Two expressive limitations of an infinitary higher-order modal language interpreted on models for higher-order contingentism – the thesis that it is contingent what propositions, properties and relations there are – are established: First, the inexpressibility of certain relations, which leads to the fact that certain model-theoretic existence conditions for relations cannot equivalently be reformulated in terms of being expressible in such a language. Second, the inexpressibility of certain modalized cardinality claims, which shows that in such a language, higher-order contingentists cannot (...) express what is communicated using various instances of talk of ‘possible things’, such as ‘there are uncountably many possible stars’. (shrink)

We often speak as if there are merely possible people—for example, when we make such claims as that most possible people are never going to be born. Yet most metaphysicians deny that anything is both possibly a person and never born. Since our unreflective talk of merely possible people serves to draw non-trivial distinctions, these metaphysicians owe us some paraphrase by which we can draw those distinctions without committing ourselves to there being merely possible people. We show that such paraphrases (...) are unavailable if we limit ourselves to the expressive resources of even highly infinitary first-order modal languages. We then argue that such paraphrases are available in higher-order modal languages only given certain strong assumptions concerning the metaphysics of properties. We then consider alternative paraphrase strategies, and argue that none of them are tenable. If talk of merely possible people cannot be paraphrased, then it must be taken at face value, in which case it is necessary what individuals there are. Therefore, if it is contingent what individuals there are, then the demands of paraphrase place tight constraints on the metaphysics of properties: either (i) it is necessary what properties there are, or (ii) necessarily equivalent properties are identical, and having properties does not entail even possibly being anything at all. (shrink)

The Twin Earth thought experiment invites us to consider a liquid that has all of the superficial properties associated with water (clear, potable, etc.) but has entirely different deeper causal properties (composed of “XYZ” rather than of H2O). Although this thought experiment was originally introduced to illuminate questions in the theory of reference, it has also played a crucial role in empirically informed debates within the philosophy of psychology about people’s ordinary natural kind concepts. Those debates have sought to accommodate (...) an apparent fact about ordinary people’s judgments: Intuitively, the Twin Earth liquid is not water. We present results from four experiments showing that people do not, in fact, have this intuition. Instead, people tend to have the intuition that there is a sense in which the liquid is not water but also a sense in which it is water. We explore the implications of this finding for debates about theories of natural kind concepts, arguing that it supports views positing two distinct criteria for membership in natural kind categories – one based on deeper causal properties, the other based on superficial, observable properties. (shrink)

From the early reception of Thomas Aquinas up to the present, many have interpreted his theory of liberum arbitrium to imply intellectual determinism: we do not control our choices, because we do not control the practical judgments that cause our choices. In this paper we argue instead that he rejects determinism in general and intellectual determinism in particular, which would effectively destroy liberum arbitrium as he conceives of it. We clarify that for Aquinas moral responsibility presupposes liberum arbitrium and thus (...) the ability to do otherwise, although the ability to do otherwise applies differently to praise and blame. His argument against intellectual determinism is not straightforward, but we construct it by analogy to his arguments against other deterministic threats. The non-determinism of the intellect’s causality with respect to the will results from his claims that practical reasoning is defeasible and that the reasons for actions are not contrastive reasons. (shrink)

Call the following claim Asymmetry: rationality often requires a more steadfast response to pure moral disagreement than it does to otherwise analogous non-moral disagreement. This paper briefly motivates Asymmetry and explores its implications for meta-ethics. Some philosophers have thought that anti-realists are better-placed than realists to explain Asymmetry because, if anti-realism is true, disagreement cannot provide evidence against the reliability of one's thinking about objective moral facts. This paper argues that this simple diagnosis fails to support otherwise plausible anti-realisms. It (...) closes by discussing an alternative explanation for Asymmetry, which appeals to the moral importance of steadfastness. (shrink)

Phineas Gage’s story is typically offered as a paradigm example supporting the view that part of what matters for personal identity is a certain magnitude of similarity between earlier and later individuals. Yet, reconsidering a slight variant of Phineas Gage’s story indicates that it is not just magnitude of similarity, but also the direction of change that affects personal identity judgments; in some cases, changes for the worse are more seen as identity-severing than changes for the better of comparable magnitude. (...) Ironically, thinking carefully about Phineas Gage’s story tells against the thesis it is typically taken to support. (shrink)

