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85Review: Jonas Olson, Moral Error Theory: History, Critique, Defence (review)Ethics 125 (4): 1219-1225. 2015.
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407The Obscurity of Internal ReasonsPhilosophers' Imprint 9 1-22. 2009.Since its publication in 1979, Bernard Williams' "Internal and External Reasons" has been one of the most influential and widely discussed papers in ethics. I suggest here that the paper's argument has nevertheless been universally misunderstood. On the standard interpretation, his argument—which he subsequently elaborated and defended in further discussions—is perplexingly weak. In the first section I sketch this Standard (or, more provocatively, "Supposed") argument, and detail just how terrib…Read more
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65Review of Mark Eli Kalderon, Moral Fictionalism (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2006 (4). 2006.
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212Normativity, Necessity and Tense: A Recipe for Homebaked NormativityIn Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics Vol. 3, Oxford University Press. pp. 57-85. 2006.Normative concepts have a special taste, which many consider to be proof that they cannot be reductively analyzed into entirely nonnormative components. This paper demonstrates that at least some intuitively normative concepts can be reductively analyzed. I focus on so-called ‘hypothetical imperatives’ or ‘anankastic conditionals’, and show that the availability of normative readings of conditionals is determined by features of grammar, specifically features of tense. Properly interpreted, th…Read more
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114Confusion of Tongues: A Theory of Normative LanguageOup Usa. 2014.Can normative words like "good," "ought," and "reason" be defined in non-normative terms? Stephen Finlay argues that they can, advancing a new theory of the meaning of this language and providing pragmatic explanations of the specially problematic features of its moral and deliberative uses which comprise the puzzles of metaethics
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934Value and implicaturePhilosophers' Imprint 5 1-20. 2005.Moral assertions express attitudes, but it is unclear how. This paper examines proposals by David Copp, Stephen Barker, and myself that moral attitudes are expressed as implicature (Grice), and Copp's and Barker's claim that this supports expressivism about moral speech acts. I reject this claim on the ground that implicatures of attitude are more plausibly conversational than conventional. I argue that Copp's and my own relational theory of moral assertions is superior to the indexical theory o…Read more
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1952The error in the error theoryAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 86 (3): 347-369. 2008.Moral error theory of the kind defended by J. L. Mackie and Richard Joyce is premised on two claims: (1) that moral judgements essentially presuppose that moral value has absolute authority, and (2) that this presupposition is false, because nothing has absolute authority. This paper accepts (2) but rejects (1). It is argued first that (1) is not the best explanation of the evidence from moral practice, and second that even if it were, the error theory would still be mistaken, because the assump…Read more
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293One Ought Too ManyPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 89 (1): 102-124. 2014.Some philosophers hold that „ought‟ is ambiguous between a sense expressing a propositional operator and a sense expressing a relation between an agent and an action. We defend the opposing view that „ought‟ always expresses a propositional operator against Mark Schroeder‟s recent objections that it cannot adequately accommodate an ambiguity in „ought‟ sentences between evaluative and deliberative readings, predicting readings of sentences that are not actually available. We show how adopting an…Read more
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690Four Faces of Moral RealismPhilosophy Compass 2 (6): 820-849. 2007.This essay explains for a general philosophical audience the central issues and strategies in the contemporary moral realism debate. It critically surveys the contribution of some recent scholarship, representing expressivist and pragmatist nondescriptivism, subjectivist and nonsubjectivist naturalism, nonnaturalism and error theory. Four different faces of ‘ moral realism ’ are distinguished: semantic, ontological, metaphysical, and normative. The debate is presented as taking shape under diale…Read more
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211Against All Reason? Scepticism about the Instrumental NormIn Charles Pigden (ed.), Hume on Is and Ought, Palgrave-macmillan. 2010.Some of the opponents of desire-based views of normativity seek to undermine them by arguing that even the existence of instrumental normativity (reasons to pursue the means to your ends) entails the existence of a desire-independent rational norm, the instrumental norm. Once we grant the existence of one such norm, there seems to be no principled reason for not allowing others. I clarify this alleged norm, identifying two criteria that any satisfactory candidate must meet: reasonable expectatio…Read more
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79The Pragmatics of Normative DisagreementIn Guy Fletcher & Michael Ridge (eds.), Having It Both Ways: Hybrid Theories and Modern Metaethics, Oxford University Press. pp. 124-148. 2014.Relational theories of normative language allegedly face special problems in accounting for the extent of disagreement, but this is everybody’s problem because normative sentences are relativized to different information in contexts of deliberation and advice. This paper argues that a relational theory provides a pragmatic solution that accounts for some disagreements as involving inconsistent preferences rather than beliefs. This is shown to be superior to the semantic solution offered by expre…Read more
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661Responding to NormativityIn Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Volume 2, Oxford University Press Uk. pp. 220--39. 2007.I believe that normative force depends on desire. This view faces serious difficulties, however, and has yet to be vindicated. This paper sketches an Argument from Voluntary Response, attempting to establish this dependence of normativity on desire by appeal to the autonomous character of our experience of normative authority, and the voluntary character of our responses to it. I first offer an account of desiring as mentally aiming intrinsically at some end. I then argue that behaviour is only …Read more
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43OughtIn Hugh LaFollette (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Blackwell. 2013.Encyclopedia article on the meaning of 'ought'.
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126Deontic Modality Today: IntroductionPacific Philosophical Quarterly 95 (4): 421-423. 2014.Introduction to a special issue of PPQ of papers from a conference on deontic modality held at USC in 2013.
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568What ought probably means, and why you can’t detach itSynthese 177 (1). 2009.Some intuitive normative principles raise vexing 'detaching problems' by their failure to license modus ponens. I examine three such principles (a self-reliance principle and two different instrumental principles) and recent stategies employed to resolve their detaching problems. I show that solving these problems necessitates postulating an indefinitely large number of senses for 'ought'. The semantics for 'ought' that is standard in linguistics offers a unifying strategy for solving these prob…Read more
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222Teaching & learning guide for: Moral realism and moral nonnaturalismPhilosophy Compass 3 (3): 570-572. 2008.
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16Price, A. W., Contextuality in Practical Reason, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, xxxiv + 208, US$70 (cloth) (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 88 (1): 187-190. 2010.This Article does not have an abstract
Oakleigh, Victoria, Australia
Areas of Specialization
Meta-Ethics |
Normativity |
Practical Reason |
Moral Psychology |