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10The Philosophy of Sex: Contemporary Readings, 7th edition (edited book)Rowman & Littlefield. 2017.
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Sex and Sexual Orientation, Gender and Sexual PreferenceJournal of Controversial Ideas. forthcoming.On what we can call the “folk” conception of sexual orientation, sexual orientation is understood as sex-based attraction, that is, as (partly) attraction on the basis of the perceived sex of the person to whom one is attracted. However, in recent discussions, philosophers have either added gender to sex as the basis of sexual orientation, or have altogether replaced sex with gender. Moreover, this addition or replacement has gone—mostly—unargued for. This paper argues that a sex-based conceptio…Read more
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57Philosophy of Sex: Contemporary Readings (edited book)Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 1980.This book's thirty essays explore philosophically the nature and morality of sexual perversion, cybersex, masturbation, homosexuality, contraception, same-sex marriage, promiscuity, pedophilia, date rape, sexual objectification, teacher-student relationships, pornography, and prostitution. Authors include Martha Nussbaum, Thomas Nagel, Alan Goldman, John Finnis, Sallie Tisdale, Robin West, Alan Wertheimer, John Corvino, Cheshire Calhoun, Jerome Neu, and Alan Soble, among others. A valuable resou…Read more
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31Sexual Exclusion and the Right to SexTheoria. forthcoming.Philosophers have recently expressed interest in the question as to whether there is a right to sex, a right whose justification is motivated by the existence of sexually excluded people—people who suffer from involuntary long-term sexual deprivation (owing, say, to a chronic medical condition). This paper, after offering preliminary remarks about what a right to sex and its objects might be and who might have this right, surveys seven justifications for the right: linkage arguments, need, well-…Read more
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86Sexual Orientations, Sexual Preferences, and Well-BeingSocial Theory and Practice 49 (3): 463-489. 2023.A common belief is that, among our sexual dispositions, sexual orientations are important and deep features of who someone is. This distinguishes them from other sexual dispositions—“mere” preferences—that are thought to be trivial in comparison. Is there a way to adequately account for this distinction? What is a plausible explanation for the belief that sexual orientation is a deep and important feature of who one is? This paper defends one necessary condition for a sexual disposition to be an…Read more
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60Sex and Sexuality, updated and revisedStanford Encyclopledia of Philosophy. 2023.This is an entry that covers the basic issues in the philosophy of sex and sexuality, both conceptual and normative. It is a revised and updated version from the 2018 entry.
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9Review of the “Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Sex and Sexuality” (review)Philosophies 8 (2): 30. 2023.This paper is a review essay of the recently published _Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Sex and Sexuality_, edited by Brian D. Earp, Clare Chambers, and Lori Watson (2022). The anthology consists of an introduction and 40 essays, and it has eight parts: (I) What Is Sex? Is Sex Good?; (II) Sexual Orientations; (III) Sexual Autonomy and Consent; (IV) Regulating Sexual Relationships; (V) Pathologizing Sex and Sexuality; (VI) Contested Desires; (VII) Objectification and Commercialized Sex; and (…Read more
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Virtue ethics and adulteryIn Adrianne Leigh McEvoy (ed.), Sex, Love, and Friendship: Studies of the Society for the Philosophy of Sex and Love, 1993-2003, Rodopi. 2011.
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Review of "The Routleddge Handbook of Philosophy of Sex and Sexuality" (review)Philosophies 8 (2). 2023.This is a lengthy review (a review essay) of "The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Sex and Sexuality" (2022), edited by Brian D. Earp, Clare Chambers, and Lori Watson.
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25The philosophy of sex: contemporary readings (edited book)Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group. 2017.With twenty-five essays, eight of which are new to this edition, this best-selling volume examines the nature, morality, and social meanings of contemporary sexual phenomena.
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1Love and IntegrityIn Arina Pismeny & Berit Brogaard (eds.), The Moral Psychology of Love, Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 213-230. 2022.This paper focuses on the relationship between love (romantic, friendship) and moral integrity. More specifically, it looks into the conditions that need to be satisfied for the two to conflict with each other. After giving a general characterization of moral integrity and explaining some crucial moral aspects of love, both culled from the literature on integrity and on love, I provide two cases of couples whose love clashes with their integrity, one of a vegan in love with a non-vegan, and anot…Read more
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2The Ethics of Sexual PleasureIn David Boonin (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Sexual Ethics, Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 37-54. 2022.This papers explains the sexual pleasure view of sexual desire, and argues that the moral evaluation of sexual pleasure depends on the moral evaluation of the sexual activity on which the pleasure supervenes. Thus, ethical talk of sexual pleasure as such, regardless of the type of activity on which it supervenes is misguided. The essay also argues that the ethics of sexual desires also depends on the sexual activities that the desires seek, but that the sexual desires and pleasures can help eval…Read more
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7Casual Sex, Promiscuity, and ObjectificationIn Raja Halwani, Jacob M. Held, Natasha McKeever & Alan G. Soble (eds.), The Philosophy of Sex: Contemporary Readings, 8th edition, Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 459-479. 2022.This essay starts by discussing the definitions, and their attendant difficulties, of "casual sex," "promiscuity," and "objectification" (including whether objectification is only about treatment or can be about mere regard), and then continues to discuss the morality of casual sex and promiscuity, especially as to whether they are objectifying. Assuming a pessimist view of sexual desire and activity, the paper argues that it is nearly impossible to defend these sexual practices against the accu…Read more
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9Racial Sexual DesiresIn The Philosophy of Sex, 8th edition, Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 285-328. 2022.(This is a revised version of the essay for the 8th edition of The Philosophy of Sex.) Halwani address three main arguments as to why someone with sexual racial preferences (sexual preferences for or against people on the basis of their ethnic of racial belonging) might be thought racist, and argues that they all fail. He then explains the steps that need to be taken before we can conclude that someone is racist from the mere fact that he or she has racial preferences. In an appendix to this rev…Read more
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10The Philosophy of Sex: Contemporary Readings, 8th edition (edited book)Rowman & Littlefield. 2022.This is the 8th edition of the book, with eight new essays to the volume. Table of contents: Are We Having Sex Now or What? (Greta Christina); Sexual Perversion (Thomas Nagel); Plain Sex (Alan Goldman); Sex and Sexual Perversion (Robert Gray); Masturbation and the Continuum of Sexual Activities (Alan Soble); Love: What’s Sex Got to Do with It? (Natasha McKeever); Is “Loving More” Better? The Values of Polyamory (Elizabeth Brake); What Is Sexual Orientation? (Robin Dembroff); Sexual Orientation: …Read more
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2Review of Srinivasan's "The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twentieth Century" (review)Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy. forthcoming.A brief review of Amia Srinivasan's book _The Right to Sex_.
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28The Palestinian Right of ReturnInternational Journal of Applied Philosophy 35 (1): 65-82. 2021.The paper argues that individual Palestinians have a right of return to historic Palestine in virtue of being members of the Palestinian people that continues to have occupancy rights in historic Palestine. More specifically, the paper argues that the Palestinians were, when Israel was founded, a people with occupancy rights to their lands, that they continue to be a people to this day, and that their occupancy right has not been alienated, forfeited, or prescripted. The paper then argues that i…Read more
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11The Palestinian Right of ReturnInternational Journal of Applied Philosophy 35 (1): 65-82. 2021.The paper argues that individual Palestinians have a right of return to historic Palestine in virtue of being members of the Palestinian people that continues to have occupancy rights in historic Palestine. More specifically, the paper argues that the Palestinians were, when Israel was founded, a people with occupancy rights to their lands, that they continue to be a people to this day, and that their occupancy right has not been alienated, forfeited, or prescripted. The paper then argues that i…Read more
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2Sexual Temperance and Sexual ObjectificationIn Eric J. Silverman (ed.), Sexual Ethics in a Secular Age: Is There Still a Virtue of Chastity?, Routledge. pp. 153-167. 2021.The paper discusses Kant's view of sexual desire in connection with Aristotle's account of sexual temperance, arguing that if the Kantian view is correct, the Aristotelian account is false (or that if the Aristotelian account is true, then the Kantian view is false). One cannot be both an Aristotelian and a Kantian about the ethics of sexual desire.
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265The Virtue of IntegritySaudi Journal of Philosophical Studies 1 (1): 13-25. 2021.Is integrity a virtue? There is a powerful argument that it is not because it would be a redundant virtue -call this the “redundancy objection.” I will, however, argue that there is a plausible conception of integrity as a virtue that meets the redundancy objection. In Section I, start by providing a plausible conception of moral integrity. I then provide, in Section II, a sketch of the virtues and the virtuous person, and explain the redundancy objection. In Section III, I offer a plausible con…Read more
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1Love and SexIn Christopher Grau & Aaron Smuts (eds.), "Introduction" for the Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Love, Oxford University Press. 2024.This chapter argues that sex and love are quite different from each other. Specifically, it argues that sexual desire is different kind of entity from romantic love, especially when the latter is understood as the settled abiding commitment between long-term partners. It also explores the normative connections (moral permissibility, obligation, and supererogation) between non-romantic forms of love—friendship, familial, and agapic love—and sexual desire, as this is an under-researched area. Furt…Read more
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35Temperance and Eating MeatJournal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 33 (3-6): 401-420. 2020.This paper provides an account of the Aristotelian virtue of temperance in regards to food, an account that revolves around the idea of enjoying the right objects and not enjoying the wrong ones. In doing so, the paper distinguishes between two meanings of “taking pleasure in something,” one that refers to the idea of the activity and one to the experience of the activity. The paper then connects this distinction to the temperate person’s attitude towards enjoying the right things and to hitting…Read more
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42The Philosophy of Sex: Contemporary Readings (edited book)Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 1980.Featuring twenty-nine essays, thirteen of which are new to this edition, this best-selling volume examines the nature, morality, and social meanings of contemporary sexual phenomena. Topics include sexual desire, masturbation, sex on the Internet, homosexuality, transgender and transsexual issues, marriage, consent, exploitation, objectification, rape, pornography, promiscuity, and prostitution
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104The Sexual Pleasure View of Sexual DesirePhilosophical Papers 49 (1): 107-137. 2020.This paper defends the ‘sexual pleasure view’ of sexual desire—that sexual desire is for sexual pleasure. It does so by explaining the various aspects of the view, especially that of ‘sexual pleasure’ on which it relies, by explaining its important implications, by responding to various objections against it (that it relies on an impoverished notion of pleasure, e.g.), and by arguing against some of its main contenders (that sexual desire is for sexual activity, e.g.).
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23The Philosophy of Sex: Contemporary Readings (edited book)Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 1980.This best-selling volume examines the nature, morality, and social meanings of contemporary sexual phenomena. Updated and new discussion questions offer students starting points for debate in both the classroom and the bedroom.
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36The Philosophy of Sex: Contemporary Readings (edited book)Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 1980.This best-selling volume examines the nature, morality, and social meanings of contemporary sexual phenomena. Updated and new discussion questions offer students starting points for debate in both the classroom and the bedroom.
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