George Sher
Biographic Data
| ID | 3865927 |
|---|---|
| NAME | George Sher |
| GIVEN NAMES | George |
| FAMILY NAME | Sher |
| SIGNATURE | SHER G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Rice University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2309-2249 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 33 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 29 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 33 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1975 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Hassoun on Sufficiency and Contentment
Nicole Hassoun has given us a wide-ranging and comprehensive sufficientarian account of distributive justice (Hassoun 2004). Since I also favor the sufficientarian approach, we share a common starting point, and we are also in agreement on many secondary issues. Here, however, I'll confine my discussion to one aspect of her account by which I'm not (yet) convinced: namely, her test for what constitutes a minimally good life for any particular ind…
On Speaking One's Mind
This paper argues that a sweeping prohibition against content‐based censorship is called for by the need to protect two distinct but related vital interests: first, our autonomy interest in making and implementing our own judgments about what is worth having or doing and, second, our social interest in living in contact with others. Because the most readily available way of overcoming our isolation is to bring the thoughts of others into either a…
What Is Culpable About Culpable Moral Ignorance
It is commonly believed that agents can be culpable for acting on false moral beliefs that they have good reason not to hold, and this paper considers two ways of explaining how that can be so. The first explanation construes the agents' culpability for their actions as an extension of their culpability for holding their false and unjustified moral beliefs, while the second maintains that they are culpable only for the larger wholes that include …
Precis of A Wild West of the Mind
How Wild the West? Reply to Coates and Swenson
You're Not Trying
At one point or another, most of us have been accused of not trying our hardest, and most of us have leveled similar accusations at others. The disputes that result are often intractable and raise difficult questions about effort, ability, and will. This essay addresses some of these questions by examining six representative cases in which the accusation is leveled. The questions discussed include (1) what trying one's hardest involves, and (2) t…
The Weight of the Past
The question that this paper seeks to answer is that of whether the resistance to change that characterizes the conservative temperament has any rational basis. More precisely, my question is whether we have good grounds for accepting any version of the principle that if something exists then we need a reason to change it but don’t need a reason to keep it. The paper defends a version of this principle whose scope is restricted to familiar tradit…
A Wild West of the Mind
This book defends the thesis that no thoughts are morally forbidden—that as long as we don’t act on them, even the nastiest attitudes, most biased beliefs, and vilest fantasies are not morally off limits. The book divides into two parts, the first a critical examination of the reasons for believing that thoughts are subject to moral regulation, the second a discussion of the mental freedom that we gain if they are not. The earlier chapters discus…
The Ethics of Social Punishment
How do we punish others socially, and should we do so? In her 2018 Descartes Lectures for Tilburg University, Linda Radzik explores the informal methods ordinary people use to enforce moral norms, such as telling people off, boycotting businesses, and publicly shaming wrongdoers on social media. Over three lectures, Radzik develops an account of what social punishment is, why it is sometimes permissible, and when it must be withheld. She argues t…
Debate
Ethics of Social Punishment
Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift, Family Values
Perfectionism and Democracy
I recently had occasion to take part in a debate on the enforcement of morals — I was cast as Devlin to my interlocutor’s Hart — in which I recapitulated some of the (non-Devlinesque) arguments for a perfectionist politics that I advance in my book Beyond Neutrality.1 The gist of my remarks was, first, that the state can do a lot of good by adopting policies aimed at promoting excellence, virtue, and desirable forms of activities and relationship…
Equality for Inegalitarians
This book offers a new and compelling account of distributive justice and its relation to choice. Unlike luck egalitarians, who treat unchosen differences in people's circumstances as sources of unjust inequality to be overcome, Sher views such differences as pervasive and unavoidable features of the human situation. Appealing to an original account of what makes us moral equals, he argues that our interest in successfully negotiating life's ever…
Who Knew?
Unlike most other discussion of responsibility, which focus on the idea that to be responsible, agents must in some sense act voluntarily, this book focuses on the relatively neglected idea that they must in some sense know what they are doing.
Who knew
Transgenerational Compensation
Blameworthy Action and Character
A number of philosophers from Hume on have claimed that it does not make sense to blame people for acting badly unless their bad acts were rooted in their characters. In this paper, I distinguish a stronger and a weaker version of this claim. The claim is false, I argue, if it is taken to mean that agents can only be blamed for bad acts when those acts are manifestations of character paws . However, what is both true and important is the weaker c…
Political Philosophy
Punishment as Societal Defense
Diversity
Approximate Justice
In this book, distinguished philosopher George Sher explores the normative moral and social problems that arise from living in a decidedly non-ideal world_a world that contains immorality, evil, and injustice, and in which resources (including knowledge) are often inadequate. Sher confronts difficult issues surrounding preferential treatment and equal opportunity, compensatory justice and punishment, the allocation of goods by lottery, and aborti…
Beyond Neutrality
Many people, including many contemporary philosophers, believe that the state has no business trying to improve people's characters, elevating their tastes, or preventing them from living degraded lives. They believe that governments should remain absolutely neutral when it comes to the consideration of competing conceptions of the good. One fundamental aim of George Sher's book is to show that this view is indefensible. A second complementary ai…
Beyond neutrality
Many people, including many contemporary philosophers, believe that the state has no business trying to improve people's characters or elevating their tastes or preventing them from living degraded lives. They believe that governments should remain absolutely neutral when it comes to the consideration of competing conceptions of the good. One fundamental aim of George Sher's book is to show that this view is indefensible. A second complementary a…
Liberal Neutrality and the Value of Autonomy
Many liberals believe that government should not base its decisions on any particular conception of the good life. Many believe, further, that this principle of neutrality is best defended through appeal to some normative principle about autonomy. In this essay, I shall discuss the prospects of mounting one such defense. I say only “one such defense” because neutralists can invoke the demands of autonomy in two quite different ways. They can argu…
Transgenerational Compensation
Diversity
A Wild West of the Mind
This book defends the thesis that no thoughts are morally forbidden—that as long as we don’t act on them, even the nastiest attitudes, most biased beliefs, and vilest fantasies are not morally off limits. The book divides into two parts, the first a critical examination of the reasons for believing that thoughts are subject to moral regulation, the second a discussion of the mental freedom that we gain if they are not. The earlier chapters discus…
Blameworthy Action and Character
A number of philosophers from Hume on have claimed that it does not make sense to blame people for acting badly unless their bad acts were rooted in their characters. In this paper, I distinguish a stronger and a weaker version of this claim. The claim is false, I argue, if it is taken to mean that agents can only be blamed for bad acts when those acts are manifestations of character paws . However, what is both true and important is the weaker c…
Sentences in the Brain
An Unsolved Problem About Punishment
Armstrong and the Interdependence of the Mental
Teleology
Health Care and the 'Deserving Poor'
This article is an adaptation of a paper prepared for the President's\nCommission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and\nBehavioral Research and included in its
Desert
Desert
Morality Within the Limits of Reason
This provocative, lucidly written reconstruction of utilitarianism focuses on the practical constraints involved in ethical choice: information may be inadequate, and understanding of causes and effects may be limited. Good decision making may be especially constrained if other people are closely involved in determining an outcome. Hardin demonstrates that many of these structural issues can and should be distinguished from the thornier problems …
Liberal Neutrality and the Value of Autonomy
Many liberals believe that government should not base its decisions on any particular conception of the good life. Many believe, further, that this principle of neutrality is best defended through appeal to some normative principle about autonomy. In this essay, I shall discuss the prospects of mounting one such defense. I say only “one such defense” because neutralists can invoke the demands of autonomy in two quite different ways. They can argu…
Approximate Justice
In this book, distinguished philosopher George Sher explores the normative moral and social problems that arise from living in a decidedly non-ideal world_a world that contains immorality, evil, and injustice, and in which resources (including knowledge) are often inadequate. Sher confronts difficult issues surrounding preferential treatment and equal opportunity, compensatory justice and punishment, the allocation of goods by lottery, and aborti…
Beyond Neutrality
Many people, including many contemporary philosophers, believe that the state has no business trying to improve people's characters, elevating their tastes, or preventing them from living degraded lives. They believe that governments should remain absolutely neutral when it comes to the consideration of competing conceptions of the good. One fundamental aim of George Sher's book is to show that this view is indefensible. A second complementary ai…
Beyond neutrality
Many people, including many contemporary philosophers, believe that the state has no business trying to improve people's characters or elevating their tastes or preventing them from living degraded lives. They believe that governments should remain absolutely neutral when it comes to the consideration of competing conceptions of the good. One fundamental aim of George Sher's book is to show that this view is indefensible. A second complementary a…
Political Philosophy
Punishment as Societal Defense
Diversity
Blameworthy Action and Character
A number of philosophers from Hume on have claimed that it does not make sense to blame people for acting badly unless their bad acts were rooted in their characters. In this paper, I distinguish a stronger and a weaker version of this claim. The claim is false, I argue, if it is taken to mean that agents can only be blamed for bad acts when those acts are manifestations of character paws . However, what is both true and important is the weaker c…
Transgenerational Compensation
Who Knew?
Unlike most other discussion of responsibility, which focus on the idea that to be responsible, agents must in some sense act voluntarily, this book focuses on the relatively neglected idea that they must in some sense know what they are doing.
Who knew
Perfectionism and Democracy
I recently had occasion to take part in a debate on the enforcement of morals — I was cast as Devlin to my interlocutor’s Hart — in which I recapitulated some of the (non-Devlinesque) arguments for a perfectionist politics that I advance in my book Beyond Neutrality.1 The gist of my remarks was, first, that the state can do a lot of good by adopting policies aimed at promoting excellence, virtue, and desirable forms of activities and relationship…
Equality for Inegalitarians
This book offers a new and compelling account of distributive justice and its relation to choice. Unlike luck egalitarians, who treat unchosen differences in people's circumstances as sources of unjust inequality to be overcome, Sher views such differences as pervasive and unavoidable features of the human situation. Appealing to an original account of what makes us moral equals, he argues that our interest in successfully negotiating life's ever…
Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift, Family Values
The Ethics of Social Punishment
How do we punish others socially, and should we do so? In her 2018 Descartes Lectures for Tilburg University, Linda Radzik explores the informal methods ordinary people use to enforce moral norms, such as telling people off, boycotting businesses, and publicly shaming wrongdoers on social media. Over three lectures, Radzik develops an account of what social punishment is, why it is sometimes permissible, and when it must be withheld. She argues t…
Debate
Ethics of Social Punishment
Philosophy (20 works) · Epistemology (16 works) · Psychology (15 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Political Philosophy and Ethics (11 works) · Political science (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Law and economics (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Philosophical Ethics and Theory (7 works)