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Resisting the buck-passing account of valueIn Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics: Volume 1, Clarendon Press. 2006.
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517Thick Concepts: Where's Evaluation?In Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Volume 7, Oxford University Press. pp. 235-70. 2012.This paper presents an alternative to the standard view that the evaluations that the so-called "thick" terms and concepts in ethics may be used to convey belong to their sense or semantic meaning. I describe a large variety of linguistic data that are well explained by the alternative view that the evaluations that (at least a very wide range of) thick terms and concepts may be used to convey are a certain kind of defeasible implications of their utterances which can be given a conversational e…Read more
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458Resisting the Buck-Passing Account of ValueIn Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics: Volume 1, Clarendon Press. pp. 295-324. 2006.I first distinguish between different forms of the buck-passing account of value and clarify my target in other respects on buck-passers' behalf. I then raise a number of problems for the different forms of the buck-passing view that I have distinguished.
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435A Theory of Hedged Moral PrinciplesIn Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics: Volume 4, Oxford University Press. pp. 91-132. 2009.This paper offers a general model of substantive moral principles as a kind of hedged moral principles that can (but don't have to) tolerate exceptions. I argue that the kind of principles I defend provide an account of what would make an exception to them permissible. I also argue that these principles are nonetheless robustly explanatory with respect to a variety of moral facts; that they make sense of error, uncertainty, and disagreement concerning moral principles and their implications; and…Read more
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510Explanatory Pluralism in Normative EthicsOxford Studies in Normative Ethics 14 138-161. 2024.Some theorists of normative explanation argue that we can make sense of debates between first-order moral theories such as consequentialism and its rivals only if we understand their explanations of why the right acts are right and the wrong acts are wrong as generative (e.g. grounding) explanations. Others argue that the standard form of normative explanation is, instead, some kind of unification. Neither sort of explanatory monism can account for all the explanations of particular moral facts …Read more
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733Moral Generalism and Moral Particularism (2nd ed.)In Christian B. Miller (ed.), The Bloomsbury Handbook of Ethics, Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 381-396. 2023.This paper is a survey of the generalism-particularism debate in ethics. It's an updated version of "Moral Particularism", in Christian B. Miller (ed.), The Continuum Companion to Ethics (Continuum, 2011), pp. 247-260.
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800Varieties of Normative ExplanationIn David Copp & Connie Rosati (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Metaethics, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.Philosophers pursue a number of different explanatory projects when explaining various sorts of normative phenomena. This chapter takes some steps towards understanding this variety. I lay some general ground about explanation. I describe some key axes of debate about explanations that first-order normative inquiry typically seeks to state and defend. And I briefly discuss how two other sorts of normative explanation that seem more concerned with the foundations of normative domains like ethics …Read more
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908Practical Commitment in Normative DiscourseJournal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 21 (2). 2022.Many normative judgments play a practical role in our thought. This paper concerns how their practical role is reflected in language. It is natural to wonder whether the phenomenon is semantic or pragmatic. The standard assumption in moral philosophy is that at least terms which can be used to express “thin” normative concepts – such as 'good', 'right', and 'ought' – are associated with certain practical roles somehow as a matter of meaning. But this view is rarely given explicit defense or even…Read more
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721Normative Naturalism on Its Own TermsOrganon F: Medzinárodný Časopis Pre Analytickú Filozofiu 28 (3): 505-530. 2021.Normative naturalism is primarily a metaphysical doctrine: there are normative facts and properties, and these fall into the class of natural facts and properties. Many objections to naturalism rely on additional assumptions about language or thought, but often without adequate consideration of just how normative properties would have to figure in our thought and talk if naturalism were true. In the first part of the paper, I explain why naturalists needn’t think that normative properties can be…Read more
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779Against Moral ContingentismThought: A Journal of Philosophy 10 (3): 209-217. 2021.[This paper is available as open access from the publisher.]The conventional wisdom in ethics is that pure moral laws are at least metaphysically necessary. By contrast, Moral Contingentism holds that pure moral laws are metaphysically contingent. This paper raises a normative objection to Moral Contingentism: it is worse equipped than Moral Necessitarianism to account for the normative standing or authority of the pure moral laws to govern the lives of the agents to whom they apply. Since moral…Read more
