•  295
    Harm, baselines, and the worse than nothing account
    Philosophical Quarterly. forthcoming.
    Harm is one of the central concepts of ethics so it would be good to offer an account of it. Many accounts appeal to a baseline: they say that you harm someone if you leave them worse off than in the baseline case. In this paper, I draw some lessons regarding what counts as an appropriate baseline and explore what these general lessons reveal about the nature of harm. In the process of so doing, I argue that a certain rarely-discussed account of harm -- the worse than nothing account of harm -- …Read more
  •  16
    The paradigm response to skepticism
    Synthese 200 (3): 1-16. 2022.
    This paper introduces and defends the paradigm response to external world skepticism. To understand it, consider an analogy. One of the hallmarks of being a bird is an ability to fly. A penguin lacks this hallmark and thus fails to be a paradigm bird. Likewise, there are various hallmarks of knowledge. Some of your external world beliefs lack some of these hallmarks, and thus fail to be paradigm cases of knowledge. Just as the inability of penguins to fly doesn’t prevent them from being birds, l…Read more
  •  419
    The Worse than Nothing Account of Harm and the Preemption Problem
    Journal of Moral Philosophy 19 (1): 25-48. 2021.
    Because harm is an important notion in ethics, it’s worth investigating what it amounts to. The counterfactual comparative account of harm, commonly thought to be the most promising account of harm, analyzes harm by comparing what actually happened with what would have happened in some counterfactual situation. But it faces the preemption problem, a problem so serious that it has driven some to suggest we abandon the counterfactual comparative account and maybe even abandon the notion of harm al…Read more
  •  89
    How Common Knowledge Is Possible
    Mind 131 (523): 935-948. 2022.
    The two of us commonly know a proposition just in case (i) we both know it, (ii) we both know that we both know it, (iii) we both know that we both know that we both know it, and so on. In a recent paper titled ‘Uncommon Knowledge’, Harvey Lederman (2018) argues against the possibility of common knowledge. His argument rests on the empirical claim that there are minor individual variations in how we perceive things. This motivates a principle about perception: when two people are perceiving some…Read more
  •  74
    Williamson, closure, and KK
    Synthese 197 (8): 3349-3373. 2020.
    Closure principles say that if you know some proposition which entails a second and you meet further conditions then you know the second. In this paper I construct an argument against closure principles which turns on the idea that knowing a proposition requires that one’s belief-forming process be reliable. My argument parallels an influential argument offered by Timothy Williamson against KK principles–principles that say that if you know some proposition and you meet further conditions then y…Read more
  •  65
    Professor Procrastinate receives an invitation to review a book. Best would be to accept it and then write the review. But if he accepts it, he will never get around to writing. And this would be worse than declining. Should he accept? Possibilists say yes, Actualists say no, and I say we need more information. In particular, we lack some information about the level of goodness of the various options. For example, we lack information regarding how much better it would be to accept and write than…Read more
  •  349
    The threshold problem is the task of adequately answering the question: “Where does the threshold lie between knowledge and lack thereof?” I start this paper by articulating two conditions for solving it. The first is that the threshold be neither too high nor too low; the second is that the threshold accommodate the significance of knowledge. In addition to explaining these conditions, I also argue that it is plausible that they can be met. Next, I argue that many popular accounts of knowledge …Read more
  •  66
    Moral pickles, moral dilemmas, and the obligation preface paradox
    Philosophical Studies 176 (8): 2087-2101. 2019.
    This paper introduces and defends a new position regarding the question of whether it is possible to have conflicting moral obligations. In doing so, it focuses on what I call a moral pickle. By “moral pickle” I mean a set of actions such that you ought to perform each and cannot perform all. Typically, when people discuss conflicting moral obligations, they focus on the notion of a moral dilemma, which is a type of moral pickle involving two conflicting actions. In other words, a moral dilemma …Read more
  •  648
    Does Ought Imply Ought Ought?
    Philosophical Quarterly 68 (273): 702-716. 2018.
    Knows-knows principles in epistemology say that if you know some proposition, then you are in a position to know that you know it. This paper examines the viability of analogous principles in ethics, which I call ought-ought principles. Several epistemologists have recently offered new defences of KK principles and of other related principles, and there has recently been an increased interest in examining analogies between ethics and epistemology, and so it seems natural to examine whether defen…Read more
  •  214
    Lotteries, Possibility and Skepticism
    Skepsis: A Journal for Philosophy and Interdisciplinary Research 12 51-67. 2015.
  •  345
    Kumārila and Knows-Knows
    Philosophy East and West 68 (2): 408-422. 2018.
    This essay defends a principle that promises to help illuminate the nature of reflective knowledge. The principle in question belongs to a broader category called knows-knows principles, or KK principles for short. Such principles say that if you know some proposition, then you're in a position to know that you know it.KK principles were prominent among various historical philosophers and can be fruitfully integrated with many views in contemporary epistemology and beyond—and yet almost every co…Read more
  •  508
    Knowledge-to-fact arguments can deliver knowledge
    Analysis 78 (1): 52-56. 2018.
    In a recent paper, Murali Ramachandran endorses a principle that he thinks can help us solve the surprise test puzzle and cause problems for a Williamsonian argument against KK principles. But in this paper I argue that his principle is false and as a result it cannot do either.
  •  86
    Parallels Between Gaps and Gluts
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 90 (2): 383-394. 2012.
    This paper compares two proposed solutions to the liar paradox, both of which involve revisions to classical semantics. The first, that of truth value gaps, denies that all sentences are true or false. The second, that of truth value gluts, asserts that some sentences are true and false. A natural question about these proposals is, ?Do they offer equally good (or bad) solutions, or is one better than the other?? Parsons 1990 suggested an answer to this question, arguing that for every problem fo…Read more
  •  76
    Question closure to solve the surprise test
    Synthese 194 (11): 4583-4596. 2017.
    This paper offers a new solution to the Surprise Test Paradox. The paradox arises thanks to an ingenious argument that seems to show that surprise tests are impossible. My solution to the paradox states that it relies on a questionable closure principle. This closure principle says that if one knows something and competently deduces something else, one knows the further thing. This principle has been endorsed by John Hawthorne and Timothy Williamson, among others, and I trace its motivation back…Read more
  •  136
    Sensitivity, Reflective Knowledge, and Skepticism
    International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 6 (4): 351-367. 2016.
    _ Source: _Page Count 17 Michael Huemer, Ernest Sosa, and Jonathan Vogel have offered a critique of the sensitivity condition on knowledge. According to them, the condition implies that you cannot know of any particular proposition that you do not falsely believe it. Their arguments rest on the claim that you cannot sensitively believe of any particular proposition that you do not falsely believe it. However, as we shall see, these philosophers are mistaken. You can do so. That said, these philo…Read more