A classic debate concerns whether reasonableness should be understood statistically (e.g., reasonableness is what is common) or prescriptively (e.g., reasonableness is what is good). This Article elaborates and defends a third possibility. Reasonableness is a partly statistical and partly prescriptive “hybrid,” reflecting both statistical and prescriptive considerations. Experiments reveal that people apply reasonableness as a hybrid concept, and the Article argues that a hybrid account offers the best general theory of reasonableness. -/- First, the Article investigates how ordinary people judge (...) what is reasonable. Reasonableness sits at the core of countless legal standards, yet little work has investigated how ordinary people (i.e., potential jurors) actually make reasonableness judgments. Experiments reveal that judgments of reasonableness are systematically intermediate between judgments of the relevant average and ideal across numerous legal domains. For example, participants’ mean judgment of the legally reasonable number of weeks’ delay before a criminal trial (ten weeks) falls between the judged average (seventeen weeks) and ideal (seven weeks). So too for the reasonable num- ber of days to accept a contract offer, the reasonable rate of attorneys’ fees, the reasonable loan interest rate, and the reasonable annual number of loud events on a football field in a residential neighborhood. Judgment of reasonableness is better predicted by both statistical and prescriptive factors than by either factor alone. -/- This Article uses this experimental discovery to develop a normative view of reasonableness. It elaborates an account of reasonableness as a hybrid standard, arguing that this view offers the best general theory of reasonableness, one that applies correctly across multiple legal domains. Moreover, this hybrid feature is the historical essence of legal reasonableness: the original use of the “reasonable person” and the “man on the Clapham omnibus” aimed to reflect both statistical and prescriptive considerations. Empirically, reasonableness is a hybrid judgment. And normatively, reasonableness should be applied as a hybrid standard. (shrink)

Sometimes it is not one’s place to blame or forgive. This phenomenon is captured under the philosophical notion of standing. However, there is an asymmetry to be explained here. One can successfully blame, even if one lacks the standing to do so. Yet, one cannot successfully forgive if one lacks the standing to do so. In this article we explain this asymmetry. We argue that a complete explanation depends on not only a difference in the natures of the standing to (...) blame and forgive but also a difference in the natures of blame and forgiveness themselves. (shrink)

Many writers have recently argued that there is something distinctively problematic about sustaining moral beliefs on the basis of others’ moral views. Call this claim pessimism about moral deference. Pessimism about moral deference, if true, seems to provide an attractive way to argue for a bold conclusion about moral disagreement: moral disagreement generally does not require belief revision. Call this claim steadfastness about moral disagreement. Perhaps the most prominent recent discussion of the connection between moral deference and moral disagreement, due (...) to Alison Hills, uses pessimism about the former to argue for steadfastness about the latter. This paper reveals that this line of thinking, and others like it, are unsuccessful. There is no way to argue from a compelling version of pessimism about moral deference to the conclusion of steadfastness about moral disagreement. The most plausible versions of pessimism about moral deference have only very limited implications for moral disagreement. (shrink)

This chapter provides an introduction to higher-order metaphysics as well as to the contributions to this volume. We discuss five topics, corresponding to the five parts of this volume, and summarize the contributions to each part. First, we motivate the usefulness of higher-order quantification in metaphysics using a number of examples, and discuss the question of how such quantifiers should be interpreted. We provide a brief introduction to the most common forms of higher-order logics used in metaphysics, and indicate a (...) number of questions which can be raised in such systems using logical vocabulary alone. Using a further example, we return to applications of higher-order logics in metaphysics. We also mention key developments in the history of higher-order logic as it pertains to metaphysics. Finally, we mention certain arguments which have been raised against the use of higher-order logic, and some ways of responding to them. (shrink)

Abstract The subjectivity of conscious experience is a central feature of our mental life that puzzles philosophers of mind. Conscious mental representations are presented to me as mine, others remain unconscious. How can we make sense of the difference between them? Some representationalists (e.g. Tye) attempt to explain it in terms of non-conceptual intentional content, i.e. content for which one need not possess the relevant concept required in order to describe it. Hanna claims that Kant purports to explain the subjectivity (...) of conscious experience in this way. This paper examines this claim in some detail in the context of a more general criticism of this kind of attempt to explain subjectivity and proposes a different reading of Kant that also leads to an alternative account of subjectivity independent from content. (shrink)

Subject-sensitive invariantism posits surprising connections between a person’s knowledge and features of her environment that are not paradigmatically epistemic features. But which features of a person’s environment have this distinctive connection to knowledge? Traditional defenses of subject-sensitive invariantism emphasize features that matter to the subject of the knowledge-attribution. Call this pragmatic encroachment. A more radical thesis usually goes ignored: knowledge is sensitive to moral facts, whether or not those moral facts matter to the subject. Call this moral encroachment. This paper (...) argues that, insofar as there are good arguments for pragmatic encroachment, there are also good arguments for moral encroachment. (shrink)

Most agree that, in some special scenarios, prudence can speak against feeling a fitting emotion. Some go further, arguing that the tension between fittingness and prudence afflicts some emotions in a fairly general way. This paper goes even further: it argues that, when it comes to anxiety, the tension between fittingness and prudence is nearly inescapable. On any plausible theory, an enormous array of possible outcomes are both bad and epistemically uncertain in the right way to ground fitting anxiety. What’s (...) more, the fittingness of an emotion is a demanding, not a permissive, normative status. So the norms of fitting emotion demand a great deal of anxiety. For almost any realistic agent, it would be deeply imprudent to feel anxiety in a way that meets the demands set by norms of fitting emotion. (shrink)

In 2019, several US states passed “heartbeat” bills. Should such bills go into effect, they would outlaw abortion once an embryonic heartbeat can be detected, thereby severely limiting an individual’s access to abortion. Many states allow health care professionals to refuse to provide an abortion for reasons of conscience. Yet heartbeat bills do not include a positive conscience clause that would allow health care professionals to provide an abortion for reasons of conscience. I argue that this asymmetry is unjustified. The (...) same criteria that justify protecting conscientious refusals to provide abortion also justify protecting positive conscientious appeals regarding abortion. Thus, if the law provides legal exemptions for health care professionals who, as a matter of conscience, refuse to provide abortions where it is legal, it should also provide exemptions for health care professionals who, as a matter of conscience, feel obligated to provide abortions where it is illegal. (shrink)

The personal identity relation is of great interest to philosophers, who often consider fictional scenarios to test what features seem to make persons persist through time. But often real examples of neuroscientific interest also provide important tests of personal identity. One such example is the case of Phineas Gage – or at least the story often told about Phineas Gage. Many cite Gage’s story as example of severed personal identity; Phineas underwent such a tremendous change that Gage “survived as a (...) different man.” I discuss a recent empirical finding about judgments about this hypothetical. It is not just the magnitude of the change that affects identity judgment; it is also the negative direction of the change. I present an experiment suggesting that direction of change also affects neuroethical judgments. I conclude we should consider carefully the way in which improvements and deteriorations affect attributions of personal identity. This is particularly important since a number of the most crucial neuroethical decisions involve varieties of cognitive enhancements or deteriorations. (shrink)

According to the structured theory of propositions, if two sentences express the same proposition, then they have the same syntactic structure, with corresponding syntactic constituents expressing the same entities. A number of philosophers have recently focused attention on a powerful argument against this theory, based on a result by Bertrand Russell, which shows that the theory of structured propositions is inconsistent in higher order-logic. This paper explores a response to this argument, which involves restricting the scope of the claim that (...) propositions are structured, so that it does not hold for all propositions whatsoever, but only for those which are expressible using closed sentences of a given formal language. We call this restricted principle Closed Structure, and show that it is consistent in classical higher-order logic. As a schematic principle, the strength of Closed Structure is dependent on the chosen language. For its consistency to be philosophically significant, it also needs to be consistent in every extension of the language which the theorist of structured propositions is apt to accept. But, we go on to show, Closed Structure is in fact inconsistent in a very natural extension of the standard language of higher-order logic, which adds resources for plural talk of propositions. We conclude that this particular strategy of restricting the scope of the claim that propositions are structured is not a compelling response to the argument based on Russell’s result, though we note that for some applications, for instance to propositional attitudes, a restricted thesis in the vicinity may hold some promise. (shrink)

“Experimental jurisprudence” draws on empirical data to inform questions typically associated with jurisprudence or legal theory. Scholars in this flourishing movement conduct empirical studies about a variety of legal language and concepts. Despite the movement’s growth, its justification is still opaque. Jurisprudence is the study of deep and longstanding theoretical questions about law’s nature, but “experimental jurisprudence,” it might seem, simply surveys laypeople. This Article elaborates and defends experimental jurisprudence. Experimental jurisprudence, appropriately understood, is not only consistent with traditional jurisprudence; (...) it is an essential branch of it. (shrink)

Medieval authors generally agreed that we have the freedom to choose among alternative possibilities. But most medieval authors also thought that there are situations in which one cannot do otherwise, not even will otherwise. They also thought when willing necessarily, the will remains free. The questions, then, are what grounds the necessity or contingency of the will’s acts, and – since freedom is not defined by the ability to choose – what belongs to the essential character of freedom, the ratio (...) libertatis. This article studies medieval theories of freedom without choice from William of Auxerre to William of Ockham and their background in Augustine, Anselm of Canterbury, and Bernard of Clairvaux. (shrink)

One popular conception of natural theology holds that certain purely rational arguments are insulated from empirical inquiry and independently establish conclusions that provide evidence, justification, or proof of God’s existence. Yet, some raise suspicions that philosophers and theologians’ personal religious beliefs inappropriately affect these kinds of arguments. I present an experimental test of whether philosophers and theologians’ argument analysis is influenced by religious commitments. The empirical findings suggest religious belief affects philosophical analysis and offer a challenge to theists and atheists, (...) alike: reevaluate the scope of natural theology’s conclusions or acknowledge and begin to address the influence of religious belief. (shrink)

Rule-Consequentialism faces “the problem of partial acceptance”: How should the ideal code be selected given the possibility that its rules may not be universally accepted? A new contender, “Calculated Rates” Rule-Consequentialism claims to solve this problem. However, I argue that Calculated Rates merely relocates the partial acceptance question. Nevertheless, there is a significant lesson from this failure of Calculated Rates. Rule-Consequentialism’s problem of partial acceptance is more helpfully understood as an instance of the broader problem of selecting the ideal code (...) given various assumptions—assumptions about who will accept and comply with the rules, but also about how the rules will be taught and enforced, and how similar the future will be. Previous rich discussions about partial acceptance provide a taxonomy and groundwork for formulating the best version of Rule-Consequentialism. (shrink)

According to the view that there is moral encroachment in epistemology, whether a person has knowledge of p sometimes depends on moral considerations, including moral considerations that do not bear on the truth or likelihood of p. Defenders of moral encroachment face a central challenge: they must explain why the moral considerations they cite, unlike moral bribes for belief, are reasons of the right kind for belief (or withheld belief). This paper distinguishes between a moderate and a radical version of (...) moral encroachment. It shows that, while defenders of moderate moral encroachment are well-placed to meet the central challenge, defenders of radical moral encroachment are not. The problem for radical moral encroachment is that it cannot, without taking on unacceptable costs, forge the right sort of connection between the moral badness of a belief and that belief’s chance of being false. (shrink)

Hypocrites are often thought to lack the standing to blame others for faults similar to their own. Although this claim is widely accepted, it is seldom argued for. We offer an argument for the claim that nonhypocrisy is a necessary condition on the standing to blame. We first offer a novel, dispositional account of hypocrisy. Our account captures the commonsense view that hypocrisy involves making an unjustified exception of oneself. This exception-making involves a rejection of the impartiality of morality and (...) thereby a rejection of the equality of persons, which we argue grounds the standing to blame others. (shrink)

This article re-examines Ned Block‘s ( 1997 , 2007 ) conceptual distinction between phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness. His argument that we can have phenomenally conscious representations without being able to cognitively access them is criticized as not being supported by evidence. Instead, an alternative interpretation of the relevant empirical data is offered which leaves the link between phenomenology and accessibility intact. Moreover, it is shown that Block’s claim that phenomenology and accessibility have different neural substrates is highly problematic in (...) light of empirical evidence. Finally, his claim that there can be phenomenology without cognitive accessibility is at odds with his endorsement of the 'same-order-theory' of consciousness. (shrink)

Epistemic two-dimensional semantics is a theory in the philosophy of language that provides an account of meaning which is sensitive to the distinction between necessity and apriority. While this theory is usually presented in an informal manner, I take some steps in formalizing it in this paper. To do so, I define a semantics for a propositional modal logic with operators for the modalities of necessity, actuality, and apriority that captures the relevant ideas of epistemic two-dimensional semantics. I also describe (...) some properties of the logic that are interesting from a philosophical perspective, and apply it to the so-called nesting problem. (shrink)

Most plausible moral theories must address problems of partial acceptance or partial compliance. The aim of this paper is to examine some proposed ways of dealing with partial acceptance problems as well as to introduce a new Rule Utilitarian suggestion. Here I survey three forms of Rule Utilitarianism, each of which represents a distinct approach to solving partial acceptance issues. I examine Fixed Rate, Variable Rate, and Optimum Rate Rule Utilitarianism, and argue that a new approach, Maximizing Expectation Rate Rule (...) Utilitarianism, better solves partial acceptance problems. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with a propositional modal logic with operators for necessity, actuality and apriority. The logic is characterized by a class of relational structures defined according to ideas of epistemic two-dimensional semantics, and can therefore be seen as formalizing the relations between necessity, actuality and apriority according to epistemic two-dimensional semantics. We can ask whether this logic is correct, in the sense that its theorems are all and only the informally valid formulas. This paper gives outlines of two (...) arguments that jointly show that this is the case. The first is intended to show that the logic is informally sound, in the sense that all of its theorems are informally valid. The second is intended to show that it is informally complete, in the sense that all informal validities are among its theorems. In order to give these arguments, a number of independently interesting results concerning the logic are proven. In particular, the soundness and completeness of two proof systems with respect to the semantics is proven (Theorems 2.11 and 2.15), as well as a normal form theorem (Theorem 3.2), an elimination theorem for the actuality operator (Corollary 3.6), and the decidability of the logic (Corollary 3.7). It turns out that the logic invalidates a plausible principle concerning the interaction of apriority and necessity; consequently, a variant semantics is briefly explored on which this principle is valid. The paper concludes by assessing the implications of these results for epistemic two-dimensional semantics. (shrink)

This paper is a study of higher-order contingentism – the view, roughly, that it is contingent what properties and propositions there are. We explore the motivations for this view and various ways in which it might be developed, synthesizing and expanding on work by Kit Fine, Robert Stalnaker, and Timothy Williamson. Special attention is paid to the question of whether the view makes sense by its own lights, or whether articulating the view requires drawing distinctions among possibilities that, according to (...) the view itself, do not exist to be drawn. The paper begins with a non-technical exposition of the main ideas and technical results, which can be read on its own. This exposition is followed by a formal investigation of higher-order contingentism, in which the tools of variable-domain intensional model theory are used to articulate various versions of the view, understood as theories formulated in a higher-order modal language. Our overall assessment is mixed: higher-order contingentism can be fleshed out into an elegant systematic theory, but perhaps only at the cost of abandoning some of its original motivations. (shrink)

Sometimes, the fact that an attitude is fitting seems like a demand to have that attitude. But in other cases, the fact that an attitude is fitting seems more like a permission to have the attitude. I defend a proposal that can accommodate both of these appearances. I argue that there is a kind of emotionlessness, which I call apathy, that can be fitting or unfitting in just the same way that emotion can. I further argue that, in some cases, (...) it can be fitting to respond a single object either with emotion or with apathy. When both apathy and emotion are fitting options, the fittingness of the emotion is a permission-like status; failures to have the fitting emotion are not failures of fit. But when an emotion is fitting and apathy is unfitting, the fittingness of the emotion is a demand-like status; failures to have the emotion are failures of fit. (shrink)

Deepfakes raise various concerns: risks of political destabilization, depictions of persons without consent and causing them harms, erosion of trust in video and audio as reliable sources of evidence, and more. These concerns have been the focus of recent work in the philosophical literature on deepfakes. However, there has been almost no sustained philosophical analysis of deepfakes from the perspective of concerns about honesty and dishonesty. That deepfakes are potentially deceptive is unsurprising and has been noted. But under what conditions (...) does the use of deepfakes fail to be honest? And which human agents, involved in one way or another in a deepfake, fail to be honest, and in what ways? If we are to understand better the morality of deepfakes, these questions need answering. Our first goal in this paper, therefore, is to offer an analysis of paradigmatic cases of deepfakes in light of the philosophy of honesty. While it is clear that many deepfakes are morally problematic, there has been a rising counter-chorus claiming that deepfakes are not essentially morally bad, since there might be uses of deepfakes that are not morally wrong, or even that are morally salutary, for instance, in education, entertainment, activism, and other areas. However, while there are reasons to think that deepfakes can supply or support moral goods, it is nevertheless possible that even these uses of deepfakes are dishonest. Our second goal in this paper, therefore, is to apply our analysis of deepfakes and honesty to the sorts of deepfakes hoped to be morally good or at least neutral. We conclude that, perhaps surprisingly, in many of these cases the use of deepfakes will be dishonest in some respects. Of course, there will be cases of deepfakes for which verdicts about honesty and moral permissibility do not line up. While we will sometimes suggest reasons why moral permissibility verdicts might diverge from honesty verdicts, we will not aim to settle matters of moral permissibility. (shrink)

Political leaders may change their mind about a policy, or even a significant moral issue. While genuinely changing one’s mind is not hypocritical, there are reasons to think that leaders who claim such a change are merely hypocritically pandering for political advantage. Indeed, some social science studies allegedly confirm that constituents will judge political leaders who change positions as hypocritical. Yet these studies are missing crucial details that we normally use to distinguish genuine mind changers from hollow hypocrites. These details (...) suggest ways in which political leaders can communicate that their mind change is genuine without necessarily being judged hypocritical. (shrink)

Are acts of violence performed in virtual environments ever morally wrong, even when no other persons are affected? While some such acts surely reflect deficient moral character, I focus on the moral rightness or wrongness of acts. Typically it’s thought that, on Kant’s moral theory, an act of virtual violence is morally wrong (i.e., violate the Categorical Imperative) only if the act mistreats another person. But I argue that, on Kant’s moral theory, some acts of virtual violence can be morally (...) wrong, even when no other persons or their avatars are affected. First, I explain why many have thought that, in general on Kant’s moral theory, virtual acts affecting no other persons or their avatars can’t violate the Categorical Imperative. For there are real world acts that clearly do, but it seems that when we consider the same sorts of acts done alone in a virtual environment, they don’t violate the Categorical Imperative, because no others persons were involved. But then, how could any virtual acts like these, that affect no other persons or their avatars, violate the Categorical Imperative? I then argue that there indeed can be such cases of morally wrong virtual acts—some due to an actor’s having erroneous beliefs about morally relevant facts, and others due not to error, but to the actor’s intention leaving out morally relevant facts while immersed in a virtual environment. I conclude by considering some implications of my arguments for both our present technological context as well as the future. (shrink)

Leibniz accepts causal independence, the claim that no created substance can causally interact with any other. And Leibniz needs causal independence to be true, since his well-known pre-established harmony is premised upon it. So, what is Leibniz’s argument for causal independence? Sometimes he claims that causal interaction between substances is superfluous. Sometimes he claims that it would require the transfer of accidents, and that this is impossible. But when Leibniz finds himself under sustained pressure to defend causal independence, those are (...) not the reasons that he marshals in its defense. Instead, deep into his long correspondence with Burchard de Volder, he gives a different sort of argument, one that has gone nearly unnoticed by commentators and has not yet been properly understood. In part, this is because the argument develops slowly over four years of correspondence. It emerges in early 1704, but it is formulated tersely and appears murky unless understood in light of Leibniz and De Volder’s tangled exchanges. There Leibniz argues that, on his distinctive ontology of an infinity of created substances, no two created substances could possibly causally interact, for roughly the same reasons that some Cartesians like De Volder deny interaction between minds and bodies on their substance dualist ontology. In this paper I draw out this lost argument, explain it and the metaphysics on which Leibniz builds it, and untangle Leibniz and De Volder’s exchanges concerning causation from which this argument results. (shrink)

Some argue that robots could never be sentient, and thus could never have intrinsic moral status. Others disagree, believing that robots indeed will be sentient and thus will have moral status. But a third group thinks that, even if robots could never have moral status, we still have a strong moral reason to treat some robots as if they do. Drawing on a Kantian argument for indirect animal rights, a number of technology ethicists contend that our treatment of anthropomorphic or (...) even animal-like robots could condition our treatment of humans: treat these robots well, as we would treat humans, or else risk eroding good moral behavior toward humans. But then, this argument also seems to justify giving rights to robots, even if robots lack intrinsic moral status. In recent years, however, this indirect argument in support of robot rights has drawn a number of objections. In this paper I have three goals. First, I will formulate and explicate the Kant-inspired indirect argument meant to support robot rights, making clearer than before its empirical commitments and philosophical presuppositions. Second, I will defend the argument against a number of objections. The result is the fullest explication and defense to date of this well-known and influential but often criticized argument. Third, however, I myself will raise a new concern about the argument’s use as a justification for robot rights. This concern is answerable to some extent, but it cannot be dismissed fully. It shows that, surprisingly, the argument’s advocates have reason to resist, at least somewhat, producing the sorts of robots that, on their view, ought to receive rights. (shrink)

This essay provides a novel argument for impurism, the view that certain non-truth-relevant factors can make a difference to a belief's epistemic standing. I argue that purists, unlike impurists, are forced to claim that certain ‘high-stakes’ cases rationally require agents to be akratic. Akrasia is one of the paradigmatic forms of irrationality. So purists, in virtue of calling akrasia rationally mandatory in a range of cases with no obvious precedent, take on a serious theoretical cost. By focusing on akrasia, and (...) on the nature of the normative judgments involved therein, impurists gain a powerful new way to frame a core challenge for purism. They also gain insight about the way in which impurism is true: my argument motivates the claim that there is moral encroachment in epistemology. (shrink)

Timothy Williamson has argued that in the debate on modal ontology, the familiar distinction between actualism and possibilism should be replaced by a distinction between positions he calls contingentism and necessitism. He has also argued in favor of necessitism, using results on quantified modal logic with plurally interpreted second-order quantifiers showing that necessitists can draw distinctions contingentists cannot draw. Some of these results are similar to well-known results on the relative expressivity of quantified modal logics with so-called inner and outer (...) quantifiers. The present paper deals with these issues in the context of quantified modal logics with generalized quantifiers. Its main aim is to establish two results for such a logic: Firstly, contingentists can draw the distinctions necessitists can draw if and only if the logic with inner quantifiers is at least as expressive as the logic with outer quantifiers, and necessitists can draw the distinctions contingentists can draw if and only if the logic with outer quantifiers is at least as expressive as the logic with inner quantifiers. Secondly, the former two items are the case if and only if all of the generalized quantifiers are first-order definable, and the latter two items are the case if and only if first-order logic with these generalized quantifiers relativizes. (shrink)

