bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Intergenerational Cooperation and Distributive Justice
Authors: Heath Joseph
Published: June 2016

Kevin Sauvé has recently argued in this journal that David Gauthier's conception of ‘morals by agreement’ is inimical to the development of long-term productive investment and sustainable levels of resource exploitation. According to Sauvé, this is because society is confronted with an intergenerational interaction problem whose strategic equilibrium is suboptimal (a ‘Prisoner's Dilemma’). However, unlike the ‘contemporaneous Prisoner's Dilemma’ that Gauthier analyzes, the intergenerational version cannot be solved by an appeal to constrained maximization. As a result, Sauvé claims, Gauthier cannot effectively address the question of intergenerational justice.

The portion of Sauvé's argument that concerns me is the following:

Gauthier solves the contemporaneous Prisoner's Dilemma by ensuring that each person will cooperate only if all others cooperate, and indeed his conception of morality is aimed at ensuring that all individuals incur the costs as well as the benefits of social cooperation. But the contemporaneous solution cannot be applied to the Intergenerational Dilemma: if each generation will save for the next only if the previous generations have also saved, none will ever save. (170)
Missing Modes of Supposition
Authors: Parsons Terence
Published: June 2016

Supposition theory is a medieval account of the semantics of terms as they function in sentences. The word ‘supposition’ is probably interchangeable with our word ‘reference,’ but I'll leave it as ‘supposition’ so as to identify the medieval source of the theory I discuss here. Medieval writers had a great deal to say about supposition; this paper focuses on only one part of the theory, the study of what is now generally called the theory of modes of common personal supposition. The word ‘common’ is used here as in ‘common term,’ as opposed to ‘singular term,’ but in fact, the theory focuses on common terms along with the quantifiers that accompany them. The word ‘personal’ is a technical term indicating that the word in question is used in its normal way to refer to the things it is true of, as distinguished from occurrences in which it refers to itself (as in “Giraffe’ is a noun’) or refers to a particular thing intimately related to the things it is true of (as in ‘Giraffe is a species’).
“Kilimanjaro”1
Authors: McGee Vann
Published: June 2016

This is not an overly ambitious paper. What I would like to do is to take a thesis that most people would regard as wildly implausible, and convince you that it is, in fact, false. What's worse, the argument I shall give is by no means airtight, though I hope it's reasonably convincing. The thesis has to do with the fuzzy boundaries of terms that refer to familiar middle-sized objects, terms like ‘Kilimanjaro’ and ‘the tallest mountain in Africa.’ It is intuitively clear (though not beyond doubt — see Timothy Williamson's book Vagueness) that Kilimanjaro has a fuzzy boundary, so that there are some clods of earth at the base of the mountain for which there isn't anything, either in our practices in using the word ‘Kilimanjaro’ or in the facts of geography, that determines an answer to the question whether the clod is a part of Kilimanjaro.
Inscrutability
Authors: Richard Mark
Published: June 2016

Pick what seems a correct scheme of reference for a language, German say. Perhaps you have picked one which tells us such things as that

‘Katz’ refers in German to cats (and nought else)

‘Hund’ refers in German to dogs (and nought else).

Your scheme, given that it also accounts for German devices of sentence compounding such as ‘und,’ ‘nicht,’ and ‘alle,’ assigns truth conditions to German sentences.

Quine reminds us that it is possible to permute your reference scheme in such a way that the result assigns the same truth values to all German sentences, even though the permutation changes the reference of all of German's terms. For example, we can take ‘Katz’ to refer to undetached cat parts, ‘Hund’ to undetached dog parts, ‘lauft’ to be true of undetached parts of things that run, ‘ist identische mit’ to name the relation undetached object parts stand in when they are parts of the same object, and so on. Quine observes that it seems possible to do this without effecting the ‘observational consequences’ of German theories: a theory in German will be seen, under one interpretation, to be confirmed by some evidence iff it is so confirmed under the other.
Nations and Social Complexity
Authors: Ware Robert
Published: June 2016

In the last three decades, we in the West have seen nationalism turn from an apparently progressive force, as in Cuba, Vietnam, and many countries in Africa, into a negative force of degenerating chaos, as in Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, Sri Lanka, and Rwanda. Elsewhere, during the same decades, the record of nationalism has been, or at least been perceived to have been, more mixed, for example in Belgium, Canada, and India. The assessments themselves are uncertain and suspect, however. Maybe nationalism was not so clearly progressive or so clearly retrogressive where we had previously thought it so. Maybe we misjudge its ambivalence elsewhere. Maybe we are not even dealing with the same kind of phenomenon.

More generally, we have yet to understand the role of nationalism in two world wars and countless imperialist incursions. We have only the vaguest ideas of its connection to social ideologies and movements like racism, fascism, and Nazism and little understanding of its relevance to economic systems like capitalism and socialism.
Afterword: Liberal Nationalism Both Cosmopolitan and Rooted
Authors: Couture Jocelyne , Nielsen Kai , Seymour Michel
Published: June 2016

There are nationalisms and nationalisms, and as nationalisms vary from barbarous and murderous to benign and, all things considered, perhaps desirable, so theories of nationalism vary from irrational or turgid metaphysical accounts to reasonable and carefully articulated and argued theories of nationalism. André Van de Putte has well described some of the former (without at all falling into that category himself) while David Miller, Yael Tamir, Geneviève Nootens, Ross Poole, and Robert X. Ware have carefully argued for some modest forms of nationalism, sometimes explicitly and sometimes only by implication. But there are also, as the reader will have seen, forcefully argued and systematic theories setting themselves against even the most sophisticated and plausible defences of nationalism. The articles of Harry Brighouse, Omar Dahbour, and Andrew Levine fall explicitly into that category and, we would argue, so does Allen Buchanan's carefully wrought article, though implicitly and by implication but not by programmatic intent.
What Good is Consciousness?
Authors: Dretske Fred
Published: June 2016

If consciousness is good for something, conscious things must differ in some causally relevant way from unconscious things. If they do not, then, as Davies and Humphreys conclude, too bad for consciousness: ‘psychological theory need not be concerned with this topic.’

Davies and Humphreys are applying a respectable metaphysical idea — the idea, namely, that if an object's having a property does not make a difference to what that object does, if the object's causal powers are in no way enhanced (or diminished) by its possession of this property, then nothing the object does can be explained by its having that property. A science dedicated to explaining the behavior of such objects would not have to concern itself with that property. That is why being an uncle is of no concern to the psychology (let alone the physics) of uncles. I am an uncle, yes, but my being so does not (causally speaking ) enable (or prevent) me to do anything I would not otherwise be able to do.
Science and Moral Skepticism in Hobbes
Authors: Black Sam
Published: June 2016

Here lyes that mighty Man of Sense

Who, full of years, departed hence,

To teach the other world Intelligence,

This was the prodigious Man,

who vanquish’ d Pope and Puritan,

By the Magic of Leviathan.

Had he not Controversy wanted,

His deeper Thoughts had not been scanted;

Therefore good Spirits him transplant:

Wise as he was, he could not tell

Whether he went to Heaven or Hell.

Beyond the Tenth Sphere, if there be a wide place,

He'll prove by his Art there's no infinite space:

And all good Angels may thank him, for that

He has prov’ d they are something, tho men know not what.

Hobbes's Epitaph (Anon 1680)
Kripke's Nonnativity Argument
Authors: Zalabardo José L.
Published: June 2016

In Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, Kripke presented an argument to the effect that there can be no facts as to what someone means by a linguistic expression. In this argument, a central role is played by the contention that meaning is a normative notion. Some of the most popular accounts of what meaning facts consist in are rejected on the grounds that they fail to accommodate the normative character of meaning. This aspect of Kripke's dialectic plays a crucial role in his rejection of dispositional accounts of meaning, and it is rightly perceived as undermining, if successful, currently fashionable information theoretic accounts of semantic notions. Assessments of its success vary widely. Whereas for some writers the normative character of meaning constitutes an insurmountable obstacle for dispositional accounts, advocates of the information theoretic program have generally failed to acknowledge that their proposals are invalidated by this aspect of the notion.
Could a Feminist and a Game Theorist Co-Parent?
Authors: Wendling Karen , Viminitz Paul
Published: June 2016

Game theorists assume that rational defensibility is a necessary condition for moral, social, or political justification. By itself, this is a fairly uncontroversial claim; most moral or political philosophers would agree. And yet game theorists tend to be advocates of the free market. External critics of game theory usually claim this is because game theorists assume that individuals are atomistic and self-interested. Game theorists themselves deny this, however, for what strike us as good reasons. In principle, game theory has no necessary ties to right-wing distribution schemes. Why, then, is game theory almost exclusively the province of conservative philosophers, political scientists, and economists? The problem, we believe, lies in the theory of rational choice standardly employed by game theory. Even if we accept, for the purposes of argument, game theory's account of the justification of moral dispositions — that a disposition is morally justified if and only if, in its absence, it would be game theoretically rational to acquire it — we need not be led to right-wing solutions. If we expand the kinds of choices facing individuals to include choices about what we will call ‘institutional roles,’ then we can explain the game theoretic rationality of the kinds of emotions and behavior exemplified by duty, loyalty, and love.
Closing the 'Is'-'Ought' Gap
Authors: Maitzen Stephen
Published: June 2016

In a dense and fascinating article of some ten years ago, Toomas Karmo adds his voice to the chorus of philosophers who deny the possibility of soundly deriving ‘ought’ from ‘is.’ According to Karmo, no derivation containing an ethical conclusion and only non-ethical premises can possibly be sound, where ‘sound’ describes a deductively valid derivation all of whose premises are true. He also suggests that the only valid derivations of ‘ought’ from ‘is’ will be trivial ones. His argument has, to my knowledge, gone unrebutted; on the contrary, it has won recent endorsements, some philosophers evidently believing that he has finally put to rest the issue of the logical autonomy of ethics. Against that trend, I intend to rebut his argument, both by falsifying the taxonomy on which his argument relies and by offering a nontrivial and potentially sound ‘is’-‘ought’ derivation of my own.
Private Lives and Public Virtues: The Idea of a Liberal Community
Authors: McCabe David
Published: June 2016

Ever since Immanuel Kant suggested that ‘the problem of setting up a state can be solved even by a nation of devils’ so long as citizens’ selfish tendencies worked to counterbalance one another (Immanuel Kant, ‘Perpetual Peace,’ Hans Reiss, ed.,Kant's Political Writing[New York: Cambridge University Press 1970], 112), critics have complained that liberalism is indifferent to individual character and, worse still, is predicated on the notion that citizens ought to be concerned primarily with their private interests and little, if at all, with the public weal. Lately, this line of criticism has been pressed with renewed force by theorists who argue that liberal states can flourish only if citizens develop the distinctive virtues that, ‘taken together … constitute a disposition to foster, support, and participate in liberal political institutions,’ but that liberal states committed to neutrality with respect to the good cannot realistically expect their citizens to develop these virtues.
Closet Dualism and Mental Causation
Authors: Leiter Brian , Miller Alexander
Published: June 2016

Serious doubts about nonreductive materialism — the orthodoxy of the past two decades in philosophy of mind — have been long overdue. Jaegwon Kim has done perhaps the most to articulate the metaphysical problems that the new breed of materialists must confront in reconciling their physicalism with their commitment to the autonomy of the mental. Although the difficulties confronting supervenience, multiple-realizability, and mental causation have been recurring themes in his work, only mental causation — in particular, the specter of epiphenomenalism — has really captured the interest of philosophers in general in recent years.

This growing attention has spawned a large body of literature, which it is not our aim here to explore or assess. Rather, we want to call attention to what we believe is a new and quite different argumentative strategy against epiphenomenalism voiced in some recent articles by Tyler Burge and Stephen Yablo. Each has challenged two central assumptions of the existing mental causation debate.
Truth: A Traditional Debate Reviewed
Authors: Wright Crispin
Published: June 2016

Every student of English-speaking analytical metaphysics is taught that the early twentieth century philosophical debate about truth confronted the correspondence theory, supported by Russell, Moore, the early Wittgenstein and, later, J.L. Austin, with the coherence theory advocated by the British Idealists. Sometimes the pragmatist conception of truth deriving from Dewey, William James, and C.S. Peirce is regarded as a third player. And as befits a debate at the dawn of analytical philosophy, the matter in dispute is normally taken to have been the proper analysis of the concept.

No doubt this conception nicely explains some of the characteristic turns taken in the debate. Analysis, as traditionally conceived, has to consist in the provision of illuminating conceptual equivalences; and illumination will depend, according to the standard rules of play, on the analysans’ utilizing only concepts which, in the best case, are in some way prior to and independent of the notion being analyzed — or, if that's too much to ask, then concepts which at least permit of some form of explication which does not in turn take one straight back to that notion.
Doubt: Affective States and the Regulation of Inquiry
Authors: Hookway Christopher
Published: June 2016

Pragmatists challenge a sharp separation of issues of theoretical and practical rationality. This can encourage a sort of anti-realism: our classifications and theories are shaped by our interests and practical concerns. However, it need not do this. A more fundamental theme is that cognition is itself an activity, the attempt to solve problems and discover truths effectively and responsibly. Evidence has to be collected, experiments have to be devised and carried out, dialogues must be engaged in with fellow inquirers, decisions must be made about when we have scrutinized our opinions enough to trust our results. Even if our goals are “purely cognitive,” the attempt to achieve them through inquiry and deliberation is an activity. The normative standards that guide its conduct, like those governing any activity, will include standards of practical rationality. Indeed, we might suggest that a belief isjustifiedso long as it is the product of responsible, well-executed inquiry.
Interpretive Charity, Massive Disagreement, and Imagination
Authors: Wong Wai-Hung
Published: June 2016

It is a main theme of Donald Davidson's theory of interpretation that interpretive charity is a sine qua non of interpretation. Interpretive charity is necessary for interpretation to get off the ground, for without being charitable, that is, without taking the speaker to be rational by our standards and taking what he holds true to be in fact true by our lights as far as possible, there is no hope that we can, as it were, break into the circle of his mental states, meanings, and behavior. Charity is not merely a necessity at the initial stage of the interpretive process, but an ever-present constraint on interpretation. In other words, there can never be a point in the interpretive process where the interpreter can cease to be charitable. This is, at least partly, explained by another main theme of Davidson's theory, namely, that understanding and communication require massive agreement between interpreter and speaker.
Mechanism and the Representational Nature of Sensation in Descartes
Authors: Keating Laura
Published: June 2016

Commentators have argued that along with adopting a mechanical view of nature, Descartes developed two innovative views concerning sensation: sensation occurs without the involvement of an entity resembling the sensation, and sensations represent features of objects but without resembling them. When Descartes is interpreted as making both of these claims, it appears that in removing resemblance from the causal process of sensation, Descartes preserves the notion that sensations represent features of objects and that he does this by introducing a new conception of representation — one not requiring resemblance.

It is important to recognize that the two claims are distinct. The first claim, that the physical process of sensation does not involve something resembling the qualitative content of the sensation, does not in and of itself entail anything about the representational nature of the sensation. Or rather, what it does entail is thatifsensations do represent their causes in objects, then it cannot be by presenting those causes to the mind as they exist in objects.
Freedom, Foreknowledge, and the Principle of Alternate Possibilities
Authors: Vihvelin Kadri
Published: June 2016

For us there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

T.S. Eliot,Four Quartets

Few arguments in contemporary philosophy have had more influence than Harry Frankfurt's ‘Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsiblity.’ In that famous paper Frankfurt noted that all parties to the traditional debate about the compatibility of free will and moral responsibility with determinism had subscribed to a common assumption. They had assumed the truth of something Frankfurt called ‘the Principle of Alternate Possibilities,’ which he expressed as follows:

(PAP) A person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise.

In the traditional debate incompatibilists argued that if determinism is true, then no one can ever do otherwise, while compatibilists argued that there is a morally relevant sense in which even a deterministic agent can do otherwise. Frankfurt proposed to show that PAPis false, thereby undercutting the traditional debate.
Prediction, Probability, and Pragmatics
Authors: Eells Ellery
Published: June 2016

Along with such criteria as truth, comprehensiveness, explanatory adequacy, and simplicity (as well as others), philosophers of science usually also mention predictive accuracy as a criterion of theory choice. But while philosophers have devoted attention to the problem of the logical structure of scientific prediction, it seems that little attention has been devoted to the difficult question of what precisely constitutes predictive accuracy, at least ‘predictive accuracy’ in the sense in which I will discuss it here.

I will in this paper discuss the role of predictive accuracy in theory choice. But before that, I will address the problem of what constitutes predictive accuracy more generally and independently of its role in theory choice. I will approach the problem of predictive accuracy from a pragmaticpoint of view, and then try to assess the role of predictive accuracy in theory choice from that perspective.
Strawson, Parfit and Impersonality
Authors: Campbell Scoti
Published: June 2016

It is thought by some philosophers that certain arguments developed by Peter Strawson in Individuals show that Derek Parfit's claim in Reasons and Persons that experiences can be referred to without referring to persons is incoherent. In this paper I argue that Parfit's claim is not threatened by these arguments.
Statistical Method and the Peircean Account of Truth
Authors: Reynolds Andrew
Published: June 2016

Peirce is often credited with having formulated a pragmatic theory of truth. This can be misleading, if it is assumed that Peirce was chiefly interested in providing a metaphysical analysis of the immediate conditions under which a belief or proposition is true, or the conditions under which a proposition or belief is said to be madetrue. Cheryl Misak has exposed the subtleties in Peirce's discussion of truth, especially showing the difficulties faced by any ascription to him of an analytic definition of truth. In this paper I follow Misak in urging that Peirce's contribution to the philosophical discussion about the nature of truth was not of that kind. What makes his pragmatic approach distinctive is that rather than attempting to state the nature of truth per se, it attempts to uncover the beliefs and expectations we commit ourselves to when we make specific claims that such and such is true or is the case.
The Liberal Foundations of Cultural Nationalism
Authors: Gans Chaim
Published: June 2016

According to cultural nationalism, members of groups sharing a common history and societal culture have a fundamental, morally significant interest in adhering to their culture and in sustaining it for generations. Moreover, this interest should be protected by states. I shall examine three theses included in this statement. The first, theadherence thesis,relates to the basic interest people have in adhering to their national culture. The second thesis ishistorical.It concerns the basic interest people have in recognizing and protecting the multigenerational dimension of their culture. The third thesis, apoliticalone, holds that the interests people have in living their lives within their culture and in sustaining this culture for generations should be protected politically. Some contemporary writers who support a liberal version of cultural nationalism do so by arguing that people have an interest in culture mainly because it is a prerequisite for their freedom and also because it is a component of their identity.
Aiming and Intending
Authors: Bumpus Ann
Published: June 2016

Does it matter morally whether a bomber who kills civilians in a raid intends to do so as a means to weakening the enemy or merely foresees he will do so in his attempt to destroy a munitions factory? Does it matter morally whether a nurse who gives a terminally ill patient a lethal dose of painkiller intends to do so as a means to ending the patient's life or merely foresees she will do so in her attempt to alleviate the patient's pain? Those who answer affirmatively rest moral weight on the notion of intending to do something as a means. But giving an adequate analysis of this notion has proved difficult. In ‘Intending as a Means,’ Kwong-Loi Shun criticizes two attempts at analyzing this notion, one which he attributes to Jonathan Bennett and the other which he attributes to Thomas Nagel. Shun thinks both Bennett's and Nagel's analyses identify intending to bring about S as a means with aiming at S and offers examples which he believes show ‘an agent need not aim at what he intends to bring about.’ In making his objection to Bennett and Nagel, Shun introduces his own criterion for intending as a means.
All the Monkeys Aren't in the Zoo: Evolutionary Ethics and the Possibility of Moral Knowledge
Authors: Stingl Michael
Published: June 2016

The error theory of moral judgment says that moral judgments, though often believed to be objectively true, never are. The tendency to believe in the objectivity of our moral beliefs, like the beliefs themselves, is rooted in objective features of human psychology, and not in objective features of the natural world that might exist apart from human psychology. In naturalized epistemology, it is tempting to take this view as the default hypothesis. It appears to make the fewest assumptions in accounting for the fact that humans not only make moral judgments, but believe them to be, at least some of the time, objectively true. In this paper I argue that from an evolutionary perspective, the error theory is not the most parsimonious alternative. It is simpler to suppose that mental representations with moral content arose as direct cognitive and motivational responses to independent moral facts.
Self-directed Agents
Authors: Christensen W. D. , Hooker C. A.
Published: June 2016

In this paper, we outline a theory of the nature of self-directed agents. What is distinctive about self-directed agents is their ability to anticipate interaction processes and to evaluate their performance, and thus their sensitivity to context. They can improve performance relative to goals, and can, in certain instances, construct new goals. We contrast self-directedness with reactive action processes that are not modifiable by the agent, though they may be modified by supra-agent processes such as populational adaptation or external design.

Self-directedness lies at the nexus of issues concerning the evolution and nature of intentionality, intelligence, and agency. It provides some insight into the evolution of intelligence because it helps explain how organisms are able to manage variable interaction processes, e.g., a hunting strategy that varies with prey type, ground condition, and hunger level. Simple self-directed organisms like bumblebees manage variability in one or a few dimensions.
Monsters Among Us
Authors: Schroeder Timothy
Published: June 2016

There are monsters that scare children and monsters that scare grownups, and then there are monsters that scare philosophers of mind. This paper is concerned with this third sort of monster, whose primary representative is the zombie – a living being, physically just like a person but lacking consciousness. Though zombies act like normal people and appear to have normal brains, everything is blank inside. Unfortunately, the term ‘zombie’ covers a narrower class of deficits than is convenient, failing to cover apparently normal human beings lacking propositional attitudes. Davidson's (1987) “Swampman” is supposed to be an example of such a creature, so I will dub individuals who are apparently normal but lack all propositional attitudes ‘swampfolk,’ though this is non-standard terminology. In what follows, I will refer to both zombies and swampfolk as ‘monsters,’ and will similarly designate animals lacking in consciousness or propositional attitudes.
Korsgaard's Kantian Arguments for the Value of Humanity
Authors: Kerstein Samuel J.
Published: June 2016

In The Sources of Normativity, Christine Korsgaard affirms that Enlightenment morality is true: humanity is valuable. To many of us few claims seem more obvious. Yet Enlightenment thinkers such as Kant do not limit themselves to affirming that humanity is valuable. They appeal to reason in an effort to establish it. They try to show that, in some sense, we are rationally compelled to recognize the value of humanity. Korsgaard joins in this effort. She champions the claim that unless we take humanity to be valuable, we condemn ourselves to complete practical skepticism, i.e., to the view that we have no reason to do anything at all.

Korsgaard discusses two arguments that, she believes, support this claim. The first she attributes directly to Kant in a series of influential papers on his ethics. The second argument, which she calls a ‘fancy new model’ of the first, she constructs under her own name in The Sources of Normativity. I will defend the view that neither of these arguments succeeds. In doing so, I will not be trying to show that we are mistaken in believing humanity to be valuable.
The Virtuous Group — Foundations for the ‘Argument from the Wisdom of the Multitudef’
Authors: Risse Mathias
Published: June 2016

Throughout the Politics, Aristotle discusses claims to the supreme authority (to kyrion) in a polis. Some claims are made on qualitative grounds, and here Aristotle mentions freedom, wealth, education, good birth, military power, and virtue (1268a21-23, 1279a40-b5, 1283a16-18, 1283bl, 1294a20, 1296b18, 1301a39-1301b4). Other claims are made on quantitative grounds (1296b17), and here Aristotle refers to the superior numbers of the multitude (1296b19). Since he takes all these claims seriously and since several parties may claim power on different grounds, quarrels (amphisbētēsis, 1283b3, also 1283a24) are to be expected. As opposed to this, in the ideal polis all claims are made by the same group. Claims on qualitative grounds make us inquire about possible bearers of such qualities. For example, is a claim on account of wealth, a claim on behalf of wealthy individuals, or may it also be an argument on behalf of groups none of whose members qualifies, but which qualifies as a group if its wealth is taken to be the sum over the individual shares? This question is significant because different answers lead to different distributions of power.
Matter and Aristotle's Material Cause
Authors: Byrne Christopher
Published: June 2016

