The purpose of this paper is to offer an account of what an agent's being rational to do or think something might amount to, which doesn't reduce to saying that it consists in this agent's doing or thinking something that is rational for him. In the first section, I call attention to the fact that such a distinction between agent rationality and action or belief rationality is widely admitted, I reject the idea that it could be interpreted as a distinction (...) between the rationality of tokens and the rationality of types, and I suggest one natural way in which a notion of objective agent rationality could be informally characterized in terms of action or belief rationality. But this first, rough, characterization depends on further uses of the notion of rationality which I try to make sense of in the second section, at least in a preliminary way. The burden of this second section is then to determine whether the intuition behind the informal proposal introduced in the first can be substantiated, i.e., whether a substantial and coherent notion of agent rationality can be worked out, and at what cost. In the concluding section, I try to "deflate" some of the worries that could be raised by the account of agent rationality I end up with. (shrink)

In a recent paper (2008), I presented two arguments against the thesis that intentional states are essentially normative. In this paper, I defend those arguments from two recent responses, one from Nick Zangwill in his (2010), and one from Daniel Laurier in the present volume, and offer improvements of my arguments in light of Laurier’s criticism.

Supererogatory acts—good deeds “beyond the call of duty”—are a part of moral common sense, but conceptually puzzling. I propose a unified solution to three of the most infamous puzzles: the classic Paradox of Supererogation (if it’s so good, why isn’t it just obligatory?), Horton’s All or Nothing Problem, and Kamm’s Intransitivity Paradox. I conclude that supererogation makes sense if, and only if, the grounds of rightness are multi-dimensional and comparative.

Debunking arguments—also known as etiological arguments, genealogical arguments, access problems, isolation objec- tions, and reliability challenges—arise in philosophical debates about a diverse range of topics, including causation, chance, color, consciousness, epistemic reasons, free will, grounding, laws of nature, logic, mathematics, modality, morality, natural kinds, ordinary objects, religion, and time. What unifies the arguments is the transition from a premise about what does or doesn't explain why we have certain mental states to a negative assessment of their epistemic status. I examine (...) the common, underlying structure of the arguments and the different strategies for motivating and resisting the premises of debunking arguments. (shrink)

Privacy and surveillance scholars increasingly worry that data collectors can use the information they gather about our behaviors, preferences, interests, incomes, and so on to manipulate us. Yet what it means, exactly, to manipulate someone, and how we might systematically distinguish cases of manipulation from other forms of influence—such as persuasion and coercion—has not been thoroughly enough explored in light of the unprecedented capacities that information technologies and digital media enable. In this paper, we develop a definition of manipulation that (...) addresses these enhanced capacities, investigate how information technologies facilitate manipulative practices, and describe the harms—to individuals and to social institutions—that flow from such practices. -/- We use the term “online manipulation” to highlight the particular class of manipulative practices enabled by a broad range of information technologies. We argue that at its core, manipulation is hidden influence—the covert subversion of another person’s decision-making power. We argue that information technology, for a number of reasons, makes engaging in manipulative practices significantly easier, and it makes the effects of such practices potentially more deeply debilitating. And we argue that by subverting another person’s decision-making power, manipulation undermines his or her autonomy. Given that respect for individual autonomy is a bedrock principle of liberal democracy, the threat of online manipulation is a cause for grave concern. (shrink)

Philosophers have long argued that duties to oneself are paradoxical, as they seem to entail an incoherent power to release oneself from obligations. I argue that self-release is possible, both as a matter of deontic logic and of metaethics.

I investigate when we can (rationally) have attitudes, and when we cannot. I argue that a comprehensive theory must explain three phenomena. First, being related by descriptions or names to a proposition one has strong reason to believe is true does not guarantee that one can rationally believe that proposition. Second, such descriptions, etc. do enable individuals to rationally have various non-doxastic attitudes, such as hope and admiration. And third, even for non-doxastic attitudes like that, not just any description will (...) allow it. I argue that we should think of attitude formation like we do (practical) choices among options. I motivate this view linguistically, extending "relevant alternatives'' theories of the attitudes to both belief and to the other, non-doxastic attitudes. Given a natural principle governing choice, and some important differences between doxastic and non-doxastic "choices'', we can explain these puzzling phenomena. (shrink)

The standard view says that epistemic normativity is normativity of belief. If you’re an evidentialist, for example, you’ll think that all epistemic reasons are reasons to believe what your evidence supports. Here we present a line of argument that pushes back against this standard view. If the argument is right, there are epistemic reasons for things other than belief. The argument starts with evidentialist commitments and proceeds by a series of cases, each containing a reason. As the cases progress, the (...) reasons change from counting in favor of things like having a belief to things like performing ordinary actions. We argue that each of those reasons is epistemic. If the argument succeeds, we should think there are epistemic reasons to consider hypotheses, conduct thought and physical experiments, extend one’s evidence, and perform mundane tasks like eating a sandwich, just as there are epistemic reasons to believe what one’s evidence supports. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a general theory of topological explanations, and illustrate its fruitfulness by showing how it accounts for explanatory asymmetry. My argument is developed in three steps. In the first step, I show what it is for some topological property A to explain some physical or dynamical property B. Based on that, I derive three key criteria of successful topological explanations: a criterion concerning the facticity of topological explanations, i.e. what makes it true of a particular system; (...) a criterion for describing counterfactual dependencies in two explanatory modes, i.e. the vertical and the horizontal; and, finally, a third perspectival one that tells us when to use the vertical and when to use the horizontal mode. In the second step, I show how this general theory of topological explanations accounts for explanatory asymmetry in both the vertical and horizontal explanatory modes. Finally, in the third step, I argue that this theory is universally applicable across biological sciences, which helps to unify essential concepts of biological networks. (shrink)

Recent work in the philosophy of religion has resurrected Leibniz’s idea that there is a best possible world, perhaps ours. In particular, Klaas Kraay’s [2010] construction of a theistic multiverse and Nevin Climenhaga’s [2018] argument from infinite value theory are novel defenses of a best possible world. I do not think that there is a best world, and show how both Kraay and Climenhaga may be resisted. First, I argue that Kraay’s construction of a theistic multiverse can be resisted from (...) plausible assumptions about set theory. Next, I argue against the value-theoretic assumptions that underlie Climenhaga’s argument and show how to give an infinite value theory where there is no best world. (shrink)

What makes it the case that an utterance constitutes an illocutionary act of a given kind? This is the central question of speech-act theory. Answers to it—i.e., theories of speech acts—have proliferated. Our main goal in this chapter is to clarify the logical space into which these different theories fit. -/- We begin, in Section 1, by dividing theories of speech acts into five families, each distinguished from the others by its account of the key ingredients in illocutionary acts. Are (...) speech acts fundamentally a matter of convention or intention? Or should we instead think of them in terms of the psychological states they express, in terms of the effects that it is their function to produce, or in terms of the norms that govern them? In Section 2, we take up the highly influential idea that speech acts can be understood in terms of their effects on a conversation’s context or “score”. Part of why this idea has been so useful is that it allows speech-act theorists from the five families to engage at a level of abstraction that elides their foundational disagreements. In Section 3, we investigate some of the motivations for the traditional distinction between propositional content and illocutionary force, and some of the ways in which this distinction has been undermined by recent work. In Section 4, we survey some of the ways in which speech-act theory has been applied to issues outside semantics and pragmatics, narrowly construed. (shrink)

Analytic Philosophy, Volume 62, Issue 1, Page 33-56, March 2021.

An influential proposal is that knowledge involves safe belief. A belief is safe, in the relevant sense, just in case it is true in nearby metaphysically possible worlds. In this paper, I introduce a distinct but complementary notion of safety, understood in terms of epistemically possible worlds. The main aim, in doing so, is to add to the epistemologist’s tool-kit. To demonstrate the usefulness of the tool, I use it to advance and assess substantive proposals concerning knowledge and justification.

A remarkable number of Nietzsche's substantive moral psychological views have been borne out by evidence from the empirical sciences. Moral judgments are products of affects on Nietzsche's view, but the latter are in turn causally dependent upon more fundamental features of the individual. Nietzsche accepts a doctrine of types. The path is short from the acceptance of the Doctrine of Types to the acceptance of epiphenomenalism, as Leiter, and more recently, Riccardi argue. This chapter explains Nietzsche's phenomenological account of willing, (...) which serves as independent motivation for the view that Nietzsche denies the causal efficacy of conscious acts of willing. It also explores that in spite of an absence of volitional freedom, self‐control can be usefully understood on a strength‐model of motivational resources. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of how Nietzsche, without employing the contemporary methods of empirical psychology, could nonetheless be such a prescient moral psychologist. (shrink)

Since the early nineteenth century a membrane or wall has been central to the cell’s identity as the elementary unit of life. Yet the literally and metaphorically marginal status of the cell membrane made it the site of clashes over the definition of life and the proper way to study it. In this article I show how the modern cell membrane was conceived of by analogy to the first “artificial cell,” invented in 1864 by the chemist Moritz Traube (1826–1894), and (...) reimagined by the plant physiologist Wilhelm Pfeffer (1845–1920) as a precision osmometer. Pfeffer’s artificial cell osmometer became the conceptual and empirical basis for the law of dilute solutions in physical chemistry, but his use of an artificial analogue to theorize the existence of the plasma membrane as distinct from the cell wall prompted debate over whether biology ought to be more closely unified with the physical sciences, or whether it must remain independent as the science of life. By examining how the histories of plant physiology and physical chemistry intertwined through the artificial cell, I argue that modern biology relocated vitality from protoplasmic living matter to nonliving chemical substances—or, in broader cultural terms, that the disenchantment of life was accompanied by the (re)enchantment of ordinary matter. (shrink)

Justification depends on context: even if E on its own justifies H, still it might fail to justify in the context of D. This sort of effect, epistemologists think, is due to defeaters, which undermine or rebut a would-be justifier. I argue that there is another fundamental sort of contextual feature, disqualification, which doesn't involve rebuttal or undercutting, and which cannot be reduced to any notion of screening-off. A disqualifier makes some would-be justifier otiose, as direct testimony sometimes does to (...) distal testimony, and as manifestly decisive evidence might do to gratuitous evidence on the same team. Basing a belief on disqualified evidence, moreover, is distinctively irrational. One is not necessarily irresponsible. Instead one is turning down a free upgrade to a sleeker, stabler basis for one's beliefs. Such an upgrade would prevent wastes of epistemic effort, since someone who bases her belief on a disqualified proposition E will need to remember E and rethink her belief should E ever be defeated. The upgrade might also reduce reliance on unwieldy evidence, if E is relevant only thanks to some labyrinthine argument; and if even ideal agents should doubt their ability to follow such arguments, even they should care about disqualifiers. (shrink)

Difference and Repetition might be said to have brought about a Deleuzian Revolution in philosophy comparable to Kant’s Copernican Revolution. Kant had denounced the three great terminal points of traditional metaphysics – self, world and God – as transcendent illusions, and Deleuze pushes Kant’s revolution to its limit by positing a transcendental field that excludes the coherence of the self, world and God in favour of an immanent and differential plane of impersonal individuations and pre-individual singularities. In the process, he (...) introduces numerous conceptual innovations into philosophy: the becoming of concepts; a transformation of the form of the question; an insistence that philosophy must start in the middle; an attempt to think in terms of multiplicities; the development of a new logic and a new metaphysics based on a concept of difference; a new conception of space as intensive rather than extensive; a conception of time as a pure and empty form; and an understanding of philosophy as a system in heterogenesis – that is, a system that entails a perpetual genesis of the heterogeneous, an incessant production of the new. -/- Keywords: concepts, becoming, multiplicity, singularity, the middle [au milieu], difference, intensity, time, system, the new. (shrink)

This paper explores the relation of the theory of time and the theory of truth in Deleuze’s philosophy. According to Deleuze, a mutation in our conception of time occurred with Kant. In antiquity, time had been subordinated to movement, it was the measure or the “number of movement” (Aristotle). In Kant, this relation is inverted: time is no longer subordinated to movement but assumes an independence and autonomy of its own for the first time. In Deleuze’s phrasing, time becomes the (...) pure and empty form of everything that moves and changes — not an eternal form (as in Plato), but precisely the form of what is not eternal. In turn, the theory of time is inextricably linked to the concept of truth, since to say that a proposition is true means that it is true “in all times and in all places.” Truth, in other words, is timeless, eternal, non-temporal. When the form of the true is confronted with the form of time, the concept of truth is necessarily put into crisis, and Deleuze’s argument is that time allows the power of the false to assume an autonomy of its own. The analysis will attempt to show how the liberation of time from movement (the pure and empty form of time) leads to a liberation of the false from the true (the power of the false). (shrink)

In recent years, neuroscience has begun to transform itself into a “big data” enterprise with the importation of computational and statistical techniques from machine learning and informatics. In addition to their translational applications such as brain-computer interfaces and early diagnosis of neuropathology, these tools promise to advance new solutions to longstanding theoretical quandaries. Here I critically assess whether these promises will pay off, focusing on the application of multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) to the problem of reverse inference. I argue that (...) MVPA does not inherently provide a new answer to classical worries about reverse inference, and that the method faces pervasive interpretive problems of its own. Further, the epistemic setting of MVPA and other decoding methods contributes to a potentially worrisome shift towards prediction and away from explanation in fundamental neuroscience. (shrink)

Over the last decades, network-based approaches have become highly popular in diverse fields of biology, including neuroscience, ecology, molecular biology and genetics. While these approaches continue to grow very rapidly, some of their conceptual and methodological aspects still require a programmatic foundation. This challenge particularly concerns the question of whether a generalized account of explanatory, organisational and descriptive levels of networks can be applied universally across biological sciences. To this end, this highly interdisciplinary theme issue focuses on the definition, motivation (...) and application of key concepts in biological network science, such as explanatory power of distinctively network explanations, network levels, and network hierarchies. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to give an account of the change in Feyerabend's philosophy that made him abandon methodological monism and embrace methodological pluralism. In this paper I offer an explanation in terms of a simple model of 'change of belief through evidence'. My main claim is that the evidence triggering this belief revision can be identified in Feyerabend's technical work in the interpretation of quantum mechanics, in particular his reevaluation of Bohr's contribution to it. This highlights an (...) under-appreciated part of Feyerabend's early work and makes it central to an understanding of the dynamics in his overall philosophy of science. (shrink)

Our question is this: What makes an act one of entrapment? We make a standard distinction between legal entrapment, which is carried out by parties acting in their capacities as (or as deputies of) law- enforcement agents, and civil entrapment, which is not. We aim to provide a definition of entrapment that covers both and which, for reasons we explain, does not settle questions of permissibility and culpability. We explain, compare, and contrast two existing definitions of legal entrapment to commit (...) a crime that possess this neutrality. We point out some problems with the extensional correctness of these definitions and propose a new definition that resolves these problems. We then extend our definition to provide a more general definition of entrapment, encompassing both civil and legal cases. Our definition is, we believe, closer to being extensionally correct and will, we hope, provide a clearer basis for future discussions about the ethics of entrapment than do the definitions upon which it improves. (shrink)

A widespread view about early social functionalism is that its account of functional explanation was underpinned by an analogy between biological organisms and societies that suggested pseudo-explanations about the latter. I will challenge this view through a case study of the use G.W.F. Hegel made of the organismic analogy for the purpose of concept development in his theory of the state. My claim will be that the dismissal of this analogy is premature for two reasons. First, to claim that the (...) organismic analogy figured among the premises of an analogical argument and, thus, as explanans in an explanation misses its point. For Hegel made use of the analogy to model the apparent close cooperation among the parts of the state and, thus conceptualize its characteristic structure in terms of organization: the mutual dependence among distinct structures generated by the state as a whole. Second, the organizational view of social functions thus suggested by the organismic analogy has not obviously been made obsolete by evolutionary theory. Instead, reconsidering the organismic analogy in light of contemporary philosophy of biology puts an account of social functions that has fallen from view (and from grace) in the contemporary discussion back in focus: the organizational account. -/- . (shrink)

The threshold problem is the task of adequately answering the question: “Where does the threshold lie between knowledge and lack thereof?” I start this paper by articulating two conditions for solving it. The first is that the threshold be neither too high nor too low; the second is that the threshold accommodate the significance of knowledge. In addition to explaining these conditions, I also argue that it is plausible that they can be met. Next, I argue that many popular accounts (...) of knowledge cannot meet them. In particular, I lay out a number of problems that standard accounts of knowledge face in trying to meet these conditions. Finally, near the end of this paper, I argue that there is one sort of account that seems to evade these problems. This sort of account, which is called a cluster account of knowledge, says that knowledge is to be accounted for in terms of truth, belief and a cluster of epistemic properties and also that knowledge doesn’t require having all members of the cluster, but merely some subset. (shrink)

Laurence BonJour observes that critics of foundationalism tend to argue against it by objecting to "relatively idiosyncratic" versions of it, a strategy which has "proven in the main to be superficial and ultimately ineffective" since answers immune to the objections emerge quickly (1985: 17). He aims to rectify this deficiency. Specifically, he argues that the very soul of foundationalism, "the concept of a basic empirical belief," is incoherent (1985: 30). This is a bold strategy from which we can learn even (...) if, in the end, as I shall argue, it fails. (shrink)

There is good reason to think that, in every case of perceptual consciousness, there is something of which we are conscious; but there is also good reason to think that, in some cases of perceptual consciousness—for instance, hallucinations—there is nothing of which we are conscious. This paper resolves this inconsistency—which we call the presentation problem—by (a) arguing that ‘conscious of’ and related expressions function as intensional transitive verbs and (b) defending a particular semantic approach to such verbs, on which they (...) have readings that lack direct objects or themes. The paper further argues that this approach serves not only as a linguistic proposal about the semantics of ‘conscious of’, but also as a proposal about the metaphysics of conscious states. (shrink)

In this paper, we claim that, if you justifiably believe that you ought to perform some act, it follows that you ought to perform that act. In the first half, we argue for this claim by reflection on what makes for correct reasoning from beliefs about what you ought to do. In the second half, we consider a number of objections to this argument and its conclusion. In doing so, we arrive at another argument for the view that justified beliefs (...) about what you ought to do must be true, based in part on the idea that the epistemic and practical domains are uniform, in a sense we spell out. We conclude by sketching possible implications of our discussion for the debates over what is wrong with akrasia and pragmatic encroachment on justified belief and knowledge. (shrink)

Rather than set out an overarching view or take a stand on the debunking of morality tout court, in what follows I’ll explore a divide and conquer strategy. First, I will briefly sketch a debunking argument that, instead of targeting all of morality or human moral nature, has a more narrow focus—namely, the intuitive moral authority of disgust. The argument concludes that as vivid and compelling as they can be while one is in their grip, feelings of disgust should be (...) granted no power to justify moral judgments. Importantly, the argument is grounded in empirical advances concerning the character of the emotion itself. Next, I will step back and consider the argument’s general form. I then point to arguments that others have made that seem to share this form and selective focus, and comment on what such arguments do and do not presuppose. Finally, I locate the selective strategy with respect to other approaches moral debunking. (shrink)

This paper is divided into three sections. In the first section I briefly outline the background of the problem, i.e. Kripke’s modal argument (Kripke 1980). In the second section I present Chalmers’ account of two- dimensional semantics and two-dimensional argument against physicalism. In the third section I criticize Chalmers’ approach based on two crucial points, one is about necessity of identities and the other is about microphysi- cal descriptions and a priori derivation.

Melis Erdur has argued that there is something morally wrong with moral realism. Moral realism promotes morally objectionable lethargy by recommending that we accept moral knowledge that could be acquired effortlessly. This is morally objectionable, because morality requires us to be reflective about moral truths. I argue that the moral realist need not be worried, because if reflection about morality is a genuine value, the realist can accept this: moral realism entails no prescriptions about how one morally ought to acquire (...) moral knowledge. It is merely a metaphysical thesis about the ontological status of moral truthmakers. If we ought to be reflective, moral realism can accept this. Moreover, Erdur’s argument generalizes to moral anti-realism, so the moral realist in particular has nothing to worry about. (shrink)

"This essay focuses on the third play in the Oresteia trilogy, the Eumenides. Telech provides a compelling reinterpretation of Nietzsche’s reading of Aeschylus's masterpiece, saving the reading from the complaint that it oversimplifies and sentimentalizes the Oresteia by celebrating the triumph of a modern and liberal understanding of law's rationalist virtues over customary and traditional forms. Telech provides an alternative Nietzschean reading that is consistent with Nietzsche's own, that reintroduces passion and irrationality into the trial and sentencing of Orestes, refrains (...) from romanticizing law, and along the way makes a case for institutionalizing a role for mercy in contemporary legal processes." (OUP abstract). (shrink)

Reprinted in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, Wadsworth, 2013, 6th edition, eds. Michael Rea and Louis Pojman. In this essay, I argue that the moral skepticism objection to what is badly named "skeptical theism" fails.

