For the benefit of our readers (but really motivated by potential benefits to me), I'd like to hear from folks about the best papers they've read in moral philosophy (broadly construed) over the past year or so, say anything published in 2010 or 2011 (I find myself more and more reading unpublished work by various folks, so I find I'm keeping up less than I should with actual published stuff). Citations would be helpful; links even more so.
Here's one I wrote the authors to commend them on and thank them for: John Martin Fischer and Neal Tognazzini's "The Physiognomy of Responsibility," Philosophy & Phenomenological Research (2011). Others?
Jeff McMahan's "The Just Distribution of Harm Between Combatants and Non-Combatants" (Philosophy and Public Affairs 38:4, 2010) continues McMahan's excellent track record of re-energizing a Just War theory that had gotten kind of bogged down for a while after Walzer.
Posted by: Eric | July 12, 2011 at 08:36 PM
I really liked reading Shelly Kagan's just published article, "Do I Make a Difference?" in Philosophy and Public Affairs 39 (2011): 105-141. Written in his characteristically direct and lucid style.
Posted by: Michael Cholbi | July 17, 2011 at 02:54 PM
I absolutely loved Not Enough There There by Micheal Titelbaum. It's an attack on first order propositional uniqueness from a logician's perspective. It's a heady read, but it's devastating. Honestly, it's one of the first times since philosophy 101 and learning quantum mechanics that my mind has had to do a 180 in its thinking about matters.
https://5103630833267736060-a-1802744773732722657-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/phil903spring2011/readings/TitelbaumThereThereOffprint.pdf?attachauth=ANoY7cq4p0hN7F-W4mTnW8NcmDMV2d4_M30uz_Di6jQXEfR-aC6ouNh1e7IHgnVn5hsJhiUCKfGRff_jjNQhoUHdZDlGQStulS-lCm9LFZ9pgbgCRGr_hosMNzgA8qaBUhGsDYjLMNwHjO-cSgFNJ4TUfohEhx1MoRRNAhglqt0iwMsE-_B4fjeDjLirZJfJqXxh-ERwuPBL9wWv3Y-rBkNQOzP9LC-4nIDouWqZz5_-jAwBPzpKoB0%3D&attredirects=0
Posted by: James Claims | July 21, 2011 at 02:26 PM
I found Phillip Montague's Stem Cell Research and the Problem of Embryonic Identity to be fairly interesting.
Also, Blackburn's review of Parfit was most amusing.
Posted by: Brandon Byrd | July 22, 2011 at 02:43 PM