•  438
    Philosophical implications of inflationary cosmology
    with Ken D. Olum and And Alexander Vilenkin
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57 (1): 47-67. 2006.
    Recent developments in cosmology indicate that every history having a non-zero probability is realized in infinitely many distinct regions of spacetime. Thus, it appears that the universe contains infinitely many civilizations exactly like our own, as well as infinitely many civilizations that differ from our own in any way permitted by physical laws. We explore the implications of this conclusion for ethical theory and for the doomsday argument. In the infinite universe, we find that the doomsd…Read more
  •  1409
    Normative Judgments and Individual Essence
    with Julian De Freitas, Kevin P. Tobia, and George E. Newman
    Cognitive Science 41 (S3): 382-402. 2017.
    A growing body of research has examined how people judge the persistence of identity over time—that is, how they decide that a particular individual is the same entity from one time to the next. While a great deal of progress has been made in understanding the types of features that people typically consider when making such judgments, to date, existing work has not explored how these judgments may be shaped by normative considerations. The present studies demonstrate that normative beliefs do a…Read more
  •  3
  •  116
    What is experimental philosophy?
    The Philosophers' Magazine 28 37-39. 2004.
    Since the earliest days of analytic philosophy, it has been a common practice to appeal to intuitions about particular cases. Typically, the philosopher presents a hypothetical situation and then makes a claim of the form: ‘In this case, we would surely say....’ This claim about people’s intuitions then forms a part of an argument for some more general theory about the nature of our concepts or our use of language. One puzzling aspect of this practice is that it so rarely makes use of standard e…Read more
  •  136
    The case for Nietzschean moral psychology
    In Brian Leiter & Neil Sinhababu (eds.), Nietzsche and morality, Oxford University Press. 2007.
    Contemporary moral psychology has been dominated by two broad traditions, one usually associated with Aristotle, the other with Kant. The broadly Aristotelian approach emphasizes the role of childhood upbringing in the development of good moral character, and the role of such character in ethical behavior. The broadly Kantian approach emphasizes the role of freely chosen conscious moral principles in ethical behavior. We review a growing body of experimental evidence that suggests that both of t…Read more
  •  859
    Free Will and the Scientific Vision
    In Edouard Machery & Elizabeth O'Neill (eds.), Current Controversies in Experimental Philosophy, Routledge. 2014.
    A review of existing work in experimental philosophy on intuitions about free will. The paper argues that people ordinarily understand free human action, not as something that is caused by psychological states (beliefs, desires, etc.) but as something that completely transcends the normal causal order.
  •  166
    Ordinary ethical reasoning and the ideal of 'being yourself'
    Philosophical Psychology 18 (3). 2005.
    The psychological study of ethical reasoning tends to concentrate on a few specific issues, with the bulk of the research going to the study of people's attitudes toward moral rules or the welfare of others. But people's ethical reasoning is also shaped by a wide range of other concerns. Here I focus on the importance that people attach to the ideal of being yourself. It is shown that certain experimental results - results that seemed anomalous and inexplicable to researchers who focused on mora…Read more