-
30Redeeming the TimeThe Personalist Forum 11 (1): 17-32. 1995.I borrow an idea from the fiction of C. S. Lewis that future outcomes may affect the value of past events. I then defend this idea via the concept of a “temporal whole”, and show its promise as a partial theodicy and its resonance with both Christian theism and a robust personalism.
-
21Absolutism, Utilitarianism and Agent-Relative ConstraintsInternational Philosophical Quarterly 62 (2): 243-252. 2022.Absolutism—the idea that some kinds of acts are absolutely wrong and must never be done—plays an important role in medical ethics. Nicholas Denyer has defended it from some influential consequentialist critics who have alleged that absolutism is committed to “agent-relative constraints” and therefore intolerably complex and messy. Denyer ingeniously argues that, if there are problems with agent-relative constraints, then they are problems for consequentialism, since it contains agent-relative co…Read more
-
12The Contingency Cosmological ArgumentIn Michael Bruce & Steven Barbone (eds.), Just the Arguments, Wiley‐blackwell. 2011-09-16.A brief synopsis of the "contingency" version of the cosmological argument for theism, as developed by Samuel Clarke and explained/examined by William Rowe.
-
17Is/Ought FallacyIn Robert Arp, Steven Barbone & Michael Bruce (eds.), Bad Arguments, Wiley. 2018-05-09.This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy called the 'is/ought fallacy (IOF)'. Some philosophers conclude that the IOF is not a logical problem but an epistemological one, meaning that even if inferences like this one are logically valid, they cannot be used epistemologically to warrant anyone's real‐life moral beliefs. Arguments do not warrant their conclusions unless the premises of those arguments are themselves warranted, and in the real world, they say, no on…Read more
-
22God's Call: Moral Realism, God's Commands, and Human Autonomy (review)Religious Studies 38 (2): 225-246. 2002.
-
8Bald LiesCogito 10 (3): 235-237. 1996.It is wrong to deceive people, to get them to believe falsehoods. At least some times, when I wear a wig, I attempt to deceive people about how much hair I have. Why is this not deception? Why is this not wrong? These are the questions I explore.
-
34Bald LiesCogito 10 (3): 235-237. 1996.I present a short, informal vignette that poses the question of whether altering one's appearance by wearing a wig counts as deception, since in both cases one (apparently) tries to bring about false beliefs in others. The bald-headed wig-wearer tries to get others to believe falsely that he has a thick head of hair. If deception is generally wrong, why isn't wig-wearing wrong also?
-
37Review of Robert Almeder Blind Realism: An Essay on Human Knowledge and Natural Science (review)Philosophical Quarterly 45 (178): 127-129. 1995.
-
7Could there be an Atheistic Political Theology?Forum Philosophicum: International Journal for Philosophy 26 (2): 303-327. 2021.“Only a God can save us.” So says Martin Heidegger in his pessimistic assessment of merely human philosophy’s ability to change the world. The thought is not unique to Heidegger: another thinker who arrived at a similar conclusion was Heidegger’s contemporary and sometime admirer, Carl Schmitt, in his idea of “political theology.” I take up Schmitt’s version of the idea and use it to examine the New Atheism, a relatively recent polemical critique of religion by an informal coalition of English-s…Read more
-
183The Problem of Endless Joy: Is Infinite Utility Too Much for Utilitarianism?Utilitas 6 (2): 183-192. 1994.What if human joy went on endlessly? Suppose, for example, that each human generation were followed by another, or that the Western religions are right when they teach that each human being lives eternally after death. If any such possibility is true in the actual world, then an agent might sometimes be so situated that more than one course of action would produce an infinite amount of utility. Deciding whether to have a child born this year rather than next is a situation wherein an agent may f…Read more
-
11Ethical Formation (review)Mind 113 (449): 189-192. 2004.A critical review of Sabina Lovibond's book Ethical Formation (2004).
-
61Intuitionism and conservatismMetaphilosophy 21 (3): 282-293. 1990.I define ethical intuitionism as the view that it is appropriate to appeal to inferentially unsupported moral beliefs in the course of moral reasoning. I mention four common objections to this view, including the view that all such appeals to intuition make ethical theory politically and noetically conservative. I defend intuitionism from versions of this criticism expressed by R.B. Brandt, R.M. Hare and Richard Miller.
