•  361
    Abortion: Three Perspectives
    with Michael Tooley, Celia Wolf-Devine, and Alison M. Jaggar
    Oup Usa. 2009.
    The newest addition to the Point/Counterpoint Series, Abortion: Three Perspectives features a debate between four noted philosophers - Michael Tooley, Celia Wolf-Devine, Philip E. Devine, and Alison M. Jaggar - presenting different perspectives on one of the most socially and politically argued issues of the past 30 years. The three main arguments include the "liberal" pro-choice approach, the "communitarian" pro-life approach, and the "gender justice" approach. Divided into two parts, the text …Read more
  •  142
    Why Tolerate Religion?By Brian Leiter
    Analysis 73 (3): 595-597. 2013.
  •  113
    Capital punishment and the sanctity of life
    Midwest Studies in Philosophy 24 (1). 2000.
  •  110
  •  77
    Creation and Evolution: PHILIP E. DEVINE
    Religious Studies 32 (3): 325-337. 1996.
    Despite the bad reputation of the legal profession, law remains king in America. A highly diverse society relies on the laws to maintain a working sense of the dignity and inviability of each individual. And a persistent element in contemporary debates is the fear that naturalistic theories of the human person will erode our belief that we have a dignity greater than that of other natural objects. Thus the endurance of the creation vs. evolution debate is due less to the arguments of creationist…Read more
  •  75
    Relativism, abortion, and tolerance
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 48 (1): 131-138. 1987.
  •  75
    The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism
    Philosophy 53 (206). 1978.
    If someone abstains from meat-eating for reasons of taste or personal economics, no moral or philosophical question arises. But when a vegetarian attempts to persuade others that they, too, should adopt his diet, then what he says requires philosophical attention. While a vegetarian might argue in any number of ways, this essay will be concerned only with the argument for a vegetarian diet resting on a moral objection to the rearing and killing of animals for the human table. The vegetarian, in …Read more
  •  74
    The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism
    Philosophy 53 (206): 481-505. 1978.
    If someone abstains from meat-eating for reasons of taste or personal economics, no moral or philosophical question arises. But when a vegetarian attempts to persuade others that they, too, should adopt his diet, then what he says requires philosophical attention. While a vegetarian might argue in any number of ways, this essay will be concerned only with the argument for a vegetarian diet resting on a moral objection to the rearing and killing of animals for the human table. The vegetarian, in …Read more
  •  71
    What’s Wrong with Torture?
    International Philosophical Quarterly 49 (3): 317-332. 2009.
    Many of us want to say that there is an absolute—or at least a virtually absolute—prohibition on torturing people. But we live in a world in which firm moral restraints of all sorts are hard to defend. Neither contemporary conventional morality, nor any of the available moral theories, provides adequate support for the deliverances of the “wisdom of repugnance” in this area. Nor do they support casuistry capable of distinguishing torture from (sometimes legitimate) forms of rough treatment. I he…Read more
  •  66
    Relativism
    The Monist 67 (3): 405-418. 1984.
  •  63
    Letters to the Editor
    with Sandra Lee Bartky, Marilyn Friedman, William Harper, Alison M. Jaggar, Richard H. Miller, Abigail L. Rosenthal, Naomi Scheman, Nancy Tuana, Steven Yates, Christina Sommers, Harry Deutsch, Michael Kelly, and Charles L. Reid
    Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 65 (7). 1992.
  •  51
    Letters to the Editor
    with William F. Vallicella, Keith Burgess-Jackson, John Pepple, and Michael Kelly
    Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 77 (2). 2003.
  •  49
    The Structure of Conventional Morality
    International Philosophical Quarterly 45 (2): 243-256. 2005.
    In recent years, analytically trained philosophers have given extensive attention to various issues involved in the “culture wars,” including abortion, same-sex marriage, stem-cell research, and assisted suicide. There are, however, moral judgments that virtually no one questions. Defenses of adult-child sex, for example, are rare. There is also “conventional immorality”—the breach of conventional moral standards within roughly defined limits that at least limit the resulting damage to third par…Read more
  •  46
    Creation and Evolution
    Religious Studies 32 (3). 1996.
    I defend the coherence of Theistic Evolutionism, though I do not present any direct argument for either theism or (broadly Darwinian) evolution. I distinguish between evolution as a scientific theory, however well established, and evolutionism as a religion or ideology. I argue that the confusion between the two senses of evolutionism is bad for both biology and religion, and conclude by suggesting that, in Irving Kristol's words, 'our goal should be to have biology and evolution taught in a way…Read more
  •  35
    Sex and Gender: A Spectrum of Views
    with Celia Wolf-Devine
    Wadsworth Publishing. 2003.
    SEX AND GENDER: A SPECTRUM OF VIEWS provides a medium for discussion and debate about today's most provocative issues concerning human sexuality and the relationships between masculinity and femininity. Including a spectrum of views that ranges from the stridently conservative to the progressively feminist, this anthology engages students in these subjects using a wider range of standpoints than is typical of such readers.
  •  33
    The Ethics of Homicide
    with R. A. Duff
    Philosophical Quarterly 30 (120): 273. 1980.
  •  33
    Homicide Revisited
    Philosophy 55 (213). 1980.
  •  30
    On the Public Responsibilities of Philosophers
    Teaching Philosophy 10 (1): 3-12. 1987.
  •  29
    The principle of double effect
    American Journal of Jurisprudence 19 (1): 44. 1974.
  •  29
    What's the Meaning of "This"? (review)
    Review of Metaphysics 44 (1): 131-132. 1990.
    Austin's book raises, but does not resolve, a problem for the analysis of belief as a two-termed relation between a believer and a proposition. The argument turns to account a puzzle about beliefs expressed in terms of the demonstratives this and that--and hence also I, here, and now--to expose a threatened inconsistency in the doctrine of propositions most commonly held among analytic philosophers.
  •  28
    The Perfect Island, the Devil, and Existent Unicorns
    American Philosophical Quarterly 12 (3). 1975.
  •  26
    On Slippery Slopes
    Philosophy 93 (3): 375-393. 2018.
    I here discuss an argument frequently dismissed as a fallacy – the slippery slope or camel's nose. The argument has three forms – analogical, argumentative, and prudential. None of these provides a deductive guarantee, but all can provide considerations capable of influencing the intellect. Our evaluation of such arguments reflects our background social and evaluative assumptions.
  •  23
    "Exists" and St. Anselm's Argument
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 3 (1): 59-70. 1977.
    This paper examines interpretations of the doctrine that "exists" is not a predicate (existence is not a property). None, it is concluded, is both true and a refutation of St. Anselm's "ontological" argument for the existence of God.
  •  22
    Against Superkitten Ethics
    International Philosophical Quarterly 51 (4): 429-436. 2011.
    I here criticize the use of science-fiction examples in ethics, chiefly, though not solely, by defenders of abortion. We have no reliable intuitions concerning such examples—certainly nothing strong enough to set against the strong intuition that infanticide is virtually always wrong.