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339Psychotic Delusion and the Insanity DefensePublic Affairs Quarterly 23 (1): 27-48. 2009.I attempt to describe and defend an alternative definition of insanity. I claim that my definition follows from an adequate general understanding of legal excuse and that it describes correctly the question that jurors in the recent Andrea Yates case and others like it ought to be faced with. My essay has three parts. In the first, I briefly criticize M'Naghten- and Durham-inspired insanity statutes. In the second, I sketch and defend a general understanding of legal excuse and try to show how a…Read more
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27Charitable organisations and the rescue principleCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 7 (3): 52-66. 2004.Despite what Peter Singer and Peter Unger believe, no one violates the ‘rescue principle’ when she makes a frivolous purchase instead of giving to a charity like UNICEF. Nor does any one violate a collective action version of the rescue principle when she makes a frivolous purchase instead of giving to a charity. Garrett Cullity is also mistaken in believing that ‘the transitivity of wrongness’ can be used to reach the conclusion that a failure to give to charity is wrong because a failure to sa…Read more
Williamsport, Pennsylvania, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Normative Ethics |
Philosophy of Law |
Social and Political Philosophy |