Writings:

Some new things and things in progress:

Synopsis: I argue that common reasons to think that no moral judgments are true suggest that epistemic judgments, e.g., that some belief is rational, justified or should be held, are not true either. I argue that these epistemic anti-realisms are rationally unacceptable and that the major premises that entail them are false. Thus, I undercut the case against moral realism, which rests on these premises. Chapters:
 1. Moral & Epistemic Realisms
 2. Defending Epistemic Deontologies
 3. Ayer and Stevenson's Ethical and Epistemological Emotivisms
 4. Hare's Epistemological Universal Prescriptivism
 5. Mackie's Epistemic Nihilism
 6. Harman's Epistemic Relativism
 7. Contemporary Moral and Epistemic Irrealisms

    Other writings:

    Some planned future works; more information is here:
    • A book on logic and animal ethics, perhaps including discussion of other contemporary moral issues, as test cases as a "warm up" for animal issues.
    • Progress and the Moral Community: a collection of the actual religious, scientific and moral arguments that were given in defense of slavery, against women's rights, etc.
    • A paper on collective responsibility, individual causal impotence and ethics.
    • Papers on epistemic / intellectual value theory and meta-epistemology, addressing issues related to intellectual obligations, intellectual virtue, the "ethics" of belief, and value-related matters concerning how we think, reason and form beliefs and other mental states.
    • A short book on logic and critical thinking that focuses on how to think (not what to think) about ethical questions that is geared toward students and scientists, called Why Think That? A Guide To Making Moral Progress (see http://www.WhyThinkThat.com). The book is designed to bridge the 'gap' between how philosophers / logicians often think about moral issues -- especially the methods they use -- and how non-philosophers often address moral issues, and address some of common cognitive, emotional and social barriers to using philosophical methods in addressing moral questions.
    • Empirically-informed research on whether teaching moral issues classes "makes a difference," so to speak.
    • Something on vicious pleasures (i.e., pleasures that are intrinsically bad, and pains that are intrinsically good) and the structure of normative ethical theories that incorporate complex axiologies like these (can they all be called 'consequentialisms'?).

Courses and teaching / advising materials:

Links: