Morphological content (MC) is content that is implicit in the standing structure of the cognitive system. Henderson and Horgan claim that MC plays a distinctive epistemological role unrecognized by traditional epistemic theories. I consider the possibilities that MC plays this role either in central cognition or in peripheral modules. I argue that the peripheral MC does not play an interesting epistemological role and that the central MC is already recognized by traditional theories.

Abstract Artificial language philosophy (also called ‘ideal language philosophy’) is the position that philosophical problems are best solved or dissolved through a reform of language. Its underlying methodology—the development of languages for specific purposes—leads to a conventionalist view of language in general and of concepts in particular. I argue that many philosophical practices can be reinterpreted as applications of artificial language philosophy. In addition, many factually occurring interrelations between the sciences and philosophy of science are justified and clarified by the (...) assumption of an artificial language methodology. (shrink)

According to Joshua Alexander, philosophers use intuitions routinely as a form of evidence to test philosophical theories but experimental philosophy demonstrates that these intuitions are unreliable and unrepresentative.1 According to Herman Cappelen, philosophers never use intuitions as evidence (despite the vacuous sentential leader ‘intuitively’) and experimental philosophy lacks a rationale for its much-touted existence.2 That two books are diametrically opposed on methodology in philosophy is not noteworthy. But eyebrows might be raised at such contradictory accounts of the phenomenology of philosophical (...) inquiry. What is it that (analytic) philosophers do? Why is it so difficult to achieve consensus on the professional activities in which we engage? (shrink)

It’s natural to say that when it’s rational for me to φ, I have reasons to φ. That is, there are reasons for φ-ing, and moreover, I have some of them. Mark Schroeder calls this view The Factoring Account of the having reasons relation. He thinks The Factoring Account is false. In this paper, I defend The Factoring Account. Not only do I provide intuitive support for the view, but I also defend it against Schroeder’s criticisms. Moreover, I show that (...) it helps us understand the requirements of substantive rationality, or what we are rationally required to do when responding to reasons. (shrink)

This article provides an account of intuitions: Affectivism. Affectivism states that intuitions are emotional experiences. The article proceeds as follows: first, the features that intuitions are typically taken to have are introduced. Then some issues with extant theories are outlined. After that, emotional experiences and their central features are brought into view. This is followed by a comparison of intuitions and emotional experiences, yielding the result that emotional experiences fit and elucidate the feature profile of intuitions. Finally, it is specified (...) what kind of emotional experiences intuitions are: intuitions are typically mild emotional experiences that belong to the subclass of epistemic feelings. (shrink)

Counterpossibles are counterfactuals that involve some metaphysical impossibility. Modal normativism is a non-descriptivist account of metaphysical necessity and possibility according to which modal claims, e.g. ‘necessarily, all bachelors are unmarried’, do not function as descriptive claims about the modal nature of reality but function as normative illustrations of constitutive rules and permissions that govern the use of ordinary non-modal vocabulary, e.g. ‘bachelor’. In this paper, I assume modal normativism and develop a novel account of counterpossibles and claims about metaphysical similarity (...) between possible and impossible worlds. I argue that considerations of metaphysical similarity between various impossible worlds and the actual world only require us to tacitly consider how the actual constitutive rules that govern the use of our terms change in order to accommodate the description of some hypothetical impossible scenario. I then argue for my account by raising worries for alternative epistemic and realist accounts of counterpossibles and showing how my account avoids those worries. (shrink)

According to Williamson, your evidence consists of all and only what you know (E = K). According to his critics, it doesn’t. While E = K calls for revision, the revisions it calls for are minor. E = K gets this much right. Only true propositions can constitute evidence and anything you know non-inferentially is part of your evidence. In this paper, I defend these two theses about evidence and its possession from Williamson’s critics who think we should break more (...) radically from E = K. (shrink)

Michael T. Stuart (2021 and 2022) has proposed imagination as an intellectual dual‐process virtue, consisting of imagination1 (underwritten by cognitive Type 1 processing) and imagination2 (supported by Type 2 processing). This paper investigates the consequences of taking such an account seriously. It proposes that the dual‐process view of imagination allows us to incorporate recent insights from virtue epistemology, providing a fresh perspective on how imagination can be epistemically reliable. The argument centers on the distinction between General Reliability (GR) and Functional (...) System Reliability (FSR), for example in relation to Kengo Miyazono and Uko Tooming's (2023) argument for epistemic generativity. Furthermore, the paper claims that the dual‐process virtue account enables us to integrate a wide range of findings from the literature on epistemology and imagination. Moreover, it suggests a novel way to distinguish the virtues of creativity and imagination and presents a case for viewing imagination as a virtue rather than a skill. (shrink)

