James Lenman
Biographic Data
| ID | 608644 |
|---|---|
| NAME | James Lenman |
| GIVEN NAMES | James |
| FAMILY NAME | Lenman |
| SIGNATURE | LENMAN J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Sheffield |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3823-6089 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 54 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Reasons for Pretending and Pretend Reasons
Thinking about the “what next?” question for moral error theory teaches us why that theory is such a bad idea. We repudiate morality and make it anew, but what we end up doing is remaking what we had before. If we can avoid skepticism about what we remake, then we had no reason to repudiate it. Joyce and others think a Humean understanding of practical reason can be rescued from the flames of their skeptical arguments and that this provides a pla…
An Ecumenical Matter
Ridge defends a form of hybrid expressivism where normative judgements are constituted by two elements, normative perspectives and representational beliefs that invoke standards our normative perspectives determine. He thinks this view will enable him to ‘offload logical complexity’ onto the latter, representational components of our judgements, thereby taming the Frege-Geach Problem and conferring a dialectical advantage over non-hybrid, ‘pure’ …
Confusion of tongues
Reviewed by: Confusion of tongues: A theory of normative language by Stephen Finlay James Lenman Confusion of tongues: A theory of normative language. By Stephen Finlay. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. 288. ISBN 9780199347490. $69 (Hb). We begin with good. Good, Finlay suggests, is an incomplete predicate. When we say something is good we are saying something of this form. (1) It is good for e if p. Where p is some proposition (for goo…
Gibbardian Humility
Ethics Without Errors
I argue against the claim that we should adopt a moral error theory. The intelligibility of our moral practice need offer no questionable metaphysical hostages to fortune. The two most credible policy recommendations that might follow from moral error theory, abolitionism and prescriptive fictionalism, are not very credible
Constructivism in practical philosophy
Achieving Objectivity 1
Naturalism Without Tears
Parfit argues that naturalistic theories that seek to understand normative concepts either as simply descriptive of certain natural facts about our desires or as expressive of our desires commit us to a bleak normative nihilism whereby nothing matters. I here defend such naturalism, in particular its expressivist variety, against this charge. It is true that such views commit us to there being no reasons as Parfit understands them. But for Parfit…
Actions, Motives and Causes
In this book Alfred Mele seeks to elaborate and defend a neo‐Davidsonian understanding of human agency which is fundamentally causalist: intentional actions are, he thinks, caused and caused in such a way that a causal explanation of them is available in terms of the desires and intentions of the agent. Chapter 2 (following a stage‐setting opening chapter) develops Davidson's most telling argument in favour of a causal interpretation of rationali…
Contractualism and risk imposition
The article investigates the resources of contractualist moral theory to make sense of the ethics of risk imposition. In some ways, contractualism seems well placed to explain how it can be reasonable to accept exposure to risk of harms whose direct imposition would not be acceptable. However, there are difficulties getting clear about what directness comes to here, especially given the difficulty of adequately motivating traditional views that a…
Utilitarianism and Obviousness
This article seeks to diagnose a serious defect in a highly influential supposed counterexample to utilitarianism: Bernard Williams's case of Jim and the Indians. Discussing this, Williams argues that, according to utilitarianism, it is obviously right to say that Jim should kill an Indian. But as this is not obviously right, Williams takes the example to furnish a forceful counterexample to utilitarianism. I note here that the force of the suppo…
Disciplined Syntacticism and Moral Expressivism
Moral Expressivists typically concede that, in some minimal sense, moral sentences are truth‐apt but claim that in some more robust sense they are not. The Immodest Disciplined Syntacticist , a species of minimalist about truth, raises a doubt as to whether this contrast can be made out. I here address this challenge by motivating and describing a distinction between reducibly and irreducibly truth‐apt sentences. In the light of this distinction …
Consequentialism and Cluelessness
The externalist and the amoralist
Michael Smith and the Daleks
Smith has defended the rationalist's conceptual claim that moral requirements are categorical requirements of reason, arguing that no status short of this would make sense of our taking these requirements as seriously as we do. Against this I argue that Smith has failed to show either that our moral commitments would be undermined by possessing only an internal, contextual justification or that they need presuppose any expectation that rational a…
Finding beauty
Consequentialism and Cluelessness
Contractualism and risk imposition
The article investigates the resources of contractualist moral theory to make sense of the ethics of risk imposition. In some ways, contractualism seems well placed to explain how it can be reasonable to accept exposure to risk of harms whose direct imposition would not be acceptable. However, there are difficulties getting clear about what directness comes to here, especially given the difficulty of adequately motivating traditional views that a…
Disciplined Syntacticism and Moral Expressivism
Moral Expressivists typically concede that, in some minimal sense, moral sentences are truth‐apt but claim that in some more robust sense they are not. The Immodest Disciplined Syntacticist , a species of minimalist about truth, raises a doubt as to whether this contrast can be made out. I here address this challenge by motivating and describing a distinction between reducibly and irreducibly truth‐apt sentences. In the light of this distinction …
Michael Smith and the Daleks
Smith has defended the rationalist's conceptual claim that moral requirements are categorical requirements of reason, arguing that no status short of this would make sense of our taking these requirements as seriously as we do. Against this I argue that Smith has failed to show either that our moral commitments would be undermined by possessing only an internal, contextual justification or that they need presuppose any expectation that rational a…
Confusion of tongues
Reviewed by: Confusion of tongues: A theory of normative language by Stephen Finlay James Lenman Confusion of tongues: A theory of normative language. By Stephen Finlay. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. 288. ISBN 9780199347490. $69 (Hb). We begin with good. Good, Finlay suggests, is an incomplete predicate. When we say something is good we are saying something of this form. (1) It is good for e if p. Where p is some proposition (for goo…
Ethics Without Errors
I argue against the claim that we should adopt a moral error theory. The intelligibility of our moral practice need offer no questionable metaphysical hostages to fortune. The two most credible policy recommendations that might follow from moral error theory, abolitionism and prescriptive fictionalism, are not very credible
Naturalism Without Tears
Parfit argues that naturalistic theories that seek to understand normative concepts either as simply descriptive of certain natural facts about our desires or as expressive of our desires commit us to a bleak normative nihilism whereby nothing matters. I here defend such naturalism, in particular its expressivist variety, against this charge. It is true that such views commit us to there being no reasons as Parfit understands them. But for Parfit…
Finding beauty
The externalist and the amoralist
Michael Smith and the Daleks
Smith has defended the rationalist's conceptual claim that moral requirements are categorical requirements of reason, arguing that no status short of this would make sense of our taking these requirements as seriously as we do. Against this I argue that Smith has failed to show either that our moral commitments would be undermined by possessing only an internal, contextual justification or that they need presuppose any expectation that rational a…
Consequentialism and Cluelessness
Disciplined Syntacticism and Moral Expressivism
Moral Expressivists typically concede that, in some minimal sense, moral sentences are truth‐apt but claim that in some more robust sense they are not. The Immodest Disciplined Syntacticist , a species of minimalist about truth, raises a doubt as to whether this contrast can be made out. I here address this challenge by motivating and describing a distinction between reducibly and irreducibly truth‐apt sentences. In the light of this distinction …
Utilitarianism and Obviousness
This article seeks to diagnose a serious defect in a highly influential supposed counterexample to utilitarianism: Bernard Williams's case of Jim and the Indians. Discussing this, Williams argues that, according to utilitarianism, it is obviously right to say that Jim should kill an Indian. But as this is not obviously right, Williams takes the example to furnish a forceful counterexample to utilitarianism. I note here that the force of the suppo…
Actions, Motives and Causes
In this book Alfred Mele seeks to elaborate and defend a neo‐Davidsonian understanding of human agency which is fundamentally causalist: intentional actions are, he thinks, caused and caused in such a way that a causal explanation of them is available in terms of the desires and intentions of the agent. Chapter 2 (following a stage‐setting opening chapter) develops Davidson's most telling argument in favour of a causal interpretation of rationali…
Contractualism and risk imposition
The article investigates the resources of contractualist moral theory to make sense of the ethics of risk imposition. In some ways, contractualism seems well placed to explain how it can be reasonable to accept exposure to risk of harms whose direct imposition would not be acceptable. However, there are difficulties getting clear about what directness comes to here, especially given the difficulty of adequately motivating traditional views that a…
Achieving Objectivity 1
Naturalism Without Tears
Parfit argues that naturalistic theories that seek to understand normative concepts either as simply descriptive of certain natural facts about our desires or as expressive of our desires commit us to a bleak normative nihilism whereby nothing matters. I here defend such naturalism, in particular its expressivist variety, against this charge. It is true that such views commit us to there being no reasons as Parfit understands them. But for Parfit…
Constructivism in practical philosophy
Ethics Without Errors
I argue against the claim that we should adopt a moral error theory. The intelligibility of our moral practice need offer no questionable metaphysical hostages to fortune. The two most credible policy recommendations that might follow from moral error theory, abolitionism and prescriptive fictionalism, are not very credible
Gibbardian Humility
Confusion of tongues
Reviewed by: Confusion of tongues: A theory of normative language by Stephen Finlay James Lenman Confusion of tongues: A theory of normative language. By Stephen Finlay. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. 288. ISBN 9780199347490. $69 (Hb). We begin with good. Good, Finlay suggests, is an incomplete predicate. When we say something is good we are saying something of this form. (1) It is good for e if p. Where p is some proposition (for goo…
An Ecumenical Matter
Ridge defends a form of hybrid expressivism where normative judgements are constituted by two elements, normative perspectives and representational beliefs that invoke standards our normative perspectives determine. He thinks this view will enable him to ‘offload logical complexity’ onto the latter, representational components of our judgements, thereby taming the Frege-Geach Problem and conferring a dialectical advantage over non-hybrid, ‘pure’ …
Reasons for Pretending and Pretend Reasons
Thinking about the “what next?” question for moral error theory teaches us why that theory is such a bad idea. We repudiate morality and make it anew, but what we end up doing is remaking what we had before. If we can avoid skepticism about what we remake, then we had no reason to repudiate it. Joyce and others think a Humean understanding of practical reason can be rescued from the flames of their skeptical arguments and that this provides a pla…
Epistemology (15 works) · Philosophical Ethics and Theory (11 works) · Philosophy (11 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Free Will and Agency (8 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics (5 works) · Political science (5 works) · Law (4 works) · Law and economics (4 works)