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3Feldman, R., 61 Glanzberg, M., 217 Glymour, B., 271 Lycan, WG, 35 Predelli, S., 145Philosophical Studies 103 (343). 2001.
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10Answering for Negligence: A Unified Account of Moral and Criminal ResponsibilityThe Journal of Ethics 1-27. forthcoming.My aim in this paper is to defend negligence as a legitimate basis for moral and criminal culpability. In so doing, I also hope to demonstrate how philosophical and jurisprudential perspectives on responsibility can mutually inform each other. While much of the paper focuses on criminal negligence, my aim is to show how attention to certain doctrines and concepts in criminal law can shed light on our understanding of moral culpability including culpability for negligence. It is often taken to be…Read more
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The Idea of Freedom: An IntroductionIn Dai Heide & Evan Tiffany (eds.), The Idea of Freedom: New Essays on the Kantian Theory of Freedom, Oxford University Press. 2023.
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12Inclusive Blameworthiness and the Wrongfulness of Causing HarmJournal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 25 (3). 2023.This paper takes up the question of whether the consequences of a person’s volitional actions can contribute to their blameworthiness. On the one hand it is intuitively plausible to hold that if D1 volitionally shoots V with the intention of killing V then D1 is blameworthy for V’s death. On the other hand, if the only difference between D1 and D2 is resultant luck, many find it counter-intuitive to hold that D1 is more blameworthy than D2. There are three broad (non-skeptical) strategies for re…Read more
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55The Idea of Freedom: New Essays on the Kantian Theory of Freedom (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2023.Kant describes the concept of freedom as "the keystone of the whole structure of a system of pure reason, even of speculative reason." Kant's theory of freedom thus plays a foundational and unifying role in all aspects of his philosophy and is thus of significant interest to historians of Kant's philosophy. Kant's theory of freedom has also played a significant role in contemporary debates in metaphysics, normative ethics, and metaethics. This volume brings historians of Kant's philosophy into c…Read more
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12Moral Philosophy Does Not Rest on a Mistake: Reasons to be Moral RevisitedCanadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 33. 2007.
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5Moral Philosophy Does Not Rest on a Mistake: Reasons to be Moral RevisitedCanadian Journal of Philosophy 39 (5). 2010.
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37Imputability, answerability, and the epistemic condition on moral and legal culpabilityEuropean Journal of Philosophy 30 (4): 1440-1457. 2022.This paper has two main goals. The first is to defend a particular account of answerability according to which a person is (morally or criminally) answerable for their conduct if it is (morally or criminally) wrongful under the same description under which it is imputable to their agency. Negating defences in law aim to defeat criminal answerability by negating some element of the charged offence while their moral analogues aim to defeat moral answerability by defeating the aptness of the descri…Read more
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52Conceptualizing Coercive Indoctrination in Moral and Legal PhilosophyCriminal Law and Philosophy 16 (1): 153-179. 2022.This paper argues that there are compelling grounds for thinking that coercive indoctrination can defeat or mitigate moral culpability in virtue of being a form of non-culpable moral ignorance. That is, I defend a two-tier account such that what excuses an agent for a wrongful act is the agent’s ignorance regarding the moral quality of their act; and what excuses the defendant for their ignorance is that coercion or manipulation deprived the defendant of a fair opportunity to avoid that ignoranc…Read more
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14Moral Philosophy Does Not Rest on a Mistake: Reasons to be Moral RevisitedCanadian Journal of Philosophy 33. 2007.
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The Normativity of MoralityDissertation, University of California, San Diego. 2000.The goal of this dissertation is to offer an account of the normativity of morality that is consistent with the commitments of philosophical naturalism. The issue of normativity can be divided into two parts: motivation and authority. In chapter 1 I attempt to explain the motivational efficacy of a moral system by arguing that it is the natural, biological function of the moral system to produce beliefs about norms, the general observance of which is mutually advantageous and to regulate behavio…Read more
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82The rational character of belief and the argument for mental anomalismPhilosophical Studies 103 (3): 258-314. 2001.If mental anomalism is to be interpreted as a thesisunique to psychology, the anomalousness must begrounded in some feature unique to the mental,presumably its rational nature. While the ground forsuch arguments from normativity has been notoriouslyslippery terrain, there are two recently influentialstrategies which make the argument precise. The firstis to deny the possibility of psychophysical bridgelaws because of the different constitutive essences ofmental and physical laws, and the secon…Read more
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263Deflationary normative pluralismCanadian Journal of Philosophy 37 (5). 2007.Let us give voice to this new demand: we need a critique of moral values, the value of these values should itself, for once, be examined. - Friedrich NietzscheAnyone who, stimulated by education, has come to feel the force of the various obligations in life, at some time or other comes to feel the irksomeness of carrying them out, and to recognize the sacrifice of interest involved; and, if thoughtful, he inevitably puts to himself the question: “Is there really a reason why I should act in the …Read more
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203Why Be an Agent?Australasian Journal of Philosophy 90 (2). 2012.Constitutivism is the view that it is possible to derive contentful, normatively binding demands of practical reason and morality from the constitutive features of agency. Whereas much of the debate has focused on the constitutivist's ability to derive content, David Enoch has challenged her ability to generate normativity. Even if one can derive content from the constitutive aims of agency, one could simply demur: ?Bah! Agency, shmagency?. The ?Why be moral?? question would be replaced by the ?…Read more
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72Deflationary Normative PluralismCanadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 33 (sup1): 231-262. 2007.Let us give voice to this new demand: we need a critique of moral values, the value of these values should itself, for once, be examined. -Friedrich NietzscheAnyone who, stimulated by education, has come to feel the force of the various obligations in life, at some time or other comes to feel the irksomeness of carrying them out, and to recognize the sacrifice of interest involved; and, if thoughtful, he inevitably puts to himself the question: “Is there really a reason why I should act in the w…Read more
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3Reasons to Be Moral Revisted: Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume 33 (edited book)University of Calgary Press. 2010.H.A. Prichard argued that the “why should I be moral?” question is the central subject matter of moral theory. Prichard famously claimed to have proved that all efforts to answer that question are doomed. Many contributors to this volume of contemporary papers attempt to reconstruct Prichard’s argument. They claim either explicitly or implicitly that Prichard was mistaken, and philosophy can contribute to meaningful engagement with the ‘why be moral?’ question. A theme to emerge from these paper…Read more
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50Choosing freedom: basic desert and the standpoint of blamePhilosophical Explorations 16 (2): 195-211. 2013.One can think of the traditional logic of blame as involving three intuitively plausible claims: (1) blame is justified only if one is deserving of blame, (2) one is deserving of blame only if one is relevantly in control of the relevant causal antecedents, and (3) one is relevantly in control only if one has libertarian freedom. While traditional compatibilism has focused on rejecting either or both of the latter two claims, an increasingly common strategy is to deny the link between blame and …Read more
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83How Kantian must Kantian constructivists be?Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 49 (6). 2006.Kantian constructivists locate the source of normativity in the rational nature of valuing agents. Some further argue that accepting this premise thereby commits one to accepting the intrinsic or unconditioned value of rational nature itself. Whereas much of the critical literature on this “regress on conditions” argument has focused either on the cogency of the inference from the value-conferring capacity of the will to the unconditional value of that capacity itself or on the plausibility of t…Read more
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142Moral Philosophy Does Not Rest on a Mistake: Reasons to be Moral RevisitedCanadian Journal of Philosophy 39 (S1). 2009.
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Action |
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |