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The Moral Parody Argument Against PanpsychismPhilosophical Studies 179 (1). 2022.I exploit parallel considerations in the philosophy of mind and metaethics to argue that the reasoning employed in an important argument for panpsychism overgeneralizes to support an analogous position in metaethics: panmoralism. Next, I raise a number of problems for panmoralism and thereby build a case for taking the metaethical parallel to be a reductio ad absurdum of the argument for panpsychism. Finally, I contrast panmoralism with a position recently defended by Einar Duenger Bohn and argu…Read more
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Normativity all the way down: from normative realism to pannormismSynthese 195 (9): 4107-4124. 2018.
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Panpsychism, The Combination Problem, and Plural Collective PropertiesAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 97 (2): 383-394. 2019.
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Varieties of NecessityIn Tamar Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Conceivability and Possibility, Oxford University Press. pp. 253-281. 2002.
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Is there a supervenience problem for robust moral realism?Philosophical Studies 176 (6): 1391-1408. 2019.The paper describes the problem for robust moral realism of explaining the supervenience of the moral on the non-moral, and examines five objections to the argument: The moral does not supervene on the descriptive, because we may owe different obligations to duplicates. If the supervenience thesis is repaired to block, it becomes trivial and easy to explain. Supervenience is a moral doctrine and should get an explanation from within normative ethics rather than metaethics. Supervenience is a con…Read more
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What Acquaintance TeachesIn Jonathan Knowles & Thomas Raleigh (eds.), Acquaintance: New Essays, Oxford University Press. 2019.In her black and white room, Mary doesn’t know what it is like to see red. Only after undergoing an experience as of something red and hence acquainting herself with red can Mary learn what it is like. But learning what it is like to see red requires more than simply becoming acquainted with it. To be acquainted with something is to know it, but such knowledge, as we argue, is object-knowledge rather than propositional-knowledge. To know what it is like one must know an appropriate propositional…Read more
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Enlightening the fully informedPhilosophical Studies 126 (1): 29-56. 2005.This paper develops a response to the knowledge argument against physicalism. The response is both austere, in that it does not concede the existence of non-physical information , and natural, in that it acknowledges the alethic character of phenomenal knowledge and learning. I argue that such a response has all the advantages and none of the disadvantages of existing objections to the knowledge argument. Throughout, the goal is to develop a response that is polemically effective in addition to …Read more
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The knowledge argument, the open question argument, and the moral problemSynthese 171 (1). 2009.Someone who knew everything about the world’s physical nature could, apparently, suffer from ignorance about various aspects of conscious experience. Someone who knew everything about the world’s physical and mental nature could, apparently, suffer from moral ignorance. Does it follow that there are ways the world is, over and above the way it is physically or psychophysically? This paper defends a negative answer, based on a distinction between knowing the fact that p and knowing that p. This d…Read more
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Real DefinitionAnalytic Philosophy 56 (3): 189-209. 2015.
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Revelation and physicalismSynthese 194 (7): 2345-2366. 2017.
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Mind-Body Meets Metaethics: A Moral Concept StrategyPhilosophical Studies 165 (3): 865-878. 2013.The aim of this paper is to assess the relationship between anti-physicalist arguments in the philosophy of mind and anti-naturalist arguments in metaethics, and to show how the literature on the mind-body problem can inform metaethics. Among the questions we will consider are: (1) whether a moral parallel of the knowledge argument can be constructed to create trouble for naturalists, (2) the relationship between such a "Moral Knowledge Argument" and the familiar Open Question Argument, and (3) …Read more
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How to Achieve the Physicalist Dream Theory of Consciousness: Identity or Grounding? (2020)In G. Rabin (ed.), Grounding and Consciousness, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.Unlike identity physicalism, ground physicalism does not achieve the physicalist dream. It faces the T-shirt problem for ground physicalism (Pautz 2014; Schaffer this volume; Rubenstein ms). In the case of insentient nature, it may be able to get by with small handful of very general ground laws to explain the emergence of nonfundamental objects and properties – for example, a few “principle of plenitude”. But I argue that for the case consciousness it will require a separate huge raft of specia…Read more
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To Be F Is To Be GPhilosophical Perspectives 30 (1): 39-134. 2016.
Austin, Texas, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Metaphysics |
Formulating Physicalism |
Grounding |
Dualism about Consciousness |