•  13
    Broad, subjective, relative: the surprising folk concept of basic needs
    with Tobu Tomabechi and Ivar R. Hannikainen
    Philosophical Studies 181 (1): 319-347. 2024.
    Some normative theorists appeal to the concept of basic needs. They argue that when it comes to issues such as global justice, intergenerational justice, human rights or sustainable development our first priority should be that everybody is able to meet these needs. But what are basic needs? We attempt to inform discussions about this question by gathering evidence of ordinary English speakers’ intuitions on the concept of basic needs. First, we defend our empirical approach to analyzing this co…Read more
  •  16
    In recent years an increasing number of political philosophers have begun to ground their arguments in empirical evidence. I investigate this novel approach by way of example. The object of my case study is David Miller’s renewed empirical argument for a needs-based principle of justice. First, I introduce Miller’s argument. Then I raise four worries about the application of his methodology that give rise to corresponding general recommendations for how to do empirical political philosophy. Prop…Read more
  •  24
    An empirical argument against moral non-cognitivism
    with Jennifer Cole Wright
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 66 (6): 1141-1169. 2023.
    1. The practice of morality raises the following two closely related questions in semantics and philosophical psychology: What do moral sentences mean? And what does it mean to make a moral judgeme...
  •  2
    Reason and Ethics: The Case Against Objective Value
    Philosophical Quarterly 73 (4): 1329-1332. 2023.
    In 2007, Joel Marks had what he describes as an ‘anti-epiphany’. Previously committed to morality in both private and professional life, he came to see it as a
  •  1
    In 2007, Joel Marks had what he describes as an ‘anti-epiphany’. Previously committed to morality in both private and professional life, he came to see it as a sham; a harmful collective illusion. Since then Marks has become one of the staunchest and most prolific defenders of amoralism, to be understood as the conjunction of the views that (1) moral judgements presuppose objective moral values that in fact do not exist (nihilism) and (2) people have practical reasons for wanting to stop making …Read more
  •  15
    In his new book Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves: Why Animals Matter for Pandemics, Climate Change, and Other Catastrophes Jeff Sebo argues that animals matter with regard to human-induced crises and that humans have a moral responsibility to prevent, reduce, or repair the increasing amount of nonhuman suffering and death that we find in today’s world. Moreover, he attempts to show how these various human-induced crises are interlinked among themselves and with our treatment of animals in a numb…Read more
  •  191
    Climate change increases the frequency and intensity of certain kinds of natural hazard events in alpine areas. This interdisciplinary study addresses the hypothetical possibility of relocating the residents of three alpine areas in Austria: the Sölk valleys, the Johnsbach valley, and the St. Lorenzen/Schwarzenbach valleys. Our particular focus is on these residents’ expectations about such relocations. We find that (1) many residents expect that in the next decades the state will provide them w…Read more
  •  262
    Moral Progress, Knowledge and Error: Do People Believe in Moral Objectivity?
    with Lieuwe Zijlstra and Jacob Dijkstra
    Philosophical Psychology. forthcoming.
    A prevalent assumption in metaethics is that people believe in moral objectivity. If this assumption were true then people should believe in the possibility of objective moral progress, objective moral knowledge, and objective moral error. We developed surveys to investigate whether these predictions hold. Our results suggest that, neither abstractly nor concretely, people dominantly believe in the possibility of objective moral progress, knowledge and error. They attribute less objectivity to t…Read more
  •  443
    The Typicality Effect in Basic Needs
    Synthese 200 (5): 1-26. 2022.
    According to the so-called Classical Theory, concepts are mentally represented by individually necessary and jointly sufficient application conditions. One of the principal empirical objections against this view stems from evidence that people judge some instances of a concept to be more typical than others. In this paper we present and discuss four empirical studies that investigate the extent to which this ‘typicality effect’ holds for the concept of basic needs. Through multiple operationaliz…Read more
  •  405
    Should morality be abolished? An empirical challenge to the argument from intolerance
    with Jennifer Cole Wright
    Philosophical Psychology 35 (3): 350-385. 2022.
    Moral abolitionists claim that morality ought to be abolished. According to one of their most prominent arguments, this is because making moral judgments renders people significantly less tolerant toward anyone who holds divergent views. In this paper we investigate the hypothesis that morality’s tolerance-decreasing effect only occurs if people are realists about moral issues, i.e., they interpret these issues as objectively grounded. We found support for this hypothesis (Studies 1 and 2). Yet,…Read more
  •  22
    Implicit Metaethical Intuitions: Validating and Employing a New IAT Procedure
    with Johannes M. J. Wagner and Jennifer C. Wright
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 14 (1): 1-31. 2023.
    Philosophical arguments often assume that the folk tends towards moral objectivism. Although recent psychological studies have indicated that lay persons’ attitudes to morality are best characterized in terms of non-objectivism-leaning pluralism, it has been maintained that the folk may be committed to moral objectivism _implicitly_. Since the studies conducted so far almost exclusively assessed subjects’ metaethical attitudes via explicit cognitions, the strength of this rebuttal remains unclea…Read more
  •  29
    The Relativistic Car: Applying Metaethics to the Debate about Self-Driving Vehicles
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 24 (3): 833-850. 2021.
    Almost all participants in the debate about the ethics of accidents with self-driving cars have so far assumed moral universalism. However, universalism may be philosophically more controversial than is commonly thought, and may lead to undesirable results in terms of non-moral consequences and feasibility. There thus seems to be a need to also start considering what I refer to as the “relativistic car” — a car that is programmed under the assumption that what is morally right, wrong, good, bad,…Read more
  •  418
    Thought Experiments and Experimental Ethics
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.
    Experimental ethicists investigate traditional ethical questions with non-traditional means, namely with the methods of the empirical sciences. Studies in this area have made heavy use of philosophical thought experiments such as the well-known trolley cases. Yet, the specific function of these thought experiments within experimental ethics has received little consideration. In this paper we attempt to fill this gap. We begin by describing the function of ethical thought experiments, and show th…Read more
  •  305
    From the day on which humans are born they need things. Some of these needs seem “basic,” such as our needs for food, water or shelter. Everybody has these needs. We cannot escape them. We also cannot escape the serious harm that arises when these needs remain unsatisfied. It is thus no wonder that in thinking about what we ought to do some researchers have suggested to first and foremost focus on people's basic needs. Such need‐based theories must answer three main questions: What are basic nee…Read more
  •  304
    Basic needs in normative contexts
    Philosophy Compass 16 (5). 2021.
    In answering normative questions, researchers sometimes appeal to the concept of basic needs. Their guiding idea is that our first priority should be to ensure that everybody is able to meet these needs—to have enough in terms of food, water, shelter, and so on. This article provides an opinionated overview of basic needs in normative contexts. Any basic needs theory must answer three questions: (1) What are basic needs? (2) To what extent do basic needs generate reasons for action and how are t…Read more
  •  466
    Against overgeneralisation objections to the argument from moral disagreement
    South African Journal of Philosophy 39 (3): 261-273. 2020.
    According to the argument from moral disagreement, the existence of widespread or persistent moral disagreement is best explained by, and thus supports, the view that there are no objective moral truths. One of the most common charges against this argument is that it “overgeneralises”: it implausibly forces its proponents to also deny the existence of objective truths about certain matters of physics, history, philosophy, etc. (“companions in guilt” objections) or even about the argument’s …Read more
  •  441
    An Empirical Argument against Moral Non-Cognitivism
    with Jen Wright
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy -. 2020.
    According to non-cognitivism, moral sentences and judgements do not aim to represent how things morally are. This paper presents an empirical argument against this view. We begin by showing that non-cognitivism entails the prediction that after some reflection competent ordinary speakers’ semantic intuitions favor that moral sentences and judgements do not aim to represent how things morally are. At first sight, this prediction may seem to have been confirmed by previous research on folk m…Read more
  •  263
    X-Phi and Impartiality Thought Experiments: Investigating the Veil of Ignorance
    with Norbert Paulo
    Diametros 17 (64): 72-89. 2020.
