Peer-Reviewed Publications

A Forgotten Distinction in Value Theory

Philosophical Studies (Forthcoming)

The debate on final value has been so far understood as a debate over what sort of properties final value depends on. The debate’s reliance on mere dependence has, I argue, made it very difficult for conditionalists to put forward a coherent positive alternative to intrinsicalism. Talk of dependence is too coarse-grained and fails to distinguish between different ways in which value can metaphysically depend on other properties of the value bearer. To remedy this, I propose that we bring back a ‘forgotten’ distinction between two ways in which value can depend on other properties. We should distinguish those properties in virtue of which a value is had – the grounds of the value – from those on condition of which it is had – which following Dancy I call the enablers of the value. With this distinction in hand, I offer a clear re-statement of the two main conditionalist accounts of final value: non-instrumentalism and non-derivatism. When understood not as making claims about the properties on which final value depends but rather as making more specific ones about the properties that ground final value, these accounts are perfectly coherent.

Re-constructing Kant: Kant Teleological Moral Realism

Kant Yearbook 14 (1) (2022)

It is common for constructivists to claim that Kant was the first philosopher to understand moral facts as ‘constructions of reason’. They think that Kant, just like the constructivist, proposes a procedure – the Categorical Imperative – from which the order of value can be ‘constructed’ and grounds the validity of this construction procedure not in some previous value but in its capacity to solve a practical problem, the problem of ‘free agency’. I here argue that this reading is misguided and propose that we read Kant as a teleological realist instead. Kant is a realist in that he takes the value of rational nature to be objective and so not ‘constructed’. Kant is a teleological realist insofar as his derivation of the moral law from the objective value of rational nature relies on a teleological understanding of rational nature.

Thomas Hobbes’s substantially constrained absolutism: the fundamental law of the commonwealth as a substantial constraint on the sovereign’s power

Jurisprudence 12 (4) (2021)

In this essay, I contend that the usually neglected Fundamental Law of the Commonwealth, which commands that the essential rights of the sovereign be retained by the sovereign, imposes substantial limitations on the sovereign’s power. Secondly, I claim that the Fundamental Law, given that it arises from the ‘the Essence of Sovereignty’, is to be understood as a constitutive principle of sovereignty and so that, as such, it needs no external enforcement.

Aquinas on Evil and the Will: A response to Mackie

New Blackfriars 102 (1102) (2020) – Undergraduate Dissertation

This article argues that, without being reducible to a version of the Free Will Defence, Aquinas’ theodicy and philosophical theology can offer contemporary versions of the Free Will Defence stronger metaphysical and theological foundations from which a response to Mackie’s compatibilistic challenge – probably the most serious challenge against this defence – can be derived.