•  503
    Deliberation and Acting for Reasons
    Philosophical 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
  •  27
    Comments on McGrath
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 107 (2): 553-555. 2023.
  •  88
    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.
  •  43
    Comments on Emotions, Values, and Agency by Christine Tappolet
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 97 (2): 520-524. 2018.
  •  41
    Comments on Talking to Our Selves by John Doris
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 97 (3): 753-757. 2018.
  •  245
    What 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
  •  211
    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.
  •  14
    Moral Worth and Normative Ethics
    Oxford 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
  •  148
    It Ain't Necessarily So
    Oxford 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).
  •  64
    Comments on Cullity
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 104 (2): 502-504. 2022.
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 104, Issue 2, Page 502-504, March 2022.
  •  17
    Huckleberry 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.
  •  237
    I—On Benevolence
    Aristotelian 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.
  •  29
    Four 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.
  •  135
    Quality of Will and (Some) Unusual Behavior
    In 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
  •  268
    Why Epistemic Partiality is Overrated
    Philosophical 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
  •  391
    Unprincipled virtue: an inquiry into moral agency
    Oxford 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.
  •  7
    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.
  •  141
    Alienation and Externality
    Canadian 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.
  •  130
    The Utilitarian's Song
    Utilitas 14 (1): 1. 2002.
  •  79
    Reply to Pippin
    Philosophical 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
  •  26
    Response to Swanton and Badhwar
    Journal of Value Inquiry 50 (2): 445-448. 2016.
  •  91
    Which autonomy
    In and D. Shier M. O.’Rourke J. K. Campbell (ed.), Freedom and Determinism, Mit Press. pp. 173--188. 2004.