•  41
    One of the most pervasive and persistent questions in philosophy is the relationship between the natural sciences and traditional philosophical categories such as metaphysics, epistemology and the mind. _Contemporary Philosophical Naturalism and Its Implications _is a unique and valuable contribution to the literature on this issue. It brings together a remarkable collection of highly regarded experts in the field along with some young theorists providing a fresh perspective. This book is notewo…Read more
  •  42
    Why Alief is Not a Legitimate Psychological Category
    Journal of Philosophical Research 36 371-389. 2011.
    We defend the view that belief is a psychological category against a recent attempt to recast it as a normative one. Tamar Gendler has argued that to properly understand how beliefs function in the regulation and production of action, we need to contrast beliefs with a class of psychological states and processes she calls “aliefs.” We agree with Gendler that affective states as well as habits and instincts deserve more attention than they receive in the contemporary philosophical psychology lite…Read more
  •  33
    How Did She Get So Good? On Virtue and Skill (review)
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 24 (2): 563-575. 2021.
    In his recent book on skill and virtue, Matt Stichter provides an account based on work in empirical psychology, specifically on self-regulation. In this paper I wish to argue that while this account is novel and well informed, it falls short. I present several examples that I believe Stichter’s view cannot explain and I try to identify the reasons for that. I argue that while trying to avoid the completely anti-intellectualist account of skill especially when it comes to virtue, Stichter may ha…Read more
  •  94
    Immoral Beliefs
    Ratio 26 (3): 299-309. 2012.
    In this paper, I argue that there exists a class of immoral beliefs. These beliefs are immoral not for the usual reasons, i.e. because of their tendency to cause harm, their immoral acquisition, or the fact that they involve unjustified moral judgments. Rather, the class of beliefs to which I wish to draw attention includes beliefs that do not even have any moral content, but whose non-moral content is still morally significant. These beliefs are immoral because holding them constitutes an immor…Read more
  • Reconciling Economics with Naturalist Ethical Theory
    Review of Social Economy 74 (3). 2016.
    The exclusive use of evolutionary explanations and game theory to justify moral claims has led economists to an impasse. Our discussion of this problem is focused on arguments made by Kenneth Binmore and Herbert Gintis, two vocal and notable economists behind these efforts. We begin by pointing out the false dilemma they present between ethical theories involving dubious non-naturalist metaphysics and their versions of naturalized game-theoretic ethics. We do so by, first, discussing alternative…Read more
  •  42
    Once upon a time, Aristotelean teleologists studied the natural world, both organic and inorganic, with the goal of revealing the divinely imposed ul- timate purpose of things. Things have changed. Galileo’s mathematization of physics removed Aristotelean final causes from the inorganic part of the natural world: that is a settled matter. Darwin then completed this revolu- tion in the sciences by extending it to the organic part of the natural world. But there is considerable room for disagreeme…Read more
  •  148
    Why Alief is Not a Legitimate Psychological Category
    Journal of Philosophical Research 36 371-389. 2011.
    We defend the view that belief is a psychological category against a recent attempt to recast it as a normative one. Tamar Gendler has argued that to properly understand how beliefs function in the regulation and production of action, we need to contrast beliefs with a class of psychological states and processes she calls “aliefs.” We agree with Gendler that affective states as well as habits and instincts deserve more attention than they receive in the contemporary philosophical psychology lite…Read more
  •  42
    Can I Be a Good Animal?
    In Bana Bashour Hans Muller (ed.), Contemporary Philosophical Naturalism and its Implications, Routledge. pp. 182--193. 2013.
    In this chapter, I wish to present an account of virtue ethics that does not base virtue solely on dispositions to behave in some way, but in the set of psychological states attributed to a person. In doing so, this modified account deals with all the problems the traditional virtue ethicist faces. I will start this chapter by presenting the main objections to virtue ethics: first, that it does not tell one how to act (which a moral theory should be aimed at); second, that virtues are culturally…Read more