Contents
38 found
Order:
  1. On the Everydayness of Trauma.Ryan Wasser - manuscript
    Shaili Jain's The Unspeakable Mind (2019) is an impressive examination of the stress experienced by a veteran community that too often is handled with a sense of clinical sterility that borders on inhumanity, or a that of pandering condescension. However, what is striking about Jain's text is the lack of analysis of how trauma manifests in what Heidegger would refer to as average everydayness. This, to me, seems like a missed opportunity, especially as it pertains to trauma-based ethics since all (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  2. What is the Difference between Weakness of Will and Compulsion?August Gorman - 2023 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 9 (1):37-52.
    Orthodoxy holds that the difference between weakness of will and compulsion is a matter of the resistibility of an agent's effective motivation, which makes control-based views of agency especially well equipped to distinguish blameworthy weak-willed acts from non-blameworthy compulsive acts. I defend an alternative view that the difference between weakness and compulsion instead lies in the fact that agents would upon reflection give some conative weight to acting on their weak-willed desires for some aim other than to extinguish them, but (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  3. Quality of Will and (Some) Unusual Behavior.Nomy Arpaly - 2022 - In Matt King & Joshua May (eds.), Agency in Mental Disorder: Philosophical Dimensions. Oxford University Press.
    This chapter explores how far one can go accounting for the moral responsibility implications of several unusual mental conditions using a parsimonious quality-of-will account that relies on the way we talk about moral responsibility in more mundane situations. By contrasting situations involving epistemic irrationality versus cognitive impairment, it becomes clear that the presence of those often (but not always) excuses actions performed by unusual agents. The discussion turns to cases of clinical depression and sketches a way for quality-of-will accounts to (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  4. Addiction and Agency.Justin Clarke-Doane & Kathryn Tabb - 2022 - In Matt King & Joshua May (eds.), Agency in Mental Disorder: Philosophical Dimensions. Oxford University Press.
    Addicts are often portrayed as compelled by their addiction and thus as a paradigm of unfree action and mitigated blame. This chapter argues that our best scientific theories of addiction reveal that, psychologically, addicts are not categorically different from non-addicts. There is no pairing of contemporary accounts of addiction and of prominent theories of moral responsibility that can justify our intuitions about the mitigation of addicts but not non-addicts. Two conclusions are advanced. First, we should either treat addicts as we (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  5. Demystifying the Deep Self View.August Gorman - 2022 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 19 (4):390-414.
    Deep Self views of moral responsibility have been criticized for positing mysterious concepts, making nearly paradoxical claims about the ownership of one’s mental states, and promoting self-deceptive moral evasion. I defend Deep Self views from these pervasive forms of skepticism by arguing that some criticism is hasty and stems from epistemic injustice regarding testimonies of experiences of alienation, while other criticism targets contingent features of Deep Self views that ought to be abandoned. To aid in this project, I provide original (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  6. Neuroscience and Normativity: How Knowledge of the Brain Offers a Deeper Understanding of Moral and Legal Responsibility.William Hirstein - 2022 - Criminal Law and Philosophy 16 (2):327-351.
    Neuroscience can relate to ethics and normative issues via the brain’s cognitive control network. This network accomplishes several executive processes, such as planning, task-switching, monitoring, and inhibiting. These processes allow us to increase the accuracy of our perceptions and our memory recall. They also allow us to plan much farther into the future, and with much more detail than any of our fellow mammals. These abilities also make us fitting subjects for responsibility claims. Their activity, or lack thereof, is at (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  7. Brain Pathology and Moral Responsibility.Anneli Jefferson - 2022 - In Matt King & Joshua May (eds.), Agency in Mental Disorder: Philosophical Dimensions. Oxford University Press.
    Does a diagnosis of brain dysfunction matter for ascriptions of moral responsibility? This chapter argues that, while knowledge of brain pathology can inform judgments of moral responsibility, its evidential value is currently limited for a number of practical and theoretical reasons. These include the problem of establishing causation from correlational data, drawing inferences about individuals from group data, and the reliance of the interpretation of brain findings on well-established psychological findings. Brain disorders sometimes matter for moral responsibility, however, because they (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  8. Mental Disorders Involve Limits on Control, not Extreme Preferences.Chandra Sripada - 2022 - In Matt King & Joshua May (eds.), Agency in Mental Disorder: Philosophical Dimensions. Oxford University Press.
    According to a standard picture of agency, a person’s actions always reflect what they most desire, and many theorists extend this model to mental illness. In this chapter, I pin down exactly where this “volitional” view goes wrong. The key is to recognize that human motivational architecture involves a regulatory control structure: we have both spontaneous states (e.g., automatically-elicited thoughts and action tendencies, etc.) as well as regulatory mechanisms that allow us to suppress or modulate these spontaneous states. Our regulatory (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  9. Is punishment backward? On neurointerventions and forward‐looking moral responsibility.Przemysław Zawadzki - 2022 - Bioethics 37 (2):183-191.
    This article focuses on justified responses to “immoral” behavior and crimes committed by patients undergoing neuromodulation therapies. Such patients could be held morally responsible in the basic desert sense—the one that serves as a justification of severe practices such as backward‐looking moral outrage, condemnation, and legal punishment—as long as they possess certain compatibilist capabilities that have traditionally served as the quintessence of free will, that is, reasons‐responsiveness; attributability; answerability; the abilities to act in accordance with moral reasons, second‐order volitions, or (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  10. Review of Jesse S. Summers and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Clean Hands? Philosophical Lessons from Scrupulosity[REVIEW]Noell Birondo - 2020 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 3.
    Philosophical lessons come in many different shapes and sizes. Some lessons are big, some are small. Some lessons go deep and have a big impact, some are shallow and have almost none. Some lessons are not really philosophical at all or would not really be lessons for an audience of academic philosophers. I mention these truisms not to disparage this informative book on 'moral OCD' (moral obsessive-compulsive disorder, or 'Scrupulosity') but rather to emphasize how difficult it can be to discern (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  11. Holding Responsible Reconsidered.Larisa Svirsky - 2020 - Public Affairs Quarterly 34 (4):321-339.
    Following Strawson, many philosophers have claimed that holding someone responsible necessitates its being appropriate to feel or express the negative reactive attitudes (e.g., resentment) toward her. This view, while compelling, is unable to capture the full range of cases in which we hold others responsible in ordinary life. Consider the parent who holds her five-year-old responsible for not teasing his sister, or the therapist who holds her patient responsible for avoiding self-injurious behavior. Holding responsible in such cases requires enforcing normative (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  12. Responsibility and the Problem of So-Called Marginal Agents.Larisa Svirsky - 2020 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 6 (2):246-263.
    Philosophical views of responsibility often identify responsible agency with capacities like rationality and self-control. Yet in ordinary life, we frequently hold individuals responsible who are deficient in these capacities, such as children or people with mental illness. The existing literature that addresses these cases has suggested that we merely pretend to hold these agents responsible, or that they are responsible to a diminished degree. In this paper, I demonstrate that neither of these approaches is satisfactory, and offer an alternative focused (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  13. The Minimal Approval View of Attributability.August Gorman - 2019 - In David Shoemaker (ed.), Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility Volume 6. Oxford University Press.
    This paper advances a new agentially undemanding account of the conditions of attributability, the Minimal Approval account, and argues that it has a number of advantages over traditional Deep Self theories, including the way in which it handles agents with conditions like addiction, Tourette syndrome, and misophonia. It is argued that in order for an agent to be attributionally responsible, the mental process that leads to her action must dispose her to be such that she would, upon reflec-tion, approve to (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  14. The Minimal Approval View of Attributional-Responsibility.August Gorman - 2018 - Dissertation, University of Southern California
    I argue in favor of the Minimal Approval account, an original account of an agent’s moral responsibility for her actions, understood as the conditions that must be met so that an agent’s actions speak for her such that she can appropriately be blamed on their basis. My account shares a general theoretical orientation with Deep Self views, but diverges in several respects. I argue that Deep Self views tend to seriously over-generate exemptions, such that agents are exempt from responsibility even (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  15. Responsible Brains: Neuroscience, Law, and Human Culpability.William Hirstein, Katrina L. Sifferd & Tyler K. Fagan - 2018 - New York, NY, USA: MIT Press. Edited by Katrina Sifferd & Tyler Fagan.
    [This download includes the table of contents and chapter 1.] -/- When we praise, blame, punish, or reward people for their actions, we are holding them responsible for what they have done. Common sense tells us that what makes human beings responsible has to do with their minds and, in particular, the relationship between their minds and their actions. Yet the empirical connection is not necessarily obvious. The “guilty mind” is a core concept of criminal law, but if a defendant (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  16. Moral Responsibility and Mental Illness: a Call for Nuance.Matt King & Joshua May - 2018 - Neuroethics 11 (1):11-22.
    Does having a mental disorder, in general, affect whether someone is morally responsible for an action? Many people seem to think so, holding that mental disorders nearly always mitigate responsibility. Against this Naïve view, we argue for a Nuanced account. The problem is not just that different theories of responsibility yield different verdicts about particular cases. Even when all reasonable theories agree about what's relevant to responsibility, the ways mental illness can affect behavior are so varied that a more nuanced (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  17. Self-deception in and out of Illness: Are some subjects responsible for their delusions?Quinn Hiroshi Gibson - 2017 - Palgrave Communications 15 (3):1-12.
    This paper raises a slightly uncomfortable question: are some delusional subjects responsible for their delusions? This question is uncomfortable because we typically think that the answer is pretty clearly just ‘no’. However, we also accept that self-deception is paradigmatically intentional behavior for which the self-deceiver is prima facie blameworthy. Thus, if there is overlap between self-deception and delusion, this will put pressure on our initial answer. This paper argues that there is indeed such overlap by offering a novel philosophical account (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  18. Associations between psychopathic traits and brain activity during instructed false responding.Andrea L. Glenn, Hyemin Han, Yaling Yang, Adrian Raine & Robert A. Schug - 2017 - Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging 266:123-137.
    Lying is one of the characteristic features of psychopathy, and has been recognized in clinical and diagnostic descriptions of the disorder, yet individuals with psychopathic traits have been found to have reduced neural activity in many of the brain regions that are important for lying. In this study, we examine brain activity in sixteen individuals with varying degrees of psychopathic traits during a task in which they are instructed to falsify information or tell the truth about autobiographical and non-autobiographical facts, (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  19. Review of: Philosophy and Psychiatry: Problems, Intersections, and New Perspectives. [REVIEW]Lane Timothy - 2017 - Notre Dame Philosophical Review 16:1-6.
    If we already had a periodic table of mental illness in hand, there would be less need for a book of this type. Although some psychiatrists do think of themselves as chemists, the analogy is without warrant. Not only does psychiatry lack an analogue of the periodic table, its principal tool -- the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) -- is a contentious document. Even subsequent to the publication of DSM-III in 1980, which was intended to serve as (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  20. Moral ignorance and blameworthiness.Elinor Mason - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (11):3037-3057.
    In this paper I discuss various hard cases that an account of moral ignorance should be able to deal with: ancient slave holders, Susan Wolf’s JoJo, psychopaths such as Robert Harris, and finally, moral outliers. All these agents are ignorant, but it is not at all clear that they are blameless on account of their ignorance. I argue that the discussion of this issue in recent literature has missed the complexities of these cases by focusing on the question of epistemic (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   45 citations  
  21. Ethics and the Brains of Psychopaths: The Significance of Psychopathy for our Ethical and Legal Theories.William Hirstein & Katrina Sifferd - 2014 - In Charles Wolfe (ed.), Brain Theory: Essays in Critical Neurophilosophy. London: Springer. pp. 149-170.
    The emerging neuroscience of psychopathy will have several important implications for our attempts to construct an ethical society. In this article we begin by describing the list of criteria by which psychopaths are diagnosed. We then review four competing neuropsychological theories of psychopathic cognition. The first of these models, Newman’s attentional model, locates the problem in a special type of attentional narrowing that psychopaths have shown in experiments. The second and third, Blair’s amygdala model and Kiehl’s paralimbic model represent the (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  22. Moral Responsibility and Psychopathy: Why We Do Not Have Special Obligations To The Psychopath.Justin Caouette - 2013 - American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 4 (2):26-27.
    Addressing concerns about the treatment of psychopaths, Grant Gillett and Flora Huang (2013) argue that we ought to accept a relational or holistic view of psychopathy and APSD rather than the default biomedical-deficit model since the latter “obscures moral truths about the psychopath”. This change in approach to the psychopath will both mitigate at least some of their moral responsibility for the harms they cause, and force communities to incur special obligations, so they claim, because the harms endured by psychopaths (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  23. Should the Late Stage Demented be Punished for Past Crimes?Annette Dufner - 2013 - Criminal Law and Philosophy 7 (1):137-150.
    The paper investigates whether it is plausible to hold the late stage demented criminally responsible for past actions. The concern is based on the fact that policy makers in the United States and in Britain are starting to wonder what to do with prison inmates in the later stages of dementia who do not remember their crimes anymore. The problem has to be expected to become more urgent as the population ages and the number of dementia patients increases. This paper (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  24. Addiction and Weakness of Will.Lubomira Radoilska - 2013 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Mental conflict not always amounts to weakness of will. Irresistible motives not always speak of addiction. This book proposes an integrated account of what singles out these phenomena: addiction and weakness of will are both forms of secondary akrasia. By integrating these two phenomena into a classical conception of akrasia as poor resolution of an unnecessary conflict – valuing without intending while intending without valuing – the book makes an original contribution to central issues in moral psychology and philosophy of (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  25. On the Criminal Culpability of Successful and Unsucessful Psychopaths.Katrina L. Sifferd & William Hirstein - 2013 - Neuroethics 6 (1):129-140.
    The psychological literature now differentiates between two types of psychopath:successful (with little or no criminal record) and unsuccessful (with a criminal record). Recent research indicates that earlier findings of reduced autonomic activity, reduced prefrontal grey matter, and compromised executive activity may only be true of unsuccessful psychopaths. In contrast, successful psychopaths actually show autonomic and executive function that exceeds that of normals, while having no difference in prefrontal volume from normals. We argue that many successful psychopaths are legally responsible for (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  26. Autonomy and Ulysses Arrangements.Lubomira V. Radoilska - 2012 - In Lubomira Radoilska (ed.), Autonomy and Mental Disorder. Oxford University Press. pp. 252-280.
    In this chapter, I articulate the structure of a general concept of autonomy and then reply to possible objections with reference to Ulysses arrangements in psychiatry. The line of argument is as follows. Firstly, I examine three alternative conceptions of autonomy: value-neutral, value-laden, and relational. Secondly, I identify two paradigm cases of autonomy and offer a sketch of its concept as opposed to the closely related freedom of action and intentional agency. Finally, I explain away the autonomy paradox, to which (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  27. An Information Processing Model of Psychopathy.Jeffrey White - 2012 - In Angelo S. Fruili & Luisa D. Veneto (eds.), Moral Psychology. Nova. pp. 1-34.
    Psychopathy is increasingly in the public eye. However, it is yet to be fully and effectively understood. Within the context of the DSM-IV, for example, it is best regarded as a complex family of disorders. The upside is that this family can be tightly related along common dimensions. Characteristic marks of psychopaths include a lack of guilt and remorse for paradigm case immoral actions, leading to the common conception of psychopathy rooted in affective dysfunctions. An adequate portrait of psychopathy is (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  28. Is it Wrong to Criminalize and Punish Psychopaths?Andrea L. Glenn, Adrian Raine & William S. Laufer - 2011 - Emotion Review 3 (3):302-304.
    Increasing evidence from psychology and neuroscience suggests that emotion plays an important and sometimes critical role in moral judgment and moral behavior. At the same time, there is increasing psychological and neuroscientific evidence that brain regions critical in emotional and moral capacity are impaired in psychopaths. We ask how the criminal law should accommodate these two streams of research, in light of a new normative and legal account of the criminal responsibility of psychopaths.
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   13 citations  
  29. Dangerous Psychopaths: Criminally Responsible But Not Morally Responsible, Subject to Criminal Punishment And to Preventive Detention.Ken Levy - 2011 - San Diego Law Review 48:1299-1395.
    I argue for two propositions. First, contrary to the common wisdom, we may justly punish individuals who are not morally responsible for their crimes. Psychopaths – individuals who lack the capacity to feel sympathy – help to prove this point. Scholars are increasingly arguing that psychopaths are not morally responsible for their behavior because they suffer from a neurological disorder that makes it impossible for them to understand, and therefore be motivated by, moral reasons. These same scholars then infer from (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  30. Disability and Moral Responsibility.Simo Vehmas - 2011 - TRAMES 15 (2):156-167.
    This article offers an introductory analysis of the philosophical and empirical considerations having to do with the significance of psychopathy, intellectual disability and ADHD regarding one’s moral responsibility. Moral responsibility comes in degrees and is ultimately determined on social grounds. Whether a certain diagnosis and its under­pinning neuro-cognitive impairment affects one’s cognitive, emotional and moral conduct, depends also on social and relational factors.
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  31. Are Psychopathic Serial Killers Evil? Are they Blameworthy for What They Do?Manuel Vargas - 2010 - In Sarah Waller (ed.), Serial Killers and Philosophy. Blackwell.
    At least some serial killers are psychopathic serial killers. Psychopathic serial killers raise interesting questions about the nature of evil and moral responsibility. On the one hand, serial killers seem to be obviously evil, if anything is. On the other hand, psychopathy is a diagnosable disorder that, among other things, involves a diminished ability to understand and use basic moral distinctions. This feature of psychopathy suggests that psychopathic serial killers have at least diminished responsibility for what they do. In this (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  32. Moral Understanding in the Psychopath.Luca Malatesti - 2009 - Synthesis Philosophica 24 (2):337-348.
    A pressing and difficult practical problem concerns the general issue of the right social response to offenders classified as having antisocial personality disorder. This paper approaches this general problem by focusing, from a philosophical perspective, on the still relevant but more approachable question whether psychopathic offenders are morally responsible. In particular, I investigate whether psychopaths possess moral understanding. A plausible way to approach the last question requires a satisfactory philosophical interpretation of the empirical evidence that appears to show that psychopaths (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  33. The mad, the bad, and the psychopath.Heidi L. Maibom - 2008 - Neuroethics 1 (3):167-184.
    It is common for philosophers to argue that psychopaths are not morally responsible because they lack some of the essential capacities for morality. In legal terms, they are criminally insane. Typically, however, the insanity defense is not available to psychopaths. The primary reason is that they appear to have the knowledge and understanding required under the M’Naghten Rules. However, it has been argued that what is required for moral and legal responsibility is ‘deep’ moral understanding, something that psychopaths do not (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   40 citations  
  34. 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.
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   18 citations  
  35. Responsibility and the Condition of Moral Sense.Paul Russell - 2004 - Philosophical Topics 32 (1-2):287-305.
    Recent work in contemporary compatibilist theory displays considerable sophistication and subtlety when compared with the earlier theories of classical compatibilism. Two distinct lines of thought have proved especially influential and illuminating. The first developed around the general hypothesis that moral sentiments or reactive attitudes are fundamental for understanding the nature and conditions of moral responsibility. The other important development is found in recent compatibilist accounts of rational self-control or reason responsiveness. Strictly speaking, these two lines of thought have developed independent (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   31 citations  
  36. Irrationality in Philosophy and Psychology: the Moral Implications of Self-Defeating Behavior.Christine James - 1998 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 5 (2):224-234.
    The philosophical study of irrationality can yield interesting insights into the human mind. One provocative issue is self-defeating behaviours, i.e. behaviours that result in failure to achieve one’s apparent goals and ambitions. In this paper I consider a self-defeating behaviour called choking under pressure, explain why it should be considered irrational, and how it is best understood with reference to skills. Then I describe how choking can be explained without appeal to a purely Freudian subconscious or ‘sub-agents’ view of mind. (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  37. Prescriptions for Responsible Psychiatry.Joseph Agassi - 1996 - In William T. O'Donohue & Richard F. Kitchener (eds.), The Philosophy of Psychology. Sage Publications. pp. 339.
    The ills of psychiatry are currently diagnoses with the aid of deficient etiologies. The currently proposed prescriptions for psychiatry are practically impossible. The defective part of the profession is its leadership which in its very defensiveness sticks to the status quo, thereby owning the worst defects and impeding all possible cure. The current discussions of the matter are pretentious and thus woolly. The minimal requirement from the profession as a whole and from each of its individual members is that they (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  38. Unconscious motives and intentional action.Michael Ladner - manuscript
    Few philosophers would deny that unconscious motives enter into causal explanations of human behavior. But many would be reluctant to say that deeply unconscious motives have anything to do with the intentionality with which we act. I argue to the contrary that deeply unconscious motives can indeed contribute to agent-intentionality on the following condition: If she were self-aware and honest with respect to her unconscious motive, the agent would believe that it constituted her reason for the action of which it (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark