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Options and Agency Australasian Journal of Philosophy Pub Date : 2024-04-18 Sophie Kikkert, Barbara Vetter
Published in Australasian Journal of Philosophy (Ahead of Print, 2024)
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Judgment's aimless heart Noûs Pub Date : 2024-04-16 Matthew Vermaire
It's often thought that when we reason to new judgments in inference, we aim at believing the truth, and that this aim of ours can explain important psychological and normative features of belief. I reject this picture: the structure of aimed activity shows that inference is not guided by a truth‐aim. This finding clears the way for a positive understanding of how epistemic goods feature in our doxastic
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Metanormative regress: an escape plan Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2024-04-15 Christian Tarsney
How should you decide what to do when you’re uncertain about basic normative principles? A natural suggestion is to follow some “second-order” norm: e.g., obey the most probable norm or maximize expected choiceworthiness. But what if you’re uncertain about second-order norms too—must you then invoke some third-order norm? If so, any norm-guided response to normative uncertainty appears doomed to a
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What Justifies Electoral Voice? J. S. Mill on Voting Mind Pub Date : 2024-04-12 Jonathan Turner
Mill advocates plural voting on instrumentalist grounds: the more competent are to have more votes. At the same time, he regards it as a ‘personal injustice’ to withhold from anyone ‘the ordinary privilege of having his voice reckoned in the disposal of affairs in which he has the same interest as other people’ (Mill 1861a, p. 469). But if electoral voice is justified by its contribution to good governance
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Indiscernibility and the grounds of identity Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2024-04-10 Samuel Z. Elgin
I provide a theory of the metaphysical foundations of identity: an account of what grounds facts of the form \(a=b\). In particular, I defend the claim that indiscernibility grounds identity. This is typically rejected because it is viciously circular; plausible assumptions about the logic of ground entail that the fact that \(a=b\) partially grounds itself. The theory I defend is immune to this circularity
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Two approaches to metaphysical explanation Noûs Pub Date : 2024-04-10 Ezra Rubenstein
Explanatory metaphysics aspires to explain the less fundamental in terms of the more fundamental. But we should recognize two importantly different approaches to this task. According to the generation approach, more basic features of reality generate (or give rise to) less basic features. According to the reduction approach, less perspicuous ways of representing reality reduce to (or collapse into)
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People and places Noûs Pub Date : 2024-04-10 John Horden, Dan López de Sa
Several authors have argued that socially significant places such as countries, cities and establishments are immaterial objects, despite their being spatially located. In contrast, we aim to defend a reductive materialist view of such entities, which identifies them with their physical territories or premises. Accordingly, these are all material objects; typically, aggregates of land and infrastructure
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Incommensurability and hardness Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2024-04-09 Chrisoula Andreou
There is growing support for the view that there can be cases of incommensurability, understood as cases in which two alternatives, X and Y, are such that X is not better than Y, Y is not better than X, and X and Y are not equally good. This paper assumes that alternatives can be incommensurable and explores the prominent idea that, insofar as choice situations that agents face qua rational agents
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What, If Anything, Is Biological Altruism? Br. J. Philos. Sci. (IF 3.4) Pub Date : 2024-04-08 Topaz Halperin, Arnon Levy
The study of biological altruism is a cornerstone of modern evolutionary biology. Associated with foundational issues about natural selection, it is often supposed that explaining altruism is key to understanding social behaviour more generally. Typically, ‘biological’ altruism is defined in purely effects-based, behavioural terms—as an interaction in which one organism contributes fitness to another
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Regions, extensions, distances, diameters Philos. Phenomenol. Res. Pub Date : 2024-04-09 Claudio Calosi
Extended simple regions have been the focus of recent developments in philosophical logic, metaphysics, and philosophy of physics. However, only a handful of works provides a rigorous characterization of an extended simple region. In particular, a recent paper in this journal defends a definition based on an extrinsic notion of least distance. Call it the Least Distance proposal. This paper provides
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The irrational failure to act Philos. Q. Pub Date : 2024-04-09 Matthew Heeney
I defend against a salient objection the thesis that practical rationality requires us to perform intentional actions. The objection is that if rationality requires the performance of intentional actions, then agents are irrational for failing to succeed in what they intend to do. I reply to this objection by hewing closely to the principle that the rational ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. We are rationally
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Introspection Is Signal Detection Br. J. Philos. Sci. (IF 3.4) Pub Date : 2024-04-05 Jorge Morales
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Ahead of Print.
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Understanding in mathematics: The case of mathematical proofs Noûs Pub Date : 2024-04-06 Yacin Hamami, Rebecca Lea Morris
Although understanding is the object of a growing literature in epistemology and the philosophy of science, only few studies have concerned understanding in mathematics. This essay offers an account of a fundamental form of mathematical understanding: proof understanding. The account builds on a simple idea, namely that understanding a proof amounts to rationally reconstructing its underlying plan
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Proximal intentions intentionalism Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2024-04-04 Victor Tamburini
According to a family of metasemantics for demonstratives called intentionalism, the intentions of speakers determine the reference of demonstratives. And according to a sub-family I call proximal intentions (PI) intentionalism, the intention that determines reference is one that occupies a certain place—the proximal one—in a structure of intentions. PI intentionalism is thought to make correct predictions
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Knowledge, true belief, and the gradability of ignorance Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2024-04-04 Robert Weston Siscoe
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Who’s afraid of common knowledge? Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2024-04-04 Giorgio Sbardolini
Some arguments against the assumption that ordinary people may share common knowledge are sound. The apparent cost of such arguments is the rejection of scientific theories that appeal to common knowledge. My proposal is to accept the arguments without rejecting the theories. On my proposal, common knowledge is shared by ideally rational people, who are not just mathematically simple versions of ordinary
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Memory Systems and the Mnemic Character of Procedural Memory Br. J. Philos. Sci. (IF 3.4) Pub Date : 2024-04-04 Jonathan Najenson
According to a standard view in psychology and neuroscience, there are multiple memory systems in the brain. Philosophers and scientists of memory rely on the idea that there are multiple memory systems in the brain to infer that procedural memory is not a cognitive form of memory. As a result, memory is considered to be a disunified capacity. In this article, I evaluate two criteria used by Michaelian
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Probability discounting and money pumps Philos. Phenomenol. Res. Pub Date : 2024-04-05 Petra Kosonen
In response to cases that involve tiny probabilities of huge payoffs, some argue that we ought to discount small probabilities down to zero. However, this paper shows that doing so violates Independence and Continuity, and as a result of these violations, those who discount small probabilities can be exploited by money pumps. Various possible ways of avoiding exploitation will be discussed. This paper
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In Defence of the Agent and Patient Distinction: The Case from Molecular Biology and Chemistry Br. J. Philos. Sci. (IF 3.4) Pub Date : 2024-04-03 Davis Kuykendall
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Ahead of Print.
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Rights reclamation Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2024-04-03
Abstract According to a rights forfeiture theory of punishment, liability to punishment hinges upon the notion that criminals forfeit their rights against hard treatment. In this paper, I assume the success of rights forfeiture theory in establishing the permissibility of punishment but aim to develop the view by considering how forfeited rights might be reclaimed. Built into the very notion of proportionate
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Superconditioning Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2024-04-03 Simon M. Huttegger
When can a shift from a prior to a posterior be represented by conditionalization? A well-known result, known as “superconditioning” and going back to work by Diaconis and Zabell, gives a sharp answer. This paper extends the result and connects it to the reflection principle and common priors. I show that a shift from a prior to a set of posteriors can be represented within a conditioning model if
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‘You're changing the subject’: An unfair objection to conceptual engineering? Philos. Q. Pub Date : 2024-04-03 Delia Belleri
Conceptual engineering projects are sometimes criticized for ‘changing the subject’. In this paper, I first discuss three strategies that have been proposed to address the change of subject objection. I notice that these strategies fail in similar ways: they all deploy a ‘loose’ notion of subject matter, while the objector can always reply deploying a ‘strict’ notion. Based on this, I then argue that
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On Block's delineation of the border between seeing and thinking Philos. Q. Pub Date : 2024-04-03 Christopher S Hill
This note is concerned with Ned Block's claim that cognition differs from perception in being paradigmatically conceptual, propositional, and non-iconic. As against Block, it maintains that large stretches of cognition constitutively involve, or depend on, iconic representations.
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Why Experimental Balance Is Still a Reason to Randomize Br. J. Philos. Sci. (IF 3.4) Pub Date : 2024-04-01 Marco Martinez, David Teira
Experimental balance is usually understood as the control for the value of the conditions, other than the one under study, which are liable to affect the result of a test. We discuss three different approaches to balance. ‘Millean balance’ requires identifying and equalizing ex ante the value of these conditions in order to conduct solid causal inferences. ‘Fisherian balance’ measures ex post the influence
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Robustness and Modularity Br. J. Philos. Sci. (IF 3.4) Pub Date : 2024-04-02 Trey Boone
Functional robustness refers to a system’s ability to maintain a function in the face of perturbations to the causal structures that support performance of that function. Modularity, a crucial element of standard methods of causal inference and difference-making accounts of causation, refers to the independent manipulability of causal relationships within a system. Functional robustness appears to
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Mind the gap: noncausal explanations of dual properties Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2024-04-01 Sorin Bangu
I identify and characterize a type of noncausal explanation in physics. I first introduce a distinction, between the physical properties of a system, and the representational properties of the mathematical expressions of the system’s physical properties. Then I introduce a novel kind of property, which I shall call a dual property. This is a special kind of representational property, one for which
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Why, Delilah? When music and lyrics move us in different directions Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2024-04-01 Laura Sizer, Eva M. Dadlez
Songs that combine happy music and sad, violent, or morally disturbing lyrics raise questions about the relationship between music and lyrics in song, including the question of how such songs affect the listener, and of the ethical implications of listening – and perhaps singing along with – such songs. To explore those perplexing cases in which the affective impact of music and lyrics seem entirely
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Parity and Pareto Philos. Phenomenol. Res. Pub Date : 2024-04-02 Brian Hedden
Pareto principles are at the core of ethics and decision theory. The Strong Pareto principle says that if one thing is better than another for someone and at least as good for everyone else, then the one is overall better than the other. But a host of famous figures express it differently, with ‘not worse’ in place of ‘at least as good.’ In the presence of parity (or incommensurability), this results
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Kant’s Fantasy Mind Pub Date : 2024-04-02 Francey Russell
Throughout his lectures and published writings on anthropology, Kant describes a form of unintentional, unstructured, obscure, and pleasurable imaginative mental activity, which he calls fantasy (Phantasie), where we ‘take pleasure in letting our mind wander about in obscurity’ (LA 25:480). In the context of his pragmatic anthropology, Kant is concerned not only to describe this form of mental activity
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Resolving to believe: Kierkegaard's direct doxastic voluntarism Philos. Phenomenol. Res. Pub Date : 2024-04-02 Z Quanbeck
According to a traditional interpretation of Kierkegaard, he endorses a strong form of direct doxastic voluntarism on which we can, by brute force of will, make a “leap of faith” to believe propositions that we ourselves take to be improbable and absurd. Yet most leading Kierkegaard scholars now wholly reject this reading, instead interpreting Kierkegaard as holding that the will can affect what we
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Nativism and empiricism in artificial intelligence Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2024-03-28 Robert Long
Historically, the dispute between empiricists and nativists in philosophy and cognitive science has concerned human and animal minds (Margolis and Laurence in Philos Stud: An Int J Philos Anal Tradit 165(2): 693-718, 2013, Ritchie in Synthese 199(Suppl 1): 159–176, 2021, Colombo in Synthese 195: 4817–4838, 2018). But recent progress has highlighted how empiricist and nativist concerns arise in the
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Distributive Epistemic Justice in Science Br. J. Philos. Sci. (IF 3.4) Pub Date : 2024-03-27 Gürol Irzik, Faik Kurtulmus
This article develops an account of distributive epistemic justice in the production of scientific knowledge. We identify four requirements: (a) science should produce the knowledge citizens need in order to reason about the common good, their individual good, and the pursuit thereof; (b) science should produce the knowledge those serving the public need to pursue justice effectively; (c) science should
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On Absolute Units Br. J. Philos. Sci. (IF 3.4) Pub Date : 2024-03-27 Neil Dewar
How may we characterize the intrinsic structure of physical quantities such as mass, length, or electric charge? This article shows that group-theoretic methods—specifically, the notion of a free and transitive group action—provide an elegant way of characterizing the structure of scalar quantities, and uses this to give an intrinsic treatment of vector quantities. It also gives a general account of
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Replies to Alex Byrne, Mike Martin, and Nico Orlandi Philos. Phenomenol. Res. Pub Date : 2024-03-28 Berit “Brit” Brogaard
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Philosophy Moves Australasian Journal of Philosophy Pub Date : 2024-03-24 David Kelley
In this paper, I introduce the notion of ‘philosophy moves’: prominent tropes featured in contemporary academic philosophy. Moves are more than patterns—they are tools for advancing and enriching p...
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Episodic imagining, temporal experience, and beliefs about time Philos. Phenomenol. Res. Pub Date : 2024-03-27 Anthony Bigg, Andrew J. Latham, Kristie Miller, Shira Yechimovitz
We explore the role of episodic imagining in explaining why people both differentially report that it seems to them in experience as though time robustly passes, and why they differentially report that they believe that time does in fact robustly pass. We empirically investigate two hypotheses, the differential vividness hypothesis, and the mental time travel hypothesis. According to each of these
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Leibniz as a virtue ethicist Philos. Phenomenol. Res. Pub Date : 2024-03-26 Hao Dong
In this paper I argue that Leibniz's ethics is a kind of virtue ethics where virtues of the agent are explanatorily primary. I first examine how Leibniz obtained his conception of justice as a kind of love in an early text, Elements of Natural Law. I show that in this text Leibniz's goal was to find a satisfactory definition of justice that could reconcile egoism with altruism, and that this was achieved
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Causation and the Time-Asymmetry of Knowledge Australasian Journal of Philosophy Pub Date : 2024-03-24 Thomas Blanchard
This paper argues that the knowledge asymmetry (the fact that we know more about the past than the future) can be explained as a consequence of the causal Markov condition. The causal Markov condit...
