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5320 Intuitions and experimental philosophy: comfortable bedfellowsIn Matthew C. Haug (ed.), Philosophical Methodology: The Armchair or the Laboratory?, Routledge. pp. 381. 2013.
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144The Prospects for Evolutionary Ethics TodayEurAmerica 40 (3): 529-571. 2010.One reason for the widespread resistance to evolutionary accounts of the origins of humanity is the fear that they undermine morality: if morality is based on nothing more than evolved dispositions, it would be shown to be illusory, many people suspect. This view is shared by some philosophers who take their work on the evolutionary origins of morality to undermine moral realism. If they are right, we are faced with an unpalatable choice: to reject morality on scientific grounds, or to reject ou…Read more
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234Enhancing AuthenticityJournal 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
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126Does 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
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Law or Order: Reconsidering the Aims of PolicingAustralian Journal of Professional and Applied Ethics 2 (2). 2000.
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50Review of Experimental Philosophy (review)Metapsychology 12 (33). 2008.This anthology mixes together previously published and new work in experimental philosophy, by many of its leading figures (among whom the editors feature prominently). Experimental philosophy is a burgeoning movement that urges philosophers to leave their armchairs and test their philosophical claims empirically. It builds upon but goes further than the movement that Jesse Prinz, in his contribution, calls empirical philosophy; philosophy that turns to existing scientific literature to find evi…Read more
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19Cognitive Enhancement and Intuitive Dualism Testing a Possible LinkIn Robyn Langdon & Catriona Mackenzie (eds.), Emotions, Imagination, and Moral Reasoning, Psychology Press. pp. 171. 2012.
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45William Hirstein , Mindmelding: Consciousness, Neuroscience, and the Mind's Privacy . Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 34 (1-2): 75-77. 2014.
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40Justin Garson, The Biological Mind: A Philosophical Introduction. Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 35 (5): 259-260. 2015.
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71Peter Ulric Tse , The Neural Basis of Free Will: Criterial Causation . Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 33 (4): 331-333. 2013.
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A Gresham's Law For Reporting About GeneticsAustralian Journal of Professional and Applied Ethics 4 (2). 2002.
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5Untimely Meditations: Periodising Recent French ThoughtSymposium 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 as any twentieth-century can be, while Foucault’s work is often taken to be d…Read more
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132History as struggle: Foucault's genealogy of genealogyHistory of the Human Sciences 11 (4): 159-170. 1998.
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236Libertarianism in all its varieties is widely taken to be vulnerable to a serious problem of present luck, inasmuch as it requires indeterminism somewhere in the causal chain leading to action. Genuine indeterminism entails luck, and lack of control over the ensuing action. Compatibilism, by contrast, is generally taken to be free of the problem of present luck, inasmuch as it does not require indeterminism in the causal chain. I argue that this view is false: compatibilism is subject to a probl…Read more
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90Ecological Engineering: Reshaping Our Environments to Achieve Our GoalsPhilosophy 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
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158Neuroethics: Challenges for the 21st CenturyCambridge University Press. 2007.Neuroscience has dramatically increased understanding of how mental states and processes are realized by the brain, thus opening doors for treating the multitude of ways in which minds become dysfunctional. This book explores questions such as when is it permissible to alter a person's memories, influence personality traits or read minds? What can neuroscience tell us about free will, self-control, self-deception and the foundations of morality? The view of neuroethics offered here argues that m…Read more
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154The apology paradox and the non-identity problemPhilosophical Quarterly 52 (208): 358-368. 2002.Janna Thompson has outlined ‘the apology paradox’, which arises whenever people apologize for an action or event upon which their existence is causally dependent. She argues that a sincere apology seems to entail a wish that the action or event had not occurred, but that we cannot sincerely wish that events upon which our existence depends had not occurred. I argue that Thompson’s paradox is a backward-looking version of Parfit’s (forward-looking) ‘non-identity problem’, where backward- and forwa…Read more
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117Dissolving the Puzzle of Resultant Moral LuckReview of Philosophy and Psychology 7 (1): 127-139. 2016.The puzzle of resultant moral luck arises when we are disposed to think that an agent who caused a harm deserves to be blamed more than an otherwise identical agent who did not. One popular perspective on resultant moral luck explains our dispositions to produce different judgments with regard to the agents who feature in these cases as a product not of what they genuinely deserve but of our epistemic situation. On this account, there is no genuine resultant moral luck; there is only luck in wha…Read more
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Michel FoucaultFoucault Studies 20-31. 2004.ABSTRACT: 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 t…Read more
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7SartreONEWorld 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
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59Conspiracy Theories (review)Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines 24 (1-2): 47-48. 2004.
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82Deafness, culture, and choiceJournal of Medical Ethics 28 (5): 284-285. 2002.We should react to deaf parents who choose to have a deaf child with compassion not condemnationThere has been a great deal of discussion during the past few years of the potential biotechnology offers to us to choose to have only perfect babies, and of the implications that might have, for instance for the disabled. What few people foresaw is that these same technologies could be deliberately used to ensure that children would be born with disabilities. That this is a real possibility, and not …Read more
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47Katrina Hutchison and Fiona Jenkins (eds.) , Women in Philosophy: What Needs to Change? Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 34 (3-4): 132-135. 2014.
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8Robert Kane, Free Will: A Contemporary Introduction Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 26 (3): 200-202. 2006.
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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 |