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54Manifest activity: Thomas Reid's theory of actionOxford University Press. 2004.Manifest Activity presents and critically examines the model of human power, the will, our capacities for purposeful conduct, and the place of our agency in the natural world of one of the most important and traditionally under-appreciated philosophers of the 18th century: Thomas Reid. For Reid, contrary to the view of many of his predecessors, it is simply manifest that we are active with respect to our behaviours; it is manifest, he thinks, that our actions are not merely remote products of fo…Read more
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61Intending to AidLaw and Philosophy 33 (1): 1-40. 2014.Courts and commentators are notoriously puzzled about the mens rea standards for complicity. Accomplices intend to aid, but what attitude need they have towards the crimes that they aid? This paper both criticizes extant accounts of the mens rea of complicity and offers a new account. The paper argues that an intention can commit one to an event’s occurrence without committing one to promoting the event, or making it more likely to take place. Under the proposed account of the mens rea of compli…Read more
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58Desert for WrongdoingThe Journal of Ethics 20 (1-3): 149-171. 2016.Much government and personal conduct is premised on the idea that a person made thereby to suffer deserves that suffering thanks to prior wrongdoing by him. Further, it often appears that one kind of suffering is more deserved than another and, in light of that, conduct inflicting the first is superior, or closer to being justified than conduct inflicting the second. Yet desert is mysterious. It is far from obvious what, exactly, it is. This paper offers and argues for a theory of comparative de…Read more
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116Thomas Reid on consciousness and attentionCanadian Journal of Philosophy 39 (2). 2009.It was common enough in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to find philosophers holding the position that for something to be ‘in the mind’ and for that mind to be conscious of it are one and the same thing. The thought is that consciousness is a relation between a mind and a mental entity playing the same role as the relation of inherence found between a substance and qualities belonging to it. What it is, on this view, for something to ‘inhere’ in the mind is for that mind to be consciou…Read more
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326Recent Work on Addiction and Responsible AgencyPhilosophy and Public Affairs 30 (2): 178-221. 2001.
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Nicholas Jolley: Locke: His Philosophical ThoughtBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 8 (2): 384-385. 2000.
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4Locke on ideas of identity and diversityIn Lex Newman (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding", Cambridge University Press. 2007.
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55Waldron's Locke and Locke's Waldron: A review of Jeremy Waldron's God, Locke, and equality (review)Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 49 (2). 2006.This Article does not have an abstract
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48Moore on causing, acting, and complicityLegal Theory 18 (4): 437-458. 2012.In Michael Moore's important book Causation and Responsibility, he holds that causal contribution matters to responsibility independently of its relevance to action. We are responsible for our actions, according to Moore, because where there is action, we typically also find the kind of causal contribution that is crucial for responsibility. But it is causation, and not action, that bears the normative weight. This paper assesses this claim and argues that Moore's reasons for it are unconvincing…Read more
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15Thomas Reid on Consciousness and AttentionCanadian Journal of Philosophy 39 (2): 165-194. 2009.It was common enough in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to find philosophers holding the position that for something to be ‘in the mind’ and for that mind to be conscious of it are one and the same thing. The thought is that consciousness is a relation between a mind and a mental entity playing the same role as the relation of inherence found between a substance and qualities belonging to it. What it is, on this view, for something to ‘inhere’ in the mind is for that mind to be consciou…Read more
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162Excusing mistakes of lawPhilosophers' Imprint 9 1-22. 2009.Whether we understand it descriptively or normatively, the slogan that ignorance of the law is no excuse is false. Our legal system sometimes excuses those who are ignorant of the law on those grounds and should. Still, the slogan contains a grain of truth; mistakes of law excuse less readily than mistakes of fact, and ought to. This paper explains the asymmetry by identifying a principle of excuse of the form “If defendant D has a false belief that p and _____, then D is excused”, which has the…Read more
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