Scholars@Duke
Owen Flanagan Jr.

Owen Flanagan Jr.

James B. Duke Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy
Philosophy
ojf@duke.edu
Duke Box 90743, Durham, NC 27708-0743
201E West Duke Bldg, Durham, NC 27708
Office hours On leave 2016-2017  

Selected Publications

Moral contagion and logical persuasion in the Mozi 1

Journal Article Journal of Chinese Philosophy · January 1, 2021 Full text Cite

How to Do Things with Emotions: THE MORALITY OF ANGER AND SHAME ACROSS CULTURES

Book · January 1, 2021 The world today is full of anger. Everywhere we look, we see values clashing and tempers rising, in ways that seem frenzied, aimless, and cruel. At the same time, we witness political leaders and others who lack any sense of shame, even as they display car ... Cite

The disunity of addictive cravings

Journal Article Philosophy, Psychiatry and Psychology · September 1, 2020 Full text Cite

Cross-cultural philosophy and well-being

Chapter · October 10, 2019 Cite

Is Oneness an Over-belief?

Journal Article Philosophy and Phenomenological Research · September 1, 2019 Full text Cite

Identity and addiction

Chapter · May 31, 2018 Cite

Neuroexistentialism: Third-wave existentialism

Chapter · January 1, 2018 Neuroexistentialism is a recent expression of existential anxiety over the nature of persons. Unlike previous existentialisms, neuroexistentialism is not caused by a problem with ecclesiastical authority, as was the existentialism represented by Kierkegaar ... Full text Cite

Neuroexistentialism: Meaning, morals, and purpose in the age of neuroscience

Book · January 1, 2018 Existentialism is a concern about the foundation of meaning, morals, and purpose. Existentialisms arise when some foundation for these elements of being is under assault. In the past, first-wave existentialism concerned the increasingly apparent inability ... Full text Cite

Philosophy and Science Dialogue: Consciousness

Journal Article Frontiers of Philosophy in China · January 1, 2018 This is a dialogue between a philosopher and a scientist about the scientific explanation of consciousness. What is consciousness? Does it admit of scientific explanation? If so, what must a scientific theory of consciousness be like in order to provide us ... Full text Cite

Neuroexistentialism

Journal Article The Philosophers' Magazine · 2018 Full text Cite

Philosophy of Multicultures

Journal Article The Philosophers' Magazine · 2018 Full text Cite

Addiction Doesn’t Exist, But it is Bad for You

Journal Article Neuroethics · April 1, 2017 There is a debate about the nature of addiction, whether it is a result of brain damage, brain dysfunction, or normal brain changes that result from habit acquisition, and about whether it is a disease. I argue that the debate about whether addiction is a ... Full text Cite

Against the Drug Cure Model: Addiction, Identity, and Pharmaceuticals

Chapter · January 1, 2017 Recent advances in brain imaging methods as well as increased sophistication in neuroscientific modeling of the brain’s reward systems have facilitated the study of neural mechanisms associated with addiction such as processes associated with motivation, d ... Full text Cite

The Character of Consciousness

Chapter · January 1, 2017 Cite

Naturalizing Ethics

Chapter · February 5, 2016 In this chapter, we provide (1) an argument for why ethics should be naturalized, (2) an analysis of why it is not yet naturalized, (3) a defense of ethical naturalism against two fallacies - Hume's and Moore's - that ethical naturalism allegedly commits, ... Full text Cite

Justice, care, and gender: The Kohlberg-Gilligan debate revisited

Chapter · January 1, 2016 In 1958, G. E. M. Anscombe wrote, “It is not profitable for us at present to do moral philosophy; that should be laid aside at any rate until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology, in which we are conspicuously lacking” (186). Anscombe hinted (and s ... Full text Cite

Confucian Moral Sources

Journal Article PHILOSOPHICAL CHALLENGE FROM CHINA · 2015 Cite

PERFORMING ONESELF

Chapter · 2014 Cite

Phenomenal Authority: The Epistemic Authority of Alcoholics Anonymous

Chapter · 2014 To understand a complicated psycho-bio-social phenomenon(a) such as addiction to alcohol one wants ideally a phenomenology, a behavioral and cognitive psychology, a physiology, and a neurobiology – all embedded in a sociology. One wants to know what it is ... Cite

*It Takes a Metaphysics, Raising Virtuous Buddhists*

Chapter · 2014 Abstract: Buddhism is an extremely demanding ethic, possibly as demanding as act-utilitarianism. It endorses virtuous dispositions, compassion and loving-kindness, to alleviate the suffering of all sentient beings and to bring well-being in its stead. How ... Cite

Introduction

Chapter · 2014 Cite

Buddhism and the scientific image: Reply to critics

Journal Article Zygon · January 1, 2014 I provide a précis of The Bodhisattva's Brain: Buddhism Naturalized, and then respond to three critics, Christian Coseru, Charles Goodman, and Bronwyn Finnigan. © 2014 by the Joint Publication Board of Zygon. ... Full text Cite

The shame of addiction.

Journal Article Frontiers in psychiatry · October 2013 Addiction is a person-level phenomenon that involves twin normative failures. A failure of normal rational effective agency or self-control with respect to the substance; and shame at both this failure, and the failure to live up to the standards for a goo ... Full text Cite

Buddhism and The Scientific Image

Journal Article Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science · 2013 Cite

Neuroexistentialism, Eudaimonics, and Positive Illusions

Journal Article SYNTHESE Philosophy Library: Studies in Epistemology, Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science · 2013 Cite

The View From the East Pole: Buddhist and Confucian Tolerance

Journal Article · 2013 In this chapter I ask the question: Why are Buddhists and Confucians more tolerant, less conflict prone, less war-like, etc. than Abrahamic peoples IF THEY ARE?1 A proper analysis that positioned us to adequately answer this question would require defining ... Cite

The View From the East Pole: Buddhist and Confucian Tolerance

Chapter · 2013 In this chapter I ask the question: Why are Buddhists and Confucians more tolerant, less conflict prone, less war-like, etc. than Abrahamic peoples IF THEY ARE?1 A proper analysis that positioned us to adequately answer this question would require defining ... Cite

Narrative and Consciousness: Literature, Psychology and the Brain

Book · March 22, 2012 The evocation of narrative as a way to understand the content of consciousness, including memory, autobiography, self, and imagination, has sparked truly interdisciplinary work among psychologists, philosophers, and literary critics. Even neuroscientists h ... Full text Cite

Narrative and Consciousness: Literature, Psychology and the Brain

Book · March 22, 2012 The evocation of narrative as a way to understand the content of consciousness, including memory, autobiography, self, and imagination, has sparked truly interdisciplinary work among psychologists, philosophers, and literary critics. Even neuroscientists h ... Full text Cite

Sexual Identities and Narratives of Self

Chapter · March 22, 2012 Certain philosophical ideas about identity, what makes one human, and other such dimensions may be associated with conceptions that concern how scientific knowledge about sense of self may be reinforced by processes that occur within the body and the brain ... Full text Cite

What do the Psychology and Biology of Morality have to do with Ethics?: Ethics as Human Ecology

Journal Article Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B · 2012 Cite

Naturalizing epistemic virtue

Book · January 1, 2012 An epistemic virtue is a personal quality conducive to the discovery of truth, the avoidance of error, or some other intellectually valuable goal. Current work in epistemology is increasingly value-driven, but this volume presents the first collection of e ... Full text Cite

Introduction: Naturalized virtue epistemology

Chapter · January 1, 2012 This volume aims to launch a powerful and largely unexplored position in epistemology: naturalized virtue epistemology. Most debates in virtue epistemology have been decidedly axiological and aim to clarify the goals, values, and ends constitutive of epist ... Full text Cite

Phenomenal and historical selves

Journal Article Grazer Philosophische Studien · January 1, 2012 There are two ways a person can experience or, what is dif erent, can think about herself: f rst, as a subject of experience who feels a certain characteristic way, the-way-it-feels-to-be-oneself; and, second, as the person who is the subject of a particul ... Full text Cite

Quid pro quo: the ecology of the self.

Journal Article Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · October 2011 Moderated by Steve Paulson, producer and interviewer for public radio's To the Best of Our Knowledge, philosopher and neurobiologist Owen Flanagan (Duke University), and psychologists Paul Bloom (Yale University) and Roy Baumeister (Florida State Universit ... Full text Cite

Neuroscience: Knowing and feeling

Journal Article Nature · January 13, 2011 Full text Cite

Performing Oneself

Chapter · 2011 Abstract: I explore the ancient idea that life is some kind of dramatic or artistic performance. How seriously and literally ought we to take this idea that life is like a dramatic performance, even that it is one? There are metaphysical and logical questi ... Cite

I, hypocrite

Journal Article NEW SCIENTIST · December 18, 2010 Full text Link to item Cite

Neuroexistentialism, with David Barack

Journal Article EURAMERICA · September 2010 Cite

What does the modularity of morals have to do with ethics? Four moral sprouts plus or minus a few.

Journal Article Topics in cognitive science · July 2010 Flanagan (1991) was the first contemporary philosopher to suggest that a modularity of morals hypothesis (MMH) was worth consideration by cognitive science. There is now a serious empirically informed proposal that moral competence is best explained in ter ... Full text Cite

Can do attitudes: Some positive illusions are not misbeliefs

Journal Article Behavioral and Brain Sciences · December 1, 2009 McKay & Dennett (M&D) argue that positive illusions are a plausible candidate for a class of evolutionarily selected for misbeliefs. I argue (Flanagan 1991; 2007) that the class of alleged positive illusions is a hodge-podge, and that some of its members a ... Full text Cite

The Literate Ape

Journal Article New Scientist · November 23, 2009 Link to item Cite

The Ego Tunnel

Journal Article New Scientist · March 21, 2009 Link to item Cite

One Enchanted Being: Neuroexistentialism & Meaning

Journal Article Zygon: journal of religion and science · March 2009 Full text Cite

Where in the World is the Mind?

Journal Article New Scientist · January 17, 2009 Link to item Cite

Your mind is more than your brain

Journal Article New Scientist · January 14, 2009 Two new books argue that the mind extends beyond the brain into the world around us. © 2009 Reed Business Information Ltd, England. ... Full text Cite

The Structures of Meaningful Life Stories

Journal Article Argentinian Journal of Philosophy and Psychology · 2009 Cite

Five Questions

Chapter · 2009 Cite

Ethical expressions: Why moralists scowl, frown and smile

Chapter · January 1, 2009 A major task for philosophy is to adjudicate conflicts between our ordinary way of understanding persons and the world - what Wilfrid Sellars called the 'manifest image' - and scientific accounts of persons and the world - the 'scientific image'. Sometimes ... Full text Cite

Moral contagion and logical persuasion in the Mozi

Journal Article Journal of Chinese Philosophy · September 1, 2008 Full text Cite

The Neural Pathway to the White House

Journal Article The New Scientist · July 2008 Cite

Review: The Political Mind by George Lakoff

Journal Article New Scientist · May 31, 2008 If winning elections is a matter of manipulating brains, that must make George Bush and his team experts in neuroscience - but Owen Flanagan isn't convinced. © 2008 Reed Business Information Ltd, England. ... Full text Cite

Consciousness

Journal Article · February 26, 2008 What is consciousness? What role, if any, does consciousness play in the explanation of cognition? Can consciousness be studied empirically? These are the questions. Here are the answers ... Full text Cite

Where is the Happiness

Chapter · 2008 Cite

Naturalizing Ethics

Chapter · 2007 Cite

Moral Issues of Human-Non-Human Primate Neural Grafting

Journal Article Science · July 15, 2005 Cite

Ethics: Moral issues of human-non-human primate neural grafting.

Journal Article Science (New York, N.Y.) · July 2005 Full text Cite

The colour of happiness

Journal Article New Scientist · December 1, 2003 Cite

Almas Que Suenan

Book · 2003 Spanish translation of DREAMING SOULS. ... Cite

Emotional Expressions

Journal Article · 2003 Cite

The Neurobiology of Sexual Self-Consciousness: Mind and the Interplay of Brain and Body

Chapter · 2003 Chapter on Narrative Self-Construction by individuals w/non-standard sexual identities. ... Cite

Ethical expressions: Why moralists scowl, frown and smile

Chapter · January 1, 2003 Darwinism And The Manifest Image Of Humankind: A major task for philosophy is to adjudicate conflicts between our ordinary way of understanding persons and the world - what Wilfrid Sellars called the 'manifest image' - and scientific accounts of persons an ... Full text Cite

