Many thanks to Thomas and to everyone for commenting on my posts. I learned a lot and had a lot of fun. My only regret is that not everyone agrees with me about everything. If only I could argue like Madison Bumgarner pitches... Happy Halloween (but don't be this guy)! Continue reading

Dear Professor Strawson, In light of two anonymous referee reports, we have decided against publishing your paper “Freedom and Resentment” in Top Peer-Reviewed Journal. We wish you the best of luck moving forward. See below for attached referee reports. Referee 1 @’s paper, “Freedom and Resentment” attempts to solve the... Continue reading

As Tamler reminded me, October is a 31 and not a 15 day month, so after taking a week off, I figure I should get back to it. Since I want to ease back into things, here's the follow-up post on the asymmetry of praise- and blameworthiness that I promised... Continue reading

A lot of folks, myself included, think that if you would be hypocritical in blaming me for my wrongdoing, then you have a weighty reason to refrain from doing so. (Some put this point in terms of "the standing to blame" but I want to be neutral here about whether... Continue reading

In late 2008 or something, Philip Swenson and I were driving to Vegas on a spontaneous poker run, and we were lamenting the fact that Gary Watson was leaving UCR. Philip was a first year grad student at the time, so I "magnanimously" volunteered some information about this awesome workshop... Continue reading

Consider the following two cases of apparently altruistic helping behavior: Broken Glass Rob’s thirsty, and he sees a glass across the room. Since she’s closer to it than he is, Rob asks Pearl to hand him the glass so that he can pour himself some water. Pearl notices that the... Continue reading

Nat King Cole's "Almost Like Being in Love" could be the jumping off point for a great deal of interesting philosophical theorizing. It captures something about Humean moral motivation (see Nancy Schauber's really wonderful paper, "Hume on Moral Motivation: It's Almost Like Being in Love"). It also suggests a way... Continue reading

Suppose that Mac embezzles money from his business but that his colleague Charlie does not. [1] It seems obvious that their co-workers have more reason to blame Mac than they do Charlie. In fact, because innocent people don’t deserve to be blamed, unless there are some special consequentialist considerations, there... Continue reading

Hi all! Thanks to Thomas for inviting me to “host” the blog for a month. I think this "featured authors" thing has been a great innovation for the blog, so I’ve been looking forward to it for a while now. I didn’t realize, though, that it would be so pressure-packed.... Continue reading