•  396
    Kriegel on the Phenomenology of Action
    Rivista Internazionale di Filosofia e Psicologia 7 (2): 264-272. 2016.
    : I focus on Uriah Kriegel’s account of conative phenomenology. I agree with Kriegel’s argument that some conative phenomenology is primitive in that some conative phenomenal properties cannot be reduced to another kind of property. I disagree, however, with Kriegel’s specific characterization of the properties in question. Kriegel argues that the experience of deciding-and-then-trying is the core of conative phenomenology. I argue, however, that the experiences of trying and acting better occup…Read more
  •  394
    Deciding as Intentional Action: Control over Decisions
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 93 (2): 335-351. 2015.
    Common-sense folk psychology and mainstream philosophy of action agree about decisions: these are under an agent's direct control, and are thus intentional actions for which agents can be held responsible. I begin this paper by presenting a problem for this view. In short, since the content of the motivational attitudes that drive deliberation and decision remains open-ended until the moment of decision, it is unclear how agents can be thought to exercise control over what they decide at the mom…Read more
  •  384
    Practical Structure and Moral Skill
    Philosophical Quarterly 72 (3): 713-732. 2022.
    I argue that moral skill is limited and precarious. It is limited because global moral skill—the capacity for morally excellent behaviour within an über action domain, such as the domain of living, or of all-things-considered decisions, or the same kind of capacity applied across a superset of more specific action domains—is not to be found in humans. It is precarious because relatively local moral skill, while possible, is prone to misfire. My arguments depend upon the diversity of practical st…Read more
  •  384
    Why does the mind wander?
    Neuroscience of Consciousness. forthcoming.
    I seek an explanation for the etiology and the function of mind wandering episodes. My proposal – which I call the cognitive control proposal – is that mind wandering is a form of non-conscious guidance due to cognitive control. When the agent’s current goal is deemed insufficiently rewarding, the cognitive control system initiates a search for a new, more rewarding goal. This search is the process of unintentional mind wandering. After developing the proposal, and relating it to literature on m…Read more
  •  377
    Non-Human Moral Status: Problems with Phenomenal Consciousness
    American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 14 (2): 148-157. 2023.
    Consciousness-based approaches to non-human moral status maintain that consciousness is necessary for (some degree or level of) moral status. While these approaches are intuitive to many, in this paper I argue that the judgment that consciousness is necessary for moral status is not secure enough to guide policy regarding non-humans, that policies responsive to the moral status of non-humans should take seriously the possibility that psychological features independent of consciousness are suffic…Read more
  •  363
    The moral status of conscious subjects
    In Stephen Clarke, Hazem Zohny & Julian Savulescu (eds.), Rethinking Moral Status. forthcoming.
    The chief themes of this discussion are as follows. First, we need a theory of the grounds of moral status that could guide practical considerations regarding how to treat the wide range of potentially conscious entities with which we are acquainted – injured humans, cerebral organoids, chimeras, artificially intelligent machines, and non-human animals. I offer an account of phenomenal value that focuses on the structure and sophistication of phenomenally conscious states at a time and over time…Read more
  •  354
    Flow and the dynamics of conscious thought
    Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 21 (4): 969-988. 2022.
    The flow construct has been influential within positive psychology, sport psychology, the science of consciousness, the philosophy of agency, and popular culture. In spite of its longstanding influence, it remains unclear [a] how the constituents of the flow state ‘hang together’—how they relate to each other causally and functionally—[b] in what sense flow is an ‘optimal experience,’ and [c] how best to describe the unique phenomenology of the flow state. As a result, difficulties persist for a…Read more
  •  326
    It seems obvious that phenomenally conscious experience is something of great value, and that this value maps onto a range of important ethical issues. For example, claims about the value of life for those in a permanent vegetative state, debates about treatment and study of disorders of consciousness, controversies about end-of-life care for those with advanced dementia, and arguments about the moral status of embryos, fetuses, and non-human animals arguably turn on the moral significance of va…Read more
  •  250
    Disappearing agents, mental action, rational glue
    In Michael Brent & Lisa Miracchi Titus (eds.), Mental action and the conscious mind, Routledge. pp. 14-30. forthcoming.
