•  763
    Better Not to Have Children
    Think, 10(27), 113-121 (27): 113-121. 2011.
    Most people take it for granted that it's morally permissible to have children. They may raise questions about the number of children it's responsible to have or whether it's permissible to reproduce when there's a strong risk of serious disability. But in general, having children is considered a good thing to do, something that's morally permissible in most cases (perhaps even obligatory).
  •  55
    Normative Reasons and Theism
    Palgrave MacMillan. 2018.
    Normative reasons are reasons to do and believe things. Intellectual inquiry seems to presuppose their existence, for we cannot justifiably conclude that we exist; that there is an external world; and that there are better and worse ways of investigating it and behaving in it, unless there are reasons to do and believe such things. But just what in the world are normative reasons? In this book a case is made for believing normative reasons are favouring relations that have a single, external sou…Read more
  •  176
    How Many Children Should We Have?: None
    The Philosophers' Magazine 75 72-77. 2016.
    Harrison and Tanner argue that having children is morally wrong.
  •  271
    Hooray! We're Not Morally Responsible!
    Think 8 (23): 87-95. 2009.
    Being morally responsible means being blameworthy and deserving of punishment if we do wrong and praiseworthy and deserving reward if we do right. In what follows I shall argue that in all likelihood we're not morally responsible. None of us. Ever.
  •  19
    Believable Normative Error Theory
    Journal of the American Philosophical Association 8 (2): 208-223. 2022.
    Normative error theory is thought by some to be unbelievable because they suppose the incompatibility of believing a proposition at the same time as believing that one has no normative reason to believe it—which believing in normative error theory would seem to involve. In this article, I argue that normative holism is believable and that a normative holist will believe that the truth of a proposition does not invariably generate a normative reason to believe it. I outline five different scenari…Read more
  •  87
    Antinatalism and Moral Particularism
    Essays in Philosophy 20 (1): 66-88. 2019.
    I believe most acts of human procreation are immoral, and I believe this despite also believing in the truth of moral particularism. In this paper I explain why. I argue that procreative acts possess numerous features that, in other contexts, seem typically to operate with negative moral valences. Other things being equal this gives us reason to believe they will operate negatively in the context of procreative acts as well. However, most people’s intuitions represent procreative acts to be mora…Read more
  •  508
    Divine command theories of metaethics are commonly rejected on the basis of the Euthyphro problem. In this paper, I argue that the Euthyphro can be raised for all forms of moral realism. I go on to argue that this does not matter as the Euthyphro is not really a problem after all. I then briefly outline some of the attractions of a divine command theory of metaethics. I suggest that given one of the major reasons for rejecting such an analysis has been found to be unsound divine command theories…Read more