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29Willful Ignorance and Bad MotivesErkenntnis 84 (6): 1409-1428. 2019.Does willful ignorance mitigate blameworthiness? In many legal systems, willfully ignorant wrongdoers are considered as blameworthy as knowing wrongdoers. This is called the ‘equal culpability thesis’. Given that legal practice depends on it, the issue has obvious importance. Interestingly enough, however, there exists hardly any philosophical reflection on ECT. A recent exception is Alexander Sarch, who defends a restricted version of ECT. On Sarch’s view, ECT is true whenever willfully ignoran…Read more
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24Participation and DegreesUtilitas 34 (1): 39-56. 2022.What's wrong with joining corona parties? In this article, I defend the idea that reasons to avoid such parties come in degrees. I approach this issue from a participation-based perspective. Specifically, I argue that the more people are already joining the party, and the more likely it is that the virus will spread among everyone, the stronger the participation-based reason not to join. In defense of these degrees, I argue that they covary with the expression of certain attitudes.
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23Wat als Jones meer of minder weet?Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 105 (4): 254-256. 2013.Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.
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22Cooperation – Kantian-styleInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.Should you reduce your energy consumption? Tragically enough, it may be better for you, and for everyone involved, to refrain from doing so even if you care about the climate. Given this tragedy, why cooperate? This paper defends the view that not cooperating is morally problematic because it is not universalizable (in a Kantian sense). That is, I will argue that we have universalizability-based reasons to cooperate as long as we have a preference for ‘collective success’ (e.g. a sustainable pla…Read more
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21Indifference as excuseInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.According to an influential view, ‘the amount of blame people deserve varies with the extent of their indifference’. That is, the more wrongdoers act from a lack of moral concern, the more they would be blameworthy. This paper argues for the exact opposite claim: the more wrongdoers act from indifference, the less they are blameworthy – that is, in a properly interpersonal way.
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19Ordinary and Detached BlameworthinessJournal of Moral Philosophy 18 (1): 75-86. 2021.Elinor Mason argues that there are different kinds of blameworthiness: ordinary and detached. In the following, I summarize the key aspects of both kinds, and critically discuss the exact boundaries between them. According to Mason, we should not blame wrongdoers in the ordinary way if they do not know that their conduct is problematic. This is plausible insofar as the function of ordinary blame is to remind wrongdoers of values that they already share, but I will suggest that we need a slightly…Read more
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18De opschorting van het oordeelAlgemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 108 (1): 3-17. 2016.Suspension of Judgment What does it take to suspend one’s judgment? In this introduction to the special issue ‘Scepticism and the suspension of judgment’, I present a conceptual analysis of suspension of judgment (what it is, what it isn’t, and why we might want to do it). Basically I argue that suspension is a mental attitude of neutrality. If you suspend judgment on a certain proposition, you are neutral towards its truth. In addition, I make a few suggestions on how to further analyse this at…Read more
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17Blame TransferIn Philip Robichaud & Jan Willem Wieland (eds.), Responsibility - The Epistemic Condition, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.Many philosophers accept derivative blameworthiness for ignorant conduct – the idea that the blameworthiness for one’s ignorance can ‘transfer’ to blameworthiness for one’s subsequent ignorant conduct. In this chapter we ask the question what it actually means that blameworthiness would transfer, and explore four distinct views and their merits. On views (I) and (II), one’s overall degree of blameworthiness is determined by factors relevant to one’s ignorance and/or one’s subsequent conduct, and…Read more
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15Degrees of criminal culpabilityJurisprudence 12 (2): 269-281. 2021.According to Alexander Sarch, criminal culpability is a special kind of culpability, which moreover comes in degrees.1 This paper critically examines his acc...
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15Nuttige illusies puur geluk?Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 111 (1): 159-167. 2019.Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.
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9Willful Ignorance and Bad MotivesErkenntnis 84 (6): 1409-1428. 2019.Does willful ignorance mitigate blameworthiness? In many legal systems, willfully ignorant wrongdoers are considered as blameworthy as knowing wrongdoers. This is called the ‘equal culpability thesis’. Given that legal practice depends on it, the issue has obvious importance. Interestingly enough, however, there exists hardly any philosophical reflection on ECT. A recent exception is Alexander Sarch, who defends a restricted version of ECT. On Sarch’s view, ECT is true whenever willfully ignoran…Read more