Speaker Series: David Shoemaker

David Shoemaker is a professor of philosophy at Tulane University.  He works on agency and responsibility, identity and ethics, and moral psychology. His Responsibility from the Margins is forthcoming (Oxford University Press).  His Knowledge, Nature, and Norms: An Introduction to Philosophy, a text and reader written and edited with Mark Timmons (Cengage, 2009). He is also the author of Personal Identity and Ethics: A Brief Introduction, (Broadview Press, 2009) and the editor of Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility, volume I (2013) and the co-editor (with Neal Tognazzini) of Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility, volume II (2014), both with Oxford University Press.

“Ecumenical Attributability”:
For many contemporary theorists, one is morally responsible for an action or attitude just in case it is properly attributable to one’s deep self.  There has been longstanding difficulty, however, in figuring out just what the deep self ostensibly consists in.  Two competing theories have become entrenched in the literature: (a) the (exclusively) Humean approach, which locates the deep self in non-cognitive psychic elements like desires or cares; and (b) the (exclusively) Platonic approach, which locates the deep self in cognitive psychic elements like evaluative judgments or commitments.  Each approach founders on counterexamples the other approach handles well, though.  In this paper, I develop and defend an ecumenical solution: an action or attitude is properly attributable to an agent just in case it expresses either her cares or her commitments.  I motivate this pluralistic view by leaning on our aretaic responses to several cases, and then I rebut the objections of various defenders of a monistic approach.