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20Synchronic Bayesian updating and the generalized Sleeping Beauty problemAnalysis 67 (1): 50-59. 2007.
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108Exploring Intuitions on Moral Twin Earth: A Reply to SonderholmTheoria 81 (4): 355-375. 2015.In his 2013 Theoria article, “Unreliable Intuitions: A New Reply to the Moral Twin-Earth Argument,” Jorn Sonderholm attempts to undermine our moral twin earth argument against Richard Boyd's moral semantics by debunking the semantic intuitions that are prompted by reflection on the thought experiment featured in the MTE argument. We divide our reply into three main sections. In section 1, we briefly review Boyd's moral semantics and our MTE argument against this view. In section 2, we set forth …Read more
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108Particularist semantic normativityActa Analytica 21 (1): 45-61. 2006.We sketch the view we call contextual semantics. It asserts that truth is semantically correct affirmability under contextually variable semantic standards, that truth is frequently an indirect form of correspondence between thought/language and the world, and that many Quinean commitments are not genuine ontological commitments. We argue that contextualist semantics fits very naturally with the view that the pertinent semantic standards are particularist rather than being systematizable as exce…Read more
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83Deep ignorance, brute supervenience, and the problem of the manyPhilosophical Issues 8 229-236. 1997.
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11Morphological Rationalism and the Psychology of Moral JudgmentEthical Theory and Moral Practice 10 (3): 279-295. 2007.According to rationalism regarding the psychology of moral judgment, people’s moral judgments are generally the result of a process of reasoning that relies on moral principles or rules. By contrast, intuitionist models of moral judgment hold that people generally come to have moral judgments about particular cases on the basis of gut-level, emotion-driven intuition, and do so without reliance on reasoning and hence without reliance on moral principles. In recent years the intuitionist model has…Read more
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264What does moral phenomenology tell us about moral objectivity?Social Philosophy and Policy 25 (1): 267-300. 2008.Moral phenomenology is concerned with the elements of one's moral experiences that are generally available to introspection. Some philosophers argue that one's moral experiences, such as experiencing oneself as being morally obligated to perform some action on some occasion, contain elements that (1) are available to introspection and (2) carry ontological objectivist purportargument from phenomenological introspection.neutrality thesisthe phenomenological data regarding one's moral experiences …Read more
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1Moorean Moral PhenomenologyIn Susana Nuccetelli & Gary Seay (eds.), Themes From G. E. Moore: New Essays in Epistemology and Ethics, Oxford University Press. 2007.
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17The Phenomenology of Agency and Freedom: Lessons from Introspection and Lessons from Its LimitsHumana. Mente 15 77-97. 2011.
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90Introspection and the phenomenology of free will: Problems and prospectsJournal of Consciousness Studies 18 (1): 180-205. 2011.Inspired and informed by the work of Russ Hurlburt and Eric Schwitzgebel in their 'Describing Inner Experience', we do two things in this commentary. First, we discuss the degree of reliability that introspective methods might be expected to deliver across a range of types of experience. Second, we explore the phenomenology of agency as it bears on the topic of free will. We pose a number of poten-tial problems for attempts to use introspective methods to answer var-ious questions about the phen…Read more
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52TransvaluationismThe Harvard Review of Philosophy 14 (1): 20-35. 2006.I advocate a two part view concerning vagueness. On one hand I claim that vagueness is logically incoherent; but on the other hand I claim that vagueness is also a benign, beneficial, and indeed essential feature of human language and thought. I will call this view transvaluationism, a name which seems to me appropriate for several reasons. First, the term suggests that we should move beyond the idea that the successive statements in a sorites sequence can be assigned differing truth values in s…Read more
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45Transglobal ReliabilismCroatian Journal of Philosophy 6 (2): 171-195. 2006.We here propose an account of what it is for an agent to be objectively justified in holding some belief. We present in outline this approach, which we call transglobal reliabilism, and we discuss how it is motivated by various thought experiments. While transglobal reliabilism is an externalist epistemology, we think that it accommodates traditional internalist concerns and objections in a uniquely natural and respectful way.
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94From agentive phenomenology to cognitive phenomenology: A guide for the perplexedIn Tim Bayne and Michelle Montague (ed.), Cognitive Phenomenology, Oxford University Press. pp. 57. 2011.
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36Retreat from non-beingAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 84 (4). 2006.This Article does not have an abstract
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19Conceptually Grounded Necessary TruthsIn Albert Casullo & Joshua C. Thurow (eds.), The a Priori in Philosophy, Oxford University Press Uk. pp. 111. 2013.
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277Copping out on moral twin earthSynthese 124 (1-2): 139-152. 2000.In "Milk, Honey, and the Good Life on Moral Twin Earth", David Copp explores some ways in which a defender of synthetic moral naturalism might attempt to get around our Moral Twin Earth argument. Copp nicely brings out the force of our argument, not only through his exposition of it, but through his attempt to defeat it, since his efforts, we think, only help to make manifest the deep difficulties the Moral Twin Earth argument poses for the synthetic moral naturalist.
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192Mental causation and the agent-exclusion problemErkenntnis 67 (2): 183-200. 2007.The hypothesis of the mental state-causation of behavior asserts that the behaviors we classify as actions are caused by certain mental states. A principal reason often given for trying to secure the truth of the MSC hypothesis is that doing so is allegedly required to vindicate our belief in our own agency. I argue that the project of vindicating agency needs to be seriously reconceived, as does the relation between this project and the MSC hypothesis. Vindication requires addressing what I cal…Read more
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6Themes in my philosophical workGrazer Philosophische Studien 63 (1): 1-26. 2002.This paper is an overview of my philosophical work. It follows closely the structure of the handout I used as the basis for a talk on this topic at the 2000 meeting of the Austro-Slovene Philosophical Association. The section-headings mention major themes, and various key concepts are indicated by boldface terms in the text
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46Generalized Conditionalization and the Sleeping Beauty Problem, IIErkenntnis 80 (4): 811-839. 2015.In “Generalized Conditionalization and the Sleeping Beauty Problem,” Anna Mahtani and I offer a new argument for thirdism that relies on what we call “generalized conditionalization.” Generalized conditionalization goes beyond conventional conditionalization in two respects: first, by sometimes deploying a space of synchronic, essentially temporal, candidate-possibilities that are not “prior” possibilities; and second, by allowing for the use of preliminary probabilities that arise by first brac…Read more
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Some ins and outs of transglobal reliabilismIn Sanford Goldberg (ed.), Internalism and externalism in semantics and epistemology, Oxford University Press. pp. 100. 2007.
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11Existence monism trumps priority monismIn Philip Goff (ed.), Spinoza on Monism, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 51--76. 2011.Existence monism is defended against priority monism. Schaffer's arguments for priority monism and against pluralism are reviewed, such as the argument from gunk. The whole does not require parts. Ontological vagueness is impossible. If ordinary objects are in the right ontology then they are vague. So ordinary objects are not included in the right ontology; and hence thought and talk about them cannot be accommodated via fully ontological vindication. Partially ontological vindication is not vi…Read more
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206Prolegomena to a future phenomenology of moralsPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 7 (1): 115-131. 2008.Moral phenomenology is (roughly) the study of those features of occurrent mental states with moral significance which are accessible through direct introspection, whether or not such states possess phenomenal character – a what-it-is-likeness. In this paper, as the title indicates, we introduce and make prefatory remarks about moral phenomenology and its significance for ethics. After providing a brief taxonomy of types of moral experience, we proceed to consider questions about the commonality …Read more
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151A Solution to the Paradox of AnalysisAnalysis 76 (1): 3-7. 2016.The paradox of analysis asks how a putative conceptual analysis can be both true and informative. If it is true then isn’t it analytic? And if it is analytic then how can it be informative? Our proposed solution rests on a distinction between explicit knowledge of meaning and implicit knowledge of meaning and on a correlative distinction between two kinds of conceptual competence. If one initially possesses only implicit knowledge of the meaning of a given concept and the associated linguistic e…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Mind |
Meta-Ethics |