•  211
    Kantian Naturalism
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.
    I offer a qualified defence of Kant’s natural teleological argument, that is, his inference from the (un)naturalness of an act to its (im)morality. Though I reject many of Kant’s conclusions, I think the form of argument he uses to support these conclusions is not as wrong-headed as it might at first appear. I consider and answer two objections: first, that the argument is inconsistent with Kant’s moral rationalism; and second, that the argument is inconsistent with post-Kantian developments i…Read more
  •  299
    Kantian Eudaimonism
    Journal of the American Philosophical Association 9 (4): 655-669. 2023.
    My aim in this essay is to reorient our understanding of the Kantian ethical project, especially in relation to its assumed rivals. I do this by considering Kant's relation to eudaimonism, especially in its Aristotelian form. I argue for two points. First, once we understand what Kant and Aristotle mean by happiness, we can see that not only is it the case that, by Kant's lights, Aristotle is not a eudaimonist. We can also see that, by Aristotle's lights, Kant is a eudaimonist. Second, we can se…Read more
  •  504
    Taking metaphysics seriously: Kant on the foundations of ethics
    European Journal of Philosophy 30 (2): 793-807. 2021.
    Ask most philosophers for an example of a moral rationalist, and they will probably answer “Kant.” And no wonder. Kant’s first great work of moral philosophy, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, opens with a clarion call for rationalism, proclaiming the need to work out for once a pure moral philosophy, a metaphysics of morals. That this metaphysics includes the first principle of ethics, the moral law, is obvious. But what about the second principles, particular moral laws, such as dut…Read more
  •  290
    Kantian Cognitivism
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 101 (4): 711-725. 2020.
    According to many of its advocates, one of the main attractions of Kantian moral philosophy is its metaethical innocence. The most interesting argument for such innocence appeals to Kantians' rationalism. Roughly, if moral action is simply rational action, then we do not need to appeal to anything beyond rationality to certify moral judgment. I assess this argument by reflecting on (dis)analogies between moral and logical forms of rationalism. I conclude that the Kantian claim to metaethical inn…Read more
  •  534
    More Than a Feeling
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 44 (3-4): 425-442. 2014.
    According to rationalist conceptions of moral agency, the constitutive capacities of moral agency are rational capacities. So understood, rationalists are often thought to have a problem with feeling. For example, many believe that rationalists must reject the attractive Aristotelian thought that moral activity is by nature pleasant. I disagree. It is easy to go wrong here because it is easy to assume that pleasure is empirical rather than rational and so extrinsic rather than intrinsic to mo…Read more
  •  92
    The Virtues of Happiness: A Theory of the Good Life (review)
    Philosophical Quarterly 66 (262): 181-183. 2016.
    A Review of Paul Bloomfield's book _The Virtues of Happiness: A Theory of the Good Life_ (OUP 2014).
  •  867
    Morality is its own Reward
    Kantian Review 21 (3): 343-365. 2016.
    Traditionally, Kantian ethics has been thought hostile to agents' well-being. Recent commentators have rightly called this view into question, but they do not push their challenge far enough. For they leave in place a fundamental assumption on which the traditional view rests, viz., that happiness is all there is to well-being. This assumption is important, since, combined with Kant’s rationalism about morality and empiricism about happiness, it implies that morality and well-being are at bes…Read more
  •  778
    Reason in its Practical Application
    Philosophers' Imprint 13 1-17. 2013.
    Is practical reason a cognitive faculty? Do practical judgments make claims about a subject matter that are appropriately assessed in terms of their agreement with that subject matter? According to Kantians like Christine Korsgaard, the answer is no. To think otherwise is to conflate the theoretical and the practical, the epistemic and the ethical. I am not convinced. In this paper, I motivate my skepticism through examination of the very figure who inspires Korsgaard’s rejection of cognitivism:…Read more