•  8
    Antecedent rationalization: Rationalization prior to action
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 43. 2020.
    Often times we find ourselves wrestling with the urge to commit a non-rational action. When this happens, we are quite good at adopting quasi-beliefs that, if true, would make the action rational. In other words, rationalization often occurs antecedent to a behavioral choice. A complete account of the evolutionary history of rationalization must include antecedent rationalization.
  •  355
    Cause, "Cause", and Norm
    In Pascale Willemsen & Alex Wiegmann (eds.), Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Causation, . pp. 123-144. 2022.
    This chapter presents a series of experiments that elicit causal judgments using statements that do not include the verb "to cause". In particular, our interest is in exploring the extent to which previously observed effects of normative considerations on agreement with what we call "cause"-statements, i.e. those of the form "X caused ..." extend as well to those of the form "X V-ed Y", where V is a lexical causative. Our principal finding is that in many cases the effects do not extend in this …Read more
  •  801
    Cause and burn
    Cognition 207 (104517): 104517. 2021.
    Many philosophers maintain that causation is to be explicated in terms of a kind of dependence between cause and effect. These “dependence” theories are opposed by “production” accounts which hold that there is some more fundamental causal “oomph”. A wide range of experimental research on everyday causal judgments seems to indicate that ordinary people operate primarily with a dependence-based notion of causation. For example, people tend to say that absences and double preventers are causes. …Read more