S
T E P H E N F I N L A Y
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY
UNIVERSITY SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
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Email: finlay@usc.edu
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CV
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Papers Published or Accepted For Publication:
What Does
Value Matter? The
Interest-Relational Theory of the Semantics and Metaphysics of Value.
Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois, 2001
My 2001 Ph.D. dissertation, directed
by James D. Wallace.
“The Conversational Practicality of Value
Judgement,” Journal of Ethics 8 (3), 2004: 205-223 [subscription]
Analyses of moral value judgements must meet a practicality
requirement: moral speech acts characteristically express pro- or
con-attitudes, indicate that speakers are motivated in certain ways, and exert
influence on others’ motivations. Nondescriptivists including Simon
Blackburn and Allan Gibbard claim that no descriptivist analysis can satisfy
this requirement. I argue first that while the practicality requirement is
defeasible, it indeed demands a connection between value judgement and
motivation that resembles a semantic or conceptual rather than merely
contingent psychological link. I then show how a form of descriptivism, the
interest-relational theory, satisfies the requirement as a pragmatic and
conversational feature of value judgement – thereby also accommodating
its defeasibility. The word ‘good’ is always indexed to some set of
motivations: when this index is unarticulated in many contexts the speaker
conversationally implicates possession of those motivations. [Note: this
‘interest-relational theory’ is superceded by the
‘end-relational theory’ in my subsequent work.]
“Value and Implicature,” Philosophers’
Imprint 5 (4), 2005: 1-20
Moral assertions express attitudes,
but it is unclear how. This paper examines proposals by David Copp, Stephen Barker,
and myself that moral attitudes are expressed as implicature (Grice), and
Copp’s and Barker’s claim that this supports expressivism about
moral speech acts. I reject this claim on the ground that implicatures of
attitude are more plausibly conversational than conventional. I argue that
Copp’s and my own relational theory of moral assertions is superior to
the indexical theory offered by Barker and Jamie Dreier, and that since the
relational theory supports conversational implicatures of attitude, expressive
conventions would be redundant. Furthermore, moral expressions of attitude
behave like conversational and not conventional implicatures, and there are
reasons for doubting that conventions of the suggested kind could exist.
“The Reasons that Matter,” Australasian
Journal of Philosophy 84 (1), 2006: 1-20 [subscription] –-
PREPRINT
Motivational reasons-internalism
(Bernard Williams) fails to capture our first-order reasons judgements, while
nonnaturalistic reasons-externalism (Derek Parfit) cannot explain the nature or
normative authority of reasons. This paper offers an intermediary view,
reformulating skepticism about external reasons as the claim not that they
don’t exist but rather that they don’t matter. The end-relational
theory of normative reasons is proposed, according to which a reason for an
action is a fact that explains why the action would be good relative to some
end, where the relevant end for any ascription of reasons is determined by the
speaker’s conversational context. Because these ends need not be the
agent’s ends, Williams is wrong to reject the existence of external
reasons. But contra Parfit, a reason for action is only important for an agent
if it is motivationally internal to that agent.
“Too Much Morality,” in Paul Bloomfield (ed.) Morality
and Self-Interest. Oxford University Press, 2007
This paper addresses the nature and relationship of
morality and self-interest, arguing that what we morally ought to do almost
always conflicts with what we self-interestedly ought to do. The concept of
morality is analyzed as being essentially and radically other-regarding, and
the category of the supererogatory is explained as consisting in what we
morally ought to do but are not socially expected to do. I express skepticism
about whether there is a coherent question, ‘Which ought I all things
considered to obey?’ and suggest that the best substitute is a question
about which is more important for me. Importance for a person, in turn, is
explained as dependent upon what a person is disposed to care about. I suggest
that morality and self-interest are both relatively unimportant for us when
compared with our other ends.
“Responding to Normativity,” in Russ
Shafer-Landau (ed.) Oxford Studies in Metaethics 2. Oxford University
Press, 2007: 220-39
I believe that normative force depends
on desire. This view faces serious difficulties, however, and has yet to be
vindicated. This paper sketches an Argument from Voluntary Response, attempting
to establish this dependence of normativity on desire by appeal to the
autonomous character of our experience of normative authority, and the
voluntary character of our responses to it. I first offer an account of
desiring as mentally aiming intrinsically at some end. I then argue that
behaviour is only voluntary if it results from such aiming; hence all voluntary
behaviour is produced by desire. Full-blooded responses to normativity, I then
argue, are voluntary actions: motivation to act arises voluntarily from
perception of reasons to act. This fits the desire-based model of normativity
but not its rivals. However this argument concludes merely that our responses
to normativity are desire-based. I end with some observations about how I think
we can bridge the gap from the nature of response to normativity to the nature
of normativity itself.
“Four Faces of Moral Realism,” Philosophy
Compass 2 (6), 2007: 820-49 [subscription]
This essay explains for a general
philosophical audience the central issues and strategies in the contemporary
moral realism debate. It critically surveys the contribution of some recent
scholarship, representing expressivist and pragmatist nondescriptivism (Mark
Timmons, Hilary Putnam), subjectivist and nonsubjectivist naturalism (Michael
Smith, Paul Bloomfield, Philippa Foot), nonnaturalism (Russ Shafer-Landau, T.
M. Scanlon) and error theory (Richard Joyce). Four different faces of
‘moral realism’ are distinguished: semantic, ontological,
metaphysical, and normative. The debate is presented as taking shape under
dialectical pressure from the demands of (i) capturing the moral appearances
and (ii) reconciling morality with our understanding of the mind and world.
“Motivation to the Means,” in David Chan
(ed.) Moral Psychology Today: Values, Rational Choice, and the Will.
Springer, 2008: 173-191 [subscription] -- PREPRINT
Rationalists including Nagel and Korsgaard argue that
motivation to the means to our desired ends cannot be explained by appeal to
the desire for the end. They claim that a satisfactory explanation of this
motivational connection must appeal to a faculty of practical reason motivated
in response to desire-independent norms of reason. This paper builds on ideas
in the work of Hume and Donald Davidson to demonstrate how the desire for the
end is sufficient for explaining motivation to the means. Desiring is analyzed
as having motivation towards making the end so, which is analyzed as engaging
in mental activity aimed at facilitating that end. I conclude that it is
constitutive of an agent’s desiring an end that he is motivated towards
what he believes to be means.
“The Error in the Error Theory,” Australasian
Journal of Philosophy 86 (3), 2008: 347-69 (AJP Best Paper
Award, 2009) -- PREPRINT
Moral error theory of the kind defended by J.L. Mackie and
Richard Joyce is premised on two claims: (1) that moral judgements essentially
presuppose that moral value has absolute authority, and (2) that this
presupposition is false, because nothing has absolute authority. This paper
accepts (2) but rejects (1). It is argued first that (1) is not the best
explanation of the evidence from moral practice, and second that even if it
were, the error theory would still be mistaken, because the assumption does not
contaminate the meaning or truth-conditions of moral claims. These are
determined by the essential application conditions for moral concepts, which
are relational rather than absolute. An analogy is drawn between moral
judgements and motion judgements.
“Reasons for Action: Internal vs. External,”
with Mark Schroeder, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2008
Encyclopedia article on internal and external reasons.
“Against All Reason? Skepticism About the
Instrumental Norm,” in Charles Pigden (ed.) Hume on Motivation and
Virtue. Palgrave MacMillan, 2009
Some of the opponents of desire-based views of normativity
seek to undermine them by arguing that even the existence of instrumental
normativity (reasons to pursue the means to your ends) entails the existence of
a desire-independent rational norm, the instrumental norm. Once we grant the
existence of one such norm, there seems to be no principled reason for not
allowing others. I clarify this alleged norm, identifying two criteria that any
satisfactory candidate must meet: reasonable expectation and possible
violation. Some interpretations meet the first criterion and others meet the
second, but there are no interpretations that meet both. After surveying the
interpretations of Sidgwick, Hampton, and Korsgaard, I suggest that there is no
instrumental norm of reason. The final section offers an alternative,
desire-based account of instrumental normativity, on which individual normative
requirements to pursue means derives from each individual desire for an end. [Note: accepted for publication in 2003]
“Oughts and Ends,” Philosophical Studies
143 (3), 2009: 315-40 [subscription] –- PREPRINT
This paper advances a reductive semantics for
‘ought’ and a naturalistic theory of normativity. It gives a
unified analysis of predictive, instrumental, and categorical uses of
‘ought’: the predictive ‘ought’ is basic, and is
interpreted in terms of probability. Instrumental ‘oughts’ are
analyzed as predictive ‘oughts’ occurring under an ‘in order
that’ modifer (the end-relational theory). The theory is then extended to
categorical uses of ‘ought’: it is argued that they are special
rhetorical uses of the instrumental ‘ought’. Plausible
conversational principles explain how this end-relational ‘ought’
can perform the expressive functions of the moral ‘ought’. The
notion of an ‘ought-simpliciter’ is also discussed.
“The Obscurity of Internal Reasons,” Philosophers’
Imprint 9 (7), 2009: 1-22
Since its publication in 1979, Bernard
Williams’ ‘Internal and External Reasons’ has been one of the
most influential and widely discussed papers in ethics. I suggest here that the
paper’s central argument has nevertheless been universally
misinterpreted. On the standard interpretation, his argument is perplexingly
weak. In the first section I sketch this Standard argument, and detail just how
terrible it is. The badness of the argument itself may not be a very strong
reason not to ascribe it even to a great philosopher, but Williams himself
seems to point out the very flaws that make it so terrible. The second part of
the paper proposes and defends an interpretation on which he offers an
Alternative argument, one which is immune to the objections that seem fatal to
the Standard argument. On this interpretation, better supported by the textual
evidence and the principle of charity, Williams’ conclusion seems to
follow validly from defensible premises, including a substantive and
interesting analysis of the concept of a normative reason.