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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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252'Ought' implies 'can' and the principle of alternate possibilitiesAnalysis 59 (3): 218-222. 1999.
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85Review: 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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28Locke on Suspending, Refraining and the Freedom to WillHistory of Philosophy Quarterly 18 (4). 2001.
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184Indoctrination, 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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17The Office of an Introspectible Sensation: A reply to Falkenstein and GrandiJournal of Scottish Philosophy 1 (2): 135-140. 2003.
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48Comments on John Fischer’s My WayPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 80 (1): 251-258. 2009.
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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, Usa. 2011.
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37"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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