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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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77'Ought' implies 'can' and the principle of alternate possibilitiesAnalysis 59 (3): 218-222. 1999.
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87Review: James Harris: Of Liberty and Necessity: The Free Will Debate in Eighteenth-Century British Philosophy (review)Mind 117 (466): 480-483. 2008.
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4Locke on Suspending, Refraining and the Freedom to WillHistory of Philosophy Quarterly 18 (4). 2001.
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174Indoctrination, coercion and freedom of willPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 67 (2). 2003.Manipulation by another person often undermines freedom. To explain this, a distinction is drawn between two forms of manipulation: indoctrination is defined as causing another person to respond to reasons in a pattern that serves the manipulator’s ends; coercion as supplying another person with reasons that, given the pattern in which he responds to reasons, lead him to act in ways that serve the manipulator’s ends. It is argued that both forms of manipulation undermine freedom because manipula…Read more
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24Comments on John Fischer’s My WayPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 80 (1): 251-258. 2009.
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18The Office of an Introspectible Sensation: A reply to Falkenstein and GrandiJournal of Scottish Philosophy 1 (2): 135-140. 2003.
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73Reconsidering Reid's geometry of visiblesPhilosophical Quarterly 52 (209): 602-620. 2002.In his 'Inquiry', Reid claims, against Berkeley, that there is a science of the perspectival shapes of objects ('visible figures'): they are geometrically equivalent to shapes projected onto the surfaces of spheres. This claim should be understood as asserting that for every theorem regarding visible figures there is a corresponding theorem regarding spherical projections; the proof of the theorem regarding spherical projections can be used to construct a proof of the theorem regarding visible f…Read more
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51Attempts: In the Philosophy of Action and the Criminal LawOxford University Press. 2010.Gideon Yaffe presents a ground-breaking work which demonstrates the importance of philosophy of action for the law. Many people are serving sentences not for completing crimes, but for trying to. Yaffe's clear account of what it is to try to do something promises to resolve the difficulties courts face in the adjudication of attempted crimes.
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33More on “Ought” Implies “Can” and the Principle of Alternate PossibilitiesMidwest Studies in Philosophy 29 (1): 307-312. 2005.
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Trying to Kill the Dead : De Dicto and De Re Intention in Attempted CrimesIn Andrei Marmor & Scott Soames (eds.), Philosophical foundations of language in the law, Oxford University Press. 2011.
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38"the Government Beguiled Me": The Entrapment Defense and the Problem of Private EntrapmentJournal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 1 (1): 1-50. 2005.Defendants who are being tried for accepting a temptation issued by the government sometimes employ the entrapment defense. Acquittal of some of them is thought to be justified either on the grounds that culpability was undermined by the temptation or on the grounds that the government acted objectionably in issuing the temptation . Advocates of the objective approach often criticize those who employ the subjective by citing what is here called “the problem of private entrapment”: we don’t grant…Read more
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67Promises, social acts, and Reid's first argument for moral libertyJournal of the History of Philosophy 45 (2): 267-289. 2007.This paper is concerned to bring out the philosophical contribution that Thomas Reid makes in his discussions of promising. Reid discusses promising in two contexts: he argues that the practice of promising presupposes the belief that the promisor is endowed with what he calls 'active power' , and he argues against Hume's claim that the very act of promising—and the obligation to do as one promised—are "artificial," or the products of human convention . In addition to explaining what Reid says i…Read more
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42More Attempts: A Reply to Duff, Husak, Mele and Walen (review)Criminal Law and Philosophy 6 (3): 429-444. 2012.In this paper, I reply to the very thoughtful comments on my book by Antony Duff, Doug Husak, Al Mele and Alec Walen
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34In Defense of Criminal PossessionCriminal Law and Philosophy 10 (3): 441-471. 2016.Criminal law casebooks and treatises frequently mention the possibility that criminal liability for possession is inconsistent with the Voluntary Act Requirement, which limits criminal liability to that which includes an act or an omission. This paper explains why criminal liability for possession is compatible with the Voluntary Act Requirement despite the fact that possession is a status. To make good on this claim, the paper defends the Voluntary Act Requirement, offers an account of the natu…Read more
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27Comment on Stephen Darwall’s The Second Person Standpoint: Morality, Respect and AccountabilityPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 81 (1): 246-252. 2010.
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96The Point of Mens Rea: The Case of Willful IgnoranceCriminal Law and Philosophy 12 (1): 19-44. 2018.Under the “Willful Ignorance Principle,” a defendant is guilty of a crime requiring knowledge he lacks provided he is ignorant thanks to having earlier omitted inquiry. In this paper, I offer a novel justification of this principle through application of the theory that knowledge matters to culpability because of how the knowing action manifests the agent’s failure to grant sufficient weight to other people’s interests. I show that, under a simple formal model that supports this theory, omitting…Read more
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23More on "Ought" Implies "Can" and the Principle of Alternate PossibilitiesMidwest Studies in Philosophy 29 (1): 307-312. 2005.
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143Locke on ideas of substance and the veil of perceptionPacific Philosophical Quarterly 85 (3). 2004.John Yolton has argued that Locke held a direct realist position according to which sensory ideas are not perceived intermediaries, as on the representational realist position, but acts that take material substances as objects. This paper argues that were Locke to accept the position Yolton attributes to him he could not at once account for appearance‐reality discrepancies and maintain one of his most important anti‐nativist arguments. The paper goes on to offer an interpretation of Locke's dist…Read more
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81The Voluntary Act RequirementIn Andrei Marmor (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Law, Routledge. pp. 174. 2012.
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