A decade of teleofunctionalism: Lycan's consciousness and consciousness and experience

Journal Article Minds and Machines · February 1, 2001 The books 'consciouness' and 'consciouness and experience,' written by Lycan, were reviewed. According to the reviwers, the author has given some powerful ideas about how functionalism would work, and a whole armory of useful tools. These two books are an ... Full text Cite

Dreaming is not an adaptation

Journal Article Behavioral and Brain Sciences · December 1, 2000 The five papers in this issue all deal with the proper evolutionary function of sleep and dreams, these being different. To establish that some trait of character is an adaptation in the strict biological sense requires a story about the fitness enhancing ... Full text Cite

Dreaming Souls

Book · 1999 Cite

Foreward

Chapter · 1999 Cite

Zombies and the Function of Consciousness

Journal Article The Journal of Consciousness Studies · 1996 Cite

Moral Network

Chapter · 1996 Cite

Deconstructing dreams: The spandrels of sleep

Conference TOWARD A SCIENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS · January 1, 1996 Link to item Cite

Consciousness and the natural method.

Journal Article Neuropsychologia · September 1995 'Consciousness' is a superordinate term for a heterogeneous array of mental state types. The types share the property of 'being experienced' or 'being experiences'--'of there being something that it is like for the subject to be in one of these states.' I ... Full text Cite

The Moment of Truth on the Dublin Bridge

Journal Article South Atlantic Quarterly · 1995 Cite

"Stream of Consciousness"

Journal Article · 1995 Cite

"D. C. Dennett"

Journal Article · 1995 Cite

Consciousness

Chapter · 1995 Cite

D. C. Dennett

Chapter · 1995 Cite

Behaviorism

Chapter · 1995 Cite

THE MOMENT OF TRUTH ON DUBLIN BRIDGE, A RESPONSE TO PICKERING,ANDREW

Journal Article SOUTH ATLANTIC QUARTERLY · 1995 Cite

Deconstructing Dreams: The Spandrels of Sleep

Journal Article The Journal of Philosophy · 1995 Full text Link to item Cite

The Malaise of Modernity.Charles Taylor

Journal Article Ethics · October 1993 Full text Cite

Identity, Gender, and Strong Evaluation

Journal Article Noûs · April 1991 Full text Cite

The modularity of consciousness

Journal Article Behavioral and Brain Sciences · January 1, 1991 Full text Cite

Virtue and Ignorance

Journal Article The Journal of Philosophy · August 1990 Full text Cite

Materialism and immaterialism: A reply to Robinson

Journal Article Contemporary Psychology: A Journal of Reviews · September 1986 Full text Cite

Psychoanalysis and Social Practice: A Comment on Grünbaum

Journal Article The Behavioral and Brain Sciences · 1986 Cite

Psychoanalysis as a social activity

Journal Article Behavioral and Brain Sciences · January 1, 1986 Full text Cite

Admirable Immorality and Admirable Imperfection

Journal Article The Journal of Philosophy · 1986 Full text Link to item Cite

CONSCIOUSNESS, NATURALISM, AND NAGEL

Journal Article JOURNAL OF MIND AND BEHAVIOR · June 1, 1985 Link to item Cite

Impartiality and Particularity

Journal Article Social Research · 1983 Full text Link to item Cite

Quinean Ethics

Journal Article Ethics · October 1982 Full text Cite

A Reply to Lawrence Kohlberg

Journal Article Ethics · April 1982 Full text Cite

Moral Structures?

Journal Article Philosophy of the Social Sciences · January 1, 1982 Full text Cite

Psychology, progress and the problem of reflexivity: a study in the epistemological foundations of psychology.

Journal Article Journal of the history of the behavioral sciences · January 1981 Full text Cite

Malcolm and the fallacy of behaviorism

Journal Article Philosophical Studies · December 1, 1974 Full text Cite

"The Neurobiology of Sexual Self-Consciousness: Mind and the Interplay of Brain and Body"

Journal Article Chapter on Narrative Self-Construction by individuals w/non-standard sexual identities. ... Cite