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David Copp [126]David Irwin Copp [1]David I. Copp [1]
  1. Morality, normativity, and society.David Copp - 1995 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Moral claims not only purport to be true, they also purport to guide our choices. This book presents a new theory of normative judgment, the "standard-based theory," which offers a schematic account of the truth conditions of normative propositions of all kinds, including moral propositions and propositions about reasons. The heart of Copp 's approach to moral propositions is a theory of the circumstances under which corresponding moral standards qualify as justified, the " society -centered theory." He argues that because (...)
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  2. Morality in a Natural World: Selected Essays in Metaethics.David Copp - 2007 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    The central philosophical challenge of metaethics is to account for the normativity of moral judgment without abandoning or seriously compromising moral realism. In Morality in a Natural World, David Copp defends a version of naturalistic moral realism that can accommodate the normativity of morality. Moral naturalism is often thought to face special metaphysical, epistemological, and semantic problems as well as the difficulty in accounting for normativity. In the ten essays included in this volume, Copp defends solutions to these problems. Three (...)
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  3. Darwinian skepticism about moral realism.David Copp - 2008 - Philosophical Issues 18 (1):186-206.
  4. Defending the principle of alternate possibilities: Blameworthiness and moral responsibility.David Copp - 1997 - Noûs 31 (4):441-456.
    According to the principle of alternate possibilities (PAP), a person is morally responsible for an action only if he could have done otherwise. PAP underlies a familiar argument for the incompatibility of moral responsibility with determinism. I argue that Harry Frankfurt's famous argument against PAP is unsuccessful if PAP is interpreted as a principle about blameworthiness. My argument turns on the maxim that "ought implies can" as well as a "finely-nuanced" view of the object of blame. To reject PAP on (...)
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  5.  88
    (1 other version)Realist-Expressivism: A Neglected Option for Moral Realism.David Copp - 2001 - Social Philosophy and Policy 18 (2):1-43.
    Moral realismandantirealist-expressivismare of course incompatible positions. They disagree fundamentally about the nature of moral states of mind, the existence of moral states of affairs and properties, and the nature and role of moral discourse. The central realist view is that a person who has or expresses a moral thought is thereby in, or thereby expresses, acognitivestate of mind; she has or expresses abeliefthat represents a moral state of affairs in a way that might be accurate or inaccurate. The view of (...)
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  6. What kind of a mistake is it to use a slur?Adam Sennet & David Copp - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (4):1079-1104.
    What accounts for the offensive character of pejoratives and slurs, words like ‘kike’ and ‘nigger’? Is it due to a semantic feature of the words or to a pragmatic feature of their use? Is it due to a violation of a group’s desires to not be called by certain terms? Is it due to a violation of etiquette? According to one kind of view, pejoratives and the non-pejorative terms with which they are related—the ‘neutral counterpart’ terms—have different meanings or senses, (...)
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  7. The collective moral autonomy thesis.David Copp - 2007 - Journal of Social Philosophy 38 (3):369–388.
  8.  35
    On Human Conduct.David Copp - 1977 - Philosophical Review 86 (2):235.
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  9. Morality and virtue: An assessment of some recent work in virtue ethics.David Copp & David Sobel - 2004 - Ethics 114 (3):514-554.
    This essay focuses on three recent books on morality and virtue, Michael Slote's 'Morals from Motives', Rosalind Hursthouse's 'On Virtue Ethics', and Philippa Foot's 'Natural Goodness'. Slote proposes an "agent-based" ethical theory according to which the ethical status of acts is derivative from assessments of virtue. Following Foot's lead, Hursthouse aims to vindicate an ethical naturalism that explains human goodness on the basis of views about human nature. Both Hursthouse and Slote take virtue to be morally basic in a way (...)
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  10. On the agency of certain collective entities: An argument from "normative autonomy".David Copp - 2006 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 30 (1):194–221.
  11. The Oxford handbook of ethical theory.David Copp (ed.) - 2006 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory is a major new reference work in ethical theory consisting of commissioned essays by leading moral philosophers. Ethical theories have always been of central importance to philosophy, and remain so; ethical theory is one of the most active areas of philosophical research and teaching today. Courses in ethics are taught in colleges and universities at all levels, and ethical theory is the organizing principle for all of them. The Handbook is divided into two parts, (...)