In 1632 Rodrigo de Arriaga, an important Baroque scholastic thinker, published a textbook in philosophy, of which the last revised and extended edition was published in 1669. Arriaga develops in it a peculiar theory of beings of reason, drawing on Pedro Hurtado de Mendoza, according to which beings of reason are that which is expressed by false judgments. It is a theory quite different from the classical theories held by Francisco Suárez, the Thomists and the majority of Scotists on the (...) one hand, and reductive theories held by Richard Lynch and a growing number of later Baroque authors on the other. In this paper I analyse Arriaga’s theory and deal with the topics of nature, existence, causes, and division of beings of reason. (shrink)

That the world is awash with resentment poses a genuine question for educators. Here, we will suggest that resentment can be better harnessed for good if we stop focusing on people and tribes and, instead, focus on systems: those invisible norms that often produce locked-in structures of social interaction. A “systems lens” is vast, so fixes will have to be an iterative process of reflection, and revision toward a more just system. Nonetheless, resentment toward the status quo may be an (...) important element in keeping that otherwise tedious process going, with the caveat that resentment is only productive when it is combined with reason, and that, therefore, educators, rather than privileging participant reactive attitudes, ought, instead, to promote participant reactive reasoning, as the latter can be a genuine force for both personal and interpersonal growth, while the former might very well do the reverse. (shrink)

Knows-knows principles in epistemology say that if you know some proposition, then you are in a position to know that you know it. This paper examines the viability of analogous principles in ethics, which I call ought-ought principles. Several epistemologists have recently offered new defences of KK principles and of other related principles, and there has recently been an increased interest in examining analogies between ethics and epistemology, and so it seems natural to examine whether defences of KK and related (...) principles carry over to OO principles. In this paper, I introduce two OO principles, and I show how some arguments in favour of KK carry over to them. Then I show how these OO principles can be used to shed light on a much-discussed case in ethics, that of Professor Procrastinate. (shrink)

In this chapter we explain what experimental philosophy of science is, how it relates to the philosophy of science, and STS more broadly, and what sorts of contributions is can make to ongoing research in the philosophy of science.

What is consciousness and why is it so philosophically and scientifically puzzling? For many years philosophers approached this question assuming a standard physicalist framework on which consciousness can be explained by contemporary physics, biology, neuroscience, and cognitive science. This book is a debate between two philosophers who are united in their rejection of this kind of "standard" physicalism - but who differ sharply in what lesson to draw from this. Amy Kind defends dualism 2.0, a thoroughly modern version of dualism (...) (the theory that there are two fundamentally different kinds of things in the world: those that are physical and those that are mental) decoupled from any religious or non-scientific connotations. Daniel Stoljar defends non-standard physicalism, a kind of physicalism different from both the standard version and dualism 2.0. The book presents a cutting-edge assessment of the philosophy of consciousness and provides a glimpse at what the future study of this area might bring. (shrink)

Parties to a temporary marriage agree in advance that their marriage will only last for a fixed period of time unless renewed: that it will automatically expire after two years, for instance, or five, or twenty. This paper defends the claim that temporary marriages deserve state recognition. The main argument for this is an application of a principle of marriage equality. Some other arguments for are also canvassed, including an argument from religious freedom, and a number of arguments against recognition (...) are also discussed. The paper also discusses the question of whether such “temporary marriages” are in fact a kind of marriage, and defends the claim that they are, or would be, genuinely marriages. (shrink)

Do we rightly expect a perfectly loving God to bring it about that, right now, we reasonably believe that He exists? It seems so. For love at its best desires the well-being of the beloved, not from a distance, but up close, explicitly participating in her life in a personal fashion, allowing her to draw from that relationship what she may need to flourish. But why suppose that we would be significantly better off were God to engage in an explicit, (...) personal relationship with us? Well, first, there would be broadly moral benefits. We would be able to draw on the resources of that relationship to overcome seemingly everpresent flaws in our character. And we would be more likely to emulate the self-giving love with which we were loved. So loved, we would be more likely to flourish as human beings. Secondly, there would be experiential benefits. We would be, for example, more likely to experience peace and joy stemming from the strong conviction that we were properly related to our Maker, security in suffering knowing that, ultimately, all shall be well, and there would be the sheer pleasure of God's loving presence. As a consequence of these moral and experiential benefits, our relationships with others would likely improve. Thirdly, to be personally related to God is intrinsically valuable, indeed, according to the Christian tradition, the greatest intrinsic good. In these ways our well-being would be enhanced if God were to relate personally to us. Moreover, the best love does not seek a personal relationship only for the sake of the beloved. As Robert Adams rightly notes, "It is an abuse of the word 'love' to say that one loves a person, or any other object, if one does not care, except instrumentally, about one's relation to that object."1 Thus, God would want a personal relationship with us not only for the benefit we would receive from it but for its own sake as well. So, if a perfectly loving God exists, He wants a personal relationship with us, or more accurately, every capable creature, those cognitively and affectively equipped to relate personally with Him.. (shrink)

We argue that supererogation cannot be understood just in terms of reasons for action. In addition to reasons, a theory of supererogation must include prerogatives, which can make an action permissible without counting in favor of doing it.

In this paper, I will compare Kant’s and Kierkegaard’s reflections on faith as they are articulated in the particular analyses of Abraham’s sacrifice. Kant’s prosecution of Abraham, which commences from the idea of “natural religion”, rests on two interrelated lines of attack, an epistemological one and ethical one, which deem Abraham’s action to be morally reprehensible. For Kant, the primacy of the practical reason leaves no special room for divine duties that are not ethical at the same time. On the (...) other hand, Kierkegaard’s defence of the sacrifice is orbiting around the possibility of a teleological suspension of the ethical. If such a suspension is possible, then faith is a paradox according to which the single individual is higher than the universal. As such, an absolute duty to god is possible, but such a duty is not rationally justifiable or publicly communicable. My paper ends with to some considerations about the protestant inheritance of both, Kant and Kierkegaard. (shrink)

This paper examines the explanatory gap account. The key notions for its proper understanding are analysed. In particular, the analysis is concerned with the role of “thick” and “thin” modes of presentation and “thick” and “thin” concepts which are relevant for the notions of “thick” and “thin” conceivability, and to that effect relevant for the gappy and non-gappy identities. The last section of the paper discusses the issue of the intelligibility of explanations. One of the conclusions is that the explanatory (...) gap account only succeeds in establishing the epistemic gap. The claim that psychophysical identity is not intelligibly explicable, and thus opens the explanatory gap, would require an indepen- dent argument which would prove that intelligible explanations stem only from conceptual analysis. This, I argue, is not the case. (shrink)

Pluralistic ignorance is a social-psychological phenomenon in which an agent believes that their attitudes, feelings, and beliefs are different from those of others, despite the fact that their public behavior is identical. I argue that agents in standard cases of pluralistic ignorance are epistemically irrational. I accomplish this, first, by rebutting a recent argument for the rationality of pluralistic ignorance. Next, I offer a defeat-based argument against the epistemic rationality of pluralistic ignorance. Third, I examine a type of case in (...) which the pluralistically ignorant agent's belief is irrational, despite the fact that this belief lacks a defeater. Finally, I consider instances of pluralistically ignorant agents whose beliefs are not irrational, but explain why such cases are not problematic for my main thesis. This critical discussion allows me to offer an important amendment to an extant account of pluralistic ignorance. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Murali Ramachandran endorses a principle that he thinks can help us solve the surprise test puzzle and cause problems for a Williamsonian argument against KK principles. But in this paper I argue that his principle is false and as a result it cannot do either.

Thomas Aquinas consistently defended the thesis that the separated rational soul that results from a human person’s death is not a person. Nevertheless, what has emerged in recent decades is a sophisticated disputed question between “survivalists” and “corruptionists” concerning the personhood of the separated soul that has left us with intractable disagreements wherein neither side seems able to convince the other. In our contribution to this disputed question, we present a digest of an unconsidered middle way: the separated soul is (...) an incomplete person. (shrink)

En el presente artículo (i) se desarrolla una crítica al discurso histórico-filosófico de Kant para explicitar sus condiciones de posibilidad, desde lo cual se erige un modelo hermenéutico que (ii) hace inteligible la historia filosofante de la filosofía presente en Los progresos de la metafísica desde los tiempos de Leibniz y Wolff, mostrando cómo las condiciones operan allí y constituyen una determinada narrativa que da cuenta de las perspectivas desde las cuales se ofrece la historia; después (iii) se realiza la (...) interpretación de la historia desde el modelo con el fin de señalar su sostenibilidad; al final, (iv) se vincula la historia filosófica con la propia filosofía trascendental de Kant, legitimando con ello al modelo y señalando cómo el horizonte del proyecto crítico es esa misma historia. (shrink)