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57The truth of performativesInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 2 (1). 1994.No abstract
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37Adapting a kidney exchange algorithm to align with human valuesArtificial Intelligence 283 (C): 103261. 2020.
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315Partisanship, Humility, and Epistemic PolarizationIn Alessandra Tanesini & Michael P. Lynch (eds.), Polarisation, Arrogance, and Dogmatism: Philosophical Perspectives, Routledge. pp. 175-192. 2021.Much of the literature from political psychology has focused on the negative traits that are positively associated with affective polarization—e.g., animus, arrogance, distrust, hostility, and outrage. Not as much attention has been focused on the positive traits that might be negatively associated with polarization. For instance, given that people who are intellectually humble display greater openness and less hostility towards conflicting viewpoints (Krumrei-Mancuso & Rouse, 2016; Hopkin et al…Read more
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23How does inequality affect our sense of moral obligation?Behavioral and Brain Sciences 43. 2020.Tomasello's novel and insightful theory of obligation explains why we sometimes sense an obligation to treat each other equally, but he has not yet explained why human morality also allows and enables much inequality in wealth and power. Ullman-Margalit's account of norms of partiality suggested a different source and kind of norms that might help to fill out Tomasello's picture.
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412AI Methods in BioethicsAmerican Journal of Bioethics: Empirical Bioethics 1 (11): 37-39. 2020.Commentary about the role of AI in bioethics for the 10th anniversary issue of AJOB: Empirical Bioethics
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755Some ethics of deep brain stimulationIn Dan Stein & Ilina Singh (eds.), Global Mental Health and Neuroethics, Elsevier. pp. 117-132. 2020.Case reports about patients undergoing Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) for various motor and psychiatric disorders - including Parkinson’s Disease, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and Treatment Resistant Depression - have sparked a vast literature in neuroethics. Questions about whether and how DBS changes the self have been at the fore. The present chapter brings these neuroethical debates into conversation with recent research in moral psychology. We begin in Section 1 by reviewing the recent clin…Read more
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37Spreading the Word: Groundings in the Philosophy of LanguagePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 48 (1): 163-166. 1987.
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61Moral conformity and its philosophical lessonsPhilosophical Psychology 33 (2): 262-282. 2020.ABSTRACTThe psychological and philosophical literature exploring the role of social influence in moral judgments suggests that conformity in moral judgments is common and, in many cases, seems to b...
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17Actions and Events: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson (review)Noûs 25 (1): 120-123. 1991.
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9Robert Audi: Moral Knowledge and Ethical CharacterEthical Theory and Moral Practice 2 (2): 185-187. 1999.
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20Contrastive mental causationSynthese 198 (Suppl 3): 861-883. 2019.Any theory of mind needs to explain mental causation. Kim’s exclusion argument concludes that non-reductive physicalism cannot meet this challenge. One classic reply is that mental properties capture the causally relevant level of generality, because they are insensitive to physical realization. However, this reply suggests downward exclusion, contrary to physicalism’s assumption of closure. This paper shows how non-reductive physicalists can solve this problem by introducing a contrastive accou…Read more
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33Contrastive mental causationSynthese 198 (Suppl 3): 861-883. 2019.Any theory of mind needs to explain mental causation. Kim’s exclusion argument concludes that non-reductive physicalism cannot meet this challenge. One classic reply is that mental properties capture the causally relevant level of generality, because they are insensitive to physical realization. However, this reply suggests downward exclusion, contrary to physicalism’s assumption of closure. This paper shows how non-reductive physicalists can solve this problem by introducing a contrastive accou…Read more
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75Clean Hands: Philosophical Lessons From ScrupulosityOup Usa. 2019.People with Scrupulosity have rigorous, obsessive moral beliefs that lead to extreme and compulsive moral acts. These fascinating outliers raise profound questions about human nature, mental illness, moral belief, responsibility, and psychiatric treatment. Clean Hands? Uses a range of case studies to examine this condition and its philosophical implications.
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74Responsibility Without Freedom? Folk Judgements About Deliberate ActionsFrontiers in Psychology 10 (1133): 1--6. 2019.A long-standing position in philosophy, law, and theology is that a person can be held morally responsible for an action only if they had the freedom to choose and to act otherwise. Thus, many philosophers consider freedom to be a necessary condition for moral responsibility. However, empirical findings suggest that this assumption might not be in line with common sense thinking. For example, in a recent study we used surveys to show that – counter to positions held by many philosophers – lay pe…Read more
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30The need for feasible compromises on conscientious objection: response to CardJournal of Medical Ethics 45 (8): 560-561. 2019.Robert Card criticises our proposal for managing some conscientious objections in medicine. Unfortunately, he severely mischaracterises the nature of our proposal, its scope and its implications. He also overlooks the fact that our proposal is a compromise designed for a particular political context. We correct Card’s mischaracterisations, explain why we believe compromise is necessary and explain how we think proposed compromises should be evaluated.
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61Moral appraisals affect doing/allowing judgmentsCognition 108 (1): 281-289. 2008.An extensive body of research suggests that the distinction between doing and allowing plays a critical role in shaping moral appraisals. Here, we report evidence from a pair of experiments suggesting that the converse is also true: moral appraisals affect doing/allowing judgments. Specifically, morally bad behavior is more likely to be construed as actively ‘doing’ than as passively ‘allowing’. This finding adds to a growing list of folk concepts influenced by moral appraisal, including causati…Read more
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36Are Proselfs More Deceptive and Hypocritical? Social Image Concerns in Appearing FairFrontiers in Psychology 9. 2018.
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1265I’m not the person I used to be: The self and autobiographical memories of immoral actionsJournal of Experimental Psychology. General 146 (6): 884-895. 2017.People maintain a positive identity in at least two ways: They evaluate themselves more favorably than other people, and they judge themselves to be better now than they were in the past. Both strategies rely on autobiographical memories. The authors investigate the role of autobiographical memories of lying and emotional harm in maintaining a positive identity. For memories of lying to or emotionally harming others, participants judge their own actions as less morally wrong and less negative th…Read more
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75Does Neuroscience Undermine Morality?In Gregg D. Caruso & Owen J. Flanagan (eds.), Neuroexistentialism: Meaning, Morals, and Purpose in the Age of Neuroscience, Oxford University Press. 2018.
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59Morality, Normativity, and SocietyPhilosophical Review 105 (4): 552. 1996.A complete moral theory should combine substantive ethics with metaethics, including moral semantics, moral epistemology, moral ontology, moral psychology, and the definition of morality. All of these topics and more are discussed with great clarity, insight, and originality in Copp’s remarkable book. Some of Copp’s positions are known from earlier articles, but his book reveals interconnections that increase the plausibility of each view separately and of the structure as a whole.
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Cognitive Enhancement in CourtsIn Judy Illes & Barbara J. Sahakian (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Neuroethics, Oxford University Press. 2011.Human cognitive performance has crucial significance for legal process, often creating the difference between fair and unfair imprisonment. Lawyers, judges, and jurors need to follow long and complex arguments. They need to understand technical language. Jurors need to remember what happens during a long trial. The demands imposed on jurors in particular are sizeable and the cognitive challenges are discussed in this chapter. Jurors are often subjected to both tremendous decision complexity and …Read more
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48The Mind, the Brain, and the LawIn Thomas A. Nadelhoffer (ed.), The Future of Punishment, Oxford University Press Usa. 2013.
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Experimental EthicsIn Christian Miller (ed.), Continuum Companion to Ethics, Continuum. pp. 261. 2011.
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235Neuroprediction, violence, and the law: setting the stageNeuroethics 5 (1): 67-99. 2010.In this paper, our goal is to survey some of the legal contexts within which violence risk assessment already plays a prominent role, explore whether developments in neuroscience could potentially be used to improve our ability to predict violence, and discuss whether neuropredictive models of violence create any unique legal or moral problems above and beyond the well worn problems already associated with prediction more generally. In Violence Risk Assessment and the Law, we briefly examine the…Read more
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6Is psychopathy a mental disease?In A. N. Vincent (ed.), Neuroscience and legal responsibility, Oxford University Press,. 2013.Whether psychopathy is a mental disease or illness can affect whether psychiatrists should treat it and whether it could serve as the basis for an insanity defense in criminal trials. Our understanding of psychopathy has been greatly improved in recent years by new research in psychology and neuroscience. This illuminating research enables us to argue that psychopathy counts as a mental disease on any plausible account of mental disease. In particular, Szasz's and Pickard's eliminativist views a…Read more
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204Neurolaw and Neuroprediction: Potential Promises and PerilsPhilosophy Compass 7 (9): 631-642. 2012.Neuroscience has been proposed for use in the legal system for purposes of mind reading, assessment of responsibility, and prediction of misconduct. Each of these uses has both promises and perils, and each raises issues regarding the admissibility of neuroscientific evidence.
Huckleberry Spring, North Carolina, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
4 more
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Religion |
Applied Ethics |
Meta-Ethics |
Moral Psychology |
Normative Ethics |
Philosophy of Law |
Neuroscience |
Psychology |
Areas of Interest
4 more
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Religion |
Applied Ethics |
Meta-Ethics |
Moral Psychology |
Normative Ethics |
Philosophy of Law |
Neuroscience |
Psychology |