Analytical Dispositionalism and Practical Reason

The paper examines the plausibility of analytical dispositionalism about practical reason, according to which the following claims are conceptual truths about common sense ethical discourse: i) Ethics: agents have reasons to act in some ways rather than others, and ii) Metaphysical Modesty: there is no such thing as a response independent normative reality. By elucidating two uncontroversial assumptions which are fundamental to the common sense commitment to ethics, I argue that common sense ethical discourse is most plausibly construed as committed to the denial of metaphysical modesty, and thereby as committed to the existence of a response independent normative reality.     

Revisionary Dispositionalism and Practical Reason

This paper examines the metaphysically modest view that attributionsof normative reasons can be made true in the absence of a responseindependent normative reality. The paper despairs in finding asatisfactory account of normative reasons in metaphysically modestterms.     

Semantic Dispositionalism and Non-Inferential Knowledge

The paper discusses Saul Kripke's Normativity Argument against semantic dispositionalism: it criticizes the orthodox interpretation of the argument, defends an alternative reading and argues that, contrary to what Kripke himself seems to have been thinking, the real point of the Normativity Argument is not that meaning is normative. According to the orthodox interpretation, the argument can be summarized as follows: (1) it is constitutive of the concept of meaning that its instances imply an ought, but (2) it is not constitutive of the concept of a disposition that dispositions imply an ought, hence (3) no dispositional analysis of meaning can work. According to my alternative reading, the point of the argument is another one, namely that while (1) dispositionalism is committed to the thesis that speakers have non-inferential knowledge of their unmanifested linguistic dispositions, (2) speakers, as a matter of fact, do not have such a knowledge. A point that is in principle independent from the issue of the normativity of meaning.     

Luck and Equality: A Reply to Hurley1

In Chapter 6 (“Why the Aim to Neutralize Luck Cannot Provide a Basis for Egalitarianism”) of her Justice, Luck, and Knowledge, Susan Hurley defends two claims: that “the aim to neutralize luck [does not] contribute to identifying and specifying what egalitarianism is”, and that it also provides no “independent non‐question‐begging reason or justification for egalitarianism” (p. 147). In the present response, I reject the first of Hurley's claims, and I show that the second, while true, lacks polemical force. I said, in “On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice” (Ethics, 1989), that     

Idealizing,Abstracting, and Semantic Dispositionalism

Abstract: According to certain dispositional accounts of meaning, an agent's meaning is determined by the dispositions that an idealized version of this agent has in optimal conditions. We argue that such attempts cannot properly fix meaning. For even if there is a way to determine which features of an agent should be idealized without appealing to what the agent means, there is no non‐circular way to determine how those features should be idealized. We sketch an alternative dispositional account that avoids this problem, according to which an agent's meaning is determined by the dispositions that an abstract version of this agent has in optimal conditions.     

Modal Dispositionalism and the (T) Axiom

Philosophia - Yates has recently argued that modal dispositionalism invalidates the (T) axiom. Both Yates and Allen have advanced responses to the objection: Yates’s response proposes...     

Ethics and Selfhood: A Reply to Dermot Moran and John Drummond 1

Situating the Self By Seyla Benhabib Polity Press, 1992. Pp. viii + 266. ISBN 0–7456–1059–5. £11.95 pbk.

A Descartes Dictionary By John Cottingham Basil Blackwell, 1993. Pp. 187. ISBN 0–631–18538–0. £12.99 pbk.

A reply to Baker and Morris By John Cottingham

Truth and Objectivity By Crispin Wright Harvard University Press, 1992. Pp. x + 247. ISBN 0–674–91086–9. £19.95.     

Reply to: Roberts

In his critique of my views on supererogation, Rodney Roberts (Philosophia, 2014) claims that I treat care ethics as having a more general moral validity than other care ethicists do. He also claims that the kind of sentimentalism I espouse doesn’t sufficiently emphasize sentiment and then goes on to question what I say about supererogation. But in fact other care ethicists also think care ethics can cover the whole of morality, and my sentimentalism emphasizes sentiment just as much and as little as that paradigm sentimentalist Francis Hutcheson does. Further, the critique Roberts makes of my view on supererogation doesn’t allow for the full range of possible cases of supererogation.     

Moral Realism and Program Explanation: A Very Short Symposium 1: Reply to Nelson

Donald Davidson once suggested that a liar ‘must intend to represent himself as believing what he does not’. In this paper I argue that, while Davidson was mistaken about lying in a few important respects, his main insight yields a very attractive definition of lying. Namely, you lie if and only if you say something that you do not believe and you intend to represent yourself as believing what you say. Moreover, I show that this Davidsonian definition can handle counter-examples that undercut four prominent definitions of lying: viz., the traditional intend-to-deceive definition, Thomas Carson's definition, Don Fallis's definition, and Andreas Stokke's definition.