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Evidence and epistemic reasonsIn Maria Lasonen-Aarnio & Clayton Littlejohn (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Evidence, Routledge. 2024.
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58Reasons FirstSchroeder, Mark, Reasons First, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021, pp. v + 274, $40 (hardback) (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.Mark Schroeder's latest book elegantly brings together two strands of his research program that have been in development for nearly two decades. The first is his work in epistemology; the second is...
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93Everything FirstAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 97 (1): 248-272. 2023.Normative theory aims to understand the commonalities between ethics, prudence, epistemology, aesthetics and political philosophy (among others). One central question in normative theory is what is fundamental to the normative. The reasons-first approach holds that normative reasons are fundamental to the normative domain. This view has been challenged by proponents of alternative X-first views such as value, fittingness and ought. This paper examines the debate about the analysis of normative r…Read more
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50No one has done more for analytic virtue epistemology than Ernie Sosa; indeed, one is tempted to delete ‘virtue’. This is his latest development of his teleolog.
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34Love: A new understanding of an ancient emotion, by Simon May. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019, 288 pp. hbk. ISBN: 9780190884833 (review)European Journal of Philosophy 30 (1): 440-443. 2022.European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 30, Issue 1, Page 440-443, March 2022.
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86Beginning in Wonder: Suspensive Attitudes and Epistemic DilemmasIn Nick Hughes (ed.), Epistemic Dilemmas, Oxford University Press. 2021.We argue that we can avoid epistemic dilemmas by properly understanding the nature and epistemology of the suspension of judgment, with a particular focus on conflicts between higher-order evidence and first-order evidence.
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110On Suspending ProperlyIn Paul Silva & Luis R. G. Oliveira (eds.), Propositional and Doxastic Justification: New Essays on their Nature and Significance, Routledge. 2022.We argue for a novel view of suspending judgment properly--i.e., suspending judgment in an ex post justified way. In so doing we argue for a Kantian virtue-theoretic view of epistemic normativity and against teleological virtue-theoretic accounts.
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101Impartiality, Eudaimonic Encroachment, and the Boundaries of MoralityOxford Studies in Normative Ethics. forthcoming.Many hold that morality is essentially impartial. Many also hold that partiality is justified. Susan Wolf argues that these commitments push us towards downgrading morality's practical significance. Here I argue that there is a way of pushing morality's boundaries in a partialist direction in a way that respects Wolf's insights.
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88Enriched Perceptual Content and the Limits of FoundationalismPhilosophical Topics 49 (2): 151-171. 2021.This paper is about the epistemology of perceptual experiences that have enriched high-level content. Enriched high-level content is content about features other than shape, color, and spatial relations that has a particular etiology. Its etiology runs through states of the agent that process other perceptual content and output sensory content about high-level features. My main contention is that the justification provided by such experiences is not foundational justification. This is because th…Read more
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24The Importance of Being RationalBy Errol Lord Oxford University Press, 2018. ix + 278 pp. $47.49 (review)Analysis 81 (1): 130-132. 2021._Summary_
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81Defending The Importance of Being Rational: Replies to Bedke and Guindon, Hazlett, and WayAnalysis 81 (1): 168-183. 2021.Defending The Importance of Being Rational: Replies to Bedke and Guindon, Hazlett, and Way By LordErrol
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699Suspension of Judgment, Rationality's Competition, and the Reach of the EpistemicIn Sebastian Schmidt & Gerhard Ernst (eds.), The Ethics of Belief and Beyond: Understanding Mental Normativity, Routledge. pp. 126-145. 2020.Errol Lord explores the boundaries of epistemic normativity. He argues that we can understand these better by thinking about which mental states are competitors in rationality’s competition. He argues that belief, disbelief, and two kinds of suspension of judgment are competitors. Lord shows that there are non-evidential reasons for suspension of judgment. One upshot is an independent motivation for a certain sort of pragmatist view of epistemic rationality.
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90How to Learn about Aesthetics and Morality through Acquaintance and DeferenceOxford Studies in Metaethics 13. 2018.There are parallel debates in metaethics and aesthetics about the rational merits of deferring to others about ethics and aesthetics. In both areas it is common to think that there is something amiss about deference. A popular explanation of this in aesthetics appeals to the importance of aesthetic acquaintance. This kind of explanation has not been explored much in ethics. This chapter defends a unified account of what is amiss about ethical and aesthetic deference. According to this account, d…Read more
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59Acting for the Right Reasons, Abilities, and ObligationOxford Studies in Metaethics 10. 2015.Objectivists about obligation hold that obligations are determined by all of the normatively relevant facts. Perspectivalists, on the other hand, hold that only facts within one’s perspective can determine what we are obligated to do. This chapter argues for a perspectivalist view. It argues that what you are obligated to do is determined by the normative reasons you possess. This view is anchored in the thought that our obligations have to be action-guiding in a certain sense—we have to be able…Read more
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53Replies to Schafer, Schroeder, and StaffelPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 100 (2): 476-487. 2020.
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31Précis of The Importance of Being RationalPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 100 (2): 452-456. 2020.
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68The Nature of Perceptual Expertise and the Rationality of CriticismErgo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 6 (29). 2019.
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794Suspension, Higher-Order Evidence, and DefeatIn Jessica Brown & Mona Simion (eds.), Reasons, Justification, and Defeat, Oxford University Press. 2021.
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34The real symmetry problem for wide-scope accounts of rationalityPhilosophical Studies 170 (3): 443-464. 2014.You are irrational when you are akratic. On this point most agree. Despite this agreement, there is a tremendous amount of disagreement about what the correct explanation of this data is. Narrow-scopers think that the correct explanation is that you are violating a narrow-scope conditional requirement. You lack an intention to x that you are required to have given the fact that you believe you ought to x. Wide-scopers disagree. They think that a conditional you are required to make true is false…Read more
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94Humean Nature: How Desire Explains Action, Thought, and FeelingPhilosophical Quarterly 69 (274): 202-206. 2019.Humean Nature: How Desire Explains Action, Thought, and Feeling. By Sinhababu Neil.
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734Reasons: Wrong, Right, Normative, FundamentalJournal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 15 (1). 2019.Reasons fundamentalists maintain that we can analyze all derivative normative properties in terms of normative reasons. These theorists famously encounter the Wrong Kind of Reasons problem, since not all reasons for reactions seem relevant for reasons-based analyses. Some have argued that this problem is a general one for many theorists, and claim that this lightens the burden for reasons fundamentalists. We argue in this paper that the reverse is true: the generality of the problem makes life h…Read more
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612Prime Time (for the Basing Relation)In Joseph Adam Carter & Patrick Bondy (eds.), Well Founded Belief: New Essays on the Epistemic Basing Relation, Routledge. 2019.It is often assumed that believing that p for a normative reason consists in nothing more than (i) believing that p for a reason and (ii) that reason’s corresponding to a normative reason to believe that p, where (i) and (ii) are independent factors. This is the Composite View. In this paper, we argue against the Composite View on extensional and theoretical grounds. We advocate an alternative that we call the Prime View. On this view, believing for a normative reason is a distinctive achieveme…Read more
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3An Opinionated Guide to the Weight of ReasonsIn Errol Lord & Barry Maguire (eds.), Weighing Reasons, Oxford University Press Usa. 2016.
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199Reasons InternalismIn Tristram Colin McPherson & David Plunkett (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Metaethics, Routledge. pp. 324-339. 2017.
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42From Independence to Conciliationism: An ObituaryAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 92 (2): 365-377. 2014.Conciliationists about peer disagreement hold that when one disagrees with an epistemic peer about some proposition p, one should significantly change one's view about p. Many arguments for conciliationism appeal to a principle Christensen [2011] dubs Independence. Independence says that evaluations of the beliefs of those with whom one disagrees should not be made on the basis of one's initial reasoning about p. In this paper, I show that this principle is false. I also show that two weaker pri…Read more
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1448The Importance of Being RationalDissertation, Princeton University. 2013.My dissertation is a systematic defense of the claim that what it is to be rational is to correctly respond to the reasons you possess. The dissertation is split into two parts, each consisting of three chapters. In Part I--Coherence, Possession, and Correctly Responding--I argue that my view has important advantages over popular views in metaethics that tie rationality to coherence (ch. 2), defend a novel view of what it is to possess a reason (ch. 3), and defend a novel view about what it is t…Read more
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488Acting for the Right Reasons, Abilities, and ObligationIn Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Volume 10, Oxford University Press Uk. 2015.Objectivists about obligation hold that obligations are determined by all of the normatively relevant facts. Perspectivalists, on the other hand, hold that only facts within one's perspective can determine what we are obligated to do. In this paper I argue for a perspectivalist view. On my view, what you are obligated to do is determined by the normative reasons you possess. My argument for my view is anchored in the thought that our obligations have to be action-guiding in a certain sense--we h…Read more
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55Action, Knowledge, and Will, by John Hyman. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2015, xi + 255 pp. ISBN 13:978‐0‐19‐873577‐9 hb £35.00 (review)European Journal of Philosophy 24 (4). 2016.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Action |
Meta-Ethics |