Overview
My main research project is about the fundamentality of normative reasons. I seek to defend what I call The Reasons Program. The main tenet of The Reasons Program is that normative reasons are the fundamental metaphysical constituents of the normative. This project has two main parts. The first part is concerned with defending reasons-first views of a host of normative phenomena. In my dissertation/current book project I argue that we can analyze rationality in terms of normative reasons (for more, see this page).
In the book I develop two tools that I've used to make progress in several debates. These are the notions of possessing normative reasons and reacting for normative reasons. I use both to defend the view that we can understand obligation in terms of normative reasons (see 'Acting for the Right Reasons, Abilities, and Obligation' and 'What You Ought To Do and What You're Rationally Required To Do (Are the Same Thing!)'). I've also argued that possession can help us make progress in the debate about the normative power of testimony about morality and aesthetics ('On the Rational Power of Aesthetic Testimony' and 'How to Learn about Aesthetics and Morality Through Acquaintance and Deference'). Finally, I've used my view of reacting for normative reasons to defend a new account of moral responsibility ('On the Intellectual Conditions of Moral Responsibility').
In normative ethics I am primarily interested in the proper role of partiality towards people and projects. I use tools from metaethical debates about reasons to advance longstanding debates about partiality. So far this has resulted in two main papers. In the first I defend new versions of the character based and overdemandingness objections to impartial consequentialism ('Bad for Herself and for Others: The Vices of a Consequentialist Character'). I argue that consequentialism entails claims about which psychology it is correct to have, and the resulting psychology is not an admirable one. Further, it forces us to give up partial relationships that partly make up a meaningful life. In the second paper I use the distinction between reasons and facts that intensify the weight of reasons to defend a novel view of why partiality is justified ('Justifying Partiality'). I argue that facts about individuals provide reasons to be partial and facts about which relationships we're in intensify the weight of those reasons.
In epistemology I have also defended the theoretical power of normative reasons. This includes an investigation into the nature of defeat (see 'Epistemic Reasons, Evidence and, Defeaters'), the nature of believing for normative reasons (see The Importance of Being Rational and 'Prime Time (for the Basing Relation)'), the nature of virtue (see 'Prime Time (for the Basing Relation)'), and the modal condition on knowledge (see 'Epistemic Reasons, Evidence, and, Defeaters').
In the last year I have started working on the epistemology of the normative. In particular, I've started a project that focuses on the role of acquaintance in the epistemologies of aesthetics and morality. The outlines of this project can be found in my papers 'On the Rational Power of Aesthetic Testimony', 'Knowing What It's Like,' and 'How to Learn about Aesthetics and Morality Through Acquaintance and Deference.' I plan to write a book about these topics in AY 2017-2018.
The second part of my investigation of The Reasons Program concerns the more abstract metaphysical question of how to best understand the claim that normative reasons are the building blocks of normativity. Part of this project is about how to understand the structure of the metaphysics of the normative and the place that normative reasons fit into this structure if they are basic in some sense. Another part of the project has to do with the question of whether normative reasons are primitive. My hunch is that they are not. This is because they can be analyzed in terms of something natural. In recent work Kurt Sylvan and I have defended a novel naturalist version of constitutivism. We first do this in the context of the famous wrong kind of reasons problem. In 'Reasons: Wrong, Right, Normative, Fundamental' we first argue that reasons fundamentalists have a particularly hard time solving the wrong kind of reasons problem. We then argue that the best way out of the problem for the fundamentalist is to accept our naturalist constitutivism. In future work (both on my own and with Sylvan) I will defend this view further.
I am also interested in several other debates ranging across my specializations. These include the logic of conditional requirements and how this bears on debates about rationality (see 'Violating Requirements, Exiting from Requirements, and the Scope of Rationality', 'The Real Symmetry Objection(s) to Wide-Scope Accounts of Rationality', and 'The Explanatory Problem for Cognitivism about Practical Reason'), the epistemology of disagreement (see 'From Independence to Conciliationism: An Obituary'), the relationship between beliefs and perceptions, and various forms of disjunctivism in the philosophies of mind and action (see chapters 5 and 6 of The Importance of Being Rational).
For a much more detailed of my work, see this extended research statement.
Written Work
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Metaethics & Practical Reason
The Importance of Being Rational
forthcoming from Oxford University Press In this book I defend the claim that what it is to be rational is to correctly respond to the objective normative reasons you possess. Chapters 1-4 and chapter 8 mainly focus on debates in metaethics and practical reason. How to Learn about Aesthetics and Morality Through Acquaintance and Testimony
forthcoming in Oxford Studies in Metaethics There are parallel debates in aesthetics and metaethics about the epistemic merits of aesthetic and moral testimony. Most participants in both debates hold that there is something amiss with beliefs formed merely on the basis of aesthetic and moral testimony. The similarities between the two debates dry up quickly, though. The main controversy in aesthetics is whether it is even possible to acquire aesthetic knowledge from testimony. While a select few have taken this tack in metaethics, most agree that we can acquire moral knowledge via testimony. The trick is explaining why, despite this, there is something fishy about moral beliefs purely based on testimony. A plausible hypothesis about why the two literatures diverge when they do is that it is widely accepted in aesthetics that acquaintance with things that have aesthetic value is necessary to have paradigm aesthetic knowledge. Since (usually) one doesn't become acquainted with things that have aesthetic value when one purely defers to someone else, this explains why many have thought that knowledge is impossible via aesthetic testimony. Relatively little has been said about the role of acquaintance in the acquisition of moral knowledge. In this paper, I argue that it's plausible that acquaintance does play a prominent role in the acquisition of paradigmatic moral knowledge and that this helps explain what's amiss with moral testimony. In fact, I will defend a general theory of what is going on in both the moral case and the aesthetic case. According to this theory, acquaintance enables one to acquire a certain type of know how—by being acquainted with certain normatively relevant facts, we come to know how to use those facts as reasons for various reactions. Neither aesthetic nor moral testimony acquaint us with the full range of normatively relevant properties. thus, we cannot come to know how to use the full range of facts as reasons when we defer. This is what is amiss with moral and aesthetic testimony. You can find the penultimate version here:
What You're Rationally Required To Do and What You Ought To Do (Are the Same Thing!)
forthcoming in Mind It is a truism that we ought to be rational. Despite this (or because of it), it has become popular to think that it is not the case that we ought to be rational. In this paper I argue for a view about rationality--the view that what you are rationally required to do is determined by the normative reasons you possess--by showing that it can vindicate that we ought to be rational. I do this by showing that it is independently very plausible that what we ought to do is determined by the normative reasons we possess. Thus, the paper also makes a contribution to the debate about the nature of our obligations. You can find the final version here:
On the Intellectual Conditions for Responsibility: Acting for the Right Reasons, Conceptualization, and Credit
forthcoming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research In this paper I'm interested in the prospects for the Right Reasons theory of creditworthiness. The Right Reasons theory says that what it is for an agent to be creditworthy for X-ing is for that agent to X for the right reasons. The paper has a negative goal and a positive goal. The negative goal is to show that a class of Right Reasons theories are doomed. These theories all have a Conceptualization Condition on acting for the right reasons. Conceptualization Conditions demand that agents who act for the right reasons deploy or be able to deploy certain normative concepts in acting. I argue that views of this type run into a host of overintellectualization problems. The positive aim is to argue for my Right Reasons view, which appeals to know-how to avoid overintellectualization. Penultimate draft here: (pdf) The Explanatory Problem for Cognitivism about Practical Reason
forthcoming in Normativity: Practical and Epistemic, Oxford University Press Cognitivists about practical reason hold that we can explain why certain wide-scope requirements of practical rationality are true by appealing to certain epistemic requirements. Extant discussions of cognitivism focus solely on two claims. The first is the claim that intentions involve beliefs. The second is that whenever your intentions are incoherent in certain ways, you will be epistemically irrational (given that intentions involve beliefs). Even if the cognitivist successfully defends these claims, she still needs to show that they entail certain practical requirements. That is, she has to show that the epistemic requirements explain the practical requirements. In this paper I argue that it is not plausible that the epistemic requirements explain the practical requirements. This shows that the cognitivists' project will fail even if we grant their controversial views about the relationship between the practical and epistemic. You can find the penultimate draft here:
Weighing Reasons (coedited and introduced with Barry Maguire)
Oxford University Press, 2016 A new collection of papers on the weight of reasons. Contributors: Ralf Bader, Ruth Chang, Stephen Darwall, Daniel Fogal, Joshua Gert, John Horty, Stephen Kearns, Errol Lord & Barry Maguire, Kate Manne, Shyam Nair, Joseph Raz, Karl Schafer, Mark Schroeder & Alida Liberman, Michael Smith & Frank Jackson An Opinionated Guide to the Weight of Reasons (with Barry Maguire)
In Weighing Reasons, Oxford University Press, 2016 In this paper we do two things. First, we motivate the importance of the weight of reasons. The motivation is simple. In order to understand strict deontic notions like obligation and permission, we claim, we need a weighted notion. Since normative reasons are a weighted notion par excellence, they provide an excellent theoretical tool in understanding strict deontic concepts. Our second goal is to catalogue the main issues and choice points facing a theory of weight. By doing this, we hope to make clear which approaches have the most promise and to make clear which problems are the most pressing for future research. On Iwao Hirose and Jonas Olson's Oxford Handbook of Value Theory (with Kurt Sylvan)
Acting for the Right Reasons, Abilities, and Obligation
Objectivists about obligation hold that obligations are determined by all of the normatively relevant facts. Perspectivalists, on the other hand, hold that only facts within one's perspective can determine what we are obligated to do. In this paper I argue for a perspectivalist view. On my view, what you are obligated to do is determined by the normative reasons you possess. My argument for my view is anchored in the thought that our obligations have to be action-guiding in a certain sense--we have to be able to act for the reasons that obligate us. I argue that we have this ability--the ability to act for the right reasons--only if we possess those reasons. Thus, objectivism is false. In the second half of the paper I argue that problems having to do with new information do not plague my particular perspectival view.
On Nomy Arpaly and Timothy Schroeder's In Praise of Desire
On Joshua Gert's Normative Bedrock: Response-Dependence, Rationality, and Reasons
The Real Symmetry Problem(s) for Wide-Scope Accounts of Rationality
Philosophical Studies, 2014 You are irrational when you are akratic. On this point most agree. Despite this agreement, there is a tremendous amount of disagreement about what the correct explanation of this data is. Narrow-scopers think that the correct explanation is that you are violating a narrow-scope conditional requirement. You lack an intention to x that you are required to have given the fact that you believe you ought to x. Wide-scopers disagree. They think that a conditional you are required to make true is false. You aren't required to have any particular attitudes. You're just requried to intend to x or not believe you ought to x. Wide-scope accounts are symmetrical insofar as they predict that you are complying with the relevant requirement just so long as the relevant conditional is true. Some narrow-scopers object to this symmetry. However, there is disagreement about why the symmetry is objectionable. This has led wide-scopers to defend their view against a number of different symmetry objections. I think their defenses in the face of these objections are, on the whole, plausible. Unfortunately for them, they aren't defending their view against the best version of the objection. In this paper I will show that there is a symmetry objection to wide-scope accounts that both hasn't been responded to and is a serious problem for wide-scope accounts. Moreover, my version of the objection will allow us to see that there is at least one narrow-scope view that has been seriously underappreciated in the literature. The Coherent and The Rational
Analytic Philosophy, 2014 Many ethicists think that rationality has a very tight connection with coherence. According to the most extreme view of this type, rationality only requires you to be coherent in various ways. A major cost of holding this view is that it commits you to thinking that rationality never requires one to perform particular actions or hold particular attitudes. It is widely thought that this is a cost we must pay because there are no plausible views that vindicate the thought that we are rationally required to perform particular actions and hold particular attitudes. In this paper I argue there is a plausible non-coherentist view. According to this view, what you are rationally required to do is determined by the normative reasons you possess. I show that this view avoids the major problems of rival views while also being able to explain why it is that you are necessarily irrational when you are incoherent. Violating Requirements, Exiting from Requirements, and The Scope of Rationality
The Philosophical Quarterly, 2011 Having Reasons and The Factoring Account
Philosophical Studies, 2010 Dancy on Acting for the Right Reason
Journal of Ethics & Social Philosophy, 2008 Reasons: Wrong, Right, Normative, Fundamental (with Kurt Sylvan)
Manuscript Reasons fundamentalists hold that normative reasons are the fundamental constituents of the normative--i.e., we can analyze all of the other normative stuff in terms of normative reasons. In this paper we discuss some neglected problems for fundamentalists when it comes to solving the famous wrong kind of reasons problem (WKRP). We argue first that the best solution to the WKRP--something akin to Mark Schroeder's solution--requires fundamentalists and non-fundamentalists alike to solve two pressing problems. The problems arise because the solution holds that the right kind of reasons are the reasons that participants in certain activities have in virtue in engaging in those activities. The first problem is that it is not clear how to determine which reasons all intenders, believers, desirers etc. have in virtue of being engaged in those activities. This is because it's not clear what constitutes those activities. Call this the Constitution Problem. The second problem arises because, given this approach to the WKRP, it is extremely plausible that not all of the right kind of reasons will be normative reasons. The second problem is that it is not clear how to pick out which activities are normatively relevant and which ones aren't. Call this the Normativity Problem. We argue that these problems are particularly acute for the fundamentalist. This is because fundamentalism imposes a very tight constraint on solutions to the two problems: The solutions cannot appeal to anything normative. If they appeal to some normative notion other than normative reasons, then it's plausible that that notion is more fundamental than normative reasons. And if the solutions appeal to normative reasons themselves, then it is plausible that the overall position is viciously circular. We argue in the second part of the paper that fundamentalists have a promising solution to the Constitution Problem, but it's unclear if they can solve the Normativity Problem. Draft coming soon. Elusive Reasons and Perspectivalism about Obligation
Abandoned Manuscript Circa 2012 Perspectivalism about obligation is the view that only facts within our perspective can determine our obligations. This view has become very popular recently due to the support of powerful cases (so-called Mine Shaft cases). In this paper I argue that perspectival views face a major threat from elusive reasons. Elusive reasons are reasons that cannot enter one's perspective and still be reasons. It seems like elusive reasons can obligate. If they can, then perspectivalism is false. I try to resist the argument on behalf of the perspectivalist but argue that the best defense leaves the perspectivalist with a dilemma. No longer in progress. I leave it here since it's been cited. Draft available upon request. |
Epistemology
The Importance of Being Rational, chapters 3 and 7
forthcoming from Oxford University Press In this book I defend the claim that what it is to be rational is to correctly respond to the objective normative reasons you possess. Chapters 3 and 7 primarily focus on debates in epistemology. Defeating the Externalist's Demons
forthcoming in The New Evil Demon: New Essays on Knowledge, Justification, and Rationality, Oxford University Press Internalists about justification complain that externalists cannot explain why non-factive internal state duplicates are equally rational. In this paper I show that my externalist view of justification can explain why non-factive internal state duplicates are equally rational. You can find the current draft here:
Epistemic Reasons, Evidence, and Defeaters
forthcoming in Oxford Handbook on Reasons and Normativity, Oxford University Press The post-Gettier literature contained many views that tried to solve the Gettier problem by appealing to the notion of defeat. Unfortunately, all of these views are false. The failure of these views greatly contributed to a general distrust of reasons in epistemology. However, reasons are making a comeback in epistemology, both in general and in the context of the Gettier problem. There are two main aims of this paper. First, I will argue against a natural defeat based resolution of the Gettier problem. Second, I will defend my own defeat based solution. This solution appeals to a modal anti-luck condition. I will argue that this condition captures anti-luck intuitions and has virtues that rival modal anti-luck conditions lack. N.B. This paper is a descendent of and supersedes 'Fake Barns, Defeat, and Dogmatism'.
On Andrew Reisner and Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen's (ed.) Reasons for Belief
On John Gibbons' The Norm of Belief
From Independence to Conciliationism: An Obituary
Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 2014 Conciliationists about peer disagreement think that when we (find out that we) disagree with an epistemic peer about p, we should significantly change our view about whether p. Some conciliationists argue for the view by appealing to an independence principle. Independence principles hold that when evaluating the epistemic credentials of someone else's belief about p, you mustn't rely on the reasoning that led to your original view about p. In this paper I show that the independence principles appealed to by conciliationists are false. I then argue that weakened principles are either false or unmotivated (or both). Prime Time (for the Basing Relation) (with Kurt Sylvan)
forthcoming in Well-Founded Belief: New Essays on the Basing Relation It is often presupposed that believing for a normative reason consists in nothing more than (i) believing for a motivating reason and (ii) that reason's happening to coincide (perhaps by sheer luck) with a normative reason, where (i) and (ii) are independent factors. This is the Composite View. In this paper, we argue against the Composite View on exten- sional and systematic grounds. We advocate an alternative we call the Prime View. On this view, believing for a normative reason is a distinc- tive achievement that isn't captured by the mere conjunction of (i) and (ii). Its being an achievement entails, we argue, that (i) and (ii) are not independent when one believes for a normative reason: minimally, (i) must hold because (ii) holds. Apart from their intrinsic interest, these conclusions have many important implications for epistemology. Reasons First Anti-Luck Virtue Epistemology
Manuscript The post-Gettier literature contained many attempted solutions to the Gettier problem that appealed to reasons and defeaters. Unfortunately, these views were plagued by serious problems. Despite this, analytic projects remain. The two most popular projects appeal to, on the one hand, virtues, and, on the other hand, the role that luck plays in preventing knowledge. Recently some epistemologists have argued that we need to combine these projects; we need, that is, to be anti-luck virtue epistemologists. In this paper I defend a unified anti-luck virtue epistemology. It is unified because both the virtue component and the anti-luck component are explained in terms of reasons, their weight, and defeat. This account can thus explain the cases that motivate the move to anti-luck virtue epistemology. Moreover, we can explain why knowledge has these components by appealing to the underlying facts about reasons. Under construction. Normative Ethics
Justifying Partiality
It's an undeniable fact about our moral lives that we are partial towards certain people and projects. Despite this, it has traditionally been very hard to morally justify partiality. In this paper I defend a novel partialist theory. The context of the paper is the debate between three different views of how partiality is justified. According to the first view, partiality is justified by facts about our ground projects. According to the second view, partiality is justified by facts about our relationships with the things that we are partial towards. And according to the third view, partiality is justified by facts about the things that we are partial towards. I argue that all three views contain part of the truth. We can see this by adopting a more sophisticated view of the weight of reasons. Once we do this, it will be clear that both facts about individuals and facts about relationships play a role in explaining why we often have stronger reason to act well towards those things we are partial towards. Further, I argue, facts about projects help explain why facts about relationships play the role that they do in determining the strength of our reasons.
On Simon Keller's Partiality
Bad for Herself and For Others: The Vices of a Consequentialist Character
Manuscript Impartial consequentialism holds that acts are morally permitted only when they sufficiently promote impartial value. Two prominent objections to views of this type are the over demandingness objection on the one hand and the character based objection on the other. The over demandiness objection holds that impartial consequentialism is implausible because it predicts morality requires too much of us. The character based objection holds that impartial consequentialism is implausible because it requires us to have a bad character. This is because, roughly, it seems to require us to seek the promotion of the impartial good, all else--including our friends, spouses, and colleagues--be damned. This paper has three aims. First, I will ague for a new version of the character based objection to impartial consequentialism. Second, I will argue that the moral psychology used to motivate this character based objection reveals the importance of a partial psychology to the welfare of creatures like us. Third, I will use this result to argue that impartial consequentialism is over demanding insofar as it requires us to have impartial psychologies. Thus, it turns out that by thinking about the best version of the character based objection will lead us to a plausible version of the over demandingness objection. Draft available upon request. Philosophy of Action
The Importance of Being Rational, chapters 5 and 6.
forthcoming from Oxford University Press In this book I defend the claim that what it is to be rational is to correctly respond to the objective normative reasons you possess. Chapters 5 and 6 focus on issues in philosophy of action. Chapter 5 defends a view of what it is to react for a normative reason. Chapter 6 defends disjunctivism about reacting for reasons. It also defends a new view of reacting for motivating reasons and argues that this view can solve the deviant causal chain problem for causal views of reacting for motivating reasons. Aesthetics
On the Rational Power of Aesthetic Testimony
In this paper I defend a moderately optimistic view about the rational power of aesthetic testimony. The context is Daniel Whiting's recent defense of pessimism about aesthetic testimony. I show that the data he appeals to can plausibly be explained by a more moderate view.
Knowing What It's Like: How To Save the Acquaintance Principle from Copies, the Imagination, and Abstracta
It's a truism in the epistemology of aesthetics that paradigmatic aesthetic knowledge requires acquaintance--call this the Acquaintance Principle. Like most truisms in philosophy, the Acquaintance Principle has been subject to serious criticism. In this paper I argue that three of the most formidable challenges are fueled by the assumption that one must be acquainted with the art object that one's judgment is about. I argue further that we can overcome these three challenges by adopting a different view, which says we are merely required to be acquainted with the relevant properties of the object. Since other objects can share properties with the original, this view allows us to avoid the problems.
Draft available upon request. |
