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2Moral Relativism and Moral NihilismIn David Copp (ed.), The Oxford handbook of ethical theory, Oxford University Press. 2006.The chapter discusses moral nihilism and moral relativism, with some sympathy, especially to relativism. It considers some arguments for the views, some arguments against them, and some arguments designed to decide between them. Moral nihilism and moral relativism are meta-ethical theories, theories of the nature of morality. Nihilism is the view that there are no moral facts, that nothing is right or wrong, or morally good or bad. Relativism is the view that moral statements are true or false o…Read more
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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 Aloysius 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, Oxford University 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, Oxford University Press. 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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79Two 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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50Explaining 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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42Review of Gerald F. Gaus: Value and Justification: The Foundations of Liberal Theory (review)Ethics 102 (1): 164-166. 1991.
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231Is 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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174The 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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76Shallow, 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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12Humean Doubts about the Practical Justification of MoralityIn Garrett Cullity & Berys Nigel Gaut (eds.), Ethics and practical reason, Oxford University Press. pp. 81-100. 1997.
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1When Do Goals Explain the Norms that Advance Them?In Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Oxford University Press. pp. 5--153. 2010.
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32Dispositions and fetishes: Externalist models of moral motivationPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 61 (3): 619-638. 2000.Internalism says that if an agent judges that it is right for her to φ, then she is motivated to φ. The disagreement between Internalists and Externalists runs deep, and it lingers even in the face of clever intuition pumps. An argument in Michael Smith’s The Moral Problem seeks some leverage against Externalism from a point within normative theory. Smith argues by dilemma: Externalists either fail to explain why motivation tracks moral judgment in a good moral agent or they attribute a kind of …Read more
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17Transforming expressivismNoûs 33 (4): 558-572. 1999.In chapter five of Wise Choices, Apt Feelings Allan Gibbard develops what he calls a ‘normative logic’ intended to solve some problems that face an expressivist theory of norms like his. The first is “the problem of embedding: The analysis applies to simple contexts, in which it is simply asserted or denied that such-and-such is rational. It says nothing about more complex normative assertions.”1 That is the problem with which I will be concerned. Though he doesn’t list it as one of the problems…Read more
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16Quasi-Realism and the Problem of Unexplained CoincidenceAnalytic Philosophy 53 (3): 269-287. 2012.
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6Can reasons fundamentalism answer the normative question?In Gunnar Björnsson, Caj Strandberg, Ragnar Francén Olinder, John Eriksson & Fredrik Björklund (eds.), Motivational Internalism, Oxford University Press. 2015.
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15Moral Relativism and Moral NihilismIn David Copp (ed.), The Oxford handbook of ethical theory, Oxford University Press. 2006.
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155Lockean and logical truth conditionsAnalysis 64 (1): 84-91. 2004.1. In ‘A problem for expressivism’ Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit argue ‘that expressivists do not have a persuasive story to tell about how ethical sentences can express attitudes without reporting them and, in particular, without being true or false’ (1998: 240). Briefly: expressivists say that ethical sentences serve to express non-cognitive attitudes, but that these sentences do not report non-cognitive attitudes. The view that ethical sentences do report non-cognitive attitudes is not Expre…Read more
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37Disagreeing (about) What to Do: Negation and Completeness in Gibbard’s Norm-ExpressivismPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 72 (3): 714-721. 2006.Brown University.
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37The Supervenience Argument Against Moral RealismSouthern Journal of Philosophy 30 (3): 13-38. 1992.
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122Contemporary Debates in Moral Theory (edited book)Wiley-Blackwell. 2006._Contemporary Debates in Moral Theory _features pairs of newly commissioned essays by some of the leading theorists working in the field today. Brings together fresh debates on the most controversial issues in moral theory Questions include: Are moral requirements derived from reason? How demanding is morality? Are virtues the proper starting point for moral theorizing? Lively debate format sharply defines the issues, and paves the way for further discussion. Will serve as an accessible introduc…Read more
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4Skepticism in Ethics, by Panayot Butchvarov (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 51 (4): 934-938. 1991.
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5Why ethical satisficing makes sense and rational satisficing doesn'tIn Michael Byron (ed.), Satisficing and Maximizing, Cambridge University Press. pp. 131-154. 2004.