Selected Publications

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“What’s so Hard about Hard Choices?”, invited commentary on Sergio Tenenbaum, “The Hardness of the Practical Might: Incommensurability and Deliberatively Hard Choices,” Erasmus Journal of Philosophy and Economics 17(1): xx-xx, 2024.

What, exactly, is so hard about hard choices? I suggest that what is distinctively hard about hard choices is that they present us with the volitional difficulty of putting ourselves behind an alternative and thereby making it true of ourselves that we have most reason to do one thing rather than another. Making it true through your commitments that, for instance, you have most reason to be a philosopher rather than a lawyer makes the choice between the careers hard. This answer is in contrast to that of Sergio Tenenbaum, who understands the hardness of a hard choice as a deliberative difficulty in specifying our alternatives and ends in ways that conform with certain proposed constraints of rationality. For Tennebaum, the hardness of hard choices is not distinctive to such choices but is a general difficulty rational agents face in needing to specify their alternatives and ends in choices, whether easy or hard.

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“3 Dogmas of Normativity”, Annual Society for Applied Philosophy Lecture, Journal of Applied Philosophy, special issue, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1111/japp.12626 (with commentary by Pamela Hieronymi, Philip Pettit, and Peter Railton)

I identify and critically examine 3 dogmas of normativity that support a commonly accepted ‘Passivist View’ of rational agency. I raise some questions about these dogmas, suggest what we should believe in their place, and moot an alternative ‘Activist View’ of what it is to be a rational agent that grows out of rejection of the 3 dogmas. Underwriting the dogmas and the Passivist View, I suggest, is a deeply held but mistaken assumption that the normative domain is fundamentally akin to the nonnormative domain. Once we allow that the normative may be fundamentally unlike the nonnormative in certain key ways, a shift in our thinking about what it is to be rational becomes possible. I end by considering some implications of this paradigm shift in rationality from the passive to the active for various applied matters, including egalitarianism, affirmative action, war and conflict, business ethics, bioethics, legal reasoning, and AI design.

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“Not Quite a Person”, in eds., Jeff McMahan, Tim Campbell, James Goodrich, and Ketan Ramakrishnan, The Legacy of Derek Parfit, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 1-10, 2021.

A reminiscence of Derek Parfit.

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“Are Hard Cases Vague Cases?”, in eds. Henrik Anderson and Anders Herlitz Incommensurability: Ethics, Risk, and Decision-making, New York: Routledge, pp. 50-70, 2021.

In a ‘hard case’ of comparison between two items, it seems that one is not better or worse than the other and yet nor are they equally good. A common explanation of such cases is that appearances are deceiving: it is indeterminate – vague – which relation holds. I offer two arguments against thinking that hard cases are cases of vagueness.  First, arbitrary stipulation in cases of vagueness resolves the vagueness but arbitrary stipulation in hard cases leaves ‘resolutional remainder’. Second, vagueness prohibits ‘normative leakage’, that is, making a series of choices based on comparisons in which you end up with something worse than what you could have had, while hard cases rationally permit such leakage. Indeed, it could be said part of the point of hard cases is to allow rational agents to change normative direction despite the normative costs of doing so. I end by describing how ‘parity’, a fourth, sui generis way items can be compared, solves both of the problems faced by vagueness. Hard cases, I suggest, are cases in which items are on a par.

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“Say What? Talking Philosophy with the Public”, in eds., Lee McIntyre, Nancy Fraser, and Ian Olasov, The Blackwell Companion to Public Philosophy, New York: Blackwell, 2021.

One philosopher’s thoughts about how to give philosophy talks to the public.

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“How to Avoid the Repugnant Conclusion”, in eds., Jeff McMahan, Tim Campbell, James Goodrich, and Ketan Ramakrishnan, Ethics and Existence: The Legacy of Derek Parfit, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021.

Derek Parfit thought that his continuum argument in population ethics leading to the Repugnant Conclusion – viz., that a world with a vast number of people leading lives barely worth living is better than a world with many people enjoying excellent lives –  raised a puzzle that must be solved before we can hope to arrive at a correct theory of morality, what he called ‘Theory X’. Since Parfit, others have offered continua arguments that similarly challenge our understanding of value – and of normativity more broadly. 

This paper critically examines four possible 'structural' solutions to such arguments – solutions according to which the structure of continua is not as continua arguments suppose. It is argued that incommensurability, incomparability, indeterminacy, and indeed Parfit’s own preferred solution, ‘lexical imprecision’, fail to provide the break in structure needed to defuse continua arguments, including ones leading to the Repugnant Conclusion continuum. An alternative structural solution is then proposed according to which, somewhere along the continuum, items are on a par with their predecessors. Being on a par is a sui generis fourth basic way two items can be compared beyond being better or worse than one another or equal good. The parity solution holds two significant advantages over the other structural proposals. First, only the parity solution allows us to maintain the very plausible thought at the heart of continua arguments, viz., that as we proceed along the continuum, a small diminution in quality of value can be compensated for by a large increase in quantity of value. Second, by appealing to a tetrachotomous, rather than a trichotomous, view of value – a view of value that includes parity – we can vindicate first-blush, untutored, intuitive reactions as to what goes wrong in continua arguments. Thinking about what some may have too readily dismissed as a ‘mere puzzle’ opens up new ways of thinking about the very structure of normativity and the shape of Theory X. 

“An Introduction to the Philosophy of Practical Reason”, (with Kurt Sylvan) in eds., Ruth Chang and Kurt Sylvan, The Routledge Handbook of Practical Reason, New York: Routledge, 2020.

In this Introduction, we lay out the main branches of and issues within the philosophy of practical reason and provide an overview of this fast-evolving terrain. 

“What is it to be a Rational Agent?”, in eds., Ruth Chang and Kurt Sylvan, The Routledge Handbook of Practical Reason, New York: Routledge, 2020.

What is it to be a rational agent? The orthodox answer to this question can be summarized by a slogan: Rationality is a matter of recognizing and responding to reasons. But is the orthodoxy correct? In this paper, I explore an alternative way of thinking about what it is to be a rational agent according to which a central activity of rational agency is the creation of reasons. I explain how the idea of metaphysical grounding can help make sense of the idea that as rational agents we can, quite literally, create reasons. I end by suggesting a reason to take this alternative view of rational agency seriously. The orthodoxy faces a challenge: how do rational agents make choices within ‘well-formed choice situations’? By allowing that we have the power to create reasons, we have a satisfying and attractive solution to this question. 

“Do We Have Normative Powers?”, Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, 94: 275-300, Joint Session, July 2020

Normative powers’ are capacities to create normative reasons by our willing or say-so. They are significant, because if we have them and exercise them, then sometimes the reasons we have are ‘up to us’. But such powers seem mysterious. How can we, by willing, create reasons? In this paper, I examine whether normative powers can be adequately explained normatively, by appeal to norms of a practice, normative principles, human interests, or values. Can normative explanations of normative powers explain how an exercise of the will can afford us special freedom in determining our reasons? I argue that normative approaches to answering this question prove to be inadequate. To vindicate the thought that normative powers can make our reasons ‘up to us’, we need an altogether different approach to understanding them, one that is located not in the normative but in the metaphysical. I end the paper by sketching a metaphysical explanation of normative powers. This metaphysical defense of normative powers provides a window into a different, more agent-centered way of thinking about rational agency.

“Hard Choices”, APA Journal of Philosophy, 92: 586-620, 2017

What makes a choice hard? I discuss and criticize three common answers and then make a proposal of my own. Paradigmatic hard choices are not hard because of our ignorance, the incommensurability of values, or the incomparability of the alternatives. They are hard because the alternatives are on a par; they are comparable, but one is not better than the other, and yet nor are they equally good. So understood, hard choices open up a new way of thinking about what it is to be a rational agent.

“Parity: An Intuitive Case”, special issue, Ratio, 29: 395-411, 2016

Why believe that items can be on a par? This paper undermines the leading source of resistance to parity, offers sufficient conditions for parity, and suggests a natural way in which parity can arise from the simple idea that values have qualitative dimensions.

“Parity, Imprecise Comparability, and the Repugnant Conclusion”, Theoria, 82: 183-215, 2016, special issue in celebration of Derek Parfit’s award of the 2014 Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy

This article explores the main similarities and differences between Derek Parfit’s notion of imprecise comparability and the related notion I have proposed of parity. I argue that imprecise comparability, insofar as it assumes ‘trichotomy’ – that if two items are comparable, one must be better than, worse than, or equal to the other – must be rejected. Instead, we should understand imprecise equality as parity, and imprecise comparability as entailing ‘tetrachotomy’ – that if two items are comparable, one must better than, worse than, equal to, or on a par with the other. I then illustrate the difference between Parfit’s notion of imprecise comparability and parity by examining how each notion might be employed in a solution to the problem posed by the Repugnant Conclusion in population ethics. I suggest that parity provides an arguably more ecumenical solution to the problem.

“Transformative Choices,” in Res Philosophica, Vol. 92, No. 2 (April 2015) http://dx.doi.org/10.11612/resphil.2015.92.2.14

This paper proposes a way to understand transformative choices, choices that change ‘who you are.’ First, it distinguishes two broad models of transformative choice: 1) ‘event-based’ transformative choices in which some event—perhaps an experience—downstream from a choice transforms you, and 2) ‘choice-based’ transformative choices in which the choice itself—and not something downstream from the choice—transforms you. Transformative choices are of interest primarily because they purport to pose a challenge to standard approaches to rational choice. An examination of the event-based transformative choices of L. A. Paul and Edna Ullman-Margalit, however, suggests that event-based transformative choices don’t raise any difficulties for standard approaches to rational choice. An account of choice-based transformative choices—and what it is to be transformed—is then proposed. Transformative choices so understood not only capture paradigmatic cases of transformative choice but also point the way to a different way of thinking about rational choice and agency.

“Comparativism: The Ground of Rational Choice,” in Errol Lord and Barry McGuire, eds., Weighing Reasons. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015

What, normatively speaking, are the grounds of (objective) rational choice? This paper defends ‘comparativism’, the view that a comparative fact grounds rational choice. It examines three of the most serious challenges to comparativism: 1) that sometimes what grounds rational choice is an exclusionary-type relation among alternatives; 2) that an absolute fact such as that it’s your duty or conforms to the Categorial Imperative grounds rational choice; and 3) that rational choice between incomparables is possible, and in particular, all that is needed for the possibility of rational choice is that one alternative is not worse than the others. Each challenge is questioned. If comparativism is correct, then no matter what normative theory you favor (utilitarianism, deontology, virtue theory, perfectionism, etc), your answer to the question, ‘What makes my choice rational?’ must be comparative in form. In this way, comparativism provides a framework for normative theorizing.

Value Pluralism. In: James D. Wright (editor-in-chief), International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Vol 25. Oxford: Elsevier, 2015, pp. 21–26

 ‘Value pluralism’ as traditionally understood is the metaphysical thesis that there are many values that cannot be ‘reduced’ to a single supervalue. While it is widely assumed that value pluralism is true, the case for value pluralism depends on resolution of a neglected question in value theory: how are values properly individuated? Value pluralism has been thought to be important in two main ways. If values are plural, any theory that relies on value monism, for example, hedonistic utilitarianism, is mistaken. The plurality of values is also thought to raise problems for rational choice. If two irreducibly distinct values conflict, it seems that there is no common ground that justifies choosing one over the other. The metaphysical plurality of values does not, however, have the implications for rational choice that many have supposed. A charitable interpretation of value pluralist writings suggests a ‘nonreductive’ form of value pluralism. Nonreductive value pluralism maintains that in the context of practical choice, there are differences between values—whether or not those values reduce to a single supervalue—that have important implications for rational choice. This article examines the main arguments for metaphysical value pluralism, argues that metaphysical value pluralism does not have certain implications that it is widely thought to have, and outlines three forms of nonreductive value pluralism.

“Value Incomparability and Incommensurability,” in eds., Iwao Hirose and Jonas Olson, Oxford Handbook of Value Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014

This introductory article describes the phenomena of incommensurability and incomparability, how they are related, and why they are important. Since incomparability is the more significant phenomenon, the paper takes that as its focus. It gives a detailed account of what incomparability is, investigates the relation between the incomparability of values and the incomparability of alternatives for choice, distinguishes incomparability from the related phenomena of parity, indeterminacy, and noncomparability, and, finally, defends a view about practical justification that vindicates the importance of incomparability — assuming it exists — for practical reason.

 “Commitments, Reasons, and the Will,” (2013) Oxford Studies in Metaethics, ed. Shafer-Landau, Vol 8, pp. 74-113.

In this paper I explore the nature of commitment, in particular, of a certain 'internal' kind of commitment. I also argue that such commitments can themselves be grounds of reasons. 

“Grounding Practical Normativity: Going Hybrid”, Philosophical Studies, 164 (1): 163-187, 2013

In virtue of what is something a reason for action? That is, what makes a consideration a reason to act? This is a metaphysical or meta-normative question about the grounding of reasons for action. The answer to the grounding question has been traditionally given in ‘pure’, univocal terms. This paper argues that there is good reason to understand the ground of practical normativity as a hybrid of traditional ‘pure’ views. The paper 1) surveys the three leading ‘pure’ answers to the question of a normative ground, 2) examines one or two of the most difficult problems for each, proposing along the way a new objection to one, and 3) argues that a particular hybrid view about normative grounds –‘hybrid voluntarism’ – avoids each of the main problems faced by the three leading ‘pure’ views.

‘Incommensurability (and Incomparability), The International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Ed. Hugh LaFollette, (Oxford: Blackwell), 2013, pp. 2591-2604

This encyclopedia entry urges what it takes to be correctives to common (mis)understandings concerning the phenomenon of incommensurability and incomparability and briefly outlines some of their philosophical upshots.

“Practical Reasons: The Problem of Gridlock”, in eds. Barry Dainton and Howard Robinson, Companion to Analytical Philosophy (London: Bloomsbury Press), 2013, pp. 474-499

The paper has two aims. The first is to propose a general framework for organizing some central questions about normative practical reasons in a way that separates importantly distinct issues that are often run together. Setting out this framework provides a snapshot of the leading types of view about practical reasons as well as a deeper understanding of what are widely regarded to be some of their most serious difficulties. The second is to use the proposed framework to uncover and diagnose what I believe is a structural problem that plagues the debate about practical reasons. A common move in the debate involves a proponent of one type of view offering what she and others proposing that type consider to be a devastating criticism of an opposing type of view, only to find that her criticism is shrugged off by her opponents as easy to answer, misguided, or having little significance for their view. This isn’t due to conceptual blindness or mere slavish devotion to a theory but something fundamental about the argumentative structure of a debate over genuinely shared issues. Hence, the debate about practical reasons suffers from argumentative gridlock. The proposed framework helps us to see why this is so, and what we might do to move beyond it.

“Are Hard Choices Cases of Incomparability?”, Philosophical Issues, Vol. 22, 2012, pp. 106-126

This paper presents an argument against the widespread view that ‘hard choices’ are hard because of the incomparability of the alternatives. The argument has two parts. First, I argue that any plausible theory of practical reason must be ‘comparativist’ in form, that is, it must hold that a comparative relation between the alternatives with respect to what matters in the choice determines a justified choice in that situation. If comparativist views of practical reason are correct, however, the incomparabilist view of hard choices should be rejected. Incomparabilism about hard choices leads us to an implausible error theory about the phenomenology of hard choices, threatens an unattractive view of human agency, and leaves us in perplexity about what we are doing when we choose in hard choices. The second part of the argument explores the main competitor to comparativist views of practical reason, noncomparativist view, according tow which a choice is justified so long as it is not worse than any of the alternatives. This view is often assumed by rational choice theorists but has its best philosophical defense in work by Joseph Raz. On Raz’s view, incomparabilism about hard choices avoids the problems faced if comparativism is correct, but it faces different difficulties. I argue that Raz’s noncomparativist view mistakenly assimilates practical reason to more restricted normative domains such as the law.

“Voluntarist Reasons and the Sources of Normativity”, in Reasons for Action eds., Sobel and Wall, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 2009, pp. 243-71

This paper investigates two puzzles in practical reason and proposes a solution to them. First, sometimes, when we are practically certain that neither of two alternatives is better than or as good as the other with respect to what matters in the choice between them, it nevertheless seems perfectly rational to continue to deliberate, and sometimes the result of that deliberation is a conclusion that one alternative is better, where there is no error in one’s previous judgment. Second, there are striking differences between rational agents – some rational agents have most reason to pursue careers on Wall Street while others have most reason to take up a career in teaching, or scuba diving, or working for political causes. These differences aren’t plausibly explained by ‘passive’ facts about our psychology or their causal interaction with our environment; instead, these facts seem in some sense to ‘express who we are’. But what is this sense? These puzzles disappear if we adopt a novel view about the source of the normativity of reasons – some reasons are given to us and others are reasons in virtue of an act of will. We make certain considerations reasons through an act of will and thus sometimes make it true through an act of agency that we have most reason to do one thing rather than another.

 “Parity, Interval Value, and Choice”, 114 Ethics January 2005, pp. 331-50

 This paper begins with a response to Josh Gert’s challenge that ‘on a par with’ is not a sui generis fourth value relation beyond ‘better than’, ‘worse than’, and ‘equally good’. It then explores two further questions: can parity be modeled by an interval representation of value? And what should one rationally do when faced with items on a par? I argue that an interval representation of value is incompatible with the possibility that items are on a par (a mathematical proof is given in the appendix). I also suggest that there are three senses of ‘rationally permissible’ which, once distinguished, show that parity does distinctive practical work that cannot be done by the usual trichotomy of relations or by incomparability. In this way, we have an additional argument for parity from the workings of practical reason.

 “All Things Considered”, 18 Philosophical Perspectives, December 2004, pp. 1-22

One of the most common judgments of normative life takes the following form: With respect to some things that matter, one item is better than the other, with respect to other things that matter, the other item is better, but all things considered – that is, taking into account all the things that matter – the one item is better than the other. In this paper, I explore how all-things-considered judgments are possible, assuming that they are. In particular, I examine the question of how the different considerations relevant to an all-things-considered judgment come together in a way that gives each relevant consideration its proper due. I propose an answer which provides a unified account of all-things-considered judgments and highlights a deep connection between value and reason. My suggestion is that ‘all things considered’ is, in effect, a placeholder for a more comprehensive, sometimes nameless, value that includes the things considered as parts, and that this more comprehensive value determines how the things considered normatively relate.

“Can Desires Provide Reasons for Action?” in Reason and Value: Themes from the Moral Philosophy of Joseph Raz, eds. R. Jay Wallace, Philip Pettit, Samuel Scheffler, and Michael Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 56-90

 What sorts of consideration can be normative reasons for action? If we systematize the wide variety of considerations that can be cited as normative reasons, do we find that there is a single kind of consideration that can always be a reason? Desire-based theorists think that the fact that you want something or would want it under certain evaluatively neutral conditions can always be your normative reason for action. Value-based theorists, by contrast, think that what plays that role are evaluative facts (or the facts that subvene them) about what you want, such as the fact that having it would be good in some way. This paper argues that value-based theorists are wrong; if we try to find a single kind of consideration that can always be normative reason, we find that sometimes our reason is the fact that we want something and not any corresponding evaluative fact.

 “Putting Together Morality and Well-Being’, in Practical Conflicts, eds. M. Betzler and P. Baumann, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 118-58

 Conflicts between morality and prudence are often thought to pose a special problem because the normativity of moral considerations derives from a distinctively moral point of view, while the normativity of prudential considerations derives from a distinctively prudential point of view, and there is no way to ‘put together’ the two points of view. I argue that talk of points of view is a red herring, and that for any ‘prumoral’ conflict there is some or other more comprehensive value – often nameless – that accounts for the relative normative weight of conflicting moral and prudential considerations. The rational resolution of conflict is possible only in virtue of a more comprehensive value that includes the conflicting moral and prudential considerations as parts.

“The Possibility of Parity”, 112 Ethics July 2002, pp. 659-88

This paper argues for the existence of a fourth positive generic value relation that can hold between two items beyond ‘better than’, ‘worse than’, and ‘equally good’: namely ‘on a par’.

“Against Constitutive Incommensurability, or, Buying and Selling Friends”, 11 Philosophical Issues (annual special issues supplement to Nous), December 2001, pp. 33-60

 Recently, some of the leading proponents of the view that there is widespread incommensurability among goods have suggested that the incommensurability of some goods is a constitutive feature of the goods themselves. So, for example, a friendship and a million dollars are incommensurable because it is part of what it is to be a friendship that it be incommensurable with money. According to these ‘constitutive incommensurabilists’, incommensurability follows from the very nature of certain goods. In this paper, I examine this idea and argue that constitutive incommensurabilists have mistaken for constitutive incommensurability a particular emphatic kind of comparability. This examination involves an account of ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ goods and an explanation of how goods of different types figure in practical conflict.

“Introduction”, in Incommensurability, Incomparability and Practical Reason, ed. Ruth Chang (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), pp. 1-34

 This paper gives an argumentative view of the philosophical landscape concerning incommensurability and incomparability. It argues that incomparability, not incommensurability, is the important phenomenon on which philosophers should be focusing and that the arguments for the existence of incomparability are so far not compelling.

 “The Philosophers’ Menu”, cowritten with friends – very abridged version here

 This used to be a five single-spaced page document passed around among friends, and we firmly believed that it augured an establishment destined to succeed. Unfortunately, the management (me) lost the original document, and what appears here, published in Ethics, is a mere shadow of the glorious original. It is the management’s hope that a new generation of philosophers, with nothing better to do, will take up the task of surpassing the original.