Argument that Lewis and others are wrong that physicalism is if true then contingently true.

The Vienna Circle was a group of scientifically-minded philosophers, many physicists by training, who in the 1920s and 30s developed the cluster of philosophical doctrines known as Logical Positivism. Among the Circle’s most distinguished members were Rudolf Carnap and Herbert Feigl, each of whom emigrated to America during the Nazi era. It is said that Feigl, the author of an important 1958 monograph defending a materialist approach to the mind-body problem, once gave a visiting lecture on the problem of consciousness (...) at UCLA, where Carnap was teaching. Feigl argued that although there were good reasons for believing that the mind is fundamentally physical, the physical explanation of the ‘qualia’ of sensory experience – the ineffable sensory qualities involved in, say, smelling coffee – was still a mystery to science. Now the story becomes apocryphal. Carnap is supposed to have interrupted, ‘But Feigl, there is something missing from your lecture. Science is beginning to explain qualia in terms of the alpha factor!’. We can imagine Feigl somewhat alarmed by this interjection from the great Carnap: ‘But Carnap, please tell me: what is the alpha factor?’. ‘Well, Feigl’ Carnap replied ‘if you tell me what qualia are, I’ll tell you what the alpha factor is’. (shrink)

Though there is much else in Levine's book that is also worthy of discussion, this critical study focuses exclusively on his central positive thesis that phenomenal consciousness exhibits two features that “both resist explanatory reduction to the physical: subjectivity and qualitative character” (p. 175).

This paper examines a paradigm case of allegedly successful reductive explanation, viz. the explanation of the fact that water boils at 100°C based on facts about H2O. The case figures prominently in Joseph Levine’s explanatory gap argument against physicalism. The paper studies the way the argument evolved in the writings of Levine, focusing especially on the question how the reductive explanation of boiling water figures in the argument. It will turn out that there are two versions of (...) the explanatory gap argument to be found in Levine’s writings. The earlier version relies heavily on conceptual analysis and construes reductive explanation as a process of deduction. The later version makes do without conceptual analysis and understands reductive explanations as based on theoretic reductions that are justified by explanatory power. Along the way will be shown that the bridge principles — which are being neglected in the explanatory gap literature — play a crucial role in the explanatory gap argument. (shrink)

As substance dualism fell out of favor, philosophers became increasingly interested in making sense of mind in purely physicalist terms. Along the way, the physicalist project has hit a few snags. Perhaps the most popular challenge was presented by Frank Jackson’s Mary’s Room thought experiment, wherein Mary, a brilliant color scientist, comes to know all of the physical facts about color whilst confined to a black-and-white room. Once released, Mary is presented with a ripe tomato. The intuition is that Mary, (...) upon seeing a colored object for the first time, has learned something new, but what she has learned apparently cannot be accounted for by physicalism, thereby leaving an explanatory gap between mind and matter. There are those, like Joseph Levine, who believe the explanatory gap to be a necessary consequence of any physicalist theory of mind. I disagree, and in this dissertation, I aim to show that at least one physicalist theory of mind can close the gap. However, it requires embracing a theory that physicalists are hesitant to embrace: panpsychism. (shrink)

Frank Jackson’s knowledge argument and different conceivability arguments, advanced by Saul Kripke, David Chalmers and Joseph Levine, conclude that consciousness involves non-physical properties or properties that cannot be reductively accounted for in physical terms. Some physicalists have replied to these objections by means of different versions of the phenomenal concept strategy. David Chalmers has responded with the master argument, a reasoning that, if successful, would undermine any reasonable version of the phenomenal concept strategy. In this paper, I argue (...) that the master argument does not advance the debate between the supporters of the anti-physicalist arguments and those of the phenomenal concept strategy. (shrink)

