In this paper, we argue that a distinction ought to be drawn between two ways in which a given world might be logically impossible. First, a world w might be impossible because the laws that hold at w are different from those that hold at some other world (say the actual world). Second, a world w might be impossible because the laws of logic that hold in some world (say the actual world) are violated at w. We develop a novel (...) way of modelling logical possibility that makes room for both kinds of logical impossibility. Doing so has interesting implications for the relationship between logical possibility and other kinds of possibility (for example, metaphysical possibility) and implications for the necessity or contingency of the laws of logic. (shrink)

In this paper, we analyse how GPS-based navigation systems are transforming some of our intellectual virtues and then suggest two strategies to improve our practices regarding the use of such epistemic tools. We start by outlining the two main approaches in virtue epistemology, namely virtue reliabilism and virtue responsibilism. We then discuss how navigation systems can undermine five epistemic virtues, namely memory, perception, attention, intellectual autonomy, and intellectual carefulness. We end by considering two possible interlinked ways of trying to remedy (...) this situation: [i] redesigning the epistemic tool to improve the epistemic virtues of memory, perception, and attention; and [ii] the cultivation of cognitive diligence for wayfinding tasks scaffolding intellectual autonomy and carefulness. (shrink)

This article argues that economic crises are incompatible with the realisation of non-domination in capitalist societies. The ineradicable risk that an economic crisis will occur undermines the robust security of the conditions of non-domination for all citizens, not only those who are harmed by a crisis. I begin by demonstrating that the unemployment caused by economic crises violates the egalitarian dimensions of freedom as non-domination. The lack of employment constitutes an exclusion from the social bases of self-respect, and from a (...) practice of mutual social contribution crucial to the intersubjective affirmation of one’s status. While this argument shows that republicans must be concerned about economic crises, I suggest a more powerful argument can be grounded in the republican requirement that freedom must be robust. The systemic risk of economic crisis constitutes a threat to the conditions of free citizenship that cannot be nullified using policy mechanisms. As a result, republicans appear to be faced with the choice of revising their commitments or rejecting the possibility that republican freedom can be robustly secured in capitalist societies. (shrink)

Can there be grounding without necessitation? Can a fact obtain wholly in virtue of metaphysically more fundamental facts, even though there are possible worlds at which the latter facts obtain but not the former? It is an orthodoxy in recent literature about the nature of grounding, and in first-order philosophical disputes about what grounds what, that the answer is no. I will argue that the correct answer is yes. I present two novel arguments against grounding necessitarianism, and show that grounding (...) contingentism is fully compatible with the various explanatory roles that grounding is widely thought to play. (shrink)

It is widely held that counterfactuals, unlike attitude ascriptions, preserve the referential transparency of their constituents, i.e., that counterfactuals validate the substitution of identicals when their constituents do. The only putative counterexamples in the literature come from counterpossibles, i.e., counterfactuals with impossible antecedents. Advocates of counterpossibilism, i.e., the view that counterpossibles are not all vacuous, argue that counterpossibles can generate referential opacity. But in order to explain why most substitution inferences into counterfactuals seem valid, counterpossibilists also often maintain that counterfactuals (...) with possible antecedents are transparency‐preserving. I argue that if counterpossibles can generate opacity, then so can ordinary counterfactuals with possible antecedents. Utilizing an analogy between counterfactuals and attitude ascriptions, I provide a counterpossibilist‐friendly explanation for the apparent validity of substitution inferences into counterfactuals. I conclude by suggesting that the debate over counterpossibles is closely tied to questions concerning the extent to which counterfactuals are more like attitude ascriptions and epistemic operators than previously recognized. (shrink)

When we think about ethics, we normally focus on a particular sort of agent: the individual person. Some philosophers have argued that we should rethink the limits of what counts as an ethically relevant unit of agency by expanding outward, and claiming that groups of people can have normative reasons for action. In this paper, I explore whether we can go in the other direction. Are there sub‐personal beings who count as agents with their own reasons for action? In particular, (...) might the temporal parts of persons, beings like “me‐in‐my‐twenties,” be thought of as normative agents? This idea, I argue, has deep attractions, and deep, but surmountable, challenges. And if we do accept this idea, I argue, this can indirectly help to support the case for thinking that groups can have reasons for action. (shrink)

Discussion of the relevance of grounding to substantiveness, theory-choice, and “location problems” in metaphysics.

The willful ignorance doctrine says defendants should sometimes be treated as if they know what they don't. This book provides a careful defense of this method of imputing mental states. Though the doctrine is only partly justified and requires reform, it also demonstrates that the criminal law needs more legal fictions of this kind. The resulting theory of when and why the criminal law can pretend we know what we don't has far-reaching implications for legal practice and reveals a pressing (...) need for change. (shrink)

The universality of critical phenomena is best explained by appeal to the Renormalisation Group (RG). Batterman and Morrison, among others, have claimed that this explanation is irreducible. I argue that the RG account is reducible, but that the higher-level explanation ought not to be eliminated. I demonstrate that the key assumption on which the explanation relies – the scale invariance of critical systems – can be explained in lower-level terms; however, we should not replace the RG explanation with a bottom-up (...) account, rather we should acknowledge that the explanation appeals to dependencies which may be traced down to lower levels. (shrink)

Jason Bowers and Meg Wallace have recently argued that those who hold that every individual instantiates a ‘haecceity’ are caught up in a Euthyphro-style dilemma when confronted with familiar cases of fission and fusion. Key to Bowers and Wallace’s dilemma are certain assumptions about the nature of metaphysical explanation and the explanatory commitments of belief in haecceities. However, I argue that the dilemma only arises due to a failure to distinguish between providing a metaphysical explanation of why a fact holds (...) vs. a metaphysical explanation of what it is for a fact to hold. In the process, I also shed light on the explanatory commitments of belief in haecceities. (shrink)

The paradox of hedonism is the idea that making pleasure the only thing that we desire for its own sake can be self-defeating. Why would this be true? In this paper, I survey two prominent explanations, then develop a third possible explanation, inspired by Joseph Butler's classic discussion of the paradox. The existing accounts claim that the paradox arises because we are systematically incompetent at predicting what will make us happy, or because the greatest pleasures for human beings are found (...) in certain special goods which hedonists cannot enjoy. On the account that I develop, the paradox is a consequence of a theory about the nature of pleasure, together with a view about the requirements of rational belief. Which of these explanations is correct, I argue, bears on central questions about how to understand the nature and extent of the paradox. (shrink)

In the study of modal and nonclassical logics, translations have frequently been employed as a way of measuring the inferential capabilities of a logic. It is sometimes claimed that two logics are “notational variants” if they are translationally equivalent. However, we will show that this cannot be quite right, since first-order logic and propositional logic are translationally equivalent. Others have claimed that for two logics to be notational variants, they must at least be compositionally intertranslatable. The definition of compositionality these (...) accounts use, however, is too strong, as the standard translation from modal logic to first-order logic is not compositional in this sense. In light of this, we will explore a weaker version of this notion that we will call schematicity and show that there is no schematic translation either from first-order logic to propositional logic or from intuitionistic logic to classical logic. (shrink)

A counterpossible is a counterfactual with an impossible antecedent. Counterpossibles present a puzzle for standard theories of counterfactuals, which predict that all counterpossibles are semantically vacuous. Moreover, counterpossibles play an important role in many debates within metaphysics and epistemology, including debates over grounding, causation, modality, mathematics, science, and even God. In this article, we will explore various positions on counterpossibles as well as their potential philosophical consequences.

