•  14
  •  59
    ABSTRACT The rise of social media has correlated with an increase in political polarization, which many perceive as a threat to public discourse and democratic governance. This paper presents a framework, drawing on social epistemology and the economic theory of public goods, to explain how social media can contribute to polarization, making us collectively poorer, even while it provides a preferable media experience for individual consumers. Collective knowledge and consensus is best served by …Read more
  •  14
    This paper examines and contrasts two closely related evolutionary explanations in human behaviour: signalling theory, and the theory of Credibility Enhancing Displays. Both have been proposed to explain costly, dangerous, or otherwise ‘extravagant’ social behaviours, especially in the context of religious belief and practice, and each have spawned significant lines of empirical research. However, the relationship between these two theoretical frameworks is unclear, and research which engages bo…Read more
  •  597
    In this paper we present an account of practical rationality and weakness of will in terms of rational capacities. We show how our account rectifies various shortcomings in Michael Smith's related theory. In particular, our account is capable of accommodating cases of weak-willed behaviour that are not `akratic', or otherwise contrary to the agent's better judgement. Our account differs from Smith's primarily by incorporating resolve: a third rational capacity for resolute maintenance of one's i…Read more
  •  206
    Finking Frankfurt
    Philosophical Studies 135 (3): 363--74. 2007.
    Michael Smith has resisted Harry Frankfurt's claim that moral responsibility does not require the ability to have done otherwise. He does this by claiming that, in Frankfurt cases, the ability to do otherwise is indeed present, but is a disposition that has been `finked' or masked by other factors. We suggest that, while Smith's account appears to work for some classic Frankfurt cases, it does not work for all. In particular, Smith cannot explain cases, such as the Willing Addict, where the Fran…Read more
  •  331
    The coevolution of sacred value and religion
    Religion, Brain and Behavior 10 (3): 252-271. 2020.
    Sacred value attitudes involve a distinctive profile of norm psychology: an absolutist prohibition on transgressing the value, combined with outrage at even hypothetical transgressions. This article considers three mechanisms by which such attitudes may be adaptive, and relates them to central theories regarding the evolution of religion. The first, “deterrence” mechanism functions to dissuade coercive expropriation of valuable resources. This mechanism explains the existence of sacred value att…Read more
  •  36
    Why should we typically act in accordance with our resolutions when faced with the temptation to do otherwise? A much-maligned view suggests that we should do so because resolutions themselves provide us with reasons for action. We defend a version of this view, on which resolutions provide second-order reasons. This account avoids the objections typically taken to be fatal for the view that resolutions are reasons, including the prominent bootstrapping objections.
  •  930
    Rational Choice and the Transitivity of Betterness
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 89 (3): 584-604. 2014.
    If A is better than B and B is better than C, then A is better than C, right? Larry Temkin and Stuart Rachels say: No! Betterness is nontransitive, they claim. In this paper, I discuss the central type of argument advanced by Temkin and Rachels for this radical idea, and argue that, given this view very likely has sceptical implications for practical reason, we would do well to identify alternative responses. I propose one such response, which employs the idea that rational agents might regard s…Read more
  •  52
    Two of a kind: Are norms of honor a species of morality?
    Biology and Philosophy 34 (3): 39. 2019.
    Should the norms of honor cultures be classified as a variety of morality? In this paper, we address this question by considering various empirical bases on which norms can be taxonomically organised. This question is of interest both as an exercise in philosophy of social science, and for its potential implications in meta-ethical debates. Using recent data from anthropology and evolutionary game theory, we argue that the most productive classification emphasizes the strategic role that moral n…Read more
  •  50
    Honor and Violence
    Human Nature 29 (4): 371-389. 2018.
    We present a theory of honor violence as a form of costly signaling. Two types of honor violence are identified: revenge and purification. Both types are amenable to a signaling analysis whereby the violent behavior is a signal that can be used by out-groups to draw inferences about the nature of the signaling group, thereby helping to solve perennial problems of social cooperation: deterrence and assurance. The analysis shows that apparently gratuitous acts of violence can be part of a system o…Read more
  •  25
    Green beards and signaling: Why morality is not indispensable
    with John Thrasher and Julian García
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 41. 2018.
  •  28
    Egalitarianism about Expected Utility
    Ethics 128 (3): 603-611. 2018.
    Alex Voorhoeve and Marc Fleurbaey have developed a novel theory of distributive ethics, which incorporates a concern for inequality in both outcomes and life chances. This article demonstrates that their attempt to measure life chances is problematic for two reasons. First, it cannot be generalized to variable population cases without inheriting the problems of average utilitarianism. Second, it does not consistently respect the very ideas that were used to motivate the proposal.
  •  973
    A Good Exit: What to Do about the End of Our Species?
    Journal of Moral Philosophy 15 (3): 272-297. 2018.
    We know that Homo sapiens will not exist forever. Given this, how should our species end? What are the reasons, if any, to delay our extinction? In this paper, I show that the pre-eminent reasons which favour prolonging the existence of the species are partial: they will arise from the particular attachments and projects of the final few generations. While there may also be impartial reasons to prolong the species, these reasons are liable, with time, to reverse their valence: we can be reasonab…Read more
  •  127
    The spectrum argument purports to show that the better-than relation is not transitive, and consequently that orthodox value theory is built on dubious foundations. The argument works by constructing a sequence of increasingly less painful but more drawn-out experiences, such that each experience in the spectrum is worse than the previous one, yet the final experience is better than the experience with which the spectrum began. Hence the betterness relation admits cycles, threatening either tran…Read more
  •  817
    Where’s the biff?
