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Article Downloads | Abstracts of Published Articles

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"Less Good but not Bad: In Defense of Epicureanism about the Badness of Death"

In this paper I defend innocuousism—a weak form of Epicureanism about the badness of death.  I argue that if we assume both mental statism about well-being and that death is an experiential blank, it follows that death is not bad for the one who dies.  I defend innocuousism against the deprivation account of the badness of death.  I argue that recent defenses of the deprivation account, such as those offered by Fred Feldman and Ben Bradley, rest on a suspect notion of extrinsic badness—a notion that erroneously confuses states of affairs that merely could have been better with those that are bad.  In reply, I defend an alternate account according to which something is extrinsically bad if an only if it leads to states that are intrinsically bad.  On my view, sometimes dying may be less good than living, but it is never bad to die.  

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"Aristocrats and Inferno Bullets: Two Controversial Claims about Humor and Morality"

Commonsense has it that humor and morality are antithetical: Moral flaws enhance amusement, and moral virtues detract.  I reject both of these claims.  If we distinguish between merely outrageous jokes and immoral jokes, the problems with the commonsense view become apparent.  What we find is that genuine morals flaws tend to inhibit amusement.  Further, by looking at a few satirical news stories from The Onion, we can see that moral virtues sometimes enhance amusement.  The position I defend is known as comic moralism.  It is widely regarded as patently absurd.  I hope to correct this mistake. 

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"The Power to Make Others Worship"

In this paper I ask a new question about worship: Can any being worthy of worship make others worship it?  By way of an analogy to love, I argue that it is perfectly coherent to think that one could be made to worship.  However, forced worship would be inauthentic—much like love earned though potions.  For this reason, I argue that one cannot be made to worship properly.  My principal claim is that no being worthy of worship could exercise the power to make others worship it, since the act of making another worship would necessarily make one unworthy of worship.  

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"'Pickman's Model': Horror and the Objective Purport of Photographs"

It is commonly held, even among non-Bazinians, that photographs are typically perceived as more objective than other forms of depiction.  The implications of this putative feature of photographic reception for the fiction film have been relatively ignored.  If photos do have an objective purport, it would explain the power of a common device used in horror movies where a monster is selectively revealed through a degraded image, usually an amateur video recording.  However, I argue that a better explanation is forthcoming.  It is not the objective purport of photographs that accounts for the peculiar power of these scenes, but the power of our imaginations to picture monsters far more terrifying than those that can be readily depicted.  This gives us reason to be skeptical of the idea that the objective purport of photographs contributes significantly to the reception of fiction films.

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"Immortality and Significance"

Although I reject his argument, I defend Bernard Williams’ claim that we would lose reason to go on if we were to live forever.  Like Williams, I develop my argument through a brief discussion of a work of fiction—in this instance, Borges’ philosophical story “The Immortal.”  I expand on Borges’ example, arguing that immortality would be motivationally devastating, since our decisions would carry little weight, our achievements would be hollow victories of mere diligence, and the prospect of eternal frustration would haunt our every effort.  

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“The Ghost is the Thing: Can Horror Reveal Audience Beliefs?”

(presented at: American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division, December 2007)

Can fictions sometimes reveal important information about what beliefs audience members hold? I argue that a case can be made that emotional responses to some horror fictions can reveal that audiences harbor beliefs in the supernatural, beliefs that audience members might otherwise deny holding. To clarify the terms of the discussion, I begin with an overview of two leading theories of belief: the representational and dispositional accounts. I explore the role of belief in the production of emotional responses by posing a hard question that none of the leading theories answers directly: Why are some fictional scenarios and events so much more effective than others? I argue that the answer has to do with belief, that is, the beliefs about the world that audiences bring to fictions. After laying the groundwork, I argue that cultural differences in audience responses to some horror fictions might be best explained by what supernatural beliefs they hold. After developing the case, I offer several reasons to be skeptical of this conclusion.

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"In Defense of Mental Statism"

In this paper I defend a widely rejected theory of well-being, mental statism—the view that the sole bearers of intrinsic prudential value are mental states.  The bulk of my effort is spent defending mental statism against a full suite of prominent objections that appear to provide a decisive refutation of the theory: Nozick’s Mongolian pornographer, Nozick’s experience machine, Nagel’s deceived business man, Mill’s swine, and Nagel’s contented infant.  I argue that the bulk of the objections confuse different types of value, most typically meaning and well-being.  I also provide some positive support for the view, principally through an inversion of the major thought-experiments.

"Where the Bolt of Cupid Fell: In Defense of the No-Reasons View"

I argue that one can try to explain why we love, but we can never justify our love.  Further, I argue that talk of justification is inappropriate.  Love is neither based on reasons, responsive to reasons, nor can it be assessed for normative reasons.  Love can be odd, unfortunate, fortuitous, or even sadly lacking, but it can never be inappropriate or appropriate.  We may have reasons to act on our love, but we cannot justify our loving feelings.  Reason and love keep little company together nowadays.  Indeed, they keep none: there are no justifying reasons for love.  

"Against Cognitive Immoralism"

Matthew Kieran argues that “a work may be valuable as art in part due to its morally defective aspect.” He calls the position in support of this claim “cognitive immoralism.” Since Kieran offers one of the best defenses of immoralsim about artistic value, I will restrict my discussion to his arguments. This limits the scope of the discussion to a manageable size without sacrificing general significance, since the basic problems with Kieran's argument are applicable to most forms of immoralism. I begin with a explication of the principal claims of cognitive immoralism, before describing Kieran's argument for the position. I then present objections to several major premises in his argument, showing how cognitive immoralism suffers from three fatal problems: Cognitive immoralism lacks a plausible source of artistic value, it fails to provide a mechanism whereby moral flaws could become artistic virtues, and it relies on an excessively permissive notion of what constitutes a moral defect with a work of art.

“A Brief Defense of Rationalism"

By focusing on two recent articles on the rationality of fictional emotions, I reveal a previously unnoticed, general problem with all such charges of irrationality. I argue that emotional reactions to fiction should not be thought irrational because we have been given no reason to stop having them. Without reason to do otherwise, we have no reason to think that the fiction-goer is the least bit unresponsive to reasons. Any criteria of rationality should not leave the question open as to why we should be rational. Before we term something irrational, we must have reason to think that we should or would want to do otherwise. No irrationalist has ever given any indication that they can meet this utterly reasonable demand.

“The Strategic Flaw Objection to Moralism about Art”

What we might call the strategic flaw objection claims that although artworks may arouse moral emotions that defeat some aesthetic properties, we have no good reason to consider such flaws moral flaws. According to this objection, artworks are less often morally flawed than we might think. Without a clearly defined mechanism whereby artworks can harm, it is not obvious that they can be morally flawed. Perhaps, such a mechanism might exist, but the burden of proof lies on the moralist's side. Even if an artwork can be morally flawed, the objection continues, why should we think that moral flaws are responsible for aesthetic defects or virtues? For example, why should we suppose that a morally flawed portrayal of a character is responsible for a lack of viewer sympathy, rather than simply inept characterization? Against the first part of this objection, I offer a brief defense of the "ethical vulnerability of art"—the position that artworks can be ethically flawed. I do not attempt an elaborate defense of this claim; instead, I expose the complexity of the issue by sorting out three possible ways in which artworks might cause harm.