Results for 'Neil Sinhababu'

271 found
Order:
  1. The Humean Theory of Motivation Reformulated and Defended.Neil Sinhababu - 2009 - Philosophical Review 118 (4):465-500.
    This essay defends a strong version of the Humean theory of motivation on which desire is necessary both for motivation and for reasoning that changes our desires. Those who hold that moral judgments are beliefs with intrinsic motivational force need to oppose this view, and many of them have proposed counterexamples to it. Using a novel account of desire, this essay handles the proposed counterexamples in a way that shows the superiority of the Humean theory. The essay addresses the classic (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   59 citations  
  2. Scalar consequentialism the right way.Neil Sinhababu - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (12):3131-3144.
    The rightness and wrongness of actions fits on a continuous scale. This fits the way we evaluate actions chosen among a diverse range of options, even though English speakers don’t use the words “righter” and “wronger”. I outline and defend a version of scalar consequentialism, according to which rightness is a matter of degree, determined by how good the consequences are. Linguistic resources are available to let us truly describe actions simply as right. Some deontological theories face problems in accounting (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   26 citations  
  3. Qualia share their correlates’ locations.Neil Sinhababu - 2023 - Synthese 202 (2):1-14.
    This paper argues that qualia share their physical correlates' locations. The first premise comes from the theory of relativity: If something shares a time with a physical event in all reference frames, it shares that physical event’s location. The second premise is that qualia share times with their correlates in all reference frames. Having qualia and correlates share locations makes relations between them easier to explain, improving both physicalist and dualist theories.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  4. The Reliable Route from Nonmoral Evidence to Moral Conclusions.Neil Sinhababu - 2024 - Erkenntnis 89 (6):2321-2341.
    We can infer moral conclusions from nonmoral evidence using a three-step procedure. First, we distinguish the processes generating belief so that their reliability in generating true belief is statistically predictable. Second, we assess the processes’ reliability, perhaps by observing how frequently they generate true nonmoral belief or logically inconsistent beliefs. Third, we adjust our credence in moral propositions in light of the truth ratios of the processes generating beliefs in them. This inferential route involves empirically discovering truths of the form (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  5. (1 other version)The Desire‐Belief Account of Intention Explains Everything.Neil Sinhababu - 2012 - Noûs 47 (4):680-696.
    I argue that one intends that ϕ if one has a desire that ϕ and an appropriately related means-end belief. Opponents, including Setiya and Bratman, charge that this view can't explain three things. First, intentional action is accompanied by knowledge of what we are doing. Second, we can choose our reasons for action. Third, forming an intention settles a deliberative question about what to do, disposing us to cease deliberating about it. I show how the desire- belief view can explain (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   32 citations  
  6. Advantages of Propositionalism.Neil Sinhababu - 2015 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 96 (1):165-180.
    Propositionalism is the view that the contents of intentional attitudes have a propositional structure. Objectualism opposes propositionalism in allowing the contents of these attitudes to be ordinary objects or properties. Philosophers including Talbot Brewer, Paul Thagard, Michelle Montague, and Alex Grzankowski attack propositionalism about such attitudes as desire, liking, and fearing. This article defends propositionalism, mainly on grounds that it better supports psychological explanations.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   24 citations  
  7. Nietzschean Pragmatism.Neil Sinhababu - 2017 - Journal of Nietzsche Studies 48 (1):56-70.
    Nietzsche holds that one should believe what best promotes life, and he also accepts the correspondence theory of truth. I’ll call this conjunction of views Nietzschean pragmatism. This article provides textual evidence for attributing this pragmatist position to Nietzsche and explains how his broader metaethical views led him to it.The following section introduces Nietzschean pragmatism, discussing how Nietzsche expresses it in BGE, and distinguishing it from William James’s pragmatism about truth. The second section explains how Nietzsche’s skepticism about values that (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  8. Imagination and Belief.Neil Sinhababu - 2016 - In Amy Kind (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Imagination. New York: Routledge. pp. 111-123.
    This chapter considers the nature of imagination and belief, exploring how deeply these two states of mind differ. It first addresses a range of cognitive and motivational differences between imagination and belief which suggest that they're fundamentally different states of mind. Then it addresses imaginative immersion, delusions, and the different norms we apply to the two mental states, which some theorists regard as providing support for a more unified picture of imagination and belief.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  9. Vengeful thinking and moral epistemology.Neil Sinhababu - 2007 - In Brian Leiter & Neil Sinhababu (eds.), Nietzsche and morality. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 262.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  10. Pleasure is goodness; morality is universal.Neil Sinhababu - forthcoming - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice:1-17.
    This paper presents the Universality Argument that pleasure is goodness. The first premise defines goodness as what should please all. The second premise reduces 'should' to perceptual accuracy. The third premise invokes a universal standard of accuracy: qualitative identity. Since the pleasure of all is accurate solely about pleasure, pleasure is goodness, or universal moral value. The argument proceeds from a moral sense theory that analyzes moral concepts as concerned with what all should hope for, feel guilty about, and admire. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  11. Heidegger's Argument for Fascism.Neil Sinhababu - forthcoming - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.
    Heidegger’s ontological views, his observations about liberalism and fascism, and his evaluative commitments are three premises of an argument for fascism. The ontological premise is that integrated wholes and objects of a creator or user’s will are ontologically superior, as Being and Time suggests in discussing Being-a-whole, creating art, and using equipment. The social premise is that fascist societies are wholes integrated by dictatorial will, while liberal societies are looser aggregates of free individuals, as Heidegger describes in his 1930s seminars. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  12. Desire and Aesthetic Pleasure.Neil Sinhababu - 2017 - Australasian Philosophical Review 1 (1):95-99.
    ABSTRACTMohan Matthen's ‘The Pleasure of Art’ considers a rich variety of psychological phenomena surrounding our experience of pleasure in aesthetic appreciation. I explain many of these phenomena in terms of desire. Often my explanations support and complement Matthen's account; but sometimes I account for the same phenomena in terms of different causal structures than he invokes, seeking a more unified psychological theory.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  13. Distinguishing Belief and Imagination.Neil Sinhababu - 2013 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 94 (2):152-165.
    Some philosophers (including Urmson, Humberstone, Shah, and Velleman) hold that believing that p distinctively involves applying a norm according to which the truth of p is a criterion for the success or correctness of the attitude. On this view, imagining and assuming differ from believing in that no such norm is applied. I argue against this view with counterexamples showing that applying the norm of truth is neither necessary nor sufficient for distinguishing believing from imagining and assuming. Then I argue (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  14. The Humean Theory of Practical Irrationality.Neil Sinhababu - 2011 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 1 (6):1-13.
    Christine Korsgaard argues that Humean views of both action and rationality jointly imply the impossibility of irrational action, allowing us only to perform actions that we deem rational. Humeans can answer Korsgaard’s objection if their views of action and rationality measure agents’ actual desires differently. What determines what the agent does are the motivational forces that desires produce in the agent at the moment when she decides to act, as these cause action. What determines what it is rational to do (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  15. Possible girls.Neil Sinhababu - 2008 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 89 (2):254–260.
    I argue that if David Lewis’ modal realism is true, modal realists from different possible worlds can fall in love with each other. I offer a method for uniquely picking out possible people who are in love with us and not with our counterparts. Impossible lovers and trans-world love letters are considered. Anticipating objections, I argue that we can stand in the right kinds of relations to merely possible people to be in love with them and that ending a trans-world (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  16. (1 other version)Rational epistemic akrasia for the ambivalent pragmatist.Neil Sinhababu - 2020 - In Berit Brogaard & Dimitria Electra Gatzia (eds.), The Philosophy and Psychology of Ambivalence: Being of Two Minds. New York: Routledge.
    Epistemic akrasia can be rational. I consider a lonely pragmatist who believes that her imaginary friend doesn’t exist, and also believes on pragmatic grounds that she should believe in him. She rationally believes that her imaginary friend doesn’t exist, rationally follows various sources of evidence to the view that she should believe in him to end her loneliness, and rationally holds these attitudes simultaneously. Evidentialism suggests that her ambivalent epistemic state is rational, as considerations grounded in the value of truth (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  17. Loving the Eternal Recurrence.Neil Sinhababu & Kuong Un Teng - 2019 - Journal of Nietzsche Studies 50 (1):106-124.
    We explore how one might respond emotionally to the eternal recurrence. Zarathustra himself serves as our central case study. First we clarify the idea of eternal recurrence and its role in Nietzsche’s philosophy, explaining why the eternal recurrence has the emotional consequences Nietzsche describes when he first introduces the idea in The Gay Science. Then we describe Zarathustra’s emotional journey from horror at the eternal recurrence to loving it, in the sections from “On Great Events” to “The Seven Seals, or: (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  18. Nietzsche's Pragmatism: A Study on Perspectival Thought by Pietro Gori.Neil Sinhababu - 2022 - Journal of Nietzsche Studies 53 (1):104-110.
    Pietro Gori dedicates Nietzsche’s Pragmatism “To the wanderers and Good Europeans,” and Anglophone wanderers into Sarah de Sanctis’s translation will indeed find good European Nietzsche scholarship. The table of contents is a helpful map of the book, with five chapters consisting of twenty-eight sections on a sequence of philosophical and interpretive topics. Perspectival thought, addressed in the subtitle, is the explicit topic of the third chapter. Pragmatism, mentioned in the title, is the explicit topic of the fifth and final chapter. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  19. (1 other version)Unequal Vividness and Double Effect.Neil Sinhababu - 2013 - Utilitas 25 (3):291-315.
    I argue that the Doctrine of Double Effect is accepted because of unreliable processes of belief-formation, making it unacceptably likely to be mistaken. We accept the doctrine because we more vividly imagine intended consequences of our actions than merely foreseen ones, making our aversions to the intended harms more violent, and making us judge that producing the intended harms is morally worse. This explanation fits psychological evidence from Schnall and others, and recent neuroscientific research from Greene, Klein, Kahane, and Schaich (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  20. Ethical Reductionism.Neil Sinhababu - 2018 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 13 (1):32-52.
    Ethical reductionism is the best version of naturalistic moral realism. Reductionists regard moral properties as identical to properties appearing in successful scientific theories. Nonreductionists, including many of the Cornell Realists, argue that moral properties instead supervene on scientific properties without identity. I respond to two arguments for nonreductionism. First, nonreductionists argue that the multiple realizability of moral properties defeats reductionism. Multiple realizability can be addressed in ethics by identifying moral properties uniquely or disjunctively with properties of the special sciences. Second, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  21. Divine Fine-Tuning vs. Electrons in Love.Neil Sinhababu - 2017 - American Philosophical Quarterly 54 (1):89-98.
    I present a novel objection to fine-tuning arguments for God's existence. On any values of the physical constants, the psychophysical laws could be set to permit intelligent and happy beings, so the specific values of the physical constants in our world provide little evidence for God's existence. For example, even if the physical constants didn't allow carbon or any atoms larger than hydrogen, the psychophysical laws could be set so that charge is sufficient to realize romantic desire. Then every hydrogen (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  22. One‐Person Moral Twin Earth Cases.Neil Sinhababu - 2019 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 8 (1):16-22.
    This paper presents two cases demonstrating that theories allowing the environment to partially determine the content of moral concepts provide incorrect truth-conditions for moral terms. While typical Moral Twin Earth cases seek to establish that these theories fail to account formoral disagreement, neither case here essentially involves interpersonal disagreement. Both involve a single person retaining moral beliefs despite recognizing actual or potential mismatches with the purportedly content-determining facts. This lets opponents of such theories grant objections that standard Moral Twin Earth (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  23. Zarathustra’s metaethics.Neil Sinhababu - 2015 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 45 (3):278-299.
