Book project in progress:
Value Is Real
In this book, I draw on and rework ideas from the philosophy of mind in order to make a novel positive argument for value realism. The book’s central move is to ask the reader to consider what she herself is up to when she is trying, on some occasion, to decide what to do. She will find, I argue, that what she is doing is looking outwards, towards the world conceived as a place laden with value, and that it is this value by which she seeks to be guided in her deliberations. Making this case requires a (re)consideration of the various psychological attitudes—desires, beliefs, evaluative judgements, and so on—that have typically stood as the basis for anti-realist accounts of value, and that might be thought to play a normatively grounding role in one’s deliberation about what to do. From your own point of view, I argue, these attitudes are not first and foremost descriptive psychological facts about a person (a person who happens to be you). Instead, they are your finding something in the world to be a certain way—desirable, say, or valuable. To borrow a term from the philosophy of mind literature that inspired this argument, these attitudes are ‘transparent’, from the first-person perspective, to the world. From the bearer’s point of view, these attitudes play the role they do in deliberation only because and insofar as they are a recognition of something in the world having normative import. My reader, I argue, is thus in a sense already a realist about value.
In this book, I draw on and rework ideas from the philosophy of mind in order to make a novel positive argument for value realism. The book’s central move is to ask the reader to consider what she herself is up to when she is trying, on some occasion, to decide what to do. She will find, I argue, that what she is doing is looking outwards, towards the world conceived as a place laden with value, and that it is this value by which she seeks to be guided in her deliberations. Making this case requires a (re)consideration of the various psychological attitudes—desires, beliefs, evaluative judgements, and so on—that have typically stood as the basis for anti-realist accounts of value, and that might be thought to play a normatively grounding role in one’s deliberation about what to do. From your own point of view, I argue, these attitudes are not first and foremost descriptive psychological facts about a person (a person who happens to be you). Instead, they are your finding something in the world to be a certain way—desirable, say, or valuable. To borrow a term from the philosophy of mind literature that inspired this argument, these attitudes are ‘transparent’, from the first-person perspective, to the world. From the bearer’s point of view, these attitudes play the role they do in deliberation only because and insofar as they are a recognition of something in the world having normative import. My reader, I argue, is thus in a sense already a realist about value.
Published and forthcoming research papers:
‘Value Realism and Idiosyncrasy’ (runner-up for the Marc Sanders Prize in Metaethics; forthcoming in Oxford Studies in Metaethics 18, 2023; pre-print available upon request)
‘Beyond the Birth: Middle and Late Nietzsche on the Value of Tragedy’ (forthcoming in Inquiry, published online 2023)
[find online]
‘Pulling Oneself up by the Hair: Understanding Nietzsche on the Freedom of the Will’, Inquiry, vol 61, pp. 82-99, 2017
[find online]
‘Why Sibley is (probably) not a particularist after all’, British Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 51, pp. 201-212, 2011
[find online]
‘Beyond the Birth: Middle and Late Nietzsche on the Value of Tragedy’ (forthcoming in Inquiry, published online 2023)
[find online]
‘Pulling Oneself up by the Hair: Understanding Nietzsche on the Freedom of the Will’, Inquiry, vol 61, pp. 82-99, 2017
[find online]
‘Why Sibley is (probably) not a particularist after all’, British Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 51, pp. 201-212, 2011
[find online]
Research papers in progress:
‘The Guise of the Good and the Agential Perspective on Action’ (committed to edited collection in honor of Joseph Raz)
‘Worlds Collided: Love as Seeing and Seeing-With’ (committed for presumptive publication in Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, 2024; draft available upon request)
‘Normativity from the First-Person Perspective’ (commissioned chapter for edited collection on normative realism, editors Paul Boghossian and Chris Peacocke; draft available upon request)
A paper on deliberation and value realism (currently under review)
A paper on alienation and the first-person perspective (currently in progress)
A paper on akrasia, moral testimony, and the epistemology of value (currently in progress)
‘Worlds Collided: Love as Seeing and Seeing-With’ (committed for presumptive publication in Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, 2024; draft available upon request)
‘Normativity from the First-Person Perspective’ (commissioned chapter for edited collection on normative realism, editors Paul Boghossian and Chris Peacocke; draft available upon request)
A paper on deliberation and value realism (currently under review)
A paper on alienation and the first-person perspective (currently in progress)
A paper on akrasia, moral testimony, and the epistemology of value (currently in progress)
Encyclopedia entries, critical commentaries, and reviews:
* = invited, † = peer reviewed
Critical commentary on Bernard Reginster’s The Will to Nothingness: An Essay on Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality (forthcoming in the European Journal of Philosophy) *
Review of Guy Elgat, Being Guilty: Freedom, Responsibility, and Conscience in German Philosophy from Kant to Heidegger (forthcoming in Ethics) *
Review of Mattia Riccardi, Nietzsche’s Philosophical Psychology (forthcoming in the Journal of Nietzsche Studies) *
Review of Andrew Huddleston, Nietzsche on the Decadence and Flourishing of Culture (published in Mind 132(525): 243–251, 2023) *
[find online]
‘Nietzsche’s Ethics’, Internet Encylopedia of Philosophy, 2022 * †
Review of Peter J. Conradi, Iris Murdoch – A Writer at War (published in the Oxonian Review, 12(4), 2010) *
Critical commentary on Bernard Reginster’s The Will to Nothingness: An Essay on Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality (forthcoming in the European Journal of Philosophy) *
Review of Guy Elgat, Being Guilty: Freedom, Responsibility, and Conscience in German Philosophy from Kant to Heidegger (forthcoming in Ethics) *
Review of Mattia Riccardi, Nietzsche’s Philosophical Psychology (forthcoming in the Journal of Nietzsche Studies) *
Review of Andrew Huddleston, Nietzsche on the Decadence and Flourishing of Culture (published in Mind 132(525): 243–251, 2023) *
[find online]
‘Nietzsche’s Ethics’, Internet Encylopedia of Philosophy, 2022 * †
Review of Peter J. Conradi, Iris Murdoch – A Writer at War (published in the Oxonian Review, 12(4), 2010) *
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