Parkville, Victoria, Australia
Areas of Interest
Meta-Ethics
  •  116
    What is it to share the same concept? The question is an important one since sharing the same concept explains our ability to non-accidentally coordinate on the same topic over time and between individuals. Moreover, concept identity grounds key logical relations among thought contents such as samesaying, contradiction, validity, and entailment. Finally, an account of concept identity is crucial to explaining and justifying epistemic efforts to better understand the precise contents of our thoug…Read more
  •  76
    A characteristic form of philosophical inquiry seeks to answer ‘what is x?’ questions. In this paper, we ask how philosophers do and should adjudicate debates about the correct answer to such questions. We argue that philosophers do and should rely on a distinctive type of pragmatic and meta-representational reasoning – a form of rationalizing self-interpretation – in answering ‘what is x?’ questions. We start by placing our methodological discussion within a broader theoretical framework. We po…Read more
  •  22
    Meanings as species in communication and inquiry
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.
    Can mere conceptual competence explain the apriori? Many contemporary theorists believe that conceptual competence grounds apriori conceptual truths – and that this fact helps explain how thinkers can have apriori justification for accepting these truths and reasoning in accord with them. In this chapter, I'll examine several contemporary defenses of the conceptual approach to apriority in order to clarify their core commitments about the nature of concepts. The common thread, I'll argue, is a p…Read more
  •  204
    The Limits of Metalinguistic Negotiation: The Role of Shared Meanings in Normative Debate
    with Laura Schroeter and Kevin Toh
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 52 (2): 180-196. 2022.
    According to philosophical orthodoxy, the parties to moral or legal disputes genuinely disagree only if their uses of key normative terms in the dispute express the same meaning. Recently, however, this orthodoxy has been challenged. According to an influential alternative view, genuine moral and legal disagreements should be understood as metalinguistic negotiations over which meaning a given term should have. In this paper, we argue that the shared meaning view is motivated by much deeper cons…Read more
  • Introduction
    In Karen Jones & François Schroeter (eds.), The Many Moral Rationalisms, Oxford Univerisity Press. 2018.
  • Reasons and justifiability
    In Karen Jones & François Schroeter (eds.), The Many Moral Rationalisms, Oxford Univerisity Press. 2018.
    Traditional normative realists are committed to the idea that different individuals manage to pick out on the very same property with terms like ‘morally right’, despite variations in their understanding and use of the term. How is this possible? In this chapter, we sketch a metasemantic account that promises to vindicate traditional normative realism within a broadly rationalist framework. We will first introduce a metasemantic principle that ties reference determination to what is justifiable…Read more
  •  5
    The many moral rationalisms (edited book)
    with Karen Jones
    Oxford University Press. 2018.
    Moral rationalism takes human reason and human rationality to be the key elements in an explanation of the nature of morality, moral judgment, and moral knowledge. This volume explores the resources of this rich philosophical tradition. Thirteen original essays, framed by the editors' introduction, critically examine the four core theses of moral rationalism: (i) the psychological thesis that reason is the source of moral judgment, (ii) the metaphysical thesis that moral requirements are constit…Read more
  •  338
    A new interpretivist metasemantics for fundamental legal disagreements
    with Laura Schroeter and Kevin Toh
    Legal Theory 26 (1): 62-99. 2020.
    ABSTRACTWhat does it take for lawyers and others to think or talk about the same legal topic—e.g., defamation, culpability? We argue that people are able to think or talk about the same topic not when they possess a matching substantive understanding of the topic, as traditional metasemantics says, but instead when their thoughts or utterances are related to each other in certain ways. And what determines the content of thoughts and utterances is what would best serve the core purposes of the re…Read more
  •  57
    Inscrutability and Its Discontents
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 50 (5): 566-579. 2020.
    Our main focus in this paper is Herman Cappelen’s claim, defended in Fixing Language, that reference is radically inscrutable. We argue that Cappelen’s inscrutability thesis should be rejected. We also highlight how rejecting inscrutability undermines Cappelen’s most radical conclusions about conceptual engineering. In addition, we raise a worry about his positive account of topic continuity through inquiry and debate.
  •  39
    Mind-making, Affective Regulation, and Resistance
    Tandf: Australasian Philosophical Review 3 (1): 86-89. 2019.
    Volume 3, Issue 1, March 2019, Page 86-89.
  •  1
    The Many Moral Rationalisms (edited book)
    Oxford Univerisity Press. 2018.
    Moral rationalism takes human reason and human rationality to be the key elements in an explanation of the nature of morality, moral judgment, and moral knowledge. This volume explores the resources of this rich philosophical tradition. Thirteen original essays, framed by the editors' introduction, critically examine the four core theses of moral rationalism: (i) the psychological thesis that reason is the source of moral judgment, (ii) the metaphysical thesis that moral requirements are constit…Read more
  •  296
    Semantic Deference versus Semantic Coordination
    American Philosophical Quarterly 53 (2): 193-210. 2016.
    It's widely accepted that social facts about an individual's linguistic community can affect both the reference of her words and the concepts those words express. Theorists sympathetic to the internalist tradition have sought to accommodate these social dependence phenomena without altering their core theoretical commitments by positing deferential reference-fixing criteria. In this paper, we sketch a different explanation of social dependence phenomena, according to which all concepts are indiv…Read more
  •  76
    Keeping track of what’s right
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 48 (3-4): 489-509. 2018.