    This chapter revolves around the problem of the disappearing agent. Shepherd suggests that as typically formulated, the problem relies on an improper focus upon the causation of action, and an inadequate characterization of agency. One result is that a key function of mental action for human agents tends to be misconstrued. Furthermore, Shepherd argues that an adequate characterization of agency illuminates why agents may seem (misleadingly) to disappear in some cases of action, and illuminates …Read more
  •  243
    Free Will and Consciousness: Experimental Studies
    Consciousness and Cognition 21 (2): 915-927. 2012.
    What are the folk-conceptual connections between free will and consciousness? In this paper I present results which indicate that consciousness plays central roles in folk conceptions of free will. When conscious states cause behavior, people tend to judge that the agent acted freely. And when unconscious states cause behavior, people tend to judge that the agent did not act freely. Further, these studies contribute to recent experimental work on folk philosophical affiliation, which analyzes fo…Read more
  •  231
    These comments, which take the form of criticism and response, were the basis of a zoom conversation at the Eastern APA, January 2021. Josh is putting them up on philpapers (with permission from all involved) in case they are helpful to people interested in the themes of this book.
  •  209
    Conscious cognitive effort in cognitive control
    WIREs Cognitive Science. forthcoming.
    Cognitive effort is thought to be familiar in everyday life, ubiquitous across multiple variations of task and circumstance, and integral to cost/benefit computations that are themselves central to the proper functioning of cognitive control. In particular, cognitive effort is thought to be closely related to the assessment of cognitive control’s costs. I argue here that the construct of cognitive effort, as it is deployed in cognitive psychology and neuroscience, is problematically unclear. The…Read more
  •  185
    The targets of skill and their importance
    In Ellen Fridland & Carlotta Pavese (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Skill and Expertise, Routledge. 2020.
  •  181
    Situationism and Agency
    with Alfred R. Mele
    Journal of Practical Ethics 1 (1): 62-83. 2013.
    Research in psychology indicates that situations powerfully impact human behavior. Often, it seems, features of situations drive our behavior even when we remain unaware of these features or their influence. One response to this research is pessimism about human agency: human agents have little conscious control over their own behavior, and little insight into why they do what they do. In this paper we review classic and more recent studies indicating “the power of the situation,” and argue for …Read more
  •  155
    Bodily Skill
    In Adrian Alsmith & Matthew Longo (eds.), Routledge Handbook of body awareness, Routledge. 2022.
    To a first approximation, ‘bodily skill’ refers to the capacity to successfully utilize the body in the world to achieve goals. But the body is complex, and bodily skill manifests in many different ways. Further, work on bodily skill spans the philosophy of mind, action, and cognitive science, as well as the sciences of motor control and perception. This chapter aims to provide an overview of recent themes and key ideas. First, we review work on the nature of skill as such. Second, we discuss wa…Read more
  •  152
    Knowledge-how, Understanding-why and Epistemic Luck: an Experimental Study
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 10 (4): 701-734. 2019.
    Reductive intellectualists about knowledge-how hold, contra Ryle, that knowing how to do something is just a kind of propositional knowledge. In a similar vein, traditional reductivists about understanding-why insist, in accordance with a tradition beginning with Aristotle, that the epistemic standing one attains when one understands why something is so is itself just a kind of propositional knowledge—viz., propositional knowledge of causes. A point that has been granted on both sides of these d…Read more
  •  98
    Action, Attitude, and the Knobe Effect: Another Asymmetry
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 3 (2): 171-185. 2012.
