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108
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53Morality, Normativity, and Society, David Copp. Oxford University Press, 1995, xii + 262 pages (review)Economics and Philosophy 14 (2): 349. 1998.
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756Subjectivism and blameCanadian Journal of Philosophy 37 (5). 2007.My favorite thing about this paper is that I think I usefully explicate and then mess with Bernard Williams's attempt to explain how his internalism is compatible with our ordinary practices of blame. There are a surprising number of things wrong with Williams's position. Of course that leaves my own favored subjectivism in a pickle, but still...
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38From Valuing to Value: A Defense of SubjectivismOxford University Press. 2016.David Sobel defends subjectivism about well-being and reasons for action: the idea that normativity flows from what an agent cares about, that something is valuable because it is valued. In these essays Sobel explores the tensions between subjective views of reasons and morality, and concludes that they do not undermine subjectivism.
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494Advice for Non-analytical NaturalistsIn Simon Kirchin (ed.), Reading Parfit, Routledge. pp. 153-171. 2017.We argue that Parfit's "Triviality Objection" against some naturalistic views of normativity is not compelling. We think that once one accepts, as one should, that identity statements can be informative in virtue of their pragmatics and not only in virtue of their semantics, Parfit's case against naturalism can be overcome.
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66Sumner on WelfareDialogue 37 (3): 571-. 1998.In this paper I criticize the way Sumner marks the subjective/objective divide and the way he argues for subjective views of well-being.
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156Desires, Motives, and Reasons: Scanlon’s Rationalistic Moral PsychologySocial Theory and Practice 28 (2): 243-76. 2002.
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Well-Being and ConsequentialismDissertation, University of Michigan. 1997.There are two common assumptions about well-being that I am especially concerned to dispute in this dissertation. The first assumption is that differences in kinds of prudential values can be reduced to differences in amount of prudential value. That is, that differences in the qualities of values can reliably be reduced to mere differences in quantity. The second assumption is that well-being is the appropriate object of moral concern. Consequentialist moral theories typically argue that morali…Read more
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168Pleasure as a Mental StateUtilitas 11 (2): 230. 1999.Shelly Kagan and Leonard Katz have offered versions of hedonism that aspire to occupy a middle position between the view that pleasure is a unitary sensation and the view that pleasure is, as Sidgwick put it, desirable consciousness. Thus they hope to offer a hedonistic account of well-being that does not mistakenly suppose that pleasure is a special kind of tingle, yet to offer a sharp alternative to desire-based accounts. I argue that they have not identified a coherent middle position
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921Disagreeing about how to disagreePhilosophical Studies 168 (3): 823-34. 2014.David Enoch, in Taking Morality Seriously, argues for a broad normative asymmetry between how we should behave when disagreeing about facts and how we should behave when disagreeing due to differing preferences. Enoch claims that moral disputes have the earmarks of a factual dispute rather than a preference dispute and that this makes more plausible a realist understanding of morality. We try to clarify what such claims would have to look like to be compelling and we resist his main conclusions.
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593Pain for objectivists: The case of matters of mere tasteEthical Theory and Moral Practice 8 (4). 2005.Can we adequately account for our reasons of mere taste without holding that our desires ground such reasons? Recently, Scanlon and Parfit have argued that we can, pointing to pleasure and pain as the grounds of such reasons. In this paper I take issue with each of their accounts. I conclude that we do not yet have a plausible rival to a desire-based understanding of the grounds of such reasons.
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1IntroductionIn David Sobel & Steven Wall (eds.), Reasons for Action, Cambridge University Press. 2009.
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415Against direction of fit accounts of belief and desireAnalysis 61 (1): 44-53. 2001.The authors argue against direction of fit accounts of the distinction between belief and desire.
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789The impotence of the demandingness objectionPhilosophers' Imprint 7 1-17. 2007.Consequentialism, many philosophers have claimed, asks too much of us to be a plausible ethical theory. Indeed, the theory's severe demandingness is often claimed to be its chief flaw. My thesis is that as we come to better understand this objection, we see that, even if it signals or tracks the existence of a real problem for Consequentialism, it cannot itself be a fundamental problem with the view. The objection cannot itself provide good reason to break with Consequentialism, because it must …Read more
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90What we owe to each other, T. M. Scanlon, the Belknap press of Harvard university press, 1998, IX + 420 pages (review)Economics and Philosophy 16 (2): 333-378. 2000.
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14Reasons for Action (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2009.What are our reasons for acting? Morality purports to give us these reasons, and so do norms of prudence and the laws of society. The theory of practical reason assesses the authority of these potentially competing claims, and for this reason philosophers with a wide range of interests have converged on the topic of reasons for action. This volume contains eleven essays on practical reason by leading and emerging philosophers. Topics include the differences between practical and theoretical rati…Read more
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20Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy, Volume 1 (edited book)Oxford University Press UK. 2015.This is the inaugural volume of Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy. Since its revival in the 1970s political philosophy has been a vibrant field in philosophy, one that intersects with jurisprudence, normative economics, political theory in political science departments, and just war theory. OSPP aims to publish some of the best contemporary work in political philosophy and these closely related subfields.
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166Explanation, Internalism, and Reasons for ActionSocial Philosophy and Policy 18 (2): 218. 2001.These days, just about every philosophical debate seems to generate a position labeledinternalism. The debate I will be joining in this essay concerns reasons for action and their connection, or lack of connection, to motivation. The internalist position in this debate posits a certain essential connection between reasons and motivation, while the externalist position denies such a connection. This debate about internalism overlaps an older debate between Humeans and Kantians about the exclusive…Read more
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54Reply to RobertsonPhilosophical Papers 32 (2): 185-191. 2003.Philosophical Papers Vol.32(2) 2003: 185-191
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638Self-Ownership and the Conflation ProblemIn Mark Timmons (ed.), Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, . forthcoming.Libertarian self-ownership views in the tradition of Locke, Nozick, and the left-libertarians have supposed that we enjoy very powerful deontological protections against infringing upon our property. Such a conception makes sense when we are focused on property that is very important to its owner, such as a person’s kidney. However, this stringency of our property rights is harder to credit when we consider more trivial infringements such as very mildly toxic pollution or trivial risks such havi…Read more
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62Practical reasons and mistakes of practical rationalityPoznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 94 (1): 299-321. 2007.
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216Instrumental Rationality: Not Dead YetJournal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 1 (1): 1-13. 2005.No abstract
Syracuse, New York, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Value Theory |
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Value Theory |
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |