Current Research
I’m in the process of updating this page. Here, in the meantime, are two forthcoming papers (both of which will be further revised before appearing in print):
“Receptivity and the Will” (pdf) – to appear in Noûs, September 2009
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.
“Assurance, Warrant, and Testimonial Norms” (new draft, 25 April 09: pdf) – forthcoming in Philosophers' Imprint
Abstract: Previous assurance-theoretic treatments of testimony have not adequately explained how the transmission of warrant depends specifically on the speaker’s mode of address – making it natural to suspect that the interpersonal element is not epistemic but merely psychological or action-theoretic. I aim to fill that explanatory gap: to specify exactly how a testifier’s assurance can create genuine epistemic warrant. In doing so I explain (a) how the illocutionary norm governing the speech act proscribes not lies but a species of bullshit, in an extension of Harry Frankfurt’s sense, (b) how that norm makes testimony fully second-personal, in Stephen Darwall’s sense, or bipolar, in Michael Thompson’s sense, and (c) how that species of second-personality or bipolarity is more fundamental than the practical species that Darwall and Thompson discuss. One attraction of this new Assurance View of testimony is that 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.
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. Now that the Bush years are winding down and one may perhaps speak of ‘evil’ without appearing to echo Bushian rhetoric, I plan to revisit this paper and produce a full version.
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.