Anthony Taylor

Blameworthiness is commonly understood in terms of fittingness of blame: An agent X is blameworthy to degree n for an action A if and only if it is fitting for all agents to blame X to degree n for A. The problem with this biconditional is that it conflicts with the intuition that whether and what kind of blame is fitting depends on the personal relationship between the blamer and the wrongdoer or the blamer and the victim. Sometimes it is, prima facie, fitting for certain agents to have different blaming responses toward the same wrongdoer due to personal relationships. This is the partiality problem for blame. I argue that we should not try to solve the problem by appealing to wrong kind of reasons, i.e. non-fittingness reasons. Instead, we should accept that different blaming responses toward the same wrongdoer may in fact be fitting. To solve the partiality problem, I propose distinguishing between agent-relative and agent-neutral blameworthiness and show how the distinction can be understood in a Strawsonian framework.

According to a Fregean view recently resurgent in higher‐order metaphysics, predicates do not denote objects, construed as any kind of thing a name could denote. Many common routes to that conclusion, however, don't do much to illuminate what it is about names and predicates that should prevent them from both denoting kinds of objects. This paper critically examines arguments that promise to fill this gap and establish the negative Fregean conclusion by reflection on the nature of predication. I begin with two such arguments but conclude that, when situated in a general syntactic and semantic framework, they don't succeed. I then develop a third, more promising argument, inspired by Wittgenstein's picture theory of meaning. The resulting proposal vindicates key Fregean ideas, while also departing from common views about predication in higher‐order settings. I go on to show that, despite these departures, the proposal can accommodate quantification into predicate position. Ultimately, however, the Fregean victory remains constrained, in that we have little reason to think that natural language predicates in fact function in the proposed manner.

A prominent approach in moral and political philosophy holds that conclusions about distributive justice can be derived from what rational, self-interested individuals would want when situated behind a veil of ignorance that prevents them from knowing their personal characteristics or positions within society. One basic feature of human self-interested reasoning is the preference for our bad experiences to be in the past, even if they would be less bad if they were still to come, and our good ones to be in the future, even if they will be worse. This article demonstrates that individuals behind the veil who have that preference will unanimously favor distributive policies that are manifestly unjust. Since there is good reason to think that caring more about one’s future than one’s past is not irrational, we should be skeptical that distributive justice reflects rational self-interest from behind a veil of ignorance.

Attitudes and emotions are commonly taken not to be under our direct voluntary control. Thus, it also seems impossible for there to be obligations to have certain attitudes. Against this, proponents of attitudinal obligations argue that we have sufficient, even if not voluntary, control over our attitudes to be appropriately held responsible for them and that this implies that there are attitudinal obligations. Call this the Responsibility Argument for Attitudinal Obligations. In this paper, I discuss the Responsibility Argument as a response to the Control Problem. I argue that the Responsibility Argument fails. Its main problem is that the type of control that we have over our attitudes and emotions, according to its proponents, is always indirect. Accordingly, there can only be obligations to perform certain actions that tend to bring about certain attitudes, but no obligations to have certain attitudes.