Neil Levy

Macquarie University, Philosophy, Faculty Member

University of Oxford, Philosophy, Faculty Member

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I am professor of philosophy at Macquarie University and a senior research fellow at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics.

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Hiroko Arakida

Manzoor Malik

Assumption University of Thailand

David Orentlicher

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Gehan Gunatilleke

University of Oxford

Péter Kakuk

University of Debrecen

Craig Paterson

Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi Christian University

Jeremy Bell

Campion College Australia

Raphael Cohen-Almagor

University of Hull

Prof Vaibhav Goel Bhartiya

SWAMI VIVEKANAND SUBHARTI UNIVERSITY

arthur schafer

University of Manitoba

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Papers by Neil Levy

Slippery Slopes and Physician-Assisted Suicide

Giving Death a Helping Hand, 2008

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The Surprising Truth About Disagreement

Acta Analytica, 2020

Conciliationism—the thesis that when epistemic peers discover that they disagree about a proposit... more Conciliationism—the thesis that when epistemic peers discover that they disagree about a proposition, both should reduce their confidence—faces a major objection: it seems to require us to significantly reduce our confidence in our central moral and political commitments. In this paper, I develop a typology of disagreement cases and a diagnosis of the source and force of the pressure to conciliate. Building on Vavova’s work, I argue that ordinary and extreme disagreements are surprising, and for this reason, they carry information about the likelihood of error. But deep disagreement is not surprising at all, and token deep disagreements do not put pressure on us to conciliate. However, a pattern of deep disagreements points to a different concern: not the problem of disagreement but the problem of irrelevant influences. Deep disagreement constitutes some pressure to examine the foundations from which we reason, rather than to conciliate on our central moral and political claims.

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Nudge, Nudge, Wink, Wink: Nudging is Giving Reasons

Ergo, an Open Access Journal of Philosophy, 2019

Nudges are, roughly, ways of tweaking the context in which agents choose in order to bring them t... more Nudges are, roughly, ways of tweaking the context in which agents choose in order to bring them to make choices that are in their own interests. Nudges are controversial: opponents argue that because they bypass our reasoning processes, they threaten our autonomy. Proponents respond that nudging, and therefore this bypassing, is inevitable and pervasive: if we do not nudge ourselves in our own interests, the same bypassing processes will tend to work to our detriment. In this paper, I argue that we should reject the premise common to opponents and proponents: that nudging bypasses our reasoning processes. Rather, well designed nudges present reasons to mechanisms designed to respond to reasons of just that kind. In this light, it is refusing to nudge that threatens our autonomy, by refusing to give us good reasons for action.

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Taking responsibility for health in an epistemically polluted environment

Theoretical medicine and bioethics, Apr 1, 2018

Proposals for regulating or nudging healthy choices are controversial. Opponents often argue that... more Proposals for regulating or nudging healthy choices are controversial. Opponents often argue that individuals should take responsibility for their own health, rather than be paternalistically manipulated for their own good. In this paper, I argue that people can take responsibility for their own health only if they satisfy certain epistemic conditions, but we live in an epistemic environment in which these conditions are not satisfied. Satisfying the epistemic conditions for taking responsibility, I argue, requires regulation of this environment. I describe some proposals for such regulation and show that we cannot reject all regulation in the name of individual responsibility. We must either regulate individuals' healthy choices or regulate the epistemic environment.

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We're All Folk: An Interview with Neil Levy about Experimental Philosophy and Conceptual Analysis

Annals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science, 2011

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Due deference to denialism: explaining ordinary people’s rejection of established scientific findings

Synthese, 2017

There is a robust scientific consensus concerning climate change and evolution. But many people r... more There is a robust scientific consensus concerning climate change and evolution. But many people reject these expert views, in favour of beliefs that are strongly at variance with the evidence. It is tempting to try to explain these beliefs by reference to ignorance or irrationality, but those who reject the expert view seem often to be no worse informed or any less rational than the majority of those who accept it. It is also tempting to try to explain these beliefs by reference to epistemic overconfidence. However, this kind of overconfidence is apparently ubiquitous, so by itself it cannot explain the difference between those who accept and those who reject expert views. Instead, I will suggest that the difference is in important part explained by differential patterns of epistemic deference, and these patterns, in turn, are explained by the cues that we use to filter testimony. We rely on cues of benevolence and competence to distinguish reliable from unreliable testifiers, but when debates become deeply politicized, asserting a claim may itself constitute signalling lack of reliability.

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Nudges in a post-truth world

Journal of medical ethics, 2017

Nudges-policy proposals informed by work in behavioural economics and psychology that are designe... more Nudges-policy proposals informed by work in behavioural economics and psychology that are designed to lead to better decision-making or better behaviour-are controversial. Critics allege that they bypass our deliberative capacities, thereby undermining autonomy and responsible agency. In this paper, I identify a kind of nudge I call a nudge to reason, which make us more responsive to genuine evidence. I argue that at least some nudges to reason do not bypass our deliberative capacities. Instead, use of these nudges should be seen as appeals to mechanisms partially constitutive of these capacities, and therefore as benign (so far as autonomy and responsible agency are concerned). I sketch some concrete proposals for nudges to reason which are especially important given the apparent widespread resistance to evidence seen in recent political events.

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Foucault as Virtue Ethicist

Foucault Studies, 2004

In his last two books and in the essays and interviews associated with them, Foucault develops a ... more In his last two books and in the essays and interviews associated with them, Foucault develops a new mode of ethical thought he describes as an aesthetics of existence. I argue that this new ethics bears a striking resemblance to the virtue ethics that has become prominent in Anglo-American moral philosophy over the past three decades, in its classical sources, in its opposition to rule-based systems and its positive emphasis upon what Foucault called the care for the self. I suggest that seeing Foucault and virtue ethicists as engaged in a convergent project sheds light on a number of obscurities in Foucault's thought, and provides us with a historical narrative in which to situate his claims about the development of Western moral thought.

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Strong-willed but not successful: The importance of strategies in recovery from addiction

Addictive Behaviors Reports, 2016

Philosophers, cognitive and social psychologists and laypeople often subscribe to the view that w... more Philosophers, cognitive and social psychologists and laypeople often subscribe to the view that willpower is central to recovery from addiction. But there are reasons to suspect that willpower is much less important to explaining recovery than this view suggests. Methods: Here we report findings from a qualitative longitudinal study on how substance dependent people see their agency and self-control, and how their self-control develops over time. 69 opioid, alcohol and methamphetamine dependent people were interviewed over a 3 year period. Results: Most of the participants described themselves as strong willed; in fact, as very strong willed. However, there seemed no correlation between having a (self-assessed) strong will and recovery status. Rather, the number of strategies cited by participants distinguished those in stable recovery from those who were not. Participants in recovery were also more enthusiastic about strategies than those who have not succeeded in controlling substance use. Willpower remained important, but was itself used strategically. Conclusions: People with addiction seem not to be short on willpower; rather, recovery is dependent on developing strategies to preserve willpower by controlling the environment.

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Persistent Vegetative State, Akinetic Mutism, and Consciousness

The Neuroscience, Ethics, and Law of Severe Brain Damage, 2016

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Joseph Keim Campbell , Free Will . Reviewed by

Philosophy in Review, 2011

The free will debate can be approached in several different ways. For some, it is a debate within... more The free will debate can be approached in several different ways. For some, it is a debate within moral philosophy, typically about the justification of punishment; for others, it is a debate about the mind and its causal powers. For yet others, it is a debate about the nature of fundamental reality, and therefore falls within the province of metaphysics. It is this last approach that Campbell takes in his excellent book. Campbell covers every major position in the debate, but he is especially concerned with arguments for free will skepticism. Free will skepticism, as Campbell understands it, is motivated by incompatibilism-the view that free will is incompatible with determinism-combined with the view that indeterminism cannot help. Since Campbell understands the debate in this manner, he centers the book around discussion of arguments for incompatibilism, especially the 'Consequence Argument' and the 'Direct Argument', both associated with Peter Van Inwagen.

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The Antipodean Philosopher: Public Lectures on Philosophy in Australia and New Zealand

Neither Fish nor Fowl: Implicit Attitudes as Patchy Endorsements

Noûs, 2014

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The Prospects for Evolutionary Ethics Today

One reason for the widespread resistance to evolutionary accounts of the origins of humanity is t... more One reason for the widespread resistance to evolutionary accounts of the origins of humanity is the fear that they undermine morality: if morality is based on nothing more than evolved dispositions, it would be shown to be illusory, many people suspect. This view is shared by some philosophers who take their work on the evolutionary origins of morality to undermine moral realism. If they are right, we are faced with an unpalatable choice: to reject morality on scientific grounds, or to reject our best-confirmed scientific explanation of our origins in order to save morality. Fortunately, as I show, we have no reason to accept the deflationary claims of some evolutionary ethicists: morality, as we ordinarily understand it, is fully compatible with evolution.

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The regulation of cognitive enhancement devices: refining Maslen et al.'s model

Journal of Law and the Biosciences, 2015

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Dissolving the Puzzle of Resultant Moral Luck

Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 2015

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Handbook of Neuroethics

Neuroethics – as a multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary endeavor – examines the implications... more Neuroethics – as a multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary endeavor – examines the implications of the neurosciences on human beings in general and on their self-understanding and their social interactions in particular. The range of approaches adopted in neuroethics includes but is not limited to historical, anthropological, ethical, philosophical, theological, sociological and legal approaches. Based on the study of neuroscientific developments and innovations, examined from different angles, this Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the international neuroethical debate, and offers unprecedented insights into the impact of neuroscientific research, diagnosis, and therapy. This Handbook deals with a plethora of topics divided into in three parts: the first part contains discussions of theories of neuroethics, identity, free will, as well as other philosophical considerations. The second part is dedicated to issues involved in current and future clinical applications of ...

Disease, Normality, and Current Pharmacological Moral Modification

Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, 2014

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Resisting Weakness of the Will

Philosophy and phenomenological research, 2011

I develop an account of weakness of the will that is driven by experimental evidence from cogniti... more I develop an account of weakness of the will that is driven by experimental evidence from cognitive and social psychology. I will argue that this account demonstrates that there is no such thing as weakness of the will: no psychological kind corresponds to it. Instead, weakness of the will ought to be understood as depletion of System II resources. Neither the explanatory purposes of psychology nor our practical purposes as agents are well-served by retaining the concept. I therefore suggest that we ought to jettison it, in favour of the vocabulary and concepts of cognitive psychology.

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The regulation of cognitive enhancement devices: extending the medical model

Journal of law and the biosciences, 2014

This article presents a model for regulating cognitive enhancement devices (CEDs). Recently, it h... more This article presents a model for regulating cognitive enhancement devices (CEDs). Recently, it has become very easy for individuals to purchase devices which directly modulate brain function. For example, transcranial direct current stimulators are increasingly being produced and marketed online as devices for cognitive enhancement. Despite posing risks in a similar way to medical devices, devices that do not make any therapeutic claims do not have to meet anything more than basic product safety standards. We present the case for extending existing medical device legislation to cover CEDs. Medical devices and CEDs operate by the same or similar mechanisms and pose the same or similar risks. This fact coupled with the arbitrariness of the line between treatment and enhancement count in favour of regulating these devices in the same way. In arguing for this regulatory model, the paper highlights potential challenges to its implementation, and suggests solutions.

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Slippery Slopes and Physician-Assisted Suicide

Giving Death a Helping Hand, 2008

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The Surprising Truth About Disagreement

Acta Analytica, 2020

Download

Nudge, Nudge, Wink, Wink: Nudging is Giving Reasons

Ergo, an Open Access Journal of Philosophy, 2019

Download

Taking responsibility for health in an epistemically polluted environment

Theoretical medicine and bioethics, Apr 1, 2018

Download

We're All Folk: An Interview with Neil Levy about Experimental Philosophy and Conceptual Analysis

Annals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science, 2011

Download

Due deference to denialism: explaining ordinary people’s rejection of established scientific findings

Synthese, 2017

Download

Nudges in a post-truth world

Journal of medical ethics, 2017

Download

Foucault as Virtue Ethicist

Foucault Studies, 2004

Download

Strong-willed but not successful: The importance of strategies in recovery from addiction

Addictive Behaviors Reports, 2016

Download

Persistent Vegetative State, Akinetic Mutism, and Consciousness

The Neuroscience, Ethics, and Law of Severe Brain Damage, 2016

Download

Joseph Keim Campbell , Free Will . Reviewed by

Philosophy in Review, 2011

Download

The Antipodean Philosopher: Public Lectures on Philosophy in Australia and New Zealand

Neither Fish nor Fowl: Implicit Attitudes as Patchy Endorsements

Noûs, 2014

Download

The Prospects for Evolutionary Ethics Today

Download

The regulation of cognitive enhancement devices: refining Maslen et al.'s model

Journal of Law and the Biosciences, 2015

Download

Dissolving the Puzzle of Resultant Moral Luck

Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 2015

Download

Handbook of Neuroethics

Disease, Normality, and Current Pharmacological Moral Modification

Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, 2014

Download

Resisting Weakness of the Will

Philosophy and phenomenological research, 2011

Download

The regulation of cognitive enhancement devices: extending the medical model

Journal of law and the biosciences, 2014

Download

Persistent Vegetative State, Akinetic Mutism and Consciousness

by Will Davies and Neil Levy

Finding Consciousness: The Neuroscience, Ethics, and Law of Severe Brain Damage

There is a strong intuition that conscious beings have a special kind and perhaps an especially h... more

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anti anti no platforming.docx

No platforming – the refusal to allow those who espouse views seen as inflammatory the opportunit... more No platforming – the refusal to allow those who espouse views seen as inflammatory the opportunity to speak in certain forums – is very controversial. Proponents typically cite the possibility of harms to disadvantaged groups, and sometimes epistemically paternalistic considerations in its favour. Opponents invoke the value of free speech and respect for intellectual autonomy in favour of more open speech, arguing that the harms that might arise from bad speech are best addressed by rebuttal, not silencing. In this paper, I argue that there is a powerful consideration in favour of no platforming some speakers: allowing them a platform generates genuine higher-order evidence in favour of their claims. When that higher-order evidence would be misleading, we may reasonably believe it should not be generated.

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In Praise of Outsourcing

Religious beliefs have some puzzling features. They may fail to guide behavior in some circumsta... more Religious beliefs have some puzzling features. They may fail to guide behavior in some circumstances to which their content is apparently relevant. Even when they do guide behavior, they may do so in ways that appear oddly limited. And yet in other cases, they may motivate behavior that seems inexplicable except by supposing that the agent has unshakable faith in what they profess to believe. I argue that these facts arise from the ways in which religious beliefs are coupled to external cues. These cues may play the role of triggering internal representations or even of partially constituting them. I argue that the coupling of religious beliefs to triggers entails that in cases in which their content is relevant but the cue is unavailable, the representation will fail to guide behavior. When the representation is tokened, we may get behavioural incongruity because the representation is coupled to a partially belief-constitutive cue which is absent, or because the expectation of such a prop leads to the tokening of a sparse representation.

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Nudges to Reason

Nudges – policy proposals informed by work in behavioural economics and psychology that are desig... more Nudges – policy proposals informed by work in behavioural economics and psychology that are designed to lead to better decision-making or better behaviour – are controversial. Critics allege that they bypass our deliberative capacities, thereby undermining autonomy and responsible agency. In this paper, I identify a kind of nudge I call a nudge to reason, which make us more responsive to genuine evidence. I argue that at least some nudges to reason do not bypass our deliberative capacities. Instead, use of these nudges should be seen as appeals to mechanisms partially constitutive of these capacities, and therefore as benign (so far as autonomy and responsible agency are concerned). I sketch some concrete proposals for nudges to reason which are especially important given the apparent widespread resistance to evidence seen in recent political events.

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You Meta Believe It.

Because of the privileged place of belief in explaining behaviour, mismatch cases - in which agen... more Because of the privileged place of belief in explaining behaviour, mismatch cases - in which agents sincerely claim to believe that p, but act in a way that is inconsistent with that belief - have attracted a great deal of attention. In this paper, I argue that some of these cases, at least, are explained by agents believing that they believe that p, while failing to believe that p. They do not believe that ~p; rather, they have an indistinct first-order, beliefy, representation that p.

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Science gone wild: explaining irrational beliefs

There is robust scientific consensus concerning climate change, evolution and the safety and effi... more There is robust scientific consensus concerning climate change, evolution and the safety and efficacy of vaccines. But many people reject these expert views, in favour of beliefs that are strongly at variance with the evidence. It is tempting to try to explain these-beliefs by reference to ignorance or irrationality, but those who reject the expert view seem to be no worse informed or any less rational than those people outside the relevant scientific community who accept it. I argue that overconfidence in the power of individual reasoning plays some role in explaining these beliefs. However, this overconfidence is actually ubiquitous, so it cannot explain the difference between those who accept and those who reject expert views by itself. I argue that the difference in beliefs between dissenters and those who accept these views is a consequence of the agents to whom each group is disposed to defer, and the differences in deference, in turn, are explicable by how we respond to markers of benevolence and competence.

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Obsessive-compulsive disorder as a disorder of attention

Cognitive and meta-cognitive models of obsessive-compulsive disorder explain it as the result of ... more Cognitive and meta-cognitive models of obsessive-compulsive disorder explain it as the result of personality traits and belief biases of sufferers. But while there is good evidence for a correlation between OCD and the cognitive traits these models make central to it, the correlation is by no means perfect: a substantial number of sufferers do not manifest these traits. In this paper, I propose a predictive coding account of the disorder, which aims to explain both the symptoms and the cognitive traits on which the cognitive models turn. On this account, OCD centrally involves heightened and dysfunctionally focused attention to components of action and thought contents that are normally unconscious or of which we are only peripherally conscious. This gives rise to anxiety and the cognitive dispositions because these components carry information that predicts a catastrophic outcome, as well as information compatible with a more realistic model of the world. The behaviors characteristic of OCD are aimed at resolving the ambiguity between these models by altering the world, suppressing the errors or increasing the precision of the information.

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Book review: Understanding blindness

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2004

Baron-Cohen, S. 2003. The Essential Difference: Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain. London: Al... more Baron-Cohen, S. 2003. The Essential Difference: Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain. London: Allen Lane. Simon Baron-Cohen is well known to researchers in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, largely on the strength of Mindblindness (Baron-Cohen 1997), his important book on the origins and nature of autism. He has now followed up that book with The Essential Difference (Baron-Cohen 2003), a much more ambitious work which aims to explain not only autism, once again, but also the (alleged) essential differences between men and women. This is a book which aims to reach a much wider audience. It is therefore important to examine it, both because it is the product of an important thinker, and because it is likely to have an impact on the wider intellectual climate. Unfortunately, The Essential Difference is a very disappointing book. There are many things wrong with it. But its central fault is one that is all too characteristic of a great deal of work in psychology. It is the complete innocence of a conception of reason that is, broadly, phenomenological. 1 Phenomenol-ogy's most important contribution to our intellectual tradition, I believe, does not consist in its distinctive methodology but in its conception of reason and intelligence as embodied, situated and holistic, and as decidedly not reducible to rule-governed manipulations of symbolic representations. Neglect this vision of reason at your peril, as Baron-Cohen's work vividly demonstrates. His superficial notion of intelligence vitiates both his central theses: that there is an 'essential difference' between men and women, and that autism is the product of 'the extreme male brain'. Baron-Cohen's major claims (stated, as we shall soon see, more carefully than he is wont to do) are these: 1. On average, men and women differ psychologically. Men have an advantage when it comes to systemizing, and women have an advantage at empathizing. 2. These differences are biological in origin, as is demonstrated by studies of neonates and correlations between psychological traits and fetal testos-terone. 3. Systemizing and empathizing give rise to different kind of cognitive abilities. Men and women have different, but equally valuable, intellectual skills. Neither gender is more intelligent than the other.

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