Creepiness and the emotion of the creeps have been overlooked in the moral philosophy and moral psychology literatures. We argue that the creeps is a morally significant emotion in its own right, and not simply a type of fear, disgust, or anger (though it shares features with those emotions). Reflecting on cases, we defend a novel account of the creeps as felt in response to creepy people. According

Aristotle’s theory of human happiness in the Nicomachean Ethics explicitly depends on the claim that contemplation (theôria) is peculiar to human beings, whether it is our function or only part of it. But there is a notorious problem: Aristotle says that divine beings also contemplate. Various solutions have been proposed, but each has difficulties. Drawing on an analysis of what divine contemplation

Reporting one’s experience of the film Alien, one might say that one saw Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley fighting the monster, but one might also say that one imagined Ripley fighting the monster. This paper aims to figure out the experience that the verbs “to see” and “to imagine” aim to characterize in such reports. For this purpose, I first introduce four requirements for an account of film experience

Aristotle analyses a large range of objects as composites of matter and form. But how exactly should we understand the relation between the matter and form of a composite? Some commentators have argued that forms themselves are somehow material, that is, forms are impure. Others have denied that claim and argued for the purity of forms. In this paper, I develop a new purist interpretation of Metaphysics

A new formulation of the Fine-Tuning Argument (FTA) for the existence of God is offered, which avoids a number of commonly raised objections. I argue that we can and should focus on the fundamental constants and initial conditions of the universe, and show how physics itself provides the probabilities that are needed by the argument. I explain how this formulation avoids a number of common objections

What is the best way of classifying different types of conditionals? According to what has become the traditional view, there is a substantive semantic difference between indicative conditionals and counterfactuals. Against this, it has been objected, primarily on grammatical grounds, that counterfactuals are merely past tense forms of indicative conditionals, expressing at a later time what the corresponding

De se exceptionalism is the view, notably championed by Perry (1979) and Lewis (1979), that our characteristically ‘first-personal’ ways of thinking about ourselves present unique challenges to standard views of propositional attitudes like belief. Though the view has won many adherents, it has recently come under a barrage of deserved criticism. A key claim of detractors is that classic examples used

We often have some reason to do actions insofar as they promote outcomes or states of affairs, such as the satisfaction of a desire. But what is it to promote an outcome? I defend a new version of 'probabilism about promotion'. According to Minimal Probabilistic Promotion, we promote some outcome when we make that outcome more likely than it would have been if we had done something (anything) else

Illusionists about phenomenal consciousness claim that phenomenal consciousness does not exist but merely seems to exist. At the same time, it is quite intuitive for there to be some kind of link between phenomenality and value. For example, some situations seem good or bad in virtue of the conscious experiences they feature. Illusionist views of phenomenal consciousness then face what I call the normative

Standard decision theory has trouble handling cases involving acts without finite expected values. This paper has two aims. First, building on earlier work by Colyvan (2008), Easwaran (2014b), and Lauwers and Vallentyne (2016), it develops a proposal for dealing with such cases, Difference Minimizing Theory. Difference Minimizing Theory provides satisfactory verdicts in a broader range of cases than

Researchers have found that philosophy’s gender gap gradually increases as students progress from first year to majoring and into graduate school. By analysing enrolments in philosophy units at Australian universities from 2005 to 2017, I argue that early interventions are likely to be more effective than typically assumed. My findings are consistent with previous data but improve on previous analyses

If I say . . . that the brandy is soft and velvety, and he questions what I say, it may not be enough merely to invite him to . . . taste. I may need to draw attention to this and that . . . If he then finds himself agreeing with me, I have vindicated my claim in the best possible way, by getting him to see for himself. There is no reason not to say, if one wishes, that I have supported, justified

As with all other moral realists, so-called relaxed moral realists believe that there are moral truths. Unlike metaphysical moral realists, they do not take themselves to be defending a substantively metaphysical position when espousing this view, but to be putting forward a moral thesis from within moral discourse. In this paper, I employ minimalism about truth to examine whether or not there is a

This essay examines Wolff’s science of teleology, which has historically been dismissed as a crude physicotheology resting on a simple confusion between uses and purposes. Focusing especially on his two German volumes (German Teleology, 1723, and German Physiology, 1725), I argue that, first, Wolff never intended teleology to be a selfstanding theology; and second, that teleology, as a part of physics

Various social epistemologists employ what seem to be rather distinct notions of group rationality. In this essay, I offer an account of group rationality that is able to unify the dominant notions present in the literature under a single framework. I argue that if we employ a teleological account of epistemic rationality, and then allow that there are many different epistemic goals that are worth

