(This page is under construction: some papers aren't linked yet—I'll put them up when I find them)
Abba,
Father: Inclusive Language and Theological Salience
Faith and
Philosophy Vol. 26,
No. 4 (July 1999)
Questions about the use of Òinclusive languageÓ in Christian discourse are trivial
but the discussion which surrounds them raises an exceedingly important
question, namely that of whether gender is theologically salient--whether
Christian doctrine either reveals theologically significant differences between
men and women or prescribes different roles for them. Arguably both
conservative support for sex roles and allegedly progressive doctrines about
the theological significance of gender, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation
are contrary to the radical teaching of the Gospel that in Christ there is no
male or female, Greek or Jew, slave or free man.
Adaptive
Preference
presented at the
APA Pacific Division Meeting, March 2004
Martha Nussbaum argues that preference welfarism, the doctrine that a personÕs
good consists in the satisfaction of her informed desires, fails to explain our
intuitions in cases of Òadaptive preference,Ó where the preferences of
individuals in deprived circumstances are formed in response to their
restricted options. Intuitively, it is better for individuals to get what they
want than to adjust their wants to be satisfied by what they can get.
Preference welfarism however cannot mark this difference as morally
significant. I argue , first, that given a reasonable account of preference as
it figures in utilitarian accounts, cases of the sort she describes are not
examples of adaptive preference and do not undermine the preference
utilitarianÕs account of what is good for people. The problem is not, as
Nussbaum suggests, that the preferences of deprived individuals have been
ÒdistortedÓ but rather that they are not satisfied.
Against
Diversity: The Liberal Case Against Multiculturalism
Work in progress—comments
greatly appreciated!
Choice
Preference and Utility
Metaphilosophy Vol. 26, No. 4 (October 1995)
Christina Sommers chides Ògender feministsÓ for ignoring what women actually
want in order to promote what they believe women ought to want. Sommers,
however, ignores the crucial distinction between what women choose, given their
current alternatives and what women would choose if their options were less restrictive. The
costs, benefits and risks of pursuing the same goals are different for women
than they are for men, consequently women, acting as rational, self-interested
and informed choosers will naturally make different choices from their equally
rational, self-interested and informed male counterparts. The flaws in SommersÕ
defense of what she takes to be commonsense about real womenÕs real desires
are, first, her failure to distinguish between what people choose, given the
way things are, and what people would prefer all other things being equal and
secondly, her proclivity for talking about desires and aversions, rather than
preference rankings. Arguably, even if in making ÒtraditionalÓ choices women
are doing the best they can for themselves in the circumstances, many would
prefer to make their choices in different circumstances.
Complicity
Center for the
Study of Ethics in Society Vol 3, No. 4 (April, 1990)
The suggestion that
women act against their own interests because they are either coerced or
brainwashed by their oppressors, is seriously misleading. In supporting traditional sex roles
women, as well as men, are act as rational, self-interested choosers whose
choices, though intended to optimize their chances of a good outcome, bring
about a state of affairs which is less than optimific for all concerned. Women, in short, are caught in a game
of Prisoner's Dilemma, a game in which, paradoxically, the result of everyone's
free and rational choice is a state of affairs that no player would freely or
rationally choose.
Ex Ante
Desire and Post Hoc Satisfaction
in Keim
Campbell, J., M. O'Rourke, and H. Silverstein. Forthcoming 2007.*Time and Identity: Topics in Contemporary
Philosophy, vol. 7*. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.
L. W. Sumner argues
that the informed desire satisfaction account of welfare is unsatisfactory
because, since desires precede the states of affairs that satisfy them,
satisfying desires may fail to satisfy their agents.[i]
I argue
that the temporal gap between our desires and the states of affairs that
satisfy them poses no special problem for the desire theory. Even if getting
what we want fails to satisfy us, we are ceteris paribus better off for having
got it.
Feminism and
Christian Ethics
Anglican
Theological Review Vol.
LXXVII, No. 3 (Summer 1995)
I shall argue that
the only clearly objectionable aspects of Christianity from the point of view
of a reasonable feminism are claims to the effect that men and women have different
duties in virtue of gender alone. I shall suggest that revisionary projects including the
promotion of inclusive language are questionable. Finally I shall argue that
attempts to reconstruct Christian theology and restructure the church in order to
accommodate a style of behavior, way of knowing and moral ÒvoiceÓ thought to be
characteristic of womenÕs experience is detrimental to womenÕs interests.
