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1618Moral psychology as accountabilityIn Justin D'Arms & Daniel Jacobson (eds.), Moral Psychology and Human Agency: Philosophical Essays on the Science of Ethics, Oxford University Press. pp. 40-83. 2014.Recent work in moral philosophy has emphasized the foundational role played by interpersonal accountability in the analysis of moral concepts such as moral right and wrong, moral obligation and duty, blameworthiness, and moral responsibility (Darwall 2006; 2013a; 2013b). Extending this framework to the field of moral psychology, we hypothesize that our moral attitudes, emotions, and motives are also best understood as based in accountability. Drawing on a large body of empirical evidence, we arg…Read more
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694The Addict in Us AllFrontiers in Psychiatry 5 (139): 01-20. 2014.In this paper, we contend that the psychology of addiction is similar to the psychology of ordinary, non-addictive temptation in important respects, and explore the ways in which these parallels can illuminate both addiction and ordinary action. The incentive salience account of addiction proposed by Robinson and Berridge (1993; 2001; 2008) entails that addictive desires are not in their nature different from many of the desires had by non-addicts; what is different is rather the way that addict…Read more
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541Joint Practical DeliberationDissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 2017.Joint practical deliberation is the activity of deciding together what to do. In this dissertation, I argue that several speech acts that we can use to alter our moral obligations – promises, offers, requests, demands, commands, and agreements – are moves within joint practical deliberation. The dissertation begins by investigating joint practical deliberation. The resulting account implies that joint deliberation is more flexible than we usually recognize, in two ways. First, we can make joint …Read more
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482The Relation Between Moral Reasons and Moral RequirementErkenntnis. 2023.What is the relation between moral reasons and moral requirement? Specifically: what relation does an action have to bear to one’s moral reasons in order to count as morally required? This paper defends the following answer to this question: an action is morally required just in case the moral reasons in favor of that action are enough on their own to outweigh all of the reasons, moral and nonmoral, to perform any alternative. I argue that this decisive moral reason view satisfies three key desi…Read more
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370Promises as Proposals in Joint Practical DeliberationNoûs 54 (1): 204-232. 2020.This paper argues that promises are proposals in joint practical deliberation, the activity of deciding together what to do. More precisely: to promise to ϕ is to propose (in a particular way) to decide together with your addressee(s) that you will ϕ. I defend this deliberative theory by showing that the activity of joint practical deliberation naturally gives rise to a speech act with exactly the same properties as promises. A certain kind of proposal to make a joint decision regarding one's ow…Read more
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140Two Concepts of Directed ObligationPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 1-26. 2024.This paper argues that there are two importantly distinct normative relations that can be referred to using phrases like ‘X is obligated to Y,’ ‘Y has a right against X,’ or ‘X wronged Y.’ When we say that I am obligated to you not to read your diary, one thing we might mean is that I am subject to a deontological constraint against reading your diary that gives me a non‐instrumental, agent‐relative reason not to do so, and which you are typically in a unique position to waive with consent. I ca…Read more
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44Review of Hanno Sauer, Moral Thinking, Fast and Slow (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2019 0. 2019.
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40Promises, Offers, Requests, AgreementsErgo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 9 (n/a). 2022.If I promise to pick you up at the airport, I thereby become obligated to do so. But this is not the only way I could undertake this obligation. If I offer to pick you up, and you accept my offer, I become obligated to pick you up in much the same way. I would also undertake similar obligations if you asked me to pick you up and I accepted your request, or if we made an agreement that I will pick you up at the airport and in exchange you’ll buy me dinner. Why are the normative effects of accepte…Read more
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28Review of Anthony Simon Laden, Reasoning: A Social Picture (review)Philosophical Review 125 (3): 435-439. 2016.
Brendan de Kenessey
University Of Toronto
University of Toronto, St. George Campus
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University Of TorontoAssistant Professor
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University of Toronto, St. George CampusAssistant Professor
Areas of Specialization
Normative Ethics |
Meta-Ethics |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Philosophy of Action |
Social and Political Philosophy |