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Publications

For my current writings, please see my Academia.edu page:

https://morehouse.academia.edu/NathanNobis/  

Most of my publications are also available at Academia.edu, Google Scholar,  PhilPapers , PhilPeople and PubMed. If the link below doesn't work, just Google the title or email me, please. 

This page is currently a mess, in part due to Blogger's really poor text editor.

My writing and research areas are broad. Most of my publications are in in: 
  • meta-ethics (which concerns the 'nature' of morality), 
  • meta-epistemology (which concerns the 'nature' of judgments about rationality or knowledge), 
  • ethical theory (general explanations for what makes wrong actions wrong and how to think about morality, in general), 
  • philosophy of religion, 
  • bioethics, 
  • and other issues in applied or practical ethics, 
  • especially ethical issues concerning animals and abortion. 
I am also very interested in issues concerning teaching and public philosophy. I have also been involved in a number of collaborative research projects with medical researchers, medical and mental health care providers, social scientists and legal scholars. I hope to eventually organize what's below to better present my writings and research.

New:

 Thinking Critically About Abortion: Why Most Abortions Aren’t Wrong & Why All Abortions Should Be Legal. With Kristina Grob. (Open Philosophy Press, 2019). 

"Abortion and Soundbites: Why Pro-Choice Arguments Are Harder to Make." With Kristina Grob. Areo Magazine. 


 New "popular" writings (4/28/19):

Update (8/9/18):

Some less recent publications (8/6/16):
Below are some papers, but this all needs to be redone; again, please see my Academia.edu page.  
  • "Rational Engagement, Emotional Response and the Prospects for Progress in Animal Use 'Debates'" in Jeremy Garrett, ed., Animal Research in Theory and Practice (MIT Basic Bioethics Series, 2012), pp. 237-265. Draft of an APPENDIX that addresses more arguments that couldn't be addressed in the chapter. 
  • "What would be so bad about rejecting libertarian 'free will'?" De Philosophia, Vol. XVI, No. 2, 21-34, 2002.
  • Discussion with the "On the Human" project of the National Humanities Center.  
On March 5, 2010, I created a survey to try to identify which topics are most commonly addressed in introductory ethics courses that have a contemporary moral issues or problems component. If (and only if) you teach a course that focuses on practical issues (with little to no discussion of moral theory) or has a mix of theory and problems (either a unit on theory and then problems or a mix of theory and problems throughout), please fill out this survey below: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ethics-course-survey  Results have been posted here, since I closed the survey:
https://sites.google.com/site/nobisphilosophy/ethics-course-survey 


I am currently at work on a (text)book entitled Making Moral Progress: A Moral Arguments Workbook. This book evaluates moral arguments using basic formal logic and starts with common arguments, what ordinary people often say about the issues, before moving on to arguments from developed by philosophers. The book will be useful for a variety of audiences and contexts. 


Dissertation (2005): Truth in Ethics and Epistemology: A Defense of Normative Realism
Synopsis: I argue that common reasons to think that no moral judgments are true suggest that epistemic judgments, e.g., that some belief is rational, justified or should be held, are not true either. I argue that these epistemic anti-realisms are rationally unacceptable and that the major premises that entail them are false. Thus, I undercut the case against moral realism, which rests on these premises.  

Note: This page is not a publication of Morehouse College. It has not been edited or examined for content by Morehouse College. The author of the page are solely responsible for the content. See http://www.NathanNobis.com for my old page and older papers.