•  309
    This paper investigates the nature of dispositional properties in the context of artificial intelligence systems. We start by examining the distinctive features of natural dispositions according to criteria introduced by McGeer (2018) for distinguishing between object-centered dispositions (i.e., properties like ‘fragility’) and agent-based abilities, including both ‘habits’ and ‘skills’ (a.k.a. ‘intelligent capacities’, Ryle 1949). We then explore to what extent the distinction applies to artif…Read more
  •  4
    The Thought and Talk of Individuals with Autism: Reflections on Ian Hacking
    In Armen T. Marsoobian, Brian J. Huschle, Eric Cavallero, Eva Feder Kittay & Licia Carlson (eds.), Cognitive Disability and Its Challenge to Moral Philosophy, Wiley‐blackwell. 2010.
    This chapter contains sections titled: The Clinical View Versus the Narrative View Informing Versus Transforming: Two Ways of Shaping the Autistic Spectrum From Thin People to Thick People Two Hypotheses: “Theory of Mind” Versus “Form of Life” Transforming the Autistic Spectrum References.
  •  35
    Building a better theory of responsibility
    Philosophical Studies 172 (10): 2635-2649. 2015.
    In Building Better Beings, Vargas develops and defends a naturalistic account of responsibility, whereby responsible agents must possess a feasibly situated capacity to detect and respond to moral considerations. As a preliminary step, he also offers a substantive account of how we might justify our practices of holding responsible—viz., by appeal to their efficacy in fostering a ‘valuable form of agency’ across the community at large, a form of agency that precisely encompasses sensitivity to m…Read more
  •  71
    Enculturating folk psychologists
    Synthese 199 (1-2): 1039-1063. 2020.
    This paper argues that our folk-psychological expertise is a special case of extended and enculturated cognition where we learn to regulate both our own and others’ thought and action in accord with a wide array of culturally shaped folk-psychological norms. The view has three noteworthy features: it challenges a common assumption that the foundational capacity at work in folk-psychological expertise is one of interpreting behaviour in mentalistic terms, arguing instead that successful mindreadi…Read more
  •  242
    Scaffolding agency: A proleptic account of the reactive attitudes
    European Journal of Philosophy 27 (2): 301-323. 2018.
    This paper examines the methodological claim made famous by P.F. Strawson: that we understand what features are required for responsible agency by exploring our attitudes and practices of holding responsible. What is the presumed metaphysical connection between holding responsible and being fit to be held responsible that makes this claim credible? I propose a non-standard answer to this question, arguing for a view of responsible agency that is neither anti-realist (i.e. purely 'conventionali…Read more
  •  60
    Volume 3, Issue 1, March 2019, Page 48-59.
  •  168
    Autistic self-awareness: Comment
    Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 11 (3): 235-251. 2004.
    A currently popular view traces autistic cognitive abnormalities to a defective capacity for theorizing about other minds. Two prominent researchers, Uta Frith and Francesca Happé, extend this account by tracing further autistic abnormalities to impaired self-consciousness. This paper argues that Frith and Happé's account requires a treatment of autistic self-report that is problematic on both methodological and philosophical grounds. However, the philosophical problems point to an alternative a…Read more
  •  140
    XV—Intelligent Capacities
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 118 (3). 2018.
    In The Concept of Mind, Gilbert Ryle argued that a more sophisticated understanding of the dispositional nature of ‘intelligent capacities’ could bolster philosophical resistance to the tempting view that the human mind is possessed of metaphysically ‘occult’ powers and properties. This temptation is powerful in the context of accounting for the special qualities of responsible agency. Incompatibilists indulge the temptation; compatibilists resist it, using a variety of strategies. One recen…Read more
  •  221
    Much recent research has sought to uncover the neural basis of moral judgment. However, it has remained unclear whether "moral judgments" are sufficiently homogenous to be studied scientifically as a unified category. We tested this assumption by using fMRI to examine the neural correlates of moral judgments within three moral areas: (physical) harm, dishonesty, and (sexual) disgust. We found that the judgment ofmoral wrongness was subserved by distinct neural systems for each of the different m…Read more
  •  69
    The Value of Reactive Attitudes: Critical Response to Christine Tappolet's Emotions, Values and Agency
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 97 (2): 512-519. 2018.
  •  571
    The Desirability and Feasibility of Restorative Justice
    with Philip Pettit
    Raisons Politiques 57 17-33. 2015.
  • The Meaning of Living Languages
    Dissertation, University of Toronto (Canada). 1991.
    In the philosophies of language and mind, "externalists" argue that the meanings of words and the contents of beliefs are determined by factors external to individual agents. "Social" externalists emphasize that the meaning-determining features of an individual's environment include what others say and do. "Physical" or "perceptual" externalists disagree, arguing that basic constraints on meaning are set by an individual's history of causal interactions with her physical environment. Communicati…Read more
  •  470
    The Empowering Theory of Trust
    In Paul Faulkner & Thomas W. Simpson (eds.), The Philosophy of Trust, Oxford University Press. pp. 14-34. 2017.
  •  954
    The Hard Problem of Responsibility
    In David Shoemaker (ed.), Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility, Volume 1, Oxford University Press Uk. 2013.
  •  37
    The problem of error: A surd spot in rational intentionalism
    Philosophia 21 (3-4): 295-309. 1992.
  •  159
    The broad issue in this paper is the relationship between cognitive psychology and neuroscience. That issue arises particularly sharply for cognitive neurospsychology, some of whose practitioners claim a methodological autonomy for their discipline. They hold that behavioural data from neuropsychological impairments are sufficient to justify assumptions about the underlying modular structure of human cognitive architecture, as well as to make inferences about its various components. But this cla…Read more
  •  153
    The regulative dimension of folk psychology
    In Daniel D. Hutto & Matthew Ratcliffe (eds.), Folk Psychology Re-Assessed, Kluwer/springer Press. pp. 137--156. 2007.
  •  43
    The Skill of Perceiving Persons
    Modern Schoolman 86 (3-4): 289-318. 2009.
  •  78
    The Art of Good Hope
    Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (1): 100--127. 2004.
    What is hope? Though variously characterized as a cognitive attitude, an emotion, a disposition, and even a process or activity, hope, more deeply, a unifying and grounding force of human agency. We cannot live a human life without hope, therefore questions about the rationality of hope are properly recast as questions about what it means to hope well. This thesis is defended and elaborated as follows. First, it is argued that hope is an essential and distinctive feature of human agency, both co…Read more
  •  95
    Ian Hacking proposes that ways of talking about autistic experience can shape, or even transform, what it is like to be autistic. I explore the grounds for two nonexclusive interpretations of this thesis. The informative interpretation holds that, because nonautistics cannot read mental states into autistic behaviour as they normally do with one another, autistic self‐narratives give nonautistics unique insights into what it is like to be autistic. This in turn affects how nonautistics interact …Read more
  •  317
    Trust, hope and empowerment
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 86 (2). 2008.
    Philosophers and social scientists have focussed a great deal of attention on our human capacity to trust, but relatively little on the capacity to hope. This is a significant oversight, as hope and trust are importantly interconnected. This paper argues that, even though trust can and does feed our hopes, it is our empowering capacity to hope that significantly underwrites—and makes rational—our capacity to trust.
  •  99
    The trouble with Mary
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 84 (4): 384-393. 2003.
    Two arguments are famously held to support the conclusion that consciousness cannot be explained in purely physical or functional terms – hence, that physicalism is false: the modal argument and the knowledge argument. While anti‐physicalists appeal to both arguments, this paper argues there is a methodological incoherence in jointly maintaining them: the modal argument supports the possibility of zombies; but the possibility of zombies undercuts the knowledge argument. At best, this leaves anti…Read more
  •  42
    Developing trust on the Internet
    Analyse & Kritik 26 (1): 91-107. 2004.
    Does the Internet provide an environment in which rational individuals can initiate and maintain relationships of interpersonal trust? This paper argues that it does. It begins by examining distinctive challenges facing would-be trusters on the net, concluding that, however distinctive, such challenges are not unique to the Internet, so cannot be cited as grounds for disparaging the rationality of Internet trust. Nevertheless, these challenges point up the importance of developing mature capacit…Read more
  •  133
    In philosophy, the last thirty years or so has seen a split between 'simulation theorists' and 'theory-theorists', with a number of variations on each side. In general, simulation theorists favour the idea that our knowledge of others is based on using ourselves as a working model of what complex psychological creatures are like. Theory-theorists claim that our knowledge of complex psychological creatures, including ourselves, is theoretical in character and so more like our knowledge of the wor…Read more
  •  247
    This paper is divided into two parts. In Section 1, I explore and defend a “regulative view” of folk-psychology as against the “standard view”. On the regulative view, folk-psychology is conceptualized in fundamentally interpersonal terms as a “mind-making” practice through which we come to form and regulate our minds in accordance with a rich array of socially shared and socially maintained sense-making norms. It is not, as the standard view maintains, simply an epistemic capacity for coming to…Read more
  •  69
    Developing trust
    Philosophical Explorations 5 (1). 2002.
    This paper examines developing trust in two related senses: (1) rationally overcoming distrust, and (2) developing a mature capacity for trusting/distrusting. In focussing exclusively on the first problem, traditional philosophical discussions fail to address how an evidence- based paradigm of rationality is easily co-opted by (immature) agents in support of irrational distrust (or trust) - a manifestation of the second problem. Well-regulated trust requires developing a capacity to tolerate the…Read more
  •  9
    Civilizing blame
    In D. Justin Coates & Neal A. Tognazzini (eds.), Blame: Its Nature and Norms, Oxford University Press. pp. 162--188. 2013.