•  15
    Dear Prudence, written by Guy Fletcher
    Journal of Moral Philosophy 20 (3-4): 346-349. 2023.
  •  319
    Speculative Aesthetic Expressivism
    with Jon Robson
    British Journal of Aesthetics (2): 181-197. 2022.
    In this paper we sketch a new version of aesthetic expressivism. We argue that one advantage of this view is that it explains various putative norms on the formation and revision of aesthetic judgement. We begin by setting out our proposed explananda and a sense in which they can be understood as governing the correct response to putative higher-order evidence in aesthetics. We then summarise some existing discussions of expressivist attempts to explain these norms, and objections raised to them…Read more
  •  350
    In “The Evolutionary Debunking of Quasi-Realism,” Neil Sinclair and James Chamberlain present a novel answer that quasi-realists can pro-vide to a version of the reliability challenge in ethics—which asks for an explanation of why our moral beliefs are generally true—and in so doing, they examine whether evolutionary arguments can debunk quasi-realism. Although reliability challenges differ from EDAs in several respects, there may well be a connection between them. For the explanatory premise of…Read more
  •  85
    Practical Expressivism
    Oxford University Press. 2021.
    What is morality? In Practical Expressivism, I argue that morality is a purely natural interpersonal co-ordination device, whereby human beings express their attitudes in order to influence the attitudes and actions of others. The ultimate goal of these expressions is to find acceptable ways of living together. This 'expressivist' model for understanding morality faces well-known challenges concerning 'saving the appearances' of morality, because morality presents itself to us as a practice of …Read more
  •  62
    Ethical Subjectivism and Expressivism
    Cambridge University Press. 2020.
    Ethical subjectivists hold that moral judgements are descriptions of our attitudes. Expressivists hold that they are expressions of our attitudes. These views cook with the same ingredients – the natural world, and our reactions to it – and have similar attractions. This Element assesses each of them by considering whether they can accommodate three central features of moral practice: the practicality of moral judgements, the phenomenon of moral disagreement, and the mind-independence of some mo…Read more
  •  14
    Belief Pills and the Possibility of Moral Epistemology
    Oxford Studies in Metaethics 13. 2017.
    This chapter argues that evolutionary debunking arguments are dialectically ineffective. Such arguments rely on the premise that moral judgements can be given evolutionary explanations which do not invoke their truth. The challenge for the debunker is to bridge the gap between this premise and the conclusion that moral judgements are unjustified. After discussing older attempts to bridge this gap, this chapter focuses on Joyce’s recent attempt, which claims that ‘we do not have a believable acco…Read more
  •  337
    Are the circumstances in which moral testimony serves as evidence that our judgement-forming processes are unreliable the same circumstances in which mundane testimony serves as evidence that our mundane judgement-forming processes are unreliable? In answering this question, we distinguish two possible roles for testimony: (i) providing a legitimate basis for a judgement, (ii) providing (‘higher-order’) evidence that a judgement-forming process is unreliable. We explore the possibilities for a v…Read more
  •  36
    Moral Skepticism: New Essays, edited by Diego E. Machuca
    International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 9 (2): 173-178. 2019.
  •  57
    "Moral Skepticism: New Essays" ed. Diego E. Machuca (Routledge 2018) (review)
    International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 9 (2): 1-7. 2019.
  •  19
    Introduction
    In The Naturalistic Fallacy, Cambridge University Press. 2018.
  •  69
    The Naturalistic Fallacy (edited book)
    Cambridge University Press. 2018.
    At the turn of the twentieth century, G.E. Moore contemptuously dismissed most previous 'ethical systems' for committing the 'Naturalistic Fallacy'. This fallacy – which has been variously understood, but has almost always been seen as something to avoid – was perhaps the greatest structuring force on subsequent ethical theorising. To a large extent, to understand the Fallacy is to understand contemporary ethics. This volume aims to provide that understanding. Its thematic chapters – written by …Read more
  •  166
    This chapter -- the first in the edited collection "The Naturalistic Fallacy" (Cambridge University Press 2019) -- locates the naturalistic fallacy within the context of the other claims Moore defends in Principia Ethica. I explore the notions of “definition” and “analysis” as Moore understood them and set out in detail the multiple interpretations of the fallacy and open question argument. I then take a broad view of the influence of the fallacy on the Century of metaethics that came after Moor…Read more
  •  80
    Ethical Issues in Designing Interventions for Behavioural Change
    with Gyunchan Thomas Jun and Fernando Carvalho
    Proceedings of Design Research Society 2018, Volume 1. 2018.
    This paper reflects on fundamental ethical issues concerning designing for behavioural change, in order to raise questions about the factors that should be considered by design practitioners when developing interventions. It draws on existing literature on philosophical ethics, moral psychology and design. It proposes a list of ethical questions and considerations to be made throughout the design process. A case study addressing behavioural changes in antibiotics prescriptions (for Urinary Tract…Read more
  •  57
    Speech and Morality (review)
    Analysis 77 (3): 643-648. 2017.
    Nicholas Sturgeon memorably asked: ‘What difference does it make whether moral realism is true?’ His question was prompted by the rise of the metaethical upstart quasi-realism, which urges that an expressivist account of moral discourse is compatible with most, if not all, of its important contours. In his invigorating new book, Cuneo offers a startling new answer to Sturgeon’s question.1 If moral realism were not true, Cuneo argues, we would not be able to speak. But since we evidently can spea…Read more
  •  137
    I argue that evolutionary debunking arguments are dialectically ineffective against a range of plausible positions regarding moral truth. I first distinguish debunking arguments which target the truth of moral judgements from those which target their justification. I take the latter to rest on the premise that such judgements can be given evolutionary explanations which do not invoke their truth. The challenge for the debunker is to bridge the gap between this premise and the conclusion that mor…Read more
  •  416
    Reasons Internalism and the Function of Normative Reasons
    Dialectica 71 (2): 209-229. 2017.
    What is the connection between reasons and motives? According to Reasons Internalism there is a non-trivial conceptual connection between normative reasons and the possibility of rationally accessing relevant motivation. Reasons Internalism is attractive insofar as it captures the thought that reasons are for reasoning with and repulsive insofar as it fails to generate sufficient critical distance between reasons and motives. Rather than directly adjudicate this dispute, I extract from it two ge…Read more
  •  43
  •  881
    The explanationist argument for moral realism
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 41 (1): 1-24. 2011.
    In this paper I argue that the explanationist argument in favour of moral realism fails. According to this argument, the ability of putative moral properties to feature in good explanations provides strong evidence for, or entails, the metaphysical claims of moral realism. Some have rejected this argument by denying that moral explanations are ever good explanations. My criticism is different. I argue that even if we accept that moral explanations are (sometimes) good explanations the metaphysic…Read more
  •  459
    On the Connection between Normative Reasons and the Possibility of Acting for those Reasons
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 19 (5): 1211-1223. 2016.
    According to Bernard Williams, if it is true that A has a normative reason to Φ then it must be possible that A should Φ for that reason. This claim is important both because it restricts the range of reasons which agents can have and because it has been used as a premise in an argument for so-called ‘internalist’ theories of reasons. In this paper I rebut an apparent counterexamples to Williams’ claim: Schroeder’s example of Nate. I argue that this counterexample fails since it underestimates t…Read more
  •  1
    Are moral properties intellectually indispensable, and, if so, what consequences does this have for our understanding of their nature, and of our talk and knowledge of them? Are mathematical objects intellectually indispensable, and, if so, what consequences does this have for our understanding of their nature, and of our talk and knowledge of them? What similarities are there, if any, in the answers to the first two questions? Can comparison of the two cases shed light on which answers are most…Read more
  •  96
    Comments on Gibbard’s Thinking How to Live (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 72 (3). 2006.
    University of Cambridge.
  •  508
    Reasons, inescapability and persuasion
    Philosophical Studies 173 (10): 2823-2844. 2016.
    This paper outlines a new metasemantic theory of moral reason statements, focused on explaining how the reasons thus stated can be inescapable. The motivation for the theory is in part that it can explain this and other phenomena concerning moral reasons. The account also suggests a general recipe for explanations of conceptual features of moral reason statements. (Published with Open Access.).
  •  1324
    Moral realism, face-values and presumptions
    Analytic Philosophy 53 (2): 158-179. 2012.
    Many philosophers argue that the face-value of moral practice provides presumptive support to moral realism. This paper analyses such arguments into three steps. (1) Moral practice has a certain face-value, (2) only realism can vindicate this face value, and (3) the face-value needs vindicating. Two potential problems with such arguments are discussed. The first is taking the relevant face-value to involve explicitly realist commitments; the second is underestimating the power of non-realist str…Read more
  •  709
    Expressivist Explanations
    Journal of Moral Philosophy 9 (2): 147-177. 2012.
    In this paper I argue that the common practice of employing moral predicates as explaining phrases can be accommodated on an expressivist account of moral practice. This account does not treat moral explanations as in any way second-rate or derivative, since it subsumes moral explanations under the general theory of program explanations (as defended by Jackson and Pettit). It follows that the phenomenon of moral explanations cannot be used to adjudicate the debate between expressivism and its ri…Read more
  •  154
    Moral Explanations
    In Hugh LaFollette (ed.), International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Wiley. 2022.
    "The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice." (Martin Luther King) A moral explanation is an explanation of a particular or type of event (or fact or state of affairs) that features moral terms in the explaining phrase. Here are some examples. First, one way of the above quote is as the claim that, in the broad sweep of history, societies tend toward more just institutions, and that they do so precisely because these institutions are just. This is a moral explanation …Read more
  •  1025
    Two kinds of naturalism in ethics
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 9 (4). 2006.
    What are the conditions on a successful naturalistic account of moral properties? In this paper I discuss one such condition: the possibility of moral concepts playing a role in good empirical theories on a par with those of the natural and social sciences. I argue that Peter Railton’s influential account of moral rightness fails to meet this condition, and thus is only viable in the hands of a naturalist who doesn’t insist on it. This conclusion generalises to all versions of naturalism that gi…Read more
  •  881
    Propositional clothing and belief
    Philosophical Quarterly 57 (228): 342-362. 2007.
    Moral discourse is propositionally clothed, that is, it exhibits those features – such as the ability of its sentences to intelligibly embed in conditionals and other unasserted contexts – that have been taken by some philosophers to be constitutive of discourses that express propositions. If there is nothing more to a mental state being a belief than it being characteristically expressed by sentences that are propositionally clothed then the version of expressivism which accepts that moral disc…Read more
  •  535
    Conceptual Role Semantics and the Reference of Moral Concepts
    European Journal of Philosophy 26 (1): 95-121. 2018.
    This paper examines the prospects for a conceptual or functional role theory of moral concepts. It is argued that such an account is well-placed to explain both the irreducibility and practicality of moral concepts. Several versions of conceptual role semantics for moral concepts are distinguished, depending on whether the concept-constitutive conceptual roles are wide or narrow normative or non-normative and purely doxastic or conative. It is argued that the most plausible version of conceptual…Read more