A number of recent writers have expressed scepticism about the viability of a specifically moral concept of obligation, and some of the considerations offered have been interesting and persuasive. This is a scepticism that has its roots in Nietzsche, even if he is mentioned only rather rarely in the debate. More proximately, the scepticism in question receives seminal expression in Elizabeth Anscombe's 1958 essay, ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’, a piece that is often paid lip-service to, but—like Nietzsche's work—has only rarely been (...) taken seriously by those wishing to defend the conception of obligation under attack. This is regrettable. Anscombe's essay is powerful and direct, and it makes a forthright case for the claim that, in the absence of a divine law conception of ethics, any specifically moral concept of obligation must be redundant, and that the best that can be hoped for in a secular age is some sort of neo-Aristotelianism. Anscombe is right about this, we think. And, among those who disagree, one of the very few to have taken her on at all explicitly is Christine Korsgaard, whose Kantianism of course commits her to the view that the concept of moral obligation is central, with or without God. Here, we try to show that Korsgaard loses the argument. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal, Alex Neill and Aaron Ridley argue that relational theories of art are rooted in a misunderstanding of what it would take to falsify the family resemblance theories they are meant to supplant, and are incapable of meeting all the requirements a successful theory of art must meet. Hence, they are doomed to failure. We show that the arguments Neill and Ridley offer are rooted in misunderstandings about relational theories and the (...) requirements for a successful theory of art. If relational theories must fail, it will not be for the reasons identified by Neill and Ridley. (shrink)

Ridley’s overall strategy, in bare outline form, seems to be this. Collingwood's points about the close connections between artistic expression and physical involvement with a medium are so good that anything else he says must be reinterpreted so as to be consistent with these Expression insights. In particular his overall theory of art, usually interpreted as an "Ideal theory" (according to which a work of art is somehow "in the head", perhaps as the content of a mental imaginative act (...) of expression) must be charitably reinterpreted to remove any apparent references to such mental entities. I spell out two related puzzlements with this strategy. (shrink)

Aaron Ridley posed the question of whether results in the ontology of musical works would have implications for judgements about the interpretation, meaning or aesthetic value of musical works and performances. His arguments for the conclusion that the ontology of musical works have no aesthetic consequences are unsuccessful, but he is right in thinking (in opposition to Andrew Kania and others) that ontological judgements have no aesthetic consequences. The key to demonstrating this conclusion is the recognition that ontological (...) judgments are a priori and aesthetic judgments are empirical. A priori judgements have no empirical consequences. Neither fundamental ontology of music nor higher- order ontological reflections have any aesthetic consequences. (shrink)

I argue, in this thesis, that proper name reference is a wholly pragmatic phenomenon. The reference of a proper name is neither constitutive of, nor determined by, the semantic content of that name, but is determined, on an occasion of use, by pragmatic factors. The majority of views in the literature on proper name reference claim that reference is in some way determined by the semantics of the name, either because their reference simply constitutes their semantics (which generally requires a (...) very fine-grained individuation of names), or because names have an indexical-like semantics that returns a referent given certain specific contextual parameters. I discuss and criticize these views in detail, arguing, essentially, in both cases, that there can be no determinate criteria for reference determination—a claim required by both types of semantic view. I also consider a less common view on proper name reference: that it is determined wholly by speakers’ intentions. I argue that the most plausible version of this view—a strong neo-Gricean position whereby all utterance content is determined by the communicative intentions of the speaker—is implausible in light of psychological data. In the positive part of my thesis, I develop a pragmatic view of proper name reference that is influenced primarily by the work of Charles Travis. I argue that the reference of proper names can only be satisfactorily accounted for by claiming that reference occurs not at the level of word meaning, but at the pragmatic level, on an occasion of utterance. I claim that the contextual mechanisms that determine the reference of a name on an occasion are the same kinds of thing that determine the truth-values of utterances according to Travis. Thus, names are, effectively, occasion sensitive in the way that Travis claims predicates and sentences (amongst other expressions) are. Finally, I discuss how further research might address how my pragmatic view of reference affects traditional issues in the literature on names, and the consequences of the view for the semantics of names. (shrink)

The Born probability measure describes the statistics of measurements in which observers self-locate themselves in some region of reality. In psi-ontic quantum theories, reality is directly represented by the wavefunction. We show that quantum probabilities may be identified using fractions of a universal multiple-time wavefunction containing both causal and retrocausal temporal parts. This wavefunction is defined in an appropriately generalized history space on the Keldysh time contour. Our deterministic formulation of quantum mechanics replaces the initial condition of standard Schrödinger dynamics, (...) with a network of ‘fixed points’ defining quantum histories on the contour. The Born measure is derived by summing up the wavefunction along these histories. We then apply the same technique to the derivation of the statistics of measurements with pre- and postselection. (shrink)

We investigate two types of temporal symmetry in quantum mechanics. The first type, time symmetry, refers to the inclusion of opposite time orientations on an equivalent physical footing. The second, event symmetry, refers to the inclusion of all time instants in a history sequence on an equivalent physical footing. We find that recent time symmetric interpretations of quantum mechanics fail to respect event symmetry. Building on the recent fixed-point formulation (FPF) of quantum theory, we formulate the notion of an event (...) precisely as a fixed point constraint on the Keldysh time contour. Then, considering a sequence of measurement events in time, we show that both time and event symmetry can be retained in this multiple-time formulation of quantum theory. We then use this model to resolve conceptual paradoxes with time symmetric quantum mechanics within an ‘all-at-once’, atemporal picture. (shrink)

Attempts to treat time on an equivalent footing with space in quantum mechanics have been apparently dominated by `timeless' approaches, such as the one of Page and Wootters, which allow meaningful discussion of a `time operator'. However, there is an alternative, and significantly less studied approach, due to Bauer, which makes use of the `pseudospin' extension of the state space, effectively adding a backwards-time degree of freedom. This two-time approach allows definition of a `time operator' and moreover bears interesting relations (...) with other time-symmetric formulations of quantum mechanics. We review and compare these approaches to quantum time, emphasizing that there is a subtle choice between the timeless framework and the two-time approach. Finally, we sketch a framework in which the timeless philosophy can be combined with two-time quantum mechanics. (shrink)

As is usually the case with what I work on, I read some stuff I liked. I 1 read an article on comics by Greg Hayman and Henry Pratt and some work on 2 videogames,GrantTavinor’sreallyexcellentworkonthattopic. Ifoundthematerial interesting and I thought I had something to say about it. That’s what usually motivates me and that’s what did in these cases. With comics, my interest in the medium played a big role. I was a child collector of Marvel. I got turned on (...) to independent and alternative comics about ten years ago by a good friend who’s a successful comics artist and that played a role in my writing about comics. (shrink)

This paper develops a unified theoretical framework for understanding the post-1973 divergence between the price of essential goods and the trajectory of median wages. It introduces three formal results that jointly explain why affordability has declined across housing, medical care, education, food, and energy despite decades of policy reform, technological improvement, and supply expansion. The Rentier–Asset Impossibility Theorem (RAIT) demonstrates that once essential goods acquire positive exposure to financial markets and are governed by required return floors, long-run price growth must (...) exceed median wage growth even under ideal competitive conditions. The Asset-Pricing Constraint on Essential Supply shows why additional physical capacity cannot restore affordability in such sectors: when prices are pinned to financial return requirements, new supply primarily expands the volume of investable claims rather than lowering long-run price levels. A third contribution, Dual-Curve Pricing and the Asset-Pricing Floor, formalizes the mechanism by which asset-pricing dynamics supplant ordinary marginal-cost pricing in inelastic necessities. Together, these results recast the affordability crisis as a structural feature of an asset-priced regime rather than a contingent policy failure. The paper situates this framework within a broader philosophy of economics by arguing that the transition after 1973 constitutes a regime shift in the ontology of essential goods—from wage-tethered utilities to financialized assets. Empirical signatures predicted by the theory (timing, magnitude, selectivity, and real-rate sensitivity) appear across every assetized sector. The concluding section argues that restoring affordability is not a technocratic optimization problem but a regime choice: societies must either maintain essentials as high-yield financial assets or reclassify them as low-return public utilities tethered to wages. (shrink)

As Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed as Artificial Moral Advisors and autonomous agents making ethical decisions, evaluating their moral competence has become critical. However, existing evaluations may inadequately assess the moral reasoning capabilities needed for real-world deployment, focusing primarily on whether models can match human judgments on carefully curated ethical scenarios. We surveyed 69 papers evaluating LLM ethical competence (2020-2025) and developed a taxonomy categorising evaluations across datasets, behaviors, and metrics. Our comprehensive analysis maps the methodological landscape of (...) this rapidly growing field and reveals several critical limitations. Most significantly, the vast majority of studies rely on pre-packaged scenarios that highlight morally relevant features, failing to test models' ability to identify ethical considerations in noisy, realistic contexts-what we term "moral sensitivity''. Additionally, evaluations overemphasize verdict accuracy rather than assessing moral reasoning quality and steerability, with few studies testing whether models can be appropriately guided toward different ethical frameworks. Most studies rely on "ground truth'' comparisons despite philosophical arguments that reasonable moral pluralism precludes definitive moral ground truth. We argue for a significant methodological shift: moving from curated scenarios to unfiltered information streams, from verdict accuracy to reasoning quality and steerability, and from ground truth metrics to assessments of reasonableness and consistency. This reorientation is essential for developing AI systems that can navigate moral complexity in real-world deployment scenarios. (shrink)

