Collaborations with Mark Timmons

The University of Memphis

New Wave Moral Realism Meets Moral Twin Earth (with M. Timmons), Journal of Philosophical Research 16 (1991), 447-65; and in J. Heil (ed.), Rationality, Morality, and Self-Interest: Essays Honoring Mark C. Overvold (Rowman and Littlefield, 1993).

There have been times in the history of ethical theory, especially in this century, when moral realism was down, but it was never out. In the last decade, moral realism has re-entered the philosophical ring in powerful-looking naturalistic form. In the paper, we provide a dialectical overview: we situate the new wave position itself, and also our objections to it, in the context of the evolving program of philosophical naturalism in 20th century analytic philosophy. We seek to show that it succumbs to punches surprisingly similar to those that knocked out the old-fashioned versions of naturalistic moral realism.

Troubles on Moral Twin Earth: Moral Queerness Revived (with M. Timmons), Synthese 92 (1992), 221-60.

J. L. Mackie argued that if there were objective moral properties or facts, then the supervenience relation linking the nonmoral to the moral would be metaphysically queer. Moral realists reply that objective supervenience relations are ubiquitous according to contemporary versions of metaphysical naturalism and, hence, that there is nothing especially queer about moral supervenience. In this paper, we revive Mackie's challenge to moral realism. We argue: (i) that objective supervenience relations of any kind, moral or otherwise, should be explainable rather than sui generis, (ii) that this explanatory burden can be successfully met vis-à-vis the supervenience of the mental upon the physical, and in other related cases; and (iii) that the burden cannot be met for (putative) objective moral supervenience relations.

Troubles for New Wave Moral Semantics: The `Open Question Argument' Revived (with M. Timmons), Philosophical Papers 21 (1992), 153-75.

We argue that (1) the new wave version of ethical naturalism defended by David Brink, Richard Boyd, Nicholas Sturgeon, and other, rests on a certain view about the semantics of moral terms that stems from the attempt to extend relatively recent developments in the philosophy of language (due to the work of Putnam and Kripke) to the understanding of moral language; but that (2) this new wave semantic view succumbs to an updated version of Moore's 'Open Question Argument' as reveled by a Twin Earth thought experiment. We conclude that, in the end, new wave ethical naturalism is as fatally flawed as its predecessor.

Metaphysical Naturalism, Semantic Normativity, and Meta-Semantic Irrealism (with M. Timmons), Philosophical Issues 4 (1993), 180-203.

We describe and motivate a version of meta-semantic irrealism, situated within a broad orientation toward language-world relations we call contextual semantics. According to contextual semantics, truth is semantically-correct assertibility, a normative feature; and other semantic notions are also normative. The most plausible way to accommodate semantic normativity within a broadly naturalistic metaphysical worldview, we argue, is a version of meta-semantic irrealism which preserves semantic discourse rather than eliminating it, and which eschews semantically reductionist treatments of moral sentences that treat them as equivalent to nondeclarative sentences such as imperatives or ejaculations.

Troubles for Michael Smith's Metaethical Rationalism (with M. Timmons), Philosophical Papers 25 (1996), 203-231.

In his recent book, The Moral Problem, Michael Smith defends as anti-Humean, rationalist account of normative reasons in terms of which he analyzes moral judgments of rightness. We argue that (1) if Smith's analysis of normative reasons is correct, then there is good reason to be skeptical about there being normative moral reasons, which would force one to accept an error theory of moral discourse; however, we go on to argue that (2) there are serious problems with Smith's analysis of normative reasons and that (3) the kind of irrealist metaethical theory, not considered by Smith and not usually recognized as a metaethical option, has serious potential for solving what Smith calls "the moral problem."

From Moral Realism to Moral Relativism in One Easy Step (with M. Timmons), Critica 28 (1996), 3-39.

In recent years, defenses of moral realism have embraced what we call "new wave moral semantics," which construes the semantic workings of moral terms like "good" and "right" as akin to the semantic workings of natural-kind terms in science and also takes inspiration from functionalist themes in the philosophy of mind. This sort of semantic view, which we find in the metaethical views of David Brink, Richard Boyd, and Peter Railton, is the crucial semantical underpinning of a naturalistic brand of moral realism that these philosophers favor--a view that promises to deliver a robust form of moral realism. We argue that new wave moral semantics leads, in one way or another, to moral relativism--a view that is incompatible with the kind of moral realism these philosophers aim to defend.

Copping Out on Moral Twin Earth (with M. Timmons). Synthese 124 (2000), 139-52. Appears with D. Copp, “Milk, Honey, and the Good Life on Moral Twin Earth.”

In "Milk, Honey, and the Good Life on Moral Twin Earth", David Copp explores some ways in which a defender of synthetic moral naturalism might attempt to get around our Moral Twin Earth argument. Copp nicely brings out the force of our argument, not only through his exposition of it, but through his attempt to defeat it, since his efforts, we think, only help to make manifest the deep difficulties the Moral Twin Earth argument poses for the synthetic moral naturalist.

Nondescriptivist Cognitivism: Framework for a New Metaethic (with M. Timmons). Philosophical Papers 29 (2000), 121-53.

We propose a metaethical view that combines the cognitivist idea that moral judgments are genuine beliefs and moral utterances express genuine assertions with the idea that such beliefs and utterances are nondescriptive in their overall content. This sort of view has not been recognized among the standard metaethical options because it is generally assumed that all genuine beliefs and assertions must have descriptive content. We challenge this assumption and thereby open up conceptual space for a new kind of metaethical view.

Conceptual Relativity and Metaphysical Realism (with M. Timmons), Philosophical Issues 12 (2002), 74-96. Issue on realism and relativism.