Some propositions are more epistemically important than others. Further, how important a proposition is is often a contingent matter—some propositions count more in some worlds than in others. Epistemic Utility Theory cannot accommodate this fact, at least not in any standard way. For EUT to be successful, legitimate measures of epistemic utility must be proper, i.e., every probability function must assign itself maximum expected utility. Once we vary the importance of propositions across worlds, however, normal measures of epistemic utility become (...) improper. I argue there isn’t any good way out for EUT. (shrink)

There are many things—call them ‘experts’—that you should defer to in forming your opinions. The trouble is, many experts are modest: they’re less than certain that they are worthy of deference. When this happens, the standard theories of deference break down: the most popular (“Reflection”-style) principles collapse to inconsistency, while their most popular (“New-Reflection”-style) variants allow you to defer to someone while regarding them as an anti-expert. We propose a middle way: deferring to someone involves preferring to make any decision (...) using their opinions instead of your own. In a slogan, deferring opinions is deferring decisions. Generalizing the proposal of Dorst (2020a), we first formulate a new principle that shows exactly how your opinions must relate to an expert’s for this to be so. We then build off the results of Levinstein (2019) and Campbell-Moore (2020) to show that this principle is also equivalent to the constraint that you must always expect the expert’s estimates to be more accurate than your own. Finally, we characterize the conditions an expert’s opinions must meet to be worthy of deference in this sense, showing how they sit naturally between the too-strong constraints of Reflection and the too-weak constraints of New Reflection. (shrink)

In this paper, we illustrate some serious difficulties involved in conveying information about uncertain risks and securing informed consent for risky interventions in a clinical setting. We argue that in order to secure informed consent for a medical intervention, physicians often need to do more than report a bare, numerical probability value. When probabilities are given, securing informed consent generally requires communicating how probability expressions are to be interpreted and communicating something about the quality and quantity of the evidence for (...) the probabilities reported. Patients may also require guidance on how probability claims may or may not be relevant to their decisions, and physicians should be ready to help patients understand these issues. (shrink)

Consequentialist theories determine rightness solely based on real or expected consequences. Although such theories are popular, they often have difficulty with generalizing intuitions, which demand concern for questions like “What if everybody did that?” Rule consequentialism attempts to incorporate these intuitions by shifting the locus of evaluation from the consequences of acts to those of rules. However, detailed rule-consequentialist theories seem ad hoc or arbitrary compared to act consequentialist ones. We claim that generalizing can be better incorporated into consequentialism by (...) keeping the locus of evaluation on acts but adjusting the decision theory behind act selection. Specifically, we should adjust which types of dependencies the theory takes to be decision-relevant. Using this strategy, we formulate a new theory, generalized act consequentialism, which we argue is more compelling than rule consequentialism both in modeling the actual reasoning of generalizers and in delivering correct verdicts. (shrink)

We are immersed within an odorous sea of chemical currents that we parse into individual odors with complex structures. Odors have been posited as determined by the structural relation between the molecules that compose the chemical compounds and their interactions with the receptor site. But, naturally occurring smells are parsed from gaseous odor plumes. To give a comprehensive account of the nature of odors the chemosciences must account for these large distributed entities as well. We offer a focused review of (...) what is known about the perception of odor plumes for olfactory navigation and tracking, which we then connect to what is known about the role odorants play as properties of the plume in determining odor identity with respect to odor quality. We end by motivating our central claim that more research needs to be conducted on the role that odorants play within the odor plume in determining odor identity. (shrink)

Extending Alvin Plantinga’s model of warranted belief to the beliefs of groups as a whole, I argue that if the dogmatic beliefs of the Catholic Church are true, they are also warranted. Catholic dogmas are warranted because they meet the three conditions of my model: they are formed (1) by ministers functioning properly (2) in accordance with a design plan that is oriented towards truth and reliable (3) in a social environment sufficiently similar to that for which they were designed. (...) I show that according to Catholic doctrine the authoritative spokespersons of the Church—ecumenical councils and popes—meet these conditions when defining dogmas. I also respond to the objection that the warrant of Catholic dogmas is defeated by the plurality of non-Catholic Christian sects that deny Catholic dogmas. (shrink)

Kyle Fritz and Daniel Miller’s reply to my article helpfully clarifies their position and our main points of disagreement. Their view is that those who blame hypocritically lack the right to blame for a violation of some moral norm N in virtue of having an unfair disposition to blame others, but not themselves, for violations of N. This view raises two key questions. First, are there instances of hypocritical blame that do not involve an unfair differential blaming disposition? Second, if (...) the answer to the first question is Yes, do hypocritical blamers of this kind lack the right to blame? In this paper, I argue that the answer to the first question is Yes. Given this, Fritz and Miller’s account faces serious problems regardless of whether the answer to the second question is Yes or No. (shrink)

In spite of its significance for everyday and philosophical discourse, the explanatory connective has not received much treatment in the philosophy of logic. The present paper develops a logic for based on systematic connections between and the truth-functional connectives.

We use a theorem from M. J. Schervish to explore the relationship between accuracy and practical success. If an agent is pragmatically rational, she will quantify the expected loss of her credence with a strictly proper scoring rule. Which scoring rule is right for her will depend on the sorts of decisions she expects to face. We relate this pragmatic conception of inaccuracy to the purely epistemic one popular among epistemic utility theorists.

An increasing number of regulations propose the notion of ‘AI audits’ as an enforcement mechanism for achieving transparency and accountability for artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Despite some converging norms around various forms of AI auditing, auditing for the purpose of compliance and assurance currently have little to no agreed upon practices, procedures, taxonomies, and standards. We propose the ‘criterion audit’ as an operationalizable compliance and assurance external audit framework. We model elements of this approach after financial auditing practices, and argue (...) that AI audits should similarly provide assurance to their stakeholders about AI organizations’ ability to govern their algorithms in ways that mitigate harms and uphold human values. We discuss the necessary conditions for the criterion audit, and provide a procedural blueprint for performing an audit engagement in practice. We illustrate how this framework can be adapted to current regulations by deriving the criteria on which ‘bias audits’ for hiring algorithms can be performed, as required by the recently effective New York City Local Law 144 of 2021. We conclude by offering critical discussion on the benefits, inherent limitations, and implementation challenges of applying practices of the more mature financial auditing industry to AI auditing where robust guardrails against quality assurance issues are only starting to emerge. Our discussion as informed by experiences in performing these audits in practice highlights the critical role that an audit ecosystem plays in ensuring the effectiveness of such methodology. (shrink)

We propose a ‘Moral Imagination’ methodology to facilitate a culture of responsible innovation for engineering and product teams in technology companies. Our approach has been operationalized over the past two years at Google, where we have conducted over 50 workshops with teams from across the organization. We argue that our approach is a crucial complement to existing formal and informal initiatives for fostering a culture of ethical awareness, deliberation, and decision-making in technology design such as company principles, ethics and privacy (...) review procedures, and compliance controls. We characterize some distinctive benefits of our methodology for the technology sector in particular. (shrink)

Sceptical theists undermine the argument from evil by claiming that our ability to distinguish between justified and unjustified evil is weak enough that we must take seriously the possibility that all evil is justified. However, I argue that this claim leads to a dilemma: either our judgements regarding unjustified evil are reliable enough that the problem of evil remains a problem, or our judgements regarding unjustified evil are so unreliable that it would be misguided to use them in our decision-making. (...) The first horn undermines theism, while the second undermines our moral decision-making. Thus, sceptical theism is problematic. (shrink)

In his discussion of normative concepts in the first part of On What Matters (2011), Parfit holds that apart from the ‘ought’ of decisive reason, there are other senses of ‘ought’ which do not imply any reasons. This claim poses a dilemma for his ‘reason-involving conception’ of normativity: either Parfit has to conclude that non-reason-implying ‘oughts’ are not normative. Or else he is forced to accept that normativity needs only to involve ‘apparent reasons’ – a certain kind of hypothetical truths (...) about reasons. I argue that both of these options are inacceptable. In the course of the discussion, I present a general objection to ‘apparent reason accounts’ of the normativity of rationality as advocated not only by Parfit, but also by Schroeder (2009) and Way (2009). (shrink)

This paper explores relationships between environment and education after the Covid-19 pandemic through the lens of philosophy of education in a new key developed by Michael Peters and the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia. The paper is collectively written by 15 authors who responded to the question: Who remembers Greta Thunberg? Their answers are classified into four main themes and corresponding sections. The first section, ‘As we bake the earth, let's try and bake it from scratch’, gathers wider philosophical (...) considerations about the intersection between environment, education, and the pandemic. The second section, ‘Bump in the road or a catalyst for structural change?’, looks more closely into issues pertaining to education. The third section, ‘If you choose to fail us, we will never forgive you’, focuses to Greta Thunberg’s messages and their responses. The last section, ‘Towards a new normal’, explores future scenarios and develops recommendations for critical emancipatory action. The concluding part brings these insights together, showing that resulting synergy between the answers offers much more then the sum of articles’ parts. With its ethos of collectivity, interconnectedness, and solidarity, philosophy of education in a new key is a crucial tool for development of post-pandemic education. (shrink)

When viewing a circular coin rotated in depth, it fills an elliptical region of the distal scene. For some, this appears to generate a two-fold experience, in which one sees the coin as simultaneously circular (in light of its 3D shape) and elliptical (in light of its 2D ‘perspectival shape’ or ‘p-shape’). An energetic philosophical debate asks whether the latter p-shapes are genuinely presented in perceptual experience (as ‘perspectivalists’ argue) or if, instead, this appearance is somehow derived or inferred from (...) experience (as ‘anti-perspectivalists’ argue). This debate, however, has largely turned on introspection. In a recent study, Morales, Bax, and Firestone (2020) aim to provide the first empirical test of this question. They asked subjects to find an elliptical coin seen face-on from a search array that also included a circular coin seen either face-on or at an angle. They found that subjects reacted more slowly when the distracting circle was seen at an angle, such that it’s p-shape matched that of the target ellipse. From this, they concluded that the similar p-shape between the ellipse and circle constituted a phenomenal similarity between the two, and thus that perspectivalism is true. We show that these results can also be explained by pre-attentive guidance by unconscious representations (in what follows, just “unconscious pre-attentive guidance”) and that this explanation is at least as plausible as one from phenomenal similarity. Thus, we conclude that the experiment does not support perspectivalism over anti-perspectivalism. (shrink)

The institution of the family and its importance have recently received considerable attention from political theorists. Leading views maintain that the institution’s justification is grounded, at least in part, in the non-instrumental value of the parent-child relationship itself. Such views face the challenge of identifying a specific good in the parent-child relationship that can account for how adults acquire parental rights over a particular child—as opposed to general parental rights, which need not warrant a claim to parent one’s biological progeny. (...) I develop a view that meets this challenge. This Project View identifies the pursuit of a parental project as a distinctive non-instrumentally valuable good that provides a justification for the family and whose pursuit is necessary and sufficient for the acquisition of parental rights. This view grounds moral parenthood in a normative relation as opposed to a biological one, supports polyadic forms of parenting, and provides plausible guidance in cases of assisted reproduction. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose and defend a structural ownership condition on moral responsibility. According to the condition I propose, an agent owns a mental item if and only if it is part of or is partly grounded by a coherent set of psychological states. As I discuss, other theorists have proposed or alluded to conditions like psychological coherence, but each proposal is unsatisfactory in some way. My account appeals to narrative explanation to elucidate the relevant sense of psychological coherence.

In this paper, I present an argument for a rational norm involving a kind of credal attitude called a quantificational credence – the kind of attitude we can report by saying that Lucy thinks that each record in Schroeder’s collection is 5% likely to be scratched. I prove a result called a Dutch Book Theorem, which constitutes conditional support for the norm. Though Dutch Book Theorems exist for norms on ordinary and conditional credences, there is controversy about the epistemic significance (...) of these results. So, my conclusion is that if Dutch Book Theorems do, in general, support norms on credal states, then we have support for the suggested norm on quantificational credences. Providing conditional support for this norm gives us a fuller picture of the normative landscape of credal states. (shrink)

Collected essays consider points of affinity and friction between Walter Benjamin and Martin Heidegger. Despite being contemporaries, Walter Benjamin and Martin Heidegger never directly engaged with one another. Yet, Hannah Arendt, who knew both men, pointed out common ground between the two. Both were concerned with the destruction of metaphysics, the development of a new way of reading and understanding literature and art, and the formulation of radical theories about time and history. On the other hand, their life (...) trajectories and political commitments were radically different. In a 1930 letter, Benjamin told a friend that he had been reading Heidegger and that if the two were to engage with one another, “sparks will fly.” Acknowledging both their affinities and points of conflict, this volume stages that confrontation, focusing in particular on temporality, Romanticism, and politics in their work. (shrink)

Local Recurrency Theory (LR) holds that recurrent loops of neural activity localized to the visual cortex are necessary and sufficient for visual consciousness (if certain background conditions obtain). LR’s popularity has recently waned in favor of theories holding that higher-level types of processing are necessary for consciousness (for example, the Global Neuronal Workspace Theory and Higher-order Theory). This has been in part because of empirical evidence thought to disconfirm LR. However, these competing theories now face challenges of their own, often (...) coming in the form of evidence showing that higher-level brain areas (that is, in the prefrontal cortex) are probably not essential for consciousness. Given growing challenges to LR's competitors, it would be timely to re-assess the prospects for LR. This article carries out such an investigation, first laying out the theory precisely, then going on to survey the evidence presented against it. What will be found is that none of the evidence necessarily undermines LR, but instead just fosters its theoretical enrichment. The overall conclusion: LR remains among our most promising neuroscientific theories of visual consciousness. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that the objections that have been raised against the view that equality is intrinsically valuable also provide objections to the view that all practical reasons can be explained in terms of value. Plausible egalitarian principles entail that under certain conditions people have claims to an equal share. These claims entail reasons to distribute goods equally that cannot be explained by value if equality has no intrinsic value.

Higher-order thought (HOT) theory says that a mental state is conscious when and only when represented by a conceptual, belief-like mental state. Plausibly, HOT theory predicts the impairment of HOT-producing brain areas to cause significant deficits in consciousness. This means that HOT theory can be refuted by identifying those brain areas that are candidates for producing HOTs, then showing that damage to these areas never produces the expected deficits of consciousness. Building this refutation is a work-in-progress, with several key components (...) of it already existing in the literature (e.g., Boly et al. in J Neurosci 37(40):9603–9613, 2017; Kozuch in Mind Lang, 37(5):790–813, 2022). This article pulls together and supplements these earlier components so as to provide a comprehensive lesion-based argument against HOT theory, one which offers extra data and arguments in support of it, and which also addresses common objections. (shrink)

In this article, I explore a Wittgensteinian approach to blasphemy. While philosophy of religion tends to have very little to say about blasphemy, we can note two key, typically unchallenged, assumptions about it. First, there is the Assertion from Anywhere Assumption: whether one can successfully blaspheme is entirely independent of one’s religious views, commitments, or way of life. Second, there is the Act of Communication Assumption: blasphemy is essentially an act of assertion. I contend that a Wittgensteinian approach rejects both (...) assumptions and, thus, reorients our conception of blasphemy. Take two characteristically Wittgensteinian claims. First, religious statements/beliefs have a different ‘grammar’ than empirical propositions. Second (and relatedly), holding religious beliefs necessarily connects with how one lives. Wittgensteinian blasphemy rejects the Assertion from Anywhere Assumption: to blaspheme, one must be in or have been in the religious framework one blasphemes. Being entirely outside of that context divests one’s blasphemy from its proper content. Second, Wittgensteinian blasphemy rejects the Act of Communication Assumption: if religious belief is centrally a form of life, then blasphemy must be lived out as well. Wittgensteinian blasphemy is less about the utterances one makes and more about how one’s life intersects (or fails to intersect) with religiosity. (shrink)

In this article, we address a major outstanding question of probabilistic Bayesian epistemology: how should a rational Bayesian agent update their beliefs upon learning an indicative conditional? A number of authors have recently contended that this question is fundamentally underdetermined by Bayesian norms, and hence that there is no single update procedure that rational agents are obliged to follow upon learning an indicative conditional. Here we resist this trend and argue that a core set of widely accepted Bayesian norms is (...) sufficient to identify a normatively privileged updating procedure for this kind of learning. Along the way, we justify a privileged formalization of the notion of ‘epistemic conservativity’, offer a new analysis of the Judy Benjamin problem, and emphasize the distinction between interpreting the content of new evidence and updating one’s beliefs on the basis of that content. (shrink)

In contemporary free will theory, a significant number of philosophers are once again taking seriously the possibility that human beings do not have free will, and are therefore not morally responsible for their actions. Free will theorists commonly assume that giving up the belief that human beings are morally responsible implies giving up all our beliefs about desert. But the consequences of giving up the belief that we are morally responsible are not quite this dramatic. Giving up the belief that (...) we are morally responsible undermines many, and perhaps most, of the desert claims we are pretheoretically inclined to accept. But it does not undermine desert claims based on the sheer fact of personhood. Even in the absence of belief in moral responsibility, personhood-based desert claims require us to respect persons and their rights. So personhood-based desert claims can provide a substantial role for desert in free will skeptics' ethical theories. (shrink)

If you ought to perform a certain act, and some other action is a necessary means for you to perform that act, then you ought to perform that other action as well – or so it seems plausible to say. This transmission principle is of both practical and theoretical significance. The aim of this paper is to defend this principle against a number of recent objections, which (as I show) are all based on core assumptions of the view called actualism. (...) I reject actualism, provide an alternative explanation of its plausible features, and present an independent argument for the transmission principle. (shrink)

Reductive representationalist theories of consciousness are yet to produce a satisfying account of pain’s affective component, the part that makes it painful. The paramount problem here is that that there seems to be no suitable candidate for what affective experience represents. This article suggests that affective experience represents the Darwinian fitness effects of events. I argue that, because of affective experience’s close association with motivation, natural selection will work to bring affect into covariance with the average fitness effects of types (...) of event, and that this covariance makes fitness effects a promising candidate for what affect represents. I also argue that this account is to be preferred to Cutter and Tye’s recent proposal that affect represents harmfulness, and answer an objection that Aydede and Fulkerson recently offered against representational accounts of affect. (shrink)

According to epistemic reductionism about practical reasons, facts about practical reasons can be reduced to facts about evidence for ought-judgements. We argue that this view misconstrues practical conflicts. At least some conflicts between practical reasons put us in a position to know that an action ϕ is optional, i.e. that we neither ought to perform nor ought to refrain from performing the action. By understanding conflicts of practical reasons as conflicts of evidence about what one ought to do, epistemic reductionism (...) fails to account for this. In conflict cases in which ϕ-ing is optional, epistemic reductionism suggests that we have equally strong evidence for and against assuming that we ought to ϕ, and thus cannot be in a position to know that it is not the case that we ought to ϕ. This is a serious flaw. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that contractualism, even when it is actually used to construe our moral duties towards non-human animals, does not do so naturally. We can infer from our experiences with companion animals that we owe moral duties to them because of special relationships we are in with them. We can further abstract that we owe general moral duties to non-human animals because they are the kinds of beings that we can have relationships with, and because of the (...) capacities that make possible this relational capacity. This type of approach better explains our duties to non-human animals and other non-rational beings than does the trustee account that Scanlon leaves room for in his contractualism. (shrink)

Andy Egan recently drew attention to a class of decision situations that provide a certain kind of informational feedback, which he claims constitute a counterexample to causal decision theory. Arntzenius and Wallace have sought to vindicate a form of CDT by describing a dynamic process of deliberation that culminates in a “mixed” decision. I show that, for many of the cases in question, this proposal depends on an incorrect way of calculating expected utilities, and argue that it is therefore unsuccessful. (...) I then tentatively defend an alternative proposal by Joyce, which produces a similar process of dynamic deliberation but for a different reason. (shrink)

According to Milner and Goodale’s dual visual systems (DVS) theory, a division obtains between visual consciousness and motor action, in that the visual system producing conscious vision (the ventral stream) is distinct from the one guiding action (the dorsal stream). That there would be this division is often taken (by Andy Clark and others) to undermine the folk view on how consciousness and action relate. However, even if this division obtains, this leaves open the possibility that con- scious ventral information (...) is often transmitted to the uncon- scious dorsal stream and then used to guide action, a possibility seeming to preserve a significant role for consciousness in action. This article assesses this possibility. In course of doing so, we will review those arguments recently having been made against the DVS view on how visual consciousness and action relate (ones due to, e.g., Briscoe and Schwenkler, or Schenk and McIntosh). What we will find is that, if we properly analyze the data upon which these arguments are based, we are still left with the impression that the DVS view is largely correct; i.e., it is only rarely that visual experience guides action. (shrink)

At the heart of Rik Peels’s Responsible Belief: A Theory in Ethics and Epistemology is the idea that responsibility for belief ought to be understood on the model of responsibility for states of affairs that are subject to our influence but not under our intentional control, or what he calls derivative responsibility. In this article, I argue that reflection on the nature and scope of derivative responsibility reveals important lacunae in Peels’s account of responsible belief and his account of responsibility (...) for belief. (shrink)

In contemporary free will theory, a significant number of philosophers are once again taking seriously the possibility that human beings do not have free will, and are therefore not morally responsible for their actions. (Free will is understood here as whatever satisfies the control condition of moral responsibility.) Free will theorists commonly assume that giving up the belief that human beings are morally responsible implies giving up all our beliefs about desert. But the consequences of giving up the belief that (...) we are morally responsible are not quite this dramatic. Giving up the belief that we are morally responsible undermines many, and perhaps most, of the desert claims we are pretheoretically inclined to accept. But it does not undermine desert claims based on the sheer fact of personhood. Even in the absence of belief in moral responsibility, personhood-based desert claims require us to respect persons and their rights. So personhood-based desert claims can provide a substantial role for desert in free will skeptics' ethical theories. (shrink)

