Search
Now showing items 21-40 of 50
Infinite Utilitarianism: More Is Always Better
(Cambridge University Press, 2004)
We address the question of how finitely additive moral value theories (such as utilitarianism) should rank worlds when there are an infinite number of locations of value (people, times, etc.). In a recent contribution, ...
Descartes's Self-Doubt
(Duke University Press, 1975)
I shall contend that even though Descartes is sometimes certain that he exists, he sometimes doubts that he exists. He believes that two kinds of things exist when he knows that he exists. On the one hand, what exist are ...
Left-Libertarianism and Private Discrimination
(University of San Diego School of Law, 2007)
Left-libertarianism, like the more familiar right-libertarianism, holds that agents initially fully own themselves. Unlike right-libertarianism, however, it views natural resources as belonging to everyone in some egalitarian ...
The Rights and Duties of Childrearing
(William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal, 2003)
What rights and duties do adults have with respect to raising children? Who, for example, has the right to decide how and where a particular child will live, be educated, receive health care, and spend recreational time? ...
Broome on Moral Goodness and Population Ethics
(Wiley-Blackwell, 2009)
In an earlier book, Weighing Goods , John Broome gave a sophisticated defense of utilitarianism for the cases involving a fixed population. In the present book, Weighing Lives, he extends this defense to variable population ...
Descartes on Theological Knowledge
(International Phenomenological Society, 1982)
Arnauld charged Descartes with circularity in his theological proof. I argue that Arnauld was correct. I also make suggestions about why Descartes fails to see the circularity. Both points are important. Many are uncomfortable ...
How well can one get to know a Strawsonian person?
(International Phenomenological Society, 1974)
I shall argue that one cannot get to know a Strawsonian person, to speak in a popular way. To speak more philosophically, Strawson has a metaphysical theory of persons which involves serious epistemological difficulties. ...
Natural rights and two conceptions of promising
(Chicago-Kent College of Law, 2006)
Does one have an obligation to keep one's promises? I answer this question by distinguishing between two broad conceptions of promising. On the normativized conception of promising, a promise is made when an agent validly ...
Hurley on Justice and Responsibility
(Wiley-Blackwell, 2006)
In Justice, Luck, and Knowledge, Susan Hurley defends a reason-responsive account of responsibility, argues that appeals to responsibility cannot provide a justification or non-trivial specification of brute luck egalitarian ...
Libertarianism, Self-Ownership and Consensual Killing
(2011)
I argue that, under a broad range of circumstances, consensual killing (suicide, assisted suicide, and killing another person with their permission) is morally permissible and forcible prevention is not. The argument depends ...
Some Problems about Being and Predication in Plato's Sophist 242-249
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976)
One of the central tasks which Plato sets for himself in the Sophist is to say what being is. In doing this he makes a variety of philosophical moves. The first is to show that non-being in a very restricted sense of the ...
Memory and Epistemic Conservatism
(2007)
We are all conservatives, at least when it comes to belief retention. We are forgetful, of course, but we typically do not abandon our beliefs unless we have special reasons to do so. Whichever view one takes of the ...
On Pragmatic Encroachment in Epistemology
(2007)
We argue, contrary to epistemological orthodoxy, that knowledge is not purely epistemic—that knowledge is not simply a matter of truth-related factors (evidence, reliability, etc.). We do this by arguing for a pragmatic ...
The Vicissitudes of Common-Sense Virtue Ethics, Part II: The Heuristic Use of Common Sense
(Kluwer, 1998)
In the first part of this study, I compared the ways in which Aristotle and Michael Slote utilize common sense, meaning the opinions and intuitions of the majority of people or some reference group among them. Both ...
Deflationism and the Normativity of Truth
(1998)
Deflationist theories of truth, some critics have argued, fail to account for the normativity of truth. This is one of the more promising, if also more elusive, objections to deflationism. Here I will consider and answer ...
Epistemic Conditions for Collective Action
(Oxford University Press, 2008)
Writers on collective action are in broad agreement that in order for a group of
agents to form a collective intention, the members of that group must have beliefs
about the beliefs of the other members. But in spite of ...
Perception, True Opinion and Knowledge in Plato's Theaetetus
(Brill, 1969)
Several years ago Mr. J. Xenakis proposed an interpretation of some aspects of the passage in the Theaetetus in which the thesis that is oc'LaO-?aLq receives its final refutation (184B4- 186El2). Although I agree in the ...
No objects, no problem?
(2005)
One familiar form of argument for rejecting entities of a certain kind is that, by rejecting them, we avoid certain difficult problems associated with them. Such problem-avoidance arguments backfire if the problems cited ...
Critical Study of John Hawthorne, Knowledge and Lotteries and Jason Stanley, Knowledge and Practical Interests
(2009)
In two important recent books, John Hawthorne and Jason Stanley each argue that non-evidential factors, such as the cost of being wrong and salience of possible error, have a place in epistemological theorizing. This point ...
Critical Notice: Child versus Childmaker: Future Persons and Present Duties in Ethics and the Law, Melinda Roberts, 1998, Rowman & Littlefield.
(Wiley-Blackwell, 2000)
In Child versus Childmaker Melinda Roberts provides an enlightening analysis and a cogent defense of a version of the person-affecting restriction in ethics. The rough idea of this restriction is that an action, state of ...