31 found
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  1. Commemoration and Emotional Imperialism.Alfred Archer & Benjamin Matheson - 2022 - Journal of Applied Philosophy 39 (5):761-777.
    The Northern Irish footballer James McClean chooses not to take part in the practice of wearing a plastic red poppy to commemorate those who have died fighting for the British Armed Forces. Each year he faces abuse, including occasional death threats, for his choice. This forms part of a wider trend towards ‘poppy enforcement’, the pressuring of people, particularly public figures, to wear the poppy. This enforcement seems wrong in part because, at least in some cases, it involves abuse. But (...)
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  2. Honouring and Admiring the Immoral: An Ethical Guide.Alfred Archer & Benjamin Matheson - 2021 - New York: Routledge.
    Is it appropriate to honour and admire people who have created great works of art, made important intellectual contributions, performed great sporting feats or shaped the history of a nation if those people have also acted immorally? This book provides a philosophical investigation of this important and timely question. -/- The authors draw on the latest research from ethics, value theory, philosophy of emotion, social philosophy and social psychology to develop and substantiate arguments that have been made in the public (...)
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  3. Emotional Imperialism.Alfred Archer & Benjamin Matheson - 2023 - Philosophical Topics 51 (1):7-25.
    How might people be wronged in relation to their feelings, moods, and emotions? Recently philosophers have begun to investigate the idea that these kinds of wrongs may constitute a distinctive form of injustice: affective injustice. In previous work, we have outlined a particular form of affective injustice that we called emotional imperialism. This paper has two main aims. First, we aim to provide an expanded account of the forms that emotional imperialism can take. We will do so by drawing inspiration (...)
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  4. When Artists Fall: Honoring and Admiring the Immoral.Alfred Archer & Benjamin Matheson - 2019 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 5 (2):246-265.
    Is it appropriate to honor artists who have created great works but who have also acted immorally? In this article, after arguing that honoring involves identifying a person as someone we ought to admire, we present three moral reasons against honoring immoral artists. First, we argue that honoring can serve to condone their behavior, through the mediums of emotional prioritization and exemplar identification. Second, we argue that honoring immoral artists can generate undue epistemic credibility for the artists, which can lead (...)
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  5. Is Blameworthiness Forever?Andrew C. Khoury & Benjamin Matheson - 2018 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 4 (2):204-224.
    Many of those working on moral responsibility assume that "once blameworthy, always blameworthy." They believe that blameworthiness is like diamonds: it is forever. We argue that blameworthiness is not forever; rather, it can diminish through time. We begin by showing that the view that blameworthiness is forever is best understood as the claim that personal identity is sufficient for diachronic blameworthiness. We argue that this view should be rejected because it entails that blameworthiness for past action is completely divorced from (...)
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  6. Blameworthiness is Terminable.Benjamin Matheson - forthcoming - Philosophical Quarterly.
    A theory of blameworthiness must answer two fundamental questions. First, what makes a person blameworthy when they act? Second, what makes a person blameworthy after the time of action? Two main answers have been given to the second question. According to interminability theorists, blameworthiness necessarily doesn’t even diminish over time. Terminability theorists deny this. In this paper, I argue against interminability and in favour of terminability. After clarifying the debate about whether blameworthiness is interminable or terminable, I argue there’s no (...)
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  7. Celebrity, Democracy, and Epistemic Power.Alfred Archer, Amanda Cawston, Benjamin Matheson & Machteld Geuskens - 2020 - Perspectives on Politics 18 (1):27 - 42.
    What, if anything, is problematic about the involvement of celebrities in democratic politics? While a number of theorists have criticized celebrity involvement in politics (Meyer 2002; Mills 1957; Postman 1987) none so far have examined this issue using the tools of social epistemology, the study of the effects of social interactions, practices and institutions on knowledge and belief acquisition. This paper will draw on these resources to investigate the issue of celebrity involvement in politics, specifically as this involvement relates to (...)
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  8. In defence of the Four-Case Argument.Benjamin Matheson - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (7):1963-1982.
    Pereboom’s Four-Case Argument was once considered to be the most powerful of the manipulation arguments against compatibilism. However, because of Demetriou’s :595–617, 2010) response, Pereboom has significantly weakened his argument. Manipulation arguments in general have also been challenged by King : 65–83, 2013). In this paper, I argue that the Four-Case Argument resists both these challenges. One upshot is that Pereboom doesn’t need weaken his argument. Another is that compatibilists still need a response the Four-Case Argument. And another is that (...)
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  9. Compatibilism and personal identity.Benjamin Matheson - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 170 (2):317-334.
    Compatibilists disagree over whether there are historical conditions on moral responsibility. Historicists claim there are, whilst structuralists deny this. Historicists motivate their position by claiming to avoid the counter-intuitive implications of structuralism. I do two things in this paper. First, I argue that historicism has just as counter-intuitive implications as structuralism when faced with thought experiments inspired by those found in the personal identity literature. Hence, historicism is not automatically preferable to structuralism. Second, I argue that structuralism is much more (...)
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  10. Self-Manipulation and Moral Responsibility.Benjamin Matheson - 2023 - Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy 42 (3):107-129.
