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661Kant's conception of humanityJournal of the History of Philosophy 45 (2): 291-308. 2007.Contemporary Kant scholarship generally takes 'humanity' in Kant's ethical writings to refer to beings with rational capacities. However, his claims that only the good will has unqualified goodness and that humanity is unconditionally valuable suggests that humanity might be the good will. This problem seems to have infiltrated some prominent scholarship, and Richard Dean has recently argued that, in fact, humanity is indeed the good will. This paper defends, and tries to make sense of, the more…Read more
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317On the methodology of the race debate: Conceptual analysis and racial discoursePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 76 (2). 2008.Analyzing racial concepts has become an important task in the philosophy of race. Aside from any inherent interest that might be found in the meanings of racial terms, these meanings also can spell the doom or deliverance of competing ontological and normative theories about race. One of the most pressing questions about race at present is the normative question of whether race should be eliminated from, or conserved in, public discourse and practice. This normative question is often answered in…Read more
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285Racism as disrespectEthics 120 (1): 64-93. 2009.An analysis of 'racism' in terms of disrespect. This article argues against the views that racism should be understood in reductive ways as, variously, an attitude of ill-will (Jorge Garcia), a cognitive object such as ideology (Tommie Shelby), a behavior (Michael Philips), or some disjunctive hybrid (Lawrence Blum). In fact, it argues that racism should be conceptually released from having any one location. The disrespect analysis favored here can accommodate a variety of important desiderat…Read more
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231Expanding the Limits of Universalization: Kant’s Duties and Kantian Moral DeliberationCanadian Journal of Philosophy 33 (1). 2003.Despite all the attention given to Kants universalizability tests, one crucial aspect of Kants thought is often overlooked. Attention to this issue, I will argue, helps us resolve two serious problems for Kants ethics. Put briefly, the first problem is this: Kant, despite his stated intent to the contrary, doesnt seem to use universalization in arguing for duties to oneself, and, anyway, it is not at all clear why duties to oneself should be grounded on a procedure that envisions a world in …Read more
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229Is Race-Thinking Biological or Social, and Does It Matter for Racism? An Exploratory StudyJournal of Social Philosophy 41 (3): 244-259. 2010.An empirical study of whether the ordinary conception of race in the United States is biological or social, and how different conceptions connect to racism.
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198Basic Racial RealismJournal of the American Philosophical Association 1 (3): 449--466. 2015.In the debate over the reality of race, a three-way dispute has become entrenched: race is biologically real, socially real, or simply not real. These three theses have each enjoyed increasingly sophisticated defenses over roughly the past thirty years, but we argue here that this debate contains a lacuna: there is a fourth, mostly neglected, position that we call ‘basic racial realism.’ Basic racial realism says that though race is neither biologically real nor socially real, it is real all the…Read more
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184The shape of a life and the value of loss and gainPhilosophical Studies 162 (3): 665-682. 2013.We ordinarily think that, keeping all else equal, a life that improves is better than one that declines. However, it has proven challenging to account for such value judgments: some, such as Fred Feldman and Daniel Kahneman, have simply denied that these judgments are rational, while others, such as Douglas Portmore, Michael Slote, and David Velleman, have proposed justifications for the judgments that appear to be incomplete or otherwise problematic. This article identifies problems with existi…Read more
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178A Theory of RaceRoutledge. 2008.Social commentators have long asked whether racial categories should be conserved or eliminated from our practices, discourse, institutions, and perhaps even private thoughts. In _A Theory of Race_, Joshua Glasgow argues that this set of choices unnecessarily presents us with too few options. Using both traditional philosophical tools and recent psychological research to investigate folk understandings of race, Glasgow argues that, as ordinarily conceived, race is an illusion. However, our press…Read more
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170The paradox paradoxSynthese 200 (2): 1-7. 2022.In this paper we argue that our conception of and intuitions about paradoxes are themselves paradoxical. Specifically, we argue that our commitment to the existence and nature of paradoxes is inconsistent with a norm of rationality—which is a paradox.
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153What is Race? Four Philosophical ViewsOup Usa. 2019.In this debate-format book, four philosophers--Joshua Glasgow, Sally Haslanger, Chike Jeffers, and Quayshawn Spencer--articulate contrasting views on race. Each author presents a distinct viewpoint on what race is, and then replies to the others, offering theories that are clear and accessible to undergraduates, lay readers, and non-specialists, as well as other philosophers of race.
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151The Ordinary Conception of Race in the United States and Its Relation to Racial Attitudes: A New ApproachJournal of Cognition and Culture 9 (1-2): 15-38. 2009.Many hold that ordinary race-thinking in the USA is committed to the 'one-drop rule', that race is ordinarily represented in terms of essences, and that race is ordinarily represented as a biological (phenotype- and/or ancestry-based, non-social) kind. This study investigated the extent to which ordinary race-thinking subscribes to these commitments. It also investigated the relationship between different conceptions of race and racial attitudes. Participants included 449 USA adults who complete…Read more
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137The impossibility of superduperveniencePhilosophical Studies 113 (3): 201-221. 2003.Supervenience has provided a way for nonreductive materialists to explain how the mental can be physically irreducible but still physically respectable. In recent years, doubts about this research program have emerged from a number of quarters. Consequently, Terence Horgan has argued that nonreductive materialists must appeal to an upgraded "superdupervenience," if supervenience is to do any materialist work. We argue that nonreductive materialism cannot meet this challenge. Superdupervenience i…Read more
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123Rethinking Race: The Case for Deflationary Realism, by Michael O. HardimonMind 127 (507): 911-919. 2018.© Mind Association 2018This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model...It starts when someone, often a highly visible someone, challenges a widely used and commonly accepted idea. In stage two, defenders of conventional wisdom recruit complicated and unexpected theories to save common sense. Statistics may be involved. Jargon is likely. In the third stage, the common-sense-preserving theories are themselves critiqued…Read more
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121In Defense of a Four-part Theory: Replies to Hardimon, Haslanger, Mallon, and ZackSymposia on Gender, Race, and Philosophy 5 (2): 1-18. 2009.Replies to Michael Hardimon, Sally Haslanger, Ron Mallon, and Naomi Zack's critical commentaries on Joshua Glasgow's book, A Theory of Race.
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105Three things realist constructionism about race—or anything else—can doJournal of Social Philosophy 38 (4). 2007.Social constructionists about race frequently hold that race does not travel, that race is socially constructed, and that racial passing is possible. Ron Mallon has argued that these three principles cannot be consistently held at once. This article argues otherwise.
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97The End of Historical Constructivism: Circularity, Redundancy, IndeterminacyThe Monist 93 (2): 321-335. 2010.Constructivists holds that social facts are what make race. One prominent version of this view is historical: it claims that historical social facts make race. Famously, this view has been accused (by Appiah) of being circular or (as emphasized by Gooding-Williams) redundant. Recently historicalism has been defended against this view by Paul Taylor and Jorge Gracia. It is argued here that these defenses only work at the cost of making historicalism indeterminate.
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67Does Direct Moral Judgment Have a Phenomenal Essence?Journal of Moral Philosophy 10 (1): 52-69. 2013.Moral phenomenology has enjoyed a resurgence lately, and within the field, a trend has emerged: uniform rejection of the idea that the experience of making ‘direct’ moral judgments has any phenomenal essence, that is, any phenomenal property or properties that are always present and that distinguish these experiences from experiences of making non-direct- moral judgments. This article examines existing arguments for this anti-essentialism and finds them wanting. While acknowledging that phenomen…Read more
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63The Expressivist Theory of Punishment DefendedLaw and Philosophy 34 (6): 601-631. 2015.Expressivist theories of punishment received largely favorable treatment in the 1980s and 1990s. Perhaps predictably, the 2000s saw a slew of critical rejections of the view. It is now becoming evident that, while several objections to expressivism have found their way into print, three concerns are proving particularly popular. So the time is right for a big picture assessment. What follows is an attempt to show that these three dominant objections are not decisive reasons to give up the most p…Read more
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52The Philosophy of Race, by Atkin Albert: Durham, Acumen, 2012 pp. vi + 194, £15.99Australasian Journal of Philosophy 91 (4): 799-801. 2013.No abstract
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39The Meaning and Wrongness of DiscriminationCriminal Justice Ethics 34 (1): 116-129. 2015.Review Essay Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Born Free and Equal? (Oxford University Press, 2014)
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39The Ordinary Meaningful LifeJournal of the American Philosophical Association 9 (3): 408-425. 2023.It is widely thought that we have good reason to try to be important. Being important or doing significant things is supposed to add value to our lives. In particular, it is supposed to make our lives exceptionally meaningful. This essay develops an alternative view. After exploring what importance is and how it might relate to meaning in life, a series of cases are presented to validate the perspective that being important adds no meaning to our lives. The meaningful life does need valuable pro…Read more
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37Symposia on Gender, Race and PhilosophyIn David Papineau (ed.), Philosophy, Oxford University Press. pp. 5--2. 2009.A response by the author of A Theory of Race, to review essays by Michael Hardimon, Sally Haslanger, Ron Mallon, and Naomi Zack
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36The Gift of DeathThe Philosophers' Magazine 91 94-98. 2020.Is there a benefit to dying around 75 or 80 years old? Ezekiel Emmanuel argues that there is, but his reasoning is dubious. However it is argued here that Emmanuel is right that there is another benefit in store for the adult children of the one who dies.
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33The Philosophy of Race, by Atkin Albert: Durham, Acumen, 2012 pp. vi + 194, £15.99 (paperback) (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 91 (4): 799-801. 2013.
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33Kant's Non-Prudential Duty of BeneficenceIn Ralph Schumacher, Rolf-Peter Horstmann & Volker Gerhardt (eds.), Kant Und Die Berliner Aufklärung: Akten des Ix. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses. Bd. I: Hauptvorträge. Bd. Ii: Sektionen I-V. Bd. Iii: Sektionen Vi-X: Bd. Iv: Sektionen Xi-Xiv. Bd. V: Sektionen Xv-Xviii, De Gruyter. pp. 211-219. 2001.An argument for generating a duty of beneficence using Kant's Formula of Universal Law.
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27Suffering and Moral Responsibility (review)International Studies in Philosophy 35 (4): 363-364. 2003.
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17Death, Value, Gratitude, and Solace: A Reply to Bradley, McAleer, and RosatiJournal of Philosophical Research 48 301-316. 2023.This article responds to Ben Bradley, Sean McAleer, and Connie Rosati’s criticisms of The Solace. Broadly, the themes touched on include the sense of narrative value at work in the book; what attitudes we should have towards positive value, including especially narrative value; whether good opportunities are themselves good for us; how we should value extrinsic but final goodness like the positive value that death draws from life; and what kinds of questions about death are worth asking.
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