The principle of alternate possibilities (PAP), making the ability to do otherwise a necessary condition for moral responsibility, is supposed by Harry Frankfurt, John Fischer, and others to succumb to a peculiar kind of counterexample. The paper reviews the main problems with the counterexample that have surfaced over the years, and shows how most can be addressed within the terms of the current debate. But one problem seems ineliminable: because Frankfurt''s example relies on a counterfactual intervener to preclude alternatives to (...) the person''s action, it is not possible for it to preclude all alternatives (intervention that is contingent upon a trigger cannot bring it about that the trigger never occurred). This makes it possible for the determined PAPist to maintain that some pre-intervention deviation is always available to ground moral responsibility. In reply, the critic of PAP can examine all the candidate deviations and argue their irrelevance to moral responsibility (a daunting prospect); or the critic can dispense with counterfactual intervention altogether. The paper pursues the second of these strategies, developing three examples of noncounterfactual intervention in which (i) the agent has no alternatives (and a fortiori no morally relevant alternatives), yet (ii) there is just as much reason to think that the agent is morally responsible as there was in Frankfurt''s original example. The new counterexamples do suffer from one liability, but this is insufficient in the end to repair PAP''s conceptual connection between moral responsibility and alternate possibilities. (shrink)

Co-parents who differ in their ideal child rearing policies should compromise, argues Marcus William Hunt. Josh Milburn and Carlo Alvaro dispute this when it comes to veganism. Milburn argues that veganism is a matter of justice and that to compromise over justice is (typically) impermissible. I suggest that compromise over justice is often permissible, and that compromise over justice may be required by justice itself. Alvaro offers aesthetic, gustatory, and virtue-based arguments for ethical veganism, showing that veganism involves sensibilities (...) and virtues, and argues that veganism involves a belief. Alvaro takes this to show that parental compromise is impermissible. I suggest that Alvaro’s arguments are implausible and that the shaping of a child’s sensibilities and virtues is an apt matter for parental compromise. (shrink)

I offer a new interpretation of Feyerabend’s ‘conquest of abundance’ narrative. I consider and reject both the ontological reading as implausible and the ‘historical’ reading as uncompelling My own proposal is that the ‘conquest of abundance’ be understood in terms of an impoverishment of the richness of human experience. For Feyerabend, such abundance is ‘conquered’ when individuals internalize distorting epistemic prejudices including those integral to the theoretical conceptions associated with the sciences. I describe several ways, identified by Feyerabend, in which (...) individuals can be led to occlude the richness of their experience in ways that are existentially impoverishing. (shrink)

A set of replies to critics of my 2021 book 'The Fiery Test of Critique: A Reading of Kant's Dialectic' (OUP). -/- The criticisms are based on talks given at an Author-meets-critics symposium at Princeton University on April 22nd, 2023. The critics are: Beatrice Longuenesse, Patricia Kitcher, Allen Wood, Des Hogan, and Anja Jauernig.

I argue that, although education should have positive effects on students’ epistemic character, it is often actually damaging, having bad effects. Rather than cultivating virtues of the mind, certain forms of education lead to the development of the vices of the mind - it is therefore epistemically corrupting. After sketching an account of that concept, I offer three illustrative case studies.

Where is consciousness? Neurobiological theories of consciousness look primarily to synaptic firing and “spike codes” as the physical substrate of consciousness, although the specific mechanisms of consciousness remain unknown. Synaptic firing results from electrochemical processes in neuron axons and dendrites. All neurons also produce electromagnetic (EM) fields due to various mechanisms, including the electric potential created by transmembrane ion flows, known as “local field potentials,” but there are also more meso-scale and macro-scale EM fields present in the brain. The functional (...) role of these EM fields has long been a source of debate. We suggest that these fields, in both their local and global forms, may be the primary seat of consciousness, working as a gestalt with synaptic firing and other aspects of neuroanatomy to produce the marvelous complexity of minds. We call this assertion the “electromagnetic field hypothesis.” The neuroanatomy of the brain produces the local and global EM fields but these fields are not identical with the anatomy of the brain. These fields are produced by, but not identical with, the brain, in the same manner that twigs and leaves are produced by a tree’s branches and trunk but are not the same as the branches and trunk. As such, the EM fields represent the more granular, both spatially and temporally, aspects of the brain’s structure and functioning than the neuroanatomy of the brain. The brain’s various EM fields seem to be more sensitive to small changes than the neuroanatomy of the brain. We discuss issues with the spike code approach as well as the various lines of evidence supporting our argument that the brain’s EM fields may be the primary seat of consciousness. This evidence (which occupies most of the paper) suggests that oscillating neural EM fields may make firing in neural circuits oscillate, and these oscillating circuits. may help unify and guide conscious cognition. (shrink)

This paper offers an overview of the philosophical work on epistemic injustices as it relates to psychiatry. After describing the development of epistemic injustice studies, we survey the existing literature on its application to psychiatry. We describe how the concept of epistemic injustice has been taken up into a range of debates in philosophy of psychiatry, including the nature of psychiatric conditions, psychiatric practices and research, and ameliorative projects. The final section of the paper indicates future directions for philosophical research (...) of epistemic injustices and psychiatry, concerning neurocognitive disorders, identity prejudices in psychiatric illness, concepts of epistemic privilege in psychiatry, and the prospects for combining phenomenological psychopathology and epistemic justice. We argue that much remains to be done in the conceptualization of these epistemic injustices and suggest that this future work should be multidisciplinary in character and sensitive to the phenomenology of psychiatric conditions. (shrink)

We argue that Hamiltonian mechanics is more fundamental than Lagrangian mechanics. Our argument provides a non-metaphysical strategy for privileging one formulation of a theory over another: ceteris paribus, a more general formulation is more fundamental. We illustrate this criterion through a novel interpretation of classical mechanics, based on three physical conditions. Two of these conditions suffice for recovering Hamiltonian mechanics. A third condition is necessary for Lagrangian mechanics. Hence, Lagrangian systems are a proper subset of Hamiltonian systems. Finally, we provide (...) a geometric interpretation of the principle of stationary action and rebut arguments for privileging Lagrangian mechanics. (shrink)

Throughout the writings of Paul Feyerabend, there are constant references to the historical contingency of the scientific enterprise, often accompanied by philosophical claims about the significance of that contingency. This paper presents those contingentist claims, situates them in the context of more recent work on the contingency of science, and offers an interpretation of their significance. I suggest that Feyerabend’s sense of contingency was connected to his defences of pluralism, and also to the ‘conquest of abundance’ narrative developed in the (...) very late writings. (shrink)

This article analyses the phenomenon of epistemic injustice within contemporary healthcare. We begin by detailing the persistent complaints patients make about their testimonial frustration and hermeneutical marginalization, and the negative impact this has on their care. We offer an epistemic analysis of this problem using Miranda Fricker's account of epistemic injustice. We detail two types of epistemic injustice, testimonial and hermeneutical, and identify the negative stereotypes and structural features of modern healthcare practices that generate them. We claim that these stereotypes (...) and structural features render ill persons especially vulnerable to these two types of epistemic injustice. We end by proposing five avenues for further work on epistemic injustice in healthcare. (shrink)

I claim that there is pro tanto moral reason for parents to not raise their child on a vegan diet because a vegan diet bears a risk of harm to both the physical and the social well-being of children. After giving the empirical evidence from nutrition science and sociology that supports this claim, I turn to the question of how vegan parents should take this moral reason into account. Since many different moral frameworks have been used to argue for veganism, (...) this is a complex question. I suggest that, on some of these moral frameworks, the moral reason that some parents have for not raising their child on a vegan diet on account of this risk is plausibly as strong as the reason they have for raising their child on a vegan diet. In other words, the moral reason I outline is weighty enough to justify some vegan parents in plausibly finding it permissible to not raise their child on a vegan diet. (shrink)

