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68Against the Being For Account of Normative CertitudeJournal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 6 (2): 1-8. 2012.Just as we can be more or less certain about empirical matters, we can be more or less certain about normative matters. Recently, it has been argued that this is a challenge for noncognitivism about normativity. Michael Smith presented the challenge in a 2002 paper and James Lenman and Michael Ridge responded independently. Andrew Sepielli has now joined the rescue operation. His basic idea is that noncognitivists should employ the notion of being for to account for normative certitude. We shall…Read more
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67Two Kinds of Ethical Intuitionism: Brentano’s and Reid’sThe Monist 100 (1): 106-119. 2017.This paper explores Franz Brentano’s metaethics by comparing it to Thomas Reid’s. Brentano and Reid share a commitment to moral realism and they are both aptly classified as intuitionists concerning moral knowledge and the nature of moral judgment. However, their respective versions of intuitionism are importantly different, in ways that reflect more general differences between their respective epistemological views. Sections III and IV of the paper focus more exclusively on Brentano’s metaethic…Read more
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65Skorupski’s Middle Way in MetaethicsPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 85 (1): 192-200. 2012.
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62The Personal and the FittingJournal of Moral Philosophy 11 (3): 341-352. 2014.This paper is a critical notice of a recent significant contribution to the debate about fitting attitudes and value, namely Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen’s Personal Value. In this book, Rønnow-Rasmussen seeks to analyse the notion of personal value—an instance of the notion of good for a person—in terms of fitting attitudes. The paper has three main themes: Rønnow-Rasmussen’s discussion of general problems for fitting attitude analyses; his formulation of the fitting attitude analysis of personal value…Read more
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61Revisiting the tropic of value: Reply to Rabinowicz and rønnow-RasmussenPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 67 (2). 2003.In this paper, I defend the view that the values of concrete objects and persons are reducible to the final values of tropes. This reductive account has recently been discussed and rejected by Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen (2003). I begin by explaining why the reduction is appealing in the first place. In my rejoinder to Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen I defend trope-value reductionism against three challenges. I focus mainly on their central objection, that holds that the reduction is untenab…Read more
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60Thinking About Reasons: Themes from the Philosophy of Jonathan DancyPhilosophical Quarterly 64 (257): 672-675. 2014.
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56Essays in Moral Skepticism (review)International Journal for the Study of Skepticism. forthcoming._ Source: _Page Count 6
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51Moral Practice after Error Theory: NegotiationismIn Richard Garner & Richard Joyce (eds.), The End of Morality: Taking Moral Abolitionism Seriously, Routledge. pp. 113-130. 2018.We first deal with a few preliminary matters and discuss what-if any-distinct impact belief in moral error theory should have on our moral practice. Second, we describe what is involved in giving an answer to our leading question and take notice of some factors that are relevant to what an adequate answer might look like. We also argue that the specific details of adequate answers to our leading question will depend largely on context. Third, we consider three extant answers to our leading quest…Read more
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50Hume on Is and Ought, by Pigden Charles R. : Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, pp. xiv + 352, £74.00 (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 91 (4): 821-824. 2013.No abstract
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46Nihilism and the Epistemic Profile of Moral JudgmentIn Aaron Zimmerman, Karen Jones & Mark Timmons (eds.), Routledge Handbook on Moral Epistemology, Routledge. 2018.Moral nihilism is the view that there are no moral facts or moral truths. It is the ontological component of moral error theory, which is the best-known and most comprehensive metaethical theory that involves moral nihilism. My main aim is to discuss some consequences of endorsing moral error theory or believing to some degree that moral error theory is true. In §2, I consider the implications for ordinary moral thought and discourse and the epistemological consequences for moral theorizing. In …Read more
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40Buck‐Passing AccountsIn Hugh LaFollette (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Blackwell. 2013.
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35Welfare and Rational Care, by Stephen Darwall. Princeton University Press, 2002, xi + 135 pages (review)Economics and Philosophy 22 (1): 171-177. 2006.
