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46Showing our seams: A reply to Eric FunkhouserPhilosophical Psychology 31 (7): 991-1006. 2018.ABSTRACTIn a recent paper published in this journal, Eric Funkhouser argues that some of our beliefs have the primary function of signaling to others, rather than allowing us to navigate the world. Funkhouser’s case is persuasive. However, his account of beliefs as signals is underinclusive, omitting both beliefs that are signals to the self and less than full-fledged beliefs as signals. The latter set of beliefs, moreover, has a better claim to being considered as constituting a psychological k…Read more
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14Response to Open Peer Commentaries on “Neuroethics: A New Way of Doing Ethics”American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 2 (2). 2011.
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35Responsibility as an Obstacle to Good Policy: The Case of Lifestyle Related DiseaseJournal of Bioethical Inquiry 15 (3): 459-468. 2018.There is a lively debate over who is to blame for the harms arising from unhealthy behaviours, like overeating and excessive drinking. In this paper, I argue that given how demanding the conditions required for moral responsibility actually are, we cannot be highly confident that anyone is ever morally responsible. I also adduce evidence that holding people responsible for their unhealthy behaviours has costs: it undermines public support for the measures that are likely to have the most impact …Read more
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69The regulation of cognitive enhancement devices : extending the medical modelJournal of Law and the Biosciences 1 (1): 68-93. 2014.This article presents a model for regulating cognitive enhancement devices. Recently, it has become very easy for individuals to purchase devices which directly modulate brain function. For example, transcranial direct current stimulators are increasingly being produced and marketed online as devices for cognitive enhancement. Despite posing risks in a similar way to medical devices, devices that do not make any therapeutic claims do not have to meet anything more than basic product safety stand…Read more
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68Do-it-yourself brain stimulation: a regulatory modelJournal of Medical Ethics 41 (5): 413-414. 2015.
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1533Moral significance of phenomenal consciousnessProgress in Brain Research. 2009.Recent work in neuroimaging suggests that some patients diagnosed as being in the persistent vegetative state are actually conscious. In this paper, we critically examine this new evidence. We argue that though it remains open to alternative interpretations, it strongly suggests the presence of consciousness in some patients. However, we argue that its ethical significance is less than many people seem to think. There are several different kinds of consciousness, and though all kinds of consciou…Read more
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80Routledge Companion to Free Will. (edited book)Routledge. 2017.Questions concerning free will are intertwined with issues in almost every area of philosophy, from metaphysics to philosophy of mind to moral philosophy, and are also informed by work in different areas of science. Free will is also a perennial concern of serious thinkers in theology and in non-western traditions. Because free will can be approached from so many different perspectives and has implications for so many debates, a comprehensive survey needs to encompass an enormous range of approa…Read more
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89You meta believe itEuropean Journal of Philosophy 26 (2): 814-826. 2018.Because of the privileged place of beliefs in explaining behaviour, mismatch cases—in which agents sincerely claim to believe that p, but act in a way that is inconsistent with that belief—have attracted a great deal of attention. In this paper, I argue that some of these cases, at least, are at least partially explained by agents believing that they believe that p, while failing to believe that p. Agents in these cases do not believe that ~p; rather, they have an indistinct first‐order, beliefy…Read more
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33Nudges to reason: not guiltyJournal of Medical Ethics 44 (10): 723-723. 2018.I am to grateful to Geoff Keeling for his perceptive response1 to my paper.2 In this brief reply, I will argue that he does not succeed in his goal of showing that nudges to reason do not respect autonomy. At most, he establishes only that such nudges may threaten autonomy when used in certain ways and in certain circumstances. As I will show, this is not a conclusion that should give us grounds for particular concerns about nudges. Before turning to this issue, let me correct some small issues …Read more
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6Love is a central preoccupation of art and literature, of popular culture and autobiography. This book is an attempt to understand its central themes, to discover why love is so important to most of us, why we seek it, and why we so frequently fail to hold on to it. John Armstrong is a philosopher whose primary interest is aesthetics. Accordingly, his meditations on love often proceed by way of reflection upon works of art and literature.
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31Strong hermeneutics: Contingency and moral identityAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 79 (2). 2001.Book Information Strong Hermeneutics: Contingency and Moral Identity. By Nicholas H. Smith. Routledge. London. 1997. Pp. x + 197. Paperback, £14.99.
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130Obsessive–compulsive disorder as a disorder of attentionMind and Language 33 (1): 3-16. 2018.An influential model holds that obsessive–compulsive disorder is caused by distinctive personality traits and belief biases. But a substantial number of sufferers do not manifest these traits. I propose a predictive coding account of the disorder, which explains both the symptoms and the cognitive traits. On this account, OCD centrally involves heightened and dysfunctionally focused attention to normally unattended sensory and motor representations. As these representations have contents that pr…Read more
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15Conspiracy Theories (review)Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines 24 (1-2): 47-48. 2004.
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272Am I a Racist? Implicit Bias and the Ascription of RacismPhilosophical Quarterly 67 (268): 534-551. 2017.There is good evidence that many people harbour attitudes that conflict with those they endorse. In the language of social psychology, they seem to have implicit attitudes that conflict with their explicit beliefs. There has been a great deal of attention paid to the question whether agents like this are responsible for actions caused by their implicit attitudes, but much less to the question whether they can rightly be described as racist in virtue of harbouring them. In this paper, I attempt t…Read more
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PrefaceIn James J. Giordano & Bert Gordijn (eds.), Scientific and Philosophical Perspectives in Neuroethics, Cambridge University Press. 2010.
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27Nicholas H. Smith, Strong Hermeneutics: Contingency and Moral Identity, London, Routledge, 1997, pp. x 197, 14.99Australasian Journal of Philosophy 79 (1): 136-138. 2001.This Article does not have an abstract
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5The prehistory of archaeology: Heidegger and the early FoucaultJournal of the British Society for Phenomenology 27 (2): 157-175. 1996.
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190Due deference to denialism: explaining ordinary people’s rejection of established scientific findingsSynthese 196 (1): 313-327. 2019.There is a robust scientific consensus concerning climate change and evolution. But many people reject these expert views, in favour of beliefs that are strongly at variance with the evidence. It is tempting to try to explain these beliefs by reference to ignorance or irrationality, but those who reject the expert view seem often to be no worse informed or any less rational than the majority of those who accept it. It is also tempting to try to explain these beliefs by reference to epistemic ove…Read more
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827Doing without Deliberation: Automatism, Automaticity, and Moral Accountability,International Review of Psychiatry 16 (4): 209-15. 2004.Actions performed in a state of automatism are not subject to moral evaluation, while automatic actions often are. Is the asymmetry between automatistic and automatic agency justified? In order to answer this question we need a model or moral accountability that does justice to our intuitions about a range of modes of agency, both pathological and non-pathological. Our aim in this paper is to lay the foundations for such an account.
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358The Powers that bind : doxastic voluntarism and epistemic obligationIn Jonathan Matheson (ed.), The Ethics of Belief, Oxford University Press. pp. 12-33. 2014.In this chapter, we argue for three theses: (1) we lack the power to form beliefs at will (i.e., directly); at very least, we lack the power to form at will beliefs of the kind that proponents of doxastic voluntarism have in mind; but (2) we possess a propensity to form beliefs for non-epistemic reasons; and (3) these propensities—once we come to know we have them—entail that we have obligations similar to those we would have were doxastic voluntarism true. Specifically, we will argue that w…Read more
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University of OxfordRegular Faculty (Part-time)
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Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Areas of Specialization
Social Epistemology |
Philosophy of Psychology |
Applied Ethics |
Philosophy of Action |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Mind |
Applied Ethics |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |