Christopher Jay

I am probably most excited at the moment about ineffability - an interest arising out of my longstanding fascination with transcendental idealism, particularly in Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein but most especially in Kant. I think the notion of acquaintance might be the key to understanding our relationship with the ineffable thing in itself (an idea which I have benefited from discussing with my student Niamh Williams, who wrote a good MA dissertation on the idea), and that there is only one kind of knowledge which is ineffable in an interesting sense (and it is not knowledge-how or knowledge by acquaintance generally), namely knowledge of ineffable truths (which I think might be possible because there might be ineffable propositions, some of which could be true). And I have some things to say about the 'Limit Argument' which recurs throughout the history of work on the ineffable, perhaps most famously in the Preface of the Tractatus, and is reconstructed nicely by A. W. Moore in various places (including his The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics, e.g. p. 135), but which I think has less to it than is often thought. I am still working through the issues here, trying to write some things, and would be delighted to discuss them with anyone who is interested, because I've got a lot more learning and thinking to do! 

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I recently finished a paper on treating like cases alike.​

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The 'practicality' or supposed 'action-guidingness' of morality and of normativity more generally interests me very much (I think it is widely overestimated, and anyway often not particularly well conceptualised). That shows up in a couple of the things I've published, on the ought implies can principle and on the idea that justice has a kind of possibility constraint. But I am still thinking and, sometimes, writing about it. 'Violability and Practical Deliberation' is a draft arguing that obligation does not require the possibility of non-compliance (pace Kant and others), and unpicking some of what is meant by talk of action guiding. (It is still a work in progress, and I will probably re-write the action guiding section in line with this talk version.)

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I have been working for a long time, on and off (mostly off), on a couple of papers on aspects of Kant's moral philosophy. One of them, interpreting and defending Kant's Doctrine of the Highest Good, has been given as a talk a few times. The other, interpreting, revising and then defending Kant's views about differential responsibility for the consequences of our lies and of our truth telling, is in a less complete state.

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One of my favourite things I've written (although nobody's ever wanted to publish it - yet?) is 'Sins of Permission', which explores the wrong of permissiveness and suggests that permissiveness might explain the morally problematic nature of various things, such as markets in certain goods and violent sports.

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I think we can probably hope for things which we believe to be impossible (and that doing so might even be rational), which is denied by many. 'Hoping for the Believed Impossible' needs some re-working, but starts to defend that view (developing a suggestion I made very briefly in a footnote of 'Doxastic and Nondoxastic Atheisms'). 

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A while back, I went through a phase of thinking and writing about issues in economic and policy ethics, prompted by what struck me as mistakes in debates about various things in the public sphere and in policy research. I am hoping to finish a paper on the moral justification of progressive tax rates, which I've given as a talk a few times. I've got a draft on 'A Fallacy in Some Reciprocity Arguments for Welfare Conditionality'. I've also written something critical of 'The Waste Argument' (an argument perhaps more often endorsed by non-philosophers, but in need of correction, I think). And I wrote up the obvious thing to say about 'Justifying Public Health Measures: Citizens' Rights and A Non-Consequentialist Argument' in the wake of the COVID pandemic. ​​​​

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Then there is 'Some Medieval Arguments Against Usury', which is a long piece with some reconstructive and critical work going on, but also lots of explanation drawn mostly from secondary sources, making it an unwieldy beast betwixt guide for students and (too long) research paper.