-
183The Value of ConsciousnessJournal of Consciousness Studies 21 (1-2): 127-138. 2014.Consciousness, or its lack, is often invoked in debates in applied and normative ethics. Conscious beings are typically held to be significantly more morally valuable than non-consious, so that establishing whether a being is conscious becomes of critical importance. In this paper, I argue that the supposition that phenomenal consciousness explains the value of our experiences or our lives, and the moral value of beings who are conscious, is less well-grounded than is commonly thought. A great d…Read more
-
163Foucault as Virtue EthicistFoucault 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
-
42Psychopathy, responsibility and the moral/conventional distinctionIn Luca Malatesti & John McMillan (eds.), Responsibility and Psychopathy: Interfacing Law, Psychiatry and Philosophy, Oxford University Press, Usa. pp. 213--226. 2010.
-
238Epistemic Akrasia and the Subsumption of Evidence: A ReconsiderationCroatian Journal of Philosophy 4 (1): 149-156. 2004.According to one influential view, advanced by Jonathan Adler, David Owens and Susan Hurley, epistemic akrasia is impossible because when we form a full belief, any apparent evidence against that belief loses its power over us. Thus theoretical reasoning is quite unlike practical reasoning, in that in the latter our desires continue to exert a pull, even when they are outweighed by countervailing considerations. I call this argument against the possibility of epistemic akrasia the subsumption vi…Read more
-
11Nomy Arpaly, Merit, Meaning and Human Bondage: An Essay on Free Will Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 27 (2): 89-91. 2007.
-
26Review of moral psychology, volume 1, the evolution of morality (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 87 (3). 2009.No abstract
-
Laurence Tancredi, Hardwired Behavior: What Neuroscience Reveals About MoralityPhilosophy in Review 27 (1): 76. 2007.
-
292Culpable ignorance and moral responsibility: A reply to FitzPatrickEthics 119 (4): 729-741. 2009.
-
480
-
283A will of one's own: Consciousness, control, and characterInternational Journal of Law and Psychiatry 27 (5): 459-470. 2004.
-
302Virtual child pornography: The eroticization of inequalityEthics and Information Technology 4 (4): 319-323. 2002.The United States Supreme Court hasrecently ruled that virtual child pornographyis protected free speech, partly on the groundsthat virtual pornography does not harm actualchildren. I review the evidence for thecontention that virtual pornography might harmchildren, and find that it is, at best,inconclusive. Saying that virtual childpornography does not harm actual children isnot to say that it is completely harmless,however. Child pornography, actual or virtual,necessarily eroticizes inequality…Read more
-
98Have I Turned the Stove Off? Explaining Everyday AnxietyPhilosophers' Imprint 16. 2016.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
-
266Addiction 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
-
31There May Be Costs to Failing to Enhance, as Well as to EnhancingAmerican Journal of Bioethics 13 (7): 38-39. 2013.No abstract
-
168Evolutionary psychology, human universals, and the standard social science modelBiology and Philosophy 19 (3): 459-72. 2004.Proponents of evolutionary psychology take the existence of humanuniversals to constitute decisive evidence in favor of their view. Ifthe same social norms are found in culture after culture, we have goodreason to believe that they are innate, they argue. In this paper Ipropose an alternative explanation for the existence of humanuniversals, which does not depend on them being the product of inbuiltpsychological adaptations. Following the work of Brian Skyrms, I suggestthat if a particular con…Read more
-
2Neuromarketing: Ethical and Political ChallengesEtica E Politica 11 (2): 10-17. 2009.Ethicists and ordinary people are typically more worried by interventions that alter agents’ mind by directly altering their brains than interventions than are focused on the environment, and thereby indirectly change minds. I argue that the causal route to changing minds is not itself important. Moreover, some of the most powerful techniques whereby behavior is altered without the consent or knowledge of agents involve environmental manipulations: manipulations of social space, for the benefit …Read more
-
23The 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
-
148Moore on Twin EarthErkenntnis 75 (1): 137-146. 2011.In a series of articles, Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons have argued that Richard Boyd’s defence of moral realism, utilizing a causal theory of reference, fails. Horgan and Timmons construct a twin Earth-style thought experiment which, they claim, generates intuitions inconsistent with the realist account. In their thought experiment, the use of (allegedly) moral terms at a world is causally regulated by some property distinct from that regulating their use here on Earth; nevertheless, Horgan and …Read more
-
148It is, as Dana Nelkin (2004) says, a rare point of agreement among participants in the free will debate that rational deliberation presupposes a belief in freedom. Of course, the precise content of that belief – and, indeed, the nature of deliberation – is controversial, with some philosophers claiming that deliberation commits us to a belief in libertarian free will (Taylor 1966; Ginet 1966), and others claiming that, on the contrary, deliberation presupposes nothing more than an epistemic open…Read more
-
35What evolves when morality evolves?Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 37 (3): 612-620. 2006.
-
639Less Blame, Less Crime? The Practical Implications of Moral Responsibility SkepticismJournal of Practical Ethics 3 (2): 1-17. 2015.Most philosophers believe that wrongdoers sometimes deserve to be punished by long prison sentences. They also believe that such punishments are justified by their consequences: they deter crime and incapacitate potential offenders. In this article, I argue that both these claims are false. No one deserves to be punished, I argue, because our actions are shot through with direct or indirect luck. I also argue that there are good reasons to think that punishing fewer people and much less harshly …Read more
-
University of OxfordRegular Faculty (Part-time)
-
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 |