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2The Locative Analysis of Good For Formulated and DefendedJournal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 6 (1): 1-27. 2012.I begin section 1 by dealing with preliminary issues such as the different relations expressed by the “good for” locution. I then (section 2) outline the Locative Analysis of good for and explain its main elements before moving on to (section 3) outlining and discussing the positive features of the view. In the subsequent sections I show how the Locative Analysis can respond to objections from, or inspired by, Sumner (sections 4–5), Regan (section 6), and Schroeder and Feldman (section 7). I the…Read more
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20Taking Prudence SeriouslyIn Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics Volume 14, Oxford University Press. pp. 70-94. 2019.Philosophers have long theorized about which things make people’s lives go well, and why, and the extent to which morality and self-interest can be reconciled. Yet little time has been spent on _meta_-prudential questions, questions about prudential _discourse_. This is surprising given that prudence is, prima facie, a _normative_ form of discourse and, as such, cries out for further investigation. Chapter 4 takes up two major meta-prudential questions. It first examines whether there is a set o…Read more
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21Needing and NecessityIn Mark C. Timmons (ed.), Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics Volume 8, Oxford University Press. pp. 170-192. 2018.This chapter examines claims about _needs_ (including claims such as ‘Saskia needs medicine’, ‘Fergus needs water’). It shows how recent work on modal language—specifically work on ‘ought’ and ‘must’—can be applied to needs claims, yielding an improved ability to interpret and assess the full range of needs claims. This is the positive part. The chapter then uses this improved understanding of needs claims to assess various positions to the effect that needs are fundamentally, or distinctively, …Read more
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23Moral TestimonyIn Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics 11, Oxford University Press. pp. 45-73. 2016.It is commonly claimed that reliance upon _moral_ testimony is problematic in a way not common to reliance upon non-moral testimony. This chapter provides a new explanation of what the problem consists in—one that enjoys advantages over the most widely accepted explanation in the extant literature (in short, that moral deference undermines moral worth). The main theses of the chapter are as follows: (1) that many forms of normative deference beyond the moral are problematic (including aesthetic …Read more
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757All’s Well That Ends Well? A new holism about lifetime well-beingPhilosophical Quarterly. forthcoming.Is there more to how well a life goes overall (its lifetime well-being) than simply the aggregate goodness and badness of its moments (its momentary well-being)? Atomists about lifetime well-being say ‘no’. Holists hold that there is more to lifetime well-being than aggregate momentary well-being (with different holists offering different candidates for what this extra element might be). This paper presents and defends a novel form of holism about lifetime well-being, which I call ‘End of Life’.…Read more
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125Not Living My Best Life: A Reply to MasnyJournal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 28 (1): 141-150. 2024.In a recent paper, Michal Masny put forward a novel, interesting, theory of the goodness of a life: the Dual Theory. As Masny’s discussion demonstrates, the Dual Theory, if true, would have very significant implications for various issues related to the goodness of lives and for normative ethics. It is thus worthy of serious attention. In this paper, I first explain the Dual Theory and the motivation Masny provides for it. I then aim to show three general problems for the view.
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971A Painful End for Perfectionism?Midwest Studies in Philosophy 46 233-250. 2022.This paper examines perfectionist attempts to explain the prudential badness of pain (its badness for those who experience it). It starts by considering simple perfectionist explanations, finding them wanting, before considering the most sophisticated perfectionist attempt to explain prudential badness: Gwen Bradford’s tripartite perfectionism. The paper argues that Bradford’s view, though an improvement on earlier perfectionist proposals, still does not satisfactorily explain the full set of pr…Read more
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71WelfareOxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. 2022.Welfare is the measure of how well someone’s life is going for them (either at one time or over a whole life). This concept is crucial throughout practical philosophy, appearing in debates in ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of law, and beyond. Philosophical discussions of welfare have centered around the extent to which welfare is purely a matter of the quality of one’s experience, the extent to which it is a matter of getting what one desires or, instead, acquiring some fixed set of de…Read more
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1021Mill’s Art Of LifeIn Christopher Macleod & Dale E. Miller (eds.), A Companion to Mill, Wiley. 2016.Towards the end of A System of Logic, John Stuart Mill makes some intriguing, suggestive, and neglected claims about what he calls “The Art of Life”. Despite the comparatively little attention that the Art of Life has received in the extensive scholarly literature on Mill, it turns out to be extremely important to understanding his moral philosophy and his practical philosophy more generally. It reveals Mill to be a considerably more subtle philosopher than it would otherwise seem. It also insul…Read more
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2699Taking Prudence SeriouslyOxford Studies in Metaethics 14 70-94. 2019.Philosophers have long theorized about which things make people’s lives go well, and why, and the extent to which morality and self-interest can be reconciled. Yet little time has been spent on meta-prudential questions, questions about prudential discourse. This is surprising given that prudence is, prima facie, a normative form of discourse and, as such, cries out for further investigation. Chapter 4 takes up two major meta-prudential questions. It first examines whether there is a set of prud…Read more
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436Moral Testimony: Once More with FeelingOxford Studies in Metaethics 11. 2016.It is commonly claimed that reliance upon moral testimony is problematic in a way not common to reliance upon non-moral testimony. This chapter provides a new explanation of what the problem consists in—one that enjoys advantages over the most widely accepted explanation in the extant literature. The main theses of the chapter are as follows: that many forms of normative deference beyond the moral are problematic, that there is a common explanation of the problem with all of these forms of defer…Read more
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239Dear Prudence: the nature and normativity of prudential discourseOxford University Press. 2021.Philosophers have long theorized about what makes people's lives go well, and why, and the extent to which morality and self-interest can be reconciled. However, we have spent little time on meta-prudential questions, questions about prudential discourse—thought and talk about what is good and bad for us; what contributes to well-being; and what we have prudential reason, or prudentially ought, to do. This situation is surprising given that prudence is, prima facie, a normative form of discourse…Read more
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249Against Contextualism about Prudential DiscoursePhilosophical Quarterly 69 (277): 699-720. 2019.In recent times, there has been a surge of interest in, and enthusiasm for, contextualist views about prudential discourse — thought and talk about what has prudential value or contributes to someone’s well-being. In this paper I examine and reject two cases for radical forms of prudential contextualism, proposed by Anna Alexandrova and Steve Campbell. Alexandrova holds that the semantic content of terms like ‘well-being’ and ‘doing well’ varies across contexts. Campbell proposes that there are …Read more
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99Knowing what's good for youForum for European Philosophy Blog. 2016.An accessible introduction to some of the main issues in the philosophy of well-being, aimed at the general reader.
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961Needing and NecessityIn Mark Timmons (ed.), Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, Oxford University Press. pp. 170-192. 2011.Claims about needs are a ubiquitous feature of everyday practical discourse. It is therefore unsurprising that needs have long been a topic of interest in moral philosophy, applied ethics, and political philosophy. Philosophers have devoted much time and energy to developing theories of the nature of human needs and the like. Philosophers working on needs are typically committed to the idea that there are different kinds of needs and that within the different kinds of needs is a privileged class…Read more
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390Pain for the Moral Error Theory? A New Companions-in-Guilt ArgumentAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 96 (3): 474-482. 2017.The moral error theorist claims that moral discourse is irredeemably in error because it is committed to the existence of properties that do not exist. A common response has been to postulate ‘companions in guilt’—forms of discourse that seem safe from error despite sharing the putatively problematic features of moral discourse. The most developed instance of this pairs moral discourse with epistemic discourse. In this paper, I present a new, prudential, companions-in-guilt argument and argue fo…Read more
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1484The Locative Analysis of Good For Formulated and DefendedJournal of Ethics and Social Philosophy (JESP) 6 (1): 1-27. 2012.THE STRUCTURE OF THIS PAPER IS AS FOLLOWS. I begin §1 by dealing with preliminary issues such as the different relations expressed by the “good for” locution. I then (§2) outline the Locative Analysis of good for and explain its main elements before moving on to (§3) outlining and discussing the positive features of the view. In the subsequent sections I show how the Locative Analysis can respond to objections from, or inspired by, Sumner (§4-5), Regan (§6), and Schroeder and Feldman (§7). I the…Read more
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959Uneasy companionsRatio 22 (3): 359-368. 2009.A critical notice of Terence Cuneo's The Normative Web and Hallvard Lillehammer's Companions in Guilt: Arguments for Ethical Objectivity.
