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95No point of view except ours?Topoi 1-11. forthcoming.I argue that it’s quite comprehensible to get upset about metaethical nihilism, to indulge what I call nihilistic despair. When we lose the objective moral or normative point of view, we lose the promise of luck-immune guidance and categorical importance, things many of us hope for. This is all quite Williams-friendly, but I reject his puzzling but suggestive remarks that nihilistic despair must be a self-pitying muddle. Finally, I argue that internalism about reasons is even more depressing tha…Read more
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79What does incommensurability tell us about agency?In Henrik Andersson & Anders Herlitz (eds.), Value Incommensurability: Ethics, Risk. And Decision-Making, Routledge. pp. 181-198. 2021.Ruth Chang and Joseph Raz have both drawn far-reaching consequences for agency from the phenomenon of incommensurability. After criticizing their arguments, I outline an alternative view: if incommensurability is vagueness, then there are no substantial implications for agency, except perhaps a limited form of naturalistic voluntarism if our reasons are provided by desires.
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13We often have some reason to do actions insofar as they promote outcomes or states of affairs, such as the satisfaction of a desire. But what is it to promote an outcome? I defend a new version of 'probabilism about promotion'. According to Minimal Probabilistic Promotion, we promote some outcome when we make that outcome more likely than it would have been if we had done something (anything) else. This makes promotion easy and reasons cheap.
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312Can Streumer simply avoid supervenience?Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 16 (3): 259-267. 2019.In his defence of an error theory for normative judgements, Bart Streumer presents a new 'reduction' argument against nonreductive normative realism. Streumer claims that unlike previous versions, his 'simple moral theory' version of the argument doesn’t rely on the supervenience of the normative on the descriptive. But this is incorrect; without supervenience the argument does not succeed.
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348Probabilistic promotion and abilityErgo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 6. 2019.We often have some reason to do actions insofar as they promote outcomes or states of affairs, such as the satisfaction of a desire. But what is it to promote an outcome? I defend a new version of 'probabilism about promotion'. According to Minimal Probabilistic Promotion, we promote some outcome when we make that outcome more likely than it would have been if we had done something (anything) else. This makes promotion easy and reasons cheap.
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356From Valuing to Value: A Defense of Subjectivism By David Sobel (review)Analysis 78 (3): 583-586. 2018.Book review of David Sobel's "From Valuing to Value: A Defense of Subjectivism"
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553Incommensurability as vagueness: a burden-shifting argumentTheoria 83 (4): 341-363. 2017.Two options are ‘incommensurate’ when neither is better than the other, but they are not equally good. Typically, we will say that one option is better in some ways, and the other in others, but neither is better ‘all things considered’. It is tempting to think that incommensurability is vagueness—that it is (perhaps) indeterminate which is better—but this ‘vagueness view’ of incommensurability has not proven popular. I set out the vagueness view and its implications in more detail, and argue th…Read more
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230Heaps and Chains: Is the Chaining Argument for Parity a Sorites?Ethics 124 (3): 557-571. 2014.I argue that the Ruth Chang’s Chaining Argument for her parity view of value incomparability trades illicitly on the vagueness of the predicate ‘is comparable with’. Chang is alert to this danger and argues that the predicate is not vague, but this defense does not succeed. The Chaining Argument also faces a dilemma. The predicate is either vague or precise. If it is vague, then the argument is most plausibly a sorites. If it is precise, then the argument is either question begging or dialectica…Read more
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835Tenenbaum and Raffman on Vague Projects, the Self-Torturer, and the SoritesEthics 126 (2): 474-488. 2016.Sergio Tenenbaum and Diana Raffman contend that ‘vague projects’ motivate radical revisions to orthodox, utility-maximising rational choice theory. Their argument cannot succeed if such projects merely ground instances of the paradox of the sorites, or heap. Tenenbaum and Raffman are not blind to this, and argue that Warren Quinn’s Puzzle of the Self-Torturer does not rest on the sorites. I argue that their argument both fails to generalise to most vague projects, and is ineffective in the case …Read more
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39IntroductionRatio 29 (4): 353-356. 2016.A brief, opinionated summary of the papers in the Ratio special edition on incommensurability and vagueness.
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986Borderline Cases and the Collapsing PrincipleUtilitas 26 (1): 51-60. 2014.John Broome has argued that value incommensurability is vagueness, by appeal to a controversial about comparative indeterminacy. I offer a new counterexample to the collapsing principle. That principle allows us to derive an outright contradiction from the claim that some object is a borderline case of some predicate. But if there are no borderline cases, then the principle is empty. The collapsing principle is either false or empty
