Robert Brandom makes several mistakes in his discussion of Sellars's "Two-Ply" account of observation. Brandom does not recognize the difference in "level" between observation reports concerning physical objects and 'looks'-statements. He also denies that 'looks'-statements are reports or even make claims. They then demonstrate a more correct reading of Sellars on 'looks'-statements.

Plato’s references to Empedocles in the myth of the Statesman perform a crucial role in the overarching political argument of the dialogue. Empedocles conceives of the cosmos as structured like a democracy, where the constituent powers ‘rule in turn’, sharing the offices of rulership equally via a cyclical exchange of power. In a complex act of philosophical appropriation, Plato takes up Empedocles’ cosmic cycles of rule in order to ‘correct’ them: instead of a democracy in which rule is shared cyclically (...) amongst equal constituents, Plato’s cosmos undergoes cycles of the presence and absence of a single cosmic monarch who possesses ‘kingly epistēmē’. By means of a revision of Empedocles’ democratic cosmology, Plato’s richly woven myth is designed precisely to reject the appropriateness of democracy as a form of human political association and legitimate monarchy in its stead. (shrink)

According to the powerful qualities view, properties are both powerful and qualitative. Indeed, on this view the powerfulness of a property is identical to its qualitativity. Proponents claim that this view provides an attractive alternative to both the view that properties are pure powers and the view that they are pure qualities. It remains unclear, however, whether the claimed identity between powerfulness and qualitativity can be made coherent in a way that allows the powerful qualities view to constitute this sort (...) of alternative. I argue here that this can be done, given a particular conception of both the qualitativity and powerfulness of properties. On this conception, a property is qualitative just in the sense that its essence is fixed independently of any distinct properties, and it is powerful just if its essence grounds its dispositional role. (shrink)

Epistemic akrasia arises when one holds a belief even though one judges it to be irrational or unjustified. While there is some debate about whether epistemic akrasia is possible, this paper will assume for the sake of argument that it is in order to consider whether it can be rational. The paper will show that it can. More precisely, cases can arise in which both the belief one judges to be irrational and one’s judgment of it are epistemically rational in (...) the sense that both are supported by sufficient evidence. (shrink)

This is the first chapter to our edited collection of essays on the nature and ethics of blame. In this chapter we introduce the reader to contemporary discussions about blame and its relationship to other issues (e.g. free will and moral responsibility), and we situate the essays in this volume with respect to those discussions.

Ordinarily, we take moral responsibility to come in degrees. Despite this commonplace, theories of moral responsibility have focused on the minimum threshold conditions under which agents are morally responsible. But this cannot account for our practices of holding agents to be more or less responsible. In this paper we remedy this omission. More specifically, we extend an account of reasons-responsiveness due to John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza according to which an agent is morally responsible only if she is appropriately (...) receptive to and reactive to reasons for action. Building on this, we claim that the degree to which an agent is responsible will depend on the degree to which she is able to recognize and react to reasons. To analyze this, we appeal to relations of comparative similarity between possible worlds, arguing that the degree to which an agent is reasons-reactive depends on the nearest possible world in which given sufficient reason to do otherwise, she does so. Similarly, we argue that the degree to which an agent is reasons-receptive will depend on the intelligibility of her patterned recognition of reasons. By extending an account of reasons-responsiveness in these ways, we are able to rationalize our practice of judging people to be more or less responsible. (shrink)

I defend a new account of constitutive essence on which an entity’s constitutively essential properties are its most fundamental, nontrivial necessary properties. I argue that this account accommodates the Finean counterexamples to classic modalism about essence, provides an independently plausible account of constitutive essence, and does not run into clear counterexamples. I conclude that this theory provides a promising way forward for attempts to produce an adequate nonprimitivist, modalist account of essence. As both triviality and fundamentality in the account are (...) understood in terms of grounding, the theory also potentially has important implications for the relation between essence and grounding. (shrink)

Discussions about the nature of essence and about the inference problem for non-Humean theories of nomic modality have largely proceeded independently of each other. In this article I argue that the right conclusions to draw about the inference problem actually depend significantly on how best to understand the nature of essence. In particular, I argue that this conclusion holds for the version of the inference problem developed and defended by Alexander Bird. I argue that Bird’s own argument that this problem (...) is fatal for David Armstrong’s influential theory of the laws of nature but not for dispositional essentialism is seriously flawed. In place of this argument, I develop an argument that whether Bird’s inference problem raises serious difficulties for Armstrong’s theory depends on the answers to substantial questions about how best to understand essence. The key consequence is that considerations about the nature of essence have significant, underappreciated implications for Armstrong’s theory. (shrink)

In De Anima 2.4, Aristotle claims that nutritive soul encompasses two distinct biological functions: nutrition and reproduction. We challenge a pervasive interpretation which posits ‘nutrients’ as the correlative object of the nutritive capacity. Instead, the shared object of nutrition and reproduction is that which is nourished and reproduced: the ensouled body, qua ensouled. Both functions aim at preserving this object, and thus at preserving the form, life, and being of the individual organism. In each case, we show how Aristotle’s detailed (...) biological analysis supports this ontological argument. (shrink)

: Agents are enkratic when they intend to do what they believe they should. That rationality requires you to be enkratic is uncontroversial, yet you may be enkratic in a way that does not exhibit any rationality on your part. Thus, what I call the enkratic requirement demands that you be enkratic in the right way. In particular, I will argue that it demands that you base your belief about what you should do and your intention to do it on (...) the same considerations. The idea is that, if you base your belief and your intention on different considerations, then you are inconsistent in your treatment of those considerations as reasons. The enkratic requirement demands that you be enkratic by treating considerations consistently as reasons. (shrink)

The relationship between abstract formal procedures and the activities of actual physical systems has proved to be surprisingly subtle and controversial, and there are a number of competing accounts of when a physical system can be properly said to implement a mathematical formalism and hence perform a computation. I defend an account wherein computational descriptions of physical systems are high-level normative interpretations motivated by our pragmatic concerns. Furthermore, the criteria of utility and success vary according to our diverse purposes and (...) pragmatic goals. Hence there is no independent or uniform fact to the matter, and I advance the ‘anti-realist’ conclusion that computational descriptions of physical systems are not founded upon deep ontological distinctions, but rather upon interest-relative human conventions. Hence physical computation is a ‘conventional’ rather than a ‘natural’ kind. (shrink)

Does Aristotle offer a definition of the soul? In fact, he rejects the possibility of defining the soul univocally. Because “life” is a homonymous concept, so too is “soul”. Given the specific causal role that Aristotle envisages for form and essence, the soul requires multiple different definitions to capture how it functions as a cause in each form of life. Aristotle suggests demonstrations can be given which express these causal definitions; I reconstruct these demonstrations in the paper.

According to a well-known argument against dispositional essentialism, the nature of unmanifested token powers leaves dispositional essentialists with an objectionable commitment to the reality of non-existent entities. The idea is that, because unmanifested token powers are directed at their non-existent token manifestations, they require the reality of those manifestations. Arguably the most promising response to this argument works by claiming that, if properties are universals, dispositional directedness need only entail the reality of actually existing manifestation types. I argue that this (...) response fails, because no version of the response can adequately accommodate dispositions of the sort that follow from Coulomb’s law. This result both defeats an important argument that dispositional essentialists ought to be realists about universals and appears to leave dispositional essentialists with a problematic commitment to either non-relational connections or a Meinongian ontology. (shrink)

While the inference problem is widely thought to be one of the most serious problems facing non-Humean accounts of laws, Jonathan Schaffer has argued that a primitivist response straightforwardly dissolves the problem. On this basis, he claims that the inference problem is really a pseudo-problem. Here I clarify the prospects of a primitivist response to the inference problem and their implications for the philosophical significance of the problem. I argue both that it is a substantial question whether this sort of (...) response ought to be accepted and that the inference problem, contra Schaffer, remains a significant problem with important implications for the non-Humean position. I also argue that this discussion indicates grounds to be wary about applying the Schaffer-style strategy of straightforwardly dissolving problems by stipulation to other philosophical problems. (shrink)

The Ockhamist claims that our ability to do otherwise is not endangered by God’s foreknowledge because facts about God’s past beliefs regarding future contingents are soft facts about the past—i.e., temporally relational facts that depend in some sense on what happens in the future. But if our freedom, given God’s foreknowledge, requires altering some fact about the past that is clearly a hard fact, then Ockhamism fails even if facts about God’s past beliefs are soft. Recent opponents of Ockhamism, including (...) David Widerker and Peter van Inwagen, have argued along precisely these lines. Their arguments, if successful, would undermine Ockhamism while avoiding the controversy over the alleged softness of facts about God’s past beliefs. But these arguments do not succeed. The past facts they rely on must be clear and uncontroversial examples of hard facts about the past, and these facts must be such that an ability to refrain from the relevant future action implies an ability to alter the relevant hard fact. We demonstrate the flaw in these arguments by showing how they rely on past facts that do not satisfy these criteria. The Ockhamist may have troubles, but this type of argument is not one of them. (shrink)

Taylor has recently argued that adopting either the standard Kimian or Davidsonian approaches to the metaphysics of events quite directly solves the regress of pure powers. I argue, though, that on closer inspection Taylor’s proposal does not succeed, given either the Kimian or the Davidsonian account of events.

This discussion of Sergio Tenenbaum’s excellent book, Rational Powers in Action, focuses on two noteworthy aspects of the big picture. First, questions are raised about Tenenbaum’s methodology of giving primacy to cases in which the agent has all the requisite background knowledge, including knowledge of a means that will be sufficient for achieving her end, and no significant false beliefs. Second, the implications of Tenenbaum’s views concerning the rational constraints on revising our ends are examined.

This introduction provides a brief overview of the issues and arguments that arise in Hume's _Dialogues concerning Natural Religion_ (1779). It also provides a few brief comments relating to the historical context in which this text should be interpreted , as well as an account of the place of the _Dialogues_ in relation to Hume's other philosophical works.

This paper considers the question of “atheism” as it arises in Hume’s _Dialogues_. It argues that the concept of “atheism” involves several signficiant ambiguities that are indicative of philosophical and interpretive disagreements of a more substantial nature. It defends the view that Philo’s general sceptical orientation accurately represents Hume’s own “irreligious” and “atheistic” commitments, both in the _Dialogues_ and in his other (“earlier”) writings. While Hume was plainly a “speculative atheist”, his “practical atheism” was targeted more narrowly against “superstition” - (...) as opposed to deism or religion of a more “philosophical” kind. (shrink)

De Finetti would claim that we can make sense of a draw in which each positive integer has equal probability of winning. This requires a uniform probability distribution over the natural numbers, violating countable additivity. Countable additivity thus appears not to be a fundamental constraint on subjective probability. It does, however, seem mandated by Dutch Book arguments similar to those that support the other axioms of the probability calculus as compulsory for subjective interpretations. These two lines of reasoning can be (...) reconciled through a slight generalization of the Dutch Book framework. Countable additivity may indeed be abandoned for de Finetti's lottery, but this poses no serious threat to its adoption in most applications of subjective probability. Introduction The de Finetti lottery Two objections to equiprobability 3.1 The ‘No random mechanism’ argument 3.2 The Dutch Book argument Equiprobability and relative betting quotients The re-labelling paradox 5.1 The paradox 5.2 Resolution: from symmetry to relative probability Beyond the de Finetti lottery. (shrink)

In the third and final part of his A Theory of Determinism (TD) Ted Honderich addresses the fundamental question concerning “the consequences of determinism.” The critical question he aims to answer is what follows if determinism is true? This question is, of course, intimately bound up with the problem of free will and, in particular, with the question of whether or not the truth of determinism is compatible or incompatible with the sort of freedom required for moral responsibility. It is (...) Honderich’s aim to provide a solution to “the problem of the consequences of determinism” and a key element of this is his articulation and defence of an alternative response to the implications of determinism that collapses the familiar Compatibilist/Incompatibilist dichotomy. Honderich offers us a third way – the response of “Affirmation” (HFY 125-6). Although his account of Affirmation has application and relevance to issues and features beyond freedom and responsibility, my primary concern in this essay will be to examine Honderich’s theory of “Affirmation” as it concerns the free will problem. (shrink)

Should a principle of charity be applied to the interpretation of the colour concepts exercised in visual experience? We think not. We shall argue, for one thing, that the grounds for applying a principle of charity are lacking in the case of colour concepts. More importantly, we shall argue that attempts at giving the experience of colour a charitable interpretation either fail to respect obvious features of that experience or fail to interpret it charitably, after all. Charity to visual experience (...) is therefore no motive for resisting the natural, Galilean response to a scientific understanding of light and vision. The best interpretation of colour experience ends up convicting it of widespread and systematic error. (shrink)

This paper argues that, given a certain apparently inevitable thesis about content, we could not know our own minds. The thesis is that the content of a thought is determined by its relational properties.

Endurantists have recently faced a mereological puzzle in various forms. Here I argue that, instead of presenting a genuine worry, the puzzle actually reveals a common misunderstanding about the endurantist ontology. Furthermore, through this discussion of the alleged problem and the misunderstanding which motivates it, I reveal metaphysical commitments the endurantist has that may not be widely recognized. For instance, she is committed to interesting and perhaps controversial views about shape and location. I highlight these commitments and what they mean (...) for the endurantist. (shrink)

Some environmental ethicists and economists argue that attributing infinite value to the environment is a good way to represent an absolute obligation to protect it. Others argue against modelling the value of the environment in this way: the assignment of infinite value leads to immense technical and philosophical difficulties that undermine the environmentalist project. First, there is a problem of discrimination: saving a large region of habitat is better than saving a small region; yet if both outcomes have infinite value, (...) then decision theory prescribes indifference. Second, there is a problem of swamping probabilities: an act with a small but positive probability of saving an endangered species appears to be on par with an act that has a high probability of achieving this outcome, since both have infinite expected value. Our paper shows that a relative concept of infinite value can be meaningfully defined, and provides a good model for securing the priority of the natural environment while avoiding the failures noted by sceptics about infinite value. Our claim is not that the relative infinity utility model gets every detail correct, but rather that it provides a rigorous philosophical framework for thinking about decisions affecting the environment. (shrink)

Proponents of public reason views hold that the exercise of political power ought to be acceptable to all reasonable citizens. This article elucidates the common structure shared by all public reason views, first by identifying a set of questions that all such views must answer and, second, by showing that the answers to these questions stand in a particular relationship to each other. In particular, we show that what we call the ‘rationale question’ is fundamental. This fact, and the common (...) structure more generally, are often overlooked or distorted within the literature. As a result, we argue, several prominent argumentative moves made by both critics and defenders of public reason are unsuccessful. Our overall conclusion is that discussions of public reason views would be more fruitful if they made consistent use of the common structure we identify. (shrink)

THE PRINCIPLE OF SUPERPOSITION. The need for a quantum theory Classical mechanics has been developed continuously from the time of Newton and applied to an ...

Public shaming plays an important role in upholding valuable social norms. But, under what conditions, if any, is it morally justifiable? Our aim in this paper is systemically to investigate the morality of public shaming, so as to provide an answer to this neglected question. We develop an overarching framework for assessing the justifiability of this practice, which shows that, while shaming can sometimes be morally justifiable, it very often is not. In turn, our framework highlights several reasons to be (...) concerned about the increasingly widespread phenomenon of online public shaming. (shrink)

Among recent objections to Pascal's Wager, two are especially compelling. The first is that decision theory, and specifically the requirement of maximizing expected utility, is incompatible with infinite utility values. The second is that even if infinite utility values are admitted, the argument of the Wager is invalid provided that we allow mixed strategies. Furthermore, Hájek has shown that reformulations of Pascal's Wager that address these criticisms inevitably lead to arguments that are philosophically unsatisfying and historically unfaithful. Both the objections (...) and Hájek's philosophical worries disappear, however, if we represent our preferences using relative utilities rather than a one-place utility function. Relative utilities provide a conservative way to make sense of infinite value that preserves the familiar equation of rationality with the maximization of expected utility. They also provide a means of investigating a broader class of problems related to the Wager. (shrink)

We are witnessing increasing use of the Internet, particular social media, to criticize (perceived or actual) moral failings and misdemeanors. This phenomenon of so-called ‘online public shaming’ could provide a powerful tool for reinforcing valuable social norms. But it also threatens unwarranted and severe punishments meted out by online mobs. This paper analyses the dangers associated with the informal enforcement of norms, drawing on Locke, but also highlights its promise, drawing on recent discussions of social norms. We then consider two (...) crucial conditions that online public shaming must meet in order to be justifiable: proportionality and accountability. We argue that these requirements are in fact frequently violated, rendering most cases of online public shaming unjustified. While the use of online public shaming against others’ vices has some apparent virtues, it is currently rarely justified, given its own vices. (shrink)

The dispute between realists about color and anti-realists is actually a dispute about the nature of color properties. The disputants do not disagree over what material objects are like. Rather, they disagree over whether any of the uncontroversial facts about material objects--their powers to cause visual experiences, their dispositions to reflect incident light, their atomic makeup, and so on--amount to their having colors. The disagreement is thus about which properties colors are and, in particular, whether colors are any of the (...) properties in a particular set that is acknowledged on both sides to exhaust the properties of material objects. In a previous paper we discussed at length one attempt to identify colors with particular properties of material objects--namely, with their dispositions to cause visual experiences. Here we shall discuss a different and perhaps more influential version of realism, which says that the colors of material objects are microphysical properties of their surfaces. We shall call this theory physicalism about color (physicalism, for short). In order to evaluate this theory, however, we shall first have to clarify some methodological issues. Our hope is that we can bring some further clarity to the question of color realism, whether or not we succeed in our critique of the physicalists' answer. (shrink)

Here I defend the compatibility of presentism and time travel against a few objections. Keller and Nelson argue that, if presentism is at all plausible, presentism and time travel are as compatible as eternalism and time travel. But Miller and Sider are not convinced. I reply that for their concerns to have merit, Miller and Sider must assume presentists are committed to positions they need not be; I explain why presentists are not so committed and, in the process, defend Keller (...) and Nelson’s position that there is no roadblock to presentist time travel that does not also apply to eternalist time travel. (shrink)

The paper looks at three big ideas that have been associated with the term “relativism.” The first maintains that some property has a higher-degree than might have been thought. The second that the judgments in a particular domain of discourse are capable only of relative truth and not of absolute truth And the third, which I dub with the oxymoronic label “absolutist relativism,” seeks to locate relativism in our acceptance of certain sorts of spare absolutist principles. -/- The first idea (...) is well illustrated by the famous cases drawn from physics, but is ill suited for providing a model for the sorts of relativism about normative domains that have most interested philosophers. -/- The second idea – according to which it is the truth of certain judgments that is relative – seems subject to a very difficult dilemma. -/- The final idea provides a coherent model of cases like etiquette but is not plausibly applied to the moral or epistemic domains. (shrink)

In this chapter, we analyze the relationships between the Internet and its users in terms of situated cognition theory. We first argue that the Internet is a new kind of cognitive ecology, providing almost constant access to a vast amount of digital information that is increasingly more integrated into our cognitive routines. We then briefly introduce situated cognition theory and its species of embedded, embodied, extended, distributed and collective cognition. Having thus set the stage, we begin by taking an embedded (...) cognition view and analyze how the Internet aids certain cognitive tasks. After that, we conceptualize how the Internet enables new kinds of embodied interaction, extends certain aspects of our embodiment, and examine how wearable technologies that monitor physiological, behavioral and contextual states transform the embodied self. On the basis of the degree of cognitive integration between a user and Internet resource, we then look at how and when the Internet extends our cognitive processes. We end this chapter with a discussion of distributed and collective cognition as facilitated by the Internet. (shrink)

It is one thing to hold that merely statistical evidence is _sometimes_ insufficient for rational belief, as in typical lottery and profiling cases. It is another thing to hold that merely statistical evidence is _always_ insufficient for rational belief. Indeed, there are cases where statistical evidence plainly does justify belief. This project develops a dispositional account of the normativity of statistical evidence, where the dispositions that ground justifying statistical evidence are connected to the goals (= proper function) of objects. There (...) are strong intuitive motivations for doing this. For we can turn almost any case of _non-justifying_ merely statistical evidence into a case of _justifying_ merely statistical evidence by adding information about the dispositions and goals of the objects involved. The resulting view not only helps us understand when and why merely statistical evidence is normatively significant, but it also helps us understand how statistical evidence relates to more standard forms of evidence (perceptual, testimonial). The emerging view also has surprising applications, as it imposes limitations on the epistemic value of fine-tuning arguments for theism as well as undermines a standard class of case-based arguments for moral encroachment. (shrink)

Andrew Lister’s Public Reason and Political Community is an important new contribution to the debate over political liberalism. In this article, I critically evaluate some of the central arguments of the book in order to assess the current state of public reason liberalism. I pursue two main objections to Lister’s work. First, Lister’s justification for public reason, which appeals to the value of civic friendship, fails to show why public reason liberalism should be preferred to an alternative democratic theory that (...) does not include public reason restrictions. Second, there are several important ambiguities and tensions within Lister’s view that he does not adequately resolve. His approach to them often takes public reason liberalism in directions that many of its advocates will reject. More work thus remains to be done by public reason liberals both to show why public reason restrictions are necessary and to resolve these tensions in a more satisfactory way. (shrink)

Debates between political liberals and liberal perfectionists have been reinvigorated by Jonathan Quong’s Liberalism Without Perfection. In this paper I argue that certain forms of perfectionism can rebut or evade Quong’s three central objections – that perfectionism is manipulative, paternalistic, and illegitimate. I then argue that perfectionists can defend an ‘internal conception’ of perfectionism, parallel in structure to Quong’s ’internal conception’ of political liberalism, but with a different conception of the justificatory constituency. None of Quong’s arguments show that his view (...) should be preferred to this perfectionist internal conception. It can thus equally claim to achieve ‘justification to all reasonable citizens’. (shrink)

One of the few points of unquestioned agreement in virtue theory is that the virtues are supposed to be excellences. The best way to understand the project of "virtue ethics" is to understand this claim as the idea that the virtues always yield correct moral action and, therefore, that we cannot be “too virtuous”. In other words, the virtues cannot be had in excess or “to a fault”. If we take this seriously, however, it yields the surprising conclusion that many (...) traits which have been traditionally thought of as “virtues” fail to make the grade. The most prominent solution to the problem, reminiscent of Aristotle's view, is found to generate more problems than it solves. -/- Ratio, Volume 35, Issue 1, Page 49-60, March 2022. (shrink)

According to the Guise of the Good, an agent only does for a reason what she sees as good. One of the main motivations for the view is its apparent ability to explain why action for a reason must be intelligible to its agent, for on this view, an action is intelligible just in case it seems good. This motivation has come under criticism in recent years. Most notably, Kieran Setiya has argued that merely seeing one’s action as good does (...) not suffice to make the action intelligible. In this paper, I show that this objection has bite only because the Guise of the Good’s theory of intelligibility has yet seen little sustained articulation. Properly understood, this theory holds that an action is intelligible to an agent only if it appears to them to possess some substantive evaluative property. I then argue that this response to the objection has a significant implication for contemporary Guise of the Good theories, for it shows that the currently ascendant version of the theory, the attitudinal theory, cannot avail itself of the intelligibility motivation. (shrink)

A distinction is made between acting hypocritically and the character trait of being a hypocrite. The former is understood as resulting from the employment of a double standard in order to obtain a wrongful advantage, while a particular problem with the latter is that hypocrites do not give trustworthy testimony.

A basic challenge to naturalistic moral realism is that, even if moral properties existed, there would be no way to naturalistically represent or track them. Here, the basic structure for a tracking account of moral epistemology is given in empirically respectable terms, based on a eudaimonist conception of morality. The goal is to show how this form of moral realism can be seen as consistent with the details of evolutionary biology as well as being amenable to the most current understanding (...) of representationalist or correspondence theories of truth. (shrink)

According to political liberalism, laws must be justified to all citizens in order to be legitimate. Most political liberals have taken this to mean that laws must be justified by appeal to a specific class of ‘public reasons’, which all citizens can accept. In this paper I defend an alternative, convergence, model of public justification, according to which laws can be justified to different citizens by different reasons, including reasons grounded in their comprehensive doctrines. I consider three objections to such (...) an account—that it undermines sincerity in public reason, that it underestimates the importance of shared values, and that it is insufficiently deliberative—and argue that convergence justifications are resilient to these objections. They should therefore be included within a theory of political liberalism, as a legitimate form of public justification. This has important implications for the obligations that political liberalism places upon citizens in their public deliberations and reason-giving, and might make the theory more attractive to some of its critics, particularly those sympathetic to religious belief. (shrink)

An argument for the eponymous conclusion is given through a series of hypothetical syllogisms, the most basic of which is as follows: morality is necessary for self-respect; self-respect is necessary for happiness; therefore, morality is necessary for happiness. Some of the most obvious objections are entertained and rejected.

Recasting Hume and Early Modern Philosophy is a collection of essays that are all concerned with major figures and topics in the early modern philosophy. Most of the essays are concerned, more specifically, with the philosophy of David Hume (1711-1776). The sixteen essays included in this collection are divided into five parts. These parts are arranged under the headings of: (1) Metaphysics and Epistemology; (2) Free Will and Moral Luck; (3) Ethics, Virtue and Optimism; (4) Skepticism, Religion and Atheism; and (...) (5) Irreligion and the Unity of Hume’s Thought. A particularly important theme running through many of these essays is the subject of Hume’s irreligious aims and intentions. The fifth and final part of the collection is devoted to an articulation and defence of this specific understanding of Hume’s philosophical thought. (shrink)

This essay critically assesses the central claim of Kevin Vallier’s Liberal Politics and Public Faith: that public religious faith and public reason liberalism can be reconciled, because the values underlying public reason liberalism should lead us to endorse the ‘convergence view’, rather than the mainstream consensus view. The convergence view is friendlier to religious faith, because it jettisons the consensus view’s much-criticised ‘duty of restraint’. I present several challenges to Vallier’s claim. Firstly, if Vallier is right to reject the duty (...) of restraint then consensus theorists can also do so, and on the same grounds. Secondly, the independent force of the objections to the duty of restraint is unclear. Thirdly, Vallier has not successfully identified desiderata that unite all public reason liberals and favour convergence over consensus. Finally, even if convergence is in some ways friendlier to religious faith, this does not show that it will be attractive to religious citizens. (shrink)

This paper introduces constitutivism about practical reason, which is the view that we can justify certain normative claims by showing that agents become committed to these claims simply in virtue of acting. According to this view, action has a certain structural feature – a constitutive aim, principle, or standard – that both constitutes events as actions and generates a standard of assessment for action. We can use this standard of assessment to derive normative claims. In short, the authority of certain (...) normative claims arises from the bare fact that we are agents. This essay explains the constitutivst strategy, surveys the extant attempts to generate constitutivist theories, and considers the problems and prospects for the theory. (shrink)