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459In defense of the principle of alternative possibilities: Why I don't find Frankfurt's argument convincingPhilosophical Perspectives 10 403-17. 1996.
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442Self-EvidenceLogos and Episteme 1 (2): 325-352. 2010.ABSTRACT: This paper develops an account of what it is for a proposition to be self- evident to someone, based on the idea that certain propositions are such that to fully understand them is to believe them. It argues that when a proposition p is self-evident to one, one has non-inferential a priori justification for believing that p and, a welcome feature, a justification that does not involve exercising any special sort of intuitive faculty; if, in addition, it is true that p and there exists …Read more
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347Freedom, responsibility, and agencyThe Journal of Ethics 1 (1): 85-98. 1997.This paper first distinguishes three alternative views that adherents to both incompatibilism and PAP may take as to what constitutes an agent''s determining or controlling her action (if it''s not the action''s being deterministically caused by antecedent events): the indeterministic-causation view, the agent-causation view, and "simple indeterminism." The bulk of the paper focusses on the dispute between simple indeterminism - the view that the occurrence of a simple mental event is determined…Read more
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325The conditional analysis of freedomIn P. Van Inwagen (ed.), Time and Cause: Essays Presented to Richard Taylor, Reidel. pp. 171-186. 1980.
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302Might We Have No ChoiceIn Keith Lehrer (ed.), Freedom and Determinisim, Random House. pp. 87--104. 1966.
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256On ActionCambridge University Press. 1990.This book deals with foundational issues in the theory of the nature of action, the intentionality of action, the compatibility of freedom of action with determinism, and the explantion of action. Ginet's is a volitional view: that every action has as its core a 'simple' mental action. He develops a sophisticated account of the individuation of actions and also propounds a challenging version of the view that freedom of action is incompatible with determinism.
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190The dispositionalist solution to Wittgenstein's problem about understanding a rule: Answering Kripke's objectionMidwest Studies in Philosophy 17 (1): 53-73. 1992.The paper explicates a version of dispositionalism and defends it against Kripke's objections (in his "Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language") that 1) it leaves out the normative aspect of a rule, 2) it cannot account for the directness of the knowledge one has of what one meant, and 3) regarding rules for computable functions of numbers, a) there are numbers beyond one's capacity to consider and b) there are people who are disposed to make systematic mistakes in computing values of functio…Read more
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174In Defense of a Non-Causal Account of Reasons ExplanationsThe Journal of Ethics 12 (3-4). 2008.This paper defends my claim in earlier work that certain non-causal conditions are sufficient for the truth of some reasons explanations of actions, against the critique of this claim given by Randolph Clarke in his book, Libertarian Accounts of Free Will
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142On Mele and Robb’s Indeterministic Frankfurt-Style CasePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 80 (2): 440-446. 2010.Alfred Mele and David Robb (1998, 2003) offer what they claim is a counter-example to the principle of alternative possibilities (PAP), the principle that a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise. In their example, a person makes a decision by his own indeterministic causal process though antecedent circumstances ensure he could not have done otherwise. Specifically, a simultaneously occurring process in him would deterministically cause the decis…Read more
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134Working with Fischer and Ravizza’s Account of Moral ResponsibilityThe Journal of Ethics 10 (3): 229-253. 2006.This paper examines the account of guidance control given in Fischer and Ravizza's book, Responsibility and Control, with the aim of revising it so as to make it a better account of what needs to be added to having alternatives open to yield a specification of the control condition for responsibility that will be acceptable to an adherent of the principle that one is responsible for something only if one could have avoided it
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128Reasons explanation of action: An incompatibilist accountPhilosophical Perspectives 3 17-46. 1989.
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115Book Review. Living Without Free Will. Derk Pereboom (review)The Journal of Ethics 6 (3): 305-309. 2002.
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108An Action Can be Both Uncaused and Up to the AgentIn Lumer (ed.), Intentionality, Deliberation, and Autonomy, Ashgate. pp. 243--255. 2007.
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105
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92Reasons Explanation: Further Defense of a Non-causal AccountThe Journal of Ethics 20 (1-3): 219-228. 2016.If moral responsibility requires uncaused action, as I believe, and if a reasons explanation of an action must be a causal explanation, as many philosophers of action suppose, then it follows that our responsible actions are ones we do for no reason, which is preposterous. In previous work I have argued against the second premise of this deduction, claiming that the statement that a person did A in order to satisfy their desire D will be true if the person, while doing A, intended of that action…Read more
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90Comments on Plantinga’s two-volume work on warrantPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 55 (2): 403-408. 1995.
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88Knowledge and Mind: Essays Presented to Norman Malcolm (edited book)Oxford Univresity Press. 1983.
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77Infinitism is not the solution to the regress problemIn Matthias Steup & John Turri (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, Blackwell. pp. 140--149. 2013.
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69Contra ReliabilismThe Monist 68 (2): 175-187. 1985.The reliability of a belief-producing process is a matter of how likely it is that the process will produce beliefs that are true. The term reliabilism may be used to refer to any position that makes this idea of reliability central to the explication of some important epistemic concept. I know of three such positions that appeal to some epistemologists: a reliabilist account of what makes a belief justified, a reliabilist account of what makes a true belief knowledge, and a reliabilist answer t…Read more
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59The Works of Agency: On Human Action, Will, and FreedomPhilosophical Review 109 (4): 632. 2000.This book comprises eleven essays in the philosophy of action, six of which were previously published. The book has a fairly extensive index. The essays are arranged in four groups. The first group contains two essays on the individuation of action. The second contains four essays that argue for the view that what makes an event an action is, not how it is caused, but that it is, or begins with, a volition, “an intrinsically actional” mental event. The third contains three essays that defend the…Read more
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58Comments on Alfred Mele, Motivation and Agency – DiscussionPhilosophical Studies 123 (3): 261-272. 2005.
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57Trying to ActIn Joseph Keim Campbell, Michael O'Rourke & David Shier (eds.), Freedom and Determinism, Mit Press. 2004.
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57Book Review. Teleological realism. Scott Sehon. (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 76 (3). 2008.No Abstract
Ithaca, New York, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Action |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |