-
Evidence and epistemic reasonsIn Maria Lasonen-Aarnio & Clayton Littlejohn (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Evidence, Routledge. 2019.
-
57Reasons FirstSchroeder, Mark, Reasons First, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021, pp. v + 274, $40 (hardback) (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.Mark Schroeder's latest book elegantly brings together two strands of his research program that have been in development for nearly two decades. The first is his work in epistemology; the second is...
-
77Everything FirstAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 97 (1): 248-272. 2023.Normative theory aims to understand the commonalities between ethics, prudence, epistemology, aesthetics and political philosophy (among others). One central question in normative theory is what is fundamental to the normative. The reasons-first approach holds that normative reasons are fundamental to the normative domain. This view has been challenged by proponents of alternative X-first views such as value, fittingness and ought. This paper examines the debate about the analysis of normative r…Read more
-
48No one has done more for analytic virtue epistemology than Ernie Sosa; indeed, one is tempted to delete ‘virtue’. This is his latest development of his teleolog.
-
32Love: A new understanding of an ancient emotion, by Simon May. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019, 288 pp. hbk. ISBN: 9780190884833 (review)European Journal of Philosophy 30 (1): 440-443. 2022.European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 30, Issue 1, Page 440-443, March 2022.
-
85Beginning in Wonder: Suspensive Attitudes and Epistemic DilemmasIn Nick Hughes (ed.), Epistemic Dilemmas, Oxford University Press. 2021.We argue that we can avoid epistemic dilemmas by properly understanding the nature and epistemology of the suspension of judgment, with a particular focus on conflicts between higher-order evidence and first-order evidence.
-
103On Suspending ProperlyIn Paul Silva & Luis R. G. Oliveira (eds.), Propositional and Doxastic Justification: New Essays on their Nature and Significance, Routledge. 2022.We argue for a novel view of suspending judgment properly--i.e., suspending judgment in an ex post justified way. In so doing we argue for a Kantian virtue-theoretic view of epistemic normativity and against teleological virtue-theoretic accounts.
-
99Impartiality, Eudaimonic Encroachment, and the Boundaries of MoralityOxford Studies in Normative Ethics. forthcoming.Many hold that morality is essentially impartial. Many also hold that partiality is justified. Susan Wolf argues that these commitments push us towards downgrading morality's practical significance. Here I argue that there is a way of pushing morality's boundaries in a partialist direction in a way that respects Wolf's insights.
-
70Enriched Perceptual Content and the Limits of FoundationalismPhilosophical Topics 49 (2): 151-171. 2021.This paper is about the epistemology of perceptual experiences that have enriched high-level content. Enriched high-level content is content about features other than shape, color, and spatial relations that has a particular etiology. Its etiology runs through states of the agent that process other perceptual content and output sensory content about high-level features. My main contention is that the justification provided by such experiences is not foundational justification. This is because th…Read more
-
21The Importance of Being RationalBy Errol Lord Oxford University Press, 2018. ix + 278 pp. $47.49 (review)Analysis 81 (1): 130-132. 2021._Summary_
-
80Defending The Importance of Being Rational: Replies to Bedke and Guindon, Hazlett, and WayAnalysis 81 (1): 168-183. 2021.Defending The Importance of Being Rational: Replies to Bedke and Guindon, Hazlett, and Way By LordErrol
-
669Suspension of Judgment, Rationality's Competition, and the Reach of the EpistemicIn Sebastian Schmidt & Gerhard Ernst (eds.), The Ethics of Belief and Beyond: Understanding Mental Normativity, Routledge. pp. 126-145. 2020.Errol Lord explores the boundaries of epistemic normativity. He argues that we can understand these better by thinking about which mental states are competitors in rationality’s competition. He argues that belief, disbelief, and two kinds of suspension of judgment are competitors. Lord shows that there are non-evidential reasons for suspension of judgment. One upshot is an independent motivation for a certain sort of pragmatist view of epistemic rationality.
-
88How to Learn about Aesthetics and Morality through Acquaintance and DeferenceOxford Studies in Metaethics 13. 2018.There are parallel debates in metaethics and aesthetics about the rational merits of deferring to others about ethics and aesthetics. In both areas it is common to think that there is something amiss about deference. A popular explanation of this in aesthetics appeals to the importance of aesthetic acquaintance. This kind of explanation has not been explored much in ethics. This chapter defends a unified account of what is amiss about ethical and aesthetic deference. According to this account, d…Read more
-
53Acting for the Right Reasons, Abilities, and ObligationOxford Studies in Metaethics 10. 2015.Objectivists about obligation hold that obligations are determined by all of the normatively relevant facts. Perspectivalists, on the other hand, hold that only facts within one’s perspective can determine what we are obligated to do. This chapter argues for a perspectivalist view. It argues that what you are obligated to do is determined by the normative reasons you possess. This view is anchored in the thought that our obligations have to be action-guiding in a certain sense—we have to be able…Read more
-
50Replies to Schafer, Schroeder, and StaffelPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 100 (2): 476-487. 2020.
-
28Précis of The Importance of Being RationalPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 100 (2): 452-456. 2020.
-
66The Nature of Perceptual Expertise and the Rationality of CriticismErgo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 6. 2019.
-
765Suspension, Higher-Order Evidence, and DefeatIn Jessica Brown & Mona Simion (eds.), Reasons, Justification, and Defeat, Oxford University Press. 2021.
-
33The real symmetry problem for wide-scope accounts of rationalityPhilosophical Studies 170 (3): 443-464. 2014.You are irrational when you are akratic. On this point most agree. Despite this agreement, there is a tremendous amount of disagreement about what the correct explanation of this data is. Narrow-scopers think that the correct explanation is that you are violating a narrow-scope conditional requirement. You lack an intention to x that you are required to have given the fact that you believe you ought to x. Wide-scopers disagree. They think that a conditional you are required to make true is false…Read more
-
93Humean Nature: How Desire Explains Action, Thought, and FeelingPhilosophical Quarterly 69 (274): 202-206. 2019.Humean Nature: How Desire Explains Action, Thought, and Feeling. By Sinhababu Neil.
-
715Reasons: Wrong, Right, Normative, FundamentalJournal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 15 (1). 2019.Reasons fundamentalists maintain that we can analyze all derivative normative properties in terms of normative reasons. These theorists famously encounter the Wrong Kind of Reasons problem, since not all reasons for reactions seem relevant for reasons-based analyses. Some have argued that this problem is a general one for many theorists, and claim that this lightens the burden for reasons fundamentalists. We argue in this paper that the reverse is true: the generality of the problem makes life h…Read more
-
591Prime Time (for the Basing Relation)In J. Adam Carter & Patrick Bondy (eds.), Well Founded Belief: New Essays on the Epistemic Basing Relation. 2020.It is often assumed that believing that p for a normative reason consists in nothing more than (i) believing that p for a reason and (ii) that reason’s corresponding to a normative reason to believe that p, where (i) and (ii) are independent factors. This is the Composite View. In this paper, we argue against the Composite View on extensional and theoretical grounds. We advocate an alternative that we call the Prime View. On this view, believing for a normative reason is a distinctive achieveme…Read more
-
3An Opinionated Guide to the Weight of ReasonsIn Errol Lord & Barry Maguire (eds.), Weighing Reasons, Oup Usa. 2016.
-
181Reasons InternalismIn Tristram Colin McPherson & David Plunkett (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Metaethics, Routledge. pp. 324-339. 2017.
-
318Dancy on Acting for the Right ReasonJournal of Ethics and Social Philosophy (3): 1-7. 2007.It is a truism that agents can do the right action for the right reason. To put the point in terms more familiar to ethicists, it is a truism that one’s motivating reason can be one’s normative reason. In this short note, I will argue that Jonathan Dancy’s preferred view about how this is possible faces a dilemma. Dancy has the choice between accounting for two plausible constraints while at the same time holding an outlandish philosophy of mind by his own lights or giving up his view's central …Read more
-
127The Explanatory Problem for Cognitivism about Practical ReasonIn Conor McHugh Jonathan Way & Daniel Whiting (eds.), Normativity: Epistemic and Practical, . forthcoming.Cognitivists about practical reason hold that we can explain why certain wide-scope requirements of practical rationality are true by appealing to certain epistemic requirements. Extant discussions of cognitivism focus solely on two claims. The first is the claim that intentions involve beliefs. The second is that whenever your intentions are incoherent in certain ways, you will be epistemically irrational. Even if the cognitivist successfully defends these claims, she still needs to show that t…Read more
-
94The Importance of Being RationalOxford University Press. 2018.Errol Lord offers a new account of the nature of rationality: what it is for one to be rational is to correctly respond to the normative reasons one possesses. Lord defends novel views about what it is to possess reasons and what it is to correctly respond to reasons, and dispels doubts about whether we ought to be rational.
-
360Justifying PartialityEthical Theory and Moral Practice 19 (3): 569-590. 2016.It’s an undeniable fact about our moral lives that we are partial towards certain people and projects. Despite this, it has traditionally been very hard to justify partiality. In this paper I defend a novel partialist theory. The context of the paper is the debate between three different views of how partiality is justified. According to the first view, partiality is justified by facts about our ground projects. According to the second view, partiality is justified by facts about our relationshi…Read more
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Action |
Meta-Ethics |