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): 438-442). The datum: other things kept equal, the obligation to keep a promise to take a friend to the airport […] 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 defense of this offputting 'anti-natalist' thesis is what he calls the asymmetry argument (BNHB, p. 30):Pleasure benefits us and pain […] Read More
The University of Toronto’s Centre for Ethics invites applications for its Visiting Faculty Fellowships. For the academic year 2010-11, two fellowships will be awarded to outstanding scholars and teachers interested in writing and conducting research about ethics during a year in residence at the University […] Read More
Feminism, Science, and Values June 25-28, 2010 The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada In June 2010, the International Association of Women Philosophers (http://www.iaph-philo.org/ ) will be meeting at The University of Western Ontario. This will be the organization's first meeting in Canada and […] Read More
Dear all: We have posted the ad below for a senior ethics and political philosophy job at the University of Toronto in the JFP. Since we'll start looking at applications before the print version of the JFP is out, I wanted to call your attention […] Read More
BBC has estimated that, in the UK, about 85.000 women were raped in the year 2006. In the US, during the same year, 92.455 rapes were reported to law-enforcement officers and we know that there were far more unreported cases than that. These sorts of numbers support […] Read More
The new better alternative to the philosophy journals wiki is here at http://www.andrewcullison.com/journal-surveys/. It's brought to you by Andrew Cullinson, who has done a fantastic job putting this together. I encourage you all to make good use of it and to help get the word […] Read More
In my recent thinking about the ethics of suicide, I've been compelled to confront a methodological issue in practical ethics that I'd not really given much thought to before now. (Nor, as best I can tell, have other ethicists thought much about the issue either.) […] Read More