•  767
    Is There a Right to Immigrate?
    Social Theory and Practice 36 (3): 429-461. 2010.
    Immigration restrictions violate the prima facie right of potential immigrants not to be subject to harmful coercion. This prima facie right is not neutralized or outweighed by the economic, fiscal, or cultural effects of immigration, nor by the state’s special duties to its own citizens, or to its poorest citizens. Nor does the state have a right to control citizenship conditions in the same way that private clubs may control their membership conditions.
  •  109
    Van Inwagen’s Consequence Argument
    Philosophical Review 109 (4): 525. 2000.
    Peter van Inwagen has presented a compelling argument for the incompatibility of free will and determinism, which he calls “the Consequence Argument.” This argument depends on a controversial inference rule, “rule beta,” which says.
  •  279
    This is not a comprehensive style guide; rather, it focuses on the most common problems I have found in student writing. Sections A and B give general tips on how to write a paper (esp. a philosophy paper). Sections C-F list common errors.
  •  195
    Fumerton’s Principle of Inferential Justification
    Journal of Philosophical Research 28 329--340. 2002.
    Richard Fumerton’s “Principle of Inferential Justification” holds that, in order to be justified in believing P on the basis of E, one must be justified in believing that E makes P probable. I argue that the plausibility of this principle rests upon two kinds of mistakes: first, a level confusion; and second, a fallacy of misconditionalisation. Furthermore, Fumerton’s principle leads to skepticism about inferential justification, for which reason it should be rejected. Instead, the examples Fume…Read more
  •  61
    The Oxford Handbook of Free Will (review)
    Philosophical Review 113 (2): 279-283. 2004.
    The free will literature is sufficiently voluminous that even philosophers already working in the area can profit from the Handbook. Beyond the survey articles, it provides a boon in the shape of summary statements and defenses, by several prominent writers on free will, of theories that they have developed at greater length elsewhere. It is, of course, impossible to discuss every article in the book; here I shall mention only a handful of the more salient.
  •  55
    Egoism and Prudent Predation
    Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 5 (2). 2004.
  •  527
    Skepticism and the Veil of Perception (edited book)
    Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. 2001.
    This book develops and defends a version of direct realism: the thesis that perception gives us direct awareness, and non-inferential knowledge, of the external..
  •  4022
    Compassionate phenomenal conservatism
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 74 (1). 2007.
    I defend the principle of Phenomenal Conservatism, on which appearances of all kinds generate at least some justification for belief. I argue that there is no reason for privileging introspection or intuition over perceptual experience as a source of justified belief; that those who deny Phenomenal Conservatism are in a self-defeating position, in that their view cannot be both true and justified; and that thedemand for a metajustification for Phenomenal Conservatism either is an easily met dema…Read more
  •  11293
    An ontological proof of moral realism
    Social Philosophy and Policy 30 (1-2): 259-279. 2013.
    The essay argues that while there is no general agreement on whether moral realism is true, there is general agreement on at least some of the moral obligations that we have if moral realism is true. Given that moral realism might be true, and given that we know some of the things we ought to do if it is true, we have a reason to do those things. Furthermore, this reason is itself an objective moral reason. Thus, if moral realism might be true, then it is true
  •  377
    The problem of memory knowledge
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 80 (4). 1999.
    both the initial justification for adopting it and the justification for retaining it provided by seeming memories. This view captures our intuitions about justification in several cases, while none of the alternative views can.
  •  76
    Is Benevolent Egoism Coherent?
    Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 3 (2). 2002.
    Michael Huemer argues that there is a tension between two principles putatively essential to Rand's ethics: the principle of egoism, which states that the only reason for doing (or not doing) anything is that it will serve (or frustrate) one's own interests; and the principle that one must not sacrifice others. Huemer considers several arguments that Rand offers for the second principle but finds that each involves either implausible empirical assumptions or assumptions that conflict with egoism…Read more
  •  105
    People want things, and they tend to act in such a way as to get the things they want, to the best of their ability.1 Sometimes our wants conflict with each other, so that we are forced to choose between different things that we want. When this happens, we normally choose the thing that we want more, over the thing that we want less. Behaving in this way is what we call “rational”; more specifically, it is “instrumentally rational.” Instrumental rationality consists in choosing the means that be…Read more
  •  221
    The form of egalitarianism I am concerned with holds that equality in the distribution of welfare across persons is intrinsically good . In other words, it is good for people to be equally well-off, and bad for some to be better off than others, apart from consideration of any further consequences of such equality or..
  •  15
    Elusive Freedom? A Reply to Helen Beebee
    Philosophical Review 113 (3): 411-416. 2004.
    In “Van Inwagen’s Consequence Argument”, I offered a reformulation and defense of the Consequence Argument for incompatibilism, including a response to Lewis-style compatibilism. In a recent response, Helen Beebee defends Lewisian compatibilism against my argument. In the following, I will show why Beebee’s defense does not succeed.
  •  310
    The drug laws don’t work
    The Philosophers' Magazine 41 (41): 71-75. 2008.
    Illegal drugs are not inherently unclean, any more than alcohol, tobacco, or canola oil. All of these are simply chemicals that people choose to ingest for enjoyment, and that can harm our health if used to excess. Most of the sordid associations we have with illegal drugs are actually the product of the drug laws: it is because of the laws that drugs are sold on the black market, that Latin American crime bosses are made rich, that government officials are corrupted, and that drug users rob oth…Read more
  •  46
    Direct Realism and the Brain-in-a-Vat Argument
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 61 (2): 397-413. 2000.
    The brain-in-a-vat argument for skepticism is best formulated, not using the closure principle, but using the “Preference Principle,” which states that in order to be justified in believing H on the basis of E, one must have grounds for preferring H over each alternative explanation of E. When the argument is formulated this way, Dretske’s and Klein’s responses to it fail. However, the strengthened argument can be refuted using a direct realist account of perception. For the direct realist, refu…Read more
  •  272
    America's Unjust Drug War
    In Bill Masters (ed.), The New Prohibition, Accurate Press. 2004.
    Should the recreational use of drugs such as marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and LSD, be prohibited by law? Prohibitionists answer yes. They usually argue that drug use is extremely harmful both to drug users and to society in general, and possibly even immoral, and they believe that these facts provide sufficient reasons for prohibition. Legalizers answer no. They usually give one or more of three arguments: First, some argue that drug use is not as harmful as prohibitionists believe, and even that…Read more
  •  125
    Phenomenal Conservatism
    Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2013.
    Phenomenal Conservatism Phenomenal Conservatism is a theory in epistemology that seeks, roughly, to ground justified beliefs in the way things “appear” or “seem” to the subject who holds a belief. The theory fits with an internalistic form of foundationalism—that is, the view that some beliefs are justified non-inferentially (not on the basis of other beliefs), and that […]
  •  10114
    I argue that taxation for redistributive purposes is a property rights violation, responding to arguments (due to Nagel, Murphy, Sunstein, and Holmes) claiming that individuals lack ownership of their pretax incomes.
  •  123
    Weak Bayesian coherentism
    Synthese 157 (3): 337-346. 2007.
    Recent results in probability theory have cast doubt on coherentism, purportedly showing (a) that coherence among a set of beliefs cannot raise their probability unless individual beliefs have some independent credibility, and (b) that no possible measure of coherence makes coherence generally probability-enhancing. I argue that coherentists can reject assumptions on which these theorems depend, and I derive a general condition under which the concurrence of two information sources lacking indiv…Read more
  •  7949
    A liberal realist answer to debunking skeptics: the empirical case for realism
    Philosophical Studies 173 (7): 1983-2010. 2016.
    Debunking skeptics claim that our moral beliefs are formed by processes unsuited to identifying objective facts, such as emotions inculcated by our genes and culture; therefore, they say, even if there are objective moral facts, we probably don’t know them. I argue that the debunking skeptics cannot explain the pervasive trend toward liberalization of values over human history, and that the best explanation is the realist’s: humanity is becoming increasingly liberal because liberalism is the obj…Read more
  •  34
    Fumerton’s Principle of Inferential Justification
    Journal of Philosophical Research 27 329-340. 2002.
    Richard Fumerton’s “Principle of Inferential Justification” holds that, in order to be justified in believing P on the basis of E, one must be justified in believing that E makes P probable. I argue that the plausibility of this principle rests upon two kinds of mistakes: first, a level confusion; and second, a fallacy of misconditionalisation. Furthermore, Fumerton’s principle leads to skepticism about inferential justification, for which reason it should be rejected. Instead, the examples Fume…Read more
  •  193
    The problem of defeasible justification
    Erkenntnis 54 (3): 375-397. 2001.
    The problem of induction and the problem of Cartesian/brain-in-the-vat skepticism have much in common. Both are instances of a general problem of defeasible justification . I use the term "defeasible justification" to refer to a relation between a piece of evidence.
  •  12847
    In the practice of jury nullification, a jury votes to acquit a defendant in disregard of the factual evidence, on the grounds that a conviction would result in injustice, either because the law itself is unjust or because its application in the particular case would be unjust. The practice is widely condemned by courts, which strenuously attempt to prevent it. Nevertheless, the arguments against jury nullification are surprisingly weak. I argue that, pursuant to the general ethical duty to avoi…Read more