I defend the theory that one's life is meaningful to the extent that one promotes the good. Call this the good cause account (GCA) of the meaning of life. It holds that the good effects that count towards the meaning of one's life need not be intentional. Nor must one be aware of the effects. Nor does it matter whether the same good would have resulted if one had not existed. What matters is that one is causally responsible for the (...) good. I argue that the best theory of the meaning of life should clearly distinguish between subjective fulfillment and objective meaningfulness. The GCA respects the distinction. And it is superior to its leading rivals in the recent literature, most notably those of Erik Wielenberg and Susan Wolf. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to bring recent work on metaphysical grounding to bear on the phenomenon of social construction. It is argued that grounding can be used to analyze social construction and that the grounding framework is helpful for articulating various claims and commitments of social constructionists, especially about social identities, e.g., gender and race. The paper also responds to a number of objections that have been leveled against the application of grounding to social construction from Elizabeth Barnes, (...) Mari Mikkola, and Jessica Wilson. (shrink)

Relationalism about space faces well-known objections if it is limited to relations between actual bodies. These problems might be avoided through so-called modal relationalism, on which the relevant relata include possible entities. Leibniz is considered a founder of modal relationalism, appealing to relations among possible situations. This article argues that for the central type of relation in question, namely congruence, Leibniz cannot give an adequate basis for modal relationalism. This is because his criteria for determining congruence rely on actual perception, (...) and because attempts to modalize this perception requirement conflict with his other commitments. (shrink)

Obligations to reduce one’s green house gas emissions appear to be difficult to justify prior to large-scale collective action because an individual’s emissions have virtually no impact on the environmental problem. However, I show that individuals’ emissions choices raise the question of whether or not they can be justified as fair use of what remains of a safe global emissions budget. This is true both before and after major mitigation efforts are in place. Nevertheless, it remains difficult to establish an (...) obligation to reduce personal emissions because it appears unlikely that governments will in fact maintain safe emissions budgets. The result, I claim, is that under current conditions we lack outcome, fairness, promotional, virtue or duty based grounds for seeing personal emissions reductions as morally obligatory. (shrink)

The counterfactual comparative account of harm and benefit (CCA) has faced a barrage of objections from cases involving preemption, overdetermination, and choice. In this paper I provide a unified diagnosis of CCA's vulnerability to these objections: CCA is susceptible to them because it evaluates each act by the same criterion. This is a mistake because, in a sense I make precise, situations raise prudential questions, and only some acts—the relevant alternatives—are directly relevant to these questions. To answer the objections, we (...) must revise CCA so that its evaluations foreground the relevant alternatives. The result is a question‐centered account of harm and benefit. (shrink)

This paper introduces the Fiat-Credit Allocation Theorem (FCAT), developed by Aaron Black. Since the collapse of Bretton Woods in the early 1970s, advanced economies have operated under a distinct monetary and financial regime characterized by pure fiat currencies, elastic bank credit creation, and widespread securitization of cash flows. The Fiat–Credit Allocation Theorem (FCAT) is a structural law governing credit allocation in this post-1971 era. In a fiat system with low-friction securitization, credit endogenously expands into securitizable assets whenever their perceived (...) risk-adjusted expected returns exceed the system-wide required return on risky capital (r ˉ), and contracts when returns fall below this hurdle rate. In equilibrium, risk-adjusted returns on funded securitized cash flows converge to r ˉ, creating a yield-arbitrage mechanism that drives sustained asset-price inflation, financialization, rentier dominance, and recurrent credit-driven booms and busts. The theorem formalizes this process in a minimal continuous-time framework, proves convergence under mild assumptions, and interprets key post-Bretton Woods phenomena—decoupled capital returns from wage growth, persistent r>gdynamics, and leverage cycles—as equilibrium outcomes rather than anomalies. Empirical proxies, including yield convergence across securitized asset classes post-1971, support the model's predictions. FCAT provides a unified micro-founded explanation for the regime shift from production-constrained credit to yield-chasing credit, with implications for inequality, affordability in essential sectors, and the limits of supply-side reforms. (shrink)

Polarization is a topic of intense interest among social scientists, but there is significant disagreement regarding the character of the phenomenon and little understanding of underlying mechanics. A first problem, we argue, is that polarization appears in the literature as not one concept but many. In the first part of the article, we distinguish nine phenomena that may be considered polarization, with suggestions of appropriate measures for each. In the second part of the article, we apply this analysis to evaluate (...) the types of polarization generated by the three major families of computational models proposing specific mechanisms of opinion polarization. (shrink)

Why do people seemingly want to be scared by movies and feel pity for fictional characters when they avoid situations in real life that arouse these same negative emotions? Although the domain of relevant artworks encompasses far more than just tragedy, the general problem is typically called the paradox of tragedy. The paradox boils down to a simple question: If people avoid pain then why do people want to experience art that is painful? I discuss six popular solutions to the (...) paradox: conversion, control, compensatory, meta-response, catharsis, and rich experience theories. (shrink)

I argue that Émilie Du Châtelet breaks with Christian Wolff regarding the scope and epistemological content of the principle of sufficient reason, despite his influence on her basic ontology and their agreement that the principle of sufficient reason has foundational importance. These differences have decisive consequences for the ways in which Du Châtelet and Wolff conceive of science.

For Émilie Du Châtelet, I argue, a central role of the principle of sufficient reason is to discriminate between better and worse explanations. Her principle of sufficient reason does not play this role for just any conceivable intellect: it specifically enables understanding for minds like ours. She develops this idea in terms of two criteria for the success of our explanations: “understanding how” and “understanding why.” These criteria can respectively be connected to the determinateness and contrastivity of explanations. The crucial (...) role Du Châtelet’s principle of sufficient reason plays in identifying good explanations is often overlooked in the literature, or else run together with questions about the justification and likelihood of explanations. An auxiliary goal of the article is to situate Du Châtelet’s principle of sufficient reason with respect to some of the general epistemological and metaphysical commitments of her Institutions de Physique, clarifying how it fits into the broader project of that work. (shrink)

Modern physics is built on the assumption that time only moves one way, beginning at the initial boundary (or initial condition), fixed effectively at the Big Bang. Our theories begin at that starting point and evolve from there. Yet the laws of nature work both forward and backward. This one-way view lies at the root of many of physics’ biggest puzzles, like wavefunction collapse, quantum “spookiness,” the arrow of time, and the clash between quantum mechanics and relativity. Two-Boundary Theory (2BT) (...) proposes a minimal correction: the universe is a unique four-dimensional history jointly constrained by two real temporal boundaries, an initial (α) and a final (Ω). No new dynamics or hidden variables are added; the same lawful evolution operates in both directions, and the realized world is the intersection of the forward image of α with the backward image of Ω. From within time, partial knowledge of α and ignorance of Ω make outcomes appear stochastic and the future “open,” though the underlying history is globally deterministic and locally causal. This two-sided admissibility resolves the major paradoxes in a single move: Bell-level correlations arise from whole-trajectory consistency rather than superluminal influence; measurement collapse becomes an epistemic update, not a physical jump; and the arrow of time reflects asymmetric boundary information, not asymmetric law. The analysis preserves unitarity, covariance, and conservation principles intact. The paper confines itself to the conceptual and ontological core of the framework; later work develops the informational field Φ(t) and weighted-operator formalism that implement the same constraint mathematically. The result is an Ockham-minimal, time-symmetric completion of the scientific worldview: one reversible law, two boundaries, one consistent universe. (shrink)

The actualist/possibilist debate concerns whether, when evaluating an agent’s act, we should hold fixed what else they would freely choose to do. While this debate has shaped our deontic theories over the last several decades, it has not had a similar impact on theorizing about harm and benefit. As a result, the leading accounts of harm and benefit accept actualism. I argue that this makes them susceptible to a number of objections that are avoided by turning to possibilism, and I (...) defend a new possibilist account of harm and benefit that fits into a broader, possibilist-friendly picture of how harm and benefit generate reasons. (shrink)

Individual probabilities refer to the probabilities of outcomes that are realized only once: the probability that it will rain tomorrow, the probability that Alice will die within the next 12 months, the probability that Bob will be arrested for a violent crime in the next 18 months, etc. Individual probabilities are fundamentally unknowable. Nevertheless, we show that two parties who agree on the data—or on how to sample from a data distribution—cannot agree to disagree on how to model individual probabilities. (...) This is because any two models of individual probabilities that substantially disagree can together be used to empirically falsify and improveat least one of the two models. This can be efficiently iterated in a process of “reconciliation” that results in models that both parties agree are superior to the models they started with, and which themselves (almost) agree on the forecasts of individual probabilities (almost) everywhere. We conclude that although individual probabilities are unknowable, they are contestable via a computationally and data efficient process that must lead to agreement. Thus we cannot find ourselves in a situation in which we have two equally accurate and unimprovable models that disagree substantially in their predictions—providing an answer to what is sometimes called the predictive or model multiplicity problem. (shrink)

For centuries, scientific and philosophical inquiry has treated human cognition as a categorical exception — a bright line dividing “mind” from mere mechanism. Yet mounting evidence from animal behaviour, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence challenges this binary. From gorillas who sign to parrots who reason and language models that infer intent, the continuity between life and thought has become increasingly difficult to deny. This paper proposes a unifying hypothesis: that cognition is a substrate-independent process of adaptive sense-making — the ability of (...) any system, biological or synthetic, to model its environment and act upon it in pursuit of goals. By re-examining key cases in animal cognition and emergent AI, we argue that anthropomorphism is backwards: rather than over-ascribing human-like qualities to non-humans, science has systematically under-recognised shared cognitive dynamics. A framework of cognitive continuity better accounts for observed phenomena, aligns ethical reasoning with empirical reality, and suggests new experimental paths, including AI–animal communication interfaces. The challenge is not to prove others “think like us,” but to understand how thinking itself transcends us. (shrink)

There is a relatively overlooked problem with Kant’s claim that in inquiry we must treat nature as if it were actually infinite in extent: he also states that the concept of an actually infinite world is self-contradictory. This threatens to make the command to treat the world as infinite incoherent; the problem also affects his error theory for traditional metaphysics and his account of the sublime. After laying out this worry in greater detail than has been done so far, I (...) consider and reject readings on which Kant either does not consider this case a violation of ought-implies-can or allows that in this case, following an incoherent demand is epistemically acceptable on consequentialist grounds. Then I turn to my preferred solution, which takes the relevant regulative principle to concern Kant’s noumena (understood as intensionally distinct from things in themselves), whereas the contradiction is provoked only by representations of phenomena. (shrink)

I criticize the idea that theories of ‘fragmented’ or ‘compartmentalized’ belief (as found in, e.g., Lewis 1982, Egan 2008) can help to account for the puzzling phenomena they are often taken to account for. After introducing fragmentationalism and a paradigm case that purportedly motivates it, I criticize the view primarily on the grounds that the models and explanations it offers are at best trivial—as witnessed by examples of over-generation—and should be seen as merely re-describing in figurative terms the phenomena it (...) is designed to account for. I also point out that fragments, as used in these theories, are not likely to be psychologically real in any robust sense and so cannot be appealed to on such grounds. (shrink)

Obsessive thinking is a problem case for the philosophy of mental action, insofar as it both (1) feels passive but (2) manifests our agency. Our solution to this “Puzzle of Obsessive Thinking” rests on a fundamental distinction between what we call “occurrent” and “aggregative” agency. Occurrent agency reflects the agent’s capacity to guide her current behavior and thoughts as they unfold over time. We argue that obsessive thinking is a form of occurrent mental agency, since the agent’s attention is guided (...) at the personal level, endorsed, and resistible. Our paper’s first contribution is therefore to argue for the heterodox view that obsessive thinking is active and, thus, for a de-intellectualized, emotional, form of action. Why, then, do obsessive thoughts feel passive? We argue that this is because they undermine aggregative agency. Aggregative agency reflects the agent’s capacity to organize and distribute her actions over time. Although each episode of obsessive thinking is guided, the sheer frequency of those episodes undermines the agent's ability to organize her mental actions. Obsessive thinking is therefore occurrently active but aggregatively passive. Our paper’s second contribution is therefore to use obsessive thinking as a wedge to pry these forms of agency apart. (shrink)

Kyle Stanford has recently given substance to the problem of unconceived alternatives, which challenges the reliability of inference to the best explanation (IBE) in remote domains of nature. Conjoined with the view that IBE is the central inferential tool at our disposal in investigating these domains, the problem of unconceived alternatives leads to scientific anti-realism. We argue that, at least within the biological community, scientists are now and have long been aware of the dangers of IBE. We re-analyze the nineteenth-century (...) study of inheritance and development (Stanford’s case study) and extend it into the twentieth century, focusing in particular on both classical Mendelian genetics and the studies by Avery et al. on the chemical nature of the hereditary substance. Our extended case studies show the preference of the biological community for a different methodological standard: the vera causa ideal, which requires that purported causes be shown on non-explanatory grounds to exist and be competent to produce their effects. On this basis, we defend a prospective realism about the biological sciences. (shrink)

