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386Morality is fundamentally an evolved solution to problems of social cooperationCritique of Anthropology. forthcoming.
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39A cross-cultural assessment of the semantic dimensions of intellectual humilityAI and Society 34 (4): 785-801. 2019.Intellectual humility can be broadly construed as being conscious of the limits of one’s existing knowledge and capable of acquiring more knowledge, which makes it a key virtue of the information age. However, the claim “I am humble” seems paradoxical in that someone who has the disposition in question would not typically volunteer it. Therefore, measuring intellectual humility via self-report may be methodologically unsound. As a consequence, we suggest analyzing intellectual humility semantica…Read more
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1353The philosophical basis of algorithmic recourseFairness, Accountability, and Transparency Conference 2020. forthcoming.Philosophers have established that certain ethically important val- ues are modally robust in the sense that they systematically deliver correlative benefits across a range of counterfactual scenarios. In this paper, we contend that recourse – the systematic process of reversing unfavorable decisions by algorithms and bureaucracies across a range of counterfactual scenarios – is such a modally ro- bust good. In particular, we argue that two essential components of a good life – temporally extend…Read more
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80Vices of Other Minds: Review of Cassam’s Vices of the MindEthical Theory and Moral Practice 23 (5): 875-879. 2019.
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49The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Humility (edited book)Routledge. 2021.Humility is a vital aspect of political discussion, social media and self-help, whilst recent empirical research has linked humility to improved well-being, open-mindedness and increased accuracy in assessing persuasive messages. It is also a topic central to research and discussion in philosophy, applied ethics and religious studies. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Humility is the first collection to present a comprehensive overview the philosophy of humility, whilst also covering impor…Read more
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530Knowledge From Vice: Deeply Social EpistemologyMind 129 (515): 887-915. 2020.In the past two decades, epistemologists have significantly expanded the focus of their field. To the traditional question that has dominated the debate — under what conditions does belief amount to knowledge? — they have added questions about testimony, epistemic virtues and vices, epistemic trust, and more. This broadening of the range of epistemic concern has coincided with an expansion in conceptions of epistemic agency beyond the individualism characteristic of most earlier epistemology. We…Read more
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77Guest Editors' Introduction: Examining Moral Emotions in Nietzsche with the Semantic Web Exploration Tool: NietzscheJournal of Nietzsche Studies 50 (1): 1-10. 2019.Five years ago, the Journal of Nietzsche Studies published a special issue on Nietzsche and the affects. In it, Aurelia Armstrong wrote generically about the passions, Michael Ure discussed Schadenfreude, Joanne Faulkner addressed disgust, and Joseph Kuzma focused on eroticism.1 In subsequent issues, authors have discussed love,2 emotion in general,3 resentment,4 compassion,5 honor and empathy,6 and affect in general.7 This special section on emotions and reactive attitudes is a chance to take s…Read more
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16Shame for Kantians, and OthersCriminal Justice Ethics 37 (3): 275-286. 2018.In Naked, Krista K. Thomason offers a multifaceted account of shame, covering its nature as an emotion, its positive and negative roles in moral life, its association with violence, and its provoca...
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2003Can Real Social Epistemic Networks Deliver the Wisdom of Crowds?In Tania Lombrozo, Joshua Knobe & Shaun Nichols (eds.), Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy, Volume 1, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.In this paper, we explain and showcase the promising methodology of testimonial network analysis and visualization for experimental epistemology, arguing that it can be used to gain insights and answer philosophical questions in social epistemology. Our use case is the epistemic community that discusses vaccine safety primarily in English on Twitter. In two studies, we show, using both statistical analysis and exploratory data visualization, that there is almost no neutral or ambivalent discuss…Read more
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320Krista K. Thomason, Naked: The Dark Side of Shame and Moral Life, Oxford University Press, 2018.Criminal Justice Ethics. forthcoming.In Naked, Krista K. Thomason offers a multi-faceted account of shame, covering its nature as an emotion, its positive and negative roles in moral life, its association with violence, and its provocation through invitations to shame, public shaming, and stigmatization. Along the way, she reflects on a range of examples drawn from literature, memoirs, journalism, and her own imagination. She also considers alternative views at length, draws a wealth of important distinctions, and articulates many …Read more
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1462Constructing and validating a scale of inquisitive curiosityIn Ilhan Inan, Lani Watson, Dennis Whitcomb & Safiye Yigit (eds.), The Moral Psychology of Curiosity, Rowman & Littlefield International. 2018.We advance the understanding of the philosophy and psychology of curiosity by operationalizing and constructing an empirical measure of Nietzsche’s conception of inquisitive curiosity, expressed by the German term Wissbegier, (“thirst for knowledge” or “need/impetus to know”) and Neugier (“curiosity” or “inquisitiveness”). First, we show that existing empirical measures of curiosity do not tap the construct of inquisitive curiosity, though they may tap related constructs such as idle curiosity a…Read more