    This paper discusses “impartiality thought experiments”, i.e., thought experiments that attempt to generate intuitions which are unaffected by personal characteristics such as age, gender or race. We focus on the most prominent impartiality thought experiment, the Veil of Ignorance (VOI), and show that both in its original Rawlsian version and in a more generic version, empirical investigations can be normatively relevant in two ways: First, on the assumption that the VOI is effective and robust…Read more
  •  2
    This paper addresses a theory of intergenerational justice that we refer to as “needs-based sufficientarianism”. According to needs-based sufficientarianism, the present generation ought to enable future generations to meet their basic needs — for example, their needs for drinkable water, food and health care. Our aim is to explain and defend this theory in a programmatic way. First, we introduce what we regard as the most plausible variant of needs-based sufficientarianism. Then we argue that t…Read more
  •  497
    Insufficient Effort Responding in Experimental Philosophy
    In Tania Lombrozo, Shaun Nichols & Joshua Knobe (eds.), Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy, Volume 4, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
    Providing valid responses to a self-report survey requires cognitive effort. Subjects engaging in insufficient effort responding (IER) are unwilling to take this effort. Compared to psychologists, experimental philosophers so far seem to have paid less attention to IER. This paper is an attempt to begin to alleviate this shortcoming. First, I explain IER’s nature, prevalence and negative effects in self-report surveys in general. Second, I argue that IER might also affect experimental philosophy…Read more
  •  71
    Anti-Realist Pluralism: a New Approach to Folk Metaethics
    with Jennifer Cole Wright
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 11 (1): 53-82. 2020.
    Many metaethicists agree that as ordinary people experience morality as a realm of objective truths, we have a prima facie reason to believe that it actually is such a realm. Recently, worries have been raised about the validity of the extant psychological research on this argument’s empirical hypothesis. Our aim is to advance this research, taking these worries into account. First, we propose a new experimental design for measuring folk intuitions about moral objectivity that may serve as an in…Read more
  •  91
    Do liberal states have a moral duty to admit immigrants? According to what has been called the “conventional view”, this question is to be answered in the negative. One of the most prominent critics of the conventional view is Joseph Carens. In the past 30 years Carens’ contributions to the open borders debate have gradually taken on a different complexion. This is explained by the varying “ideality” of his approaches. Sometimes Carens attempts to figure out what states would be obliged to do un…Read more
  •  561
    Empirical research on folk moral objectivism
    with Jennifer Cole Wright
    Philosophy Compass 14 (5). 2019.
    Lay persons may have intuitions about morality's objectivity. What do these intuitions look like? And what are their causes and consequences? In recent years, an increasing number of scholars have begun to investigate these questions empirically. This article presents and assesses the resulting area of research as well as its potential philosophical implications. First, we introduce the methods of empirical research on folk moral objectivism. Second, we provide an overview of the findings that h…Read more
  •  56
    Camus on the Value of Art
    Philosophia 48 (1): 365-376. 2020.
    Many instances of art are valuable. Where is this value located? And how is it to be justified? In this paper I reconstruct and critically assess Albert Camus’ answers to these questions. Camus’ theory of the value of art is based on his “logic of the absurd”, i.e., the idea that the human condition is absurd and that we therefore ought to adopt an attitude of revolt. This idea entails that art lacks any intrinsic value. Rather, Camus argues, art is valuable only insofar as it promotes creators’…Read more
  •  29
    Finding Meaning in an Imperfect World
    Philosophical Quarterly 69 (275): 435-438. 2019.
    Finding Meaning in an Imperfect World. By Landau Iddo. ).
  •  21
    Compensation for Historical Injustices: The Continuing Injustice Argument
    Archiv Fuer Rechts Und Sozialphilosphie 104 (3): 380-396. 2018.
  •  45
    How to Determine whether Evolution Debunks Moral Realism
    Jahrbuch für Wissenschaft Und Ethik 23 (1): 35-60. 2018.
    Anti-realist evolutionary debunking arguments purport to show that if there were objective moral truths, then evolutionary evidence would suggest that our moral judgements are unjustified (which excludes or makes it unlikely that these truths exist). Recent controversies about these arguments can often be traced back to confusion about how its premises are to be supported or undermined. My aim in this paper is accordingly a clarificatory one. I will attempt to identify which kinds of philosophic…Read more
  •  440
    How to Measure Moral Realism
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 9 (3): 647-670. 2018.
    In recent years an increasing number of psychologists have begun to explore the prevalence, causes and effects of ordinary people’s intuitions about moral realism. Many of these studies have lacked in construct validity, i.e., they have failed to measure moral realism. My aim in this paper accordingly is to motivate and guide methodological improvements. In analysis of prominent existing measures, I develop general recommendations for overcoming ten prima facie serious worries about research on …Read more