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15The Oneness Hypothesis: Beyond the Boundary of Self (edited book)Columbia University Press. 2018.The idea that the self is inextricably intertwined with the rest of the world—the “oneness hypothesis”—can be found in many of the world’s philosophical and religious traditions. Oneness provides ways to imagine and achieve a more expansive conception of the self as fundamentally connected with other people, creatures, and things. Such views present profound challenges to Western hyperindividualism and its excessive concern with self-interest and tendency toward self-centered behavior. This anth…Read more
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7Virtue Epistemology Naturalized: Bridges between Virtue Epistemology and Philosophy of Science (edited book)Synthese Library. 2014.Bridges Between Virtue Epistemology and Philosophy of Science 1 Abrol Fairweather Part I Epistemic Virtue, Cognitive Science and Situationism The Function of Perception 13 Peter J Graham Metacognition and Intellectual Virtue 33 Christopher Lepock Daring to Believe: Metacognition, Epistemic Agency and Reflective Knowledge 49 Fernando Broncano Success, Minimal Agency and Epistemic Virtue 67 Carlos Montemayor Towards a Eudaimonistic Virtue Epistemology 83 Berit Brogaard Expanding the Situationist C…Read more
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5Narrative and Consciousness: Literature, Psychology, and the Brain (edited book)Oxford University Press USA. 2003.We define our conscious experience by constructing narratives about ourselves and the people with whom we interact. Narrative pervades our lives--conscious experience is not merely linked to the number and variety of personal stories we construct with each other within a cultural frame, but is subsumed by them. The claim, however, that narrative constructions are essential to conscious experience is not useful or informative unless we can also begin to provide a distinct, organized, and empirica…Read more
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12The Bodhisattva's Brain: Buddhism NaturalizedBradford. 2011.If we are material beings living in a material world -- and all the scientific evidence suggests that we are -- then we must find existential meaning, if there is such a thing, in this physical world. We must cast our lot with the natural rather than the supernatural. Many Westerners with spiritual inclinations are attracted to Buddhism -- almost as a kind of moral-mental hygiene. But, as Owen Flanagan points out in The Bodhisattva's Brain, Buddhism is hardly naturalistic. In _The Bodhisattva's …Read more
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6Narrative and Consciousness: Literature, Psychology, and the Brain (edited book)Oup Usa. 2003.The evocation of narrative as a way to understand the content of consciousness, including memory, autobiography, self, and imagination, has sparked truly interdisciplinary work among psychologists, philosophers, and literary critics. Even neuroscientists have taken an interest in the stories people create to understand themselves, their past, and the world around them. The research presented in this volume should appeal to researchers enmeshed in these problems, as well as the general reader wit…Read more
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13Moral sprouts and natural teleologies: 21st century moral psychology meets classical Chinese philosophyMarquette University Press. 2014.Contemporary Western moral philosophy in harmony with classical Chinese philosophy, especially Buddhism.
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7The State of Nature in Comparative Political Thought: Western and Non-Western Perspectives (edited book)Lexington Books. 2013.
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Han Feizi's philosophical psychology : human nature, scarcity, and the neodarwinian consensusIn Jon D. Carlson & Russell Arben Fox (eds.), The State of Nature in Comparative Political Thought: Western and Non-Western Perspectives, Lexington Books. 2013.
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11The natural method: essays on mind, ethics, and self in honor of Owen Flanagan (edited book)The MIT Press. 2020.This collection offers cutting-edge chapters on themes related to the philosophical work of Owen Flanagan. Flanagan is an influential philosopher in the late 20th and early 21st Century, whose wide-ranging work spans philosophy of mind (especially consciousness, identity, and the self), ethics and moral psychology, comparative philosophy, and philosophical study of psychopathology (especially disorders of self, dreams, and addiction). Flanagan is the author of numerous scholarly and popular arti…Read more
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3ConsciousnessIn George Graham & William Bechtel (eds.), A Companion to Cognitive Science, Blackwell. 1998.What is consciousness? What role, if any, does consciousness play in the explanation of cognition? Can consciousness be studied empirically? These are the questions. Here are the answers.
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2Anguished ArtIn Fritz Allhoff, Jesse R. Steinberg & Abrol Fairweather (eds.), Blues–Philosophy for Everyone, Wiley‐blackwell. 2011-12-09.This chapter contains sections titled: Notes.
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215Naturalizing ethicsIn Kelly James Clark (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Naturalism, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 16-33. 2015.In this essay we provide (1) an argument for why ethics should be naturalized, (2) an analysis of why it is not yet naturalized, (3) a defense of ethical naturalism against two fallacies—Hume’s and Moore’s—that ethical naturalism allegedly commits, and (4) a proposal that normative ethics is best conceived as part of human ecology committed to pluralistic relativism. We explain why naturalizing ethics both entails relativism and also constrains it, and why nihilism about value is not an especial…Read more
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21A decade of teleofunctionalism: Lycan's consciousness and consciousness and experience (review)Minds and Machines 11 (1): 113-126. 2001.The 1990’s, we’ve been told, were the decade of the brain. But without anyone announcing or declaring, much less deciding that it should be so, the 90’s were also a breakthrough decade for the study of consciousness. (Of course we think the two are related, but that is another matter altogether.) William G. Lycan leads the charge with his 1987 book Consciousness (MIT Press), and he has weighed-in again with Consciousness and Experience (1996, MIT Press). Together these two books put forth Lycan’…Read more
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9What Does the Modularity of Morals Have to Do With Ethics? Four Moral Sprouts Plus or Minus a FewTopics in Cognitive Science 2 (3): 430-453. 2010.Flanagan (1991) was the first contemporary philosopher to suggest that a modularity of morals hypothesis (MMH) was worth consideration by cognitive science. There is now a serious empirically informed proposal that moral competence is best explained in terms of moral modules-evolutionarily ancient, fast-acting, automatic reactions to particular sociomoral experiences (Haidt & Joseph, 2007). MMH fleshes out an idea nascent in Aristotle, Mencius, and Darwin. We discuss the evidence for MMH, specif…Read more
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22Malfunction and Mental IllnessThe Monist 82 (4): 658-670. 1999.For years a debate has raged within the various literatures of philosophy, psychiatry, and psychology over whether, and to what degree, the concepts that characterize psychopathology are social constructions that reflect cultural values. While the majority position among philosophers has been normativist, i.e., that the conception of a mental disorder is value-laden, a vocal and cogent minority have argued that psychopathology results from malfunctions that can be described by terminology that i…Read more
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35This chapter presents a reflective, critical position toward the author’s own addiction and toward himself as an addict. It presents the question of whether addressing addiction as a disease is useful; the idea of addiction as a disease seems less useful in describing “what it is like” for the author than to say that his being was physically, psychologically, and relationally disordered. Despite his desires, he could not find a way to regain order and harmony within himself. It was only the phen…Read more
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10One enchanted being: Neuroexistentialism and meaningZygon 44 (1): 41-49. 2009.The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World is my attempt to explain whether and how existential meaning is possible in a material world, and how such meaning is best conceived naturalistically. Neuroexistentialism conceives of our predicament in accordance with Darwin plus neuroscience. The prospects for our kind of being-in-the-world are limited by our natures as smart but fully embodied short-lived animals. Many find this picture disenchanting, even depressing. I respond to four crit…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Value Theory |
Cognitive Sciences |
Social Sciences |
Areas of Interest
Philosophical Traditions |
Cognitive Sciences |
Social Sciences |