•  299
    Nonconsensual neurocorrectives, bypassing, and free action
    Philosophical Studies 179 (6): 1953-1972. 2021.
    As neuroscience progresses, we will not only gain a better understanding of how our brains work, but also a better understanding of how to modify them, and as a result, our mental states. An important question we are faced with is whether the state could be justified in implementing such methods on criminal offenders, without their consent, for the purposes of rehabilitation and reduction of recidivism; a practice that is already legal in some jurisdictions. By focusing on a prominent type of vi…Read more
  •  248
    Manipulation, machine induction, and bypassing
    Philosophical Studies 180 (2): 487-507. 2022.
    A common style of argument in the literature on free will and moral responsibility is the Manipulation Argument. These tend to begin with a case of an agent in a deterministic universe who is manipulated, say, via brain surgery, into performing some action. Intuitively, this agent is not responsible for that action. Yet, since there is no relevant difference, with respect to whether an agent is responsible, between the manipulated agent and a typical agent in a deterministic universe, responsibi…Read more
  •  204
    Technology to Prevent Criminal Behavior
    In David Edmonds (ed.), Future Morality, Oxford University Press. 2021.
    The Case of Jim: Jim was arrested arriving at the house of an unattended minor, having brought with him some alcoholic drinks, condoms, and an overnight bag. Records of online conversations Jim was having with the minor give the court strong evidence that the purpose of this meet-up was to engage in sexual relations with the minor. In the course of searching his home computer, investigators also found child pornography. Jim was charged with intent to sexually abuse a child and possession of chil…Read more
  •  139
    ‘Determinism’ Is Just Fine: A Reply to Scott Sehon
    Philosophia 44 (2): 469-477. 2016.
    Scott Sehon recently argued that the standard notion of determinism employed in the Consequence Argument makes it so that, if our world turns out to be deterministic, then an interventionist God is logically impossible. He further argues that because of this, we should revise our notion of determinism. In this paper I show that Sehon’s argument for the claim that the truth of determinism, in this sense, would make an interventionist God logically impossible ultimately fails. I then offer and res…Read more
  •  78
    Neurointerventions—interventions that physically or chemically modulate brain states—are sometimes imposed on criminal offenders for the purposes of diminishing the risk that they will recidivate, or, more generally, of facilitating their rehabilitation. One objection to the nonconsensual implementation of such interventions holds that this expresses a disrespectful message, and is thus impermissible. In this paper, we respond to this objection, focusing on the most developed version of it—that …Read more
  •  55
    Rescuing the Zygote Argument
    Philosophical Studies 173 (6): 1621-1628. 2016.
    In a recent paper, Kristin Mickelson argues that Alfred Mele’s Zygote Argument, a popular argument for the claim that the truth of determinism would preclude free action or moral responsibility, is not valid. This sort of objection is meant to generalize to various manipulation arguments. According to Mickelson, the only way to make such arguments valid is to supplement them with an argument that is an inference to the best explanation. In this paper, I argue that there are two other ways in whi…Read more
  •  48
    In the theoretical literature on moral responsibility, one sometimes comes across cases of manipulated agents. In cases of this type, the agent is a victim of wholesale manipulation, involving the implantation of various pro-attitudes (desires, values, etc.) along with the deletion of competing pro-attitudes. As a result of this manipulation, the agent ends up performing some action unlike any that she would have performed were it not for the manipulation. These sorts of cases are sometimes thou…Read more
  •  34
    Healthcare, Responsibility and Golden Opportunities
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 1 (3). 2021.
    When it comes to determining how healthcare resources should be allocated, there are many factors that could—and perhaps should—be taken into account. One such factor is a patient’s responsibility for his or her illness, or for the behavior that caused it. Policies that take responsibility for the unhealthy lifestyle or its outcomes into account—responsibility-sensitive policies—have faced a series of criticisms. One holds that agents often fail to meet either the control or epistemic conditions…Read more
  •  31
    In discussions on moral responsibility for actions, a commonly discussed case is one in which an agent is manipulated into performing some action. On some views, such agents lack responsibility for those actions partly because they issue from attitudes that were acquired in an inappropriate way. In this paper, it is argued that such views are in need of revision. After introducing a new problematic case of a manipulated agent, revisions are offered for specific views. The paper concludes with a …Read more
  •  30
    Responsibility and Healthcare (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
    This edited collection brings together world-leading authors writing about a wide range of issues related to responsibility and healthcare, and from a variety of perspectives. Alongside a comprehensive introduction by the editors outlining the scope of the relevant debates, the volume contains 14 chapters, split into four sections. This volume pushes forward a number of important debates on responsibility and its role in contemporary healthcare. The first and second groups of chapters focus, res…Read more
  •  24
    What makes a medical intervention invasive?
    with Jannieke Simons, Lisa Forsberg, and Thomas Douglas
    Journal of Medical Ethics 50 (4): 226-233. 2024.
    The classification of medical interventions as either invasive or non-invasive is commonly regarded to be morally important. On the most commonly endorsed account of invasiveness, a medical intervention is invasive if and only if it involves either breaking the skin (‘incision’) or inserting an object into the body (‘insertion’). Building on recent discussions of the concept of invasiveness, we show that this standard account fails to capture three aspects of existing usage of the concept of inv…Read more
  •  15
    Nudge Transparency Is Not Required for Nudge Resistibility
    Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 10 (n/a). 2023.
    In discussions of nudging, transparency is often taken to be important; it is often suggested that a significant moral consideration to take into account when nudging is whether the nudge is transparent. Another consideration taken to be relevant is whether the nudge is easy to resist. Sometimes, these two considerations are taken to be importantly related: if we have reason to make nudges easy to resist, then we have reason to make them transparent, insofar as a nudge’s transparency is relevant…Read more
  •  11
    In a recent book, Ann Whittle develops a view of freedom and responsiblity according to which their attribution to agents is sensitive to the speakers' contexts. This review provides a summary of the main argument, and briefly mentions some points that will be of interest in further developing the view.
  •  7
    On the Relative Intrusiveness of Physical and Chemical Restraints
    with Thomas Douglas, Lisa Forsberg, and Julian Savulescu
    American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 15 (1): 26-28. 2024.
    Crutchfield and Redinger argue that consciousness-altering chemical restraints are less “liberty-intrusive” (or as we will sometimes put it, just less “intrusive”) than physical restraints. Physica...
  •  4
    What makes a medical intervention invasive? A reply to commentaries
    with Jannieke Simons, Lisa Forsberg, and Thomas Douglas
    Journal of Medical Ethics 50 (4): 244-245. 2024.
    We are grateful to the commentators for their close reading of our article 1 and for their challenging and interesting responses to it. We do not have space to respond to all of the objections that they raise, so in this reply, we address only a selection of them. Some commentaries question the usefulness of developing an account of the sort we provide, 2 or of revising the Standard Account (SA) in doing so. 3–5 Our schema is intended to provide a framework for developing a full account of invas…Read more
  •  1
    Review of The Age of Culpability (review)
    Metapsychology Online Reviews. 2019.
  • Responsibility, Healthcare, and Harshness
    In Ben Davies, Gabriel De Marco, Neil Levy & Julian Savulescu (eds.), Responsibility and Healthcare, . forthcoming.
  • Introduction: Responsibility and Healthcare, An Overview
    In Ben Davies, Gabriel De Marco, Neil Levy & Julian Savulescu (eds.), Responsibility and Healthcare, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.