Aberdeen, Scotland, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Areas of Interest
Applied Ethics
Philosophy of Law
  •  6
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:An Exposition of The Divine Names, The Book of Blessed Dionysius by Thomas AquinasMichael J. Rubin, Elizabeth C. Shaw, and Staff*AQUINAS, Thomas. An Exposition of The Divine Names, The Book of Blessed Dionysius. Translated and edited with an introduction by Michael A. Augros. Merrimack, N.H.: Thomas More College Press, 2021. xxv + 549 pp. Cloth, $65.00The profound influence that Pseudo-Dionysius had on Aquinas’s thought, …Read more
  •  27
    Retributivism and the Moral Enhancement of Criminals Through Brain Interventions
    Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 83 251-270. 2018.
    This chapter will focus on the biomedical moral enhancement of offenders – the idea that we could modify offenders’ brains in order to reduce the likelihood that they would engage in immoral, criminal behaviour. Discussions of the permissibility of using biomedical means to address criminal behaviour typically analyse the issues from the perspective of medical ethics, rather than penal theory. However, recently certain theorists have discussed whether brain interventions could be legitimately us…Read more
  •  4
    Explorations in Ancient and Modern Philosophy by Myles F. Burnyeat
    with Allison Piñeros Glasscock
    Review of Metaphysics 76 (2): 345-346. 2022.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Explorations in Ancient and Modern Philosophy by Myles F. BurnyeatAllison Piñeros Glasscock and Elizabeth C. Shaw and Staff*BURNYEAT, Myles F. Explorations in Ancient and Modern Philosophy, vol. 4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. xii + 395 pp. Cloth, $120.00The eleven essays in this collection were originally published while Burnyeat was at All Souls College, Oxford (1996–2006) and during his subsequent retir…Read more
  •  2
    Summary and Comment
    Review of Metaphysics 73 (3): 605-606. 2020.
  •  4
    Summaries and Comments
    with Mor Segev
    Review of Metaphysics 75 (3): 587-588. 2022.
  •  3
    As one of the foremost contemporary public intellectuals and scholars of our time, Hamid Dabashi's interests and writings span subjects ranging from Islamic philosophy and political ideology to Iranian art and Persian literature; from Sufism and Orientalism to Iranian and world cinema and contemporary Arab and Muslim visual arts; and from postcolonial theory and globalization to imperialism and public affairs. There is a direct connection between his theoretical innovations and the angle of his …Read more
  •  24
    Neurodoping in Chess to Enhance Mental Stamina
    Neuroethics 14 (2): 217-230. 2021.
    This article discusses substances/techniques that target the brain in order to enhance sports performance (known as “neurodoping”). It considers whether neurodoping in mind sports, such as chess, is unethical and whether it should be a crime. Rather than focusing on widely discussed objections against doping based on harm/risk to health, this article focuses specifically on the objection that neurodoping, even if safe, would undermine the “spirit of sport”. Firstly, it briefly explains why chess…Read more
  •  10
    Routledge Handbook on the Philosophy and Science of Punishment (edited book)
    with Farah Focquaert and Bruce Waller
    Routledge. 2020.
    Philosophers, legal scholars, criminologists, psychiatrists and psychologists have long asked important questions about punishment: What is its purpose? What theories helps us better understand its nature? Is punishment just? Are there effective alternatives to punishment? How can empirical data from the sciences help us better understand punishment? What are the relationships between punishment and our biology, psychology and social environment? How is punishment understood and administered dif…Read more
  •  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.
  •  354
    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
  •  65
    Determinism, Moral Responsibility and Retribution
    with Robert Blakey
    Neuroethics 13 (1): 99-113. 2019.
    In this article, we will identify two issues that deserve greater attention from those researching lay people’s attitudes to moral responsibility and determinism. The first issue concerns whether people interpret the term “moral responsibility” in a retributive way and whether they are motivated to hold offenders responsible for pre-determined behaviour by considerations other than retributivism, e.g. the desires to condemn the action and to protect society. The second issue concerns whether exp…Read more
  •  27
    '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
  •  28
    Offering castration to sex offenders: the significance of the state's intentions
    Journal of Medical Ethics 40 (9): 594-595. 2014.
    In his thought-provoking article, John McMillan argues that the moral acceptability of offering surgical castration to imprisoned sex offenders depends partly on the state's intentions when making the offer.1 McMillan considers the situation where the prisoner will be detained for public protection for as long as he is considered dangerous and where the state and the offender both know that he may become non-dangerous sooner and qualify for early release if he accepts the offer of castration. Do…Read more
  •  71
    Medical interventions such as methadone treatment for drug addicts or “chemical castration” for sex offenders have been used in several jurisdictions alongside or as an alternative to traditional punishments, such as incarceration. As our understanding of the biological basis for human behaviour develops, our criminal justice system may make increasing use of such medical techniques and may become less reliant on incarceration. Academic debate on this topic has largely focused on whether offende…Read more
  •  92
    Direct Brain Interventions and Responsibility Enhancement
    Criminal Law and Philosophy 8 (1): 1-20. 2014.
    Advances in neuroscience might make it possible to develop techniques for directly altering offenders’ brains, in order to make offenders more responsible and law-abiding. The idea of using such techniques within the criminal justice system can seem intuitively troubling, even if they were more effective in preventing crime than traditional methods of rehabilitation. One standard argument against this use of brain interventions is that it would undermine the individual’s free will. This paper ma…Read more
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