University of Reading
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 2008
CV
Birmingham, England, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Areas of Specialization
Meta-Ethics
Normative Ethics
PhilPapers Editorships
Normative Ethics
  •  527
    Contractualism as Restricted Constructivism
    Topoi 37 (4): 571-579. 2018.
    Metaethics is often dominated by both realist views according to which moral claims are made true by either non-natural or natural properties and by non-cognitivist views according to which these claims express desire-like attitudes. It is sometimes suggested that constructivism is a fourth alternative, but it has remained opaque just how it differs from the other views. To solve this problem, this article first describes a clear constructivist theory based on Crispin Wright’s anti-realism. It t…Read more
  •  555
    Contractualism and the Conditional Fallacy
    Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics 4 113-137. 2014.
    Most contractualist ethical theories have a subjunctivist structure. This means that they attempt to make sense of right and wrong in terms of a set of principles which would be accepted in some idealized, non-actual circumstances. This makes these views vulnerable to the so-called conditional fallacy objection. The moral principles that are appropriate for the idealized circumstances fail to give a correct account of what is right and wrong in the ordinary situations. This chapter uses two vers…Read more
  •  1001
    Non-Naturalism and Reference
    Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 11 (2): 1-24. 2017.
    Metaethical realists disagree about the nature of normative properties. Naturalists think that they are ordinary natural properties: causally efficacious, a posteriori knowable, and usable in the best explanations of natural and social sciences. Non-naturalist realists, in contrast, argue that they are sui generis: causally inert, a priori knowable and not a part of the subject matter of sciences. It has been assumed so far that naturalists can explain causally how the normative predicates manag…Read more