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Matthew S. Bedke [22]Matthew Bedke [11]
  1. No Coincidence?Matthew S. Bedke - 2014 - Oxford Studies in Metaethics 9:102-125.
    This paper critically examines coincidence arguments and evolutionary debunking arguments against non-naturalist realism in metaethics. It advances a version of these arguments that goes roughly like this: Given a non-naturalist, realist metaethic, it would be cosmically coincidental if our first order normative beliefs were true. This coincidence undermines any prima facie justification enjoyed by those beliefs.
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  2. Intuitive non-naturalism meets cosmic coincidence.Matthew S. Bedke - 2009 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 90 (2):188-209.
    Having no recourse to ways of knowing about the natural world, ethical non-naturalists are in need of an epistemology that might apply to a normative breed of facts or properties, and intuitionism seems well suited to fill that bill. Here I argue that the metaphysical inspiration for ethical intuitionism undermines that very epistemology, for this pair of views generates what I call the defeater from cosmic coincidence. Unfortunately, we face not a happy union, but a difficult choice: either ethical intuitionism (...)
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  3. Might All Normativity be Queer?Matthew S. Bedke - 2010 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 88 (1):41-58.
    Here I discuss the conceptual structure and core semantic commitments of reason-involving thought and discourse needed to underwrite the claim that ethical normativity is not uniquely queer. This deflates a primary source of ethical scepticism and it vindicates so-called partner in crime arguments. When it comes to queerness objections, all reason-implicating normative claims—including those concerning Humean reasons to pursue one's ends, and epistemic reasons to form true beliefs—stand or fall together.
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  4. Against Normative Naturalism.Matthew S. Bedke - 2012 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 90 (1):111 - 129.
    This paper considers normative naturalism, understood as the view that (i) normative sentences are descriptive of the way things are, and (ii) their truth/falsity does not require ontology beyond the ontology of the natural world. Assuming (i) for the sake of argument, I here show that (ii) is false not only as applied to ethics, but more generally as applied to practical and epistemic normativity across the board. The argument is a descendant of Moore's Open Question Argument and Hume's Is-Ought (...)
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  5. Phenomenal Abilities: Incompatibilism and the Experience of Agency.Oisín Deery, Matthew S. Bedke & Shaun Nichols - 2013 - In David Shoemaker (ed.), Oxford studies in agency and responsibility. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 126–50.
    Incompatibilists often claim that we experience our agency as incompatible with determinism, while compatibilists challenge this claim. We report a series of experiments that focus on whether the experience of having an ability to do otherwise is taken to be at odds with determinism. We found that participants in our studies described their experience as incompatibilist whether the decision was (i) present-focused or retrospective, (ii) imagined or actual, (iii) morally salient or morally neutral. The only case in which participants did (...)
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  6. The Iffiest Oughts: A Guise of Reasons Account of End‐Given Conditionals.Matthew S. Bedke - 2009 - Ethics 119 (4):672-698.
    It often seems that what one ought to do depends on what contingent ends one has adopted and the means to pursuing them. Imagine, for example, that you are applying for jobs, and a particularly attractive one comes your way. It offers excellent colleagues in a desirable location, the pay is good, and acquiring a job like this is one of your ends. If practicing your job talk is a means to getting the job, the following seems true: (1) If (...)
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  7. Ethical Intuitions: What They Are, What They Are Not, and How They Justify.Matthew S. Bedke - 2008 - American Philosophical Quarterly 45 (3):253-270.
    There are ways that ethical intuitions might be, and the various possibilities have epistemic ramifications. This paper criticizes some extant accounts of what ethical intuitions are and how they justify, and it offers an alternative account. Roughly, an ethical intuition that p is a kind of seeming state constituted by a consideration whether p, attended by positive phenomenological qualities that count as evidence for p, and so a reason to believe that p. They are distinguished from other kinds of seemings, (...)
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  8. What Normativity Cannot Be.Matthew Bedke - 2020 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 18 (2).
    Here, I consider Derek Parfit’s Normativity Objection to naturalist realism, according to which normative-natural property or fact reductions are “conceptually excluded”. While a lot of philosophers inclined toward non-naturalism share this view or something close to it, plenty of philosophers remain unconvinced, and the literature offers little guidance to the perplexed. I suggest a way to improve the argument – indeed, I think it is the best and perhaps only plausible way to make good on the claim of conceptual exclusion. (...)
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  9. Kowtowing to a Non-natural Realm.Matthew S. Bedke - 2022 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 19 (6):559-576.
    Non-naturalists face a dilemma. They either leave their normative views hostage to a non-natural realm, which is immoral, or they do not, which is irrational. David Enoch has argued that the problem rests on cases of junk knowledge — conditionals that cannot be used to expand knowledge via modus ponens. Camil Golub has suggested that the dilemma rests on questionable assumptions about how we might come to know about the non-natural. Here I reply to these worries, sharpen the dilemma, and (...)
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  10.  65
    Ends to Means.Matthew Bedke - 2017 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 12 (1):6–28.
    This paper defends a probability-raising theory of what it is to be a means to an end, and how much reason transmits from an end to its means. In short, an action is a means to an end insofar as it raises the probability of the end relative to the worst one could do. The paper also considers and criticizes several alternative probability-raising theories as well as non-probability-raising conditions on being a means and being supported by means-based reason.
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  11. A Menagerie of Duties? Normative Judgments Are Not Beliefs about Non-Natural Properties.Matthew Bedke - 2014 - American Philosophical Quarterly 51 (3):189-201.
    According to cognitive non-naturalism, normative judgments are standard beliefs that purport to be about non-natural properties. An influential plurality of normative theorists, including non-naturalist realists, error theorists and skeptics, share this view. But it is mistaken. For it predicts an epistemic profile for normative judgments that they do not have. In particular, they are not disposed to extinguish in light of accepted evidence that the any non-natural properties are absent, and they are not disposed to come into existence in light (...)
     
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  12. Cognitivism and Non-Cognitivism.Matthew Bedke - 2018 - In Tristram Colin McPherson & David Plunkett (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Metaethics. New York: Routledge. pp. 292-307.
    This chapter discusses the difference between cognitivism and non-cognitivism in metaethics. It considers the main arguments for and against each view, as well as arguments that the distinction cannot survive critical scrutiny.
     
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  13. Non-Descriptive Relativism: Adding Options to the Expressivist Marketplace.Matthew Bedke - 2018 - Oxford Studies in Metaethics 13:48-70.
    This chapter identifies a novel family of metaethical theories that are non-descriptive and that aim to explain the action-guiding qualities of normative thought and language. The general strategy is to consider different relations language might bear to a given content, where we locate descriptivity (or lack of it) in these relations, rather than locating it in a theory that begins with the expression of states of mind, or locating it in a special kind of content that is not way-things-might-be content. (...)
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  14. Intuitional Epistemology in Ethics.Matthew S. Bedke - 2010 - Philosophy Compass 5 (12):1069-1083.
    Here I examine the major theories of ethical intuitions, focusing on the epistemic status of this class of intuitions. We cover self-evidence theory, seeming-state theory, and some of the recent contributions from experimental philosophy.
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  15. A dilemma for non-naturalists: irrationality or immorality?Matthew S. Bedke - 1027–1042 - Philosophical Studies 177 (4):1027-1042.
    Either 1. the non-naturalist is in a state of mind that would treat as relevant information about the existence and patterns of non-natural properties and facts as they make up their mind about normative matters, or 2. the non-naturalist is in a state of mind that would treat as irrelevant information about the existence and patterns of non-natural properties and facts as they make up their mind about normative matters. The first state of mind is morally objectionable, for one should (...)
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  16. Practical Oomph: A Case for Subjectivism.Matthew Bedke - 2019 - Philosophical Quarterly 69 (277):657-677.
    This paper examines the empirical and armchair evidence concerning the practical profiles of normative judgments. It then argues that the theory of normative judgment that best explains these practical profiles is a version of cognitivism: subjectivism. The preferred version says, roughly, i) each normative predicate is conventionally associated with a certain conative attitude, and ii) for S to judge that x has normative status N is for S to judge that x has a property picked out by the conative attitude (...)
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  17. 10. Iakovos Vasiliou, Aiming at Virtue in Plato Iakovos Vasiliou, Aiming at Virtue in Plato (pp. 796-800).Cheshire Calhoun, Mark LeBar, Matthew S. Bedke, Neil Levy & Daniel M. Hausman - 2004 - In John Hawthorne (ed.), Ethics. Wiley Periodicals.
     
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  18. Rationalist restrictions and external reasons.Matthew S. Bedke - 2010 - Philosophical Studies 151 (1):39 - 57.
    Historically, the most persuasive argument against external reasons proceeds through a rationalist restriction: For all agents A, and all actions Φ, there is a reason for A to Φ only if Φing is rationally accessible from A's actual motivational states. Here I distinguish conceptions of rationality, show which one the internalist must rely on to argue against external reasons, and argue that a rationalist restriction that features that conception of rationality is extremely implausible. Other conceptions of rationality can render the (...)
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  19. Choosing Normative Concepts.Matthew S. Bedke - 2019 - Philosophical Review 128 (1):121-126.
    This is a review of Eklund's book. It discusses his suggestion that "ardent realists" use the practical profiles of normative concepts to A) explain what it is for a concept to be normative, B) fix reference, and C) provide an extensional theory of normative properties. I argue that those sympathetic to ardent realism will be happier to focus on the way in which normativity presents itself to cognition, particularly that presentation of inherent, authoritative guidance, and whether that 1) explains what (...)
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  20. Naturalism and normative cognition.Matthew S. Bedke - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 178 (1):147-167.
    Normative cognition seems rather important, even ineliminable. Communities that lack normative concepts like SHOULD, IS A REASON TO, JUSTIFIES, etc. seem cognitively handicapped and communicatively muzzled. And yet a popular metaethic, normative naturalism, has a hard time accommodating this felt ineliminability. Here, I press the argument against normative naturalism, consider some replies on behalf of normative naturalists, and suggest that a version of sophisticated subjectivism does the best job preserving the importance and ineliminability of the special, normative way of thinking.
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  21.  87
    Practical Reasons, Practical Rationality, Practical Wisdom.Matthew S. Bedke - 2008 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 11 (1):85-111.
    There are a number of proposals as to exactly how reasons, ends and rationality are related. It is often thought that practical reasons can be analyzed in terms of practical rationality, which, in turn, has something to do with the pursuit of ends. I want to argue against the conceptual priority of rationality and the pursuit of ends, and in favor of the conceptual priority of reasons. This case comes in two parts. I first argue for a new conception of (...)
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  22.  32
    Moral Contingency and Moral Supervenience.Matthew S. Bedke - 2024 - Journal of Moral Philosophy:1-21.
    Moral Supervenience says that there can be no moral difference without a descriptive difference. This has been considered one of the least controversial principles in ethics. Explaining it has been a central desideratum. And yet an increasingly popular metaethical view appears to be incompatible with it. According to Moral Contingency, there are metaphysically contingent pure moral principles helping to ground particular moral facts. On such a view, it looks like there can be a difference in pure moral principles without a (...)
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  23. Developmental Process Reliabilism: on Justification, Defeat, and Evidence.Matthew S. Bedke - 2010 - Erkenntnis 73 (1):1 - 17.
    Here I present and defend an etiological theory of objective, doxastic justification, and related theories of defeat and evidence. The theory is intended to solve a problem for reliabilist epistemologies— the problem of identifying relevant environments for assessing a process's reliability. It is also intended to go some way to accommodating, neutralizing, or explaining away many internalist-friendly elements in our epistemic thinking.
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  24. (2 other versions)Moral Intuition.Matthew Bedke - 2018 - In Aaron Zimmerman, Karen Jones & Mark Timmons (eds.), Routledge Handbook on Moral Epistemology. New York: Routledge.
    This chapter articulates a standard practice in moral theory: eliciting intuitions and adjusting one’s moral theory to accommodate them. It then critically discusses different views about the nature of moral intuitions, and different views about the epistemic role of moral intuitions. Along the way, it examines various philosophical and empirical concerns that inform the current debates.
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  25.  66
    The Ought‐Is Gap: Trouble For Hybrid Semantics.Matthew S. Bedke - 2012 - Philosophical Quarterly 62 (249):657-670.
    When it comes to the meanings of normative expressions, descriptivist theories and expressivist theories have distinct explanatory virtues. Noting this, and with the hope of not compromising on explanatory resources, hybrid semantic theories refuse to choose. Here, I examine how well the strategy works for Moorean open questions and associated is‐ought gaps. Though hybrid theorists typically rely on their expressivist resources for this explanandum, there is a type of open question that unadulterated expressivist theories can handle but hybrid theories cannot (...)
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  26. A new theory of Humean reasons? A critical note on Schroeder's hypotheticalism.Matthew Bedke - 2007 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy (3):1-5.
  27. Intuitions, Meaning, and Normativity: Why Intuition Theory Supports a Non‐Descriptivist Metaethic.Matthew S. Bedke - 2016 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 93 (1):144-177.
    Non-descriptivists in metaethics should say more about intuitions. For one popular theory has it that case-based intuitions are in the business of correctly categorizing or classifying merely by bringing to bear a semantic or conceptual competence. If so, then the fact that all normative predicates have case-based intuitions involving them shows that they too are in the business of categorizing or classifying things. This favors a descriptivist position in metaethics—normative predicates have descriptive content—and disfavors a purely non-descriptivist position, like pure (...)
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  28. An Objectivist Argument for Thirdism.Ian Evans, Don Fallis, Peter Gross, Terry Horgan, Jenann Ismael, John Pollock, Paul D. Thorn, Jacob N. Caton, Adam Arico, Daniel Sanderman, Orlin Vakerelov, Nathan Ballantyne, Matthew S. Bedke, Brian Fiala & Martin Fricke - 2008 - Analysis 68 (2):149-155.
    Bayesians take “definite” or “single-case” probabilities to be basic. Definite probabilities attach to closed formulas or propositions. We write them here using small caps: PROB(P) and PROB(P/Q). Most objective probability theories begin instead with “indefinite” or “general” probabilities (sometimes called “statistical probabilities”). Indefinite probabilities attach to open formulas or propositions. We write indefinite probabilities using lower case “prob” and free variables: prob(Bx/Ax). The indefinite probability of an A being a B is not about any particular A, but rather about the (...)
     
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  29.  54
    Explaining compensatory duties.Matthew S. Bedke - 2010 - Legal Theory 16 (2):91-110.
    In some cases, harming another gives rise to a duty to compensate for harm done. This paper argues that the influential explanations of such duties of compensation—that they are somehow derived from rights intrusions, or breaches of duties not to harm—fail. I offer and defend an alternative explanation for why certain harms and not others give rise to compensatory duties, an explanation that seeks to derive them from wide-scope duties not to harm or to compensate for harm done.
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  30. Practical Conditionals.Matthew Bedke - 2021 - In Hugh LaFollette (ed.), International Encyclopedia of Ethics. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
  31.  49
    Nuccitelli, Susana, and Seay, Gary, eds. Ethical Naturalism: Current Debates.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Pp. 270. $90.00. [REVIEW]Matthew S. Bedke - 2013 - Ethics 123 (4):776-780.
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