•  8
    Correction: The Conversational Practicality of Value Judgement
    The Journal of Ethics 27 (2): 231-232. 2023.
  •  91
    Responding to Normativity
    In Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics: Volume 2, Clarendon Press. pp. 220-239. 2007.
    This paper defends the view that normative force depends on desire, by sketching an Argument from Voluntary Response which attempts to establish this dependence by appeal to the autonomous character of our experience of normative authority, and the voluntary character of our responses to it. I first offer an account of desiring as mentally aiming intrinsically at some end. I then argue that behaviour is only voluntary if it results from such aiming; hence all voluntary behaviour is produced by d…Read more
  •  136
    Normative concepts have a special taste, which many consider to be proof that they cannot be reductively analyzed into entirely nonnormative components. This paper demonstrates that at least some intuitively normative concepts can be reductively analyzed. I focus on so-called ‘hypothetical imperatives’ or ‘anankastic conditionals’, and show that the availability of normative readings of conditionals is determined by features of grammar, specifically features of tense. Properly interpreted, these…Read more
  •  92
    What might but must not be
    Analysis 80 (4): 647-656. 2020.
    We examine an objection to analysing the epistemic ‘might’ and ‘may’ as existential quantifiers over possibilities. Some claims that a proposition “might” be the case appear felicitous although, according to the quantifier analysis, they are necessarily false, since there are no possibilities in which the proposition is true. We explain such cases pragmatically, relying on the fact that ‘might’-sentences are standardly used to convey that the speaker takes a proposition as a serious option in re…Read more
  •  558
    A “Good” Explanation of Five Puzzles about Reasons
    Philosophical Perspectives 33 (1): 62-104. 2019.
    This paper champions the view (REG) that the concept of a normative reason for an agent S to perform an action A is that of an explanation why it would be good (in some way, to some degree) for S to do A. REG has numerous virtues, but faces some significant challenges which prompt many philosophers to be skeptical that it can correctly account for all our reasons. I demonstrate how five different puzzles about normative reasons can be solved by attention to the concept of goodness, and in partic…Read more
  •  76
    Reply to Worsnip, Dowell, and Koehn
    Analysis 80 (1): 131-147. 2020.
    This paper responds to comments on my 2014 book Confusion of Tongues by Alex Worsnip, Janice Dowell, and Glen Koehn. I first address Worsnip’s case for contextualism without relativism. Next I address Dowell’s and Worsnip’s scepticism about whether COT succeeds in providing an analytic reduction of the normative, and Dowell’s recommendation to pursue an alternative, synthetic method. I then consider Worsnip’s comments on COT’s implications for normative ethical theory, and end by responding to …Read more
  •  158
    This is a short precis of my 2014 book Confusion of Tongues: A Theory of Normative Language, accompanying my Reply to Worsnip, Dowell, and Koehn in the same volume.
  •  28
    Reasons as Defaults (review)
    Philosophical Review 124 (2): 286-289. 2015.
    Review of Jeff Horty's book REASONS AS DEFAULTS (OUP 2012)
  •  52
    What Does Value Matter? The Interest-Relational Theory of the Semantics and Metaphysics of Value
    Dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 2001.
    Value and reasons for action are often cited by rationalists and moral realists as providing a desire-independent foundation for normativity. Those maintaining instead that normativity is dependent upon motivation often deny that anything called "value" or "reasons" exists. According to the interest-relational theory, something has value relative to some perspective of desire just in case it satisfies those desires, and a consideration is a reason for some action just in case it indicates that s…Read more
  •  1403
    Defining Normativity
    In Toh Kevin, Plunkett David & Shapiro Scott (eds.), Dimensions of Normativity: New Essays on Metaethics and Jurisprudence, Oxford University Press. pp. 62-104. 2019.
    This paper investigates whether different philosophers’ claims about “normativity” are about the same subject or (as recently argued by Derek Parfit) theorists who appear to disagree are really using the term with different meanings, in order to cast disambiguating light on the debates over at least the nature, existence, extension, and analyzability of normativity. While I suggest the term may be multiply ambiguous, I also find reasons for optimism about a common subject-matter for metanormati…Read more
  •  802
    Conceptual Analysis in Metaethics
    In Tristram McPherson & David Plunkett (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Metaethics, Routledge. pp. 536-551. 2017.
    A critical survey of various positions on the nature, use, possession, and analysis of normative concepts. We frame our treatment around G.E. Moore’s Open Question Argument, and the ways metaethicists have responded by departing from a Classical Theory of concepts. In addition to the Classical Theory, we discuss synthetic naturalism, noncognitivism (expressivist and inferentialist), prototype theory, network theory, and empirical linguistic approaches. Although written for a general philosoph…Read more
  •  484
    Quasi-Expressivism about Statements of Law: A Hartian Theory
    In John Gardner, Leslie Green & Brian Leiter (eds.), Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Law, vol. 3, Oxford University Press. pp. 49-86. 2018.
    Speech and thought about what the law is commonly function in practical ways, to guide or assess behavior. These functions have often been seen as problematic for legal positivism in the tradition of H.L.A. Hart. One recent response is to advance an expressivist analysis of legal statements (Toh), which faces its own, familiar problems. This paper advances a rival, positivist-friendly account of legal statements which we call “quasi-expressivist”, explicitly modeled after Finlay’s metaethical…Read more
  •  711
    Disagreement Lost and Found
    In Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics 12, Oxford University Press. pp. 187-205. 2017.
    According to content-relativist theories of moral language, different speakers use the same moral sentences to say different things. Content-relativism faces a well-known problem of lost disagreement. Recently, numerous content-relativists (including the author) have proposed to solve this problem by appeal to various kinds of non-content-based, or broadly pragmatic, disagreement. This presents content-relativists with a new problem—of found agreement. Which (if any) of these newly identifie…Read more
  •  283
    One Ought Too Many
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 89 (1): 102-124. 2014.
    Some philosophers hold that „ought‟ is ambiguous between a sense expressing a propositional operator and a sense expressing a relation between an agent and an action. We defend the opposing view that „ought‟ always expresses a propositional operator against Mark Schroeder‟s recent objections that it cannot adequately accommodate an ambiguity in „ought‟ sentences between evaluative and deliberative readings, predicting readings of sentences that are not actually available. We show how adopting an…Read more
  •  657
    Four Faces of Moral Realism
    Philosophy Compass 2 (6): 820-849. 2007.
    This essay explains for a general philosophical audience the central issues and strategies in the contemporary moral realism debate. It critically surveys the contribution of some recent scholarship, representing expressivist and pragmatist nondescriptivism, subjectivist and nonsubjectivist naturalism, nonnaturalism and error theory. Four different faces of ‘ moral realism ’ are distinguished: semantic, ontological, metaphysical, and normative. The debate is presented as taking shape under diale…Read more
  •  280
    Against All Reason? Scepticism about the Instrumental Norm
    In Charles R. Pigden (ed.), Hume on Motivation and Virtue, Palgrave-macmillan. 2009.
    Some of the opponents of desire-based views of normativity seek to undermine them by arguing that even the existence of instrumental normativity (reasons to pursue the means to your ends) entails the existence of a desire-independent rational norm, the instrumental norm. Once we grant the existence of one such norm, there seems to be no principled reason for not allowing others. I clarify this alleged norm, identifying two criteria that any satisfactory candidate must meet: reasonable expectatio…Read more
  •  71
    The Pragmatics of Normative Disagreement
    In Guy Fletcher & Michael Ridge (eds.), Having It Both Ways: Hybrid Theories and Modern Metaethics, Oxford University Press. pp. 124-148. 2014.
    Relational theories of normative language allegedly face special problems in accounting for the extent of disagreement, but this is everybody’s problem because normative sentences are relativized to different information in contexts of deliberation and advice. This paper argues that a relational theory provides a pragmatic solution that accounts for some disagreements as involving inconsistent preferences rather than beliefs. This is shown to be superior to the semantic solution offered by expre…Read more
  •  544
    Responding to Normativity
    In Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Volume 2, Clarendon Press. pp. 220--39. 2007.
    I believe that normative force depends on desire. This view faces serious difficulties, however, and has yet to be vindicated. This paper sketches an Argument from Voluntary Response, attempting to establish this dependence of normativity on desire by appeal to the autonomous character of our experience of normative authority, and the voluntary character of our responses to it. I first offer an account of desiring as mentally aiming intrinsically at some end. I then argue that behaviour is only …Read more
  •  43
    Ought
    In Hugh LaFollette (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Blackwell. 2013.
    Encyclopedia article on the meaning of 'ought'.
  •  78
    Deontic Modality Today: Introduction
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 95 (4): 421-423. 2014.
    Introduction to a special issue of PPQ of papers from a conference on deontic modality held at USC in 2013.
  •  523
    Some intuitive normative principles raise vexing 'detaching problems' by their failure to license modus ponens. I examine three such principles (a self-reliance principle and two different instrumental principles) and recent stategies employed to resolve their detaching problems. I show that solving these problems necessitates postulating an indefinitely large number of senses for 'ought'. The semantics for 'ought' that is standard in linguistics offers a unifying strategy for solving these prob…Read more
  •  306
    Teaching & learning guide for: Moral realism and moral nonnaturalism
    with Stephen Finlay and Terence Cuneo
    Philosophy Compass 3 (3): 570-572. 2008.
  •  35
    This Article does not have an abstract
  •  1043
    Metaethical Contextualism Defended
    Ethics 121 (1): 7-36. 2010.
    We defend a contextualist account of deontic judgments as relativized both to (i) information and to (ii) standards or ends, against recent objections that turn on practices of moral disagreement. Kolodny & MacFarlane argue that information-relative contextualism cannot accommodate the connection between deliberation and advice; we suggest in response that they misidentify the basic concerns of deliberating agents. For pragmatic reasons, semantic assessments of normative claims sometimes are eva…Read more
  •  1755
    The Reasons that Matter
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 84 (1). 2006.
    Bernard Williams's motivational reasons-internalism fails to capture our first-order reasons judgements, while Derek Parfit's nonnaturalistic reasons-externalism cannot explain the nature or normative authority of reasons. This paper offers an intermediary view, reformulating scepticism about external reasons as the claim not that they don't exist but rather that they don't matter. The end-relational theory of normative reasons is proposed, according to which a reason for an action is a fact tha…Read more
  •  498
    Recent work on normativity
    Analysis 70 (2): 331-346. 2010.
    Survey of some recent literature on normativity, including nonreductionist, neo-Aristotelian, neo-Humean, expressivist, and constructivist views
  •  467
    Oughts and ends
    Philosophical Studies 143 (3). 2008.
    This paper advances a reductive semantics for ‘ought’ and a naturalistic theory of normativity. It gives a unified analysis of predictive, instrumental, and categorical uses of ‘ought’: the predictive ‘ought’ is basic, and is interpreted in terms of probability. Instrumental ‘oughts’ are analyzed as predictive ‘oughts’ occurring under an ‘in order that’ modifer (the end-relational theory). The theory is then extended to categorical uses of ‘ought’: it is argued that they are special rhetorical u…Read more
  •  114
    Explaining Reasons
    Deutsches Jahrbuch Fuer Philosophie 4 112-126. 2012.
    What does it mean to call something a “reason”? This paper offers a unifying semantics for the word ‘reason’, challenging three ideas that are popular in contemporary philosophy; (i) that ‘reason’ is semantically ambiguous, (ii) that the concept of a normative reason is the basic normative concept, and (iii) that basic normative concepts are unanalyzable. Nonnormative uses of ‘reason’ are taken as basic, and as meaning explanation why. Talk about normative reasons for action is analyzed in te…Read more