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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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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.
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446The supervenience argument against moral realismSouthern Journal of Philosophy 30 (3): 13-38. 1992.In 1971, Simon Blackburn worked out an argument against moral realism appealing to the supervenience of the moral realm on the natural realm.1 He has since revised the argument, in part to take account of objections,2 but the basic structure remains intact. While commentators3 seem to agree that the argument is not successful, they have not agreed upon what goes wrong. I believe this is because no attempt has been made to see what happens when Blackburn's argument is addressed to particular vari…Read more