The problem of the man who met death in Damascus appeared in the infancy of the theory of rational choice known as causal decision theory. A straightforward, unadorned version of causal decision theory is presented here and applied, along with Brian Skyrms’ deliberation dynamics, to Death in Damascus and similar problems. Decision instability is a fascinating topic, but not a source of difficulty for causal decision theory. Andy Egan’s purported counterexample to causal decision theory, Murder Lesion, is considered; a simple (...) response shows how Murder Lesion and similar examples fail to be counterexamples, and clarifies the use of the unadorned theory in problems of decision instability. I compare unadorned causal decision theory to previous treatments by Frank Arntzenius and by Jim Joyce, and recommend a well-founded heuristic that all three accounts can endorse. Whatever course deliberation takes, causal decision theory is consistently a good guide to rational action. (shrink)

The non-reductive physicalist would like to believe that mental properties are not identical to physical properties; that there are complete causal explanations of all events in terms of physical properties; and that there are sometimes explanations of events in terms of mental properties. However, some have argued that these claims cannot all be true, since they are collectively inconsistent with a principle of causal exclusion. In this paper I argue that the best formulation of the interventionist theory of causation entails (...) the falsity of the exclusion principle. However, I argue that it does so at the cost of revealing a weakness in the interventionist theory itself. (shrink)

Dutch Book arguments have been presented for static belief systems and for belief change by conditionalization. An argument is given here that a rule for belief change which under certain conditions violates probability kinematics will leave the agent open to a Dutch Book.

I defend an account of explanatory depth according to which explanations in the non-fundamental sciences can be deeper than explanations in fundamental physics.

One guide to an argument's significance is the number and variety of refutations it attracts. By this measure, the Dutch book argument has considerable importance.2 Of course this measure alone is not a sure guide to locating arguments deserving of our attention—if a decisive refutation has really been given, we are better off pursuing other topics. But the presence of many and varied counterarguments at least suggests that either the refutations are controversial, or that their target admits of more than (...) one interpretation, or both. The main point of this paper is to focus on a way of understanding the Dutch Book argument (DBA) that avoids many of the well-known criticisms, and to consider how it fares against an important criticism that still remains: the objection that the DBA presupposes value-independence of bets. (shrink)

If counterfactual dependence is sufficient for causation and if omissions can be causes, then all events have many more causes than common sense tends to recognize. This problem is standardly addressed by appeal to pragmatics. However, Carolina Sartorio [2010] has recently raised what I shall argue is a more interesting problem concerning omissions for counterfactual theories of causation—more interesting because it demands a more subtle pragmatic solution. I discuss the relationship between the idea that causes are proportional to their effects, (...) the idea that causation is contrastive, and the question of the dimensions along which causal explanations should be evaluated with respect to one another. (shrink)

Theories of individual well‐being fall into three main categories: hedonism, the desire‐fulfilment theory, and the list theory (which maintains that there are some things that can benefit a person without increasing the person's pleasure or desire‐fulfilment). The paper briefly explains the answers that hedonism and the desire‐fulfilment theory give to the question of whether being virtuous constitutes a benefit to the agent. Most of the paper is about the list theory's answer.

The primary aim of this paper is the presentation of a foundation for causal decision theory. This is worth doing because causal decision theory (CDT) is philosophically the most adequate rational decision theory now available. I will not defend that claim here by elaborate comparison of the theory with all its competitors, but by providing the foundation. This puts the theory on an equal footing with competitors for which foundations have already been given. It turns out that it will also (...) produce a reply to the most serious objections made so far against CDT and against the particular version of CDT I will defend. (shrink)

I discuss a strategy for grounding ethical naturalism propounded by Frank Jackson and more recently by Allan Gibbard: that the undisputed supervenience of the moral upon the natural (or descriptive) entails that moral properties are natural (or descriptive) properties. I show that this strategy falls foul of certain indubitable constraints governing natural kinds; and I then rebut some objections. The upshot is that no viable strategy for supporting ethical naturalism is to be found along these lines. This result has additional (...) consequences, both for Jackson's attempt to accommodate ethical discourse into the natural world, and for Gibbard's purported 'meta-ethical synthesis'. (shrink)

Consider the following causal exclusion principle: For all distinct properties F and F* such that F* supervenes on F, F and F* do not both cause a property G. Peter Menzies and Christian List have proven that it follows from a natural conception of causation as difference-making that this exclusion principle is not generally true. Rather, it turns out that whether the principle is true is a contingent matter. In addition, they have shown that in a wide range of empirically (...) ordinary cases, it follows that F* causes G and F does not. These cases plausibly include instances where F* is a mental property and F and G are physical properties. If this is the right conception of causation, it therefore turns out that the physical world is not causally closed. In this paper I show that there is an alternative conception of causation as difference-making that does not have the same consequences. Whether the physical world is causally closed therefore turns out to depend, inter alia, on which conception of difference-making is correct. I give a number of arguments for the alternative conception of difference-making. (shrink)

Brad Hooker; II*—Rule-Consequentialism, Incoherence, Fairness1, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 95, Issue 1, 1 June 1995, Pages 19–36, https://d.

I argue against the claim, advanced by David Albert and Barry Loewer, that all non-fundamental laws can be derived from those required to underwrite the second law of thermodynamics.

This essay contends that the constitutive elements of well-being are plural, partly objective, and separable. The essay argues that these elements are pleasure, friendship, significant achievement, important knowledge, and autonomy, but not either the appreciation of beauty or the living of a morally good life. The essay goes on to attack the view that elements of well-being must be combined in order for well-being to be enhanced. The final section argues against the view that, because anything important to say about (...) well-being could be reduced to assertions about these separable elements, the concept of well-being or personal good is ultimately unimportant. (shrink)

It is widely held that the influence of risk on rational decisions is not entirely explained by the shape of an agent’s utility curve. Buchak (Erkenntnis, 2013, Risk and rationality, Oxford University Press, Oxford, in press) presents an axiomatic decision theory, risk-weighted expected utility theory (REU), in which decision weights are the agent’s subjective probabilities modified by his risk-function r. REU is briefly described, and the global applicability of r is discussed. Rabin’s (Econometrica 68:1281–1292, 2000) calibration theorem strongly suggests that (...) plausible levels of risk aversion cannot be fully explained by concave utility functions; this provides motivation for REU and other theories. But applied to the synchronic preferences of an individual agent, Rabin’s result is not as problematic as it may first appear. Theories that treat outcomes as gains and losses (e.g. prospect theory and cumulative prospect theory) account for risk sensitivity in a way not available to REU. Reference points that mark the difference between gains and losses are subject to framing, many instances of which cannot be regarded as rational. However, rational decision theory may recognize the difference between gains and losses, without endorsing all ways of fixing the point of reference. In any event, REU is a very interesting theory. (shrink)

The paper is an examination of Tyler Burge’s notion of epistemic entitlement. It begins with consideration of a recent attempt to understand entitlement, including the ways in which it differs from the more traditional notion of justification. The paper argues that each of Casullo’s central contentions rests upon confusion. More generally, the paper shows that Casullo’s interpretation tries to force Burge’s work into a framework that is not suited for it; and that the interpretation also suffers from not being even (...) minimally informed about the actual character of Burge’s epistemological views. The paper’s second half explains the distinction between entitlement and justification, including ways in which Burge’s understanding of the relevant notions has changed over time. (shrink)

What can rational deliberation indicate about belief? Belief clearly influences deliberation. The principle that rational belief is stake-invariant rules out at least one way that deliberation might influence belief. The principle is widely, if implicitly, held in work on the epistemology of categorical belief, and it is built into the model of choice-guiding degrees of belief that comes to us from Ramsey and de Finetti. Criticisms of subjective probabilism include challenges to the assumption of additive values (the package principle) employed (...) by defenses of probabilism. But the value-interaction phenomena often cited in such challenges are excluded by stake-invariance. A comparison with treatments of categorical belief suggests that the appeal to stake-invariance is not ad hoc. Whether or not to model belief as stake-invariant is a question not settled here. (shrink)

Fixed-rate versions of rule-consequentialism and rule-utilitarianism evaluate rules in terms of the expected net value of one particular level of social acceptance, but one far enough below 100% social acceptance to make salient the complexities created by partial compliance. Variable-rate versions of rule-consequentialism and rule-utilitarianism instead evaluate rules in terms of their expected net value at all different levels of social acceptance. Brad Hooker has advocated a fixed-rate version. Michael Ridge has argued that the variable-rate version is better. The (...) debate continues here. Of particular interest is the difference between the implications of Hooker's and Ridge's rules about doing good for others. (shrink)