Otto Neurath’s empiricist methodology of economics and his contributions to politi- cal economy have gained increasing attention in recent years. We connect this research with contemporary debates regarding the epistemological status of thought experiments by reconstructing Neurath’s utopias as linchpins of thought experiments. In our three reconstructed examples of different uses of utopias/dystopias in thought experiments we employ a reformulation of Häggqvist’s model for thought experiments and we argue that: (1) Our reformulation of Häggqvist’s model more adequately complies with many (...) uses of thought experiments, especially with the open-ended discussions of utopias and dys- topias in thought experiments. (2) As a strict logical empiricist, Neurath is committed to a strictly empiricist account of thought experiments. John Norton’s empiricist argument view can indeed account for the justifications of empirical beliefs and genuine discoveries targeted by scientific utopianism in three distinct (yet connected) ways, all of which Neur- ath already contemplated: (2.I) Dealing with utopias and thought experiments on a regular basis increases creativity and inventiveness. (2.II) Particular ways of presenting knowl- edge facilitate scientific discovery and social progress. (2.III) The use of utopias in thought experiments can prompt conceptual change and allow access to new phenomena. We con- clude by highlighting that, even though thought experiments support a positive attitude for exploring new social possibilities, Neurath points out that active decisions are unavoidable. The exploration of alternatives and the awareness of a need for decisions in policy discus- sion avert a technocratic outlook in social science. (shrink)

Some philosophers have recently suggested that the reason mathematics is useful in science is that it expands our expressive capacities. Of these philosophers, only Stephen Yablo has put forward a detailed account of how mathematics brings this advantage. In this article, I set out Yablo’s view and argue that it is implausible. Then, I introduce a simpler account and show it is a serious rival to Yablo’s. 1 Introduction2 Yablo’s Expressionism3 Psychological Objections to Yablo’s Expressionism4 Introducing Belief Expressionism5 Objections and (...) Replies5.1 Yablo’s likely response5.2 Charity6 Conclusion. (shrink)

In recent years, a number of philosophers have conducted empirical studies that survey people's intuitions about various subject matters in philosophy. Some have found that intuitions vary accordingly to seemingly irrelevant facts: facts about who is considering the hypothetical case, the presence or absence of certain kinds of content, or the context in which the hypothetical case is being considered. Our research applies this experimental philosophical methodology to Judith Jarvis Thomson's famous Loop Case, which she used to call into question (...) the validity of the intuitively plausible Doctrine of Double Effect. We found that intuitions about the Loop Case vary according to the context in which the case is considered. We contend that this undermines the supposed evidential status of intuitions about the Loop Case. We conclude by considering the implications of our findings for philosophers who rely on the Loop Case to make philosophical arguments and for philosophers who use intuitions in general. (shrink)

Imaginative resistance refers to a phenomenon in which people resist engaging in particular prompted imaginative activities. On one influential diagnosis of imaginative resistance, the systematic difficulties are due to these particular propositions’ discordance with real-world norms. This essay argues that this influential diagnosis is too simple. While imagination is indeed by default constrained by real-world norms during narrative engagement, it can be freed with the power of genre conventions and expectations.

Transcendental philosophy was not born like Athena out of Zeus’s head, mature and in full armour from the very beginning. That is why in both prefaces to the Critique of Pure Reason (1781 and 1787) Kant introduces the concept of transcendental philosophy as an “idea.” The idea understood architectonically develops slowly and only gradually acquires a definite form. As witnessed by the works of Kant himself and of his predecessors and followers, the idea of transcendental philosophy has undergone a series (...) of changes and adjustments compared to the initial plan. In this context, my goal is not simply exegesis and historical investigation of transcendental philosophy, but also to look at it from a systematic and methodological perspective. I examine the concept of transcendental philosophy from the viewpoint of programmatic metaphilosophy. The first part discusses programmatics as a distinct subsection of metaphilosophy. I argue that Kant’s architectonic methodology and the methodology of Lakatos can be used to understand the inception, development and degradation of philosophical systems. In the second part I look at the project of transcendental philosophy and the stages of its development from the standpoint of architectonics. The third part shows that Lakatos’s methodology can provide a detailed insight into the elements of transcendental philosophy, a clear idea of its logic and identify the component parts that can be improved and developed. In spite of the different levels of detailing and epistemological prerequisites, the methodologies of Kant and Lakatos can be combined to achieve a metaphilosophically informed and progressive understanding of philosophical projects. (shrink)

What formulas are tense-logically valid depends on the structure of time, for example on whether it has a beginning. Logicians have investigated what formulas correspond to what physical hypotheses about time. Analogously, we can investigate what formulas of modal logic correspond to what metaphysical hypotheses about necessity. It is widely held that physical hypotheses about time may be contingent. If so, tense-logical validity may be contingent. In contrast, validity in modal logic is typically taken to be non-contingent, as reflected by (...) the general acceptance of the so-called “rule of necessitation.” But as has been argued by various authors in recent years, metaphysical hypotheses may likewise be contingent. If, in particular, hypotheses about the extent of possibility are contingent, we should expect modal-logical validity to be contingent too. Let “contingentism” be the view that everything that is not ruled out by logic is possible. I shall investigate what the right system of modal logic is, if contingentism is true. Given plausible assumptions, the system contains the McKinsey principle, and is thus not even contained in S5. It also contains simple and elegant iteration principles for the contingency operator: something is contingent if and only if it is contingently contingent. (shrink)

What is the function of modal judgment? Why do we make judgments of possibility and necessity? Or are such judgments, in fact, dispensable? This paper introduces and develops an answer to these questions based on Kant’s remarks in section 76 of the Critique of Judgment. Here, Kant appears to argue the following: that a capacity to make modal judgments using modal concepts is required for a capacity for objective representation, in light of our split cognitive architecture. This split cognitive architecture (...) leaves room for a mismatch between our concepts and intuitions and, Kant argues, that is why we need modal concepts and modal judgments. In this paper, I develop this account of the function of modal judgment and to explore the extent to which it may improve upon contemporary alternatives. I focus on one particularly important challenge for the account: to explain why a distinction between the actual and the possible, rather than merely a distinction between the actual and the non-actual, is required. In order to answer this question, I supplement the account with a particular way of thinking about objectivity. (shrink)

Philosophers sometimes give arguments that presuppose the following principle: two theories can fail to be empirically equivalent on the sole basis that they present different “thick” metaphysical pictures of the world. Recently, a version of this principle has been invoked to respond to the argument that composite objects are dispensable to our best scientific theories. This response claims that our empirical evidence distinguishes between ordinary and composite-free theories, and it empirically favors the ordinary ones. In this paper, I ask whether (...) this response to the dispensability argument is tenable. I claim that it is not. This is because it presupposes an indefensible thesis about when two empirical consequences are distinct or the same. My argument provides some insight into what our empirical consequences are, and I conclude that empirical evidence is radically metaphysically neutral. This gives us some insight into the significant content of our scientific theories—the content that a scientific realist is committed to—and I show how this insight relates to questions about theoretical equivalence more broadly. (shrink)

Matti Eklund (2017) has argued that ardent realists face a serious dilemma. Ardent realists believe that there is a mind-independent fact as to which normative concepts we are to use. Eklund claims that the ardent realist cannot explain why this is so without plumping in favor of their own normative concepts or changing the topic. The paper first advances the discussion by clarifying two ways of understanding the question of which normative concepts to choose: a theoretical question about which concepts (...) have the abstract property of being normatively privileged and a further practical question of which concepts we are to choose even granting some concepts are thus privileged. I argue that the ardent realist’s best bet for answering the theoretical question while avoiding Eklund’s dilemma is to provide a real definition of this property. I point out the difficulties for providing such a definition. I then argue that even with an answer to the theoretical question, the ardent realist faces a further dilemma in answering the practical question. In sum, though I see no knock-down argument against ardent realism, it may nonetheless die a death by a thousand cuts. I close by considering a deeper reason for why ardent realism is so difficult to defend: every argument starts somewhere. It is unclear how there can be an Archimedean point that makes no reference to any normative concepts that can nonetheless be employed to convince everyone to adopt ours. I then briefly propose two options for someone still inclined towards realism: (i) accept that our normative concepts are normatively privileged without attempting to explain why this is so, or (ii) be less ardent and accept a perspective-dependent account of normativity. (shrink)

Several theists, including Linda Zagzebski, have claimed that theism is somehow committed to nonvacuism about counterpossibles. Even though Zagzebski herself has rejected vacuism, she has offered an argument in favour of it, which Edward Wierenga has defended as providing strong support for vacuism that is independent of the orthodox semantics for counterfactuals, mainly developed by David Lewis and Robert Stalnaker. In this paper I show that argument to be sound only relative to the orthodox semantics, which entails vacuism, and give (...) an example of a semantics for counterfactuals countenancing impossible worlds for which it fails. (shrink)

It is a common intuition that at least in some cases disagreement has skeptical consequences: the participants are not justified in persisting in their beliefs. I will argue that the currently popular non-dialectical and individualistic accounts of justification, such as evidentialism and reliabilism, cannot explain this intuition and defend the dialectical conception of justification that can explain it. I will also argue that this sort of justification is a necessary condition of knowledge by relying on Craig's genealogy of the concept (...) of knowledge. I will then respond to the accusation that the dialectical conception leads to radical skepticism. My response is partly concessive. It does lead to skepticism in areas where controversy prevails, such as philosophy, politics and religion, but this sort of skepticism is quite intuitive. Finally, I deal with the objection that my defense of skepticism about philosophy is self-refuting. (shrink)

We present a new puzzle about logical truth, necessity, and moral responsibility. We defend one solution to the puzzle. A corollary of our preferred solution is that prominent arguments for the incompatibility of determinism and moral responsibility are invalid.

The Gettier problem has stymied epistemologists. But, whether or not this problem is resolvable, we still must face an important question: Why does the Gettier problem arise in the first place? So far, philosophers have seen it as either a problem peculiar to the concept of knowledge, or else an instance of a general problem about conceptual analysis. But I would like to steer a middle course. I argue that the Gettier problem arises because knowledge is a thick concept, and (...) a Gettier-like problem is just what we should expect from attempts at analyzing a thick concept. Section 2 is devoted to establishing the controversial claim that knowledge is thick, and, in Sect. 3, I show that there is a general problem for analyzing thick concepts of which the Gettier problem is a special instance. I do not take a stand on whether the Gettier problem, or its general counterpart, is resolvable. My primary aim is to bring these problems into better focus. (shrink)

In this paper I defend the claim that Paul Feyerabend held a robust metaphilosophical position for most of his philosophical career. This position I call Decision-Based Epistemology and reconstruct it in terms of three key components: a form of epistemic voluntarism concerning the justification of philosophical positions and a behaviorist account of philosophical beliefs, which allows him to cast normative arguments concerning philosophical beliefs in scientific methodology, such as realism, in terms of means-ends relations. I then introduce non-naturalist and naturalist (...) variants of his conception of normativity, which I trace back to his mentors Viktor Kraft and Karl Popper, respectively. This distinction, introduced on the metaphilosophical level, can can be put to use to explain key changes in Feyerabend’s philosophical proposals, such as the viability of his methodological argument for realism. I conclude that this Decision-Based Epistemology should be further explored by historically embedding Feyerabend’s metaphilosophy in a voluntarist tradition of scientific philosophy. (shrink)

We argue that a semantics for counterfactual conditionals in terms of comparative overall similarity faces a formal limitation due to Arrow’s impossibility theorem from social choice theory. According to Lewis’s account, the truth-conditions for counterfactual conditionals are given in terms of the comparative overall similarity between possible worlds, which is in turn determined by various aspects of similarity between possible worlds. We argue that a function from aspects of similarity to overall similarity should satisfy certain plausible constraints while Arrow’s impossibility (...) theorem rules out that such a function satisfies all the constraints simultaneously. We argue that a way out of this impasse is to represent aspectual similarity in terms of ranking functions instead of representing it in a purely ordinal fashion. Further, we argue against the claim that the determination of overall similarity by aspects of similarity faces a difficulty in addition to the Arrovian limitation, namely the incommensurability of different aspects of similarity. The phenomena that have been cited as evidence for such incommensurability are best explained by ordinary vagueness. (shrink)

The proper evaluation of a theory's virtues seems to require taking into account what the theory is indirectly or implicitly committed to, in addition to what it explicitly says. Most extant proposals for criteria of theory choice in the literature spell out the relevant notion of implicit commitment via some notion of entailment. I show that such criteria behave implausibly in application to theories that differ over matters of entailment. A recent defence by Howard Peacock of such a criterion against (...) this objection is examined and rejected. I go on to a develop a better proposal on which, roughly speaking, a theory is counted committed to a claim if and only if its best fully explicit extension is explicitly committed to the claim. Such extensions in turn are evaluated by ordinary standards of theory choice adapted to the case of theories assumed to articulate their intended content in a fully explicit fashion. (shrink)

Plural definite descriptions across many languages display two well-known properties. First, they can give rise to so-called non-maximal readings, in the sense that they ‘allow for exceptions’. Second, while they tend to have a quasi-universal quantificational force in affirmative sentences, they tend to be interpreted existentially in the scope of negation. Building on previous works, we offer a theory in which sentences containing plural definite expressions trigger a family of possible interpretations, and where general principles of language use account for (...) their interpretation in various contexts and syntactic environments. Our theory solves a number of problems that these previous works encounter, and has broader empirical coverage in that it offers a precise analysis for sentences that display complex interactions between plural definites, quantifiers and bound variables, as well as for cases involving non-distributive predicates. The resulting proposal is briefly compared with an alternative proposal by Križ, which has similar coverage but is based on a very different architecture and sometimes makes subtly different predictions. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy is a relatively recent discipline that employs experimental methods to investigate the intuitions, concepts, and assumptions behind traditional philosophical arguments, problems, and theories. While experimental philosophy initially served to interrogate the role that intuitions play in philosophy, it has since branched out to bring empirical methods to bear on problems within a variety of traditional areas of philosophy—including metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and epistemology. To date, no connection has been made between developments in experimental philosophy (...) and philosophy of technology. In this paper, I develop and defend a research program for an experimental philosophy of technology. (shrink)

Revisionary ontologies seem to go against our common sense convictions about which material objects exist. These views face the so-called Problem of Reasonableness: they have to explain why reasonable people don’t seem to accept the true ontology. Most approaches to this problem treat the mismatch between the ontological truth and ordinary belief as superficial or not even real. By contrast, I propose what I call the “uncompromising solution”. First, I argue that our beliefs about material objects were influenced by evolutionary (...) forces that were independent of the ontological truth. Second, I draw an analogy between the Problem of Reasonableness and the New Evil Demon Problem and argue that the revisionary ontologist can always find a positive epistemic status to characterize ordinary people’s beliefs about material objects. Finally, I address the worry that the evolutionary component of my story also threatens to undermine the best arguments for revisionary ontologies. (shrink)

Timothy Williamson's new book, The Philosophy of Philosophy, has a number of central themes. The very idea that philosophy has a method which is different in kind from the sciences is one Williamson rejects. “… the common assumption of philosophical exceptionalism is false. Even the distinction between the a priori and the a posteriori turns out to obscure underlying similarities”. Although Williamson sees the book as “a defense of armchair philosophy”, he also argues that “the differences in subject matter between (...) philosophy and the other sciences are also less deep than is often supposed. In particular, few philosophical questions are conceptual questions in any distinctive sense. …”. In addition, Williamson argues that “the current philosophical mainstream has failed to articulate an adequate philosophical methodology, in part because it has fallen into the classic epistemological error of psychologizing the data. … The picture is wrong; we frequently have better epistemic access to our immediate physical environment than to our own psychology. … Our understanding of philosophical methodology must be rid of internalist preconceptions”. I am tremendously sympathetic with all of these views.In this review, I want to raise a number of questions about philosophical methodology which Williamson does not address. While Williamson is wonderfully forthright on many important issues about philosophical methodology, the view he presents is compatible with a surprisingly wide range of approaches to philosophical questions. This may be precisely what Williamson wants. At this stage in our understanding of the philosophical enterprise, it may be premature to narrow the range of methodological options more than Williamson does. There are some hints, however, that Williamson may favor some of these options more than others, and, if that is so, it would be useful to make that clear and …. (shrink)

Edouard Machery argues that many traditional philosophical questions are beyond our capacity to answer. Answering them seems to require using the method of cases, a method that involves testing answers to philosophical questions against what we think about real or imagined cases. The problem, according to Machery, is that this method has proved unreliable ; what we think about these kinds of cases is both problematically heterogeneous and volatile. His bold solution: abandon the method of cases altogether and with it (...) many of the questions that we have come to associate with philosophy itself. Many of the critical responses to Machery’s book have focused on whether empirical work on judgements about philosophical cases supports his claim that the method of cases is unreliable. Our problem with these responses is that they accept that reliability is the right way to frame empirically informed concerns about the method of cases, and we think that it is not. The reason is simple: the kind of unreliability thesis that Machery needs proves to be empirically intractable, at least by anything like the current methods used by experimental philosophers, or so we shall argue here. While we have empirical grounds for thinking that unreliability arguments don’t give us reason to abandon the method of cases, we do think that there are empirical grounds for thinking that it needs to be reformed. There are other standards that we expect our methods to meet beyond mere reliability, especially standards of practical rationality, which are too often forgotten in metaphilosophical discussions that tend to focus exclusively on epistemological considerations. Methodological considerations, after all, are not just matters of epistemic normativity, but practical rationality as well. What’s more, considerations of practical rationality become particularly important when we move from the kind of extreme scepticism that Machery endorses to the kind of progressive reformation that we think should be pursued. And so we conclude by arguing that thinking about philosophical inquiry in terms of standards of practical rationality allows us both to better understand what kinds of problems recent empirical work on philosophical cognition raises for the method of cases and also how that work can point the way to reforming it. (shrink)

A philosopher argues that state-sponsored cyberattacks against central military or civilian targets are always acts of war. What is this philosopher doing? According to conceptual analysts, the philosopher is making a claim about our concept of war. According to philosophical realists, the philosopher is making a claim about war per se. In a quickly developing literature, a third option is being explored: the philosopher is engineering the concept of war. On this view, the philosopher is making a proposal about which (...) concept we should have – even if it deviates from the extant concept, and even if it does not capture ‘what war really is’. The activity or method of proposing such revisionary definitions, as well as the metaphilosophical reflection on it, has become known as conceptual engineering. (shrink)

A counteridentical is a counterfactual with an identity statement in the antecedent. While counteridenticals generally seem non-trivial, most semantic theories for counterfactuals, when combined with the necessity of identity and distinctness, attribute vacuous truth conditions to such counterfactuals. In light of this, one could try to save the orthodox theories either by appealing to pragmatics or by denying that the antecedents of alleged counteridenticals really contain identity claims. Or one could reject the orthodox theory of counterfactuals in favor of a (...) hyperintensional semantics that accommodates non-trivial counterpossibles. In this paper, I argue that none of these approaches can account for all the peculiar features of counteridenticals. Instead, I propose a modified version of Lewis’s counterpart theory, which rejects the necessity of identity, and show that it can explain all the peculiar features of counteridenticals in a satisfactory way. I conclude by defending the plausibility of contingent identity from objections. (shrink)

We develop and defend a new approach to counterlogicals. Non-vacuous counterlogicals, we argue, fall within a broader class of counterfactuals known as counterconventionals. Existing semantics for counterconventionals, 459–482 ) and, 1–27 ) allow counterfactuals to shift the interpretation of predicates and relations. We extend these theories to counterlogicals by allowing counterfactuals to shift the interpretation of logical vocabulary. This yields an elegant semantics for counterlogicals that avoids problems with the usual impossible worlds semantics. We conclude by showing how this approach (...) can be extended to counterpossibles more generally. (shrink)

A coherent practice of mens rea (‘guilty mind’) ascription in criminal law presupposes a concept of mens rea which is insensitive to the moral valence of an action’s outcome. For instance, an assessment of whether an agent harmed another person intentionally should be unaffected by the severity of harm done. Ascriptions of intentionality made by laypeople, however, are subject to a strong outcome bias. As demonstrated by the Knobe effect, a knowingly incurred negative side effect is standardly judged intentional, whereas (...) a positive side effect is not. We report the first empirical investigation into intentionality ascriptions made by professional judges, which finds (i) that professionals are sensitive to the moral valence of outcome type, and (ii) that the worse the outcome, the higher the propensity to ascribe intentionality. The data shows the intentionality ascriptions of professional judges to be inconsistent with the concept of mens rea supposedly at the foundation of criminal law. (shrink)

During the last quarter of a century, a number of philosophers have become attracted to the idea that necessity can be analyzed in terms of a hyperintensional notion of essence. One challenge for proponents of this view is to give a plausible explanation of our modal knowledge. The goal of this paper is to develop a strategy for meeting this challenge. My approach rests on an account of modality that I developed in previous work, and which analyzes modal properties in (...) terms of the notion of a metaphysical law. I discuss what information about the metaphysical laws is required for modal knowledge. Moreover, I describe two ways in which we might be able to acquire this information. The first way employs inference to the best explanation. The metaphysical laws, including the essential truths, play a crucial role in causal and grounding explanations and we can gain knowledge of these laws by abductive inferences from facts of which we have perceptual or a priori knowledge. The second way of gaining information about the metaphysical laws rests on knowledge that is partly constitutive of competence with the concepts that are needed to express the relevant information. Finally, I consider how knowledge of the metaphysical laws can be used to establish modal claims, paying special attention to the much-discussed connection between conceiving and possibility. (shrink)

What exactly does conceptual analysis consist in? Is it empirical or a priori? How does it support philosophical theses? and What kinds of thesis are these? There is no consensus on these questions in contemporary philosophy. This study aims to defend conceptual analysis by showing that it comprises a number of different methods and by explaining their importance in philosophy. After setting out an initial dilemma for conceptual analysis, the study outlines a minimal ecumenical account of concepts, as well as (...) an account of concept possession and concept employment. On the basis of these accounts, the study then argues that there are both empirical and a priori forms of conceptual analysis, and that each can be defended as legitimate methods. The philosophical interest of conceptual analysis, however, resides in relying on all three types of method in the service of answering philosophical concerns. This is illustrated by three sample cases. (shrink)

In this paper, we offer a novel defense of descriptivism about reference. Our argument is based on principles about the relevance of speaker intentions to reference that are shared by many opponents of descriptivism, including Saul Kripke. We first show that two such principles that are plausibly endorsed by Kripke and other prominent externalists in fact entail descriptivism. The first principle states that when certain kinds of speaker intentions are present, they suffice to determine and explain reference. According to the (...) second principle, certain speaker intentions must be present whenever something determines or explains reference. We then go on to make these principles more precise and argue that it would be costly to deny either of them. Since on the more precise understanding we suggest, the conjunction of these principles still entails descriptivism, we conclude that opponents of descriptivism have to give up some highly plausible assumption about the relation between speaker intentions and reference. (shrink)

Imagination has been assigned an important explanatory role in a multitude of philosophical contexts. This paper examines four such contexts: mindreading, pretense, our engagement with fiction, and modal epistemology. Close attention to each of these contexts suggests that the mental activity of imagining is considerably more heterogeneous than previously realized. In short, no single mental activity can do all the explanatory work that has been assigned to imagining.

I discuss three observations about backtracking counterfactuals not predicted by existing theories, and then motivate a theory of counterfactuals that does predict them. On my theory, counterfactuals quantify over a suitably restricted set of historical possibilities from some contextually relevant past time. I motivate each feature of the theory relevant to predicting our three observations about backtracking counterfactuals. The paper concludes with replies to three potential objections.

An "overview article" that (a) clarifies the nature of theological anti-realism and how that thesis should be formulated, and (b) negatively assesses some of the most common arguments for being a theological anti-realist.

Nathan Ballantyne argues that the knockdown status of certain non-philosophical arguments can be transferred to arguments for substantive philosophical conclusions. Thus, if there are knockdown non-philosophical arguments, there are knockdown philosophical arguments. I show that Ballantyne’s argument is unsound, since arguments that are knockdown in non-philosophical contexts may become question-begging when used to argue for philosophical conclusions.

Suppose that one is at least a minimal realist about a given domain, in that one thinks that that domain contains truths that are not in any interesting sense of our own making. Given such an understanding, what can be said for and against the method of reflective equilibrium as a procedure for investigating the domain? One fact that lends this question some interest is that many philosophers do combine commitments to minimal realism and a reflective equilibrium methodology. Here, for (...) example, is David Lewis on philosophy: Our “intuitions” are simply opinions: our philosophical theories are the same. Some are commonsensical, some are sophisticated; some are particular; some general; some are more firmly held, some less. But they are all opinions, and a reasonable goal for a philosopher is to bring them into equilibrium. Our common task it to find out what equilibria there are that can withstand examination, but it remains for each of us to come to rest at one or another of them… Once the menu of well-worked out theories is before us, philosophy is a matter of opinion. Is that to say that there is no truth to be had? Or that the truth is of our own making, and different ones of us can make it differently? Not at all! If you say flatly that there is no god, and I say that there are countless gods but none of them are our worldmates, then it may be that neither of us is making any mistake of method. We may each be bringing our opinions to equilibrium in the most careful possible way, taking account of all the arguments, distinctions, and counterexamples. But one of us, at least, is making a mistake of fact. Which one is wrong depends on what there is (1983: x-xi). In addition to philosophy in general, the method of reflective equilibrium has also been endorsed as the appropriate procedure for investigating various other subject.. (shrink)

