•  35
    Non-Ideal Virtue and Situationism
    The Journal of Ethics 26 (1): 41-68. 2021.
    Several philosophers, known as situationists, have argued that evidence in social psychology threatens to undermine Aristotelian virtue ethics. An impressively large amount of empirical evidence suggests that most people do not consistently act virtuously and lack the ability to exercise rational control over their behavior. Since possessing moral virtues requires these features, situationists have argued that Aristotelianism does not accurately describe the character traits possessed by most pe…Read more
  •  436
    One: but not the same
    Philosophical Studies (6). 2021.
    Ordinary judgments about personal identity are complicated by the fact that phrases like “same person” and “different person” have multiple uses in ordinary English. This complication calls into question the significance of recent experimental work on this topic. For example, Tobia (2015) found that judgments of personal identity were significantly affected by whether the moral change described in a vignette was for the better or for the worse, while Strohminger and Nichols (2014) found that los…Read more
  •  13
    Are the folk historicists about moral responsibility?
    with Heather M. Maranges
    Philosophical Psychology 33 (1): 1-22. 2020.
  •  64
    Situationism and the problem of moral improvement
    Philosophical Explorations 22 (3): 312-327. 2019.
    A wealth of research in social psychology indicates that various ethically arbitrary situational factors exert a surprisingly powerful influence on moral conduct. Empirically-minded philosophers have argued over the last two decades that this evidence challenges Aristotelian virtue ethics. John Doris, Gilbert Harman, and Maria Merritt have argued that situationist moral psychology – as opposed to Aristotelian moral psychology – is better suited to the practical aim of helping agents act better. …Read more
  •  19
    Agency enhancement and social psychology
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 41. 2018.
  •  41
    Are the Folk Historicists about Moral Responsibility?
    with Heather Maranges
    Philosophical Psychology 1-22. forthcoming.
    Manipulation cases have figured prominently in philosophical debates about whether moral responsibility is in some sense deeply historical. Meanwhile, some philosophers have thought that folk thinking about manipulated agents may shed some light on the various argumentative burdens facing participants in that debate. This paper argues that folk thinking is, to some extent, deeply historical. Across three experiments, it is shown that a substantial number of participants did not attribute moral r…Read more