Papers
Here are abstracts of some papers in print and in progress. If there is no link to a paper, you are welcome to contact me for a draft. I am always hungry for comments.
Why You Should Be Miserable (in progress). There is a deeply plausible and popularly held value theoretic principle that it is good to love the good and hate the bad. To be precise, this principle holds that it is intrinsically good to take a pro-attitude, such as being pleased by or enjoying toward objects or states of affairs that are themselves intrinsically good, and it is intrinsically good to take a con-attitude, such as being pained by toward objects or states of affairs that are intrinsically bad. From this principle, one can formulate a coherent argument to the conclusion that you should be miserable. Either there is more, less, or an equal amount of goodness or badness in the world, and the conclusion follows regardless, on the grounds of several asymmetric principles of value, or so I argue. While one might take this conclusion as a reductio against the principle that it is good to love the good and hate the bad, it is argued that it stands nonetheless.
Consciousness and Irreplaceable Value (in progress). When someone dies, it’s no consolation to observe that new people are born every minute. This is true not only of people we love, but of any stranger, and perhaps any sentient creature. People, and perhaps other creatures, are thought to have irreplaceable value: value that, when lost, cannot be replenished in kind even if it can be replenished in amount. But precisely what irreplaceable value is and why we have it is surprisingly underexplored. Phenomenal consciousness initially seems to be a prime candidate for the ground or source of the irreplaceable value of persons: it is incommunicable, and therefore a source of uniqueness, and it has been argued that it gives rise to reasons that demand respect, which is a characteristic of irreplaceable value. However, as attractive as this may be, I argue that it is surprisingly difficult to establish.
Ross and Aesthetic Value (in progress). While W. D. Ross did not, so far as it seems, write on aesthetic value in any work dedicated exclusively to that topic, he nevertheless defends a view of aesthetic value in The Right and the Good that he further develops in Foundations of Ethics. Ross has a dispositionalist account of the definition of aesthetic value, meaning that he holds the view that aesthetic value, specifically beauty, is a disposition to induce aesthetic experience. Ross is further an instrumentalist about the value of beauty. Beauty is instrumentally, not intrinsically, valuable. Rather, it is aesthetic experience that is intrinsically valuable. However, its value is derivative: it is composed of the value of pleasure and the value of knowledge, two underivative goods. Ross’ view runs contrary to important views of his time, especially Moore’s, and finds company in contemporary views in aesthetics, and, as a result, is subject to similar objections. Ross enhances his aesthetic axiology in Foundations of Ethics, adding that artistic creation may have intrinsic value which he does by, perhaps surprisingly, drawing on a perfectionist rationale. Ross’ views on these points have both their strengths and their weaknesses. This paper presents an overview and critical discussion of Ross’ views on aesthetic value.
Uniqueness, Intrinsic Value, and Reasons (The Journal of Philosophy, 2023). Although it appears that uniqueness can enhance intrinsic value, it’s not at all clear that it does. However, it does seem to reveal something very interesting about reasons. It’s a popular view that we have a pro tanto reason to promote intrinsic value, but uniqueness shows this is not so clear. The most interesting role for uniqueness in value is not how it shapes intrinsic value, but how it shapes our reasons, and the lesson that we learn about reasons and intrinsic value.
Consciousness and Welfare Subjectivity (Noûs, 2022). Many philosophers hold the view that consciousness is necessary for being a welfare subject. I argue that, in the absence of a compelling rationale, we are not in fact licensed to accept this view, because doing so amounts to fallacious reasoning in theorizing about welfare – one commits “consciousism.” As a result, the view that welfare subjectivity requires consciousness does not advance our understanding of the value of consciousness. I also diagnose why we may be attracted to this view, and what we should accept instead, which appeals to the principle of organic unity, and gives consciousness a value-amplifying role.
Irreplaceable Value (Oxford Studies in Metaethics, vol. 19, forthcoming). It is often acknowledged that some intrinsic value is also irreplaceable value. But just what does this mean? There are virtually no accounts of irreplaceable value to be found. This paper gives one.
Failure (in Perspectives in Ill-Being, ed. Christine Tappolet and Mauro Rossi, forthcoming). In Achievement, I suggest that failures can be just as good as achievements. While that may be true, surely it’s also true that failures are, or can be, genuinely bad – not merely a privation of the good of achievement, but themselves intrinsically bad. As is the case for many bads, it is surprisingly difficult to give an account that is not merely privative: viewed one way, a failure is simply a privation of attaining an end. This challenge is compounded by perfectionist theory of value, which may yield the most plausible account of achievement, but traditionally only offers an account of bads as privative. In this paper, I develop an account of failure as a robust bad by appealing to contrastive ends and the framework of tripartite perfectionism. Often, one has an end not simply “to attain X” but “to attain X rather than Y.” The contrastive end account enables distinctions in the relative badness of failures by appealing to the sharpness of contrast, so to speak, of certain contrastive ends relative to others, as well as the hierarchical position of the end and its contrastives.
Perfectionism (in The Oxford Handbook of Normative Ethics, forthcoming). This paper presents perfectionism as a theory of the good, and introduces some new developments as well as some new challenges, including methods of intrapersonal aggregation.
Achievement and the Meaning of Life (Oxford Handbook of the Meaning of Life, 2022). In many discussions of meaning in life, achievement, or something very much like it, is a central element, playing a key role in the account of meaning. But there isn’t a lot of discussion about precisely what amounts to having “objective worth.” I take a stab at describing one of the ways in which achievements can be particularly meaningful, partly inspired by a discussion by Neil Levy. But it turns out that a far wider range of achievements can be meaningful than we might have thought.
