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369The insignificance of personal identity for bioethicsBioethics 24 (9): 481-489. 2009.It has long been thought that certain key bioethical views depend heavily on work in personal identity theory, regarding questions of either our essence or the conditions of our numerical identity across time. In this paper I argue to the contrary, that personal identity is actually not significant at all in this arena. Specifically, I explore three topics where considerations of identity are thought to be essential – abortion, definition of death, and advance directives – and I show in each cas…Read more
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239Psychopathy, Responsibility, and the Moral/Conventional DistinctionSouthern Journal of Philosophy 49 (s1): 99-124. 2011.In this paper, I attempt to show that the moral/conventional distinction simply cannot bear the sort of weight many theorists have placed on it for determining the moral and criminal responsibility of psychopaths. After revealing the fractured nature of the distinction, I go on to suggest how one aspect of it may remain relevant—in a way that has previously been unappreciated—to discussions of the responsibility of psychopaths. In particular, after offering an alternative explanation of the avai…Read more
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28Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility, Volume 1 (edited book)Oxford University Press UK. 2013.Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility is a series of volumes presenting outstanding new work in moral philosophy and philosophy of action. Contributors to the series draw from a diverse range of cross-disciplinary sources, including moral psychology, psychology proper, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of law, legal theory, metaphysics, neuroscience, neuroethics, political philosophy, and more. It is unified by its focus on who we are as deliberators and actors, embodied practical agent…Read more
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186Huck vs. Jojo: Moral Ignorance and the (A)symmetry of Praise and BlameOxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy 7-27. 2014.Presentation and discussion of two new experimental studies surveying intuitions about cases of moral ignorance due to childhood deprivation. Discussion of resulting asymmetry between negative and positive cases and proposal of speculative hypothesis to explain results, The Difficulty Hypothesis.
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150Utilitarianism and personal identityJournal of Value Inquiry 33 (2): 183-199. 1999.Ethical theories must include an account of the concept of a person. They also need a criterion of personal identity over time. This requirement is most needed in theories involving distributions of resources or questions of moral responsibility. For instance, in using ethical theories involving compensations of burdens, we must be able to keep track of the identities of persons earlier burdened in order to ensure that they are the same people who now are to receive the compensatory benefits. Si…Read more
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70Reductionist Contractualism: Moral Motivation and the Expanding SelfCanadian Journal of Philosophy 30 (3): 343-370. 2000.This paper attempts to show how a reductionist approach to the metaphysics of personal identity might well be most compatible with a form of contractualism, not utilitarianism.
Ithaca, New York, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
3 more
Moral Responsibility |
Agency |
Moral Psychology |
Persons |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Applied Ethics |
Free Will |
Value Theory, Miscellaneous |