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Worldly Indeterminacy and the Provisionality of Language Australasian Journal of Philosophy Pub Date : 2024-03-21 Chien-hsing Ho
Theorists who advocate worldly (metaphysical or ontological) indeterminacy—the idea that the world itself is indeterminate in one or more respects—should address how we understand the signifying na...
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Thing causation Noûs Pub Date : 2024-03-21 Nathaniel Baron‐Schmitt
According to orthodoxy, the most fundamental kind of causation involves one event causing another event. I argue against this event‐causal view. Instead, the most fundamental kind of causation is thing causation, which involves a thing causing a thing to do something. Event causation is reducible to thing causation, but thing causation is not reducible to event causation, because event causation cannot
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Quine, evidence, and our science Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2024-03-20 Gary Kemp
As is reasonably well-appreciated, Quine struggled with his definition of the all-important notion of an observation sentence; especially in order to make them bear out his commitment to language’s being a ‘social art’. In an earlier article (Mind 131(523):805–825, 2022), I proposed a certain repair, which here I will explain, justify and articulate further. But it also infects the definition of observation
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Grasp and scientific understanding: a recognition account Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2024-03-20 Michael Strevens
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Three Concepts of Actual Causation Br. J. Philos. Sci. (IF 3.4) Pub Date : 2024-03-15 Enno Fischer
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Ahead of Print.
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Normativity, Epistemic Rationality, and Noisy Statistical Evidence Br. J. Philos. Sci. (IF 3.4) Pub Date : 2024-03-13 Boris Babic, Anil Gaba, Ilia Tsetlin, Robert L. Winkler
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Ahead of Print.
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Responsibility and Perception J. Philos. Pub Date : 2024-03-11 Benjamin Henke
I argue that beliefs based on irresponsibly formed experiences—whose causes were not appropriately regulated by the subject—are doxastically unjustified. Only this position, I claim, accounts for the higher epistemic standard required of perceptual experts. Section I defends this standard and applies it to a pair of cases in which either an expert umpire or a complete novice judge a force play in baseball
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Optimization and Beyond J. Philos. Pub Date : 2024-03-11 Akshath Jitendranath
This paper will be concerned with hard choices—that is, choice situations where an agent cannot make a rationally justified choice. Specifically, this paper asks: if an agent cannot optimize in a given situation, are they facing a hard choice? A pair of claims are defended in light of this question. First, situations where an agent cannot optimize because of incompleteness of the binary preference
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Notes on Contributors Ethics (IF 10.8) Pub Date : 2024-03-11
Ethics, Volume 134, Issue 3, Page 448-448, April 2024.
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Jeff Sebo, Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves: Why Animals Matter for Pandemics, Climate Change, and Other Catastrophes Ethics (IF 10.8) Pub Date : 2024-03-11 Heather Browning, Walter Veit
Ethics, Volume 134, Issue 3, Page 443-447, April 2024.
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Tamar Schapiro, Feeling Like It: A Theory of Inclination and Will Ethics (IF 10.8) Pub Date : 2024-03-11 Nomy Arpaly
Ethics, Volume 134, Issue 3, Page 438-443, April 2024.
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Michael J Robillard and Bradley J Strawser, Outsourcing Duty: The Moral Exploitation of the American Soldier Ethics (IF 10.8) Pub Date : 2024-03-11 George Lucas
Ethics, Volume 134, Issue 3, Page 436-438, April 2024.
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Hichem Naar, The Rationality of Love Ethics (IF 10.8) Pub Date : 2024-03-11 Troy Jollimore
Ethics, Volume 134, Issue 3, Page 431-435, April 2024.
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Berislav Marušić, On the Temporality of Emotions: An Essay on Grief, Anger, and Love Ethics (IF 10.8) Pub Date : 2024-03-11 Oded Na’aman
Ethics, Volume 134, Issue 3, Page 426-431, April 2024.
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Artūrs Logins, Normative Reasons: Between Reasoning and Explanation Ethics (IF 10.8) Pub Date : 2024-03-11 John Brunero
Ethics, Volume 134, Issue 3, Page 420-425, April 2024.
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Thomas Kelly, Bias: A Philosophical Study Ethics (IF 10.8) Pub Date : 2024-03-11 Endre Begby
Ethics, Volume 134, Issue 3, Page 416-420, April 2024.