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71Self-ControlRoutledge. 2022.Self-control is a fundamental part of what it is to be a human being. It poses important philosophical and psychological questions about the nature of belief, motivation, judgment, and decision making. More immediately, failures of self-control can have high costs, resulting in ill-health, loss of relationships, and even violence and death, whereas strong self-control is also often associated with having a virtuous character. What exactly is self-control? If we lose control can we still be free?…Read more
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16Robert J. Hartman, In Defense of Moral Luck: Why Luck Often Affects Praiseworthiness and Blameworthiness (review)Journal of Moral Philosophy 18 (4): 437-440. 2021.
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16The puzzle of transformationThink 21 (62): 39-49. 2022.Sometimes we make choices that transform us significantly; they change who we are and what we value. This article looks at such choices and resulting changes from the perspective of control and moral responsibility. While we may have an inclination to think that we possess a good amount of control over these important transformations, a more careful examination reveals that we may have less than ideal control over some fundamental choices and changes in our character. As a result, this brings in…Read more
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57Barking Up the Wrong Tree: On Control, Transformative Experiences, and Turning Over a New LeafThe Monist 103 (3): 278-293. 2020.I argue that we do not intentionally and rationally shape our character and values in major ways. I base this argument on the nature of transformative experiences, that is, those experiences which are transformative from personal and epistemological points of view. The argument is roughly this. First, someone who undergoes major changes in her character or values thereby undergoes a transformative experience. Second, if she undergoes such an experience, her reasons for changing in a major way ar…Read more
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50Transformative Moral LuckMidwest Studies in Philosophy 43 (1): 162-180. 2019.Midwest Studies In Philosophy, EarlyView.
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40Trigger warning: no proximal intentions required for intentional actionPhilosophical Explorations 21 (3): 364-383. 2018.In this paper, I argue that some intentional actions are not triggered by proximal intentions; i.e. there are actions which are intentional, but lack relevant proximal intentions in their immediate causal history. More specifically, I first introduce various properties of intentions. I then argue that some actions (such as some spontaneous actions) are triggered by mental states which lack properties typically ascribed to intentions, yet these actions are still intentional. The view that all int…Read more
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67This is a Tricky Situation: Situationism and Reasons-ResponsivenessThe Journal of Ethics 21 (2): 151-183. 2017.Situations are powerful: the evidence from experimental social psychology suggests that agents are hugely influenced by the situations they find themselves in, often without their knowing it. In our paper, we evaluate how situational factors affect our reasons-responsiveness, as conceived of by John Fischer and Mark Ravizza, and, through this, how they also affect moral responsibility. We argue that the situationist experiments suggest that situational factors impair, among other things, our mod…Read more
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93Self-control and mechanisms of behavior: Why self-control is not a natural mental kindPhilosophical Psychology 30 (6): 731-762. 2017.In this paper, I argue for two main hypotheses. First, that self-control is not a natural mental kind and, second, that there is no dedicated mechanism of self-control. By the first claim, I simply mean that those behaviors we label as “self-controlled” are a somewhat arbitrarily selected hodgepodge that do not have anything in common that distinguishes them from other behaviors. In other words, self-control is a gerrymandered property that does not correspond to a natural mental or psychologica…Read more
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33The importance of being ErnieThought: A Journal of Philosophy 10 (4): 257-263. 2021.Alfred Mele presents an influential argument for incompatibilism which compares an agent, Ernie, whose life has been carefully planned by the goddess Diana, to normal deterministic agents. The argument suggests both that Ernie is not free, and that there is no relevant difference between him and normal deterministic agents in respect of free will. In this paper, I suggest that what drives our judgement that Ernie is not free in the Diana case is that his actions are merely an extension of Diana'…Read more
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208Difficult Circumstances: Situationism and AbilityJournal of Ethical Urban Living 2 (1): 63-91. 2019.Certain aspects of our situations often influence us in significant and negative ways, without our knowledge (call this claim “situationism”). One possible explanation of their influence is that they affect our abilities. In this paper, we address two main questions. Do these situational factors rid us of our abilities to act on our sufficient reasons? Do situational factors make it more difficult for us to exercise our abilities to act for sufficient reasons? We argue for the answer ‘sometimes’…Read more
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42What you Don't Know Can Hurt You: Situationism, Conscious Awareness, ControlJournal of Cognition and Neuroethics 4 (1): 45-71. 2016.The thesis of situationism says that situational factors can exert a signi cant in uence on how we act, o en without us being consciously aware that we are so in uenced. In this paper, I examine how situational factors, or, more speci cally, our lack of conscious awareness of their in uence on our behavior, a ect di erent measures of control. I further examine how our control is a ected by the fact that situational factors also seem to prevent us from becoming consciously aware of our reasons fo…Read more
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64Are intentions in tension with timing experiments?Philosophical Studies 173 (3): 573-587. 2016.Libet’s timing experiments have resulted in some strong and unsavoury claims about human agency. These range from the idea that conscious intentions are epiphenomenal to the idea that we all lack free will. In this paper, I propose a new type of response to the various sceptical conclusions about our agency occasioned by both Libet’s work and other experiments in this testing paradigm. Indeed, my argument extends to such conclusions drawn from fMRI-based prediction experiments. In what follows, …Read more
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164Get lucky: situationism and circumstantial moral luckPhilosophical Explorations 18 (3): 362-377. 2015.Situationism is, roughly, the thesis that normatively irrelevant environmental factors have a great impact on our behaviour without our being aware of this influence. Surprisingly, there has been little work done on the connection between situationism and moral luck. Given that it is often a matter of luck what situations we find ourselves in, and that we are greatly influenced by the circumstances we face, it seems also to be a matter of luck whether we are blameworthy or praiseworthy for our a…Read more
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37Simply Irresistible: Addiction, Responsibility, and Irresistible DesiresJournal of Cognition and Neuroethics 3 (1): 196-216. 2015.In this paper I set out to investigate the claim that addicts lack su cient control over their drug-taking and are thus not morally responsible for it. More speci cally, I evaluate what I call the Simply Irresistible Argument, which proceeds from the claim that addictive desires are irresistible to the conclusion that addicts are not responsible for acting on such desires. I rst propose that we have to disambiguate the notion of an irresistible desire according to temporal criteria, and revise …Read more
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28Haji, Ishtiyaque. Luck’s Mischief: Obligation and Blameworthiness on a Thread.New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. 376. $74.00 (review)Ethics 127 (2): 491-496. 2017.
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Philosophy of Mind |
Moral Psychology |
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Free Will and Science |