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23Suffering and punishmentIn Amalia Amaya & Maksymilian Del Mar (eds.), Virtue, Emotion and Imagination in Law and Legal Reasoning, Hart Publishing. pp. 139-156. 2020.This paper offers a defence of the Communicative Theory of Punishment against recent criticisms due to Matt Matravers. According to the Communicative Theory, the intentional imposition of suffering by the judiciary is justified because it is intrinsic to the condemnation and censure that an offender deserves as a result of wrongdoing. Matravers raises a number of worries about this idea – grounded in his thought that suffering isn’t necessary for censure, and as a consequence sometimes the impos…Read more
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15A philosophical approach to improving empirical research on posttraumatic growthPhilosophical Psychology. forthcoming.Post-traumatic growth (PTG) has been a key topic of research by psychologists over the last 25 years. But the idea that a person can benefit from adversity has been around for much longer, and is a stable in many mainstream cultures, and in theological and recent philosophical thinking. However, there has been, to date, little overlap between psychological research into PTG, and philosophical thinking about similar ideas. This is unfortunate, both because philosophers are not taking up potential…Read more
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8Replies to Ben-Ze’ev, Starkey, Reyes Càrdenas, Bloomfield, LaGuardia-LoBianco, and MendonçaJournal of Philosophy of Emotion 3 (1): 49-61. 2021.In this section, I respond to all six of my commentators. I acknowledge a number of areas where the book could be improved—not least in terms of the categorisation of theories of emotion; the emphasis on the positive value of emotion as opposed to emotion’s negative aspects; and the need to consider how emotions function in a broader range of circumstances. Alongside this, I welcome the defences of the perceptual model and new perspectives on the relations between emotion and virtue that a numbe…Read more
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179Against Agent-Based Virtue EthicsPhilosophical Papers 33 (1): 1-10. 2004.Abstract Agent-based virtue ethics is a unitary normative theory according to which the moral status of actions is entirely dependent upon the moral status of an agent's motives and character traits. One of the problems any such approach faces is to capture the common-sense distinction between an agent's doing the right thing, and her doing it for the right (or wrong) reason. In this paper I argue that agent-based virtue ethics ultimately fails to capture this kind of fine-grained distinction, a…Read more
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68Valuing, Desiring and Normative PriorityPhilosophical Quarterly 53 (211). 2003.Judgement internalism claims that our evaluative judgements will motivate us to act appropriately, at least in so far as we are rational. I examine how this claim should be understood, with particular focus on whether valuing enjoys a kind of 'normative priority' over desiring. I consider and reject views according to which valuing something provides one with a reason to be moved; this claim of normative priority and the readings of internalism it suggests are too strong. I also reject an interp…Read more
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294Value and Fitting EmotionsJournal of Value Inquiry 42 (4): 465-475. 2008.No abstract available.
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32The role of emotion in intellectual virtueIn Heather Battaly (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Virtue Epistemology, . pp. 47-58. 2018.Emotions are important for virtue, both moral and intellectual. This chapter aims to explain the significance of emotion for intellectual virtue along two dimensions. The first claim is that epistemic emotions can motivate intellectual inquiry, and thereby constitute ways of 'being for' intellectual goods. As a result, such emotions can constitute the motivational components of intellectual virtue. The second claim is that other emotions, rather than motivating intellectual inquiry and questioni…Read more
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94Skepticism, normativity, and practical identityJournal of Value Inquiry 36 (4): 403-412. 2002.No abstract available
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54Reasons and rational motivational accessPacific Philosophical Quarterly 79 (2). 1998.Practical Internalism holds that an agent's reasons for acting are entirely determined by his rational desires. This account is thought to be preferable to externalism, on the grounds that internalism alone can guarantee that agents have ‘rational motivational access’ (RMA) to their reasons. Rachel Cohon has recently argued that (i) internalism fails to ensure this, and (ii) an externalist account, akin to relativism, can guarantee RMA. I suggest that both of these claims are mistaken. I argue t…Read more
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23Précis: Emotions: The BasicsJournal of Philosophy of Emotion 3 (1): 1-4. 2021.Emotion: The Basics is an introductory text about the nature and value of emotion, and highlights the very many ways in which emotions can be good for us: epistemically, deliberatively, socially, morally, and aesthetically. It proposes a pluralist account of what emotions are, and includes both an overview of current literature on emotion, and original proposals about emotion’s importance.
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27Learning from Adversity: Suffering and WisdomIn Laura Candiotto (ed.), The Value of Emotions for Knowledge, Springer Verlag. pp. 197-214. 2019.It is commonplace, in philosophy and in everyday life, to think that suffering, understood as a kind of negative affective experience, is bad. Nevertheless, the case can be made that suffering, in certain instances and circumstances, has considerable value. Indeed, it seems plausible that we would be considerably worse off if we didn’t experience things like pain and remorse, hunger and shame. Those who are insensitive to pain don’t live very long, after all. And those who are incapable of feeli…Read more
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61II—Michael Brady: DisappointmentAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 84 (1): 179-198. 2010.Miranda Fricker appeals to the idea of moral-epistemic disappointment in order to show how our practices of moral appraisal can be sensitive to cultural and historical contingency. In particular, she thinks that moral-epistemic disappointment allows us to avoid the extremes of crude moralism and a relativism of distance. In my response I want to investigate what disappointment is, and whether it can constitute a form of focused moral appraisal in the way that Fricker imagines. I will argue that …Read more
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15Ii—disappointmentAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 84 (1): 179-198. 2010.Miranda Fricker appeals to the idea of moral-epistemic disappointment in order to show how our practices of moral appraisal can be sensitive to cultural and historical contingency. In particular, she thinks that moral-epistemic disappointment allows us to avoid the extremes of crude moralism and a relativism of distance. In my response I want to investigate what disappointment is, and whether it can constitute a form of focused moral appraisal in the way that Fricker imagines. I will argue that …Read more
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117How to understand internalismPhilosophical Quarterly 50 (198): 91-97. 2000.Internalism about practical reasons claims that there is a necessary connection between what an agent has reason to do and what he would be motivated to do if he were in privileged or optimal conditions. Internalism is traditionally supported by the claim that it alone can capture two conditions of adequacy for any theory of practical reasons, that reasons must be capable of justifying actions, and that reasons must be capable of explaining intentional acts. Robert Johnson, pp. 53–71) has argued…Read more
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35Group Emotion and Group UnderstandingIn Michael Brady & Miranda Fricker (eds.), The Epistemic Life of Groups: Essays in the Epistemology of Collectives, Oxford University Press. 2016.This chapter focuses on the positive epistemic value that individual and group emotion can have. It explains how group emotion can help to bring about the highest epistemic good, namely group understanding. It is argues that this group good would be difficult to achieve, in very many cases, in the absence of group emotion. Even if group emotion sometimes—indeed often—leads us astray, we would be worse off, from the standpoint of achieving the highest epistemic good, without it. The chapter illus…Read more
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8Virtue, emotion, and attentionIn Heather Battaly (ed.), Virtue and Vice, Moral and Epistemic, Wiley-blackwell. 2010.This chapter contains sections titled: 1 2 3 4 Acknowledgments References.
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Emotion, attention, and the nature of valueIn Sabine Roeser & Cain Samuel Todd (eds.), Emotion and Value, Oxford University Press Uk. 2014.
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35Suffering as experiential—A response to Jennifer CornsPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 107 (1): 24-30. 2022.Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.
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21Philosophy of Pain: Unpleasantness, Emotion, and Deviance (edited book)Routledge. 2018.Over recent decades pain has received increasing attention as philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists try to answer deep and difficult questions about it. What is pain? What makes pain unpleasant? How is pain related to the emotions? This volume provides a rich and wide-ranging exploration of these questions and important new insights into the philosophy of pain. Divided into three clear sections - pain and motivation; pain and emotion; and deviant pain - the collection covers fundamenta…Read more
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17Ethical Sentimentalism: New Perspectives, edited by Remy Debes and Karsten R. StueberJournal of Moral Philosophy 17 (4): 461-463. 2020.
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203Miranda Fricker, Epistemic injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing (review)Analysis 69 (2): 380-382. 2009.Miranda Fricker's book Epistemic Injustice is an original and stimulating contribution to contemporary epistemology. Fricker's main aim is to illustrate the ethical aspects of two of our basic epistemic practices, namely conveying knowledge to others and making sense of our own social experiences. In particular, she wishes to investigate the idea that there are prevalent and distinctively epistemic forms of injustice related to these aspects of our epistemic lives, injustices which reflect the f…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Value Theory |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Value Theory |