How can we be responsible for our attitudes if we cannot normally choose what we believe, desire, feel, and intend? This problem has received much attention during the last decades, both in epistemology and ethics. Yet its connections to discussions about reasons and rationality have been largely overlooked. This book develops the foundations of an ethics of mind by investigating the responsibility that is presupposed by the requirements of rationality that govern our attitudes. It has five main goals. First, it (...) reinterprets the problem of responsibility for attitudes as a problem about the normativity of rationality. Second, it connects substantive and structural rationality by drawing on debates about responsibility. Third, it supports recent accounts of the normativity of rationality by explicitly defending the view that epistemic reasons and other ‘right-kind’ reasons are genuine normative reasons. Fourth, it breaks the stalemate between rationalist and voluntarist accounts of mental responsibility by proposing a hybrid view. Finally, it argues that irrationality can warrant moral blame, thus revealing an unnoticed normative force of rational requirements. Length of manuscript: 85,000 words. (shrink)

Ethical issues concerning brain–computer interfaces have already received a considerable amount of attention. However, one particular form of BCI has not received the attention that it deserves: Affective BCIs that allow for the detection and stimulation of affective states. This paper brings the ethical issues of affective BCIs in sharper focus. The paper briefly reviews recent applications of affective BCIs and considers ethical issues that arise from these applications. Ethical issues that affective BCIs share with other neurotechnologies are presented and (...) ethical concerns that are specific to affective BCIs are identified and discussed. (shrink)

Creepiness and the emotion of the creeps have been overlooked in the moral philosophy and moral psychology literatures. We argue that the creeps is a morally significant emotion in its own right, and not simply a type of fear, disgust, or anger (though it shares features with those emotions). Reflecting on cases, we defend a novel account of the creeps as felt in response to creepy people. According to our moral insensitivity account, the creeps is fitting just when its object (...) is agential activity that is insensitive to basic moral considerations. When, only when, and insofar as someone is disposed to such insensitivity, they are a creep. Such insensitivity, especially in extreme forms, raises doubts about creeps’ moral agency. We distinguish multiple types of insensitivity, respond to concerns that feeling the creeps is itself objectionable, and conclude with a discussion of epistemic issues relating to the creeps. (shrink)