University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Department of Philosophy
PhD
Columbus, Ohio, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Meta-Ethics
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Action
Meta-Ethics
  •  554
    Moral cognitivism and motivation
    Philosophical Review 108 (2): 161-219. 1999.
    The impact moral judgments have on our deliberations and actions seems to vary a great deal. Moral judgments play a large part in the lives of some people, who are apt not only to make them, but also to be guided by them in the sense that they tend to pursue what they judge to be of moral value, and shun what they judge to be of moral disvalue. But it seems unrealistic to claim that moral judgments play a pervasive role in the lives of all or even most people. There are considerable variations i…Read more
  •  277
    Having Value and Being Worth Valuing
    Journal of Philosophy 111 (2): 84-109. 2014.
    This paper explores the relationship between the ascription of value to an object and an assessment of conative attitudes taken towards that object. It argues that this relationship is captured by an a priori necessary truth that falls out of the mastery conditions for the concept of value: what has value is worth valuing, when valuing is understood to be a relatively stable conative attitude distinct from judging valuable. What kind of assessment of attitude is at stake? How are we to understan…Read more
  •  178
    The Virtue of Practical Rationality
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 77 (1): 1-33. 2008.
    Practical rationality is best regarded as a virtue: an excellence in the exercise of one’s cognitive capacities in one’s practical endeavors. The author develops this idea so as to yield a Humean conception of practical rationality. Nevertheless, one of the crucial features of the approach is not distinctively Humean and sets it apart from the most familiar neo‐Humean approaches: an agent’s practical rationality has to do with the presence and form of his cognitive activity, as well as with how …Read more
  •  131
    The practical role essential to value judgments
    Philosophical Issues 19 (1): 299-320. 2009.
    No Abstract
  •  54
    Value ascriptions: rethinking cognitivism
    Philosophical Studies 176 (6): 1417-1438. 2019.
    This paper focuses on value as ascribed to what can be desired, enjoyed, cherished, admired, loved, and so on: value that putatively serves as ground for evaluating such attitudes and for justifying conduct. The main question of the paper is whether such value ascriptions are property ascriptions as traditional cognitivism claims. The paper makes the case that although the linguistic evidence favors traditional cognitivism over non-cognitivism about evaluative language, the main tenet of cogniti…Read more
  •  42
    Moral Cognitivism and Motivation
    Philosophical Review 108 (2): 161-219. 1999.
    The impact moral judgments have on our deliberations and actions seems to vary a great deal. Moral judgments play a large part in the lives of some people, who are apt not only to make them, but also to be guided by them in the sense that they tend to pursue what they judge to be of moral value, and shun what they judge to be of moral disvalue. But it seems unrealistic to claim that moral judgments play a pervasive role in the lives of all or even most people. There are considerable variations i…Read more
  •  25
    Evaluations of Rationality
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 41 (S1): 121-136. 2003.
  •  18
    The Rationality of Ends
    Oxford Studies in Metaethics 13. 2018.
    This chapter defends the thesis that an agent can display more or less rationality in selecting ends, even final ends, against the background of a conception of practical rationality as an excellence in the exercise of cognitive capacities in one’s practical endeavors. It moreover argues that Humeans and anti-Humeans alike should accept this conclusion, while refocusing their disagreement on the question of whether excellence in the exercise of cognitive capacities in one’s practical endeavors i…Read more
  •  4
    Objective values: does metaethics rest on a mistake?
    In Brian Leiter (ed.), Objectivity in Law and Morals, Cambridge University Press. pp. 144--193. 2001.
  • The practical role essential to value judgments
    In Ernest Sosa & Enrique Villanueva (eds.), Metaethics, Wiley Periodicals. 2009.
  • Evaluations of rationality
    In Terry Horgan & Mark Timmons (eds.), Metaethics After Moore, Clarendon Press. 2006.