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48Constructing agents: Rethinking the how and what in developmental theories of social understandingBehavioral and Brain Sciences 27 (1): 115-115. 2004.Although I am broadly in sympathy with Carpendale & Lewis's (C&L's) version of social constructivism, I raise two issues they might address. One bears on the question of how social understanding develops: Is their resistance to individualism inappropriately combined with a resistance to internalism? A second question concerns a more radical implication of their view for what social understanding is.
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9Civilizing blameIn D. Justin Coates & Neal A. Tognazzini (eds.), Blame: Its Nature and Norms, Oxford University Press. pp. 162--188. 2012.
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92Building a better theory of responsibilityPhilosophical Studies 172 (10): 2635-2649. 2015.In Building Better Beings, Vargas develops and defends a naturalistic account of responsibility, whereby responsible agents must possess a feasibly situated capacity to detect and respond to moral considerations. As a preliminary step, he also offers a substantive account of how we might justify our practices of holding responsible—viz., by appeal to their efficacy in fostering a ‘valuable form of agency’ across the community at large, a form of agency that precisely encompasses sensitivity to m…Read more
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65Are ‘Optimistic’ Theories of Criminal Justice Psychologically Feasible? The Probative Case of Civic RepublicanismCriminal Law and Philosophy 11 (3): 523-544. 2017.‘Optimistic’ normative theories of criminal justice aim to justify criminal sanction in terms of its reprobative/rehabilitative value rather than its punitive nature as such. But do such theories accord with ordinary intuitions about what constitutes a ‘just’ response to wrongdoing? Recent empirical work on the psychology of punishers suggests that human beings have a ‘brutely retributive’ moral psychology, making them unlikely to endorse normative theories that sacrifice retribution for the sak…Read more
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61Philip Gerrans and Victoria McGeer
Areas of Specialization
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