David O. Brink (born 1958) is Distinguished Professor of

Philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...

at the University of California, San Diego. He works in the areas of

moral A moral (from Latin ''morālis'') is a message that is conveyed or a lesson to be learned from a story or event. The moral may be left to the hearer, reader, or viewer to determine for themselves, or may be explicitly encapsulated in a maxim. A ...

, political, and legal philosophy.

Education and career

He earned his Ph.D. in

philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...

at Cornell University where he worked with Terence Irwin and David Lyons. He taught for two years at

Case Western Reserve University Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) is a private research university in Cleveland, Ohio. Case Western Reserve was established in 1967, when Western Reserve University, founded in 1826 and named for its location in the Connecticut Western Reser ...

, and then from 1987 to 1994 at Massachusetts Institute of Technology before joining the faculty at UCSD.

Philosophical views

Brink is associated with the view known as " Cornell Realism." Cornell realism was developed in the 1980s by the philosophers Richard Boyd and Nicholas Sturgeon, both faculty members at Cornell University. The view combines ethical realism with

moral naturalism Ethical naturalism (also called moral naturalism or naturalistic cognitivistic definism) is the meta-ethical view which claims that: # Ethical sentences express propositions. # Some such propositions are true. # Those propositions are made true ...

. 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, such as 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)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brink, David O. 1958 births 20th-century American essayists 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American philosophers 21st-century American essayists 21st-century American male writers 21st-century American philosophers American ethicists American male essayists Analytic philosophers Cornell University alumni Living people MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences faculty Moral realists Philosophers of law Philosophers of social science Philosophy writers Political philosophers Social philosophers University of California, San Diego faculty