Published Articles

 

1. How to be reasonable about the meaning of ‘ought’

Philosophical Studies (forthcoming)

 

… argues that the connection between deontic facts and reason facts has implications for natural language semantics, and gives a semantics for ‘ought’ and ‘must’ in terms of what agents have reason to do.

link, pdf

 

2. ‘Reason’ en masse

Philosophical Perspectives (2025)

 

… explores the relationship between the count and mass senses of ‘reason’, and gives a reasons-based analysis of the mass noun.

link, pdf

 

3. Reasons for non-agents

Australasian Journal of Philosophy (2025)

 

… argues that there are normative reasons for toasters to toast and for alarms to alarm.

link, pdf

Work In Progress

 

1. A paper on reasons and attitude intensity

Provisionally forthcoming in The Structure of Normativity: Exploring the Prospects of the Reason-First Approach (Routledge, edited by Singa Behrens & Benjamin Kiesewetter)

 

… argues that reasons fundamentalists can not only explain which attitudes we ought to hold, but also the degree to which we ought to hold them.

draft (feedback welcome)

 

2. A paper on ‘Why phi?’ questions

with Daniel Fogal

 

… investigates the meaning of questions of the form ‘Why VP?’ (‘why dance?’, ‘why be optimistic?’), and explores the connections between answers to these questions and facts about reasons.