A Theory of Moral Perception
Draft · in progress
Winner · 2026 Best Graduate Essay Prize, North Carolina Philosophical Society
This paper has four aims: first, to spell out why a successful theory of moral perception would get moral realism very close to being home and dry; second, to show that the leading theories of moral perception are all false; third, to argue that these failings generate desiderata for any account of moral perception; and fourth, to argue positively for a new account of moral perception which satisfies these desiderata.
Desires Don't Need No Satisfaction
Draft · in progress
This paper starts by assuming that desire-satisfactionism is at least weakly true, such that satisfied make a persons life go better. It then considers a problem case for the view: you meet a stranger on a train, who you learn is in the late stages of a fatal illness. You form the desire that they recover. Unbeknownst to you, they do. Does this satisfied desire make your life go better? Many have thought it does not, and have tried to delimit the range of satisfied desires which we can accrue welfare benefit from as to exclude such desires. The first mission of this paper is to argue that delimiting the range of satisfied desires is fruitless, and that it is does not help us settle very similar problem cases for desire-satisficationism. Instead of delimiting the range of which desires we can benefit from, I argue that we should instead try to delimit the kind of epistemic standing we must stand in to our satisfied desires. What standing might that be? I argue that it is the non-factive state of justified belief. Along the way, I spell out the sort of externalist justification needed to escape experience machine and zombie worries, and defend the view from objections.
