In the Works
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A paper on methodology in ethics, invited as a contribution to a Routledge volume on philosophical methodology (2012/13).
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A paper developing a version of expressivism that can handle embeddability problems, thanks to vagueness.
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A paper showing that normative judgments are not beliefs about non-natural properties. I ask: would our judgments change if the non-natural facts/properties were revealed to us? I answer: no.
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A paper analyzing what it is to be a means to an end and how much reason is transmitted from ends to means. The approach makes use of conditional probabilities.
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A paper against hybrid semantic theories, according to which normative expressions have some descriptive purport. I try to show, based on ought-is gaps, that they have no descriptive purport.
Articles
“Against Normative Naturalism” Australasian Journal of Philosophy (forthcoming).
Subject area(s): normative metaphysics, naturalism, reduction
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This paper considers normative naturalism, understood as the view that (i) normative sentences are descriptive of the way things are, and (ii) their truth/falsity does not require ontology beyond the ontology of the natural world. Assuming (i) for the sake of argument, I here show that (ii) is false not only as applied to ethics, but more generally as applied to practical and epistemic normativity across the board. The argument is a descendant of Moore’s Open Question Argument and Hume’s Is-Ought Gap. It goes roughly as follows: to ensure that natural ontology suffices for normative truth, there must be semantically grounded entailments from the natural truths to the normative truths. There are none. So natural ontology does not suffice for normative truth.
“Passing the Deontic Buck,” Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Volume 6 (2011).
Subject area(s): buck passing, normative ethics
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In this paper I explore buck-passing analyses of deontic properties in terms of reasons. The preferred analysis is that the permissibility/impermissibility/optionality/requiredness/etc. of some agent's acting is to be couched in terms of reasons to respond in some way to that agent's action, or the prospect thereof. Along the way I try to accommodate supererogation, wrong kinds of reasons objections, and commonly accepted inferences in deontic logic.
“Intuitional Epistemology in Ethics,” Philosophy Compass 5/12 (2010): 1069-1083.
Subject area(s): moral epistemology, intuitionism
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Here I examine the major theories of ethical intuitions, focusing on the epistemic status of ethical intuitions. We cover self-evidence theory, seeming-state theory, and some of the recent contributions from experimental philosophy.
“Explaining Compensatory Duties,” Legal Theory 16/2 (2010): 91-110.
Subject area(s): philosophy of tort law
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In some cases, harming another gives rise to a duty to compensate for harm done. This paper argues that the influential explanations of such duties of compensation—that they are somehow derived from rights intrusions, or breaches of duties not to harm—fail. I offer and defend an alternative explanation for why certain harms and not others give rise to compensatory duties, an explanation that seeks to derive them from wide-scope duties not to harm or to compensate for harm done.
Subject area(s): epistemology, reliabilism, evidentialism
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Here I present and defend an etiological theory of objective, doxastic justification, and related theories of defeat and evidence. The theory is intended to solve a problem for reliabilist epistemologies--the problem of identifying relevant environments for assessing a process's reliability. It is also intended to go some way to accommodating, neutralizing, or explaining away many internalist-friendly elements in our epistemic thinking.
“Rationalist Restrictions and External Reasons,” Philosophical Studies 151/1 (2010): 39-57.
Subject area(s): metaethics, reason internalism/externalism
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Historically, the most persuasive argument against external reasons proceeds through a rationalist restriction: For all agents A, and all actions Φ, there is a reason for A to Φ only if Φing is rationally accessible from A’s actual motivational states. Here I distinguish conceptions of rationality, show which one the internalist must rely on to argue against external reasons, and argue that a rationalist restriction that features that conception of rationality is extremely implausible. Other conceptions of rationality can render the restriction true, but then the restriction simply fails to rule out external reasons.
“The Iffiest Oughts,” Ethics 119/4 (2009): 672-698.
Subject area(s): metaethics, hypothetical imperatives, wide/narrow scope
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Conditional oughts that advise one to take the means to one's contingent ends (end-given oughts) run up against problems of detachment. Here I consider wide scope and suppositional accounts that purport to block detachment with respect to various conditional oughts, show that they fail, and offer an alternative account.
“Might All Normativity Be Queer?” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 88/1 (2010): 41-58.
Subject area(s): normative metaphysics, normative error theory
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Here I discuss the conceptual structure and core semantic commitments of reason thought and discourse needed to underwrite the claim that ethical normativity is not uniquely queer. This deflates a primary source of ethical scepticism and it vindicates so-called partner in crime arguments. When it comes to queerness objections, all reason-implicating normative claims—including those concerning Humean reasons to pursue one’s ends, and epistemic reasons to form true beliefs—stand or fall together.
Subject area(s): moral epistemology, moral skepticism, intuitionism, ethical non-naturalism
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Having no recourse to ways of knowing about the natural world, ethical non-naturalists are in need of an epistemology that might apply to a normative breed of facts or properties, and intuitionism seems well suited to fill that bill. Here I argue that the metaphysical inspiration for ethical intuitionism undermines that very epistemology, for this pair of views generates what I call the defeater from cosmic coincidence. This is not an argument against rationalism as such, or an argument against sui generis non-natural ontologies as such. Rather, it is an argument against that blend of ethical intuitionism and ethical non-naturalism that has recently come back into favor. Unfortunately, we face not a happy union, but a difficult choice: either ethical intuitionism or ethical non-naturalism, but not both. To the extent the argument generalizes to other forms of synthetic a priori justification outside of ethics it must be met, not dismissed.
Online here.
Subject area(s): normative theory
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Here I argue that, for a representative agent X who has a non-derivative desire that p, Hypotheticalism (as articulated in Schroeder’s 2007 Slaves of the Passions) does not identify plausible reasons for X to perform those actions that directly make it the case that p.
Bedke, APQ, Ethical Intuitions.pdf
Subject area(s): moral epistemology, intuitionism
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There are ways that ethical intuitions might be, and the various possibilities have epistemic ramifications. Here I criticize some extant accounts of what ethical intuitions are and how they justify, and I offer an alternative account. Roughly, an ethical intuition that p is a kind of seeming state constituted by a consideration whether p, attended by positive phenomenological qualities that count as evidence for p, and so a reason to believe that p. They are distinguished from other kinds of seemings, such as those which are content driven (e.g., the sensory experience that a stick in water seems bent) and those which are competence driven (e.g., the intellectual seeming that XYZ is not water, or that one of DeMorgan's laws is true). One important conclusion is this: when crafting their positive theory ethical intuitionists have fewer resources than intuitionists in other domains, not because of the subject matter of these intuitions, but because of the their structure. A second conclusion, less certain than the first, is that the seemings featured in substantive ethical intuitions deliver relatively weak justification as compared to other seeming states.
Subject area(s): metaethics, judgment internalism/externalism
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Consider orthodox motivational judgment internalism: necessarily, A’s sincere moral judgment that he or she ought to φ motivates A to φ. Such principles fail because they cannot accommodate the amoralist, or one who renders moral judgments without any corresponding motivation. The orthodox alternative, externalism, posits only contingent relations between moral judgment and motivation. In response I first revive conceptual internalism by offering some modifications on the amoralist case to show that certain community-wide motivational failures are not conceptually possible. Second, I introduce a theory of moral motivation that supplements the intuitive responses to different amoralist cases. According to moral judgment purposivism (MJP), in rough approximation, a purpose of moral judgments is to motivate corresponding behaviors such that a mental state without this purpose is not a moral judgment. MJP is consistent with conceptual desiderata, provides an illuminating analysis of amoralist cases, and offers a step forward in the internalist-externalist debates.
Subject area(s): normative theory, reason internalism/externalism
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There are a number of proposals as to exactly how reasons, ends and rationality are related. It is often thought that practical reasons can be analyzed in terms of practical rationality, which, in turn, has something to do with the pursuit of ends. I want to argue against the conceptual priority of rationality and the pursuit of ends, and in favor of the conceptual priority of reasons. This case comes in two parts. I first argue for a new conception of ends by which all ends are had under the guise of reasons. I then articulate a sense of rationality, procedural rationality, that is connected with the pursuit of ends so conceived, where one is rational to the extent that one is motivated to act in accordance with reasons as they appear to be. Unfortunately, these conceptions of ends and procedural rationality are inadequate for building an account of practical reasons, though I try to explain why it is that the rational pursuit of ends generates intuitive but misleading accounts of genuine normative reasons. The crux of the problem is an insensitivity to an is-seems distinction, where procedural rationality concerns reasons as they appear, and what we are after is a substantive sense of rationality that concerns reasons as they are. Based on these distinct senses of rationality, and some disambiguation of what it is to have a reason, I offer a critique of internalist analyses of one’s reasons in terms of the motivational states of one’s ideal, procedurally rational self, and I offer an alternative analysis of one’s practical reasons in terms of practical wisdom that overcomes objections to related reasons externalist views. The resulting theory is roughly Humean about procedural rationality and roughly Aristotelian about reasons, capturing the core truths of both camps.
Encyclopedia Entry
“Practical Conditionals,” International Encyclopedia of Ethics (forthcoming).
Unpublished
“A Case for Besires” (I cite this in “Moral Judgment Purposivism” above).
Author’s copy: Besires.pdf
Subject area(s): metaethics, judgement internalism, moral psychology
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One Humean view holds that motivation requires beliefs and desires, which are separate and distinct mental states. Beliefs are disposed to fit the world, and desires are disposed to make the world fit them. This view is thought to eliminate besire theory, according to which moral judgments have both a world-mind direction of fit by representing the ethical facts of the matter, and a mind-world direction of fit by motivating action accordingly. Here I argue that besires are fully consistent with the Humean view. The Humean view should be cast at the level of types, while besire theory is supported by introspection on psychological tokens. Existent Humean arguments against besires do not go through, and besire theory remains a viable option—indeed, the option best supported by the evidence—without rejecting the Humean view.