Vishnu Sridharan

While moral encroachment—the view that the moral features of an agent's belief can impact its epistemic status—has received a significant amount of attention, core problems with the view remain unaddressed. In this paper, I aim to accomplish three tasks: first, I argue that if moral encroachment simply applies to cases in which agents engage in statistical reasoning, then the thesis is epistemically redundant. Second, I critically examine the possibility of moral encroachment applying to cases in which agents do not engage in statistical reasoning. Lastly, I demonstrate that even if the thesis of moral encroachment is stripped of its epistemic implications, it still can teach us important moral lessons about when our beliefs wrong others.

In this article, I argue that there is a tension between our moral evaluation of risky actions and our moral evaluation of sequences of risky actions. In particular, I argue that both of the following may be true: (1) each particular risky action constituting the sequence is permissible, but (2) the sequence of risky actions is one that the agent ought not to perform. I show how these claims are compatible by distinguishing between the moral evaluation of actions and the moral evaluation of sequences of actions.

While the claim that moral ignorance exculpates is quite controversial, the parallel claim with respect to non-moral ignorance seems to be universally accepted. As a starting point, we can state this claim as follows: Non-moral Ignorance Exculpates: If an agent did everything that could be reasonably expected of her to inquire into some empirical issue as to whether P, the seeming truth of P played the appropriate role in the agent’s motivation to Φ, and the agent would not have merited blame for Φ-ing if P had been the case, then the agent does not merit blame for Φ-ing. In this paper, I aim to accomplish two tasks. First, I argue that NMIE is false in certain cases in which, by Φ-ing, the agent violates a course-grained, reasonable community norm without knowing that doing so is in everyone’s best interests. Second, I argue that, while moral ignorance, like non-moral ignorance, does not exculpate when community norms are violated in this manner, it does exculpate when they are not. With these two tasks accomplished, we will see the striking parallels in the manner in which both moral and non-moral ignorance exculpate.

In this paper, I present a puzzle about how courts react to purely statistical evidence and my own tentative approach to solving it. The basic puzzle is that while there are a number of contexts in which statistical evidence is rejected as a foundation for liability, there are others such as toxic torts in which such evidence is thought to be sufficient. While a number of attempts have been made to explain why statistical evidence is unacceptable in a variety of contexts, significantly fewer have brought to light cases in which such evidence is commonplace. Through an examination of toxic torts, I show that it is untenable to claim that as a general matter, courts will not ground findings of liability in statistical evidence. I then put forward a more nuanced view, according to which findings of liability can be justified when grounded in direct—but not indirect—statistical evidence.

In our deliberations about what to do, ought we take for granted the propositions that we know? According to one prominent view, which I'll call the Fallibilist View, it is rational to be very confident in such propositions when deliberating about what to do, but almost never maximally confident in them. The primary appeal of the Fallibilist View is that it appears to address serious shortcomings of the natural alternative, which I'll call the Certainty View, according to which it is practically rational to be maximally confident in all known propositions. In this paper, I aim to accomplish two tasks. First, I'll demonstrate some unappealing features of the Fallibilist View. To follow, I'll present a third view, which I call the Split View. According to the Split View, there are distinct notions of primary and dispositional rationality, and while it is not dispositionally rational to take known propositions for granted in our practical deliberations, it is primarily rational to do so.

There’s more to meriting praise than doing what’s objectively right. After all, one might do what’s objectively right as the result of a fluke or with malicious intent. While doing what’s objectively right is not enough to merit praise, it’s natural to think that some list of sufficient conditions can be assembled. The most common approach to such lists entails that, when one does what is objectively right with the appropriate epistemic state and/or motivation, one merits praise for one’s action. In other words, according to the most influential extant views, if one both does what’s right and meets certain additional criteria, one will not only succeed in doing what is morality required but will also succeed in deserving positive moral evaluation for what one has done. In this paper, I use the example of extended actions to show that drawing any sort of link between doing what’s objectively right and being worthy of praise is much more difficult than has been previously appreciated.

Concern for corporate influence on democratic decisions has mostly focused on campaign funding and access to legislators. While these are certainly worrisome, corporations have another tool to influence decisions, which they are increasingly using. They can threaten to move their operations or cancel expansion plans in a municipality unless its public officials pass (or kill) certain policies. In one sense, this is business as usual. Companies have the right to decide where to operate, and it is important for officials to consider how policy will impact local businesses that provide jobs and tax revenue. On the other hand, companies can use these threats to get their way on any policy, whether or not it impacts them. How do we tell when this kind of corporate action is illegitimate? We argue that such actions are illegitimate when they violate democratic norms of reason-giving, which occurs when companies offer the public “created” rather than “natural” reasons for their proposed policy.

In this paper, I present a puzzle about the connection between an agent’s knowledge and her rationality and a way to solve it. The puzzle is that, intuitively, many of us want to accept both that it is rational for an agent to act on what she knows and that it is irrational for an agent to take what she knows for granting in her practical reasoning. These two claims about rationality present us with a puzzle because, holding fixed our interpretation of rationality, we cannot accept them both. According to my view, the most compelling way of solving this puzzle is to distinguish between our primary and dispositional evaluations of actions. By making this distinction, we not only gain a unique perspective on the relationship between knowledge and rationality, we also see how doing what we know is best might still manifest an undesirable habit.

In both the Consequences of Compassion and his response to my article, Goodman outlines a consequentialist theory that is both coherent and, in many ways, compelling. One can imagine that out of a concern toward—as Goodman puts it—“the impersonal events which fill the world”, we will accept “momentary experiences as the morally significant units”, and our actions will aim to promote the existence of “good dharmas.” However, as this brief reply argues, Goodman’s equating of a consequentialism focused on good dharmas to a consequentialism focused on individual well-being is unjustified, and, as a consequence, the textual evidence he presents does not support his consequentialist view...

It’s widely accepted that whether or not an agent merits praise for performing a particular action importantly depends on her motivation in doing so. What has received less attention is the importance of an agent’s moral understanding to whether she merits praise for performing a particular action, or whether her action has ‘moral worth.’ The first task of this paper is relatively straightforward: to show that two prominent attempts to address the importance of moral understanding to moral worth, namely that of Zoe Johnson King and Paulina Sliwa, are unsuccessful. The second task of this paper, which is more novel and ambitious, is to show that agents who lack moral understanding are a challenge to more accounts of moral worth than has been previously recognized. My goal in this paper is largely negative: to show that extant accounts of such conditions are unable to account for the relevance of an agent’s understanding to her praiseworthiness for performing a particular action. In making clear these shortcomings, however, I also hope to make clear just how complicated it is to pin down exactly when an agent merits praise for her actions.

In his foundational enactivist writings, Francisco Varela explained the self as 'virtual', 'fictional', and 'groundless'. More recent enactivist scholars have taken issue with Varela's analysis, elevating the self to the same ontological status as other biological processes. On their interpretation, our 'self' can be considered an autonomous system in the same manner as cells, organs, and organisms. After discussing the enactivist's definition of an autonomous system, this paper examines the lack of clarity from more recent scholars around precisely how our self can fulfil this definition. Specifically, the challenge of meeting the enactivist's criteria will be illustrated through a discussion of a narrative self, a socially co-generated self, and approaches to the self that eschew metaphysical commitments. Through this examination, we see some of the challenges faced in arguing that the self exists in the same way as our cells and organs, and why Varela chooses instead to focus on the virtual self. To close, the paper examines how an approach that aligns with Varela's foundational writings can handle the questions of reductionism and social interaction.

Many accounts of moral responsibility have emerged recently that question the importance of conscious choice for moral responsibility. Instead of this ‘volitional’ requirement, these ‘attributionist’ accounts claim that agents are responsible for their actions when their actions reflect who they are and what they value. This paper argues that attributionist accounts are too quick to dismiss the connection between volition and moral responsibility. By excising conscious control from their accounts, attributionists leave open the undesirable possibility that an agent may fulfil all necessary conditions for moral responsibility even when she is under the conscious control of another person. Through analyzing situations in which attributionist conditions for moral responsibility are met while an agent is controlled by someone else, the link between an agent's volition and her moral responsibility becomes more apparent.

In exploring the impact of cognitive science findings on compatibilist theories of moral responsibility such as Fischer and Ravizza’s, most attention has focused on whether agents are, in fact, responsive to reasons. In doing so, however, we have largely ignored our improved understanding of agents’ epistemic access to their reasons for acting. The “ownership” component of Fischer and Ravizza’s theory depends on agents being able to see the causal efficacy of their conscious deliberation. Cognitive science studies make clear that a variety of situational factors, implicit attitudes, and unconscious mental states influence agents’ behavior, and that they are generally unaware of their impact. If an agent is skeptical of the extent to which her conscious deliberation has causal upshots in the world, then she – like a natural incompatibilist – may not take ownership over her action-generating mechanism. Instead, she may seek a more general account of moral responsibility or revise her moral intuitions altogether

A number of scholars have attempted to situate the Buddha’s teachings within the primary Western ethical theories, namely consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics. One challenge that each has confronted is Buddhism’s emphasis on the ultimate non-existence of the self. In his writings, Charles Goodman has put forward an account of how the realization of the ultimate non-existence of the self would lead a practitioner to consequentialism. The present comment challenges the account offered by Goodman, and argues that an ethical-particularist account better squares Buddhist ethics with Buddhist metaphysics. This comment also shows how Goodman’s more recent work, while constituting a significant retreat from his..

There is an emerging consensus that human behavior is governed by two types of processes: System 1 processes, which are quicker, automatic, and run in parallel, and System 2 (S2) processes, which are slower, more conscious, and run in serial. Among such “dual-process” theorists, however, there is disagreement about whether the premises we use in our conscious, S2 reasoning should be considered as beliefs. In this exchange, one facet that has been largely overlooked is how conscious beliefs are structurally and functionally similar to episodic memories. This article will argue that the similarities between beliefs and episodic memories, specifically in light of Daniel Schacter’s widely influential constructive memory framework, highlight a heretofore unexamined empirical weakness of dispositional accounts of S2 beliefs. In addition, this perspective helps situate beliefs within our broader understanding of how information is encoded and retrieved in the brain.

In his book The Opacity of Mind, Peter Carruthers presents the Interpretive Sensory Awareness theory, which holds that while we have direct access to our own sensory states, our access to “self-knowledge” is almost always interpretive. In presenting his view, Carruthers also claims that his account is the first of its kind; after a cursory examination of major theories of mind, he concludes that “transparent access” accounts of self-knowledge—the alternative to ISA—have been endorsed throughout history. This paper challenges this latter claim. Contrary to Carruthers’ view, the paper argues that Buddhist theories of mind are not “transparent access” accounts. Instead, they not only have an analysis of sensory processing and conscious experience similar to that of ISA, but also share what Carruthers sees as ISA’s central tenet: individuals lack transparent, conscious access to most of their propositional attitudes. Given this fundamental alignment, the Buddhist perspective can offer u..