When Democritus (460–370 BC) said that he would rather discover one true cause than gain the kingdom of Persia, he signalled both the difficulty and the value of gaining causal knowledge. It is arguably the acquisition of causal knowledge that is the primary goal of scientific enquiry; and within philosophy, causation has played a central role in recent theories of reference, perception, decision making, knowledge, intentional and other mental states, and the role of theoretical terms in scientific theories. Indeed, Samuel (...) Alexander (1859–1938) suggested that causation was of the essence of existence itself with his dictum that to be real is to have causal powers. Moreover, assumptions about the nature of causation structure a great deal of discussion elsewhere in philosophy. For example, debates over free will often take as their starting point the question of how we can be free if our intentions to act are themselves part of the causal order. Again, debates in the metaphysics of mind often revolve around the claim that since every physical event has a physical cause, the mind must itself be in some sense physical in order to be the causal source of our actions qua physical events. (shrink)

Deep personal relationships involve deep mutual understanding and strong mutual affection. This paper focuses on whether having deep personal relationships is one of the elements of well-being. Roger Crisp put forward thought experiments which might be taken to suggest that having deep personal relationships has only instrumental value as a means to other elements of well-being. The different conclusion this paper draws is that having deep personal relationships is an element of well-being if, but only if, the other people involved (...) have qualities that merit affection for these people. (shrink)

This paper discusses the ecological case for epistemic innocence: does biased cognition have evolutionary benefits, and if so, does that exculpate human reasoners from irrationality? Proponents of ‘ecological rationality’ have challenged the bleak view of human reasoning emerging from research on biases and fallacies. If we approach the human mind as an adaptive toolbox, tailored to the structure of the environment, many alleged biases and fallacies turn out to be artefacts of narrow norms and artificial set-ups. However, we argue that (...) putative demonstrations of ecological rationality involve subtle locus shifts in attributions of rationality, conflating the adaptive rationale of heuristics with our own epistemic credentials. By contrast, other cases also involve an ecological reframing of human reason, but do not involve such problematic locus shifts. We discuss the difference between these cases, bringing clarity to the rationality debate. (shrink)

Is the common cause principle merely one of a set of useful heuristics for discovering causal relations, or is it rather a piece of heavy duty metaphysics, capable of grounding the direction of causation itself? Since the principle was introduced in Reichenbach’s groundbreaking work The Direction of Time (1956), there have been a series of attempts to pursue the latter program—to take the probabilistic relationships constitutive of the principle of the common cause and use them to ground the direction of (...) causation. These attempts have not all explicitly appealed to the principle as originally formulated; it has also appeared in the guise of independence conditions, counterfactual overdetermination, and, in the causal modelling literature, as the causal markov condition. In this paper, I identify a set of difficulties for grounding the asymmetry of causation on the principle and its descendents. The first difficulty, concerning what I call the vertical placement of causation, consists of a tension between considerations that drive towards the macroscopic scale, and considerations that drive towards the microscopic scale—the worry is that these considerations cannot both be comfortably accommodated. The second difficulty consists of a novel potential counterexample to the principle based on the familiar Einstein Podolsky Rosen (EPR) correlations in quantum mechanics. (shrink)

To what extent do our beliefs, and how strongly we hold them, depend upon how they matter to us, on what we take to be at stake on them? The idea that beliefs are sometimes stake-sensitive (Armendt 2008, 2013) is further explored here, with a focus on whether beliefs may be stake-sensitive and rational. In contexts of extended deliberation about what to do, beliefs and assessments of options interact. In some deliberations, a belief about what you will do may rationally (...) influence your estimate of the value of doing it; deliberation dynamics provides a framework for modeling such interactions. A distinction is drawn between sensitivity to the magnitude of the stakes, and sensitivity to the shape of the stakes. Contexts of extended deliberation are settings in which some beliefs that p rationally depend on the shape of the stakes on p. The dependence is either rational stake-sensitivity or an outcome of rational learning; empirical evidence concerning contexts of deliberation may lead us to model rational beliefs in one way or the other. (shrink)

The idea that beliefs may be stake-sensitive is explored. This is the idea that the strength with which a single, persistent belief is held may vary and depend upon what the believer takes to be at stake. The stakes in question are tied to the truth of the belief—not, as in Pascal’s wager and other cases, to the belief’s presence. Categorical beliefs and degrees of belief are considered; both kinds of account typically exclude the idea and treat belief as stake-invariant (...) , though an exception is briefly described. The role of the assumption of stake-invariance in familiar accounts of degrees of belief is also discussed, and morals are drawn concerning finite and countable Dutch book arguments. (shrink)

For Aristotle, the shape of a physical body is perceptible per se (DA II.6, 418a8-9). As I read his position, shape is thus a causal power, as a physical body can affect our sense organs simply in virtue of possessing it. But this invites a challenge. If shape is an intrinsically powerful property, and indeed an intrinsically perceptible one, then why are the objects of geometrical reasoning, as such, inert and imperceptible? I here address Aristotle’s answer to that problem, focusing (...) on the version of it that he presents in De caelo III.8. I argue that if we grant that Aristotle conceived of the shape of a sensible body as some kind of causal power, then the satisfactory resolution of that challenge pushes us to interpret him as having conceived of it as being, more specifically, an impure power—that is, as a property that is not only intrinsically powerful but also, in some way, intrinsically non-powerful as well. This is a notable result not only insofar as it illuminates Aristotle’s conception of shape but also insofar as it contributes to our knowledge of Aristotle’s theory of dunameis and his ontology more broadly. (shrink)

Attempts to characterise time seem to throw up paradox at every turn. Some of the most famous of the paradoxes are also the oldest—those due to Aristotle (384–322 BC) and Zeno (b. c. 488 BC), as described in Aristotle’s Physics. For example, Zeno argued that in order to traverse any distance, one must always first traverse half that distance; but since this half is itself a distance to be traversed, one must in turn first traverse half of the half, and (...) so on ad infinitum. Since it is impossible to traverse an infinite number of distances in a finite time, all motion must be impossible—indeed, incoherent. A similar argument can be used to show that a line cannot be composed of a set of points, a problem which was only satisfactorily resolved with the development of the modern mathematics of infinity. A central question for the philosophy of time, then, becomes whether (and how) the mathematics of infinity applies to time. (shrink)

This paper starts by juxtaposing the normative ethics in the final part of Parfit's final book, On What Matters, vol. 3, with the normative ethics in his earlier books, Reasons and Persons and On What Matters, vol. 1. The paper then addresses three questions. The first is, where does the reflective-equilibrium methodology that Parfit endorsed in the first volume of On What Matters lead? The second is, is the Act-involving Act Consequentialism that Parfit considers in the final volume of On (...) What Matters as plausible as Rossian deontology? The third is, how is the new argument that Parfit puts forward for Rule Consequentialism supposed to work? (shrink)

On the work of Frank Ramsey, emphasizing topics most relevant to philosophy of science.

Brief comment upon Sartre's analysis of Berkeley from Being and Nothingness.

Does the strength of a particular belief depend upon the significance we attach to it? Do we move from one context to another, remaining in the same doxastic state concerning p yet holding a stronger belief that p in one context than in the other? For that to be so, a doxastic state must have a certain sort of context-sensitive complexity. So the question is about the nature of belief states, as we understand them, or as we think a theory (...) should model them. I explore the idea and how it relates to work on imprecise probabilities and second-order confidence. (shrink)

This paper looks at the debates between internalism and externalism in mind and epistemology. In each realm, internalists face what we call 'The Connection Problem', while externalists face what we call 'The Problem of Opacity'. We offer an integrated account of thought content and epistemic warrant that overcomes the problems. We then apply the framework to debates between internalists and externalists in metaethics.

To meet the luck objection to incompatibilism, philosophers such as Timothy O’Connor, Randolph Clark, and William Rowe resurrected the Reidian notion of agent causation, which implies the “Substance-Causal Thesis” (SCT): some causes are fundamentally substances, not events. I examine an objection to SCT by C. D. Broad, developed by Carl Ginet, that substances cannot cause events because substances cannot explain why events happen when they do. The objection fails as it rests on a demand for contrastive explanations of free actions. (...) However, I show that a slightly different objection succeeds in showing SCT false. (shrink)

Introduction to 'Skyrmsfest: Papers in Honor of Brian Skyrms' issue of Philosophical Studies, January 2010. Remarks about Brian Skyrms and about the 10 papers in the issue.

A paper of Roger Crisp’s four years ago contained arguments that seemed to imply that having deep personal relationships does not constitute an element of well‐being. The lesson to draw from that paper of Crisp’s, according to a recent journal article of mine, is that one’s having a deep personal relationship does constitute an element of one’s well‐being on condition that one’s affection for the other person is merited. Crisp’s paper earlier in this issue of Ratio responds to my arguments. (...) Here I reply to new questions that Crisp poses or provokes. (shrink)

In this essay, I defend a mind-body dualism, according to which human minds are immaterial substances that exercise non-redundant causal powers over bodies, against the notorious problem of psychophysical causation. I explicate and reply to three formulations of the problem: (i) the claim that, on dualism, psychophysical causation is inconsistent with physical causal closure, (ii) the claim that psychophysical causation on the dualist view is intolerably mysterious, and (iii) Jaegwon Kim’s claim that dualism fails to account for causal pairings. Ultimately, (...) I conclude that these objections fail and that dualist interactionism is no more problematic or mysterious than physical causation. (shrink)

Algorithm Decision Making (ADM) systems designed to augment or automate human decision-making have the potential to produce better decisions while also freeing up human time and attention for other pursuits. For this potential to be realised, however, algorithmic decisions must be sufficiently aligned with human goals and interests. We take a Principal-Agent (P-A) approach to the questions of ADM alignment and trust. In a broad sense, ADM is beneficial if and only if human principals can trust algorithmic agents to act (...) faithfully on their behalf. This mirrors the challenge of facilitating P-A relationships among humans, but the peculiar nature of human-machine interaction also raises unique issues. The problem of asymmetric information is omnipresent but takes a different form in the context of ADM. Although the decision-making machinery of an algorithmic agent can in principle be laid bare for all to see, the sheer complexity of ADM systems based on deep learning models prevents straightforward monitoring. We draw on literature from economics and political science to argue that the problem of trust in ADM systems should be addressed at the level of institutions. Although the dyadic relationship between human principals and algorithmic agents is our ultimate concern, cooperation at this level must rest against an institutional environment which allows humans to effectively evaluate and choose among algorithmic alternatives. (shrink)

Philosophical work on causation in Australasia has been extraordinarily rich and diverse, and in a brief survey much important work must remain unmentioned. Here I provide a selective overview, designed to highlight particularly influential work and to indicate the diversity of the contributions made by Australasian philosophers.

Intro to festschrift for Jonathan Dancy.

Analysis of Heidegger on Plato's Doctrine of Truth, the Cave Allegory.

Building on work by Steve Darwall, I argue that standard virtue ethical accounts of moral motivation are defective because they don't include accounts of social morality. I then propose a virtue ethical account of social morality, and respond to one of Darwall's core objections to the coherence of any such (non-Kantian) account.

This paper begins by trying to explicate what moral thought and moral theory are. Then the paper contends that, at the point of decision of what to do, everyday moral thought focuses on what seem to be the morally relevant differences among available alternative acts. Moral principles might well come into play when we try to tease out whether a moral concept applies. Moral principles might also come into play in thinking about cases in which moral reasons conflict. Moral principles (...) and moral theorizing even more obviously come into play when thought experiments are conducted on imaginary cases. A very common example of imaginary cases figuring in moral decision-making is the role-reversal thought experiment in which we contemplate how we would react if others did to us what we are considering doing to them. Sometimes, when one person asserts that an action is morally required, someone else asks why. Pressed far enough, this question can be answered only by “I don’t know” or by pointing to whatever ultimately makes acts morally required, permissible, or prohibited. Views about what ultimately makes acts morally required, permissible, or prohibited are moral theories. The final section of the paper outlines the leading moral theories and proposes that, although they differ at the level of fundamental principle, they largely agree about how everyday moral thought should be conducted. (shrink)

I examine the epistemic import of collaborative research in science. I develop and defend a functional explanation for its growing importance. Collaborative research is becoming more popular in the natural sciences, and to a lesser degree in the social sciences, because contemporary research in these fields frequently requires access to abundant resources, for which there is great competition. Scientists involved in collaborative research have been very successful in accessing these resources, which has in turn enabled them to realize the epistemic (...) goals of science more effectively than other scientists, thus creating a research environment in which collaboration is now the norm. (shrink)

The thesis explores and suggests a solution to a problem that I identify in John McDowell’s and Lynne Rudder Baker’s approaches to mental and intention-dependent (ID) causation in the physical world. I begin (chapter 1) with a brief discussion of McDowell’s non-reductive and anti-scientistic account of mind and world, which I believe offers, through its vision of the unbounded conceptual and the world as within the space of reasons, to liberate and renew philosophy. However, I find an inconsistency in McDowell’s (...) criticism of Davidson’s anomalous monism (chapter 2), stemming from a tension between McDowell’s naïve common sense view of mental causation and an understanding of ordinary physical causation which I think McDowell ought to embrace, which portrays it as both objective, in the sense of being recognition- independent, and as belonging within the space of reasons. The question of the relation between these two concepts of causation is an aspect of the more general question of the relation between the space of reasons and the realm of law. In chapter 3 I begin examining the possibility that Baker’s account of material and property constitution could form the basis of a bridge between the two spaces, and find it generally promising. However, I find that her defence of her version of non-reductive monism against Kim’s causal arguments also runs into problems, which I attribute to the fact that she holds a view of causation as secondary to causal explanation. 2 3 In chapter 4 I develop an account of what I call manifest physical causation – of objective causal relations in the world of Sellars’s manifest image. Based upon McDowell’s transcendental empiricism, which takes the existence of the ordinary perceived world as a condition of the possibility of our possession of conceptual capacities, I contend that it is this picture of reality, rather than that of fundamental physics, that should be the starting point of our theorizing. Causation in the manifest image, I argue, covers the behaviour of the familiar physical world as well as that of its well-understood extensions into the special sciences and engineering. Manifest physical causation, on my account, is productive, acts through mechanisms which are almost entirely mechanical, electromagnetic, and/ or chemical, and is causally closed. In my view, normative, semantic, contentful property-instances are not part of the manifest physical causal nexus. In my final chapter I suggest a modification of Baker’s constitution account, which I call Constituted Causation, whereby higher-level – mental and other ID – causal relations are constituted, in favourable circumstances, by lower-level ones. ID causal relations belong in their own causal nexus but are connected to the manifest physical world through constitution, a relation of unity without identity. Causation and constitution are, respectively, intra- and inter-level relations, and they are non-overlapping. The constituted network of rational and normative relations bears, I believe, striking parallels with McDowell’s view of reality. According to Baker’s view of constitution, the essential properties of constituted entities subsume those of their constituters; extending this to my account enables us to say that the real cause and explanation of someone’s action is that they consciously performed it 4 rather than that certain manifest causal processes occurred at the lower level. (shrink)

Commentary upon ten papers on the subject of Hegel's Lectures on Fine Art, his Aesthetics.

Analysis of the Deductions in Plato's Parmenides.

The chapter juxtaposes the fairly quick and automatic thinking and decision making that constitutes everyday moral thought and action with the slower, more complicated, and more reflective thinking that steps beyond everyday moral thought. Various difficulties that can slow down everyday moral thought are catalogued in this paper. The paper explains how dealing with many of these difficulties leads to thinking about moral principles. And, even where there are not such difficulties, everyday moral thought can be challenged by repeated “why?” (...) questions. Pushed far enough, such questions have to be answered by admitting ignorance or by pointing to theses about whatever ultimately makes acts morally required, permissible, or prohibited. Such theses are moral theories. As a point about moral theories, the paper ends by pointing out a respect in which everyday moral thought is more like rule-consequentialism, contractualism, foundational pluralism, and virtue ethics than everyday moral thought is like traditional act-consequentialism. (shrink)

H.-J. Glock has made important contributions to discussions of rationality, reasons, and rules. This chapter addresses four conceptions of rationality that Glock identifies. One of these conceptions of rationality is that rationality consists in responsiveness to reasons. This chapter goes on to consider the idea that reasons became prominent in normative ethics because of their usefulness in articulating moral pluralism. The final section of the chapter connects reasons and rules and contends that both are ineliminable.