-
30Stephen T. Davis God, reason and theistic proofs. (Edinburgh university press, 1997). (review)Religious Studies 35 (1): 99-111. 1999.
-
87Utilitarian EschatologyAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 28 (4): 339-47. 1991.Traditional utilitarianism, when applied, implies a surprising prediction about the future, viz., that all experience of pleasure and pain must end once and for all, or infinitely dwindle. Not only is this implication surprising, it should render utilitarianism unacceptable to persons who hold any of the following theses: that evaluative propositions may not imply descriptive, factual propositions; that evaluative propositions may not imply contingent factual propositions about the future; tha…Read more
-
109Morally serious critics of moral intuitionsRatio 12 (1). 1999.I characterise moral intuitionism as the methodological claim that one may legitimately appeal to moral judgments in the course of moral reasoning even when those judgments are not supported by inference from other judgments. I describe two patterns of criticism of this method: ‘morally unserious’ criticisms, which hold that ‘morality is bunk’, so appeals to moral intuitions are bunk as well; and ‘morally serious’ criticisms, which hold that morality is not bunk, but that appeals to moral intu…Read more
-
351We Have No Positive Epistemic DutiesMind 119 (473): 83-102. 2010.In ethics, it is commonly supposed that we have both positive duties and negative duties, things we ought to do and things we ought not to do. Given the many parallels between ethics and epistemology, we might suppose that the same is true in epistemology, and that we have both positive epistemic duties and negative epistemic duties. I argue that this is false; that is, that we have negative epistemic duties, but no positive ones. There are things that we ought not to believe, but there is nothi…Read more
-
34Epistemic Value, edited by Adrian Haddock, Alan Millar, and Duncan PritchardMind 123 (490): 609-612. 2014.
-
12An Aristotelian Business Ethics?Journal of Applied Philosophy 15 (1): 89-104. 1998.Elaine Sternberg’s Just Business is one of the first book‐length Aristotelian treatments of business ethics. It is Aristotelian in the sense that Sternberg begins by defining the nature of business in order to identify its end, and, thence, normative principles to regulate it. According to Sternberg, the nature of business is ‘the selling of goods or services in order to maximise long‐term owner value’, therefore all business behaviour must be evaluated with reference to the maximisation of long…Read more
-
31Review of Timothy Chappell, Ethics and Experience: Life Beyond Moral Theory (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2009 (12). 2009.
-
58Non-contradiction: Oh yeah and so what?: Nelson non-contradictionThink 12 (34): 87-91. 2013.ExtractThe logical Law of Non-contradiction – that a proposition cannot be both true and false – enjoys a special, perhaps uniquely privileged, status in philosophy. Most philosophers think that finding a contradiction – the assertion of both P and not-P – in one's reasoning is the best possible evidence that something has gone wrong, the ultimate refutation of a position. But why should this be so? What reason do we have to believe it?Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, f…Read more
-
32John Hare God's call: Moral realism, God's commands, and human autonomy. (William B. Eerdmans, 2001). (review)Religious Studies 38 (2): 225-246. 2002.
-
135Y and Z Are Not Off the Hook: The Survival Lottery Made FairerJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 35 (4): 396-401. 2010.In this article I show that the argument in John Harris's famous "Survival Lottery" paper cannot be right. Even if we grant Harris's assumptions—of the justifiability of such a lottery, the correctness of maximizing consequentialism, the indistinguishability between killing and letting die, the practical and political feasibility of such a scheme—the argument still will not yield the conclusion that Harris wants. On his own terms, the medically needy should be less favored (and more vulnerable t…Read more
-
31Temporal Wholes and the Problem of EvilReligious Studies 29 (3). 1993.I borrow an idea from the fiction of C. S. Lewis that future outcomes may affect the value of past events, defend this idea via the concept of a 'temporal whole' and show its promise as a part of a theodicy and its resonance with Christian theism.
Leeds, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Religion |
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |