Research

My research focuses primarily on moral and epistemic thought, reasoning, and motivation. These are the topics I have taken up in my articles, reviews, dissertation, and work in progress.

Note: Generally, article titles link to penultimate drafts (or self-archived final versions if open access); journal titles link to final if available.

For fun, feel free to have a look at some of my Favorite Philosophical Quotes.

Articles

“What in the World Is Weakness of Will?” (2012), Philosophical Studies Vol. 157, No. 3, pp. 341–360.

Co-author: Richard Holton.

Abstract: At least since the middle of the twentieth century, philosophers have tended to identify weakness of will with akrasia—i.e. acting, or having a disposition to act, contrary to one‘s judgments about what is best for one to do. However, there has been some recent debate about whether this captures the ordinary notion of weakness of will. Richard Holton (1999, 2009) claims that it doesn’t, while Alfred Mele (2010) argues that, to a certain extent, it does. As Mele recognizes, the question about an ordinary concept here is one apt for empirical investigation. We evaluate Mele’s studies and report some experiments of our own in order to investigate what in the world the ordinary concept of weakness of will is. We conclude that neither Mele nor Holton (previously) was quite right and offer a tentative proposal of our own: the ordinary notion is more like a prototype or cluster concept whose application is affected by a variety of factors.

Blog discussion: Flickers of Freedom (5-29-10)

“Egoism, Empathy, and Self-Other Merging” (2011), Southern Journal of Philosophy Vol. 49 (s1), Spindel Supplement: Empathy & Ethics, Remy Debes (ed.), Emerging Scholar Prize Essay, pp. 25-39.

Other contributors include: Stephen Darwall, John Deigh, Peter Goldie, Jesse Prinz, Michael Slote.

Abstract: Some philosophers and psychologists have evaluated psychological egoism against recent experimental work in social psychology. Dan Batson (1991; 2011), in particular, argues that empathy tends to induce genuinely altruistic motives in humans. However, some argue that there are egoistic explanations of the data that remain unscathed. I focus here on a recent and widely cited criticism based on the idea of self-other merging or “oneness,” primarily leveled by Robert Cialdini and his collaborators. These authors argue that the putatively altruistic subjects are acting on ultimately egoistic motives because empathic feelings for someone in distress tend to cause the helper to blur the distinction between oneself and the other. Employing a conceptual framework for the debate I have previously developed, I argue that the self-other merging explanation fails to explain the empathy-helping relationship on conceptual grounds, regardless of the results Cialdini et al. (1997) report.

“Relational Desires and Empirical Evidence against Psychological Egoism” (2011), European Journal of Philosophy Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 39–58.

Abstract: Roughly, psychological egoism is the thesis that all of a person’s intentional actions are ultimately self-interested in some sense; psychological altruism is the thesis that some of a person’s intentional actions are not ultimately self-interested, since some are ultimately other-regarding in some sense. Dan Batson and other social psychologists have argued that experiments provide support for a theory called the “empathy-altruism hypothesis” that entails the falsity of psychological egoism. However, several critics claim that there are egoistic explanations of the data that are still not ruled out. One of the most potent criticisms of Batson comes from Elliott Sober and David Sloan Wilson. I argue for two main theses in this paper: (1) we can improve on Sober and Wilson’s conception of psychological egoism and altruism, and (2) this improvement shows that one of the strongest of Sober and Wilson’s purportedly egoistic explanations is not tenable. A defense of these two theses goes some way toward defending Batson’s claim that the evidence from social psychology provides sufficient reason to reject psychological egoism.

“Practical Interests, Relevant Alternatives, and Knowledge Attributions” (2010), Review of Philosophy & Psychology (formerly European Review of Philosophy), Psychology and Experimental Philosophy, Edouard Machery, Tania Lombrozo, & Joshua Knobe (eds.), Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 265-273.

Co-authors: Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Jay G. Hull, and Aaron Zimmerman

Abstract: In defending his interest-relative account of knowledge, Jason Stanley relies heavily on intuitions about several bank cases. We experimentally test the empirical claims that Stanley seems to make concerning our common-sense intuitions about these cases. Additionally, we test the empirical claims that Jonathan Schaffer seems to make, regarding the salience of an alternative, in his critique of Stanley. Our data indicate that neither raising the possibility of error nor raising stakes moves most people from attributing knowledge to denying it. However, the raising of stakes (but not alternatives) does affect the level of confidence people have in their attributions of knowledge. We argue that our data impugn what both Stanley and Schaffer claim our common-sense judgments about such cases are.

