Abstract

This book symposium contribution provides responses to four commentaries on my book _Choosing Well: The Good_,_ the Bad_,_ and the Trivial_. The authors of the commentaries are Michael Bratman, Mark Budolfson, Sergio Tenenbaum, and Johanna Thoma. Although doing justice to all of the interesting points raised by the commentators is out of the question, I respond to some of the main issues raised (proceeding in alphabetical order by the commentators’ last names), launching my responses with a discussion of Bratman’s question “Why stop with adding categorial appraisals?” and wrapping them up with my response to Thoma’s contrasting question “Do we need categorial appraisal responses?” Notably, some responses require me to get more “in the weeds” than others. Hopefully, this is for the better rather than for the worse, and will give the reader a taste of both some big picture issues and some more intricate complications involved in developing and defending my approach.