-
91Responsible Psychopaths RevisitedThe Journal of Ethics 20 (1-3): 265-278. 2016.This paper updates, modifies, and extends an account of psychopaths’ responsibility and blameworthiness that depends on behavioral control rather than moral knowledge. Philosophers mainly focus on whether psychopaths can be said to grasp moral rules as such, whereas it seems to be important to their blameworthiness that typical psychopaths are hampered by impulsivity and other barriers to exercising self-control. I begin by discussing an atypical case, for contrast, of a young man who was diagno…Read more
-
15Practical Guilt: Moral Dilemmas, Emotions, and Social NormsPhilosophical and Phenomenological Research 58 (3): 730-732. 1995.
-
127Impulse and self-reflection: Frankfurtian responsibility versus free will (review)The Journal of Ethics 3 (4): 325-341. 1999.Harry Frankfurt''s early work makes an important distinction between moral responsibility and free will. Frankfurt begins by focusing on the notion of responsibility, as supplying counterexamples to the principle of alternative possibilities; he then turns to an apparently independent account of free will, in terms of his well-known hierarchy of desires. But the two notions seem to reestablish contact in Frankfurt''s later discussion of issues and cases. The present article sets up a putative Fr…Read more
-
23Emotions and Reasons: An Inquiry into Emotional Justification, by Patricia S. Greenspan (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 51 (3): 716-719. 1991.
-
Unfreedom and ResponsibilityIn Ferdinand Schoeman (ed.), Responsibility, Character, and the Emotions: New Essays in Moral Psychology, Cambridge University Press. 1987.
-
Practical Reasons and Moral "In Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics: Volume Ii, Clarendon Press. 2007.
-
40Moral responses and moral theory: Socially-based externalist ethics (review)The Journal of Ethics 2 (2): 103-122. 1998.The paper outlines a view called social (or two-level) response-dependency as an addition to standard alternatives in metaethics that allows for a position intermediate between standard versions of internalism and externalism on the question of motivational force. Instead of taking psychological responses as either directly supplying the content of ethics (as on emotivist or sentimentalist accounts) or as irrelevant to its content (as in classical versions of Kantian or utilitarian ethics), the …Read more
-
193Genes, electrotransmitters, and free willIn Patricia S. Greenspan, David Wasserman & Robert Wachbroit (eds.), Genetics and Criminal Behavior: Methods, Meanings, and Morals, Cambridge University Press. 2001.There seems to be evidence of a genetic component in criminal behavior. It is widely agreed not to be "deterministic"--by which discussions outside philosophy seem to mean that by itself it is not sufficient to determine behavior. Environmental factors make a decisive difference--for that matter, there are nongenetic biological factors--in whether and how genetic.
-
306
-
26The language of evolutionary biology and psychology is built on concepts applicable in the first instance to individual strategic rationality but extended to the level of genetic explanation. Current discussions of mental disorders as evolutionary adaptations would apply that extended language back to the individual level, with potentially problematic moral/political implications as well as possibilities of confusion. This paper focuses on one particularly problematic area: the explanation of wo…Read more
-
119Philosophy of action: 5 questionsIn J. H. Aguilar & A. A. Buckareff (eds.), Philosophy of action: 5 questions, Automatic Press/vip. 2000.Like many people, I was initially attracted to free will issues – at first embracing hard determinism, as part of a general rejection of doctrines associated with religion, though exposure to Kant’s views in my first philosophy course made me begin to consider nonreligious grounds for an indeterminist conception of free action. Of course, Kant also takes belief in God and immortality as presupposed by moral agency, but I was never much moved by those arguments. On free will, though, I thought se…Read more
-
107The role of emotions in ethics is often taken by philosophers and others as antithetical to rationality. On the most basic level (in undergraduate philosophy exams and elsewhere), stating an opinion in the form "I feel that p" can be a way of sidestepping the demand for reasons. But emotions can sometimes also be seen as supplying reasons for moral judgment to the extent that they involve evaluations--and a way of communicating them across different moral perspectives.
-
57VII. Emotions, Rationality, and Mind/BodyRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 52 113-125. 2003.There are now quite a number of popular or semi-popular works urging rejection of the old opposition between rationality and emotion. They present evidence or theoretical arguments that favour a reconception of emotions as providing an indispensable basis for practical rationality. Perhaps the most influential is neuroanatomist Antonio Damasio's Descartes' Error, which argues from cases of brain lesion and other neurological causes of emotional deficit that some sort of emotional ‘marking,’ of m…Read more
-
85Resting content: Sensible satisficing?American Philosophical Quarterly 46 (4). 2009.Suppose I am now making plans for next summer’s vacation. I can spend a week in Rome or on the Riviera, but not both. Either choice would be excellent, but after weighing various pros and cons, I decide that for my purposes Rome would be better. If I am rational, then, I must choose Rome. It is an assumption of standard decision theory that rationality requires maximizing: trying to get the maximum amount of whatever form of value we are after (usually construed as “utility”). An alternative has…Read more
-
295Making room for options: Moral reasons, imperfect duties, and choice: Patricia GreenspanSocial Philosophy and Policy 27 (2): 181-205. 2010.An imperfect duty such as the duty to aid those in need is supposed to leave leeway for choice as to how to satisfy it, but if our reason for a certain way of satisfying it is our strongest, that leeway would seem to be eliminated. This paper defends a conception of practical reasons designed to preserve it, without slighting the binding force of moral requirements, though it allows us to discount certain moral reasons. Only reasons that offer criticism of alternatives can yield requirements, bu…Read more
College Park, Maryland, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Action |
Meta-Ethics |
Value Theory |
Areas of Interest
1 more
Emotions |
Reasons and Rationality |
Free Will |
Philosophy of Action |
Meta-Ethics |
Value Theory |