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385Way and Whiting on Elusive ReasonsAnalytic Philosophy 63 (2): 131-136. 2021.Analytic Philosophy, Volume 63, Issue 2, Page 131-136, June 2022.
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52Introducing a new elusive reasonRatio 34 (3): 227-235. 2021.In this paper, I introduce a new species of elusive reason–reasons that it is impossible for an agent to act, or be motivated to act, for–and I show how this kind of elusive reason undermines a plausible claim about normative reasons, the Motivational Constraint. To defend the existence of this new kind of elusive reason, I respond to the objection that our intuitions are tracking another normative or evaluative phenomenon, such as reasons to have certain affective responses or reasons for other…Read more
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736Hypocrisy is Vicious, Value-Expressing InconsistencyThe Journal of Ethics 25 (1): 57-80. 2020.Hypocrisy is a ubiquitous feature of moral and political life, and accusations of hypocrisy a ubiquitous feature of moral and political discourse. Yet it has been curiously under-theorized in analytic philosophy. Fortunately, the last decade has seen a boomlet of articles that address hypocrisy in order to explain and justify conditions on the so-called “standing” to blame (Wallace 2010; Friedman 2013; Bell 2013; Todd 2017; Herstein 2017; Roadevin 2018; Fritz and Miller 2018). Nevertheless, much…Read more
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516Elusive Reasons and the Motivational ConstraintJournal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 20 (1). 2021.The motivational constraint on normative reasons says that a consideration is a normative reason for an agent to act only if it is logically possible for the agent to act for that reason, or at least to be moved so to act. The claim figures Zelig-like in philosophical debates about practical reasons: on hand, occasionally prominent, but never the focus of discussion. However, because it is entailed by a number of prominent views about normative reasons—including various forms of internalism and…Read more
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787False Exemplars: Admiration and the Ethics of Public MonumentsJournal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 18 (1). 2020.In recent years, a new generation of activists has reinvigorated debate over the public commemorative landscape. While this debate is in no way limited to statues, it frequently crystallizes around public representations of historical figures who expressed support for the oppression of certain groups or contributed to their past or present oppression. In this paper, I consider what should be done about such representations. A number of philosophers have articulated arguments for modifying or rem…Read more
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277Feeling Badly Is Not Good Enough: a Reply to Fritz and MillerEthical Theory and Moral Practice 23 (1): 101-105. 2020.Kyle Fritz and Daniel Miller’s reply to my article helpfully clarifies their position and our main points of disagreement. Their view is that those who blame hypocritically lack the right to blame for a violation of some moral norm N in virtue of having an unfair disposition to blame others, but not themselves, for violations of N. This view raises two key questions. First, are there instances of hypocritical blame that do not involve an unfair differential blaming disposition? Second, if the an…Read more
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286Coercive Offers Without Coercion as SubjectionAmerican Journal of Bioethics 19 (9): 64-66. 2019.Volume 19, Issue 9, September 2019, Page 64-66.
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197Derivative Differential Responsibility: A Reply to PeelsTeorema: International Journal of Philosophy 37 (2): 139-151. 2018.At the heart of Rik Peels’s Responsible Belief: A Theory in Ethics and Epistemology is the idea that responsibility for belief ought to be understood on the model of responsibility for states of affairs that are subject to our influence but not under our intentional control, or what he calls derivative responsibility. In this article, I argue that reflection on the nature and scope of derivative responsibility reveals important lacunae in Peels’s account of responsible belief and his account of …Read more
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678The Commitment Account of HypocrisyEthical Theory and Moral Practice 21 (3): 553-567. 2018.Hypocrisy is widely thought to be morally objectionable in a way that undermines the hypocrite’s moral standing to blame others. To wit, we seem to intuitively accept the “Nonhypocrisy Condition:” R has the standing to blame S for some violation of a moral norm N only if R’s blaming S is not hypocritical. This claim has been the subject of intensifying philosophical investigation in recent years. However, we can only understand why hypocrisy is morally objectionable and has an effect on standing…Read more
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246The Relationship Between Moral Responsibility and FreedomIn Kevin Timpe, Meghan Griffith & Neil Levy (eds.), Routledge Companion to Free Will., Routledge. pp. 612-623. 2017.
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1052Squaring the Epicurean Circle: Friendship and Happiness in the GardenAncient Philosophy 37 (1): 153-168. 2017.Epicurean ethics has been subject to withering ancient and contemporary criticism for the supposed irreconcilability of Epicurus’s emphatic endorsement of friendship and his equally clear and striking ethical egoism. Recently, Matthew Evans (2004) has suggested that the key to a plausible Epicurean response to these criticisms must begin by understanding why friendship is valuable for Epicurus. In the first section of this paper I develop Evans’ suggestion further. I argue that a shared concepti…Read more
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336Mental Self-Management as Attempted Negligence: Trying and SucceedingLaw and Philosophy 34 (5): 551-579. 2015.‘Attempted negligence’ is a category of criminal offense that many jurists and philosophers have law have deemed conceptually incoherent. In his Attempts: In the Philosophy of Action and the Criminal Law, Gideon Yaffe challenges this dismissal, anchoring his argument in cases of what he calls ‘mental self-management’ in which agents plan to bring about that they perform unintentional actions at a later time. He plausibly argues that mental self-management-type attempted negligence is possible. H…Read more
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100Moral Excuses and Blame-Based Theories of Moral WrongnessSouthwest Philosophy Review 32 (1): 153-165. 2016.Many moral theorists argue that the concept of moral wrongness is connected to, and can be understood in terms of, the concept of blameworthiness. This tradition has its earliest roots in Mill’s Utilitarianism, and can be found in the work of, among others, Alan Gibbard, Stephen Darwall, and John Skorupski. Their ambition is to offer a non-circular analysis of the concept of moral wrongness in terms of blameworthiness. While these views have been criticized on various grounds, it has not general…Read more
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Duke UniversityOther student
University of Notre Dame
PhD, 2018
Cincinnati, OH, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Meta-Ethics |
Value Theory |
Moral Responsibility, Misc |
Practical Reason |