The Projectability Challenge states that a metaethical view must explain how ordinary agents can, on the basis of moral experience and reflection, accurately and justifiably apply moral concepts to novel situations. In this paper, we argue for two primary claims. First, paradigm nonnaturalism can satisfactorily answer the projectability challenge. Second, it is unclear whether there is a version of moral naturalism that can satisfactorily answer the challenge. The conclusion we draw is that there is an important respect in which nonnaturalism (...) holds an advantage over its most prominent naturalist rivals. The conclusion is interesting if only because it is widely assumed that naturalism has an easier time handling thorny problems in moral epistemology. We argue that there is at least one such problem of which this assumption is not true. (shrink)

Review of Terence Cuneo, "Ritualized Faith: Essays on the Philosophy of Liturgy", Oxford Univ. Press 2016, 228pp.

A critical notice of Terence Cuneo's The Normative Web and Hallvard Lillehammer's Companions in Guilt: Arguments for Ethical Objectivity.

In his highly engaging book, Speech and Morality, Terence Cuneo advances a transcendental argument for moral realism from the fact that we speak. After summarizing the major moves in the book, I argue that its master argument is not as friendly to non-naturalist versions of moral realism as Cuneo advertises and relies on a diet of insufficient types of speech acts. I also argue that expressivists have compelling replies to each of Cuneo's objections individually, but taken (...) together, Cuneo's objections provide the resources for issuing a new and interesting challenge to expressivists. (shrink)

Review article of Nicholas Wolterstorff, Inquiring about God: Selected Essays, vol. 1, and Practices of Belief: Selected Essays, vol. 2, edited by Terence Cuneo.

This document gathers together, in summary form, objections scattered across many papers and multiple online databases. Nevertheless, it omits some objections, notably complicated ones.

This document briefly summarizes several objections to Thomas Kuhn on science, including by Feyerabend, Davidson, and Fodor.

This paper is a response to Kathleen Stock’s book Material Girls, by way of imitation. I have attempted to write a faux chapter in the book’s style, identifying four moments in overcoming the low-high culture divide in responses to the arts.

This paper responds to an argument against a kind of anthropology. According to the argument, if the aim of anthropology is to describe the different worldviews of different groups, then anthropologists should only refer to material artefacts in order to illustrate a worldview; but the interest of artefacts to anthropology goes beyond mere illustration. This argument has been endorsed by key members of the ontological movement in anthropology, who found at least one of its premises in Marilyn Strathern’s writing.

This paper responds to Kathleen Stock’s attempt to explain a puzzling fact, at least from her standpoint: widespread assertions that some people who are biologically male are women and some people who are biologically female are men. She regards these assertions as made while immersed in a fiction. Stock rejects an alternative explanation – that a lot of these people have read Judith Butler or 1970s feminism. Clarifying that explanation reveals it to be not so easy to dismiss.

This paper evaluates an argument according to which many anthropologists commit themselves to Cartesian dualism, when they talk about meanings. This kind of dualism, it is argued, makes it impossible for anthropologists to adequately attend to material artefacts. The argument is very original, but it is also vulnerable to a range of objections.

I argue that Kathleen Stock omits crucial information in her 2021 book Material Girls, when she debates with Thomas Laqueur, information which enables readers to appreciate the excitement in relation to his historical discovery. I argue further that this is more than just a communicational problem. I then present a reason for rejecting the theory Laqueur uncovers: the initially strange theory that there is just one sex. But I argue that the one sex theory is unlikely to be killed off (...) by this reason. I also raise a concern about Stock’s interpretation of Mrs. Gaskell’s Cranford. The writing style here is influenced by an essay by a medic. (shrink)

This is a one page handout outlining an interpretation of Simone de Beauvoir which draws heavily upon material from the analytic tradition of philosophy.

This is a one page handout identifying some notable omissions from her brief history of gender identity theory.

Joe Horton’s all-or-nothing problem concerns a situation in which it is morally permissible to do nothing and to save two people but not to save only one. This description seems to entail that we should do nothing rather than save only one. I object to Horton’s solution and challenge a principle he draws attention to, which is required to generate the problem but which Horton regards as beyond dispute.

The professor of psychopathology Simon Baron-Cohen claims that males are on average stronger at systematizing than empathizing and females are on average stronger at empathizing than systematizing. Systematizing is defined as the drive to construct or understand systems. In this paper, I observe that Baron-Cohen overlooks certain examples of systems, examples which lead to doubts about his claim.

Economics uses rational actor models, but what about anthropology? I present an interpretation of the influential anthropologist Marilyn Strathern according to which she engages in a kind of rational actor modelling, but a kind that is different from economic modelling.

An objection to John Rawls’s original position is that it faces a problem of inconsistent features: the individuals in this hypothetical situation are not supposed to know where they are in history, but they have knowledge of general social science, from which they can infer at which point in time they are. In this paper, I consider two solutions. One of these solutions depends on extending a solution to another well-known objection: that readers cannot imagine lacking the knowledge that these (...) individuals lack. (shrink)

This is a one-page handout which responds to Kathleen Stock's 2021 book Material Girls. It considers how analytic philosophy can be introduced into this area, and specifies five kinds of argument for the claim that the sexes are socially constructed.

This paper observes that P. F. Strawson’s distinction between descriptive and revisionary metaphysics is a baffling one from the perspective of traditional metaphysics. If one thinks of metaphysics as the study of the fundamental nature of reality, it is bewildering to divide up metaphysics in this way. The paper then tries to show how the distinction is no longer bewildering if we deny that such study is possible.

In this paper, I present an outline of a paradox which is a variation on the lottery paradox and concerns whether we can ignore hesitant moral judgments.

According to a familiar reading of Kant, he denies the possibility alleged by the rationalists of our having non-sensible or intellectual intuition. I argue in this article that he simply holds the possibility to be groundless. To put the contrast in terms of a distinction Kant makes in the A-Paralogisms, he raises a “dogmatic” objection to the rationalists in the former case, and a “critical” one in the latter. By analyzing the two-step argument in the B-Deduction, I defend the “critical” (...) reading, which may, I hope, shed light on how Kant can justify his claim – which may be regarded as a second-order, methodological one pivotal to his Critical project – that possible experience serves as the only guideline for proving that we can cognize objects a priori. (shrink)

This paper contains my second attempt to pastiche the Lacanian philosopher and social theorist Renata Salecl. The pastiche responds to the theories of social inequality and education of Pierre Bourdieu.

In the sixth chapter of The View from Nowhere, Thomas Nagel aims to identify a form of idealism, to isolate the argument for it and to counter this argument. The position that Nagel takes to be idealist is that what there is must be possibly conceivable by us. In this paper, I show that Nagel has not made a convincing case against this position. I then present an alternative case. In light of this alternative case, we have reason to reject (...) an important example that Nagel offers of a contemporary idealist, namely Donald Davidson. (shrink)

The title question arises because the philosophy seems the same as asking, “What if everyone did that?” In this paper, I give a partial response to the question. In an appendix, I consider the question of why should we tell you the answer?

This paper evaluates Jonathan Quong’s attempt to defend a version of political liberalism from the asymmetry objection. I object that Quong’s defence relies on a premise that has not been adequately supported and does not look as if it can be given adequate support.

This paper contests a standard interpretation of how Descartes comes to the conclusion that he is not his body in the second meditation. I propose an alternative interpretation in its place.

I present some objections to traditional literary interpretation and consider subversive interpretation as a solution to these problems. Subversive interpretation may seem more scientific and more democratic than traditional interpretation, but it is open to doubt that it is more democratic.

Some philosophers assert that astrology is a false theory. The simplest way to argue against all astrology is to identify a proposition that any kind of astrology must be committed to and then show that this proposition is false. In this paper I draw attention to some misconceptions about which propositions are essential to astrology.

In her paper ‘An Awkward Relationship: the Case of Feminism and Anthropology’, Marilyn Strathern argues that feminist research cannot produce a paradigm shift in social anthropology. I reconstruct her arguments and evaluate them, revealing that they are insufficient for ruling out this possibility.

This paper presents two accounts of how Oedipus might have arrived at the answer to the Sphinx's riddle by proceeding methodically.

