This chapter reclaims teleological ethics, arguing that the proper aim of moral thought and action is human flourishing. Building on Aristotle’s concept of eudaimonia, it extends classical virtue ethics in three ways: (1) grounding flourishing in empirical evidence from developmental psychology and archaeology; (2) shifting from merely individual excellence to excellence within systemic interdependence; and (3) moving from civic friendship in the polis to trust and the vow‑motive in complex societies of strangers. Flourishing is defined as the integrated exercise of (...) informed agency to sustain a meaningful life, operationalised through three measurable capacities (cognitive, moral, sustained agency). The chapter distinguishes ordinary flourishing (the threshold baseline) from horizon flourishing (clarity – the stable perception of interdependence). It integrates care ethics critiques of Kohlberg, proposing two post‑conventional stages (vow‑motive and clarity). The vow‑motive is the durable commitment to sustain and repair the conditions for flourishing; it arises naturally from clarity and the exercise of agency within a just commonwealth. The chapter concludes that moral heroism is a symptom of systemic failure, and that the proper task of moral philosophy is architectural: designing institutions that make flourishing possible without superhuman sacrifice. This work is part of a larger project, Noura: Justice, Flourishing, and the Commonwealth, and is cross‑referenced with two other PhilArchive preprints on value efficiency and the architecture of trust. (shrink)

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has long been criticized for ignoring human well‑being, but its deeper limitation is teleological: GDP optimizes for monetary throughput rather than the conditions that enable human flourishing. By treating all monetized activity as positive output, it obscures what this paper terms the attentional cost of abstraction—the systemic displacement of human and ecological realities by symbolic representations such as prices, metrics, and algorithmic scores. This cost generates rising defensive expenditure, cognitive burden, and institutional fragility, all of which (...) GDP records as growth. To diagnose this structural failure, the paper introduces the Durable Flourishing Indices (DFIₓ) and Flourishing Cost Indices (FCIₓ), a measurement framework that shifts evaluation from output to value efficiency: how effectively societies convert material resources and human time into flourishing lives. The DFI family isolates productive, defensive, cognitive, extractive, and coordination costs that remain invisible in GDP, while the complementary FCI indices reveal the cost per flourishing life. Grounded in an interdisciplinary account of flourishing as an empirically assessable institutional output, the framework provides a diagnostic architecture for distinguishing growth that enhances human development from growth that monetizes friction, opacity, and repair. (shrink)

Human flourishing exhibits vast cultural diversity – monastic contemplation, scientific inquiry, communal traditions, entrepreneurial innovation, and many other forms of meaningful life. Yet this diversity does not imply that flourishing is arbitrary or purely relative. Flourishing, defined as living a sustained life of adaptive, meaning‑making (Moore, forthcoming d), is the topic of this paper. It argues that just as there is a deep structure in all languages (universal grammar), flourishing, too, possesses universal, innate deep structural conditions that are realised in (...) culturally variable surface forms. These deep conditions are three innate capacities: cognitive capacity (self‑construction, self‑location, trajectory projection, causal inference, narrative integration), agentive capacity (sustained intention and coherent action), and moral capacity (forming and revising a conception of a meaningful life, taking responsibility). These capacities are species‑typical and developmentally real; they require enabling institutional scaffolds – visibility, symmetry, contestability, and repair – in order for a society of strangers to enable its participants to fully exercise these capacities and develop and sustain flourishing lives. The scaffolds are not themselves innate; they are analogous to the social interaction necessary for language acquisition. The framework reconciles universalism and pluralism without collapsing into cultural imperialism or relativism, and it provides a diagnostic basis for evaluating whether any large‑scale civilisation supports the deep structure of flourishing. (shrink)

Modern political theory often equates legitimate government with procedural democracy – competitive elections, multiparty systems, and formal rights. This paper argues that Aristotle’s classical typology offers a more fundamental standard: a regime is good when it rules for the common good, regardless of how many hold government power. Drawing on global survey data showing that citizens worldwide define democracy primarily by welfare, fairness, and protection rather than by procedures alone, I propose a structural criterion for legitimacy: the four revealing‑form conditions (...) of visibility, symmetry, contestability, and repair. Any regime – democracy, constitutional monarchy, or one‑party rule – that satisfies these conditions governs with the consent of the governed, because the governed can see consequences, challenge decisions, and expect repair. A concrete example from contemporary China (the “Blue Wind Chime” restorative justice programme) illustrates how a one‑party system can instantiate revealing‑form institutions and generate genuine consent. The paper concludes that Aristotle was right: the purpose of politics is flourishing, not procedure; monarchy (or any regime) is defensible not by heredity or tradition, but by its revealing‑form architecture. (shrink)

Standard accounts of freedom focus on negative liberty (non‑interference) or positive liberty (rational self‑direction). Both neglect a crucial dimension: epistemic scaffolding. A person may be legally uncoerced yet remain structurally disoriented – acting within architectures that obscure consequences, displace burdens, and prevent intelligible action. This paper proposes a third conception: freedom as the absence of systemic ignorance and the presence of intelligible action within revealing‑form institutions (visibility, symmetry, contestability, repair). Drawing on recent work on the architecture of trust, I argue (...) that agency in complex societies of strangers is not a metaphysical given but an emergent capacity scaffolded by institutional design. The paper defends a compatibilist view of causation, a two‑stage model of responsibility (structural plus individual), and the claim that freedom culminates in the vow‑motive – the durable commitment to sustain and repair the conditions for flourishing. It concludes that the free person does not seek isolation but clarity, and that clarity reveals interdependence, leading naturally to care. (shrink)

For Kant, the human cognitive faculty has two sub-faculties: sensibility and the understanding. Each has pure forms which are necessary to us as humans: space and time for sensibility; the categories for the understanding. But Kant is careful to leave open the possibility of there being creatures like us, with both sensibility and understanding, who nevertheless have different pure forms of sensibility. They would be finite rational beings and discursive cognizers. But they would not be human. And this raises a (...) question about the pure forms of the understanding. Does Kant leave open the possibility of discursive cognizers who have different categories? Even if other discursive cognizers might not sense like us, must they at least think like us? We argue that textual and systematic considerations do not determine the answers to these questions and examine whether Kant thinks that the issue cannot be decided. Consideration of his wider views on the nature and limits of our knowledge of mind shows that Kant could indeed remain neutral on the issue but that the exact form his neutrality can take is subject to unexpected constraints. The result would be an important difference between what Kant says about discursive cognizers with other forms of sensibility and what he is in a position to say about discursive cognizers with other forms of understanding. Kantian humility here takes on a distinctive character. (shrink)

Perception is often treated as the passive reception of sensory data, a process that merely informs an already‑constituted self. This paper argues for a different view: perception is an active, constructive capacity that simultaneously builds a coherent self and supplies the causal information needed for intentional agency. Drawing on phenomenological (Husserl, Merleau‑Ponty), enactive (Varela, Thompson), and predictive processing (Clark, Friston) traditions, the paper defends a constructive‑enactive account of perception. It shows that perception is not only epistemic (providing mental maps of (...) the world) but also ontological – it participates in the ongoing self‑construction of the agent. Because perception makes causal pathways legible, it is the epistemic gateway to interdependence. Consequently, institutional visibility – the condition that makes causal consequences traceable – is a moral necessity. A society that blocks perception of causal relations (an obscuring‑form society) directly undermines the cognitive capacity that underlies flourishing. (shrink)

Libertarian free will is, roughly, the view that the same agential states can cause different possible actions. Nonreductive physicalism is, roughly, the view that mental states cause actions to occur, while these actions also have sufficient physical causes. Though libertarian free will and nonreductive physicalism have overlapping subject matter, and while libertarian free will is currently trending at the same time as nonreductive physicalism is a dominant metaphysical posture, there are few sustained expositions of a nonreductive physicalist model of libertarian (...) free will – indeed some tell against such an admixture. This paper concocts such a blend by articulating and defending, with some caveats, a nonreductive physicalist model of libertarian free will. (shrink)

Democratic legitimacy is often grounded in procedural consent – voting, representation, majority rule. This paper argues that procedural consent is insufficient. Drawing on a structural account of trust and flourishing developed in previous work, we propose four conditions – Visibility, Contestability, Repair, and Symmetry – as prerequisites for meaningful consent. A government that conceals consequences, forecloses challenge, defers repair, or decouples benefits from burdens does not govern by consent, regardless of its electoral procedures. We show how these conditions diagnose legitimation (...) deficits that standard democratic metrics miss, and we outline an institutional architecture for government as care for the governed. This framework does not reject democracy but deepens it: consent without these conditions is formally procedural but substantively hollow. (shrink)

On standard readings of Grice, Gricean communication requires (a) possession of a concept of belief, (b) the ability to make complex inferences about others’ goal-directed behaviour, and (c) the ability to entertain fourth order meta-representations. To the extent that these abilities are pre-requisites of Gricean communication they are inconsistent with the view that Gricean communication could play a role in their development. In this paper, I argue that a class of ‘minimally Gricean acts’ satisfy the intentional structure described by Grice, (...) but require none of abilities (a)-(c). As a result, Gricean communicative abilities may indeed contribute to the development of (a)-(c) – in particular, by enabling language development. This conclusion has important implications for our theorising about cognitive development. (shrink)

Libertarian free will is, roughly, the view that agents cause actions to occur or not occur: Maddy’s decision to get a beer causes her to get up off her comfortable couch to get a beer, though she almost chose not to get up. Libertarian free will notoriously faces the luck objection, according to which agential states do not determine whether an action occurs or not, so it is beyond the control of the agent, hence lucky, whether an action occurs or (...) not: Maddy’s reasons for getting beer in equipoise with her reasons to remain in her comfortable seat do not determine that she will get up or stay seated, so it seems beyond her control, hence lucky, that she gets up. In this paper I consider a sub-set of the luck objection called the Physical Indeterminism Luck Objection, according to which indeterministic physical processes cause actions to occur or not, and agent’s lack control over these indeterministic physical processes, so agent’s lack control over, hence it is lucky, whether action occurs or not. After motivating the physical indeterminism luck objection, I consider responses from three recent event-causal libertarian models, and conclude that they fail to overcome the problem, though one promising avenue is opened up. (shrink)

Anyone who has pondered the limitlessness of space and time, or the endlessness of numbers, or the perfection of God will recognize the special fascination of this question. Adrian Moore's historical study of the infinite covers all its aspects, from the mathematical to the mystical.

Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development identifies post-conventional morality with abstract principle-based reasoning, including utilitarian, contractarian, and rights-based approaches. This paper argues that such reasoning remains conventional because it operates within established legal, social, and philosophical frameworks, even when it involves critical reflection. We argue that genuinely post-conventional morality arises at stage 5 from the lived experience of interdependent agency and culminates at stage 6 in the direct, stable perception of interdependence. Drawing on care ethics (Gilligan), Blasi’s account of moral (...) identity, and the author’s framework of flourishing, we propose a two-stage model of post-conventional moral development: the vow-motive, a stabilised commitment to sustain and repair the conditions of flourishing arising from the perception of interdependence, and clarity, the spontaneous expression of care grounded in the direct perception of interdependence. We argue that flourishing, suffering, and interdependence provide an account of moral motivation that avoids both principle-based formalism and moral relativism. The paper further argues that conventional care and conventional rule-based reasoning are products of socialisation rather than biological determinism and that neither constitutes genuinely post-conventional morality. Finally, it develops empirical predictions concerning moral development, self-construal, institutional design, and the cultivation of post-conventional care, and proposes directions for future research. (shrink)

Hobbes’s Leviathan is often read as a defense of absolute sovereignty grounded in fear and self‑preservation. This paper reinterprets Hobbes as a proto‑empirical thinker whose insights into vulnerability, reciprocal dependence, and coordination remain foundational but were limited by the science of his era. Drawing on developmental psychology, attachment theory, social cognition, flourishing research, and institutional epistemology, I reconstruct Hobbes’s “law of accommodation” as a principle of care rather than fear. The sovereign’s stability, I argue, implicitly requires a proto‑vow motive — (...) a durable commitment to sustain the laws of nature — but such a motive can be cultivated in all persons, not only rulers. This dissolves the case for absolutism and points toward revealing‑form institutions (visibility, symmetry, contestability, repair) as the true foundation of legitimacy. The result is a trajectory from Leviathan to Noura: a rebirth of liberalism that is historically continuous, empirically updated, and oriented toward flourishing‑based legitimacy. (shrink)

Liberal theories of justice, from Hobbes to Rawls, rest on a particular theory of value: the satisfaction of subjective preferences. On this view, a person's good is whatever they happen to prefer, and justice consists in fairly distributing the means to satisfy those preferences. This paper argues that the preference‑satisfaction model is both empirically and philosophically inadequate. Human beings are not preference machines; they are meaning‑makers. Flourishing is not the satisfaction of arbitrary preferences, but the integrated exercise of cognitive, moral, (...) and agentive capacities to sustain a meaningful life. -/- The paper further argues that Rawls was mistaken to identify justice with fairness, and mistaken to suppose that his two principles fully articulate the concept of fairness. Properly understood, fairness is a necessary condition of justice, and fairness consists in symmetry—the alignment of benefits and burdens with causal responsibility. Rawls's "fairness" is a vague mixture of the indeterminate "maximum co‑possible liberty" principle and an intuitive belief that society should make the worst off as well off as possible. But without a concept of flourishing, "as good as it can be" is empty. -/- Justice in a complex society of strangers—a commonwealth—requires more than fairness alone. A just commonwealth enables all citizens to flourish by providing the institutional and material conditions necessary for the development and exercise of distinctly human capacities for meaning‑making, care, and informed agency. Fairness as symmetry is one of four institutional conditions required for such flourishing. Together with visibility, contestability, and repair, it forms part of the deep structure of a commonwealth. In addition, a just commonwealth must provide adequate education and ensure meaningful opportunities to secure the material requisites of flourishing through participation in cooperative production. Together with the four scaffolds, these conditions result in informed agency. -/- The paper concludes that society is not responsible for equalising outcomes. It is responsible for ensuring that everyone has fully informed agency and the necessary support so that each can develop and sustain a flourishing life through their own informed choices and cooperative production. Justice is not the fair distribution of the means to satisfy preferences. It is the design of institutions that enable all persons to develop and exercise their capacities for meaning‑making, care, and agency, thereby sustaining lives of their own choosing. -/- . (shrink)

I argue that uniquely human forms of ‘Theory of Mind’ are a product of cultural evolution. Specifically, propositional attitude psychology is a linguistically constructed folk model of the human mind, invented by our ancestors for a range of tasks and refined over successive generations of users. The construction of these folk models gave humans new tools for thinking and reasoning about mental states—and so imbued us with abilities not shared by non-linguistic species. I also argue that uniquely human forms of (...) ToM are not required for language development, such that an account of the cultural origins of ToM does not jeopardise the explanation of language development. Finally, I sketch a historical model of the cultural evolution of mental state talk. (shrink)

I recently argued that reductive physicalist versions of libertarian free will face a physical indeterminism luck objection. John Lemos claims that one potential advocate of reductive physicalist libertarianism, Robert Kane, avoids this physical indeterminism luck objection. I here show how the problem remains.

John Locke's theory of property rests upon three claims: that property arises through labour, that appropriation is legitimate only where enough and as good is left for others, and that no one may take more than they can use before it spoils. Contemporary discussions often retain the first claim while neglecting the second and third. This paper argues that the provisos are not historical curiosities but the central conditions of property's legitimacy. Drawing upon the Noura framework, I reinterpret labour as (...) participation in cooperative productive activity, reinterpret the "enough and as good" proviso as requiring that institutions preserve fair access to the requisites of flourishing, and reinterpret the spoilage proviso as prohibiting the hoarding of capital outside productive circulation. Because productive activity depends upon socially generated capacities, shared knowledge, infrastructure, care, and ecological systems, property rights cannot be understood as absolute individual entitlements. They are conditional claims arising within cooperative systems whose legitimacy depends upon maintaining the conditions under which all persons can participate as informed agents. The paper extends this reconstruction to inheritance, ecological sustainability, intellectual property, and the global commonwealth, showing that the Bancor system's prohibition on hoarding is a global instantiation of the spoilage proviso, and that the same principle applies at the individual level. The result is a reconstruction of property rights that remains recognisably Lockean while providing a contemporary account of justice, cooperation, and flourishing. -/- . (shrink)

The dollar‑centric financial order entrenches asymmetry, externalises ecological costs, and records defensive load as growth. This paper proposes a counter‑model: a Global Commonwealth built on four structural invariants — Visibility, Symmetry, Contestability, and Repair — extended to the planetary scale. At its core is a Neutral Clearing Union with a Bancor unit of account, whose exchange rates are determined not by speculation but by each nation's value efficiency (nF/TPE), measured through Durable Flourishing Indices (DFIs). Surpluses trigger automatic demurrage, reinvested into (...) repair. New Bancors are minted only when defensive load decreases, aligning currency creation with flourishing. The Five Articles of Perpetual Commonwealth articulate reciprocity, law, visibility, dialogue, and repair as functional prerequisites for trust among nations. For BRICS and the Global South, this architecture offers a cooperative alternative to IMF conditionality and neoliberal austerity: debt denominated in flourishing, not dollars. The paper outlines institutional prototypes — Moralogy Institute, Court of Repair, Neutral Clearing Union — and sketches pathways for pilot implementation within BRICS+ frameworks. -/- . (shrink)

The contemporary international order remains incapable of reliably producing peace, sustainability, or durable flourishing. This paper argues that the failure is not primarily moral but structural. The nation‑state system was designed for a world of limited interdependence. The contemporary world, however, is characterised by dense economic, ecological, informational, epidemiological, and security interdependence. Institutions adequate for a world of deep interdependence must satisfy the same conditions required for flourishing at the domestic level: visibility, symmetry, contestability, and repair. -/- This paper extends (...) those conditions to the international order. It argues that the world does not require a world state, a universal culture, or a single form of government. Rather, it requires an architecture that enables diverse nations to cooperate, learn from one another, resolve disputes peacefully, and repair harms that arise within a shared web of interdependence. The Five Articles of Perpetual Commonwealth articulate the normative principles of such an architecture, while institutions such as the Moralogy Institute, the Court of Conflict Resolution and Repair, the Neutral Clearing Union, and the Bancor illustrate how those principles might be operationalised. The Global Commonwealth is therefore not a world government but an architecture for transforming interdependence from a source of vulnerability into a foundation for shared flourishing. (shrink)

This paper develops a general theory of the legitimacy of institutional conventions through an examination of property. Property is not an object; it is a social relation among persons concerning things, sustained by institutions that define ownership, transfer, inheritance, and cooperation [Hohfeld, 1919; Honoré, 1961; Waldron, 1988]. Without institutions there are no property rights—only physical possessions [North, 1990; Ostrom, 1990]. The paper argues that property institutions are solutions to coordination problems, and their legitimacy depends upon whether they enable informed agency (...) and flourishing. Drawing upon Locke's three pillars—labour, the "enough and as good" proviso, and the spoilage limitation—reinterpreted through the Noura framework, the paper shows that legitimate property institutions must: (1) account for the cooperative nature of all productive activity [Marx, 1867; Bowles & Gintis, 2011]; (2) secure the requisites of flourishing for all [Sen, 1999; Nussbaum, 2011]; and (3) prohibit the hoarding of surplus value outside productive circulation [Piketty, 2014; Philippon, 2019; Stiglitz, 2012]. The deep structure of legitimate institutions consists of visibility, symmetry, contestability, repair, education, and the requisites of flourishing [Moore, 2026b]. These are not normative ideals but empirical conditions under which informed agency is possible [Piaget, 1950; Kohlberg, 1981, 1984; Gilligan, 1982]. Human beings possess three empirically observable capacities—cognitive, agentive, and moral—that develop only under certain institutional conditions. Institutions that fail to provide those conditions systematically impair informed agency. Therefore informed agents have reason to reject such institutions. Property rights are not a priori; they are conventions within institutions. Institutions must empower informed agency so that everyone has the opportunity to flourish. The paper concludes that the question is not who first mixed labour with resources, but what kind of property institutions informed agents can reasonably accept in a world of interdependent production—and whether those institutions prevent the economic spoilage of surplus value. -/- This paper is cross referenced to As Good and Enough: A Reconstruction of Property Rights, which provides the detailed Lockean reconstructions of the provisos. (shrink)

It is sometimes claimed that Gricean communication is necessarily a form of cooperative or ‘joint’ action. A consequence of this Cooperative Communication View is that Gricean communication could not itself contribute to an explanation of the possibility of joint action. I argue that even though Gricean communication is often a form of joint action, it is not necessarily so—since it does not always require intentional action on the part of a hearer. Rejecting the Cooperative Communication View has attractive consequences for (...) our theorising about human cognitive development, since it opens up the possibility of appealing to communicative interaction to explain the emergence of joint action in phylogeny. (shrink)

Libertarian free will is the view that agents can choose between various courses of action. Advocates of libertarian free will largely divide themselves between event-causal libertarianism and agent-causal libertarianism. Robert Kane, a leading contemporary libertarian, recently proposes a hybrid agent-causal, event-causal model, according to which agent involving events such as reasons and efforts play a necessary but insufficient role in causing choices, leaving a necessary role for agents-qua-agents. In this paper I consider the merits and demerits of Kane's hybrid model (...) before introducing a modified event-causal, agent-causal model of libertarian free will that expands upon, but also substantially amends, Kane's model. (shrink)

Researchers have converged on the idea that a pragmatic understanding of communication can shed important light on the evolution of language. Accordingly, animal communication scientists have been keen to adopt insights from pragmatics research. Some authors couple their appeal to pragmatic aspects of communication with the claim that there are fundamental asymmetries between signalers and receivers in non-human animals. For example, in the case of primate vocal calls, signalers are said to produce signals unintentionally and mindlessly, whereas receivers are thought (...) to engage in contextual interpretation to derive the significance of signals. We argue that claims about signaler-receiver asymmetries are often confused. This is partly because their authors conflate two conceptions of pragmatics, which generate different accounts of the explanatory target for accounts of the evolution of language. Here we distinguish these conceptions, in order to help specify more precisely the proper explanatory target for language evolution research. (shrink)

We admire Heyes's attempt to develop a mechanistic account of norm cognition. Nonetheless, her account leaves us unsure of whom Heyes counts as normative agents, and on what grounds. Therefore we ask a series of questions designed to clarify which features of Heyes's account she thinks are necessary and sufficient for norm cognition.

[A. W. Moore] Criteria of ineffability are presented which, it is claimed, preclude the possibility of truths that are ineffable, but not the possibility of other things that are ineffable—not even the possibility of other things that are non-trivially ineffable. Specifically, they do not preclude the possibility of states of understanding that are ineffable. This, it is argued, allows for a reappraisal of the dispute between those who adopt a traditional reading of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and those who adopt the new (...) reading recently championed by Cora Diamond, James Conant, and others. By maintaining that what the nonsense in the Tractatus is supposed to convey is ineffable understanding, rather than ineffable truth, we can do considerable justice to each of these readings. We can also do considerable justice to the Tractatus. /// [Peter Sullivan] Moore proposes to cut between 'traditional' and 'new' approaches to the Tractatus, suggesting that Wittgenstein's intention is to convey, through the knowing use of nonsense, ineffable understanding. I argue, first, that there is indeed room for a proposal of Moore's general kind. Secondly, though, I question whether Moore's actual proposal is not more in tune with Wittgenstein's later thought than with the attitude of the Tractatus. (shrink)

The question "Can a billionaire be happy?" is often asked rhetorically, but it raises a profound philosophical issue. This paper follows Aristotle's method: taking an ordinary question about happiness and subjecting it to rigorous philosophical analysis. Drawing on the Noura framework, the paper defines flourishing as the integrated exercise of three innate capacities—cognitive, agentive, and moral—to develop and sustain a meaningful life of one's own choosing. It argues that a billionaire may experience subjective well-being, purpose, and agency, yet still fail (...) to flourish if their life systematically violates the conditions of interdependent flourishing. The normative constraint—compatibility with the Four Conditions (visibility, symmetry, contestability, repair) and the truth of interdependence—excludes lives that deny the constitutive conditions of human flourishing. The paper argues that there is little evidence that the majority of billionaires actively seek to ensure that workers possess the requisites of flourishing, and that practical indifference to whether those requisites are secured constitutes evidence that one's life is not fully ordered toward flourishing. The paper concludes that wealth is not the enemy of flourishing, but wealth that depends upon opacity, asymmetry, unaccountable power, and unrepaired harm—wealth that denies interdependence—is incompatible with flourishing. A billionaire may be happy in the sense of experiencing subjective well-being, but they are not flourishing unless their wealth is deployed in ways that sustain and repair the conditions for flourishing for all. -/- . (shrink)

Compatibilism is the view that determinism is true, but agents nevertheless possess free will as long as they act from a compatibilist friendly agential structure (i.e., agents want to perform their actions, agents identify with the actions they perform, agents would be responsive to reasons against performing those actions, etc.). The most powerful contemporary objection to compatibilism is the manipulation argument, according to which agents determined to act as they do by the prodding of manipulative neuroscientists are not considered free, (...) so agents determined to act by physical processes operating from the remote past should not be considered free either. One compatibilist response to the manipulation argument is the so-called hard-line reply, according to which compatibilists argue that agents determined by physical processes operating from the remote past are free, so agents determined by manipulative neuroscientists are free as well. In this paper I demonstrate that leading hard-line replies fail, while also introducing a novel argument against the hard-line reply. (shrink)

Nonreductive physicalism states that actions have sufficient physical causes and distinct mental causes. Nonreductive physicalism has recently faced the exclusion problem, according to which the single sufficient physical cause excludes the mental causes from causal efficacy. Autonomists respond by stating that while mental-to-physical causation fails, mental-to-mental causation persists. Several recent philosophers establish this autonomy result via similar models of causation :1031–1049, 2016; Zhong, J Philos 111:341–360, 2014). In this paper I argue that both of these autonomist models fail on account (...) of the problem of Edwards’s Dictum. However, I appeal to foundational principles of action theory to resuscitate mental-to-mental causation in a manner that is consistent with the models of causation endorsed by these autonomists. (shrink)

Tomasello and colleagues have offered various arguments to explain why apes find the comprehension of pointing difficult. They have argued that: (i) apes fail to understand communicative intentions; (ii) they fail to understand informative, cooperative communication, and (iii) they fail to track the common ground that pointing comprehension requires. In the course of a review of the literature on apes' production and comprehension of pointing, I reject (i) and (ii), and offer a qualified defence of (iii). Drawing on work on (...) expressive communication, I sketch an account of a mechanism by which ape gestural communication may proceed: the showing of expressive and naturally meaningful embodied behaviours. Such gestures are easily interpretable because they present rich evidence for a speaker's message. By contrast, pointing typically provides poor evidence for a speaker’s message, which must therefore be inferred from considerations in the interlocutors' common ground. This makes pointing comprehension comparatively difficult. (shrink)

This essay involves exploration of certain repercussions of Bernard Williams’ view that there is, in Wittgenstein’s later work, a transcendental idealism akin to that found in the Tractatus—sharing with it the feature that it cannot be satisfactorily stated. It is argued that, if Williams is right, then Wittgenstein’s later work precludes a philosophically substantial theory of meaning; for such a theory would force us to try to state the idealism. In a postscript written for the reprint of the essay, reasons (...) are given for thinking that Williams is not right: Wittgenstein’s later work actually helps us to repudiate as ill-conceived all those questions whose answers invite us to embrace any such idealism. But the main thesis of the essay remains intact. Indeed the idea that Wittgenstein’s later work precludes a philosophically substantial theory of meaning is reinforced. (shrink)

I explore, explain, and expound the history of the debates about virtue and virtue ethics in twentieth-century anglophone philosophy.

Rights are central to modern political philosophy and legal theory, but their foundation remains contested. Are they natural, God-given, or pre-social entitlements inherent in personhood ? This paper argues that all such foundational accounts of rights are unnecessary. Applying Ockham's Razor, we need not posit metaphysical rights, natural rights, or any other foundational ontology of rights. We need only observe that institutions create rights, and institutions are legitimate only insofar as they enable flourishing. Rights are therefore explained by institutional legitimacy, (...) not the other way around. The requirements of informed agency and flourishing constitute the deep structure of legitimate commonwealth institutions. Rights are not elements of that deep structure; they are institutionally specific surface realisations through which those requirements may be protected and enabled. Their content therefore does not exist independently of institutional design. The paper argues further that we do not need rights in order to identify injustice. We need an account of legitimate institutional function. Rights arise in the design, maintenance, and repair of legitimate institutions. This is not a retreat from moral criticism but a refoundation of it. Injustice is identified by its failure to enable informed agency and flourishing. Rights are the institutional conventions through which legitimate institutions protect and enable informed agency. (shrink)

A new international currency faces a foundational problem: how to distribute the initial supply fairly. Existing proposals (Keynes’s bancor, Special Drawing Rights, BRICS reserve currencies) rely on GDP‑weighted quotas or political bargaining – both of which entrench existing asymmetries. This paper proposes a radical alternative: the Bancor is launched on a per‑capita basis, giving every human life equal representation in the initial currency pool. The value of the Bancor is anchored to a global baseline of value efficiency (F/TPE), measured by (...) the Durable Flourishing Indices. After launch, new Bancors are minted only when global defensive load decreases – through ecological restoration, demilitarisation, or social repair (repair‑minting). Persistent trade surpluses trigger automatic demurrage, redirecting funds into a Global Repair Fund. Nations can strengthen their currency only by raising domestic F/TPE – i.e., by converting resources into flourishing lives more efficiently. The paper outlines an audit framework to ensure repair‑minting is visible, symmetric, contestable, and repairable; a pilot pathway with a concrete timeline; and a strategic contrast between the Bancor’s repair‑logic and the dollar’s debt‑logic. The system can be implemented by a coalition of willing nations (BRICS+, Global South) without requiring Western consent. (shrink)

Current work in language models (LMs) helps us speed up or even skip thinking by accelerating and automating cognitive work. But can LMs help us with critical thinking -- thinking in deeper, more reflective ways which challenge assumptions, clarify ideas, and engineer new concepts? We treat philosophy as a case study in critical thinking, and interview 21 professional philosophers about how they engage in critical thinking and on their experiences with LMs. We find that philosophers do not find LMs to (...) be useful because they lack a sense of selfhood (memory, beliefs, consistency) and initiative (curiosity, proactivity). We propose the selfhood-initiative model for critical thinking tools to characterize this gap. Using the model, we formulate three roles LMs could play as critical thinking tools: the Interlocutor, the Monitor, and the Respondent. We hope that our work inspires LM researchers to further develop LMs as critical thinking tools and philosophers and other 'critical thinkers' to imagine intellectually substantive uses of LMs. (shrink)

Orang-utans played a communication game in two studies testing their ability to produce and comprehend requestive pointing. While the ‘communicator’ could see but not obtain hidden food, the ‘donor’ could release the food to the communicator, but could not see its location for herself. They could coordinate successfully if the communicator pointed to the food, and if the donor comprehended his communicative goal and responded pro-socially. In Study 1, one orang-utan pointed regularly and accurately for peers. However, they responded only (...) rarely. In Study 2, a human experimenter played the communicator’s role in three conditions, testing the apes’ comprehension of points of different heights and different degrees of ostension. There was no effect of condition. However, across conditions one donor performed well individually, and as a group orang-utans’ comprehension performance tended towards significance. We explain this on the grounds that comprehension required inferences that they found difficult – but not impossible. The finding has valuable implications for our thinking about the development of pointing in phylogeny. (shrink)

国内生产总值（GDP）长期因忽视人类福祉而受到批评，但其更深层的局限是目的论的：GDP为货币吞吐量而非人类繁荣条件而优化。本文将“抽象注意成本”定义为系统性替代——价格、指标、算法等符号表征排挤了人与 生态的现实。该成本导致防御性支出、认知负担和制度脆弱性上升，而GDP却将这些记录为增长。 为诊断这一结构性缺陷，本文提出持久繁荣指数（DFIₓ）与繁荣成本指数（FCIₓ），将评估从“产出”转向价值效率：社会将物质资源和人的时间转化为繁荣生活的有效程度。DFI系列分离了GDP看不见的生产、防 御、认知、提取和协调成本，而FCI则揭示每单位繁荣生活的成本。本文基于跨学科的繁荣操作化定义，提供了一种诊断架构，用以区分真正提升人类发展的增长与仅仅货币化摩擦、不透明及修复的“增长”。.

