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322Finding the corkscrewStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 37 (1): 114-117. 2006.
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283Good citizens and moral heroesIn Pedro Alexis Tabensky (ed.), The positive function of evil, Palgrave-macmillan. 2009.Scale matters in morality, so that different factors occupy us at high and low scales. Different people are needed to be good neighbours in everyday life and moral heroes in crises. There is no reason to believe that the same traits are required for both. So there is no such thing as the all-round good person.
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140Frames of Mind: Constraints on the Common-sense Conception of the MentalOxford University Press USA. 1980.I argue that general constraints on how humans think about humans produce universal features of the concept of mind. Some of these constraints determine how we imagine other people's thinking and action through our own. I formulate this in opposition to what I call the "theory theory". I believe this was the first use of this terminology, and this work was an early version of what has come to be called the simulation theory.
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665Emotional Truth. By Ronald de Sousa. (Oxford UP, 2011. Pp. xviii + 391. Price £38.00.)Philosophical Quarterly 62 (246): 220-222. 2012.
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149Empathy for the DevilIn Amy Coplan & Peter Goldie (eds.), Empathy: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives, Oxford University Press. pp. 318. 2011.I argue that there is a blinkering effect to decency. Being a morally sensitive person, and having internalized a code of behavior that restricts the range of actions that one takes as live options for oneself, constrains one’s imagination. It becomes harder to identify imaginatively with mportant parts of human possibility. In particular—the part of the claim that I will argue for in this chapter—it limits one’s capacity to empathize with those who perform atrocious acts. They become alien to o…Read more
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242Damage, flourishing, and two sides of moralityEshare: An Iranian Journal of Philosophy 1 (1). forthcoming.I explore how considerations about psychological damage connect with moral theories.
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20This paper connects Turiel's discovery that small children distinguish between moral and conventional norms with the theory of mind debate and with contemporary work in moral philosophy. My aim is to explain both why pre-schoolers can easily make a moral/conventional distinction, and why at some later age it becomes harder to grasp such a distinction. My answer, in a nutshell, is that there is a simple moral/conventional distinction that is well within the capabilities of very small children, bu…Read more
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64Central and Marginal Forgiveness: Comments on Charles Griswold’s Forgiveness; a Philosophical ExplorationPhilosophia 38 (3): 439-444. 2010.I discuss Charles Griswold’s Forgiveness, arguing that he classifies as marginal many cases that we normally count as forgiveness. Moreover the phenomenon that he calls “forgiveness at its best” may include some awful aspects of human nature. Nevertheless, there are central and important aspects of the concept that are captured by his discussion
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295A Guide Through the Theory of KnowledgeWiley-Blackwell. 1997.The third edition of this highly acclaimed text is ideal for introductory courses in epistemology. Assuming little or no philosophical knowledge, it guides beginning students through the landmarks in epistemology, covering historically important topics as well as current issues and debates
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312review of two similar collections on well-being.
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152I_— _Ronald de SousaAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 76 (1): 247-263. 2002.Taking literally the concept of emotional truth requires breaking the monopoly on truth of belief-like states. To this end, I look to perceptions for a model of non-propositional states that might be true or false, and to desires for a model of propositional attitudes the norm of which is other than the semantic satisfaction of their propositional object. Those models inspire a conception of generic truth, which can admit of degrees for analogue representations such as emotions; belief-like stat…Read more
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121Review: Understanding People: Normativity and Rationalizing Explanation (review)Mind 115 (459): 777-780. 2006.
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710The Value of a PersonAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 68 (1). 1994.(for Adam Morton's half) I argue that if we take the values of persons to be ordered in a way that allows incomparability, then the problems Broome raises have easy solutions. In particular we can maintain that creating people is morally neutral while killing them has a negative value.
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361The Future for Philosophy - Edited by Brian Leiter (review)Philosophical Books 47 (4): 366-368. 2006.review of Brian Leiter's collection *The Future for Philosophy*
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57A Virtue Epistemology: Apt Belief and Reflective Knowledge, Volume 1, by Ernest SosaMind 118 (472): 1180-1183. 2009.(No abstract is available for this citation)
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187Great expectationsIn Tim Lewens (ed.), Risk: Philosophical Perspectives, Routledge. 2007.I distinguish between risks in which most people will do badly from those in which few will, though some will do very badly.
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2Why there is no concept of a personIn Christopher Gill (ed.), The Person and the Human Mind: Issues in Ancient and Modern Philosophy, Oxford University Press. 1990.(written years later) I argue that the schematic concept of a person as found in discussions of personal identity could not be used by real humans of themselves, and is not much of a guide for imagining possible beings. Issues of demonstrative self-knowledge play a large role in the argument.
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223Why there is no concept of a person. in Gill, ed. *the person and the human mind*:In Christopher Gill (ed.), Ancient and Modern Philosophy, Clarendon Press. 1989.I argue that the Frankfurtian concept of a person ignored the indexical 'I'
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1626An introductory logic textbook where the central concept is not deduction but search and logical form. (Deduction - logical consequence - drops out as a special case. TIt is meant for a class-based rather than a lecture-based course, and for students with general interests.
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53The Many Faces of Evil: Historical Perspectives (review)The Monist 85 (2): 337-338. 2002.Amélie Rorty has put together a wonderfully varied collection of writings, with a range in time of three thousand years and a range of style from sacred writings to fiction to analytical philosophy. There is nothing like it in print, and it will be an invaluable source for many of us. The writings she has collected are all about—well, I’m not sure that there is something that they are all about. The title suggests that the collection is about a phenomenon called Evil that has many faces: one und…Read more
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149describes connections between a series of related papers
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169Damage and imaginationThe Junkyard (Blog). 2017.Many morally important facts about the way we affect one another, in particular the psychological damage we can inflict, are hard to imagine .
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402Cousins of RegretIn Gottlieb Anna (ed.), the moral psychology of regret, . forthcoming.I classify emotions in the family of regret, remorse, and so on, in such a way that it is easy to see how there can be further emotions in this family, for which we happened not to have names in English. I describe some of these emotions.
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25II—Adam Morton: Emotional AccuracyAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 76 (1): 265-275. 2002.
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334Book Review:Studies in Perception Peter K. Machamer, Robert G. Turnbull (review)Philosophy of Science 46 (4): 657-. 1979.
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620Saving epistemology from the epistemologists: recent work in the theory of knowledgeBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 51 (4): 685-704. 2000.This is a very selective survey of developments in epistemology, concentrating on work from the past twenty years that is of interest to philosophers of science. The selection is organized around interesting connections between distinct themes. I first connect issues about skepticism to issues about the reliability of belief-acquiring processes. Next I connect discussions of the defeasibility of reasons for belief to accounts of the theory-independence of evidence. Then I connect doubts about Ba…Read more
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506Causation: A Realist ApproachPhilosophical Books 30 (3): 157-161. 1989.a review of Tooley's Causation: a realist approach*, with emphasis on his use of probability and Ramsey sentences.
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240Review of VaguenessPhilosophical Books 36 (4): 272-276. 1995.review of Williamson's *Vagueness*