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399Rationalization in Philosophical and Moral ThoughtIn Jean-François Bonnefon & Bastien Trémolière (eds.), Moral Inferences, Routledge. 2017.Rationalization, in our intended sense of the term, occurs when a person favors a particular conclusion as a result of some factor (such as self-interest) that is of little justificatory epistemic relevance, if that factor then biases the person’s subsequent search for, and assessment of, potential justifications for the conclusion. Empirical evidence suggests that rationalization is common in people’s moral and philosophical thought. We argue that it is likely that the moral and philosophical t…Read more
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2The Behavior of EthicistsIn Wesley Buckwalter & Justin Sytsma (eds.), Blackwell Companion to Experimental Philosophy, Blackwell. 2016.
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Do people still report dreaming in black and white? An attempt to replicate a questionnaire from 1942Perceptual and Motor Skills 96 25-29. 2003.
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1A Dispositional Approach to the AttitudesIn Nikolaj Nottelmann (ed.), New Essays on Belief: Constitution, Content and Structure, Palgrave. pp. 75-99. 2013.I argue that to have an attitude is, primarily, (1.) to have a dispositional profile that matches, to an appropriate degree and in appropriate respects, a stereotype for that attitude, typically grounded in folk psychology, and secondarily, (2.) in some cases also to meet further stereotypical attitude-specific conditions. To have an attitude, on the account I will recommend here, is mainly a matter of being apt to interact with the world in patterns that ordinary people would regard as characte…Read more
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65The Moral Behaviour of Ethicists: Peer OpinionMind 118 (472): 1043-1059. 2009.If philosophical moral reflection tends to improve moral behaviour, one might expect that professional ethicists will, on average, behave morally better than non-ethicists. One potential source of insight into the moral behaviour of ethicists is philosophers' opinions about ethicists' behaviour. At the 2007 Pacific Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association, we used chocolate to entice 277 passers-by to complete anonymous questionnaires without their knowing the topic of those qu…Read more
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111Expertise in Moral Reasoning? Order Effects on Moral Judgment in Professional Philosophers and Non-PhilosophersMind and Language 27 (2): 135-153. 2012.We examined the effects of order of presentation on the moral judgments of professional philosophers and two comparison groups. All groups showed similar-sized order effects on their judgments about hypothetical moral scenarios targeting the doctrine of the double effect, the action-omission distinction, and the principle of moral luck. Philosophers' endorsements of related general moral principles were also substantially influenced by the order in which the hypothetical scenarios had previously…Read more
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90Aiming for Moral MediocrityRes Philosophica 96 (3): 347-368. 2019.Most people aim to be about as morally good as their peers—not especially better, not especially worse. We do not aim to be good, or non-bad, or to act permissibly rather than impermissibly, by fixed moral standards. Rather, we notice the typical behavior of our peers, then calibrate toward so-so. This is a somewhat bad way to be, but it’s not a terribly bad way to be. We are somewhat morally criticizable for having low moral ambitions. Typical arguments defending the moral acceptability of low …Read more
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175Kant Meets CyberpunkDisputatio 11 (55). 2019.I defend a how-possibly argument for Kantian (or Kant*-ian) transcendental idealism, drawing on concepts from David Chalmers, Nick Bostrom, and the cyberpunk subgenre of science fiction. If we are artificial intelligences living in a virtual reality instantiated on a giant computer, then the fundamental structure of reality might be very different than we suppose. Indeed, since computation does not require spatial properties, spatiality might not be a feature of things as they are in themselves …Read more
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130Phenomenal Consciousness, Defined and Defended as Innocently as I Can ManageJournal of Consciousness Studies 23 (11-12): 224-235. 2016.Phenomenal consciousness can be conceptualized innocently enough that its existence should be accepted even by philosophers who wish to avoid dubious epistemic and metaphysical commitments such as dualism, infallibilism, privacy, inexplicability, or intrinsic simplicity. Definition by example allows us this innocence. Positive examples include sensory experiences, imagery experiences, vivid emotions, and dreams. Negative examples include growth hormone release, dispositional knowledge, standing …Read more
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5Death, Self, and Oneness in the Incomprehensible ZhuangziIn Philip J. Ivanhoe, Owen Flanagan, Victoria S. Harrison, Hagop Sarkissian & Eric Schwitzgebel (eds.), The Oneness Hypothesis: Beyond the Boundary of Self, Columbia University Press. 2018.The ancient Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi defies coherent interpretation. This is an inextricable part of the beauty and power of his work. The text – by which I mean the “Inner Chapters” of the text traditionally attributed to him, the authentic core of the book – is incomprehensible as a whole. It consists of shards, in a distinctive voice – a voice distinctive enough that its absence is plain in most or all of the “Outer” and “Miscellaneous” Chapters, and which I will treat as the voice of a s…Read more
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86Zhuangzi's Attitude Toward Language and His SkepticismIn P. Kjellberg & Philip J. Ivanhoe (eds.), Essays on Skepticism, Relativism, and Ethics in the Zhuangzi, Suny Press. pp. 68-96. 1996.This paper begins by observing a tension in the Zhuangzi (or Chuang Tzu). On the one hand, Zhuangzi often advocates radical skepticism and relativism. On the other hand, he often makes a variety of factual claims and endorses and condemns various ways of living, in apparent disregard of any skeptical or relativist considerations. I resolve this tension by suggesting that Zhuangzi does not mean what he says when he advocates skepticism and relativism - that he aims in the apparently skeptical and…Read more
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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
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112Ethicists' courtesy at philosophy conferencesPhilosophical Psychology 25 (3). 2012.If philosophical moral reflection tends to promote moral behavior, one might think that professional ethicists would behave morally better than do socially comparable non-ethicists. We examined three types of courteous and discourteous behavior at American Philosophical Association conferences: talking audibly while the speaker is talking (versus remaining silent), allowing the door to slam shut while entering or exiting mid-session (versus attempting to close the door quietly), and leaving behi…Read more
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41Consciousness, Idealism, and Skepticism: Reflections on Jay Garfield’s Engaging BuddhismSophia 57 (4): 559-563. 2018.Jay Garfield’s Engaging Buddhism admirably shows the relevance of Indian philosophy to the interests of mainstream analytic Anglophone philosophers. Garfield deploys the Indian tradition to critique phenomenal realism, the view that there really are qualia or phenomenal properties—that there really is ‘something it’s like’ to be undergoing the experience you are undergoing right now. I argue that Garfield’s critique probably turns on a false dilemma that omits the possibility of introspection as…Read more
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50The experience of readingConsciousness and Cognition 62 (C): 57-68. 2018.What do people consciously experience when they read? There has been almost no rigorous research on this question, and opinions diverge radically among both philosophers and psychologists. We describe three studies of the phenomenology of reading and its relationship to memory of textual detail and general cognitive abilities. We find three main results. First, there is substantial variability in reports about reading experience, both within and between participants. Second, reported reading exp…Read more
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111The Insularity of Anglophone Philosophy: Quantitative AnalysesPhilosophical Papers 47 (1): 21-48. 2018.We present evidence that mainstream Anglophone philosophy is insular in the sense that participants in this academic tradition tend mostly to cite or interact with other participants in this academic tradition, while having little academic interaction with philosophers writing in other languages. Among our evidence: In a sample of articles from elite Anglophone philosophy journals, 97% of citations are citations of work originally written in English; 96% of members of editorial boards of elite A…Read more
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Little or No Experience Outside of Attention?Journal of Consciousness Studies 18 (1): 234-252. 2011.
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4How well do we know our own conscious experience? the case of visual imageryJournal of Consciousness Studies 9 (5-6): 35-53. 2002.Philosophers tend to assume that we have excellent knowledge of our own current conscious experience or 'phenomenology'. I argue that our knowledge of one aspect of our experience, the experience of visual imagery, is actually rather poor. Precedent for this position is found among the introspective psychologists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Two main arguments are advanced toward the conclusion that our knowledge of our own imagery is poor. First, the reader is asked to …Read more
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2338Knowing That P without Believing That PNoûs 47 (2): 371-384. 2013.Most epistemologists hold that knowledge entails belief. However, proponents of this claim rarely offer a positive argument in support of it. Rather, they tend to treat the view as obvious and assert that there are no convincing counterexamples. We find this strategy to be problematic. We do not find the standard view obvious, and moreover, we think there are cases in which it is intuitively plausible that a subject knows some proposition P without—or at least without determinately—believing tha…Read more
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146Women in Philosophy: Quantitative Analyses of Specialization, Prevalence, Visibility, and Generational ChangePublic Affairs Quarterly 31 83-105. 2017.We present several quantitative analyses of the prevalence and visibility of women in moral, political, and social philosophy, compared to other areas of philosophy, and how the situation has changed over time. Measures include faculty lists from the Philosophical Gourmet Report, PhD job placement data from the Academic Placement Data and Analysis project, the National Science Foundation's Survey of Earned Doctorates, conference programs of the American Philosophical Association, authorship in e…Read more
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4Reply to commentators: scientific and everyday theories are of a pieceScience & Education 8 (5): 575-582. 1999.
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39Difficulties in Davidson's arguments against belief without languageDissertation Chapter, U.C. Berkeley Philosophy. 1997.
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258Philosophers’ biased judgments persist despite training, expertise and reflectionCognition 141 (C): 127-137. 2015.We examined the effects of framing and order of presentation on professional philosophers’ judgments about a moral puzzle case (the “trolley problem”) and a version of the Tversky & Kahneman “Asian disease” scenario. Professional philosophers exhibited substantial framing effects and order effects, and were no less subject to such effects than was a comparison group of non-philosopher academic participants. Framing and order effects were not reduced by a forced delay during which participants …Read more
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371A Phenomenal, Dispositional Account of BeliefNoûs 36 (2): 249-275. 2002.This paper describes and defends in detail a novel account of belief, an account inspired by Ryle's dispositional characterization of belief, but emphasizing irreducibly phenomenal and cognitive dispositions as well as behavioral dispositions. Potential externalist and functionalist objections are considered, as well as concerns motivated by the inevitably ceteris paribus nature of the relevant dispositional attributions. It is argued that a dispositional account of belief is particularly well-s…Read more
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3Presuppositions and background assumptionsJournal of Consciousness Studies 18 (1): 206-233. 2011.
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Metaphilosophy |