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Contextual pluralism and the libertarian paradoxArchiv Fuer Rechts Und Sozialphilosphie 79 (2): 188-197. 1993.
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Four Structures of Intransitive PreferencesIn Routledge Handbook of Philosophy, Politics and Economics, Routledge. forthcoming.
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Value ReceptaclesNoûs 49 (2): 322-332. 2015.
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Does Consequentialism Demand too Much? Recent Work on the Limits of ObligationPhilosophy and Public Affairs 13 (3): 239-254. 1984.
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The fundamental reason for reasons fundamentalismPhilosophical Studies 178 (10): 3107-3127. 2021.Reasons, it is often said, are king in contemporary normative theory. Some philosophers say not only that the vocabulary of reasons is useful, but that reasons play a fundamental explanatory role in normative theory—that many, most, or even all, other normative facts are grounded in facts about reasons. Even if reasons fundamentalism, the strongest version of this view, has only been wholeheartedly endorsed by a few philosophers, it has a kind of prominence in contemporary normative theory that …Read more
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Selfish ReasonsErgo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 2. 2015.
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Why You Should Vote to Change the OutcomePhilosophy and Public Affairs 48 (4): 422-446. 2020.Prevailing opinion—defended by Jason Brennan and others—is that voting to change the outcome is irrational, since although the payoffs of tipping an election can be quite large, the probability of doing so is extraordinarily small. This paper argues that prevailing opinion is incorrect. Voting is shown to be rational so long as two conditions are satisfied: First, the average social benefit of electing the better candidate must be at least twice as great as the individual cost of voting, and sec…Read more
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Mackie Was Not an Error TheoristPhilosophical Perspectives 33 (1): 5-25. 2019.
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Aggregation, Complaints, and RiskPhilosophy and Public Affairs 45 (1): 54-81. 2017.Several philosophers have defended versions of Minimax Complaint, or MC. According to MC, other things equal, we should act in the way that minimises the strongest individual complaint. In this paper, I argue that MC must be rejected because it has implausible implications in certain cases involving risk. In these cases, we can apply MC either ex ante, by focusing on the complaints that could be made based on the prospects that an act gives to people, or ex post, by focusing on the complaints th…Read more
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Three conceptions of action in moral theoryNoûs 35 (1). 2001.The utilitarian conception, which I call “action as production,” holds that action is a way of making use of the world, conceived as a causal mechanism. According to the rational intuitionist conception, which I call “action as assertion,” action is a way of acknowledging the value in the world, conceived as a realm of status. On the Kantian constructivist conception, which I call “action as participation,” action is a way of making the world, qua causal mechanism, come to count as a realm of st…Read more
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A Paradox of Evidential EquivalenceMind 129 (513): 113-127. 2020.Our evidence can be about different subject matters. In fact, necessarily equivalent pieces of evidence can be about different subject matters. Does the hyperintensionality of ‘aboutness’ engender any hyperintensionality at the level of rational credence? In this paper, I present a case which seems to suggest that the answer is ‘yes’. In particular, I argue that our intuitive notions of independent evidence and inadmissible evidence are sensitive to aboutness in a hyperintensional way. We are th…Read more
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Saving the FewNoûs 47 (2): 302-315. 2011.
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Civic TrustPhilosophers' Imprint 17. 2017.It is a commonplace that there are limits to the ways we can permissibly treat people, even in the service of good ends. For example, we may not steal someone’s wallet, even if we plan to donate the contents to famine relief, or break a promise to help a colleague move, even if we encounter someone else on the way whose need is somewhat more urgent. In other words, we should observe certain constraints against mistreating people, where a constraint is a moral principle that we should not violate…Read more
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The Power to Promise OneselfSouthern Journal of Philosophy 52 (1): 61-85. 2014.Considerable attention has been devoted to the peculiar obligating force of interpersonal promises. But paradigmatic promising is not an orphan in the family of our moral concepts, and the focus on interpersonal promises has overshadowed sibling phenomena that any account of promises should also cover. I examine the case of single-party promises and argue, against the prevailing view, that we have good reason to take the phenomenon of making promises to oneself seriously. This supports what I ca…Read more
APA Eastern Division
Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Normative Ethics |
Areas of Interest
Political Theory |
Science, Logic, and Mathematics |