•  865
    Our Reliability is in Principle Explainable
    Episteme 14 (2): 197-211. 2017.
    Non-skeptical robust realists about normativity, mathematics, or any other domain of non- causal truths are committed to a correlation between their beliefs and non- causal, mind-independent facts. Hartry Field and others have argued that if realists cannot explain this striking correlation, that is a strong reason to reject their theory. Some consider this argument, known as the Benacerraf–Field argument, as the strongest challenge to robust realism about mathematics, normativity, and even logi…Read more
  •  849
    In this article, I will argue against the Orthodox Jewish view that the Torah should be treated as an absolute authority. I begin with an explanation of what it means to treat something as an absolute authority. I then review examples of norms in the Torah that seem clearly immoral. Next, I explore reasons that people may have for accepting a person, text, or tradition as an absolute authority in general. I argue that none of these reasons can justify absolute authority if the authority prescrib…Read more
  •  795
    How can necessary facts call for explanation
    Synthese 198 (12): 11607-11624. 2020.
    While there has been much discussion about what makes some mathematical proofs more explanatory than others, and what are mathematical coincidences, in this article I explore the distinct phenomenon of mathematical facts that call for explanation. The existence of mathematical facts that call for explanation stands in tension with virtually all existing accounts of “calling for explanation”, which imply that necessary facts cannot call for explanation. In this paper I explore what theoretical re…Read more
  •  635
    What Makes Something Surprising?
    with Oded Na’Aman
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 105 (1): 195-215. 2022.
    Surprises are important in our everyday lives as well as in our scientific and philosophical theorizing—in psychology, information theory, cognitive-neuroscience, philosophy of science, and confirmation theory. Nevertheless, there is no satisfactory theory of what makes something surprising. It has long been acknowledged that not everything unexpected is surprising. The reader had no reason to expect that there will be exactly 190 words in this abstract and yet there is nothing surprising about …Read more
  •  608
    Calling for explanation: the case of the thermodynamic past state
    European Journal for Philosophy of Science 10 (3): 1-20. 2020.
    Philosophers of physics have long debated whether the Past State of low entropy of our universe calls for explanation. What is meant by “calls for explanation”? In this article we analyze this notion, distinguishing between several possible meanings that may be attached to it. Taking the debate around the Past State as a case study, we show how our analysis of what “calling for explanation” might mean can contribute to clarifying the debate and perhaps to settling it, thus demonstrating the frui…Read more
  •  543
    Motivated by examples, many philosophers believe that there is a significant distinction between states of affairs that are striking and therefore call for explanation and states of affairs that are not striking. This idea underlies several influential debates in metaphysics, philosophy of mathematics, normative theory, philosophy of modality, and philosophy of science but is not fully elaborated or explored. This paper aims to address this lack of clear explanation first by clarifying the epist…Read more
  •  483
    No need to get up from the armchair
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 23 (3): 575-590. 2020.
    Several authors believe that metaethicists ought to leave their comfortable armchairs and engage with serious empirical research. This paper provides partial support for the opposing view, that metaethics is rightly conducted from the armchair. It does so by focusing on debunking arguments against robust moral realism. Specifically, the article discusses arguments based on the possibility that if robust realism is correct, then our beliefs are most likely insensitive to the relevant truths. Thes…Read more
  •  465
    Calling for Explanation
    Oxford University Press. 2022.
    The idea that there are some facts that call for explanation serves as an unexamined premise in influential arguments for the inexistence of moral or mathematical facts and for the existence of a god and of other universes. This book is the first to offer a comprehensive and critical treatment of this idea. It argues that calling for explanation is a sometimes-misleading figure of speech rather than a fundamental property of facts.
  •  461
    Several theorists have been attracted to the idea that in order to account for counterpossibles, i.e. counterfactuals with impossible antecedents, we must appeal to impossible worlds. However, few have attempted to provide a detailed impossible worlds account of counterpossibles. Berit Brogaard and Joe Salerno’s ‘Remarks on Counterpossibles’ is one of the few attempts to fill in this theoretical gap. In this article, I critically examine their account. I prove a number of unanticipated implicati…Read more
  •  386
    Modal Security
    with Justin Clarke-Doane
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 102 (1): 162-183. 2021.
    Modal Security is an increasingly discussed proposed necessary condition on undermining defeat. Modal Security says, roughly, that if evidence undermines (rather than rebuts) one’s belief, then one gets reason to doubt the belief's safety or sensitivity. The primary interest of the principle is that it seems to entail that influential epistemological arguments, including Evolutionary Debunking Arguments against moral realism and the Benacerraf-Field Challenge for mathematical realism, are unso…Read more
  •  290
    Are there any facts that call for explanation? According to one possible view, all facts call for explanation; according to another, none do. This paper is concerned with an intermediate view according to which some facts call for explanation and others do not. Such a view requires explaining what makes some facts call for explanation and not others. In this paper, I explore a neglected proposal, inspired by the work of George Schlesinger, according to which facts call for explanation when they …Read more
  •  289
    Carbon Offsetting
    Ethics, Policy and Environment. forthcoming.
    Do carbon-offsetting schemes morally offset emissions? The moral equivalence thesis is the claim that the combination of emitting greenhouse gasses and offsetting those emissions is morally equivalent to not emitting at all. This thesis implies that in response to climate change, we need not make any lifestyle changes to reduce our emissions as long as we offset them. An influential argument in favor of this thesis is premised on two claims, one empirical and the other normative: (1) When you em…Read more
  •  163
    A reliability challenge to theistic Platonism
    Analysis 77 (3): 479-487. 2017.
    Many philosophers believe that when a theory is committed to an apparently unexplainable massive correlation, that fact counts significantly against the theory. Philosophical theories that imply that we have knowledge of non-causal mind-independent facts are especially prone to this objection. Prominent examples of such theories are mathematical Platonism, robust normative realism and modal realism. It is sometimes thought that theists can easily respond to this sort of challenge and that theism…Read more
  •  153
    The Explanatory Challenge: Moral Realism Is No Better Than Theism
    European Journal of Philosophy 26 (1): 368-389. 2018.
    Many of the arguments for and against robust moral realism parallel arguments for and against theism. In this article, I consider one of the shared challenges: the explanatory challenge. The article begins with a presentation of Harman's formulation of the explanatory challenge as applied to moral realism and theism. I then examine two responses offered by robust moral realists to the explanatory challenge, one by Russ Shafer-Landau and another by David Enoch. Shafer-Landau argues that the moral…Read more
  •  133
    A strike against a striking principle
    Philosophical Studies 177 (6): 1501-1514. 2020.
    Several authors believe that there are certain facts that are striking and cry out for explanation—for instance, a coin that is tossed many times and lands in the alternating sequence HTHTHTHTHTHT…. According to this view, we have prima facie reason to believe that such facts are not the result of chance. I call this view the striking principle. Based on this principle, some have argued for far-reaching conclusions, such as that our universe was created by intelligent design, that there are many…Read more
  •  78
    Oxford Studies in Metaethics Volume 7, edited by R. Shafer-Landau (review)
    Journal of Moral Philosophy 12 (3): 359-362. 2015.
    This review article focuses on David Copp's article 'Experiments, Intuitions, and Methodology in Moral and Political Theory'. Copp argues that recent developments in moral psychology challenge the common method in ethics, which infers moral truths from moral intuitions, as these intuitions are shown to likely be unreliable. Copp responds to the worry by arguing that even if moral intuitions cannot be trusted to indicate objective moral truths, the common method remains valuable for other reasons…Read more
  •  73
    Review - The New Intuitionism (review)
    Metapsychology Online Reviews 16 (49). 2012.
    In this review article I focus on Walter-Sinnott-Armstrong's critique of moral intuitionism. Sinnott-Armstrong argues that recent discoveries by empirical psychologists undermine the plausibility of moral intuitionism. In response, I list a number of potential ways in which moral intuitionists might defend their view.