国内生产总值（GDP）长期受到忽视人类福祉的批评，但其更深层的局限是目的论式的：GDP为货币吞吐量而非人类繁荣得以实现的条件进行优化。通过将所有货币化活动视为正向产出，GDP掩盖了本文所称的 抽象化的注意力成本¹ ——即人类与生态现实被价格、指标、算法评分等符号表征系统性替代的过程。这一成本催生了不断上升的防御性支出、认知负担和制度脆弱性，而GDP却将这些记录为增长。为诊断这一结构性失效，本文引入 持久繁荣指数（DFI） 与 繁荣成本指数（FCI） ，这是一个将评价从产出转向 价值效率 的测量框架：社会将物质资源与人类时间转化为繁荣生活的有效程度。DFI家族分离了GDP中不可见的生产性、防御性、认知性、提取性和协调性成本，而互补的FCI指数则揭示每单位繁荣生活所付出的成本。基于对繁荣 的跨学科阐释——将其视为可经验评估的制度产出——该框架提供了一种诊断性架构，用以区分增进人类发展的增长与将摩擦、不透明及修复货币化的增长。 .

一种新的国际货币面临一个根本性问题：如何公平地分配初始供应量。现有方案（凯恩斯的班科、特别提款权、金砖国家储备货币）依赖于按GDP加权的配额或政治谈判——两者都固化了现有的不对称格局。本文提出一个根本 性的替代方案：班科按人均基础发行，在初始货币池中给予每个人类生命平等的代表权。班科的价值锚定于全球价值效率基线（F/TPE），由持久繁荣指数测量。发行后，新的班科仅在全球防御性负担下降时铸造——通过生 态修复、非军事化或社会修复（修复铸造¹）。持续的贸易顺差触发自动滞留费²，资金直接转入全球修复基金。各国只能通过提高国内价值效率（即以更高效的方式将资源转化为繁荣生活）来强化本国货币。本文概述了确保修 复铸造可见、对称、可争辩、可修复的审计框架；一个带有具体时间表的试点路径；以及班科的修复逻辑与美元的债务逻辑之间的战略对比。该系统可由一个有意愿的国家联盟（金砖国家+、全球南方）在不需西方同意的情况下 实施。 .

人类繁荣展现出巨大的文化多样性——寺院冥想、科学探究、社群传统、创业创新，以及许多其他形式的有意义生活。然而，这种多样性并不意味着繁荣是任意的或纯粹相对的。本文将繁荣定义为过一种持续的、适应性的意义建 构生活（Moore，即将出版 d），并论证：正如所有语言都存在深层结构（普遍语法）一样，繁荣也拥有普遍的、先天的深层结构条件，这些条件在文化上可变的表层形式中得以实现。这些深层条件是三种先天能力：认知能力（自我建构、自我定位、轨迹 投射、因果推断、叙事整合）、能动能力（持续意图与连贯行动）和道德能力（形成并修正有意义生活的观念、承担责任）。这些能力是物种典型的、发育真实的；它们需要制度性支架——可见性、对称性、可争辩性和可修复性 ——以便一个陌生人社会能够使其参与者充分行使这些能力，发展并维持繁荣的生活。这些支架本身并非先天固有；它们类似于语言习得所需的社会互动。该框架调和了普遍主义与多元主义，既不会滑向文化帝国主义，也不会滑 向相对主义，并为评估任何大型文明是否支持繁荣的深层结构提供了诊断基础。 -/- 关键词：深层结构；繁荣；普遍语法；认知能力；能动能力；道德能力；显明型制度；文化多样性 .

Agent-causal libertarianism is the view that agents-qua-agents, rather than being determined by external factors beyond their control, can choose for themselves, among various possibilities, how they will act. Numerous philosophers yoke their agent-causal libertarianism with an emergentist metaphysic, according to which nature is mereologically layered such that novel wholes emerge from, and causally influence, the parts constituting them. In this paper I present an emergentist model of agent causal libertarianism, according to which agents as emergent wholes of higher-level parts such (...) as reasons, desires and choices, arise out of and causally influence, their lower-level neural parts. I then compare and contrast this model with two other contemporary agent-causal emergentist models, one from Timothy O’Connor, the other from Juan Morales. After arguing that my model is preferable in several respects to these models, I consider a leading concern with all forms of emergentism, namely, outlining how it integrates with the doctrine of physicalism. (shrink)

关于自由的经典论述聚焦于消极自由（不受干涉）或积极自由（理性的自我决定）。两者都忽略了一个关键维度：认知支架²。一个人可能在法律上不受强制，却仍然处于结构性迷失之中——在那些掩盖后果、转移负担、阻止可 理解行动的架构内行动。本文提出第三种概念：自由即系统性无知¹的不在场，并能够在显明型制度中进行可理解行动。显明型制度提供可见性、对称性、可争辩性和可修复性。借鉴近期关于信任架构的研究，本文论证：在复杂 的陌生人社会中，能动性不是形而上学给定之物，而是由制度设计所支撑的涌现能力。本文辩护一种关于因果关系的相容论观点⁴，一个两阶段责任模型（结构性的加上个体的），并主张自由最终表现为誓愿动机——维持和修复 繁荣条件的持久承诺。结论是：自由人不寻求孤立，而是寻求清晰；而清晰揭示了相互依存，自然地导向关怀。 .

现代政治理论常常将合法政府等同于程序性民主——竞争性选举、多党制和形式权利。本文认为，亚里士多德的古典类型学提供了一个更根本的标准：一个政体是好的，当它为共同利益而统治，无论多少人掌握政府权力。利用全 球民调数据（显示世界各地的公民主要根据福利、公平和保护而非仅凭程序来定义民主），我提出一个关于合法性的结构性标准：显明型制度的四个条件——可见性、对称性、可争辩性和可修复性。任何政体——民主制、君主立 宪制或一党制——只要满足这些条件，就获得了被统治者的同意而统治，因为被统治者能够看到后果、挑战决策并期望修复。当代中国的一个具体例子（“蓝风铃”恢复性司法项目）说明了一党制如何能够实例化显明型制度并产 生真正的同意。本文的结论是：亚里士多德是正确的——政治的目的是繁荣，而非程序；君主制（或任何政体）的可辩护性不在于世袭或传统，而在于其显明型架构。本文对比较政治理论和当代中国治理辩论具有直接的启示意义 。 .

经典囚徒困境展示了理性自利如何导致相互背叛。本文提出一个不同的困境：在什么条件下，一个被公正监禁的囚犯能够诚实地说“我属于这里”？借助 Noura 框架中的显明型制度（可见性、对称性、可争辩性、可修复性），本文论证：只有当社会已经重构自身，使所有人都能够实现繁荣时，这样的回答才是可能的。这需要：（1）保障繁荣所需的物质与认知要件；（2）提供充分的 系统性素养教育；（3）将刑事司法从报应转向修复。本文回顾了犯罪结构性成因的实证证据，并介绍了中国的一个恢复性司法实践（“蓝风铃”）作为显明型逻辑运作的范例。结论是：一个获得了清明（clarity）的囚 犯——看清了自己的因果责任，以及一个透明、修复导向的制度的公正性——能够真诚地说“我属于这里”，这不是屈服，而是知情能动性的表达。 -/- .

The classic prisoner’s dilemma models how rational self‑interest can lead to mutual betrayal. This paper introduces a different dilemma: under what conditions can a prisoner – even one justly incarcerated – honestly answer “I belong here”? Drawing on the Noura framework of revealing‑form institutions (visibility, symmetry, contestability, repair), I argue that such an answer is possible only when society has restructured itself to enable flourishing for all. This requires (1) securing the material and cognitive requisites of flourishing, (2) providing adequate (...) education for systemic literacy, and (3) shifting criminal justice from retribution to repair. I review empirical evidence on the structural causes of crime and present a Chinese restorative justice practice (“Blue Wind Chime”) as an example of revealing‑form logic at work. The paper concludes that a prisoner who achieves clarity – who sees their own causal responsibility and the fairness of a transparent, repair‑oriented institution – can genuinely say “I belong here,” not as submission but as an expression of informed agency. (shrink)

The American founders declared that legitimate government rests on consent, secures liberty, and enables the pursuit of happiness. This paper argues that these purposes logically require four structural conditions: visibility (consequences traceable), symmetry (benefits and burdens aligned with causal responsibility), contestability (affected parties can challenge decisions), and repair (harms can be redressed). Drawing on modern empirical knowledge, we operationalise the founders’ concepts of liberty and happiness as informed agency and flourishing, respectively. These definitions are not inventions of new law but (...) precise specifications of the principles the founders themselves invoked. The majority ruling in Citizens United v. FEC (2010) violates all four structural conditions, thereby undermining informed agency, distorting consent, and obstructing the pursuit of happiness. The decision is unjust not because of a novel theory, but because it contradicts the very purposes for which legitimate government exists. (shrink)

This essay appeared as a contribution to a special issue of European Journal of Philosophy to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of P. F. Strawson’s The Bounds of Sense. In that book Strawson asks whether we should agree with Kant's claim, in his Critique of Pure Reason, that there can be only one world. What Kant means by this claim is that the four-dimensional realm that we inhabit must constitute the whole of empirical reality. Strawson gives reasons for (...) challenging this claim. This essay raises the question whether, even if Strawson is right, we may nevertheless have reason to believe that there can be only one world on a broader understanding of ‘world’. The aim is as much to clarify the issue as to settle it, although an attempt is made to motivate the view that there can indeed be only one world on this broader understanding. (shrink)

In this essay I focus on the idea of the univocity of being, championed by Duns Scotus and given prominence more recently by Deleuze. Although I am interested in how this idea can be established, my primary concern is with something more basic: how the idea can even be properly thought. In the course of exploring this issue, which I do partly by borrowing some ideas about logical syntax from Wittgenstein's Tractatus, I try to show how there can be dialogue (...) between analytic philosophers and those of other traditions. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to characterize the issue whether tense is real. Roughly, this is the issue whether, given any tensed representation, its tense corresponds in some suitably direct way to some feature of reality. The task is to make this less rough. Eight characterizations of the issue are considered and rejected, before one is endorsed. On this characterization, the unreality of tense is equivalent to the unity of temporal reality. The issue whether tense is real, so characterized, (...) is then related to Kant’s deduction of the categories in his Critique of Pure Reason. It is argued that Kant’s deduction does not provide the argument for the unreality of tense that it may appear to. The conclusion drawn at the end of the essay is that the unreality of tense cannot be argued for—not because tense is real, but because, even if it is unreal, its unreality is basic. (shrink)