•  734
    Epistemic partiality in friendship
    Ethics 116 (3): 498-524. 2006.
  •  281
    Weakness of will and practical irrationality (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2003.
    Among the many practical failures that threaten us, weakness of will or akrasia is often considered to be a paradigm of irrationality. The eleven new essays in this collection, written by an excellent international team of philosophers, some well-established, some younger scholars, give a rich overview of the current debate over weakness of will and practical irrationality more generally. Issues covered include classical questions such as the distinction between weakness and compulsion, the conn…Read more
  •  232
    Moral overridingness and moral theory
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 79 (2). 1998.
    I begin by proposing and explicating a plausible articulation of the view that morality is overriding. I then argue that it would be desirable for this thesis to be sustained. However, the prospects for its vindication will depend crucially on which moral theory we adopt. I examine some schematic moral theories in order to bring out which are friendly and which unfriendly to moral overridingness. In light of the reasons to hope that the overridingness thesis can be sustained, theories apparently…Read more
  •  159
    Moral Commitment and Moral Theory
    Journal of Philosophical Research 26 381-398. 2001.
    This paper examines the nature of what I call moral commitment: that is, a standing commitment to live up to moral demands. I first consider what kind of psychological state moral commitment might be, arguing that moral commitment is a species of commitment to a counterfactual condition. I explore the general structural features of attitudes of this type in order to shed light on how moral commitment might function in an agent’s motivational economy. I then use this understanding of moral commit…Read more
  •  127
    “Good For” supra “Good”
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 87 (2): 459-466. 2013.
  •  124
    Conceptual Disagreement
    American Philosophical Quarterly 56 (1): 15-28. 2019.
    Can you disagree with someone without thinking that what they say is false? As we shall see, this is not only possible but quite frequent. Starting with the type of disagreement most familiar from the philosophical literature, we will progressively expand the circle of genuine disagreement until it encompasses even conceptual disagreement, which might sound like a contradiction in terms. For conceptual disagreement necessarily involves the parties' using different concepts, which one might think…Read more
  •  114
    Acts of will (review)
    Philosophical Quarterly 61 (245): 851-855. 2011.
  •  113
    Self-control in action and belief
    Philosophical Explorations 24 (2): 225-242. 2021.
    Self-control is normally, if only tacitly, viewed as an inherently practical capacity or achievement: as exercised only in the domain of action. Questioning this assumption, we wish to motivate the...
  •  90
    The Aim of Affirmative Action
    Social Theory and Practice 25 (3): 385-408. 1999.
  •  90
    Moral Relativism and Quasi-Absolutism
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 58 (1): 189. 1998.
  •  76
  •  75
    Weakness of Will and Practical Judgement
    In Sarah Stroud & Christine Tappolet (eds.), Weakness of will and practical irrationality, Oxford University Press. pp. 121. 2003.
    A practical judgement is one which enjoys an internal, necessary relation to subsequent action or intention, and which can serve as a sufficient explanation of such action or intention. Does the phenomenon of weakness of will show that deliberation does not characteristically issue in such practical judgements? The author argues that the possibility of akrasia does not threaten the view that we make practical judgements, when the latter thesis is properly understood. Indeed, the author suggests …Read more
  •  72
    Dworkin and Casey on Abortion
    Philosophy and Public Affairs 25 (2): 140-170. 1996.
  •  55
    Introduction to the Special Issue: The Nature and Implications of Disagreement
    American Philosophical Quarterly 56 (1): 15-28. 2019.
    Disagreement and the implications thereof have emerged as a central preoccupation of recent analytic philosophy. In epistemology, articles on so-called peer disagreement and its implications have burgeoned and now constitute an especially rich subject of discussion in the field. In moral and political philosophy, moral disagreement has of course traditionally been a crucial argumentative lever in meta-ethical debates, and disagreement over conceptions of the good has been the spark for central c…Read more
  •  51
    This chapter highlights and assesses an important form of argument that has often been deployed in debates over moral demandingness. 'They can’t take that away from me' arguments claim to identify something which morality cannot ask us to give up — something which morality allegedly cannot take away from us. Does any argument of this kind succeed? This chapter investigates that question by sketching and critiquing three such arguments from the contemporary literature, including a well-known argu…Read more
  •  39
    Facts, Values, and Morality (review)
    Philosophical Review 107 (4): 612. 1998.
