Richard Rowland
Biographic Data
| ID | 3858767 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Richard Rowland |
| GIVEN NAMES | Richard |
| FAMILY NAME | Rowland |
| SIGNATURE | ROWLAND R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Leeds |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0471-1948 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 42 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 24 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1977 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Non‐Naturalist Realism and Quietist Constructivism
Metaethical quietists propose views that share all the features of robust non‐naturalist realism, such as a commitment to cognitivism and irreducibly normative truths, except robust realist non‐naturalists' commitment to non‐natural properties. In this paper I propose a version of quietism which holds that true first‐order claims about practical reasons are made true by being the conclusion of the best reasoning process about what practical reaso…
The Injustice of Bathroom Bills
Bathroom bills are laws or policies that require trans people to use bathrooms for the gender they were assigned at birth rather than the gender that matches their gender identity. Florida, Kansas, and Texas currently have bathroom bills in place, the UK in all likelihood will soon have such a bill in place. And many other US states have limited bathroom bills in place. Existing philosophical work on bathroom bills by gender-critical feminists La…
Freedom of Gender
We have basic liberal rights to live and act with integrity; these rights very plausibly ground our rights to freedom of religious belief and expression. In section 1, I argue that many trans people need to be able to change their gender markers on their legal identification documents in order to live and act with integrity, and because of this, trans people have pro tanto rights to change their gender markers on their legal identification docume…
Gender identity
This paper proposes a new account of gender identity on which for A to have gender G as part of their gender identity is for A to not take G not to fit them (or to positively take G to fit them). It argues that this subjective fit account of gender identity fits well with trans people’s testimony and both trans and cis people’s experiences of their genders. The subjective fit account also avoids the problems that existing accounts of gender ident…
The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Disagreement
Disagreement is one of the deepest and most pervasive topics in philosophy, arguably its very bedrock, and is an ever-increasing feature of politics, ethics, public policy, science and many other areas. Despite the omnipresence of disagreement, the topic itself has received relatively little sustained examination. In this outstanding handbook a team of international contributors examines the philosophy of disagreement and how it extends to debate…
Ethical Theories and Controversial Intuitions
We have controversial intuitions about the rightness of retributive punishment, keeping promises for its own sake, and pushing the heavy man off of the bridge in the footbridge trolley case.How do these intuitions relate to ethical theories?Should ethical theories aim to fit with and explain them?Or are only uncontroversial intuitions relevant to explanatory ethical theorising?I argue against several views that we might hold about the relationshi…
Integrity and rights to gender-affirming healthcare
Gender-affirming healthcare (GAH) interventions are medical or surgical interventions that aim to allow trans and non-binary people to better affirm their gender identity. It has been argued that rights to GAH must be grounded in either a right to be cured of or mitigate an illness—gender dysphoria—or in harm prevention, given the high rates of depression and suicide among trans and non-binary people. However, these grounds of a right to GAH conf…
Morality and Epistemic Judgement
Moral Error Theory
According to moral error theorists, moral talk is like talk about witches. Moral talk commits us to particular normative properties just as witch talk commits us to the existence of people with supernatural abilities. And just as there are no such supernatural abilities there are none of these normative properties. In his thorough, lucid, rich, and valuable book Wouter Kalf investigates how we should understand the error theory, what the best arg…
Moral Error Theory Without Epistemic Error Theory
Proponents of the epistemic companions in guilt argument argue that we should reject the moral error theory because it entails that there are no epistemic reasons. In this paper, I investigate whether a plausible version of the moral error theory can be constructed that does not entail an error theory about epistemic reasons. I argue that there are no irreducibly normative second-personal reasons even if there are irreducibly normative reasons. A…
Companions in Guilt Arguments in Metaethics
Iris Murdoch both argues that perceptual experience itself can be evaluatively significant, and that the best way of making sense of this claim is to say that experience is shaped by the concepts that subjects possess and deploy as situated historical agents with a stance upon the world. This paper examines the implications of Murdoch’s distinctive conception of moral perception as a form of ‘vision’ revelatory of value for recent companions in g…
The Normative and the Evaluative
Many have been attracted to the idea that for something to be good is just for there to be reasons to favour it. This view has come to be known as the buck-passing account of value. According to the buck-passing account, for pleasure to be good is just for there to be reasons for us to desire and pursue it. And for liberty and equality to be values is just for there to be reasons for us to promote and preserve them. There has been extensive discu…
Companions in Guilt
Our Intuitions About the Experience Machine
This article responds to a recent empirical study by De Brigard and Weijers on intuitions about the experience machine and what it tells us about hedonism
Reasons or Fittingness First
Conor McHugh and Jonathan Way argue that we should put fittingness rather than reasons first because we can provide an account of the evaluative in terms of the normative only if we put fittingness rather than reasons first. I argue that it is no more difficult to provide an account of the evaluative in terms of the normative if we put reasons rather than fittingness first
Killing Hercules
"Each chapter of this book offers a detailed account of the ways in which different cultures - the ancient Greek democracy, imperial Rome, early Christianity, the emergent vernacular cultures of late medieval and early modern Europe, the Enlightenment - have re-evaluated the story of Hercules and his wife and killer Deianira, in the light of their own attempts to come to terms with the phenomena of military and domestic violence."
Rescuing Companions in Guilt Arguments
Christopher Cowie has recently argued that companions in guilt arguments against the moral error theory that appeal to epistemic reasons cannot work. I show that such companions in guilt arguments can work if, as we have good reason to believe, moral reasons and epistemic reasons are instances of fundamentally the same relation
Reasons as the Unity Among the Varieties of Goodness
Our concepts of good simpliciter , good for , and good as a particular kind of thing must share some common element. I argue that all three types of goodness can be analysed in terms of the reasons that there are for a certain sets of agents to have pro‐attitudes. To this end I provide new and compelling accounts of good for and goodness of a kind in terms of reasons for pro‐attitudes that are more explanatorily illuminating than competing accoun…
Dissolving the wrong kind of reason problem
Moral Error Theory and the Argument from Epistemic Reasons
In this paper I defend what I call the argument from epistemic reasons against the moral error theory. I argue that the moral error theory entails that there are no epistemic reasons for belief and that this is bad news for the moral error theory since, if there are no epistemic reasons for belief, no one knows anything. If no one knows anything, then no one knows that there is thought when they are thinking, and no one knows that they do not kno…
Patrol officers and public reassurance
The objective of this study is to establish how well the public distinguishes between different uniformed patrol officer patrolling shopping malls, and whether they have different effects on feelings of safety and worry about crime. It is based on interviews with a sample of 502 shoppers at five shopping malls in Southern England. Using photographs, most respondents correctly identified the police officer and the PCSO, whereas fewer recognised th…
Wrong Kind of Reasons and Consequences
In a recent issue of Utilitas Gerald Lang provided an appealing new solution to the Wrong Kind of Reason problem for the buck-passing account of value. In subsequent issues Jonas Olson and John Brunero have provided objections to Lang's solution. I argue that Brunero's objection is not a problem for Lang's solution, and that a revised version of Lang's solution avoids Olson's objections. I conclude that we can solve the Wrong Kind of Reason probl…
"The Captives"
The Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3
Nationality and Population Change in Russia and the USSR
The Normative and the Evaluative
Many have been attracted to the idea that for something to be good is just for there to be reasons to favour it. This view has come to be known as the buck-passing account of value. According to the buck-passing account, for pleasure to be good is just for there to be reasons for us to desire and pursue it. And for liberty and equality to be values is just for there to be reasons for us to promote and preserve them. There has been extensive discu…
Reasons as the Unity Among the Varieties of Goodness
Our concepts of good simpliciter , good for , and good as a particular kind of thing must share some common element. I argue that all three types of goodness can be analysed in terms of the reasons that there are for a certain sets of agents to have pro‐attitudes. To this end I provide new and compelling accounts of good for and goodness of a kind in terms of reasons for pro‐attitudes that are more explanatorily illuminating than competing accoun…
Companions in Guilt Arguments in Metaethics
Iris Murdoch both argues that perceptual experience itself can be evaluatively significant, and that the best way of making sense of this claim is to say that experience is shaped by the concepts that subjects possess and deploy as situated historical agents with a stance upon the world. This paper examines the implications of Murdoch’s distinctive conception of moral perception as a form of ‘vision’ revelatory of value for recent companions in g…
Reasons or Fittingness First
Conor McHugh and Jonathan Way argue that we should put fittingness rather than reasons first because we can provide an account of the evaluative in terms of the normative only if we put fittingness rather than reasons first. I argue that it is no more difficult to provide an account of the evaluative in terms of the normative if we put reasons rather than fittingness first
Patrol officers and public reassurance
The objective of this study is to establish how well the public distinguishes between different uniformed patrol officer patrolling shopping malls, and whether they have different effects on feelings of safety and worry about crime. It is based on interviews with a sample of 502 shoppers at five shopping malls in Southern England. Using photographs, most respondents correctly identified the police officer and the PCSO, whereas fewer recognised th…
Nationality and Population Change in Russia and the USSR
Rescuing Companions in Guilt Arguments
Christopher Cowie has recently argued that companions in guilt arguments against the moral error theory that appeal to epistemic reasons cannot work. I show that such companions in guilt arguments can work if, as we have good reason to believe, moral reasons and epistemic reasons are instances of fundamentally the same relation
Dissolving the wrong kind of reason problem
Wrong Kind of Reasons and Consequences
In a recent issue of Utilitas Gerald Lang provided an appealing new solution to the Wrong Kind of Reason problem for the buck-passing account of value. In subsequent issues Jonas Olson and John Brunero have provided objections to Lang's solution. I argue that Brunero's objection is not a problem for Lang's solution, and that a revised version of Lang's solution avoids Olson's objections. I conclude that we can solve the Wrong Kind of Reason probl…
The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Disagreement
Disagreement is one of the deepest and most pervasive topics in philosophy, arguably its very bedrock, and is an ever-increasing feature of politics, ethics, public policy, science and many other areas. Despite the omnipresence of disagreement, the topic itself has received relatively little sustained examination. In this outstanding handbook a team of international contributors examines the philosophy of disagreement and how it extends to debate…
Nationality and Population Change in Russia and the USSR
The Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3
"The Captives"
Moral Error Theory and the Argument from Epistemic Reasons
In this paper I defend what I call the argument from epistemic reasons against the moral error theory. I argue that the moral error theory entails that there are no epistemic reasons for belief and that this is bad news for the moral error theory since, if there are no epistemic reasons for belief, no one knows anything. If no one knows anything, then no one knows that there is thought when they are thinking, and no one knows that they do not kno…
Patrol officers and public reassurance
The objective of this study is to establish how well the public distinguishes between different uniformed patrol officer patrolling shopping malls, and whether they have different effects on feelings of safety and worry about crime. It is based on interviews with a sample of 502 shoppers at five shopping malls in Southern England. Using photographs, most respondents correctly identified the police officer and the PCSO, whereas fewer recognised th…
Wrong Kind of Reasons and Consequences
In a recent issue of Utilitas Gerald Lang provided an appealing new solution to the Wrong Kind of Reason problem for the buck-passing account of value. In subsequent issues Jonas Olson and John Brunero have provided objections to Lang's solution. I argue that Brunero's objection is not a problem for Lang's solution, and that a revised version of Lang's solution avoids Olson's objections. I conclude that we can solve the Wrong Kind of Reason probl…
Dissolving the wrong kind of reason problem
Reasons as the Unity Among the Varieties of Goodness
Our concepts of good simpliciter , good for , and good as a particular kind of thing must share some common element. I argue that all three types of goodness can be analysed in terms of the reasons that there are for a certain sets of agents to have pro‐attitudes. To this end I provide new and compelling accounts of good for and goodness of a kind in terms of reasons for pro‐attitudes that are more explanatorily illuminating than competing accoun…
Killing Hercules
"Each chapter of this book offers a detailed account of the ways in which different cultures - the ancient Greek democracy, imperial Rome, early Christianity, the emergent vernacular cultures of late medieval and early modern Europe, the Enlightenment - have re-evaluated the story of Hercules and his wife and killer Deianira, in the light of their own attempts to come to terms with the phenomena of military and domestic violence."
Rescuing Companions in Guilt Arguments
Christopher Cowie has recently argued that companions in guilt arguments against the moral error theory that appeal to epistemic reasons cannot work. I show that such companions in guilt arguments can work if, as we have good reason to believe, moral reasons and epistemic reasons are instances of fundamentally the same relation
Our Intuitions About the Experience Machine
This article responds to a recent empirical study by De Brigard and Weijers on intuitions about the experience machine and what it tells us about hedonism
Reasons or Fittingness First
Conor McHugh and Jonathan Way argue that we should put fittingness rather than reasons first because we can provide an account of the evaluative in terms of the normative only if we put fittingness rather than reasons first. I argue that it is no more difficult to provide an account of the evaluative in terms of the normative if we put reasons rather than fittingness first
Companions in Guilt Arguments in Metaethics
Iris Murdoch both argues that perceptual experience itself can be evaluatively significant, and that the best way of making sense of this claim is to say that experience is shaped by the concepts that subjects possess and deploy as situated historical agents with a stance upon the world. This paper examines the implications of Murdoch’s distinctive conception of moral perception as a form of ‘vision’ revelatory of value for recent companions in g…
The Normative and the Evaluative
Many have been attracted to the idea that for something to be good is just for there to be reasons to favour it. This view has come to be known as the buck-passing account of value. According to the buck-passing account, for pleasure to be good is just for there to be reasons for us to desire and pursue it. And for liberty and equality to be values is just for there to be reasons for us to promote and preserve them. There has been extensive discu…
Companions in Guilt
Moral Error Theory
According to moral error theorists, moral talk is like talk about witches. Moral talk commits us to particular normative properties just as witch talk commits us to the existence of people with supernatural abilities. And just as there are no such supernatural abilities there are none of these normative properties. In his thorough, lucid, rich, and valuable book Wouter Kalf investigates how we should understand the error theory, what the best arg…
Moral Error Theory Without Epistemic Error Theory
Proponents of the epistemic companions in guilt argument argue that we should reject the moral error theory because it entails that there are no epistemic reasons. In this paper, I investigate whether a plausible version of the moral error theory can be constructed that does not entail an error theory about epistemic reasons. I argue that there are no irreducibly normative second-personal reasons even if there are irreducibly normative reasons. A…
Integrity and rights to gender-affirming healthcare
Gender-affirming healthcare (GAH) interventions are medical or surgical interventions that aim to allow trans and non-binary people to better affirm their gender identity. It has been argued that rights to GAH must be grounded in either a right to be cured of or mitigate an illness—gender dysphoria—or in harm prevention, given the high rates of depression and suicide among trans and non-binary people. However, these grounds of a right to GAH conf…
Morality and Epistemic Judgement
Ethical Theories and Controversial Intuitions
We have controversial intuitions about the rightness of retributive punishment, keeping promises for its own sake, and pushing the heavy man off of the bridge in the footbridge trolley case.How do these intuitions relate to ethical theories?Should ethical theories aim to fit with and explain them?Or are only uncontroversial intuitions relevant to explanatory ethical theorising?I argue against several views that we might hold about the relationshi…
Gender identity
This paper proposes a new account of gender identity on which for A to have gender G as part of their gender identity is for A to not take G not to fit them (or to positively take G to fit them). It argues that this subjective fit account of gender identity fits well with trans people’s testimony and both trans and cis people’s experiences of their genders. The subjective fit account also avoids the problems that existing accounts of gender ident…
The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Disagreement
Disagreement is one of the deepest and most pervasive topics in philosophy, arguably its very bedrock, and is an ever-increasing feature of politics, ethics, public policy, science and many other areas. Despite the omnipresence of disagreement, the topic itself has received relatively little sustained examination. In this outstanding handbook a team of international contributors examines the philosophy of disagreement and how it extends to debate…
Freedom of Gender
We have basic liberal rights to live and act with integrity; these rights very plausibly ground our rights to freedom of religious belief and expression. In section 1, I argue that many trans people need to be able to change their gender markers on their legal identification documents in order to live and act with integrity, and because of this, trans people have pro tanto rights to change their gender markers on their legal identification docume…
Non‐Naturalist Realism and Quietist Constructivism
Metaethical quietists propose views that share all the features of robust non‐naturalist realism, such as a commitment to cognitivism and irreducibly normative truths, except robust realist non‐naturalists' commitment to non‐natural properties. In this paper I propose a version of quietism which holds that true first‐order claims about practical reasons are made true by being the conclusion of the best reasoning process about what practical reaso…
The Injustice of Bathroom Bills
Bathroom bills are laws or policies that require trans people to use bathrooms for the gender they were assigned at birth rather than the gender that matches their gender identity. Florida, Kansas, and Texas currently have bathroom bills in place, the UK in all likelihood will soon have such a bill in place. And many other US states have limited bathroom bills in place. Existing philosophical work on bathroom bills by gender-critical feminists La…
Epistemology (14 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Free Will and Agency (10 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Psychology (10 works) · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics (8 works) · Philosophical Ethics and Theory (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · Normative (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works)