•  11
    Knowledge and Temperance in Plato's Charmides
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 99 (4): 763-789. 2018.
    Toward the end of the Charmides, Socrates declares the search for temperance a ‘complete failure’ (175b2‐3). Despite this, commentators have suspected that the dialogue might contain an implicit answer about temperance. I propose a new interpretation: the dialogue implies that temperance is the knowledge of good and bad, when this knowledge is applied specifically to certain operations of the soul. This amounts to a kind of self‐knowledge; it also involves a kind of reflexivity, for it involves …Read more
  •  65
    Eudaimonistic Virtue Ethics and Self-Effacement
    Journal of Value Inquiry 50 (3): 507-524. 2016.
  •  51
    Socratic inquiry and the “What‐is‐F?” question
    European Journal of Philosophy 26 (4): 1324-1342. 2018.
    In raising the “What-is-F?” question, commentators disagree about whether Socrates is asking a conceptual question or a causal question. I argue that the contexts surrounding Socrates' two most prominent examples of adequate answers confirm that the “What-is-F?” question is a conceptual question in both the Meno and Euthyphro, but a causal question in the Laches and Protagoras. The “What-is-F?” question is multifunctional. Plato's Socrates consistently employs two separate vocabularies in connec…Read more
  •  57
    Socrates, the primary question, and the unity of virtue
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 45 (4): 445-470. 2015.
    For Socrates, the virtues are a kind of knowledge, and the virtues form a unity. Sometimes, Socrates suggests that the virtues are all ‘one and the same’ thing. Other times, he suggests they are ‘parts of a single whole.’ I argue that the ‘what is x?’ question is sophisticated, it gives rise to two distinct kinds of investigations into virtue, a conceptual investigation into the ousia and a psychological investigation into the dunamis, Plato recognized the difference between definitional account…Read more