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8Robert Kane, Free Will: A Contemporary Introduction Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 26 (3): 200-202. 2006.
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180Consciousness and Moral ResponsibilityOxford University Press. 2014.Neil Levy presents a new theory of freedom and responsibility. He defends a particular account of consciousness--the global workspace view--and argues that consciousness plays an especially important role in action. There are good reasons to think that the naïve assumption, that consciousness is needed for moral responsibility, is in fact true
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176The 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
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162Foucault 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
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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.
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446The case for physician assisted suicide: how can it possibly be proven?Journal of Medical Ethics 32 (6): 335-338. 2006.In her paper, The case for physician assisted suicide: not proven, Bonnie Steinbock argues that the experience with Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act fails to demonstrate that the benefits of legalising physician assisted suicide outweigh its risks. Given that her verdict is based on a small number of highly controversial cases that will most likely occur under any regime of legally implemented safeguards, she renders it virtually impossible to prove the case for physician assisted suicide. In thi…Read more
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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
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11Nomy Arpaly, Merit, Meaning and Human Bondage: An Essay on Free Will Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 27 (2): 89-91. 2007.
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Laurence Tancredi, Hardwired Behavior: What Neuroscience Reveals About MoralityPhilosophy in Review 27 (1): 76. 2007.
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26Review of moral psychology, volume 1, the evolution of morality (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 87 (3). 2009.No abstract
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479
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283Culpable ignorance and moral responsibility: A reply to FitzPatrickEthics 119 (4): 729-741. 2009.
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300Virtual 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
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97Have 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
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270A will of one's own: Consciousness, control, and characterInternational Journal of Law and Psychiatry 27 (5): 459-470. 2004.
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162Evolutionary 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
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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
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265Addiction 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
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31There May Be Costs to Failing to Enhance, as Well as to EnhancingAmerican Journal of Bioethics 13 (7): 38-39. 2013.No abstract
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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 |