If by the term ‘matter’ is meant the extended, movable, and corporeal stuff out of which perceptible objects are made, then, according to one interpretative tradition, there is nothing in Aristotle's account of the world that corresponds to matter in the above sense of physical stuff. Aristotle does indeed describe certain things as extended, movable, and corporeal: for example, the five elements, earth, water, air, fire, and ether, as well as everything made out of them. He also has the concept of a material cause, that is, the raw materials out of which something can be made or generated, and he makes frequent use of this concept in his analysis of perceptible substances. Still, the fact that Aristotle thought about what perceptible substances are made of is insufficient evidence for attributing to him the concept of matter as physical stuff. In addition, we would want to know whether he thought that all perceptible substances are extended, movable, and corporeal precisely because they are made out of matter, and whether any aspect of their behavior is to be explained simply by virtue of their nature as material objects.
Fictionalism and Moore's Paradox
Authors: Szabó Zoltán Gendler
Published: June 2016

Many philosophers strive for a thin ontology but are nevertheless unwilling to curtail ordinary and scientific talk that carries apparent commitment to the entities they reject. As Carnap put it, such a philosopher speaks with an uneasy conscience, ‘like a man who in his everyday life does with qualms many things which are not in accord with the high moral principles he professes on Sundays.’ To appear less hypocritical he may, of course, tell us openly what he is doing and invite us to join him. But then it is hard to see why he is not advocating the absurd position that we should assent to sentences of the form ‘There areFs but I don't believe that there areFs.’

This is a simple objection, and there is a simple answer to it. But the answer is not available to everyone. I will argue that defenders of a particular version of fictionalism are in trouble with Moore's paradox. The bad news for fictionalism in general is that this particular version is the one that best deals with the Quine-Putnam challenge.
A Skeptic's Reply to Lewisian Contextualism
Authors: Oakley I.T.
Published: June 2016

A skeptic will from time to time make such claims as ‘We know (little or) nothing.’ Call this the skeptical use of the word ‘know.’ In apparent contradiction of the skeptic's claims, almost all of us firmly ascribe knowledge to ourselves and others. We use the word ‘know’ and its cognates frequently and fluently in largely untroubled communication with our fellows. We make judgments ascribing knowledge to ourselves and others. Furthermore, faced with the same situation and needing to make a judgment about whether to ascribe knowledge or not, we agree on the whole with each other's ascriptions (and withholdings and doubtful cases). For the sake of a term, and being careful to neglect any stray connotations it may carry, let us call this the cognitivist use of ‘know.’
Rational Choice with Deontic Constraints
Authors: Heath Joseph
Published: June 2016

Anyone who has ever lived with roommates understands the Hobbesian state of nature implicitly. People sharing accommodations quickly discover that buying groceries, doing the dishes, sweeping the floor, and a thousand other household tasks, are all prisoner's dilemmas waiting to happen. For instance, if food is purchased communally, it gives everyone an incentive to overconsume (because the majority of the cost of anything anyone eats is borne by the others). Individuals also have an incentive to buy expensive items that the others are unlikely to want. As a result, everyone's food bill will be higher than it would be if everyone did their own shopping. Things are not much better when it comes to other aspects of household organization. Cleaning is a common sticking point. Once there are a certain number of people living in a house, cleanliness becomes a quasi-public good. If everyone ‘pitched in’ to clean up, then everyone would be happier. But there is a free-rider incentive—before cleaning, it's best to wait around a bit to see if someone else will do it. As a result, the dishes will stack up in the sink, the carpet will get grungy, and so on.
The Action as Conclusion
Authors: Clark Philip
Published: June 2016

On the question of the conclusion of a piece of practical reasoning, few have been willing to follow Aristotle's lead. He said the conclusion was an action. These days, the conclusion is usually described either as a proposition about what one ought to do, or as a psychological state or event, such as a decision to do something, an intention to do something, or a belief about what one ought to do. Why favor these options over the action-as-conclusion view? By far the most oft-repeated answer is that these views, unlike Aristotle's, can accommodate the case in which a conclusion is drawn but not acted upon. The conclusion cannot be an action, it is said, because it is possible to reach a conclusion about what to do without doing the action. My thesis is that this objection fails, and that as a consequence no radical departure from Aristotle's proposal is warranted.
The Charitable Perspective: Forgiveness and Toleration as Supererogatory
Authors: Benbaji Hagit , Heyd David
Published: June 2016

'May one be pardon’ d and retain the offence?’ asks King Claudius in his tormented monologue inHamlet.Forgiveness appears incompatible with the retention of the offence, both in the sense of enjoying its consequences (Claudius's arrogation of the Queen and the Kingdom of Denmark) and in the sense of the subsistence of the attitude which underlay the offensive act (his cold-heartedness and ambition). There are, however, views which allow for, even admire, an attitude of forgiveness towards people who have ‘retained’ their offense in some way. This idea of forgiveness is harder to justify, since no change (like repentance) has taken place in the agent. We suggest that the concept of toleration can serve as an illuminating clue in such an analysis. The tolerant attitude involves a certain kind of reconciliation with people who not only have done something wrong in the past, but insist on sticking to their objectionable conduct in the present and the future. Tolerance, in other words, is not conditioned by repentance or by commitment to behavioral transformation; it is a kind of unconditional ‘forgiveness’ in advance.
Return to Moral Twin Earth
Authors: Merli David
Published: June 2016

Roughly a half-century ago, R.M. Hare gave us a potent argument against attempts to account for the meaning of moral language in non-normative or ‘descriptive’ terms. The argument relies on the idea that in order to have genuine moral disagreement, we have to be talking about the same thing. Real disagreement requires agreement in meaning: if the words we use in our disputes mean different things, then we're just talking past, and not to, one another. Using this simple observation, Hare argues that if the meaning of an evaluative word such as ‘good’ were primarily descriptive, then groups with sufficiently different standards for applying ‘good’ wouldn't be able to enter into a real evaluative disagreement. But these disagreements are possible. Hence, he concluded, it's the evaluative meaning of ‘good’ that's primary — and any descriptive account is bound to fail because it doesn't capture the crucial element of endorsement that's central to normative language.
Contingent Natures and Virtuous Knowers: Could Epistemology be ‘Gendered’
Authors: Kukla Rebecca , Ruetsche Laura
Published: June 2016

When Sandra Harding called for an epistemology of science whose systematic attention to the gendered Status of epistemic agents renders it ‘less partial and distorted’ than ‘traditional’ epistemologies, some commentators recoiled in horror. Propelled by ‘a mad form of the genetic fallacy’ they said, she descends ‘the slide to an arational account of science.’ On a less melodramatic reading, feminist epistemologies such as Harding's advocate not irrationalism, but senses of rationality more expanded than those which they associate with ‘traditional’ epistemology.
The Real Problem With Internalism About Reasons
Authors: Brewer Talbot
Published: June 2016

Over the past two decades, moral philosophers have been engaged in a seemingly interminable debate about the role of internal and external reasons in practical reasoning. The rough distinction between these two sorts of reasons is this: internal reasons apply to particular agents in virtue of their relation to that agent's desires, preferences, or other motivational states, while external reasons are normative for particular agents quite independently of their relation to the subjective motivational states of these agents.
On Presentism, Endurance, and Change
Authors: Hestevold H. Scott , Carter William R.
Published: June 2016

There has been much recent debate about Presentism among those who believe the doctrine to be nontrivial and true, those who believe it to be nontrivial and false, and those who believe it to be trivial — either trivially true or trivially false. Formulating Presentism precisely is problematic, which accounts for some of the controversy.
Warmongers, Martyrs, and Madmen versus the Hobbesian Laws of Nature
Authors: Cohen Andrew I.
Published: June 2016

Hobbes claims all persons agree on the value of the laws of nature and the peace to which they are means. He also sees the laws of nature as the ‘conclusions’ of right reason. But Hobbes argues that right reason in nature is particularized; each agent may decide which reasons govern her conduct. If Hobbes is then to cast the laws of nature as conclusions of right reason, he must either explain why the extent to which right reason in nature is particularized is not such as to impede convergence on the laws of nature, or he must explain why any divergence is irrelevant to the justification of the laws of nature.
Feminism and Agency
Authors: Isaacs Tracy
Published: June 2016

Given conditions of oppression presupposed by a feminist understanding of social structures, feminist agency is paradoxical. I am going to understand feminist agency as women's ability to be effective agents against their own oppression. The paradox of feminist agency arises because feminist assumptions about women's socialization seem to entail that women's agency is compromised by sexist oppression. In particular, women's agency appears to be diminished in ways that interfere with their capacity for feminist action, that is, action against sexist oppression.

Feminist philosophers have taken issue with traditional conceptions of agency, claiming that these conceptions are overly individualistic and valorize an illusory and unattractive ideal of agents and agency. If the paradox arises because women do not attain traditional ideals of independence, control, choice, and free action, then, if we reject the tradition, we may be able to articulate a preferable ideal of agency. This alternative may be one that women satisfy. Hence, a feminist reconstrual of the self could dispel the paradox.
Sexual Exploitation and the Social Contract
Authors: Sample Ruth
Published: June 2016

Nearly everyone agrees that sexual exploitation occurs and that, when it does, it is morally wrong. However, there is substantial disagreement over what constitutes sexual exploitation and why it is wrong. Is sex between freely consenting adults ever exploitative? Is prostitution always exploitative? What features of sexually exploitative interactions lead us to regard them as morally wrong? And if sexual exploitation is morally wrong, what should be done about it?

