Externalism in the philosophy of language and mind is often thought to be supported by a series of thought-experiments that probe everyday speakers’ intuitions. Nowadays, …
Increasing sensitivity to the moral significance of coordinated and uncoordinated human activity has led many philosophers to claim that individuals can be blameworthy for harms …
This dissertation consists of three related but self-contained papers. The first clarifies what some philosophers have thought to be an epistemological problem for metaethical realism: …
This dissertation consists of three independent but related papers on the boundary between semantics and pragmatics. The overarching theme is that it is most fruitful …
Abstract of “Kant and the Problem of the Regulative” by Thomas Moore, Ph.D., Brown University, May 2020 The distinction between the regulative and the constitutive …
Abstract of “Kant on the Intertwining of Individual Moral Development and Ethical Community” by Emily Hodges, Ph.D., Brown University, February 2022 I seek to resolve …
At present, there is little consensus in the secondary literature about how to understand Kant’s metaethical position. In the space of contemporary metaethical theories, neither …
This dissertation focuses on Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason and his late ethical writings. In these works, Kant becomes increasingly concerned with …
These collected papers explore the question of moral progress, particularly in light of the extraordinary shifts in moral belief witnessed in the past 300 years. …
Many believe that some normative standpoints have a certain authority that others lack. Only some normative standpoints, the thought goes, tell us what we "really" …
The broad question of this dissertation is how, if at all, one’s moral theories should relate to their moral beliefs and their motivations. The first …
I examine four non-impersonal, welfarist approaches to population ethics that have been discussed in the literature: presentism, necessitarianism, soft comparativism, and actualism. I provide an …
The two main claims of my dissertation are summarized in its contradictory-sounding title: "Nothing Is Bad, and so Is Suffering." Across three interrelated papers, I …
