Writings of 2014

I guess it's a tradition for me now, posting a retrospect of the past year's writings on New Year's Day. (Here are the retrospects of 2012 and 2013.)

Two notable things this past year were (a.) several essays on a topic that is new to me: skeptical epistemology of metaphysics ("The crazyist metaphysics of mind", "If materialism is true, the United States is probably conscious", "1% skepticism", "Experimental evidence for the existence of an external world"); and (b.) a few pieces of philosophical science fiction, a genre in which I had only published one co-authored piece before 2014. These two new projects are related: one important philosophical function of science fiction is to enliven metaphysical possibilities that one might not otherwise have taken seriously, thus opening up more things to be undecided among.

Of course I also continued to work on some of my other favorite topics: self-knowledge, moral psychology, the nature of attitudes, the moral behavior of ethicists. Spreading myself a bit thin, perhaps!

Non-fiction appearing in print in 2014:

• “The moral behavior of ethics professors: Relationships among self-reported behavior, expressed normative attitude, and directly observed behavior” (first author, with Joshua Rust), Philosophical Psychology 27, 293-327.
• “The moral behavior of ethicists and the power of reason” (second author, with Joshua Rust), in Advances in Experimental Moral Psychology, ed. H. Sarkissian and J. Wright (Continuum).
• “The moral behavior of ethicists and the role of the philosopher”, in C. Lütge, H. Rusch, and M. Uhl, eds., Experimental Ethics (Palgrave).
• “The crazyist metaphysics of mind”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 92, 665-682.
• “The problem of known illusion and the resemblance of experience to reality”, Philosophy of Science 81, 954-960.
• “What good philosophy does: David Chalmers’s The Conscious Mind”, Chronicle of Higher Education (Nov. 7).
• “A theory of jerks”, Aeon Magazine (Jun. 4).
• (interview) “The splintered skeptic”, in R. Marshall, Philosophy at 3:AM: Questions and Answers with 25 Top Philosophers (Oxford).
• (revision and update) “Introspection,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• (reprint) “When your eyes are closed, what do you see?” (Ch. 8 of Perplexities of Consciousness, released as an MIT Press BITS).
• (reprint) “The essence of jerkitude”, The Week ("A theory of jerks", with different title).

Non-fiction finished and forthcoming:

• “Experimental evidence for the existence of an external world” (first author, with Alan T. Moore), Journal of the American Philosophical Association .
• “If materialism is true, the United States is probably conscious”, Philosophical Studies.
• “Philosophers recommend science fiction”, in S. Schneider, ed., Science Fiction and Philosophy, 2nd ed. (Wiley-Blackwell).
• “The behavior of ethicists” (first author, with Joshua Rust), in W. Buckwalter and J. Sytsma, eds., Blackwell Companion to Experimental Philosophy (Wiley-Blackwell).

Non-fiction in draft and circulating:

• “1% skepticism”.
• “Do ethics classes influence student behavior?” [a 2013 manuscript I'm not quite happy with but which I'm still collecting thoughts about].
• “Professional philosophers’ susceptibility to order effects and framing effects in evaluating moral dilemmas” (first author, with Fiery Cushman).

Some favorite blog posts:

• Our possible imminent divinity (Jan. 2)
• Our moral duties to monsters (Mar. 28)
• Meta-analysis of the effect of religion on crime: The missing positive tail (Apr. 11)
• Goldfish-pool immortality (May 30)
• Tononi's exclusion postulate would make consciousness (nearly) irrelevant (Jul. 16)
• SEP analysis continued: Jewish, non-Anglophone, queer, and disabled philosophers (Aug. 14)
• On aiming for moral mediocrity (Oct. 2)
• Possible psychology of a Matrioshka Brain (Oct. 9)

Fiction:

• “What kelp remembers”, Weird Tales: Flashes of Weirdness series, #1, April 14, 2014.
• “The tyrant’s headache”, Sci Phi Journal, issue 3. [appeared Dec. 2014, dated Jan. 2015]
• Out of the jar”, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction [forthcoming].
• “Momentary sage” The Dark [forthcoming].
• (reprint) “Reinstalling Eden” (first author, with R. Scott Bakker), in S. Schneider, ed., Science Fiction and Philosophy, 2nd ed. (Wiley-Blackwell) [forthcoming].

(I also published a couple of poems, and I have several science fiction stories in draft. If you're interested to see any of these, feel free to email me.)