    Richard Brandt's last book discusses foundational questions in metaethics and normative ethics. Many of the central views expressed, as well as the topics taken up, will be familiar to those who know Brandt's earlier works, although some parts of the book represent new and welcome additions to his corpus. Brandt was very much a systematic moral philosopher, a theory builder. I can here only sketch the outlines of the theory he developed in the book, and suggest some points at which one might wis…Read more
  •  37
    Truth and Truthfulness: an Essay in Genealogy (review)
    Disputatio 1 (18): 197-203. 2005.
    018-7
  •  36
    Between Universalism and Skepticism (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 57 (3): 732-734. 1997.
  •  32
    The Rational and the Moral Order: The Social Roots of Reason and Morality (review)
    Philosophical Review 106 (4): 577. 1997.
    The first four chapters develop his account of reason and reasons in general. Baier calls actions, beliefs, and feelings that can be assessed as rational or irrational “performances”. He argues that the aim of the enterprise of reason is to arrive at performances that are as good as possible ; in order to further this aim, societies promulgate guidelines of rationality. Baier thinks that a being cannot be fully rational unless it has the benefit of such publicly available guidelines. Indeed, “a …Read more
  •  28
    Review of James Dreier (ed.), Contemporary Debates in Moral Theory (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2006 (10). 2006.
  •  19
    À la recherche de la source des normes déontologiques
    Philosophiques 28 (1): 151-171. 2001.
    La pensée morale ordinaire semble incorporer une adhésion à des contraintes ou des restrictions déontologiques : des interdictions qui restent en vigueur même dans des cas où les actions interdites constituent le seul moyen de prévenir des conséquences encore pires. La source de ces normes déontologiques, cependant, n'est pas évidente. Plusieurs tentatives récentes pour trouver une base aux restrictions déontologiques ou pour expliquer ce qui les génère sont examinées. La plus prometteuse insist…Read more
  •  14
    Rationalité, humanité, normativité
    Philosophiques 31 (2): 405-408. 2004.
  •  12
    This chapter considers whether our moral entitlement to manifest certain kinds of partiality stems from a morally basic permission to be partial, or whether it can be accounted for in some other way. In particular, it explores the possibility of justifying partial conduct via a general moral prerogative to pursue our own projects. On this approach, in contexts of plural agency, where two or more people together pursue a joint project, we would have permission to favour our co-agents — but only i…Read more
  •  8
    Is procrastination weakness of will?
    In Chrisoula Andreou & Mark D. White (eds.), The Thief of Time: Philosophical Essays on Procrastination, Oxford University Press. pp. 51-67. 2010.
  •  4
    Irrationality
    In Ernie Lepore & Kirk Ludwig (eds.), Blackwell Companion to Donald Davidson, Wiley. 2013.
    A philosophical treatment of irrationality should at the same time leave space for irrational forms of thought and action and illuminate what is defective about them. While Davidson's analysis of weakness of the will is justly famous, some of Davidson's general philosophical commitments in fact conspire to make it especially difficult for him to account for irrationality. Davidson's conviction that irrationality must involve inconsistency, together with his rather circumscribed understanding of …Read more
  •  4
    Déontologisme et droits
    Philosophiques 26 (1): 139-148. 1999.
    RÉSUMÉ Dans ce texte, l'accent est mis sur les contraintes ou restrictions dites déontologiques. Croire en l'existence de telles contraintes, c'est croire qu'il peut être moralement inadmissible de faire quelque chose, même si cette action se révélait la seule manière d'empêcher un résultat encore pire. La question que pose et examine ce texte est celle de savoir pourquoi il est mal de faire des actions qui semblent violer une contrainte déontologique. Plus particulièrement, ce texte étudie l'hy…Read more