University of Texas at Austin
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 2018
Davis, California, United States of America
  •  247
    A Defense of Global Theological Voluntarism
    Faith and Philosophy. forthcoming.
    In this paper, I challenge the recent consensus that global versions of theological voluntarism—on which all moral facts are explained by God’s action—fail, because only local versions—on which only a proper subset of moral facts are so explained—can successfully avoid the objection that theological voluntarism entails that God’s actions are arbitrary. I argue that global theological voluntarism can equally well avoid such arbitrariness. This does not mean that global theological voluntarism sho…Read more
  •  80
    Normative principles and the nature of mind-dependence
    Philosophical Studies 179 (4): 1153-1176. 2022.
    One of the most fundamental debates in metaethics is whether the normative facts are mind-dependent. Yet some philosophers are skeptical that mind-dependence is a category that's significant in the way metaethicists have assumed it is. In this paper, I consider a puzzle that showcases this skepticism, explaining how it undermines the most natural reading of the mind-dependence claim. I then go on to show that no modification of this reading within a certain class can hope to solve the problem. I…Read more
  •  613
    Epistemological objections to moral realism allege that realism entails moral skepticism. Many philosophers have assumed that theistic moral realists can easily avoid such objections. In this article, I argue that things are not so easy: theists run the risk of violating an important constraint on replies to epistemological objections, according to which replies to such objections may not rely on substantive moral claims of a certain kind. Yet after presenting this challenge, I then argue that t…Read more
  •  89
    Grounding Thick Normative Facts
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 100 (2): 408-431. 2018.
    Many philosophers have been concerned with the nature of thick normative concepts. In this paper, I try to motivate a different project: understanding the nature of thick normative properties and facts. I propose a ground-theoretic approach to this project. I then argue that some of the simplest and most initially plausible ways of understanding thick facts fail, and that we are forced to accept some initially implausible views. I try to show how these views are not so implausible after all.
  •  220
    Grounding the normative: a problem for structured non-naturalism
    Philosophical Studies 177 (1): 173-196. 2020.
    Many non-naturalists about the normative want to endorse the view that some normative facts hold in virtue of both non-normative facts and normative principles. In this paper, I argue that non-naturalism is inconsistent with this thesis, due to the nature of normative principles and their grounds. I then consider two ways in which the nonnaturalist position could be modified or expanded to solve this problem. No solution, it turns out, is without its problems. I end by considering how the non-na…Read more
  •  45
    A Dilemma for Streetian Constructivism
    Southwest Philosophy Review 34 (1): 133-140. 2018.
    In this paper, I pose a dilemma for a very influential kind of metaethical constructivism, advocated recently by Sharon Street. It is either true or false that, if an action is morally wrong for a certain agent, then that agent has a normative reason not to do it. If it is true, then the constructivist is committed to the counterintuitive claim that some apparently morally horrendous acts are not actually wrong. If it is false, then the constructivist cannot maintain a distinctively metaethical …Read more
  •  159
    When Do Replies to the Evolutionary Debunking Argument Against Moral Realism Beg the Question?
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 97 (2): 265-280. 2018.
    ABSTRACTSome proponents of the evolutionary debunking argument against moral realism believe that replies that assume substantive moral claims beg the question. In this paper, I give a new account of what's wrong with such replies. On this account, many realists beg the question when they rely on substantive moral claims in their replies to the argument, but naturalists do not. While this account generalizes to some other domains, it allows perceptual and inductive realism to remain undebunked.
  •  2599
    Parsimony and the Argument from Queerness
    Res Philosophica 91 (4): 609-627. 2014.
    In his recent book Error Theory: History, Critique, Defence, Jonas Olson attempts to revive the argument from queerness originally made famous by J.L. Mackie. In this paper, we do three things. First, we eliminate four untenable formulations of the argument. Second, we argue that the most plausible formulation is one that depends crucially upon considerations of parsimony. Finally, we evaluate this formulation of the argument. We conclude that it is unproblematic for proponents of moral non-natu…Read more
  •  1549
    A New Evolutionary Debunking Argument Against Moral Realism
    Journal of the American Philosophical Association 2 (2): 233-253. 2016.
    Evolutionary debunking arguments claim that evolution has influenced our moral faculties in such a way that, if moral realism is true, then we have no positive moral knowledge. I present several popular objections to the standard version of this argument, then give a new EDA that has clear advantages in responding to these objections. Whereas the Standard EDA argues that evolution has selected for many moral beliefs with certain contents, this New EDA claims that evolution has selected for one b…Read more