• Four Views on Free Will is a robust and careful debate about free will, how it interacts with determinism and indeterminism, and whether we have it or not. Providing the most up-to-date account of four major positions in the free will debate, the second edition of this classic text presents the opposing perspectives of renowned philosophers John Martin Fischer, Robert Kane, Derk Pereboom, and Manuel Vargas. Substantially revised throughout, this new volume contains eight in-depth chapters, almos…Read more
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    Natural Theology and Natural Religion
    Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy. 2020.
    The term “natural religion” is sometimes taken to refer to a pantheistic doctrine according to which nature itself is divine. “Natural theology”, by contrast, originally referred to (and still sometimes refers to)[1] the project of arguing for the existence of God on the basis of observed natural facts. In contemporary philosophy, however, both “natural religion” and “natural theology” typically refer to the project of using all of the cognitive faculties that are “natural” to human beings—reaso…Read more
  •  5
    The chapter begins by introducing the problem of free will and moral responsibility and the standard terminology used to frame it in the philosophical context. It turns to the contributions of experimental philosophy and the prospects for the use of this methodology in the area. People believe that experimental philosophy is relevant to the traditional debates. The chapter discusses an error theory for incompatibilist intuitions proposed by Eddy nahmias and colleagues, and the role that empirica…Read more
  •  2
    Early Modern Philosophical Theology on the Continent
    In Charles Taliaferro, Paul Draper & Philip L. Quinn (eds.), A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, Wiley‐blackwell. 2010.
    This chapter contains sections titled: Works cited.
  •  4
    A Defense Without Free Will
    In Justin P. McBrayer & Daniel Howard‐Snyder (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to the Problem of Evil, Wiley. 2013.
    This chapter explores the prospects that skeptics about free will have for addressing the problem of evil. I argue that skeptics have available many of the resources employed by antiskeptics about free will, and that the responses that involve an essential appeal to free will are not especially powerful. As a result, the theist who is a free will skeptic is not at a significant disadvantage in coping with the problem of evil.
  •  77
    Libertarian Accounts of Free Will (Randolph Clarke) (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 74 (1): 269-272. 2007.
  • Free will skepticism and prevention of crime
    In Elizabeth Shaw, Derk Pereboom & Gregg D. Caruso (eds.), Free Will Skepticism in Law and Society: Challenging Retributive Justice, Cambridge University Press. 2019.
  •  836
    Moral Responsibility Reconsidered
    with Gregg D. Caruso
    Cambridge University Press. 2022.
    This Element examines the concept of moral responsibility as it is used in contemporary philosophical debates and explores the justifiability of the moral practices associated with it, including moral praise/blame, retributive punishment, and the reactive attitudes of resentment and indignation. After identifying and discussing several different varieties of responsibility-including causal responsibility, take-charge responsibility, role responsibility, liability responsibility, and the kinds of…Read more
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    Wrongdoing and the Moral Emotions
    Oxford University Press. 2021.
    Wrongdoing and the Moral Emotions provides an account of how we might effectively address wrongdoing given challenges to the legitimacy of anger and retribution that arise from ethical considerations and from concerns about free will. The issue is introduced in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 asks how we might conceive of blame without retribution, and proposes an account of blame as moral protest, whose function is to secure forward-looking goals such as the moral reform of the wrongdoer and reconciliatio…Read more
  •  58
    The Oxford Handbook of Moral Responsibility (edited book)
    with Dana Kay Nelkin
    Oxford University Press. 2022.
    The Oxford Handbook of Moral Responsibility is a collection of 33 articles by leading international scholars on the topic of moral responsibility and its main forms, praiseworthiness and blameworthiness. The articles in the volume provide a comprehensive survey on scholarship on this topic since 1960, with a focus on the past three decades. Articles address the nature of moral responsibility - whether it is fundamentally a matter of deserved blame and praise, or whether it is grounded anticipate…Read more
  •  89
    Undivided Forward-Looking Moral Responsibility
    The Monist 104 (4): 484-497. 2021.
    This article sets out a forward-looking account of moral responsibility on which the ground-level practice is directly sensitive to aims such as moral formation and reconciliation, and is not subject to a barrier between tiers. On the contrasting two-tier accounts defended by Daniel Dennett and Manuel Vargas, the ground-level practice features backward-looking, desert-invoking justifications that are in turn justified by forward-looking considerations at the higher tier. The concern raised for t…Read more
  •  127
    Russellian Monism and Structuralism About Physics
    Erkenntnis 88 (4): 1409-1428. 2023.
    It is often claimed that Russellian monism carries a commitment to a structuralist conception of physics, on which physics describes the world only in terms of its spatiotemporal structure and dynamics. We argue that this claim is mistaken. On Russellian monism, there is more to consciousness, and to the rest of concrete reality, than spatiotemporal structure and dynamics. But the latter claim supports only a conditional claim about physics: _if_ structuralism about physics is true, then there i…Read more
  •  762
    A Non-Punitive Alternative to Punishment
    In Farah Focquaert, Bruce Waller & Elizabeth Shaw (eds.), Routledge Handbook on the Philosophy and Science of Punishment, Routledge. 2020.
  •  1152
    Free Will Skepticism in Law and Society: An Overview
    In Elizabeth Shaw, Derk Pereboom & Gregg D. Caruso (eds.), Free Will Skepticism in Law and Society: Challenging Retributive Justice, Cambridge University Press. pp. 1-26. 2019.
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    Within the United States, the most prominent justification for criminal punishment is retributivism. This retributivist justification for punishment maintains that punishment of a wrongdoer is justified for the reason that she deserves something bad to happen to her just because she has knowingly done wrong—this could include pain, deprivation, or death. For the retributivist, it is the basic desert attached to the criminal’s immoral action alone that provides the justification for punishment. T…Read more
  •  28
    Criminal Punishment and Free Will
    In David Boonin, Katrina L. Sifferd, Tyler K. Fagan, Valerie Gray Hardcastle, Michael Huemer, Daniel Wodak, Derk Pereboom, Stephen J. Morse, Sarah Tyson, Mark Zelcer, Garrett VanPelt, Devin Casey, Philip E. Devine, David K. Chan, Maarten Boudry, Christopher Freiman, Hrishikesh Joshi, Shelley Wilcox, Jason Brennan, Eric Wiland, Ryan Muldoon, Mark Alfano, Philip Robichaud, Kevin Timpe, David Livingstone Smith, Francis J. Beckwith, Dan Hooley, Russell Blackford, John Corvino, Corey McCall, Dan Demetriou, Ajume Wingo, Michael Shermer, Ole Martin Moen, Aksel Braanen Sterri, Teresa Blankmeyer Burke, Jeppe von Platz, John Thrasher, Mary Hawkesworth, William MacAskill, Daniel Halliday, Janine O’Flynn, Yoaav Isaacs, Jason Iuliano, Claire Pickard, Arvin M. Gouw, Tina Rulli, Justin Caouette, Allen Habib, Brian D. Earp, Andrew Vierra, Subrena E. Smith, Danielle M. Wenner, Lisa Diependaele, Sigrid Sterckx, G. Owen Schaefer, Markus K. Labude, Harisan Unais Nasir, Udo Schuklenk, Benjamin Zolf & Woolwine (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Public Policy, Springer Verlag. pp. 63-76. 2018.
    This chapter examines the restrictions on justification of punishment that result from the claim that human beings lack freedom of the will. The variety of free will at issue is the control in action required for the agent to basically deserve to be blamed or punished. If we lack such free will, the classical retributive justification is undermined. Furthermore, if we lack such free will, one justification for using criminals as means for the purpose of general deterrence is also threatened. Sin…Read more
  •  16
    On Baker's Persons and Bodies
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 64 (3): 615-622. 2002.
  •  11
    Belief and Meaning
    Philosophical and Phenomenological Research 58 (3): 621-626. 1998.
  •  129
    Russellian Monism, Introspective Inaccuracy, and the Illusion Meta- Problem of Consciousness
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 26 (9-10): 182-193. 2019.
    Proposed is a two-factor explanation for our resistance to illusionism about phenomenal consciousness. The first is that we lack, and can't easily imagine, ways of checking the accuracy of introspective phenomenal representation. The second is that illusions of phenomenal consciousness would themselves appear to be phenomenally conscious. The illusionist's defence is to apply illusionism to illusions of consciousness, but the result, even if formally coherent, resists imaginative conception.
  •  116
    Illusionism and Anti-Functionalism about Phenomenal Consciousness
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 23 (11-12): 172-185. 2016.
    The role of a functionalist account of phenomenal properties in Keith Frankish's illusionist position results in two issues for his view. The first concerns the ontological status of illusions of phenomenality. Illusionists are committed to their existence, and these illusions would appear to have phenomenal features. Frankish argues that functionalism about phenomenal properties yields a response, but I contend that it doesn't, and that instead the illusionist's basic account of phenomenal prop…Read more
  •  53
    What Makes the Free Will Debate Substantive?
    The Journal of Ethics 23 (3): 257-264. 2019.
    Contrary to what I have contended, Michael McKenna argues that basic desert does not have an essential role in the free will debate. On his alternative construal, what is central is whether our practice of holding morally responsible, and blaming in particular, can be justified, and what notion of free will is required for that justification. Notions distinct from basic desert can ground our practice, and so the free will debate is independent of basic desert. Here I argue that the one best cand…Read more
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    'Free will skepticism' refers to a family of views that all take seriously the possibility that human beings lack the control in action - i.e. the free will - required for an agent to be truly deserving of blame and praise, punishment and reward. Critics fear that adopting this view would have harmful consequences for our interpersonal relationships, society, morality, meaning, and laws. Optimistic free will skeptics, on the other hand, respond by arguing that life without free will and so-calle…Read more
  •  30
    In Wrongs and Crimes, Victor Tadros argues that wrongdoers acquire special duties to those they’ve wronged, and from there he generates wrongdoers’ duties to contribute to general deterrence by being punished. In support, he contends that my manipulation argument against compatibilism fails to show that causal determination is incompatible with the proposed duties wrongdoers owe to those they’ve wronged. I respond that I did not intend my manipulation argument to rule out a sense of moral respon…Read more
  •  78
    The aim of this article is to set out a theory for treatment of criminals that rejects retributive justification for punishment; does not fall afoul of a plausible prohibition on using people merely as means; and actually works in the real world. The theory can be motivated by free will skepticism. But it can also be supported without reference to the free will issue, since retributivism faces ethical challenges in its own right. In past versions of the account I’ve emphasized the quarantine ana…Read more
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  •  15
    Basic Desert, Reactive Attitudes and Free Will (edited book)
    Routledge. 2015.
    Basic Desert, Reactive Attitudes and Free Will addresses the issue of whether we can make sense of the widespread conviction that we are morally responsible beings. It focuses on the claim that we deserve to be blamed and punished for our immoral actions, and how this claim can be justified given the philosophical and scientific reasons to believe that we lack the sort of free will required for this sort of desert. Contributions to the book distinguish between, and explore, two clusters of quest…Read more
  •  196
    The metaphysics of irreducibility
    Philosophical Studies 63 (August): 125-45. 1991.
    During the 'sixties and 'seventies, Hilary Putnam, Jerry Fodor, and Richard Boyd, among others, developed a type of materialism that eschews reductionist claims.1 In this view, explana- tions, natural kinds, and properties in psychology do not reduce to counterparts in more basic sciences, such as neurophysiology or physics. Nevertheless, all token psychological entities-- states, processes, and faculties--are wholly constituted of physical entities, ultimately out of entities over which microph…Read more