Profile

Career

Departmental roles

• Chair of the PEP Board of Studies

Research

Overview

Research interests

Moral Philosophy, Theories of Practical Reason, Normative Theory, History of Moral Philosophy, Decision Theory, Social Choice, Epistemology.

Current projects

• ‘Counting Reasons and Saving Lives’ (a paper on number scepticism and, more generally, on the foundations of consequentialism)
•  ‘The Normativity of Rationality’ (a paper on the relation between reasons and rationality, which continues work done in my paper 'Ewing's Problem)
• ‘The Bootstrapping Objection’ (a paper arguing that there is no general bootstrapping problem for mind-based accounts of practical reasons) 
•  ‘The Normative Force of Decision Theory’ (to counter Broome's criticism of decision theory as normatively vacuous)
•  ‘The Philosophy of Cost-Benefit Analysis’ (a project on the philosophical commitments of CBA) 
•  ‘Is Sosa’s epistemology apt?’ (to investigate whether aptness, accuracy because of adroitness, can play the important role Sosa assigns to it in his analysis of knowledge)
•  ‘Virtue Theory versus Deontology in Epistemology’ (continuing my work of ‘Valuing Knowledge’, where I argue for a deontological understanding of justification)
•  ‘What is epistemic value?’ (to investigate the tension between an attributive theory of goodness and the idea that epistemic values are on a par with other kinds of ‘non-attributive’ values, like social, aesthetic, or moral values)
•  Instrumental Value (to argue that there is no conception of instrumental value that could be the basis of instrumental reasoning)
•  Subjectivism and Objectivism in Normative theory (to defend what I take to be Pritchard’s view which, to put it somewhat paradoxically, is to defend subjectivism by showing that is a form of objectivism) 
•  Final Value (to argue that the conception of final value is not on a par with analogous distinctions in value theory as it presupposes a substantial commitment regarding what it is to be valuable)
•  Fairness and Goodness (an exploration of Broome’s anti-consequentialist account of fairness and its uses in a consequentialist framework)
•  Liberty, Rights, and Consistency (a defence of minimal consistency against Sugden’s rights-based criticism) 
•  Is there a Gettier Problem in Practical Philosophy? (to discuss the reliance of virtue epistemology on parallels between beliefs and actions)

Publications

Selected publications

• ‘Valuing Knowledge: A Deontological Approach (PDF , 202kb)’, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 12, 413-428, 2009
• ‘Reliabilist Responses to the Value of Knowledge Problem (PDF , 98kb)’, Grazer Philosophische Studien 79, 121-135, 2009
• ‘Desiring the Truth and Nothing but the Truth (PDF , 151kb)’, Nous 43, 193-213, 2009
• ‘Morality’s Place: Kierkegaard and Frankfurt (PDF , 301kb)’,  Revista Portoguesa Filosofia 64, 497-509, 2008
• ‘Ewing’s Problem (PDF , 200kb)’, European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 3, 43-65, 2007.
• ‘Kinds of Practical Reasons: Attitude-Related Reasons and Exclusionary Reasons (PDF , 44kb)’, in: S Miguens, J A Pinto and C E Mauro, eds, Analyses, Porto: Porto University, 98-106, 2006.
• ‘Particularism and the Structure of Reasons (PDF , 83kb)’, Acta Analytica 21:2,  87-102, 2006.
  
• ‘Content-Related and Attitude-Related Reasons for Preferences (PDF , 126kb)’, Philosophy, Supplement Volume 59, 155-181, 2006
• ‘The New Realism in Ethics’, in: T Baldwin (ed), The Cambridge History of Philosophy 1870-1945, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 277-288, 2003
• ‘Two Accounts of Objective Reasons’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 67, 2003, 444-451
• ‘Criticial Notice: Jonathan Dancy, Practical Reality (PDF , 96kb)’, Philosophy 78, 414-425, 2003.
• ‘Ways of Being Good (PDF , 76kb)’, Acta Analytica 16, 153-167, 2001
• ‘Normative Practical Reasoning (PDF , 774kb)’ , Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplement Vol. 75, 195-216, 2001  
• ‘Doing What is Best (PDF , 188kb)’, Philosophical Quarterly 50, 208-226, 2000

Teaching

Undergraduate

• Ethics
• Free Will and Moral Responsibility
• Moral Relativism
• Meta-ethics
• The Structure of the Good
• Practical Reason and Ethics
• Normative Ethics
• Rationality, Morality and Economics
  

Postgraduate

• Ethical Thinking
• Ethics
• Philosophy, Politics and Economics of Social Choice