The professor of psychopathology Simon Baron-Cohen is well-known for his thesis that males are on average better at systematizing than empathizing and females are on average better at empathizing than systematizing. In this paper, I note an ambiguity in how he defines systematizing.

John Rawls recommends a reflective equilibrium method for evaluating which principles institutions should abide by. In this paper, I identify and challenge three assumptions that he makes.

John Rawls’s difference principle says that we should change our economy if doing so is better for the worst-off group, on the condition that certain basic rights are secured. This paper presents a kind of case that challenges the principle. If we modify the principle to cope with the challenge, we open the way to a Sorites paradox.

Political philosophers sometimes write of liberal democracies, but which societies, if any, are liberal democracies? John Rawls says that in the public political culture of a liberal democracy, we find the principle that this society should be a fair system of cooperation between free and equal individuals. In this paper, I draw attention to how, if we grant Rawls’s definition, a society can easily be mistaken for a liberal democracy when it is not. I then argue that Andrew March, Gabrielle (...) Badano and Alasia Nuti have not given sufficient evidence for treating various European societies as Rawlsian liberal democracies. (shrink)

Some formulations of the surprise paradox involve a pair of unnecessary and controversial assumptions. After casting doubt on these assumptions, I propose a solution to the paradox.

The economist David K. Levine claims that if a government of a country makes torture legal, the inevitable result will be torture that is out of control. I point out an inconsistency in his approach to torture. I then argue that we should be open to rare counterexamples to his claim and describe a kind of counterexample.

Does the debate between Rawlsians and liberal perfectionists boil down to the following: for liberal perfectionists, the government should fund aesthetic projects that are in good taste; for Rawlsians, the government should be neutral on the aesthetic value of anything? If so, liberal perfectionists are committed to the view that there is objective aesthetic value. In this paper, I argue that within the Rawlsian system is a thesis that is difficult to reconcile with objectivity about aesthetics.

Philosophers and logicians talk of arguments for conclusions. In a recent paper, Jeffrey Goodman identifies a common way of thinking about what an argument is. I propose a definition that is quite different to this common way. I also make two objections to Goodman’s proposed definition.

The students’ argument against the possibility of a surprise exam assumes that the following would not occur: the teacher decides to give the exam on a certain day; the teacher believes that the exam would be a surprise on that day; but, actually, the exam would not be a surprise on that day. I give a reason to reject this assumption, and I point out that an attempt to reformulate the surprise exam paradox in order to allow for the assumption (...) does not result in an acceptable argument. (shrink)

There are some premise-by-premise reconstructions in political philosophy which are flawed, because they omit at least one premise or misword at least one premise. This paper focuses on a reconstruction by Richard Child. The original argument is by Andrea Sangiovanni and is about whether egalitarian values of distributive justice apply both within a state and globally. Child’s reconstruction has been reproduced in a paper by Ian Davis, who approves of it. But I point out five logical problems with the reconstruction.

In this paper, I object to Michael Rush’s definitions of targeted and propositional gratitude.

This paper evaluates a definition of anthropology at home formulated by Marilyn Strathern in her book contribution 'The Limits of Auto-Anthropology'. According to the definition, anthropology at home is anthropology carried out in the social context that produced this discipline. I argue that this is not an adequate definition of anthropology at home.

This paper evaluates an argument for the conclusion that in order to produce a viable objection to a particular error theory, the objection must not be applicable to any error theory. The reason given for this conclusion is that error theories about some discourses are uncontroversial. But the examples given of uncontroversial error theories are not good ones, nor do there appear to be other examples available.

This paper evaluates the following argument, suggested in the writings of Donald Davidson: if there is such a thing as the given, then there can be alternative conceptual schemes; there cannot be alternative conceptual schemes; therefore there is no such thing as the given.

This paper presents an objection to John Rawls’s use of the original position method to argue against implementing utilitarian rules. The use of this method is pointless because a small subset of the premises Rawls relies on can be used to infer the same conclusion.

Joseph Raz has argued that the problem of the amoralist is misconceived. In this paper, I present three interpretations of what his argument is. None of these interpretations yields an argument that we are in a position to accept.