University of Texas at Austin
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 1976
Williamsport, Pennsylvania, United States of America
  •  67
    Famine and Charity
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 29 (1): 149-166. 1991.
  •  297
    Psychotic Delusion and the Insanity Defense
    Public 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
  •  38
    Charitable organisations and the rescue principle
    Critical 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