Publications (click for links, where available)

Book:

Making Sense of Freedom and Responsibility (Oxford University Press 2011).

Articles:

“So Close, Yet So Far: Why Solutions to the Closeness Problem for the Doctrine of Double Effect Fall Short” (with Samuel C. Rickless), in Noûs (forthcoming).

    According to the classical Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE), there is a morally significant difference between intending harm and merely foreseeing harm.  Versions of DDE have been defended in a variety of creative ways, but there is one difficulty, the so-called “closeness problem,” that continues to bedevil all of them.  The problem is that an agent’s intention can always be identified in such a fine-grained way as to eliminate an intention to harm from almost any situation, including those that have been taken to be paradigmatic instances in which DDE applies to intended harm.  In this paper, we consider and reject a number of recent attempts to solve the closeness problem.  We argue that the failure of these proposals strongly suggests that the closeness problem is intractable, and that the distinction between intending harm and merely foreseeing harm is not morally significant.  Further, we argue that there may be a deeper reason why such attempts must fail: the rationale that makes the best fit with DDE, namely, an imperative not to aim at evil, is itself irredeemably flawed.  While we believe that these observations should lead us to abandon further attempts to solve the closeness problem for DDE, we also conclude by showing how a related principle that is supported by a distinct rationale and avoids facing the closeness problem altogether nevertheless shares with DDE its most important features, including an intuitive explanation of a number of cases and a commitment to the relevance of intentions.

“Desert, Fairness, and Resentment,” in Philosophical Explorations (Special Issue: Desert) (forthcoming).

    Responsibility, and blameworthiness in particular, has been characterized in a number of ways in a literature in which participants appear to be talking about the same thing much of the time.  More specifically, blameworthiness has been characterized in terms of what sorts of responses are fair, appropriate, and deserved in a basic way, where the responses in question range over blame, sanctions, alterations to interpersonal relationships, and the reactive attitudes, such as resentment and indignation.  In this paper, I explore the relationships between three particular theses: (i) the claim that one is blameworthy to the extent that it is fair to impose sanctions, (ii) the claim that one is blameworthy to the extent that one deserves sanctions, and (iii) the claim that one is blameworthy to the extent that it is appropriate to respond with reactive attitudes. Appealing to the way in which luck in the outcome of an action can justifiably affect the degree of sanctions received, I argue that (i) is false, and that fairness and desert come apart.  I then argue that the relationship between the reactive attitudes and sanction is not as straightforward as has sometimes been assumed, but that (ii) and (iii) might both be true and closely linked.  I conclude by exploring various claims about desert, including ones that link it to the intrinsic goodness of receiving what is deserved and to the permissibility or rightness of inflicting suffering.  

“Moral Responsibility, the Reactive Attitudes, and the Significance of (Libertarian) Free Will,” in Libertarian Free Will: Essays for Robert Kane, edited by David Palmer.  Oxford: Oxford University Press (forthcoming).

“Three Cheers for Double Effect” (with Samuel C. Rickless), Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (forthcoming).

    The doctrine of double effect, together with other moral principles that appeal to the intentions of moral agents, has come under attack from many directions in recent years, as have a variety of rationales that have been given in favor of it.  In this paper, our aim is to develop, defend, and provide a new theoretical rationale for a secular version of the doctrine.  Following Quinn (1989), we distinguish between Harmful Direct Agency and Harmful Indirect Agency.  We propose the following version of the doctrine: that in cases in which harm must come to some in order to achieve a good (and is the least costly of possible harms necessary), the agent foresees the harm, and all other things are equal, a stronger case is needed to justify Harmful Direct Agency than to justify Harmful Indirect Agency.  We distinguish between two Kantian rationales that might be given for the doctrine, a “dependent right” rationale, defended by Quinn, and an “independent right” rationale, which we defend.  We argue that the doctrine and the “independent right” rationale for it are not vulnerable to counterexamples or counterproposals, and conclude by drawing implications for the larger debate over whether agents' intentions are in any way relevant to permissibility and obligation. 

“Fairness and the Architecture of Responsibility” (with David O. Brink), in Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility (forthcoming). 

    This essay explores a conception of responsibility at work in moral and criminal responsibility.  Our conception draws on work in the compatibilist tradition that focuses on the choices of agents who are reasons-responsive and work in criminal jurisprudence that understands responsibility in terms of the choices of agents who have capacities for practical reason and whose situation affords them the fair opportunity to avoid wrongdoing.  Our conception brings together the dimensions of normative competence and situational control, and we factor normative competence into cognitive and volitional capacities, which we treat as equally important to normative competence and responsibility.  Normative competence and situational control can and should be understood as expressing a common concern that blame and punishment presuppose that the agent had a fair opportunity to avoid wrongdoing.  This fair opportunity is the umbrella concept in our understanding of responsibility, one that explains it distinctive architecture.