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  12. The Idea of a Legitimate State.David Copp - 1999 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 28 (1):3-45.
    A legitimate state would have a right to rule. The problem is to understand, first, precisely what this right amounts to, and second, under what conditions a state would have it. According to the traditional account, the legitimacy of a state is to be explained in terms of its subjects’ obligation to obey the law. I argue that this account is inadequate. I propose that the legitimacy of a state would consist in its having a bundle of rights of various (...)
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  13. The Ring of Gyges: Overridingness and the Unity of Reason.David Copp - 1997 - Social Philosophy and Policy 14 (1):86-106.
    Does morality override self-interest? Or does self-interest override morality? These questions become important in situations where there is conflict between the overall verdicts of morality and self-interest, situations where morality on balance requires an action that is contrary to our self-interest, or where considerations of self-interest on balance call for an action that is forbidden by morality. In situations of this kind, we want to know what we ought simpliciter to do. If one of these standpoints over-rides the other, then (...)
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  14. Realist-expressivism and conventional implicature.David Copp - 2009 - Oxford Studies in Metaethics 4:167-202.
     
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  15. Morality, Normativity, and Society.David Copp - 1997 - Philosophical Quarterly 47 (188):411-413.
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  16. Belief, reason, and motivation: Michael Smith's "the moral problem".David Copp - 1997 - Ethics 108 (1):33-54.
  17. Why naturalism?David Copp - 2003 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 6 (2):179-200.
    My goal in this paper is to explain what ethical naturalism is, to locate the pivotal issue between naturalists and non-naturalists, and to motivate taking naturalism seriously. I do not aim to establish the truth of naturalism nor to answer the various familiar objections to it. But I do aim to motivate naturalism sufficiently that the attempt to deal with the objections will seem worthwhile. I propose that naturalism is best understood as the view that the moral properties are natural (...)
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  18. Milk, honey, and the good life on moral twin earth.David Copp - 2000 - Synthese 124 (1-2):113-137.
  19. (1 other version)Toward a pluralist and teleological theory of normativity.David Copp - 2009 - Philosophical Issues 19 (1):21-37.
  20. What Collectives Are: Agency, Individualism and Legal Theory.David Copp - 1984 - Dialogue 23 (2):249-269.
    An account of the ontological nature of collectives would be useful for several reasons. A successful theory would help to show us a route through the thicket of views known as “methodological individualism”. It would have a bearing on the plausibility of legal positivism. It would be relevant to the question whether collectives are capable of acting. The debate about the ontology of collectives is therefore important for such fields as the theory of action, social and political philosophy, the philosophy (...)
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  21. How to avoid begging the question against evolutionary debunking arguments.David Copp - 2019 - Ratio 32 (4):231-245.
    Evolutionary debunking arguments aim to undercut the epistemological status of our evaluative beliefs on the basis of the genesis of our belief-forming tendencies. This paper addresses the issue whether responses to these arguments must be question-begging. It argues for a pragmatic understanding of question-beggingness, according to which whether an argument is question-begging depends on the argumentative context. After laying out the debunking argument, the paper considers a variety of responses. It asks whether metaethical responses, such as Sharon Street’s response that (...)
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  22. Just too different: normative properties and natural properties.David Copp - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (1):263-286.
    Many normative nonnaturalists find normative naturalism to be completely implausible. Naturalists and nonnaturalists agree, provided they are realists, that there are normative properties, such as moral ones. Naturalists hold that these properties are similar in all metaphysically important respects to properties that all would agree to be natural ones, such as such as meteorological or economic ones. It is this view that the nonnaturalists I have in mind find to be hopeless. They hold that normative properties are just too different (...)
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  23. Pejorative Verbs and the Prospects for a Unified Theory of Slurs.Adam Sennet & David Copp - 2020 - Analytic Philosophy 61 (2):130-151.
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  24.  91
    Realist-expressivism and the fundamental role of normative belief.David Copp - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (6):1333-1356.
    The goal of this paper is to show that a cognitivist–externalist view about moral judgment is compatible with a key intuition that motivates non-cognitivist expressivism. This is the intuition that normative judgments have a close connection to action that ordinary “descriptive factual beliefs” do not have, or, as James Dreier has suggested, that part of the fundamental role of normative judgment is to motivate. One might think that cognitivist–externalist positions about normative judgment are committed to viewing normative judgments as having (...)
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  25.  70
    Collective Actions and Secondary Actions.David Copp - 1979 - American Philosophical Quarterly 16 (3):177 - 186.
  26. 'Ought' implies 'can' and the derivation of the Principle of Alternate Possibilities.David Copp - 2008 - Analysis 68 (1):67-75.
  27.  34
    Utilitarianism and Co-Operation.David Copp - 1983 - Philosophical Review 92 (4):617.
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  28. Normative naturalism and normative nihilism: Parfit's dilemma for naturalism.David Copp - 2017 - In Simon Kirchin (ed.), Reading Parfit: On on What Matters. New York: Routledge.
    The fundamental issue dividing normative naturalists and non-naturalists concerns the nature of normativity. Non-naturalists hold that the normativity of moral properties and facts sets them apart from natural properties and facts in an important and deep way. As Derek Parfit explains matters, the normative naturalist distinguishes between normative concepts and the natural properties to which these concepts refer and also between normative propositions and the natural facts in virtue of which such propositions are true when they are true. This chapter (...)
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  29. Quinn on double effect: The problem of "closeness".John Martin Fischer, Mark Ravizza & David Copp - 1993 - Ethics 103 (4):707-725.
  30. Introduction: Metaethics and normative ethics.David Copp - 2006 - In The Oxford handbook of ethical theory. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 3--35.
    This chapter begins by explaining the distinction between meta-ethics and normative ethics. It then introduces the main issues in the two fields and provides a critical overview of the chapters in the volume. In meta-ethics, it focuses on explaining the different kinds of moral realism and anti-realism, including the divine command theory, naturalism, non-naturalism, relativism, nihilism, and non-cognitivism. Quasi-realism illustrates how the distinction between anti-realism and realism can become blurred. A variety of views about the relation between morality and practical (...)
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  31.  69
    Pejoratives and Ways of Thinking.Adam Sennet & David Copp - 2017 - Analytic Philosophy 58 (3):248-271.
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  32. A semantic challenge to non-realist cognitivism.David Copp - 2018 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 48 (3-4):569-591.
    Recently, some philosophers have attempted to escape familiar challenges to orthodox nonnaturalist normative realism by abandoning the robust metaphysical commitments of the orthodox view. One such view is the ‘Non-Metaphysical Non-Naturalism’ or ‘Non-Realist Cognitivism’ proposed by Derek Parfit and a few others. The trouble is that, as it stands, Non-Realist Cognitivism seems unable to provide a substantive non-trivial account of the meaning and truth conditions of moral claims. The paper considers various strategies one might use to address the challenge. There (...)
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  33.  77
    Morality, reason, and truth: new essays on the foundations of ethics.David Copp & David Zimmerman (eds.) - 1984 - Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Allanheld.
    The thirteen papers...address various dimensions of the complex relationship between morality and rationality. Most of the papers are new and they are generally at the cutting edge of current research. The collection is a substantial and important contribution to metaethics.
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  34. Hobbes on artificial persons and collective actions.David Copp - 1980 - Philosophical Review 89 (4):579-606.
  35. (2 other versions)Moral Obligation and Moral Motivation.David Copp - 1995 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplement 21 (sup1):187–219.
    'Internalism’ in ethics is a cluster of views according to which there is an ‘internal’ connection between moral obligations and either motivations or reasons to act morally; ‘externalism’ says that such connections are contingent. So described, the dispute between internalism and externalism may seem a technical debate of minor interest. However, the issues that motivate it include deep problems about moral truth, realism, normativity, and objectivity. Indeed, I think that some philosophers view externalism as undermining the ‘dignity’ of morality. They (...)
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  36. Desires, Motives, and Reasons: Scanlon’s Rationalistic Moral Psychology.David Copp & David Sobel - 2002 - Social Theory and Practice 28 (2):243-76.
  37. Explanation and justification in ethics.David Copp - 1990 - Ethics 100 (2):237-258.
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  38. The normativity of self-grounded reason.David Copp - 2005 - Social Philosophy and Policy 22 (2):165-203.
    In this essay, I propose a standard of practical rationality and a grounding for the standard that rests on the idea of autonomous agency. This grounding is intended to explain the “normativity” of the standard. The basic idea is this: To be autonomous is to be self-governing. To be rational is at least in part to be self-governing; it is to do well in governing oneself. I argue that a person's values are aspects of her identity—of her “self-esteem identity”—in a (...)
