•  153
    What do We Want from a Theory of Epistemic Blame?
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 99 (4): 791-805. 2021.
    ABSTRACT This paper identifies a number of questions that any plausible theory of epistemic blame ought to answer. What is epistemic blame? When is someone an appropriate target of epistemic blame? And what justifies engaging in epistemic blame? I argue that a number of problems arise when we try to answer these questions by using existing conceptions of moral blame. I then consider and reject Brown’s [2020] belief-desire model of epistemic blame. Finally, I argue that an agency-cultivation mode…Read more
  •  145
    Hypocrisy, Standing to Blame and Second‐Personal Authority
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 101 (4): 603-627. 2020.
    This paper identifies why hypocrites lack the standing to blame others for certain wrongs. I first examine previous analyses of 'standing', and note these attempts all centre around the idea of entitlement. I then argue that thinking of standing to blame as a purely moral entitlement faces numerous problems. By examining how the concept of standing is used in other contexts, I argue that we should think of standing to blame in partly metaphysical terms. That is, we should think of it as a status…Read more
  •  143
    Situationism, subjunctive hypocrisy and standing to blame
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 66 (4): 514-538. 2023.
    Philosophers have argued that subjects who act wrongly in the situationist psychology experiments are morally responsible for their actions. This paper argues that though the obedient subjects in Milgram’s ‘Obedience to Authority’ experiments are blameworthy, since most of us would have acted in the same manner they did, it is inappropriate for most of us to blame them. On Todd’s ([2019]. “A Unified Account of the Moral Standing to Blame.” Noûs 53 (2): 347–374.) recent account of standing to bla…Read more
  •  123
    Responsibility for Testimonial Injustice
    Philosophical Studies 178 (2). 2021.
    In this paper, I examine whether agents who commit testimonial injustice are morally responsible for their wrongdoing, given that they are ignorant of their wrongdoing. Fricker (2007) argues that agents whose social setting lacks the concepts or reasons necessary for them to correct for testimonial injustice are excused. I argue that agents whose social settings have these concepts or reasons available are also typically excused, because they lack the capacity to recognise those concepts or reas…Read more
  •  67
    Blame in the Aftermath of Excused Wrongdoing
    Public Affairs Quarterly 34 (2): 142-168. 2020.
    Control accounts of moral responsibility argue that agents must possess certain capacities in order to be blameworthy for wrongdoing. This is sometimes thought to be revisionary, because reflection on our moral practices reveals that we often blame many agents who lack these capacities. This paper argues that Control accounts of moral responsibility are not too revisionary, nor too permissive, because they can still demand quite a lot from excused wrongdoers. Excused wrongdoers can acquire dutie…Read more
  •  66
    Vice epistemology studies how character traits, attitudes, or thinking styles systematically get in the way of knowledge, while doxastic responsibility is concerned with what kinds of responses are appropriate towards agents who believe badly. This paper identifies a new connection between these two fields, arguing that our propensity to take responsibility for our doxastic failures is directly relevant for vice epistemology, and in particular, understanding the social obstacles to knowledge tha…Read more
  •  65
    Situationism, capacities and culpability
    Philosophical Studies 179 (6): 1997-2027. 2022.
    The situationist experiments demonstrate that most people's behaviour is influenced by environmental factors much more than we expect, and that ordinary people can be led to behave very immorally. A number of philosophers have investigated whether these experiments demonstrate that subjects' responsibility-relevant capacities are impeded. This paper considers how, in practice, we can assess when agents have a reduced capacity to avoid wrongdoing. It critiques some previously offered strategies i…Read more
  •  48
    Philosophy’s Undergraduate Gender Gaps and Early Interventions
    Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 6 707-741. 2019.
    Researchers have found that philosophy’s gender gap gradually increases as students progress from first year, to majoring and into graduate school. By analysing enrolments in philosophy units at Australian universities from 2005 to 2017, I argue that early interventions are likely to be more effective than typically assumed. My findings are consistent with previous data, but improve on previous analyses in a few ways. First, this paper quantifies women’s risk of leaving philosophy relative to me…Read more
  •  46
    Smilansky notes that wrongdoers seem to lack any entitlement to complain about being treated in the ways that they have treated others. However, it also seems impermissible to treat agents in certain ways, and this impermissibility would give wrongdoers who are themselves wronged grounds for complaint. This article solves this apparent paradox by arguing that what is at issue is not the right simply to make complaints, but the right to have one's demands respected. Agents must accept the authori…Read more
  •  44
    Epistemic Health, Epistemic Immunity and Epistemic Inoculation
    with Scott Siskind
    Philosophical Studies 180 (8): 2329-2354. 2023.
    This paper introduces three new concepts: epistemic health, epistemic immunity, and epistemic inoculation. Epistemic health is a measure of how well an entity (e.g. person, community, nation) is functioning with regard to various epistemic goods or ideals. It is constituted by many different factors (e.g. possessing true beliefs, being disposed to make reliable inferences), is improved or degraded by many different things (e.g. research funding, social trust), and many different kinds of inquiry…Read more
  •  40
    How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Ignore Unwelcome Epistemic Company
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 53 (2): 121-137. 2023.
    The problem of unwelcome epistemic company refers to the problem of encountering agreement with your beliefs from an unwelcome source, such as someone who is known to form unreliable beliefs or have values you reject. Blanchard (2023) and Levy (2023) argue that when we encounter unwelcome agreement, we may have reason to reduce our confidence in our matching beliefs. I argue that unwelcome epistemic company rarely provides reasons to reduce our confidence, and apparent successes at improving our…Read more
  •  26
    Situationism and trait-eliciting situations
    Analysis 83 (1): 80-88. 2022.
    Doris, in his 2002 book Lack of Character and 2005 paper ‘Replies: evidence and sensibility’, famously argues that we lack the kinds of global character traits posited by theories of virtue, because the situationist experiments demonstrate that people do not display trait-relevant behaviour in trait-relevant situations above chance. This paper argues that some notable situationist experiments are not trait-relevant situations. By analysing which factors improve or reduce participants’ chances of…Read more
  •  18
    The Utilitarian's Guide to Dreams
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 105 (1): 75-97. 2024.
    Unpleasant dreams occur much more frequently than many people realise. If one is a hedonistic utilitarian – or, at least, one thinks that dreams have positive or negative moral value in virtue of their experiential quality – then one has considerable reason to try to make such dreams more positive. Given it is possible to improve the quality of our dreams, we ought to be promoting and implementing currently available interventions that improve our dream experiences, and conducting research to fi…Read more
  •  11
    A Modest Defence of Somewhat Selective Outrage
    with Scott Siskind
    Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.
    Many people think there is something objectionable about ‘selective outrage’. After investigating how to best characterise what selective outrage is and what these objections target, this paper argues that many cases of supposedly selective outrage actually have important positive effects. Because we often have limited resources with which to enforce norms, it can be collectively prudent to prioritise enforcing norms that are well-established or collectively recognisable over those that are not.…Read more
  •  11
    Upon hearing the title of C. Stephen Evans’s book, many readers familiar with the moral responsibility and blame literature will be struck by surprise that more consideration hasn’t previously been...
  •  9
    Attributionist Group Agent Responsibility
    Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 25 (3). 2023.
    A number of philosophers have recently argued that group agents can be morally responsible for their actions in virtue of having a certain kind of structured decision-making procedure which is responsive to reasons. However, accounts of group agent blameworthiness face some objections. One is that group agents cannot be responsible for wrongdoing because they are unable to experience certain kinds of emotional responses (Thompson, 2018). Another is that group agents who regularly commit wrongdoi…Read more
  •  4
    A ‘bad feminist’ is someone who endorses feminist ideals and values but finds themselves falling short of them. Since bad feminists exhibit an inconsistency between what they say and what they do, this can generate worries about hypocrisy. This article investigates whether and when members of political movements with certain ideals ought to worry they are being hypocritical. It first provides a diagnosis of why worries about hypocrisy seem common in the political arena. I argue that accusations …Read more