“Précis” and “Replies to Critics on Making Sense of Freedom and Responsibility” in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research [For critics’ articles, see: Randolph Clark, Laura Ekstrom, and Gary Watson] (2013).

“Replies to Critics on Making Sense of Freedom and Responsibility,” in Philosophical Studies [For critics’ articles, see: Michael McKenna and Daniel Speak] (2013).

Responsibility and Self-Deception: a Framework,” in Humana Mente (A special issue on Self-Deception) (2012)

    This paper focuses on the question of whether and, if so, when people can be responsible for their self-deception and its consequences.  On Intentionalist accounts, self-deceivers intentionally deceive themselves, and it is easy to see how they can be responsible.  On Motivationist accounts, in contrast, self-deception is a motivated, but not intentional, and possibly unconscious process, making it more difficult to see how self-deceivers could be responsible.  I argue that a particular Motivationist account, the Desire to Believe account, together with other resources, best explains how there can be culpable self-deception.  In the process, I also show how self-deception is a good test case for deciding important questions about the nature of moral responsibility. 

“Responsibility, Rational Abilities, and Two Kinds of Fairness Arguments,” in Philosophical Explorations (Special Issue: Action, Responsibility, and Belief) (2009).

    In this paper, I begin by considering a traditional argument according to which it would be unfair to impose sanctions on people for performing actions when they could not do otherwise, and thus that no one who lacks the ability to do otherwise is responsible or blameworthy for their actions in an important sense.   Interestingly, a parallel argument concluding that people are not responsible or praiseworthy if they lack the ability to do otherwise is not as compelling.  Watson (1996/2004) offers in its stead an “interpersonal” argument that appeals to a distributive notion of unfairness to conclude that praiseworthy actions, too, require the ability to do otherwise.  I argue that this argument does not succeed.  At this point, it seems that we have support for an asymmetrical treatment of blameworthy and praiseworthy actions.  However, I conclude that while such an asymmetrical treatment may ultimately be correct, there is reason to doubt that considerations of fairness of sanction and reward support an asymmetry as well as an appeal to the “ought-implies-can” principle.

“Responsibility and Rational Abilities: Defending an Asymmetrical View,” in Pacific Philosophical Quarterly (2008).

     In this paper, I defend a view according to which one is responsible for one’s actions to the extent that one has the ability to do the right thing(s) for the right reasons.  Following Susan Wolf, I call the view “asymmetrical” because it requires the ability to do otherwise when one acts badly (or for the wrong reasons), but it requires no such ability in cases in which one acts well for the right reasons.  Despite the intuitive appeal of the view, its asymmetry makes it a target of both of the main camps in the debate over responsibility.  I begin by motivating the view and distinguishing it from some of its main competitors, and then address two important objections to it.  The first, developed by Gary Watson, primarily targets the implications for the view about “good” actions; it suggests that the view appears plausible only insofar as we fail to distinguish between two notions of responsibility, and goes on to raise deep questions about the relationship between fairness and responsibility.  The second objection, raised initially by John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza, targets implications of the view concerning “bad” actions; it calls for examination of a wider set of intuitions that appear to undermine the plausibility of asymmetry, and that ultimately force us to confront questions concerning the nature of “ability” in this context.  I argue that the asymmetrical view has surprisingly strong resources with which to meet both sorts of challenges.

“Do We Have a Coherent Set of Intuitions About Moral Responsibility?,” in Philosophy and the Empirical, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 31. (2007)

“Good Luck to Libertarians: Reflections on Al Mele’s Free Will and Luck,” Philosophical Explorations 10  (2007): 173-84.  (with a reply by Mele in the same issue)

“Discriminating Shoppers Beware,” in San Diego Law Review (2006).

“Tradition and the Law: A Response to Wax,” San Diego Law Review 42 (2005). 

“Deliberative Alternatives,” in Philosophical Topics (on Agency).  (2004, appeared in 2005). [pdf of draft]

“Freedom, Responsibility, and the Challenge of Situationism,” in Free Will and Moral Responsibility, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 29.  Cambridge: Blackwell. (2005).

According to the situationist literature in social psychology, apparently unimportant elements of agents’ situations, rather than what we think of as agents’ stable character traits, play a large role in determining their behavior.  For example, an experimenter in a white lab coat politely asks an unsuspecting subject to torture an innocent stranger, and, remarkably, this seems sufficient to induce obedience in otherwise ordinary subjects (Milgram (1963)).  Or take an experiment recently much in the news because of the disturbing resemblance of the behavior of its subjects to those of American soldiers at Abu Ghraib: the Stanford Prison Experiment conducted by Zimbardo and colleagues in 1971.  In that experiment, the behavior of undergraduates playing the roles of guards in a simulated prison became increasingly abusive to the point that the experiment was halted after just six days into a scheduled two week run.  Recently, some philosophers (e.g., Doris (2002)) have argued that the situationist literature contains a serious threat to the assumptions of well-received moral theories, including the assumption that we are free and responsible agents.  In my paper, I begin with the question: Why do freedom and responsibility appear to be threatened by this literature? Only by answering this question can we begin to answer the equally pressing question of whether appearances are a good guide to reality in this case.  I argue that the situationist experiments appear threatening not in virtue of their support for the substantive thesis of situationism, according to which character traits play a lesser role in explaining behavior than situational factors.  Rather, one ultimate reason they appear threatening is because they suggest the possibility that we are prevented in systematic ways from exercising our capacities to act for good reasons. 

“Irrelevant Alternatives and Frankfurt Counterfactuals,” Philosophical Studies 121 (2004): 1-25.

In this paper, I consider a very interesting alternative way of defending compatibilism from the challenge that responsibility requires indeterministic options, and argue that it is destined to fail.  Very generally, it is claimed to be irrelevant to an agent’s responsibility for an action whether she had alternatives, as long as it is true that she wouldn’t have availed herself of those alternatives even if she did have them.  Since this sort of claim can be true, it follows that having alternatives can be irrelevant to responsibility.    I believe that this approach fails for interesting reasons that I bring out in the paper, including a very natural confusion about how to understand both indeterministic and “interlegal” counterfactuals.   I suggest that acknowledging these points leads to an appreciation of alternative ways of defending compatibilism.

“The Sense of Freedom,” in Freedom and Determinism, Volume II, Topics in Contemporary Philosophy.  Edited by Joseph Keim Campbell, Michael O’Rourke, and David Shier.  Cambridge: MIT Press. (2004): 105-134.

    This paper begins with a rare point of agreement among compatibilists, libertarians, and skeptics about freedom, namely, that in virtue of being rational deliberators, we have an inescapable sense of freedom.  In this paper, I argue that this is correct, and that the best understanding of this claim is that we are committed in some way to our actions being up to us in such a way that we are accountable for them.  Thus, we can understand our sense of freedom in such a way that does not require a commitment to our having undetermined alternatives. I make this key point, while offering a new account of what that sense of freedom is. 

“Moral Luck,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/moral-luck/>.

“Self-Deception, Motivation, and the Desire to Believe,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 83 (2002): 384-406.

    In this paper, I take up the question of whether the phenomenon of self-deception requires a radical sort of partitioning of the mind, and argue that it does not.  Most of those who argue in favor of partitioning accept a model of self-deception according to which the self-deceived person desires to and intentionally sets out to form a certain belief that she knows to be false.  Such a model is similar to that of deception of other persons, and for this reason is thought to require that the self-deceiver’s mind be partitioned; one “part” of her knows the truth, while the other “part” is convinced of a false belief.  I argue that while both the partitionist model and its main competitor should be rejected, each contains a key insight.  On the one hand, anti-partitionist models correctly invoke some sort of desire or motivation on the part of self-deceivers as playing a role in the acquisition of their beliefs.  But it is partitionists who identify the right sort of desire, namely, the desire to believe. 

“Warfield’s New Argument for Incompatibilism” (with Samuel C. Rickless), Analysis (2002): 104-07.

“Phenomenal Consciousness and Intentionality: Comment on Charles Siewert’s The Significance of Consciousness,” Psyche: An Interdisiplinary Journal of Research on Consciousness, (2001).

“The Consequence Argument and the Mind Argument,” Analysis 61 (2001): 107-15.

“How to Solve Blum’s Paradox” (with Samuel C. Rickless), Analysis 61 (2001): 91-94.

“The Lottery Paradox, Knowledge, and Rationality,” The Philosophical Review 109 (2000): 373-409.

 

     The knowledge version of the paradox arises because it appears that we know our lottery ticket  (which is not relevantly different from any other) will lose, but we know that one of the tickets sold will win.  The rationality version of the paradox arises because it appears that it is rational to believe of each single ticket in, say, a million-ticket lottery that it will not win, and that it is simultaneously rational to believe that one such ticket will win.  It seems, then, that we are committed to attributing two rational beliefs to a single agent at a single time, beliefs that, together with a few background assumptions, are inconsistent and can be seen by the agent to be so.  This has seemed to many to be a paradoxical result: an agent in possession of two rational beliefs that she sees to be inconsistent.  In my paper, I offer a novel solution to the paradox in both its rationality and knowledge versions that emphasizes a special feature of the lottery case, namely, the statistical nature of the evidence available to the agent.  On my view, it is neither true that one knows nor that it is rational to believe that a particular ticket will lose.  While this might seem surprising at first, it has a natural explanation and lacks the serious disadvantages of competing solutions.

“Two Standpoints and the Belief in Freedom,” Journal of Philosophy 97 (2000): 564-76.

Book Reviews

T. M. Scanlon, Moral Dimensions: Permissibility, Meaning, Blame, Philosophical Review (2011).

George Sher, Who Knew?  Responsibility Without Awareness, Ethics 121 (2011) pp. 675-80.