We should not just be in the neighborhood of vegan. For example, we should not be vegetarian. We should not be flexitarian. We should not be reducetarian. We should be vegan, specifically, rather than any of those other things. That's my view. But veganism—real veganism—is unattractive to many philosophers, because they think it involves restraining yourself in…

Consider: The Darwall-Dancy definition of moral reasons: A reason to φ is a moral reason to φ =def it is the sort of reason that can, in the right circumstances, give rise to a moral obligation to φ. I suspect this definition fits with common talk. For example, I think regular people will say that…

I saw Mickey 17 in the theater the other day, and it made me worry about whether I might be wrong in my belief that we have relationships (relationships of the folk sort) with ourselves. I won't bother to summarize the scene that made me have this worry, but if you've seen the movie, you…

I'm a fan of the view that All moral obligations are directed: If S1 has a moral obligation to φ, then there is some individual, S2, to whom this obligation to φ is owed. The view runs into problems when we consider cases where it seems that there is a moral obligation to φ but…

To illustrate the distinction between relationship tokens and relationship types, consider: Huck's friendship with Jim is a different thing than Bert's friendship with Ernie. These two things are distinct tokens of the same type. Relationship tokens are always grounded in further factors. For example, if X and Y are friends, this might be so in…

I don't see why the following very simple idea isn't good. The People's Bribe(1) Key decision-makers (KDMs) in the federal government are guaranteed a large income for life.(2) Apart from whatever they buy with the above-mentioned guaranteed income, KDMs are strictly prohibited from ever accepting any salary, payments, gifts, or any other things of value.…

A standard (I think) story: Before the chemical composition of water was known, people didn't know, and couldn't know, that water=H2O. But they still had the (or a) concept of water. It's just that their concept of water didn't include the fact that water=H2O. So they could deny that water=H2O without thereby manifesting conceptual incompetence.…

It is widely and, I think, correctly thought that if The desire-satisfaction account of well-being: For any individual S, S's well-being consists in S's desires being satisfied, such that S is made better off by S's desires being satisfied and is made worse off by S's desires being frustrated. is true, then well-being is not…

Compare and contrast: Curtis Yarvin and Elizabeth Anderson. Yarvin's signature idea is that the United States should not be a democracy and should instead be a dictatorship. He thinks the country should be governed like a corporation, with the president as CEO. Anderson's signature idea is that corporations (and workplaces generally) are fundamentally political organizations;…

Here is the idea of naturalness that I like the most: A fact F is natural if and only if either (i) F is brutely natural or (ii) F explains (= substantively contributes to the best explanation of) at least one natural fact. I'll explain how the idea works, and then I'll explain why I…