-
821Confucius and the superorganismIn Philip J. Ivanhoe, Owen Flanagan, Victoria S. Harrison, Hagop Sarkissian & Eric Schwitzgebel (eds.), The Oneness Hypothesis: Beyond the Boundary of Self, Columbia University Press. pp. 305-320. 2018.In this paper, I describe a sense of oneness that, while having its roots in a tradition of thought far removed from our own, might nonetheless be of relevance to persons today. It is not a oneness with all of humanity, let alone with all the creatures under the sky or all the elements of the cosmos. Nevertheless, it is a sense of oneness that transcends one’s own person and connects one to a larger whole. I will be calling this conception that of a superorganism, to borrow a phrase the natural …Read more
-
316Experimental PhilosophyOxford Bibliographies Online (1): 81-92. 2006.Bibliography of works in experimental philosophy.
-
204Experimental PhilosophyAnnual Review of Psychology 63 (1): 81-99. 2012.Experimental philosophy is a new interdisciplinary field that uses methods normally associated with psychology to investigate questions normally associated with philosophy. The present review focuses on research in experimental philosophy on four central questions. First, why is it that people's moral judgments appear to influence their intuitions about seemingly nonmoral questions? Second, do people think that moral questions have objective answers, or do they see morality as fundamentally rela…Read more
-
638Naturalizing ethicsIn Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (ed.), Moral Psychology: The Evolution of Morality: Adaptations and Innateness, Bradford. pp. 1-26. 2007.In this essay we provide (1) an argument for why ethics should be naturalized, (2) an analysis of why it is not yet naturalized, (3) a defense of ethical naturalism against two fallacies—Hume’s and Moore’s—that ethical naturalism allegedly commits, and (4) a proposal that normative ethics is best conceived as part of human ecology committed to pluralistic relativism. We explain why naturalizing ethics both entails relativism and also constrains it, and why nihilism about value is not an especial…Read more
-
281What is the nature of morality? A response to Casebeer, Railton and RuseIn Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (ed.), Moral Psychology: The Evolution of Morality: Adaptations and Innateness, Bradford. pp. 45-52. 2007.A response to comments by William Casebeer, Peter Railton, and Michael Ruse on "Naturalizing Ethics" (2007).
-
101The Oneness Hypothesis: Beyond the Boundary of Self (edited book)Columbia University Press. 2018.The idea that the self is inextricably intertwined with the rest of the world—the “oneness hypothesis”—can be found in many of the world’s philosophical and religious traditions. Oneness provides ways to imagine and achieve a more expansive conception of the self as fundamentally connected with other people, creatures, and things. Such views present profound challenges to Western hyperindividualism and its excessive concern with self-interest and tendency toward self-centered behavior. This anth…Read more
-
528Folk Platitudes as the Explananda of Philosophical Metaethics: Are They Accurate? And Do They Help or Hinder Inquiry?Journal of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research 34 (3): 565-575. 2017.The field of metaethics, the branch of moral philosophy that examines the nature and status of morality, is rich in theoretical diversity. Nonetheless, a majority of professional philosophers embrace a subset of theories that affirm the existence of objective moral facts. I suggest that this may be related to the very method that philosophers use to construct metaethical theories. This method involves analyzing how ordinary people think and argue about morality. Analysis of ordinary moral discou…Read more
-
670Neo-Confucianism, experimental philosophy and the trouble with intuitive methodsBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 26 (5): 812-828. 2018.ABSTRACTThe proper role of intuitions in philosophy has been debated throughout its history, and especially since the turn of the twenty-first century. The context of this recent debate within analytic philosophy has been the heightened interest in intuitions as data points that need to be accommodated or explained away by philosophical theories. This, in turn, has given rise to a sceptical movement called experimental philosophy, whose advocates seek to understand the nature and reliability of …Read more
-
966Consistent Belief in a Good True Self in Misanthropes and Three Interdependent CulturesCognitive Science 42 (S1): 134-160. 2018.People sometimes explain behavior by appealing to an essentialist concept of the self, often referred to as the true self. Existing studies suggest that people tend to believe that the true self is morally virtuous; that is deep inside, every person is motivated to behave in morally good ways. Is this belief particular to individuals with optimistic beliefs or people from Western cultures, or does it reflect a widely held cognitive bias in how people understand the self? To address this question…Read more
-
483Situationism, Manipulation, and Objective Self-AwarenessEthical Theory and Moral Practice 20 (3): 489-503. 2017.Among those taking the implications of situationism seriously, some have suggested exploiting our tendency to be shaped by our environments toward desirable ends. The key insight here is that if experimental studies produce reliable, probabilistic predictions about the effects of situational variables on behavior—for example, how people react to the presence or absence of various sounds, objects, and their placement—then we should deploy those variables that promote prosocial behavior, while avo…Read more
-
548Minor Tweaks, Major Payoffs: The Problems and Promise of Situationism in Moral PhilosophyPhilosophers' Imprint 10. 2010.Moral philosophers of late have been examining the implications of experimental social psychology for ethics. The focus of attention has been on situationism—the thesis that we routinely underestimate the extent to which minor situational variables influence morally significant behavior. Situationism has been seen as a threat to prevailing lay and philosophical theories of character, personhood, and agency. In this paper, I outline the situationist literature and critique one of its upshots: the…Read more
-
136The folk strike back; or, why you didn’t do it intentionally, though it was bad and you knew itPhilosophical Studies 138 (2). 2008.Recent and puzzling experimental results suggest that people’s judgments as to whether or not an action was performed intentionally are sensitive to moral considerations. In this paper, we outline these results and evaluate two accounts which purport to explain them. We then describe a recent experiment that allegedly vindicates one of these accounts and present our own findings to show that it fails to do so. Finally, we present additional data suggesting no such vindication could be in the off…Read more
-
1403Recent Approaches to Confucian Filial MoralityPhilosophy Compass 5 (9): 725-734. 2010.A hallmark of Confucian morality is its emphasis on duties to family and kin as weighty features of moral life. The virtue of ‘filiality’ or ‘filial piety’ (xiao 孝), for example, is one of the most important in the Confucian canon. This aspect of Confucianism has been of renewed interest recently. On the one hand, some have claimed that, precisely because it acknowledges the importance of kin duties, Confucianism should be seen as an ethics rooted in human nature that remains a viable system of …Read more
-
2095Is Belief in Free Will a Cultural Universal?Mind and Language 25 (3): 346-358. 2010.Recent experimental research has revealed surprising patterns in people's intuitions about free will and moral responsibility. One limitation of this research, however, is that it has been conducted exclusively on people from Western cultures. The present paper extends previous research by presenting a cross-cultural study examining intuitions about free will and moral responsibility in subjects from the United States, Hong Kong, India and Colombia. The results revealed a striking degree of cros…Read more
-
713Confucius and the Effortless Life of VirtueHistory of Philosophy Quarterly 27 (1): 1-16. 2010.Natural talent and diligent practice regularly lead to effortless virtuosity in many fields, such as music and athletics. Can the same be true of morality? Confucius’s wonderfully terse autobiography in the Analects suggests that, given the right starting materials and an appropriate curriculum of study, a program of moral self-cultivation can indeed lead to effortless moral virtuosity. But can we make sense of this claim from a contemporary perspective? This paper evaluates the plausibility of …Read more
-
684The darker side of daoist primitivismJournal of Chinese Philosophy 37 (2): 312-329. 2010.The Primitivist (responsible for chapters 8-11 of the heterogeneous Zhuangzi) has largely been interpreted as just another exponent of the philosophy of the Laozi or Daodejing. This is a shame, because the Primitivist is an idiosyncratic thinker whose theories do not simply reiterate those found in the Laozi. In this essay, I argue that even though the Primitivist embraced some of the values of the Laozi’s brand of Daoism, (e.g. simplicity, harmony with nature, being rid of knowledge, etc.) he w…Read more
-
329What Does the Nation of China Think About Phenomenal States?Review of Philosophy and Psychology 1 (2): 225-243. 2010.Critics of functionalism about the mind often rely on the intuition that collectivities cannot be conscious in motivating their positions. In this paper, we consider the merits of appealing to the intuition that there is nothing that it’s like to be a collectivity. We demonstrate that collective mentality is not an affront to commonsense, and we report evidence that demonstrates that the intuition that there is nothing that it’s like to be a collectivity is, to some extent, culturally specific r…Read more
-
1114Folk Moral RelativismMind and Language 26 (4): 482-505. 2011.It has often been suggested that people's ordinary understanding of morality involves a belief in objective moral truths and a rejection of moral relativism. The results of six studies call this claim into question. Participants did offer apparently objectivist moral intuitions when considering individuals from their own culture, but they offered increasingly relativist intuitions considering individuals from increasingly different cultures or ways of life. The authors hypothesize that people do…Read more
-
16Advances in Experimental Moral PsychologyBloomsbury Academic. 2014.Advances in Experimental Moral Psychology brings together leading scholars in the field to provide fresh theoretical perspectives on research in philosophy and psychology. Reflecting a diverse and active field of study, contributors are drawn from across both subjects to pursue central questions concerning moral psychology. Covering a wide-ranging selection of arguments, issues and debates, topics includes the role of emotion in moral judgment (both at a general theoretical level and with regard…Read more
-
502Is the 'trade-off hypothesis' worth trading for?Mind and Language 24 (2): 164-180. 2009.Abstract: Recently, the experimental philosopher Joshua Knobe has shown that the folk are more inclined to describe side effects as intentional actions when they bring about bad results. Edouard Machery has offered an intriguing new explanation of Knobe's work—the 'trade-off hypothesis'—which denies that moral considerations explain folk applications of the concept of intentional action. We critique Machery's hypothesis and offer empirical evidence against it. We also evaluate the current state …Read more
APA Eastern Division
New York City, New York, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Meta-Ethics |
Chinese Philosophy |
Moral Psychology |
Metaphilosophy |
PhilPapers Editorships
Classical Confucianism |
Confucius |
Mencius |
The Doctrine of the Mean |
The Great Learning |