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797Normative explanation unchainedPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 103 (2): 278-297. 2021.[This paper is available as open access from the publisher.] Normative theories aim to explain why things have the normative features they have. This paper argues that, contrary to some plausible existing views, one important kind of normative explanations which first-order normative theories aim to formulate and defend can fail to transmit downward along chains of metaphysical determination of normative facts by non-normative facts. Normative explanation is plausibly subject to a kind of a just…Read more
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743Thick Concepts: Where’s Evaluation?In Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Volume 7, Oxford University Press. pp. 235-70. 2012.This chapter presents an alternative to the standard view that at least some of the evaluations that the so-called “thick” terms and concepts in ethics may be used to convey belong to their sense or semantic meaning. After introducing the topic and making some methodological remarks, the chapter presents a wide variety of linguistic data that are well explained by the alternative view that at least a very wide range of thick terms and concepts are such that even the evaluations that are most clo…Read more
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687A Theory of Hedged Moral PrinciplesOxford Studies in Metaethics 4 91-132. 2009.This paper offers a general model of substantive moral principles as a kind of hedged moral principles that can (but don't have to) tolerate exceptions. I argue that the kind of principles I defend provide an account of what would make an exception to them permissible. I also argue that these principles are nonetheless robustly explanatory with respect to a variety of moral facts; that they make sense of error, uncertainty, and disagreement concerning moral principles and their implications; and…Read more
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661Resisting the buck-passing account of valueOxford Studies in Metaethics 1 295-324. 2006.I first distinguish between different forms of the buck-passing account of value and clarify my target in other respects on buck-passers' behalf. I then raise a number of problems for the different forms of the buck-passing view that I have distinguished.
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76Review of Moral Particularism (ed. Brad Hooker and Margaret Little) (review)Philosophical Review 111 (3): 478-483. 2002.This is a short review of Moral Particularism, ed. Brad Hooker and Margaret Little (Oxford University Press, 2002).
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1822Normative Explanation and JustificationNoûs 55 (1): 3-22. 2021.Normative explanations of why things are wrong, good, or unfair are ubiquitous in ordinary practice and normative theory. This paper argues that normative explanation is subject to a justification condition: a correct complete explanation of why a normative fact holds must identify features that would go at least some way towards justifying certain actions or attitudes. I first explain and motivate the condition I propose. I then support it by arguing that it fits well with various theories of n…Read more
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885Reasons why in normative explanationInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 62 (6): 607-623. 2019.Normative explanations, which specify why things have the normative features they do, are ubiquitous in normative theory and ordinary thought. But there is much less work on normative explanation than on scientific or metaphysical explanation. Skow (2016) argues that a complete answer to the question why some fact Q occurs consists in all of the reasons why Q occurs. This paper explores this theory as a case study of a general theory that promises to offer us a grip on normative explanation whic…Read more
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1239Normative Commitments in Metanormative TheoryIn Jussi Suikkanen & Antti Kauppinen (eds.), Methodology and Moral Philosophy, Routledge. pp. 193-213. 2018.First-order normative theories concerning what’s right and wrong, good and bad, etc. and metanormative theories concerning the nature of first-order normative thought and talk are widely regarded as independent theoretical enterprises. This paper argues that several debates in metanormative theory involve views that have first-order normative implications, even as the implications in question may not be immediately recognizable as normative. I first make my claim more precise by outlining a gene…Read more
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2059A Simple Escape from Moral Twin EarthThought: A Journal of Philosophy 7 (2): 109-118. 2018.This paper offers a simple response to the Moral Twin Earth (MTE) objection to Naturalist Moral Realism (NMR). NMR typically relies on an externalist metasemantics such as a causal theory of reference. The MTE objection is that such a theory predicts that terms like ‘good’ and ‘right’ have a different reference in certain twin communities where it’s intuitively clear that the twins are talking about the same thing when using ‘good’. I argue that Boyd’s causal regulation theory, the original targ…Read more
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349Review of Ethical Intuitionism: Re-evaluations (review)European Journal of Philosophy 14 (1): 159-63. 2006.This piece is a short review of a volume of papers on ethical intuitionism (Ethical Intuitionism: Re-evaluations, ed. Philip Stratton-Lake, Oxford University Press, 2002).
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952Objectionable thick concepts in denialsPhilosophical Perspectives 23 (1): 439-469. 2009.So-called "thick" moral concepts are distinctive in that they somehow "hold together" evaluation and description. But how? This paper argues against the standard view that the evaluations which thick concepts may be used to convey belong to sense or semantic content. That view cannot explain linguistic data concerning how thick concepts behave in a distinctive type of disagreements and denials which arise when one speaker regards another's thick concept as "objectionable" in a certain sense. The…Read more
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673Shapelessness in ContextNoûs 48 (3): 573-593. 2012.Many philosophers believe that the extensions of evaluative terms and concepts aren’t unified under non-evaluative similarity relations and that this “shapelessness thesis” (ST) has significant metaethical implications regarding non-cognitivism, ethical naturalism, moral particularism, thick concepts and more. ST is typically offered as an explanation of why evaluative classifications appear to “outrun” classifications specifiable in independently intelligible non-evaluative terms. This paper ar…Read more
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697A Wrong Turn to Reasons?In Michael S. Brady (ed.), New Waves in Metaethics, Palgrave-macmillan. 2010.This paper argues that the recent metaethical turn to reasons as the fundamental units of normativity offers no special advantage in explaining a variety of other normative and evaluative phenomena, unless perhaps a form of reductionism about reasons is adopted which is rejected by many of those who advocate turning to reasons.
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919Usable moral principlesIn Matjaž Potrc, Vojko Strahovnik & Mark Lance (eds.), Challenging Moral Particularism, Routledge. pp. 75-106. 2007.One prominent strand in contemporary moral particularism concerns the claim of "principle abstinence" that we ought not to rely on moral principles in moral judgment because they fail to provide adequate moral guidance. I argue that moral generalists can vindicate this traditional and important action-guiding role for moral principles. My strategy is to argue, first, that, for any conscientious and morally committed agent, the agent's acceptance of (true) moral principles shapes their responsive…Read more
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901Moral Generalism: Enjoy in ModerationEthics 116 (4): 707-741. 2006.I defend moral generalism against particularism. Particularism, as I understand it, is the negation of the generalist view that particular moral facts depend on the existence of a comprehensive set of true moral principles. Particularists typically present "the holism of reasons" as powerful support for their view. While many generalists accept that holism supports particularism but dispute holism, I argue that generalism accommodates holism. The centerpiece of my strategy is a novel model of mo…Read more
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2960Reasons and Moral PrinciplesIn Daniel Star (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Reasons and Normativity, Oxford University Press. pp. 839-61. 2018.This paper is a survey of the generalism-particularism debate and related issues concerning the relationship between normative reasons and moral principles.
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1331Essential Contestability and EvaluationAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 92 (3): 471-488. 2014.Evaluative and normative terms and concepts are often said to be "essentially contestable". This notion has been used in political and legal theory and applied ethics to analyse disputes concerning the proper usage of terms like democracy, freedom, genocide, rape, coercion, and the rule of law. Many philosophers have also thought that essential contestability tells us something important about the evaluative in particular. Gallie (who coined the term), for instance, argues that the central struc…Read more
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786Particularism and default reasonsEthical Theory and Moral Practice 7 (1): 53-79. 2004.This paper addresses a recent suggestion that moral particularists can extend their view to countenance default reasons (at a first stab, reasons that are pro tanto unless undermined) by relying on certain background expectations of normality. I first argue that normality must be understood non-extensionally. Thus if default reasons rest on normality claims, those claims won't bestow upon default reasons any definite degree of extensional generality. Their generality depends rather on the contin…Read more
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Meta-Ethics |
Moral Explanation |
Moral Semantics |
Moral Normativity |
Moral Principles |
Moral Naturalism and Non-Naturalism |
Moral Value |