Bradford Cokelet - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Bradford Cokelet
Ethics, 2009
This excellent book promises to be influential in debates about reasons and rationality. Schroede... more This excellent book promises to be influential in debates about reasons and rationality. Schroeder provides subtle, novel arguments for contentious views— he defends a semi-Humean theory of reasons and claims the book is “an existence proof of a viable reductive view of the normative” (82)—but he also identifies and questions numerous assumptions that are taken for granted in debates about Humeanism. Without hyperbole, I can say that even those who are unconvinced by his arguments will gain from thinking about them. I call Schroeder’s view “semi-Humean” because, although he defends the Humean claim that all reasons for action can be reduced to desires, he pairs that claim with a decidedly un-Humean account of weighing reasons and ought. In other words, Schroeder lacks Hume’s robust antirationalist animus; he would reject, for example, Hume’s claim that someone could quite reasonably prefer ending an itch to the destruction of the world. I think this difference with Hume is of more than historical interest because I think it points to a deep tension in Schroeder’s reductionist aspiration: he hopes to reduce the normative to the nonnormative, first, by reducing being a reason to nonnormative properties and, second, by reducing all other normative properties (e.g., being what someone ought to do) to reasons. As I will explain, I think we may quite reasonably maintain doubts about the first step in this program, but, even if we grant him that, we might still have doubts about his rationalist-friendly accounts of weighing reasons and ought and about how well these fit with his more authentically Humean account of reasons. Unfortunately, these worries (and Schroeder’s accounts) are too complicated to pursue here. Before turning to the more straightforward doubt I have about Schroeder’s reductionism, I should mention two chapters of the book that focus on questions about how to formulate Humeanism—these chapters promise to substantively advance the debate about Humeanism by questioning assumptions that underlie two prominent Kantian attacks. In chapter 2, Schroeder argues convincingly that Humeans can and should distinguish between reasons and the “background” factors that explain why something is a reason or what it is to be a reason and that, insofar as they avail themselves of this distinction, Humeans need not say that all our reasons for action are, if we spell things out, constituted by our desires. In addition, chapter 3 provides a nuanced discussion of why we should reject Kantian “companions in guilt” arguments to the effect that even Humeans have to make one reason claim that is not grounded in a desire claim—namely, that agents have reason to act so as to promote the satisfaction of their desires. In short, Schroeder thinks that Humeans should reject the assumption (on which such arguments apparently rest) that they need to posit a general reason for
Ethics, 2006
Graham Oddie’s Value, Desire, and Reality is a bold, thought-provoking foray into metaethics. Odd... more Graham Oddie’s Value, Desire, and Reality is a bold, thought-provoking foray into metaethics. Oddie aims high: he defends a robust nonnaturalistic form of value realism and argues that our evaluative beliefs should be guided by experiences of value, which are caused by evaluative properties. On the way to developing and defending these provocative views, Oddie purports to undermine what he calls dispositional value idealism—roughly idealized or refined desire accounts of value—and to convince us that it is desires that provide us with access to (real, nonnatural, causally efficacious) evaluative properties. In short, Oddie argues that although evaluative properties seem queer from a naturalistic point of view (in nearly the way Mackie thought), they are nonetheless real and really influence us. Oddie’s book can be roughly divided into three parts. First, after differentiating five degrees of value realism and idealism, Oddie spends chapters 2 and 3 motivating and defending what he calls the experience conjecture—roughly the idea that desires can be experiences of value. Second, in chapters 4 and 5, he develops a sophisticated model of how desires can be revised to be coherent, before arguing that it reveals why value cannot be reduced to idealized desire. Third, in chapters 6 and 7, he develops and defends his account of nonnaturalistic evaluative properties, which allows for the supervenience of the evaluative on the natural but denies reduction and explains why we should think these properties causally influence us. Finally, in chapter 8, Oddie provides an overview of how the claims developed in the three parts of his book hang together. Oddie starts the first part of the book with a puzzle: there is something odd about asserting a sentence of the form, “I believe Q is good but I have no desire for Q to obtain,” but what makes it odd? Some philosophers explain the oddity by denying that evaluative belief and desire can diverge in the way such an assertion suggests; they hold that if one believes some state of affairs is good, then one desires that it obtains, so the assertion cannot be taken at face value. After rejecting this “internalist” solution, Oddie uses the puzzle to motivate the “experience conjecture” (40)—that desires can be equated with appearances of value. Given the truth of the conjecture, he argues we can explain the oddity of believing something to be good but not desiring it by noting that this amounts to (oddly) believing something is good without having it appear that it is good; he thinks the oddity in the value case is like the oddity you face when you believe a stick is straight even though it seems (appears) crooked to you. Oddie responds to a number of potential objections to the equation of desiring something with having that thing seem (appear) good, and he also defends the idea that these appearances count as value data, providing beliefs with epistemic support. Oddie does a good job of answering several objections
Notre Dame philosophical reviews, 2014
Notre Dame philosophical reviews, 2017
The Journal of Buddhist Ethics, 2006
Adding to growing debate about the role of rebirth in Buddhist ethics, Dale S. Wright has recentl... more Adding to growing debate about the role of rebirth in Buddhist ethics, Dale S. Wright has recently advocated distinguishing and distancing the concept of karma from that of rebirth. In this paper, I evaluate Wright’s arguments in the light of Immanuel Kant’s views about supernatural beliefs. Although Kant is a paradigmatic Enlightenment critic of metaphysical speculation and traditional dogmas, he also offers thought-provoking practical arguments in favor of adopting supernatural (theistic) beliefs. In the light of Kant’s views, I argue we can assuage most of Wright’s worries about the traditional concept of rebirth and better identify the outstanding philosophic questions on which the debate between traditionalists and reformers rests. I conclude by expressing doubts about whether the karma controversy can be settled at a general level; I argue that it can be adequately discussed and resolved only within particular Buddhist traditions
This presentation was given by Dr. Blaine Fowers and Dr. Bradford Cokelet at the 2017 Annual Mid-... more This presentation was given by Dr. Blaine Fowers and Dr. Bradford Cokelet at the 2017 Annual Mid-Winter Meeting of the Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology. It is based on reflections from their own scholarly collaboration on the research project, "Virtues as Properly Motivated, Self-Integrated Traits," supported by a grant from Templeton Religion Trust, through the Self, Motivation & Virtue Project.This presentation was made possible through the support of a grant from Templeton Religion Trust. The opinions expressed in this presentation are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Templeton Religion Trust.N
Personality and Individual Differences, Jul 1, 2022
Although fairness is a key moral trait, limited research focuses on participants' observed fairne... more Although fairness is a key moral trait, limited research focuses on participants' observed fairness behavior because moral traits are generally measured through self-report. This experiment focused on day-today interpersonal fairness rather than impersonal justice, and fairness was assessed as observed behavior. The experiment investigated whether a self-reported fairness trait would moderate a situational influence on observed fairness behavior, such that individuals with a stronger fairness trait would be less affected by a situational influence than those with a weaker fairness trait. We used an iterated resource game in which participants could withdraw resources as they chose, and we manipulated the number of resources bogus players withdrew. The number of resources participants withdrew was the behavioral measure of fairness. Results confirmed the expected moderation of the unfairness manipulation by a fairness trait on observed behavior. Those reporting a stronger fairness trait were unaffected by the manipulation, whereas those reporting a weaker fairness trait were more strongly influenced.
International Encyclopedia of Ethics, 2020
Journal of Confucian Philosophy and Culture, 2020
This paper defends a new, role-differentiated account of the virtues of compassion. My main thesi... more This paper defends a new, role-differentiated account of the virtues of compassion. My main thesis is that in order to understand compassion’s value and advance debate about its ethical importance we need to recognize that the virtue of compassion involves substantively different dispositions and attitudes in different spheres of life – for example in our personal, professional, and civic lives. In each sphere, compassion is an apt and distinctive form of good-willed responsiveness to the value of living beings and their characteristic struggles to live good lives, but the relevant forms of good-willed responsiveness vary because in different contexts there are different types of living beings involved and different relations between the compassionate person and the being to whom she is compassionate. My specific focus is on compassion in human relations; I argue that, in different role and relationship contexts, the virtues of compassion involve different forms of good-willed responsiveness to human struggles to live well. In developing my account I critically engage with the emotion-focused accounts defended by Martha Nussbaum and Roger Crisp and explain how my more plausible account can shed light on the nature and value of compassion for oneself
Adding to growing debate about the role of rebirth in Buddhist ethics, Dale S. Wright has recentl... more Adding to growing debate about the role of rebirth in Buddhist ethics, Dale S. Wright has recently advocated distinguishing and distancing the concept of karma from that of rebirth. In this paper, I evaluate Wright's arguments in the light of Immanuel Kant's views about supernatural beliefs. Although Kant is a paradigmatic Enlightenment critic of metaphysical speculation and traditional dogmas, he also offers thought-provoking practical arguments in favor of adopting supernatural (theistic) beliefs. In the light of Kant's views, I argue we can assuage most of Wright's worries about the traditional concept of rebirth and better identify the outstanding philosophic questions on which the debate between traditionalists and reformers rests. I conclude by expressing doubts about whether the karma controversy can be settled at a general level; I argue that it can be adequately discussed and resolved only within particular Buddhist traditions.
Supplemental material, Fowers_Supplemental_Material for The Emerging Science of Virtue by Blaine ... more Supplemental material, Fowers_Supplemental_Material for The Emerging Science of Virtue by Blaine J. Fowers, Jason S. Carroll, Nathan Leonhardt and Bradford Cokelet in Perspectives on Psychological Science
Cognition, 2020
Do university ethics classes influence students' real-world moral choices? We aimed to conduct th... more Do university ethics classes influence students' real-world moral choices? We aimed to conduct the first controlled study of the effects of ordinary philosophical ethics classes on real-world moral choices, using non-selfreport, non-laboratory behavior as the dependent measure. We assigned 1332 students in four large philosophy classes to either an experimental group on the ethics of eating meat or a control group on the ethics of charitable giving. Students in each group read a philosophy article on their assigned topic and optionally viewed a related video, then met with teaching assistants for 50-minute group discussion sections. They expressed their opinions about meat ethics and charitable giving in a follow-up questionnaire (1032 respondents after exclusions). We obtained 13,642 food purchase receipts from campus restaurants for 495 of the students, before and after the intervention. Purchase of meat products declined in the experimental group (52% of purchases of at least $4.99 contained meat before the intervention, compared to 45% after) but remained the same in the control group (52% both before and after). Ethical opinion also differed, with 43% of students in the experimental group agreeing that eating the meat of factory farmed animals is unethical compared to 29% in the control group. We also attempted to measure food choice using vouchers, but voucher redemption rates were low and no effect was statistically detectable. It remains unclear what aspect of instruction influenced behavior.
Ethics, 2009
This excellent book promises to be influential in debates about reasons and rationality. Schroede... more This excellent book promises to be influential in debates about reasons and rationality. Schroeder provides subtle, novel arguments for contentious views— he defends a semi-Humean theory of reasons and claims the book is “an existence proof of a viable reductive view of the normative” (82)—but he also identifies and questions numerous assumptions that are taken for granted in debates about Humeanism. Without hyperbole, I can say that even those who are unconvinced by his arguments will gain from thinking about them. I call Schroeder’s view “semi-Humean” because, although he defends the Humean claim that all reasons for action can be reduced to desires, he pairs that claim with a decidedly un-Humean account of weighing reasons and ought. In other words, Schroeder lacks Hume’s robust antirationalist animus; he would reject, for example, Hume’s claim that someone could quite reasonably prefer ending an itch to the destruction of the world. I think this difference with Hume is of more than historical interest because I think it points to a deep tension in Schroeder’s reductionist aspiration: he hopes to reduce the normative to the nonnormative, first, by reducing being a reason to nonnormative properties and, second, by reducing all other normative properties (e.g., being what someone ought to do) to reasons. As I will explain, I think we may quite reasonably maintain doubts about the first step in this program, but, even if we grant him that, we might still have doubts about his rationalist-friendly accounts of weighing reasons and ought and about how well these fit with his more authentically Humean account of reasons. Unfortunately, these worries (and Schroeder’s accounts) are too complicated to pursue here. Before turning to the more straightforward doubt I have about Schroeder’s reductionism, I should mention two chapters of the book that focus on questions about how to formulate Humeanism—these chapters promise to substantively advance the debate about Humeanism by questioning assumptions that underlie two prominent Kantian attacks. In chapter 2, Schroeder argues convincingly that Humeans can and should distinguish between reasons and the “background” factors that explain why something is a reason or what it is to be a reason and that, insofar as they avail themselves of this distinction, Humeans need not say that all our reasons for action are, if we spell things out, constituted by our desires. In addition, chapter 3 provides a nuanced discussion of why we should reject Kantian “companions in guilt” arguments to the effect that even Humeans have to make one reason claim that is not grounded in a desire claim—namely, that agents have reason to act so as to promote the satisfaction of their desires. In short, Schroeder thinks that Humeans should reject the assumption (on which such arguments apparently rest) that they need to posit a general reason for
Ethics, 2006
