For the benefit of our readers (but really motivated by potential benefits to me), I'd like to hear from folks about the best papers they've read in moral philosophy (broadly construed) over the past year or so, say anything published in 2010 or 2011 (I find myself more and more reading unpublished work by various folks, so I find I'm keeping up less than I should with actual published stuff). Citations would be helpful; links even more so.
Here's one I wrote the authors to commend them on and thank them for: John Martin Fischer and Neal Tognazzini's "The Physiognomy of Responsibility," Philosophy & Phenomenological Research (2011). Others?
Jeff McMahan’s “The Just Distribution of Harm Between Combatants and Non-Combatants” (Philosophy and Public Affairs 38:4, 2010) continues McMahan’s excellent track record of re-energizing a Just War theory that had gotten kind of bogged down for a while after Walzer.
I really liked reading Shelly Kagan’s just published article, “Do I Make a Difference?” in Philosophy and Public Affairs 39 (2011): 105-141. Written in his characteristically direct and lucid style.
I absolutely loved Not Enough There There by Micheal Titelbaum. It’s an attack on first order propositional uniqueness from a logician’s perspective. It’s a heady read, but it’s devastating. Honestly, it’s one of the first times since philosophy 101 and learning quantum mechanics that my mind has had to do a 180 in its thinking about matters.
https://5103630833267736060-a-1802744773732722657-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/phil903spring2011/readings/TitelbaumThereThereOffprint.pdf?attachauth=ANoY7cq4p0hN7F-W4mTnW8NcmDMV2d4_M30uz_Di6jQXEfR-aC6ouNh1e7IHgnVn5hsJhiUCKfGRff_jjNQhoUHdZDlGQStulS-lCm9LFZ9pgbgCRGr_hosMNzgA8qaBUhGsDYjLMNwHjO-cSgFNJ4TUfohEhx1MoRRNAhglqt0iwMsE-_B4fjeDjLirZJfJqXxh-ERwuPBL9wWv3Y-rBkNQOzP9LC-4nIDouWqZz5_-jAwBPzpKoB0%3D&attredirects=0
I found Phillip Montague’s Stem Cell Research and the Problem of Embryonic Identity to be fairly interesting.
Also, Blackburn’s review of Parfit was most amusing.