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1297Resisting buck-passing accounts of prudential valuePhilosophical Studies 157 (1): 77-91. 2012.This paper aims to cast doubt upon a certain way of analysing prudential value (or good for ), namely in the manner of a ‘buck-passing’ analysis. It begins by explaining why we should be interested in analyses of good for and the nature of buck-passing analyses generally (§I). It moves on to considering and rejecting two sets of buck-passing analyses. The first are analyses that are likely to be suggested by those attracted to the idea of analysing good for in a buck-passing fashion (§II). The s…Read more
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1027A Millian Objection to Reasons as EvidenceUtilitas 25 (3): 417-420. 2013.Stephen Kearns and Daniel Star have recently proposed this thesis: [Reasons as Evidence: Necessarily, a fact F is a reason for an agent A to PHI
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266Moral Utterances, Attitude Expression, and ImplicatureIn Guy Fletcher & Michael Ridge (eds.), Having It Both Ways: Hybrid Theories and Modern Metaethics, Oxford University Press. pp. 173-198. 2014.This paper examines implicaturist hybrid theories by examining how closely attitude expression by moral utterances fits with the varieties of implicature (conventional, particular conversational, generalized conversational) using five standard criteria for implicature: indeterminacy (§3), reinforceability (§4), non-detachability (§5), cancellability (§6), and calculability (§7). I argue (1) that conventional implicature is a clear non-starter as a model of attitude expression by moral utterances…Read more
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10379Sentimental valueJournal of Value Inquiry 43 (1): 55-65. 2009.For many people, among the first experiences they have of things as being valuable are experiences of things as possessing sentimental value. Such is the case in childhood where treasured objects are often among the first things we experience as valuable. In everyday life, we frequently experi- ence apparent sentimental value belonging to particular garments, books, cards, and places. Philosophers, however, have seldom discussed sentimental value and have also tended to think about value general…Read more
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1672Hybrid Views in Meta‐ethics: Pragmatic ViewsPhilosophy Compass 9 (12): 848-863. 2014.A common starting point for ‘going hybrid’ is the thought that moral discourse somehow combines belief and desire-like aspects, or is both descriptive and expressive. Hybrid meta-ethical theories aim to give an account of moral discourse that is sufficiently sensitive to both its cognitive and its affective, or descriptive and expressive, dimensions. They hold at least one of the following: moral thought: moral judgements have belief and desire-like aspects or elements; moral language: moral utt…Read more
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645The Philosophy of Well-Being: An IntroductionRoutledge. 2016.Well-being occupies a central role in ethics and political philosophy, including in major theories such as utilitarianism. It also extends far beyond philosophy: recent studies into the science and psychology of well-being have propelled the topic to centre stage, and governments spend millions on promoting it. We are encouraged to adopt modes of thinking and behaviour that support individual well-being or 'wellness'. What is well-being? Which theories of well-being are most plausible? In this r…Read more
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957Wrongness, welfarism and evolution: Crisp on reasons and the goodRatio 20 (3). 2007.A critical notice of Roger Crisp's Reasons and the Good
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2096Review of Richard Kraut’s What is Good And Why: The Ethics of Well-Being (review)Analysis 69 (3): 576-8. 2009.Anyone familiar with Richard Kraut's work in ancient philosophy will be excited to see him putting aside the dusty tomes of the ancients and delving into ethics first-hand. He does not disappoint. His book is a lucid and wide-ranging discussion that provides at least the core of an ethical theory and an appealing set of answers to a range of ethical questions.Kraut aims to provide an alternative to utilitarianism that preserves the good-centred nature of that theory. He claims that all justifica…Read more
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1138Brown and Moore's value invariabilism vs Dancy's variabilismPhilosophical Quarterly 60 (238): 162-168. 2010.Campbell Brown has recently argued that G.E. Moore's intrinsic value holism is superior to Jonathan Dancy's. I show that the advantage which Brown claims for Moore's view over Dancy's is illusory, and that Dancy's view may be superior.
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10179Objective list theoriesIn The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Well-Being, Routledge. pp. 148-160. 2015.This chapter is divided into three parts. First I outline what makes something an objective list theory of well-being. I then go on to look at the motivations for holding such a view before turning to objections to these theories of well-being.
Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
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| Normative Ethics |
| Value Theory |
PhilPapers Editorships
| Objective Accounts of Well-Being |