Jon Tresan

We discuss Sharon Ryan’s Deep Rationality Theory of wisdom, defended recently in her “Wisdom, Knowledge and Rationality.” We argue that (a) Ryan’s use of the term “rationality” needs further elaboration; (b) there is a problem with requiring that the wise person possess justified beliefs but not necessarily knowledge; (c) the conditions of DRT are not all necessary; (d) the conditions are not sufficient. At the end of our discussion, we suggest that there may be a problem with the very assumption that an informative, non-circular set of necessary and sufficient conditions of wisdom can be given.

In “Neurosentimentalism and Moral Agency”, Philip Gerrans and Jeanette Kennett argue that prominent versions of metaethical sentimentalism and moral realism ignore the importance, for moral agency and moral judgment, of the capacity to experientially project oneself into the past and possible futures – to engage in ‘mental time travel’. They contend that such views are committed to taking subjects with impaired capacities for MTT to be moral judgers, and thus confront a dilemma: either allow that these subjects are moral agents, or deny that moral agency is required for moral judgment. In reply, we argue for two main claims. First, it is implausible that moral agency is required for moral judgment, and Gerrans and Kennett give us no good reason for thinking it is. Second, at least some of the subjects in question seem able to make moral judgments, and Gerrans and Kennett give us no good reason to doubt that they can. We conclude that they have not shown a problem for any of the metaethical views in question.

Metaethicists of all stripes should read and learn from Richard Joyce's book The Evolution of Morality. This includes moral realists, despite Joyce's own nihilism. Joyce thinks that moral obligations, prohibitions, and the like are myths. But that is just a bit of a rich, broad account of moral attitudes and practices, the bulk of which can comfortably be accepted by realists. In fact, other than nihilism itself, there's only one claim of Joyce's which realists must reject. I argue that that claim ought to be rejected, and reply to Joyce's argument to the contrary. The result is that—aside from nihilism and one rejectable claim—realists are free to take from Joyce whatever they like

‘Internalism’ is used in metaethics for a cluster of claims which bear a family resemblance. They tend to link, in some distinctive way—typically modal, mereological, or causal—different parts of the normative realm, or the normative and the psychological. The thesis of this paper is that much metaethical mischief has resulted from philosophers’ neglect of the distinction between two different features of such claims. The first is the modality of the entire claim. The second is the relation between the items specified in the claim. In part one I explain this distinction and the problems neglecting it may cause. In part two I show that it has been neglected, and has caused those problems, at least with respect to one version of internalism. That is judgment internalism, which claims that moral beliefs are necessarily related to pro- or con-attitudes; e.g., that if you believe you ought to x you must have some motivation to x. The considerations standardly adduced in favor of judgment internalism support only a version which lacks the metaethical implications typically attributed to it, at least so far as anyone has shown. Proponents and opponents of judgment internalism fail to realize this because of their neglect of the modality/relation distinction. I illustrate by considering discussions of judgment internalism by Russ Shafer-Landau, Simon Blackburn, James Dreier, David Brink, and others.

As standardly understood, for an act to be optional is for it to be permissible but not required. Supererogatory acts are commonly taken to be optional in this way. In “Supererogation, Optionality and Cost”, Claire Benn rejects this common view: she argues that optionality so understood—permissible but not required—cannot be the sort of optionality involved in supererogation. As an alternative, she offers a novel account of the optionality of supererogatory acts: the “comparative cost” account. In this paper, we rebut Benn’s objection to the common view that supererogation involves optionality as standardly understood. We also point out that her objection, if it worked, would equally undermine her own comparative cost proposal.

This work centers around the relations between moral beliefs and the motivational and affective states which characteristically accompany them, and what those relations tell us about the nature of moral beliefs themselves. Specifically, I argue for five conclusions. First, moral-conative relations are far more complex than is typically realized. Secondly, certain relations to conations are both necessary and sufficient for moral beliefs. Third, given the complexity of moral-conative relations, it is easy to mistake those necessary and sufficient conditions for ones which actually do not obtain . Fourth, the moral-conative relations which do obtain turn out to comport well with an account of moral beliefs as being straightforwardly true or false, requiring nothing beyond the natural world for their truth, and having the same truth-conditions regardless of their context. Fifth, that account of moral beliefs is plausible, and has been rejected in large part because philosophers have posited moral-conative relations which don't actually obtain