Response to Comments and Criticisms

These responses are replies to the contributions to a book symposium devoted to my book Knowing and Seeing. Groundwork for a New Empiricism (2019), held at the University of Vienna in February 2020.

Heated Agreement

This chapter was originally a contribution to a book symposium on Robert Adams’ A Theory of Virtue (2006), which develops an extended response to the arguments for character skepticism put forth in Doris’ Lack of Character (2002). It is argued that despite the differences between them, the works are actually in considerable agreement, both methodologically and substantively, when it comes to the fundamentals of moral psychology. Both sides agree that philosophical moral psychology ought to be empirically informed, and both sides agree that traditional conceptions of character traits require revision in light of empirical information.

Doing Without (Arguing about) Desert

This chapter was originally a contribution to a book symposium on Manuel Vargas’ Building Better Beings (2013a), focusing on the revisionist treatment of desert therein. By means of an analogy between morality and sport, it examines some seemingly peculiar implications of Vargas’ teleological and revisionary account of desert. It also considers some general questions of philosophical methodology provoked by revisionary approaches.

Evidence and Sensibility

This chapter derives from a book symposium on Doris’ (2002), Lack of Character, and responds to commentary by Annas, Arplay, and Solomon. The responses defend Doris’ situationist skepticism about character from a variety of objections. Among the topics considered are: standards of evidence in moral psychology, the role of empirical considerations in normative thought, the role of traits in psychological explanation, the appropriate conceptualization of character, the role of character in interpersonal relationships, and the relation of culture and character.

THE LIBERALISM OF DIVERSITY

Book Symposium on "Dealing with Diversity: A Study in Contemporary Liberalism" by D. Melidoro: comments and replies.

WHY LIBERALISM NEEDS AUTONOMY

Book Symposium on "Dealing with Diversity: A Study in Contemporary Liberalism" by D. Melidoro: comments and replies.

HOBBESIAN LIBERALISM

Book Symposium on "Dealing with Diversity: A Study in Contemporary Liberalism" by D. Melidoro: comments and replies.

DIVERSITY WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF JUSTICE

Book Symposium on "Dealing with Diversity: A Study in Contemporary Liberalism" by D. Melidoro: comments and replies.

Vagueness-Related Partial Belief and the Constitution of Borderline Cases

This chapter, specially written for a Philosophy and Phenomenological Research book symposium on the Stephen Schiffer’s The Things We Mean, is focused on Schiffer’s proposal there concerning the most central and important question about vagueness: namely, what, specifically, something’s being a borderline case of a vague expression consists in. Schiffer argues for a new kind of approach, according to which vagueness is constitutively a psychological phenomenon, grounded in a supposedly distinctive propositional attitude taken by practitioners of vague discourse: vagueness-related partial belief (VPB), contrasting in ways Schiffer details with standard partial belief (SPB). Two principal problems are raised for this proposal. First, on Schiffer’s account, VPB looks to be characteristic of a wider range of kinds of indeterminacy besides the targeted soritical vagueness. Second, there is an awkward dilemma arising over whether or why a thinker could not, as a matter of psychological contingency, adopt a VPB towards a precise proposition.