•  161182
    Possible girls
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 89 (2). 2008.
    I argue that if David Lewis’ modal realism is true, modal realists from different possible worlds can fall in love with each other. I offer a method for uniquely picking out possible people who are in love with us and not with our counterparts. Impossible lovers and trans-world love letters are considered. Anticipating objections, I argue that we can stand in the right kinds of relations to merely possible people to be in love with them and that ending a trans-world relationship to start a relat…Read more
  •  13160
    Scalar consequentialism the right way
    Philosophical Studies 175 (12): 3131-3144. 2018.
    The rightness and wrongness of actions fits on a continuous scale. This fits the way we evaluate actions chosen among a diverse range of options, even though English speakers don’t use the words “righter” and “wronger”. I outline and defend a version of scalar consequentialism, according to which rightness is a matter of degree, determined by how good the consequences are. Linguistic resources are available to let us truly describe actions simply as right. Some deontological theories face proble…Read more
  •  11711
    I defend hedonism about moral value by first presenting an argument for moral skepticism, and then showing that phenomenal introspection gives us a unique way to defeat the skeptical argument and establish pleasure's goodness.
  •  7322
    Divine Fine-Tuning vs. Electrons in Love
    American Philosophical Quarterly 54 (1): 89-98. 2017.
    I present a novel objection to fine-tuning arguments for God's existence. On any values of the physical constants, the psychophysical laws could be set to permit intelligent and happy beings, so the specific values of the physical constants in our world provide little evidence for God's existence. For example, even if the physical constants didn't allow carbon or any atoms larger than hydrogen, the psychophysical laws could be set so that charge is sufficient to realize romantic desire. Then eve…Read more
  •  5699
    I argue that one intends that ϕ if one has a desire that ϕ and an appropriately related means-end belief. Opponents, including Setiya and Bratman, charge that this view can't explain three things. First, intentional action is accompanied by knowledge of what we are doing. Second, we can choose our reasons for action. Third, forming an intention settles a deliberative question about what to do, disposing us to cease deliberating about it. I show how the desire- belief view can explain why these p…Read more
  •  4638
    The Humean Theory of Motivation Reformulated and Defended
    Philosophical Review 118 (4): 465-500. 2009.
    This essay defends a strong version of the Humean theory of motivation on which desire is necessary both for motivation and for reasoning that changes our desires. Those who hold that moral judgments are beliefs with intrinsic motivational force need to oppose this view, and many of them have proposed counterexamples to it. Using a novel account of desire, this essay handles the proposed counterexamples in a way that shows the superiority of the Humean theory. The essay addresses the classic obj…Read more
  •  3990
    Distinguishing Belief and Imagination
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 94 (2): 152-165. 2013.
    Some philosophers (including Urmson, Humberstone, Shah, and Velleman) hold that believing that p distinctively involves applying a norm according to which the truth of p is a criterion for the success or correctness of the attitude. On this view, imagining and assuming differ from believing in that no such norm is applied. I argue against this view with counterexamples showing that applying the norm of truth is neither necessary nor sufficient for distinguishing believing from imagining and assu…Read more
  •  3801
    Ethical Reductionism
    Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 13 (1): 32-52. 2018.
    Ethical reductionism is the best version of naturalistic moral realism. Reductionists regard moral properties as identical to properties appearing in successful scientific theories. Nonreductionists, including many of the Cornell Realists, argue that moral properties instead supervene on scientific properties without identity. I respond to two arguments for nonreductionism. First, nonreductionists argue that the multiple realizability of moral properties defeats reductionism. Multiple realizabil…Read more
  •  3000
    Unequal Vividness and Double Effect
    Utilitas 25 (3): 291-315. 2013.
    I argue that the Doctrine of Double Effect is accepted because of unreliable processes of belief-formation, making it unacceptably likely to be mistaken. We accept the doctrine because we more vividly imagine intended consequences of our actions than merely foreseen ones, making our aversions to the intended harms more violent, and making us judge that producing the intended harms is morally worse. This explanation fits psychological evidence from Schnall and others, and recent neuroscientific r…Read more
  •  2893
    In Defense of Partisanship
    In David Killoren, Emily Crookston & Jonathan Trerise (eds.), Ethics in Politics: The Rights and Obligations of Individual Political Agents, Routledge. pp. 75-90. 2016.
    This essay explains why partisanship is justified in contemporary America and environments with similar voting systems and coalition structures. It explains how political parties operate, how helping a party succeed can be a goal of genuine ethical significance, and how trusting one party while mistrusting another can be a reliable route to true belief about important political issues.
