Good Selves, True Selves: Moral Ignorance, Responsibility, and the Presumption of Goodness

The Selves and the Shoemaker: Psychopaths, Moral Judgement, and Responsibility

David Shoemaker argues from (A) psychopaths’ emotional deficiency, to (B) their insensitivity to moral reasons, to (C) their lack of criminal responsibility. This response observes three important ambiguities in this argument, involving the interpretation of (1) psychopaths’ emotional deficit, (2) their insensitivity to reasons, and (3) their moral judgements. Resolving these ambiguities presen...

True Selves, False Selves, and the Ambiguity of Authenticity

Selves and Moral Units

Derek Parfit claims that, at certain times and places, the metaphysical units he labels “selves” may be thought of as the morally significant units (i.e., the objects of moral concern) for such things as resource distribution, moral responsibility, commitments, etc. But his concept of the self is problematic in important respects, and it remains unclear just why and how this entity should count...

Précis of Talking to Our Selves: Reflection, Ignorance, and Agency.

Does it make sense for people to hold one another responsible for what they do, as happens in countless social interactions every day? One of the most unsettling lessons from recent psychological research is that people are routinely mistaken about the origins of their behavior. Yet philosophical orthodoxy holds that the exercise of morally responsible agency typically requires accurate self-aw...

The society of selves.

Human beings are not only the most sociable animals on Earth, but also the only animals that have to ponder the separateness that comes with having a conscious self. The philosophical problem of 'other minds' nags away at people's sense of who--and why--they are. But the privacy of consciousness has an evolutionary history--and maybe even an evolutionary function. While recognizing the importan...