Here you will find some of my work, including previously published papers and work in progress. Comments on any of these papers are most welcome.
Work in progress.
NEW BOOK! (one day, anyway)..
The Hard Luck View.
CHAPTER TWO: The Luck Objection to Libertarianism.
Other work...
THE LUCK PROBLEM FOR COMPATIBILISTS.
Libertarianism in all its varieties is widely taken to be vulnerable to a serious problem of present luck, inasmuch as it requires indeterminism somewhere in the causal chain leading to action. Genuine indeterminism entails luck, and lack of control over the ensuing action. Compatibilism, by contrast, is generally taken to be free of the problem of present luck, inasmuch as it does not require indeterminism in the causal chain. I argue that this view is false: compatibilism is subject to a problem of present luck. Taken by itself, the compatibilist problem with present luck is less serious than the analogous problem confronting libertarianism. However, its effects are just as devastating for the entire account of freedom: the present luck confronting compatibilism is sufficient to undermine the compatibilist response to distant – constitutive – luck.
Frankfurt Enablers and Frankfurt Disablers.
In this paper, I introduce the notion of a Frankfurt Enabler, a counterfactual intervener poised, should a signal for intervention be received, to enable an agent to perform a mental or physical action. Frankfurt enablers demonstrate, I claim, that merely counterfactual conditions are sometimes relevant to assessing what capacities agents possess. Since this is the case, we are not entitled to conclude that agents in standard Frankfurt-style cases retain their responsibility-ensuring capacities. There is no principled rationale for bracketing counterfactual interveners in standard Frankfurt-style cases, but admitting their relevance when they are Frankfurt enablers. I argue that the intuition that we ought to bracket counterfactual interveners is, at bottom, an expression of a mistaken internalist view about the mental.
Restrictivism is a Covert Compatibilism.
Libertarian restrictivists hold that agents are rarely directly free. However, they seek to reconcile their views with common intuitions by arguing that moral responsibility, or indirect freedom (depending on the version of restrictivism) is much more common than direct freedom. I argue that restrictivists must give up either the claim that agents are rarely free, or the claim that indirect freedom or responsibility is much more common than direct freedom. Focusing on Kane’s version of restrictivism, I show that the view holds people responsible for actions when (merely) compatibilist conditions are met. Since this is unacceptable by libertarian lights, they must either accept that compatibilist conditions on moral responsibility are sufficient, or make their restrictivism more extreme than it already is.
BAT - the belief in ability thesis - states, roughly, that for an agent to be able rationally to deliberate between two or more alternatives, she must believe that she is metaphysically free to perform each alternative. I show, by way of a counterexample, that BAT is false.
Why Frankfurt-Style Cases Don't Help (Much)
Frankfurt-style cases are widely taken to show that agents do not need alternative possibilities to be morally responsible for their actions. Many philosophers take these cases to constitute a powerful argument for compatibilism: if we do not need alternative possibilities for moral responsibility, it is hard to see what the attraction of indeterminism might be. I defend the claim that even though Frankfurt-style cases establish that agents can be responsible for their actions despite lacking alternatives, agents can only be responsible if they possess certain powers, and possession of these powers is - arguably - incompatible with determinism. Because this is the case, Frankfurt-style cases fail to advance the debate between compatibilism and incompatibilism.
Are Zombies Responsible? The Role of Consciousness in Moral Responsibility.
Compatibilists often think they can afford to be complacent with regard to scientific findings. But there are apparent threats to free will besides determinism. Robert Kane has recently claimed that if consciousness does not initiate action, all accounts of free will go down, compatibilist and incompatibilist. Some cognitive scientists argue that in fact consciousness does not initiate action. In this paper I argue that they are right (though not for the reasons they advance): as a matter of fact consciousness does not initiate action. But, I contend, Kane is wrong in thinking that it follows that we have no free will. I sketch how we might have free will in spite of the finding that consciousness does not initiate action, and remark on the implications for several well-known accounts of responsibility, include Clarke's agent-causal theory and Fischer and Ravizza's reasons-responsiveness account.
Self-Deception Without Thought Experiments.Theories of self-deception divide into those that hold that the state is characterized by some kind of synchronic tension or conflict between propositional attitudes and those that deny this. Proponents of the latter like Al Mele claim that their theories are more parsimonious, because they do not require us to postulate any psychological mechanisms beyond those which have been independently verified. But if we can show that there are real cases of motivated believing which are characterized by conflicting propositional attitudes, however, the parsimony argument against incongruent mental state accounts is undermined. I argue that anosognosia presents us with a real-life example of motivated belief together with (sub)-doxastic conflict.
Published and accepted papers (penultimate drafts).
Doxastic Responsibility. Forthcoming in Synthese.
Doxastic responsibility matters, morally and epistemologically. Morally, because many of our intuitive ascriptions of blame seem to track back to agents' apparent responsibility for beliefs; epistemologically because some philosophers identify epistemic justification with deontological permissibility. But there is a powerful argument which seems to show that we are rarely or never responsible for our beliefs, because we cannot control them. I examine various possible responses to this argument, which aim to show either that doxastic responsibility does not require that we control our beliefs, or that as a matter of fact we do exercise the right kind of control over our beliefs. I argue that the existing arguments are all wanting: in fact, our lack of control over our beliefs typically excuses us of responsibility for them.
Imaginative Resistance and the Moral/Conventional Distinction. Philosophical Psychology 18 (2005): 231-241.
Children, even very young children, distinguish moral from conventional transgressions, inasmuch as they hold that the former, but not the latter, would still be wrong if there was no rule prohibiting them. Many people have taken this finding as evidence that morality is objective, and therefore universal. I argue that reflection on the phenomenon of imaginative resistance will lead us to question these claims. If a concept applies in virtue of the obtaining of a set of more basic facts, then it is authority-independent, and we therefore resist the attempts of authorities to claim that it does not apply. Thus, the moral/conventional distinction is a product of imaginative resistance to claims that a concept does not apply when its supervenience base is in place (or vice-versa). All we can rightfully conclude from the fact that children are disposed to make the moral/conventional distinction is that our moral concepts belong to the class of authority-independent concepts. Though the set of basic facts in virtue of which an authority-independent concept obtains must be objective, the concept itself might be conventional, inasmuch as we could easily draw its boundaries wider or narrower, or fail to have a concept that corresponds to these properties at all.
The Apology Paradox and the Non-Identity Problem. Philosophical Quarterly 52 (2002): 358-368.
Janna Thompson has outlined 'the apology paradox', which arises whenever people apologize for an action or event upon which their existence is causally dependent. She argues that a sincere apology seems to entail a wish that the action or event had not occurred, but that we cannot sincerely wish that events upon which our existence depends had not occurred. I argue that Thompson's paradox is a backward-looking version of Parfit's (forward-looking) 'nonidentity problem', where backward- and forward-looking refer to the perspective of an agent apologizing for or contemplating an action. The temporal perspective of the agent gives us the tools with which to dissolve the air of paradox which surrounds these problems. Each is best grasped from one temporal perspective, but the paradoxes arise when we attempt to examine it simultaneously from another. The evaluations appropriate to the apology paradox and the non-identity problem are therefore time-indexed.
Epistemic Akrasia and the Subsumption of Evidence. Croatian Journal of Philosophy , 4 (2004): 149-156.
According to one influential view, advanced by Jonathan Adler, David Owens and Susan Hurley, epistemic akrasia is impossible because when we form a full belief, any apparent evidence against that belief loses its power over us. Thus, theoretical reasoning is quite unlike practical reasoning, in that in the latter our desires continue to exert a pull, even when they are outweighed by countervailing considerations. I call this argument against the possibility of epistemic akrasia the subsumption view. The subsumption view accurately reflects the nature of reasoning in a range of everyday cases. But, as I show, it is quite false with regard to controversial questions, like philosophical disputes. In these, evidence against our best judgments continues to exert a hold on us. Thus, the claimed disanalogy between practical and theoretical reasoning fails.
Contrastive Explanations: A Dilemma for Libertarians. Dialectica 59 (2005): 51-61.
To the extent that indeterminacy intervenes between our reasons for action and our decisions, intentions and actions, our freedom seems to be reduced, not enhanced. Free will becomes nothing more than the power to choose irrationally. In recognition of this problem, some recent libertarians have suggested that free will is paradigmatically manifested only in actions for which we have reasons for both or all the alternatives. In these circumstances, however we choose we choose rationally. Against this kind of account, most fully developed by Robert Kane, critics have pressed the demand for contrastive explanations. Kane has responded by arguing that the demand does not need to be met: responsibility for an action does not require that there be a contrastive explanation of that action. However, this responses proves too much: it implies that agents are responsible not only for the actions they choose, but also for their counterfactual actions which were equally available to them.
Cultural Membership and Moral Responsibility. The Monist 86 (2003): 145-163.
Ought we to excuse some people from responsibility for actions that are wrong, on the grounds that they could not grasp the wrongness of their actions because their cultural membership prevented them from possessing the requisite moral knowledge? Most philosophers who have addressed this question have denied that cultural membership can excuse, but I show that this conclusion is unwarranted. Moral facts can sometimes be difficult to know, and the wrong education or socialization can prevent us coming to know them. I conclude by showing that this conclusion is not dangerous: it does not license immoral behavior. Failure to understand the wrongness of an action must be distinguished from failure to understand a set of legal prohibitions, and people can be rightly held responsible for violating the latter if they do so knowingly, even in the absence of the requisite moral knowledge.
Analytic and Continental Philosophy: Explaining the Differences. Metaphilosophy 34 (2003): 284-304.
I argue that analytic philosophy is usefully seen as philosophy conducted within a paradigm, in Kuhn's sense of the word, whereas Continental philosophy assumes much less in the way of shared presuppositions, problems, methods and approaches. This important opposition accounts for all those features that have rightly been held to constitute the difference between the two traditions. I finish with some reflections on the relative superiority of each tradition and by highlighting the characteristic deficiencies of each.
Downshifting and the Meaning of Life. Ratio 18 (2005): 176-189.
So-called downshifters seek more meaningful lives by decreasing the amount of time they devote to work, leaving more time for the valuable goods of friendship, family and personal development. But though these are indeed meaning-conferring activities, they do not have the right structure to count as superlatively meaningful. Only in work - of a certain kind - can superlative meaning be found. It is by active engagements in projects, which are activities of the right structure, dedicated to the achievement of goods beyond ourselves, that we make our lives superlatively meaningful.
Evolutionary Psychology, Human Universals, and the Standard Social Science Model.. Biology and Philosophy 19 (2004): 459-472.
Proponents of evolutionary psychology take the existence of human universals to constitute decisive evidence in favor of their view. If the same social norms are found in culture after culture, we have good reason to believe that they are innate, they argue. In this paper I propose an alternative explanation for the existence of human universals, which does not depend on them being the product of inbuilt psychological adaptations. Following the work of Brian Skyrms, I suggest that if a particular convention possesses even a very small advantage over competitors, whatever the reason for that advantage, we should expect it to become the norm almost everywhere. Tiny advantages are translated into very large basins of attraction, in the language of game theory. If this is so, universal norms are not evidence for innate psychological adaptations at all. Having shown that the existence of universals is consistent with the so-called Standard Social Science Model, I turn to a consideration of the evidence, to show that this style of explanation is preferable to the evolutionary explanation, at least with regard to patterns of gender inequality.
