Current Research
Here are some drafts that I’m working on (if there is no linked file, then I’m in mid-revision at the moment):
“Receptivity and the Will” (pdf) – forthcoming in Noûs
Abstract: This paper defends an internalist view of agency. The challenge for an internalist view of agency is to explain how an agent’s all-things-considered judgment has necessary implications for action, a challenge that lies specifically in the possibility of two species of akratic break: between judgment and intention, and between intention and action. I argue that the two breaks are not importantly different: in each case akrasia manifests a single species of irrational self-mistrust. I aim to vindicate internalism by showing how rational agency rests on our capacity for trusting receptivity to the verdict of judgment. To call the relation receptivity is to characterize it as fundamentally passive. To call it trusting receptivity is to ensure that the passivity is not incompatible with agency, since trust retains a crucial degree of control. I argue that the best way to meet the externalist argument from akrasia is to abandon the assumption that the will must be a locus of activity.
“The Assurance of Warrant” (pdf) – forthcoming in Philosophers' Imprint
Abstract: In “Telling as Inviting to Trust” (PPR, May 2005) I defended a version of what Richard Moran subsequently christened the Assurance View of testimony, according to which the epistemic warrant transmitted through testimony derives from an assurance that the speaker gives her addressee and is therefore unavailable to overhearers. But neither my earlier paper nor Moran’s gives an adequate explanation of how the transmission of warrant depends specifically on the speaker’s mode of address, making it natural to suspect that the interpersonal element is merely psychological or action-theoretic, rather than epistemic. I aim here to fill that explanatory gap: to specify exactly how a testifier’s assurance can create genuine epistemic warrant. One attraction of the Assurance View of testimony is that, properly developed, it allows us to reconceptualize the natures of normativity and responsibility more generally, viewing the assurance as implicating us in normative relations of recognition, and therefore of justice, that are not yet moralized with reactive attitudes. Understanding this dimension of bipolar normative relation thus provides us with a principled basis for resisting broader moralizations of normativity and responsibility.
"Assertion, Sincerity, and Knowledge" (new draft, 2 May 08: pdf)
Abstract: Lottery propositions and Moore’s paradox appear to support the knowledge account of assertion, according to which one should assert only what one knows. I reject that diagnosis of the oddity in such cases. The oddity derives instead, I argue, from a respect in which the assertions appear insincere: though the speaker is not aiming to deceive, it’s hard to see how her assertion could express any judgment she has made. The insincerity has the ring not of fraudulence but of a distinctive confusion: the speaker judges that p while quite transparently lacking epistemic authority to inform anyone whether p. This diagnosis yields a knowledge account not of assertion but of judgment. And it supports a relativistic account of the semantics of knowledge ascriptions, since the epistemic norm governing judgment is sensitive to the context not of the subject or of ascribers but of interlocutors who might rely on the judgment.
“Judging as Inviting Self-Trust” (new draft, 20 Nov 07: pdf)
Abstract: Judging is regarded by some (Plato, Sellars) as ‘inner’ assertion. And asserting that p is regarded by some (Williamson, DeRose) as representing yourself as knowing that p. If we combine these theses, we make judging that p representing yourself ‘inwardly’ – i.e. to yourself – as knowing that p. In this paper I pursue that thought. Though I don’t endorse the component theses, I aim to reveal the philosophical attractions of putting them together. These attractions follow from my emphasis on the intrapersonal relations at the core of judgment and belief. Judging manifests two distinct dimensions of self-reliance, I hold, and invites the relation of self-trust. Believing, I hold, is accepting the invitation. This explains why it makes sense to speak of ‘trusting your own judgment’ but not of ‘trusting your own belief.’ And it provides the resources for a novel treatment of epistemic normativity.
“Regret and Responsible Agency” (new draft, 8 Jan 08: pdf)
Abstract: This paper offers a novel explanation of the ‘unity’ of agency – that is, of what makes an action attributable to its agent. It is typically assumed that the unity that makes what you do attributable to you must take one of two forms: it is either a unity entirely present in the perspective of the deciding self or a unity between this perspective and that of the (usually later) self that acts on the decision. I think it is a mistake to locate the unity in either of those places. Attributability derives instead, I hold, from a unity holding between (i) the entire sequence of decision and follow-through and (ii) a perspective that looks back and judges that the sequence manifested the right sort of rational relation. Looking backwards, the unity of agency derives from an absence of regret. More specifically, it derives from a species of agent-regret that I call trust-regret: regret that you entered into that self-trust relation. In the forward-looking direction from which we live our lives, it derives from anticipation of avoiding such regret. Whenever you act, I argue, you acknowledge the normative bearing of this backward-looking reactive attitude. This acknowledgment of accountability explains why what you do is accountable – that is, attributable – to you.
“Conspiracy, Commitment, and the Self” (pdf)
Abstract: Practical commitment is Janus-faced, looking outward toward the expectations it creates and inward toward their basis in the agent’s will. This paper criticizes Kantian attempts to link these facets and proposes an alternative. Contra David Velleman, the availability of a conspiratorial perspective (not yours, not your interlocutor’s) is what allows you to understand yourself as making a lying promise – as committing yourself ‘outwardly’ with the deceptive reasoning that Velleman argues cannot provide a basis for self-understanding. Moreover, the intrapersonal availability of such a third perspective is what enables you to commit yourself ‘inwardly.’ Here I offer an alternative to Christine Korsgaard’s account of practical commitment, on which committing yourself requires identifying yourself with a principle. You needn’t identify yourself with a principle, I argue, because the unity at which you aim when you commit yourself is a unity not with your acting self but with a later perspective, where the relation is one of self-intelligibility, not self-justification, and therefore needn’t be mediated by principles. This ‘twice-future’ perspective – neither your present intending nor your (once-)future acting but a third perspective that looks back on that relation – plays the intrapersonal role played in interpersonal commitment by potential co-conspirators. Kantians are therefore right to link your ability to commit yourself with your ability credibly to express that commitment to others. But the linkage generates a strikingly unKantian result. The nature of agency cannot provide an apriori basis for honesty because what enables you to commit yourself is what also enables you to lie.
“Rationality and Preemptive Reasons” (alas, I'm not going to be able to work on this again till the summer)
Abstract: This paper asks how rational requirements bind the three perspectives constitutive of doxastic or practical agency: deliberation (yielding judgment), commitment (yielding belief or intention), and follow-through (yielding further beliefs or intentions). I argue that rational requirements are normative for belief and intention because they codify a species of coherence that binds these commissive attitudes to judgment. You have a reason to follow through on your belief or intention, if you do, because the judgment you trusted when you formed the attitude was trustworthy. Rational requirements codify not logical coherence but the agential coherence that you negotiate through relations of self-trust. One result is that, contra John Broome, only deliberation-to-commitment requirements have wide scope. Another is that where you are rationally required to follow through on a belief or intention you thereby have a reason to follow through. I argue that such normative narrow-scope requirements do not entail unacceptable ‘bootstrapping.’
“Trust and Reasons” (coming in Spring 2008 -- I have a very full draft, but there's one move I still need to clarify)
Abstract: This paper defends an internalist view of practical reasons from a new angle, arguing that internalists can embrace a thesis traditionally deemed distinctive of externalism. The new angle reveals how the old debate misconstrues an important underlying issue: how to understand the motivating force of personal trust. We can approach this issue by generalizing the traditional challenge of the amoralist. The amoralist doesn’t care about morality, and the challenge is whether an advisor can nonetheless engage him in moral reasoning. The challenge misconstrued by the old internalism debate is whether an advisor can reason with an advisee who doesn’t care about whatever consideration the advisor deems reason-giving – whether or not the upshot would be moral reasoning. One sometimes feels the need to reason an interlocutor into appropriate self-concern in order to get him to care about anything. The important questions obscured by the old debate are: Is that really possible? If so, how? If not, how can any decision informed by that concern count as rational? This last question gives rise to a new debate. If an agent could not be reasoned into feeling concern for himself, should he lose the self-concern that he does feel, how could that self-concern ever give him a reason? We can ask the question about any motive, including the advisee’s even more fundamental desire to act wisely, whether from self-interest or not. The important issue, I argue, is how any desire, concern or commitment could be reason-giving if not for the possibility of its creation purely through trust.
"Norm as Fiction: Rhetorical not Metaphysical" (still incomplete, but here is the draft I've prepared for the Penn narrative workshop)
"Disagreement in Context" (coming some day!)
And here’s some older stuff:
"Advising as Inviting to Trust" (pdf) appeared in the Canadian Journal of Philosophy 35:3 (September 2005).
Abstract: How can you give your interlocutor a reason to act? One way is by manipulating his deliberative context through threats, flattery, or other incentives. Another is by addressing him in the way distinctive of reasoning with him. I aim to account for the possibility of this non-manipulative form of address by showing how it is realized through the performance of a specific illocutionary act, that of advising as inviting to trust. I argue that exercise of a capacity for reasonable trust can give us reasons that are not grounded in our motivational susceptibilities. Here I echo Kant on moral motivation. But this rational faculty assesses not principles but persons. Here I echo Hume on the moral virtues. We can thus agree with Kant about the motivational efficacy of practical reasons dispensed through advice but agree with Hume about the form of intelligence needed to put ourselves in touch with them.
"Telling as Inviting to Trust" (pdf) appeared in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 70:3 (May 2005).
Abstract: How can I give you a reason to believe what I tell you? I can influence the evidence available to you. Or I can simply invite your trust. These two ways of giving reasons work very differently. When a speaker tells her hearer that p, I argue, she intends that he gain access to a prima facie reason to believe that p that derives not from evidence but from his mere understanding of her act. Unlike mere assertions, acts of telling give reasons directly. They give reasons by inviting the hearer’s trust. This yields a novel form of anti-reductionism in the epistemology of testimony. The status of testimony as a sui generis source of epistemic warrant is entailed by the nature of the act of telling. We can discover the nature of this illocution, and its epistemic role, by examining how it functions in the real world of human relations.
"On the Limits of Reflection: A Theory of Evil" (pdf) was presented at the 2004 Central APA in Chicago.
Abstract: I argue that ‘evil’ can be given a straightforward and purely secular definition that captures the point of much its current usage. Passive evil is simply undeserved suffering. But active evil, I propose, is the state of being systematically disposed to the creation of passive evil through a willed failure to be receptive to considerations requiring empathy with the perspective of those to whom this passive evil is done. That the failure of empathy must be willed shows that active evil is not mere callousness. It is deliberative excess rather than deficiency, but an excess that paradoxically ensures a failure of self-understanding. Since the actively evil agent cannot appear evil from his own perspective, he cannot deliberate from the premise that he is evil. Evil is thus paradoxically both what an agent creates through an act of his will and what merely befalls him.
"Trust and Diachronic Agency" (pdf) appeared in Noûs 37:1 (March 2003).
Abstract: Some philosophers worry that it can never be reasonable to act simply on the basis of trust, yet you act on the basis of self-trust whenever you merely follow through on one of your own intentions. It is no more reasonable to follow through on an intention formed by an untrustworthy earlier self of yours than it is to act on the advice of an untrustworthy interlocutor. But reasonable mistrust equally presupposes untrustworthiness in the mistrusted, or evidence thereof. The concept of an intention, I argue, codifies the fact that practical reason rests on a capacity for reasonable trust.