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38Elusive Reasons 1Oxford 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
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38The Many Moral ParticularismsCanadian 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
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21Book ReviewsRichard Joyce,. The Myth of Morality.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. xiii+249. $60.00Ethics 114 (1): 182-184. 2003.
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25The Ethics of Sport: what everyone needs to know (review)Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 44 (3): 408-410. 2017.
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622A moral basis for prohibiting performance enhancing drug use in competitive sportJournal 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
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1Completeness as an Ideal for Moral TheoryDissertation, 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
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25Punishment, Participatory Democracy, & the Jury, written by Albert W. DzurJournal of Moral Philosophy 12 (5): 668-671. 2015.
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240What does holism have to do with moral particularism?Ratio 18 (1). 2005.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
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29Organic UnitiesIn David Bakhurst, Margaret Olivia Little & Brad Hooker (eds.), Thinking about reasons: themes from the philosophy of Jonathan Dancy, Oxford University Press. pp. 265. 2013.
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183Preempting principles: Recent debates in moral particularismPhilosophy 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.
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131Particularism and the contingent a prioriActa 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
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176Principled ethics: generalism as a regulative idealOxford University Press. 2006.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
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106Turning on default reasonsJournal 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
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2Aesthetics and particularismIn Michael Brady (ed.), New Waves in Metaethics, Palgrave-macmillan. 2010.
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Particularism and principlesIn John Skorupski (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Ethics, Routledge. 2010.