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50Comments on Emotions, Values, and Agency by Christine TappoletPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 97 (2): 520-524. 2018.
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52Comments on Talking to Our Selves by John DorisPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 97 (3): 753-757. 2018.
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31Consciousness and Moral Responsibility, by Levy, Neil: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. xv + 157, £27.50 (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 93 (4): 829-831. 2015.
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526Deliberation and Acting for ReasonsPhilosophical Review 121 (2): 209-239. 2012.Theoretical and practical deliberation are voluntary activities, and like all voluntary activities, they are performed for reasons. To hold that all voluntary activities are performed for reasons in virtue of their relations to past, present, or even merely possible acts of deliberation thus leads to infinite regresses and related problems. As a consequence, there must be processes that are nondeliberative and nonvoluntary but that nonetheless allow us to think and act for reasons, and these pro…Read more
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76Review of Tamar Schapiro: Feeling Like It: A Theory of Inclination and Will (review)Ethics 134 (3): 438-443. 2024.
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157Responsibility, applied ethics, and complex autonomy theoriesIn J. Stacey Taylor (ed.), Personal Autonomy: New Essays on Personal Autonomy and Its Role in Contemporary Moral Philosophy, Cambridge University Press. pp. 162-180. 2005.I argue that despite it being said often that the concept of personal autonomy is important for grounding moral responsibility and in applied ethics, a certain type of theories of autonomy and identification, descended from the work of Harry Frankfurt starting 1971, are not relevant in an obvious way to either moral responsibility or applied ethics.
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343What is it Like to Have a Crappy Imagination?In John Schwenkler & Enoch Lambert (eds.), Becoming Someone New: Essays on Transformative Experience, Choice, and Change, Oxford University Press. pp. 122-133. 2020.I argue that when it comes to understanding other people, humans have a problem that involves a combination of poor imagination and excessive trust in this imagination. Often, the problem has to do with what I call "runaway simulation" - clinging to the assumption that another person resembles you despite glaring counter-evidence. I then argue that the same type of problem appears intra-personally, as we fail miserably to imagine potential and future selves. Finally, I argue that this fact goes …Read more
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392Practical reasons to believe, epistemic reasons to act, and the baffled action theoristPhilosophical Issues 33 (1): 22-32. 2023.I argue that unless belief is voluntary in a very strict sense – that is, unless credence is simply under our direct control – there can be no practical reasons to believe. I defend this view against recent work by Susanna Rinard. I then argue that for very similar reasons, barring the truth of strict doxastic voluntarism, there cannot be epistemic reasons to act, only purely practical reasons possessed by those whose goal is attaining knowledge or justified belief.
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77Review: Reply to Harman, Stroud and Mason: Nomy Arpaly (review)Philosophical Studies 134 (3). 2007.
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224Desire and Meaning in Life: Towards a TheoryIn Iddo Landau (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Meaning in Life, Oxford University Press. 2022.
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15Moral Worth and Normative EthicsOxford Studies in Normative Ethics 5. 2015.According to Arpaly and to Markovits, actions have moral worth iff they are done for the reasons that make them right. Can this view have implications for normative ethics? I argue that it has such implications, as you can start from truths about the moral worth of actions to truths about the reasons that make them right. What makes actions right is the question of normative ethics. I argue from the moral worth view to a pluralistic view of ethics - not Kantianism or utilitarianism but an accoun…Read more
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209It Ain't Necessarily SoOxford Studies in Metaethics 13. 2018.While Neo-Aristotelians argue quite plausibly that it is hard to get to eudaemonia if one is wicked, I argue that they fail to show that the seeker of flourishing has a reason to become virtuous (as opposed to morally mediocre).
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The reward theory of desire in moral psychologyIn Justin D'Arms & Daniel Jacobson (eds.), Moral Psychology and Human Agency: Philosophical Essays on the Science of Ethics, Oxford University Press. 2014.
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73Comments on CullityPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 104 (2): 502-504. 2022.Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 104, Issue 2, Page 502-504, March 2022.
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18Huckleberry FInn Revisited: Inverse Akrasia and Moral Ignorance"In Michael Mckenna Randolph Clarcke & Smith Angela M. (eds.), The Nature of Moral Responsibility, Oxford University Press. pp. 141-156. 2015.This paper argue that moral ignorance does not excuse. Nobody is off the hook for doing something bad simply because she did it believing ii to be right. The paper uses the Arpaly view that cases of Akrasia can be praiseworthy as one premise in the argument.
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348I—On BenevolenceAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 92 (1): 207-223. 2018.It is widely agreed that benevolence is not the whole of the moral life, but it is not as widely appreciated that benevolence is an irreducible part of that life. This paper argues that Kantian efforts to characterize benevolence, or something like it, in terms of reverence for rational agency fall short. Such reverence, while credibly an important part of the moral life, is no more the whole of it than benevolence.
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39Four Notes on John Broome’s ‘Rationality versus Normativity’Australasian Philosophical Review 4 (4): 312-320. 2020.ABSTRACT I argue that Broome's view of the distinction between rationality and normativity needs more to be said for it to be preferable to more mundane views that connect reasons and rationality more intimately, and that it has curious implications about the connection between whether an agent does what she ought to do and the results of her action. I also argue that the etymology and history of words like ‘reason’ and ‘rational’ have absolutely no bearing on the issue at hand.
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204Quality of Will and (Some) Unusual BehaviorIn Matt King & Joshua May (eds.), Agency in Mental Disorder: Philosophical Dimensions, Oxford University Press. 2022.This chapter explores how far one can go accounting for the moral responsibility implications of several unusual mental conditions using a parsimonious quality-of-will account that relies on the way we talk about moral responsibility in more mundane situations. By contrasting situations involving epistemic irrationality versus cognitive impairment, it becomes clear that the presence of those often (but not always) excuses actions performed by unusual agents. The discussion turns to cases of clin…Read more
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293Why Epistemic Partiality is OverratedPhilosophical Topics 46 (1): 37-51. 2018.Epistemic partialism is the view that friends have a doxastic duty to overestimate each other. If one holds that there are no practical reasons for belief, we will argue, one has to deny the existence of any epistemic duties, and thus reject epistemic partialism. But if it is false that one has a doxastic duty to overestimate one’s friends, why does it so often seem true? We argue that there is a robust causal relationship between friendship and overestimation that can be mistaken for a constitu…Read more
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412Unprincipled virtue: an inquiry into moral agencyOxford University Press. 2003.Nomy Arpaly rejects the model of rationality used by most ethicists and action theorists. Both observation and psychology indicate that people act rationally without deliberation, and act irrationally with deliberation. By questioning the notion that our own minds are comprehensible to us--and therefore questioning much of the current work of action theorists and ethicists--Arpaly attempts to develop a more realistic conception of moral agency.
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7Moral Psychology's Drinking ProblemIn Iskra Fileva (ed.), Questions of Character, Oxford University Press Usa. 2016.Sometimes when a person acts while drunk we see her actions as not reflective of her character ("oh, she was just drunk"). At other times we see her actions as reflective of her "deep self" ("in vino veritas"). What is the difference between the two types of cases? This paper sketches a possible answer.
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134 When Cheap Will Just Won’t DoIn Merit, Meaning, and Human Bondage: An Essay on Free Will, Princeton University Press. pp. 117-138. 2006.
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152Alienation and ExternalityCanadian Journal of Philosophy 29 (3): 371-387. 1999.Harry Frankfurt introduces the concept of externality. Externality is supposed to be a fact about the structure of an agent's will. We argue that the pre-theorethical basis of externality has a lot more to do with feelings of alienation than it does with the will. Once we realize that intuitions about externality are guided by intuitions about feelings of alienation surprising conclusions follow regarding the structure of our will.
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85Reply to PippinPhilosophical Explorations 10 (3). 2007.I argue that in his response to me Robert Pippin misrepresents my view of akrasia (partially because of what looks like his strong disbelief in the existence of akrasia) as well as expresses a false view of the way a generalizing moral theory is supposed to apply to specific cases. The last issue is related to particularism, which I turn to discuss, arguing that one familiar way in which it seems attractive is a misleading one
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77Which autonomyIn and D. Shier M. O'Rourke J. K. Campbell (ed.), Freedom and Determinism, Mit Press. pp. 173--188. 2004.
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187The Constitution of Agency: Essays on Practical Reason and Moral Psychology (review)Philosophical Review 120 (4): 607-609. 2011.
Areas of Specialization
Value Theory |
Areas of Interest
Value Theory |
Philosophy of Action |
Normative Ethics |