For a full list of my publications, click here. Please do not hesitate to ask me for a paper by email if you do not have access to it (sifferdk@elmhurst.edu).
Available on Request, until I can figure out how to post it here: I have a handout that attempts to summarize the first three chapters of my book, Why Punishment Matters. This is the handout from my presentation at the Law and Society Association meeting in May of 2025.
(2025) “Psychiatric Diagnoses and Criminal Responsibility: An argument for the relevance of intellectual disability,” with Tyler Fagan in Criminal Justice Ethics. Abstract: In this paper we explore the relevance of psychiatric diagnoses to responsibility assessments, with a focus on criminal law. There is wide agreement that certain mental disorders and developmental conditions may impact one’s capacity for responsible agency, but whether a diagnosis itself is relevant—and if so, how—remains unclear and controversial. A psychiatric diagnosis carries information about the mental differences or symptoms a person with that diagnosis might experience. Because of this, we argue that diagnoses are relevant to responsibility when they pick out symptoms or differences that are likely to undermine the specific capacities that matter for responsibility. We claim that where there is enough empirical evidence about a diagnosis’s impact on legal agency, a criminal court must investigate whether a defendant ought to be fully or partially excused. Intellectual disability is this sort of diagnosis. Evidence that a person has intellectual disability at the time of their wrongful act does not automatically settle the question of their responsibility, but this diagnosis requires that the court investigate the nature and degree of responsibility-relevant differences and symptoms experienced by that person at the time of the act in question.
(2025) “Scaffolding Bad Moral Agents” with Anneli Jefferson and Henrick Heinrichs, Topoi 44 (2): 445-455. Abstract: Recent work on ecological accounts of moral responsibility and agency have argued for the importance of social environments for moral reasons-responsiveness. Moral audiences can scaffold individual agents’ sensitivity to moral reasons and their motivation to act on them, but they can also undermine it. In this paper, we look at two case studies of ‘scaffolding bad’, where moral agency is undermined by social environments: street gangs and online incel communities. In discussing these case studies, we draw both on recent situated cognition literature and on scaffolded responsibility theory. We show that the way individuals are embedded into a specific social environment changes the moral considerations they are sensitive to in systematic ways because of the way these environments scaffold affective and cognitive processes, specifically those that concern the perception and treatment of ingroups and outgroups. We argue that gangs undermine reasons-responsiveness to a greater extent than incel communities because gang members are more thoroughly immersed in the gang environment.
(2024) “Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Is the State Justified in Using Selective Exclusionary Rules as Punishment?” in Crime Prevention by Exclusion: Ethical Considerations, Thomas Søbirk Petersen, Sebastian Jon Holmen and Jesper Ryberg, Eds (Routledge). Abstract: Selective exclusionary rules, including protective orders and parole conditions, target an offender’s decision-making processes by attempting to keep them away from places or persons. State management of crime by selective exclusion seems to distrust a person’s ability to choose well in certain circumstances, and thus attempts to limit or manipulate the opportunities for choice. Some exclusionary rules, including certain protective orders that prohibit proximity to a likely victim, support diachronic agency and may be justified as punishment. However, selective exclusionary rules that are too harsh and thus disproportionate, and those that are not well designed to have the right sort of deterrent effect, cannot be justified as punishment. Further, some exclusionary rules may constitute state coercion or wrongful manipulation.
(2023) “Structural Injustice and Fair Opportunity,” for a special issue of Criminal Law & Philosophy on David Brink’s Book, Fair Opportunity and Responsibility (Oxford University Press).
(2023) “Deserving Blame, and Sometimes Punishment,” for a special issue of Criminal Law & Philosophy on Moore’s book Mechanical Minds (Oxford University Press).
(2023) Jefferson, A. and Sifferd, K. “Responsible agency and the importance of moral audience,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice (online first).
(2023) “Do Rapists Deserve Criminal Treatment?” in the Palgrave Handbook on Philosophy of Punishment, (Altman, M. Ed.)
(2022) “Responsibility for Reckless Rape,” with Anneli Jefferson, Humana Mente – Journal of Philosophical Studies: New Work on Agency and Responsibility 42(15), 119-143 (Oisin Deery Ed.).
(2022) “Practical Wisdom and Cognitive Diversity,” with Anneli Jefferson, in Values and Virtues in a Changing World, Royal Institute of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume (Jefferson, A., Panos, P., Palermos, O., and Webber, J., Eds.).
(2022) “Do Rape Cases sit in a Moral Blindspot?“, in Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Action, Routledge Press (Sam Murray & Paul Henne, Eds.).
(2022) “Negligence and Normative Import: A reply to comments on Responsible Brains,” with Tyler Fagan, Criminal Law & Philosophy 22, 1-18. Response to comments on the book Responsible Brains (Hirstein, Sifferd, and Fagan, 2018).
(2022) “Neuroethics,” with Joshua VanArsdall, book chapter in Mind, Cognition, and Neuroscience: A Philosophical Introduction, Routledge Press (B. Young and C. Dicey Jennings, eds.).
(2022) “Legal Insanity and Moral Knowledge: Why is a lack of moral knowledge related to a mental illness exculpatory?” book chapter in Agency, Responsibility, & Mental Disorder: Exploring the Connections, under contract, Oxford University Press (Matt King & Joshua May, Eds.).
(2021) “How is criminal punishment forward-looking?”, The Monist 104(4), 540-553 (A. Jefferson and P. Robichard, Eds of special issue).
(2021) “Why not weak retributivism?” Journal of Legal Philosophy 46(2), 138-143. Comment on Rejecting Retributivism by Gregg Caruso (2021).
(2021) “Philosophy Labs: Bringing Pedagogy and Research Together,” with Kit Rempala and Joseph Vukov, Teaching Philosophy: 44(2).
(2020) “Juvenile Self-Control and Legal Responsibility: Building a Scalar Standard,” with Tyler Fagan and William Hirstein, in Surrounding Self-Control, Oxford University Press (A. Mele, Ed.).
(2020) “Chemical Castration as Punishment,” in Neuro-Interventions and the Law, Oxford University Press (N. Vincent & Nadelhoffer, T. Eds.).
(2018) Responsible Brains: Neuroscience, Law, and Human Culpability, with William Hirstein and Tyler Fagan, MIT press.
Pleas and Excuses 