36 found
Order:
Disambiguations
William J. FitzPatrick [33]William Joseph Fitzpatrick [3]
  1. Debunking evolutionary debunking of ethical realism.William J. FitzPatrick - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (4):883-904.
    What implications, if any, does evolutionary biology have for metaethics? Many believe that our evolutionary background supports a deflationary metaethics, providing a basis at least for debunking ethical realism. Some arguments for this conclusion appeal to claims about the etiology of the mental capacities we employ in ethical judgment, while others appeal to the etiology of the content of our moral beliefs. In both cases the debunkers’ claim is that the causal roles played by evolutionary factors raise deep epistemic problems (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   87 citations  
  2. (1 other version)Robust ethical realism, non-naturalism, and normativity.William Joseph FitzPatrick - 2008 - Oxford Studies in Metaethics 3:159-205.
  3. Moral Responsibility and Normative Ignorance: Answering a New Skeptical Challenge.William J. Fitzpatrick - 2008 - Ethics 118 (4):589-613.
  4. The Practical Turn in Ethical Theory: Korsgaard’s Constructivism, Realism, and the Nature of Normativity.William J. FitzPatrick - 2005 - Ethics 115 (4):651-691.
  5.  34
    Teleology and the Norms of Nature.William Joseph FitzPatrick - 2000 - New York: Routledge.
    This work is an examination of teleological attributions i.e. ascriptions of proper functions and natural ends) to the features and behavior of living things with a view to understanding their application to human life.
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   21 citations  
  6. The Doctrine of Double Effect: Intention and Permissibility.William J. FitzPatrick - 2012 - Philosophy Compass 7 (3):183-196.
    The Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE) is an influential non-consequentialist principle positing a role for intention in affecting the moral permissibility of some actions. In particular, the DDE focuses on the intend/foresee distinction, the core claim being that it is sometimes permissible to bring about as a foreseen but unintended side-effect of one’s action some harm it would have been impermissible to aim at as a means or as an end, all else being equal. This article explores the meaning and (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   20 citations  
  7.  64
    The Intend/Foresee Distinction and the Problem of “Closeness”.William J. Fitzpatrick - 2006 - Philosophical Studies 128 (3):585-617.
    The distinction between harm that is intended as a means or end, and harm that is merely a foreseen side-effect of one’s action, is widely cited as a significant factor in a variety of ethical contexts. Many use it, for example, to distinguish terrorist acts from certain acts of war that may have similar results as side-effects. Yet Bennett and others have argued that its application is so arbitrary that if it can be used to cast certain harmful actions in (...)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   27 citations  
  8. Ethical non-naturalism and normative properties.William J. FitzPatrick - 2010 - In Michael S. Brady (ed.), New Waves in Metaethics. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.
  9. Skepticism about Naturalizing Normativity: In Defense of Ethical Nonnaturalism.William J. FitzPatrick - 2014 - Res Philosophica 91 (4):559-588.
    There is perhaps no more widely shared conviction in contemporary metaethics, even among those who hold otherwise divergent views, than that practical normativity must be capable of being naturalized (i.e., captured fully within a metaphysically naturalist worldview). My aim is to illuminate the central reasons for skepticism about this. While certain naturalizing projects are plausible for very limited purposes, it is unlikely that any can provide everything we might reasonably want from an account of goodness and badness, rightness and wrongness, (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  10. Representing ethical reality: a guide for worldly non-naturalists.William J. FitzPatrick - 2018 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 48 (3-4):548-568.
    Ethical realists hold that our ethical concepts, thoughts, and claims are in the business of representing ethical reality, by representing evaluative or normative properties and facts as aspects of reality, and that such representations are at least sometimes accurate. Non-naturalist realists add the further claim that ethical properties and facts are ultimately non-natural, though they are nonetheless worldly. My aim is threefold: to elucidate the sort of representation involved in ethical evaluation on realist views; to clarify what exactly is represented (...)
    No categories
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  11. Ontology for an Uncompromising Ethical Realism.William J. FitzPatrick - 2016 - Topoi 37 (4):537-547.
    I begin by distinguishing two general approaches to metaethics and ontology. One in effect puts our experience as engaged ethical agents on hold while independent metaphysical and epistemological inquiries, operating by their own lights, deliver metaethical verdicts on acceptable interpretations of our ethical lives; the other instead keeps engaged ethical experience in focus and allows our reflective interpretation of it to shape our metaphysical and epistemological views, including our ontology. While the former approach often leads to deflationary views, the latter (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  12.  74
    Moral Phenomenology and the Value-Laden World.William J. FitzPatrick - 2021 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 25 (1):21-36.
    Do the introspectively ascertainable aspects of our moral experiences carry ontological objective purport—portraying reality as containing worldly moral properties and facts, thus supporting moral realism? Horgan and Timmons answer this question in the negative, arguing that their non-realist view, cognitivist expressivism, can accommodate the introspectively ascertainable moral phenomenology just as well as realism can—where accommodating the phenomenology means accounting for it without construing it as misleading or erroneous. If sound, this constitutes an important defense of cognitivist expressivism, undermining a central (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  13.  42
    Ethical Realism.William J. FitzPatrick - 2022 - Cambridge University Press.
    This Element examines the many facets of ethical realism and the issues at stake in metaethical debates about it—both between realism and non-realist alternatives, and between different versions of realism itself. Starting with a minimal core characterization of ethical realism focused on claims about meaning and truth, we go on to develop a narrower and more theoretically useful conception by adding further claims about objectivity and ontological commitment. Yet even this common understanding of ethical realism captures a surprisingly heterogeneous range (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  14. Thomson's turnabout on the trolley.William J. FitzPatrick - 2009 - Analysis 69 (4):636-643.
    The famous ‘trolley problem’ began as a simple variation on an example given in passing by Philippa Foot , involving a runaway trolley that cannot be stopped but can be steered to a path of lesser harm. By switching from the perspective of the driver to that of a bystander, Judith Jarvis Thomson showed how the case raises difficulties for the normative theory Foot meant to be defending, and Thomson compounded the challenge with further variations that created still more puzzles (...)
    Direct download (8 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  15.  29
    Acts, intentions, and moral permissibility: in defence of the doctrine of double effect.W. J. FitzPatrick - 2003 - Analysis 63 (4):317-321.
  16. Reasons, value, and particular agents: Normative relevance without motivational internalism.William J. FitzPatrick - 2004 - Mind 113 (450):285-318.
    While differing widely in other respects, both neo-Humean and neo-Kantian approaches to normativity embrace an internalist thesis linking reasons for acting to potential motivation. This thesis pushes in different directions depending on the underlying view of the powers of practical reason, but either way it sets the stage for an attack on realist attempts to ground reasons directly in facts about value. How can reasons that are not somehow grounded in motivational features of the agent nonetheless count as reasons for (...)
    Direct download (5 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  17.  71
    Totipotency and the moral status of embryos: New problems for an old argument.William J. FitzPatrick - 2004 - Journal of Social Philosophy 35 (1):108–122.
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  18. Recent work on ethical realism.William J. FitzPatrick - 2009 - Analysis 69 (4):746-760.
    Introduction: characterizing ethical realismIt is useful to begin a survey of recent work on ethical realism with a look at current disputes over what makes a theory of ethics count as ‘realist’ in the first place. Nearly all characterizations of ethical realism include some version of the following two core claims: Ethical discourse is assertoric and descriptive: ethical claims purport to state ethical facts by attributing ethical properties to people, actions, institutions, etc., and are thus true or false depending on (...)
    Direct download (7 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  19.  28
    Moral Progress for Evolved Rational Creatures.William J. FitzPatrick - 2019 - Analyse & Kritik 41 (2):217-238.
    Allen Buchanan and Russell Powell have developed a rich ‘biocultural theory’ of the nature and causes of moral progress (and regress) for human beings conceived as evolved rational creatures with a nature characterized by ‘adaptive plasticity’. They characterize their theory as a thoroughly naturalistic account of moral progress, while bracketing various questions in moral theory and metaethics in favor of focusing on a certain range of more scientifically tractable questions under some stipulated moral and metaethical assumptions. While I am very (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  20.  92
    Misidentifying the Evolutionary Debunkers’ Error: Reply to Mogensen.William J. FitzPatrick - 2016 - Analysis 76 (4):433-437.
    Andreas Mogensen has recently argued that the current debate over evolutionary debunking in ethics is mired in confusion due to a simple fallacy committed by debunkers and uncritically taken on board by their opponents. I argue that no party to this debate is involved in the type of confusion and fallacy Mogensen has in mind, which he himself notes would be an absurd and outlandish mistake for anyone to make in other domains. Debunkers do plausibly commit an error in their (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  21.  23
    Scientific Naturalism and the Explanation of Moral Beliefs.William J. Fitzpatrick - 2015 - In Kelly James Clark (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Naturalism. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 386–400.
    An increasingly common form of naturalism associated with the study of morality is what might be called “scientific naturalism,” which takes as its subject matter various empirical phenomena associated with talk of “morality” and aims to subject them to scientific inquiry, just like any other empirical phenomena. This is unproblematic when it comes to scientific investigations into the origins of the human capacity for normative guidance or moral emotions, or the neurophysiology associated with moral feeling and behavior, but things get (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  22. Climate Change and the Rights of Future Generations: Social Justice beyond Mutual Advantage.William J. Fitzpatrick - 2007 - Environmental Ethics 29 (4):369-388.
    Despite widespread agreement that we have moral responsibilities to future generations, many are reluctant to frame the issues in terms of justice and rights.There are indeed philosophical challenges here, particularly concerning nonoverlapping generations. They can, however, be met. For example, talk of justiceand rights for future generations in connection with climate change is both appropriate and important, although it requires revising some common theoreticalassumptions about the nature of justice and rights. We can, in fact, be bound by the rights of (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  23. 2.“Doing and Allowing” and Doing and Allowing “Doing and Allowing” and Doing and Allowing (pp. 799-808).William J. FitzPatrick, Gerhard Øverland, Talbot Brewer, David Enoch & Philip Stratton‐Lake - 2005 - Ethics 115 (4).
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  24.  34
    Recent work : Recent work on ethical realism.William J. FitzPatrick - 2009 - Analysis 69 (4):746 - 760.
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  25. Open question arguments and the irreducibility of ethical normativity.William J. FitzPatrick - 2018 - In Neil Sinclair (ed.), The Naturalistic Fallacy. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  26.  17
    Defending Against Biochemical Warfare.William J. FitzPatrick & Lee L. Zwanziger - 2003 - Journal of Philosophy, Science and Law 3:1-19.
    No categories
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  27.  61
    Valuing nature non-instrumentally.William J. Fitzpatrick - 2004 - Journal of Value Inquiry 38 (3):315-332.
  28.  68
    The Origins of Unfairness: Social Categories and Cultural Evolution.William J. FitzPatrick - 2022 - Philosophical Review 131 (1):111-115.
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  29. Evolutionary Theory and Morality: Why the Science Doesn't Settle the Philosophical Questions.William J. FitzPatrick - 2014 - Philosophic Exchange 44 (1).
    Four decades ago, E.O. Wilson famously declared that “the time has come for ethics to be removed temporarily from the hands of the philosophers and biologicized." One still finds Wilson’s idea echoed frequently in popular science writing today. While I’m not going to deny that evolutionary biology and other sciences have important things to tell us about morality, I think there is a lot of confusion about what exactly they can tell us, and how much they can tell us. My (...)
    No categories
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  30. Functional Teleology, Biology, and Ethics.William Joseph Fitzpatrick - 1995 - Dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles
    Functional contexts have long been recognized to support evaluative judgments of a certain kind, even where there is no element of design: we speak, for example, of such things as good roots or defective hearts in connection with judgments about proper functions; an animal might even be judged defective for failing to possess a certain species-typical, functional behavioral disposition. These are obviously not moral judgments, but it is interesting to wonder whether the latter might be understood in a similar way. (...)
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  31.  36
    Satisficing and Maximizing: Moral Theorists on Practical Reason - Edited by Michael Byron.William J. Fitzpatrick - 2007 - Philosophical Books 48 (3):281-283.
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  32.  33
    Book Reviews Kitcher , Philip . The Ethical Project Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011. Pp. 422. $49.95 (cloth). [REVIEW]William J. FitzPatrick - 2012 - Ethics 123 (1):167-174.
  33. 10. Kristin Shrader‐Frechette, Taking Action, Saving Lives: Our Duties to Protect Environmental and Public Health Kristin Shrader‐Frechette, Taking Action, Saving Lives: Our Duties to Protect Environmental and Public Health (pp. 757-761). [REVIEW]William J. FitzPatrick, Cheryl Misak, Mark Greene, Daniel Statman, Brian Barry & Kimberley Brownlee - 2008 - Ethics 118 (4).
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  34.  36
    Book ReviewsJoseph Raz,. The Practice of Value. With commentaries by Christine Korsgaard, Robert Pippin, and Bernard Williams; edited by R. Jay Wallace.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. viii+161. $32.50 ; $17.95. [REVIEW]William J. FitzPatrick - 2006 - Ethics 116 (4):805-809.
  35.  47
    Thomson, Judith Jarvis . Normativity . Chicago: Open Court, 2008 . Pp. ix+271. $27.97 (paper). [REVIEW]William J. FitzPatrick - 2010 - Ethics 120 (2):417-422.
  36.  21
    Review of Giovanni Boniolo, Gabriele de Anna (eds.), Evolutionary Ethics and Contemporary Biology[REVIEW]William J. FitzPatrick - 2007 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2007 (4).
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark