Zoom: https://umac.zoom.us/j/96566927288

Password: 990210

Abstract

One approach to the question of why addiction excuses is to focus on the question of what addiction is. In this presentation, I take a different approach, focusing on the question of what excuses are. I argued that excuses are considerations that block inferences to a morally deficient psychology. It falls out of this view of what excuses are that a relatively surface-level property of addiction – the fact when one is addicted to something, one is highly motivated by it – is sufficient to explain why addiction excuses. The view about excuses also supports a diagnosis of why the point about motivation can seem insufficient to explain why addiction excuses. Central to the diagnosis is a fact about non-addicts: non-addicts typically underestimate how motivating objects of addiction are to addicts, thought ignorance of some of the mechanisms by which those objects motivate.

Bio

Dr. Daniel Morgan received his UG, BPhil and DPhil from the University of Oxford. He had post-docs at Oxford, University College London, and the University of Barcelona, and is presently a lecturer at the University of York. He is interested in Mind, Epistemology, and Moral Psychology. His PhD and postdoctoral work looked at issues at the nature and role of perspectival thought (e.g. thought about a time ‘as now’, thought about a person ‘as me’). More recently he has been interested in moral responsibility, including especially the nature of excuses in general and addiction in particular. He has a paper forthcoming on excuses in Free and Equal, and on spontaneous freedom in Ethics.