Corcoran’s 27 entries in the 1999 second edition of Robert Audi’s Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy [Cambridge: Cambridge UP]. -/- ancestral, axiomatic method, borderline case, categoricity, Church (Alonzo), conditional, convention T, converse (outer and inner), corresponding conditional, degenerate case, domain, De Morgan, ellipsis, laws of thought, limiting case, logical form, logical subject, material adequacy, mathematical analysis, omega, proof by recursion, recursive function theory, scheme, scope, Tarski (Alfred), tautology, universe of discourse. -/- The entire work is available online free at more than (...) one website. Paste the whole URL. http://archive.org/stream/RobertiAudi_The.Cambridge.Dictionary.of.Philosophy/Robert.Audi_The.Cambrid ge.Dictionary.of.Philosophy -/- The 2015 third edition will be available soon. Before you think of buying it read some reviews on Amazon and read reviews of its competition: For example, my review of the 2008 Oxford Companion to Philosophy, History and Philosophy of Logic,29:3,291-292. URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01445340701300429 -/- Some of the entries have already been found to be flawed. For example, Tarski’s expression ‘materially adequate’ was misinterpreted in at least one article and it was misused in another where ‘materially correct’ should have been used. The discussion provides an opportunity to bring more flaws to light. -/- Acknowledgements: Each of these entries was presented at meetings of The Buffalo Logic Dictionary Project sponsored by The Buffalo Logic Colloquium. The members of the colloquium read drafts before the meetings and were generous with corrections, objections, and suggestions. Usually one 90-minute meeting was devoted to one entry although in some cases, for example, “axiomatic method”, took more than one meeting. Moreover, about half of the entries are rewrites of similarly named entries in the 1995 first edition. Besides the help received from people in Buffalo, help from elsewhere was received by email. We gratefully acknowledge the following: José Miguel Sagüillo, John Zeis, Stewart Shapiro, Davis Plache, Joseph Ernst, Richard Hull, Concha Martinez, Laura Arcila, James Gasser, Barry Smith, Randall Dipert, Stanley Ziewacz, Gerald Rising, Leonard Jacuzzo, George Boger, William Demopolous, David Hitchcock, John Dawson, Daniel Halpern, William Lawvere, John Kearns, Ky Herreid, Nicolas Goodman, William Parry, Charles Lambros, Harvey Friedman, George Weaver, Hughes Leblanc, James Munz, Herbert Bohnert, Robert Tragesser, David Levin, Sriram Nambiar, and others. -/- . (shrink)

In many spheres, the law takes the legal concept of causation to correspond to the folk concept (the correspondence assumption). Courts, including the US Supreme Court, tend to insist on the "common understanding" and that which is "natural to say" (Burrage v. United States) when it comes to expressions relating to causation, and frequently refuse to clarify the expression to juries. As recent work in psychology and experimental philosophy has uncovered, lay attributions of causation are susceptible to a great number (...) of unexpected factors, some of which seem rather peripheral to causation. One of those is the norm effect (Knobe & Fraser, 2008): Agents who, in acting as they do, break a salient norm, are more likely to be considered as having caused a certain consequence than when they do not violate a norm. According to some (e.g., Alicke, 1992) this constitutes a bias. According to others (e.g., Sytsma, 2020), the folk concept of causation is sensitive to normative factors, and there’s nothing wrong with that. In this paper, we explore the question whether the norm effect should be considered a bias from the legal perspective on the one hand, and from the psychological perspective on the other. To do this, we test whether norms which are nonpertinent to the consequences or outright silly also impact causation judgements. The data from two preregistered experiments (total N=593) clearly show they do. This, we argue, makes the bias interpretation plausible from the psychological perspective, and both plausible and problematic from the legal perspective. It also shows that the law should abstain from unreflectively assuming conceptual correspondence between legal and ordinary language concepts. (shrink)

This chapter takes the form of a discussion between the editors of this volume and Joseph Agassi, regarding the relationship between methodological individualism and institutional individualism. The focus is on Agassi’s interpretation of traditional methodological individualism in terms of psychologism; the role of institutions and structural factors in social explanation; Popper’s theory of World 3; the application of Weber’s interpretative approach—Verstehen—to typical ways of thinking and acting; and the Austrian School of economics.

A growing body of literature has revealed ordinary causal judgement to be sensitive to normative factors, such that a norm-violating agent is regarded more causal than their non-norm-violating counterpart. In this paper, we explore two competing explanations for this phenomenon: the Responsibility View and the Bias View. The Bias View, but not the Responsibility View, predicts features peripheral to the agent’s responsibility to impact causal attributions. In a series of three preregistered experiments (N = 1162), we present new evidence that (...) the Norm Effect arises from such peripheral features, namely from nonpertinent or entirely silly norm violations. Furthermore, we show that this effect cannot be explained by recourse to the agent’s foreknowledge or desire of the outcome, nor by its foreseeability: the Norm Effect arises even when participants judge the norm-violating agent’s doing as equally foreseeable. This, we argue, provides evidence in favour of the Bias View. (shrink)

Extant research has shown that ordinary causal judgments are sensitive to normative factors. For instance, agents who violate a norm are standardly deemed more causal than norm-conforming agents in identical situations. In this paper, we explore two competing explanations for the Norm Effect: the Responsibility View and the Bias View. According to the former, the Norm Effect arises because ordinary causal judgment is intimately intertwined with moral responsibility. According to the alternative view, the Norm Effect is the result of a (...) blame-driven bias. In a series of five preregistered experiments (N = 2688), we present evidence that predominantly favours the Bias View. In particular, and against predictions made by the Responsibility View, we show that participants deem agents who violate nonpertinent or silly norms – norms that do not relate to the outcome at hand – as more causal, and that this effect cannot be explained in terms of plausible mediators such as the agent’s foreknowledge and desire, or the foreseeability of harm. We close with a discussion regarding the implications of these findings, in as regards the just assessment of proximate cause in the law. (shrink)

Collected and edited by Noah Levin -/- Table of Contents: -/- UNIT ONE: INTRODUCTION TO CONTEMPORARY ETHICS: TECHNOLOGY, AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, AND IMMIGRATION 1 The “Trolley Problem” and Self-Driving Cars: Your Car’s Moral Settings (Noah Levin) 2 What is Ethics and What Makes Something a Problem for Morality? (David Svolba) 3 Letter from the Birmingham City Jail (Martin Luther King, Jr) 4 A Defense of Affirmative Action (Noah Levin) 5 The Moral Issues of Immigration (B.M. Wooldridge) 6 The Ethics of our (...) Digital Selves (Noah Levin) -/- UNIT TWO: TORTURE, DEATH, AND THE “GREATER GOOD” 7 The Ethics of Torture (Martine Berenpas) 8 What Moral Obligations do we have (or not have) to Impoverished Peoples? (B.M. Wooldridge) 9 Euthanasia, or Mercy Killing (Nathan Nobis) 10 An Argument Against Capital Punishment (Noah Levin) 11 Common Arguments about Abortion (Nathan Nobis & Kristina Grob) 12 Better (Philosophical) Arguments about Abortion (Nathan Nobis & Kristina Grob) -/- UNIT THREE: PERSONS, AUTONOMY, THE ENVIRONMENT, AND RIGHTS 13 Animal Rights (Eduardo Salazar) 14 John Rawls and the “Veil of Ignorance” (Ben Davies) 15 Environmental Ethics: Climate Change (Jonathan Spelman) 16 Rape, Date Rape, and the “Affirmative Consent” Law in California (Noah Levin) 17 The Ethics of Pornography: Deliberating on a Modern Harm (Eduardo Salazar) 18 The Social Contract (Thomas Hobbes) -/- UNIT FOUR: HAPPINESS 19 Is Pleasure all that Matters? Thoughts on the “Experience Machine” (Prabhpal Singh) 20 Utilitarianism (J.S. Mill) 21 Utilitarianism: Pros and Cons (B.M. Wooldridge) 22 Existentialism, Genetic Engineering, and the Meaning of Life: The Fifths (Noah Levin) 23 The Solitude of the Self (Elizabeth Cady Stanton) 24 Game Theory, the Nash Equilibrium, and the Prisoner’s Dilemma (Douglas E. Hill) -/- UNIT FIVE: RELIGION, LAW, AND ABSOLUTE MORALITY 25 The Myth of Gyges and The Crito (Plato) 26 God, Morality, and Religion (Kristin Seemuth Whaley) 27 The Categorical Imperative (Immanuel Kant) 28 The Virtues (Aristotle) 29 Beyond Good and Evil (Friedrich Nietzsche) 30 Other Moral Theories: Subjectivism, Relativism, Emotivism, Intuitionism, etc. (Jan F. Jacko). (shrink)

The distinctly contemporary proliferation of pornography and hate speech poses a challenge to liberalism's traditional ideal of a 'marketplace of ideas' facilitated by state neutrality about the content of speech. This new study argues that the liberal state ought to depart from neutrality to meet this challenge.

In a study that goes beyond the ego affirmed by Freudian psychology, David Levin offers an account of personal growth and self-fulfillment based on the development of our capacity for listening. Drawing on the work of Dewey, Piaget, Erikson, and Kohlberg, he uses the vocabulary of phenomenological psychology to distinguish four stages in this developmental process and brings us the significance of these stages for music, psychotherapy, ethics, politics, and ecology. This analysis substantiates his claim that the development of our (...) listening capacity is a process that fits Foucault's conception of a practice of the self, forming our character as social beings and moral agents. David Levin contends that our self- development as auditory beings is necessary for the achievement of a just and democratic society. (shrink)

When do two sentences say the same thing, that is, express the same content? We defend two-component (2C) semantics: the view that propositional contents comprise (at least) two irreducibly distinct constituents: (1) truth-conditions and (2) subject-matter. We contrast 2C with one-component (1C) semantics, focusing on the view that subject-matter is reducible to truth-conditions. We identify exponents of this view and argue in favor of 2C. An appendix proposes a general formal template for propositional 2C semantics.

José Benardete developed a famous paradox involving a beginningless set of items each member of which satisfies some predicate just in case no earlier member satisfies it. The Grim Reaper version of this paradox has recently been employed in favor of various finitist metaphysical theses, ranging from temporal finitism to causal finitism to the discrete nature of time. Here, I examine a new challenge to these finitist arguments—namely, the challenge of implying that the future cannot be endless. In particular, I (...) develop future-oriented Benardete paradoxes and examine their epistemic symmetry with past-oriented paradoxes. (shrink)

The international protest surrounding the Copenhagen Zoo’s recent decision to kill a healthy giraffe in the name of population management reveals a deep moral tension between contemporary zoological display practices—which induce zoo-goers to view certain animals as individuals, quasi-persons, or friends—and the traditional objectives of zoos, which ask us only to view animals as specimens. I argue that these zoological display practices give rise to moral obligations on the part of zoos to their visitors, and thus ground indirect duties on (...) behalf of zoos to their animals. I conclude that zoos might take on interspecies friendship as a new zoological objective. (shrink)

Emotional states of consciousness, or what are typically called emotional feelings, are traditionally viewed as being innately programed in subcortical areas of the brain, and are often treated as different from cognitive states of consciousness, such as those related to the perception of external stimuli. We argue that conscious experiences, regardless of their content, arise from one system in the brain. On this view, what differs in emotional and non-emotional states is the kind of inputs that are processed by a (...) general cortical network of cognition, a network essential for conscious experiences. Although subcortical circuits are not directly responsible for conscious feelings, they provide non-conscious inputs that coalesce with other kinds of neural signals in the cognitive assembly of conscious emotional experiences. In building the case for this proposal, we defend a modified version of what is known as the higher-order theory of consciousness. (shrink)

Belief storage is often modeled as having the structure of a single, unified web. This model of belief storage is attractive and widely assumed because it appears to provide an explanation of the flexibility of cognition and the complicated dynamics of belief revision. However, when one scrutinizes human cognition, one finds strong evidence against a unified web of belief and for a fragmented model of belief storage. Using the best available evidence from cognitive science, we develop this fragmented model into (...) a nascent theory of the cognitive architecture of belief storage. (shrink)

Rapid technological advancements such as fMRI have led to the rise of neuroscientific discoveries. Coupled with findings from cognitive psychology, they are claiming to have solved the millennia-old puzzle of moral cognition. If true, our societal structures – and with that the criminal law – would be gravely impacted. This thesis concerns itself with four distinct theories stemming from the disciplines above as to what mechanisms constitute moral judgement: the Stage Model by KOHLBERG, the Universal Moral Grammar Theory by MIKHAIL, (...) the Social Intuitionist Model by HAIDT, and the Dual-Process Theory by GREENE – comparing the findings of the latter to the consequentialist and retributivist theories of punishment present in the American Criminal Law Doctrine. Analysing both a direct (link to deontology) and indirect (link to incompatibilism) approach to discrediting retributivism, I come to the conclusion that while science can have an impact on our morals and thus on the law, the current state of neuroscientific findings are not capable of shattering foundational notions of the criminal law. (shrink)

Sentences \(\varphi\) and \(\psi\) are _cognitive synonyms_ for one when they play the same role in one’s cognitive life. The notion is pervasive (Sect. 1 ), but elusive: it is bound to be hyperintensional (Sect. 2 ), but excessive fine-graining would trivialize it and there are reasons for some coarse-graining (Sect. 2.1 ). Conceptual limitations stand in the way of a natural algebra (Sect. 2.2 ), and it should be sensitive to subject matters (Sect. 2.3 ). A cognitively adequate individuation (...) of content may be intransitive (Sect. 3 ) due to ‘dead parrot’ series: sequences of sentences \(\varphi _1, \ldots, \varphi _n\) where adjacent \(\varphi _i\) and \(\varphi _{i+1}\) are cognitive synonyms while \(\varphi _1\) and \(\varphi _n\) are not (Sect. 3.1 ). Finding an intransitive account is hard: Fregean equipollence won’t do (Sect. 3.2 ) and a result by Leitgeb shows that it wouldn’t satisfy a minimal compositionality principle (Sect. 3.3 )._Sed contra_, there are reasons for transitivity, too (Sect. 3.4 ). In Sect. 4, we come up with a formal semantics capturing this jumble of desiderata, thereby showing that the notion is coherent. In Sect. 5, we re-assess the desiderata in its light. (shrink)

Benardete paradoxes involve a beginningless set each member of which satisfies some predicate just in case no earlier member satisfies it. Such paradoxes have been wielded on behalf of arguments for the impossibility of an infinite past. These arguments often deploy patchwork principles in support of their key linking premise. Here I argue that patchwork principles fail to justify this key premise.

We argue that there is a conflict among classical theism's commitments to divine simplicity, divine creative freedom, and omniscience. We start by defining key terms for the debate related to classical theism. Then we articulate a new argument, the Aloneness Argument, aiming to establish a conflict among these attributes. In broad outline, the argument proceeds as follows. Under classical theism, it's possible that God exists without anything apart from Him. Any knowledge God has in such a world would be wholly (...) intrinsic. But there are contingent truths in every world, including the world in which God exists alone. So, it's possible that God contingently has wholly intrinsic knowledge. But whatever is contingent and wholly intrinsic is an accident. So, God possibly has an accident. This is incompatible with classical theism. Finally, we consider and rebut several objections. (shrink)

Contemporary egalitarian liberals—unlike their classical counterparts—have lived through many contentious events where the right to freedom of expression has been tested to its limits—the Skokie, Illinois, skinhead marches, hate speech incidents on college campuses, Internet pornography and hate speech sites, Holocaust deniers, and cross-burners, to name just a few. Despite this contemporary tumult, freedom of expression has been nearly unanimously affirmed in both the U.S. jurisprudence and philosophical discourse. In what follows, I will examine Ronald Dworkin's influential contemporary justification for (...) freedom of expression, which claims that a thoroughgoing right to freedom of expression is justified by the fact that it guarantees and preserves liberalism's commitment to equality by offering everyone an opportunity to speak, whereas any other policy, such as state regulation, would fail to offer this equal opportunity. This justification has been challenged by feminists and critical race theorists, who find the cases of pornography and hate speech to be sufficient threats to the freedom of expression and equality of their targets—women and minorities—to warrant limiting freedom of expression in these cases. I will argue that if Dworkin is to take equality as seriously as he claims to, then, by his own lights, he must back away from an unrestricted freedom of expression, in light of these distinctly contemporary challenges of the harms of systemic racism and sexism, which underlie hate speech and pornography. (shrink)

Over the last few decades, multiple studies have examined the understanding of participants in clinical research. They show variable and often poor understanding of key elements of disclosure, such as expected risks and the experimental nature of treatments. Did the participants in these studies give valid consent? According to the standard view of informed consent they did not. The standard view holds that the recipient of consent has a duty to disclose certain information to the profferer of consent because valid (...) consent requires that information to be understood. The contents of the understanding and disclosure requirements are therefore conceptually linked. In this paper, we argue that the standard view is mistaken. The disclosure and understanding requirements have distinct grounds tied to two different ways in which a token of consent can be rendered invalid. Analysis of these grounds allows us to derive the contents of the two requirements. It also implies that it is sometimes permissible to enroll willing participants who have not understood everything that they ought to be told about their clinical trials. (shrink)

I defend a new argument for causal finitism, the view that nothing can have an infinite causal history. I begin by defending a number of plausible metaphysical principles, after which I explore a host of novel variants of the Littlewood-Ross and Thomson’s Lamp paradoxes that violate such principles. I argue that causal finitism is the best solution to the paradoxes.

Modal collapse arguments are all the rage in certain philosophical circles as of late. The arguments purport to show that classical theism entails the absurdly fatalistic conclusion that everything exists necessarily. My first aim in this paper is bold: to put an end to action-based modal collapse arguments against classical theism. To accomplish this, I first articulate the ‘Simple Modal Collapse Argument’ and then characterize and defend Tomaszewski’s criticism thereof. Second, I critically examine Mullins’ new modal collapse argument formulated in (...) response to the aforementioned criticism. I argue that Mullins’ new argument does not succeed. Third, I critically examine a powers-based modal collapse argument against classical theism that has received much less attention in the literature. Fourth, I show why God’s being purely actual, as well God’s being identical to each of God’s acts, simply cannot entail modal collapse given indeterministic causation. This, I take it, signals the death of modal collapse arguments. But not all hope is lost for proponents of modal collapse arguments—for the death is a fruitful one insofar as it paves the way for new inquiry into at least two new potential problems for classical theism. Showing this is my paper’s second aim. (shrink)

I offer a new interpretation of Heidegger’s analysis of anxiety in Being and Time as an account of the relationship between individual agents and the public normative practices of their communities. According to a prominent recent interpretation, Heidegger’s discussions of anxiety, death and the “call of conscience” together explain how we can respond to the norms of our practices as reasons and subject them to critical reflection. I argue that this is only part of the story. Anxiety is an occasion (...) for Dasein to take responsibility for its ongoing activity of interpreting the possibilities for living and acting made available by the normative practices of its community, which is presupposed and overlooked from the perspective of everyday Dasein. Public normativity underdetermines Dasein’s conception of what it would mean to take up any of the possibilities available in its world as a way of living its own life. (shrink)

Philosophical Papers, Volume 41, Issue 1, Page 149-165, March 2012.

ABSTRACT Many recent articles argue that participants who seroconvert during HIV prevention trials deserve treatment when they develop AIDS, and there is a general consensus that the participants in HIV/aids treatment trials should have continuing post‐trial access. As a result, the primary concern of many ethicists and activists has shifted from justifying an obligation to treat trial participants, to working out mechanisms through which treatment could be provided. In this paper I argue that this shift frequently conceals an important assumption: (...) that if there is an obligation to supply treatment, then any party who could provide it may be prevailed upon to discharge the obligation. This assumption is false. The reasons why trial participants should get ART affect who has the duty to provide it. We should not burden governments with the obligations of sponsors, nor researchers with the obligations of the international community. And we should not deprive a group of treatment because their need is less salient than that of research participants. Insisting otherwise may lead to people being wrongfully deprived of access to antiretrovirals. (shrink)

After introducing the new field of cultural evolution, we review a growing body of empirical evidence suggesting that culture shapes what people attend to, perceive and remember as well as how they think, feel and reason. Focusing on perception, spatial navigation, mentalizing, thinking styles, reasoning (epistemic norms) and language, we discuss not only important variation in these domains, but emphasize that most researchers (including philosophers) and research participants are psychologically peculiar within a global and historical context. This rising tide of (...) evidence recommends caution in relying on one’s intuitions or even in generalizing from reliable psychological findings to the species, Homo sapiens. Our evolutionary approach suggests that humans have evolved a suite of reliably developing cognitive abilities that adapt our minds, information-processing abilities and emotions ontogenetically to the diverse culturally-constructed worlds we confront. (shrink)

The idea that payment for research participation can be coercive appears widespread among research ethics committee members, researchers, and regulatory bodies. Yet analysis of the concept of coercion by philosophers and bioethicists has mostly concluded that payment does not coerce, because coercion necessarily involves threats, not offers. In this article we aim to resolve this disagreement by distinguishing between two distinct but overlapping concepts of coercion. Consent-undermining coercion marks out certain actions as impermissible and certain agreements as unenforceable. By contrast, (...) coercion as subjection indicates a way in which someone’s interests can be partially set back in virtue of being subject to another’s foreign will. While offers of payment do not normally constitute consent-undermining coercion, they do sometimes constitute coercion as subjection. We offer an analysis of coercion as subjection and propose three possible practical responses to worries about the coerciveness of payment. (shrink)

We examine two competing solutions to Benardete paradoxes: causal finitism, according to which nothing can have infinitely many causes, and the unsatisfiable pair diagnosis (UPD), according to which such paradoxes are logically impossible and no metaphysical thesis need be adopted to avoid them. We argue that the UPD enjoys notable theoretical advantages over causal finitism. Causal finitists, however, have levelled two main objections to the UPD. First, they urge that the UPD requires positing a ‘mysterious force’ that prevents paradoxes from (...) arising. Since such a force is implausible, the UPD is in trouble. Second, they employ recombination or patchwork principles to argue that paradoxical situations would be possible if causal finitism were false. Since such situations are not possible, causal finitism is true, and so a substantive metaphysical thesis is needed to avoid the paradoxes. We argue that the UPD proponent can successfully respond to these objections. (shrink)

Edward Feser defends the ‘Neo-Platonic proof ’ for the existence of the God of classical theism. After articulating the argument and a number of preliminaries, I first argue that premise three of Feser’s argument—the causal principle that every composite object requires a sustaining efficient cause to combine its parts—is both unjustified and dialectically ill-situated. I then argue that the Neo-Platonic proof fails to deliver the mindedness of the absolutely simple being and instead militates against its mindedness. Finally, I uncover two (...) tensions between Trinitarianism and the Neo-Platonic proof. (shrink)

Suppose A is wrongfully attempting to kill you, thereby forfeiting his right not to be harmed proportionately in self-defense. Even if it were proportionate to blow off A's arms and legs to stop his attack, this would be impermissible if you could stop his attack by blowing off just one of his arms. Blowing off his arms and legs violates the necessity condition on imposing harm. Jonathan Quong argues that violating the necessity condition consists in violating a right to be (...) rescued: blowing off four of A’s limbs in proportionate self-defense rather than blowing off one of A’s limbs in proportionate self-defense fails to costlessly rescue three of A's limbs. In response, we present cases which intuitively show that violating the necessity constraint involves the violation of a right that is more stringent than a right to be rescued. (shrink)

The modal ontological argument (MOA) proceeds from God’s possible existence to God’s actual existence. A prominent objection to the MOA is that it suffers from a symmetry problem: an exactly parallel modal ontological argument can be given for God's non-existence. Several attempts have been made to break the symmetry between the arguments. This draft is a mostly comprehensive survey of those attempts. -/- The draft was initially written as a supplement to the 2024 Summer edition of the SEP entry on (...) Ontological Arguments. However, the draft is not included in the SEP entry. (shrink)

