University of Reading
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 2008
CV
Birmingham, England, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Areas of Specialization
Meta-Ethics
Normative Ethics
PhilPapers Editorships
Normative Ethics
  •  122
    Metaethics and the Nature of Properties
    Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume. forthcoming.
    This paper explores the connection between two philosophical debates concerning the nature of properties. The first metaethical debate is about whether normative properties are ordinary natural properties or some unique kind of non-natural properties. The second metaphysical debate is about whether properties are sets of objects, transcendent or immanent universals, or sets of tropes. I argue that nominalism, transcendent realism, and immanent realism are not neutral frameworks for the metaethic…Read more
  •  195
    Act and Rule Consequentialism: A Synthesis
    Moral Philosophy and Politics. forthcoming.
    As an indirect ethical theory, rule consequentialism first evaluates moral codes in terms of how good the consequences of their general adoption are and then individual actions in terms of whether or not the optimific code authorises them. There are three well-known and powerful objections to rule consequentialism’s indirect structure: the ideal world objection, the rule worship objection, and the incoherence objection. These objections are all based on cases in which following the optimific cod…Read more
  •  59
    Introduction
    In Jussi Suikkanen & John Cottingham (eds.), Essays on Derek Parfit's On What Matters, Wiley‐blackwell. 2010.
    This is an introduction to an edited volume of critical reactions to Derek Parfit's book On What Matters. It outlines Parfit's key ideas on reasons and rationality, his revisionary interpretations of Kantian ethics, his versions of Kantian Contractualism and Rule Consequentialism, and his master argument that attempts to show how the best versions of these ethical theories converge. The introduction also intoruces the essays of the volume.
  •  200
    Normative Judgments, Motivation, and Evolution
    Filosofiska Notiser 10 (1): 23-48. 2023.
    This paper first outlines a new taxonomy of different views concerning the relationship between normative judgments and motivation. In this taxonomy, according to the Type A views, a positive normative judgment concerning an action consists at least in part of motivation to do that action. According to the Type B views, motivation is never a constituent of a positive normative judgment even if such judgments have, due to the kind of states they are, a causal power to produce motivation in an age…Read more
  •  1290
    Subjectivism, Relativism and Contextualism (2nd ed.)
    In Christian B. Miller (ed.), The Bloomsbury Handbook of Ethics, 2nd Edition, Bloomsbury. pp. 130-149. 2023.
    There is a family of metaethical views according to which (i) there are no objectively correct moral standards and (ii) whether a given moral claim is true depends in some way on moral standards accepted by either an individual (forms of subjectivism) or a community (forms of relativism). This chapter outlines the three most important versions of this type of theories: old-fashioned subjectivism and relativism, contextualism and new wave subjectivism and relativism. It also explores the main…Read more
  •  348
    Nonnaturalism, the Supervenience Challenge, Higher-Order Properties, and Trope Theory
    Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 26 (3): 601-632. 2024.
    Nonnaturalist realism is the view that normative properties are unique kind of stance-independent properties. It has been argued that such views fail to explain why two actions that are exactly alike otherwise must also have the same normative properties. Mark Schroeder and Knut Olav Skarsaune have recently suggested that nonnaturalist realists can respond to this supervenience challenge by taking the primary bearers of normative properties to be action kinds. This paper develops their response …Read more
  •  385
    Brad Hooker’s rule-consequentialism and T.M. Scanlon’s contractualism have been some of the most debated ethical theories in normative ethics during the last twenty years or so. This article suggests that these theories can be compared at two levels. Firstly, what are the deep, structural differences between the rule-consequentialist and contractualist frameworks in which Hooker and Scanlon formulate their views? Secondly, what are the more superficial differences between Hooker’s and Scanlon’s …Read more
  •  742
    Contractualism
    In Michael Hemmingsen (ed.), Ethical Theory in Global Perspective, Suny Press. pp. 221-236. 2024.
    This is a chapter on contractualism for Ethical Theory in Global Perspective, edited by Michael Hemmingsen (SUNY Press). The chapter (i) outlines contractualism as an ethical theory, (ii) explains how it differs from classical utilitarianism, (iii) explores the differences between ex post and ex ante contractualism, and (iv) finally looks at two traditional objections to the view.
  •  1176
    Ethical Theories as Methods of Ethics
    Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics 11 247-269. 2021.
