James L. D. Brown

We regularly appeal to different temporal perspectives when we think and talk about well-being. This has led many philosophers to distinguish between distinct temporal kinds of well-being, such as momentary well-being and lifetime well-being. This paper argues against this way of thinking. It argues that dividing well-being into distinct temporal kinds is not well-motivated and has implausible implications. The paper then proposes an alternative account of our thought and talk about well-being across time that appeals only to how well an individual’s life goes. It then explores the implications of the view for debates about the shape of a life and related phenomena.

This paper raises a challenge for moral inferentialism. Moral inferentialism explains moral discourse in terms of the distinctive kinds of discursive commitments we acknowledge and undertake in making moral claims. However, like any metaethical theory, inferentialism owes us an account not only of what it is to make moral claims, but of what it is to think moral thoughts. The paper argues that what inferentialists have said about moral thought is unsatisfactory. While more satisfactory accounts are available, adopting such accounts robs inferentialism of certain supposed advantages that it enjoys over its main competitor, moral expressivism. Insofar as inferentialism is motivated as a non-representationalist alternative to expressivism, the challenge therefore undermines a central motivation for inferentialism.

This paper examines the prospects for an expressivist theory of prudential thought and discussion, or thought and discussion about what is good for us or what makes our lives go well. It is becoming increasingly common to view prudential thought and discussion as a kind of normative thought and discussion. If this is right, then expressivism, like any other meta-normative view, must be able to explain prudential thought and discussion. However, existing expressivist theories offer no such explanation and lack the resources to construct one. I argue that the best strategy for expressivists is to adopt a fitting attitudes account of prudential concepts. More specifically, I propose that expressivists adopt the rational care theory of well-being, according to which claims about what is good for a person are equivalent to claims about what it is rational to want for that person insofar as one cares for them. In doing so, I defend the rational care theory against its most pressing objection and argue that the view provides an independently attractive account of prudential thought and discussion that fits well with the expressivist’s aim to explain normative thought and discussion in terms of its distinctive practical function.

The reasoning view of rational normativity claims that structural rationality is normative for reasoning. Specifically, it claims that structural rationality gives us reasons to structure deliberation in ways that respect the requirements of rationality. This paper critically assesses the reasoning view. It argues that while the reasoning view might succeed in responding to arguments against the normativity of rationality, it is in tension with the motivations for thinking that rationality is normative in the first place. Moreover, proponents of the view do not offer any independent reason for thinking that the view is true. As such, we have no reason to accept the reasoning view.

This paper examines the integration and unification of the philosophy and psychology of well-being. For the most part, these disciplines investigate well-being without reference to each other. In recent years, however, with the maturing of each discipline, there have been a growing number of calls to integrate the two. While such calls are welcome, what it means to integrate well-being philosophy and psychology can vary greatly depending on one’s theoretical and practical ends. The aim of this paper is to provide a novel conceptual framework for thinking about integrating well-being philosophy and psychology that systematically categorizes different kinds of integration projects. We divide existing attempts in the literature into three broad categories according to the perspective from which the integration takes place: (1) top-down meta-theoretical unification; (2) psychological integration within philosophy; and (3) philosophical integration within psychology. These categories are then broken down into various further subcategories. Our aim in providing this framework is both to facilitate the assessment and comparison of existing integration attempts and to provide a roadmap for future integration attempts. For each category, we discuss one or two representative examples of the approaches. By doing so, we hope to generate interest in the wide variety of existing integration projects, as well as to generate discussion concerning the benefits and pitfalls of different approaches.

Scepticism about ought simpliciter is the view that there is no such thing as what one ought simpliciter to do. Instead, practical deliberation is governed by a plurality of normative standpoints, each authoritative from their own perspective but none authoritative simpliciter. This paper aims to resist such scepticism. After setting out the challenge in general terms, I argue that scepticism can be resisted by rejecting a key assumption in the sceptic’s argument. This is the assumption that standpoint-relative ought judgments bring with them a commitment to act in accordance with those judgments. Instead, I propose an alternative account of our normative concepts according to which only ought simpliciter judgments commit one to acting in accordance with those judgments. In addition to answering the sceptical challenge, the proposal offers an independently motivated account of what makes a concept normatively authoritative.

Expressivism is the view that normative claims express nondescriptive, practical attitudes. It is widely assumed that this involves denying that normative claims express beliefs, except in a minimal or deflationary sense. However, this assumption is increasingly being called into question. Instead, it is argued, expressivists can and should provide a robust, nondescriptive theory of belief in general which can explain the difference between ordinary descriptive beliefs and nondescriptive normative beliefs. This paper examines one such an attempt due to Mark Schroeder who provides a theory of belief as being for. I argue that the theory fails to deliver on its primary aim: to distinguish between descriptive and nondescriptive beliefs. Accordingly, I conclude that the theory should be rejected as it stands.

