•  2
    There's more to consider than knowledge and belief
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 44. 2021.
    Phillips et al. present a number of arguments for the premise that knowledge is more basic than belief. Although their arguments are coherent and sound, they do not directly address numerous cases in which belief appears to be a developmental precursor to knowledge. I describe several examples, not necessarily as a direct challenge, but rather to better understand their framework.
  •  3
    The authors argue that children prefer fictions with imaginary worlds. But evidence from the developmental literature challenges this claim. Children's choices of stories and story events show that they often prefer realism. Further, work on the imagination's relation to counterfactual reasoning suggests that an attraction to unrealistic fiction would undermine the imagination's role in helping children understand reality.
  •  77
    People are adept at inferring novel causal relations, even from only a few observations. Prior knowledge about the probability of encountering causal relations of various types and the nature of the mechanisms relating causes and effects plays a crucial role in these inferences. We test a formal account of how this knowledge can be used and acquired, based on analyzing causal induction as Bayesian inference. Five studies explored the predictions of this account with adults and 4-year-olds, using…Read more
  •  12
    Reach tracking reveals dissociable processes underlying cognitive control
    with Christopher D. Erb, Jeff Moher, and Joo-Hyun Song
    Cognition 152 (C): 114-126. 2016.
  •  12
    Children’s developing understanding of the relation between variable causal efficacy and mechanistic complexity
    with Christopher D. Erb and David W. Buchanan
    Cognition 129 (3): 494-500. 2013.
  • Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy, Volume 9 (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2023.
    This is the ninth volume of Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy. Since its revival in the 1970s political philosophy has been a vibrant field in philosophy, one that intersects with jurisprudence, normative economics, political theory in political science departments, and just war theory. OSPP aims to publish some of the best contemporary work in political philosophy and these closely related subfields.
  •  11
    Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 9 (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2023.
    This is Volume 9 of Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy. It contains papers on democracy, the law, political liberalism, voting, social experimentation, state neutrality, equality and incentives, self-ownership, drugs and prostitution, and Lincoln. Chapters include: “Challenging Democratic Commitments: On Liberal Arguments for Instrumentalism About Democracy” (Daniel Viehoff); “Emotional Abuse and the Law” (Elizabeth Brake); “Practical Political Liberalism” (Caleb Perl); “Beyond the Voting De…Read more
  • Parfit's Case against Subjectivism
    In Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Volume 6, Oxford University Press. 2011.
  •  17
    Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 7 (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2021.
    This is the seventh volume of Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy. The series aims to publish some of the best contemporary work in the vibrant field of political philosophy and its closely related subfields, including jurisprudence, normative economics, political theory in political science departments, and just war theory.
  •  152
    A robust hybrid theory of well-being
    Philosophical Studies 178 (9): 2829-2851. 2020.
    This paper articulates and defends a novel hybrid account of well-being. We will call our view a Robust Hybrid. We call it robust because it grants a broad and not subservient role to both objective and subjective values. In this paper we assume, we think plausibly but without argument, that there is a significant objective component to well-being. Here we clarify what it takes for an account of well-being to have a subjective component. Roughly, we argue, it must allow that favoring attitudes t…Read more
  •  14
    Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy, vol. 6 (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2020.
    This is the sixth volume of Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy. The series aims to publish some of the best contemporary work in the vibrant field of political philosophy and its closely related subfields, including jurisprudence, normative economics, political theory in political science departments, and just war theory
  •  48
    Parfit's Case against Subjectivism 1
    Oxford Studies in Metaethics 6. 2011.
    Derek Parfit, in On What Matters, argues that all subjective accounts of normative reasons for action are false. This chapter focuses on his “Agony Argument.” The first premise of the Agony Argument is that we necessarily have current reasons to avoid our own future agony. Its second premise is that subjective accounts cannot vindicate this fact. So, the argument concludes, subjective accounts must be rejected. This chapter accepts the first premise of this argument and that it is valid. The mai…Read more
  •  5
    Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 6 (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2020.
    This is the sixth volume of Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy. The series aims to publish some of the best contemporary work in the vibrant field of political philosophy and its closely related subfields, including jurisprudence, normative economics, political theory in political science departments, and just war theory
  •  276
    The Point of Self-Ownership
    In David Schmidtz & Carmen Pavel (eds.), Oxford Handbook on Freedom, Oxford University Press. pp. 124-40. 2018.
    I examine what the point of self-ownership might best be thought to be.
  •  973
    The Ethics of Eating Meat
    Philosophic Exchange 46 (1). 2017.
    I explore the ethical issues involved in eating meat.
  •  279
    How to be a Subjectivist
    In Ruth Chang & Kurt Sylvan (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Practical Reason, Routledge. forthcoming.
    Subjectivism, desires, reasons, well-being, ethics
  •  459
    "Understanding the Demandingness Objection"
    In Douglas W. Portmore (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Consequentialism, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
    This paper examines possible interpretations of the Demandingness Objection as it is supposed to work against Consequentialist ethical theories.
  •  103
    The Case for Stance Dependent Reasons
    Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 15 (2). 2019.
    Many philosophers maintain that neither one’s reasons for action nor well-being are ever grounded in facts about what we desire or favor. Yet our reasons to eat a flavor of ice cream we like rather than one we do not seem an obvious counter-example. I argue that there is no getting around such examples and that therefore a fully stance independent account of the grounding of our reasons is implausible. At least in matters of mere taste our “stance” plays a normative role in grounding reasons.
  •  1
    Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 5 (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2019.
    This is the fifth volume of Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy. The series aims to publish some of the best contemporary work in the vibrant field of political philosophy and its closely related subfields, including jurisprudence, normative economics, political theory in political science departments, and just war theory.
  •  3
    Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy, vol. 2 (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2016.
    This is the second volume of Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy. Since its revival in the 1970s political philosophy has been a vibrant field in philosophy, one that intersects with jurisprudence, normative economics, political theory in political science departments, and just war theory. OSPP aims to publish some of the best contemporary work in political philosophy and these closely related subfields. The papers in this volume address a range of central topics and represent cutting edge wo…Read more
  •  9
    Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy, Volume 3 (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2017.
    This is the third volume of Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy. The series aims to publish some of the best contemporary work in the vibrant field of political philosophy and its closely related subfields, including jurisprudence, normative economics, political theory in political science departments, and just war theory.
  • Well-Being and Consequentialism
    Dissertation, University of Michigan. 1997.
    There are two common assumptions about well-being that I am especially concerned to dispute in this dissertation. The first assumption is that differences in kinds of prudential values can be reduced to differences in amount of prudential value. That is, that differences in the qualities of values can reliably be reduced to mere differences in quantity. The second assumption is that well-being is the appropriate object of moral concern. Consequentialist moral theories typically argue that morali…Read more
  •  164
    Pleasure as a Mental State
    Utilitas 11 (2): 230. 1999.
    Shelly Kagan and Leonard Katz have offered versions of hedonism that aspire to occupy a middle position between the view that pleasure is a unitary sensation and the view that pleasure is, as Sidgwick put it, desirable consciousness. Thus they hope to offer a hedonistic account of well-being that does not mistakenly suppose that pleasure is a special kind of tingle, yet to offer a sharp alternative to desire-based accounts. I argue that they have not identified a coherent middle position
  •  30
    Subjectivism and Blame
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 37 (sup1): 149-170. 2007.
  •  899
    Disagreeing about how to disagree
    with Kate Manne
    Philosophical Studies 168 (3): 823-34. 2014.
    David Enoch, in Taking Morality Seriously, argues for a broad normative asymmetry between how we should behave when disagreeing about facts and how we should behave when disagreeing due to differing preferences. Enoch claims that moral disputes have the earmarks of a factual dispute rather than a preference dispute and that this makes more plausible a realist understanding of morality. We try to clarify what such claims would have to look like to be compelling and we resist his main conclusions.
  •  570
    Pain for objectivists: The case of matters of mere taste
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 8 (4). 2005.
    Can we adequately account for our reasons of mere taste without holding that our desires ground such reasons? Recently, Scanlon and Parfit have argued that we can, pointing to pleasure and pain as the grounds of such reasons. In this paper I take issue with each of their accounts. I conclude that we do not yet have a plausible rival to a desire-based understanding of the grounds of such reasons.