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164The Rules of "Goodness": An Essay on Moral SemanticsAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 40 (3). 2003.
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1988Morality is necessary for happinessPhilosophical Studies 174 (10): 2613-2628. 2017.An argument for the eponymous conclusion is given through a series of hypothetical syllogisms, the most basic of which is as follows: morality is necessary for self-respect; self-respect is necessary for happiness; therefore, morality is necessary for happiness. Some of the most obvious objections are entertained and rejected.
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16Partially Re‐Humanized Ethics: Comments on ButchvarovSouthern Journal of Philosophy 41 (S1): 184-189. 2003.
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13Opening questions, following rulesIn Terry Horgan & Mark Timmons (eds.), Metaethics After Moore, Oxford University Press Uk. pp. 169. 2006.
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51The Virtues of Happiness: A Theory of the Good LifeOup Usa. 2014.Undeniably, life is unfair. So, why play fairly in an unfair world? The answer comes from combining the ancient Greek conception of happiness with a modern conception of self-respect. The book is about why it is bad to be bad and good to be good, and what happens in between.
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672Moral Point of View (2nd ed.)In Hugh LaFollette (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Blackwell. 2013.
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41Why it's bad to be badIn Morality and Self-Interest, Oxford University Press. 2008.The question “Why is it bad to be bad?” might seem either tautologous or poorly formed. It may seem like a tautology because it seems logical to think that badness is necessarily bad and so it must, of course, follow that it is bad to be bad. It might seem to be malformed because it may seem like anyone who asks the question, “Why is it bad to be bad?” must fail to understand the meaning of the words they are using: generally, if something is X, it cannot fail to be X. If so, then it may seem as…Read more
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174Prescriptions Are Assertions: An Essay on Moral SyntaxAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 35 (1). 1998.
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222Virtue epistemology and the epistemology of virtuePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 60 (1): 23-43. 2000.The ancient Greeks almost universally accepted the thesis that virtues are skills. Skills have an underlying intellectual structure , and having a particular skill entails understanding the relevant logos. possessing a general ability to diagnose and solve problems . as well as having appropriate experience. Two implications of accepting this thesis for moral epistemology and epistemology in general are considered. Thinking of virtues as skills yields a viable virtue epistemology in which moral …Read more
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230Two dogmas of metaethicsPhilosophical Studies 132 (3): 439-466. 2007.The two dogmas at issue are the Humean dogma that “‘is’ statements do not imply ‘ought’ statements” and the Kantian dogma that “‘ought’ statements imply ‘can’” statements. The extant literature concludes these logically contradict each other. On the contrary, it is argued here that while there is no derivable formal contradiction, the juxtaposition of the dogmas manifests a philosophical disagreement over how to understand the logic of prescriptions. This disagreement bears on how to understand …Read more
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106Moral RealityOxford University Press. 2001.We typically assume that the standard for what is beautiful lies in the eye of the beholder. Yet this is not the case when we consider morality; what we deem morally good is not usually a matter of opinion. Such thoughts push us toward being realists about moral properties, but a cogent theory of moral realism has long been an elusive philosophical goal. Paul Bloomfield here offers a rigorous defense of moral realism, developing an ontology for morality that models the property of being morally …Read more
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318Error Theory and the Concept of MoralityMetaphilosophy 44 (4): 451-469. 2013.Error theories about morality often take as their starting point the supposed queerness of morality, and those resisting these arguments often try to argue by analogy that morality is no more queer than other unproblematic subject matters. Here, error theory (as exemplified primarily by the work of Richard Joyce) is resisted first by arguing that it assumes a common, modern, and peculiarly social conception of morality. Then error theorists point out that the social nature of morality requires o…Read more
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34Moral Realism And Program Explanation: A Very Short Symposium 2: Reply To MillerAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 87 (2): 343-344. 2009.Miller's reply to Nelson misses the point because it does not attend to the difference between identifying the truth conditions for a proposition and explaining why those conditions are the ones in which the proposition is true
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39Partially Re-Humanized Ethics: Comments on ButchvarovSouthern Journal of Philosophy 41 (S1): 184-189. 2003.
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134Morality and Self-Interest (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2008.The volume will act as a useful collection of scholarship by top figures, and as a resource and course book on an important topic.
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Normativity |
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |