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48Contested terms and philosophical debatesPhilosophical Studies 174 (10): 2499-2510. 2017.There are two standard theoretical responses to putative errors in ordinary thinking about some given target property: eliminativism or revisionism. Roughly, eliminativism is the denial that the target property exists, and revisionism is the view that the property exists, but that people tend to have false beliefs about it. Recently, Shaun Nichols has proposed a third option: discretionism. Discretionism is the idea that some terms have multiple reference conventions, so that it may be true to s…Read more
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307Responsibility and the aims of theory: Strawson and revisionismPacific Philosophical Quarterly 85 (2): 218-241. 2004.In recent years, reflection on the relationship between individual moral responsibility and determinism has undergone a remarkable renaissance. Incompatibilists, those who believe moral responsibility is incompatible with determinism, have offered powerful new arguments in support of their views. Compatibilists, those who think moral responsibility is compatible with determinism, have responded with ingenious counterexamples and alternative accounts of responsibility. Despite the admirable elevat…Read more
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347How to Be Fair to PsychopathsPhilosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 14 (2): 153-155. 2007.Consider the following claim: “If an agent comes to be bad through a process that entirely bypasses her ability to appreciate and to respond to reasons, including moral reasons, she is not a responsible agent at all” (Levy 2007). Psychopathy is a wonderful example here, since there’s reason to think it has a strong genetic component. But why should we accept this claim that we have to absolve those who are born irrevocably bad?
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111Précis of Building Better Beings: A Theory of Moral ResponsibilityPhilosophical Studies 172 (10): 2621-2623. 2015.The idea of moral responsibility is central to a wide range of our moral, social, and legal practices, and it underpins our basic notion of culpability. Yet the idea of moral responsibility is increasingly viewed with skepticism by researchers and scholars in psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and the law. Building Better Beings: A Theory of Moral Responsibility responds to these challenges, offering a new account of the justification of our practices and judgments of moral responsibility. Th…Read more
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44Lessons from the Philosophy of Race in MexicoPhilosophy Today 44 (Supplement): 18-29. 2000.The precise conceptions of race deployed by Mexican philosophers in the first half of the twentieth century have often been poorly understood. Consequently, the specifically racial components in their work have been frequently dismissed on the grounds that they were unscientific, irresponsible, and/or sloppy. I hope to show that with a sufficiently rich understanding of at least the seminal works many of these criticisms can be blunted.
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280The Revisionist’s Guide to ResponsibilityPhilosophical Studies 125 (3): 399-429. 2005.Revisionism in the theory of moral responsibility is the idea that some aspect of responsibility practices, attitudes, or concept is in need of revision. While the increased frequency of revisionist language in the literature on free will and moral responsibility is striking, what discussion there has been of revisionism about responsibility and free will tends to be critical. In this paper, I argue that at least one species of revisionism, moderate revisionism, is considerably more sophisticate…Read more
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Even Better Than the Real Thing: Revisionism and ResponsibilityDissertation, Stanford University. 2001.This is a dissertation about moral responsibility, whether we have it in the sense we ordinarily suppose, and what alternatives are available to us given that we lack it. ;The dissertation comes in two main parts. The first part defends a particular kind of error theory about the folk concept of moral responsibility. That is, given a roughly scientific picture of the world, it is likely that our commonsense beliefs about responsible agency are systematically mistaken. The second part of the diss…Read more
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78Review of James Stacey Taylor (ed.), Personal Autonomy: New Essays on Personal Autonomy and its Role in Contemporary Moral Philosophy (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2006 (8). 2006.I once heard a colleague opine that we would be better off if there were a 50-year moratorium on philosophers using the word 'autonomy'. He went on to argue that we could get along just fine without the word, and that a good number of confusions would be dispelled along the way. This collection of new papers goes a long way toward responding to this challenge in ways that both undercut and vindicate aspects of this complaint.
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165Compatibilism evolves?: On some varieties of Dennett worth wantingMetaphilosophy 36 (4): 460-475. 2005.I examine the extent to which Dennett’s account in Freedom Evolves might be construed as revisionist about free will or should instead be understood as a more traditional kind of compatibilism. I also consider Dennett’s views about philosophical work on free agency and its relationship to scientific inquiry, and I argue that extant philosophical work is more relevant to scientific inquiry than Dennett’s remarks may suggest
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197Revisionist Accounts of Free Will: Origins, Varieties, and ChallengesIn Robert Kane (ed.), Oxford Handbook on Free Will, 2nd Edition, Oxford University Press. 2011.The present chapter is concerned with revisionism about free will. It begins by offering a new characterization of revisionist accounts and the way such accounts fit (or do not) in the familiar framework of compatibilism and incompatibilism. It then traces some of the recent history of the development of revisionist accounts, and concludes by remarking on some challenges for them.
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151On the importance of history for responsible agencyPhilosophical Studies 127 (3): 351-382. 2006.In this article I propose a resolution to the history issue for responsible agency, given a moderate revisionist approach to responsibility. Roughly, moderate revisionism is the view that a plausible and normatively adequate theory of responsibility will require principled departures from commonsense thinking. The history issue is whether morally responsible agency – that is, whether an agent is an apt target of our responsibility-characteristic practices and attitudes – is an essentially histor…Read more
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272Libertarianism and skepticism about free will: Some arguments against bothPhilosophical Topics 32 (1&2): 403-26. 2004.In this paper I criticize libertarianism and skepticism about free will. The criticism of libertarianism takes some steps towards filling in an argument that is often mentioned but seldom developed in any detail, the argument that libertarianism is a scientifically implausible view. I say "take some steps" because I think the considerations I muster (at most) favor a less ambitious relative of that argument. The less ambitious claim I hope to motivate is that there is little reason to believe th…Read more
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2Response to Kane, Fischer, and PereboomIn John Martin Fischer (ed.), Four Views on Free Will, Blackwell. 2007.
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115Desert, responsibility, and justification: a reply to Doris, McGeer, and RobinsonPhilosophical Studies 172 (10): 2659-2678. 2015.Building Better Beings: A Theory of Moral Responsibility argues that the normative basis of moral responsibility is anchored in the effects of responsibility practices. Further, the capacities required for moral responsibility are socially scaffolded. This article considers criticisms of this account that have been recently raised by John Doris, Victoria McGeer, and Michael Robinson. Robinson argues against Building Better Beings’s rejection of libertarianism about free will, and the account of …Read more
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Free Will and Responsibility |
Philosophy of Action |
Moral Psychology |
Latin American Philosophy |
Philosophy of the Americas |
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