    In this paper, I first argue that sometimes freely and knowingly manipulating oneself does not fully preserve moral responsibility – namely, in cases of practically distinct self-manipulation. However, I argue that practically distinct self-manipulation preserves moral responsibility to some extent because such a self-manipulated person is more morally responsibility than an other-manipulated person. This is an important result: manipulating oneself doesn’t always fully preserve one’s moral responsibility for one’s actions. But in what sense is the self-manipulated person more morally responsible? (...)
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  11. It was a Different Time: Judging Historical Figures by Today’s Moral Standards.Alfred Archer & Benjamin Matheson - forthcoming - Journal of Applied Philosophy.
    How should we respond to historical figures who played an important role in their country’s history but have also perpetrated acts of great evil? Much of the existing philosophical literature on this topic has focused on explaining why it may be wrong to celebrate such figures. However, a common response that is made in popular discussions around these issues is that we should not judge historical figures by today’s standards. Our goal in this paper is to examine the most plausible (...)
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  12. Towards a structural ownership condition on moral responsibility.Benjamin Matheson - 2019 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 49 (4):458-480.
    In this paper, I propose and defend a structural ownership condition on moral responsibility. According to the condition I propose, an agent owns a mental item if and only if it is part of or is partly grounded by a coherent set of psychological states. As I discuss, other theorists have proposed or alluded to conditions like psychological coherence, but each proposal is unsatisfactory in some way. My account appeals to narrative explanation to elucidate the relevant sense of psychological coherence.
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  13. Tracing and heavenly freedom.Benjamin Matheson - 2018 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 84 (1):57-69.
    Accounts of heavenly freedom typically attempt to reconcile the claim that the redeemed have free will with the claim that the redeemed cannot sin. In this paper, I first argue that Pawl and Timpe :396–417, 2009) tracing account of heavenly freedom—according to which the redeemed in heaven have only ‘derivative’ free will—is untenable. I then sketch an alternative account of heavenly freedom, one which eschews derivative free will. On this account, the redeemed are able to sin in heaven.
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  14.  78
    Shame and the sports fan.Alfred Archer & Benjamin Matheson - 2019 - Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 46 (2):208-223.
    ABSTRACTSports fans sometimes feel shame for their team’s moral transgressions. In this paper, we investigate this phenomenon. We offer an account of sports fan shame in terms of collective shame....
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  15. The Out of Character Objection to the Character Condition on Moral Responsibility.Robert J. Hartman & Benjamin Matheson - 2022 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 11 (1):24-31.
    According to the character condition, a person is morally responsible for an action A only if a character trait of hers non-accidentally motivates her performing A. But that condition is untenable according to the out of character objection because people can be morally responsible for acting out of character. We reassess this common objection. Of the seven accounts of acting out of character that we outline, only one is even a prima facie counterexample to the character condition. And it is (...)
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  16. The Threat from Manipulation Arguments.Benjamin Matheson - 2018 - American Philosophical Quarterly 55 (1):37-50.
    Most seem to presume that what is threatening about manipulation arguments is the ‘no difference’ premise – that is, the claim that there are no responsibility-relevant differences between a manipulated agent and her merely causally determined counterpart. This presumption underlies three recent replies to manipulation arguments from Kearns (2012), King (2013), and Schlosser (2015). But these replies fail to appreciate the true threat from manipulation arguments – namely, the manipulation cases that are allegedly counterexamples to the leading compatibilist conditions on (...)
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  17. Escaping Heaven.Benjamin Matheson - 2014 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 75 (3):197-206.
    In response to the problem of Hell, Buckareff and Plug (Relig Stud 41:39–54, 2005; Relig Stud 45:63–72, 2009) have recently proposed and defended an ‘escapist’ conception of Hell. In short, they propose that the problem of Hell does not arise because God places an open-door policy on Hell. In this paper, I expose a fundamental problem with this conception of Hell—namely, that if there’s an open door policy on Hell, then there should be one on Heaven too. I argue that (...)
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  18. Admiration Over Time.Alfred Archer & Benjamin Matheson - 2020 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 101 (4):669-689.
    In this paper, we investigate the diachronic fittingness conditions of admiration – that is, what it takes for a person to continue or cease to be admirable over time. We present a series of cases that elicit judgements that suggest different understandings of admiration over time. In some cases, admirability seems to last forever. In other cases, it seems that it can cease within a person’s lifetime if she changes sufficiently. Taken together, these cases highlight what we call the puzzle (...)
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  19. Manipulators and Moral Standing.Benjamin Matheson - 2019 - Philosophia 47 (4):1197-1214.
    Manipulation arguments aim to show that compatibilism is false. Usually, they aim to undermine compatibilism by first eliciting the intuition that a manipulated agent is not morally responsible. Patrick Todd's (2012) Moral Standing Manipulation Argument instead aims to first elicit the intuition that a manipulator cannot blame her victim. Todd then argues that the best explanation for why a manipulator cannot blame her victim is that incompatibilism is true. In this paper, I present three lines of defence against this argument (...)
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  20.  55
    Introduction: Symposium on The Ethics of Indirect Intervention.Helen Frowe & Benjamin Matheson - 2022 - Journal of Applied Philosophy 39 (1):1-5.
  21. Fame and Redemption: On the Moral Dangers of Celebrity Apologies.Benjamin Matheson - 2023 - Journal of Social Philosophy.
    In this paper, I first consider three possible explanations for why celebrities typically apologise publicly and sometimes also include their fans among the targets of their apology. I then identify three moral dangers of celebrity apologies, the third of which arises specifically for fan-targeted apologies, and each of which teaches us important lessons about the practice of celebrity apologies. From these individual lessons, I draw more general lessons about apologies from those with elevated social positions and the powers they are (...)
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  22. More Than A Feeling: The Communicative Function of Regret.Benjamin Matheson - 2017 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 25 (5):664-681.
    Rüdiger Bittner argues that regret is not useful and so it is always unreasonable to feel and express it. In this paper, I argue that regret is often reasonable because regret has a communicative function: it communicates where we stand with respect to things we have done and outcomes that we have caused. So, I not only argue that Bittner’s argument is unsuccessful, I also shed light on the nature and purpose of regret.
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  23. Alternative Possibilities, Volitional Necessities, and Character Setting.Benjamin Matheson - 2017 - Disputatio 9 (45):287-307.
    Conventional wisdom suggests that the power to do otherwise is necessary for being morally responsible. While much of the literature on alternative possibilities has focused on Frankfurt’s argument against this claim, I instead focus on one of Dennett’s (1984) arguments against it. This argument appeals to cases of volitional necessity rather than cases featuring counterfactual interveners. van Inwagen (1989) and Kane (1996) appeal to the notion of ‘character setting’ to argue that these cases do not show that the power to (...)
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  24. Practical Identity.Benjamin Matheson - 2017 - In Benjamin Matheson & Yujin Nagasawa (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of the Afterlife. London: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 391-411.
    In this paper, I present a dilemma for those who believe in the afterlife: either we won’t survive death (or an eternal life) in the sense that most matters to us or we will become bored if we do. First, I argue that even if we – in a strict sense – survive death, there is practical sense in which we don’t survive death. This applies, I contend, to all accounts of the afterlife that: eventually, we lose our practical identity. (...)
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  25. The Case Against Non-Moral Blame.Benjamin Matheson & Per-Erik Milam - 2022 - In Mark C. Timmons (ed.), Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, Volume 11.
    Non-moral blame seems to be widespread and widely accepted in everyday life—tolerated at least, but often embraced. We blame athletes for poor performance, artists for bad or boring art, scientists for faulty research, and voters for flawed reasoning. This paper argues that non-moral blame is never justified—i.e. it’s never a morally permissible response to a non-moral failure. Having explained what blame is and how non-moral blame differs from moral blame, the paper presents the argument in four steps. First, it argues (...)
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  26. Admiration and Education: What should we do with immoral intellectuals?Alfred Archer & Benjamin Matheson - 2019 - Ethical Perspectives 26 (1):5-32.
    How should academics respond to the work of immoral intellectuals? This question appears to be one that is of increasing concern in academic circles but has received little attention in the academic literature. In this paper, we will investigate what our response to immoral intellectuals should be. We begin by outlining the cases of three intellectuals who have behaved immorally or at least have been accused of doing so. We then investigate whether it is appropriate to admire an immoral person (...)
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  27.  98
    The Palgrave Handbook of the Afterlife.Benjamin Matheson & Yujin Nagasawa (eds.) - 2017 - London: Palgrave Macmillan.
    This unique Handbook provides a sophisticated, scholarly overview of the most advanced thought regarding the idea of life after death. Its comprehensive coverage encompasses historical, religious, philosophical and scientific thinking. Starting with an overview of ancient thought on the topic, The Palgrave Handbook of the Afterlife examines in detail the philosophical coherence of the main traditional notions of the nature of the afterlife including heaven, hell, purgatory and rebirth. In addition (and breaking with traditional conceptions) it also explores the most (...)
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  28.  32
    The incompatibility between free will theodicies and religious experience.Benjamin Matheson - unknown
    This thesis suggests a novel problem for theists. This problem is that there is an incompatibility between free will theodicies and religious experience. Free will theodicies are responses to the problem of evil and religious experience is form of interaction between God and people. The free will theodicies that are discussed say that God gives us free will for two purposes. These purposes are to excuse God from direct responsibility for evil in the world and to act as a qualifying (...)
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  29.  20
    Kevin Timpe: Free Will in Philosophical Theology. Bloomsbury 2014. [REVIEW]Benjamin Matheson - 2017 - European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 9 (1):212--221.
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  30. Tim Mawson. Free Will: A Guide for the Perplexed. Continuum, 2011. [REVIEW]Benjamin Matheson - 2012 - European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 4 (1):260--264.
  31.  42
    War Crimes: Causes, Excuses, and Blame Matthew Talbert & Jessica Wolfendale New York, Oxford University Press, 2019 x + 168 pp, $74.00. [REVIEW]Benjamin Matheson - 2019 - Journal of Applied Philosophy 36 (5):844-846.