A “Crash” Course on Personal Racism
in Ethics at the Cinema
January 2011; published online January 2011.
Chapter. Subjects: moral philosophy. 11162 words.
The 2005 film Crash deals powerfully with personal racism. Its wide array of story lines raise issues of personal stereotyping, prejudice, racial humiliation, wielding of racial power, and racial and...
A. C. Ewing's First and Second Thoughts in Metaethics
in Underivative Duty
February 2011; published online May 2011.
Chapter. Subjects: moral philosophy. 16358 words.
Metaethical non‐naturalism went from being a dominant theory at the turn of the nineteenth century to being an intellectual curiosity a few decades later. With regard to the mercurial fortunes of...
A Modulated Case for the Primacy of Value
in Ethics and Qualities of Life
May 2007; published online January 2009.
Chapter. Subjects: moral philosophy. 9918 words.
This chapter charts the roles of consequentialist considerations within an acceptable ethical theory. It argues that quality-of-life (in the sense of what is valuable) considerations are decisive in...
A Rawlsian Society
in John Rawls
January 2007; published online May 2007.
Chapter. Subjects: moral philosophy. 10620 words.
This chapter deals with Rawls's desire to develop a theory of social justice that is practical, and thus he emphasizes that moral considerations need to be sensitive to a certain degree to empirical...
A Top‐Tier Criterion of Justice
in John Rawls
January 2007; published online May 2007.
Chapter. Subjects: moral philosophy. 6994 words.
This chapter introduces Rawls's three-tiered approach to justice. How Rawls comes to adopt a purely recipient-oriented criterion of justice is discussed. Another important element of a criterion of...
Abandonment and Change of Mind
in Attempts
November 2010; published online January 2011.
Chapter. Subjects: moral philosophy. 12165 words.
Defendants sometimes fail to complete their crimes because they abandon their attempts before completion. Jurisdictions vary in their response to this. Some grant an affirmative defense for...
Abortion
in Life Before Birth
July 2011; published online September 2011.
Chapter. Subjects: moral philosophy. 40861 words.
This identifies the major views on abortion and argue that the interest view is superior to them all. The conservative view ascribes moral status on a seemingly arbitrary feature, namely, species...
Abortion
in The Oxford Handbook of Practical Ethics
September 2005; published online September 2009.
Article. Subjects: philosophy; moral philosophy. 10905 words.
Abortion is one of those classic problems that has been discussed in all of the major ‘fertile periods’ of practical philosophy, from the flourishing of Greek thought, through the medieval period, in...
Abortion and Human Rights
in Moral Status
March 2000; published online October 2011.
Chapter. Subjects: moral philosophy. 9097 words.
This chapter discusses the ethics of abortion. It identifies two weaknesses inherent in approaches to the ethics of abortion that focus exclusively upon the nature of the foetus, and the moral status...
Abortion and Social Responsibility
February 2003; published online November 2003.
Book. Subjects: moral philosophy. 188 pages.
This book argues that Roe v. Wade's six‐month time span for abortion “on demand” polarized the American public, and obscured alternatives that could have gained broad public support. As a result, a...