•  18
    This paper defends the claim that if a person P exists, there can be true positive comparisons between P's existence and P's never having existed at all in terms of what is better or worse for P. If correct, this view will have significant implications for various fundamental issues in population ethics. I try to show how arguments to the contrary fail to take note of a general ambiguity in comparisons when compared alternatives contain their own different standards (or, in the case of non-exist…Read more
  •  176
    In the first part of the paper, I discuss Benatar’s asymmetry argument for the claim that it would have been better for each of us to have never lived at all. In contrast to other commentators, I will argue that there is a way of interpreting the premises of his argument which makes all of them come out true. (This will require one departure from Benatar’s own presentation.) Once we see why the premises are true, we will, however, also realise that the argument trades on an ambiguity that render…Read more
  •  111
    Content-Related and Attitude-Related Reasons for Preferences
    Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 59 155-182. 2006.
    In the first section of this paper I draw, on a purely conceptual level, a distinction between two kinds of reasons: content-related and attitude-related reasons. The established view is that, in the case of the attitude of believing something, there are no attitude-related reasons. I look at some arguments intended to establish this claim in the second section with an eye to whether these argument could be generalized to cover the case of preferences as well. In the third section I argue agains…Read more
  •  411
    Beware of Safety
    Analytic Philosophy 60 (4): 01-29. 2019.
    Safety, as discussed in contemporary epistemology, is a feature of true beliefs. Safe beliefs, when formed by the same method, remain true in close-by possible worlds. I argue that our beliefs being safely true serves no recognisable epistemic interest and, thus, that this notion of safety should play no role in epistemology. Epistemologists have been misled by failing to distinguish between a feature of beliefs — being safely true — and a feature of believers, namely being safe from error. The…Read more
  •  52
    Norm-reasons and evidentialism
    Analysis 79 (2): 202-206. 2019.
    It has been argued by Clayton Littlejohn that cases of insufficient evidence provide an argument against evidentialism. He distinguishes between evidential reasons and norm-reasons, but this distinction can be accepted by evidentialists, as we argue. Furthermore, evidentialists can acknowledge the existence of norm-reasons stemming from an epistemic norm, like the norm that one should not believe a proposition if one has only insufficient evidence for it. An alternative interpretation of evident…Read more
  •  71
    Treating Broome Fairly
    Utilitas 29 (2): 214-238. 2017.
  •  18
    II_— _Christian Pillar
    Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 75 (1): 195-216. 2001.
  • Defending Humeanism
    Dissertation, Princeton University. 1997.
    So-called Humean theories of practical rationality elaborate on David Hume's famous dictum that "reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions". According to Humeanism, beliefs alone cannot determine what one rationally should do. Desires are always involved in practical reasons. A version of Humeanism is developed and defended in this dissertation. ;Its basic principle is the following: If a person believes that some event x increases the likelihood of the occurrence of some other e…Read more
  •  47
    Comment on Keith Lehrer and Vann McGee's Solution of Newcomb's Problem
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 40 (1): 221-228. 1991.
    Keith Lehrer's notion of acceptance and its relation to the notion of belief is analyzed in a way that a person only accepts some proposition p if she decides to believe it in order to reach the epistemic aim. This view of acceptance turns out to be untenable: Under the empirical claim that we don't have the power to decide what to beheve it follows that we cannot accept anything. If reaching the truth is the epistemic aim acceptance proves ill-formed, it is impossible to pursue the aim of truth…Read more
  •  19
    Es wird versucht, die Stellung des Vindizierungsarguments im Gesamtzusammenhang des Induktionsproblems genauer festzulegen, und eine neue Sichtweise dieses Arguments als entscheidungstheoretisches Dominanzargument wird vorgeschlagen. Diese neue Interpretation bewährt sich in der Konfrontation mit alten Einwänden, doch zeigt sich schließlich, daß sich auch gegen diese Form des Vindizierungsarguments ein erfolgreicher Widerlegungsversuch führen läßt. Eine allgemeine Formulierung des vorgebrachten …Read more
  •  17
    Book reviews (review)
    Erkenntnis 41 (1): 127-133. 1994.
  •  60
    Evidentialism, Transparency, and Commitments
    Philosophical Issues 26 (1): 332-350. 2016.
  •  42
    Comment on Keith Lehrer and Vann McGee's Solution of Newcomb's Problem
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 40 (1): 221-228. 1991.
    Keith Lehrer's notion of acceptance and its relation to the notion of belief is analyzed in a way that a person only accepts some proposition p if she decides to believe it in order to reach the epistemic aim. This view of acceptance turns out to be untenable: Under the empirical claim that we don't have the power to decide what to beheve it follows that we cannot accept anything. If reaching the truth is the epistemic aim acceptance proves ill-formed, it is impossible to pursue the aim of truth…Read more
  •  606
    John Greco claims that knowledge is a kind of achievement. The value achievements have (as such) shows, according to Greco, why knowledge is better than mere true belief. I argue that, for a variety of reasons, it is not always good to know. Furthermore, it is wrong to think that achievements are always good – think of achieving what is bad. Greco is mistaken twice; this leaves the idea that knowledge is a kind of achievement intact.
  •  17
    Two Accounts of Objective Reasons
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 67 (2): 444-451. 2003.
    GE Moore vehemently defended the view that what actually happens and not what we, even reasonably, expect to happen, determines what we ought to do. ‘The only possible reason that can justify any action’, Moore writes, ‘is that by it the greatest possible amount of what is good absolutely should be realized’. Moore is an objectivist about reasons and duties: The world and not our view of it gives us reasons to act; the way the world is, and not the way we think it is, determines what we ought to…Read more
  •  27
    Comment on Keith Lehrer and Vann McGee's Solution of Newcomb's Problem
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 40 (1): 221-228. 1991.
    Keith Lehrer's notion of acceptance and its relation to the notion of belief is analyzed in a way that a person only accepts some proposition p if she decides to believe it in order to reach the epistemic aim. This view of acceptance turns out to be untenable: Under the empirical claim that we don't have the power to decide what to beheve it follows that we cannot accept anything. If reaching the truth is the epistemic aim acceptance proves ill-formed, it is impossible to pursue the aim of truth…Read more
  •  14
    Es wird versucht, die Stellung des Vindizierungsarguments im Gesamtzusammenhang des Induktionsproblems genauer festzulegen, und eine neue Sichtweise dieses Arguments als entscheidungstheoretisches Dominanzargument wird vorgeschlagen. Diese neue Interpretation bewährt sich in der Konfrontation mit alten Einwänden, doch zeigt sich schließlich, daß sich auch gegen diese Form des Vindizierungsarguments ein erfolgreicher Widerlegungsversuch führen läßt. Eine allgemeine Formulierung des vorgebrachten …Read more
  •  17
    Choices (review)
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 30 197-207. 1987.
  •  48
    Reliabilist responses to the value of knowledge problem
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 79 (1): 121-135. 2009.
    After sketching my own solution to the Value of Knowledge Problem, which argues for a deontological understanding of justification and understands the value of knowing interesting propositions by the value we place on believing as we ought to believe, I discuss Alvin Goldman's and Erik Olsson's recent attempts to explain the value of knowledge within the framework of their reliabilist epistemology.
  •  472
    Morality's Place: Kierkegaard and Frankfurt
    Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 64 (2/4). 2008.
    The aim of this paper is to look at Søren Kierkegaard's defence of an ethical way of life in the light of Harry Frankfurt's work. There are salient general similarities connecting Kierkegaard and Frankfurt: Both are sceptical towards the Kantian idea of founding morality in the laws of practical reason. They both deny that the concerns, which shape our lives, could simply be validated by subject-independent values. Furthermore, and most importantly, they both emphasize the importance of reflecti…Read more
  •  20
    Comment on Keith Lehrer and Vann McGee's Solution of Newcomb's Problem
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 40 (1): 221-228. 1991.
    Keith Lehrer's notion of acceptance and its relation to the notion of belief is analyzed in a way that a person only accepts some proposition p if she decides to believe it in order to reach the epistemic aim. This view of acceptance turns out to be untenable: Under the empirical claim that we don't have the power to decide what to beheve it follows that we cannot accept anything. If reaching the truth is the epistemic aim acceptance proves ill-formed, it is impossible to pursue the aim of truth…Read more
  •  11
    Antikritische Bemerkungen
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 32 (1): 197-204. 1988.
  •  280
    ‘Kinds of Practical Reasons: Attitude-Related Reasons and Exclusionary Reasons’
    In C. E. Mauro J. A. Pinto S. Miguens (ed.), Analyses, . pp. 98-105. 2006.
    I start by explaining what attitude-related reasons are and why it is plausible to assume that, at least in the domain of practical reason, there are such reasons. Then I turn to Raz’s idea that the practice of practical reasoning commits us to what he calls exclusionary reasons. Being excluded would be a third way, additional to being outweighed and being undermined, in which a reason can be defeated. I try to show that attitude-related reasons can explain the phenomena Raz appeals to equally w…Read more
  •  1110
    The Bootstrapping Objection
    Organon F: Medzinárodný Časopis Pre Analytickú Filozofiu 20 (4): 612-631. 2013.
    If our mental attitudes were reasons, we could bootstrap anything into rationality simply by acquiring these mental attitudes. This, it has been argued, shows that mental attitudes cannot be reasons. In this paper, I focus on John Broome’s development of the bootstrapping objection. I distinguish various versions of this objection and I argue that the bootstrapping objection to mind-based accounts of reasons fails in all its versions.
  •  90
    Particularism and the structure of reasons
    Acta Analytica 21 (2): 87-102. 2006.
    I argue that particularism (or holism) about reasons, i.e., the view that a feature that is a reason in one case need not be a reason in another case, is true, but uninterestingly so. Its truth is best explained by principles that govern a weaker notion than that of being a reason: one thing can be ‘normatively connected’ to something else without its being a reason for what it is normatively connected to. Thus, even though true, particularism about reasons does not support the particularist’s g…Read more