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  39. The Idea of Democracy.David Copp, Jean Hampton & John E. Roemer - 1995 - Ethics 105 (2):425-426.
    In the wake of the recent expansion of democratic forms of government around the world, political theorists have begun to rethink the nature and justification of this form of government. The essays in this book address a variety of foundational questions about democracy: How effective is it? How stable can it be in a pluralist society? Does it deserve its current popularity? Can it successfully guide a socialist society?
     
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  40.  62
    Rational Choice and Moral Agency.David Copp - 1999 - Philosophical Review 108 (2):297.
    The “ultimate objective” of this book, says David Schmidtz, “is to examine the degree to which being moral is co-extensive with being rational”. For Schmidtz, an “end” gives us a reason for action provided that its pursuit is not undercut by some other end. Morality has a two-part structure. A person’s goal is “moral” if “pursuing it helps [her] to develop in a reflectively rational way,” provided its pursuit does not violate “interpersonal moral constraints”. Interpersonal constraints are imposed by “collectively (...)
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  41.  30
    Rationality and Moral Authority.David Copp - 2015 - Oxford Studies in Metaethics 10.
    According to the Rationality Doctrine, whether morality is normative depends on the existence of a link of an important kind between morality and rationality. The RD is intuitively appealing and has a historical pedigree. Versions have been endorsed by philosophers who otherwise disagree fundamentally. A version of it has been used in arguing against the chapter’s account of the normativity of morality on the basis that, allegedly, it fails to establish the right kind of link between morality and rationality. Yet (...)
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  42. The Right to an Adequate Standard of Living: Justice, Autonomy, and the Basic Needs.David Copp - 1992 - Social Philosophy and Policy 9 (1):231.
    Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights reads as follows: “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services.” I shall refer to the right postulated here as “the right to an adequate standard of living” or “The Right.”.
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  43. The Ring of Gyges: On the Unity of Practical Reason.David Copp - forthcoming - Social Philosophy and Policy.
  44. Jesse Prinz, The Emotional Construction of Morals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007): Prinz's Subjectivist Moral Realism1.David Copp - 2011 - Noûs 45 (3):577-594.
  45.  52
    Responsibility for collective inaction.David Copp - 1991 - Journal of Social Philosophy 22 (2):71-80.
  46.  48
    The right to an adequate standard of living: Justice, autonomy, and the basic needs*: David Copp.David Copp - 1992 - Social Philosophy and Policy 9 (1):231-261.
    Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights reads as follows: “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services.” I shall refer to the right postulated here as “the right to an adequate standard of living” or “The Right.”.
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  47. International law and morality in the theory of secession.David Copp - 1998 - The Journal of Ethics 2 (3):219-245.
    In order responsibly to decide whether there ought to be an international legal right of secession, I believe we need an account of the morality of secession. I propose that territorial and political societies have a moral right to secede, and on that basis I propose a regime designed to give such groups an international legal right to secede. This regime would create a procedure that could be followed by groups desiring to secede or by states desiring to resolve the (...)
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  48.  72
    Normativity and the very idea of moral epistemology.David Copp - 1991 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 29 (S1):189-210.
  49.  57
    Perl and Schroeder’s presuppositional error theory.David Copp - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (6):1473-1493.
    Ronald Dworkin charges that the error theory is a position in first-order moral theory that should be judged by the standards that are appropriately used in evaluating first-order theories. Perl and Schroeder contend that a “presuppositional error theory” can avoid Dworkin’s charge. On the presuppositional view, moral sentences, such as, “It is wrong to torture babies,” have a false presupposition. Perhaps, for example, they presuppose that there are objectively prescriptive moral standards. This proposal can be understood in different ways, depending (...)
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  50. (1 other version)International justice and the basic needs principle.David Copp - 2005 - In Gillian Brock & Harry Brighouse (eds.), The Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 39--54.
    According to the basic needs principle, a state in favorable circumstances must enable its members to meet their basic needs throughout a normal life-span. Applied to the international situation, I argue, this principle implies that a global state would have a duty to enable subordinate states to meet their members‘ needs. In the absence of a global state, existing states have a duty to work to create a system of institutions that would enable each state to meet its members‘ needs. (...)
     
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