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624Fittingness, Value and trans-World AttitudesPhilosophical Quarterly (260): 1-22. 2015.Philosophers interested in the fitting attitude analysis of final value have devoted a great deal of attention to the wrong kind of reasons problem. This paper offers an example of the reverse difficulty, the wrong kind of value problem. This problem creates deeper challenges for the fitting attitude analysis and provides independent grounds for rejecting it, or at least for doubting seriously its correctness.
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473The possibility of pragmatic reasons for belief and the wrong kind of reasons problemPhilosophical Studies 145 (2). 2009.In this paper I argue against the stronger of the two views concerning the right and wrong kind of reasons for belief, i.e. the view that the only genuine normative reasons for belief are evidential. The project in this paper is primarily negative, but with an ultimately positive aim. That aim is to leave room for the possibility that there are genuine pragmatic reasons for belief. Work is required to make room for this view, because evidentialism of a strict variety remains the default view in …Read more
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864Abandoning the buck passing analysis of final valueEthical Theory and Moral Practice 12 (4). 2009.In this paper it is argued that the buck-passing analysis (BPA) of final value is not a plausible analysis of value and should be abandoned. While considering the influential wrong kind of reason problem and other more recent technical objections, this paper contends that there are broader reasons for giving up on buck-passing. It is argued that the BPA, even if it can respond to the various technical objections, is not an attractive analysis of final value. It is not attractive for two reasons:…Read more
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911Normative Conflicts and the Structure of NormativityIn Iwao Hirose & Andrew Reisner (eds.), Weighing and Reasoning: Themes from the Work of John Broome, Oxford University Press. 2015.This paper considers the relation between the sources of normativity, reasons, and normative conflicts. It argues that common views about how normative reasons relate to their sources have important consequences for how we can understand putative normative conflicts.
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1407Ethics for FishIn Anne Barnhill, Mark Budolfson & Tyler Doggett (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Food Ethics, Oxford University Press. pp. 189-208. 2017.In this chapter we discuss some of the central ethical issues specific to eating and harvesting fish. We survey recent research on fish intelligence and cognition and discuss possible considerations that are distinctive to questions about the ethics of eating fish as opposed to terrestrial and avian mammals. We conclude that those features that are distinctive to the harvesting and consumption of fish, including means of capture and the central role that fishing plays in many communities, do not…Read more
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769Leaps of KnowledgeIn Timothy Chan (ed.), The Aim of Belief, Oxford University Press. pp. 167-183. 2013.This paper argues that both a limited doxastic voluntarism and anti-evidentialism are consistent with the views that the aim of belief is truth or knowledge and that this aim plays an important role in norm-setting for beliefs. More cautiously, it argues that limited doxastic voluntarism is (or would be) a useful capacity for agents concerned with truth tracking to possess, and that having it would confer some straightforward benefits of both an epistemic and non-epistemic variety to an agent c…Read more
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524Two Thesis about the Distinctness of Practical and Theoretical NormativityIn C. McHugh, J. Way & D. Whiting (eds.), Normativity: Epistemic and Practical, Oxford University Press. pp. 221-240. 2018.In tradition linked to Aristotle and Kant, many contemporary philosophers treat practical and theoretical normativity as two genuinely distinct domains of normativity. In this paper I consider the question of what it is for normative domains to be distinct. I suggest that there are two different ways that the distinctness thesis might be understood and consider the different implications of the two different distinctness theses.
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1183Is the Enkratic Principle a Requirement of Rationality?Organon F: Medzinárodný Časopis Pre Analytickú Filozofiu 20 (4): 436-462. 2013.In this paper I argue that the enkratic principle in its classic formulation may not be a requirement of rationality. The investigation of whether it is leads to some important methodological insights into the study of rationality. I also consider the possibility that we should consider rational requirements as a subset of a broader category of agential requirements.
Areas of Specialization
5 more
Value Theory |
Meta-Ethics |
Normativity |
Epistemic Normativity |
Normativity, Misc |
Doxastic Voluntarism |
Epistemic Normativity, Misc |
Ethics of Belief |
Theories of Value |
Axiology |