These are not new questions for the social philosopher. However, recent criticisms of social contract theory may lead us to wonder whether contractarianism (of any variety) has the resources to criticize important cases of sexual exploitation—particularly prostitution. Some liberals have defended prostitution “in principle,” arguing that when prostitution is truly consensual, there is nothing wrong with it. This is called “sound prostitution.” Indeed, in cases where the parties to a sexual exchange are both competent adults, liberals and libertarians have a difficult time criticizing it, since to do so runs the risk of imposing a local and historically specific sexual ideal on members of society who explicitly reject it or else suggests that the prostitutes and their clients are not really competent agents.
Can There be Spatially Coincident Entities of the Same Kind
Authors: Hershenov David B.
Published: June 2016

The majority of philosophers believe that the existence of spatially coincident entities is not only a coherent idea but that there are millions of such entities. What such philosophers do not countenance are spatially coincident entities of the same kind. We will call this ‘Locke's Thesis’ since the denial goes back to An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. It is there that Locke wrote, ‘For we never finding, nor conceiving it possible that two things of the same kind should exist in the same place at the same time, we rightly conclude that, whatever exists anywhere at any time, excludes all of the same kind, and is there itself alone.’ It is not clear to me that the believer in spatially coincident entities can draw the ‘ontological line’ where Locke does. Many of the reasons that lead Locke and others to maintain that there exist spatially coincident entities of different kinds would also suggest that there are spatially coincident entities of the same kind. To illustrate this claim, a scenario of spatially coincident roads will be presented.
Unnatural Rights
Authors: Darby Derrick
Published: June 2016

I was in bondage in Missouri, too. I can't say that my treatment was bad. In one respect I say it was not bad, but in another I consider it was as bad as could be. I was a slave. That covers it all. I had not the rights of a man.

It cannot be too often repeated: peasants and workmen have no natural rights, not one. Only we ought instantly to add, that kings and nobles have none either.
Consciousness as Intransitive Self-Consciousness: Two Views and an Argument
Authors: Kriegel Uriah
Published: June 2016

The word ‘consciousness’ is notoriously ambiguous. This is mainly because it isnota term of art, but a mundane word we all use quite frequently, for different purposes and in different everyday contexts. In this paper, I am going to discuss consciousness in one specific sense of the word. To avoid the ambiguities of the word ‘consciousness,’ I will introduce a term of art:intransitive self-consciousness.As the term suggests, the phenomenon I have in mind is a kind of self-consciousness, or self-awareness.
The Seriousness of Doubt and Our Natural Trust in the Senses in the First Meditation
Authors: Macarthur David
Published: June 2016

In the Synopsis to the Meditations Descartes assures us that ‘extensive doubt… [provides] the easiest route by which the mind may be led away from the senses’ (12). And in the Fifth Replies Descartes adds that it is essential to a proper understanding of the Meditations that ‘the entire testimony of the senses should be regarded as uncertain and even as false’ (350). But to deny our ordinary trust in the senses on the grounds of such ‘hyperbolic’ or ‘metaphysical’ doubts as that one might be dreaming or the victim of an evil demon is, as Descartes himself puts it, quite mad: ‘no sane person has ever seriously doubted that there really is a world and that human beings have bodies’ (16). We seem, then, to be confronted with a dilemma: on the one hand, the skepticism about the senses that we find in the First Meditation must be taken seriously. On the other hand, it is, in some sense, a sham. How, then, are we to understand these doubts?
The NOAer's Dilemma: Constructive Empiricism and the Natural Ontological Attitude
Authors: Alspector-Kelly Marc
Published: June 2016

Faced with interminable combat over some piece of philosophical terrain, someone will inevitably suggest that the contested ground is nothing more than a philosophically manufactured mirage that is therefore not worth fighting for. Arthur Fine has long advocated such a response — the ‘Natural Ontological Attitude,’ or NOA — to the realism debate in the philosophy of science. Notwithstanding theprima facieincompatibility between the realist's and anti-realist's positions, Fine suggests that there is in fact enough common ground for NOA to stand on its own as a minimal alternative, one that enjoys the advantage of being free of the philosophical burdens of its overweight contenders.

Notwithstanding Fine's claim to have identified a position that is neither realist nor anti-realist, critics charge that NOA, as Fine describes it, is a realist position. I endorse this criticism below, with attention to the relation between NOA and Bas van Fraassen's Constructive Empiricism (CE). I show that Fine's repudiation of the globalism he identifies in realism (and in anti-realism) does not insulate him from that charge.
The Free Speech Argument Against Pornography
Authors: West Caroline
Published: June 2016

Pornography may harm women in a variety of ways. But among the harms that pornography has sometimes been alleged to cause is a surprising one: it violates women's right to freedom of speech. Pornography ‘silences’ women; and laws against pornography are justified (among other reasons) in order to stop pornographers from expressing themselves in a way that prevents women from speaking. Or so claims Catherine Mackinnon.