B.Phil. 2004, D.Phil. 2007, University of Oxford
Prior to September 2008: Research Fellow, ANU
I have wide-ranging philosophical interests. My present research focuses on the relation of ethical theory to folk morality. I am especially interested in normative reasons, virtue, moral principles, and the forms of moral knowledge that might be available to us either pre-theoretically or through philosophical reflection.
Teaching
During the 2008-09 academic year, I will be teaching an upper-level History of Ethics course, as well as Introduction to Ethics (x2).
Research
I am writing a monograph, Knowing Better, for Oxford University Press, as well as editing and writing the commentary for History of Ethics, a reader to be published by Wiley-Blackwell.
A selection of papers can be downloaded or accessed below. Other papers that I am working on include Two Levels of Moral Thinking (where I provide a new account of the relationship of pre-philosophical commitments to normative ethical theory), and After Virtue Ethics (where I argue for a particular conception of virtue).
Reasons as Evidence (coauthored with Stephen Kearns) [pdf]
Forthcoming in Oxford Studies in Metaethics 4, 2009.
Reasons: Explanations or Evidence? (coauthored with Stephen Kearns) [pdf]
Forthcoming in Ethics 118:4 (October), 2008.
Abstract: John Broome thinks a person's normative reasons for action are either explanations concerning what he/she ought to do, or parts of explanations concerning what he/she ought to do. We think a person's normative reasons for action are evidence concerning what he/she ought to do . In an earlier paper, we presented arguments for and against this evidence-based view of reasons, concluding that there are strong arguments that support our view, and that all of the arguments against the view that we have received or considered so far are not compelling. In this newer paper we compare our account of normative reasons with Broome's. We argue that one apparent advantage that Broome's account has over ours – it clearly captures a common thought that an essential role that normative reasons play is to make it the case that I ought to do whatever it is I ought to do – is really only apparent, and that we are better placed to make sense of the thought that normative reasons make it the case that I ought to do whatever it is I ought to do.
Moral Knowledge, Epistemic Externalism, and Intuitionism [pdf]
Ratio 21:3 (September), 2008, 329-343.
Abstract: This paper explores the generally overlooked relevance of an important contemporary debate in mainstream epistemology to philosophers working within ethics on questions concerning moral knowledge. It is argued that this debate, between internalists and externalists about the accessibility of epistemic justification, has the potential to be both significantly influenced by, and have a significant impact upon, the study of moral knowledge. The moral sphere provides a particular type of strong evidence in favour of externalism, and mainstream epistemologists might benefit from paying attention to this fact. At the same time, the terrain of moral epistemology (approached as a subfield of metaethics) needs to be reshaped by the realisation that externalists can steal the thunder of intuitionists when it comes to knowledge constituted by seemingly self-evident beliefs.
Long Review of Sean McKeever and Michael Ridge, Principled Ethics (OUP, 2006) [link]
Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 2007.
Do Confucians Really Care? [pdf]
Hypatia 17:1, 2002, 77-106. I no longer stand by this paper. It was accepted for publication before I began my graduate studies at Oxford.
Abstract: Chenyang Li argues, in an article originally published in Hypatia, that the ethics of care and Confucian ethics constitute similar approaches to ethics. The present paper takes issue with this claim. It is more accurate to view Confucian ethics as a kind of virtue ethics, rather than as a kind of care ethics. In the process of criticizing Li’s claim, the distinctiveness of care ethics is defended, against attempts to assimilate it to virtue ethics.