Recent work in bilateral logic has concerned itself with whether and to what extent strong negation, which "toggles" between assertion and denial, is definable in bilateral systems that lack it. This paper presents a number of results about the definability of strong negation in bilateral systems. First, I show that a constructive Nelson-style Sheffer stroke defines the strong negation of A as (A|(A|A))|A. The same stroke defines the constructive Nelson implication, thus providing a single-connective basis for the strong-negation-and-implication fragment of (...) N4. Second, I provide an exhaustive characterization of the eight combinations of a single "aggregative" connective and a single Nelson-style connective that suffice to jointly define strong negation, with neither defining it individually. One such combination is the material conditional together with constructive co-implication. Third, I show that a constructive and connexive Wansing-style Sheffer stroke (recently referred to as "connexive exclusion") likewise defines the strong negation of A as (A|(A| A))|A and also defines connexive implication. Fourth, I show that, unlike with the Nelson-style connectives, there are no combinations of Wansing-style and aggregative connectives that jointly define strong negation if neither connective defines it individually. (shrink)

Desde os anos 60, o paradigma cognitivista tornou-se central nos estudos da mente e da cognição. Uma suposição fundamental desse paradigma é a de que a cognição é a manipulação computacional de representações. O cognitivismo é consistente com a imagem tradicional da mente como algo interno que se realiza exclusivamente no cérebro. Contudo, a partir dos anos 80, uma série de críticas teóricas e empíricas começou a abalar essa suposição, dando origem às abordagens corporificadas da mente. Essas abordagens sustentam que (...) o corpo e as ações de um organismo constituem suas cognições. Em vez de pensar no organismo como algo que reage aos estímulos a partir de um programa interno, essas abordagens supõem que o organismo age no ambiente para conhecê-lo. Neste livro, eu apresento essa história a partir da abordagem ecológica da percepção. Após assinalar os três principais comprometimentos do cognitivismo clássico, a saber, o representacionalismo, o funcionalismo e o cerebralismo, eu mostro como a abordagem ecológica desafia cada um desses comprometimentos. Articulo, então, a concepção de mente e de cognição que a abordagem ecológica implica, e exploro as suas consequências epistemológicas. Em vez de uma epistemologia centrada no conhecimento proposicional, sustento que a epistemologia deve centrar-se na noção de habilidade. O livro faz parte da Coleção _Rumos da Epistemologia_, publicado pelo NEL/UFSC, e resulta da tese que submeti para promoção a professor titular na UFRGS em fevereiro de 2026. (shrink)

Background Since its inception over half a century ago, a defining attribute of palliative care philosophy has been an insistence that this approach intends to neither hasten death nor prolong life. A commitment to facilitate a ‘natural’ end-of-life trajectory is ubiquitous in palliative care discourse. However, as an increasing number of jurisdictions around the world legislate to allow assisted death, palliative care providers are having to re-evaluate the relevance of this commitment for the relational ethics of their practice. Research Aims (...) and Participants In this paper, we explore how a sample of Canadian specialist palliative care nurses reflected on this longstanding disciplinary ethic of never intending to hasten death amidst evolving professional and ethical responsibilities to support people who explore and choose medical assistance in dying (MAiD). Research Design A qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews with Canadian speciality palliative care nurses, conducted shortly after Canada legalized MAiD. We present an interpretive description through a framework of moral reflection; moral reflection consists of moral intuition, relational ethics, and moral coherence. Ethical Considerations Approval was granted from the Research Ethics Board of the University of Ottawa. Informed consent was obtained in writing and confirmed verbally at the time of each interview. We removed identifiers such as participant roles and geographic locations from interview quotes to protect confidentiality. Findings Across the different components of moral reflection, palliative care nurses negotiated their ethical positions amidst changes to end-of-life care. Conclusions Moral reflection and striving for moral coherence are ongoing processes; the goal is an engagement with moral plurality. As new jurisdictions consider and legalize MAiD, revisiting the early moral reflections of palliative care nurses can help nurses currently wrestling with similar ethical questions. (shrink)

This essay argues that Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal recurrence is best understood as a radical reworking of the Heraclitean image of the aiōn-child in fragment B52. Rather than treating eternal recurrence as either a wholly private invention or a direct derivation from Heraclitus, it shows that Nietzsche’s early engagement with the Ephesian thinker provides a decisive imagistic and conceptual horizon for the later doctrine. Particular attention is given to fragment B52 and to the intertwined motifs of child, play, innocence, and (...) dominion that organise its configuration of finitude. The essay argues that the Heraclitean aiōn should be read not merely as an abstract notion of eternity, but as a figure of finite temporality in which becoming, generation, and destruction are held together. On this basis, it contends that Nietzsche does not simply inherit a doctrine of recurrence from Heraclitus; rather, he radicalises the fragment’s core constellation into an existential doctrine of affirmation. Eternal recurrence thus emerges as neither a straightforward repetition of B52 nor an isolated innovation, but as Nietzsche’s transformation of the fragment’s imagistic and conceptual core into a post-Christian response to nihilism. (shrink)

Both proponents and critics of Truth Deflationism have argued that, according to Truth Deflationism, truth is a use-independent feature of sentences. And this seems to entail a form of Meaning Deflationism, according to which deflationists can completely avoid metasemantic questions. Here I show that the only arguments for Use-Independence from Truth Deflationism require what I call Counterfactual Blindness: they are blind to the counterconventional reading of standard counterfactuals. I close by suggesting that Counterfactual Blindness also leads to gridlock in some (...) other philosophical debates, including debates over quasi-realism in metaethics and two-dimensionalism in the philosophy of language and mind. (shrink)

US law forbids foreigners from entering the United States without its approval. Violation of such law is subject to criminal punishment, which raises the question of whether the violation is morally wrong. In this Article, I will demonstrate that even under seriously unfavorable assumptions—(1) the United States is morally permitted to keep foreigners out and (2) there exists a moral obligation to follow some mala prohibita laws—it is nevertheless morally permissible for foreign citizens to cross the border without the approval (...) of the United States. The law prohibiting entry without approval is US malum prohibitum law, and moral obligations to follow US mala prohibita law attach to US citizens, not foreign citizens. (shrink)

Metcalf (2026) provides a productive commentary on our paper, ‘Is Undisclosed LLM Use Morally Wrong?’ (Sahebi & Montefiore, 2026). Metcalf characterises our view - the Faked-Competencies account - and argues that it fails to necessarily or sufficiently explain what is wrong about undisclosed LLM use. In its place, Metcalf endorses a pluralism of explanations involving, in addition to the Faked-Competencies Account, deceptions over care, and deceptions over one’s identity. In this commentary, we endorse these additions and welcome a pluralism of (...) explanations in capturing the wrongness of undisclosed LLM use. We also note a few points of difference between Metcalf’s analysis of this debate and how we understand it. (shrink)

In The Expressive Self, a contrast is established between two views of the self, alternatively based on the abilities for reflection and expression. In addition, the book defends the expressive view of the self, first because it avoids the incoherence to which the reflective view of the self falls prey; second, because it provides more clarity about three first-person puzzles (namely, Moore’s paradox, self-deception, and McKinsey’s paradox); and third, because it successfully meets potential challenges from self-reference and first-person authority.

In his latest book, The Complex Tapestry of Free Will (2024), Robert Kane builds on previous workof his in developing a novel libertarian position on free will. Alfred Mele (2017)presents a libertarian view that is argued to be superior to the view Kane heldat that time. Kane’s latest view avoids the main problem raised in Mele 2017, butother problems are raised for it here. It is argued that a version of the libertarianview presented in Mele 2017 that is modified to (...) match an important modificationKane makes in his own view is superior to Kane’s new view. Topics discussedinclude the nature of decision-making, necessary conditions for freely decidingto do something, problems luck apparently poses for deciding freely, being ableto decide what to do, and what agents are trying to do when they deliberateabout what to do. (shrink)

In this paper, I attempt to uncover motivations for the main premise that supports essential representationalism about perceptual experience (ER), namely the Immediacy thesis. ER claims that for every phenomenal property in the class Φ, there is some representational property R such that, necessarily, having Φ entails having R. The Immediacy thesis is that, roughly, the very phenomenal relation to the experience’s qualitative profile entails a representational relation to the qualitative profile of the represented object, and that these two profiles (...) are type-identical. In § 2, I clarify ER’s commitments. Then I attempt to uncover the role of the Immediacy thesis in the four arguments for representationalism: the argument from transparency (§ 3), the argument from inference to the best explanation (§ 4), the argument from perceptual seemings (§ 5), and the argument from perceptual capacities (§ 6). In § 7, I conclude by wrapping up the results of my analyses in §§ 3–6 and elaborating on the role of the so-called Immediacy thesis in the dialectic of representationalist arguments. (shrink)

Pluralism is an inevitable reality in the contemporary world, posing a challenge for regional cultures as they navigate coexistence with diverse cultures. In this paper, I explore how Confucianism can respond to this challenge. I begin by critically assessing two influential proposals. Joseph Chan’s perfectionist approach grounds state action in universally recognizable goods independent of any comprehensive doctrine, thereby aiming to secure pluralism, but risks severing Confucian values from their cultural roots. Sungmoon Kim’s perfectionist approach, by contrast, although it claims (...) to accommodate pluralism, requires that political values satisfy the Confucian intelligibility condition, and thereby opens itself to charges of sectarianism. To move beyond this impasse, I introduce the framework of explanatory metaphysics, which conceives metaphysics as the ongoing tracking of moral reality through human practices and experiences. On this basis, I argue that a form of Confucian perfectionism developed from Chan’s approach can accommodate pluralism while meeting the intelligibility condition, provided it adopts an explanatory metaphysical orientation. Because different cultural traditions can track the same moral reality through their own explanatory frameworks, pluralism emerges as a structural feature rather than a concession. (shrink)

Many of the standard arguments for moral expressivism also seem to apply to the domain of taste. One standard argument turns on the apparent possibility of moral disagreement without any disagreement in belief. This suggests that moral disagreements and taste disagreements are best understood as disagreements in attitude. This presents the expressivist with a dilemma. Taste disagreements are paradigmatic examples of so-called faultless disagreements, whereas moral disagreements are not faultless. But if moral and taste judgments are attitudinal states, then the (...) disagreement intuitions in the different domains should be uniform, which they are not. Eriksson (2016) argues that moral judgments are attitudinally more complex than taste judgments and that this explains the difference. Pietroiusti (2021) argues that Eriksson’s suggestion is unpersuasive. This paper develops and defends a view in the spirit of Eriksson’s suggestion against Pietroiusti’s arguments. (shrink)

This article examines the gender pay gap in Hollywood as a paradigmatic case of inequality among the super-rich. While the issue has gained visibility through public interventions by actresses such as Patricia Arquette, Jennifer Lawrence, and Emma Watson, its moral significance is not immediately obvious, given that it concerns highly privileged individuals. Nevertheless, the case raises questions central to two ongoing philosophical debates: the normative status of extreme wealth and the role of celebrities in public moral discourse. Building on current (...) work in expressivist theory, the article asks whether the equal pay claims of super-rich celebrities can be justified. The article reconstructs two possible versions of the Disrespect Argument—the Insider and Outsider Variants—and argues that neither proves adequate. The conclusion is that, despite their initial plausibility, these expressivist arguments fail to yield a normatively determinate basis for grounding Hollywood celebrities’ claims to pay equality. (shrink)

Accusations of humblebragging have become increasingly common in recent years, and the phenomenon of humblebragging has been widely studied in disciplines ranging from psychology to linguistics. By contrast, philosophical discussion of humblebragging has been virtually non-existent. In this paper, I aim to remedy this neglect and to demonstrate that humblebragging raises significant philosophical issues. In particular, I focus on answering two central questions concerning the nature and ethics of humblebragging. First, what is humblebragging? Second, why is humblebragging often viewed as (...) especially egregious compared to other forms of self-promotion? (shrink)

This article explores the ethical, cognitive, and epistemic stakes of introducing smart-hive technologies (such as Hiveopolis project) into honeybee colonies (Apis mellifera). These robotic structures supplemented with artificial intelligence algorithms and other technological alterations are discussed here not as merely monitoring devices but as an active part that bridges and enhances the remaining two organic elements. The paper proposes a portrayal of a biohybrid with a triadic structure consisting of bees, humans, and technology. This depiction foregrounds whole-organism interactions and emphasizes (...) the emergent character of such hybrids, which are more than the sum of their parts. Situated within the framework of embodied cognition, this development is examined through an enactivist lens. Adhering to this perspective, cognition arises through a dynamic organism–environment coupling, together bringing forth the world. Ethical concern cannot be separated from its cognitive counterpart; questions of responsibility, care and consent are inscribed in the very structure of such coupling. (shrink)

It is my pleasure to respond to three thoughtful commentaries on A Philosophy for the Science of Animal Consciousness in this issue (Veit 2023a). The commentaries by Pober (2025), as well as Barrett and Fischer (2025), both focus on the relationship between valence, common currencies of value, and consciousness, and so I will largely respond to their arguments together. Afterwards, I will respond to the commentary by Kohda (2025) which raises distinct concerns about my gradualist approach to consciousness and proposes (...) an alternative thesis for understanding the evolution of self-awareness, drawing on his experimental work on mirror self-recognition in fish. (shrink)

That some mutually beneficial exchanges could be impermissibly exploitative is generally thought to be incompatible with welfarism – a perspective emphasising the moral value of satisfied preferences. The present article argues that both perspectives can be reconciled by turning Kaldor-Hicks inefficiency into a necessary condition for exploitation. The ensuing account provides a parsimonious answer to the so-called exploitation problem, at the cost of accurate intuition tracking.

This article examines a very specific way in which self-determination of older individuals is being undermined in the context of digitalization that is often overlooked in the philosophical debate. After a few brief remarks on the role of ethics in the debate about digitalization and the connection between aging and digitalization, a contextual definition of self-determination and one of its preconditions – namely, authenticity – is provided. In the course of examining the definition and role authenticity in the debate, it (...) is emphasized that, contrary to what is commonly suggested in the literature on digitalization, self-determination cannot only be expressed by “pulling the plug” and refusing to use technology. The aim is to demonstrate that, under certain conditions, the non-use of technology by older individuals can also be seen as the result of limited self-determination and is therefore problematic. To prevent this, greater social awareness is needed regarding the problems resulting from the spread of negative prejudices and narratives of old age. (shrink)

Christopher Devlin Brown’s The Hope and Horror of Physicalism: An Existential Treatise (2024) is a novel contribution to analytical existentialism. The book is divided into three parts. In Part 1, Brown examines the existential consequences of two broad kinds of physicalism, distinguished by their characterization of the physical: via negativa physicalism and theory-based physicalism. He then argues that the existential consequences of via negativa physicalism are more existentially severe than those of theory-based physicalism. In Part 2, he examines how we (...) ought to respond to the existential consequences of via negativa physicalism if it is true. In Part 3, he defends a version of via negativa physicalism, Russellian physicalism, arguing that it offers the most plausible response to the hard problem of consciousness. I first argue for the two-fold point that Brown mischaracterizes the theory-based approach to physicalism, and that when it is properly characterized we can see that it is just as existentially severe as via negativa physicalism. Then, I point out some gaps and omissions in Brown’s discussion of how we should respond to those existential consequences. Finally, I argue that the via negativa approach to characterizing the physical is inadequate, and that Brown’s attempt to make a case that Russellian physicalism offers the most plausible response to the hard problem is unsuccessful. (shrink)

This essay provides a critical reflection on two distinctive theses proposed by Peregrin in his book Normative Species. First, it challenges his hypothesis that implicit normative attitudes ground the ultimate anthropological difference – one that fundamentally separated humans from other animals, and made possible other distinctively human accomplishments. Second, it questions his naturalistic view that normative claims do not express any truth-apt contents that science could not express.

Mirror self-recognition (MSR) is a method to confirm self-awareness in animals. Recently, it has been documented that small cleaner fish (Labroides dimidiatus) identify their mirror reflection as own image via self-face recognition, suggesting fish have mental image of self-face, and have private self-awareness. Thus, existence of self-awareness will not be restricted to animals of large brain and phylogenetically close to humans. This document will be disproof for main evolutionary models of animal self-awareness: e.g. the gradualist view hypothesis (de Waal, 2019), (...) assuming that large brained animals with phylogenetical closeness to humans would have several levels of self-awareness. This hypothesis is likely to be supported by many researchers including Veit (2023). It is suggested, however, that many studies of MSR would potentially conceive false-negative, and the interpretation of results of MSR-tests that used the traditional mark-test in various animals would misled the evolutionary views of self-awareness in vertebrates. I propose “self-awareness homology hypothesis” that self-awareness in vertebrates will go back to ancestral bony fish in Paleozoic era (450 Mya) at latest. (shrink)

Agent-relative consequentialism uses the theoretical framework of consequentialism to capture the constraints favored by deontologists. Christopher Howard has recently argued that agent-relative consequentialism is implausible because it can only capture such constraints at the expense of getting other normative facts incorrect. In this reply, I argue that Howard’s objection to agent-relative consequentialism fails because it rests on faulty intuitions that arise from a misunderstanding of basic structural features of agent-relative consequentialism.

Jaroslav Peregrin’s project in Normative Species: How Naturalized Inferentialism Explains Us is to provide an account of the emergence of normativity. He takes the project to be essential for understanding the kind of creatures we are, namely, normative creatures whose lives are governed by rules. My focus in this response is on linguistic meaning, and on the kind of explanation of language that Peregrin puts forward. While I agree that meaning depends on the intersection of many cognitions, I have doubts (...) about some aspects of Peregrin’s conception of this intersection. (shrink)

Balanced epistemic reasons for beliefs that p and ¬p combine towards a prohibition on either belief while balanced reasons for two incompatible actions combine to permit either action. This “combinatorial contrast” needs explaining. After showing that a straightforward explanation is inadequate, I consider various accounts for this contrast. Stephanie Leary’s explanation is insufficient for prohibitive balancing of epistemic reasons due to its lack of reasons for suspension. John Brunero’s explanation incorporates reasons for suspension but cannot accommodate reasons against suspension. A (...) general point, which applies to any explanatory attempt that focuses on prohibitive balancing, is that a successful explanation for prohibitive balancing needs reasons for suspension that are both strong enough and weak enough to give correct verdicts. Tucker’s explanation is also prone to doubts from this general requirement, as well as other problems, including those similar to those found in the previous two explanations. (shrink)

In this paper, I present some comments on Jaroslav Peregrin’s Normative Species. Although I agree with much of what Peregrin says, my comments focus on disagreements. After summarizing some key aspects of Peregrin’s naturalistic account of norms, I raise three questions. I criticize Peregrin’s anti-realism about normativity and his use of Sellars’s distinction between the manifest and the scientific image.

We put some pressure on the utility of the pathological complexity thesis by considering the challenge of nonconscious mentality. Here’s the problem in a nutshell. Suppose we grant Veit’s view that “hedonically felt valence is the best explanation of how animals came to deal with [pathological] complexity and thus how consciousness gradually evolved.” It remains an open question as to when pathological complexity reached the point where there was a fitness advantage for individuals with the capacity for hedonically felt valence. (...) So, if Veit wants to say, for instance, that consciousness arose at some era, then he owes us a story about why conscious valenced states have more explanatory power in that era than nonconscious valenced states. But Veit doesn’t provide that story. Instead, he bases his timeline for the origin of consciousness on evidence of valence simpliciter—not conscious valence. (shrink)

This is a précis of my book Normative species. The point of departure of the book is inferentialism – the doctrine foreshadowed by Sellars and brought to full fruition by Robert Brandom, according to which language, but also other specifically human amenities, presuppose rules or are directly decomposable into various complexes of rules. It seems, indeed, that rules have managed to erect spaces within which we humans assumed our “unnatural” forms of life and which differentiate us so much from other (...) animals. From this viewpoint, rules and complexes of rules start to look as something like the true key to our peculiar nature. (shrink)

[COMMENTARY on Walter Veit's "A Philosophy for the Science of Animal Consciousness"] The framework Veit introduces for animal consciousness turns on finding and articulating its evolutionary origins. Veit argues that consciousness first evolved as affective experience in the Cambrian period. His argument centers around the plausible need of organisms in the Cambrian for a common currency of subjective valuation. I argue that such an adaptive pressure is unlikely to result in affective experience. I review other processes that instantiate common currencies (...) of subjective valuation: unconscious (non-experiential) affect and the reward learning system and argue that each is likely to have evolved prior to affective experience. (shrink)

Challenging the tendency to fixate on rigid definitions of interdisciplinarity, this essay highlights the nuanced nature of interdisciplinarity as embedded within broader concepts like knowledge, science, discipline, and disciplinarity. We begin by positioning the discussion, outlining two prevalent logics underlying current conceptualizations of interdisciplinarity. By addressing the limitations and flaws inherent in these logics, we propose a dynamic logic that views interdisciplinarity as a process of evolving, interconnected dimensions. Rather than predefined frameworks, interdisciplinarity is conceptualized as continuous, multidimensional dynamics that (...) unfold through practice. Accordingly, we advocate for a pluralistic, constructivist, and holistic perspective that acknowledges the heterogeneity and complexity of interdisciplinary efforts.1. (shrink)

From LLM-based artificial friends to social robots, an increasing number of artificial agents are explicitly designed to interact with us in an emotionally salient way. The notion of emotional transparency has recently been proposed to describe the mechanisms behind users’ emotional involvement with such systems. However, the details and theoretical boundaries of emotional transparency have been left largely unspecified. This article provides an in-depth analysis of emotional transparency. First, emotional transparency is characterized as a form of transparency in use and (...) situated in the current theoretical landscape of varieties of transparency in the philosophy of mind and technology. Then, the drivers of emotional transparency are investigated, focusing on the features of artificial systems, users, and context of use. Finally, the epistemic state of users interacting with emotionally transparent artificial agents is analyzed, focusing on the apparent paradox by which users behave as if such agents had emotions even if they are perfectly aware that this is not the case. (shrink)

In this article, I examine the conception of religious language advanced by two of the most influential Islamic philosophers, al-Fārābī (d. 339/950) and Avicenna (d. 428/1037). I argue that from their perspective, the language of revelation is intrinsically metaphorical, a characteristic stemming from the very nature of revelatory experience, which originates in the prophetic imaginative faculty and is embodied in sacred texts. I examine the mechanics of revelation as the outcome of contact between the material imaginative faculty and the immaterial (...) intelligible realm, and posit the strong alignment and conceptual affinity between their epistemic framework and core tenets of conceptual metaphor theory. I posit that revelation in al-Fārābī’s and Avicenna’s accounts should not be understood as symbolic in the traditional sense—that is, as one concrete concept standing in for another. Rather, revelation is the product of a cognitive function through which the transcendental and immaterial is materialized; it is, as such, the bridge between two distinct domains that is unrestricted in its form, and untranslatable in its content. (shrink)

Kate Soper is a prominent environmentalist and peace campaigner, as well as a pioneering philosopher of Marxism and ecology, human needs, consumerism and its alternatives. In the first half of our wide-ranging interview, she discusses her formative experiences, education, and early key works.

Is there a category of ‘phthonic’ or malicious humour that is morally wrong because it endorses negative stereotypes, or is humour always or for the most part morally neutral? De Sousa argues that humour that trades in racist or sexist stereotypes involves an implicit endorsement of those attitudes. To think otherwise while telling or laughing at jokes that depend on pernicious stereotypes to land is to engage in self-deception, either of belief or emotion. His critics label this view as extreme (...) and advocate for the dissociation of humour from any endorsement of immoral attitudes. It is argued here that while de Sousa’s critics are right that a joke teller need not be either asserting or implying the truth of an associated stereotype, it cannot be inferred from this that the dissociationist thesis is correct—that is, that the status of such humour as humorous is independent of pernicious stereotypes. Utilising speech act theory, an analysis of such jokes is then given that explains why they enjoy immunity to criticism, with the consequence that such jokes threaten to undermine our rationality, not just our morality. This claim is born out empirically in disparagement humour studies that suggest that jokes function psychologically to impede argument scrutiny. The complexities of self-deprecating and reclaimed humour are then explained in terms of shifts in joke frames that render the apparent ‘butt’ of the joke (the speaker) the winner and the ‘other’ (the out-group audience) the loser, unless the audience can position themselves morally to laugh with not at the butt of the joke and, with good measure, at themselves. Such jokes, properly understood, can thus be seen as playing an important role in promoting the intellectual and moral virtue of humility. (shrink)

J L Austin was a towering figure in twentieth century analytic philosophy. He also played a major role in developing and popularising the ‘ordinary language method’, which dominated post-war philos...

Real Forgiveness is a very impressive book. In it, Luke Russell examines the many disagreements at play in the philosophical literature on forgiveness, identifies the source of these disputes, and...

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: in his seminal Naming and Necessity, Kripke pulled apart a priori knowability from being necessary. Statements like ‘Hesperus is Phosphorus’, ‘cats are animals’...

Soames attributes to Kripke the theory of epistemic possibility that uses metaphysical impossibilities in explaining necessary a posteriori truths. I attribute to Kripke a theory from epistemic counterparthood. I develop an epistemic accessibility based on Kripke’s appeal to Lewis’ counterpart theory that is reflexive, non-transitive, and non-symmetric. I also propose an epistemic counterpart function and a description function.

Problems in moral philosophy and philosophy of religion can take on new forms in light of contemporary physical theories. Here we discuss how the problem of evil is transformed by the Everettian ‘Many-Worlds’ theory of quantum mechanics. We first present an Everettian version of the problem and contrast it to the problem in single-universe physical theories such as Newtonian mechanics and Bohmian mechanics. We argue that, pace Turner and Zimmerman, the Everettian problem of evil is no more extreme than the (...) Bohmian one. The existence and multiplicity of (morally) terrible branches in the Everettian multiverse in contrast to the mere possibility of them in the Bohmian universe does not entail there is ‘more evil’ in the former than in the latter. Low probability in the Bohmian case and low branch weight in the Everettian case should modulate how we respond to them in exactly the same way. We suggest that the same applies to the divine decision of creating an Everettian multiverse. For an empirically adequate Everettian quantum mechanics that justifies the Born rule, there is no special problem of evil. In order for there to be a special Everettian problem of evil, the Everettian interpretation must already have been exposed to decisive refutation. In the process, we hope to show how attention to the details of physical and metaphysical theories can and should impact the way we think about problems in moral philosophy and philosophy of religion. (shrink)

A common objection against Humean reductionism about laws is an argument from governing: It is natural to think that laws of nature govern. But in order to govern the laws need to be independent of the phenomena they govern. Hence, Humean laws, which reduce to patterns in the phenomena and so lack this independence, cannot govern. A standard Humean response to this argument is that we should not place much weight on the intuition that laws govern. Non-Humeans, however, reply that (...) the argument does not merely rest on intuitions but that scientific practice presupposes governing. In this paper, we offer a response to this revised challenge to Humeanism by giving a detailed account of the laws’ role in scientific modelling. We argue that while Humean theories indeed cannot capture certain governing-intuitions, they still can make sense of those aspects of science that allegedly motivate governing. (shrink)

Longtermism is the thesis that in a large class of decision situations, the best thing we can do is what is best for the long-term future. The scope question for longtermism asks: how large is the class of decision situations for which this is true? In this paper, I suggest that the scope of longtermism may be narrower than many longtermists suppose. I identify a restricted version of longtermism: swamping axiological strong longtermism (swamping ASL). I identify three scope-limiting factors - (...) probabilistic and decision-theoretic phenomena which, when present, tend to reduce the prospects for swamping ASL. I argue that these scope-limiting factors are often present in human decision problems, then use two case studies from recent discussions of longtermism to show how the scope-limiting factors lead to a restricted, if perhaps nonempty, scope for swamping ASL. (shrink)

The investigation of folk concepts of race has been central to many theoretical and experimental contributions in recent decades; however, most of these contributions have been centred around the North American cultural context. Despite many philosophers pointing to a possible discrepancy between the European, and especially the German, context and the U.S.-American one, a systematic investigation has yet to be undertaken. This paper provides the first cross-cultural experimental study of U.S.-American and German concepts of race. More specifically, it examines whether (...) German concepts of race are more biological than U.S.- American ones and to what extent Germans and U.S.-Americans lean towards conservationism or eliminativism about concepts of race. Surprisingly, our results suggest that U.S.-Americans’ concepts of racial categories such as Black, White, or Asian are no less biologically loaded than Germans’ but that Germans lean far more towards eliminativism than U.S. Americans. We discuss multiple explanations for this finding and develop avenues for future research. In doing so, this paper contributes to the larger project of cross-cultural comparisons between folk theories of race - a project we deem highly fruitful and timely. (shrink)

The objects we interact with in virtual reality—virtual objects—raise metaphysical questions. The most central of these questions is whether virtual objects really exist, that is, whether we ought to be realists about such objects. The most prominent realist metaphysics of virtual objects is David Chalmers’ virtual digitalism—the view that virtual objects are digital objects. I propose an alternative realist account—virtual perceptibilism. On this view virtual objects are pure perceptibilia. They are public objects, like rainbows, whose existence and intrinsic nature is (...) dependent on us as perceivers. I contrast perceptibilism with digitalism, showing the superiority of the former. As such, I demonstrate that virtual perceptibilism is the best virtual realism on offer, leaving aside the question of whether perceptibilism is superior to irrealist accounts. (shrink)

This paper identifies a previously unrecognized, and philosophically interesting, kind of mistake that can be made by a composer in composing a work of Western classical music. Specifically, she may err by writing some scored instructions for performance that undercut the meaning of her own work. Since following those instructions would frustrate the most fundamental purpose of performing that work—namely, to evince understanding of it—the practice of work-performance sanctions performers to correct those mistakes in performance by departing from the score (...) where necessary. The possibility of this kind of mistake and their correction lies, we argue, in the distinction between a work’s meaning and its elaboration in the scored instructions for performance. We substantiate this claim and defend it against the tight constraint thesis, the view that a work’s meaning is determined by the totality of its score’s instructions. This thesis will be revealed to be both in conflict with the manifest image of our performance practice and philosophically unmotivated. Finally, we consider the scope of the composer’s authority in light of the possibility of the sort of mistakes and their correction that concern us here. (shrink)