•  13
    Relativism, Fallibilism, and the Need for Interpretive Charity
    Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 92 253-270. 2022.
    Abstract‘Relativists' and ‘absolutists' about truth often see their own camp as promoting virtues, such as open-mindedness and intellectual humility, and see the opposing camp as fostering vices, like closed-mindedness and arrogance. Relativism is accused of fostering these vices because it entails that each person’s beliefs are automatically right for the person who holds them. How can we be humble or open-minded if we cannot concede that we might be wrong? Absolutism is accused of fostering th…Read more
  •  17
    Moral alternatives, physical determinism & Frankfurt-style counterexamples
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 65 (10): 1231-1249. 2022.
    ABSTRACT Agents in Frankfurt-style counterexamples only appear to be responsible insofar as they act willingly in the actual sequence, but would need to be manipulated against their will into forming the relevant intention in the alternative sequence. This difference appears ineliminable and unavoidably morally significant. ‘Neo-Frankfurtians’ concede that the sequences must be physically differentiated, but deny their moral differentiation. In contrast, I explore whether the alternatives could …Read more
  •  721
    Haji argues that determinism threatens deontic morality, not via a threat to moral responsibility, but directly, because of the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. Haji’s argument requires not only that we embrace an ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ principle, but also that we adopt the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘able not to’. I argue that we have little reason to adopt the latter principle, and examine whether deontic morality might be destroyed on the basis of the more commonly embraced ‘ought’ im…Read more
  •  37
    Undetermined Choices, Luck and the Enhancement Problem
    Erkenntnis 88 (7): 2827-2846. 2021.
    If indeterminism is to be necessary for moral responsibility, we must show that it doesn’t preclude responsibility (the Luck Problem) and that it might enhance it (the Enhancement Problem). A ‘strong luck claim’ motivates the Luck Problem: if an agent’s choice is undetermined, then her mental life will be causally irrelevant to her choice, whichever way she decides. A ‘weak luck claim’ motivates the Enhancement Problem: if an agent’s choice is undetermined, then even if her mental life is causal…Read more
  •  19
    Deterrence and Self-Defence
    The Monist 104 (4): 526-539. 2021.
    Measures aimed at general deterrence are often thought to be problematic on the basis that they violate the Kantian prohibition against sacrificing the interests of some as a means of securing a greater good. But even if this looks like a weak objection because deterrence can be justified as a form of societal self-defence, such measures may be regarded as problematic for another reason: Harming in self-defence is only justified when it’s necessary, i.e., when there are no relatively harmless al…Read more
  •  490
    From Neuroscience to Law: Bridging the Gap
    Frontiers in Psychology 11. 2020.
    Since our moral and legal judgments are focused on our decisions and actions, one would expect information about the neural underpinnings of human decision-making and action-production to have a significant bearing on those judgments. However, despite the wealth of empirical data, and the public attention it has attracted in the past few decades, the results of neuroscientific research have had relatively little influence on legal practice. It is here argued that this is due, at least partly, to…Read more
  •  468
    A type of transcendental argument for libertarian free will maintains that if acting freely requires the availability of alternative possibilities, and determinism holds, then one is not justified in asserting that there is no free will. More precisely: if an agent A is to be justified in asserting a proposition P (e.g. "there is no free will"), then A must also be able to assert not-P. Thus, if A is unable to assert not-P, due to determinism, then A is not justified in asserting P. While such a…Read more
  •  611
    While philosophers have worried about mental causation for centuries, worries about the causal relevance of conscious phenomena are also increasingly featuring in neuroscientific literature. Neuroscientists have regarded the threat of epiphenomenalism as interesting primarily because they have supposed that it entails free will scepticism. However, the steps that get us from a premise about the causal irrelevance of conscious phenomena to a conclusion about free will are not entirely clear. In f…Read more
  •  188
    Supervenient Freedom and the Free Will Deadlock
    Disputatio (45): 219-243. 2017.
    Supervenient libertarianism maintains that indeterminism may exist at a supervening agency level, consistent with determinism at a subvening physical level. It seems as if this approach has the potential to break the longstanding deadlock in the free will debate, since it concedes to the traditional incompatibilist that agents can only do otherwise if they can do so in their actual circumstances, holding the past and the laws constant, while nonetheless arguing that this ability is compatible wi…Read more
  •  94
    Proponents of modern Frankfurt-Style Counterexamples generally accept that we cannot construct successful FSCs in which there are no alternative possibilities present. But they maintain that we can construct successful FSCs in which there are no morally significant alternatives present and that such examples succeed in breaking any conceptual link between alternative possibilities and free will. I argue that it is not possible to construct an FSC that succeeds even in this weaker sense. In cases…Read more
  •  84
    Scepticism, responsibility and other prickly topics
    Analysis 73 (1): 107-118. 2013.
    This paper examines Dworkin's rejection of external scepticism about ethics and his rejection of incompatibilist accounts of moral responsibility. I argue that his rejection of external scepticism is defensible, but that he errs in treating the challenge posed by incompatibilist accounts of moral responsibility as a parallel form of external scepticism. Incompatibilism only appears to be an external challenge if we make certain assumptions about the motivations for incompatibilism, and about the…Read more
  •  36
    Freedom of the will: a possible alternative
    Dissertation, University College London. 2008.
    This thesis is an investigation into free will, and the role of alternative possibilities. I defend an incompatibilist notion of freedom, but argue that such freedom is not exercised in all cases of decision-making. I begin by considering the debate surrounding Harry Frankfurt’s famous argument that alternative possibilities are irrelevant to freedom. I argue that the main disagreement can be best understood by considering the dispute surrounding the 'Flicker-of-Freedom' objection, which contend…Read more
  •  75
    The demand for contrastive explanations
    Philosophical Studies 176 (5): 1325-1339. 2019.
    A “contrastive explanation” explains not only why some event A occurred, but why A occurred as opposed to some alternative event B. Some philosophers argue that agents could only be morally responsible for their choices if those choices have contrastive explanations, since they would otherwise be “luck infested”. Assuming that contrastive explanations cannot be offered for causally undetermined events, this requirement entails that no one could be held responsible for a causally undetermined cho…Read more
  •  30
    Causes, Laws, and Free Will, by Kadri Vihvelin (review)
    Mind 124 (495): 994-998. 2015.
  •  26
    Freedom, Teleology, and Evil, by Stewart Goetz (review)
    Mind 124 (493): 338-342. 2015.
  •  52
    Basic desert, conceptual revision, and moral justification
    Philosophical Explorations 16 (2): 212-225. 2013.
    I examine Manuel Vargas's revisionist justification for continuing with our responsibility-characteristic practices in the absence of basic desert. I query his claim that this justification need not depend on how we settle questions about the content of morality, arguing that it requires us to reject the Kantian principle that prohibits treating anyone merely as a means. I maintain that any convincing argument against this principle would have to be driven by concerns that arise within the spher…Read more
  •  73
    Pereboom’s Frankfurt case and derivative culpability
    Philosophical Studies 166 (3): 553-573. 2013.
    Pereboom has formulated a Frankfurt-style counterexample in which an agent is alleged to be responsible despite the fact that there are only non-robust alternatives present (Pereboom, Moral responsibility and alternative possibilities: essays on the importance of alternative possibilities, 2003; Phil Explor 12(2):109–118, 2009). I support Widerker’s objection to Pereboom’s Tax Evasion 2 example (Widerker, J Phil 103(4):163–187, 2006) (which rests on the worry that the agent in this example is de…Read more
  •  74
    Conflicting Reasons and Freedom of the Will
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 110 (3pt3): 399-407. 2010.
    Incompatibilism is often accused of incoherence because it introduces randomness in support of freedom. I argue that the sort of randomness that's thought to be detrimental to freedom results not from denying causal determinism, so much as denying what we might call ‘rational determinism’: denying that agents' actions are determined by their reasons for acting. Compatibilists argue that introducing the ability to decide differently allows agents to make choices that are irrational, and this unde…Read more