Graham Oddie’s Value, Desire, and Reality is a bold, thought-provoking foray into metaethics. Odd... more Graham Oddie’s Value, Desire, and Reality is a bold, thought-provoking foray into metaethics. Oddie aims high: he defends a robust nonnaturalistic form of value realism and argues that our evaluative beliefs should be guided by experiences of value, which are caused by evaluative properties. On the way to developing and defending these provocative views, Oddie purports to undermine what he calls dispositional value idealism—roughly idealized or refined desire accounts of value—and to convince us that it is desires that provide us with access to (real, nonnatural, causally efficacious) evaluative properties. In short, Oddie argues that although evaluative properties seem queer from a naturalistic point of view (in nearly the way Mackie thought), they are nonetheless real and really influence us. Oddie’s book can be roughly divided into three parts. First, after differentiating five degrees of value realism and idealism, Oddie spends chapters 2 and 3 motivating and defending what he calls the experience conjecture—roughly the idea that desires can be experiences of value. Second, in chapters 4 and 5, he develops a sophisticated model of how desires can be revised to be coherent, before arguing that it reveals why value cannot be reduced to idealized desire. Third, in chapters 6 and 7, he develops and defends his account of nonnaturalistic evaluative properties, which allows for the supervenience of the evaluative on the natural but denies reduction and explains why we should think these properties causally influence us. Finally, in chapter 8, Oddie provides an overview of how the claims developed in the three parts of his book hang together. Oddie starts the first part of the book with a puzzle: there is something odd about asserting a sentence of the form, “I believe Q is good but I have no desire for Q to obtain,” but what makes it odd? Some philosophers explain the oddity by denying that evaluative belief and desire can diverge in the way such an assertion suggests; they hold that if one believes some state of affairs is good, then one desires that it obtains, so the assertion cannot be taken at face value. After rejecting this “internalist” solution, Oddie uses the puzzle to motivate the “experience conjecture” (40)—that desires can be equated with appearances of value. Given the truth of the conjecture, he argues we can explain the oddity of believing something to be good but not desiring it by noting that this amounts to (oddly) believing something is good without having it appear that it is good; he thinks the oddity in the value case is like the oddity you face when you believe a stick is straight even though it seems (appears) crooked to you. Oddie responds to a number of potential objections to the equation of desiring something with having that thing seem (appear) good, and he also defends the idea that these appearances count as value data, providing beliefs with epistemic support. Oddie does a good job of answering several objections
Notre Dame philosophical reviews, 2014
Notre Dame philosophical reviews, 2017
The Journal of Buddhist Ethics, 2006
Adding to growing debate about the role of rebirth in Buddhist ethics, Dale S. Wright has recentl... more Adding to growing debate about the role of rebirth in Buddhist ethics, Dale S. Wright has recently advocated distinguishing and distancing the concept of karma from that of rebirth. In this paper, I evaluate Wright’s arguments in the light of Immanuel Kant’s views about supernatural beliefs. Although Kant is a paradigmatic Enlightenment critic of metaphysical speculation and traditional dogmas, he also offers thought-provoking practical arguments in favor of adopting supernatural (theistic) beliefs. In the light of Kant’s views, I argue we can assuage most of Wright’s worries about the traditional concept of rebirth and better identify the outstanding philosophic questions on which the debate between traditionalists and reformers rests. I conclude by expressing doubts about whether the karma controversy can be settled at a general level; I argue that it can be adequately discussed and resolved only within particular Buddhist traditions
This presentation was given by Dr. Blaine Fowers and Dr. Bradford Cokelet at the 2017 Annual Mid-... more This presentation was given by Dr. Blaine Fowers and Dr. Bradford Cokelet at the 2017 Annual Mid-Winter Meeting of the Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology. It is based on reflections from their own scholarly collaboration on the research project, "Virtues as Properly Motivated, Self-Integrated Traits," supported by a grant from Templeton Religion Trust, through the Self, Motivation & Virtue Project.This presentation was made possible through the support of a grant from Templeton Religion Trust. The opinions expressed in this presentation are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Templeton Religion Trust.N
Personality and Individual Differences, Jul 1, 2022
Although fairness is a key moral trait, limited research focuses on participants' observed fairne... more Although fairness is a key moral trait, limited research focuses on participants' observed fairness behavior because moral traits are generally measured through self-report. This experiment focused on day-today interpersonal fairness rather than impersonal justice, and fairness was assessed as observed behavior. The experiment investigated whether a self-reported fairness trait would moderate a situational influence on observed fairness behavior, such that individuals with a stronger fairness trait would be less affected by a situational influence than those with a weaker fairness trait. We used an iterated resource game in which participants could withdraw resources as they chose, and we manipulated the number of resources bogus players withdrew. The number of resources participants withdrew was the behavioral measure of fairness. Results confirmed the expected moderation of the unfairness manipulation by a fairness trait on observed behavior. Those reporting a stronger fairness trait were unaffected by the manipulation, whereas those reporting a weaker fairness trait were more strongly influenced.
International Encyclopedia of Ethics, 2020
Journal of Confucian Philosophy and Culture, 2020
This paper defends a new, role-differentiated account of the virtues of compassion. My main thesi... more This paper defends a new, role-differentiated account of the virtues of compassion. My main thesis is that in order to understand compassion’s value and advance debate about its ethical importance we need to recognize that the virtue of compassion involves substantively different dispositions and attitudes in different spheres of life – for example in our personal, professional, and civic lives. In each sphere, compassion is an apt and distinctive form of good-willed responsiveness to the value of living beings and their characteristic struggles to live good lives, but the relevant forms of good-willed responsiveness vary because in different contexts there are different types of living beings involved and different relations between the compassionate person and the being to whom she is compassionate. My specific focus is on compassion in human relations; I argue that, in different role and relationship contexts, the virtues of compassion involve different forms of good-willed responsiveness to human struggles to live well. In developing my account I critically engage with the emotion-focused accounts defended by Martha Nussbaum and Roger Crisp and explain how my more plausible account can shed light on the nature and value of compassion for oneself
Adding to growing debate about the role of rebirth in Buddhist ethics, Dale S. Wright has recentl... more Adding to growing debate about the role of rebirth in Buddhist ethics, Dale S. Wright has recently advocated distinguishing and distancing the concept of karma from that of rebirth. In this paper, I evaluate Wright's arguments in the light of Immanuel Kant's views about supernatural beliefs. Although Kant is a paradigmatic Enlightenment critic of metaphysical speculation and traditional dogmas, he also offers thought-provoking practical arguments in favor of adopting supernatural (theistic) beliefs. In the light of Kant's views, I argue we can assuage most of Wright's worries about the traditional concept of rebirth and better identify the outstanding philosophic questions on which the debate between traditionalists and reformers rests. I conclude by expressing doubts about whether the karma controversy can be settled at a general level; I argue that it can be adequately discussed and resolved only within particular Buddhist traditions.
Supplemental material, Fowers_Supplemental_Material for The Emerging Science of Virtue by Blaine ... more Supplemental material, Fowers_Supplemental_Material for The Emerging Science of Virtue by Blaine J. Fowers, Jason S. Carroll, Nathan Leonhardt and Bradford Cokelet in Perspectives on Psychological Science
Cognition, 2020
Do university ethics classes influence students' real-world moral choices? We aimed to conduct th... more Do university ethics classes influence students' real-world moral choices? We aimed to conduct the first controlled study of the effects of ordinary philosophical ethics classes on real-world moral choices, using non-selfreport, non-laboratory behavior as the dependent measure. We assigned 1332 students in four large philosophy classes to either an experimental group on the ethics of eating meat or a control group on the ethics of charitable giving. Students in each group read a philosophy article on their assigned topic and optionally viewed a related video, then met with teaching assistants for 50-minute group discussion sections. They expressed their opinions about meat ethics and charitable giving in a follow-up questionnaire (1032 respondents after exclusions). We obtained 13,642 food purchase receipts from campus restaurants for 495 of the students, before and after the intervention. Purchase of meat products declined in the experimental group (52% of purchases of at least $4.99 contained meat before the intervention, compared to 45% after) but remained the same in the control group (52% both before and after). Ethical opinion also differed, with 43% of students in the experimental group agreeing that eating the meat of factory farmed animals is unethical compared to 29% in the control group. We also attempted to measure food choice using vouchers, but voucher redemption rates were low and no effect was statistically detectable. It remains unclear what aspect of instruction influenced behavior.