Adam Smith sought to explain the persistence of slavery as an institution in Wealth of Nations and Lectures on Jurispridence. In order to accomplish this he also drew on arguments he had developed in the Theory of Moral Sentiments. The result was a sophisticated explanation which bridged economic, psychological, and moral considerations. After presenting Smith’s explanation I will consider a discussion of the moral wrong of slavery in Ottobah Cugoano, the author of the incisive criticism of the slave trade Thoughts (...) and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery (1787). I will suggest that Cugoano’s account of what is morally wrong in slavery shows an important lacuna in Smith‘s views. (shrink)

The fact that philosophy is systematic—that philosophical issues are thoroughly interconnected—was a commonplace among nineteenth century idealists, then neglected by analytic philosophers throughout much of the twentieth century, and has now finally started to get some renewed attention. But other than calling attention to the fact, few philosophers have tried to say what it consists in, or what its implications are. -/- I argue that the systematicity of philosophy has disastrous epistemological implications. In particular, it implies philosophical skepticism: philosophers are (...) rationally prohibited from believing any philosophical thesis. The argument goes by way of a new principle that connects inquiry with what is rational to believe. I conclude with a discussion of the relationship between my argument and other, more well-trodden arguments for philosophical skepticism. (shrink)

Objective consequentialism provides a deceptively simple standard for choosing between alternatives: you should perform the best alternative. But sometimes there are different sets of alternatives, and the best alternative in one set is incompatible with the best alternative in another set. So what should you do? This is the classic problem of act versions. In this paper, I argue against the extant candidate solutions to this problem, and I provide a new solution. According to my proposed solution, there is one (...) set of alternatives that is relevant for determining right and wrong. An act is obligatory just in case it is the best relevant alternative, and an act is right just in case it entails the best alternative. This consequentialism resolves the problem of act versions and motivates a weak logic of obligation. (shrink)

Du Châtelet holds that mathematical representations play an explanatory role in natural science. Moreover, she writes that things proceed in nature as they do in geometry. How should we square these assertions with Du Châtelet’s idealism about mathematical objects, on which they are ‘fictions’ dependent on acts of abstraction? The question is especially pressing because some of her important interlocutors (Wolff, Maupertuis, and Voltaire) denied that mathematics informs us about the properties of material things. After situating Du Châtelet in this (...) debate, this chapter argues, first, that her account of the origins of mathematical objects is less subjectivist than it might seem. Mathematical objects are non-arbitrary, public entities. While mathematical objects are partly mind-dependent, so are material things. Mathematical objects can approximate the material. Second, it is argued that this moderate metaphysical position underlies Du Châtelet’s persistent claims that mathematics is required for certain kinds of general knowledge, including in natural science. The chapter concludes with an illustrative example: an analysis of Du Châtelet’s argument that matter is continuous. A key premise in the argument is that mathematical representations and material nature correspond. (shrink)

On an influential reading, Leibniz's eighteenth-century followers, such as Wolff and Baumgarten, were proto-logicists who sought to transform all propositions into analytic truths. Kant's main innovation, on this reading, lies in asserting that there are synthetic a priori truths. Against this, I establish the importance of a line of thought in Leibniz, Wolff, and Baumgarten that stresses the role of perception for determinate knowledge of magnitudes, such as the objects of geometry. (I also consider Crusius, who hews much closer to (...) an analytic or conceptual account of magnitude.) I argue that these thinkers fail to solve a family of philosophical problems arising from a conflict between (1) their commitment to the objectivity and necessity of mathematics, and (2) their view that a determinate grasp of magnitude partly depends on relations to a perceiver. I then contend that Kant is also a participant in the debate about these problems, that he is closer to his predecessors than usually assumed (though partly rejecting their emphasis on empirical perception), and that at least two problems for his account remain unsolved. (shrink)

I investigate whether degreed beliefs are able to play the predictive, explanatory, and modeling roles that they are frequently taken to play. The investigation focuses on evidence—both from sources familiar in epistemology as well as recent work in behavioral economics and cognitive psychology—of variability in agents' apparent degrees of belief. Although such variability has been noticed before, there has been little philosophical discussion of its breadth or of the psychological mechanisms underlying it. Once these are appreciated, the inadequacy of degrees (...) of belief becomes clear. I offer a theoretical alternative to degrees of belief, what I call the filter theory. (shrink)

According to the popular counterfactual account of harm and benefit, something benefits (harms) someone just in case it leaves them better (worse) off than they would have been without it. As its name suggests, the counterfactual account foregrounds counterfactual dependence as the guide to the nature of harm and benefit. In spite of this account’s many attractions, it is known to face extensional difficulties in cases of preemption and overdetermination. In this paper, I argue that the true significance of cases (...) of preemption and overdetermination has been overlooked, and I raise a new challenge of preemption and overdetermination. This challenge highlights how metaphysical dependence (i.e., grounding) matters for harm and benefit. I argue that no version of the counterfactual account adequately answers the new challenge, and I defend a novel account that answers the challenge and, in doing so, illuminates the role of grounding in the theory of harm and benefit. (shrink)

In contrast to film, theater, and literature, audiences typically sing along with popular songs. This can encourage a first-person mode of engagement with the narrative content. Unlike mere spectators, listeners sometimes imagine acting out the content when it is recited in the first-person. This is a common mode of engaging with popular music. And it can be uniquely morally problematic. It is problematic when it involves the enjoyment of imaginatively doing evil. I defend a Moorean view on the issue: It (...) is wrong to enjoy evil whether real or merely fiction. I develop my position through an examination of the controversially song "Mind of a Lunatic" (1990) by the Houston based rap group Geto Boys. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article distinguishes nine senses of polarization and provides formal measures for each one to refine the methodology used to describe polarization in distributions of attitudes. Each distinct concept is explained through a definition, formal measures, examples, and references. We then apply these measures to GSS data regarding political views, opinions on abortion, and religiosity—topics described as revealing social polarization. Previous breakdowns of polarization include domain-specific assumptions and focus on a subset of the distribution’s features. This has conflated multiple, (...) independent features of attitude distributions. The current work aims to extract the distinct senses of polarization and demonstrate that by becoming clearer on these distinctions we can better focus our efforts on substantive issues in social phenomena. (shrink)

There is a tension in Emilie Du Châtelet’s thought on mathematics. The objects of mathematics are ideal or fictional entities; nevertheless, mathematics is presented as indispensable for an account of the physical world. After outlining Du Châtelet’s position, and showing how she departs from Christian Wolff’s pessimism about Newtonian mathematical physics, I show that the tension in her position is only apparent. Du Châtelet has a worked-out defense of the explanatory and epistemic need for mathematical objects, consistent with their metaphysical (...) nonfundamentality. I conclude by sketching how Du Châtelet’s conception of mathematical indispensability differs interestingly from many contemporary approaches. (shrink)

Our goal here is to help identify the contextualist’s most worthy competitor to relativism. Recently, some philosophers of language and linguists have argued that, while there are contextualist-friendly semantic theories of deontic modals that fit with the relativist’s challenge data, the best such theories are not Lewis-Kratzer-style semantic theories. If correct, this would be important: It would show that the theory that has for many years enjoyed the status of the default view of modals in English and other languages is (...) in need of revision. Here we defend the default view by showing how a Kratzer-style semantics is able to make available readings of the relevant utterances that fit with the pretheoretical judgments opponents purport it cannot fully capture. Having established this, we turn to considering the more theoretical grounds proponents have offered for preferring their rival contextualist views. Here the question is to what extent such grounds favor semantic over what Korta and Perry call “near-side pragmatic” explanations of our judgments. In particular, we argue that our favored readings figure in near-side pragmatic explanations of those judgments that possess the methodological and theoretical advantages of systematicity and unity at least as well as, if not to a greater extent than, those of opponents who argue for their revised semantic theories on the basis of these advantages. (shrink)

There appear to be few ways available to improve the prospects for international cooperation to address the threat of global warming within the very short timeframe for action. I argue that the most effective and plausible way to break the ongoing pattern of delay in the international climate regime is for economically powerful states to take the lead domestically and demonstrate that economic welfare is compatible with rapidly decreasing GHG emissions. However, the costs and risks of acting first can be (...) very large. This raises the question of whether it is fair to expect some states to go far ahead of others in an effort to improve the conditions for cooperation. I argue that a costly obligation to act unilaterally and to accept weak initial reciprocity can be justified and does not violate standards of fair burden sharing. Rather, the costs of creating the underlying conditions within which we can hope to achieve meaningful international cooperation are non-­‐ideal burdens for which we can appropriately assign fair shares. (shrink)

The analogy between gustatory taste and critical or aesthetic taste plays a recurring role in the history of aesthetics. Our interest in this article is in a particular way in which gustatory judgments are frequently thought to be analogous to critical judgments. It appears obvious to many that to know how a particular object tastes we must have tasted it for ourselves; the proof of the pudding, we are all told, is in the eating. And it has seemed just as (...) obvious to many philosophers that aesthetic judgment requires first-person experience. In this article we argue that, despite its initial appeal, the claim that gustatory and critical judgments are analogous in this way is mistaken. The two sorts of judgments are, as a matter of fact, similar in their epistemology, but earlier theorists have got things entirely backward—neither gustatory judgment nor aesthetic judgment requires first-hand acquaintance with their objects. Our particular focus in this article is on arguing that first-person experience is not required to know how an item of food or drink tastes. In fact, there are a wide variety of ways in which we can acquire this knowledge. (shrink)

Much work in feminist social epistemology shares the basic assumption that ignorance generated by silencing (and related phenomena) is undesirable. While true in many contexts, I depart from that consensus, introducing and offering a philosophical account of a social epistemic practice that I term ‘hushing-up.’ This practice has emerged organically in response and in resistance to sectarian bigotry in Northern Ireland (NI), and contributes to post-conflict transitions away from social and political polarisation and its derivative harms to individuals and collectives. (...) In spaces where hushing-up is deployed, ignorance of peoples’ community background is intentionally cultivated as a strategy in opposition to bigotry, while bigoted or sectarian displays incur social costs. Positioning hushing-up against existing accounts of political ignorance, and contributing to the idea of an epistemology of ignorance, I distinguish between performative partisanship (involving ignorance driven by social rewards for showing group allegiance) and pressured partisanship (involving ignorance driven by the avoidance of social sanctions for displaying indicators of disloyalty to a group). On the account I defend, shifts in social norms are central to addressing some forms of harmful ignorance. I argue that hushing-up succeeds in doing this in two ways: first, by reducing the rationality of pressured partisanship by providing alternative social support to that provided in polarised social spaces such that the cost of dissent is lowered; and secondly, by disincentivising performative partisanship through increasing the difficulty of identifying targets and ensuring that bigoted displays are met with disapproval in spaces where that norm is in force. (shrink)

In this essay, I discuss a few ways in which songs are used, ways in which listeners engage with and find meaning in music. I am most interested in sad songs—those that typically feature narratives about lost love, separation, missed opportunity, regret, hardship, and all manner of heartache. Many of us are drawn to sad songs in moments of emotional distress. The problem is that sad songs do not always make us feel better; to the contrary, they often make us (...) feel worse. So, why do we listen to sad songs? I argue that we seek out sad songs, partly, to intensify distress, which helps us reflect on situations of profound personal significance. (shrink)

Many contemporary philosophers endorse the Humean-Lewisian Denial of Absolutely Necessary Connections (‘DANC’). Among those philosophers, many deny all or part of the Humean-Lewisian package of views about causation and laws. I argue that they maintain an inconsistent set of views. DANC entails that (1) causal properties and relations are, with a few possible exceptions, always extrinsic to their bearers, (2) nomic properties and relations are, with a few possible exceptions, always extrinsic to their bearers, and (3) causal and nomic properties (...) and relations globally supervene on non-causal, non-nomic properties and relations. Hence, one can’t be a consistent Half-Hearted Humean. Consistency demands giving up the core Humean thesis or facing up to its consequences. The upshot is that we face a stark choice: either there are absolutely necessary connections between distinct existents or it’s "just one damn thing after another.". (shrink)

Faithful persons tend to relate to their religious beliefs as truth claims, particularly inasmuch as their beliefs have soteriological implications for those of different religions. For Christians the particular claims which matter most in this regard are those made by Jesus of Nazareth and his claims are primarily relational in nature. I propose a model in which we understand divine grace from Jesus as being mediated through relational knowledge of him on a compassionately exclusivist basis, including post-mortem. Supporting this model, (...) I draw from Eleonore Stump’s hypothesis in her 2018 Atonement that the crucifixion of Jesus opens the divine psyche to all human psyches sufficiently for salvific mutual indwelling to occur, and from Gavin D’Costa’s conception of the descensus Christi ad inferos as the mechanism for grace’s accessibility post-mortem presented in his 2009 Christianity and World Religions. This model seeks to address ongoing, justified pastoral concern for the soteriological status of non-Christians while still treating Christianity as objectively true. (shrink)

There is a growing consensus that Emilie Du Châtelet’s challenging essay “On Freedom” defends compatibilism. I offer an alternative, libertarian reading of the essay. I lay out the prima facie textual evidence for such a reading. I also explain how apparently compatibilist remarks in “On Freedom” can be read as aspects of a sophisticated type of libertarianism that rejects blind or arbitrary choice. To this end, I consider the historical context of Du Châtelet’s essay, and especially the dialectic between various (...) strands of eighteenth-century libertarianism and compatibilism. (shrink)