Metaethics
Might moral epistemologists be asking the wrong questions?
(Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (2020), 100 (3): 556-585)
(Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (2020), 100 (3): 556-585)
This paper suggests that moral epistemologists have been focusing on the wrong questions, or at least ignoring some of the right ones. They've been ignoring some of the right questions because they've made a mistake about the semantics and pragmatics of moral discourse.
Attributing error without taking a stand
(with Mark Schroeder. Philosophical Studies, (2019), 176, 1453--1471)
(with Mark Schroeder. Philosophical Studies, (2019), 176, 1453--1471)
Moral error theory is the doctrine that our first-order moral commitments are pervaded by systematic error. It has been objected that this makes the error theory itself a position in first-order moral theory that should be judged by the standards of competing first-order moral theories. 1 This paper shows that error theorists can resist this charge if they adopt a particular understanding of the presuppositions of moral discourse.
A user's guide to hybrid tools
(Mind (2020), 129 (513): 129--158)
(Mind (2020), 129 (513): 129--158)
Hybrid metaethical theories have significant promise; they would have important upshots if they were true. But the also face severe problems. The problems are severe enough to make many philosophers doubt that they could be true. My ambition is to show that the problems are just instances of a highly general problem: a problem about what are sometimes called “intensional anaphora”. I’ll also show that any adequate explanation of intensional anaphora immediately solves all the problems for the hybrid theorist. We should regard hybrid tools as one of the most legitimate tools in our toolkit - at least when we use them properly.
Formulating moral error theory (reply to Tiefensee)
(The Journal of Philosophy (2022) 119 (5): 279-288)
(The Journal of Philosophy (2022) 119 (5): 279-288)
This paper shows how to formulate moral error theories given a contextualist semantics like the one that Angelika Kratzer pioneered. (It's a successor to `Attributing error without taking a stand'; it fleshes out the picture sketched there in more detail.) It's a reply piece to:
Tiefensee, Christine. 2020. ““Ought” and error.” Journal of Philosophy 117 (2):96–114.
Tiefensee, Christine. 2020. ““Ought” and error.” Journal of Philosophy 117 (2):96–114.
An epistemology for moral naturalists
(forthcoming in Oxford Studies in Metaethics)
(forthcoming in Oxford Studies in Metaethics)
This paper introduces a new account of moral knowledge -- an account of how we make or assess claims to moral knowledge. It aims at explaining three hallmarks of moral knowledge: its aprioricity, its autonomy from scientific inquiry, and its minimalist epistemology. These hallmarks all seem like evidence against moral naturalists. I show that my new account allows moral naturalists to capture all three hallmarks. Capturing the three hallmarks undercuts a central source of evidence against moral naturalism.
epistemologyformoralnaturalists8.22.20.pdf | |
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Normativity as Reactive Shield
This paper develops a construal of normativity that descends from Mill's classic account of moral wrongs as what ought to be sanctioned. Its core aim is to generalize Mill's account to avoid objectionable circularity, by taking normative judgments to play a distinctive role in our social lives. It suggests, roughly, that a fact's normativity consists in its constitutively governing certain sanctions. The paper argues that the resulting construal of normativity is on a par with more familiar Humean or Kantian construals. Establishing parity helps us ask which metaethical questions should be central.
2.22.23_normativity.pdf | |
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Normative ethics and political philosophy
Solving the ideal worlds problem
(Ethics (2021) 132 (1):89–126.)
(Ethics (2021) 132 (1):89–126.)
I introduce a new formulation of rule consequentialism, defended as an improvement on traditional formulations. My new formulation cleanly avoids what Parfit calls `ideal world' objections. I suggest that those objections arise because traditional formulations incorporate counterfactual comparisons about how things could go differently. My new formulation eliminates those counterfactual comparisons. Part of the interest of the new formulation is as a model of how to reformulate structurally similar views, including various kinds of contractualism.
Empirical ignorance as defeating moral intuitions? A puzzle for rule consequentialists (and others)
(Analysis (2019), 79 (1): 62-72)
(Analysis (2019), 79 (1): 62-72)
Brad Hooker and Derek Parfit have both defended their consequentialist theories as the outcome of reflective equilibrium. I’ll argue that it’s impossible to defend them that way, given reasonable, orthodox assumption about the appropriate standards for moral epistemology. My argument can be seen as an extension and application of the cluelessness problem for consequentialists that James Lenman (2000) has noted.
Debunking arguments in normative ethics: a defense
This paper explains why debunking arguments in normative ethics can be compelling. The key challenge is to distinguish those arguments from the sorts of global debunking arguments that philosophers like Sharon Street defend. I answer this challenge by introducing and motivating a new kind of contextualism about moral knowledge. The contextualist idea is that there are low-standards contexts where moral knowledge and evidence is easy to acquire, and also high-standards contexts where moral knowledge and evidence is hard to acquire. Global debunking arguments are not compelling in the low-standards contexts, but local debunking ar- guments still are.
Practical political liberalism
(forthcoming, Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy)
(forthcoming, Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy)
This paper introduces a new version of political liberalism, or at least a new, very close cousin of political liberalism. The new version differs from traditional kinds of political liberalism in its focus on practical rather than doxastic commitments. I might be committed to paying my taxes, and I might also believe that paying my taxes is morally required. The former is a practical commitment: a commitment to act. The latter is a doxastic state: belief in a proposition. This paper focuses exclusively on the practical states necessary for cooperating together in the right way. So I call the new version practical political liberalism. I’ll introduce practical liberalism as particularly accommodating to religious citizens. For instance, it can seem like more traditional kinds of political liberalism require religious citizens to be skeptics about religious questions. Practical liberalism will explain why skepticism isn’t required. And the explanation illustrates more generally how practical liberalism doesn’t require religious citizens to accept additional commitments that they’d find objectionable. I then argue that all political liberals should be practical liberals.