Blog Discussion: Experimental Philosophy (9-26-08); Data Supplement (PDF)

Book Reviews

Encyclopedia Entries

“Moral Psychology, Empirical Work In” (forthcoming), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Abstract: Provides an overview of empirical research relevant to philosophical questions about moral thought, feeling, reasoning, and motivation. Topics include: free will and moral responsibility, egoism and altruism, moral judgment and motivation, weakness and strength of will, and moral intuitions.

“Psychological Egoism” (2011), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Abstract: Provides an overview of the theory of psychological egoism—the thesis that we are all ultimately motivated by self-interest. Philosophical arguments for and against the view are considered as well as some empirical evidence.

In Progress

(If not already provided, drafts may be available upon request.)

“Because I Believe It’s the Right Thing to Do” (submitted)

Abstract: Our beliefs about which actions we ought to perform clearly have an effect on what we do. But so-called “Humean” theories—holding that all motivation has its source in desire—insist on connecting such beliefs with an antecedent motive. Rationalists, on the other hand, allow normative beliefs a more independent role. I argue in favor of the rationalist view in two stages. First, I show that the Humean theory rules out some of the ways we ordinarily explain actions. This shifts the burden of proof onto Humeans to motivate their more restrictive, revisionary account. Second, I show that they are unlikely to discharge this burden because the key arguments in favor of the Humean theory fail. I focus on some of the most potent and most recent lines of argument, which appeal to either parsimony, the teleological nature of motivation, or the structure of practical reasoning.

“Skeptical Hypotheses and Moral Skepticism” (submitted)

Abstract: Epistemic moral skeptics maintain that we do not have moral knowledge. Traditionally they have not modeled their arguments on the kind of skeptical hypotheses we find among perceptual skeptics about the external world, such as Descartes’ deceiving demon or the brain-in-a-vat scenario. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (2006), however, has recently argued on just such grounds for a moderate form of moral skepticism (set within a contrastivist framework for justification). In fact, he believes skeptical hypotheses have special force in the moral case. I argue that the prospects are bleak for such lines of argument by using Sinnott-Armstrong’s formulation as a test case. Its failure to specify an adequate skeptical scenario reveals a general lesson: skeptical hypothesis arguments are not a promising avenue for moral skeptics to take. Not only are they no more powerful for morality than perception, they’re weaker.

“Toward a Naturalistic Motivational Rationalism” (submitted)

Abstract: Motivational rationalists claim that at least sometimes normative or evaluative beliefs (e.g. beliefs about what one ought to do) can be the ultimate source of one’s motivation. Neo-Humeans, on the other hand, maintain that motivation always ultimately has its source in desire. The dominant trend among philosophers seems to be that rationalistic or generally “anti-Humean” views of motivation are not as compatible with empirical research or scientific approaches to human action (e.g. Mele, Roskies, Schroeder, and Nichols). I investigate how some empirical work, from neuroscience to social psychology, bears on this debate. The focus is limited to neurological disorders (e.g. “acquired sociopathy”) and research on temptation (e.g. “ego depletion”). Perhaps surprisingly, I argue that the evidence is entirely compatible with motivational rationalism and in some cases provides some tentative support for it. While this does not address certain sentimentalist views that eschew the neo-Humean conception of motivation (e.g. McDowell), a decidedly rationalist thesis remains in play.

“Does Disgust Influence Moral Judgment?” (drafted)

Abstract: Recent empirical research seems to show that emotions play a substantial role in the production of moral judgments. One of the most important lines of support for this claim focuses in particular on the emotion of disgust. Largely due to the work of Jonathan Haidt and other psychologists, a number of philosophers and scientists have declared there is sufficient empirical evidence to establish that disgust plays a substantial role in the production of moral judgment generally. I argue to the contrary that the existing evidence, while important, does not provide sufficient support for this contention. This is unlike other challenges, which have tended to grant the empirical thesis but deny any important ethical implications.

“Motivational Externalism and Humeanism Disentangled” (drafted)

Abstract: Motivational internalists hold that making a moral judgment entails having some motivation to act in accordance with it, at least in certain circumstances. There has been a great deal of discussion about internalism and externalism in reference to empirical research on moral judgment and motivation. This is somewhat puzzling since many traditional debates about the issue have been on apriori grounds alone. This is no accident. I argue that discussions of internalism have conflated importantly different theses and that this has led to poor apriori and empirical arguments. Instead, their targets should be a view that takes a stance on the old issue of whether reason can motivate: Humeanism or rationalism.

PhD Dissertation

The Possibility of Acting from Duty (UC Santa Barbara)

Abstract: Argues in a Kantian spirit that we are sometimes motivated to do what’s right simply because we recognize it as such. Primarily defends the view by undermining two challengers: psychological egoism and motivational Humeanism.

PhilPapers Categories

I edit the following categories at philpapers.org: