Desire is commonly spoken of as a state in which the desired object seems good, which apparently ascribes an evaluative element to desire. I offer a new defence of this old idea. As traditionally conceived, this view faces serious objections related to its way of characterizing desire's evaluative content. I develop an alternative conception of evaluative mental content which is plausible in its own right, allows the evaluative desire theorist to avoid the standard objections, and sheds interesting new light on (...) the idea of evaluative experience. (shrink)

There is a strong appetite in ‘the wild’ (i.e., beyond the academy) for public philosophy. There are myriad forums available, from magazines and online publications to podcasts and YouTube videos, for those who wish to engage in philosophy in a non-academic context. For academic philosophers, this has raised methodological and metaphilosophical questions like: ‘what is the best way to engage in public philosophy?’ and ‘what are our aims when we engage in public philosophy?’ But what do ‘the public’ want? If (...) public philosophy is philosophy written for a public audience, what is it, exactly, that it can or might do for them? Several answers have been proposed by philosophers, but less attention has been paid to how the public themselves might answer that question. The aim of this essay is to try and put together at least the beginning of an answer. In June 2022 we put out a survey in the hope of eliciting views from ‘the public’ on issues relating to the nature and aims of both philosophy (more generally) and public philosophy. In doing so, our aim was to take a ‘democratic’ approach to answering the question: What is public philosophy? (shrink)

Frege claims that sentences of the form ‘A’ are equivalent to sentences of the form ‘it is true that A’ (The Equivalence Thesis). Frege also says that there are fictional names that fail to refer, and that sentences featuring fictional names fail to refer as a result. The thoughts such sentences express, Frege says, are also fictional, and neither true nor false. Michael Dummett argues that these claims are inconsistent. But his argument requires clarification, since there are two ways The (...) Equivalence Thesis has been formulated, according as the thesis equates the senses or the referents of the relevant sentences. -/- I have two aims in this paper. The first is to demonstrate that a sameness of sense thesis is inconsistent with Frege’s other theses. The second is to argue that a sameness of reference thesis is consistent with them. Thus, all else being equal, Frege ought to endorse a sameness of reference, rather than a sameness of sense thesis. (shrink)

The dominant approach to assessing decision-making capacity in medicine focuses on determining the extent to which individuals possess certain core cognitive abilities. Critics have argued that this model delivers the wrong verdict in certain cases where patient values that are the product of mental disorder or disordered affective states undermine decision-making without undermining cognition. I argue for a re-conceptualization of what it is to possess the capacity to make medical treatment decisions. It is, I argue, the ability to track one’s (...) own personal interests at least as well as most people can. Using this idea, I demonstrate that it is possible to craft a solution for the problem cases—one that neither alters existing criteria in dangerous ways (e.g. does not open the door to various kinds of abuse) nor violates widely accepted ethical constraints on decision-making assessment. (shrink)

It is plausible to think that it is wrong to cure many people’s headaches rather than save someone else’s life. On the other hand, it is plausible to think that it is not wrong to expose someone to a tiny risk of death when curing this person’s headache. I will argue that these claims are inconsistent. For if we keep taking this tiny risk then it is likely that one person dies, while many others’ headaches are cured. In light of (...) this inconsistency, there is a conflict in our intuitions about beneficence and chance. This conflict is perplexing. And I have not been able to find a satisfactory way of resolving it. Perhaps you can do better? (shrink)

Theories of well-being are typically divided into subjective and objective. Subjective theories are those which make facts about a person’s welfare depend on facts about her actual or hypothetical mental states. I am interested in what motivates this approach to the theory of welfare. The contemporary view is that subjectivism is devoted to honoring the evaluative perspective of the individual, but this is both a misleading account of the motivations behind subjectivism, and a vision that dooms subjective theories to failure. (...) I suggest that we need to revisit and reinstate certain features of traditional hedonism, in particular the idea that felt experience plays a role that no theory of welfare can afford to ignore. I then offer a sketch of a theory that is subjective in my preferred sense and avoids the worst sins of hedonism as well as the problems generated by the contemporary constraints of subjective theorists. (shrink)

So-called money pump arguments aim to show that intransitive preferences are irrational because they will lead someone to accept a series of deals that leaves his/her financially worse off and better off in no respect. A common response to these arguments is the foresight response, which counters that the agent in question may see the exploitation coming, and refuse to trade at all. To obviate this response, I offer a “deluxe money pump argument” that applies dominance reasoning to a modified (...) money pump case. (shrink)

This chapter explores radical personal change and its relationship to well-being, welfare, or prudential value. Many theorists of welfare are committed to what is here called the future-based reasons view (FBR), which holds (1) that the best prudential choice in a situation is determined by which possible future has the greatest net welfare value for the subject and (2) what determines facts about future welfare are facts about the subject and the world at that future time. Although some cases of (...) radical change are intuitively prudentially good, many cases of really radical change are not. Yet FBR has trouble explaining this. Many people instinctively reach for the notion of identity to solve this problem—arguing that really radical change cannot be good because it alters who someone is. Yet, as the chapter argues, there are reasons to doubt that appeals to identity are appropriate. The chapter ends with the suggestion that prudential facts may explain why and when retaining identity matters, rather than the other way around, and points to a possible way forward for a theorist of welfare committed to FBR. (shrink)

In this article I explore various facets of Nozick’s famous thought experiment involving the experience machine. Nozick’s original target is hedonism—the view that the only intrinsic prudential value is pleasure. But the argument, if successful, undermines any experientialist theory, i.e. any theory that limits intrinsic prudential value to mental states. I first highlight problems arising from the way Nozick sets up the thought experiment. He asks us to imagine choosing whether or not to enter the machine and uses our choice (...) (or rather the choice he assumes most people will have) as evidence against experientialist theories. But for this strategy to succeed it must be possible to distinguish between self-interested and non-self-interested reasons for declining to enter the machine, and there is no obvious way to do this without begging the question against the hedonist. In successive sections I then (a) consider a common misconception of Nozick’s conclusion (that he thinks machine life is the worst life), (b) consider different intuitions about what is important to well-being but missing from machine life, and finally (c) explain what “the experience requirement” is, and describe its relationship to debates about experientialist theories. (shrink)

Philosophers concerned with what would be good for a person sometimes consider a person’s past desires. Indeed, some theorists have argued by appeal to past desires that it is in the best interests of certain dementia patients to die. I reject this conclusion. I consider three different ways one might appeal to a person’s past desires in arguing for conclusions about the good of such patients, finding flaws with each. Of the views I reject, the most interesting one is the (...) view that prudential value is, at least partly, concerned with the shape of a life as a whole. (shrink)

Medical ethics would be better if people were taught to think more clearly about well-being or the concept of what is good for a person. Yet for a variety of reasons, bioethicists have generally paid little attention to this concept. Here, I argue, first, that focusing on general theories of welfare is not useful for practical medical ethics. I argue, second, for what I call the “theory-without-theories approach” to welfare in practical contexts. The first element of this approach is a (...) focus on examining important and relatively uncontroversial constituents of welfare as opposed to general theories. The second key element is a framework for thinking about choice in relation to welfare, a framework I refer to as “the mild objectivity framework.” I conclude with illustrations of the way in which the “theory without theories approach” can improve thinking in medicine. (shrink)

This paper explores the idea that popular narrative film can somehow contribute to our philosophical understanding. I identify a number of problems with this 'film as philosophy' thesis and argue that the capacity of film to contribute to philosophy is not as great as many authors think. Specifically, I argue that film can only offer genuinely distinctive insights into philosophical questions *about film* and explore Hitchcock's Rear Window as an example of this.

In her impressive book, looking at the philosophy and science of well-being, Anna Alexandrova argues for the strong claim that we possess no stable, unified concept of well-being. Instead, she thinks the word “well-being” only comes to have a specific meaning in particular contexts, and has a quite different meaning in different contexts. I take issue with (1) her claim that we do not possess a unified, all-things-considered concept of well-being as well as with (2) her failure to consider why (...) we might want a unified concept. I grant that Alexandrova is probably correct that the word “well-being” is used differently in different contexts. But this only shows that one word can come to be used to express different concepts. Moreover, noting that several concepts exist that are picked out by “well-being” doesn’t establish that we lack altogether a notion of all-things-considered well-being. I believe we have such a concept, even though it is not always the concept in play. Moreover, I think we need such a concept. The conceptual muddles Alexandrova highlights—muddles that result from a single word being used to express multiple ideas—remind us how important it is to be able to distinguish different concepts from one another, as well as how important it is to periodically remind ourselves of how various forms of specialist dialogue relate back to the broader, more general notion of “well-being.”. (shrink)

Existence internalism claims that facts about human psychological responsiveness constrain the metaphysics of value in particular ways. Chapter 5 examines whether some form of existence internalism holds for prudential value. It emphasizes the importance of a modal distinction that has been traditionally overlooked. Some facts about personal good are facts about realized good. For example, right now it may be true that X is good for me. Other facts about goodness are facts about what would be good for me in (...) certain possible futures. These are facts about merely possible good. Philosophers should be internalists about realized good. The chapter defends a qualified version of the idea that a necessary constraint on something’s being good for a person at a time is that the thing in question elicits some kind of positive psychological response from the person at that time. However, philosophers should be motivational externalists about merely possible good. Facts about the superior future goodness of an option may ground reasons now to choose it. But we should not expect individuals to always recognize such facts, and so there is no reason to think such facts are always motivating. (shrink)

Desire satisfaction theorists and attitudinal-happiness theorists of well-being are committed to correcting the psychological attitudes upon which their theories are built. However, it is not often recognized that some of the attitudes in need of correction are evaluative attitudes. Moreover, it is hard to know how to correct for poor evaluative attitudes in ways that respect the traditional commitment to the authority of the individual subject's evaluative perspective. L. W. Sumner has proposed an autonomy-as-authenticity requirement to perform this task, but (...) this article argues that it cannot do the job. Sumner's proposal focuses on the social origins of our values and overlooks the deep psychological roots of other evaluative attitudes that are just as problematic for welfare. If subjective theories of welfare are to be at all plausible they may need to abandon or modify their traditional commitment to the authority of the individual subject. (shrink)

Most philosophers these days assume that more matters for well-being than simply mental states. However, there is an important distinction that is routinely overlooked. When it is said that more matters than mental states, this could mean either that certain mind-independent events count when it comes to assessing the prudential value of a life (the mind-independent events thesis or MIE), or it could mean that it is prudentially important for individuals to have the right kind of epistemic relation to life (...) events (the positive value of knowledge thesis or PVK). This chapter first aims to convince theorists of the importance of the distinction between MIE and PVK, or, more precisely, the importance of distinguishing questions about which non-mental objects (or events or facts) have intrinsic welfare value (if any do) and questions about which epistemic relations (knowledge, justified true belief, true belief) have intrinsic welfare value (if any do). This chapter also raises serious doubts about the way in which contemporary desire theories handle the extra-mental components of welfare, and offers some tentative answers to the question: what should a theorist of welfare say about these matters? (shrink)

In this article we examine obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). We examine and reject two existing models of this disorder: the Dysfunctional Belief Model and the Inference‐Based Approach. Instead, we propose that the main distinctive characteristic of OCD is a hyperactive sub‐personal signal of being in error, experienced by the individual as uncertainty about his or her intentional actions (including mental actions). This signalling interacts with the anxiety sensitivities of the individual to trigger conscious checking processes, including speculations about possible harms. (...) We examine the implications of this model for the individual's capacity to control his or her thoughts. (shrink)

Most adult persons with anorexia satisfy the existing criteria widely used to assess decision-making capacity, meaning that incapacity typically cannot be used to justify coercive intervention. After rejecting two other approaches to justification, Professor Radden concludes that it is most likely not possible to justify coercive medical intervention for persons with anorexia in liberal terms, though she leaves it open whether some other framework might succeed. I shall assume here that the standard approach to assessing decisionmaking capacity is adequate.1 The (...) question then is whether we can justify—within a liberal framework—coercive intervention with the decision of a competent... (shrink)

I consider the current best interests of patients who were once thought to be either completely unaware (to be in PVS) or only minimally aware (MCS), but who, because of advanced fMRI studies, we now suspect have much more “going on” inside their minds, despite no ability to communicate with the world. My goal in this chapter is twofold: (1) to set out and defend a framework that I think should always guide thinking about the best interests of highly cognitively (...) compromised patients, and then (2) to defend a particular conclusion that applies to this specific patient population. The framework requires us to ask two questions: Is the individual suffering? Is the individual gaining any benefit from life? There must be benefit of some sort for life to be worth preserving, and the benefit must outweigh any suffering (if there is suffering present). I then argue it would be best overall to allow these patients to die. Either these patients are not really very aware at all, in which case they are most likely not suffering, but not benefiting from life either, or they are mentally intact enough to make benefit a theoretical possibility, but in fact they are not benefiting because they cannot communicate with anyone. Such patients would most likely suffer. As there is no way currently to address their suffering, we should allow them to die. No matter the truth about their cognitive lives, death would either be a neutral event, or a blessing. (shrink)

It is an important feature of creatures like us that our various motivations compete for control over our behaviour, including mental behaviour such as imagining and attending. In large part, this competition is adjudicated by the stimulation of affect — the intrinsically pleasant or unpleasant aspects of experience. In this paper I argue that the motivation-affect system controls a sub-type of attention called 'alerting attention' to bring various goals and stimuli to consciousness and thereby prioritize those contents for action. This (...) view allows me to flesh out the global workspace theory of consciousness, as well as some of the phenomenal characteristics of conscious experience. (shrink)

How wrong is it to deceive someone into sex by lying, say, about one's profession? The answer is seriously wrong when the liar's actual profession would be a deal breaker for the victim of the deception: this deception vitiates the victim's sexual consent, and it is seriously wrong to have sex with someone while lacking his or her consent.

If we were to connect two individuals’ brains together, how would this affect the individuals’ conscious experiences? In particular, it is possible for two people to share any of their conscious experiences; to simultaneously enjoy some token experiences while remaining distinct subjects? The case of the Hogan twins—craniopagus conjoined twins whose brains are connected at the thalamus—seems to show that this can happen. I argue that while practical empirical methods cannot tell us directly whether or not the twins share conscious (...) experiences, considerations about the locality of content processing in the brain entails that they most likely do so. (shrink)

In this article I take an unusual starting point from which to argue for a unified cognitive science, namely a position defined by what is sometimes called the ‘life-mind continuity thesis’. Accordingly, rather than taking a widely accepted starting point for granted and using it in order to propose answers to some well defined questions, I must first establish that the idea of life-mind continuity can amount to a proper starting point at all. To begin with, I therefore assess the (...) conceptual tools which are available to construct a theory of mind on this basis. By drawing on insights from a variety of disciplines, especially from a combination of existential phenomenology and organism-centered biology, I argue that mind can indeed be conceived as rooted in life, but only if we accept at the same time that social interaction plays a constitutive role for our cognitive capacities. (shrink)

Deflationists believe that the question “What is truth?” should be answered not by means of a metaphysical inquiry into the nature of truth, but by figuring out what use we make of the concept of truth, and the word ‘true’, in practice. This article accepts this methodology, and it thereby rejects pluralism about truth that is driven by ontological considerations. However, it shows that there are practical considerations for a pluralism about truth, formulated at the level of use. The theory (...) expounded by this article states that truth is a dual-purpose tool; it can be used as a device for transferring justificatory burdens and, for select areas of discourse, it can also be used as a standard, a norm. This contrast in how truth is used introduces a bifurcation in our discourse that is reminiscent of metaphysical divides traced by more traditional versions of alethic pluralism. However, my pluralism “at the level of use” states that truth is plural solely at the level of use. It is unified at both the conceptual as well as the metaphysical level. At those levels, the theory takes its cue from deflationism. As such, this theory is offered as a midway point and as a potential way forward in the debate between deflationism and pluralism. (shrink)

What is the relationship between negative experience, artistic production, and prudential value? If it were true that (for some people) artistic creativity must be purchased at the price of negative experience (to be clear: currently no one knows whether this is true), what should we conclude about the value of such experiences? Are they worth it for the sake of art? The first part of this essay considers general questions about how to establish the positive extrinsic value of something intrinsically (...) negative. The second part emphasizes the importance of various distinctions within the realm of the negative. We must distinguish between adversity (which is non-mental) and negative mental states, and between negative thoughts (or attitudes) and negative affect. Within the realm of negative affect, we must distinguish between negative emotions and moods, on the one hand, and negative affective perspectives on the other, and then between mildly negative affective perspectives and severely negative ones (for which I reserve the term ‘suffering’). These distinctions matter greatly, since different types of negative experience have very different degrees of prudential disvalue. Although many types of negative experience may be “worth it”—because their positive extrinsic value outweighs their negative value—this is rarely true of severe suffering. (shrink)

On the basis of psychological research, a group of philosophers known as 'situationists' argue that the evidence belies the existence of broad and stable (or 'global') character traits. They argue that this condemns as psychologically unrealistic those traditions in moral theory in which global virtues are upheld as ideals. After a survey of the debate to date, this article argues that the thesis of situationism is ill-supported by the available evidence. Situationists overlook the explanatory potential of a large class of (...) global character traits, namely, vices that do not involve other-directed malevolence, such as laziness, cowardice, and selfishness. A detailed discussion of the relevant empirical studies bearing on moral psychology shows that the behavioral patterns observed in these studies are consistent with the widespread possession of such non-malicious vices. This means, contrary to the situationist thesis, that the empirical record is fully compatible with the common existence of global character traits. (shrink)

Nearly everyone prefers pain to be in the past rather than the future. This seems like a rationally permissible preference. But I argue that appearances are misleading, and that future-biased preferences are in fact irrational. My argument appeals to trade-offs between hedonic experiences and other goods. I argue that we are rationally required to adopt an exchange rate between a hedonic experience and another type of good that stays fixed, regardless of whether the hedonic experience is in the past or (...) future. (shrink)

This chapter discusses vagueness in ethics.

Pragmatism and the correspondence theory of truth are longtime foes. Nevertheless, there is an argument to be made that pragmatists must embrace truth as correspondence. I show that there is a distinctive pragmatic utility to taking truth to be correspondence, and I argue that it would be inconsistent for pragmatists to accept the utility of the belief that truth is correspondence while resisting the premise that this belief is correct. -/- In order to show how pragmatists can embrace truth as (...) correspondence, I develop a kind of alethic pluralism, which treats pragmatist truth as theoretically fundamental to truth as correspondence. This theoretical fundamentality of pragmatist truth allows the pragmatist to conditionally accept truth as correspondence for certain discourses without falling prey to the typical pragmatist objections to correspondence. This pluralist account of truth thus allows pragmatists to concede that, for certain domains of discourse, truth is correspondence, without thereby betraying their pragmatist principles. (shrink)

You are morally permitted to save your friend at the expense of a few strangers, but not at the expense of very many. However, there seems no number of strangers that marks a precise upper bound here. Consequently, there are borderline cases of groups at the expense of which you are permitted to save your friend. This essay discusses the question of what explains ethical vagueness like this, arguing that there are interesting metaethical consequences of various explanations.

Dewey's pragmatist regard for the place of rules in moral deliberation occupies a middle ground between the rejection of rules found in Jonathan Dancy's moral particularism and full scale subsumptivism of actions to rules. Concerning the authority rules should play in one's moral thinking, however, Dewey is closely aligned with the particularists: he rejects their authority over individual cases. This essay takes Dewey's naturalistic approach to the derivation of rules to argue that in some cases it is ultimately beneficial to (...) allow rules to occupy a place of authority in moral thinking. (shrink)

In this paper, we develop an analysis of the structure and content of loneliness. We argue that this is an emotion of absence-an affective state in which certain social goods are regarded as out of reach for the subject of experience. By surveying the range of social goods that appear to be missing from the lonely person's perspective, we see what it is that can make this emotional condition so subjectively awful for those who undergo it, including the profound sense (...) of being unable to realise oneself, in collaboration with others. (shrink)

In an influential paper, L. A. Paul argues that one cannot rationally decide whether to have children. In particular, she argues that such a decision is intractable for standard decision theory. Paul's central argument in this paper rests on the claim that becoming a parent is ``epistemically transformative''---prior to becoming a parent, it is impossible to know what being a parent is like. Paul argues that because parenting is epistemically transformative, one cannot estimate the values of the various outcomes of (...) a decision whether to become a parent. In response, we argue that it is possible to estimate the value of epistemically transformative experiences. Therefore, there is no special difficulty involved in deciding whether to undergo epistemically transformative experiences. Insofar as major life decisions do pose a challenge to decision theory, we suggest that this is because they often involve separate, familiar problems. (shrink)

The anglophone philosophy profession has a well-known problem with gender equity. A sig-nificant aspect of the problem is the fact that there are simply so many more male philoso-phers than female philosophers among students and faculty alike. The problem is at its stark-est at the faculty level, where only 22% - 24% of philosophers are female in the United States (Van Camp 2014), the United Kingdom (Beebee & Saul 2011) and Australia (Goddard 2008).<1> While this is a result of the (...) percentage of women declining at each point through-out the standard career trajectory, recent large-scale studies in the United States (Paxton et al. 2012) and Australia (Goddard et al. 2008) have identified a key drop-off point as the transi-tion between taking introductory classes and majoring in philosophy. So why do dispropor-tionately few female students choose to major in philosophy? (shrink)

Conservatives claim that all phenomenal properties are sensory. Liberals countenance non-sensory phenomenal properties such as what it’s like to perceive some high-level property, and what it’s like to think that p. A hallmark of phenomenal properties is that they present an explanatory gap, so to resolve the dispute we should consider whether experience has non-sensory properties that appear ‘gappy’. The classic tests for ‘gappiness’ are the invertibility test and the zombifiability test. I suggest that these tests yield conflicting results: non-sensory (...) properties lend themselves to zombie scenarios but not to inversion scenarios. Which test should we trust? Against Carruthers & Veillet (2011), I argue that invertibility is not a viable condition of phenomenality. In contrast, being zombifiable is credibly necessary and sufficient for phenomenality. I conclude that there are non-sensory properties of experience that are ‘gappy’ in the right way, and that liberalism is therefore the most plausible position. (shrink)

I argue that while the feeling of bodily responses is not necessary to emotion, these feelings contribute significant meaningful content to everyday emotional experience. Emotional bodily feelings represent a ‘state of self’, analysed as a sense of one's body affording certain patterns of interaction with the environment. Recognising that there are two sources of intentional content in everyday emotional experience allows us to reconcile the diverging intuitions that people have about emotional states, and to understand better the long-standing debate between (...) bodily feeling-based and appraisal-based theories of emotion. (shrink)

Abstract: I argue that practically all vague language is context-sensitive in a covert and unfamiliar way. I first outline a novel puzzle concerning the interaction of conditionals and vagueness. I then argue that the best way of resolving the puzzle is through positing context-sensitive penumbral connections between sundry parts of language. I argue that these penumbral connections shift through a distinct form of Lewisian accommodation. The upshot is that meaning is a far shiftier thing than has typically been thought.

Why is there female under-representation among philosophy majors? We survey the hypotheses that have been proposed so far, grouping similar hypotheses together. We then propose a chronological taxonomy that distinguishes hypotheses according to the stage in undergraduates’ careers at which the hypotheses predict an increase in female under-representation. We then survey the empirical evidence for and against various hypotheses. We end by suggesting future avenues for research.

This book defends Aestheticism- the claim that everything is aesthetically valuable and that a life lived in pursuit of aesthetic value can be a particularly good one. Furthermore, in distilling aesthetic qualities, artists have a special role to play in teaching us to recognize values; a critical component of virtue. I ground my account upon an analysis of aesthetic value as ‘objectified final value’, which is underwritten by an original psychological claim that all aesthetic values are distal versions of practical (...) values. This is followed by systematic accounts of beauty, sublimity, comedy, drama, and tragedy, as well as appendix entries on the cute, the cool, the kitsch, the uncanny, the horrific, the erotic, and the furious. (shrink)

