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47When Should we be Open to Persuasion?Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 24 (1): 123-136. 2021.Being open to persuasion can help show respect for an interlocutor. At the same time, open-mindedness about morally objectionable claims can carry moral as well as epistemic risks. Our aim in this paper is to specify when there might be duty to be open to persuasion. We distinguish two possible interpretations of openness. First, openness might refer to a kind of mental state, wherein one is willing to revise or abandon present beliefs. Second, it might refer to a deliberative practice, accordin…Read more
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40Symbolic ValuesJournal of the American Philosophical Association 5 (4): 449-467. 2019.When a symbol is a marker of a primary bearer of value and, secondarily, a bearer of value itself, then it has symbolic value. Philosophers have long been suspicious of symbolic values, often regarding them as illusory or irrelevant. I suggest that arguments against symbolic values either overgeneralize or else require premises that can only be supported if the normative significance of some symbolic considerations is presupposed. Humans need symbols to represent identity facts to themselves and…Read more
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58Frontier Kantianism: Autonomy and Authority in Ralph Waldo Emerson and Joseph SmithJournal of Religious Ethics 46 (2): 332-359. 2018.Ralph Waldo Emerson is often seen as the early American prophet of autonomy. This essay suggests a perhaps surprising fellow traveler in this prophetic call: Joseph Smith. Smith opposed religious creeds for the same reason that Emerson denounced them, namely that creeds represent a threat to the autonomy of a person's beliefs. Smith and Emerson also forward similar defenses of individual autonomy in action. Furthermore, they encounter a shared problem: how can autonomy be possible in a society w…Read more
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46Divine love as a model for human relationshipsInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 83 (3): 271-290. 2018.A common Christian belief is that God loves universally, and that the Christian believer ought, likewise, to love universally. On standard analyses of love, loving universally appears unwise, morally suspect, or even impossible. This essay seeks to understand how the Christian command to love could be both possible and morally desirable. It considers two scriptural examples: Matthew’s trilogy of parables, and the Feast of the Tabernacles in the Gospel of John. I argue that God shows love to huma…Read more
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22The democratic limits of political experimentsPolitics, Philosophy and Economics 19 (4): 321-342. 2020.Since field experiments in democratic politics influence citizens and the relationships among citizens, they are freighted with normative significance. Yet the distinctively democratic concerns that bear upon such field experiments have not yet been systematically examined. In this paper, we taxonomize such democratic concerns. Our goal is not to justify any of them, but rather to reveal their basic structure, so that they can be scrutinized at further length. We argue that field experiments cou…Read more
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16Self‐Authorship and the Claim Against InterferencePacific Philosophical Quarterly 102 (2): 220-242. 2021.We can imagine agents who would have the moral status to demand contractualist justification but still lack an especially strong claim against interference. In contrast, agents who can conceive of their lives in a temporally unified way have a distinctive, strong interest in non‐interference. This contrast helps illuminate the moral importance of self‐authorship. The upshot is that ordinary persons have a more general and less variable right against interference than is often supposed. Self‐auth…Read more
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3064Teaching Philosophy through Lincoln-Douglas DebateTeaching Philosophy 36 (3): 271-289. 2013.This paper is about teaching philosophy to high school students through Lincoln-Douglas (LD) debate. LD, also known as “values debate,” includes topics from ethics and political philosophy. Thousands of high school students across the U.S. debate these topics in class, after school, and at weekend tournaments. We argue that LD is a particularly effective tool for teaching philosophy, but also that LD today falls short of its potential. We argue that the problems with LD are not inevitable, and w…Read more
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34Manipulation and the grounds of institutional obligation: an argument for international equalityEthics and Global Politics 8 (1). 2015.
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89Rational Persuasion, Paternalism, and RespectRes Publica 23 (4): 513-522. 2017.In ‘Rational Persuasion as Paternalism', George Tsai argues that providing another person with reasons or evidence can be a morally objectionable form of paternalism. I believe Tsai’s thesis is importantly correct, denying the widely accepted identification of rational persuasion with respectful treatment. In this comment, I disagree about what is centrally wrong with objectionable rational persuasion. Contrary to Tsai, objectionable rational persuasion is not wrong because it undermines the val…Read more
Shreveport, Louisiana, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Aesthetics |
20th Century Philosophy |
Continental Philosophy |