•  98
    Cases in which we find ourselves irrationally worried about whether we have done something we habitually do are familiar to most people, but they have received surprisingly little attention in the philosophical literature. In this paper, I argue that available accounts designed to explain superficially similar mismatches between agents’ behavior and their beliefs fail to explain these cases. In the kinds of cases which have served as paradigms for extant accounts, contents are poised to drive be…Read more
  •  8
    Self-Ownership
    Social Theory and Practice 28 (1): 77-99. 2002.
  •  267
    Addiction is not a brain disease (and it matters)
    Frontiers in Psychiatry 4 (24): 1--7. 2013.
    The claim that addiction is a brain disease is almost universally accepted among scientists who work on addiction. The claim’s attraction rests on two grounds: the fact that addiction seems to be characterized by dysfunction in specific neural pathways and the fact that the claim seems to the compassionate response to people who are suffering. I argue that neural dysfunction is not sufficient for disease: something is a brain disease only when neural dysfunction is sufficient for impairment. I c…Read more
  •  84
    Zimmerman’s The Immorality of Punishment: A Critical Essay (review)
    Criminal Law and Philosophy 9 (1): 103-112. 2015.
    In “The Immorality of Punishment”, Michael Zimmerman attempts to show that punishment is morally unjustified and therefore wrong. In this response, I focus on two main questions. First, I examine whether Zimmerman’s empirical claims—concerning our inability to identify wrongdoers who satisfy conditions on blameworthiness and who might be reformed through punishment, and the comparative efficacy of punitive and non-punitive responses to crime—stand up to scrutiny. Second, I argue that his crucial…Read more
  •  30
    Defending the Consciousness Thesis: A response to Robichaud, Sripada and Caruso
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 22 (7-8): 61-76. 2015.
    16 page
  •  151
    Neuroethics and the extended mind
    In Judy Illes & Barbara J. Sahakian (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Neuroethics, Oxford University Press. pp. 285. 2011.
    Neuroethics offers unprecedented opportunities as well as challenges. The challenges stem from the range of difficult ethical issues, which are confronted by neuroethicists. Issues concerning the nature of consciousness, of personal identity, free will, and so on, are all grist for the neuroethical mill. This article argues that this debate bears centrally on neuroethics and is significant for neuroethics. Whether the best interpretation of the facts to which proponents of the extended mind appe…Read more
  •  36
    Virtues Have Deeply Cultural Roots
    Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 14 (2): 195-202. 2015.
    8 page
  •  2
    The presumption against direct manipulation
    Neuroethics: Challenges for the 21st Century. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. forthcoming.
  •  111
    Culpable Ignorance
    Journal of Philosophical Research 41 263-271. 2016.
  •  260
    Implicit Bias and Moral Responsibility: Probing the Data
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 93 (3): 3-26. 2016.
  •  23
    The best of all possible paternalisms?
    Journal of Medical Ethics 40 (5): 304-305. 2014.
    I am grateful to the commentators, for their kind words and for their probing challenges. They range in the views they express, from those who seem to think I have not gone far enough in questioning the value of autonomy to those who think I have not challenged it at all. Given this diversity, it seems best to address their remarks sequentially.J D Trout is sympathetic to my project, and highlights his own work which supports it.1 Indeed, Trout's work—together with Michael Bishop and his own sta…Read more
  •  108
    This book brings cutting edge neuroscience and psychology into dialogue with philosophical reflection to illuminate the loss of control experienced by addicts, and thereby cast light on ordinary agency and the way in which it sometimes goes wrong
  •  163
    Foucault as Virtue Ethicist
    Foucault Studies 1 20-31. 2004.
    In his last two books and in the essays and interviews associated with them, Foucault develops a new mode of ethical thought he describes as an aesthetics of existence. I argue that this new ethics bears a striking resemblance to the virtue ethics that has become prominent in Anglo-American moral philosophy over the past three decades, in its classical sources, in its opposition to rule-based systems and its positive emphasis upon what Foucault called the care for the self. I suggest that seeing…Read more
  •  7
    Sartre
    ONEWorld Publications. 2002.
    This introduction traces the philosophical achievements of a thinker sonfluential that his death in 1980 brought 50,000 people on to the streets ofaris. The account of Jean-Paul Sartre - writer, journalist and intellectualornerstone of the 20th century - stretches from his early existential phaseo his later Marxist beliefs. With coverage of such major contemporary issuess human liberty, sociobiology, the ethics of work, and the influence ofenetics on ideas of individual freedom, Neil Levy uses a…Read more
  •  238
    Enhancing Authenticity
    Journal of Applied Philosophy 28 (3): 308-318. 2011.
    Some philosophers have criticized the use of psychopharmaceuticals on the grounds that even if these drugs enhance the person using them, they threaten their authenticity. Others have replied by pointing out that the conception of authenticity upon which this argument rests is contestable; on a rival conception, psychopharmaceuticals might be used to enhance our authenticity. Since, however, it is difficult to decide between these competing conceptions of authenticity, the debate seems to end in…Read more
  • On determinism and freedom (review)
    Philosophical Quarterly 56 (223): 310-312. 2006.
  •  73
    Morality on the brain (review)
    The Philosophers' Magazine 54 (54): 108-109. 2011.
  •  20
    Untimely Meditations
    Symposium 2 (1): 61-75. 1998.
    Most accounts of recent French intellectual history are organized around a fundamental rupture, which divides thought and thinkers into two eras: ‘modern’ and ‘postmodern’. But the attempts to identify the features which characterise these eras seem, at best, inconclusive. In this paper, I examine this rupture, by way of a comparison of two thinkers representative of the divide. Sartre seems as uncontroversially modern (and therefore out of date) as any twentieth-century can be, while Foucault’s…Read more
  •  126
    Does phenomenology overflow access?
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 15 (7): 29-38. 2008.
    Ned Block has influentially distinguished two kinds of consciousness, access and phenomenal consciousness. He argues that these two kinds of consciousness can dissociate, and therefore we cannot rely upon subjective report in constructing a science of consciousness. I argue that none of Block's evidence better supports his claim than the rival view, that access and phenomenal consciousness are perfectly correlated. Since Block's view is counterintuitive, and has wildly implausible implications, …Read more
  •  54
    The Intrinsic Value of Cultures
    Philosophy in the Contemporary World 9 (2): 49-57. 2002.
    Our intuitions concerning cultures show that we are committed to thinking that they are intrinsically valuable. I set out the conditions under which we attribute such value to cultures, and show that coming to possess intrinsic value is a matter of having the right kind of causal history.
  •  148
    Culture by nature
    Philosophical Explorations 14 (3): 237-248. 2011.
    One of the major conflicts in the social sciences since the Second World War has concerned whether, and to what extent, human beings have a nature. One view, traditionally associated with the political left, has rejected the notion that we have a contentful nature, and hoped thereby to underwrite the possibility that we can shape social institutions by references only to norms of justice, rather than our innate dispositions. This view has been in rapid retreat over the past three decades, in the…Read more
  •  189
    The concept of luck has played an important role in debates concerning free will and moral responsibility, yet participants in these debates have relied upon an intuitive notion of what luck is. Neil Levy develops an account of luck, which is then applied to the free will debate. He argues that the standard luck objection succeeds against common accounts of libertarian free will, but that it is possible to amend libertarian accounts so that they are no more vulnerable to luck than is compatibili…Read more
  •  26
    Review of moral psychology, volume 1, the evolution of morality (review)
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 87 (3). 2009.
    No abstract
  •  5
    Springer Handbook of Neuroethics (edited book)
    with Jens Clausen
    Dordrecht. 2014.
  •  91
    Ecological Engineering: Reshaping Our Environments to Achieve Our Goals
    Philosophy and Technology 25 (4): 589-604. 2012.
    Human beings are subject to a range of cognitive and affective limitations which interfere with our ability to pursue our individual and social goals. I argue that shaping our environment to avoid triggering these limitations or to constrain the harms they cause is likely to be more effective than genetic or pharmaceutical modifications of our capacities because our limitations are often the flip side of beneficial dispositions and because available enhancements seem to impose significant costs.…Read more