•  56
    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...
  •  64
    Everything First
    Aristotelian 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
  •  44
    No 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.
  •  29
    European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 30, Issue 1, Page 440-443, March 2022.
  •  76
    Beginning in Wonder: Suspensive Attitudes and Epistemic Dilemmas
    In 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.
  •  91
    On Suspending Properly
    In Luis Oliveria & Paul Silva (eds.), Propositional and Doxastic Justification, Routledge. forthcoming.
    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.
  •  87
    Impartiality, Eudaimonic Encroachment, and the Boundaries of Morality
    Oxford 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.
  •  65
    Enriched Perceptual Content and the Limits of Foundationalism
    Philosophical 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
  •  69
    Defending The Importance of Being Rational: Replies to Bedke and Guindon, Hazlett, and Way By LordErrol
  •  110
    The Vices of Perception
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 101 (3): 727-734. 2020.
  •  614
    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.
  •  80
    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
  •  47
    Acting for the Right Reasons, Abilities, and Obligation
    Oxford 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
  •  44
    Replies to Schafer, Schroeder, and Staffel
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 100 (2): 476-487. 2020.
  •  27
    Précis of The Importance of Being Rational
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 100 (2): 452-456. 2020.
  •  60
    The Nature of Perceptual Expertise and the Rationality of Criticism
    Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 6. 2019.
  •  26
    The real symmetry problem for wide-scope accounts of rationality
    Philosophical 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
  •  90
    Humean Nature: How Desire Explains Action, Thought, and Feeling
    Philosophical Quarterly 69 (274): 202-206. 2019.
    Humean Nature: How Desire Explains Action, Thought, and Feeling. By Sinhababu Neil.
  •  661
    Reasons: Wrong, Right, Normative, Fundamental
    with Kurt Sylvan
    Journal 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
  •  532
    Prime Time (for the Basing Relation)
    with Kurt Sylvan
    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
  •  3
    An Opinionated Guide to the Weight of Reasons
    In Errol Lord & Barry Maguire (eds.), Weighing Reasons, Oup Usa. 2016.
  •  143
    Reasons Internalism
    In Tristram McPherson & David Plunkett (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Metaethics, Routledge. pp. 324-339. 2017.
  •  253
    On the Rational Power of Aesthetic Testimony
    British Journal of Aesthetics 56 (1): 1-13. 2016.
    Can one know aesthetic facts on the basis of testimony? Optimists say that we can. Pessimists say that we cannot. Daniel Whiting has recently put forth a new argument for pessimism about the epistemic power of aesthetic testimony. He seeks to establish pessimism by arguing that testimonial beliefs cannot justify the downstream reactions that would otherwise be justified if one had aesthetic knowledge. In this paper, I will show that there is a plausible alternative explanation of the data that W…Read more
  •  169
    Violating requirements, exiting from requirements, and the scope of rationality
    Philosophical Quarterly 61 (243): 392-399. 2011.
    It is generally agreed that many types of attitudinal incoherence are irrational, but there is controversy about why they are. Some think incoherence is irrational because it violates certain wide-scope conditional requirements, others (‘narrow-scopers’) that it violates narrow-scope conditional requirements. In his paper ‘The Scope of Rational Requirements’, John Brunero has offered a putative counter-example to narrow-scope views. But a narrow-scoper should reject a crucial assumption which Br…Read more
  •  261
    Having reasons and the factoring account
    Philosophical Studies 149 (3). 2010.
    It’s natural to say that when it’s rational for me to φ, I have reasons to φ. That is, there are reasons for φ-ing, and moreover, I have some of them. Mark Schroeder calls this view The Factoring Account of the having reasons relation. He thinks The Factoring Account is false. In this paper, I defend The Factoring Account. Not only do I provide intuitive support for the view, but I also defend it against Schroeder’s criticisms. Moreover, I show that it helps us understand the requirements of sub…Read more
  •  343
    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