Edward Feser defends the ‘Aristotelian proof’ for the existence of God, which reasons that the only adequate explanation of the existence of change is in terms of an unchangeable, purely actual being. His argument, however, relies on the falsity of the Existential Inertia Thesis, according to which concrete objects tend to persist in existence without requiring an existential sustaining cause. In this article, I first characterize the dialectical context of Feser’s Aristotelian proof, paying special attention to EIT and its rival (...) thesis—the Existential Expiration Thesis. Next, I provide a more precise characterization of EIT, after which I outline two metaphysical accounts of existential inertia. I then develop new lines of reasoning in favor of EIT that appeal to the theoretical virtues of explanatory power and simplicity. Finally, I address the predominant criticisms of EIT in the literature. (shrink)

We draw out significant consequences of a relatively popular theory of metaphysical modality—branching actualism—for cosmological arguments for God’s existence. According to branching actualism, every possible world shares an initial history with the actual world and diverges only because causal powers (or dispositions, or some such) are differentially exercised. We argue that branching actualism undergirds successful responses to two recent cosmological arguments: the Grim Reaper Kalam argument and a modal argument from contingency. We also argue that branching actualism affords a response (...) to one popular defense of the classic contingency argument. What results are new difficulties for several cosmological arguments arising from the metaphysics of modality. (shrink)

What explains change? Edward Feser argues in his ‘Aristotelian proof’ that the only adequate answer to these questions is ultimately in terms of an unchangeable, purely actual being. In this paper, I target the cogency of Feser’s reasoning to such an answer. In particular, I present novel paths of criticism—both undercutting and rebutting—against one of Feser’s central premises. I then argue that Feser’s inference that the unactualized actualizer lacks any potentialities contains a number of non-sequiturs.

James Henry Collin recently developed a new symmetry breaker favouring the ontological argument’s possibility premiss over that of the reverse ontological argument. The symmetry breaker amounts to an undercutting defeater for the reverse possibility premiss based on Kripkean cases of a posteriori necessity. I argue, however, that symmetry re-arises in two forms. First, I challenge the purported asymmetry in epistemic entitlements to the original and reverse possibility premisses. Second, relevantly similar Kripkean cases equally undercut the original possibility premiss.

This paper considers whether victims can justify what appears to be unnecessary defensive harming by reference to an honour-based justification. I argue that such an account faces serious problems: the honour-based justification cannot permit, first, defensive harming, and second, substantial unnecessary harming. Finally, I suggest that, if the purpose of the honour based justification is expressive, an argument must be given to demonstrate why harming threateners, as opposed to opting for a non-harmful alternative, is the most effective means of affirming (...) one’s honour. Along the way, I also suggest why I think that internalism about the constraints on defensive harming (the view that the satisfaction of the necessity constraint is a necessity condition of a threatener’s liability) is correct. Most importantly, externalism implies that threateners can be liable to suffer gratuitous harm. I take this to be an unattractive consequence of the view. (shrink)

Misconceived Consent: Miguel has stage IV lung cancer. He has nearly exhausted his treatment options when his oncologist, Dr. Llewellyn, tells him about an experimental vaccine trial that may boost his immune response to kill cancer cells. Dr. Llewellyn provides Miguel with a consent form that explains why the study is being conducted, what procedures he will undergo, what the various risks and benefits are, alternative sources of treatment, and so forth. She even sits down with him, carefully talks through (...) the most important points, and gives him time to ask questions. Though it is a Phase 1 study and the chance that he will benefit is very low, Miguel happily agrees to take part. A week later, after the first experimental injection, she asks him if he is worried about the risks. “Risks?” he asks. “I’m sure this is safe—you’re a doctor, after all!”. (shrink)

According to the most prominent principle of early modern rationalists, the Principle of Sufficient Reason [PSR], there are no brute facts, hence, there are no facts without any explanation. Contrary to the PSR, some philosophers have argued that divine ideas are brute facts within Leibniz’s metaphysics. In this paper, I argue against brute-fact-theories of divine ideas, especially represented by Samuel Newlands in Leibniz and the Ground of Possibility, and elaborate an alternative Leibnizian theory of divine ideas.

This article provides an overview of P.T. Raju’s Neo-Vedantic philosophy of I-am and a relationalist assessment of it.

A comprehensive bibliography of truth from 1873 to 1939. (I do not intend to publish this manuscript; rather, I post it as a resource for others with an interest in theories of truth during the early analytic period.).