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167The heroism paradox: another paradox of supererogationPhilosophical Studies 172 (6): 1575-1592. 2015.Philosophers are by now familiar with “the” paradox of supererogation. This paradox arises out of the idea that it can never be permissible to do something morally inferior to another available option, yet acts of supererogation seem to presuppose this. This paradox is not our topic in this paper. We mention it only to set it to one side and explain our subtitle. In this paper we introduce and explore another paradox of supererogation, one which also deserves serious philosophical attention. Peo…Read more
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39Naïve Practical Reasoning and the Second-Person Standpoint: Simple Reasons for Simple People?Journal of Value Inquiry 49 (1-2): 17-30. 2015.Much contemporary first-order moral theory revolves around the debate between consequentialists and deontologists. Depressingly, this debate often seems to come down to irresolvable first-order intuition mongering about runaway trolleys, drowning children in shallow ponds, lying to murderers at doors, and the like. Prima facie, common sense morality contains both consequentialist and deontological elements, so it may be no surprise that direct appeal to first-order intuitions tend towards stalem…Read more
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69Impassioned BeliefOxford University Press. 2014.Michael Ridge presents an original expressivist theory of normative judgments--Ecumenical Expressivism--which offers distinctive treatments of key problems in metaethics, semantics, and practical reasoning. He argues that normative judgments are hybrid states partly constituted by ordinary beliefs and partly constituted by desire-like states.
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154II—Michael Ridge: Epistemology for Ecumenical ExpressivistsAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 81 (1): 83-108. 2007.
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131Particularism and the contingent a prioriActa Analytica 21 (2): 3-11. 2006.Particularism renders the options for a sound moral epistemology few and the prospects dim. One leading approach treats basic knowledge of particular cases as derivable from an a priori moral principle and a posteriori knowledge of the contingent non-moral facts to which the principle applies. Particularists must forgo this approach because it requires principles. Yet a purely a posteriori moral epistemology is also implausible, especially when combined with particularism. Particularists such as…Read more
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133Sincerity and ExpressivismPhilosophical Studies 131 (2): 487-510. 2006.What is it for a speech-act to be sincere? A very tempting answer, defended by John Searle and others, is that a speech-act is sincere just in case the speaker has the state of mind it expresses. I argue that we should instead hold that a speech-act is sincere just in case the speaker believes that she has the state of mind she believes it expresses (Sections 1 and 2). Scenarios in which speakers are deluded about their own states of mind play an important role in arguing for this account. In th…Read more
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171Mill's Intentions and MotivesUtilitas 14 (1): 54. 2002.One might have thought that any right-thinking utilitarian would hold that motives and intentions are morally on a par, as either might influence the consequences of one's actions. However, in a neglected passage of Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill claims that the rightness of an action depends 'entirely upon the intention' but does not at all depend upon the motive. In this paper I try to make sense of Mill's initially puzzling remarks about the relative importance of intentions and motives in …Read more
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42How children learn the meanings of moral words: Expressivist semantics for childrenEthics 114 (2): 301-317. 2004.
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43Judith Jarvis Thomson, Goodness and Advice, edited by Amy Gutmann:Goodness and AdviceEthics 113 (2): 447-450. 2003.
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114The truth in ecumenical expressivismIn David Sobel & Steven Wall (eds.), Reasons for Action, Cambridge University Press. 2009.Early expressivists, such as A.J. Ayer, argued that normative utterances are not truth-apt, and many found this striking claim implausible. After all, ordinary speakers are perfectly happy to ascribe truth and falsity to normative assertions. It is hard to believe that competent speakers could be so wrong about the meanings of their own language, particularly as these meanings are fixed by the conventions implicit in their own linguistic behavior. Later expressivists therefore tried to arrange a…Read more
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73Having It Both Ways: Hybrid Theories and Modern Metaethics (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2014.In twelve new essays, contributors explore hybrid theories in metaethics and other normative domains.
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Particularism and principlesIn John Skorupski (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Ethics, Routledge. 2010.
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64II—Michael Ridge: Epistemology for Ecumenical ExpressivistsAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 81 (1): 83-108. 2007.
