•  37
    Exploring the Illusion of Free Will and Moral Responsibility
    with Susan Blackmore, Thomas W. Clark, Mark Hallett, John-Dylan Haynes, Ted Honderich, Neil Levy, Thomas Nadelhoffer, Shaun Nichols, Michael Pauen, Derk Pereboom, Susan Pockett, Saul Smilansky, Galen Strawson, Daniela Goya Tocchetto, Manuel Vargas, Benjamin Vilhauer, and Bruce Waller
    Lexington Books. 2013.
    Exploring the Illusion of Free Will and Moral Responsibility is an edited collection of new essays by an internationally recognized line-up of contributors. It is aimed at readers who wish to explore the philosophical and scientific arguments for free will skepticism and their implications
  •  15
    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
  •  20
    Introduction
    with Derk Pereboom
    Philosophical Explorations 16 (2): 97-100. 2013.
  •  18
    Using Stars for Moral Navigation: An Ethical Exploration into Celebrity
    Journal of Applied Philosophy 40 (2): 340-357. 2023.
    What role do celebrities play in our moral lives? Philosophers have explored the potential for celebrities to function as moral exemplars and role models. We argue that there are more ways in which celebrities play a role in helping us navigate our moral lives. First, gossiping about celebrities helps us negotiate our moral norms and identify competing styles of life. Second, fandom for celebrities serves as the basis for the development of distinct moral communities and identities. Third, celeb…Read more
  • Het probleem van eigen redenen
    Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 4. 2005.
  •  4
    Introduction
    with Leon Bruin
    Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 15 (1): 3-5. 2016.
  •  4
    Wat bezielt ons?
    Filosofie En Praktijk 32 (1): 19-36. 2011.
  •  202
    The real challenge to free will and responsibility
    Trends in Cognitive Sciences 12 (1): 3-4. 2008.
    Adina Roskies has argued that worries that recent developments in the neurosciences challenge our ideas of free will and responsibility are misguided. Her argument focuses on the idea that we are able to act differently than we do. However, according to a dominant view in contemporary philosophy, the ability to do otherwise is irrelevant to our judgments of responsibility and free will. It rather is our ability to act for reasons that is crucial. We argue that this view is most significantly cha…Read more
  •  33
    “I demote practical reason from the conductor’s podium on which it is traditionally pictured, leading the performance. I picture practical reason less as an orchestral conductor than as a theatrical prompter — out of sight, following the action in case it needs to be nudged back into an intelligible course.” (David Velleman 2009, p. 4)IntroductionIn this paper I discuss our practice of exchanging explanatory and justifying reasons with one another, that is, reasons with which we explain or justi…Read more
  • The Metaphysics of Autonomy (review)
    Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 2 164-165. 2005.
  •  150
    Many philosophers ignore developments in the behavioral, cognitive, and neurosciences that purport to challenge our ideas of free will and responsibility. The reason for this is that the challenge is often framed as a denial of the idea that we are able to act differently than we do. However, most philosophers think that the ability to do otherwise is irrelevant to responsibility and free will. Rather it is our ability to act for reasons that is crucial. We argue that the scientific findings ind…Read more
  •  77
    Moral Agency, Conscious Control, and Deliberative Awareness
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 52 (5): 516-531. 2009.
    Recent empirical research results in the behavioral, cognitive, and neurosciences on the “adaptive unconscious” show that conscious control and deliberative awareness are not all-pervasive aspects of our everyday dealings with one another. Moral philosophers and other scientists have used these insights to put our moral agency to the test. The results of these tests are intriguing: apparently we are not always (or ever?) the moral agents we take ourselves to be. This paper argues in favor of a r…Read more
  •  171
    Ordinary wrongdoing and responsibility worth wanting
    European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 1 (2): 67-82. 2005.
    In this paper it is argued that we can have defensible attributions of responsibility without first answering the question whether determinism and free will are compatible. The key to such a defense is a focus on the fact that most actions for which we hold one another responsible are quite ordinary—trespassing traffic regulations, tardiness, or breaking a promise. As we will show, unlike actions that problematize our moral competence — e.g. akratic and ‘moral monster’- like ones—ordinary ‘wrong…Read more
  •  311
    Mad, bad, or disagreeing? On moral competence and responsibility
    Philosophical Explorations 3 (3). 2000.
    Suppose that there is no real distinction between 'mad' and 'bad' because every truly bad-acting agent, proves to be a morally incompetent one. If this is the case: should we not change our ordinary interpersonal relationships in which we blame people for the things they do? After all, if people literally always act to 'the best of their abilities' nobody is ever to blame for the wrong they commit, whether these wrong actions are 'horrible monster'-like crimes or trivial ones, such as cycling on…Read more
  •  27
    This book shows why we can justify blaming people for their wrong actions even if free will turns out not to exist. Contrary to most contemporary thinking, we do this by focusing on the ordinary, everyday wrongs each of us commits, not on the extra-ordinary, "morally monstrous-like" crimes and weak-willed actions of some.
  •  24
    Maureen Sie
    Wijsgerig Perspectief 49 (4): 46-47. 2009.
  •  11
    Goodwill, determinism and justification
    In J. A. M. Bransen & S. E. Cuypers (eds.), Human Action, Deliberation and Causation, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 113--129. 1998.
  •  113
    Moral Hypocrisy and Acting for Reasons: How Moralizing Can Invite Self-Deception
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 18 (2): 223-235. 2015.
    According to some, contemporary social psychology is aptly described as a study in moral hypocrisy. In this paper we argue that this is unfortunate when understood as establishing that we only care about appearing to act morally, not about true moral action. A philosophically more interesting interpretation of the “moral hypocrisy”-findings understands it to establish that we care so much about morality that it might lead to self-deception about the moral nature of our motives and/or mispercepti…Read more
  • Einsteins gemoedsrust
    Wijsgerig Perspectief 50 (1)
    Is de vrije wil een noodzakelijke voorwaarde voor morele verantwoordelijkheid? Dit stuk gaat over enkele van de argumenten die voor een ontkennend of bevestigend antwoord op die vraag pleiten.
  •  25
    Freedom and Blameworthiness
    In A. van den Beld (ed.), Moral Responsibility and Ontology, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 113--128. 2000.
  •  39
    In 1969 Prof. Frankfurt has introduced a famous class of counterexamples to the Principle of Alternate Possibilities. The principle that states that a person x is only responsible for an action y, if she could have done otherwise than y. In these examples a so called ‘counterfactual intervener’ figures that pre-empts all alternate possibilities counterfactually, that is, without actually intervening. Because this counterfactual intervener only looms passively in the background, x’s moral respons…Read more
  •  22
    De realiteit van morele verantwoordelijkheid: waar Sartre en Frankfurt het over eens zijn
    Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 105 (4): 228-231. 2013.
    Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.
  •  29
    Introduction
    Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 15 (1): 3-5. 2016.
    The idea that human beings experience their lives as some sort of story and tend to understand themselves as authors of a narrative has become increasingly popular in philosophy. Some philosophers suggest that narratives are indispensable when it comes to answering the traditional question associated with personal (numerical) identity: what makes it the case that the person considered at time t0 is the same person as the person considered at time t1? They claim that taking a narrative approach t…Read more