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)

I argue that embodied understanding and conceptual-representational understanding interact through schematic structure. I demonstrate that common conceptions of these two kinds of understanding, such as developed by Wheeler (2005, 2008) and Dreyfus (2007a, b, 2013), entail a separation between them that gives rise to significant problems. Notably, it becomes unclear how they could interact; a problem that has been pointed out by Dreyfus (2007a, b, 2013) and McDowell (2007) in particular. I propose a Kantian strategy to close the gap between (...) them. I argue that embodied and conceptual-representational understanding are governed by schemata. Since they are governed by schemata, they can interact through a structure that they have in common. Finally, I spell out two different ways to conceive of the schematic interaction between them—a close, grounding relationship and a looser relationship that allows for a minimal interaction, but preserves the autonomy of both forms of understanding. (shrink)

Conventional wisdom has it that truth is always evaluated using our actual linguistic conventions, even when considering counterfactual scenarios in which different conventions are adopted. This principle has been invoked in a number of philosophical arguments, including Kripke’s defense of the necessity of identity and Lewy’s objection to modal conventionalism. But it is false. It fails in the presence of what Einheuser (2006) calls c-monsters, or convention-shifting expressions (on analogy with Kaplan’s monsters, or context-shifting expressions). We show that c-monsters naturally (...) arise in contexts, such as metalinguistic negotiations, where speakers entertain alternative conventions. We develop an expressivist theory—inspired by Barker (2002) and MacFarlane (2016) on vague predications and Einheuser (2006) on counterconventionals—to model these shifts in convention. Using this framework, we reassess the philosophical arguments that invoked the conventional wisdom. (shrink)

This article examines two questions about scientists’ search for knowledge. First, which search strategies generate discoveries effectively? Second, is it advantageous to diversify search strategies? We argue pace Weisberg and Muldoon, “Epistemic Landscapes and the Division of Cognitive Labor”, that, on the first question, a search strategy that deliberately seeks novel research approaches need not be optimal. On the second question, we argue they have not shown epistemic reasons exist for the division of cognitive labor, identifying the errors that led (...) to their conclusions. Furthermore, we generalize the epistemic landscape model, showing that one should be skeptical about the benefits of social learning in epistemically complex environments. (shrink)

Elselijn Kingma argues that, in cases of mammalian placental pregnancy, the foster (roughly, the post-implantation embryo/foetus) is part of the gravida (the pregnant organism). But she does not consider the possibility of proper overlap. I show that this generates a number of serious problems for her argument and trace the oversight to a quite general issue within the literature on biological individuality. Doing so provides an opportunity to pull apart and clarify the relations between some importantly distinct questions concerning organismality (...) and organismic parthood, and to identify the implications that this has for those who want to draw on this literature when making metaphysical or mereological arguments. (shrink)

Kant and Fichte developed the concept of a worldview as a way of reflecting on experience as a whole. But what does it mean to form a worldview? And what role did it play in the German Idealist tradition? This paper seeks to answer these questions through a detailed analysis of the form of a philosophical worldview and its historical portent, both of which remain unexplored in the literature. The dearth of attention is partially to blame on Kant’s desultory development (...) of it, as well as its place in Fichte’s understudied lectures on religion. In this paper, I first reconstruct Kant’s conception as the starting point and then trace it to Fichte who went on to evolve it further. Fichte endorses the basic conceptual shape pioneered by Kant, namely, a reflective process of positing an idea and then checking the coherence of necessary judgments relative to it. However, Fichte came to realize that its philosophical function needed expanding. Beyond recognizing the possibility for alternative worldviews, Fichte further fleshed out how worldview creation could lead to human flourishing. The common feature between both thinkers is that the formation of a worldview aims to turn philosophy into a life-orienting exercise. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore a fundamental but under-appreciated distinction between two ways of understanding the desire-satisfaction theory of well-being. According to proactive desire satisfactionism, a person is benefited by the acquisition of new satisfied desires. According to reactive desire satisfactionism, a person can be benefited only by the satisfaction of their existing desires. I first offer an overview of this distinction. I then canvass several ways of developing a general formulation of desire satisfactionism that would capture the reactive view, (...) and argue that all come with significant costs. (shrink)

Kant’s claim that we must postulate the immortality of the soul is polarizing. While much attention has been paid to two standard arguments in its defense (one moral-psychological, the other rational), I contend that a favorite argument of Kant’s from the apogee of his critical period, namely, the teleological argument, deserves renewed attention. This paper reconstructs it and exhibits what makes it unique (though not necessarily superior) in relation to the other arguments. In particular, its form (as third-personal or descriptive, (...) beginning from observations) and related force of assent (as a subjectively universal reflective judgment) set it apart from the other arguments. My goal is to establish that any engagement with Kant’s immortality postulate must include equal consideration of the teleological argument in order to be complete. (shrink)

While it is a point of agreement in contemporary republican political theory that property ownership is closely connected to freedom as non-domination, surprisingly little work has been done to elucidate the nature of this connection or the constraints on property regimes that might be required as a result. In this paper, I provide a systematic model of the boundaries within which republican property systems must sit and explore some of the wider implications that thinking of property in these terms may (...) have for republicans. The boundaries I focus on relate to the distribution of property and the application of types of property claims over particular kinds of goods. I develop this model from those elements of non-domination most directly related to the operation of a property regime: (a) economic independence, (b) limiting material inequalities, and (c) the promotion of common goods. The limits that emerge from this analysis support intuitive judgments that animate much republican discussion of property distribution. My account diverges from much orthodox republican theory, though, in challenging the primacy of private property rights in the realization of economic independence. The value of property on republican terms can be realized without private ownership of the means of production. (shrink)

Rational agents face choices, even when taking seriously the possibility of determinism. Rational agents also follow the advice of Causal Decision Theory (CDT). Although many take these claims to be well-motivated, there is growing pressure to reject one of them, as CDT seems to go badly wrong in some deterministic cases. We argue that deterministic cases do not undermine a counterfactual model of rational deliberation, which is characteristic of CDT. Rather, they force us to distinguish between counterfactuals that are relevant (...) and ones that are irrelevant for the purposes of deliberation. We incorporate this distinction into decision theory to develop ‘Selective Causal Decision Theory’, which delivers the correct recommendations in deterministic cases while respecting the key motivations behind CDT. (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)

In this paper, we introduce a distinctive kind of psychological abuse we call Tightlacing. We begin by presenting four examples and argue that there is a distinctive form of abuse in these examples that cannot be captured by our existing moral categories. We then outline our diagnosis of this distinctive form of abuse. Tightlacing consists in inducing a mistaken self-conception in others that licenses overburdening demands on them such that victims apply those demands to themselves. We discuss typical Tightlacing strategies (...) and argue that Tightlacing typically is manipulative. Typical tightlacers will be motivated by a strong desire to suppress a kind of behaviour on the victim’s part. We will then differentiate Tightlacing from a related and widely discussed form of psychological abuse, Gaslighting. While Gaslighting focuses on the victim’s epistemic capacities and typically serves to insulate the abuser from potential dissent, Tightlacing focuses on the kind of person the victim is and typically serves to insulate the abuser from confronting ways of behaviour they cannot cope with. While Gaslighting targets the victim’s epistemic self-trust, Tightlacing targets their basic sense of who they are and their sense of entitlement to conduct themselves as who they really are. We finish by diagnosing the wrong-making features of Tightlacing, arguing that Tightlacing, among many secondary wrongs, makes the victim complicit in a denial of their rights as well as an erasure of who they are. (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)

Jennifer Nagel (2010) has recently proposed a fascinating account of the decreased tendency to attribute knowledge in conversational contexts in which unrealized possibilities of error have been mentioned. Her account appeals to epistemic egocentrism, or what is sometimes called the curse of knowledge, an egocentric bias to attribute our own mental states to other people (and sometimes our own future and past selves). Our aim in this paper is to investigate the empirical merits of Nagel’s hypothesis about the psychology involved (...) in knowledge attribution. (shrink)

Whether or not quantum physics can account for molecular structure is a matter of considerable controversy. Three of the problems raised in this regard are the problems of molecular structure. We argue that these problems are just special cases of the measurement problem of quantum mechanics: insofar as the measurement problem is solved, the problems of molecular structure are resolved as well. In addition, we explore one consequence of our argument: that claims about the reduction or emergence of molecular structure (...) cannot be settled independently of the choice of a particular resolution to the measurement problem. Specifically, we consider how three standard putative solutions to the measurement problem inform our under- standing of a molecule in isolation, as well as of chemistry’s relation to quantum physics. (shrink)

Hermeneutical injustice is being unjustly prevented from making sense of one’s experiences, identity, or circumstances and/or communicating about them. The literature focusses almost exclusively on whether people have access to adequate conceptual resources. In this paper, we discuss a different kind of hermeneutical struggle caused by stigma. We argue that in some cases of hermeneutic injustice people have access to hermeneutical resources apt to understand their identity but reject employing these due to the stigma attached to the identity. We begin (...) with a reinterpretation of one of the cases discussed in the literature, Edmund White’s novel A Boy’s Own Story. We argue that in this case hermeneutic resources are available but are rejected due to the stigma attached to homosexuality. We then present two analogous kinds of cases: alcohol addiction and being the victim of intimate partner violence. Here, too, hermeneutic injustice occurs because of stigma attached to an identity rather than unavailability of resources. We close by suggesting that these cases may, additionally, involve the wrong of Tightlacing: by meddling with their self-conception, stigma can manipulate individuals into a view of themselves that licenses inappropriate demands on them and makes them complicit in an erasure of their identities. (shrink)

A common objection to the very idea of conceptual engineering is the topic continuity problem: whenever one tries to “reengineer” a concept, one only shifts attention away from one concept to another. Put differently, there is no such thing as conceptual revision: there’s only conceptual replacement. Here, I show that topic continuity is compatible with conceptual replacement. Whether the topic is preserved in an act of conceptual replacement simply depends on what is being replaced (a conceptual tool or a conceptual (...) role) and what the topic under discussion is. Thus, the topic continuity problem only arises from a failure to specify these two things. (shrink)

Recent discussions of emergence in physics have focussed on the use of limiting relations, and often particularly on singular or asymptotic limits. We discuss a putative example of emergence that does not fit into this narrative: the case of phonons. These quasi-particles have some claim to be emergent, not least because the way in which they relate to the underlying crystal is almost precisely analogous to the way in which quantum particles relate to the underlying quantum field theory. But there (...) is no need to take a limit when moving from a crystal lattice based description to the phonon description. Not only does this demonstrate that we can have emergence without limits, but also provides a way of understanding cases that do involve limits. (shrink)

This is an introduction to the volume "Explanation Beyond Causation: Philosophical Perspectives on Non-Causal Explanations", edited by A. Reutlinger and J. Saatsi (OUP, forthcoming in 2017). -/- Explanations are very important to us in many contexts: in science, mathematics, philosophy, and also in everyday and juridical contexts. But what is an explanation? In the philosophical study of explanation, there is long-standing, influential tradition that links explanation intimately to causation: we often explain by providing accurate information about the causes of the (...) phenomenon to be explained. Such causal accounts have been the received view of the nature of explanation, particularly in philosophy of science, since the 1980s. However, philosophers have recently begun to break with this causal tradition by shifting their focus to kinds of explanation that do not turn on causal information. The increasing recognition of the importance of such non-causal explanations in the sciences and elsewhere raises pressing questions for philosophers of explanation. What is the nature of non-causal explanations - and which theory best captures it? How do non-causal explanations relate to causal ones? How are non-causal explanations in the sciences related to those in mathematics and metaphysics? This volume of new essays explores answers to these and other questions at the heart of contemporary philosophy of explanation. The essays address these questions from a variety of perspectives, including general accounts of non-causal and causal explanations, as well as a wide range of detailed case studies of non-causal explanations from the sciences, mathematics and metaphysics. (shrink)

Grounding and explanation are said to be intimately connected. Some even maintain that grounding just is a form of explanation. But grounding and explanation also seem importantly different—on the face of it, the former is ‘worldy’ or ‘objective’ while the latter isn’t. In this paper, we develop and respond to an argument to the effect that there is no way to fruitfully address this tension that retains orthodox views about grounding and explanation but doesn’t undermine a central piece of methodology, (...) namely that explanation is a guide to ground. (shrink)

Pattern-based reasons are reasons for action deriving not from the features of our own actions, but from the features of the larger patterns of action in which we might be participating. These reasons might relate to the patterns of action that will actually be carried out, or they might relate to merely hypothetical patterns. In past work, I have argued that accepting merely hypothetical pattern-based reasons, together with a plausible account of how to weigh these reasons, can lead to disastrous (...) consequences. However, in this article, I argue that this problem is not limited to hypothetical pattern-based reasons: it turns out that there are analogous issues for reasons deriving from actual patterns. I then suggest that we can avoid this problem by adopting a different account of the weight of pattern-based reasons. (shrink)

I develop an expressivist account of verbal disagreements as practical disagreements over how to use words rather than factual disagreements over what words actually mean. This account enjoys several advantages over others in the literature: it can be implemented in a neo-Stalnakerian possible worlds framework; it accounts for cases where speakers are undecided on how exactly to interpret an expression; it avoids appeals to fraught notions like subject matter, charitable interpretation, and joint-carving; and it naturally extends to an analysis of (...) metalinguistic negotiations. (shrink)

ABSTRACT It has become standard to conceive of metalinguistic disagreement as motivated by a form of negotiation, aimed at reaching consensus because of the practical consequences of using a word with one content rather than another. This paper presents an alternative motive for expressing and pursuing metalinguistic disagreement. In using words with given criteria, we betray our location amongst social categories or groups. Because of this, metalinguistic disagreement can be used as a stage upon which to perform a social identity. (...) The ways in which metalinguistic disagreements motivated in this way diverge in character from metalinguistic negotiations are described, as are several consequences of the existence of metalinguistic disagreements motivated in this way. (shrink)

The recent literature abounds with accounts of the semantics and pragmatics of so-called predicates of personal taste, i.e. predicates whose application is, in some sense or other, a subjective matter. Relativism and contextualism are the major types of theories. One crucial difference between these theories concerns how we should assess previous taste claims. Relativism predicts that we should assess them in the light of the taste standard governing the context of assessment. Contextualism predicts that we should assess them in the (...) light of the taste standard governing the context of use. We show in a range of experiments that neither prediction is correct. People have no clear preferences either way and which taste standard they choose in evaluating a previous taste claim crucially depends on whether they start out with a favorable attitude towards the object in question and then come to have an unfavorable attitude or vice versa. We suggest an account of the data in terms of what we call hybrid relativism. (shrink)

It is commonly claimed that the universality of critical phenomena is explained through particular applications of the renormalization group. This article has three aims: to clarify the structure of the explanation of universality, to discuss the physics of such RG explanations, and to examine the extent to which universality is thus explained. The derivation of critical exponents proceeds via a real-space or a field-theoretic approach to the RG. Building on work by Mainwood, this article argues that these approaches ought to (...) be distinguished: while the field-theoretic approach explains universality, the real-space approach fails to provide an adequate explanation. (shrink)

This is the second part of a two-part series on the logic of hyperlogic, a formal system for regimenting metalogical claims in the object language (even within embedded environments). Part A provided a minimal logic for hyperlogic that is sound and complete over the class of all models. In this part, we extend these completeness results to stronger logics that are sound and complete over restricted classes of models. We also investigate the logic of hyperlogic when the language is enriched (...) with hyperintensional operators such as counterfactual conditionals and belief operators. (shrink)

Fine is widely thought to have refuted the simple modal account of essence, which takes the essential properties of a thing to be those it cannot exist without exemplifying. Yet, a number of philosophers have suggested resuscitating the simple modal account by appealing to distinctions akin to the distinction Lewis draws between sparse and abundant properties, treating only those in the former class as candidates for essentiality. I argue that ‘sparse modalism’ succumbs to counterexamples similar to those originally posed by (...) Fine, and fails to capture paradigmatic instances of essence involving abundant properties and relations. (shrink)

Near the end of 'Naming the Colours', Lewis (1997) makes an interesting claim about the relationship between linguistic and mental content; we are typically unable to read the content of a belief off the content of a sentence used to express that belief or vice versa. I call this view autonomism. I motivate and defend autonomism and discuss its importance in the philosophy of mind and language. In a nutshell, I argue that the different theoretical roles that mental and linguistic (...) content play suggest these kinds of content should be understood as sensitive to different things. (shrink)

I like the view that the fundamental facts are logically simple, not complex. However, some universal generalizations and negations may appear fundamental, because they cannot be explained by logically simple facts about particulars. I explore a natural reply: those universal generalizations and negations are true because certain logically simple facts—call them —are the fundamental facts. I argue that this solution is only available given some metaphysical frameworks, some conceptions of metaphysical explanation and fundamentality. It requires a ‘fitting’ framework, according to (...) which metaphysical theories explain the aptness of representations in terms of how things are fundamentally. Fitting frameworks conceive of the fundamental facts as those that are metaphysically ‘real’; call them the ‘facts-in-reality’. Moreover, we must take as primary a plural notion of the facts-in-reality, not the singular notion of a fact-in-reality. By contrast, a metaphysics that grounds facts is incompatible with my strategy for keeping the fundamental facts logically simple. (shrink)

Sentences about logic are often used to show that certain embedding expressions are hyperintensional. Yet it is not clear how to regiment “logic talk” in the object language so that it can be compositionally embedded under such expressions. In this paper, I develop a formal system called hyperlogic that is designed to do just that. I provide a hyperintensional semantics for hyperlogic that doesn’t appeal to logically impossible worlds, as traditionally understood, but instead uses a shiftable parameter that determines the (...) interpretation of the logical connectives. I argue this semantics compares favorably to the more common impossible worlds semantics, which faces difficulties interpreting propositionally quantified logic talk. (shrink)

Kant’s accounts of the Highest Good and the moral argument for God and immortality are central features of his philosophy. But both involve lingering puzzles. In this entry, we first explore what the Highest Good is for Kant and the role it plays in a complete account of ethical life. We then focus on whether the Highest Good involves individuals only, or whether it also connects with Kant’s doctrines about the moral progress of the species. In conclusion, we look into (...) three ways of articulating the moral argument for God and immorality that take our commitment to the Highest Good as their point of departure. (shrink)

Professor Morales’ Coss Dialogue Lecture demonstrates the utility of pragmatism for his work as a social scientist across three projects: 1) field research studying the acephalous and heterogenous social order of Chicago’s Maxwell Street Market; 2) nascent research how unseen religious orders animate the lives of im/migrants and their contributions to food systems; and 3) large-scale longitudinal research on farmers markets using the Metrics + Indicators for Impact (MIFI) toolkit. The first two sections of my paper applaud and build upon (...) Morales’ first two projects, and my extremely brief third section raises some questions about positivist specters that may haunt the MIFI project insofar as it is conceptualized, described, and deployed using the terms favored by mainstream social science. (shrink)

In chapter 3 of Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, Kripke’s Wittgenstein offers a “sceptical solution" to the sceptical paradox about meaning developed in chapter 2 (according to which there are no facts in virtue of which ascriptions of meaning such as “Jones means addition by ‘+’” can be true). Although many commentators have taken the sceptical solution to be broadly analogous to non-factualist theories in other domains, such as non-cognitivism or expressivism in metaethics, the nature of the sceptical solution (...) has not been well-understood. The main aim of this paper is to advance our understanding of the nature of the non-factualism about meaning proposed in the sceptical solution. It attempts to outline some desiderata that should be respected by interpretations of the sceptical solution and considers two objections raised against it in Barry Stroud’s paper “Wittgenstein on Meaning, Understanding and Community". It attempts to correct misconstruals of the sceptical solution that have been promulgated by Davidson and some of his followers and suggests that the sceptical solution developed by Kripke’s Wittgenstein is best viewed as a form of quasi-realism about meaning. It ends by outlining what it takes to be the most pressing challenges facing the sceptical solution. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

The modern Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics describes an emergent multiverse. The goal of this paper is to provide a perspicuous characterisation of how the multiverse emerges making use of a recent account of (weak) ontological emergence. This will be cashed out with a case study that identifies decoherence as the mechanism for emergence. The greater metaphysical clarity enables the rebuttal of critiques due to Baker (2007) and Dawid and Th\'ebault (2015) that cast the emergent multiverse ontology as incoherent; responses (...) are also offered to challenges to the Everettian approach from Maudlin (2010) and Monton (2013). (shrink)