• After Metaethics
    Philosophers' Imprint. forthcoming.
  •  160
    Reference Magnetism as a Solution to the Moral Twin Earth Problem
    Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 3. 2016.
  •  1420
    Moral non-cognitivists hope to explain the nature of moral agreement and disagreement as agreement and disagreement in non-cognitive attitudes. In doing so, they take on the task of identifying the relevant attitudes, distinguishing the non-cognitive attitudes corresponding to judgements of moral wrongness, for example, from attitudes involved in aesthetic disapproval or the sports fan’s disapproval of her team’s performance. We begin this paper by showing that there is a simple recipe for gener…Read more
  •  115
    Conceptual Ethics and The Methodology of Normative Inquiry
    In Alexis Burgess, Herman Cappelen & David Plunkett (eds.), Conceptual Engineering and Conceptual Ethics, Oxford University Press. pp. 274-303. 2019.
    This chapter explores two central questions in the conceptual ethics of normative inquiry. The first is whether to orient one’s normative inquiry around folk normative concepts (like KNOWLEDGE or IMMORAL) or around theoretical normative concepts (like ADEQUATE EPISTEMIC JUSTIFICATION or PRO TANTO PRACTICAL REASON). The second is whether to orient one’s normative inquiry around concepts whose normative authority is especially accessible to us (such as OUGHT ALL THINGS CONSIDERED), or around conce…Read more
  •  2
    Authoritative Normativity
    In David Copp & Connie Rosati (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Meta-Ethics, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
  •  1
    The Fragmentation of Authoritative Normativity
    In Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies of Metaethics 19, Oxford University Press Usa. 2024.
  •  6
    Counterfactual Genealogy and Metaethics in Pettit’s The Birth of Ethics
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.
    One of the primary goals of Pettit’s The Birth of Ethics is to offer a novel defense of a form of naturalistic realism in metaethics, drawing on a kind of “counterfactual genealogy” for ethical thought and talk, in a community he dubs “Erewhon”. We argue that Pettit’s argument faces a deep dilemma. The dilemma begins by noting the reasonable controversy about which metaethical view is true of our ethical thought and talk. We then ask: is the thought and talk in Pettit’s Erewhon apt for the same …Read more
  •  60
    Ground, Essence, and the Metaphysics of Metanormative Non-Naturalism
    Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 9 (26): 674-701. 2022.
    The past few decades have witnessed an extraordinary revival of interest in metanormative non-naturalism. Despite this interest, it is still unclear how to understand the distinctive metaphysical commitments of this view. We illustrate the relevant difficulties by examining what is arguably the most prominent class of contemporary attempts to formulate non-naturalism’s metaphysical commitments. This class of proposals, exemplified in work by Gideon Rosen and Stephanie Leary, characterizes the di…Read more
  •  11
    This paper addresses an important but relatively unexplored question about the relationship between conceptual ethics and other philosophical inquiry: how does the epistemology of conceptual ethics relate to the epistemology of other, more “traditional” forms of philosophical inquiry? This paper takes as its foil the optimistic thought that the epistemology of conceptual ethics will be easier and less mysterious than relevant “traditional” philosophical inquiry. We argue against this foil by foc…Read more
  •  24
    The past few decades have witnessed an extraordinary revival of interest in metanormative non-naturalism. Despite this interest, it is still unclear how to understand the distinctive metaphysical commitments of this view. We illustrate the relevant difficulties by examining what is arguably the most prominent class of contemporary attempts to formulate non-naturalism’s metaphysical commitments. This class of proposals, exemplified in work by Gideon Rosen and Stephanie Leary, characterizes the di…Read more
  •  70
    Topic Continuity in Conceptual Engineering and Beyond
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 1-27. forthcoming.
    One important activity in conceptual ethics and conceptual engineering involves proposing to associate a new semantics with an existing word. Many philosophers think that one important way to evaluate such a proposal concerns whether it preserves the “topic” picked out by the existing word, and several have offered competing proposals concerning what is required to preserve topic. Our paper is focused on the conceptual ethics question of how conceptual engineers should use the term ‘topic contin…Read more
  •  56
    Conceptual Ethics, Metaepistemology, and Normative Epistemology
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 1-33. forthcoming.
    This paper advertises the importance of distinguishing three different foundational projects about epistemic thought and talk, which we call “systematic normative epistemology”, “metaepistemology”, and “the conceptual ethics of epistemology”. We argue that these projects can be distinguished by their contrasting constitutive success conditions. This paper is motivated by the idea that the distinctions between these three projects matter for epistemological theorizing in ways that have been under…Read more
  •  49
    Philosophy and Climate Change (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2021.
    This volume is guided by two thoughts. First, philosophers have much to contribute to the discussion of climate change. Second, reflection on climate change can contribute to our thinking about a range of general topics that are of independent interest to philosophers. This volume will be of interest both to philosophers working on climate change as well as those working in a range of other fields, ranging from public policy to economics to law to empirical disciplines including psychology, the …Read more
  •  67
    The conceptual ethics of normativity involves normative reflection on normative thought and talk. One motive for engaging in this project is to seek to either vindicate or improve one’s existing normative concepts. This paper clarifies and addresses a deep challenge to the conceptual ethics of normativity, when it is motivated in this way. The challenge arises from the fact that we need to use some of our own normative concepts in order to evaluate our normative concepts. This might seem ob…Read more
  •  265
    Ardent realism without referential normativity
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 63 (5): 489-508. 2020.
    ABSTRACT This paper addresses a central positive claim in Matti Eklund’s Choosing Normative Concepts: that a certain kind of metaphysically ambitious realist about normativity – the ardent realist – is committed to the metasemantic idea that the distinctive inferential role of normative concepts suffices to fix the extension of those concepts. I argue first that commitment to this sort of inferential role metasemantic view does nothing to secure ardent realism. I then show how the ardent realist…Read more
  •  388
    Controversy about the credibility of normative realism is endemic to contemporary metaethics. Some take realism to be “obviously, the default position,” while others, to put it mildly, do not., In the face of such persistent controversy, it can be valuable to step back from the myriad arguments for and against realism, and seek to understand the challenges that face this view in their deepest and most general form. This paper aims to achieve this deeper understanding with respect to a pair of fa…Read more
  •  385
    Many of us care about the existence of ethical facts because they appear crucial to making sense of our practical lives. On one tempting line of thought, this idea can also play a central role in justifying our belief in those facts. David Enoch has developed this thought into a formidable new proposal in moral epistemology: that the deliberative indispensability of ethical facts gives us epistemic justification for believing in such facts. This chapter argues that Enoch’s proposal fails because…Read more
  •  659
    Authoritatively Normative Concepts
    Oxford Studies in Metaethics 13 253-277. 2018.
    This chapter offers an analysis of the authoritatively normative concept PRACTICAL OUGHT that appeals to the constitutive norms for the activity of non-arbitrary selection. It argues that this analysis permits an attractive and substantive explanation of what the distinctive normative authority of this concept amounts to, while also explaining why a clear statement of what such authority amounts to has been so elusive in the recent literature. The account given is contrasted with more familiar c…Read more
  •  25
    Ethical Non-Naturalism and the Metaphysics of Supervenience
    Oxford Studies in Metaethics 7. 2012.
    It is widely accepted that the ethical supervenes on the natural, where this is roughly the claim that it is impossible for two circumstances to be identical in all natural respects, but different in their ethical respects. This chapter refines and defends the traditional thought that this fact poses a significant challenge to ethical non-naturalism, a view on which ethical properties are fundamentally different in kind from natural properties. The challenge can be encapsulated in three core cla…Read more
  •  22
    Epistemology and Methodology in Ethics
    Cambridge University Press. 2020.
    This Element introduces several prominent themes in contemporary work on the epistemology and methodology of ethics. Topics addressed include skeptical challenges in ethics, epistemic arguments in metaethics, what is epistemically distinctive of the ethical. Also considered are methodological questions in ethics, including questions about which ethical concepts we should investigate, and what our goals should be in ethical inquiry.
  •  363
    Ardent realism without referential normativity
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 1-20. forthcoming.
    This paper addresses a central positive claim in Matti Eklund’s Choosing Normative Concepts: that a certain kind of metaphysically ambitious realist about normativity – the ardent realist – is committed to the metasemantic idea that the distinctive inferential role of normative concepts suffices to fix the extension of those concepts. I argue first that commitment to this sort of inferential role metasemantic view does nothing to secure ardent realism. I then show how the ardent realist can addr…Read more
  •  296
    Evaluative predicates as classificatory devices?
    Philosophical Studies 176 (6): 1439-1451. 2019.
    In “Value Ascriptions: Rethinking Cognitivism,” Sigrún Svavarsdóttir offers a novel account of the semantic function of evaluative predication, according to which such predicates function as “linguistically encoded classificatory devices.” This short paper raises three questions about Svavarsdóttir’s account: how it relates to familiar sorts of projects in and about semantics, how to understand the nature of “linguistic encoding,” and how to understand the significance of the account’s central u…Read more
  •  238
    Explaining Practical Normativity
    Topoi 37 (4): 621-630. 2018.
    Ethical non-naturalists often charge that their naturalist competitors cannot adequately explain the distinctive normativity of moral or more broadly practical concepts. I argue that the force of the charge is mitigated, because non-naturalism is ultimately committed to a kind of mysterianism about the metaphysics of practical norms that possesses limited explanatory power. I then show that focusing on comparative judgments about the explanatory power of various metaethical theories raises addit…Read more
  •  519
    Moral Steadfastness and Meta-ethics
    American Philosophical Quarterly 56 (1): 43-56. 2019.
    Call the following claim Asymmetry: rationality often requires a more steadfast response to pure moral disagreement than it does to otherwise analogous non-moral disagreement. This paper briefly motivates Asymmetry and explores its implications for meta-ethics. Some philosophers have thought that anti-realists are better-placed than realists to explain Asymmetry because, if anti-realism is true, disagreement cannot provide evidence against the reliability of one's thinking about objective moral …Read more
  •  1239
    Naturalistic Moral Realism, Moral Rationalism, and Non-Fundamental Epistemology
    In Karen Jones & François Schroeter (eds.), The Many Moral Rationalisms, Oxford Univerisity Press. pp. 187-209. 2018.
    This paper takes up an important epistemological challenge to the naturalistic moral realist: that her metaphysical commitments are difficult to square with a plausible rationalist view about the epistemology of morality. The paper begins by clarifying and generalizing this challenge. It then illustrates how the generalized challenge can be answered by a form of naturalistic moral realism that I dub joint-carving moral realism. Both my framing of this challenge and my answer advertise the method…Read more