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Fairness and Non-ComplianceIn Brian Feltham & John Cottingham (eds.), Partiality and Impartiality: Morality, Special Relationships, and the Wider World, Oxford University Press. 2010.
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183Preempting principles: Recent debates in moral particularismPhilosophy Compass 3 (6): 1177-1192. 2008.Moral particularism, as recently defended, charges that traditional moral theorizing unduly privileges moral principles. Moral generalism defends a prominent place for moral principles. Because moral principles are often asked to play multiple roles, moral particularism aims at multiple targets. We distinguish two leading roles for moral principles, the role of standard and the role of guide. We critically survey some of the leading arguments both for and against principles so conceived.
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101Saving the ethical appearancesMind 115 (459): 633-650. 2006.An important worry about what Simon Blackburn has called ‘quasi-realism’ is that it collapses into realism full-stop. Edward Harcourt has recently pressed the worry about collapse into realism in an original way. Harcourt presents the challenge in the form of a dilemma. Either ethical discourse appears to ordinary speakers to express representational states or not. If the former then expressivism means that this appearance is not saved after all, in which case quasi-realism fails in its own term…Read more
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172There may be as much philosophical controversy about how to distinguish naturalism from non-naturalism as there is about which view is correct. In spite of this widespread disagreement about the content of naturalism and non-naturalism there is considerable agreement about the status of certain historically influential philosophical accounts as non-naturalist. In particular, there is widespread agreement that G.E. Moore's account of goodness in.
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114Humean IntentionsAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 35 (2): 157-178. 1998.Many hold that the differences between intentions and desires are so significant that, not only can we not identify intentions with desires simpliciter, but that intentions are irreducible to any subclass of desires. My main aim is to explain why we should reject the irreducibility thesis in both forms, thereby defending the Humean view of action explanation.
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41II—Michael Ridge: Epistemology for Ecumenical ExpressivistsAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 81 (1): 83-108. 2007.
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352Anti-reductionism and supervenienceJournal of Moral Philosophy 4 (3): 330-348. 2007.In this paper, I argue that anti-reductionist moral realism still has trouble explaining supervenience. My main target here will be Russ Shafer-Landau's attempt to explain the supervenience of the moral on the natural in terms of the constitution of moral property instantiations by natural property instantiations. First, though, I discuss a recent challenge to the very idea of using supervenience as a dialectical weapon posed by Nicholas Sturgeon. With a suitably formulated supervenience thesis …Read more
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64Universalizability for Collective Rational Agents: A Critique of AgentrelativismPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 70 (1): 34-66. 2007.This paper contends that a Kantian universalizability constraint on theories of practical reason in conjunction with the possibility of collective rational agents entails the surprisingly strong conclusion that no fully agent‐relative theory of practical reason can be sound. The basic point is that a Kantian universalizability constraint, the thesis that all reasons for action are agent‐relative and the possibility of collective rational agents gives rise to a contradiction. This contradiction c…Read more
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2Aesthetics and particularismIn Michael Brady (ed.), New Waves in Metaethics, Palgrave-macmillan. 2010.
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236Reasons for action: Agent-neutral vs. Agent-relativeThe Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2011.The agent-relative/agent-neutral distintion is widely and rightly regarded as a philosophically important one. Unfortunately, the distinction is often drawn in different and mutually incompatible ways. The agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction has historically been drawn three main ways: the ‘principle-based distinction’, the ‘reason-statement-based distinction’ and the ‘perspective-based distinction’. Each of these approaches has its own distinctive vices (Sections 1-3). However, a slightly …Read more
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56Kantian constructivism : something old, something newIn James Lenman & Yonatan Shemmer (eds.), Constructivism in Practical Philosophy, Oxford University Press. pp. 138. 2012.
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105Turning on default reasonsJournal of Moral Philosophy 4 (1): 55-76. 2007.Particularism takes an extremely ecumenical view of what considerations might count as reasons and thereby threatens to ‘flatten the moral landscape’ by making it seem that there is no deep difference between, for example, pain, and shoelace color. After all, particularists have claimed, either could provide a reason provided a suitable moral context. To avoid this result, some particularists draw a distinction between default and non-default reasons. The present paper argues that all but the mo…Read more