•  163
    This is a review of "The nature and value of knowlege: Three investigations", by Duncan Pritchard, Alan Millar, and Adrian Haddock (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2011).
  •  269
    Instrumental rationality
    Oxford Studies in Metaethics 6 280-309. 2011.
    Is there any distinctive aspect of rationality that deserves the label of “instrumental rationality”? Recently, Joseph Raz (2005) has argued that instrumental rationality is a “myth”. In this essay, I shall give some qualified support to Raz’s position: as I shall argue, many philosophers have indeed been seduced by certain myths about instrumental rationality. Nonetheless, Raz’s conclusion is too strong. Instrumental rationality is not itself a myth: there really is a distinctive aspect of rati…Read more
  •  234
    The "Good" and the "Right" Revisited
    Philosophical Perspectives 23 (1). 2009.
    Moral philosophy has long been preoccupied by a supposed dichotomy between the "good" and the "right". This dichotomy has been taken to define certain allegedly central issues for ethics. How are the good and the right related to each other? For example, is one of the two "prior" to the other? If so, is the good prior to the right, or is the right prior to the good?
  •  177
    Doxastic Correctness
    Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 87 (1): 217-234. 2013.
    If beliefs are subject to a basic norm of correctness—roughly, to the principle that a belief is correct only if the proposition believed is true—how can this norm guide believers in forming their beliefs? Answer: this norm guides believers indirectly: believers are directly guided by requirements of rationality—which are themselves explained by this norm of correctness. The fundamental connection between rationality and correctness is probabilistic. Incorrectness comes in degrees; for beliefs, …Read more
  •  296
    Sensing values?
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 63 (1): 215-223. 2001.
    This is a reply to Mark Johnston's paper "The Authority of Affect", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (2001).
  •  198
    The Weight of Moral Reasons
    Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics (Ed. Mark Timmons) 3 35-58. 2013.
    This paper starts by giving an interpretation of the notorious question "Why be moral?" Then, to answer that question, it develops an account of why some moral reasons -- specifically, the moral reasons that ground moral requirements -- are sufficiently weighty that they outweigh all countervailing reasons for action.
  •  37
    Value Judgement: Improving Our Ethical Beliefs (review)
    Philosophical Review 107 (3): 447. 1998.
    This is a review of James Griffin's book "Value-Judgement: Improving Our Ethical Beliefs".
  •  159
    An Inferentialist Conception of the A Priori
    Oxford Studies in Epistemology 5. 2015.
    This paper offers an account of the a priori. According to this account, the fundamental notion is not that of a priori knowledge, or even of a priori justified belief, but a notion of an a priori justified inferential disposition. The rationality or justification of such a priori justified inferential dispositions is explained purely by some of the basic cognitive capacities that the thinker possesses, independently of any further experiences or other conscious mental states that the thinker ha…Read more
  •  193
    Review: Kieran Setiya: Reasons without Rationalism (review)
    Mind 117 (468): 1130-1135. 2008.
    This is a review of Kieran Setiya's book, "Reasons without Rationalism" (Princeton University Press, 2007).
  •  352
    Objective and Subjective 'Ought'
    In Nate Charlow & Matthew Chrisman (eds.), Deontic Modality, Oxford University Press. pp. 143-168. 2016.
    This essay offers an account of the truth conditions of sentences involving deontic modals like ‘ought’, designed to capture the difference between objective and subjective kinds of ‘ought’ This account resembles the classical semantics for deontic logic: according to this account, these truths conditions involve a function from the world of evaluation to a domain of worlds (equivalent to a so-called “modal base”), and an ordering of the worlds in such domains; this ordering of the worlds itself…Read more
  •  155
    The metaethicists' mistake
    Philosophical Perspectives 18 (1). 2004.
    According to normative judgment internalism (NJI), normative judgments -- that is, judgments of the form 'I ought to F' and the like -- are "essentially practical", in the sense that they are in some way essentially connected to practical reasoning, or to motivation for action. Many metaethicists believe that if NJI is true, then it would cast grave doubts on any robustly realist (RR) conception of normative judgments. These metaethicists are mistaken. This mistake about the relations between NJ…Read more
  •  6
    Critical Notice of Jean Hampton, "The Authority of Reason" (review)
    Philosophical Books 40 (4): 218-226. 1999.
    This is a review of Jean Hampton's posthumously published book "The Authority of Reason" (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
  •  265
    The Essence of Response-Dependence
    European Review of Philosophy 3 31-54. 1997.
    Many philosophers have thought that colours or flavours or values are in some way less objective than shape or mass or motion. This paper explores the approach to capturing this thought that is based on the idea of ‘ response-dependence ’. First, it is argued that the conceptions of response-dependence developed by Mark Johnston, Philip Pettit and Crispin Wright fail to capture this thought adequately. Then, the rest of the paper proposes an alternative conception, based in part on Kit Fine's no…Read more
  •  170
    Butler on Virtue, Self Interest, and Human Nature
    In Paul Bloomfield (ed.), Morality and Self-Interest, Oxford University Press. 2008.
    This essay gives a new interpretation of some of the central ethical doctrines of Bishop Butler's Sermons -- in particular, of his claim that a review of the empirical facts of human nature shows that we have "an obligation to the practice of virtue", and of the precise claims that he makes about the relations between morality and self-interest.