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Against all reason? : scepticism about the instrumental normIn Charles R. Pigden (ed.), Hume on motivation and virtue, Palgrave-macmillan. 2009.
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11Correction: The Conversational Practicality of Value JudgementThe Journal of Ethics 27 (2): 231-232. 2023.
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38Correction to: What ought probably means, and why you can’t detach itSynthese 200 (3): 1-2. 2022.
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101Responding to NormativityIn 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
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145Normativity, Necessity and Tense: A Recipe for Homebaked NormativityIn Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Volume 5, Oxford University Press. 2010.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
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100What might but must not beAnalysis 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
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581A “Good” Explanation of Five Puzzles about ReasonsPhilosophical 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
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88Reply to Worsnip, Dowell, and KoehnAnalysis 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
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167Confusion of Tongues: A Theory of Normative Language By Stephen FinlayAnalysis 80 (1): 99-101. 2020.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.
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29Reasons as Defaults (review)Philosophical Review 124 (2): 286-289. 2015.Review of Jeff Horty's book REASONS AS DEFAULTS (OUP 2012)
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55What Does Value Matter? The Interest-Relational Theory of the Semantics and Metaphysics of ValueDissertation, 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
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1438Defining NormativityIn 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
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831Conceptual Analysis in MetaethicsIn Tristram Colin 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
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499Quasi-Expressivism about Statements of Law: A Hartian TheoryIn 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
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729Disagreement Lost and FoundIn 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
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275The Selves and the Shoemaker: Psychopaths, Moral Judgement, and ResponsibilitySouthern Journal of Philosophy 49 (s1). 2011.David Shoemaker argues from (A) psychopaths’ emotional deficiency, to (B) their insensitivity to moral reasons, to (C) their lack of criminal responsibility. This response observes three important ambiguities in this argument, involving the interpretation of (1) psychopaths’ emotional deficit, (2) their insensitivity to reasons, and (3) their moral judgements. Resolving these ambiguities presents Shoemaker with a dilemma: his argument either equivocates or it is falsified by the empirical eviden…Read more
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1262The conversational practicality of value judgementThe Journal of Ethics 8 (3): 205-223. 2004.Analyses of moral value judgements must meet a practicality requirement: moral speech acts characteristically express pro- or con-attitudes, indicate that speakers are motivated in certain ways, and exert influence on others' motivations. Nondescriptivists including Simon Blackburn and Allan Gibbard claim that no descriptivist analysis can satisfy this requirement. I argue first that while the practicality requirement is defeasible, it indeed demands a connection between value judgement and moti…Read more
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284'Ought': OUT OF ORDERIn Nate Charlow & Matthew Chrisman (eds.), Deontic Modality, Oxford University Press. 2016.This paper argues that the innovation of an ordering source parameter in the standard Lewis-Kratzer semantics for modals was a mistake, at least for English auxiliaries like ‘ought’, and that a simpler dyadic semantics (as proposed in my earlier work) provides a superior account of normative uses of modals. I programmatically investigate problems arising from (i) instrumental conditionals, (ii) gradability and “weak necessity”, (iii) information-sensitivity, and (iv) conflicts, and show how the …Read more
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331Errors upon errors: a reply to joyceAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 89 (3). 2011.In his response to my paper ?The Error in the Error Theory? criticizing his and J. L. Mackie's moral error theory, Richard Joyce finds my treatment of his position inaccurate and my interpretation of morality implausible. In this reply I clarify my objection, showing that it retains its force against their error theory, and I clarify my interpretation of morality, showing that Joyce's objections miss their mark
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86Review: Jonas Olson, Moral Error Theory: History, Critique, Defence (review)Ethics 125 (4): 1219-1225. 2015.
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399The Obscurity of Internal ReasonsPhilosophers' Imprint 9 1-22. 2009.Since its publication in 1979, Bernard Williams' "Internal and External Reasons" has been one of the most influential and widely discussed papers in ethics. I suggest here that the paper's argument has nevertheless been universally misunderstood. On the standard interpretation, his argument—which he subsequently elaborated and defended in further discussions—is perplexingly weak. In the first section I sketch this Standard (or, more provocatively, "Supposed") argument, and detail just how terrib…Read more
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62Review of Mark Eli Kalderon, Moral Fictionalism (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2006 (4). 2006.
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212Normativity, Necessity and Tense: A Recipe for Homebaked NormativityIn Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Vol. 5, Oxford University Press. pp. 57-85. 2010.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, th…Read more
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109Confusion of Tongues: A Theory of Normative LanguageOup Usa. 2014.Can normative words like "good," "ought," and "reason" be defined in non-normative terms? Stephen Finlay argues that they can, advancing a new theory of the meaning of this language and providing pragmatic explanations of the specially problematic features of its moral and deliberative uses which comprise the puzzles of metaethics
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860Value and implicaturePhilosophers' Imprint 5 1-20. 2005.Moral assertions express attitudes, but it is unclear how. This paper examines proposals by David Copp, Stephen Barker, and myself that moral attitudes are expressed as implicature (Grice), and Copp's and Barker's claim that this supports expressivism about moral speech acts. I reject this claim on the ground that implicatures of attitude are more plausibly conversational than conventional. I argue that Copp's and my own relational theory of moral assertions is superior to the indexical theory o…Read more
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1932The error in the error theoryAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 86 (3): 347-369. 2008.Moral error theory of the kind defended by J. L. Mackie and Richard Joyce is premised on two claims: (1) that moral judgements essentially presuppose that moral value has absolute authority, and (2) that this presupposition is false, because nothing has absolute authority. This paper accepts (2) but rejects (1). It is argued first that (1) is not the best explanation of the evidence from moral practice, and second that even if it were, the error theory would still be mistaken, because the assump…Read more
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285One Ought Too ManyPhilosophy 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
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671Four Faces of Moral RealismPhilosophy 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
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280Against All Reason? Scepticism about the Instrumental NormIn 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
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78The Pragmatics of Normative DisagreementIn 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
Oakleigh, Victoria, Australia
Areas of Specialization
Meta-Ethics |
Normativity |
Practical Reason |
Moral Psychology |