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54Book Review: Emotions: An Essay in Aid of Moral Psychology (review)Journal of Moral Philosophy 1 (1): 105-108. 2004.Book review
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58Review of Jeff McMahan, The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2002 (11). 2002.
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88Philosophy for A2Routledge. 2008.Philosophy for AS is the definitive textbook for students of the current AQA Advanced Subsidiary Level. Structured closely around the examination specifications, it covers the two units of the AS Level in an exceptionally clear and student-friendly style. As an invitation to philosophy, the book encourages and enables students to engage philosophically with the following syllabus topics: reason and experience Why should I be governed? Why should I be moral? the idea of God persons knowledge of t…Read more
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56Inferring Motives in Psychology and PsychoanalysisPhilosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 19 (3): 197-212. 2012.Grünbaum argues that psychoanalysis cannot justify its inferences regarding motives using its own methodology, as only the employment of Mill’s canons can justify causal inferences (which inferences to motives are). I consider an argument offered by Hopkins regarding the nature and status of our everyday inferences from other people’s behavior to their motives that seeks to rebut Grünbaum’s charge by defending a form of inference to the best explanation that makes use of connections in intention…Read more
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377Book review of Dancy, J., "Ethics Without Principles" (review)Philosophical Quarterly 55 (221). 2005.Book review
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1039The psychology of evil: a contribution from psychoanalysisIn Pedro Alexis Tabensky (ed.), The positive function of evil, Palgrave-macmillan. 2009.It has often been noted that evil – by which I mean evil in human motivation and action – is difficult to understand. We find it hard to make sense of what ‘drives’ a person to commit evil. This is not because we cannot recognise or identify with some aspect of the psychology of evil; we all experience feelings of envy, spite, cruelty, and hatred. But somehow this shared experience can seem insufficient, and we are left at a loss as to how such natural, universal human motivations could have res…Read more
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14Philosophy for A2: Unit 3 is the definitive textbook for students of the current AQA Advanced Level syllabus. Structured very closely around the AQA specifications for Unit 3: Key Themes in Philosophy, it introduces the student to each of the core themes: philosophy of mind political philosophy epistemology and metaphysics moral philosophy philosophy of religion. All chapters are helpfully subdivided into short digestible passages, and include: quiz questions to test core knowledge discussion qu…Read more
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107Psychoanalysis, emotions and living a good lifeThink 12 (33): 41-51. 2013.ExtractThe central question of ethics is ‘How should I live?’. It covers not only actions, but more broadly, our reactions and our characters, questions of what we should feel and how we should be as people. This has been the central concern of theories of virtue. Aristotle claimed that a virtue is a character trait that enables us to ‘stand well’ in relation to our desires and emotions. To be virtuous with regard to a type of emotion – anger, sadness, joy, fear, etc. – is to feel that type of e…Read more
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158Expert Moral Intuition and Its Development: A Guide to the DebateTopoi 34 (2): 1-17. 2015.In this article, I provide a guide to some current thinking in empirical moral psychology on the nature of moral intuitions, focusing on the theories of Haidt and Narvaez. Their debate connects to philosophical discussions of virtue theory and the role of emotions in moral epistemology. After identifying difficulties attending the current debate around the relation between intuitions and reasoning, I focus on the question of the development of intuitions. I discuss how intuitions could be shaped…Read more
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43The academic face of psychoanalysis: papers in philosophy, the humanities, and the British clinical tradition (edited book)Routledge. 2007.Ever since Freud, psychoanalysts have explored the connections between psychoanalysis and literature and psychoanalysis and philosophy, while literary criticism, social science and philosophy have all reflected on and made use of ideas from psychoanalytic theory. The Academic Face of Psychoanalysis presents contributions from these fields and gives the reader an insight into different understandings and applications of psychoanalytic theory. This book comprises twelve contributions from experts …Read more
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32Review of Marcia Cavell, Becoming a Subject (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2006 (10). 2006.Marcia Cavell’s recent book is the continuation of a ‘conversation between philosophy and psychoanalysis’ in which she has been engaged for some time. Her previous monograph, The Psychoanalytic Mind (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), was a powerful and sustained argument in favour of an interpretation of psychoanalysis and children’s mental development informed by a broadly Davidsonian perspective on mind and meaning. Her theme in Becoming a Subject is the nature of self, which she…Read more
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14Philosophy for A2: Unit 3: Key Themes in PhilosophyRoutledge. 2009.Philosophy for A2: Unit 3 is the definitive textbook for students of the current AQA Advanced Level syllabus. Structured very closely around the AQA specifications for Unit 3: Key Themes in Philosophy, it introduces the student to each of the core themes: philosophy of mind political philosophy epistemology and metaphysics moral philosophy philosophy of religion. All chapters are helpfully subdivided into short digestible passages, and include: quiz questions to test core knowledge discussion qu…Read more
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1891Moral philosophy (unit 2)In Elizabeth Burns & Stephen Law (eds.), Philosophy for AS and A2, Routledge. 2004.
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191Do unconscious emotions involve unconscious feelings?Philosophical Psychology 20 (1): 81-104. 2007.The very idea of unconscious emotion has been thought puzzling. But in recent debate about emotions, comparatively little attention has been given explicitly to the question. I survey a number of recent attempts by philosophers to resolve the puzzle and provide some preliminary remarks about their viability. I identify and discuss three families of responses: unconscious emotions involve conscious feelings, unconscious emotions involve no feelings at all, and unconscious emotions involve unconsc…Read more
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44The problem of suggestion in psychoanalysis: An analysis and solutionPhilosophical Psychology 26 (5): 718-743. 2013.From its inception, psychoanalysis has been troubled by the problem of suggestion. I defend an answer to the problem of suggestion understood as a methodological concern about the evidential basis of psychoanalytic theory. This purely methodological approach is relatively uncommon in discussions in psychoanalysis. I argue that suggestion in psychoanalysis is best understood in terms of experimenter expectancy effects. Such effects are not specific to psychoanalysis, and they can be corrected for…Read more
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29Philosophy for As: 2008 Aqa SyllabusRoutledge. 2008.Philosophy for AS is the definitive textbook for students of the current AQA Advanced Subsidiary Level. Structured closely around the examination specifications, it covers the two units of the AS Level in an exceptionally clear and student-friendly style. As an invitation to philosophy, the book encourages and enables students to engage philosophically with the following syllabus topics: reason and experience Why should I be governed? Why should I be moral? the idea of God persons knowledge of t…Read more
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University College LondonResearch Department of Clinical and Educational PsychologyReader (Part-time)
London, London, City of, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Meta-Ethics |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Mind |
Meta-Ethics |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |