•  1173
    Marcelo Fischborn discusses the significance of neuroscience for debates about free will. Although he concedes that, to date, Libet-style experiments have failed to threaten “libertarian free will”, he argues that, in principle, neuroscience and psychology could do so by supporting local determinism. We argue that, in principle, Libet-style experiments cannot succeed in disproving or even establishing serious doubt about libertarian free will. First, we contend that “local determination”, as Fis…Read more
  •  404
    Bringing moral responsibility down to earth
    Journal of Philosophy 105 (7): 371-388. 2008.
    Thought experiments have played a central role in philosophical methodology, largely as a means of elucidating the nature of our concepts and the implications of our theories.1 Particular attention is given to widely shared “folk” intuitions – the basic untutored intuitions that the layperson has about philosophical questions.2 The folk intuition is meant to underlie our core metaphysical concepts, and philosophical analysis is meant to explicate or sometimes refine these naïve concepts. Consist…Read more
  •  299
    Metaethical questions are typically held to be a priori , and therefore impervious to empirical evidence. Here I examine the metaethical claim that motive-internalism about belief , the position that moral beliefs are intrinsically motivating, is true. I argue that belief-internalists are faced with a dilemma. Either their formulation of internalism is so weak that it fails to be philosophically interesting, or it is a substantive claim but can be shown to be empirically false. I then provide ev…Read more
  •  242
    Neuroethics for the new millennium
    Neuron 35 (1): 21-23. 2002.
    ics. Each of these can be pursued independently to a large extent, but perhaps most intriguing is to contem- plate how progress in each will affect the other. The past several months have seen heightened interest <blockquote> _<b>The Ethics of Neuroscience</b>_ </blockquote> in the intersection of ethics and neuroscience. In the The ethics of neuroscience can be roughly subdivided popular press, the topic grabbed headlines in a May
  •  241
    Moral Motivation
    In John Doris (ed.), Moral Psychology Handbook, Oxford University Press. 2010.
    In this chapter, we begin with a discussion of motivation itself, and use that discussion to sketch four possible theories of distinctively moral motivation: caricature versions of familiar instrumentalist, cognitivist, sentimentalist, and personalist theories about morally worthy motivation. To test these theories, we turn to a wealth of scientific, particularly neuroscientific, evidence. Our conclusions are that (1) although the scientific evidence does not at present mandate a unique philosop…Read more
  •  238
    Are neuroimages like photographs of the brain?
    Philosophy of Science 74 (5): 860-872. 2007.
    Images come in many varieties, but for evidential purposes, photographs are privileged. Recent advances in neuroimaging provide us with a new type of image that is used as scientific evidence. Brain images are epistemically compelling, in part because they are liable to be viewed as akin to photographs of brain activity. Here I consider features of photography that underlie the evidential status we accord it, and argue that neuroimaging diverges from photography in ways that seriously undermine …Read more
  •  219
    A New Argument for Nonconceptual Content
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 76 (3): 633-659. 2008.
    This paper provides a novel argument against conceptualism, the claim that the content of human experience, including perceptual experience, is entirely conceptual. Conceptualism entails that the content of experience is limited by the concepts that we possess and deploy. I present an argument to show that such a view is exceedingly costly—if the nature of our experience is entirely conceptual, then we cannot account for concept learning: all perceptual concepts must be innate. The version of na…Read more
  •  186
    Neuroimaging and inferential distance
    Neuroethics 1 (1): 19-30. 2008.
    Brain images are used both as scientific evidence and to illustrate the results of neuroimaging experiments. These images are apt to be viewed as photographs of brain activity, and in so viewing them people are prone to assume that they share the evidential characteristics of photographs. Photographs are epistemically compelling, and have a number of characteristics that underlie what I call their inferential proximity. Here I explore the aptness of the photography analogy, and argue that althou…Read more
  •  166
    The binding problem
    Neuron 24 7--9. 1999.
    (von der Malsburg, 1981), “the binding problem” has with the visual percept of it, so that both are effortlessly captured the attention of researchers across many disci- perceived as being aspects of a single event. I like to plines, including psychology, neuroscience, computa- refer to these sorts of problems as perceptual binding tional modeling, and even philosophy. Despite the is- problems, since they involve unifying aspects of per- sue’s prominence in these fields, what “binding” means cep…Read more
  •  157
    In some recent papers, Max Coltheart has questioned the ability of neuroimaging techniques to tell us anything interesting about the mind and has thrown down the gauntlet before neuroimagers, challenging them to prove he is mistaken. Here I analyze Coltheart ’s challenge, show that as posed its terms are unfair, and reconstruct it so that it is addressable. I argue that, so modified, Coltheart ’s challenge is able to be met and indeed has been met. In an effort to delineate the extent of neuroim…Read more
  •  131
    Don’t panic: Self-authorship without obscure metaphysics1
    Philosophical Perspectives 26 (1): 323-342. 2012.
    In this paper I attempt to respond to the worries of the source incompatibilist, and try to sketch a naturalistically plausible, compatibilist notion of self-authorship and control that I believe captures important aspects of the folk intuitions regarding freedom and responsibility. It is my hope to thus offer those moved by source incompatibilist worries a reason not to adopt what P.F. Strawson called “the obscure and panicky metaphysics of Libertarianism” (P. F. Strawson, 1982) or the panic-in…Read more
  •  116
    Brain Images as Legal Evidence
    with Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Teneille Brown, and Emily Murphy
    Episteme 5 (3): 359-373. 2008.
    This paper explores whether brain images may be admitted as evidence in criminal trials under Federal Rule of Evidence 403, which weighs probative value against the danger of being prejudicial, confusing, or misleading to fact finders. The paper summarizes and evaluates recent empirical research relevant to these issues. We argue that currently the probative value of neuroimages for criminal responsibility is minimal, and there is some evidence of their potential to be prejudicial or misleading.…Read more
  •  99
    Running head: Functional neuroimaging Abstract Several recently developed techniques enable the investigation of the neural basis of cognitive function in the human brain. Two of these, PET and fMRI, yield whole-brain images reflecting regional neural activity associated with the performance of specific tasks. This article explores the spatial and temporal capabilities and limitations of these techniques, and discusses technical, biological, and cognitive issues relevant to understanding the goa…Read more
  •  94
    The problem of induction is perennially important in epistemology and the philosophy of science. In response to Goodman's 'New Riddle of Induction', Frank Jackson made a compelling case for there being no new riddle, by arguing that there are no nonprojectible properties. Although Jackson's denial of nonprojectible properties is correct, I argue here that he is mistaken in thinking that he thereby shows that there is no new riddle of induction, and demonstrate that his solution to the grue parad…Read more
  •  94
    Functional neuroimaging is sometimes criticized as showing only where in the brain things happen, not how they happen, and thus being unable to inform us about questions of mental and neural representation. Novel analytical methods increasingly make clear that imaging can give us access to constructs of interest to psychology. In this paper I argue that neuroimaging can give us an important, if limited, window into the large-scale structure of neural representation. I describe Representational S…Read more
  •  91
    Readiness potentials driven by non-motoric processes
    with Prescott Alexander, Alexander Schlegel, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Thalia Wheatley, and Peter Ulric Tse
    Consciousness and Cognition 39 38-47. 2016.
  •  89
    Language-of-thought hypothesis: Wrong, but sometimes useful?
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 46. 2023.
    Quilty-Dunn et al. maintain that language-of-thought hypothesis (LoTH) is the best game in town. We counter that LoTH is merely one source of models – always wrong, sometimes useful. Their reasons for liking LoTH are compatible with the view that LoTH provides a sometimes pragmatically useful level of abstraction over processes and mechanisms that fail to fully live up to LoT requirements.
  •  88
    A Strawsonian look at desert
    Philosophical Explorations 16 (2): 133-152. 2013.
    P.F. Strawson famously argued that reactive attitudes and ordinary moral practices justify moral assessments of blame, praise, and punishment. Here we consider whether Strawson's approach can illuminate the concept of desert. After reviewing standard attempts to analyze this concept and finding them lacking, we suggest that to deserve something is to justifiably receive a moral assessment in light of certain criteria – in particular, eligibility criteria (a subject's properties that make the sub…Read more
  •  88
    We are Borg
    Biology and Philosophy 20 (2-3): 611-622. 2005.
  •  88
    Hypnotizing Libet: Readiness potentials with non-conscious volition
    with Alexander Schlegel, Prescott Alexander, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Peter Ulric Tse, and Thalia Wheatley
    Consciousness and Cognition 33 (C): 196-203. 2015.
    The readiness potential (RP) is one of the most controversial topics in neuroscience and philosophy due to its perceived relevance to the role of conscious willing in action. Libet and colleagues reported that RP onset precedes both volitional movement and conscious awareness of willing that movement, suggesting that the experience of conscious will may not cause volitional movement (Libet, Gleason, Wright, & Pearl, 1983). Rather, they suggested that the RP indexes unconscious processes that may…Read more
  •  78
    Patients with ventromedial frontal damage have moral beliefs
    Philosophical Psychology 19 (5). 2006.
    Michael Cholbi thinks that the claim that motive internalism (MI), the thesis that moral beliefs or judgments are intrinsically motivating, is the best explanation for why moral beliefs are usually accompanied by moral motivation. He contests arguments that patients with ventromedial (VM) frontal brain damage are counterexamples to MI by denying that they have moral beliefs. I argue that none of the arguments he offers to support this contention are viable. First, I argue that given Cholbi's own…Read more
  •  76
    Catching the Prediction Wave in Brain Science
    with C. C. Wood
    Analysis 77 (4): 848-857. 2017.
    © The Authors 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Analysis Trust. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] Clark is usually among the first in philosophy to ride a new and important wave on the frontiers of cognitive science research. His Microcognition and Associative Engines chronicled connectionism, Being There explored embodied cognition, Natural Born Cyborgs deals with BCIs and environmental and technological scaffolding, a…Read more
  •  74
    A Puzzle about Empathy
    Emotion Review 3 (3): 378-280. 2011.
    Is empathy important for moral behavior? To answer this we will have to be conceptually clearer, empirically more detailed, and pay attention to the neural mechanisms underlying empathy-related phenomena.
  •  72
    Saving Subtraction: A reply to Van Orden and Paap
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 61 (3): 635-665. 2010.
    Van Orden and Paap argue that subtractive functional neuroimaging is fundamentally flawed, unfalsifiable, and cannot bear upon the nature of mind. In this they are mistaken, although their criticisms interestingly illuminate the scientific problems we confront in investigating the material basis of mind. Here, I consider the criticisms of Van Orden and Paap and discuss where they are mistaken and where justified. I then consider the picture of imaging science that Van Orden and Paap seem to espo…Read more
  •  71
    Neuroimages in court: less biasing than feared
    with N. J. Schweitzer and Michael J. Saks
    Trends in Cognitive Sciences 17 (3): 99-101. 2013.