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92Truth, Lies, and the Narrative SelfAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 49 (4): 301-316. 2012.Social persons routinely tell themselves and others richly elaborated autobiographical stories filled with details about deeds, plans, roles, motivations, values, and character. Saul, let us imagine, is someone who once sailed the world as a young adventurer, going from port to port and living a gypsy existence. In telling his new acquaintance, Jess, of his former exotic life, he shines a light on his present character and this may guide to some extent their interaction here and now. Perhaps Jes…Read more
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49Introduction: Is cognitive penetrability the mark of the moral?Philosophical Explorations 9 (1). 2006.No abstract
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134The unity and disunity of agencyPhilosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 10 (4): 308-312. 2003.Effective agency, according to contemporary Kantians, requires a unity of purpose both at a time, in order that we may eliminate conflict among our motives, and over time, because many of the things we do form part of longer-term projects and make sense only in the light of these projects and life plans. Call this the unity of agency thesis. This thesis can be regarded as a normative constraint on accounts of personal identity and indeed on accounts of what it is to have the life of a person in …Read more
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107Just Say No? Addiction and the Elements of Self-controlIn Neil Levy (ed.), Addiction and Self-Control: Perspectives From Philosophy, Psychology, and Neuroscience, Oup Usa. pp. 144-164. 2013.In this chapter I argue that there is a normative aspect to self-control that is not captured by the purely procedural account to be drawn from dual process theories of cognition – which we only uncover when we consider what self-control is for and why it is valuable. For at least a significant sub-group of addicts their loss of control over their drug use may not be due to a lack or depletion of cognitive resources. Rather it may be that they have little confidence in their ability to exert con…Read more
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99Will the Real Moral Judgment Please Stand Up?Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 12 (1): 77-96. 2009.The recent, influential Social Intuitionist Model of moral judgment (Haidt, Psychological Review 108, 814–834, 2001) proposes a primary role for fast, automatic and affectively charged moral intuitions in the formation of moral judgments. Haidt’s research challenges our normative conception of ourselves as agents capable of grasping and responding to reasons. We argue that there can be no ‘real’ moral judgments in the absence of a capacity for reflective shaping and endorsement of moral judgment…Read more
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22Friendship and role moralityIn Kim Chong Chong, Sor-Hoon Tan & C. L. Ten (eds.), The moral circle and the self: Chinese and Western approaches, Open Court. 2003.
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40Normative agencyIn Kim Atkins & Catriona Mackenzie (eds.), Practical Identity and Narrative Agency, Routledge. 2007.20 page
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59Beyond dualism : a plea for an extended taxonomy of agency impairment in addictionAmerican Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 3 (2): 56-57. 2012.Pickard (2012) claims that the neurobiological or disease model of addiction hinders the recovery of people because it undermines their feeling of self-efficacy and agency. Sub- stance users are “not aided by being treated as victims of a neurobiological disease, as opposed to agents of their own recovery” (40).Although Pickard acknowledges that claims of powerlessness or loss of agency can have a functional role in the self-narratives of substance users in excusing them from blame, she primaril…Read more
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86Mental Time Travel, Dynamic Evaluation, and Moral AgencyMind 126 (501): 259-268. 2017.Mental time travel is the ability to simulate alternative pasts and futures. It is often described as the ability to project a sense of self in the service of diachronic agency. It requires not only semantic representation but affective sampling of alternative futures. If people lose this ability for affective sampling their sense of self is diminished. They have less of a self to project hence are compromised as agents. If they cannot “feel the future” they cannot imaginatively inhabit it and h…Read more
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Action |
Applied Ethics |
Meta-Ethics |
Philosophy of Social Science |