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1386Weighing ExplanationsIn Andrew Reisner & Iwao Hirose (eds.), Weighing and Reasoning: A Festschrift for John Broome, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
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3161Reasons as EvidenceOxford Studies in Metaethics 4 215-42. 2009.In this paper, we argue for a particular informative and unified analysis of normative reasons. According to this analysis, a fact F is a reason to act in a certain way just in case it is evidence that one ought to act in that way. Similarly, F is a reason to believe a certain proposition just in case it is evidence for the truth of this proposition. Putting the relatively uncontroversial claim about reasons for belief to one side, we present several arguments in favor of our analysis of reason…Read more
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199Epistemicism about vagueness and meta-linguistic safetyPhilosophical Perspectives 22 (1): 277-304. 2008.The paper challenges Williamson’s safety based explanation for why we cannot know the cut-off point of vague expressions. We assume throughout (most of) the paper that Williamson is correct in saying that vague expressions have sharp cut-off points, but we argue that Williamson’s explanation for why we do not and cannot know these cut-off points is unsatisfactory. In sect 2 we present Williamson's position in some detail. In particular, we note that Williamson's explanation relies on taking a pa…Read more
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1525Free Will AgnosticismNoûs 47 (2): 235-252. 2013.I argue that no one knows whether there is free will.
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35Sartorio, Carolina. Causation and Free Will.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. 208. $65.00Ethics 127 (3): 802-806. 2017.
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66This is a Tricky Situation: Situationism and Reasons-ResponsivenessThe Journal of Ethics 21 (2): 151-183. 2017.Situations are powerful: the evidence from experimental social psychology suggests that agents are hugely influenced by the situations they find themselves in, often without their knowing it. In our paper, we evaluate how situational factors affect our reasons-responsiveness, as conceived of by John Fischer and Mark Ravizza, and, through this, how they also affect moral responsibility. We argue that the situationist experiments suggest that situational factors impair, among other things, our mod…Read more
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1369Weighing ReasonsJournal of Moral Philosophy 10 (1): 70-86. 2013.This paper is a response to two sets of published criticisms of the 'Reasons as Evidence’ thesis concerning normative reasons, proposed and defended in earlier papers. According to this thesis, a fact is a normative reason for an agent to Φ just in case this fact is evidence that this agent ought to Φ. John Broome and John Brunero have presented a number of challenging criticisms of this thesis which focus, for the most part, on problems that it appears to confront when it comes to the topic of …Read more
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42Finding the Value in Things: Remarks on Markovits's Moral ReasonPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 92 (2): 539-548. 2016.
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72Naturalism and the First Person Perspective By Lynne Rudder BakerAnalysis 74 (4): 733-735. 2014.
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575Aborting the zygote argumentPhilosophical Studies 160 (3): 379-389. 2012.Alfred Mele’s zygote argument for incompatibilism is based on a case involving an agent in a deterministic world whose entire life is planned by someone else. Mele’s contention is that Ernie (the agent) is unfree and that normal determined agents are relevantly similar to him with regards to free will. In this paper, I examine four different ways of understanding this argument and then criticize each interpretation. I then extend my criticism to manipulation arguments in general. I conclude that…Read more
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