    Erkenntnis 68 (2): 149-68. 2008.
    This paper presents an attempt to integrate theories of causal processes—of the kind developed by Wesley Salmon and Phil Dowe—into a theory of causal models using Bayesian networks. We suggest that arcs in causal models must correspond to possible causal processes. Moreover, we suggest that when processes are rendered physically impossible by what occurs on distinct paths, the original model must be restricted by removing the relevant arc. These two techniques suffice to explain cases of late pr…Read more
  •  1190
    Dispositions, rules, and finks
    Philosophical Studies 140 (2). 2007.
    This paper discusses the prospects of a dispositional solution to the Kripke–Wittgenstein rule-following puzzle. Recent attempts to employ dispositional approaches to this puzzle have appealed to the ideas of finks and antidotes—interfering dispositions and conditions—to explain why the rule-following disposition is not always manifested. We argue that this approach fails: agents cannot be supposed to have straightforward dispositions to follow a rule which are in some fashion masked by other, c…Read more
  •  159
    Absent Desires
    Utilitas 23 (4): 402-427. 2011.
    What difference does it make to matters of value, for a desire satisfactionist, if a given desire is *absent*, rather than *present*? I argue that it is most plausible to hold that the state in which a given desire is satisfied is, other things being equal, incommensurate with the state in which that desire does not exist at all. In addition to illustrating the internal attractions of the view, I demonstrate that this idea has attractive implications for population ethics. Finally, I show that t…Read more
  •  59
    We present a probabilistic extension to active path analyses of token causation. The extension uses the generalized notion of intervention presented in : we allow an intervention to set any probability distribution over the intervention variables, not just a single value. The resulting account can handle a wide range of examples. We do not claim the account is complete --- only that it fills an obvious gap in previous active-path approaches. It still succumbs to recent counterexamples by Hiddles…Read more
  •  132
    Laws of nature
    A Companion to Philosophy in Australia and New Zealand. 2010.
    A short piece on laws of nature, focusing on "Australian" contributions to the topic, such as the views of Armstrong, Tooley, Lewis, and Ellis.
  •  112
    Dispositions and causes (edited book)
    Clarendon Press ;. 2009.
    In recent decades, the analysis of causal relations has become a topic of central importance in analytic philosophy. More recently, dispositional properties have also become objects of intense study. Both of these phenomena appear to be intimately related to counterfactual conditionals and other modal phenomena such as objective chance, but little work has been done to directly relate them. This collection contains ten essays by scholars working in both metaphysics and in philosophy of science, …Read more
  •  149
    Mass vaccination has been a successful public health strategy for many contagious diseases. The immunity of the vaccinated also protects others who cannot be safely or effectively vaccinated—including infants and the immunosuppressed. When vaccination rates fall, diseases like measles can rapidly resurge in a population. Those who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons are at the highest risk of severe disease and death. They thus may bear the burden of others' freedom to opt out of vaccinatio…Read more
  •  1225
    Decision theory for agents with incomplete preferences
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 92 (3): 453-70. 2014.
    Orthodox decision theory gives no advice to agents who hold two goods to be incommensurate in value because such agents will have incomplete preferences. According to standard treatments, rationality requires complete preferences, so such agents are irrational. Experience shows, however, that incomplete preferences are ubiquitous in ordinary life. In this paper, we aim to do two things: (1) show that there is a good case for revising decision theory so as to allow it to apply non-vacuously to ag…Read more
  •  1279
    This article gives a general overview of recent metaphysical work on dispositional properties and causal relations. It serves as an introduction to the edited volume, Dispositions and Causes.
  •  790
    Essentially Comparative Value Does Not Threaten Transitivity
    Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 5 (1): 3-12. 2016.
    The essentially comparative conception of value entails that the value of a state of affairs does not depend solely upon features intrinsic to the state of affairs, but also upon extrinsic features, such as the set of feasible alternatives. It has been argued that this conception of value gives us reason to abandon the transitivity of the better than relation. This paper shows that the support for intransitivity derived from this conception of value is very limited. On its most plausible interpr…Read more
  •  170
    A philosophical guide to chance
    Cambridge University Press. 2012.
    It is a commonplace that scientific inquiry makes extensive use of probabilities, many of which seem to be objective chances, describing features of reality that are independent of our minds. Such chances appear to have a number of paradoxical or puzzling features: they appear to be mind-independent facts, but they are intimately connected with rational psychology; they display a temporal asymmetry, but they are supposed to be grounded in physical laws that are time-symmetric; and chances are us…Read more
  •  746
    Chance and Context
    In Alastair Wilson (ed.), Chance and Temporal Asymmetry, Oxford University Press. 2014.
    The most familiar philosophical conception of objective chance renders determinism incompatible with non-trivial chances. This conception – associated in particular with the work of David Lewis – is not a good fit with our use of the word ‘chance’ and its cognates in ordinary discourse. In this paper we show how a generalized framework for chance can reconcile determinism with non-trivial chances, and provide for a more charitable interpretation of ordinary chance-talk. According to our proposal…Read more
  •  581
    Nozick, prohibition, and no-fault motor insurance
    Journal of Applied Philosophy 20 (2). 2003.
    Is a Nozickian theory of rights compatible with a no-fault motor insurance scheme? I say, Yes. The argument turns on an explication of the basis on which a Nozickian justifies the prohibition of merely risky activities.