•  272
    Rivka Weinberg advances an error theory of ultimate meaning with three parts: (1) a conceptual analysis, (2) the claim that the extension of the concept is empty, and (3) a proposed fitting response, namely being very, very sad. Weinberg’s conceptual analysis of ultimate meaning involves two features that jointly make it metaphysically impossible, namely (i) the separateness of activities and valued ends, and (ii) the bounded nature of human lives. Both are open to serious challenges. We offer a…Read more
  •  228
    The Cogito, Dreamt Characters, and Unreal Existence
    Acta Analytica 38 (X): 585-592. 2023.
    Borges’ The Circular Ruins tells the story of a magician who turns out to be a character in a dream. Leibowitz (2021) argues that this scenario undermines the rational indubitability of Descartes’ Cogito. The magician, he argues, is an unreal appearance and therefore does not exist. I argue that Borges drew a distinction between reality and existence and that he was right to do so. There are various senses of reality and the sense in which a dreamt character is unreal poses no threat to their ex…Read more
  •  104
    Social media, interpersonal relations and the objective attitude
    Ethics and Information Technology 22 (3): 269-279. 2020.
    How do social media affect interpersonal relationships? Adopting a Strawsonian framework, I argue that social media make us more likely to adopt the objective attitude towards persons. Technologically mediated communication tends to inhibit interpersonal emotions and other reactive attitudes. This is due to a relative lack of the social cues that typically enable us to read minds and react to them. Adopting the objective attitude can be harmful for two reasons. First, it tends to undermine the b…Read more
  •  64
    Normativity, Realism and Emotional Experience
    Philosophia 51 (1). 2023.
    Norms are standards against which actions, dispositions of mind and character, states of affairs and so forth can be measured. They also govern our behaviour, make claims on us, bind us and provide reasons for action and thought that motivate us. J. L. Mackie argued that the intrinsic prescriptivity, or to-be-pursuedness, of moral norms would make them utterly unlike anything else that we know of. Therefore, we should favour an error theory of morality. Mackie thought that the to-be-pursuedness …Read more
  •  46
    On the Prospects of Modal Fictionalism
    Gnosis 8 (2): 31-47. 2007.
    I argue that fictionalism is an unpromising alternative to realism in two important respects. First, fictionalism offers a less satisfactory modal semantics because the incorporated fictive operator is itself modal and its results differ significantly from realism. Second, fictionalism struggles to provide us with a satisfactory account of the ontological grounding of modal truth and finds itself in opposition to several influential accounts of fictional objects which I discuss. I conclude by su…Read more
  •  39
    Goodness: Attributive and predicative
    Les ateliers de l'éthique/The Ethics Forum 11 (2-3): 70-87. 2016.
    Michael-John Turp | : There is little consensus concerning the truth or reference conditions for evaluative terms such as “good” and “bad.” In his paper “Good and Evil,” Geach proposed that we distinguish between attributive and predicative uses of “good.” Foot, Thomson, Kraut, and others have put this distinction to use when discussing basic questions of value theory. In §§1-2, I outline Geach’s proposal and argue that attributive evaluation depends on a prior grasp of the kind of thing that is…Read more
  •  39
    Hume, Humans and Animals
    The Journal of Ethics 24 (1): 119-136. 2020.
    Hume’s Treatise, Enquiries and Essays contain plentiful material for an investigation into the moral nature of other animals and our moral relations to them. In particular, Hume pays considerable attention to animal minds. He also argues that moral judgment is grounded in sympathy. As sympathy is shared by humans and some other animals, this already hints at the possibility that some animals are morally considerable, even if they are not moral agents. Most contributions to the literature on anim…Read more
  •  38
    Gamesmanship as strategic excellence
    with Josh Leota
    Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 47 (2): 232-247. 2020.
    Contributors to the literature on gamesmanship typically assume that gamesmanship can be clearly distinguished from other legal strategies used in sports. In this article, we argue that this is a m...
  •  32
    Belief, truth and virtue
    Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy 32 (3): 91-104. 2013.
    In this paper, I defend the view that truth is a constitutive norm of belief formation, argue in favour of a virtue-theoretic account of epistemic evaluation and respond to possible objections. In §1, I argue that belief necessarily aims at truth. In §2, I defend a virtue-theoretic approach to epistemic evaluation in response to concerns about epistemic luck and doxastic control. In §3, I distinguish between evaluative and deontic norms in order to avoid the charge that we are subject to impo…Read more
  •  28
    Cynics as Rational Animals
    History of Philosophy Quarterly 37 (3): 203-222. 2020.
    The Cynic exhortation to live according to nature is far from transparent. I defend a traditional interpretation: to live in accordance with nature is to live in accordance with human nature, which is to live as a rational animal. After discussing methodological concerns, I consider the theriophilic proposal that the ideal Cynic lives like an animal. I marshal evidence against this view and in favor of the alternative of Cynics as rational animals. Finally, I anticipate and address the concern t…Read more
  •  26
    Meaning and morality in boxing
    Sport, Ethics and Philosophy 1-15. forthcoming.
    While sport is often pursued more for reasons of meaning than morality, philosophers have had far less to say about the former. How are the ends of sport related to meaning and morality? I address the question through the case study of boxing. One reason for this approach is that the moral status of boxing is contested, which makes it an interesting candidate for immoral, meaningful activity. Drawing on Wolf’s hybrid account of meaning in life, I argue that boxing can be a meaningful pursuit ins…Read more
  •  23
    Ways of life as modes of presentation
    Human Affairs 31 (4): 429-438. 2021.
    Books and journal articles have become the dominant modes of presentation in contemporary philosophy. This historically contingent paradigm prioritises textual expression and assumes a distinction between philosophical practice and its presented product. Using Socrates and Diogenes as exemplars, we challenge the presumed supremacy of the text and defend the importance of ways of life as modes of practiced presentation. We argue that text cannot capture the embodied activity of philosophy without…Read more
  •  22
    An Evaluative Norm for Belief
    Dialogue 56 (2): 227-239. 2017.
    It is often argued that belief is partly constituted by a norm of truth. Most recent discussions have assumed that the norm is deontic concerning what may or ought to be believed. I criticize two proposals, one canvassed by Krister Bykvist and Anandi Hattiangadi, and the other defended by Daniel Whiting. Instead, I argue in favour of an evaluative norm, according to which we would do well to believe the truth. I show that an evaluative norm fares better than its deontic competitors with respect …Read more
  •  20
    Naturalized epistemology and the normative
    Forum Philosophicum: International Journal for Philosophy 13 (2): 335-347. 2008.
    Gradually emerging from the so-called 'linguistic turn', philosophy in the second half of the twentieth century witnessed what we might follow P. M. S. Hacker in describing as a 'naturalistic turn'. This change of direction, an abandon­ment of traditional philosophical methods in favour of a scientific approach, or critics would say a scientistic approach, has met with widespread approval. In the first part of the paper I look to establish the centrality of the normative to the dis­cipline of ep…Read more
  •  14
    Unjustifiably Irresponsible: The Effects of Social Roles on Attributions of Intent
    Social Psychological and Personality Science 12 (8): 1446-1456. 2021.
    How do people’s social roles change others’ perceptions of their intentions to cause harm? Three preregistered vignette-based experiments (N = 788) manipulated the social role of someone causing harm and measured how intentional people thought the harm was. Results indicate that people judge harmful consequences as intentional when they think the actor unjustifiably caused harm. Social roles were shown to alter intention judgments by making people responsible for preventing harm (thereby enderin…Read more
  •  9
    Naturalized Epistemology and the Normative
    Forum Philosophicum: International Journal for Philosophy 13 (2): 343-355. 2008.
    Gradually emerging from the so-called “linguistic turn,” philosophy in the second half of the twentieth century witnessed what we might follow P. M. S. Hacker in describing as a “naturalistic turn.” This change of direction, an abandonment of traditional philosophical methods in favour of a scientific approach, or critics would say a scientistic approach, has met with widespread approval. In the first part of the paper I look to establish the centrality of the normative to the discipline of epis…Read more
  • Versions of Naturalism (review)
    Philosophical Forum 42 (3): 332-332. 2011.