9.1.21practicalpoliticalliberalism.pdf | |
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Some question-begging objections to rule consequentialism
(forthcoming, Australasian Journal of Philosophy)
(forthcoming, Australasian Journal of Philosophy)
This paper defends views like rule consequentialism by distinguishing two sorts of ideal world objections. It aims to show that one of those sorts of objections is question-begging. Its success would open up a path forward for such views.
11.30.21cluelessnessidealworld.pdf | |
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Philosophy of language
How to outfox Sly Pete
(Forthcoming in Meaning, Decision, and Norms: Themes from the Work of Allan Gibbard)
(Forthcoming in Meaning, Decision, and Norms: Themes from the Work of Allan Gibbard)
This paper develops a novel account of a central puzzle about indicative conditionals. Allan Gibbard noted that different speakers are sometimes perfectly entitled to accept indicatives with the same antecedent and incompatible consequents. Standard contextualist semantics for indicatives (like Robert Stalnaker’s or Angelika Kratzer’s) seem to make implausible predictions about those cases. Gibbard used those problems to motivate an expressivist account of indicatives, where indicatives semantically express the speaker’s state of mind. Others have used this puzzle to motivate relativist accounts, where indicatives express propositions whose truth-conditions are relative to novel points of assessment. This puzzle is interesting in large part because of its significance for foundational questions in the philosophy of language: as evidence for an expressivist approach, or a relativist approach, or some other heterodox approach.
This paper argues that Gibbard’s puzzle is not a license for optimism for the expressivist or the relativist. It has three central goals. The first central goal is to show that Gibbard’s puzzle is even harder to answer than most philosophers think. The second central goal is to introduce a novel account of Gibbard’s puzzle, which posits new presuppositions, and to show that this account captures all facets of the puzzle. I intend this presuppositional account as a defense of traditional contextualism. The presuppositional account shows how a traditional contextualist can get the puzzle just right. And the third central goal is to explore which heterodox semantic theorists can give an equally good explanation of the puzzle.
This paper argues that Gibbard’s puzzle is not a license for optimism for the expressivist or the relativist. It has three central goals. The first central goal is to show that Gibbard’s puzzle is even harder to answer than most philosophers think. The second central goal is to introduce a novel account of Gibbard’s puzzle, which posits new presuppositions, and to show that this account captures all facets of the puzzle. I intend this presuppositional account as a defense of traditional contextualism. The presuppositional account shows how a traditional contextualist can get the puzzle just right. And the third central goal is to explore which heterodox semantic theorists can give an equally good explanation of the puzzle.
Presuppositions, attitudes, and why they matter
(Australasian Journal of Philosophy (2020), 98 (2): 363-381)
(Australasian Journal of Philosophy (2020), 98 (2): 363-381)
This paper focuses on the way that presupposition triggers embed under attitude verbs. It has three main goals. It first shows that we can't explain those embeddings just by drawing on the standard tools that philosophers and linguists have traditionally used. The second goal is to introduce and develop a non-standard tool that does capture these embeddings. The central point of this discussion is that presupposition triggers behave very differently under attitude ascriptions than most other kinds of linguistic constructions, in a way that philosophers and linguists have missed. And the third goal is to unpack the philosophical payoffs of this discovery. Several central debates in epistemology look very different.
Shifty contextualism about epistemics
(Ergo (2017) 4(2): 783-820 )
(Ergo (2017) 4(2): 783-820 )
According to a highly natural, orthodox view, epistemic modals like might and must are contextually variable, allowing us to express different propositions in different contexts of utterance. This view (contextualism about epistemic modals) is natural because the only other ways of making sense of how epistemic expressions are sensitive to information (views like relativism, expressivism, and dynamicism) carry such unorthodox commitments. Yet it has faced more than its share of challenges. In this paper, I will argue that two important challenges for contextualism about epistemic modals receive the very same solution: one problem about disagreement, and one problem about the reasonableness of our epistemic beliefs. The first of these challenges is very familiar, and the second less so, but equally important.
An argument for temporalism and contingentism
(Philosophical Studies (2015) 172 (5); 1387-1417)
NB: I now regard this paper as mistaken. My `A User's Guide to Hybrid Tools' (above) is my explanation why.
(Philosophical Studies (2015) 172 (5); 1387-1417)
NB: I now regard this paper as mistaken. My `A User's Guide to Hybrid Tools' (above) is my explanation why.
Aristotle and Aquinas may have held that the things we believe and assert can have different truth-values at different times. Stoic logicians did; they held that there were “vacillating assertibles”—assertibles that are sometimes true and sometimes false. Frege and Russell endorsed the now widely accepted alternative, where the propositions believed and asserted are always specific with respect to time. This paper brings a new perspective to this question. We want to figure out what sorts of propositions speakers believe. Some philosophers have argued that we must take agents to believe temporalist propositions—propositions that are inspecific with respect to time—if we’re to explain the agent’s own thoughts and inferences. I’ll explore another strategy. I’ll focus on our ability to think and reason about the beliefs that other people have. I’ll suggest that an adequate account of that ability requires that we take others to believe some temporalist propositions. I also ask whether all propositions can be specific with respect to worlds, and close by exploring some general issues.