Matthew Talbert
Assistant Professor
-
Contact Information
-
Specializations
-
Ethics
Moral Psychology
Philosophy of Agency
-
Research Interests and Publications
-
My current research project involves giving an account of the conditions on moral responsibility and blameworthiness. My general approach is compatibilist: that is, I assume that moral responsibility is compatible with the truth of physical determinism. However, most compatibilists place more restrictions on moral responsibility than I find necessary.
In two forthcoming papers, I argue against the widespread assumption that responsibility and blameworthiness require the capacity—on the part of the person blamed—to respond to specifically moral considerations. In one of these papers, I give reasons for thinking that even psychopaths may be morally responsible for some of their behavior. In the other paper, I argue that even if situational pressures undermine the capacity of soldiers to respond to moral considerations, this does not always excuse soldiers for wartime atrocities they might commit. The second paper is largely a response to John Doris and Dominic Murphy's recent paper, "From My Lai to Abu Ghraib: The Moral Psychology of Atrocity," Midwest Studies in Philosophy 31 (2007): 25-55.
In an unpublished paper, I argue against the assumption that responsibility is a historical phenomenon. The content of the assumption I deny here is, roughly, that the historical processes by which a person becomes the sort of agent she is might undermine her present responsibility for her actions. Standard examples of supposedly responsibility-undermining historical factors are: having been abused as a child and having had one's psychology manipulated in various ways.
-
Publications
-
"Situationism, Normative Competence, and Responsibility for Wartime Behavior," forthcoming, The Journal of Value Inquiry.
"Blame and Responsiveness to Moral Reasons: Are Psychopaths Blameworthy?," forthcoming, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly.
"Contractualism and Our Duties to Nonhuman Animals," Environmental Ethics, 28 (2006): 201-15.
Book Reviews:
Herbert Fingarette, Mapping Responsibility: Explorations in Mind, Law, Myth, and Culture (Open Court, 2004), reviewed for The Philosophical Review, Oct. 2007: 130 - 33.
-
Courses Offered
-
PHIL 100: Introduction to Problems in Philosophy
PHIL 260: Introduction to Symbolic Logic
PHIL 321: Ethical Theory
PHIL 493: Free Will
