-
135Race and racial cognitionIn John M. Doris (ed.), Moral Psychology Handbook, Oxford University Press. 2010.A core question of contemporary social morality concerns how we ought to handle racial categorization. By this we mean, for instance, classifying or thinking of a person as Black, Korean, Latino, White, etc.² While it is widely FN:2 agreed that racial categorization played a crucial role in past racial oppression, there remains disagreement among philosophers and social theorists about the ideal role for racial categorization in future endeavors. At one extreme of this disagreement are short-ter…Read more
-
130Against the Yuck Factor: On the Ideal Role of Disgust in SocietyUtilitas 26 (2): 153-177. 2014.The view we defend is that in virtue of its nature, disgust is not fit to do any moral or social work whatsoever, and that there are no defensible uses for disgust in legal or political institutions. We first describe our favoured empirical theory of the nature of disgust. Turning from descriptive to normative issues, we address the best arguments in favour of granting disgust the power to justify certain judgements, and to serve as a social tool, respectively. Daniel Kahan advances a pair of th…Read more
-
119The Psychology of Normative CognitionThe Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2020.From an early age, humans exhibit a tendency to identify, adopt, and enforce the norms of their local communities. Norms are the social rules that mark out what is appropriate, allowed, required, or forbidden in different situations for various community members. These rules are informal in the sense that although they are sometimes represented in formal laws, such as the rule governing which side of the road to drive on, they need not be explicitly codified to effectively influence behavior. Th…Read more
-
105Two theories about the cognitive architecture underlying moralityIn Peter Carruthers, Stephen Laurence & Stephen P. Stich (eds.), The Innate Mind, Vol. III, Foundations and the Future, Oxford University Press. 2008.In this paper we compare two theories about the cognitive architecture underlying morality. One theory, proposed by Sripada and Stich (forthcoming), posits an interlocking set of innate mechanisms that internalize moral norms from the surrounding community and generate intrinsic motivation to comply with these norms and to punish violators. The other theory, which we call the M/C model was suggested by the widely discussed and influential work of Elliott Turiel, Larry Nucci and others on the “mo…Read more
-
100Intentionality - naturalization ofIn Encyclopedia of Neuroscience, . pp. 1993-1996. 2008.States that are about things are intentional, that is, they have content. The precise nature of intentional states is a matter of dispute.What makes some states, but not others, intentional? Of those states that are intentional, what makes them about what they are about as opposed to something else, i.e. what gives them their specific content?
-
92Yuck!: The Nature and Moral Significance of DisgustBradford. 2011.People can be disgusted by the concrete and by the abstract -- by an object they find physically repellent or by an ideology or value system they find morally abhorrent. Different things will disgust different people, depending on individual sensibilities or cultural backgrounds. In _Yuck!_, Daniel Kelly investigates the character and evolution of disgust, with an emphasis on understanding the role this emotion has come to play in our social and moral lives. Disgust has recently been riding a sw…Read more
-
86Moral Disgust and The Tribal Instincts HypothesisIn Kim Sterelny, Richard Joyce, Brett Calcott & Ben Fraser (eds.), Cooperation and its Evolution, Mit Press. 2013.Psychological research has been discovering a number of puzzling features of morality and moral cognition recently.2 Zhong & Liljenquist (2006) found that when people are asked to think about an unethical deed or recall one they themselves have committed in the past, issues of physical cleanliness become salient. Zhong & Liljenquist cleverly designate this phenomenon the “Macbeth Effect,” and it takes some interesting forms. For instance, reading a story describing an immoral deed increased peop…Read more
-
78On the Alleged Inadequacies of Psychological Explanations of RacismThe Monist 93 (2): 228-254. 2010.
-
63A tale of two processes: On Joseph Henrich’s the secret of our success: How culture is driving human evolution, domesticating our species, and making us smarterPhilosophical Psychology 30 (6): 832-848. 2017.We situate Henrich’s book in the larger research tradition of which it is a part and show how he presents a wide array of recent psychological, physiological, and neurological data as supporting the view that two related but distinct processes have shaped human nature and made us unique: cumulative cultural evolution and culture-driven genetic evolution. We briefly sketch out several ways philosophers might fruitfully engage with this view and note some implications it may have for current philo…Read more
-
57On the Morality of Harm: A response to Sousa, Holbrook and PiazzaCognition 113 (1): 93-97. 2009.
-
55The role of psychology in the study of cultureBehavioral and Brain Sciences 29 (4): 355-355. 2006.Although we are enthusiastic about a Darwinian approach to culture, we argue that the overview presented in the target article does not sufficiently emphasize the crucial explanatory role that psychology plays in the study of culture. We use a number of examples to illustrate the variety of ways by which appeal to psychological factors can help explain cultural phenomena
-
48Norms, not moral norms: The boundaries of morality do not matterBehavioral and Brain Sciences 41. 2018.
-
46The role of psychology in the study of cultureBehavioral and Brain Sciences 29 (4): 355-355. 2006.Although we are enthusiastic about a Darwinian approach to culture, we argue that the overview presented in the target article does not sufficiently emphasize the crucial explanatory role that psychology plays in the study of culture. We use a number of examples to illustrate the variety of ways by which appeal to psychological factors can help explain cultural phenomena. (Published Online November 9 2006).
-
45Correction to: Change the People or Change the Policy? On the Moral Education of AntiracistsEthical Theory and Moral Practice 26 (2): 333-336. 2023.
-
44This dissertation explores issues in the philosophy of psychology and metaphysics through the lens of the emotion of disgust, and its corresponding property, disgustingness. The first chapter organizes an extremely large body of data about disgust, imposes two constraints any theory must meet, and offers a cognitive model of the mechanisms underlying the emotion. The second chapter explores the evolution of disgust, and argues for the Entanglement thesis: this uniquely human emotion was formed w…Read more
-
38Socializing willpower: Resolve from the outside inBehavioral and Brain Sciences 44. 2021.Ainslie's account of willpower is conspicuously individualistic. Because other people, social influence, and culture appear only peripherally, it risks overlooking what may be resolve's deeply social roots. We identify a general “outside-in” explanatory strategy suggested by a range of recent research into human cognitive evolution, and suggest how it might illuminate the origins and more social aspects of resolve.
-
37Explaining Social Normativity: Introduction to The Discussion Forum on Cecilia Heyes’ “Rethinking Norm Psychology”Perspectives on Psychological Science 1-12. forthcoming.This essay is an introduction to a special issue centered on Cecilia Heyes’ article ‘Rethinking Norm Psychology’. This target article criticizes nativist accounts of the psychological processes dedicated to social norms and offers an alternative account of norm psychology as a cognitive gadget that is culturally evolved and socially learned. The essay sketches out the conceptual landscape around that article and locates within it some of the main points of the 14 short commentaries. These discus…Read more
-
28Should an individual composed of selfish goals be held responsible for her actions?Behavioral and Brain Sciences 37 (2): 158-159. 2014.We discuss the implications of the Selfish Goal model for moral responsibility, arguing it suggests a form of skepticism we call the “locus problem.” In denying that individuals contain any genuine psychological core of information processing, the Selfish Goal model denies the kind of locus of control intuitively presupposed by ascriptions of responsibility. We briefly consider ways the problem might be overcome.
-
16Bioethical Ideals, Actual Practice, and the Double Life of NormsAmerican Journal of Bioethics 20 (4): 86-88. 2020.Volume 20, Issue 4, May 2020, Page 86-88.
-
65. David Foster Wallace as American HedgehogIn Steven M. Cahn & Maureen Eckert (eds.), Freedom and the Self: Essays on the Philosophy of David Foster Wallace, Columbia University Press. pp. 109-132. 2015.
-
Review of The Meaning of Disgust by Colin McGinn (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 1 1-8. 2012.Colin McGinn's The Meaning of Disgust numbers among several scholarly books on disgust that have been published in the last couple of years (including, in the interest of full and up front disclosure, one by the writer of this review). McGinn's book argues for a coherent, if incredible, account of the essence of disgustingness and of the emotion of disgust, and reflects on the potential significance of that account for different areas of human concern. It also bears many of the characteristics t…Read more
-
Implicit bias, character, and controlIn Alberto Masala & Jonathan Webber (eds.), From Personality to Virtue: Essays on the Philosophy of Character, Oxford University Press Uk. 2016.
West Lafayette, Indiana, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Value Theory, Misc |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Value Theory, Misc |