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81Objective Morality, Subjective Morality, and the Explanatory QuestionJournal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 6 (3): 1-25. 2012.A common presupposition in metaethical theory is that moral assessment comes in two flavors, one of which is sensitive to our epistemic circumstances, the second of which is not so sensitive. Though this thought is popular, a number of questions arise. In this paper, I limit my discussion to what I dub the "explanatory question": how one might understand the construction of subjective moral assessment given an explanatorily prior objective assessment. I argue that a proper answer to this questio…Read more
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74A Near‐Term Bias ReconsideredPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 99 (2): 461-477. 2018.Standard accounts of prudential rationality enjoin temporal neutrality. “Rationality,” or so says Rawls, “requires an impartial concern for all parts of our life.” And while I accept this form of temporal neutrality, I argue in this paper that a powerful rationale exists for a competing form of prudential rationality according to which it is permissible to be biased toward near-future rather than far-future parts of one’s life. After arguing that traditional defenses of temporal neutrality do no…Read more
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73Future-Bias: A (Qualified) DefensePacific Philosophical Quarterly 98 (S1): 351-373. 2016.The preferences of ordinary folks typically display a future‐bias. For instance, we care more about pains and pleasures in our future than pains and pleasures in our past. Indeed, this future‐bias is so pervasive, many have taken it for granted that the preferences of rational agents will, or at least can, display this future‐bias to some degree or other. However, the rationality of future‐biased preferences has recently come in for critique. However, in this article, I offer a defense of future…Read more
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69AmoralityEthical Theory and Moral Practice 19 (2): 329-342. 2016.Actions are usually grouped into one of several moral categories. Familiar ones include the morally required, the morally permitted, and the morally prohibited. These categories have been expanded and/or refined to include the supererogatory and the “suberogatory”. Some eschew deontic categories such as the above, but nevertheless allow the existence of two comparative moral categories, i.e., the morally better or morally worse. At the risk of adding to the clutter, I want to explore the possibi…Read more
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69Welfare, Autonomy, and the Autonomy FallacyPacific Philosophical Quarterly 96 (2): 141-164. 2015.In this article, I subject the claim that autonomous choice is an intrinsic welfare benefit to critical scrutiny. My argument begins by discussing perhaps the most influential argument in favor of the intrinsic value of autonomy: the argument from deference. In response, I hold that this argument displays what I call the ‘Autonomy Fallacy’: the argument from deference has no power to support the intrinsic value of autonomy in comparison to the important evaluative significance of bare self-direc…Read more
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60Moral Failure and Agent-Relative PrerogativesJournal of Philosophical Research 30 (9999): 309-319. 2005.
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57Objectivity and Perfection in Hume’s HedonismJournal of the History of Philosophy 53 (2): 245-270. 2015.In this paper, I investigate David Hume’s theory of well-being or prudential value. That Hume was some sort of hedonist is typically taken for granted in discussions of his value theory, but I argue that Hume was a hedonist of pathbreaking sophistication. His hedonism intriguingly blends traditional hedonism with a form of perfectionism yielding a version of qualitative hedonism that not only solves puzzles surrounding Hume’s moral theory, but is interesting and important in its own right.
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49On fellowshipPhilosophical Studies 181 (1): 133-152. 2024.This paper explores a form of communion between persons that the philosophy of value has a tendency to ignore. In discussions of interpersonal relationships and experiences, focus is almost always directed to the phenomenon of friendship and family: two or more individuals that share a history, have longstanding relationships of mutual care. Friendship is said, among other things, to be of intrinsic value, to directly benefit the friend, to generate special obligations, and to yield advances in …Read more
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49Moral Distinctiveness and Moral InquiryEthics 126 (3): 747-773. 2016.Actions can be moral or immoral, surely, but can also be prudent or imprudent, rude or polite, sportsmanlike or unsportsmanlike, and so on. The fact that diverse methods of evaluating action exist seems to give rise to a further question: what distinguishes moral evaluation in particular? In this article, my concern is methodological. I argue that any account of the distinctiveness of morality cannot be prior to substantive inquiry into the content of moral reasons, requirements, and concerns. T…Read more
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48Friendship and the wishes of the deadLegal Theory 28 (2): 124-145. 2022.ABSTRACTThe wishes of the dead seem to have normative significance. We not only respect last wills and testaments, but we take seriously what the dead loved, what they valued, even after they have long escaped this mortal coil. But this presents a philosophical puzzle. Is this a normatively justified practice? Why should the fact that some dead person preferred state of affairs x to state of affairs y be a reason to bring about x rather than y—especially if there is otherwise reason to promote y…Read more
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44A Theory of PrudenceOxford University Press. 2021.Much of knowing what to do is knowing what to do for ourselves, but knowing how to act in our best interest is complex---we must know what benefits us, what burdens us, and how these facts present and constitute considerations in favor of action. Additionally, we must know how we should weigh our interests at different times---past, present, and future. Dale Dorsey argues that a theory of prudence is needed: a theory of how we ought to act when we are acting for ourselves. A Theory of Prudence p…Read more
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43Truth and error in moralityIn Cory D. Wright & Nikolaj Pedersen (eds.), New Waves in Truth, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 235--248. 2010.
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40The Authority of Competence and Quality as ExtrinsicBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 21 (1). 2013.(2013). The Authority of Competence and Quality as Extrinsic. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 78-99. doi: 10.1080/09608788.2012.689752
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38Adaptation, Autonomy, and AuthorityIn Juha Räikkä & Jukka Varelius (eds.), Adaptation and Autonomy: Adaptive Preferences in Enhancing and Ending Life, Springer. pp. 27--47. 2013.
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37The Basic Minimum: A Welfarist ApproachCambridge University Press. 2012.A common presupposition in contemporary moral and political philosophy is that individuals should be provided with some basic threshold of goods, capabilities, or well-being. But if there is such a basic minimum, how should this be understood? Dale Dorsey offers an underexplored answer: that the basic minimum should be characterized not as the achievement of a set of capabilities, or as access to some specified bundle of resources, but as the maintenance of a minimal threshold of human welfare. …Read more
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32The Limits of Moral AuthorityOxford University Press UK. 2016.Dale Dorsey considers one of the most fundamental questions in philosophical ethics: to what extent do the demands of morality have normative authority over us and our lives? Must we conform to moral requirements? Most who have addressed this question have treated the normative significance of morality as simply a fact to be explained. But Dorsey argues that this traditional assumption is misguided. According to Dorsey, not only are we not required to conform to moral demands, conforming to mora…Read more
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27Ill-Being for SubjectivistsMidwest Studies in Philosophy 46 87-107. 2022.The axiological phenomenon of ill-being has been thought to be a special problem for subjectivist theories. I argue here that this common supposition is false. I argue that no leading theory of subjectivism need be unable to accommodate the phenomenon of ill-being. In addition, subjectivists on the whole are licensed to adopt somewhat more outré alternatives, including adopting a disunified approach to ill-being, or rejecting the notion altogether.
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25Trade-offs, Transitivity, and TemkinJournal of Moral Philosophy 12 (3): 331-342. 2015.In this essay I critically assess Larry S. Temkin’s new book, Rethinking the Good: Moral Ideals and the Nature of Practical Reasoning. While I find that there is much to praise about this work, I focus on two points of critique. Generally, Temkin’s aims in this book are to expose a radical tension in our beliefs about value, and to show that one potentially palatable option is to reject the transitivity of the predicate “better than”. However, I argue that in both his motivation for claiming tha…Read more
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24The Natural and the Publick Good: Two Puzzles in Hutcheson's AxiologyJournal of Scottish Philosophy 20 (2): 163-182. 2022.Whatever the finer details, Francis Hutcheson is clearly some form of proto-, quasi-, pseudo-utilitarian. But for any utilitarian, the full picture of their moral theory will only emerge once we understand their theory of the good. What, according to said utilitarian, is the nature of happiness? How do we aggregate happiness across persons? In this paper, I discuss two important aspects of Hutcheson's utilitarian axiology each with their own puzzles of interpretation. The first involves Hutcheso…Read more
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18A puzzle for constructivism and how to solve itIn James Lenman & Yonatan Shemmer (eds.), Constructivism in Practical Philosophy, Oxford University Press. pp. 99. 2012.
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15The Staircase Scene: Supererogation and Moral AttunementIn David Heyd (ed.), Handbook of Supererogation, Springer Nature Singapore. pp. 87-104. 2023.This paper considers a pair of mutually puzzling first-order intuitions: a case in which it seems both supererogatory for an agent to perform a specified act, and also seems as though were that act not performed, this would have been a failure of moral obligations. I argue that these intuitive reactions are difficult to dislodge and resist accommodation by standard accounts of supererogation. I then argue that this puzzle motivates a new form of supererogatory action: action that, though morally…Read more
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12Hutcheson, FrancisIn Hugh LaFollette (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Blackwell. 2013.