•  871
    Against ‘Good for’/‘Well-Being’, for ‘Simply Good’
    Philosophical Quarterly 71 (4): 803-22. 2021.
    This paper challenges the widely held view that ‘good for’, ‘well-being’, and related terms express a distinctive evaluative concept of central importance for ethics and separate from ‘simply good’ as used by G. E. Moore and others. More specifically, it argues that there's no philosophically useful good-for or well-being concept that's neither merely descriptive in the sense of naturalistic nor reducible to ‘simply good’. The paper distinguishes two interpretations of the common claim that the …Read more
  •  854
    More Seriously Wrong, More Importantly Right
    Journal of the American Philosophical Association 5 (1): 41-58. 2019.
    Common-sense morality divides acts into those that are right and those that are wrong, but it thinks some wrong acts are more seriously wrong than others, for example murder than breaking a promise. If an act is more seriously wrong, you should feel more guilt about it and, other things equal, are more blameworthy for it and can deserve more punishment; more serious wrongs are also more to be avoided given empirical or moral uncertainty. This paper examines a number of different views about what…Read more
  •  729
    The Speech Act Fallacy Fallacy
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 12 (3): 509-526. 1982.
    John Searle has charged R.M. Hare's prescriptivist analysis of the meaning of ‘good,’ ‘ought’ and the other evaluative words with committing what he calls the ‘speech act fallacy.’ This is a fallacy which Searle thinks is committed not only by Hare's analysis, but by any analysis which attributes to a word the function of indicating that a particular speech act is being performed, or that an utterance has a particular illocutionary force. ‘There is a condition of adequacy which any analysis of t…Read more
  •  506
    Perfectionism
    Oxford University Press. 1993.
    Perfectionism is one of the leading moral views of the Western tradition, defended by Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Leibniz, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and Green. Defined broadly, it holds that what is right is whatever most promotes certain objective human goods such as knowledge, achievement, and deep personal relations. Defined more narrowly, it identifies these goods by reference to human nature, so the human good consistsin developing the properties fundamental to human beings. If it is fundament…Read more
  •  503
    A Surprisingly Common Dilemma
    Journal of Moral Philosophy 16 (1): 74-84. 2019.
    This paper discusses a dilemma that’s arises for a surprising number of ethical views and that's generated by a thesis they share: they all hold that it's a necessary condition for a thing to have an ethical property like rightness or goodness that it be accompanied by the belief that it has that property (see e.g. Kant (on one reading), Dworkin, Kymlicka, Sidgwick, Sumner, Dorsey). If the required belief is read one way, these views make it necessary, for a thing to be right or good, that it be…Read more
  •  415
    Games and the good
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 106 (1): 237-264. 2006.
    Using Bernard Suits’s brilliant analysis (contra Wittgenstein) of playing a game, this paper examines the intrinsic value of game-playing. It argues that two elements in Suits’s analysis make success in games difficult, which is one ground of value, while a third involves choosing a good activity for the property that makes it good, which is a further ground. The paper concludes by arguing that game-playing is the paradigm modern (Marx, Nietzsche) as against classical (Aristotle) value: since it…Read more
  •  413
    More seriously wrong
    Journal of the American Philosophical Association 5 41-58. 2019.
    Common-sense morality divides acts into those that are right and those that are wrong, but it thinks some wrong acts are more seriously wrong than others, for example murder than breaking a promise. If an act is more seriously wrong, you should feel more guilt about it and, other things equal, are more blameworthy for it and can deserve more punishment; more serious wrongs are also more to be avoided given empirical or moral uncertainty. This paper examines a number of different views about what…Read more
  •  298
    From Thick to Thin: Two Moral Reduction Plans
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 39 (4). 2009.
    Many philosophers of the last century thought all moral judgments can be expressed using a few basic concepts — what are today called ‘thin’ moral concepts such as ‘good,’ ‘bad,’ ‘right,’ and ‘wrong.’ This was the view, fi rst, of the non-naturalists whose work dominated the early part of the century, including Henry Sidgwick, G.E. Moore, W.D. Ross, and C.D. Broad. Some of them recognized only one basic concept, usually either ‘ought’ or ‘good’; others thought there were two. But they all assumed…Read more
  •  288
    Games and the good
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 106 (1): 217-235. 2006.
    Using Bernard Suits’s brilliant analysis (contra Wittgenstein) of playing a game, this paper examines the intrinsic value of game-playing. It argues that two elements in Suits’s analysis make success in games difficult, which is one ground of value, while a third involves choosing a good activity for the property that makes it good, which is a further ground. The paper concludes by arguing that game-playing is the paradigm modern (Marx, Nietzsche) as against classical (Aristotle) value: since it…Read more
  •  280
    Virtue, Vice, and Value
    Oxford University Press. 2001.
    What are virtue and vice, and how do they relate to other moral properties such as goodness and rightness? This book defends a perfectionist account of virtue and vice that gives distinctive answers to these questions. The account treats the virtues as higher‐level intrinsic goods, ones that involve morally appropriate attitudes to other, independent goods and evils. Virtue by itself makes a person's life better, but in a way that depends on the goodness of other things. This account was accepte…Read more
  •  279
    Why Value Autonomy?
    Social Theory and Practice 13 (3): 361-382. 1987.
  •  269
    How Much Are Games Like Art?
    Analysis 81 (2): 287-296. 2021.
    This paper challenges Thi Nguyen's argument, in Games: Agency as Art, a central part of the value of game-play comes from the aesthetic experiences it allows, especially of our own agency, so playing a game is importantly like engaging with art. It challenges three arguments Nguyen makes in support of this view and argues, to the contrary, that the principal value in game-play rests in the achievments it allows.
  •  260
    Right Act, Virtuous Motive
    Metaphilosophy 41 (1-2): 58-72. 2010.
    The concepts of right action and virtuous motivation are clearly connected, in that we expect people with virtuous motives to at least often act rightly. Two well-known views explain this connection by defining one of the concepts in terms of the other. Instrumentalists about virtue identify virtuous motives as those that lead to right acts; virtue-ethicists identify right acts as those that are or would be done from virtuous motives. This paper outlines a rival explanation, based on the “higher…Read more
  •  258
    Virtuous act, virtuous dispositions
    Analysis 66 (1): 69-76. 2006.
    Everyday moral thought uses the concepts of virtue and vice at two different levels. At what I will call a global level it applies these concepts to persons or to stable character traits or dispositions. Thus we may say that a person is brave or has a standing trait of generosity or malice. But we also apply these concepts more locally, to specific acts or mental states such as occurrent desires or feelings. Thus we may say that a particular act was brave or that a desire or pleasure felt at a p…Read more
  •  255
    Value and friendship: A more subtle view
    Utilitas 18 (3): 232-242. 2006.
    T. M. Scanlon has cited the value of friendship in arguing against a ‘teleological’ view of value which says that value inheres only in states of affairs and demands only that we promote it. This article argues that, whatever the teleological view's final merits, the case against it cannot be made on the basis of friendship. The view can capture Scanlon's claims about friendship if it holds, as it can consistently with its basic ideas, that (i) friendship is a higher-level good consisting in app…Read more
  •  203
    The justification of national partiality
    In Jeff McMahan & Robert McKim (eds.), The Morality of Nationalism, Oxford Unversity Press. pp. 139-57. 1997.
    The moral issues about nationalism arise from the character of nationalism as a form of partiality. Nationalists care more about their own nation and its members than about other nations and their members; in that way nationalists are partial to their own national group. The question, then, is whether this national partiality is morally justified or, on the contrary, whether everyone ought to care impartially about all members of all nations. As Jeff McMahan emphasizes in [another chapter of the…Read more
  •  196
    The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia
    with Bernard Suits
    Broadview Press. 1978.
    In the mid twentieth century the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein famously asserted that games are indefinable; there are no common threads that link them all. "Nonsense," says the sensible Bernard Suits: "playing a game is a voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles." The short book Suits wrote demonstrating precisely that is as playful as it is insightful, as stimulating as it is delightful. Suits not only argues that games can be meaningfully defined; he also suggests that playing ga…Read more
  •  195
    Feeling good: four ways -- Finding that feeling -- The place of pleasure -- Knowing what's what -- Making things happen -- Being good -- Love and friendship -- Putting it together.
  •  175
    Value and population size
    Ethics 93 (3): 496-507. 1982.
    Just because an angel is better than a stone, it does not follow that two angels are better than one angel and one stone. So said Aquinas (Summa contra Gentiles III, 71), and the sentiment was echoed by Leibniz. In section 118 of the Theodicy he wrote: "No substance is either absolutely precious or absolutely contemptible in the sight of God. It is certain that God attaches more importance to a man than to a lion, but I do not know that we can bc sure that he prefers one man to an entire species…Read more
  •  174
    Value theory
    In David Copp (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory, Oxford University Press. pp. 357--379. 2006.
    This chapter surveys a variety of views about which states of affairs are intrinsically good, that is, in themselves or apart from their consequences. It considers the claims to intrinsic value of such states of individuals as pleasure, the fulfillment of desire, knowledge, achievement, moral virtue, and personal relationships; the different ways such goods can be compared and aggregated both within and across individual lives; and the possibility, given a principle of “organic unities,” of good…Read more
  •  166
    Indirect Perfectionism: Kymlicka on Liberal Neutrality
    Journal of Political Philosophy 3 (1): 36-57. 1995.
  •  166
    Moore in the middle
    Ethics 113 (3): 599-628. 2003.
    The rhetoric of Principia Ethica, as of not a few philosophy books, is that of the clean break. Moore claims that the vast majority of previous writing on ethics has been misguided and that an entirely new start is needed. In its time, however, the book’s claims to novelty were widely disputed. Reviews in Mind, Ethics, and The Journal of Philosophy applauded the clarity of Moore’s criticisms of Mill, Spencer, and others, but said they were “not altogether original,” had for the most part “alread…Read more
  •  161
    Sidgwick on Consequentialism and Deontology: A Critique
    Utilitas 26 (2): 129-152. 2014.
    In The Methods of Ethics Henry Sidgwick argued against deontology and for consequentialism. More specifically, he stated four conditions for self-evident moral truth and argued that, whereas no deontological principles satisfy all four conditions, the principles that generate consequentialism do. This article argues that both his critique of deontology and his defence of consequentialism fail, largely for the same reason: that he did not clearly grasp the concept W. D. Ross later introduced of a…Read more
  •  156
    The well-rounded life
    Journal of Philosophy 84 (12): 727-746. 1987.