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1717The Intentionality of Phenomenology and the Phenomenology of IntentionalityIn David J. Chalmers (ed.), Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings, Oup Usa. pp. 520--533. 2002.
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956New Wave Moral Realism Meets Moral Twin EarthJournal of Philosophical Research 16 447-465. 1991.There have been times in the history of ethical theory, especially in this century, when moral realism was down, but it was never out. The appeal of this doctrine for many moral philosophers is apparently so strong that there are always supporters in its corner who seek to resuscitate the view. The attraction is obvious: moral realism purports to provide a precious philosophical good, viz., objectivity and all that this involves, including right answers to (most) moral questions, and the possibi…Read more
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708Analytic moral functionalism meets moral twin earthIn Ian Ravenscroft (ed.), Minds, Ethics, and Conditionals: Themes From the Philosophy of Frank Jackson, Oxford University Press. pp. 221. 2009.In Chapters 4 and 5 of his 1998 book From Metaphysics to Ethics: A Defence of Conceptual Analysis, Frank Jackson propounds and defends a form of moral realism that he calls both ‘moral functionalism’ and ‘analytical descriptivism’. Here we argue that this metaethical position, which we will henceforth call ‘analytical moral functionalism’, is untenable. We do so by applying a generic thought-experimental deconstructive recipe that we have used before against other views that posit moral properti…Read more
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671New Wave Moral Realism Meets Moral Twin EarthJournal of Philosophical Research 16 447-465. 1991.There have been times in the history of ethical theory, especially in this century, when moral realism was down, but it was never out. The appeal of this doctrine for many moral philosophers is apparently so strong that there are always supporters in its corner who seek to resuscitate the view. The attraction is obvious: moral realism purports to provide a precious philosophical good, viz., objectivity and all that this involves, including right answers to (most) moral questions, and the possibi…Read more
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619Cognitivist expressivismIn Terry Horgan & Mark Timmons (eds.), Metaethics After Moore, Oxford University Press. pp. 255--298. 2006.
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532Troubles on moral twin earth: Moral queerness revivedSynthese 92 (2). 1992.J. L. Mackie argued that if there were objective moral properties or facts, then the supervenience relation linking the nonmoral to the moral would be metaphysically queer. Moral realists reply that objective supervenience relations are ubiquitous according to contemporary versions of metaphysical naturalism and, hence, that there is nothing especially queer about moral supervenience. In this paper we revive Mackie's challenge to moral realism. We argue: (i) that objective supervenience relation…Read more
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455Functionalism, qualia, and the inverted spectrumPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 44 (June): 453-69. 1984.
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380Phenomenal intentionality and the brain in a vatIn Richard Schantz (ed.), The Externalist Challenge, De Gruyter. 2004.
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339Troubles for new wave moral semantics: The 'open question argument' revivedPhilosophical Papers 21 (3): 153-175. 1992.(1992). TROUBLES FOR NEW WAVE MORAL SEMANTICS: THE ‘OPEN QUESTION ARGUMENT’ REVIVED. Philosophical Papers: Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 153-175. doi: 10.1080/05568649209506380
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335Risk sensitive animal knowledgePhilosophical Studies 166 (3): 599-608. 2013.A discussion of Sosa's Knowing Full Well. The authors focus on the understood place and significance of animal and reflective knowledge.
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284Conceptual Relativity and Metaphysical RealismNoûs 36 (s1): 74-96. 2002.Is conceptual relativity a genuine phenomenon? If so, how is it properly understood? And if it does occur, does it undermine metaphysical realism? These are the questions we propose to address. We will argue that conceptual relativity is indeed a genuine phenomenon, albeit an extremely puzzling one. We will offer an account of it. And we will argue that it is entirely compatible with metaphysical realism. Metaphysical realism is the view that there is a world of objects and properties that is in…Read more
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278The A Priori Isn’t All That It Is Cracked Up to Be, But It Is SomethingPhilosophical Topics 29 (1/2): 219-250. 2001.Alvin Goldman’s contributions to contemporary epistemology are impressive—few epistemologists have provided others so many occasions for reflecting on the fundamental character of their discipline and its concepts. His work has informed the way epistemological questions have changed (and remained consistent) over the last two decades. We (the authors of this paper) can perhaps best suggest our indebtedness by noting that there is probably no paper on epistemology that either of us individually o…Read more
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249Untying a knot from the inside out: Reflections on the “paradox” of supererogation*: Terry Horgan and mark TimmonsSocial Philosophy and Policy 27 (2): 29-63. 2010.In his 1958 seminal paper “Saints and Heroes”, J. O. Urmson argued that the then dominant tripartite deontic scheme of classifying actions as being exclusively either obligatory, or optional in the sense of being morally indifferent, or wrong, ought to be expanded to include the category of the supererogatory. Colloquially, this category includes actions that are “beyond the call of duty” and hence actions that one has no duty or obligation to perform. But it is a controversial category. Some ha…Read more
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248What does moral phenomenology tell us about moral objectivity?Social Philosophy and Policy 25 (1): 267-300. 2008.Moral phenomenology is concerned with the elements of one's moral experiences that are generally available to introspection. Some philosophers argue that one's moral experiences, such as experiencing oneself as being morally obligated to perform some action on some occasion, contain elements that (1) are available to introspection and (2) carry ontological objectivist purportargument from phenomenological introspection.neutrality thesisthe phenomenological data regarding one's moral experiences …Read more
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235Morphological Rationalism and the Psychology of Moral JudgmentEthical Theory and Moral Practice 10 (3): 279-295. 2007.According to rationalism regarding the psychology of moral judgment, people’s moral judgments are generally the result of a process of reasoning that relies on moral principles or rules. By contrast, intuitionist models of moral judgment hold that people generally come to have moral judgments about particular cases on the basis of gut-level, emotion-driven intuition, and do so without reliance on reasoning and hence without reliance on moral principles. In recent years the intuitionist model has…Read more
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234Copping out on moral twin earthSynthese 124 (1-2): 139-152. 2000.In "Milk, Honey, and the Good Life on Moral Twin Earth", David Copp explores some ways in which a defender of synthetic moral naturalism might attempt to get around our Moral Twin Earth argument. Copp nicely brings out the force of our argument, not only through his exposition of it, but through his attempt to defeat it, since his efforts, we think, only help to make manifest the deep difficulties the Moral Twin Earth argument poses for the synthetic moral naturalist.
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223Generalized Conditionalization and the Sleeping Beauty ProblemErkenntnis 78 (2): 333-351. 2013.We present a new argument for the claim that in the Sleeping Beauty problem, the probability that the coin comes up heads is 1/3. Our argument depends on a principle for the updating of probabilities that we call ‘generalized conditionalization’, and on a species of generalized conditionalization we call ‘synchronic conditionalization on old information’. We set forth a rationale for the legitimacy of generalized conditionalization, and we explain why our new argument for thirdism is immune to t…Read more
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207Science nominalized properlyPhilosophy of Science 54 (2): 281-282. 1987.Although Hale and Resnik are correct in their specific objection to my proposal for nominalizing science, the proposal can be saved by means of a simple and plausible modification
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203Naturalism and intentionalityPhilosophical Studies 76 (2-3): 301-26. 1994.I argue for three principle claims. First, philosophers who seek to integrate the semantic and the intentional into a naturalistic metaphysical worldview need to address a task that they have thus far largely failed even to notice: explaining into- level connections between the physical and the intentional in a naturalistically acceptable way. Second, there are serious reasons to think that this task cannot be carried out in a way that would vindicate realism about intentionality. Third, there i…Read more
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197A nonclassical framework for cognitive scienceSynthese 101 (3): 305-45. 1994.David Marr provided a useful framework for theorizing about cognition within classical, AI-style cognitive science, in terms of three levels of description: the levels of (i) cognitive function, (ii) algorithm and (iii) physical implementation. We generalize this framework: (i) cognitive state transitions, (ii) mathematical/functional design and (iii) physical implementation or realization. Specifying the middle, design level to be the theory of dynamical systems yields a nonclassical, alterna…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Mind |
Meta-Ethics |