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.     

Facts,Ends, and Normative Reasons

This paper is about the relationship between two widely accepted and apparently conflicting claims about how we should understand the notion of ‘reason giving’ invoked in theorising about reasons for action. According to the first claim, reasons are given by facts about the situation of agents. According to the second claim, reasons are given by ends. I argue that the apparent conflict between these two claims is less deep than is generally recognised.     

V—Moral Error Theory

The paper explores the consequences of adopting a moral error theory targeted at the notion of reasonable convergence. I examine the prospects of two ways of combining acceptance of such a theory with continued acceptance of moral judgements in some form. On the first model, moral judgements are accepted as a pragmatically intelligible fiction. On the second model, moral judgements are made relative to a framework of assumptions with no claim to reasonable convergence on their behalf. I argue that the latter model shows greater promise for an error theorist whose commitment to moral thought is initially serious.     

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.     

Moral Realism, Normative Reasons, and Rational Intelligibility

This paper concerns a prima facie tension between the claims that (a) agents have normative reasons obtaining in virtue of the nature of the options that confront them, and (b) there is a non-trivial connection between the grounds of normative reasons and the upshots of sound practical reasoning. Joint commitment to these claims is shown to give rise to a dilemma. I argue that the dilemma is avoidable on a response dependent account of normative reasons accommodating both (a) and (b) by yielding (a) as a substantial constraint on sound practical reasoning. This fact is shown to have significance for the contemporary dialectic between moral realists and their opponents.     

Emotional intelligence: The MSCEIT from the perspective of generalizability theory

The Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) has been reported to provide reliable scores for the four-branch ability model of emotional intelligence [Mayer, J. D., Salovey, P., & Caruso, D. R. (2002). Mayer–Salovey–Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT). User's manual. Toronto, Canada: Multi-Health Systems]. However, no studies have yet been reported that have carried out a comprehensive analysis of reliability of scores from MSCEIT, taking into account the different conceptual features of the multifacet measurement design. Results from generalizability analyses of scores from 111 Norwegian executives' responses on the Norwegian version of MSCEIT show that scores reflect considerable amounts of measurement error. Ability scores from Perceiving Emotions are multidimensional, reflecting different types of emotion and the presence or absence of rated emotions in the stimuli. Generalizability (reliability) coefficients for scores from Perceiving Emotions, Facilitating Thought, Understanding Emotion, and Managing Emotions were estimated to .71, .37, .50, and .46, respectively, which is substantially lower than reported in previous studies. The low estimated generalizability coefficients suggest that the scores may not generalize well to intended domains, and the validity of some of the scores may be questioned.