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30Non-NaturalismIn Simon Robertson (ed.), Spheres of Reason: New Essays in the Philosophy of Normativity, Oxford University Press. pp. 164. 2009.
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30Essays in Moral Skepticism, written by Richard JoyceInternational Journal for the Study of Skepticism 8 (1): 66-71. 2018._ Source: _Page Count 6
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29The Oxford Handbook of Value Theory (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2015.Value theory, or axiology, looks at what things are good or bad, how good or bad they are, and, most fundamentally, what it is for a thing to be good or bad. Questions about value and about what is valuable are important to moral philosophers, since most moral theories hold that we ought to promote the good. This Handbook focuses on value theory as it pertains to ethics, broadly construed, and provides a comprehensive overview of contemporary debates pertaining not only to philosophy but also to…Read more
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26Revisiting the Tropic of Value: Reply to Rabinowicz and Rønnow‐RasmussenPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 67 (2): 412-422. 2003.In this paper, I defend the view that the values of concrete objects and persons are reducible to the final values of tropes. This reductive account has recently been discussed and rejected by Rabinowicz and R0nnow‐Rasmussen (2003). I begin by explaining why the reduction is appealing in the first place. In my rejoinder to Rabinowicz and R0nnow‐Rasmussen I defend trope‐value reductionism against three challenges. 1 focus mainly on their central objection, that holds that the reduction is untenab…Read more
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24Hume's sentimentalism: Not non-cognitivismBelgrade Philosophical Annual 1 (34): 95-111. 2021.This paper considers and argues against old and recent readings of Hume according to which his account of moral judgement is non-cognitivist. In previous discussions of this topic, crucial metaethical distinctions-between sentimentalism and non-cognitivism and between psychological and semantic non-cognitivism-are often blurred. The paper aims to remedy this and argues that making the appropriate metaethical distinctions undermines alleged support for non-cognitivist interpretations of Hume. The…Read more
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24Metaethics Out of Speech Acts? Moral Error Theory and the Possibility of SpeechIn Christopher Cowie & Richard Rowland (eds.), Companions in Guilt: Arguments in Metaethics, Routledge. pp. 73-85. 2019.Are there moral facts? According to moral nihilism, the answer is no. Some moral nihilists are moral error theorists, who think that moral judgements purport to refer to moral facts, but since there are no moral facts, moral judgements are uniformly false or untrue. Terence Cuneo has recently raised an original and potentially very serious objection to moral error theory. According to Cuneo’s ‘normative theory of speech’, normative facts, some of which are moral facts, are crucially involved in …Read more
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21Review of Simon Kirchin (ed.), Thick Concepts (Oxford University Press, 2013) (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. forthcoming.
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18Review of Ingmar Persson, The Retreat of Reason: A Dilemma in the Philosophy of Life (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2006 (8). 2006.
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18In his recent book The Value Gap (2021), Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen defends a pluralist view of final goodness and goodness-for, according to which neither concept is analysable in terms of the other. In this paper I defend a specific version of monism, namely so-called ‘Mooreanism’, according to which goodness-for is analysable partly in terms of final goodness. Rønnow-Rasmussen offers three purported counterexamples to Mooreanism. I argue that Mooreanism can accommodate two of them. The third is mo…Read more
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18Moral Error: History, Critique, DefenceOxford University Press UK. 2017.Jonas Olson presents a critical survey of moral error theory, the view that there are no moral facts and so all moral claims are false. Part I explores the historical context of the debate; Part II assesses J. L. Mackie's famous arguments; Part III defends error theory against challenges and considers its implications for our moral thinking.
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11Review of Robert Audi, The Good in the right: A Theory of Inuition and Intrinsic Value (review)Philosophical Review 115 (4): 540-542. 2006.
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10Value superiorityIn Iwao Hirose & Jonas Olson (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Value Theory, . pp. 225-248. 2015.
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9Error theory and reasons for beliefIn Andrew Reisner & Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen (eds.), Reasons for Belief, Cambridge University Press. 2011.
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6The value of existenceIn Iwao Hirose & Jonas Olson (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Value Theory, . pp. 424-444. 2015.