Data-driven, decision-making technologies used in the justice system to inform decisions about bail, parole, and prison sentencing are biased against historically marginalized groups (Angwin, Larson, Mattu, & Kirchner 2016). But these technologies’ judgments—which reproduce patterns of wrongful discrimination embedded in the historical datasets that they are trained on—are well-evidenced. This presents

In his characteristically excellent paper, “A New Defense of Hedonism about WellBeing,”1 Ben Bramble provides a series of highly original arguments defending a new kind of hedonism. Specifically, Bramble argues for a hedonism that (1) adopts a feltquality (as opposed to an attitudebased) theory of pleasure and pain2 (§ 4), (2) makes use of an important distinction between “the degree to which a pleasure

In this paper, I will consider the repercussions that epistemic contextualism has on capturing the distinctive value of knowledge. I will argue that the way that contextualist views capture the value of knowledge depends on the depth of the contextualism involved. To do so, I distinguish between superficial and deep contextualism, and I show how the latter is forced to contextualist epistemic value

Anhedonia, roughly defined as the diminishment or absence of the capacity to experience pleasure or joy in the performance of daily activities, is a core symptom of Major Depressive Disorder, as well as other psychiatric illnesses. I argue that the two major psychological theories of anhedonia are committed to the view that anhedonia depends, in the general case, on more than just neurobiological states

What’s important about ‘coming out’? Why do we wear business suits or Star Trek pins? Part of the answer, we think, has to do with what we call agential identity. Social metaphysics has given us tools for understanding what it is to be socially positioned as a member of a particular group and what it means to self-identify with a group. But there is little exploration of the general relationship between

It is widely agreed that hypocrisy can undermine one’s moral standing to blame. According to the Nonhypocrisy Condition on standing, R has the standing to blame some other agent S for a violation of some norm N only if R is not hypocritical with respect to blame for violations of N. Yet this condition is seldom argued for. Macalester Bell points out that the fact that hypocrisy is a moral fault does

There is conflicting experimental evidence about whether the “stakes” or importance of being wrong affect judgments about whether a subject knows a proposition. To date, judgments about stakes effects on knowledge have been investigated using binary paradigms: responses to “low” stakes cases are compared with responses to “high stakes” cases. However, stakes or importance are not binary properties—they

Fictional characters are awkward creatures. They are described as being girls, detectives, and cats; as being famous, based on real people, and well developed, and as being paradigmatic examples of things that don’t exist. It’s not hard to see that there are tensions between these various descriptions— how can something that is a detective not exist?— and there is a range of views designed to make

Phenomenal intentionality theories have recently enjoyed significant attention. According to these theories, the intentionality of a mental representation (what it is about) crucially depends on it ...

In the Resolution of the Second Antinomy of the first Critique and the Dynamics chapter of the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Sciences, Kant presents his critical views on mereology, the study of parts and wholes. He endorses an unusual position: Matter is said to be infinitely divisible without being infinitely divided. It would be mistaken to think that matter consists of infinitely many parts—rather

This paper addresses the question whether there is a rational connection between selfrespect and the disrespect of others by engaging with the socalled Stoic View (SV) presented by Colin Bird. According to SV, there is no such connection because the disrespect other people show us can never provide us with a reason to lose our selfrespect. This essay argues that SV is correct only from a thirdpersonal

This paper explores ways in which agentive, deontic, and epistemic concepts combine to yield ought statements, or "oughts," of different characters. I am especially interested in agentive ought statements whose violation invites criticism of the agent. I refer to these statements as “epistemic oughts,” since an appeal to knowledge seems to play such an important role in their description. The investigation

The dominant framework for addressing procreative ethics has revolved around the notion of harm, largely due to Derek Parfit’s famous nonidentity problem. Focusing exclusively on the question of harm treats what procreators owe their offspring as akin to what they would owe strangers (if they owe them anything at all). Procreators, however, usually expect (and are expected) to parent the persons they

I argue that Nietzsche’s criticism of the Kantian theory of disinterested pleasure in beauty reflects his own commitment to claims that closely resemble certain Kantian aesthetic principles, specifically as reinterpreted by Schiller. I show that Schiller takes the experience of beauty to be disinterested both (1) insofar as it involves impassioned ‘play’ rather than desiredriven ‘work’, and (2) insofar

In this paper, I show how a novel treatment of speech acts can be combined with a well-known liberal argument for multiculturalism in a way that will justify claims about the preservation, protection, or accommodation of minority languages. The key to the paper is the claim that every language makes a distinctive range of speech acts possible, acts that cannot be realized by means of any other language

Nudges are, roughly, ways of tweaking the context in which agents choose in order to bring them to make choices that are in their own interests. Nudges are controversial: opponents argue that because they bypass our reasoning processes, they threaten our autonomy. Proponents respond that nudging, and therefore this bypassing, is inevitable and pervasive: if we do not nudge ourselves in our own interests

Adam Hochman has recently argued for comprehensive antirealism about race against social kind theories of race. He points out that sceptics, often taken as archetypical antirealists, may admit race in certain circumstances even if they are eliminativists about race. To be comprehensively antirealist about races, which also means rejecting all ‘race talk’, he suggests that racial formation theory should

There is an oldmeta-philosophical worry: very roughly, metaphysical theories have no observational consequences and so the study of metaphysics has no value. The worry has been around in some form since the rise of logical positivism in the early twentieth century but has seen a bit of a renaissance recently. In this paper, I provide an apology for metaphysics in the face of this kind of concern. The

This paper concerns accounts of normative reasons for action that distinguish between the content of a reason and its “background conditions” (the explanation of why it is a reason). Such accounts sometimes appeal to this distinction to try to avoid what I will call “problematic thought objections”. These objections reject some accounts of normative reasons because (they claim) those accounts allow

Truth, or accuracy, is widely thought to be the centerpiece of any formal theory of meaning, at least in the study of language. This paper argues for a theory of pictorial accuracy, with attention to the relationship between accuracy and pictorial content. Focusing on cases where pictures are intended to convey accurate information, the theory distinguishes between two fundamental representational

According to ontological nihilism there are, fundamentally, no individuals. Both natural languages and standard predicate logic, however, appear to be committed to a picture of the world as containing individual objects. This leads to what I call the expressibility challenge for ontological nihilism: what language can the ontological nihilist use to express her account of how matters fundamentally

This paper advances three related arguments showing that the ontic conception of explanation (OC), which is often adverted to in the mechanistic literature, is inferentially and conceptually incapacitated, and in ways that square poorly with scientific practice. Firstly, the main argument that would speak in favor of OC is invalid, and faces several objections. Secondly, OC’s superimposition of ontic

This paper motivates and defends a principle which captures a systematic connection between essence, truth, and grounding. It says that if a proposition expresses an essential truth, i.e., if it is true in virtue of the nature of some objects, then there are grounds for its truth which involve these objects. Together with the assumption that a fact can only be grounded in facts which are relevant to

This paper evaluates the argument for the contradictoriness of unity, that begins Priest’s recent book One. The argument is seen to fail because it does not adequately differentiate between different forms of unity. This diagnosis of the argument’s failure is used as a basis for two consistent accounts of unity. The paper concludes by arguing that reality contains two absolutely fundamental and unanalysable

The classical rule of Repetition says that if you take any sentence as a premise and repeat it as a conclusion, you have a valid argument. It’s a very basic rule of logic, and many other rules depend on the guarantee that repeating a sentence, or really, any expression, guarantees sameness of referent, or semantic value. However, Repetition fails for token-reflexive expressions. In this paper, I offer

Although the concept of gender identity plays a prominent role in campaigns for trans rights, it is not well understood, and common definitions suffer from a problematic circularity. This paper undertakes an ameliorative inquiry into the concept of gender identity, taking as a starting point the ways in which trans rights movements seek to use the concept. First, I set out six desiderata that a target

In the Categories, Aristotle claims that the most distinctive mark of substance is that it persists through change of contraries (4a10–11), a claim he explains elsewhere by appeal to hylomorphism. This explanation has been characterized as an answer to what I call the Conditions Question, a question that asks for the conditions under which a substance before and after a change are identical. The evidence

In the context of two recent yet distinct philosophical debates— over choice under conditions of moral uncertainty and over transformative choices— several philosophers have implicitly adopted a thesis about how to evaluate alternatives of uncertain value. The thesis says that the value a rational agent ought to attach to an alternative under the hypothesis that the value of this alternative is x,

One of the most pressing philosophical problems in early modern Europe concerned how the soul and body could form a unity, or, as many understood it, how these two substances could act upon each other. It was widely believed that there were three (and only three) hypotheses regarding the union of soul and body: (1) physical influence, (2) occasionalism, and (3) pre-established harmony. However, in