    In this paper, we argue that ordinary judgments about core normative topics purport to attribute stable, objective properties and relations. Our strategy is first to analyze the structures and practices characteristic of paradigmatically representational concepts such as concepts of objects and natural kinds. We identify three broad features that ground the representational purport of these concepts. We then argue that core normative concepts exhibit these same features.
  •  119
    The Generalized Integration Challenge is the task of providing, for a given domain of discourse, a simultaneously acceptable metaphysics, epistemology and metasemantics and showing them to be so. In this paper, we focus on a metaethical position for which seems particularly acute: the brand of normative realism which takes normative properties to be mind-independent and causally inert. The problem is that these metaphysical commitments seem to make normative knowledge impossible. We suggest that…Read more
  •  572
    Metasemantics and Metaethics
    In Tristram McPherson & David Plunkett (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Metaethics, Routledge. pp. 519-535. 2017.
  •  2
    Moral Expertise
    In Tristram McPherson & David Plunkett (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Metaethics, Routledge. pp. 459-471. 2017.
  •  109
    Reasons as right-makers
    Philosophical Explorations 12 (3): 279-296. 2009.
    This paper sketches a right-maker account of normative practical reasons along functionalist lines. The approach is contrasted with other similar accounts, in particular John Broome's analysis of reasons as explanations of oughts
  •  100
    Endorsement and Autonomous Agency
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 69 (3): 633-659. 2004.
    We take self‐governance or autonomy to be a central feature of human agency: we believe that our actions normally occur under our guidance and at our command. A common criticism of the standard theory of action is that it leaves the agent out of his actions and thus mischaracterizes our autonomy. According to proponents of the endorsement model of autonomy, such as Harry Frankfurt and David Velleman, the standard theory simply needs to be supplemented with the agent's actual endorsement of his a…Read more
  •  25
    Kants Theorie der formalen Bestimmung des Willens
    Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 47 (3). 1993.
  •  103
    A slim semantics for thin moral terms?
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 81 (2). 2003.
    This paper is a critique of Ralph Wedgwood's recent attempt to use the framework of conceptual role semantics in metaethics. Wedgwood's central idea is that the action-guiding role of moral terms suffices to determine genuine properties as their semantic values. We argue that Wedgwood cannot get so much for so little. We explore two interpretations of Wedgwood's account of what it takes to be competent with a thin moral term. On the first interpretation, the account does not warrant the assignme…Read more
  •  10
    Wieviele moralische Wahrheiten gibt es?
    Conceptus: Zeitschrift Fur Philosophie 37 (92): 83-104. 2008.
  •  24
    Review: Die psychologische Basis von Freiheit und Verantwortung. Neuere Literatur (review)
    Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 59 (4). 2005.
  •  32
    Experimentelle Philosophie. Ein kritischer Überblick
    Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 62 (3): 433-445. 2008.
  •  63
    Experimental philosophers, conceptual analysts, and the rest of us
    Philosophical Explorations 11 (2): 143-149. 2008.
    In an interesting recent exchange, Antti Kauppinen (2007) disagrees with Thomas Nadelhoffer and Eddy Nahmias (2007) over the prospects of experimental methods in philosophy. Kauppinen's critique of experimental philosophy is premised on an endorsement of a priori conceptual analysis. This premise has shaped the trajectory of their debate. In this note, I consider what foes of conceptual analysis will have to say about their exchange.
  •  215
    The limits of sentimentalism
    Ethics 116 (2): 337-361. 2006.
    Unlike traditional sentimentalists, sophisticated sentimentalists don’t think that the main linguistic function of evaluative terms is simply to express emotional responses. Instead, they contend that to predicate an evaluative term to an object is to judge that a particular emotion is justified toward that object. I will raise a fundamental difficulty for the sophisticated sentimentalists’ attempt to provide a credible account of the meaning of our most important evaluative terms. A more carefu…Read more
  •  185
    Le relativisme moral et le projet de coopération épistémique
    Les ateliers de l'éthique/The Ethics Forum 4 (1): 4-19. 2009.
    Cet article examine de façon critique certaines des récentes tentatives de défendre une position relativiste en métaéthique. Les adeptes du relativisme ont tenté avec beaucoup d’ingéniosité de montrer comment leur position peut soit accepter soit invalider l’intuition selon laquelle nous parlons tous de la même chose quand nous utilisons le vocabulaire moral. Mon argument cherche à établir qu’ils ont ce faisant négligé l’une des fonctions centrales de notre discours moral : créer u…Read more
  •  1556
    A third way in metaethics
    Noûs 43 (1): 1-30. 2009.
    What does it take to count as competent with the meaning of a thin evaluative predicate like 'is the right thing to do'? According to minimalists like Allan Gibbard and Ralph Wedgwood, competent speakers must simply use the predicate to express their own motivational states. According to analytic descriptivists like Frank Jackson, Philip Pettit and Christopher Peacocke, competent speakers must grasp a particular criterion for identifying the property picked out by the term. Both approaches face …Read more
  • Faut-il craindre le relativisme moral?
    Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie Und Theologie 55 (2): 324-333. 2008.