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592Internalism and speaker relativismEthics 101 (1): 6-26. 1990.In this article I set out a reason for believing in a form of metaethical relativism. In rough terms, the reason is this: a widely held thesis, internalism, tells us that to accept (sincerely assert, believe, etc.) a moral judgment logically requires having a motivating reason. Since the connection is logical, or conceptual, it must be explained by a theory of what it is to accept a moral claim. I argue that the internalist feature of moral expressions can best be explained by my version of mora…Read more
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92Disagreeing (about) What to Do: Negation and Completeness in Gibbard’s Norm-Expressivism (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 72 (3). 2006.Brown University.
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57Disagreeing (about) What to Do: Negation and Completeness in Gibbard's Norm-ExpressivismPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 72 (3): 714-721. 2006.Brown University.
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21The Expressivist Circle: Invoking Norms in the Explanation of Normative JudgmentPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (1): 136-143. 2002.“States of mind are natural states. They are extremely hard to define.”1.
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240Rational preference: Decision theory as a theory of practical rationalityTheory and Decision 40 (3): 249-276. 1996.In general, the technical apparatus of decision theory is well developed. It has loads of theorems, and they can be proved from axioms. Many of the theorems are interesting, and useful both from a philosophical and a practical perspective. But decision theory does not have a well agreed upon interpretation. Its technical terms, in particular, ‘utility’ and ‘preference’ do not have a single clear and uncontroversial meaning. How to interpret these terms depends, of course, on what purposes in pur…Read more
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88Negation for Expressivists: A Collection of Problems with a Suggestion for their SolutionOxford Studies in Metaethics 1 217-233. 2006.
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4Mackie's RealismIn Richard Joyce & Simon Kirchen (eds.), A World Without Values, Springer. 2010.The chapter argues that we should draw the line between realist and antirealist metaethics according to whether a theory locates the explanation for the special, puzzling features of moral terms and concepts out in the world, with the content of moral thoughts, or inside the head. This taxonomy places Mackie's error theory in the realist category, contrary to the usual scheme. The paper suggests that in looking for the “queerness” of objective value in the metaphysics of moral properties, Mackie…Read more
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79Critical study: Timmons, Mark; Morality without foundations: A defense of moral contextualism (review)Noûs 36 (1). 2002.
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47Pettit on Preference for Prospects and Properties – DiscussionPhilosophical Studies 124 (2): 199-219. 2005.
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Charles Leslie StevensonIn David Sosa & A. P. Martinich (eds.), Blackwell Companion to Analytic Philosophy, Blackwell. 2001.
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324In Defense of ConsequentializingIn Mark Timmons (ed.), Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, Volume 1, Oxford University Press. 2011.
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34The Authority of Reason, Jean Hampton. Cambridge University Press, 1998, vi + 310 pages (review)Economics and Philosophy 15 (2): 311. 1999.
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446The supervenience argument against moral realismSouthern Journal of Philosophy 30 (3): 13-38. 1992.In 1971, Simon Blackburn worked out an argument against moral realism appealing to the supervenience of the moral realm on the natural realm.1 He has since revised the argument, in part to take account of objections,2 but the basic structure remains intact. While commentators3 seem to agree that the argument is not successful, they have not agreed upon what goes wrong. I believe this is because no attempt has been made to see what happens when Blackburn's argument is addressed to particular vari…Read more
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343Humean Doubts about the Practical Justification of MoralityIn Garrett Cullity & Berys Nigel Gaut (eds.), Ethics and practical reason, Oxford University Press. pp. 81-100. 1997.
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1When Do Goals Explain the Norms that Advance Them?In Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Oxford University Press. pp. 5--153. 2010.
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496Dispositions and fetishes: Externalist models of moral motivationPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 61 (3): 619-638. 2000.Internalism says that if an agent judges that it is right for her to φ, then she is motivated to φ. The disagreement between Internalists and Externalists runs deep, and it lingers even in the face of clever intuition pumps. An argument in Michael Smith’s The Moral Problem seeks some leverage against Externalism from a point within normative theory. Smith argues by dilemma: Externalists either fail to explain why motivation tracks moral judgment in a good moral agent or they attribute a kind of …Read more
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369Transforming expressivismNoûs 33 (4): 558-572. 1999.In chapter five of Wise Choices, Apt Feelings Allan Gibbard develops what he calls a ‘normative logic’ intended to solve some problems that face an expressivist theory of norms like his. The first is “the problem of embedding: The analysis applies to simple contexts, in which it is simply asserted or denied that such-and-such is rational. It says nothing about more complex normative assertions.”1 That is the problem with which I will be concerned. Though he doesn’t list it as one of the problems…Read more