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159Negative AgencyIn Luca Ferrero (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Agency, Routledge. pp. 59-67. 2022.A comprehensive theory of agency will encompass not just acting but also omitting to act and refraining from acting. Some theorists maintain that a causal theory can be applied to acting, omitting, and refraining in a perfectly uniform manner, for each omission or instance of refraining can be identified with some garden-variety action. Here it is argued that in plenty of cases this strategy fails. Sufficient conditions for omitting or refraining are offered that do not require there to be, in e…Read more
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114Accounting for failureIn Taylor W. Cyr, Andrew Law & Neal A. Tognazzini (eds.), Freedom, Responsibility, and Value: Essays in Honor of John Martin Fischer, Routledge. pp. 153-70. 2023.
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130I didn't think of thatPhilosophical Issues 33 (1): 45-57. 2023.Consider cases in which an agent simply doesn.t think to do a certain thing, or doesn't think of a crucial consideration favoring doing a certain thing, or intends to do a certain thing but forgets to do it. In such a case, is the agent able to do the thing that she fails to do? Assume that commonly we all‐in can do things that we do not do. Here I argue that, given this assumption, in the cases under consideration, too, commonly agents all‐in can do the things they fail to do.
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10Agent CausationIn Timothy O'Connor & Constantine Sandis (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Action, Wiley‐blackwell. 2010.This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Why Agent Causation? What Is Agent ‐ Caused, and What Else (if Anything) Causes It? What is Agent Causation? References Further reading.
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303Desert of blamePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 108 (1): 62-80. 2024.The blameworthy deserve blame. So runs a platitude of commonsense morality. My aim here is to set out an understanding of this desert claim (as I call it) on which it can be seen to be a familiar and attractive aspect of moral thought. I conclude with a response to a prominent denial of the claim.
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52Blameworthiness and DependencePhilosophical Quarterly 74 (1): 110-124. 2024.Some recent accounts of blameworthiness present this property as response-dependent: an agent is blameworthy, they say, if and only if, and (if so) in virtue of the fact that, it is fitting to respond to her with a certain blaming emotion. Given the explanatory aim of these views, the selected emotion cannot be said simply to appraise its object as blameworthy. We argue that articulation of the appraisal in other terms suggested by proponents yields a failure of the coextension required by the a…Read more
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184The Source of ResponsibilityEthics 133 (2). 2023.Although we are morally responsible for things of various kinds, what we bear direct responsibility for are certain exercises of our agency (and perhaps some omissions of these). Theorists disagree about what kind of agency is in this respect the source of our responsibility. Some hold that it is agency the exercises of which are actions. Others say that it is agency exercised in forming reasons-responsive attitudes on the basis of our take on reasons (or value). With attention to the relation o…Read more
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291True BlameAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 101 (3): 736-749. 2023.1. We sometimes angrily confront, pointedly ostracize, castigate, or denounce those whom we think have committed moral offences. Conduct of this kind may be called blaming behaviour. When genuine,...
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301Still guiltyPhilosophical Studies 179 (8): 2579-2596. 2022.According to what may be called PERMANENT, blameworthiness is forever: once you are blameworthy for something, you are always blameworthy for it. Here a prima facie case for this view is set out, and the view is defended from two lines of attack. On one, you are no longer blameworthy for a past offense if, despite being the person who committed it, you no longer have any of the pertinent psychological states you had at the time of the misdeed. On the other, you can cease to be blameworthy if you…Read more
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103Reply to SartorioIn Jesús Aguilar & Andrei Buckareff (eds.), Causing Human Action: New Perspectives on the Causal Theory of Action, . pp. 161-65. 2010.This chapter is a contribution to an exchange with Carolina Sartorio about intentional omissions.
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Review of A Minimal Libertarianism: Free Will and the Promise of Reduction, by Christopher Franklin (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2018. 2018.
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168Freedom, Responsibility, and Omitting to ActIn David Palmer (ed.), Libertarian Free Will: Contemporary Debates. pp. 107-23. 2014.We take it for granted that commonly we act freely and we are generally morally responsible for what we do when we so act. Can there be such a thing as freely omitting to act, or freely refraining or forbearing, and can we be similarly responsible for omitting, refraining, and forbearing? This paper advances a view of freely omitting to act. In many cases, freedom in omitting cannot come to the same thing as freedom in acting, since in many cases omitting to do a certain thing is not a matter of…Read more
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157Negligent Action and Unwitting OmissionsIn Alfred Mele (ed.), Surrounding Free Will. pp. 298-317. 2015.Negligence and omission are closely related: commonly, in cases of negligent action, the agent has failed to turn her attention to some pertinent fact. But that omission is itself typically unwitting. A sufficient condition for blameworthiness for an unwitting omission is offered, as is an account of blameworthiness for negligent action. It is argued that one can be blameworthy for wrongdoing done from ignorance even if one is not blameworthy for that ignorance.
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178Ignorance, Revision, and Common SenseIn Philip Robichaud & Jan Willem Wieland (eds.), Responsibility: The Epistemic Condition. pp. 233-51. 2017.Sometimes someone does something morally wrong in clear-eyed awareness that what she is doing is wrong. More commonly, a wrongdoer fails to see that her conduct is wrong. Call the latter behavior unwitting wrongful conduct. It is generally agreed that an agent can be blameworthy for such conduct, but there is considerable disagreement about how one’s blameworthiness in such cases is to be explained, or what conditions must be satisfied for the agent to be blameworthy for her conduct. Many theori…Read more
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207Reason to Feel GuiltyIn Andreas Carlsson (ed.), Self-Blame and Moral Responsibility, Cambridge University Press. pp. 217-36. 2022.Let F be a fact in virtue of which an agent, S, is blameworthy for performing an act of A-ing. We advance a slightly qualified version of the following thesis: (Reason) F is (at some time) a reason for S to feel guilty (to some extent) for A-ing. Leaving implicit the qualification concerning extent, we claim as well: (Desert) S's having this reason suffices for S’s deserving to feel guilty for A-ing. We also advance a third thesis connecting desert of feeling guilty with the fitti…Read more
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224It’s Up to YouThe Monist 103 (3): 328-341. 2020.Part of our ordinary conception of our freedom is the idea that commonly when we act—and often even when we don’t act—it is up to us whether we do this or that. This paper examines efforts to spell out what must be the case for this idea to be correct. Several claims regarding the basic metaphysics of agential powers are considered; they are found not to shed light on the issue. Thinking about agents’ psychological capacities provides some illumination, though the idea of freedom remains puzzlin…Read more
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23Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 57 (1): 230-232. 1997.
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527Agent Causation and the Phenomenology of AgencyPacific Philosophical Quarterly 100 (3): 747-764. 2019.Several philosophers claim that the phenomenology of one’s own agency conflicts with standard causal theories of action, couched in terms of causation by mental events or states. Others say that the phenomenology is prima facie incompatible with such a theory, even if in the end a reconciliation can be worked out. Here it is argued that the type of action theory in question is consistent with what can plausibly be said to be presented to us in our experience of our agency. Several routes to a cl…Read more
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401Toward a credible agent–causal account of free willNoûs 27 (2): 191-203. 1993.Agent-causal accounts of free will face two problems. First, such a view needs an account of rational free action, that is, of acting for reasons when one acts freely. And second, an intelligible explication of causation by an agent is required. This paper addresses both of these problems. Free actions are seen as caused both by prior events and by agents. Reasons (or their mental representations) can then be seen as figuring causally when one freely acts for reasons. It is suggested that agent …Read more
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37Free will, causation, and absencePhilosophical Studies 175 (6): 1517-1524. 2018.This paper comments on Carolina Sartorio’s Causation and Free Will, challenging the non-modal conception of reasons-sensitivity that Sartorio advances.
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An Agent-Causal View of Free WillDissertation, Princeton University. 1990.Freedom of the will is intrinsically valuable in deliberation and action, and it is a necessary condition for moral responsibility. Free will is not a sufficient condition for the latter; other abilities, and the absence of certain responsibility-undermining conditions, are also necessary. The free will requisite for moral responsibility is a self-determination in coming to have a particular intention in action. It does not consist even partly in an ability to do otherwise. ;Deliberation require…Read more
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3Blameworthiness and Unwitting OmissionsIn Dana Kay Nelkin and Samuel C. Rickless (ed.), The Ethics and Law of Omissions, Oxford University Press. pp. 63-83. 2017.This paper argues that agents can be directly blameworthy for unwitting omissions. The view developed focuses on the capacities and abilities of agents.
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564Free Will and Abilities to ActIn Martin Bruel Aaron Langenfeld Klaus von Stosch Saskia Wendel (ed.), Streit um die Freiheit: Philosophische und theologische Beiträge, Schoeningh/brill. pp. 41-62. 2019.This paper examines the view of abilities to act advanced by Kadri Vihvelin in Causes, Laws, and Free Will. Vihvelin argues that (i) abilities of an important kind are “structurally” like dispositions such as fragility; (ii) ascriptions of dispositions can be analyzed in terms of counterfactual conditionals; (iii) ascriptions of abilities of the kind in question can be analyzed similarly; and (iv) we have the free will we think we have by having abilities of this kind and being in circumstances …Read more
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738Absence Causation for Causal DispositionalistsJournal of the American Philosophical Association 4 (3): 323-331. 2018.Several theories of causation reject causation of or by absences. They thereby clash with much of what we think and say about what causes what. This paper examines a way in which one kind of theory, causal dispositionalism, can be modified so as to accept absence causation, while still retaining a fundamental commitment of dispositionalism. The proposal adopts parts of a strategy described by David Lewis. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the problem of the proliferation of causes.
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1125Free Will, Agent Causation, and “Disappearing Agents”Noûs 76-96. 2017.A growing number of philosophers now hold that agent causation is required for agency, or free will, or moral responsibility. To clarify what is at issue, this paper begins with a distinction between agent causation that is ontologically fundamental and agent causation that is reducible to or realized in causation by events or states. It is widely accepted that agency presents us with the latter; the view in question claims a need for the former. The paper then examines a “disappearing agent” ar…Read more
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37The Nature of Moral Responsibility: New EssaysOxford University Press. 2015.What is it to be morally responsible for something? Recent philosophical work reveals considerable disagreement on the question. Indeed, some theorists claim to distinguish several varieties of moral responsibility, with different conditions that must be satisfied if one is to bear responsibility of one or another of these kinds. Debate on this point turns partly on disagreement about the kinds of responses made appropriate when one is blameworthy or praiseworthy. It is generally agreed that the…Read more
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542Dispositions, Abilities to Act, and Free Will: The New DispositionalismMind 118 (470): 323-351. 2009.This paper examines recent attempts to revive a classic compatibilist position on free will, according to which having an ability to perform a certain action is having a certain disposition. Since having unmanifested dispositions is compatible with determinism, having unexercised abilities to act, it is held, is likewise compatible. Here it is argued that although there is a kind of capacity to act possession of which is a matter of having a disposition, the new dispositionalism leaves unresolve…Read more
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95Responsibility, Mechanisms, and CapacitiesModern Schoolman 88 (1/2): 161-169. 2011.Frankfurt-style cases are supposed to show that an agent can be responsible for doing something even though the agent wasn’t able to do otherwise. Neil Levy has argued that the cases fail. Agents in such cases, he says, lack a capacity that they’d have to have in order to be responsible for doing what they do. Here it’s argued that Levy is mistaken. Although it may be that agents in Frankfurt-style cases lack some kind of capability, what they lack isn’t required for them to be responsible for d…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Action |
Free Will |
Moral Responsibility |
Dispositions and Powers |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics |
Normative Ethics |