    Nietzsche takes moral judgments to be false beliefs, and encourages us to pursue subjective nonmoral value arising from our passions. His view that strong and unified passions make one virtuous is mathematically derivable from this subjectivism and a conceptual analysis of virtue, explaining his evaluations of character and the nature of the Overman.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  24. (1 other version)In Defense of Partisanship.Neil Sinhababu - 2016 - In Emily Crookston, David Killoren & Jonathan Trerise (eds.), Ethics in Politics: The Rights and Obligations of Individual Political Agents. New York: Routledge. pp. 75-90.
    This essay explains why partisanship is justified in contemporary America and environments with similar voting systems and coalition structures. It explains how political parties operate, how helping a party succeed can be a goal of genuine ethical significance, and how trusting one party while mistrusting another can be a reliable route to true belief about important political issues.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  25. Nietzsche’s Humean (all-too-Humean) Theory of Motivation.Neil Sinhababu - 2018 - In The Nietzchean Mind. Routledge. pp. 161-176.
    Nietzsche and Hume agree that desire drives all human action and practical reasoning. This shared view helps them appreciate continuities between human and animal motivation and sets them against a long tradition of rationalist rivals including Kant and Plato. In responding to Kant, Nietzsche further developed the Humean views that Kant himself was responding to. Kantians like Christine Korsgaard argue that reflective endorsement and rejection of options presented by desire demonstrates reason’s ability to independently drive reasoning and action. In Daybreak (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  26. The Epistemic Argument for Hedonism.Neil Sinhababu - 2024 - In Sanjit Chakraborty (ed.), Human Minds and Cultures. Switzerland: Springer Nature Switzerland. pp. 137-158.
    I defend ethical hedonism, the view that pleasure is the sole good thing, by arguing that it offers the only answer to an argument for moral skepticism. The skeptical problem arises from widespread fundamental moral disagreement, which entails the presence of enough moral error to undermine the reliability of most processes generating moral belief. We know that pleasure is good through the reliable process of phenomenal introspection, which reveals what our experiences are like. If knowing of pleasure’s goodness through phenomenal (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  27. Zarathustra’s Moral Psychology.Neil Sinhababu - 2022 - In Keith Ansell-Pearson & Paul S. Loeb (eds.), Nietzsche's ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra': A Critical Guide. Cambridge University Press. pp. 148-167.
    In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche presents passion as constituting human agency. He encountered this Humean view in Schopenhauer, and recognized its explanatory advantages over Platonic and Kantian rationalism. Zarathustra's poetic speeches anticipate and address contemporary objections to the view that passion constitutes agency. "On the Despisers of the Body" explains why understanding the self as constituted by passion provides better explanations of reasoning, value judgment, and the unity of the self than Christine Korsgaard's neo-Kantian view. "On Enjoying and Suffering the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  28. Virtue, Desire, and Silencing Reasons.Neil Sinhababu - 2016 - In Iskra Fileva (ed.), Questions of Character. New York, US: Oxford University Press USA. pp. 158-168.
    John McDowell claims that virtuous people recognize moral reasons using a perceptual capacity that doesn't include desire. I show that the phenomena he cites are better explained if desire makes us see considerations favoring its satisfaction as reasons. The salience of moral considerations to the virtuous, like the salience of food to the hungry, exemplifies the emotional and attentional effects of desire. I offer a desire-based account of how we can follow uncodifiable rules of common-sense morality and how some reasons (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  29. Nietzsche on the Eternal Recurrence.Neil Sinhababu - forthcoming - Cambridge University Press.
    Table of Contents: 1. The introduction of infinities 2. Gay Science 341, “The greatest weight”, considers infinite value 3. The argument of KSA 11:11:38[12] anticipates Poincaré’s theorem 4. “The Soothsayer” envisions the dark side of eternal recurrence 5. “On Redemption” tells of the will’s struggle with the past 6. “The Stillest Hour” struggles to speak of infinite negative value 7. “On The Vision and the Riddle” envisions the cosmology 8. “The Convalescent” has animals proclaiming recurrence 9. “The Other Dancing Song” (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  30. The Backward Clock, Truth-Tracking, and Safety.John N. Williams & Neil Sinhababu - 2015 - Journal of Philosophy 112 (1):46-55.
    We present Backward Clock, an original counterexample to Robert Nozick’s truth-tracking analysis of propositional knowledge, which works differently from other putative counterexamples and avoids objections to which they are vulnerable. We then argue that four ways of analysing knowledge in terms of safety, including Duncan Pritchard’s, cannot withstand Backward Clock either.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  31. Comments on Nietzsche’s Constructivism by Justin Remhof. [REVIEW]Neil Sinhababu - 2020 - Philosophia 49 (2):565-570.
    Justin Remhof defends a constructivist interpretation of Nietzsche’s view regarding the metaphysics of material objects. First, I describe an attractive feature of Remhof’s interpretation. Since Nietzsche seems to be a constructivist about whatever sort of value he accepts, a constructivist account of objects would fit into a nicely unified overall metaphysical theory. Second, I explore various options for developing the constructivist view of objects. Depending on how Nietzsche understood concepts, and whose concepts he saw as giving rise to objects, he (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  32. Recognition of intrinsic values of sentient beings explains the sense of moral duty towards global nature conservation.Tianxiang Lan, Neil Sinhababu & Luis Roman Carrasco - 2022 - PLoS ONE 10 (17):NA.
    Whether nature is valuable on its own (intrinsic values) or because of the benefits it provides to humans (instrumental values) has been a long-standing debate. The concept of relational values has been proposed as a solution to this supposed dichotomy, but the empirical validation of its intuitiveness remains limited. We experimentally assessed whether intrinsic/relational values of sentient beings/non-sentient beings/ecosystems better explain people’s sense of moral duty towards global nature conservation for the future. Participants from a representative sample of the population (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  33. Janaway, Christopher, and Robertson, Simon, eds. Nietzsche, Naturalism, and Normativity.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. 280. $75.00. [REVIEW]Neil Sinhababu - 2014 - Ethics 124 (3):617-622.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  34. There’s nothing to beat a backward clock: A rejoinder to Adams, Barker and Clarke.John N. Williams - 2016 - Logos and Episteme 7 (3):363-378.
    Neil Sinhababu and I presented Backward Clock, an original counterexample to Robert Nozick’s truth-tracking analysis of propositional knowledge. Fred Adams, John Barker and Murray Clarke argue that Backward Clock is no such counterexample. Their argument fails to nullify Backward Clock which also shows that other tracking analyses, such as Dretske’s and one that Adams et al. may well have in mind, are inadequate.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  35. Are the psychophysical laws fine-tuned?Dan Cavedon-Taylor - 2020 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 89 (3):285-292.
    Neil Sinhababu :89–98, 2017) has recently argued against the fine-tuning argument for God. They claim that the question of the universe’s fine-tuning ought not be ‘why is the universe so hospitable to life?’ but rather ‘why is the universe so hospitable to morally valuable minds?’ and that, moreover, the universe isn’t so hospitable. For it is metaphysically possible that psychophysical laws be substantially more permissive than they in fact are, allowing for the realisation of morally valuable consciousness by (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  36. Knowledge as Fact-Tracking True Belief.Fred Adams, John A. Barker & Murray Clarke - 2017 - Manuscrito 40 (4):1-30.
    ABSTRACT Drawing inspiration from Fred Dretske, L. S. Carrier, John A. Barker, and Robert Nozick, we develop a tracking analysis of knowing according to which a true belief constitutes knowledge if and only if it is based on reasons that are sensitive to the fact that makes it true, that is, reasons that wouldn’t obtain if the belief weren’t true. We show that our sensitivity analysis handles numerous Gettier-type cases and lottery problems, blocks pathways leading to skepticism, and validates the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  37. Methods Matter: Beating the Backward Clock.Murray Clarke, Fred Adams & John A. Barker - 2017 - Logos and Episteme 8 (1):99-112.
    In “Beat the (Backward) Clock,” we argued that John Williams and Neil Sinhababu’s Backward Clock Case fails to be a counterexample to Robert Nozick’s or Fred Dretske’s Theories of Knowledge. Williams’ reply to our paper, “There’s Nothing to Beat a Backward Clock: A Rejoinder to Adams, Barker and Clarke,” is a further attempt to defend their counterexample against a range of objections. In this paper, we argue that, despite the number and length of footnotes, Williams is still wrong.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  38. We're All Folk: An Interview with Neil Levy about Experimental Philosophy and Conceptual Analysis.Neil Levy & Yasuko Kitano - 2011 - Annals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science 19:87-98.
    The following is a transcript of the interview I (Yasuko Kitano) conducted with Neil Levy (The Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, CAPPE) on the 23rd in July 2009, while he was in Tokyo to give a series of lectures on neuroethics at The University of Tokyo Center for Philosophy. I edited his words for publication with his approval.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  39. On Forms of Justification in Set Theory.Neil Barton, Claudio Ternullo & Giorgio Venturi - 2020 - Australasian Journal of Logic 17 (4):158-200.
    In the contemporary philosophy of set theory, discussion of new axioms that purport to resolve independence necessitates an explanation of how they come to be justified. Ordinarily, justification is divided into two broad kinds: intrinsic justification relates to how `intuitively plausible' an axiom is, whereas extrinsic justification supports an axiom by identifying certain `desirable' consequences. This paper puts pressure on how this distinction is formulated and construed. In particular, we argue that the distinction as often presented is neither well-demarcated nor (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  40. Speculative Aesthetic Expressivism.Neil Sinclair & Jon Robson - 2022 - British Journal of Aesthetics (2):181-197.
    In this paper we sketch a new version of aesthetic expressivism. We argue that one advantage of this view is that it explains various putative norms on the formation and revision of aesthetic judgement. We begin by setting out our proposed explananda and a sense in which they can be understood as governing the correct response to putative higher-order evidence in aesthetics. We then summarise some existing discussions of expressivist attempts to explain these norms, and objections raised to them. This (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  41. Moral significance of phenomenal consciousness.Neil Levy & Julian Savulescu - 2009 - Progress in Brain Research.
    Recent work in neuroimaging suggests that some patients diagnosed as being in the persistent vegetative state are actually conscious. In this paper, we critically examine this new evidence. We argue that though it remains open to alternative interpretations, it strongly suggests the presence of consciousness in some patients. However, we argue that its ethical significance is less than many people seem to think. There are several different kinds of consciousness, and though all kinds of consciousness have some ethical significance, different (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   24 citations  
  42. Reasons, inescapability and persuasion.Neil Sinclair - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (10):2823-2844.
    This paper outlines a new metasemantic theory of moral reason statements, focused on explaining how the reasons thus stated can be inescapable. The motivation for the theory is in part that it can explain this and other phenomena concerning moral reasons. The account also suggests a general recipe for explanations of conceptual features of moral reason statements. (Published with Open Access.).
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  43. Expressivism and the practicality of moral convictions.Neil Sinclair - 2007 - Journal of Value Inquiry 41 (2-4):201-220.
    Many expressivists have employed a claim about the practicality of morality in support of their view that moral convictions are not purely descriptive mental states. In this paper I argue that all extant arguments of this form fail. I distinguish several versions of such arguments and argue that in each case either the sense of practicality the argument employs is too weak, in which case there is no reason to think that descriptive states cannot be practical or the sense of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  44. Absence perception and the philosophy of zero.Neil Barton - 2020 - Synthese 197 (9):3823-3850.
    Zero provides a challenge for philosophers of mathematics with realist inclinations. On the one hand it is a bona fide cardinal number, yet on the other it is linked to ideas of nothingness and non-being. This paper provides an analysis of the epistemology and metaphysics of zero. We develop several constraints and then argue that a satisfactory account of zero can be obtained by integrating an account of numbers as properties of collections, work on the philosophy of absences, and recent (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  45. Are You Morally Modified?: The Moral Effects of Widely Used Pharmaceuticals.Neil Levy, Thomas Douglas, Guy Kahane, Sylvia Terbeck, Philip J. Cowen, Miles Hewstone & Julian Savulescu - 2014 - Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 21 (2):111-125.
    A number of concerns have been raised about the possible future use of pharmaceuticals designed to enhance cognitive, affective, and motivational processes, particularly where the aim is to produce morally better decisions or behavior. In this article, we draw attention to what is arguably a more worrying possibility: that pharmaceuticals currently in widespread therapeutic use are already having unintended effects on these processes, and thus on moral decision making and morally significant behavior. We review current evidence on the moral effects (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   24 citations  
  46. Causal exclusion and the limits of proportionality.Neil McDonnell - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 174 (6):1459-1474.
    Causal exclusion arguments are taken to threaten the autonomy of the special sciences, and the causal efficacy of mental properties. A recent line of response to these arguments has appealed to “independently plausible” and “well grounded” theories of causation to rebut key premises. In this paper I consider two papers which proceed in this vein and show that they share a common feature: they both require causes to be proportional to their effects. I argue that this feature is a bug, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   27 citations  
  47. Doing without Deliberation: Automatism, Automaticity, and Moral Accountability,.Neil Levy & Tim Bayne - 2004 - International Review of Psychiatry 16 (4):209-15.
    Actions performed in a state of automatism are not subject to moral evaluation, while automatic actions often are. Is the asymmetry between automatistic and automatic agency justified? In order to answer this question we need a model or moral accountability that does justice to our intuitions about a range of modes of agency, both pathological and non-pathological. Our aim in this paper is to lay the foundations for such an account.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   18 citations  
  48. Betraying Trust.Collin O'Neil - 2017 - In Paul Faulkner & Thomas Simpson (eds.), The Philosophy of Trust. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press. pp. 70-89.
    Trust not only disposes us to feel betrayed, trust can be betrayed. Understanding what a betrayal of trust is requires understanding how trust can ground an obligation on the part of the trusted person to act specifically as trusted. This essay argues that, since trust cannot ground an appropriate obligation where there is no prior obligation, a betrayal of trust should instead be conceived as the violation of a trust-based obligation to respect an already existing obligation. Two forms of trust (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  49. Disease, Normality, and Current Pharmacological Moral Modification.Neil Levy, Thomas Douglas, Guy Kahane, Sylvia Terbeck, Philip J. Cowen, Miles Hewstone & Julian Savulescu - 2014 - Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 21 (2):135-137.
    Response to commentary. We are grateful to Crockett and Craigie for their interesting remarks on our paper. We accept Crockett’s claim that there is a need for caution in drawing inferences about patient groups from work on healthy volunteers in the laboratory. However, we believe that the evidence we cited established a strong presumption that many of the patients who are routinely taking a medication, including many people properly prescribed the medication for a medical condition, have morally significant aspects of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  50. The Powers that bind : doxastic voluntarism and epistemic obligation.Neil Levy & Eric Mandelbaum - 2014 - In Rico Vitz & Jonathan Matheson (eds.), The Ethics of Belief: Individual and Social. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 12-33.
    In this chapter, we argue for three theses: (1) we lack the power to form beliefs at will (i.e., directly); at very least, we lack the power to form at will beliefs of the kind that proponents of doxastic voluntarism have in mind; but (2) we possess a propensity to form beliefs for non-epistemic reasons; and (3) these propensities—once we come to know we have them—entail that we have obligations similar to those we would have were doxastic voluntarism true. Specifically, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
1 — 50 / 271