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37Academic Journals, Incentives, and the Quality of Peer Review: A ModelPhilosophy of Science 91 (1): 186-203. 2024.We model the impact of different incentives on journal behavior in undertaking peer review. Under one scheme, the journal aims to publish the highest-quality papers; under the second, the journal aims to maintain a high rejection rate. Under both schemes, journals prefer to set very high standards for acceptance despite allowing significant error in peer review. Under the second scheme, however, in order to encourage more submissions of mediocre papers, the journal is incentivized to make its ed…Read more
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39Review of Gerald F. Gaus: The Open Society and its Complexities (review)Ethics 134 (1): 131-136. 2023.
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274Regulating Social Media as a Public Good: Limiting Epistemic SegregationSocial Epistemology (6): 1-16. 2023.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
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49Explaining costly religious practices: credibility enhancing displays and signaling theoriesSynthese 200 (3): 1-32. 2022.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
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820Rational Capacities, Resolve, and Weakness of WillMind 119 (476). 2010.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
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241Finking FrankfurtPhilosophical 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
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637The coevolution of sacred value and religionReligion, 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
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68Resolutions provide reasons or: “how the Cookie Monster quit cookies”Synthese 199 (1-2): 4829-4840. 2021.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.
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1255Rational Choice and the Transitivity of BetternessPhilosophy 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
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84Two 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
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76Honor and ViolenceHuman 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
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47Green beards and signaling: Why morality is not indispensableBehavioral and Brain Sciences 41. 2018.
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51Egalitarianism about Expected UtilityEthics 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.
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1188A 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
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148Incommensurability and vagueness in spectrum arguments: options for saving transitivity of betternessPhilosophical Studies 175 (9): 2373-2387. 2018.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
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182Victims, vectors and villains: are those who opt out of vaccination morally responsible for the deaths of others?Journal of Medical Ethics (12): 762-768. 2016.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
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1649Decision theory for agents with incomplete preferencesAustralasian 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
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1631The metaphysics of dispositions and causesIn Dispositions and causes, Clarendon Press ;. pp. 1--30. 2009.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.
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1102Essentially Comparative Value Does Not Threaten TransitivityThought: 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
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182A philosophical guide to chanceCambridge 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
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986Chance and ContextIn 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
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837Nozick, prohibition, and no-fault motor insuranceJournal 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.
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311Dispositional essentialism and the possibility of a law-abiding miraclePhilosophical Quarterly 51 (205): 484-494. 2001.
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367Armstrong and the modal inversion of dispositionsPhilosophical Quarterly 55 (220). 2005.D. M. Armstrong has objected that the Dispositionalist theory of laws and properties is modally inverted, for it entails that properties are constituted by relations to non-actual possibilia. I contend that, if this objection succeeds against Dispositionalism, then Armstrong's nomic necessitation relation is also modally inverted. This shows that at least one of Armstrong's reasons for preferring a nomic necessitation theory is specious.
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101Humanitarian Intervention and the Modern State SystemThe Oxford Handbook of Ethics and War. 2015.This chapter argues that, because humanitarian intervention typically involves the military of one state attempting to overthrow another state ’s government, it gives rise to different moral questions from simple cases of interpersonal defensive violence. State sovereignty not only protects institutions within a society that contribute to the satisfaction of individuals’ interests and that cannot be easily restored once overthrown; it also plays a role in the constitution of those interests, whi…Read more
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1398Unfinkable dispositionsSynthese 160 (2). 2008.This paper develops two ideas with respect to dispositional properties: (1) Adapting a suggestion of Sungho Choi, it appears the conceptual distinction between dispositional and categorical properties can be drawn in terms of susceptibility to finks and antidotes. Dispositional, but not categorical properties, are not susceptible to intrinsic finks, nor are they remediable by intrinsic antidotes. (2) If correct, this suggests the possibility that some dispositions—those which lack any causal bas…Read more
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1058Humean dispositionalismAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 86 (1): 113-126. 2008.Humean metaphysics is characterized by a rejection of necessary connections between distinct existences. Dispositionalists claim that there are basic causal powers. The existence of such properties is widely held to be incompatible with the Humean rejection of necessary connections. In this paper I present a novel theory of causal powers that vindicates the dispositionalist claim that causal powers are basic, without embracing brute necessary connections. The key assumptions of the theory are th…Read more
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1007Counterlegals and Necessary LawsPhilosophical Quarterly 54 (216). 2004.Necessitarian accounts of the laws of nature meet an apparent difficulty: for them, counterlegal conditionals, despite appearing to be substantive, seem to come out as vacuous. I argue that the necessitarian may use the presuppositions of counterlegal discourse to explain this. If the typical presupposition that necessitarianism is false is made explicit in counterlegal utterances, we obtain sentences such as 'If it turns out that the laws of nature are contingent, then if the laws had been othe…Read more
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870Climate Change, Cooperation, and Moral BioenhancementJournal of Medical Ethics 42 (2): 742-747. 2016.The human faculty of moral judgment is not well suited to address problems, like climate change, that are global in scope and remote in time. Advocates of ‘moral bioenhancement’ have proposed that we should investigate the use of medical technologies to make human beings more trusting and altruistic, and hence more willing to cooperate in efforts to mitigate the impacts of climate change. We survey recent accounts of the proximate and ultimate causes of human cooperation in order to assess the p…Read more