Perfectionist Bads (Philosophical Quarterly, 2021). Perfectionism has particular difficult accounting for pain and other bads. This paper explores some new resources from which perfectionism might draw to account for bads, such as failure, false beliefs, and pain.
The Badness of Pain (Utilitas, 2020). Why is pain bad? The literature abounds with discussion of well-being, but there is so little about what is bad for us that you would think we’re in denial about it. Surely if anything is bad, it’s pain. Yet its badness is complicated: there are instances where we do not treat pain as intrinsically bad, but only instrumentally so, or we do not treat it as bad at all. What is the best account to capture the badness of pain? This paper explores several possible accounts, and highlights the merits of what seems to be the most promising account so far.
Problems for Perfectionism (Utilitas, 2017). Perfectionism is the view that developing the human essence is good. This paper defends perfectionism against some recent formulations of classic objections. The first objection is that perfectionism counterintuitively undervalues the relevance of (1) pleasure and (2) preferences. The second objection is a sophisticated version of the “wrong properties” objection wherein the intuitive plausibility of the perfectionist ideal is threatened by a lack of theoretical pressure to accept putative wrong properties cases. I argue this objection is unsuccessful, but when pushed further, it leads to a more serious worry – what I call the Deep Problem: perfectionism fails to offer a satisfying foundational justification for why developing the human essence is valuable. In response, I consider a new and surprising direction for perfectionism which suggests a close relationship between perfectionism and value-theoretic pluralism.
Hard to Know (in Responsibility: The Epistemic Condition, ed. Jan Willem Wieland and Philip Robichaud, OUP 2017). Is the epistemic condition for moral responsibility sensitive to difficulty? It’s a natural thought that if discerning some morally relevant factor would be exceptionally difficult, we are not to blame if we fail to recognize it. This paper argues that difficulty per se does not shape the epistemic condition. According to the best account of difficulty, difficulty is a matter of exerting effort. There is no stock set of what we may call effort-requiring features. It turns out that it is not the difficulty per se that mitigates responsibility in cases where it appears to do so, but it is the effort-requiring features. In other cases, difficulty is extrinsically significant, insofar as it shapes the moral valence of the action. In these cases difficulty is not relevant for moral responsibility, but for the rightness or wrongness of the action, and thereby shapes praise- or blameworthiness.
Achievement, Well-being, and Value (Blackwell Philosophy Compass, 2016). This article examines possibilities about the nature of achievement and the relationship between achievement and different kinds of value, including well-being, intrinsic value, meaning, and epistemic value.
Perfectionism (in the Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Well-Being ed. Guy Fletcher, 2016). What is perfectionism as a theory of well-being? This article gives an overview of perfectionism, putting it in contrast with other related theories, and taking up some of the central issues and worries.
Achievement and Well-being, co-authored with Simon Keller (in the Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Well-Being ed. Guy Fletcher, 2016). What is achievement, and how might it be relevant to our wellbeing? We discuss and explore these issues in this article.
Achievement (Oxford University Press, 2015). Paperback, 2020. Awarded the APA Book Prize, 2017. What is achievement and why is it valuable? This book investigates the nature and value of achievements, and proposes a new strand of perfectionism to account for their value. Achievements, it is argued, have a common structure: a process culminates in a product. But not just any process and product make an achievement. The process of an achievement is difficult, and it culminates in the product in a way that is competent. These two elements — difficulty and competent causation — are the two essential features of achievements, and are also sources of value for all achievements. The best account to explain the value of achievement is a perfectionist theory, according to which the exercise of our characteristically human capacities has intrinsic value. But not just any perfectionist account will do. Perfectionism must acknowledge that the will is among the characteristic capacities.
Knowledge, Achievement, and Manifestation (Erkenntnis, 2014). Virtue epistemology appealingly characterizes knowledge as a kind of achievement, attributable to the exercise of cognitive virtues. But a more thorough understanding of the nature and value of achievement more broadly casts doubt on the view. I argue that the virtue epistemological answer to the Meno question is not as impressive as it purports to be, and that the favored analysis of ability is both problematic and irrelevant. However, considerations about achievements illuminate the best direction for the development of virtue epistemology. The key, I argue, is developing the notion of manifestation as the distinguishing feature of knowledge and achievement.
Evil Achievements and the Principle of Recursion (Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics vol. 3. Ed. Mark Timmons, 2013). This paper investigates the value of achievement by examining the implications of a highly plausible axiological principle, the principle of Recursion, according to which the pursuit of an intrinsic good is itself good, and the pursuit of bad is bad. Evil achievements present a puzzle for Recursion. The value of achievement is at least in part grounded by the positive intrinsic value of the pursuit. This is true even of achievements with evil goals. Yet Recursion entails that the pursuit of an evil is itself evil. Three different contstruals of Recursion are considered, and it is concluded that Recursion is best construed as an instance of genuine organic unity, which is a return to the original Moorean formulation.
The Value of Achievements (Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 2013). Achievements are, if any thing is, among the elements that can make a life a good one. Yet for all that, virtually no philosophers have devoted more than a few short passages to discerning what makes achievements valuable. In this paper, I offer an account of the value of achievements. Although the natural thought is that achievements are valuable because of the things that are accomplished, such as a cure for cancer or a work of art, I argue that the simple value of the product of an achievement is not sufficient to account for its overall value as an achievement. Rather, I defend the view that achievements are valuable in virtue of their difficulty. I develop a new perfectionist theory of value. This view acknowledges the will as a characteristic human capacity, and thus holds that the exercise of the will, and therefore difficulty, is intrinsically valuable.
Evil Achievements, (The Philosophers’ Magazine, 2012).
Review of The Best Things in Life by Thomas Hurka, Journal of Value Inquiry 2011 (45): 487-490.
Review of Drawing Morals: Essays in Ethical Theory by Thomas Hurka, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews