work in progress

An overview of my philosphical work in progress. Feel free to contact me for drafts!

Table of contents:

The Factivity of Practical Knowledge

Co-authored with Niels van Miltenburg (Utrecht).

Abstract: Anscombean accounts claim that intentional action is essentially characterized by an agent’s non-observational knowledge of what she is doing. Such accounts are threatened by cases in which an agent seemingly fails to know what she is doing because of a mistake in the performance. It thus seems that such accounts are incompatible with the factivity of practical knowledge. We argue that Anscombean accounts should not be defended, as has recently been suggested, by drawing on familiar anti-sceptical strategies from epistemology, but rather by attending closely to the specifically practical character of agential knowledge.

Ripstein on Right and Property

Abstract: In this paper, I investigate Arthur Ripstein’s (2010) Kantian account of the concept of a right. The question I am interested in is whether Ripstein succeeds at providing a justification of that concept, i.e., whether he is able to show that rights and duties of the kind at issue truly have a place in sound practical reasoning. I argue that it ultimately fails to achieve this purpose. To show this, first explain the Kantian understanding of right in general, and then how the sphere of juridical normativity is supposed to be grounded in our capacity for free, self-conscious choice. I will label Ripstein’s way of accounting for the latter the “argument from efficacy”, as it aims to show that the most fundamental right each person possesses—the right to their own body—is grounded in practical thought’s ability to view itself as efficacious.

The argument is enticing, but difficult to understand, and it may be hard to see where it goes wrong. I believe this becomes more clear when we focus on the Kantian justification of acquired right (rights to objects other than the body). As we will see, Ripstein’s reconstruction of that argument leaves his account vulnerable to an objection by Julius (2017). Julius takes Ripstein’s argument for acquired right, and aims to show that it leads to the distinctly un-Kantian conclusion that there can be no private property. I argue first that pace Julius, his conception of right is not an alternative way of articulating the Kantian demand for independence. Instead, the argument Julius provides commits him to a denial of the Kantian starting point. But, I then show, Ripstein is in fact similarly committed. Having thus identified the tension at the heart of the Kantian account of acquired right, we will be in a position to see that the same problem plagues the justification of bodily right.

The upshot will be that the Kantian ideal of mutual freedom, and a fortriori the concept of property, cannot be grounded in an understanding of the efficacy of individual wills.

The Explanation of Judgement

Forthcoming in Reading Rödl on Self-consciousness and Objectivity (eds. Jesse Mulder and James Conant).

Abstract: This chapter discusses the topic of the explanation of judgement as it emerges in Rödl’s Self-consciousness and Objectivity. It investigates the question whether we can speak of a special form of explanation of judgements: a form that would be distinctive in the way that, say, teleological explanations of the activities of animals are distinct in kind compared to mechanical explanations of the movements of a billiard ball. That judgement-explanations are distinct in this way is a tempting reading of Rödl, who after all distinguishes between the “necessity of a fact” and “the necessity of an act” of judgment, where the latter is said to be a necessity that includes a subject’s knowledge of it. This seems similar to the idea of a special form of sellf-conscious causality familiar from Rödl’s earlier work. However, this chapter explains why this would constitute a misreading of SC&O: it would undermine the possibility of objective judgement that is Rödl’s central concern. The chapter ends by raising the question what folllows for the idea of practical judgement. Intentional action is often said to be the object of a distinctive form of rational explanation—can this idea be made compatible with the insights of SC&O?

Practical Reason: Historical and Systematic Perspectives

Forthcoming with De Gruyter, in the series Berlin Studies in Knowledge Research. Co-edited with James Conant (Chicago).

This volume tries to develop systematic perspectives on the idea of a specifically practical form of reasoning and knowledge – an idea which runs through a rich historical tradition spanning figures as otherwise different as Aristotle and Kant, Rousseau and Marx, Hegel and G.E.M. Anscombe. Inspired by these figures (and many others), the contributions aim to deepen our systematic understanding of questions concerning the form and nature of practical reasoning, agential self-consciousness or practical knowledge, how knowledge of the good relates to our motivational capacity, and the shape of philosophical thinking about sound forms of living together.

Includes contributions by: John McDowell, Sebastian Rödl, Jennifer Lockhart, Douglas Lavin, Rory O’Conell, Anastasia Berg, Wolfram Gobsch, Anton Ford, Benjamin Laurence, Alec Hinshelwood.