This book provides a comprehensive examination of the police role from within a broader philosophical context. Contending that the police are in the midst of an identity crisis that exacerbates unjustified law enforcement tactics, Luke William Hunt examines various major conceptions of the police—those seeing them as heroes, warriors, and guardians. The book looks at the police role considering the overarching societal goal of justice and seeks to present a synthetic theory that draws upon history, law, society, psychology, and (...) philosophy. Each major conception of the police role is examined in light of how it affects the pursuit of justice, and how it may be contrary to seeking justice holistically and collectively. The book sets forth a conception of the police role that is consistent with the basic values of a constitutional democracy in the liberal tradition. Hunt’s intent is that clarifying the police role will likewise elucidate any constraints upon policing strategies, including algorithmic strategies such as predictive policing. This book is essential reading for thoughtful policing and legal scholars as well as those interested in political philosophy, political theory, psychology, and related areas. Now more than ever, the nature of the police role is a philosophical topic that is relevant not just to police officials and social scientists, but to everyone. (shrink)

Science frequently gives us multiple, compatible ways of solving the same problem or formulating the same theory. These compatible formulations change our understanding of the world, despite providing the same explanations. According to what I call "conceptualism," reformulations change our understanding by clarifying the epistemic structure of theories. I illustrate conceptualism by analyzing a typical example of symmetry-based reformulation in chemical physics. This case study poses a problem for "explanationism," the rival thesis that differences in understanding require ontic explanatory differences. (...) To defend conceptualism, I consider how prominent accounts of explanation might accommodate this case study. I argue that either they do not succeed, or they generate a skeptical challenge. (shrink)

One strategy in recent discussions of theological fatalism is to draw on Harry Frankfurt’s famous counterexamples to the principle of alternate possibilities (PAP) to defend human freedom from divine foreknowledge. For those who endorse this line, “Frankfurt counterexamples” are supposed to show that PAP is false, and this conclusion is then extended to the foreknowledge case. This makes it critical to determine whether Frankfurt counterexamples perform as advertised, an issue recently debated in this journal via a pair of articles by (...) David Widerker and John Martin Fischer. I suggest that this debate can be avoided: divine foreknowledge is itself aparadigmatic counterexample to PAP, requiring no support from suspect Frankfurt counterexamples. (shrink)

The 'Why ain'cha rich?' argument for one-boxing in Newcomb's problem allegedly vindicates evidential decision theory and undermines causal decision theory. But there is a good response to the argument on behalf of causal decision theory. I develop this response. Then I pose a new problem and use it to give a new 'Why ain'cha rich?' argument. Unlike the old argument, the new argument targets evidential decision theory. And unlike the old argument, the new argument is sound.

ABSTRACT This article develops an Arendtian conception of resentment and shows that resentment as a response to injustice is in fact only possible within a community of persons engaged in moral and recognitive relations. While Arendt is better known for her work on forgiveness—characterized as a creative rather than vindictive response to injury—this article suggests that Arendt provides a unique way of thinking about resentment as essentially a response to another human's subjectivity. But when injury is massive, so beyond the (...) pale that the possibility of face-to-face human interaction is annihilated, the space for resentment is thereby destroyed. Ironically, while the absence of resentment might at first seem to be an unproblematically good thing, Arendt shows us that the loss of resentment actually signals the loss of the properly human realm. (shrink)

This paper seeks to rehabilitate St. Augustine’s widely dismissed response to the alleged incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and free will. This requires taking a fresh look at his analysis in On Free Choice of the Will, and arguing its relevance to the current debate. Along the way, mistaken interpretations of Augustine are rebutted, his real solution is developed and defended, a reason for his not anticipating Boethius’s a temporalist solution is suggested, a favorable comparison with Ockham is made, rival solutions (...) are rejected, and the aporetic nature of the problem is explained. (shrink)

Why does institutional police brutality continue so brazenly? Criminologists and other social scientists typically theorize about the causes of such violence, but less attention is given to normative questions regarding the demands of justice. Some philosophers have taken a teleological approach, arguing that social institutions such as the police exist to realize collective ends and goods based upon the idea of collective moral responsibility. Others have approached normative questions in policing from a more explicit social-contract perspective, suggesting that legitimacy is (...) derived by adhering to (limited) authority. This article examines methodologies within political philosophy for analyzing police injustice. The methodological inquiry leads to an account of how justice constrains the police through both special (or positional) moral requirements that officers assume voluntarily, as well as general moral requirements in virtue of a polity’s commitment to moral, political and legal values beyond law enforcement and crime reduction. The upshot is a conception of a police role that is constrained by justice from multiple foundational stances. (shrink)

Frankfurt cases are purported counterexamples to the Principle of Alternative Possibilities, which implies that we are not morally responsible for unavoidable actions. A major permutation of the counterexample strategy features buffered alternatives; this permutation is designed to overcome an influential defense of the Principle of Alternative Possibilities. Here we defend the buffering strategy against two recent objections, both of which stress the timing of an agent’s decision. We argue that attributions of moral responsibility aren’t time-sensitive in the way the objectors (...) suppose. We then turn to the crucial question of when an action is relevantly avoidable—when, in the parlance of the literature, an alternative possibility is robust. We call attention to two plausible tests for robustness that merit further consideration, showing that the agents in buffered Frankfurt cases don’t pass these tests, despite being morally responsible for their actions. (shrink)

The paper argues that ‘All varieties of gratitude are only overall fitting when targeted towards agents,’ for instance that any variety of gratitude for the beautiful sunset is only overall fitting if a supernatural agent such as God exists. The first premise is that ‘Prepositional gratitude is overall fitting only when targeted towards agents.’ For this premise, intuitive judgments are offered. The second premise is that ‘Prepositional gratitude is the paradigmatic variety of gratitude.’ For this premise, an aspect of the (...) common consent of philosophers about gratitude is noted and the metaphysical basicness of prepositional gratitude is argued for. This gives the intermediate conclusion that ‘The paradigmatic variety of gratitude is overall fitting only when targeted towards agents.’ The fourth premise is that ‘If the paradigmatic variety of gratitude is overall fitting only when targeted towards agents, then all varieties of gratitude are overall fitting only when targeted towards agents.’ To supply the conditional of this premise, the Paradigmatic Fittingness Principle is offered, which states that ‘Paradigmatic emotions set the fittingness conditions for their non-paradigmatic varieties.’ This principle is argued for by noting that it vindicates some popular and plausible intuitive judgements and gives an error theory of why one might think that gratitude could be fittingly targeted towards non-agents, and by suggesting the absence of any other plausible source of fittingness conditions for non-paradigmatic emotions. (shrink)

Although the discipline of vice epistemology is only a decade old, the broader project of studying epistemic vices and failings is much older. This paper argues that contemporary vice epistemologists ought to engage more closely with these earlier projects. After sketching some general arguments in section one, I then turn to deep epistemic vices: ones whose identity and intelligibility depends on some underlying conception of human nature or the nature of reality. The final section then offers a case study from (...) a vice epistemic tradition that emerged in early modern English natural philosophy. (shrink)

This article offers two arguments for the conclusion that we should refuse on moral grounds to establish a human presence on the surface of Mars. The first argument appeals to a principle constraining the use of invasive or destructive techniques of scientific investigation. The second appeals to a principle governing appropriate human behavior in wilderness. These arguments are prefaced by two preliminary sections. The first preliminary section argues that authors working in space ethics have good reason to shift their focus (...) away from theory-based arguments in favor of arguments that develop in terms of pretheoretic beliefs. The second argues that of the popular justifications for sending humans to Mars only appeals to scientific curiosity can survive reflective scrutiny. (shrink)

Reformulating a scientific theory often leads to a significantly different way of understanding the world. Nevertheless, accounts of both theoretical equivalence and scientific understanding have neglected this important aspect of scientific theorizing. This essay provides a positive account of how reformulation changes our understanding. My account simultaneously addresses a serious challenge facing existing accounts of scientific understanding. These accounts have failed to characterize understanding in a way that goes beyond the epistemology of scientific explanation. By focusing on cases in which (...) we have differences in understanding without differences in explanation, I show that understanding does not reduce to explanation. (shrink)

I reject both (a) inevitabilism about the historical development of the sciences and (b) what Ian Hacking calls the "put up or shut up" argument against those who make contingentist claims. Each position is guilty of a lack of humility about our epistemic capacities.

Accounts of scientific explanation disagree about what’s required for a cause, law, or other fact to be a reason why an event occurs. In short, they disagree about the conditions for explanatory relevance. Nonetheless, most accounts presuppose that claims about explanatory relevance play a descriptive role in tracking reality. By rejecting the need for this descriptivist assumption, I develop an expressivist account of explanatory relevance and explanation: to judge that an answer is explanatory is to express an attitude ofbeing for (...) being satisfied by that answer. I show how expressivism vindicates ordinary scientific discourse about explanation, including claims about the objectivity and mind-independence of explanations. By avoiding commitment to ontic relevance relations, I rehabilitate an irrealist conception of explanation. (shrink)

Policing in many parts of the world—the United States in particular—has embraced an archetypal model: a conception of the police based on the tenets of individuated archetypes, such as the heroic police “warrior” or “guardian.” Such policing has in part motivated moves to (1) a reallocative model: reallocating societal resources such that the police are no longer needed in society (defunding and abolishing) because reform strategies cannot fix the way societal problems become manifest in (archetypal) policing; and (2) an algorithmic (...) model: subsuming policing into technocratic judgements encoded in algorithms through strategies such as predictive policing (mitigating archetypal bias). This paper begins by considering the normative basis of the relationship between political community and policing. It then examines the justification of reallocative and algorithmic models in light of the relationship between political community and police. Given commitments to the depth and distribution of security—and proscriptions against dehumanizing strategies—the paper concludes that a nonideal-theory priority rule promoting respect for personhood (manifest in community and dignity-promoting policing strategies) is a necessary condition for the justification of the above models. (shrink)

I introduce the concept pathophobia, to capture the range of morally objectionable forms of treatment to which somatically ill persons are subjected. After distinguishing this concept from sanism and ableism, I argue that the moral wrongs of pathophobia are best analysed using a framework of vice ethics. To that end I describe five clusters of pathophobic vices and failings, illustrating each with examples from three influential illness narratives.

A great achievement makes one’s life go better independently of its results, but what makes an achievement great? A simple answer is—its difficulty. I defend this view against recent, pressing objections by interpreting difficulty in terms of competitiveness. Difficulty is determined not by how hard the agent worked for the end but by how hard others would need to do in order to compete. Successfully reaching a goal is a valuable achievement because it is difficult, and it is difficult because (...) it is competitive. Hence, both virtuosic performances and lucky successes can be valuable achievements. (shrink)

Why are teleological arguments based on biological phenomena so popular? My explanation is that teleological properties are presented in our experiences of biological phenomena. I contrast this with the view that the attribution of teleological properties to biological phenomena takes place at an intellective level – via inference, and as belief or similar propositional attitude. I suggest five ways in which the experiential view is the better explanation for the popularity of such teleological arguments. Experiential attributions are more easy, impactful, (...) and implastic. The experiential view accommodates cases of conflicting attributions, and it makes sense of the readiness with which we follow such teleological arguments. I respond to objections and explain how my view builds on existing answers to this question found in the philosophical literature. (shrink)

I examine how co-parents should handle differing commitments about how to raise their child. Via thought experiment and the examination of our practices and affective reactions, I argue for a thesis about the locus of parental authority: that parental authority is invested in full in each individual parent, meaning that that the command of one parent is sufficient to bind the child to act in obedience. If this full-authority thesis is true, then for co-parents to command different things would be (...) for them to contest one another’s authority. The only course that respects the authority of both parents is for co-parents to agree to command the same thing. Further, what is commanded must not result from a ‘capitulation’ by one co-parent, rather, it should result from a compromise. Parental authority involves a duty to deliberate about which commands it is best to give the child. If a command results from a capitulation, one parent will rightly think of themselves as not having fulfilled their parental duty. Parental compromises are not best understood as bargains or conflicts, but by the metaphor of gifts given by each parent out of respect for the other’s authority. (shrink)

Since subjection to harm is an intrinsic feature of our social and epistemic lives, there is a perpetual need for individual and collective agents with the virtue of epistemic courage. In this chapter, I survey some of the main issues germane to this virtue, such as the nature of courage and of harm, the range of epistemic activities that can manifest courage, and the status of epistemic courage as a collective and as a professional virtue.

