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642Laws as Conventional NormsIn David Plunkett, Scott Shapiro & Kevin Toh (eds.), Dimensions of Normativity: New Essays on Metaethics and Jurisprudence, Oxford University Press. 2019.A persistent worry concerning conventionalist accounts of law is that such accounts are ill equipped to account for law’s special normativity. I offer a particular kind of conventionalist account that is based on the practice-dependent account of conventional norms I have offered elsewhere and consider whether it is vulnerable to the Normativity Objection. I argue that it isn’t. It can account for all the ways in which law can justly claim to be normative. While there are ways of being normative…Read more
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559Vindicating the Normativity of RationalityEthics 119 (1): 9-30. 2008.I argue that the "why be rational?" challenge raised by John Broome and Niko Kolodny rests upon a mistake that is analogous to the mistake that H.A. Pritchard famously claimed beset the “why be moral?” challenge. The failure to locate an independent justification for obeying rational requirements should do nothing whatsoever to undermine our belief in the normativity of rationality. I suggest that we should conceive of the demand for a satisfactory vindicating explanation of the normativity of r…Read more
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438Moral contractualismPhilosophy Compass 4 (6): 926-937. 2009.This article provides a critical introduction to contractualism as a moral or ethical theory, that is, as a theory of the rightness and wrongness of individual conduct – focusing specifically on the influential 'Kantian' version of contractualism due to T. M. Scanlon. I begin by elucidating the key features of Scanlon's contractualism: justifiability to others; reasonable rejectability; the individualist restriction; and mutual recognition. I then turn to discuss both its appeal and the main obj…Read more
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3616What Is Special About Human Rights?Ethics and International Affairs 25 (3): 369-83. 2011.Despite the prevalence of human rights discourse, the very idea or concept of a human right remains obscure. In particular, it is unclear what is supposed to be special or distinctive about human rights. In this paper, we consider two recent attempts to answer this challenge, James Griffin’s “personhood account” and Charles Beitz’s “practice-based account”, and argue that neither is entirely satisfactory. We then conclude with a suggestion for what a more adequate account might look like – what …Read more
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517Constructivism and the normativity of practical reasonIn Karen Jones & François Schroeter (eds.), The Many Moral Rationalisms, Oxford Univerisity Press. 2018.Constructivists hold that truths about practical reasons are to be explained in terms of truths about the correct exercise of practical reason (rather than vice versa). But what is the normative status of the correctness-defining standards of practical reason? The problem is that constructivism appears to presuppose the truth of two theses that seem hard to reconcile. First, for constructivism to be remotely plausible, the relevant standards must be genuinely (and not merely formally or minimall…Read more
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6The authority of social normsIn Michael Brady (ed.), New Waves in Metaethics, Palgrave-macmillan. 2010.
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59Beyond Pettit's neo-Roman republicanism: towards the deliberative republicCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 5 (1): 16-42. 2002.
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1109“The Thing To Do” Implies “Can”Noûs 50 (1): 61-72. 2016.A familiar complaint against the principle that “ought” implies “can” is that it seems that agents can intentionally make it the case that they cannot perform acts that they nonetheless ought to perform. I propose a related principle that I call the principle that “the thing to do” implies “can.” I argue that the principle that “the thing to do” implies “can” is implied by important but underappreciated truths about practical reason, and that it is not vulnerable to the familiar complaint agains…Read more
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4544Promises and TrustIn Hanoch Sheinman (ed.), Promises and Agreements: Philosophical Essays, Oxford University Press. 2011.In this article we develop and defend what we call the “Trust View” of promissory obligation, according to which making a promise involves inviting another individual to trust one to do something. In inviting her trust, and having the invitation accepted (or at least not rejected), one incurs an obligation to her not to betray the trust that one has invited. The distinctive wrong involved in breaking a promise is a matter of violating this obligation. We begin by explicating the core notion o…Read more
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212Promises beyond assurancePhilosophical Studies 144 (2). 2009.Breaking a promise is generally taken to involve committing a certain kind of moral wrong, but what (if anything) explains this wrong? According to one influential theory that has been championed most recently by T.M. Scanlon, the wrong involved in breaking a promise is a matter of violating an obligation that one incurs to a promisee in virtue of giving her assurance that one will perform or refrain from performing certain acts. In this paper, we argue that the “Assurance View”, as we call it, …Read more
Acton, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
Areas of Specialization
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Law |
Philosophy of Social Science |