In this age of post-Moorean modesty, many of us are inclined to doubt that philosophy is in possession of arguments that might genuinely serve to undermine what we ordinarily believe. It may perhaps be conceded that the arguments of the skeptic appear to be utterly compelling; but the Mooreans among us will hold that the very plausibility of our ordinary beliefs is reason enough for supposing that there must be something wrong in the skeptic’s arguments, even if we are unable (...) to say what it is. In so far then, as the pretensions of philosophy to provide a world view rest upon its.. (shrink)

On their alethic reading, formulas,, and codify three of the most basic principles of possibility and its dual. This paper discusses these formulas on a broadly epistemic reading, and in particular as candidate principles about conceivability and its dual. As will be shown, the question whether and its classical dual equivalent, as well as and hold on this reading is not only a logical one but involves a distinctively metaphysical controversy between realist and antirealist views on the relation between truth (...) on the one hand and various cognitive conditions such as knowability, conceivability, and thinkability on the other. It will be argued that the stance we take with regard to the metaphysical dispute has consequences for our assessment of the plausibility not only of and its classical equivalent, but also of and—when that stance is combined with a structural account of propositions—potentially of as well; with all four taken in the above epistemic sense. A second upshot will be that the same sensitivity to metaphysical background commitment also applies to our view as to whether or not inconceivability of the opposite coincides with, or even entails, apriority. (shrink)

According to the quasi-perceptualist account of philosophical intuitions, they are intellectual appearances that are psychologically and epistemically analogous to perceptual appearances. Moral intuitions share the key characteristics of other intuitions, but can also have a distinctive phenomenology and motivational role. This paper develops the Humean claim that the shared and distinctive features of substantive moral intuitions are best explained by their being constituted by moral emotions. This is supported by an independently plausible non-Humean, quasi-perceptualist theory of emotion, according to which (...) the phenomenal feel of emotions is crucial for their intentional content. (shrink)

Wright (In Gendler and Hawthorne (Eds.), Conceivability and possibility, 2002) rejects some dominant responses to Kripke’s modal argument against the mind-body identity theory, and instead he proposes a new response that draws on a certain understanding of counterpossibles. This paper offers some defensive remarks on behalf of Lewis’ objection to that argument, and it argues that Wright’s proposal fails to fully accommodate the conceivability intuitions, and that it is dialectically ineffective.

Machery et al. claim that analytic philosophers of language are committed to a method of cases according to which theories of reference are assessed by consulting semantic intuitions about actual and possible cases. Since empirical evidence suggests that such intuitions vary both within and across cultures, these experimental semanticists conclude that the traditional attempt at pursuing such theories is misguided. Against the backdrop of Kripke’s anti-descriptivist arguments, this paper offers a novel response to the challenge posed by Machery et al., (...) arguing that they either misplace or exaggerate the role played by. The lesson is that while semantic intuitions carry evidential weight in evaluating certain subjunctive conditionals reflecting counterfactual possibilities, they neither play an epistemic role in determining the actual reference of proper names, nor in evaluating certain indicative conditionals reflecting so-called counteractual possibilities. Moreover, once an asymmetry is acknowledged in Machery et al’s vignette between the narrator and the subject’s suppositions about the actual world, a corresponding ambiguity can account for the alleged culturally determined variation in semantic intuitions. (shrink)

Much seems to be at stake in metaphysical questions about, for example, God, free will or morality. One thing that could be at stake is the value of the universe we inhabit—how good or bad it is. We can think of competing philosophical positions as describing possibilities, ways the world might turn out to be, and to which value can be assigned. When, for example, people hope that God exists, or fear that we do not possess free will, they express (...) attitudes towards these possibilities, attitudes that presuppose answers to questions about their comparative value. My aim in this paper is to distinguish these evaluative questions from related questions with which they can be confused, to identify structural constraints on their proper pursuit, and to address objections to their very coherence. Answers to such evaluative questions offer one measure of the importance of philosophical disputes. (shrink)