•  108
    In search of animal normativity: a framework for studying social norms in non-human animals
    with Evan Westra, Simon Fitzpatrick, Sarah F. Brosnan, Thibaud Gruber, Catherine Hobaiter, Lydia M. Hopper, Christopher Krupenye, Lydia V. Luncz, Jordan Theriault, and Kristin Andrews
    Biological Reviews. forthcoming.
    Social norms – rules governing which behaviours are deemed appropriate or inappropriate within a given community – are typically taken to be uniquely human. Recently, this position has been challenged by a number of philosophers, cognitive scientists, and ethologists, who have suggested that social norms may also be found in certain non-human animal communities. Such claims have elicited considerable scepticism from norm cognition researchers, who doubt that any non-human animals possess the psy…Read more
  •  170
    S-frames and i-frames do not represent two opposed types of intervention. Rather they are interpretive lenses for focusing on specific aspects of interventions, all of which include individual and structural dimensions. There is no sense to be made of prioritizing either system change or individual change, because each requires the other.
  •  28
    This essay is an introduction to a special issue centered on Cecilia Heyes’ article ‘Rethinking Norm Psychology’. This target article criticizes nativist accounts of the psychological processes dedicated to social norms and offers an alternative account of norm psychology as a cognitive gadget that is culturally evolved and socially learned. The essay sketches out the conceptual landscape around that article and locates within it some of the main points of the 14 short commentaries. These discus…Read more
  •  3
    5. David Foster Wallace as American Hedgehog
    In Steven M. Cahn & Maureen Eckert (eds.), Freedom and the Self: Essays on the Philosophy of David Foster Wallace, Columbia University Press. pp. 109-132. 2015.
  •  24
    We discuss the implications of the Selfish Goal model for moral responsibility, arguing it suggests a form of skepticism we call the “locus problem.” In denying that individuals contain any genuine psychological core of information processing, the Selfish Goal model denies the kind of locus of control intuitively presupposed by ascriptions of responsibility. We briefly consider ways the problem might be overcome.
  •  224
    While those who take a "structuralist" approach to racial justice issues are right to call attention to the importance of social practices, laws, etc., they sometimes go too far by suggesting that antiracist efforts ought to focus on changing unjust social systems rather than changing individuals’ minds. We argue that while the “either/or” thinking implied by this framing is intuitive and pervasive, it is misleading and self-undermining. We instead advocate for a “both/and” approach to antiracis…Read more
  • Implicit bias, character, and control
    In Alberto Masala & Jonathan Webber (eds.), From Personality to Virtue: Essays on the Philosophy of Character, Oxford University Press Uk. 2016.
  •  1829
    A Cultural Species and its Cognitive Phenotypes: Implications for Philosophy
    with Joseph Henrich, Damián E. Blasi, Cameron M. Curtin, Helen Elizabeth Davis, Ze Hong, and Ivan Kroupin
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 14 (2): 349-386. 2022.
    After introducing the new field of cultural evolution, we review a growing body of empirical evidence suggesting that culture shapes what people attend to, perceive and remember as well as how they think, feel and reason. Focusing on perception, spatial navigation, mentalizing, thinking styles, reasoning (epistemic norms) and language, we discuss not only important variation in these domains, but emphasize that most researchers (including philosophers) and research participants are psychological…Read more
  •  1424
    Culture and Cognitive Science
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2022.
    Human behavior and thought often exhibit a familiar pattern of within group similarity and between group difference. Many of these patterns are attributed to cultural differences. For much of the history of its investigation into behavior and thought, however, cognitive science has been disproportionately focused on uncovering and explaining the more universal features of human minds—or the universal features of minds in general. This entry charts out the ways in which this has changed over rece…Read more
  •  572
    A Framework for the Emotional Psychology of Group Membership
    with Taylor Davis
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 1-22. 2021.
    The vast literature on negative treatment of outgroups and favoritism toward ingroups provides many local insights but is largely fragmented, lacking an overarching framework that might provide a unified overview and guide conceptual integration. As a result, it remains unclear where different local perspectives conflict, how they may reinforce one another, and where they leave gaps in our knowledge of the phenomena. Our aim is to start constructing a framework to help remedy this situation. We …Read more
  •  382
    Norm-based Governance for a New Era: Lessons from Climate Change and COVID-19
    with Leigh Raymond and Erin Hennes
    Perspectives on Politics 1 1-14. 2021.
    The world has surpassed three million deaths from COVID-19, and faces potentially catastrophic tipping points in the global climate system. Despite the urgency, governments have struggled to address either problem. In this paper, we argue that COVID-19 and anthropogenic climate change (ACC) are critical examples of an emerging type of governance challenge: severe collective action problems that require significant individual behavior change under conditions of hyper- partisanship and scientific …Read more
  •  97
    Intentionality - naturalization of
    with Kelby Mason and Dennis Whitcomb
    In Encyclopedia of Neuroscience, . pp. 1993-1996. 2008.
    States that are about things are intentional, that is, they have content. The precise nature of intentional states is a matter of dispute.What makes some states, but not others, intentional? Of those states that are intentional, what makes them about what they are about as opposed to something else, i.e. what gives them their specific content?
  •  3097
    Individualism, Structuralism, and Climate Change
    Environmental Communication 1. 2021.
    Scholars, journalists, and activists working on climate change often distinguish between “individual” and “structural” approaches to decarbonization. The former concern choices individuals can make to reduce their “personal carbon footprint” (e.g., eating less meat). The latter concern changes to institutions, laws, and other social structures. These two approaches are often framed as oppositional, representing a mutually exclusive forced choice between alternative routes to decarbonization. Aft…Read more
  •  427
    Taking social psychology out of context
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 45 26-27. 2022.
