•  209
    Reasons to Punish Autonomous Robots
    The Gradient 14. 2023.
    I here consider the reasonableness of punishing future autonomous military robots. I argue that it is an engineering desideratum that these devices be responsive to moral considerations as well as human criticism and blame. Additionally, I argue that someday it will be possible to build such machines. I use these claims to respond to the no subject of punishment objection to deploying autonomous military robots, the worry being that an “accountability gap” could result if the robot committed a w…Read more
  •  293
    Currently, there are many advocacy interventions aimed at reducing animal consumption. We report results from a lab (N = 267) and a field experiment (N = 208) exploring whether, and to what extent, some of those educational interventions are effective at shifting attitudes and behavior related to animal consumption. In the lab experiment, participants were randomly assigned to read a philosophical ethics paper, watch an animal advocacy video, read an advocacy pamphlet, or watch a control video. …Read more
  •  290
    Developing an objective measure of knowledge of factory farming
    with Adam Feltz, Jacob N. Caton, Mylan Engel, Silke Feltz, Ramona Ilea, L. Syd M. Johnson, and Tom Offer-Westort
    Philosophical Psychology 37 (2). 2022.
    Knowledge of human uses of animals is an important, but understudied, aspect of how humans treat animals. We developed a measure of one kind of knowledge of human uses of animals – knowledge of factory farming. Studies 1 (N = 270) and 2 (N = 270) tested an initial battery of objective, true or false statements about factory farming using Item Response Theory. Studies 3 (N = 241) and 4 (N = 278) provided evidence that responses to a 10-item Knowledge of Factory Farming Scale predicted a reduction…Read more
  •  780
    Forgiveness and the Multiple Functions of Anger
    Journal of Philosophy of Emotion 1 (1): 44-71. 2019.
    This paper defends an account of forgiveness that is sensitive to recent work on anger. Like others, we claim anger involves an appraisal, namely that someone has done something wrong. But, we add, anger has two further functions. First, anger communicates to the wrongdoer that her act has been appraised as wrong and demands she feel guilty. This function enables us to explain why apologies make it reasonable to forgo anger and forgive. Second, anger sanctions the wrongdoer for what she has done…Read more
  •  407
    Contempt's Evaluative Presentation and Connection to Accountability
    In Michelle Mason (ed.), The Moral Psychology of Contempt, Rowman & Littlefield International. pp. 131-150. 2018.
    In this chapter, I defend a novel account of contempt’s evaluative presentation by synthesizing relevant psychological work (Rozin et al. 1999; Fischer and Roseman 2007; Fischer 2011; Hutcherson and Gross 2011) with philosophical insights (Mason 2003; Bell 2005; Abramson 2009; Bell 2013). I then show how a concern about contempt’s status as an emotion involved in holding people accountable can be helpfully addressed. Finally, I gesture at an account of why, when we feel contemptuous toward peopl…Read more
  •  176
    Rolling Back the Luck Problem for Libertarianism
    Journal of Cognition and Neuroethics 3 (1): 121-137. 2015.
    I here sketch a reply to Peter van Inwagen’s Rollback Argument, which suggests that libertarian accounts of free agency are beset by problems involving luck. Van Inwagen imagines an indeterministic agent whose universe is repeatedly ‘rolled back’ by God to the time of her choice. Since the agent’s choice is indeterministic, her choices are sometimes di erent in the imaginary rollback scenarios. I show that although this is true, this need not impair her control over what she does. I develop an a…Read more
  •  920
    Trust and the trickster problem
    Analytic Philosophy 53 (1): 30-47. 2012.
    In this paper, I articulate and defend a conception of trust that solves what I call “the trickster problem.” The problem results from the fact that many accounts of trust treat it similar to, or identical with, relying on someone’s good will. But a trickster could rely on your good will to get you to go along with his scheme, without trusting you to do so. Recent philosophical accounts of trust aim to characterize what it is for one person to trust another so as to avoid this problem, but no…Read more
  •  932
    A Study of Virtuous and Vicious Anger
    In Kevin Timpe & Craig Boyd (eds.), Virtues and Their Vices, Oxford University Press. pp. 199. 2014.
    This chapter presents an account of an angrily virtuous, or patient, person informed by research on emotion in empirical and philosophical psychology. It is argued that virtue for anger is determined by excellence and deficiency with respect to all three of anger’s psychological functions: appraisal, motivation, and communication. Many competing accounts of virtue for anger assess it by attention to just one function; it is argued that singular evaluations of a person’s anger will ignore importa…Read more
  •  410
    Michael McKenna, Conversation and Responsibility. Reviewed by Zac Cogley
    Philosophy in Review 33 (6): 480-482. 2013.
    In this review I present the main claims of McKenna's book Conversation and Responsibility. There McKenna develops a theory of moral responsibility inspired by an analogy with the relationship people bear to each other as part of a conversational exchange. The first half of the book develops the conversational account and considers objections to it. In the second half of the book, McKenna turns to an examination of the kind of normative claim being made when we say that being morally responsible…Read more
  •  593
    The Three-Fold Significance of the Blaming Emotions
    In David Shoemaker (ed.), Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility, Oxford University Press. pp. 205-224. 2013.
    In this paper, I explore the idea that someone can deserve resentment or other reactive emotions for what she does by attention to three psychological functions of such emotions—appraisal, communication, and sanction—that I argue ground claims of their desert. I argue that attention to these functions helps to elucidate the moral aims of reactive emotions and to distinguish the distinct claims of desert, as opposed to other moral considerations.
  •  885
    Basic Desert of Reactive Emotions
    Philosophical Explorations 16 (2): 165-177. 2013.
    In this paper, I explore the idea that someone can deserve resentment or other reactive emotions for what she does by attention to three psychological functions of such emotions – appraisal, communication, and sanction – that I argue ground claims of their desert. I argue that attention to these functions helps to elucidate the moral aims of reactive emotions and to distinguish the distinct claims of desert, as opposed to other moral considerations.
  •  55
    Manuel Vargas, Building Better Beings: A Theory of Moral Responsibility
    Social Theory and Practice 42 (1): 205-211. 2016.
    I develop and explore the main themes of Vargas's recent book. The first section of my review lays out Vargas's case for revisionism about moral responsibility: the idea that our thinking about moral responsibility is internally inconsistent, so we need to purge core problematic elements. In the section section, I develop Vargas's own revisionist position. Vargas argues that the practice of blaming people aims at agency cultivation: trying to train people to be more sensitive to moral considerat…Read more
  •  303
    Fortifying the Self-Defense Justification of Punishment
    Public Affairs Quarterly 31 (4). 2017.
    David Boonin has recently advanced several challenges to the self-defense justification of punishment. Boonin argues that the self-defense justification of punishment justifies punishing the innocent, justifies disproportionate punishment, cannot account for mitigating excuses, and does not justify intentionally harming offenders as we do when we punish them. In this paper, I argue that the self-defense justification, suitably understood, can avoid all of these problems. To help demonstrate the …Read more