The paper that follows continues a discussion with Tomis Kapitan in the pages of this journal over the compatibility of divine agency with divine foreknowledge. I had earlier argued against two premises in Kapitan's case for omniscient impotence: (i) that intentionally A-ing presupposes prior acquisition of the intention to A, and (ii) that acquiring the intention to A presupposes prior ignorance whether one will A. In response to my criticisms, Kapitan has recently offered new defences for these two premises. I (...) show in reply why neither defence succeeds in rehabilitating the case against omniscient agency. (Note that the very first sentence of the published version has a misprint: instead of "To claim that divine foreknowledge is inconsistent with divine agency has been pressed with increasing frequency of late . . .", it should read, "_The_ claim . . ."!). (shrink)

Hobbes is known for bridging natural and political philosophy, but less attention has been given to how this distinguishes the Hobbesian conception of the self from individualist strands of liberalism. First, Hobbes’s determinism suggests a conception of the self in which externalities determine the will and what the self is at every moment. Second, there is no stable conception of the self because externalities keep it in a constant state of flux. The metaphysical underpinnings of his project downplay the notion (...) of a purely individualistic conception of the self, pointing to a positivist theory of criminology relying upon external forces. This theory is especially prescient with respect to twentieth-century variants of positivism that focus upon how social organization affects personality. In a sense, then, modern criminological theory is indebted to Hobbes’s focus upon the connections between externalities and the self; a focus that illuminates new ways of viewing responsibility and accountability. (shrink)

The use of deception and dishonesty is widely accepted as a fact of life in policing. This paper thus defends a counterintuitive claim: Good faith is a normative foundation for the police as a political institution. Good faith is a core value of contracts, and policing is contractual in nature both broadly (as a matter of social contract theory) and narrowly (in regard to concrete encounters between law enforcement officers and the public). Given the centrality of good faith to policing, (...) dishonesty and deception on par with fraud are justified only as a narrowly circumscribed investigative tool that is constrained by institutional commitments to the fair distribution of security and the rule of law. The practical upshot is the preclusion of most dishonest and deceptive police tactics on par with fraud, leading to an institution that is less proactive and more reactive. (shrink)

The paper offers a three-premise argument that a person with first-hand experience of possession and exorcism, such as an exorcist, can have a justified belief in the existence of demons. (1) “Exorcism involves a process by which the exorcist comes to believe that testimony is offered by a demon.” Cited for (1) are the Gospels, the Roman Ritual, some modern cases of exorcism, and exorcism practices in non-Christian contexts. (2) “If defeaters are absent, the exorcist may treat as reliable the (...) process by which he comes to believe that testimony is offered by a demon.” For (2) a case is offered that we have a reliable ability to identify when testimony is being offered and when it is being offered by particular types of agents, what is termed testifier-identification. (3) “In many cases of exorcism, defeaters are absent.” An inductive case is given for (3) by responding to possible defeaters, including several suggested recently by David Kyle Johnson. Therefore, in many cases of exorcism the exorcist may treat as reliable the processes by which he comes to believe that testimony is offered by a demon, and so can have a justified belief in the existence of demons. (shrink)

The paper offers an account of luck, fate, and fortune. It begins by showing that extant accounts of luck are deficient because they do not identify the genus of which luck is a species. That genus of properties, the tychic, alert an agent to occasions on which the external world cooperates with or frustrates their goal-achievement. An agent’s sphere of competence is the set of goals that it is possible for them to reliably achieve. Luck concerns occasions on which there (...) is a mismatch between attempt and result; in bad luck the external world thwarts goal-achievement within the agent’s sphere of competence, in good luck the external world assists goal-achievement beyond the agent’s sphere of competence. Fateful events are those where, more passively, the agent finds the external world achieving or frustrating their goals. Fortune concerns the contraction and expansion of the agent’s sphere of competence. Eight reasons are given for accepting the account; its theoretical virtues and various things it explains. Lastly, three objections are answered; that the tychic properties relate to well-being rather than agency, that there are alternative theories of fortune available in the contemporary literature, that the account draws arbitrary distinctions between synonyms. (shrink)

This paper argues that it cannot be fitting to blame God. I show that divine immutability, even on a weak conception, implies that God's ethical character cannot change. I then argue that blame aims at a change in the ethical character of the one blamed. This claim is directly intuitive, explains a wide set of intuitions about when blame is unfitting, and is implied by most of the theories blame offered in the philosophical literature. Since blame targeted at God aims (...) to change God's ethical character, an impossibility, such blame is not fitting. I then draw on this conclusion to sketch a new theodicy. I argue that a necessary condition on being blameworthy is that one can be blamed under some possible condition. So, God cannot be blameworthy. Further, I argue that if someone cannot be blameworthy, then they cannot do wrong. Wrong actions tend to make us blameworthy, but since God cannot be blameworthy nothing can tend to make him blameworthy – God cannot do wrong. (shrink)

This chapter challenges the common claim that vicious forms of argumentative practice, like interpersonal arrogance and discursive polarisation, are caused by martial metaphors, such as ARGUMENT AS WAR. I argue that the problem isn’t the metaphor, but our wider practices of metaphorising and the ways they are deformed by invidious cultural biases and prejudices. Drawing on feminist argumentation theory, I argue that misogynistic cultures distort practices of metaphorising in two ways. First, they spotlight some associations between the martial and argumentative (...) domains while occluding others, resulting in a sort of myopia. Second, those cultures interfere with a phenomenon I label normative isomorphism – the capacity of some structural metaphors to enable (and often encourage) a transfer of normative chracater traits from the source domain to the target domain. Crucially, the normative status of character trait often changes across domains—traits that are virtuous in the martial domain are often vicious in the argumentative domain, and vice versa. Sexist myopia tends to deform practices of metaphorising by interfering with normative isomorphism by privileging the transfer across domains of traits that recapitulate invidious cultural constructions of masculinity in terms of aggression, domination, and violence. Basically, the problem isn’t the metaphors, but the cultures. (shrink)

There is a growing sense that many liberal states are in the midst of a shift in legal and political norms—a shift that is happening slowly and for a variety of reasons relating to security. The internet and tech booms—paving the way for new forms of electronic surveillance—predated the 9/11 attacks by several years, while the police’s vast use of secret informants and deceptive operations began well before that. On the other hand, the recent uptick in reactionary movements—movements in which (...) the rule of law seems expendable—began many years after 9/11 and continues to this day. One way to describe this book is an examination of the moral limits on modern police practices that flow from the basic legal and political tenets of the liberal tradition. The central argument is that policing in liberal states is constrained by a liberal conception of persons coupled with particular rule of law principles. Part I consists of three chapters that constitute the book’s theoretical foundation, including an overview of the police’s law enforcement role in the liberal polity and a methodology for evaluating that role. Part II consists of three chapters that address applications of the theory, including the police’s use of informants, deceptive operations, and surveillance. The upshot is that policing in liberal societies has become illiberal in light of its response to both internal and external threats to security. The book provides an account of what it might mean to retrieve policing that is consistent with the basic tenets of liberalism and the limits imposed by those tenets. [This is an uncorrected draft of the book's preface and introduction, forthcoming from Oxford University Press.]. (shrink)

A growing number of authors defend putative examples of knowledge from falsehood (KFF), inferential knowledge based in a critical or essential way on false premises, and they argue that KFF has important implications for many areas of epistemology (whether evidence can be false, the Gettier debate, defeasibility theories of knowledge, etc.). I argue, however, that there is no KFF, because in any supposed example either the falsehood does not contribute to the knowledge or the subject lacks knowledge. In particular, I (...) show that if the subject actually has knowledge in putative KFF cases, then there is always a veridical evidential path meeting the basing conditions that accounts for her knowledge; if there is no such path, then the subject is in a type of Gettier case. All the recent arguments that rely on KFF are therefore based on a mistake. (shrink)

Interpreting the content of the law is not limited to what a relevant lawmaker utters. This paper examines the extent to which implied and implicit content is part of the law, and specifically whether the Gricean concept of conversational implicature is relevant in determining the content of law. Recent work has focused on how this question relates to acts of legislation. This paper extends the analysis to case law and departs from the literature on several key issues. The paper's argument (...) is based upon two points: Precedent-setting judicial opinions may consist of multiple conversations, of which some entail opposing implicata, and if a particular precedent-setting judicial opinion consists of multiple conversations, of which some entail opposing implicata, then no meaningful conversational implicatum is part of the content of that particular precedent-setting opinion. Nevertheless, the paper's conclusion leaves open the prospect of gleaning something in between conversational implicature and what is literally said, namely, conversational impliciture. (shrink)

George Bealer provides an account of intuitions as “intellectual seemings.” My purpose in this paper is to criticize the phenomenological considerations that Bealer offers in favor of his account. In the first part I review Bealer’s attempt to distinguish intuitions from beliefs, judgments, guesses, and hunches. I examine each of the three phenomenological differences – incorrigibility, implasticity, and scope – that Bealer adduces between intuitions and these other types of mental contents. I argue that any difference between intuitions and these (...) other types of mental contents with regards to their incorrigibility, implasticity, and scope is unproven and likely to remain unproven. In the second part I criticize Bealer’s analogy between intuitions and sensory seemings by suggesting that intuitions do not display the theoretical virtues—consistency, corroboration, and confirmation—that Bealer claims for them. Moreover, I suggest that intuitions do not display the theoretical virtue that would indicate a similarity to sensory seemings, consilience. (shrink)

Siblings ought to treat one another specially – in other words, siblings qua siblings ought to treat one another in ways that they need not treat others. This paper offers a theory of why this is the case. The paper begins with some intuitive judgments about how siblings ought to treat one another and some other normative features of siblinghood. I then review three potential theories of why siblings ought to treat one another specially, adapted from the literature on filial (...) piety: the gratitude theory, the friendship theory, and the special goods theory. In each case, these theories fail to explain some of the intuitive judgments about how siblings ought to treat one another. The paper then proposes a familial belonging theory. The institution of the family has certain goals, which impose normative demands on family members. I suggest that one such family goal is that every member feel familial belonging towards every other member, a goal which grounds the ways in which siblings ought to treat one another specially. (shrink)

This paper explores what the epistemic account of vagueness means for theories of legal interpretation. The thesis of epistemicism is that vague statements are true or false even though it is impossible to know which. I argue that if epistemicism is accepted within the domain of the law, then the following three conditions must be satisfied: Interpretative reasoning within the law must adhere to the principle of bivalence and the law of excluded middle, interpretative reasoning within the law must construe (...) vague statements as an epistemic phenomenon, and epistemicism must be expanded to include normative considerations in order to account for legal theories that are consistent with the first two conditions. The first two conditions are internal to a particular theory of legal interpretation, while the third condition is external to a particular theory of legal interpretation. My conclusion shows that there are legal theories that are internally consistent with the fundamental features of epistemicism. However, within the domain of law—and specifically in the case of legal theories that are internally consistent with epistemicism—I show that vagueness cannot be explained simply by our ignorance of the meaning and use of vague expressions. Rather, epistemicism must also account for ignorance of the requisite normative considerations in legal theories with which it is otherwise consistent. (shrink)

Short online essay on the state of policing in liberal societies, discussing how executive discretionary power has grown to such a degree that it has trended toward illiberal practices and policies.