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James R. Wible, The Economics of Science: Methodology and Epistemology as if Economics Really MatteredInternational Studies in the Philosophy of Science 12 (3): 281. 1998.
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87Environmental Damage and the Puzzle of the Self-TorturerPhilosophy and Public Affairs 34 (1): 95-108. 2005.I show, building on Warren Quinn's puzzle of the self-torturer, that destructive conduct with respect to the environment can flourish even in the absence of interpersonal conflicts. As Quinn's puzzle makes apparent, in cases where individually negligible effects are involved, an agent, whether it be an individual or a unified collective, can be led down a course of destruction simply as a result of following its informed and perfectly understandable but intransitive preferences. This is relevan…Read more
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162The real puzzle of the self-torturer: uncovering a new dimension of instrumental rationalityCanadian Journal of Philosophy 45 (5-6): 562-575. 2015.The puzzle of the self-torturer raises intriguing questions concerning rationality, cyclic preferences, and resoluteness. Interestingly, what makes the case puzzling has not been clearly pinpointed. The puzzle, it seems, is that a series of rational choices foreseeably leads the self-torturer to an option that serves his preferences worse than the one with which he started. But this is a very misleading way of casting the puzzle. I pinpoint the real puzzle of the self-torturer and, in the proces…Read more
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52Temptation and DeliberationPhilosophical Studies 131 (3): 583-606. 2006.There is a great deal of plausibility to the standard view that if one is rational and it is clear at the time of action that a certain move, say M1, would serve one’s concerns better than any other available move, then one will, as a rational agent, opt for move M1. Still, this view concerning rationality has been challenged at least in part because it seems to conflict with our considered judgments about what it is rational to do in cases of temptation that share the structure of Warren Quin…Read more
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173Parity, Comparability, and ChoiceJournal of Philosophy 112 (1): 5-22. 2015.It is often supposed that, given two potential objects of choice X and Y, a specific set of circumstances, and a specific choosing agent, one of the following must be true: (1) opting for X is a better choice than opting for Y, (2) opting for Y is a better choice than opting for X, or (3) opting for X and opting for Y are exactly equally good choices. My aim in this paper is to show how some philosophical insights concerning color perception can illuminate the possibility of two options, X and …Read more
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133Incommensurable alternatives and rational choiceRatio 18 (3). 2005.I consider the implications of incommensurability for the assumption, in rational choice theory, that a rational agent’s preferences are complete. I argue that, contrary to appearances, the completeness assumption and the existence of incommensurability are compatible. Indeed, reflection on incommensurability suggests that one’s preferences should be complete over even the incommensurable alternatives one faces
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68Non-relative reasons and Humean thought: If what is a reason for you is a reason for me, where does that leave the Humean?Metaphilosophy 38 (5): 654-668. 2007.A variety of strategies have been used to oppose the influential Humean thesis that all of an agent’s reasons for action are provided by the agent’s current wants. Among these strategies is the attempt to show that it is a conceptual truth that reasons for action are non-relative. I introduce the notion of a basic reason- giving consideration and show that the non-relativity thesis can be understood as a corollary of the more fundamental thesis that basic reason-giving considerations are general…Read more
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3Coping with ProcrastinationIn Chrisoula Andreou and Mark D. White (ed.), The Thief of Time, . 2010.This paper focuses on a puzzling but familiar strategy for coping with procrastination that has not yet been analyzed in the literature on that topic. The strategy involves leveraging control. In employing the strategy, we take advantage of the possibility that poor self-control can be a local trait rather than a robust character trait.
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103The Newxin puzzlePhilosophical Studies 139 (3): 415-422. 2008.A variety of thought experiments suggest that, if the standard picture of practical rationality is correct, then practical rationality is sometimes an obstacle to practical success. For some, this in turn suggests that there is something wrong with the standard picture. In particular, it has been argued that we should revise the standard picture so that practical rationality and practical success emerge as more closely connected than the current picture allows. In this paper, I construct a choic…Read more
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71Advantage, Restraint, and the Circumstances of JusticeSocial Theory and Practice 43 (2): 397-419. 2017.I focus on the mutual advantage conception of justice and on a related Humean argument according to which “the circumstances of justice” obtain only when there is a conflict of ends, a suitable level of scarcity, and rough equality of power. I add to the challenges facing the argument by using a Millian illustration whose significance has not been appreciated in prior discussions of the circumstances of justice to show that, contrary to a key premise of the Humean argument, restraining ground ru…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Action |
Applied Ethics |
Meta-Ethics |