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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
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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.
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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
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26What 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.
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365Implicit Bias and Moral Responsibility: Probing the DataPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 93 (3): 3-26. 2016.
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34Punishing the Addict: Reflections on Gene HeymanIn Thomas A. Nadelhoffer (ed.), The Future of Punishment, Oup Usa. pp. 233. 2013.
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598Analytic and continental philosophy: Explaining the differencesMetaphilosophy 34 (3): 284-304. 2003.A number of writers have tackled the task of characterizing the differences between analytic and Continental philosophy.I suggest that these attempts have indeed captured the most important divergences between the two styles but have left the explanation of the differences mysterious.I argue that analytic philosophy is usefully seen as philosophy conducted within a paradigm, in Kuhn’s sense of the word, whereas Continental philosophy assumes much less in the way of shared presuppositions, proble…Read more
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82The wisdom of the packPhilosophical Explorations 9 (1). 2006.This short article is a reply to Fine's criticisms of Haidt's social intuitionist model of moral judgement. After situating Haidt in the landscape of meta-ethical views, I examine Fine's argument, against Haidt, that the processes which give rise to moral judgements are amenable to rational control: first-order moral judgements, which are automatic, can nevertheless deliberately be brought to reflect higher-order judgements. However, Haidt's claims about the arationality of moral judgements seem…Read more
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128In this paper, I introduce the notion of a Frankfurt Enabler, a counterfactual intervener poised, should a signal for intervention be received, to enable an agent to perform a mental or physical action. Frankfurt enablers demonstrate, I claim, that merely counterfactual conditions are sometimes relevant to assessing what capacities agents possess. Since this is the case, we are not entitled to conclude that agents in standard Frankfurt-style cases retain their responsibility-ensuring capacities.…Read more
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Nomy Arpaly, Merit, Meaning and Human Bondage: An Essay on Free WillPhilosophy in Review 27 (2): 89. 2007.
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52The Intrinsic Value of CulturesPhilosophy 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.
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12Ethics and Rules: A Political Reading of Foucault's Aesthetics of ExistencePhilosophy Today 42 (1): 79-84. 1998.
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22Mark Belaguer, Free Will as an Open Scientific Problem Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 30 (2): 80-82. 2010.
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2Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter, ed., Moral Psychology, Volume 1. The Evolution of Morality: Adaptations and Innateness, Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 2008, pp. xix + 583, US$30.00/£17.95 (paper) (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 87 (3): 523-525. 2009.
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5Don Ross, David Spurrett, Harold Kincaid and G. Lynn Stephens, eds. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context Reviewed by (review)Philosophy in Review 28 (1): 67-70. 2008.
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7Joseph Keim Campbell, Michael O'Rourke, and David Shier, eds., Freedom and Determinism Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 25 (5): 323-326. 2005.
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69Religious beliefs are factual beliefs: Content does not correlate with context sensitivityCognition 161 (C): 109-116. 2017.
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44Be a Skeptic, Not a MetaskepticIn Gregg Caruso (ed.), Exploring the Illusion of Free Will and Moral Responsibility, Lexington Books. pp. 87. 2013.
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36Virtues Have Deeply Cultural RootsDao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 14 (2): 195-202. 2015.8 page
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287Hard Luck: How Luck Undermines Free Will and Moral ResponsibilityOxford University Press UK. 2011.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
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110Open-Mindedness and the Duty to Gather EvidencePublic Affairs Quarterly 20 (1): 55-66. 2006.Most people believe that we have a duty to gather evidence on both sides of central moral and political controversies, in order to fulfil our epistemic responsibilities and come to hold justified cognitive attitudes on these matters. I argue, on the contrary, that to the extent to which these controversies require special expertise, we have no such duty. We are far more likely to worsen than to improve our epistemic situation by becoming better informed on these questions. I suggest we do better…Read more
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226The feeling of doing: Deconstructing the phenomenology of agnecyIn Natalie Sebanz & Wolfgang Prinz (eds.), Disorders of Volition, Mit Press. 2006.Disorders of volition are often accompanied by, and may even be caused by, disruptions in the phenomenology of agency. Yet the phenomenology of agency is at present little explored. In this paper we attempt to describe the experience of normal agency, in order to uncover its representational content
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2The presumption against direct manipulationNeuroethics: Challenges for the 21st Century. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. forthcoming.
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160Embodied savoir-faire: knowledge-how requires motor representationsSynthese 194 (2). 2017.I argue that the intellectualist account of knowledge-how, according to which agents have the knowledge-how to \ in virtue of standing in an appropriate relation to a proposition, is only half right. On the composition view defended here, knowledge-how at least typically requires both propositional knowledge and motor representations. Motor representations are not mere dispositions to behavior because they have representational content, and they play a central role in realizing the intelligence …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 |