Welcome!
I work in several distinct areas. Some of my work has
concerned the normative foundations of responsibility
and blame, and the significance of sociality
for agency. Another strand of my work has focused on topics in
Latin American philosophy, especially the history of Mexican
philosophy. I've also done some work on Latinx
philosophy (i.e., philosophical questions concerned with
US Latinxs, which is distinct from philosophy produced in
Latin America), and philosophy of race more broadly.
I've also published in the philosophy of law, and I
have a robust interest in debates about philosophical
methodology, especially in connection with free
will.
Depending on your interests, these might be some reasonable
starting places:
- For my recent-ish work in the history of Latin
American philosophy, I recommend starting with "The
Philosophy of Accidentality"
- For a recent statement of my views on free will,
read this, which is from the
forthcoming second (completely re-written) edition of Four
Views on Free Will.
- For an outline of my theory of moral
responsibility, the obvious thing is Building
Better Beings, but that's long and the view
has been updated in various ways. Maybe the most currently
representative thing is "Constitutive
Instrumentalism and the Fragility of Responsibility,"
which re-configures some of the signaling
approach I developed with David Shoemaker, embedding
it within my broadly instrumentalist story about the
justification of responsibility practices.
- Reflections on the surprisingly messy
nature of the category "Latinx" can be found in this essay.
- I've also started writing about the social function
of religion and the effects of secularization,
informed by recent sociological work on secularization and
older (19th century) fights about liberalism in Latin
America. Stay tuned.
Monographs
Mexican Philosophy. (under contract) Oxford University
Press.
Four Views on Free Will: 2nd
Edition [completely revised and expanded] (in
press) Co-authored with John Martin
Fischer, Robert Kane, and Derk Pereboom. Wiley-Blackwell.
Building
Better Beings: A Theory of Moral Responsibility. (2013)
Oxford University Press
Winner of the APA
Book Prize (2015)
Published reviews of the book:
Ethics
| Notre
Dame Philosophical Reviews
| Philosophy in Review
|
Philosophical Quarterly
| Social
Theory and Practice |
Journal
of Moral Philosophy |
Choice
| Theoria
Symposium on Building
Better Beings, with critical essays by John Doris,
Victoria McGeer, and Michael Robinson, in Philosophical
Studies 172.10
(2015) pp. 2621-2678.
Four
Views on Free Will. (2007) Co-authored with John Martin Fischer,
Robert Kane, and Derk Pereboom. Wiley-Blackwell.
Symposium on Four Views on Free Will, published in Philosophical Studies
144.1 (2009) pp. 3-62 (available at Springerlink.com).
Edited
volumes
Gallegos, L., Vargas, M., and Gallegos, F. The Latina/o/x
Philosophy Reader. Routledge (under contract).
Amaya, S., Shoemaker, D., Vargas, M., eds. (2024) Oxford
Studies in Agency and Responsibility, Vol. 8: Non-Ideal
Agency and Responsibility. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Vargas, M. and Doris, J., eds. (2022) The
Oxford Handbook of Moral Psychology. Oxford
University Press.
Vargas, M. and Yaffe, G., eds (2014). Rational and Social Agency: The
Philosophy of Michael Bratman. Oxford University
Press.
¥ Published reviews of the book:
Notre
Dame Philosophical Reviews |
Social Ontology
| Journal of Moral Philosophy
Articles, book
chapters, reviews, etc. (single-authored unless otherwise
indicated)
(forthcoming)
"What is the
Free Will
Debate Even
About?" In The
Harvard Review
of Philosophy.
Abstract
|
Published
version
| Prepublication PDF
(forthcoming)
ÒBlame, Oppression, and Retributive PunishmentÓ in S. Figueroa
Rubio and I. Ortiz de Urbina (Eds.). Opresi—n,
responsabilidad y delito. [Oppression, Responsibility, and
Crime] Madrid, Spain: Marcial Pons.
Abstract
|
Published
version
| Prepublication PDF (English ver.)
(2024)
"Functionalisms
and the
Philosophy of
Action." The
Journal of
Applied
Philosophy.
(open
access)