    We endorse Cesario's call for more research into the complexities of “real-world” decisions and the comparative power of different causes of group disparities. Unfortunately, these reasonable suggestions are overshadowed by a barrage of non sequiturs, misdirected criticisms of methodology, and unsubstantiated claims about the assumptions and inferences of social psychologists.
  • Review of The Meaning of Disgust by Colin McGinn (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 1 1-8. 2012.
    Colin McGinn's The Meaning of Disgust numbers among several scholarly books on disgust that have been published in the last couple of years (including, in the interest of full and up front disclosure, one by the writer of this review). McGinn's book argues for a coherent, if incredible, account of the essence of disgustingness and of the emotion of disgust, and reflects on the potential significance of that account for different areas of human concern. It also bears many of the characteristics t…Read more
  •  377
    Review of The Evolution of Moral Progress: A Biocultural Theory by Allen Buchanan and Russell Powell (review)
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Review of Books 1 1-14. 2019.
    Allen Buchanan and Russel Powell’s The Evolution of Moral Progress (EMP) is likely to become a landmark. It adeptly builds on much of the recent empirical work, weaving it together with philosophical material drawn from a series of essays published by the two authors. EMP makes the case that moral progress is not only consistent with human psychology but—under some conditions—likely. At its heart is a careful, well-developed rebuttal to the idea that there are evolved constraints endogenous to h…Read more
  •  273
    Kurth wants us to understand and appreciate our anxiety more than we typically do. His concise and crisply written monograph makes a good case that we should. It deepens our understanding of what anxiety is, and of how it animates different facets of our mental and moral lives. The case he builds that, roughly, anxiety is one of the brain’s ways of affectively signaling and responding to uncertainty is clearly argued and meticulously organized. Kurth hits the targets he sets for himself, and adv…Read more
  •  32
    Socializing willpower: Resolve from the outside in
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 44. 2021.
    Ainslie's account of willpower is conspicuously individualistic. Because other people, social influence, and culture appear only peripherally, it risks overlooking what may be resolve's deeply social roots. We identify a general “outside-in” explanatory strategy suggested by a range of recent research into human cognitive evolution, and suggest how it might illuminate the origins and more social aspects of resolve.
  •  71
    On the Alleged Inadequacies of Psychological Explanations of Racism
    with Edouard Machery, Luc Faucher, and Daniel R. Kelly
    The Monist 93 (2): 228-254. 2010.
  •  131
    Race and racial cognition
    with Daniel Kelly, Edouard Machery, and Ron Mallon
    In John M. Doris (ed.), Moral Psychology Handbook, Oxford University Press. 2010.
    A core question of contemporary social morality concerns how we ought to handle racial categorization. By this we mean, for instance, classifying or thinking of a person as Black, Korean, Latino, White, etc.² While it is widely FN:2 agreed that racial categorization played a crucial role in past racial oppression, there remains disagreement among philosophers and social theorists about the ideal role for racial categorization in future endeavors. At one extreme of this disagreement are short-ter…Read more
  •  308
    My modest aim in this piece is to frame and illuminate some of the issues surrounding normative motivation, rather than take a firm position on any of them. I begin by clarifying the key terms in my title of this essay, and unpacking some of the assumptions that underpin its question. I then distinguish four kinds of answers one might give. In this short essay I will not be able to properly develop and evaluate an argument for the view that normative motivations are psychologically primitive, bu…Read more
  •  57
    The Psychology of Normative Cognition
    The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2020.
    From an early age, humans exhibit a tendency to identify, adopt, and enforce the norms of their local communities. Norms are the social rules that mark out what is appropriate, allowed, required, or forbidden in different situations for various community members. These rules are informal in the sense that although they are sometimes represented in formal laws, such as the rule governing which side of the road to drive on, they need not be explicitly codified to effectively influence behavior. Th…Read more
  •  13
    Bioethical Ideals, Actual Practice, and the Double Life of Norms
    American Journal of Bioethics 20 (4): 86-88. 2020.
    Volume 20, Issue 4, May 2020, Page 86-88.
  •  593
    Enhancement, Authenticity, and Social Acceptance in the Age of Individualism
    American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 10 (1): 51-53. 2019.
    Public attitudes concerning cognitive enhancements are significant for a number of reasons. They tell us about how socially acceptable these emerging technologies are considered to be, but they also provide a window into the ethical reasons that are likely to get traction in the ongoing debates about them. We thus see Conrad et al’s project of empirically investigating the effect of metaphors and context in shaping attitudes about cognitive enhancements as both interesting and important. We sket…Read more
  •  227
    At the end of a chapter in his book Race, Racism and Reparations, Angelo Corlett notes that “[t]here remain other queries about racism [than those he addressed in his chapter], which need philosophical exploration. … Perhaps most important, how might racism be unlearned?” (2003, 93). We agree with Corlett’s assessment of its importance, but find that philosophers have not been very keen to directly engage with the issue of how to best deal with, and ultimately do away with, racism. Rather, they …Read more
  •  187
    Selective debunking arguments, folk psychology, and empirical psychology
    In Hagop Sarkissian & Jennifer Cole Wright (eds.), Advances in Experimental Moral Psychology, Bloomsbury. pp. 130-147. 2014.
    Rather than set out an overarching view or take a stand on the debunking of morality tout court, in what follows I’ll explore a divide and conquer strategy. First, I will briefly sketch a debunking argument that, instead of targeting all of morality or human moral nature, has a more narrow focus—namely, the intuitive moral authority of disgust. The argument concludes that as vivid and compelling as they can be while one is in their grip, feelings of disgust should be granted no power to justify …Read more