Centre for Ethics, Philosophy and Public Affairs
Title: 'What is Morality?' Abstract: In “Modern Moral Philosophy,” Anscombe argued that the moral vocabulary does not correspond to any concept of Aristotelian ethics, that it derives from a confused response to the ethics of divine of command, and that it is literally meaningless. This essay contends that Anscombe was wrong. Morality corresponds to Aristotle’s general ... Read more
Title: 'Consent and the Question of Dynamics' Abstract: In this paper, I first argue that “rights-waiving” is not an accurate, general description of the operation persons perform when they grant permissive consent. It fails to describe the change to the structure of the normative world that I call authority-retaining permissive consent. This is the kind ... Read more
Title: 'Group Motivation' Abstract: We routinely treat groups, including governments and corporations, as agents with beliefs and aims who are morally responsible for their actions. For instance, we might blame an oil company for an oil spill pointing out that they knew the risk of their profits-first policies. In this paper I discuss a key ... Read more
Title: 'How To Be a Pluralist About Gender' Abstract: There are various of attractive accounts of gender kinds on offer (Haslanger 2012, Asta 2018), as well as accounts of the ontology of human social kinds (or social groups) more broadly (Mallon 2016, Ritchie 2020) that are much more conducive to feminist aims than a lot ... Read more
Title: 'The Problem of Polarization' Abstract: “The cure for democracy's ills is more democracy.” This popular adage is false. Contemporary democracy faces problems that have their source in otherwise laudable forms of political participation. In short, enactments of democratic citizenship heighten our exposure to polarization, which in turn erodes our capacities to perform well as ... Read more