In view of the strong influence of Dewey’s thinking on contemporary educational thought, looking back over his epistemological conceptions is of crucial importance. The heart of Dewey’s theory of knowing rests on a fundamental postulate derived from his naturalistic interpretation of human cognitive development: that of the functional separation, in the understanding of meaning, between observed or

Is attention a cognitive process? I reconstruct and critically assess an argument first proposed by Christopher Mole that it cannot be so. Mole’s argument is influential because it creates theoretical space for a unifying analysis of attention at the subject level (though it does not entail it). Despite their differing theoretical commitments, prominent philosophers working on attention such as Wayne

In his Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant famously claims that it is analytic that whoever wills the end also wills the indispensably necessary means to it that is within his control. The orthodox consensus has it that the analytic proposition expresses a normative principle of practical reason. In this paper, I argue that this consensus is mistaken. On my resolute reading of Kant, he is

Kant’s account of nonmoral practical imperatives— specifically imperatives of skill and imperatives of prudence,1 which Kant collectively terms hypothetical imperatives and contrasts with the categorical imperative— has been receiving an increasing amount of attention in the literature.2 While interpretations of Kant’s account, as well as the points at which it proves defensible and indefensible, remain

The primary aim of a theory of consciousness is to articulate existence conditions for conscious states, i.e. the conditions under which a mental state is conscious rather than unconscious. There are two main broad approaches: The HigherOrder approach and the FirstOrder approach. HigherOrder theories claim that a mental state is conscious only if it is the object of a suitable state of higherorder

This paper addresses the question of what the attitude of hope consists in. We argue that shortcomings in recent theories of hope have methodological roots in that they proceed with little regard for the rich body of literature on the emotions. Taking insights from work in the philosophy of emotions, we argue that hope involves a kind of normative perception. We then develop a strategy for determining

This paper examines the role of prestige bias in shaping academic philosophy, with a focus on its demographics. I argue that prestige bias exacerbates the structural underrepresentation of minorities in philosophy. It works as a filter against (among others) philosophers of color, women philosophers, and philosophers of low socioeconomic status. As a consequence of prestige bias our judgments of philosophical

Some assessments of what is good for a person focus on the state of the person at a moment or during a short period of time and how the person is faring then. These are assessments of the person’s wellbeing at that time. Other assessments take the person’s full life into view, saying how good that life is on the whole. These are assessments of lifegoodness. Thus delineated, assessments of wellbeing

What is it that makes a mental state conscious? Recent commentators have proposed that for Kant, consciousness results from differentiation: A mental state is conscious insofar as it is distinguished, by means of our conceptual capacities, from other states or things. I argue instead that Kant’s conception of state consciousness is sensory: A mental state is conscious insofar as it is accompanied by

By giving consent, competent adults can permit acts that would otherwise be rights violations. In order to give valid consent a person must be capable of autonomous decisionmaking and her consent must be proffered voluntarily. However, competence and voluntariness are insufficient. The person who gives consent must also understand what she is authorizing. In this paper we develop an account of the

A longstanding debate in the philosophy of action opposes causalists to anti-causalists. Causalists claim the authority of Davidson, who offered powerful arguments to the effect that intentional explanations must be causal explanations. Anti-causalists claim the authority of Wittgenstein, who offered equally powerful arguments to the effect that reasons cannot be causes. My aim in this paper is to

Testimony is a source of knowledge. On many occasions, the explanation of one’s knowing that p is that a speaker, S, told one that p. Our testimonial sources – the referents of ‘S’ – can be other individuals, and they can be collectives; that is, in addition to learning from individuals, we learn things from committees, commissions, councils, clubs, teams, research groups, departments, administrations

Philosophers frequently comment on the intimate connection there is between something’s being present in perceptual experience (call this experiential presence) and that thing’s being, or at least appearing to be, temporally present (call this temporal presence). Yet, there is relatively little existing work that goes beyond asserting such a connection and instead examines its specific nature. In this

Leibniz’s famous Principle of the identity of indiscernibles (Pii) states that no two things are exactly alike. The Pii is commonly thought to be metaphysically necessary for Leibniz: the coexistence of two indiscernibles is metaphysically impossible. This paper argues, against the standard interpretation, that Leibniz’s Pii is metaphysically contingent. in other words, while the coexistence of indiscernibles

in the first Critique, Kant claims to refute Moses Mendelssohn’s argument for the immortality of the soul. But some commentators, following Bennett (1974), have identified an apparent problem in the exchange: Mendelssohn appears to have overlooked the possibility that the “leap” between existence and nonexistence might be a boundary or limit point in a continuous series, and Kant appears not to have