Frege believes that the content of declarative sentences divides into a thought and its ‘colouring’, perhaps combined with assertoric force. He further thinks it is important to separate the thought from its colouring. To do this, a criterion which determines sameness of sense between sentences must be deployed. But Frege provides three criteria for this task, each of which adjudicate on different grounds. In this article, rather than expand on criticisms levelled at two of the criteria offered, the author focuses (...) on the most promising candidate. As it stands, this criterion has problems, but not insuperable ones. He suggests an adjusted criterion that relies on the epistemic notion of triviality. He recommends this criterion as both harmonious with Frege’s broader thought and preferable to alternatives offered. The moral is that Frege individuates thoughts by deploying an epistemic concept, and this is the only suitable way for him to do so. (shrink)

What is the best way to account for the badness of pain and what sort of theory of welfare is best suited to accommodate this view? I argue that unpleasant sensory experiences are prudentially bad in the absence of contrary attitudes, but good when the object of positive attitudes. Pain is bad unless it is liked, enjoyed, valued etc. Interestingly, this view is incompatible with either pure objectivist or pure subjectivist understandings of welfare. However, there is a kind of welfare (...) theory that can incorporate this view of the badness of pain and which is very, very close to being a form of subjectivism. Moreover, this hybrid account of welfare is entirely compatible with the deep motivations of subjectivism. I therefore argue that those who lean towards welfare subjectivism should adopt this account of pain, and that we should revise our understanding of subjectivism to count such theories as subjective. (shrink)

I claim that the significance of comic works to influence our attitudes is limited by the conditions under which we find things funny. I argue that we can only find something funny if we regard it as norm-violating in a way that doesn’t make certain cognitive or pragmatic demands upon us. It is compatible with these conditions that humour reinforces our attitude that something is norm-violating. However, it is not compatible with these conditions that, on the basis of finding it (...) funny, we come to reject some existing attitude. Such a rejection would require that we recognize our attitude as norm-violating in a way that has pragmatic force. Thus if a humorous work reveals the absurdity of something, we can either find it funny and not have our attitudes significantly influenced, or else be significantly influenced but not find it funny. (shrink)

We introduce two concepts—social certainty and social doubt—that help to articulate a variety of experiences of the social world, such as shyness, self-consciousness, culture shock, and anxiety. Following Carel's (2013) analysis of bodily doubt, which explores how a person's tacit confidence in the workings of their body can be disrupted and undermined in illness, we consider how an individual's faith in themselves as a social agent, too, can be compromised or lost, thus altering their experience of what is afforded by (...) the social environment. We highlight how a loss of bodily or social certainty can be shaped and sustained by the environments in which one finds oneself. As such, we show how certain individuals might be more vulnerable to experiences of bodily and social doubt than others. (shrink)

In the middle of the last century, it was common to explain the notion of necessity in linguistic terms. A necessary truth, it was said, is a sentence whose truth is guaranteed by linguistic rules. Quine famously argued that, on this view, de re modal claims do not make sense. “Porcupettes are porcupines” is necessarily true, but it would be a mistake to say of a particular porcupette that it is necessarily a porcupine, or that it is possibly purple. Linguistic (...) theories of necessity fell out of favour with the publication of Kripke’s Naming and Necessity, and Quine’s arguments were put aside. In her recent book, Norms and Necessity, Amie Thomasson presents her modal normativism, which is an updated version of the mid-century theories just described. Quine’s arguments are thus relevant once again. We recapitulate Quine’s central argument, in the context of modal normativism. We then criticise Amie Thomasson’s discussion of de re modality. We finish by briefly presenting an alternative account of de re modal statements, which is compatible with modal normativism. (shrink)

In this essay, I discuss why consent is invalidated by duress that involves attaching penalties to someone's refusal to give consent. At the heart of my explanation is the Complaint Principle. This principle specifies that consent is defeasibly invalid when the consent results from someone conditionally imposing a penalty on the consent‐giver's refusal to give the consent, such that the consent‐giver has a legitimate complaint against this imposition focused on how it is affects their incentives for consenting. The Complaint Principle (...) says that this consent is defeasibly invalid to make room for the Authorization Principle, which allows sincere authorizations to constitute valid consent, even when these are issued by an agent acting under duress. The Authorization Principle has application only in cases of third‐party duress because when the consent‐receiver is the source of the duress, the consent‐giver is not sincerely authorizing the action. (shrink)