Papers by Michael-John Turp
Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, Aug 22, 2023
Society & Animals, Jan 4, 2024
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license.
Acta Analytica
Borges’ The Circular Ruins tells the story of a magician who turns out to be a character in a dre... more Borges’ The Circular Ruins tells the story of a magician who turns out to be a character in a dream. Leibowitz (2021) argues that this scenario undermines the rational indubitability of Descartes’ Cogito. The magician, he argues, is an unreal appearance and therefore does not exist. I argue that Borges drew a distinction between reality and existence and that he was right to do so. There are various senses of reality and the sense in which a dreamt character is unreal poses no threat to their existence or to the indubitability of the Cogito. The magician is unreal because he is a mind-dependent, illusory and fake. Nonetheless, he can be certain that he thinks, therefore he is.
Philosophy in review, Jun 28, 2013
Like-Minded attempts to unite the extended mind hypothesis with findings from moral psychology in... more Like-Minded attempts to unite the extended mind hypothesis with findings from moral psychology in defence of what Sneddon calls the 'Wide Moral Systems Hypothesis' (WMSH). The 'wide' indicates that moral cognition is partly constituted by the world beyond our skull and skin. After sketching the conceptual territory in Ch. 1, Sneddon concentrates on defending the WMSH on empirical grounds. He examines findings from moral psychology as they bear on moral judgment (Ch. 2), reasoning (Ch. 3), responsibility (Ch. 4), agency (Ch. 5) and amoralism (Ch. 6), demonstrating an impressive grasp of the empirical literature throughout. He also provides interesting commentary on the work of prominent theoreticians such as Haidt, Hauser, Nichols, and Prinz. Although I doubt whether Sneddon makes his ambitious central case for the WMSH, a professional audience interested or engaged in empirically orientated moral psychology will find the book valuable.
Journal of controversial ideas, Apr 29, 2022
Rivka Weinberg advances an error theory of ultimate meaning with three parts: (1) a conceptual an... more Rivka Weinberg advances an error theory of ultimate meaning with three parts: (1) a conceptual analysis, (2) the claim that the extension of the concept is empty, and (3) a proposed fitting response, namely being very, very sad. Weinberg's conceptual analysis of ultimate meaning involves two features that jointly make it metaphysically impossible, namely (i) the separateness of activities and valued ends, and (ii) the bounded nature of human lives. Both are open to serious challenges. We offer an internalist alternative to (i) and a relational alternative to (ii). We then draw out implications for (2) and conclude with reasons to be cheerful about the prospects of a meaningful life.
Like-Minded attempts to unite the extended mind hypothesis with findings from moral psychology in... more Like-Minded attempts to unite the extended mind hypothesis with findings from moral psychology in defence of what Sneddon calls the 'Wide Moral Systems Hypothesis' (WMSH). The 'wide' indicates that moral cognition is partly constituted by the world beyond our skull and skin. After sketching the conceptual territory in Ch. 1, Sneddon concentrates on defending the WMSH on empirical grounds. He examines findings from moral psychology as they bear on moral judgment (Ch. 2), reasoning (Ch. 3), responsibility (Ch. 4), agency (Ch. 5) and amoralism (Ch. 6), demonstrating an impressive grasp of the empirical literature throughout. He also provides interesting commentary on the work of prominent theoreticians such as Haidt, Hauser, Nichols, and Prinz. Although I doubt whether Sneddon makes his ambitious central case for the WMSH, a professional audience interested or engaged in empirically orientated moral psychology will find the book valuable.
Supplemental Material, SPPS_submitted_supplemental_materials.final for Unjustifiably Irresponsibl... more Supplemental Material, SPPS_submitted_supplemental_materials.final for Unjustifiably Irresponsible: The Effects of Social Roles on Attributions of Intent by Stephen J. Rowe, Andrew J. Vonasch and Michael-John Turp in Social Psychological and Personality Science
History of Philosophy Quarterly
The Cynic exhortation to live according to nature is far from transparent. I defend a traditional... more The Cynic exhortation to live according to nature is far from transparent. I defend a traditional interpretation: to live in accordance with nature is to live in accordance with human nature, which is to live as a rational animal. After discussing methodological concerns, I consider the theriophilic proposal that the ideal Cynic lives like an animal. I marshal evidence against this view and in favor of the alternative of Cynics as rational animals. Finally, I anticipate and address the concern that mine is an unduly idealized and Stoicized account.
Philosophy in review, 2012
Books and journal articles have become the dominant modes of presentation in contemporary philoso... more Books and journal articles have become the dominant modes of presentation in contemporary philosophy. This historically contingent paradigm prioritises textual expression and assumes a distinction between philosophical practice and its presented product. Using Socrates and Diogenes as exemplars, we challenge the presumed supremacy of the text and defend the importance of ways of life as modes of practiced presentation. We argue that text cannot capture the embodied activity of philosophy without remainder, and is therefore limited and incomplete. In particular, we contend that (1) a static text is essentially alienated from our practices of philosophising, (2) words cannot unambiguously represent lives, and (3) practiced presentation enriches our understanding beyond words alone. After discussing some pedagogical implications, we conclude with a plea for a pluralistic approach that recognises lives as legitimate and valuable modes of philosophical presentation.
Philosophia, 2018
Norms are standards against which actions, dispositions of mind and character, states of affairs ... more Norms are standards against which actions, dispositions of mind and character, states of affairs and so forth can be measured. They also govern our behaviour, make claims on us, bind us and provide reasons for action and thought that motivate us. J. L. Mackie argued that the intrinsic prescriptivity, or to-be-pursuedness, of moral norms would make them utterly unlike anything else that we know of. Therefore, we should favour an error theory of morality. Mackie thought that the to-be-pursuedness would have to be built into mind-independent moral reality. One alternative, however, is that the to-be-pursuedness is built into our faculty of moral sensibility. There is a large body of empirical evidence demonstrating that the emotions play a central role in making moral judgments. I shall argue that this helps to explain how normative judgments are reliably and non-accidentally related to motivation. I shall also argue that emotional experience has the right structure and properties to p...
This dissertation explores the way in which normative facts create a problem for naturalist appro... more This dissertation explores the way in which normative facts create a problem for naturalist approaches to philosophy. How can lumpy scientific matter give rise to technicolour normativity? How can normative facts show up in the world described from a scientific perspective? In this context, I start by analysing Hume’s discussion of ’is’ and ‘ought’, Moore’s open question argument, and Kripke’s interpretation of Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations. I then look at the nature of philosophical naturalism in detail, arguing that is fundamentally an epistemological commitment to the norms governing scientific publications. I consider the particular examples of Penelope Maddy’s approach to naturalising logic and the instrumentalist accounts of epistemic normativity favoured by advocates of naturalised epistemology. I argue, however, that these approaches to naturalising normativity are unsuccessful. In the second half of the dissertation, I develop a novel account of the nature of...
Possible world discourse has two important aims. First, it offers a promising approach to modal s... more Possible world discourse has two important aims. First, it offers a promising approach to modal semantics. Quantifying across possible worlds enables us to reduce modal sentences to non-modal sentences. This reduction enables us to replace the poorly understood modal terms 'possibly' and 'necessarily' with truth-functional quantifiers. In this way, a powerful and elegant modal logic, developed by Kripke (1963) and others, provides us with a theory of formal validity which can also be brought to bear on philosophical issues involving, for example, counterfactuals, contingency, essence, supervenience and theological evil. Accounts of possible worlds also aim to explain which facts about reality make modal propositions true. Because modalities are alternatives to reality, it is difficult to see how a modal proposition can be true in virtue of some fact about the actual world. Hence, it seems promising to suppose that possible worlds offer the ontological grounding for m...
Like-Minded attempts to unite the extended mind hypothesis with findings from moral psychology in... more Like-Minded attempts to unite the extended mind hypothesis with findings from moral psychology in defence of what Sneddon calls the 'Wide Moral Systems Hypothesis' (WMSH). The 'wide' indicates that moral cognition is partly constituted by the world beyond our skull and skin. After sketching the conceptual territory in Ch. 1, Sneddon concentrates on defending the WMSH on empirical grounds. He examines findings from moral psychology as they bear on moral judgment (Ch. 2), reasoning (Ch. 3), responsibility (Ch. 4), agency (Ch. 5) and amoralism (Ch. 6), demonstrating an impressive grasp of the empirical literature throughout. He also provides interesting commentary on the work of prominent theoreticians such as Haidt, Hauser, Nichols, and Prinz. Although I doubt whether Sneddon makes his ambitious central case for the WMSH, a professional audience interested or engaged in empirically orientated moral psychology will find the book valuable.
Books and journal articles have become the dominant modes of presentation in contemporary philoso... more Books and journal articles have become the dominant modes of presentation in contemporary philosophy. This historically contingent paradigm prioritises textual expression and assumes a distinction between philosophical practice and its presented product. Using Socrates and Diogenes as exemplars, we challenge the presumed supremacy of the text and defend the importance of ways of life as modes of practiced presentation. We argue that text cannot capture the embodied activity of philosophy without remainder, and is therefore limited and incomplete. In particular, we contend that (1) a static text is essentially alienated from our practices of philosophising, (2) words cannot unambiguously represent lives, and (3) practiced presentation enriches our understanding beyond words alone. After discussing some pedagogical implications, we conclude with a plea for a pluralistic approach that recognises lives as legitimate and valuable modes of philosophical presentation.
In this paper, I defend the view that truth is a constitutive norm of belief formation, argue in ... more In this paper, I defend the view that truth is a constitutive norm of belief formation, argue in favour of a virtue-theoretic account of epistemic evaluation and respond to possible objections. In §I, I argue that belief necessarily aims at truth. In §II, I defend a virtue-theoretic approach to epistemic evaluation in response to concerns about epistemic luck and doxastic control. In §III, I distinguish between evaluative and deontic norms in order to avoid the charge that we are subject to impossible epistemic demands. In §IV, I study the relationship between epistemic norms, practical interests and ascriptions of knowledge.
Social Psychological and Personality Science
How do people’s social roles change others’ perceptions of their intentions to cause harm? Three ... more How do people’s social roles change others’ perceptions of their intentions to cause harm? Three preregistered vignette-based experiments ( N = 788) manipulated the social role of someone causing harm and measured how intentional people thought the harm was. Results indicate that people judge harmful consequences as intentional when they think the actor unjustifiably caused harm. Social roles were shown to alter intention judgments by making people responsible for preventing harm (thereby rendering the harm as an intentional neglect of one’s responsibilities) or for causing the harm (thereby excusing it as an unintentional byproduct of the role). Additionally, Experiment 3 conceptually replicated and moderated the side-effect effect —revealing that people think harmful side effects are intentional when the harm is unjustified but not when a role’s responsibility justifies it. We discuss the importance of social information—including roles—in how people judge others’ intentions.
Ethics and Information Technology
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Papers by Michael-John Turp