As I noted in an earlier post, there are at least two competing rationales for constraints: the victim-focused rationale (VFR) and the agent-focused rationale (AFR). One worry that I have about VFR is that it seems to have a tough time accounting for the intuition […] Read More
Please consider the following three cases and then take the following poll: Case A (‘A’ for Abe): Abe poisons his son, Larry. The poison causes his son to develop prostate cancer at the age of 40 and die soon afterwards. Had Abe not poisoned Larry, […] Read More
Let A1-A6 stand for six distinct agents. Let V1-V6 stand for six distinct potential victims. Let T1-T6 stand for six distinct and successive times. And let C1 stand for some set of agent-centered constraints. Those who endorse agent-centered constraints accept the following: (1) It would […] Read More
Smith has exactly two doses of anesthetic, and Jones has zero doses of anesthetic. Tom is having an operation on Saturday, and unless Smith gives Tom a double-dose of anesthetic right before his operation, Tom will suffer terribly during his operation. Rick and Harry are […] Read More
Smith has exactly two doses of anesthetic. Tom is having an operation on Saturday, and unless Smith gives Tom a double-dose of anesthetic right before his operation, Tom will suffer terribly during his operation. Rick and Harry are each having an operation on Sunday, and […] Read More
I’ve been reading Krister Bykvist’s and Jonas Olson’s wonderful paper entitled ‘Expressivism and Moral Certitude’ (HERE). Krister and Jonas argue that ecumenical forms of expressivism are unable to give a reply to Michael Smith’s objection to non-ecumenical forms of expressivism according to which expressivists cannot […] Read More
PhilPapers has launched and is now public. PhilPapers is a comprehensive directory of online philosophy articles and books by academic philosophers. They monitor journals in many areas of philosophy, as well as archives and personal pages. They also accept articles directly from users, who can […] Read More
Russ Shafer-Landau is pleased to announce a call for abstracts for the Sixth Annual Metaethics Workshop, to be held at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, on September 11-13, 2009. Allan Gibbard (Michigan) will be this year's keynote speaker. Abstracts (of 2-3 double-spaced pages) of papers […] Read More
In "Stalking the Perfect Journal" (Essay 8 in The Great Eskimo Snow Vocabulary Hoax), Geoff Pullum lists some suggestions for improving academic journals; his focus is on linguistics journals, but as you might imagine the suggestions generally apply equally well to philosophy journals. His last […] Read More