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35Review of Andrew Sepielli: Pragmatist Quietism: A Metaethical System (review)Ethics 134 (1): 172-176. 2023.
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26Which answers to the now what question collapse into abolitionism (if any)?Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.Moral error theorists face the now what question. How, if at all, ought they to adjust their moral practice after having discovered the error? Various answers have emerged in the literature, including, but not limited to, revisionary fictionalism, revisionary expressivism, and revisionary naturalism. Recently, François Jaquet has argued that there are only two available answers to the now what question, since every extant answer except revisionary fictionalism collapses into abolitionism. This p…Read more
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60Quietist metaethical realism and moral determinationRatio 34 (3): 248-256. 2021.Metaethical realists believe that moral facts exist, but they disagree among themselves about whether moral facts have ontological import. Robust realists think that they do. Quietist realists deny this. I argue that quietist realism faces a new objection; viz., the moral determination objection. This is the objection that general moral facts (or moral principles) must determine specific moral facts (or which actions in the world are right and wrong) but that general moral facts cannot do this i…Read more
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70Philosophy in the Age of Science? Inquiries into Philosophical Progess, Method, and Societal Relevance (edited book)Rowman & Littlefield. 2020.Current academic philosophy is being challenged from several angles. Subdisciplinary specialisations often make it challenging to articulate philosophy’s relevance for the societal questions of our day. Additionally, the success of the ‘scientific method’ puts pressure on philosophers to articulate their methods and specify how these can be successful. How does philosophical progress come about? What can philosophy contribute to our understanding of today’s world? Moreover, can it also contribut…Read more
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74The belief problem for moral error theoryInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 66 (4): 492-513. 2023.Moral error theorists think that moral judgments such as ‘stealing is morally wrong’ express truth-apt beliefs that ascribe moral properties to objects and actions. They also think that moral properties are not instantiated. Since moral error theorists think that moral judgments can only be true if they correctly describe moral properties, they think that no moral judgment is true. The belief problem for moral error theory is that this theory is inconsistent with every plausible theory of belief…Read more
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51Conceptual Entailment Error TheoryIn Moral Error Theory, Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 27-79. 2015.This book provides a novel formulation and defence of moral error theory. It also provides a novel solution to the so-called now what question; viz., the question what we should do with our moral thought and talk after moral error theory. The novel formulation of moral error theory uses pragmatic presupposition rather than conceptual entailment to argue that moral judgments carry a non-negotiable commitment to categorical moral reasons. The new answer to the now what question is pragmatic presup…Read more
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43Moral Error TheoryPalgrave Macmillan. 2015.This book provides a novel formulation and defence of moral error theory. It also provides a novel solution to the so-called now what question; viz., the question what we should do with our moral thought and talk after moral error theory. The novel formulation of moral error theory uses pragmatic presupposition rather than conceptual entailment to argue that moral judgments carry a non-negotiable commitment to categorical moral reasons. The new answer to the now what question is pragmatic presup…Read more
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48Mackie’s Conceptual Reform Moral Error TheoryJournal of Value Inquiry 2 (53): 1-17. forthcoming.John P. Burgess has remarked that Mackie: “even though he talks of the need to invent morality … does not seem to think that this proposal could be worked into a revisionary meta-ethic”. In the first part of my paper, I argue that Mackie did propose a revisionary meta-ethic (conceptual reformism), and that Mackie was not a preservatist, abolitionist, or semantic pluralist. I also argue that interpreting Mackie as a conceptual reformist enables us to overcome a number of standard objections to hi…Read more
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CONGRESBESPREKING-Morele verantwoordelijkheid en wetenschapAlgemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 102 (1). 2010.
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Voorbij het postmodernisme?Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 100 (2): 154-156. 2008.
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176Moral Error Theory, Entailment and PresuppositionEthical Theory and Moral Practice 16 (5): 923-937. 2013.According to moral error theory, moral discourse is error-ridden. Establishing error theory requires establishing two claims. These are that moral discourse carries a non-negotiable commitment to there being a moral reality and that there is no such reality. This paper concerns the first and so-called non-negotiable commitment claim. It starts by identifying the two existing argumentative strategies for settling that claim. The standard strategy is to argue for a relation of conceptual entailmen…Read more
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1Review of Guy Fletcher and Michael Ridge, Having it Both Ways: Hybrid Theories and Modern Metaethics (review)Ethical Perspectives 22 (3): 725-729. 2015.
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29Why Solar Radiation Management is (Much) More Likely to be Morally PermissibleEthics, Policy and Environment 17 (2): 150-152. 2014.Ethics, Policy & Environment, Volume 17, Issue 2, Page 150-152, June 2014
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52The Tractatus Theologico-Politicus and the Received View of Spinoza on DemocracyRes Publica 20 (3): 263-279. 2014.On many interpretations of Spinoza’s political philosophy, democracy emerges as his ideal type of government. But a type of government can be ideal and yet it can be unwise to implement it if certain background conditions obtain. For example, a dominion’s people can be too ‘wretched by the conditions of slavery’ to rule themselves. This begs the following question. Do Spinoza’s arguments for democracy entail that all political bodies should be democracies at all times (the received view), or do …Read more
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125Are moral properties impossible?Philosophical Studies 172 (7): 1869-1887. 2015.Perhaps the actual world does not contain moral properties. But might moral properties be impossible because no world, possible or actual, contains them? Two metaethical theories can be argued to entail just that conclusion; viz., emotivism and error theory. This paper works towards the strongest formulation of the emotivist argument for the impossibility of moral properties, but ultimately rejects it. It then uses the reason why the emotivist argument fails to argue that error-theoretic argumen…Read more