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459On the Connection between Normative Reasons and the Possibility of Acting for those ReasonsEthical Theory and Moral Practice 19 (5): 1211-1223. 2016.According to Bernard Williams, if it is true that A has a normative reason to Φ then it must be possible that A should Φ for that reason. This claim is important both because it restricts the range of reasons which agents can have and because it has been used as a premise in an argument for so-called ‘internalist’ theories of reasons. In this paper I rebut an apparent counterexamples to Williams’ claim: Schroeder’s example of Nate. I argue that this counterexample fails since it underestimates t…Read more
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1Introduction: Explanation in Ethics and MathematicsIn Uri D. Leibowitz & Neil Sinclair (eds.), Explanation in Ethics and Mathematics: Debunking and Dispensability, Oxford University Press. 2016.Are moral properties intellectually indispensable, and, if so, what consequences does this have for our understanding of their nature, and of our talk and knowledge of them? Are mathematical objects intellectually indispensable, and, if so, what consequences does this have for our understanding of their nature, and of our talk and knowledge of them? What similarities are there, if any, in the answers to the first two questions? Can comparison of the two cases shed light on which answers are most…Read more
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96Comments on Gibbard’s Thinking How to Live (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 72 (3). 2006.University of Cambridge.
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508Reasons, inescapability and persuasionPhilosophical Studies 173 (10): 2823-2844. 2016.This paper outlines a new metasemantic theory of moral reason statements, focused on explaining how the reasons thus stated can be inescapable. The motivation for the theory is in part that it can explain this and other phenomena concerning moral reasons. The account also suggests a general recipe for explanations of conceptual features of moral reason statements. (Published with Open Access.).
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1324Moral realism, face-values and presumptionsAnalytic Philosophy 53 (2): 158-179. 2012.Many philosophers argue that the face-value of moral practice provides presumptive support to moral realism. This paper analyses such arguments into three steps. (1) Moral practice has a certain face-value, (2) only realism can vindicate this face value, and (3) the face-value needs vindicating. Two potential problems with such arguments are discussed. The first is taking the relevant face-value to involve explicitly realist commitments; the second is underestimating the power of non-realist str…Read more
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709Expressivist ExplanationsJournal of Moral Philosophy 9 (2): 147-177. 2012.In this paper I argue that the common practice of employing moral predicates as explaining phrases can be accommodated on an expressivist account of moral practice. This account does not treat moral explanations as in any way second-rate or derivative, since it subsumes moral explanations under the general theory of program explanations (as defended by Jackson and Pettit). It follows that the phenomenon of moral explanations cannot be used to adjudicate the debate between expressivism and its ri…Read more
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154Moral ExplanationsIn Hugh LaFollette (ed.), International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Wiley. 2022."The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice." (Martin Luther King) A moral explanation is an explanation of a particular or type of event (or fact or state of affairs) that features moral terms in the explaining phrase. Here are some examples. First, one way of the above quote is as the claim that, in the broad sweep of history, societies tend toward more just institutions, and that they do so precisely because these institutions are just. This is a moral explanation …Read more
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1025Two kinds of naturalism in ethicsEthical Theory and Moral Practice 9 (4). 2006.What are the conditions on a successful naturalistic account of moral properties? In this paper I discuss one such condition: the possibility of moral concepts playing a role in good empirical theories on a par with those of the natural and social sciences. I argue that Peter Railton’s influential account of moral rightness fails to meet this condition, and thus is only viable in the hands of a naturalist who doesn’t insist on it. This conclusion generalises to all versions of naturalism that gi…Read more
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881Propositional clothing and beliefPhilosophical Quarterly 57 (228): 342-362. 2007.Moral discourse is propositionally clothed, that is, it exhibits those features – such as the ability of its sentences to intelligibly embed in conditionals and other unasserted contexts – that have been taken by some philosophers to be constitutive of discourses that express propositions. If there is nothing more to a mental state being a belief than it being characteristically expressed by sentences that are propositionally clothed then the version of expressivism which accepts that moral disc…Read more
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486Review: Kinds of Reasons – Maria Alvarez (review)Philosophical Quarterly 61 (245): 873-875. 2011.
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535Conceptual Role Semantics and the Reference of Moral ConceptsEuropean Journal of Philosophy 26 (1): 95-121. 2018.This paper examines the prospects for a conceptual or functional role theory of moral concepts. It is argued that such an account is well-placed to explain both the irreducibility and practicality of moral concepts. Several versions of conceptual role semantics for moral concepts are distinguished, depending on whether the concept-constitutive conceptual roles are wide or narrow normative or non-normative and purely doxastic or conative. It is argued that the most plausible version of conceptual…Read more
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42Review of Shaun Nichols, Sentimental Rules: On the Natural Foundations of Moral Judgment (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2005 (10). 2005.
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1232Metaethics, teleosemantics and the function of moral judgementsBiology and Philosophy 27 (5): 639-662. 2012.This paper applies the theory of teleosemantics to the issue of moral content. Two versions of teleosemantics are distinguished: input-based and output-based. It is argued that applying either to the case of moral judgements generates the conclusion that such judgements have both descriptive (belief-like) and directive (desire-like) content, intimately entwined. This conclusion directly validates neither descriptivism nor expressivism, but the application of teleosemantics to moral content does …Read more
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163Explanation in Ethics and Mathematics: Debunking and Dispensability (edited book)Oxford University Press UK. 2016.How far should our realism extend? For many years philosophers of mathematics and philosophers of ethics have worked independently to address the question of how best to understand the entities apparently referred to by mathematical and ethical talk. But the similarities between their endeavours are not often emphasised. This book provides that emphasis. In particular, it focuses on two types of argumentative strategies that have been deployed in both areas. The first—debunking arguments—aims to…Read more
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488Evolution and the Missing Link (in Debunking Arguments)In Michael Ruse & Robert J. Richards (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Ethics, Cambridge University Press. 2017.What are the consequences, for human moral practice, of an evolutionary understanding of that practice? By ‘moral practice’ we mean the way in which human beings think, talk and debate in moral terms. We suggest that the proper upshot of such considerations is moderate support for anti-realism in ethics.
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701The moral belief problemRatio 19 (2). 2006.The moral belief problem is that of reconciling expressivism in ethics with both minimalism in the philosophy of language and the syntactic discipline of moral sentences. It is argued that the problem can be solved by distinguishing minimal and robust senses of belief, where a minimal belief is any state of mind expressed by sincere assertoric use of a syntactically disciplined sentence and a robust belief is a minimal belief with some additional property R. Two attempts to specify R are discuss…Read more
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