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46Should We Want to Be Loved Unconditionally and Forever?Philosophies 8 (2): 34. 2023.People often say that romantic love should be unconditional, and they often want romantic love to last forever. These claims and desires are presumably linked: part of the reason it would be good for love to be unconditional is that it is assumed that such love, being detached from changing conditions, would last forever. This article argues that there are, indeed, kinds of unconditional and permanent love that are worth wanting, but also kinds that are not, and attempts to clarify just what it …Read more
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12John Gibson, ed., The Philosophy of PoetryEstetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics 53 (1): 100. 2020.
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20Anxious feelings, anxious friends: on anxiety and friendshipSynthese 199 (5-6): 14709-14724. 2021.Although anxiety is frequently seen as a predominantly negative phenomenon, some recent researchers have argued that it plays an important positive function, serving as an alert to warn agents of possible problems or threats. I argue that not only can one’s own, first-personal anxiety perform this function; because it is possible for others—in particular, one’s friends—to feel anxious on one’s behalf, their anxious feelings can sometimes play the same role in our functioning, and make similar co…Read more
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40Beauty Always DiesMidwest Studies in Philosophy 44 (1): 213-230. 2019.Midwest Studies In Philosophy, Volume 44, Issue 1, Page 213-230, December 2019.
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29Love Drugs: The Chemical Future of Relationships (review)The Philosophers' Magazine 90 126-128. 2020.
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14Review of The Prudence of Love: How Possessing the Virtue of Love Benefits the Lover, by Eric J. Silverman (review)Essays in Philosophy 13 (1): 384-391. 2012.
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21Morality, Perspective, and Fantasy: A Comment on Sarah BussJournal of Applied Philosophy 37 (1): 51-57. 2020.A response to Sarah Buss's article, ‘Some Musings about the Limits of an Ethics that Can Be Applied,’ focusing on issues connected with Buss’s claims about human insignificance, and the indifference to self that the recognition of insignificance allegedly engenders.
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The psychology of exclusivityLes Ateliers de L’Ethique 3 (1): 52-60. 2008.Friendship and romantic love are, by their very nature, exclusive relationships. This paper suggests that we can better understand the nature of the exclusivity in question by understanding what is wrong with the view of practical reasoning I call the Comprehensive Surveyor View. The CSV claims that practical reasoning, in order to be rational, must be a process of choosing the best available alternative from a perspective that is as detached and objective as possible. But this view, while it me…Read more
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42Carrie Jenkins’ What Love Is: And What It Could Be (review)The Philosophers' Magazine 78 108-110. 2017.
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173Love’s VisionPrinceton University Press. 2011."Something in between : on the nature of love" -- Love's blindness (1) : love's closed heart -- Love's blindness (2) : love's friendly eye -- Beyond comparison -- Commitments, values, and frameworks -- Valuing persons -- Love and morality -- Afterword. Between the universal and the particular.
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13Five. Commitments, Values, and FrameworksIn Love’s Vision, Princeton University Press. pp. 95-122. 2011.
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177Terrorism, War, and The Killing of the InnocentEthical Theory and Moral Practice 10 (4): 353-372. 2007.Commonsense moral thought holds that what makes terrorism particularly abhorrent is the fact that it tends to be directed toward innocent victims. Yet contemporary philosophers tend to doubt that the concept of innocence plays any significant role here, and to deny that prohibitions against targeting noncombatants can be justified through appeal to their moral innocence. I argue, however, that the arguments used to support these doubts are ultimately unsuccessful. Indeed, the philosophical posit…Read more
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9On LoyaltyRoutledge. 2012.Loyalty is a highly charged and important issue, often evoking strong feelings and actions. What is loyalty? Is loyalty compatible with impartiality? How do we respond to conflicts of loyalties? In a global era, should we be trying to transcend loyalties to particular political communities? Drawing on a fascinating array of literary and cinematic examples - The Remains of the Day , No Country for Old Men , The English Patient , The Third Man , and more - Troy Jollimore expertly unravels the phen…Read more
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51Creating cosmopolitans: the case for literature (review)Studies in Philosophy and Education 25 (5-6): 363-383. 2006.A cosmopolitan education must help us identify with those who are unlike us. In Martha Nussbaum’s words, students must learn “enough to recognize common aims, aspirations, and values, and enough about these common ends to see how variously they are instantiated in the many cultures and their histories.” It is commonly thought that reading serious literature will play a significant role in this process. However, this claim is challenged by theorists we call sentimentalists, who claim that the goa…Read more
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46Beauty, Evil, and The English PatientPhilosophy and Literature 28 (1): 23-40. 2004.Can literature provide moral insight? Or can literary works do nothing more than reflect the moral views that readers bring to them? We argue that literary works can provide genuine moral insight by discussing one that does. Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient challenges two key assumptions about moral evil: that evil necessarily involves active malevolence, and that evil and aesthetic beauty are mutually exclusive. These assumptions play foundational roles both in everyday moral thinking, an…Read more
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17Three. Love’s Blindness : Love’s Friendly EyeIn Love’s Vision, Princeton University Press. pp. 46-73. 2011.
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17"Review of" The Prudence of Love: How Possessing the Virtue of Love Benefits the Lover" (review)Essays in Philosophy 13 (1): 25. 2012.
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140Friendship without partiality?Ratio 13 (1). 2000.Consequentialism involves a kind of strong impartiality which seems incompatible with the sort of partiality manifested in friendships. Consequentialists such as Kagan respond that friendship does not, in fact, require partiality. Against this, I argue that friendship cannot exist without expressions of personal feeling, and that such expressions necessarily involve a kind of partiality. Because her every action is determined by the goal of maximizing the impersonal good, a consequentialist cann…Read more
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159Why Is Instrumental Rationality Rational?Canadian Journal of Philosophy 35 (2). 2005.It is relatively common for philosophers to doubt whether we have any reason to act as morality requires. But it is very difficult to find philosophers who are willing to doubt, in a similar way, the idea that we have reason to act as instrumental rationality requires; reason, that is, to take effective steps toward attaining the ends we have accepted as our own. The inference from the fact that a certain action is an effective means of satisfying an agent’s ends to the conclusion that that agen…Read more
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34One. “Something In Between”: On the Nature of LoveIn Love’s Vision, Princeton University Press. pp. 1-27. 2011.
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39John Gibson, ed., The Philosophy of PoetryEstetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics 53 (1): 100-110. 2016.A review of John Gibson´s The Philosophy of Poetry.
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55Friendship and Agent-Relative MoralityRoutledge. 2001.First Published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company
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71Goldstick on the 'Two Hats' ProblemUtilitas 15 (3): 369. 2003.The indirect-strategy consequentialist recommends that the consequentialist agent develop certain non-consequentialist feelings and dispositions. It is difficult to see, however, how such an agent could knowingly do this, given her moral beliefs. Goldstick has argued that the problem is not particular to consequentialism; deontologists, too, are obliged to admit the possibility of mental divisions of this sort. I argue, however, that the type of mental division to which the deontologist is commi…Read more
Chico, California, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Aesthetics |
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |