•  13
    What kind of reason does incoherence provide?
    Asian Journal of Philosophy 2 (2): 1-9. 2023.
    In this commentary, I raise a few questions about Schmidt’s argument against (R-E): whether facts about incoherence are directly reasons for suspension on particular propositions, as opposed to reasons against sets of attitudes; whether (R-E) should really be formulated in terms of a broad category of “doxastic attitudes” that includes transitional attitudes like suspension; and whether incoherence-based reasons really must fit into the category of “epistemic reasons,” as opposed to be a more ge…Read more
  •  367
    Belief as Commitment to the Truth
    In Eric Schwitzgebel & Jonathan Jong (eds.), The Nature of Belief, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
    In this essay, I develop an account of belief as commitment to the truth of a proposition. On my account, to believe p is to represent p as true by way of committing to the truth of p. To commit to the truth of p, in the sense I am interested in, is to exercise the normative power to subject one’s representation of p as true to the normative standard of truth. As I argue, my account of belief as commitment of the truth explains a variety of features of belief that separate it from attitudes like…Read more
  •  604
    Does Race Best Explain Racial Discrimination?
    Philosophers' Imprint 23. 2023.
    Our concern in this paper lies with a common argument from racial discrimination to realism about races: some people are discriminated against for being members of a particular race (i.e., racial discrimination exists), so some people must be members of that race (i.e., races exist). Error theorists have long responded that we can explain racial discrimination in terms of racial attitudes alone, so we need not explain it in terms of race itself. But to date there has been little detailed discuss…Read more
  •  296
    What's in an Aim?
    Oxford Studies in Metaethics 17 138-165. 2022.
    Metaethical constitutivists seek to ground normativity in facts about what is constitutive of agency. One strand of constitutivism locates the foundations of normativity in constitutive aims, which are standardly conceived of in teleological terms. I present three challenges that show that the teleological conception of constitutive aims is inadequate for the constitutivist project. I then sketch an alternative conception of constitutive aims in the form of a commitment-based conception. On the …Read more
  •  126
  •  36
    Rationality and Kinds of Reasons
    Australasian Philosophical Review 4 (4): 386-392. 2021.
    ABSTRACT In his ‘Rationality versus Normativity’, John Broome argues against the view that rationality is reducible to normativity. Broome’s argument rests on the claim that while rationality supervenes on the mind, normativity does not. In this commentary, I argue that Broome's arguments succeed only against views on which reasons and normativity are univocal. Once we admit of multiple kinds of normative reasons, some fact-given and others non-factive, a version of the reasons-responsiveness vi…Read more
  •  1410
    Vice and Virtue in Sikh Ethics
    The Monist 104 (3): 319-336. 2021.
    In recent years, there has been increasing interest in analytic philosophy that engages with non-Western philosophical traditions, including South Asian religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. However, thus far, there has been no engagement with Sikhism, despite its status as a major world religion with a rich philosophical tradition. This paper is an attempt to get a start at analytic philosophical engagement with Sikh philosophy. My focus is on Sikh ethics, and in particular on the …Read more
  •  1211
    Anscombe on Acting for Reasons
    In Ruth Chang & Kurt Sylvan (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Practical Reason, Routledge. 2020.
    This chapter discusses some of Anscombe’s contributions to the philosophy of practical reason. It focuses particularly on Anscombe’s view of what it is to act for reasons. I begin by discussing the relationship between acting intentionally and acting for reasons in Anscombe's theory of action. I then further explicate her view by discussing her rejection of two related views about acting for reasons: causalism (the view that reasons are a kind of cause of actions) and psychologism (the view that…Read more
  •  813
    Moral Worth, Credit, and Non-Accidentality
    In Mark Timmons (ed.), Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics Volume 10, Oxford University Press, Usa. 2020.
    This paper defends an account of moral worth. Moral worth is a status that some, but not all, morally right actions have. Unlike with merely right actions, when an agent performs a morally worthy action, she is necessarily creditworthy for doing the right thing. First, I argue that two dominant views of moral worth have been unable to fully capture this necessary connection. On one view, an action is morally worthy if and only if its agent is motivated by the features of the action that make it …Read more
  •  656
    Evidentialism doesn’t make an exception for belief
    Synthese 198 (6): 5477-5494. 2021.
    Susanna Rinard has recently offered a new argument for pragmatism and against evidentialism. According to Rinard, evidentialists must hold that the rationality of belief is determined in a way that is different from how the rationality of other states is determined. She argues that we should instead endorse a view she calls Equal Treatment, according to which the rationality of all states is determined in the same way. In this paper, I show that Rinard’s claims are mistaken, and that evidentiali…Read more
  •  752
    Acting and Believing Under the Guise of Normative Reasons
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 99 (2): 409-430. 2019.
    In this paper, I defend an account of the reasons for which we act, believe, and so on for any Ф such that there can be reasons for which we Ф. Such reasons are standardly called motivating reasons. I argue that three dominant views of motivating reasons (psychologism, factualism and disjunctivism) all fail to capture the ordinary concept of a motivating reason. I show this by drawing out three constraints on what motivating reasons must be, and demonstrating how each view fails to satisfy at le…Read more