W S-A

Professional Interests:

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong's research interests include ethics, philosophy of law, epistemology, informal logic and philosophy of religion. In applied ethics, he has worked on abortion, nuclear deterrence, the insanity defense, computer ethics, and, recently, environmental ethics. In moral theory, he has written on moral dilemmas, consequentialism, and moral epistemology, where he defends limited moral skepticism. In informal logic, he creates teaching videos and defends the propositional calculus. In philosophy of law, he studies constitutional interpretation and defends a perspectival theory of law that grants some truth to the classic antagonists: legal positivism, legal realism, and natural law theory. He also published a debate book on the existence of God and a book on the independence of morality from religion and God. Currently he is working on moral psychology and brain science, as well as the uses and implications of neuroscience for legal systems.

Courses for 2009-2010:

Summer 2009
COCO 8: Evidence and Law

Fall 2009
3 (11) Reason and Argument (course website link with videos)

Selected Publications and Current Projects:

Books:

Morality Without God? (Oxford University Press, 2009)
Moral Psychology, Voume 1: The Evolution of Morality, Volume 2: The Cognitive Science of Morality, Volume 3: Morality in the Brain (MIT Press, 2008), edited.
Moral Skepticisms (Oxford University Press, 2006)
Perspectives on Climate Change: Science, Economics, Politics, Ethics, co-edited with Richard Howarth (Elsevier, 2005)
Understanding Arguments; An Introduction to Informal Logic, Eighth Edition, with Robert J. Fogelin (Wadsworth, 2009)
Pyrrhonian Skepticism (Oxford University Press, 2004), edited.
God? A Debate between a Christian and an Atheist, co-authored with William Lane Craig (Oxford University Press, 2003)
Rationality, Rules, and Ideals; Critical Essays on Bernard Gert's Moral Theory with a Reply, co-edited with Robert Audi (Rowman and Littlefield, 2002)
Philosophy of Law: Classic and Contemporary Readings with Commentary, co-edited with Frederick Schauer (Harcourt and Oxford University Press, 1996)
Moral Knowledge? New Readings in Moral Epistemology, co-edited with Mark Timmons (Oxford University Press, 1996)
Modality, Morality, and Belief; Essays in Honor of Ruth Barcan Marcus, co-edited with Diana Raffman & Nicholas Asher (Cambridge University Press, 1995)
Contemporary Perspectives on Constitutional Interpretation, co-edited with Susan Brison (Westview, 1993)
Moral Dilemmas (Basil Blackwell, 1988)

Selected Articles:

Moral Psychology and Brain Science

“Consequences, Action, and Intention as Factors in Moral Judgments: An fMRI
Investigation” (with Jana Schaich Borg, Catherine Hynes, John van Horn, and
Scott Grafton), Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 18, 5 (2006), pp. 803-817.

“Moral Intuitionism Meets Empirical Psychology” in Metaethics After Moore, T. Horgan
and M. Timmons (eds.). New York: Oxford University Press, 2006, pp. 339-365.

“Framing Moral Intuitions” in Moral Psychology, Volume 2: The Cognitive Science of
Morality, ed. W. Sinnott-Armstrong (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008), pp. 47-76.

“Is Moral Phenomenology Unified?”, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences,
7(1), 2008, pp. 85-97.

“Moral Reasoning” with Gilbert Harman and Kelby Mason for Handbook on
Empirical Moral Psychology, ed. Stephen Stich, John Doris, and Shaun Nichols
(in progress)

“Moral Intuitions as Heuristics” with Liane Young & Fiery Cushman for Handbook
on Empirical Moral Psychology, ed. Stephen Stich, John Doris, & Shaun Nichols
(in progress)

Experimental Philosophy

“Intention, Temporal Order, and Moral Judgments” with Ron Mallon, Jay Hull,
and Tom McCoy, Mind and Language, 23, 1 (2008), pp.90-106.

"Abstract + Concretre = Paradox" in Experimental Philosophy, edited by Shaun Nichols and
Joshua Knobe. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp.209-230.

“Moral Judgments Affect Doing/Allowing Judgments” with Fiery Cushman
and Joshua Knobe, Cognition 108, 1 (2008), pp.281-289.

Law and Neuroscience

“Brain Scans Go Legal” (with Scott Grafton, Michael Gazzaniga, and Suzanne Gazzaniga),
Scientific American Mind (December 2006/January 2007), pp. 30-37.

"Neural Lie Detection in Courts" in Using Imaging to Identify Deceit: Scientific and Ethical Questions.
American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2009).

“Can neurological evidence help courts assess criminal responsibility? Lessons
from law and neuroscence” with Eyal Aharoni, Chadd Funk, and Michael
Gazzaniga for The Year in Cognitive Neuroscience, 2008, Annals of the New York
Academy of Sciences, vol. 1124 (Boston: Blackwell, 2008), pp. 145-160.

Contrastivism

“A Contrastivist Manifesto”, Social Epistemology 22, 3 (July 2008), pp. 257-270.

Book symposia on Moral Skepticisms with commentators: David Copp, Peter
Railton, Mark Timmons (in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research),
Jamie Dreier and David McNaughton (in Philosophical Books), and
Gerry Hough, Peter Baumann, and Martijn Blaauw (in Philosophical
Quarterly) (all in 2008.)

"Free Contrastivism" commissioned for a collection to be edited by Martijn
Blaauw (in progress)