    A majority of people regard the harmful side-effects of an agent’s behavior as much more intentional than an agent’s helpful side-effects. In this paper, I present evidence for a related asymmetry. When a side- effect action is an instance of harming, folk ascriptions are significantly impacted by the relative badness of either an agent’s main goal or her side- effect action, but not her attitude. Yet when a side- effect action is an instance of helping, folk ascriptions are sensitive to an agen…Read more
  •  67
    In this interesting paper, Lavazza and Massimini draw attention to a subset of the ethical issues surrounding the development and potential uses of cerebral organoids. This subset concerns the possibility that cerebral organoids may one day develop phenomenal consciousness, and thereby qualify as conscious subjects—that there may one day be something it is like to be an advanced cerebral organoid. This possibility may feel outlandish. But as Lavazza and Massimini demonstrate, the science of orga…Read more
  •  59
    Halfhearted Action and Control
    Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 4. 2017.
    Some of the things we do intentionally we do halfheartedly. I develop and defend an account of halfheartedness with respect to action on which one is halfhearted with respect to an action A if one’s overall motivation to A is weak. This requires getting clear on what it is to have some level of overall motivation with respect to an action, and on what it means to say one’s overall motivation is weak or strong. After developing this account, I defend the claim that one key functional expression o…Read more
  •  59
    The Moral Insignificance of Self‐consciousness
    European Journal of Philosophy 25 (2): 398-415. 2017.
    In this paper, I examine the claim that self-consciousness is highly morally significant, such that the fact that an entity is self-conscious generates strong moral reasons against harming or killing that entity. This claim is apparently very intuitive, but I argue it is false. I consider two ways to defend this claim: one indirect, the other direct. The best-known arguments relevant to self-consciousness's significance take the indirect route. I examine them and argue that in various ways they …Read more
  •  57
    Intentional action and knowledge-centered theories of control
    Philosophical Studies 180 (3): 957-977. 2023.
    Intentional action is, in some sense, non-accidental, and one common way action theorists have attempted to explain this is with reference to control. The idea, in short, is that intentional action implicates control, and control precludes accidentality. But in virtue of what, exactly, would exercising control over an action suffice to make it non-accidental in whatever sense is required for the action to be intentional? One interesting and prima facie plausible idea that we wish to explore in t…Read more
  •  47
    Consciousness and Quality of Life Research
    American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 7 (1): 54-55. 2016.
  •  46
    Human Brain Organoids and Consciousness
    with Takuya Niikawa, Yoshiyuki Hayashi, and Tsutomu Sawai
    Neuroethics 15 (1): 1-16. 2022.
    This article proposes a methodological schema for engaging in a productive discussion of ethical issues regarding human brain organoids, which are three-dimensional cortical neural tissues created using human pluripotent stem cells. Although moral consideration of HBOs significantly involves the possibility that they have consciousness, there is no widely accepted procedure to determine whether HBOs are conscious. Given that this is the case, it has been argued that we should adopt a precautiona…Read more
  •  44
    Mapping the Ethical Issues of Brain Organoid Research and Application
    with Tsutomu Sawai, Yoshiyuki Hayashi, Takuya Niikawa, Elizabeth Thomas, Tsung-Ling Lee, Alexandre Erler, Momoko Watanabe, and Hideya Sakaguchi
    American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 13 (2): 81-94. 2022.
  •  34
    Self-Association and Attentional Processing Regarding Perceptually Salient Items
    with Alejandra Sel, Jie Sui, and Glyn Humphreys
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 10 (4): 735-746. 2019.
    Earlier work has demonstrated that attention is indirectly cognitively malleable by processes of self-association – processes by which agents explicitly associate an item with the self. We extend this work by considering the manipulation of attention to both salient and non-salient objects. We demonstrate that self-association impacts attentional processing not only of non-salient objects, but also regarding salient items known to command attention. This result indicates the flexibility and susc…Read more
  •  23
    The power to exercise control is a crucial feature of agency. Necessarily, if S cannot exercise some degree of control over anything - any state of affairs, event, process, object, or whatever - S is not an agent. If S is not an agent, S cannot act intentionally, responsibly, or rationally, nor can S possess or exercise free will. In my dissertation I reflect on the nature of control, and on the roles consciousness plays in its exercise. I first consider the fragmented state of philosophical and…Read more
  •  14
    Corrigendum
    Mind 130 (517): 377-377. 2021.