  •  2436
    The Backward Clock, Truth-Tracking, and Safety
    Journal of Philosophy 112 (1): 46-55. 2015.
    We present Backward Clock, an original counterexample to Robert Nozick’s truth-tracking analysis of propositional knowledge, which works differently from other putative counterexamples and avoids objections to which they are vulnerable. We then argue that four ways of analysing knowledge in terms of safety, including Duncan Pritchard’s, cannot withstand Backward Clock either.
  •  2416
    Advantages of Propositionalism
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 96 (1): 165-180. 2015.
    Propositionalism is the view that the contents of intentional attitudes have a propositional structure. Objectualism opposes propositionalism in allowing the contents of these attitudes to be ordinary objects or properties. Philosophers including Talbot Brewer, Paul Thagard, Michelle Montague, and Alex Grzankowski attack propositionalism about such attitudes as desire, liking, and fearing. This article defends propositionalism, mainly on grounds that it better supports psychological explanations
  •  2277
    Zarathustra’s metaethics
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 45 (3): 278-299. 2015.
    Nietzsche takes moral judgments to be false beliefs, and encourages us to pursue subjective nonmoral value arising from our passions. His view that strong and unified passions make one virtuous is mathematically derivable from this subjectivism and a conceptual analysis of virtue, explaining his evaluations of character and the nature of the Overman.
  •  2021
    Vengeful thinking and moral epistemology
    In Brian Leiter & Neil Sinhababu (eds.), Nietzsche and Morality, Oxford University Press. pp. 262. 2007.
  •  1787
    Virtue, Desire, and Silencing Reasons
    In Iskra Fileva (ed.), Questions of Character, Oxford University Press. pp. 158-168. 2016.
    John McDowell claims that virtuous people recognize moral reasons using a perceptual capacity that doesn't include desire. I show that the phenomena he cites are better explained if desire makes us see considerations favoring its satisfaction as reasons. The salience of moral considerations to the virtuous, like the salience of food to the hungry, exemplifies the emotional and attentional effects of desire. I offer a desire-based account of how we can follow uncodifiable rules of common-sense mo…Read more
  •  1281
    Imagination and Belief
    In Amy Kind (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Imagination, Routledge. pp. 111-123. 2016.
    This chapter considers the nature of imagination and belief, exploring how deeply these two states of mind differ. It first addresses a range of cognitive and motivational differences between imagination and belief which suggest that they're fundamentally different states of mind. Then it addresses imaginative immersion, delusions, and the different norms we apply to the two mental states, which some theorists regard as providing support for a more unified picture of imagination and belief.
  •  939
    Loving the Eternal Recurrence
    with Kuong Un Teng
    Journal of Nietzsche Studies 50 (1): 106-124. 2019.
    We explore how one might respond emotionally to the eternal recurrence. Zarathustra himself serves as our central case study. First we clarify the idea of eternal recurrence and its role in Nietzsche’s philosophy, explaining why the eternal recurrence has the emotional consequences Nietzsche describes when he first introduces the idea in The Gay Science. Then we describe Zarathustra’s emotional journey from horror at the eternal recurrence to loving it, in the sections from “On Great Events” to …Read more
  •  907
    Pleasure is goodness; morality is universal
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 1-17. forthcoming.
    This paper presents the Universality Argument that pleasure is goodness. The first premise defines goodness as what should please all. The second premise reduces 'should' to perceptual accuracy. The third premise invokes a universal standard of accuracy: qualitative identity. Since the pleasure of all is accurate solely about pleasure, pleasure is goodness, or universal moral value. The argument proceeds from a moral sense theory that analyzes moral concepts as concerned with what all should hop…Read more
  •  894
    One‐Person Moral Twin Earth Cases
    Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 8 (1): 16-22. 2019.
    This paper presents two cases demonstrating that theories allowing the environment to partially determine the content of moral concepts provide incorrect truth-conditions for moral terms. While typical Moral Twin Earth cases seek to establish that these theories fail to account formoral disagreement, neither case here essentially involves interpersonal disagreement. Both involve a single person retaining moral beliefs despite recognizing actual or potential mismatches with the purportedly conten…Read more
  •  864
    We can infer moral conclusions from nonmoral evidence using a three-step procedure. First, we distinguish the processes generating belief so that their reliability in generating true belief is statistically predictable. Second, we assess the processes’ reliability, perhaps by observing how frequently they generate true nonmoral belief or logically inconsistent beliefs. Third, we adjust our credence in moral propositions in light of the truth ratios of the processes generating beliefs in them. Th…Read more
  •  736
    Qualia share their correlates’ locations
    Synthese 202 (2): 1-14. 2023.
    This paper argues that qualia share their physical correlates' locations. The first premise comes from the theory of relativity: If something shares a time with a physical event in all reference frames, it shares that physical event’s location. The second premise is that qualia share times with their correlates in all reference frames. Having qualia and correlates share locations makes relations between them easier to explain, improving both physicalist and dualist theories.
  •  695
    Epistemic akrasia can be rational. I consider a lonely pragmatist who believes that her imaginary friend doesn’t exist, and also believes on pragmatic grounds that she should believe in him. She rationally believes that her imaginary friend doesn’t exist, rationally follows various sources of evidence to the view that she should believe in him to end her loneliness, and rationally holds these attitudes simultaneously. Evidentialism suggests that her ambivalent epistemic state is rational, as con…Read more
  •  672
    The Humean Theory of Practical Irrationality
    Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 1 (6): 1-13. 2011.
    Christine Korsgaard argues that Humean views of both action and rationality jointly imply the impossibility of irrational action, allowing us only to perform actions that we deem rational. Humeans can answer Korsgaard’s objection if their views of action and rationality measure agents’ actual desires differently. What determines what the agent does are the motivational forces that desires produce in the agent at the moment when she decides to act, as these cause action. What determines what it i…Read more
  •  640
    Nietzschean Pragmatism
    Journal of Nietzsche Studies 48 (1): 56-70. 2017.
    Nietzsche holds that one should believe what best promotes life, and he also accepts the correspondence theory of truth. I’ll call this conjunction of views Nietzschean pragmatism. This article provides textual evidence for attributing this pragmatist position to Nietzsche and explains how his broader metaethical views led him to it.The following section introduces Nietzschean pragmatism, discussing how Nietzsche expresses it in BGE, and distinguishing it from William James’s pragmatism about tr…Read more
  •  446
    Mark Alfano, Nietzsche’s Moral Psychology (review)
    Ethics 131 (1): 122-127. 2020.
    While Nietzsche’s interpreters come from impressively diverse intellectual perspectives, very few of them are cyborgs. Mark Alfano has done a valuable service to the field by becoming one to write Nietzsche’s Moral Psychology.
  •  351
    Nietzsche’s Humean (all-too-Humean) Theory of Motivation
    In The Nietzchean Mind, Routledge. pp. 161-176. 2018.
    Nietzsche and Hume agree that desire drives all human action and practical reasoning. This shared view helps them appreciate continuities between human and animal motivation and sets them against a long tradition of rationalist rivals including Kant and Plato. In responding to Kant, Nietzsche further developed the Humean views that Kant himself was responding to. Kantians like Christine Korsgaard argue that reflective endorsement and rejection of options presented by desire demonstrates reason’s…Read more
  •  271
    Comments on Nietzsche’s Constructivism by Justin Remhof (review)
    Philosophia 49 (2): 565-570. 2020.
    Justin Remhof defends a constructivist interpretation of Nietzsche’s view regarding the metaphysics of material objects. First, I describe an attractive feature of Remhof’s interpretation. Since Nietzsche seems to be a constructivist about whatever sort of value he accepts, a constructivist account of objects would fit into a nicely unified overall metaphysical theory. Second, I explore various options for developing the constructivist view of objects. Depending on how Nietzsche understood conce…Read more
  •  207
    Desire and Aesthetic Pleasure
    Australasian Philosophical Review 1 (1): 95-99. 2017.
    ABSTRACTMohan Matthen's ‘The Pleasure of Art’ considers a rich variety of psychological phenomena surrounding our experience of pleasure in aesthetic appreciation. I explain many of these phenomena in terms of desire. Often my explanations support and complement Matthen's account; but sometimes I account for the same phenomena in terms of different causal structures than he invokes, seeking a more unified psychological theory.
  •  205
    Naturalistic arguments for ethical hedonism
    An Introduction to Utilitarianism. 2022.
    This essay presents two arguments for ethical hedonism, each defending it on naturalistic grounds. This abstract lists the three premises of each argument. First is the Reliability Argument. [R1] The reliability of a process is the probability that beliefs it generates are true. [R2] Phenomenal introspection is reliable in generating belief that pleasure is good. [R3] No other processes are independently reliable in generating moral belief. ∴ [%PIG] Pleasure is probably the only good thing. S…Read more