This paper presents a challenge to conciliationist views of disagreement. I argue that conciliationists cannot satisfactorily explain why we need not revise our beliefs in response to certain moral disagreements. Conciliationists can attempt to meet this challenge in one of two ways. First, they can individuate disputes narrowly. This allows them to argue that we have dispute-independent reason to distrust our opponents’ moral judgment. This approach threatens to license objectionable dogmatism. It also inappropriately gives deep epistemic significance to superficial questions (...) about how to think about the subject matter of a dispute. Second, conciliationists can individuate disputes widely. This allows them to argue that we lack dispute-independent reason to trust our opponents’ moral judgment. But such arguments fail; our background of generally shared moral beliefs gives us good reason to trust the moral judgment of our opponents, even after we set quite a bit of our reasoning aside. On either approach, then, conciliationists should acknowledge that we have dispute-independent reason to trust the judgment of those who reject our moral beliefs. Given a conciliationist view of disagreement’s epistemic role, this has the unattractive result that we are epistemically required to revise some of our most intuitively secure moral beliefs. (shrink)

Statistical evidence is crucial throughout disparate impact’s three-stage analysis: during (1) the plaintiff’s prima facie demonstration of a policy’s disparate impact; (2) the defendant’s job-related business necessity defense of the discriminatory policy; and (3) the plaintiff’s demonstration of an alternative policy without the same discriminatory impact. The circuit courts are split on a vital question about the “practical significance” of statistics at Stage 1: Are “small” impacts legally insignificant? For example, is an employment policy that causes a one percent disparate (...) impact an appropriate policy for redress through disparate impact litigation? This circuit split calls for a comprehensive analysis of practical significance testing across disparate impact’s stages. Importantly, courts and commentators use “practical significance” ambiguously between two aspects of practical significance: the magnitude of an effect and confidence in statistical evidence. For example, at Stage 1 courts might ask whether statistical evidence supports a disparate impact (a confidence inquiry) and whether such an impact is large enough to be legally relevant (a magnitude inquiry). Disparate impact’s texts, purposes, and controlling interpretations are consistent with confidence inquires at all three stages, but not magnitude inquiries. Specifically, magnitude inquiries are inappropriate at Stages 1 and 3—there is no discriminatory impact or reduction too small or subtle for the purposes of the disparate impact analysis. Magnitude inquiries are appropriate at Stage 2, when an employer defends a discriminatory policy on the basis of its job-related business necessity. (shrink)

The models of contingency in what propositions, properties and relations there are developed in Part 1 are related to models of contingency in what propositions there are due to Robert Stalnaker. It is shown that some but not all of the classes of models of Part 1 agree with Stalnaker’s models concerning the patterns of contingency in what propositions there are they admit. Further structural connections between the two kinds of models are explored.

The impossibility theorem of Dekel, Lipman and Rustichini has been thought to demonstrate that standard state-space models cannot be used to represent unawareness. We first show that Dekel, Lipman and Rustichini do not establish this claim. We then distinguish three notions of awareness, and argue that although one of them may not be adequately modeled using standard state spaces, there is no reason to think that standard state spaces cannot provide models of the other two notions. In fact, standard space (...) models of these forms of awareness are attractively simple. They allow us to prove completeness and decidability results with ease, to carry over standard techniques from decision theory, and to add propositional quantifiers straightforwardly. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that hypocrisy can undermine one’s moral standing to blame. According to the Nonhypocrisy Condition on standing, R has the standing to blame some other agent S for a violation of some norm N only if R is not hypocritical with respect to blame for violations of N. Yet this condition is seldom argued for. Macalester Bell points out that the fact that hypocrisy is a moral fault does not yet explain why hypocritical blame is standingless blame. (...) She raises a challenge: one must explain what is distinct about hypocritical blame such that the hypocritical blamer lacks the standing to blame, even if the arrogant or petty blamer does not. Of those writing on hypocrisy, only we offer a direct response to Bell’s challenge. Recently, however, our account has come under criticism. We argue here that (1) our account can handle these criticisms and that (2) no other rival account adequately addresses Bell’s challenge of explaining what is uniquely objectionable about hypocritical blame. Because answering Bell’s challenge is a necessary component of any plausible account of the relationship between hypocrisy and standing, our account remains the best on offer. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend an epistemic requirement on fitting hopes and worries: it is fitting to hope or to worry that p only if one’s epistemic position makes it rational to suspend judgment as to whether p. This view, unlike prominent alternatives, is ecumenical; it retains its plausibility against a variety of different background views of epistemology. It also has other important theoretical virtues: it is illuminating, elegant, and extensionally adequate. Fallibilists about knowledge have special reason to be friendly (...) to my view; it can help them explain why it can be unfitting to hold on to hope and worry in the face of overwhelming evidence, and it can also help them explain the sense in which knowledge that p and hope that –p are in tension with one another. (shrink)

Traditionally, those writing on blame have been concerned with blaming others, including when one has the standing to blame others. Yet some alleged problems for such accounts of standing arise when we focus on self-blame. First, if hypocrites lack the standing to blame others, it might seem that they also lack the standing to blame themselves. But this would lead to a bootstrapping problem, wherein hypocrites can only regain standing by doing that which they lack the standing to do. Second, (...) in addition to hypocrites, there may be hypercrites, who blame themselves more severely than others. Leading accounts for why hypocrites lack standing to blame others would also seem to imply that hypercrites lack the standing to blame others, but some may find this counterintuitive. We argue that neither of these problems from self-blame poses a unique threat to leading accounts of standing. (shrink)

Many philosophers claim to employ intuitions in their philosophical arguments. Others contest that no such intuitions are used frequently or at all in philosophy. This article suggests and defends a conception of intuitions as part of the philosophical method: intuitions are special types of philosophical assumptions to which we are invited to assent, often as premises in argument, that may serve an independent function in philosophical argument and that are not formed through a purely inferential process. A series of philosophical (...) case studies shows that intuitions in these arguments contain the relevant features. The view has implications for philosophical method, offering a compromise between opponents on the divisive debate of the merits of experimental philosophy: experimental philosophy provides an especially useful role in philosophical assumption analysis. (shrink)

Auf die Frage „Was ist Wahrnehmung und welche Rolle spielt sie für die Objektivität der Erfahrung?“ hätte Ernst Cassirer vermutlich schlicht geantwortet: „Wahrnehmung ist eine erste Form objektiver Erfahrung.“ Tobias Endres macht es sich zur Aufgabe, Cassirers „Philosophie der symbolischen Formen“ einer Neu- und Gesamtinterpretation zu unterziehen und sie als eine „Phänomenologie der Wahrnehmung“ auszulegen. In Auseinandersetzung mit klassischen und gegenwärtigen Wahrnehmungstheorien wie der Sinnesdatentheorie, dem Disjunktivismus oder dem Enaktivismus gelingt es dem Autor, die Aktualität und Originalität solch einer (...) phänomenologischen Wahrnehmungstheorie aufzuzeigen. (shrink)

If there is pragmatic encroachment in epistemology, whether a person knows that p can vary with normative facts about her actions—including facts that do not bear on the truth or likelihood of p. This paper raises an underappreciated question for defenders of pragmatic encroachment: which of the many norms on action are distinctively connected to knowledge? To the extent that contemporary defenders of pragmatic encroachment address this question, they do so by citing norms of ‘practical rationality.’ I show that this (...) approach can only be made to work on the assumption that all immorality involves some form of incoherence. I then suggest a pluralist strategy for pragmatic encroachers who seek to answer my question without making this heavyweight metaethical assumption: they should agree that multiple distinct norms on action play a difference-making role in epistemology. I close the paper by sketching three ways in which pragmatic encroachers might pursue this strategy. (shrink)

Ein Dilemma in Kants Theorie der Subjektivität besteht darin, dass er einerseits von einem identischen Ich als dem Gegenstand eines reinen Selbstbewusstseins spricht, andererseits bestreiten muss, dass es sich bei diesem Ich um einen realen Gegenstand handelt. Horstmanns Interpretation des kantischen Ichs als bloßer Aktivität wird als Ausweg aus diesem Dilemma verworfen. Dann wird gezeigt, dass Kant außer realen auch logische Gegenstände kennt und dass das Ich ein solcher bloß logischer Gegenstand ist.

Our aim in this entry is to articulate the state of the art in the moral psychology of personal identity. We begin by discussing the major philosophical theories of personal identity, including their shortcomings. We then turn to recent psychological work on personal identity and the self, investigations that often illuminate our person-related normative concerns. We conclude by discussing the implications of this psychological work for some contemporary philosophical theories and suggesting fruitful areas for future work on personal identity.

Scalar Utilitarianism eschews foundational notions of rightness and wrongness in favor of evaluative comparisons of outcomes. I defend Scalar Utilitarianism from two critiques, the first against an argument for the thesis that Utilitarianism's commitments are fundamentally evaluative, and the second that Scalar Utilitarianism does not issue demands or sufficiently guide action. These defenses suggest a variety of more plausible Scalar Utilitarian interpretations, and I argue for a version that best represents a moral theory founded on evaluative notions, and offers better (...) answers to demandingness concerns than does the ordinary Scalar Utilitarian response. If Utilitarians seek reasonable development and explanation of their basic commitments, they may wish to reconsider Scalar Utilitarianism. (shrink)