    This chapter presents a new argument for thinking of traditional ethical theories as methods that can be used in first-order ethics - as a kind of deliberation procedures rather than as criteria of right and wrong. It begins from outlining how ethical theories, such as consequentialism and contractualism, are flexible frameworks in which different versions of these theories can be formulated to correspond to different first-order ethical views. The chapter then argues that, as a result, the trad…Read more
  •  2598
    Contractualism
    Cambridge University Press. 2020.
    This essay begins by describing T.M. Scanlon’s contractualism according to which an action is right when it is authorised by the moral principles no one could reasonably reject. This view has argued to have implausible consequences with regards to how different-sized groups, non-human animals, and cognitively limited human beings should be treated. It has also been accused of being theoretically redundant and unable to vindicate the so-called deontic distinctions. I then distinguish between the …Read more
  •  265
    This is a short review of Rach Cosker-Rowland's book The Normative and the Evaluative - the Buck-Passing Account of Value
  •  823
    Ex Ante and Ex Post Contractualism: A Synthesis
    The Journal of Ethics 23 (1): 77-98. 2019.
    According to contractualist theories in ethics, whether an action is wrong is determined by whether it could be justified to others on grounds no one could reasonably reject. Contractualists then think that reasonable rejectability of principles depends on the strength of the personal objections individuals can make to them. There is, however, a deep disagreement between contractualists concerning from which temporal perspective the relevant objections to different principles are to be made. Are…Read more
  •  296
    The advice models of happiness: a response to Feldman
    International Journal of Wellbeing 9 (2): 8-13. 2019.
    In his critical notice entitled ‘An Improved Whole Life Satisfaction Theory of Happiness?’ focusing on my article that was previously published in this journal, Fred Feldman raises an important objection to a suggestion I made about how to best formulate the whole life satisfaction theories of happiness. According to my proposal, happiness is a matter of whether an idealised version of you would judge that your actual life corresponds to the life-plan, which he or she has constructed for you on …Read more
  •  898
    Consequentialism, Constraints, and Good-Relative-to
    Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 3 (1): 1-9. 2008.
    Recently, it has been a part of the so-called consequentializing project to attempt to construct versions of consequentialism that can support agent-relative moral constraints. Mark Schroeder has argued that such views are bound to fail because they cannot make sense of the agent relative value on which they need to rely. In this paper, I provide a fitting-attitude account of both agent-relative and agent-neutral values that can together be used to consequentialize agent-relative constraints.
  •  1443
    Consequentializing Moral Dilemmas
    Journal of Moral Philosophy 17 (3): 261-289. 2020.
    The aim of the consequentializing project is to show that, for every plausible ethical theory, there is a version of consequentialism that is extensionally equivalent to it. One challenge this project faces is that there are common-sense ethical theories that posit moral dilemmas. There has been some speculation about how the consequentializers should react to these theories, but so far there has not been a systematic treatment of the topic. In this article, I show that there are at least five w…Read more
  •  211
    Introduction
    In Jussi Suikkanen & Antti Kauppinen (eds.), Methodology and Moral Philosophy, Routledge. pp. 1-20. 2018.
    This chapter begins by explaining two widespread attitudes towards the methods of moral philosophy. The first common attitude is that the appropriate method for doing ethics was described by John Rawls when he formulated the reflective equilibrium method. Another common attitude is that moral philosophy has no method – anything goes in ethical theorising as long as the results are significant enough. The chapter then motivates the volume by arguing that these attitudes are not helpful. The refle…Read more
  •  733
    Contextualism, Moral Disagreement, and Proposition Clouds
    In Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics 14, Oxford University Press. pp. 47-69. 2019.
    According to contextualist theories in metaethics, when you use a moral term in a context, the context plays an ineliminable part in determining what natural property will be the semantic value of the term. Furthermore, on subjectivist and relativist versions of these views, it is either the speaker's own moral code or her moral community's moral code that constitutes the reference-fixing context. One standard objection to views of this type is that they fail to enable us to disagree in ordinary…Read more
  •  72
    Methodology and Moral Philosophy (edited book)
    Routledge. 2018.
    Moral philosophy is one of the core areas of philosophy. It is a fruitful research project in which ethicists investigate a range of different kinds of questions from the abstract metaethical puzzles concerning the meaning of moral language to the concrete ethical problems such as how much we should do to help other people. Yet, even if different answers to all these questions are intensively debated in moral philosophy, there is surprising little explicit reflection of what the appropriate ways…Read more
  •  1107
    The subjectivist consequences of expressivism
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 90 (3): 364-387. 2009.
    Jackson and Pettit argue that expressivism in metaethics collapses into subjectivism. A sincere utterer of a moral claim must believe that she has certain attitudes to be expressed. The truth-conditions of that belief then allegedly provide truth-conditions also for the moral utterance. Thus, the expressivist cannot deny that moral claims have subjectivist truth-conditions. Critics have argued that this argument fails as stated. I try to show that expressivism does have subjectivist repercussion…Read more
  •  299
    The Possibility of Love Independent Reasons
    Essays in Philosophy 12 (1): 32-54. 2011.
    This article is a critical examination of Harry Frankfurt's view of reasons. Frankfurt has argued in a number of recent books for the view which holds that all practical reasons are a function of what we love. This article examines Frankfurt's key argument for this claim. It uses the analogy of a similar argument in the domain of epistemic reasons to show where Frankfurt's argument fails. It also argues that there are a number of plausible views about practical reasons that are available for us …Read more
  •  136
    Review of Nomy Arpaly's Unprincipled Virtue (review)
    Ratio 19 (2). 2006.
    This paper is a short book review of Nomy Arpaly's brilliant book Unprincipled Virtue.
  •  132
    This is Ethics: An Introduction
    Wiley-Blackwell. 2014.
    What makes you happy? Should you always do what is best for you, or what is best for everyone? What is the meaning of life – and how are we supposed to think about it? Should sacrifices be made to help future generations? This Is Ethics presents an accessible and engaging introduction to a variety of issues relating to contemporary moral philosophy. It reveals the intimate connection between timeless philosophical problems about right and wrong and offers timely and thought-provoking insights on…Read more
  •  297
    What We Owe to Many
    Social Theory and Practice 30 (4): 485-506. 2004.
    This article is an attempt to defend Scanlon's contractualism against the so-called aggregation problems. Scanlon's contractualism attempts to make sense of right and wrong in terms of principles which no one could reasonably reject. These principles are a function of what kind personal objections persons can make to alternative sets of moral principles. Because of this, it has been argued that contractualism is unable to account for how groups of different sizes are to be treated. In this artic…Read more
  •  35
    This is a short review of Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer's book The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick and Contemporary Ethics.
  •  110
    Review of John Kekes's The Human Condition (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2011 (1). 2011.
    This article is a short review of John Kekes's book The Human Condition.
  •  382
    Non-Naturalism: The Jackson Challenge
    In Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics 5, Oxford University Press. pp. 87-110. 2010.
    Frank Jackson has famously argued that there is no logical space for the view which understands moral properties as non-natural properties of their own unique kind. His argument is based on two steps: firstly, given supervenience and truth-aptness of moral claims, it is always possible to find a natural property which is necessarily co-instantiated with a given moral property, and secondly that there are no distinct necessarily co-instantiated properties. I argue that this second step of the arg…Read more
  •  464
    Reasons and value – in defence of the buck-passing account
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 7 (5). 2005.
    In this article, I will defend the so-called buck-passing theory of value. According to this theory, claims about the value of an object refer to the reason-providing properties of the object. The concept of value can thus be analyzed in terms of reasons and the properties of objects that provide them for us. Reasons in this context are considerations that count in favour of certain attitudes. There are four other possibilities of how the connection between reasons and value might be formulated.…Read more
  •  272
    Normativity of Reasons: A Critical Notice of Joshua Gert's Brute Rationality (review)
    International Journal of Philosophical Studies 12 (4): 480. 2004.
    This critical notice explores the distinction between the justifying and requiring forces of reasons, which Joshua Gert introduced and defended in his book Brute Rationality
  •  84
    Review of Anita M. Superson's The Moral Skeptic (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2009 (7). 2009.
    This is a short review of Anita Superson's book The Moral Skeptic.
  •  333
    Reason‐Statements As Non‐Extensional Contexts
    Philosophical Quarterly 62 (248): 592-613. 2012.
    Many believe that, if true, reason-statements of the form ‘that X is F is a reason to φ’ describe a ‘favouring-relation’ between the fact that X is F and the act of φing. This favouring-relation has been assumed to share many features of other, more concrete relations. This combination of views leads to immediate problems. Firstly, unlike statements about many other relations, reason-statements can be true even when the relata do not exist, i.e., when the relevant facts do not obtain and the rel…Read more