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35Do de re necessities express semantic rules?Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.Amie Thomasson's Norms and Necessity offers a non-factualist theory of the language of metaphysical necessity, centering on the idea that statements of necessity express semantic norms. This article identifies a potential problem for the view by distinguishing two kinds of conditional necessity, investigates a solution derived from a well-known parallel pair of conditional necessities in deontic logic, but finds it is not up to the job. The last part of the paper suggests a different route, larg…Read more
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11C. L. Stevenson (1908–1979)In A. P. Martinich & David Sosa (eds.), A Companion to Analytic Philosophy, Blackwell. 2001.This chapter contains sections titled: Stevenson's major contribution to philosophy was his development of emotivism, a theory of ethical language according to which moral judgments do not state any sort of fact, but rather express the moral emotions of the speaker and attempt to influence others. Stevenson's emotive theory of ethical language Some advantages of emotivism Some difficulties for emotivism Some related theories.
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Negation for expressivists: a collection of problems with a suggestion for their solutionIn Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics: Volume 1, Clarendon Press. 2006.
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1Moral Relativism and Moral NihilismIn David Copp (ed.), The Oxford handbook of ethical theory, Oxford University Press. 2006.
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Decision Theory and MoralityIn Alfred R. Mele & Piers Rawling (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Rationality, Oup Usa. 2004.
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11Skepticism in Ethics, by Panayot Butchvarov (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 51 (4): 934-938. 1991.
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76Two Models of Agent-Centered ValueRes Philosophica 97 (3): 345-362. 2020.The consequentializing project relies on agentcentered value (aka agent-relative value), but many philosophers find the idea incomprehensible or incoherent. Discussions of agent-centered value often model it with a theory that assigns distinct better-than rankings of states of affairs to each agent, rather than assigning a single ranking common to all. A less popular kind of model uses a single ranking, but takes the value-bearing objects to be properties (sets of centered worlds) rather than st…Read more
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46Explaining the Quasi-RealOxford Studies in Metaethics 10. 2015.This chapter discusses whether Quasi-Realism gains any advantage over Robust Realism with respect to the problem of explaining supervenience. The chapter starts with a summary of what the supervenience problem is and recounts the history of expressivist thinking about supervenience: the supervenience problem was a challenge raised by expressivist Robust Realists, with the idea that expressivism had an excellent explanation of the phenomenon and realism had none. The chapter then contrasts Quasi-…Read more
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39Review of Gerald F. Gaus: Value and Justification: The Foundations of Liberal Theory (review)Ethics 102 (1): 164-166. 1991.
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220Is there a supervenience problem for robust moral realism?Philosophical Studies 176 (6): 1391-1408. 2019.The paper describes the problem for robust moral realism of explaining the supervenience of the moral on the non-moral, and examines five objections to the argument: The moral does not supervene on the descriptive, because we may owe different obligations to duplicates. If the supervenience thesis is repaired to block, it becomes trivial and easy to explain. Supervenience is a moral doctrine and should get an explanation from within normative ethics rather than metaethics. Supervenience is a con…Read more
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167The real and the quasi-real: problems of distinctionCanadian Journal of Philosophy 48 (3-4): 532-547. 2018.This paper surveys some ways of distinguishing Quasi-Realism in metaethics from Non-naturalist Realism, including ‘Explanationist’ methods of distinguishing, which characterize the Real by its explanatory role, and Inferentialist methods. Rather than seeking the One True Distinction, the paper adopts an irenic and pragmatist perspective, allowing that different ways of drawing the line are best for different purposes.
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75Shallow, Deeper, Deep: A Few Thoughts on a Small Piece of Walter Sinnott‐Armstrong's Moral Skepticisms (review)Philosophical Books 49 (3): 197-206. 2008.No Abstract
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7Review of Gerald F. Gaus: Value and Justification: The Foundations of Liberal Theory (review)Ethics 102 (1): 164-166. 1991.
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240Rational preference: Decision theory as a theory of practical rationalityTheory and Decision 40 (3): 249-276. 1996.In general, the technical apparatus of decision theory is well developed. It has loads of theorems, and they can be proved from axioms. Many of the theorems are interesting, and useful both from a philosophical and a practical perspective. But decision theory does not have a well agreed upon interpretation. Its technical terms, in particular, ‘utility’ and ‘preference’ do not have a single clear and uncontroversial meaning. How to interpret these terms depends, of course, on what purposes in pur…Read more
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4Mackie's RealismIn Richard Joyce & Simon Kirchen (eds.), A World Without Values, Springer. 2010.The chapter argues that we should draw the line between realist and antirealist metaethics according to whether a theory locates the explanation for the special, puzzling features of moral terms and concepts out in the world, with the content of moral thoughts, or inside the head. This taxonomy places Mackie's error theory in the realist category, contrary to the usual scheme. The paper suggests that in looking for the “queerness” of objective value in the metaphysics of moral properties, Mackie…Read more
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88Negation for Expressivists: A Collection of Problems with a Suggestion for their SolutionOxford Studies in Metaethics 1 217-233. 2006.
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79Critical study: Timmons, Mark; Morality without foundations: A defense of moral contextualism (review)Noûs 36 (1). 2002.
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47Pettit on Preference for Prospects and Properties – DiscussionPhilosophical Studies 124 (2): 199-219. 2005.
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Charles Leslie StevensonIn David Sosa & A. P. Martinich (eds.), Blackwell Companion to Analytic Philosophy, Blackwell. 2001.
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323In Defense of ConsequentializingIn Mark Timmons (ed.), Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, Volume 1, Oxford University Press. 2011.
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34The Authority of Reason, Jean Hampton. Cambridge University Press, 1998, vi + 310 pages (review)Economics and Philosophy 15 (2): 311. 1999.