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108A range of repliesAsian Journal of Philosophy 3 (16). 2024.This is a reply by the author to the contributors to a symposium on the book, The Range of Reasons (Oxford University Press, 2021).
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226Kenelm Digby (and Margaret Cavendish) on MotionJournal of Modern Philosophy 6 (1): 1-27. 2024.Motion—and, in particular, local motion or change in location—plays a central role in Kenelm Digby’s natural philosophy and in his arguments for the immateriality of the soul. Despite this, Digby’s account of what motion consists in has yet to receive much scholarly attention. In this paper, I advance a novel interpretation of Digby on motion. According to it, Digby holds that for a body to move is for it to divide from and unify with other bodies. This is a view of motion—as change in relations…Read more
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209Is Margaret Cavendish a Naïve Realist?European Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.Perception plays a central and wide-ranging role in the philosophy of Margaret Cavendish. In this paper, I argue that Cavendish holds a naïve realist theory of perception. The case draws on what Cavendish has to say about perceptual presentation, the role of sympathy in experience, the natures of hallucination and of illusion, and the individuation of kinds. While Cavendish takes perception to have representational content, I explain how this is consistent with naïve realism. In closing, I addre…Read more
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52Higher-Order Evidence in AestheticsBritish Journal of Aesthetics 63 (2): 143-155. 2023.In this introduction, I explain the notion of higher-order evidence and explore its bearing on aesthetic judgement. I start by illustrating how reflection on cases involving higher-order evidence engages with well-established concerns in aesthetics—specifically, how it might reveal tensions within and between widely recognized aesthetic ideals governing aesthetic judgement. Next, I show how attention to higher-order evidence in relation to aesthetic judgement might expose limitations or assumpti…Read more
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488Wittgenstein's Later NonsenseIn Christoph C. Pfisterer, Nicole Rathgeb & Eva Schmidt (eds.), Wittgenstein and Beyond: Essays in Honour of Hans-Johann Glock, Routledge. 2022.According to an influential reading of his later philosophy, Wittgenstein thinks that nonsense can result from combining expressions in ways prohibited by the rules to which their use is subject. According to another influential reading, the later Wittgenstein thinks that nonsense only ever results from privation—that is, from a failure to assign a meaning to one or more of the relevant expressions. This chapter challenges Glock’s defence of the view that the later Wittgenstein allows for combin…Read more
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512Margaret Macdonald on the Definition of ArtBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 30 (6): 1074-1095. 2022.In this paper, I show that, in a number of publications in the early 1950s, Margaret Macdonald argues that art does not admit of definition, that art is—in the sense associated with Wittgenstein—a family resemblance concept, and that definitions of art are best understood as confused or poorly expressed contributions to art criticism. This package of views is most typically associated with a famous paper by Morris Weitz from 1956. I demonstrate that Macdonald advanced that package prior to Weitz…Read more
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529Cavendish’s Aesthetic RealismPhilosophers' Imprint 23 (15): 1-17. 2023.In this paper, I offer a new interpretation of Margaret Cavendish’s remarks on beauty. According to it, Cavendish takes beauty to be a real, response-independent quality of objects. In this sense, Cavendish is an aesthetic realist. This position, which remains constant throughout her philosophical writings, contrasts with the non-realist views that were soon after to dominate philosophical reflections on matters of taste in the early modern period. It also, I argue, contrasts with the realism of…Read more
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629Admiration, Appreciation, and Aesthetic WorthAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 101 (2): 375-389. 2023.What is aesthetic appreciation? In this paper, I approach this question in an indirection fashion. First, I introduce the Kantian notion of moral worthy action and an influential analysis of it. Next, I generalise that analysis from the moral to the aesthetic domain, and from actions to affects. Aesthetic appreciation, I suggest, consists in an aesthetically worthy affective response. After unpacking the proposal, I show that it has non-trivial implications while cohering with a number of existi…Read more
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328The Range of Reasons: In Ethics and EpistemologyOxford University Press. 2021.This book contributes to two debates and it does so by bringing them together. The first is a debate in metaethics concerning normative reasons, the considerations that serve to justify a person’s actions and attitudes. The second is a debate in epistemology concerning the norms for belief, the standards that govern a person’s beliefs and by reference to which they are assessed. The book starts by developing and defending a new theory of reasons for action, that is, of practical reasons. The the…Read more
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703Higher-Order EvidenceAnalysis 80 (4): 789-807. 2021.A critical survey of recent work in epistemology on higher-order evidence. It discusses the nature of higher-order evidence, some puzzles it raises, responses to those puzzles, and problems facing them. It concludes by indicating connections between debates concerning higher-order evidence in epistemology and parallel debates in ethics and aesthetics.
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586Aesthetic Reasons and the Demands They (Do Not) MakePhilosophical Quarterly 71 (2): 407-427. 2021.What does the aesthetic ask of us? What claims do the aesthetic features of the objects and events in our environment make on us? My answer in this paper is: that depends. Aesthetic reasons can only justify feelings – they cannot demand them. A corollary of this is that there are no aesthetic obligations to feel, only permissions. However, I argue, aesthetic reasons can demand actions – they do not merely justify them. A corollary of this is that there are aesthetic obligations to act, not only …Read more
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1145Guided by Guided by the Truth: Objectivism and Perspectivism in Ethics and EpistemologyIn Baron Reed & A. K. Flowerree (eds.), Towards an Expansive Epistemology: Norms, Action, and the Social Sphere, Routledge. forthcoming.According to ethical objectivism, what a person should do depends on the facts, as opposed to their perspective on the facts. A long-standing challenge to this view is that it fails to accommodate the role that norms play in guiding a person’s action. Roughly, if the facts that determine what a person should do lie beyond their ken, they cannot inform a person’s deliberations. This paper explores two recent developments of this line of thought. Both focus on the epistemic counterpart to ethical …Read more
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337Epistemic WorthErgo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 7. 2020.Actions can have, or lack, moral worth. When a person’s action is morally worthy, she not only acts rightly, but does so in a way that reflects well on her and in such a way that she is creditable for doing what is right. In this paper, I develop and defend an analogue of the notion of moral worth that applies to belief, which I call epistemic worth. When a person’s belief is epistemically worthy, she not only believes rightly, but does so in a way that reflects well on her and in such a way tha…Read more
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393Whither Higher-Order Evidence?In Mattias Skipper & Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen (eds.), Higher-Order Evidence: New Essays, Oxford University Press. 2019.First-order evidence is evidence which bears on whether a proposition is true. Higher-order evidence is evidence which bears on whether a person is able to assess her evidence for or against a proposition. A widespread view is that higher-order evidence makes a difference to whether it is rational for a person to believe a proposition. In this paper, I consider in what way higher-order evidence might do this. More specifically, I consider whether and how higher-order evidence plays a role in det…Read more
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568Knowledge, justification, and (a sort of) safe beliefSynthese 197 (8): 3593-3609. 2020.An influential proposal is that knowledge involves safe belief. A belief is safe, in the relevant sense, just in case it is true in nearby metaphysically possible worlds. In this paper, I introduce a distinct but complementary notion of safety, understood in terms of epistemically possible worlds. The main aim, in doing so, is to add to the epistemologist’s tool-kit. To demonstrate the usefulness of the tool, I use it to advance and assess substantive proposals concerning knowledge and justifica…Read more
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667Is Meaning Fraught with Ought?Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 90 (4): 535-555. 2009.According to Normativism, what an expression means has immediate implications for how a subject should or may (not) employ that expression. Many view this thesis as imposing substantive constraints upon theories of linguistic meaning. In this paper, I shall not consider that view; instead, I shall address the prior issue of whether or not one should accept Normativism. Against certain recent prominent lines of attack common to a number of different anti‐Normativist discussions, I shall defend bo…Read more
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4Don't Take my Word for It: On Beliefs, Affects, Reasons, Values, Rationality, and Aesthetic TestimonyIn Ema Sullivan-Bissett, Helen Bradley & Paul Noordhof (eds.), Art and Belief, Oxford University Press. 2017.Aesthetic testimony is not a source of knowledge; it is not even a source of rational belief. If, for example, Holly tells Harry that Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas is good, Harry cannot come to know or rationally believe that the film is good on the basis of Holly’s testimony alone. This chapter outlines a novel argument for this view, one which serves also to explain it. That argument appeals to four principles connecting rationality and reasons, reasons and values, belief and affects, and beliefs …Read more
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1172The Normativity of BeliefAnalysis 74 (4): 698-713. 2014.This is a survey of recent debates concerning the normativity of belief. We explain what the thesis that belief is normative involves, consider arguments for and against that thesis, and explore its bearing on debates in metaethics
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577Right in some respects: reasons as evidencePhilosophical Studies 175 (9): 2191-2208. 2018.What is a normative reason for acting? In this paper, I introduce and defend a novel answer to this question. The starting-point is the view that reasons are right-makers. By exploring difficulties facing it, I arrive at an alternative, according to which reasons are evidence of respects in which it is right to perform an act, for example, that it keeps a promise. This is similar to the proposal that reasons for a person to act are evidence that she ought to do so; however, as I explain, it diff…Read more
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179Conservatives and racists: Inferential role semantics and pejorativesPhilosophia 36 (3): 375-388. 2008.According to inferential role semantics, for any given expression to possess a particular meaning one must be disposed to make or, alternatively, acknowledge as correct certain inferential transitions involving it. As Williamson points out, pejoratives such as ‘Boche’ seem to provide a counter-example to IRS. Many speakers are neither disposed to use such expressions nor consider it proper to do so. But it does not follow, as IRS appears to entail, that such speakers do not understand pejorative…Read more
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703Perspectivism and the Argument from GuidanceEthical Theory and Moral Practice 20 (2): 361-374. 2017.Perspectivists hold that what you ought to do is determined by your perspective, that is, your epistemic position. Objectivists hold that what you ought to do is determined by the facts irrespective of your perspective. This paper explores an influential argument for perspectivism which appeals to the thought that the normative is action guiding. The crucial premise of the argument is that you ought to φ only if you are able to φ for the reasons which determine that you ought to φ. We show that …Read more
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64The later Wittgenstein on language (edited book)Palgrave-Macmillan. 2009.Ludwig Wittgenstein's notoriously elusive later writings are dominated by remarks on language. However, while the textual analysis of Wittgenstein's writings is presently a booming industry, the tendency is to focus narrowly on exegetical matters with little attention to their bearing on philosophy at large. Moreover, one finds in contemporary philosophy of language various ideas with a distinctively Wittgensteinian ring to them but whose pedigree is uncertain. This volume brings together distin…Read more
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906Truth: the Aim and Norm of BeliefTeorema: International Journal of Philosophy 32 (3): 121-136. 2013.Invited contribution to The Aim of Belief, a special issue of Teorema, guest-edited by J. Zalabardo.
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663On epistemic conceptions of meaning: Use, meaning and normativityEuropean Journal of Philosophy 17 (3): 416-434. 2008.A number of prominent philosophers advance the following ideas: (1) Meaning is use. (2) Meaning is an intrinsically normative notion. Call (1) the use thesis, hereafter UT, and (2) the normativity thesis, hereafter NT. They come together in the view that for a linguistic expression to have meaning is for there to be certain proprieties governing its employment.1 These ideas are often associated with a third
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180Leave Truth Alone: On Deflationism and ContextualismEuropean Journal of Philosophy 19 (4): 607-624. 2010.Abstract: According to deflationism, grasp of the concept of truth consists in nothing more than a disposition to accept a priori (non-paradoxical) instances of the schema:(DS) It is true that p if and only if p.According to contextualism, the same expression with the same meaning might, on different occasions of use, express different propositions bearing different truth-conditions (where this does not result from indexicality and the like). On this view, what is expressed in an utterance depen…Read more
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643Knowledge Is NOT Belief for Sufficient (Objective and Subjective) ReasonLogos and Episteme 6 (2): 237-243. 2015.Mark Schroeder has recently proposed a new analysis of knowledge. I examine that analysis and show that it fails. More specifically, I show that it faces a problem all too familiar from the post-Gettier literature, namely, that it is delivers the wrong verdict in fake barn cases.
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143Defending semantic generalismAnalysis 67 (4). 2007.‘Particularism’ is a meta-ethical theory resulting from a holistic doctrine in the theory of reasons. According to Jonathan Dancy, the foremost contemporary proponent of particularism, ‘a feature that is a reason in favour of an action in one case may be no reason at all in another, or even a reason against’ (2004: 190). From this, Dancy claims, it follows that the ‘possibility of moral thought and judgement does not depend on the provision of a suitable supply of moral principles’ (2004: 7). Th…Read more
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763Between Old and New: Brandom’s Analytic PragmatismInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 17 (4): 597-607. 2009.In his latest book, Between Saying and Doing, Robert Brandom aims to lay the foundations for a new approach to philosophy, 'analytic pragmatism', which as the name suggests aims to reconcile the insights of the pragmatists with the ambitions of the analytic tradition. To do so, Brandom offers what he describes as a ‘new metatheoretic conceptual apparatus’. In this paper, I raises questions concerning whether the method underlying that apparatus is really so new, and challenge the suggestion that…Read more
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19Wittgenstein: Meaning and judgement (review)Philosophical Investigations 28 (4). 2005.Books reviewed: Michael Luntley, Wittgenstein: Meaning and Judgement, Blackwell Publishers, 2003, ix + 187, price £16.99 p.b. Reviewed by Daniel Whiting, University of Reading Department of Philosophy University of Reading Whiteknights, Reading RG6 6AA [email protected].
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Meta-Ethics |
Aesthetics |
17th/18th Century British Philosophy |
Philosophy of Language |
Areas of Interest
20th Century Philosophy |
Value Theory |