Introduction
David O. Brink (born 1958) is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego.He works in the areas of moral, political, and legal philosophy.
Education and career
He earned his Ph.D. in philosophy at Cornell University where he worked with Terence Irwin and David Lyons. He taught for two years at Case Western Reserve University, and then from 1987 to 1994 at Massachusetts Institute of Technology before joining the faculty at UCSD.
Philosophical views
Brink is one of the originators of a view in metaethics called "Synthetic Ethical Naturalism." The view is also known as "Cornell Realism."Cornell realism was developed in the 1980s by the philosophers Richard Boyd, David Brink, Nicholas Sturgeon, and Peter Railton. Its name is due to the fact that when they developed the metaethical theory, Boyd, Brink, Sturgeon and Railton all studied or worked at Cornell University. The view combines ethical realism with moral naturalism. Ethical realism holds that ethical judgments, such as "murder is wrong," are factual claims similar to "Albany is the Capital of New York" in being objectively true or objectively false.Moral naturalism holds that moral properties such as the properties of being right, wrong, good, bad, virtuous or vicious are natural properties that have a status comparable to other natural properties, say, those of being a tiger, being Gold or being an electron.
Selected works
- Mill's Progressive Principles (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 2013).
- Perfectionism and the Common Good:Themes in the Philosophy of T.H. Green (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 2003).
- Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics (New York:Cambridge University Press, 1989)