It is often claimed that credences are not reducible to ordinary beliefs about probabilities. Such a reduction appears to be decisively ruled out by certain sorts of triviality results–analogous to those often discussed in the literature on conditionals. I show why these results do not, in fact, rule out the view. They merely give us a constraint on what such a reduction could look like. In particular they show that there is no single proposition belief in which suffices for having (...) a particular credence, regardless of one’s evidence. But if we allow such propositions to vary with evidence–as we should–then the results do not rule out a reduction. So, at least on this count, credences might very well just be beliefs about probabilities. (shrink)

I defend a deontological social contract justification of punishment for free will deniers. Even if nobody has free will, a criminal justice system is fair to the people it targets if we would consent to it in a version of original position deliberation (OPD) where we assumed that we would be targeted by the justice system when the veil is raised. Even if we assumed we would be convicted of a crime, we would consent to the imprisonment of violent criminals (...) if prison conditions were better than the state of nature but deterring enough to prevent the state of nature. And even if we assumed we would be accused of a crime, we would consent to an evidentiary standard low enough to allow a conviction rate sufficient to prevent the state of nature. After explaining this justification, I contrast it with the public health quarantine justification defended by Derk Pereboom and Gregg Caruso, and argue that it provides a stronger response to the using criminals as mere means objection. (shrink)

The first part of this paper surveys five perspectives in Kant’s philosophy on the quantity of retribution to be inflicted on wrongdoers, ordered by two dimensions of difference – whether they are theoretical or practical perspectives, and the quantity of retribution they prescribe: (1) theoretical zero, the perspective of theoretical philosophy; (2) practical infinity, the perspective of God and conscience; (3) practical equality, the perspective of punishment in public law; (4) practical degrees, the perspective we adopt in private relations to (...) others and (5) practical zero, a perspective I argue is entailed by Kant’s doctrine of strict right, which is his justification of coercing compliance with public law. Kant acknowledges 1–4 but not 5. The second part draws on Kant’s account of the burden of proof in criminal law to argue that Kant is wrong to adopt 3 in responding to criminals, and that we ought to adopt 5 instead. (shrink)

This paper advocates for a general policy of penal leniency: judges should often sentence offenders to a punishment less severe than initially preferred. The argument’s keystone is the relatively uncontroversial Minimal Invasion Principle (MIP). MIP says that when more than one course of action satisfies a state’s legitimate aim, only the least invasive is permissibly pursued. I contend that MIP applies in two common sentencing situations. In the first, all sentences within a statutorily specified range are equally proportionate. Here MIP (...) applies directly. In the second, judges reasonably believe that one of the sentences within the range is the most proportionate, but can’t identify it with any certainty. In these cases of sentencing uncertainty, judges must be indifferent between their preferred sentence and a softer one, and this indifference triggers MIP. MIP thus frequently mandates some degree of leniency. I conclude with some comments on statistical uncertainty. (shrink)

Metaphysicians play an important role in our understanding of the universe. In recent years, physicists have focussed on finding accurate mathematical formalisms of the evolution of our physical system - if a metaphysician can uncover the metaphysical underpinnings of these formalisms; that is, why these formalisms seem to consistently map the universe, then our understanding of the world and the things in it is greatly enhanced. Science, then, plays a very important role in our project, as the best scientific formalisms (...) provide us with what we, as metaphysicians, should be trying to interpret. In this thesis I examine existing metaphysical views of what a law is (both from a conceptual and from a metaphysical perspective), to show how closely causation is linked to laws, and to provide a priori arguments for and against each of these positions. Ultimately, I aim to provide an analysis of a number of metaphysics of natural laws and causation, apply these accounts to our best scientific theories, and see how these metaphysics fit in with our concepts of cause and law. Although I do not attempt a definitive metaphysical account myself, I conclude that any successful metaphysic will be a broadly Humean one, and furthermore that given the concepts of cause and law that shall be agreed upon, Humean theories allow for there to be causal sequences and laws (in line with our concepts) in the world. (shrink)

G. A. Cohen conceptualizes socialism as luck egalitarianism constrained by a community principle. The latter mitigates certain inequalities to achieve a shared common life. This article explores the plausibility of the community constraint on inequality in light of two related problems. First, if it is voluntary, it fails as a response to “the abandonment objection” to luck egalitarianism, as it would not guarantee imprudent people sufficient resources to avoid deprivation and to function as equal citizens in a democratic society. Contra (...) Cohenite socialism, this appears unjust. Second, if it is instead enforced, coercive equalization beyond sufficiency-constrained luck egalitarianism, which is possibly necessary to achieve a shared common life, seems to require unjustified restrictions on liberty. I therefore argue that the constraint is most plausibly specified as requiring enforcement of sufficiency and only voluntary equalization thereafter. I also note, skeptically, why this constraint might be morally preferable to a purely sufficientarian alternative. (shrink)