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577The epistemic function of contempt and laughter in NietzscheIn Michelle Mason (ed.), The Moral Psychology of Contempt, Rowman & Littlefield International. 2018.Interpreters have noticed that Nietzsche, in addition to sometimes being uproariously funny, reflects more on laughter and having a sense of humor than almost any other philosopher. Several scholars have further noticed that Nietzschean laughter sometimes seems to have an epistemic function. In this chapter, I assume that Nietzsche is a pluralist about the functions of humor and laughter, and seek to establish the uses he finds for them. I offer an interpretation according to which he tactically…Read more
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501Development and validation of a multi-dimensional measure of intellectual humilityPLoS ONE 12 (8). 2017.This paper presents five studies on the development and validation of a scale of intellectual humility. This scale captures cognitive, affective, behavioral, and motivational components of the construct that have been identified by various philosophers in their conceptual analyses of intellectual humility. We find that intellectual humility has four core dimensions: Open-mindedness (versus Arrogance), Intellectual Modesty (versus Vanity), Corrigibility (versus Fragility), and Engagement (versus …Read more
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1082Technological Seduction and Self-RadicalizationJournal of the American Philosophical Association (3): 298-322. 2018.Many scholars agree that the Internet plays a pivotal role in self-radicalization, which can lead to behaviours ranging from lone-wolf terrorism to participation in white nationalist rallies to mundane bigotry and voting for extremist candidates. However, the mechanisms by which the Internet facilitates self-radicalization are disputed; some fault the individuals who end up self-radicalized, while others lay the blame on the technology itself. In this paper, we explore the role played by technol…Read more
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393A research program for empirically informed ethicsIn Empirically Informed Ethics, Springer. pp. 3-27. 2013.
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870Ethical issues of 'morality mining': When the moral identity of individuals becomes a focus of data-miningIn Hakikur Rahman & Isabel Ramos (eds.), Ethical Data Mining Applications for Socio-Economic Development, Igi Global. pp. 1-21. 2013.
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77Extending the situationist challenge to reliabilism about inferenceIn Abrol Fairweather & Owen Flanagan (eds.), Virtue Epistemology Naturalized: Bridges between Virtue Epistemology and Philosophy of Science, Synthese Library. pp. 103-122. 2014.
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191Character as Moral FictionCambridge University Press. 2013.Everyone wants to be virtuous, but recent psychological investigations suggest that this may not be possible. Mark Alfano challenges this theory and asks, not whether character is empirically adequate, but what characters human beings could have and develop. Although psychology suggests that most people do not have robust character traits such as courage, honesty and open-mindedness, Alfano argues that we have reason to attribute these virtues to people because such attributions function as self…Read more
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559Implications for virtue epistemology from psychological science: Intelligence as an interactionist virtueIn Heather Battaly (ed.), Handbook of Virtue Epistemology, Routledge. pp. 433-445. 2018.This chapter aims to expand the body of empirical literature considered relevant to virtue theory beyond the burned-over districts that are the situationist challenges to virtue ethics and epistemology. We thus raise a rather simple-sounding question: why doesn’t virtue epistemology have an account of intelligence? In the first section, we sketch the history and present state of the person-situation debate to argue for the importance of an interactionist framework in bringing psychological resea…Read more
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278Current Controversies in Virtue Theory (edited book)Routledge. 2015.Virtue is among the most venerable concepts in philosophy, and has recently seen a major revival. However, new challenges to conceptions of virtue have also arisen. In _Current Controversies in Virtue Theory_, five pairs of cutting-edge philosophers square off over central topics in virtue theory: the nature of virtue, the connection between virtue and flourishing, the connection between moral and epistemic virtues, the way in which virtues are acquired, and the possibility of attaining virtue. …Read more
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221Sensitivity Theory and the Individuation of Belief-Formation MethodsErkenntnis 70 (2): 271-281. 2009.In this paper it is argued that sensitivity theory suffers from a fatal defect. Sensitivity theory is often glossed as: (1) S knows that p only if S would not believe that p if p were false. As Nozick showed in his pioneering work on sensitivity theory, this formulation needs to be supplemented by a further counterfactual condition: (2) S knows that p only if S would believe p if p were true. Nozick further showed that the theory needs a qualification on the method used to form the belief. Howev…Read more
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88Ethics, morality, and game theoryGames 9 (2). 2018.Ethics is a field in which the gap between words and actions looms large. Game theory and the empirical methods it inspires look at behavior instead of the lip service people sometimes pay to norms. We believe that this special issue comprises several illustrations of the fruitful application of this approach to ethics.
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518Swanton, Christine. The Virtue Ethics of Hume and Nietzsche.Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2015. Pp. 248. $99.95Ethics 126 (4): 1120-1124. 2016.This book has a noble aim: to free virtue ethics from the grip of the neo- Aristotelianism that limits its scope in contemporary Anglophone philosophy. Just as there are deontological views that are not Kant’s or even Kantian, just as there are consequentialist views that are not Bentham’s or even utilitarian, so, Swanton contends, there are viable virtue ethical views that are not Aristotle’s or even Aristotelian. Indeed, the history of both Eastern and Western philosophy suggests that the majo…Read more
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46A cross-cultural assessment of the semantic dimensions of intellectual humilityAI and Society 34 (4): 785-801. 2019.Intellectual humility can be broadly construed as being conscious of the limits of one’s existing knowledge and capable of acquiring more knowledge, which makes it a key virtue of the information age. However, the claim “I am humble” seems paradoxical in that someone who has the disposition in question would not typically volunteer it. Therefore, measuring intellectual humility via self-report may be methodologically unsound. As a consequence, we suggest analyzing intellectual humility semantica…Read more
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33The Nietzschean self: moral psychology, agency, and the unconscious (review)British Journal for the History of Philosophy 26 (3): 637-640. 2018.
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533Nietzsche’s polychrome exemplarismEthics and Politics 2 45-64. 2018.In this paper, I develop an account of Nietzschean exemplarism. Drawing on my previous work, I argue that an agent’s instincts and other drives constitute her psychological type. In this framework, a drive counts as a virtue to the extent that it is well-calibrated with the rest of the agent’s psychic economy and meets with sentiments of approbation from the agent’s community. Different virtues are fitting for different types, and different types elicit different discrete emotions in people with…Read more
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693A plague on both your houses: Virtue theory after situationism and repligateTeoria. forthcoming.Virtues are dispositions that make their bearers admirable. Dispositions can be studied scientifically by systematically varying whether their alleged bearers are in (or take themselves to be in) the dispositions' eliciting conditions. In recent decades, empirically-minded philosophers looked to social and personality psychology to study the extent to which ordinary humans embody dispositions traditionally considered admirable in the Aristotelian tradition. This led some to conclude that virtues…Read more
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722Natural Language Processing and Semantic Network Visualization for PhilosophersIn Eugen Fischer & Mark Curtis (eds.), Methodological Advances in Experimental Philosophy, Bloomsbury Press. 2019.Progress in philosophy is difficult to achieve because our methods are evidentially and rhetorically weak. In the last two decades, experimental philosophers have begun to employ the methods of the social sciences to address philosophical questions. However, the adequacy of these methods has been called into question by repeated failures of replication. Experimental philosophers need to incorporate more robust methods to achieve a multi-modal perspective. In this chapter, we describe and showcas…Read more
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778Nudges and other moral technologies in the context of power: Assigning and accepting responsibilityIn Boonin David (ed.), Handbook of Philosophy and Public Policy, Palgrave. 2018.Strawson argues that we should understand moral responsibility in terms of our practices of holding responsible and taking responsibility. The former covers what is commonly referred to as backward-looking responsibility , while the latter covers what is commonly referred to as forward-looking responsibility . We consider new technologies and interventions that facilitate assignment of responsibility. Assigning responsibility is best understood as the second- or third-personal analogue of takin…Read more
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733The Seduction of Winston SmithIn Ezio Di Nucci & Stefan Storrie (eds.), 1984 and philosophy, is resistance futile?, Open Court. 2018.On the first page of 1984, Winston Smith is confronted with several posters featuring the face of Big Brother and the famous sentence, “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU.” This may not seem like a promising way to seduce someone, but the seduction of Winston Smith by Big Brother in 1984 is a most unusual love story. I call it a seduction because Winston’s mind and heart are slowly won over in the aptly-named Ministry of Love. Moreover, in the final scene of the novel, Winston gazes, with tears in his …Read more
CUNY
Alumnus, 2011
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Mind |
Normative Ethics |
19th Century Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Social Epistemology |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Language, Miscellaneous |
PhilPapers Editorships
Skepticism about Character |