This paper asks whether a necessity can be the source of necessity. According to an influential argument due to Simon Blackburn, it cannot. This paper argues that although Blackburn fails to show that a necessity cannot be the source of necessity, extant accounts fail to establish that it is, with particular focus on Bob Hale’s essentialist theory and Christopher Peacocke’s ‘principle-based’ theory of modality. However, the paper makes some positive suggestions for what a satisfactory answer to the challenge must look like.

This paper examines the general prospects for conceptual role expressivism, expressivist theories that embrace conceptual role semantics. It has two main aims. The first aim is to provide a general characterisation of the view. The second aim is to raise a challenge for the general view. The challenge is to explain why normative concepts are not a species of defective concepts, where defective concepts are those that cannot meaningfully embed and participate in genuine inference. After rejecting existing attempts to answer the challenge, I propose an alternative solution. However, the solution leaves conceptual role expressivism a far less distinctive and interesting position than its proponents claim. I conclude that we should be sceptical about how much expressivists gain by appealing to conceptual role semantics.

Metaethical expressivism is typically characterised as the view that normative statements express desire-like attitudes instead of beliefs. However, in this paper I argue that expressivists should claim that normative statements express beliefs in normative propositions, and not merely in some deflationary sense but in a theoretically robust sense explicated by a theory of propositional attitudes. I first argue that this can be achieved by combining an interpretationist understanding of belief with a nonfactualist view of normative belief content. This results in a view I call ‘interpretative expressivism’. I then argue that traditional arguments employed by expressivists that normative statements express noncognitive attitudes can just as well support the claim that normative statements express nonfactual or nonrepresentational beliefs. Finally, I argue that this view has a number of advantages to versions of expressivism that deny that normative statements express non-deflationary normative beliefs.

The thesis of this thesis is that expressivists can and should develop a theory of normative propositions that can play an explanatory role in their theory of normative thought and discourse. It has been widely assumed that expressivists cannot make explanatory appeal to normative propositions because propositional content is representational in the following sense: a proposition is or determines a way that reality must be when that proposition is true. If a normative proposition is or determines a way reality must be when that proposition is true, and believing a proposition involves taking that proposition to be true, it follows that believing a normative proposition involves taking reality to be some particular way. But expressivists deny that normative thought represents reality in this way. Rather, normative thought is best explained as having some distinctive nonrepresentational function, such as motivating our actions and coordinating our attitudes. As such, almost all expressivists have rejected the existence of normative propositions, except in a deflationary and hence non-explanatory sense. However, by rejecting the existence of normative propositions, expressivists face a number of serious problems in relation to explaining normative thought and discourse. These problems have more recently led some to suggest that expressivists should embrace the existence of normative propositions within their theory of normative thought and discourse. This thesis takes up this idea and examines a number of different frameworks in which expressivists might develop a theory of normative propositions. It argues that expressivists should reject the assumption that normative propositions are representational. If a normative proposition is not or does not determine a way reality must be when it is true, then believing that proposition need not involve representing reality as being some particular way or other. I explore several different views about propositions and argue that they each admit of generalisation such that some but not all propositions are representational. I argue that some of these views are better than others for the purposes of expressivism.

Expressivists about normative thought and discourse traditionally deny that there are nondeflationary normative propositions. However, it has recently been suggested that expressivists might avoid a number of problems by providing a theory of normative propositions compatible with expressivism. This paper explores the prospects for developing an expressivist theory of propositions within the framework of cognitive act theories of propositions. First, I argue that the only extant expressivist theory of cognitive propositions—Michael Ridge's ‘ecumenical expressivist’ theory—fails to explain identity conditions for normative propositions. Second, I argue that this failure motivates a general constraint—the ‘unity requirement’—that any expressivist theory of propositions must provide a unified nonrepresentational explanation of that in virtue of which propositional attitudes have the content that they have. Third, I argue that conceptual role accounts of content provide a promising framework in which to develop an expressivist theory of cognitive propositions.

The shape of a life hypothesis holds that the temporal sequence of good or bad times in a life can itself be a valuable feature of that life. This is generally thought to be incompatible with additivism about lifetime well-being, which holds that lifetime well-being is fully determined by momentary well-being. This paper examines Dale Dorsey’s recent argument that these views are in fact compatible. I argue that accepting the conjunction of these views requires stronger commitments than Dorsey recognizes. After arguing that these commitments are problematic, I conclude that we should reject the compatibility claim.