According to a widely held view, epistemic reasons are normative reasons for belief – much like prudential or moral reasons are normative reasons for action. In recent years, however, an increasing number of authors have questioned the assumption that epistemic reasons are normative. In this article, I discuss an important challenge for anti-normativism about epistemic reasons and present a number of arguments in support of normativism. The challenge for anti-normativism is to say what kind of reasons epistemic reasons are if (...) they are not normative reasons. I discuss various answers to this challenge and find them all wanting. The arguments for normativism each stress a certain analogy between epistemic reasons and normative reasons for action. Just like normative reasons for action, epistemic reasons provide partial justification; they provide premises for correct reasoning; they constitute good bases for the responses they are reasons for; and they are reasons for which agents can show these responses without committing a mistake. In each case, I argue that the relevant condition is plausibly sufficient for the normativity of a reason, and that normativism is in any case in a much better position to explain the analogy than anti-normativism. (shrink)

In the De Anima, Aristotle claims that the five senses are infallible about their proper objects. I contend that this claim means that sight is infallible about its proper object in its most specific form, i. e. sight is infallible about red or green and not merely about color in general. This robust claim is justified by Aristotle’s teleological principle that nature does nothing in vain. Additionally, drawing on Aristotle’s comparison of perception and one’s understanding of the essences, I defend (...) a conception of the senses in which the structure of their contents is simple rather than predicative and show how this coheres better with the rest of my interpretation. (shrink)

Partiality is the special concern that we display for ourselves and other people with whom we stand in some special personal relationship. It is a central theme in moral philosophy, both ancient and modern. Questions about the justification of partiality arise in the context of enquiry into several moral topics, including the good life and the role in it of our personal commitments; the demands of impartial morality, equality, and other moral ideals; and commonsense ideas about supererogation. This paper provides (...) an overview of the debate on the ethics of partiality through the lens of the domains of permissible and required partiality. After outlining the conceptual space, I first discuss agent-centred moral options that concern permissions not to do what would be impartially optimal. I then focus on required partiality, which concerns associative duties that go beyond our general duties to others and require us to give special priority to people who are close to us. I discuss some notable features of associative duties and the two main objections that have been raised against them: the Voluntarist and the Distributive objections. I then turn to the justification of partiality, focusing on underivative approaches and reasons-based frameworks. I discuss the reductionism and non-reductionism debate: the question whether partiality is derivative or fundamental. I survey arguments for ‘the big three’, according to which partiality is justified by appeal to the special value of either projects, personal relationships, or individuals. I conclude by discussing four newly emerging areas in the debate: normative transitions of various personal relationships, relationships with AI, epistemic partiality, and negative partiality, which concerns the negative analogue of our positive personal relationships. (shrink)

This article is concerned with a puzzle that arises from three initially plausible assumptions that form an inconsistent triad: (1) Epistemic reasons are normative reasons (normativism); (2) reasons are normative only if conformity with them is good (the reasons/value-link); (3) conformity with epistemic reasons need not be good (the nihilist assumption). I start by defending the reasons/value-link, arguing that normativists need to reject the nihilist assumption. I then argue that the most familiar view that denies the nihilist assumption – epistemic (...) teleology – is untenable. Finally, I consider two alternative ways of accounting for the goodness of conformity with epistemic reasons: it may be good because it accords with the virtue of reasons-responsiveness, and it may be good because it is good to conform with normative reasons as such. I argue that both of these conceptions avoid the problems of epistemic teleology and merit serious consideration as potential solutions to the puzzle. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to provide a justification of punishment which can be endorsed by free will skeptics, and which can also be defended against the "using persons as mere means" objection. Free will skeptics must reject retributivism, that is, the view that punishment is just because criminals deserve to suffer based on their actions. Retributivists often claim that theirs is the only justification on which punishment is constrained by desert, and suppose that non-retributive justifications must therefore endorse (...) treating the people punished as mere means to social ends. Retributivists typically presuppose a monolithic conception of desert: they assume that action-based desert is the only kind of desert. But there are also personhood-based desert claims, that is, desert claims which depend not on facts about our actions, but instead on the more abstract fact that we are persons. Since personhood-based desert claims do not depend on facts about our actions, they do not depend on moral responsibility, so free will skeptics can appeal to them just as well as retributivists. What people deserve based on the mere fact of their personhood is to be treated as they would rationally consent to be treated if all they had in view was the mere fact of their personhood. We can work out the implications of this view for punishment by developing a hypothetical consent justification in which we select principles of punishment in the Rawlsian original position, so long as we are careful not to smuggle in the retributivist assumption that it is under our control whether we end up as criminals or as law-abiding citizens once we raise the veil of ignorance. (shrink)

According to an attractive and widely held view, all practical reasons are explained in terms of the (instrumental or final) value of the action supported by the reason. I argue that this theory is incompatible with plausible assumptions about the practical reasons that correspond to certain moral rights, including the right to a promised action and the right to an exclusive use of one’s property. The argument is an explanatory rather than extensional one: while the actions supported by the relevant (...) reasons (e.g. keeping a valid promise or respecting property) can be argued to have a certain kind of value, I argue that this value presupposes a moral right, and therefore cannot explain the reason. Reflection on such cases suggest the conclusion that reasons that are subject to normative powers are generally not value-based. This also has important implications for the dialectic between ‘value-first’ and ‘reasons-first’ approaches to normativity. (shrink)

Hypocrisy is widely thought to be morally objectionable in a way that undermines the hypocrite’s moral standing to blame others. To wit, we seem to intuitively accept the “Nonhypocrisy Condition:” R has the standing to blame S for some violation of a moral norm N only if R’s blaming S is not hypocritical. This claim has been the subject of intensifying philosophical investigation in recent years. However, we can only understand why hypocrisy is morally objectionable and has an effect on (...) standing to blame if we can correctly characterize hypocrisy itself. Unfortunately, some recent discussions fail to do this, which fatally undermines subsequent arguments concerning the effect of hypocrisy on the standing to blame. This paper’s central aim is to develop and defend a better account of hypocrisy. The hope is that with such an account in hand, we can explain and perhaps justify our moral aversion to hypocrisy in general as well as the Nonhypocrisy Condition in particular. (shrink)

The principle of indifference states that in the absence of any relevant evidence, a rational agent will distribute their credence equally among all the possible outcomes under consideration. Despite its intuitive plausibility, PI famously falls prey to paradox, and so is widely rejected as a principle of ideal rationality. In this article, I present a novel rehabilitation of PI in terms of the epistemology of comparative confidence judgments. In particular, I consider two natural comparative reformulations of PI and argue that (...) while one of them prescribes the adoption of patently irrational epistemic states, the other provides a consistent formulation of PI that overcomes the most salient limitations of existing formulations. (shrink)

Anarchism is by far the least broadly understood ideology and the least studied academically. Though highly influential, both historically and in terms of recent social movements, anarchism is regularly dismissed. Anarchism: A Conceptual Approach is a welcome addition to this growing field, which is widely debated but poorly understood. Occupying a distinctive position in the study of anarchist ideology, this volume, authored by a handpicked group of established and rising scholars, investigates how anarchists often seek to sharpen their message and (...) struggle to determine what ideas and actions are central to their identity. Moving beyond defining anarchism as simply an ideology or political theory, this book examines the meanings of its key concepts, which have been divided into three categories: Core, Adjacent, and Peripheral concepts. Each chapter focuses on one important concept, shows how anarchists have understood the concept, and highlights its relationships to other concepts. Although anarchism is often thought of as a political topic, the interdisciplinary nature of Anarchism: A Conceptual Approach makes it of interest to students and scholars across the social sciences, liberal arts, and the humanities. (shrink)

Hypocrisy is a ubiquitous feature of moral and political life, and accusations of hypocrisy a ubiquitous feature of moral and political discourse. Yet it has been curiously under-theorized in analytic philosophy. Fortunately, the last decade has seen a boomlet of articles that address hypocrisy in order to explain and justify conditions on the so-called “standing” to blame (Wallace 2010; Friedman 2013; Bell 2013; Todd 2017; Herstein 2017; Roadevin 2018; Fritz and Miller 2018). Nevertheless, much of this more recent literature does (...) not adequately address the question, “what is hypocrisy?” In this paper, I develop and defend an account of hypocrisy as vicious, value-expressing inconsistency. I show how this account solves some traditional and some novel philosophical puzzles concerning hypocrisy and affords a deeper understanding of the features of hypocrisy emphasized by other prominent accounts. (shrink)