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1 Justin Morton,, (936) Areas of Specialization Ethics, Metaethics Areas of Competence Epistemology, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Religion Education PhD 2018 (expected) The MA 2015 The University of Wisconsin MA 2012 Texas Tech University BA 2010 Stephen F. Austin State University Publications 2016 A New Evolutionary Debunking Argument Against Moral Realism Journal of the American Philosophical Association 2014 Parsimony and the Argument from Queerness (with Eric Sampson) Res Philosophica (Special issue on ethical non-naturalism, edited by Terence Cuneo) Revise and Resubmit When Do Replies to the Evolutionary Debunking Argument Beg the Question? Australasian Journal of Philosophy Under Review Do Normative Principles Help Ground Normative Facts? Grounding Thick Normative Facts How Humeans About Reasons Should Solve Their Weight Problem Can Theists Avoid Epistemological Objections to Moral (and Normative) Realism? Presentations Can Theists Avoid Epistemological Objections to Moral Realism? 1

2 Society of Christian Philosophers (Midwest) September 2016 Grounding the Normative: A New Direction for Non-Naturalists Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress August 2016 The Language and Metaphysics of Normativity, in Uppsala, Sweden May 2016 Metaphysical Permissivism and the Problem of Inter-Domain Conflict North Texas Philosophical Association April 2016 A Dilemma for Streetian Constructivism Alabama Philosophical Society September 2016 New Mexico-Texas Philosophical Society March 2016 Why You Should Be Agnostic About Composite Objects (with Eric Sampson) Rocky Mountain Graduate Conference April 2015 Western Michigan Graduate Conference December 2014 A New Evolutionary Debunking Argument Against Moral Realism Texas Tech University Graduate Conference March 2015 Parsimony and the Argument from Queerness (with Eric Sampson) 40 th Annual Conference on Value Inquiry: Evolution and the Foundations of Ethics May 2014 Teaching Full Responsibility Introduction to Ethics In this course, I focused on several major questions in ethics: What is the good life? How should we live? Why should I be moral? Is God necessary for morality? Readings were diverse: from Jesus to Kant, Dostoevsky to Aristotle. At several points, films (e.g., The Truman Show, The Dark Knight) were assigned instead of a reading. Introduction to Philosophy In this course, I covered epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and philosophy of religion using as primary texts Stephen Hetherington s Knowledge Puzzles and Peter van Inwagen s Metaphysics. Teaching Teaching Assistant Medical Ethics (2x) Epistemology Contemporary Moral Issues (3x) Elementary Logic (2x) Introductory Ethics (3x) Introduction to Philosophy (3x) Aesthetics 2

3 Teaching Development Book Group on What the Best College Teachers Do (Organizer) Summer 2017 Development in Instruction Group (DIG) at UW-Madison A group of graduate students who met bi-monthly to discuss teaching methods and regularly observed each other s classes Workshop on teaching philosophy American Association of Philosophy Teachers Fall 2012 Seminar on teaching philosophy UT-Austin Fall 2016 Seminar on teaching philosophy Texas Tech Fall 2012 Service Organizer, Metaethics Reading Group, UT-Austin Summer 2016, Summer 2017 Co-Organizer, University of Texas Graduate Philosophy Conference 2016 Referee, 5 th Annual Philosophers Cocoon Conference 2017 Referee, Austin Graduate Ethics and Normativity Talks Referee, University of Texas Graduate Philosophy Conference Research Assistant, Book project by Russ Shafer-Landau and Terrence Cuneo

4 References Jonathan Dancy Professor (512) Sinan Dogramaci Associate Professor (512) Jon Litland Assistant Professor (512) Daniel Bonevac Professor (512)

5 Russ Shafer-Landau Professor and Director of the Parr Center for Ethics University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 207 Caldwell Hall Campus Box #3125 Chapel Hill, NC (919) Ray Buchanan (Teaching Reference) Associate Professor (512) Jesse Steinberg (Teaching Reference) Faculty Associate and Assistant to the Chair University of Wisconsin 600 N. Park Street Madison, WI (608)

6 Dissertation Abstract You have a reason to believe that it s raining. It was wrong for the chairman to lie to the committee. Debbie had better not get involved in that Facebook debate. These are all normative facts. Realists about normativity claim that some normative facts are not fully grounded in facts about mental states. In my dissertation, I argue that the only viable form of realism about normative facts is a very strong form of naturalism, on which (i) all normative facts are fully grounded in non-normative facts, and (ii) normative facts are causally efficacious. Most arguments for naturalism assume a broader doctrine of metaphysical naturalism roughly, that there are no non-natural or supernatural facts. I give two arguments for naturalism, neither of which depends on any such assumption. First, only naturalists can give a satisfactory reply to certain worries about the evolutionary influence on our normative beliefs. Second, only naturalists can give a plausible account of how normative facts are grounded. I believe that I ought to take care of my children. But it is clearly adaptive for me to believe this, regardless of its truth: my genes are much more likely to be passed on when I have this belief. Many of our normative beliefs share this feature. Some philosophers worry that, if realism is true, then such evolutionary influence entails that we don t have any normative knowledge. But if realism entails normative skepticism, then we ought to reject realism. I am dissatisfied with this evolutionary debunking argument (EDA), as it stands. According to the standard argument, particular normative beliefs were influenced by evolution. In Chapter 1, I propose a new evolutionary debunking argument, which has it that belief in just one claim was influenced by evolution the belief that there are categorical reasons but that if normative realism is true, then this one claim is entailed by all substantive normative claims. I argue that, since each of our substantive normative beliefs entails a claim belief in which is defeated, so also are all of our substantive normative beliefs defeated. So, if normative realism is true, then we have no normative knowledge. I argue that this new EDA has many advantages over the standard formulation. But in Chapter 2, I deal with one respect in which both arguments are vulnerable: both are vulnerable to what I call firstorder replies. These are replies that assume a substantive normative claim. For example, if we assume just that whatever promotes survival is good, it is no surprise that the moral beliefs selected for by evolution turned out to be true. Friends of the EDA argue that first-order replies beg the question, by assuming just what s in question: knowledge of substantive normative claims. But proponents of first-order replies call foul: our best replies to perceptual (or mathematical, or logical) skepticism assume a substantive perceptual (or mathematical, or logical) claim. So if first-order replies to normative skeptics beg the question, then so do our best replies to skepticism in these other domains. The challenge for the debunker is then to give an interpretation of begging the question on which first-order replies beg the question, but in which replies to these other kinds of skepticism do not. I argue that only naturalists can accomplish this. I first give a probabilistic understanding of what s apparently going wrong with first-order replies: they go wrong insofar as the truth of our normative beliefs doesn t increase the probability that we have those beliefs. If normative facts/properties are causally efficacious as naturalists are permitted to claim--then the truth of a normative belief will increase the probability that we have that belief. However, if normative facts/properties are not causally efficacious as non-naturalists are required to claim then the truth of a normative belief will not increase the probability that we have that belief. So, only the naturalist can give a first-order reply to the EDA without begging the question. Finally, I argue that, in giving such a reply, naturalists can avoid overgeneralizing to the domains of the perceptual and the inductive. However, their reply commits them to anti-realism about the domains of math and logic. I argue that this is acceptable. Thus, if realism is true, then naturalism of the sort I ve outlined must be true. 6

7 There is a proviso here. In Chapter 3 I argue that if the non-naturalist commits to theism, then she need not beg the question in replying to the EDA. If the God of theism exists, then even if normative facts are causally impotent, the truth of a normative claim could increase the probability that we believe it: God would engineer things in such a way that our beliefs roughly match the normative truth. So, Chapters 1-3 of my dissertation purport to establish this claim: non-naturalism can only be true if God exists. In other words, without God, the only plausible form of realism is naturalism. In Chapter 4, however, I give an independent argument against non-naturalism. This chapter addresses the metaphysical relation between the normative and the non-normative. That you ought to believe that it is raining is somehow grounded in your seeing drops of water hit the ground around you. That Stalin s action was wrong is somehow grounded in its being an act of murder. I argue that nonnaturalists are committed to the claim that no normative fact is fully grounded in non-normative facts. I then argue that non-naturalism is a deeply unstable position. Non-naturalists, I argue, are committed to the claim that there are some normative facts principles that ground others. The problem non-naturalists face, then, is in saying how these principles are grounded or, failing that, they must argue that principles are not the kind of thing that need to be grounded. I argue, first, that the kind of principles non-naturalists need are not good candidates for being ungrounded. I then argue that there s no way of grounding normative principles that doesn t entail the falsity of non-naturalism. So, non-naturalism should be abandoned. My conclusion, therefore, is that regardless of whether God exists, the only plausible form of realism about the normative is a very strong form of naturalism. 7

8 Graduate Coursework In Metaethics: Metaethics in the 20 th Century (Jonathan Dancy) Moral Responsibility (John Deigh) New Work on Moral Realism (Russ Shafer-Landau and Mike Titelbaum) Moral Error Theories (Russ Shafer-Landau) Contemporary Metaethics (Daniel Nathan) Thick Concepts (Mini-seminar with Jonathan Dancy) In Ethics: Ethics of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche (Claudia Card) Aristotle's Ethics (Paula Gottlieb) Aristotle s Function Argument: Independent Study (Paula Gottlieb) Kant s Ethics (Jeremy Schwartz) Great Figures: Sidgwick (Jeremy Schwartz) Contemporary Virtue Ethics (Howard Curzer) Plato's Moral Psychology (Emily Fletcher) Rawls and his Critics (Walter Schaller) In Metaphysics: Grounding (Jon Litland) Conference Course on Ground (Jon Litland) Objects and Modality (Alan Sidelle) Personal Identity (Alan Sidelle) In Epistemology: Epistemology of the Apriori (Sinan Dogramaci) Philosophy of Logic (Sinan Dogramaci and Jon Litland) Contemporary Epistemology (Dustin Tucker) Other Courses: Advanced Logic (Josh Dever and Jon Litland) Occam s Razor: Parsimony in Science and Philosophy (Elliott Sober) Action Theory (Sarah Paul) Advanced Logic (Dustin Tucker) Early Modern Philosophy (Francesca Di Poppa) Philosophy of Language (Christopher Hom) Seminar on Teaching Philosophy (Daniel Nathan) Philosophy of Science (Kevin Coffey) 8