Gender
Conscious
Journal of
Applied Philosophy
Vol. 18, No. 1 (2001)
Integration, has got a good deal of bad press in recent years. Feminists and
spokesmen for racial and ethnic minorities express concern that the
integrationist agenda requires women and members of minorities to divest
themselves of features of their "identities" in order to approximate
a restrictive white male ideal which should not be a requirement for fair
treatment and social benefits. I argue that this concern is unwarrented and
that "Integration" with respect to gender, as I shall understand it,
is overall more conducive to the happiness of both men and women than what I
shall call "Diversity."
Has
Feminist Philosophy Lost Contact With Women?
APA Feminism and
Philosophy Newsletter (Fall 1993)
I should like therefore to consider some ways in which analytic philosophers
can use their expertise and professional status to promote the goals of
feminism--because this is what I believe Òdoing philosophy as a feministÓ comes
to.
How Bad is Rape?
Hypatia (Summer, 1987)
I argue that being
compelled to do routine work is to be seriously harmed and indeed that the
pink-collar work that most women in the labor force do is more harmful to women
than rape.
In
Defense of Proselytizing
Religious
Studies 36 (2000)
In Ethics in the Sanctuary, Margaret Battin argues that traditional evangelism,
directed to promoting religious belief, practice, and affiliation, that is
proselytizing, is morally questionable to the extent that it involves
unwarranted paternalism in the interests of securing other-worldly benefits for
potential converts. I argue that Christian evangelism is justified in order to
make the this-worldly benefits of religious belief and practice available to
everyone, to bring about an increase in religious affiliation for the purpose
of providing a more supportive social environment for Christians, and to
promote the survival of the institutional Church, which benefits Christians and
non-Christians alike by maintaining church property, providing access to church
buildings and doing liturgy visibly and publicly for the sake of all people.
Is Homosexuality
Sexuality?
Theology (May 2004)
I argue on utilitarian grounds that while traditional constraints on
heterosexual activity, including the prohibition of pre-marital sex and divorce
may be justified by appeal to purely secular principles, no comparable
prohibitions are justified as regards homosexual activity. Homosexuality is in
this respect Òoutside the lawÓ: to the extent that restrictions on sexual
activity are warranted, homosexuality is not sexuality. I argue further that
although homosexual activity is morally innocuous, the Church should not at
this time ordain openly active homosexuals or bless same-sex unions.
Left
Libertarianism: WhatÕs In It For Me?
Left Libertarians hold, first, that agents
fully own themselves and secondly, that natural resources belong to everyone in
some egalitarian manner. Peter Vallentyne argues that while discrimination is
not intrinsically unjust on Left Libertarian grounds and state prohibitions
against it are, it is nevertheless unjust for the state (and many private
individuals) to take no steps to offset the negative effects of systematic
discrimination. I argue that,
contrary to VallentyneÕs assumption, most significant discrimination on the
basis of sex and race, particularly in employment and housing, is
rational—and that that is why, on consequentialist grounds, intervention
by the state or other agencies is warranted. In the final section I pose some
questions about whether the Left Libertarian account can either provide a
rationale for promoting greater equality in opportunities for wellbeing and
whether programs that are consistant with Left Libertarian notions of full
property ownership and self-ownership can contribute significantly either to
promoting greater equality of opportunity or greater wellbeing.
Liberal
Feminism
Since AlisonÕs
JaggarÕs influential work in constructing a taxonomy of feminist positions,
Òliberal feministsÓ have been taken to support a fundamentally libertarian
political agenda based on the assumption that formal equality under the law
suffices to eliminate male-female inequality and that additional
state-supported programs which serve womenÕs interests, including affirmative
action, the provision of child-care, family leave and the like, are
unwarranted. In addition, some feminist philosophers suggest that liberal
feminists "valorize" masculinity, are indifferent to the devaluation
of female-identified work and that one of our fundamental goals is to
establish, by a priori methods if necessary, that there are no gender-based
psychological differences. These assumptions are false. In fact, many of us who
are liberal feminists to the extent that we believe that womenÕs interests are
best served by working toward a state of affairs where the expectations and
opportunities for men and women are the same, do not hold these views. I shall
argue that the real fault line between liberal feminists and the majority of
feminist philosophers who are unsympathetic to this view marks a divergence in
our understanding of the causes of gender inequality and, consequently,
disagreement about the priorities of feminist political action.
Meet the Meat:
So Where's the Beef?
to be presented
at the APA Pacific Division Meeting, March 2005
Preferentism is the
doctrine that "in deciding what is good and what is bad for a given
individual, the ultimate criterion can only be his own wants and his own
preferences." If preferentism is true then it would seem to follow that
modifying a person's preferences so that they are satisfied by what is on offer
should be as good as improving the circumstances of her life to satisfy her
preferences. Our intuitive response to stories of life-adjustment through
brainwashing, psychosurgery and the like suggests otherwise. I sketch a broadly
preferentist account drawing upon Sen's (non-preferentist) capability approach
that resists such putative counterexamples.
Parental
Leave
The purpose of treating men and women differently on the assimilationist
account is to bring about a situation in which men and women can be, in
important respects, the same. The goal is a state of affairs in which the costs
and benefits of undertaking a policy of action are the same for men and women.
On this account the problem which affirmative action and other policies
characteristic of liberal feminism is that they do not go far enough: to enable
women to behave like their male colleagues on the job, adjustments will have to
be made in the organization of society outside the labor market.
Sabellianism
Reconsidered
Sophia (October
2002)
Sabellianism, the doctrine that the Persons of the Trinity are roles that a
single divine being plays either simultaneously or successively, is commonly
thought to entail that the Father is the Son. I argue that there is at least
one version of Sabellianism that does not have this result and meets the requirements
for a minimally decent doctrine of the Trinity insofar as it affirms that each
Person of the Trinity is God and that the Trinity of Persons is God while
maintaining monotheism without undermining the distinctness of Persons
The Gender Tax
The Anglican (December 1998)
The Church has little to offer the growing number of women who no longer play
traditional roles in home or workplace. Coming to the Church from a world where
there is at least the appearance of minimizing the significance of gender,
we enter a world which is highly sex‑segregated and, in addition, women
are expected to pay a gender tax: while leadership roles are now open to women,
the costs are higher for women who, unlike their male counterparts, are
expected to manifest "involvement" by participating in traditional,
labor‑intensive women's activities
The
Market for Feminist Epistemology
The Monist (1994)
The thesis of gender differences in moral reasoning hypothesized by Carol
Gilligan who, according to Jaggar, "demonstrated that the categories used
to describe the moral development of children in fact fit the development only
of boys"[5]
[emphasis added] was early shown to be false on empirical grounds.
Nevertheless, like a number of other "scientific fictions," including
the myth of mother-infant bonding to be considered presently, the myth of
women's way of knowing took on a life of its own within the literature, in
which feminist theoreticians cited other feminist theoreticians and the highly
speculative work of feminist psychoanalysts in support of claims about gender
differences which had little or no empirical basis.
These
requirements are not supposed to impose restrictions on the content of
preferences. In fact they do: while a variety of preferences which we might
regard as self-destructive, perverse or silly can count as true preferences,
the preferentist account does rule out the preference for innocence.
Two Models of Preferential Treatment for Working Mothers
Public Affairs
Quarterly (October 1990)
In recent years, feminists have become disillusioned with what might be called
the Assimilationist Strategy--the project of making it more feasible for women
to hire others as primary childcare providers in order to maintain the pattern
of labor force participation traditionally expected of males. It is suggested
rather that we aim to reorganize work in such a way as to make it possible for
workers to devote more time and energy to "parenting". I argue that
this Non-Assimilationist Strategy is fundamentally contrary to the interests of
women in the long run as well as unfair. In particular, I shall argue that
extended leaves for childcare are unfair and undesirable: employers are under
no obligation to provide them and women, in the interests of promoting
equality, ought not to take them.
What Women's
Ordination Entails
Theology v.CII,
no. 806 (March/April 1999)
Opponents of
womenÕs ordination typically suggest that the proposition that women can be
priests entails further propositions which supporters either fail to recognise
or wrongly fail to regard as objectionable. I suggest that in fact the
objectionable doctrines which are alleged to follow from the thesis that women
can be priests follow only if we make highly questionable assumptions,
including most particularly the controversial assumption that there are theologically
significant gender differences. Arguably, the burden of proof is on the
opponent of womenÕs ordination to defend these assumptions.