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
  •  2609
    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
  •  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
  •  1301
    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
  •  1268
    Buck-passing accounts of value
    Philosophy Compass 4 (5): 768-779. 2009.
    This paper explores the so-called buck-passing accounts of value. These views attempt to use normative notions, such as reasons and ought to explain evaluative notions, such as goodness and value . Thus, according to Scanlon's well-known view, the property of being good is the formal, higher-order property of having some more basic properties that provide reasons to have certain kind of valuing attitudes towards the objects. I begin by tracing some of the long history of such accounts. I then de…Read more
  •  1237
    Naturalism in Metaethics
    In Kelly James Clark (ed.), Blackwell Companion to Naturalism, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 351-368. 2016.
    This chapter offers an introduction to naturalist views in contemporary metaethics. Such views attempt to find a place for normative properties (such as goodness and rightness) in the concrete physical world as it is understood by both science and common sense. The chapter begins by introducing simple naturalist conceptual analyses of normative terms. It then explains how these analyses were rejected in the beginning of the 20th Century due to G.E. Moore’s influential Open Question Argument. Af…Read more
  •  1177
    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
  •  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
  •  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.
  •  830
    Contractualism and Climate Change
    In Marcello Di Paola & Gianfranco Pellegrino (eds.), Canned Heat: Ethics and Politics of Climate Change, Routledge. pp. 115-128. 2014.
    Climate change is ‘a complex problem raising issues across and between a large number of disciplines, including physical and life sciences, political science, economics, and psychology, to name just a few’ (Gardiner 2006: 397). It is also a moral problem. Therefore, in this chapter, I will consider what kind of a contribution an ethical theory called ‘contractualism’ can make to the climate change debates. This chapter first introduces contractualism. It then describes a simple climate change…Read more
  •  829
    An Improved Whole Life Satisfaction Theory of Happiness
    International Journal of Wellbeing 1 (1): 149-166. 2011.
    According to the popular Whole Life Satisfaction theories of happiness, an agent is happy when she judges that her life fulfils her ideal life-plan. Fred Feldman has recently argued that such views cannot accommodate the happiness of spontaneous or pre-occupied agents who do not consider how well their lives are going. In this paper, I formulate a new Whole Life Satisfaction theory which can deal with this problem. My proposal is inspired by Michael Smith’s advice-model of desirability. Accordin…Read more
  •  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
  •  816
    Moral Error Theory and the Belief Problem
    In Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics: Volume 8, Oxford University Press. pp. 168-194. 2013.
    Moral error theories claim that (i) moral utterances express moral beliefs, that (ii) moral beliefs ascribe moral properties, and that (iii) moral properties are not instantiated. Thus, according to these views, there seems to be conclusive evidence against the truth of our ordinary moral beliefs. Furthermore, many error theorists claim that, even if we accepted moral error theory, we could still in principle keep our first-order moral beliefs. This chapter argues that this last claim makes many…Read more
  •  807
    Non-Naturalism and Reference
    Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 11 (2): 1-24. 2017.
    Metaethical realists disagree about the nature of normative properties. Naturalists think that they are ordinary natural properties: causally efficacious, a posteriori knowable, and usable in the best explanations of natural and social sciences. Non-naturalist realists, in contrast, argue that they are sui generis: causally inert, a priori knowable and not a part of the subject matter of sciences. It has been assumed so far that naturalists can explain causally how the normative predicates manag…Read more
  •  744
    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.
  •  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
  •  632
    Judgment Internalism: An Argument from Self-Knowledge
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 21 (3): 489-503. 2018.
    Judgment internalism about evaluative judgments is the view that there is a necessary internal connection between evaluative judgments and motivation understood as desires. The debate about judgment internalism has reached a standoff some time ago. In this paper, I outline a new argument for judgment internalism. This argument does not rely on intuitions about cases, but rather it has the form of an inference to the best explanation. I argue that the best philosophical explanations of how we kno…Read more
  •  588
    Consequentialist Options
    Utilitas 26 (3): 276-302. 2014.
    According to traditional forms of act-consequentialism, an action is right if and only if no other action in the given circumstances would have better consequences. It has been argued that this view does not leave us enough freedom to choose between actions which we intuitively think are morally permissible but not required options. In the first half of this article, I will explain why the previous consequentialist responses to this objection are less than satisfactory. I will then attempt to sh…Read more
  •  518
    Contractualist Replies to the Redundancy Objections
    Theoria 71 (1): 38-58. 2005.
    This paper is a defence of T.M. Scanlon's contractualism - the view that an action is wrong if it is forbidden by the principles which no one could reasonably reject. Such theories have been argued to be redundant in two ways. They are claimed to assume antecedent moral facts to explain which principles could not be reasonably rejected, and the reasons they provide to follow the non-rejectable principles are said to be unnecessary given that we already have sufficient reasons not to do the acts …Read more
  •  495
    Contractualism and the Conditional Fallacy
    Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics 4 113-137. 2014.
    Most contractualist ethical theories have a subjunctivist structure. This means that they attempt to make sense of right and wrong in terms of a set of principles which would be accepted in some idealized, non-actual circumstances. This makes these views vulnerable to the so-called conditional fallacy objection. The moral principles that are appropriate for the idealized circumstances fail to give a correct account of what is right and wrong in the ordinary situations. This chapter uses two vers…Read more
  •  477
    Contractualism as Restricted Constructivism
    Topoi 37 (4): 571-579. 2018.
    Metaethics is often dominated by both realist views according to which moral claims are made true by either non-natural or natural properties and by non-cognitivist views according to which these claims express desire-like attitudes. It is sometimes suggested that constructivism is a fourth alternative, but it has remained opaque just how it differs from the other views. To solve this problem, this article first describes a clear constructivist theory based on Crispin Wright’s anti-realism. It t…Read more
  •  465
    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
  •  463
    A dilemma for rule-consequentialism
    Philosophia 36 (1): 141-150. 2008.
    Rule-consequentialists tend to argue for their normative theory by claiming that their view matches our moral convictions just as well as a pluralist set of Rossian duties. As an additional advantage, rule-consequentialism offers a unifying justification for these duties. I challenge the first part of the ruleconsequentialist argument and show that Rossian duties match our moral convictions better than the rule-consequentialist principles. I ask the rule-consequentialists a simple question. In t…Read more
  •  457
    Non-Realist Cognitivism, Truth and Objectivity
    Acta Analytica 32 (2): 193-212. 2017.
    In On What Matters, Derek Parfit defends a new metaethical theory, which he calls non-realist cognitivism. It claims that normative judgments are beliefs; that some normative beliefs are true; that the normative concepts that are a part of the propositions that are the contents of normative beliefs are irreducible, unanalysable and of their own unique kind; and that neither the natural features of the reality nor any additional normative features of the reality make the relevant normative belief…Read more
  •  432
    Contractualism and the Counter-Culture Challenge
    Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics 7 184-206. 2017.
    T. M. Scanlon’s contractualism attempts to give an account of right and wrong in terms of the moral code that could not be reasonably rejected. Reasonable rejectability is then a function of what kind of consequences the general adoption of different moral codes has for different individuals. It has been shown that moral codes should be compared at a lower than 100% level of social acceptance. This leads to the counter-culture challenge. The problem is that the cultural background of the individ…Read more
  •  387
    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
  •  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
  •  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
  •  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
  •  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
  •  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