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72Will-powered: Synchronic regulation is the difference maker for self-controlCognition 225 (C): 105154. 2022.Philosophers, psychologists, and economists have reached the consensus that one can use two different kinds of regulation to achieve self-control. Synchronic regulation uses willpower to resist current temptation. Diachronic regulation implements a plan to avoid future temptation. Yet this consensus may rest on contaminated intuitions. Specifically, agents typically use willpower (synchronic regulation) to achieve their plans to avoid temptation (diachronic regulation). So even if cases of diach…Read more
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18Simulation and the evolution of mindreadingIn Antonio Zilhao (ed.), Evolution, Rationality, and Cognition: A Cognitive Science for the Twenty-First Century, Routledge. pp. 148-161. 2005.
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6343The free will inventory: Measuring beliefs about agency and responsibilityConsciousness and Cognition 25 27-41. 2014.In this paper, we present the results of the construction and validation of a new psychometric tool for measuring beliefs about free will and related concepts: The Free Will Inventory (FWI). In its final form, FWI is a 29-item instrument with two parts. Part 1 consists of three 5-item subscales designed to measure strength of belief in free will, determinism, and dualism. Part 2 consists of a series of fourteen statements designed to further explore the complex network of people’s associated bel…Read more
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44The Phenomenology of Hair Pulling Urges in Trichotillomania: A Comparative ApproachFrontiers in Psychology 7. 2016.
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169Simulationist Models of Face-based Emotion RecognitionCognition 94 (3): 193-213. 2005.Recent studies of emotion mindreading reveal that for three emotions, fear, disgust, and anger, deficits in face-based recognition are paired with deficits in the production of the same emotion. What type of mindreading process would explain this pattern of paired deficits? The simulation approach and the theorizing approach are examined to determine their compatibility with the existing evidence. We conclude that the simulation approach offers the best explanation of the data. What computationa…Read more
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319Empirical tests of interest-relative invariantismEpisteme 9 (1): 3-26. 2012.According to Interest-Relative Invariantism, whether an agent knows that p, or possesses other sorts of epistemic properties or relations, is in part determined by the practical costs of being wrong about p. Recent studies in experimental philosophy have tested the claims of IRI. After critically discussing prior studies, we present the results of our own experiments that provide strong support for IRI. We discuss our results in light of complementary findings by other theorists, and address the…Read more
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11Cognitive efficiency beats top-down control as a reliable individual difference dimension relevant to self-controlCognition 215 (C): 104818. 2021.
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817Mental Disorders Involve Limits on Control, not Extreme PreferencesIn Matt King & Joshua May (eds.), Agency in Mental Disorder: Philosophical Dimensions, Oxford University Press. 2022.According to a standard picture of agency, a person’s actions always reflect what they most desire, and many theorists extend this model to mental illness. In this chapter, I pin down exactly where this “volitional” view goes wrong. The key is to recognize that human motivational architecture involves a regulatory control structure: we have both spontaneous states (e.g., automatically-elicited thoughts and action tendencies, etc.) as well as regulatory mechanisms that allow us to suppress or mod…Read more
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37What Does “Mind‐Wandering” Mean to the Folk? An Empirical InvestigationCognitive Science 44 (10). 2020.Although mind‐wandering research is rapidly progressing, stark disagreements are emerging about what the term “mind‐wandering” means. Four prominent views define mind‐wandering as (a) task‐unrelated thought, (b) stimulus‐independent thought, (c) unintentional thought, or (d) dynamically unguided thought. Although theorists claim to capture the ordinary understanding of mind‐wandering, no systematic studies have assessed these claims. Two large factorial studies present participants (N = 545) wit…Read more
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20Structure in the stream of consciousness: Evidence from a verbalized thought protocol and automated text analytic methodsConsciousness and Cognition 85 103007. 2020.
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157The atoms of self‐controlNoûs 55 (4): 800-824. 2021.Philosophers routinely invoke self‐control in their theorizing, but major questions remain about what exactly self‐control is. I propose a componential account in which an exercise of self‐control is built out of something more fundamental: basic intrapsychic actions called cognitive control actions. Cognitive control regulates simple, brief states called response pulses that operate across diverse psychological systems (think of one's attention being grabbed by a salient object or one's mind be…Read more
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380Although mind-wandering research is rapidly progressing, stark disagreements are emerging about what the term “mind-wandering” means. Four prominent views define mind-wandering as 1) task-unrelated thought, 2) stimulus-independent thought, 3) unintentional thought, or 4) dynamically unguided thought. Although theorists claim to capture the ordinary understanding of mind-wandering, no systematic studies have assessed these claims. Two large factorial studies present participants (n=545) with vign…Read more
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34The fallibility paradoxSocial Philosophy and Policy 36 (1): 234-248. 2019.:Reasons-responsiveness theories of moral responsibility are currently among the most popular. Here, I present the fallibility paradox, a novel challenge to these views. The paradox involves an agent who is performing a somewhat demanding psychological task across an extended sequence of trials and who is deeply committed to doing her very best at this task. Her action-issuing psychological processes are outstandingly reliable, so she meets the criterion of being reasons-responsive on every sing…Read more
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37Acting from the Gut: Responsibility without AwarenessJournal of Consciousness Studies 22 (7-8): 37-48. 2015.
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128Addiction and FallibilityJournal of Philosophy 115 (11): 569-587. 2018.There is an ongoing debate about loss of control in addiction: Some theorists say at least some addicts’ drug-directed desires are irresistible, while others insist that pursuing drugs is a choice. The debate is long-standing and has essentially reached a stalemate. This essay suggests a way forward. I propose an alternative model of loss of control in addiction, one based not on irresistibility, but rather fallibility. According to the model, on every occasion of use, self-control processes exh…Read more
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Experimental Philosophy and Moral TheoryIn Tristram Colin McPherson & David Plunkett (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Metaethics, Routledge. pp. 609-625. 2017.
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145Punishment and the strategic structure of moral systemsBiology and Philosophy 20 (4). 2005.The problem of moral compliance is the problem of explaining how moral norms are sustained over extented stretches of time despite the existence of selfish evolutionary incentives that favor their violation. There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of solutions that have been offered to the problem of moral compliance, the reciprocity-based account and the punishment-based account. In this paper, I argue that though the reciprocity-based account has been widely endorsed by evolutionary theorists, …Read more
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102Adaptationism, Culture, and the Malleability of Human NatureIn Peter Carruthers, Stephen Laurence & Stephen Stich (eds.), The Innate Mind, Volume 3: Foundations and the Future, Oxford University Press. 2008.It is often thought that if an adaptationist explanation of some behavioural phenomenon is true, then this fact shows that a culturist explanation of the very same phenomenon is false, or else the adaptationist explanation preempts or crowds out the culturist explanation in some way. This chapter shows why this so-called competition thesis is misguided. Two evolutionary models are identified — the Information Learning Model and the Strategic Learning Model — which show that adaptationist reasoni…Read more
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113Review of Morton's The importance of being understood: Folk psychology as ethics (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 82 (2). 2004.Book Information The Importance of Being Understood: Folk Psychology as Ethics. The Importance of Being Understood: Folk Psychology as Ethics Adam Morton , London; New York: Routledge , 2002 , 240 , US$95 ( cloth ), US$29.95 ( paper ) By Adam Morton. London; New York: Routledge. Pp. 240. US$95 (cloth:), US$29.95 (paper:).
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110Free will and the construction of optionsPhilosophical Studies 173 (11): 2913-2933. 2016.What are the distinctive psychological features that explain why humans are free, but many other creatures, such as simple animals, are not? It is natural to think that the answer has something to do with unique human capacities for decision-making. Philosophical discussions of how decision-making works, however, are tellingly incomplete. In particular, these discussions invariably presuppose an agent who has a mentally represented set of options already fully in hand. The emphasis is largely on…Read more
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156The Philosophy of psychologyIn Dermot Moran (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Twentieth-Century Philosophy, Routledge. 2008.The 20 sup > th /sup > century has been a tumultuous time in psychology -- a century in which the discipline struggled with basic questions about its intellectual identity, but nonetheless managed to achieve spectacular growth and maturation. It’s not surprising, then, that psychology has attracted sustained philosophical attention and stimulated rich philosophical debate. Some of this debate was aimed at understanding, and sometimes criticizing, the assumptions, concepts and explanatory strateg…Read more
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254Evolution, culture, and the irrationality of the emotionsIn D. Evans & Pierre Cruse (eds.), Emotion, Evolution, and Rationality, Oxford University Press. 2004.For about 2500 years, from Plato’s time until the closing decades of the 20th century, the dominant view was that the emotions are quite distinct from the processes of rational thinking and decision making, and are often a major impediment to those processes. But in recent years this orthodoxy has been challenged in a number of ways. Damasio (1994) has made a forceful case that the traditional view, which he has dubbed _Descartes’ Error_, is quite wrong, because emotions play a fundamental role …Read more
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226Philosophical Questions about the Nature of WillpowerPhilosophy Compass 5 (9). 2010.In this article, I survey four key questions about willpower: How is willpower possible? Why does willpower fail? How does willpower relate to other self-regulatory processes? and What are the connections between willpower and weakness of will? Empirical research into willpower is growing rapidly and yielding some fascinating new findings. This survey emphasizes areas in which empirical progress in understanding willpower helps to advance traditional philosophical debates.
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37Automatic goals and conscious regulation in social cognitive affective neuroscienceBehavioral and Brain Sciences 37 (2): 156-157. 2014.
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157Telling More Than We Can Know About Intentional ActionMind and Language 26 (3): 353-380. 2011.Recently, a number of philosophers have advanced a surprising conclusion: people's judgments about whether an agent brought about an outcome intentionally are pervasively influenced by normative considerations. In this paper, we investigate the ‘Chairman case’, an influential case from this literature and disagree with this conclusion. Using a statistical method called structural path modeling, we show that people's attributions of intentional action to an agent are driven not by normative asses…Read more
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1888How is Willpower Possible? The Puzzle of Synchronic Self‐Control and the Divided MindNoûs 48 (1): 41-74. 2012.Peer Reviewed.
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43The 2014 Tanner Symposium features a panel of speakers discussing current research in the areas of volition and self-control and the effects of that research for issues of public policy.
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20Using big data to map the network organization of the brainBehavioral and Brain Sciences 37 (1): 101-102. 2014.
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509Self-expression: a deep self theory of moral responsibilityPhilosophical Studies 173 (5): 1203-1232. 2016.According to Dewey, we are responsible for our conduct because it is “ourselves objectified in action”. This idea lies at the heart of an increasingly influential deep self approach to moral responsibility. Existing formulations of deep self views have two major problems: They are often underspecified, and they tend to understand the nature of the deep self in excessively rationalistic terms. Here I propose a new deep self theory of moral responsibility called the Self-Expression account that ad…Read more
Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Action |
Meta-Ethics |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |