Saul Smilansky's 10 Moral Paradoxes is a delightful book. The paradoxes are easy to appreciate and though it's written in a light and accessible style, […] Read More
Category: Discussions
There is a powerful argument that is frequently used in metaethics (and elsewhere). It’s based on the idea that disagreement requires shared concepts. Thus, by […] Read More
Five years ago I was up-to-date on virtue ethics. I've been ignoring it for a few years, so please forgive me if what I'm about […] Read More
In “Oughts, Options, and Actualism” (Philosophical Review 1986), Frank Jackson and Robert Pargetter defended the “actualist” view that, for every act-type A, you ought to […] Read More
Suppose I wanted to get up to speed on the buck-passing-account literature. What three to five things would you say are "must reading"?
At the "start of the year" college meeting last week our dean showed some Powerpoint slides listing the number of majors in each department over […] Read More
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong has given us a new argument for consequentialism (“How strong is this obligation? An argument for consequentialism from concomitant variation,” Analysis 69 (2009): […] Read More
As summer comes to a close and we get ready to return to the classroom, I’ve been thinking more about the different shapes my colleagues’ summers have taken, about how much we’ve written and how much real holidays we’ve taken. As a philosophy department chair, one of my responsibilities is chairing the department’s annual performance evaluation committee and each year I’m struck anew by how hard some of my colleagues work. I feel humbled by how much very high quality work some colleagues publish.
Coming to exist is always a harm. Or so argues David Benatar in his provocative book, Better Never to Have Been.A central pillar of Benatar's […] Read More