•  551
    A moral basis for prohibiting performance enhancing drug use in competitive sport
    Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 44 (2): 243-257. 2017.
    A strong moral reason for prohibiting doping in sport is to be found in the bad choices that would be faced by clean athletes in a sporting world that tolerated doping. The case against doping is not, however, to be grounded in the concept of coercion. Instead, it is grounded in a general duty of sport to afford fair opportunity to the goods that are distinctively within sport's sphere of control. The moral reason to prohibit doping need not be balanced against any autonomy claim of athletes who…Read more
  •  269
    Moral particularists are united in their opposition to the codification of morality, and their work poses an important challenge to traditional ways of thinking about moral philosophy. Defenders of moral particularism have, with near unanimity, sought support from a doctrine they call “holism in the theory of reasons.” We argue that this is all a mistake. There are two ways in which holism in the theory of reasons can be understood, but neither provides any support for moral particularism. Moral…Read more
  •  161
    Preempting principles: Recent debates in moral particularism
    Philosophy Compass 3 (6): 1177-1192. 2008.
    Moral particularism, as recently defended, charges that traditional moral theorizing unduly privileges moral principles. Moral generalism defends a prominent place for moral principles. Because moral principles are often asked to play multiple roles, moral particularism aims at multiple targets. We distinguish two leading roles for moral principles, the role of standard and the role of guide. We critically survey some of the leading arguments both for and against principles so conceived.
  •  160
    Moral philosophy has long been dominated by the aim of understanding morality and the virtues in terms of principles. However, the underlying assumption that this is the best approach has received almost no defence, and has been attacked by particularists, who argue that the traditional link between morality and principles is little more than an unwarranted prejudice. In Principled Ethics, Michael Ridge and Sean McKeever meet the particularist challenge head-on, and defend a distinctive view the…Read more
  •  114
    Particularism and the contingent a priori
    Acta Analytica 21 (2): 3-11. 2006.
    Particularism renders the options for a sound moral epistemology few and the prospects dim. One leading approach treats basic knowledge of particular cases as derivable from an a priori moral principle and a posteriori knowledge of the contingent non-moral facts to which the principle applies. Particularists must forgo this approach because it requires principles. Yet a purely a posteriori moral epistemology is also implausible, especially when combined with particularism. Particularists such as…Read more
  •  97
    Turning on default reasons
    Journal of Moral Philosophy 4 (1): 55-76. 2007.
    Particularism takes an extremely ecumenical view of what considerations might count as reasons and thereby threatens to ‘flatten the moral landscape’ by making it seem that there is no deep difference between, for example, pain, and shoelace color. After all, particularists have claimed, either could provide a reason provided a suitable moral context. To avoid this result, some particularists draw a distinction between default and non-default reasons. The present paper argues that all but the mo…Read more
  •  64
    Ethics without Principles
    with Michael Ridge
    Philosophical Review 116 (1): 124-128. 2007.
  •  44
    Medically Assisted Death
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 87 (4): 684-687. 2009.
    No abstract
  •  31
    Book Notes (review)
    with Bradford R. Cokelet, Yusuf Has, Todd P. Hedrick, and David A. Williams
    Ethics 115 (1): 187-191. 2004.
  •  30
    Reasons and the Good (review)
    Review of Metaphysics 61 (2): 409-410. 2007.
  •  29
    The Many Moral Particularisms
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 35 (1): 83-106. 2005.
    What place, if any, moral principles should or do have in moral life has been a longstanding question f or moral philosophy. For some, the proposition that moral philosophy should strive to articulate moral principles has been an article of faith. At least since Aristotle, however, there has been a rieh counter-tradition that questions the possibility or value of trying to capture morality in principled terms. In recent years, philosophers who question principled approaches to morality have argu…Read more
  •  27
    Organic Unities
    In David Bakhurst, Margaret Olivia Little & Brad Hooker (eds.), Thinking About Reasons: Themes From the Philosophy of Jonathan Dancy, Oxford University Press. pp. 265. 2013.
  •  27
    Elusive Reasons 1
    Oxford Studies in Metaethics 7. 2012.
    The present chapter attempts to resolve a puzzle about normative testimony. On the one hand, agents act on the advice of others, advice which purports to tell them what they have reason to do. When they do so, they can act for good reason. This thought, though, sits uneasily with another: that the mere fact that someone has advised a course of action is not itself a reason. An interesting view of reasons recently defended by Stephen Kearns and Daniel Star offers a resolution to the puzzle. On th…Read more
  •  22
    The Ethics of Sport: what everyone needs to know (review)
    Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 44 (3): 408-410. 2017.
  •  3
    Jonathan Dancy, Ethics without Principles (review)
    Philosophical Review 116 (1): 124-128. 2007.
  •  1
    Completeness as an Ideal for Moral Theory
    Dissertation, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 2001.
    Must an acceptable moral theory be systematic and complete? Most philosophers agree we have no such theory now---at least not one which is plausible in other respects. But perhaps we should strive for such a theory and regard our current incomplete theories as at best useful stepping stones. Some theories, such as hedonistic utilitarianism, hold out the promise of being complete: provided all the empirical facts one could, in principle, determine whether any given act was right or not. Other the…Read more