I argue that we can get evidence for the temporal ontology of the universe simply by looking at the time. The argument is an extension of the 'epistemic objection' towards Growing Block theories.

In Games: Agency as Art, I offer an account of the unique value of games. Games are a distinctive form of art – and very different from many traditional arts. Game designers don’t just tell stories or create environments. They tell us what our abilities will be in the game. They set our motivations, by setting the scoring system and specifying the win-conditions. Game designers sculpt temporary agencies

AbstractSeveral philosophers of science claim that scientific toy models afford knowledge of possibility, but answers to the question of why toy models can be expected to competently play this role are scarce. The main line of reply is that toy models support possibility claims insofar as they are credible. I raise a challenge for this credibility-thesis, drawing on a familiar problem for imagination-based

The paradox of pain refers to the idea that the folk concept of pain is paradoxical, treating pains as simultaneously mental states and bodily states (as described in papers by Hill and Borg et al.). By taking a close look at our pain terms, this paper argues that there is no paradox of pain. The air of paradox dissolves once we recognize that pain terms are polysemous and that there are two separate

The reasons view holds that morally worthy actions are right actions motivated by the reasons that make them right. Opponents object that such actions are only accidentally right, and it is widely held that morally worthy actions cannot be accidentally right. My aim here is to defend the reasons view from this objection by considering conditional reasons. Once these reasons are in view, actions motivated

In this essay we argue that there is a contradiction lurking at the heart of Bernard Suits's seminal book on the philosophy of games, The Grasshopper, which has oddly gone unnoticed for 43 years. Suits argues that games need inefficiency and defines inefficiency such that it wouldn't exist in Utopia. This trivially entails that there could be no games in Utopia, yet the whole normative point of The

Chalmers has argued that Bayesianism supports the existence of a priori truths, since it entails that scrutability conditionals are not rationally revisable. However, as we argue, Chalmers s arguments leave open that every proposition is rationally deniable, which would be devastating for large parts of his philosophical program. We suggest that Chalmers should appeal to well-known convergence theorems

I show that some famous arguments against moral responsibility — most notably, Galen Strawson’s Basic Argument and Susan Wolf’s Troubling Train of Thought — reason in an unnatural way: if a clearly has some property that results in our saying that a is F, and if b less clearly has that property, then it is the case that b is F. I argue that this problem is not present in reasons-responsiveness theories

Perry Hendricks has recently argued that endorsing the divine hiddenness objection to the existence of God ‘eliminates’ or ‘does away with’ all de jure objections to theism. So, he says, anyone who endorses the divine hiddenness objection must ‘reject’ any de jure objection. ‘And this,’ he says, ‘means that the argument from divine hiddenness is costly for atheists’. However, although Hendricks's argument

The principle of Anteriority says that prospects that are identical from the perspective of every possible person’s welfare are equally good overall. The principle enjoys prima facie plausibility, and has been employed for various theoretical purposes. Here it is shown using an analogue of the St Petersburg Paradox that Anteriority is inconsistent with central principles of axiology.

In their 2020 paper ‘Unfreezing the spotlight’, Correia and Rosenkranz argue that the spotlight theory – the mix of the view that, always, everything always exists and the view that there is a metaphysically robust property of presentness for times – is sufficient for temporal passage, and that the fact ‘that this robust property of presentness attaches to different times as time goes by … is unnecessary’

Doxastic dualists acknowledge both outright beliefs and credences, and they maintain that neither state is reducible to the other. This gives rise to the ‘Bayesian Challenge’, which is to explain why we need beliefs if we have credences already. On a popular dualist response to the Bayesian Challenge, we need beliefs to simplify our reasoning. I argue that this response fails because credences perform

Jago (2019) uses a Fitch-style argument in an attempt to demonstrate that every truth has a truthmaker (maximalism). But Trueman (forthcoming) shows that there is a parallel argument, this time to the conclusion that no truth has a truthmaker. Since we cannot accept both, we must ditch at least one Fitch. But which?

Analysis 81(1) (2021): 27–32. doi: 10.1093/analys/anaa043

I acquired many intellectual debts while writing What’s the Point of Knowledge?, but I am especially indebted to my three symposiasts. David Henderson’s work helped me to appreciate the value of thinking about the point of epistemic evaluation; Catherine Elgin’s writings prompted me to investigate the purpose of the concept of understanding; and Krista Lawlor’s 2013 book revealed important connections

The point of knowledge is to answer our need for information that will let us successfully navigate our world. So says Edward Craig in Knowledge and the State of Nature (Craig 1999). This claim may sound anodyne, but according to Craig, it is crucial we keep this fact uppermost in our minds as we theorize about knowledge. Craig argues that our concept of knowledge begins its life by answering our need

Summary

Considerations of accuracy – the epistemic good of having credences close to truth-values – have led to the justification of a host of epistemic norms. These arguments rely on specific ways of measuring accuracy. In particular, the accuracy measure should be strictly proper. However, the main argument for strict propriety supports only weak propriety. But strict propriety follows from weak propriety

Summary

Michael Hannon advocates an epistemological methodology – tracing its roots, articulating refinements, distinguishing it from alternative methodologies and giving reasons for preferring it to the alternatives. He also advances an account of knowledge as a compelling application of this methodology. As reflected in his title, both projects are pivotal to the work and intimately related. In its general

Human beings are epistemically interdependent. Much of what we know and much of what we need to know we glean from others. Being a gregarious bunch, we are prone to venturing opinions whether they are warranted or not. This makes information transfer a tricky business. What we want from others is not just information, but reliable information. When we seek information, we are in the position of enquirers

The question ‘Why be rational?’ has an air of paradox about it. Outside of contemporary metaethics, someone who said that they questioned the importance of ‘rationality’ would best be understood as questioning the importance of rationality on some conventional or traditional conception, or sometimes just the judgements about rationality issued by some credentialed expert or socially sanctioned authority

Central to Errol Lord’s excellent book is the notion of a possessed (objective, normative) reason. For Lord, rationality is a matter of correctly responding to possessed reasons, what rationality requires and permits is that we react in ways that are appropriate given our possessed reasons, and we ought – full stop – to react in ways that are decisively supported by our possessed reasons. Thus for

Explaining the ways we are praiseworthy or criticizable through exercising our agency is a central task of theories of intelligent agency. Very often theories of this are cast as theories of rationality. To be rational is to exercise one’s agency well and to be irrational is to exercise one’s agency badly. Being rational or irrational is the sort of agential achievement or failing we want to explain

Conceptions of Set and the Foundations of Mathematics By IncurvatiLucaCambridge University Press, 2020. xvi + 238 pp.

AbstractAccording to phenomenal transparency, phenomenal concepts are transparent where a transparent concept is one that reveals the nature of that to which it refers. What is the connection between phenomenal transparency and our concept of a subject of experience? This paper focuses on a recent argument, due to Philip Goff, for thinking that phenomenal transparency entails transparency about subjecthood

This paper develops an argument against causal decision theory. I formulate a principle of preference, which I call the Guaranteed Principle. I argue that the preferences of rational agents satisfy the Guaranteed Principle, that the preferences of agents who embody causal decision theory do not, and hence that causal decision theory is false.

AbstractThis paper is about reasons to conserve, in particular why some things warrant being conserved. In discussing G. A. Cohen’s conservatism, I find strains of four answers to the question why, presumptively, we should not sacrifice existing valuable things, a fortiori destroy them for no overall gain in value. After criticizing the first three, I develop the fourth into a deflationary proposal

AbstractDe facto objections to theism purport to show that theism is false, whereas de jure objections to theism claim that, whether or not theism is true, belief in God is irrational. Divine hiddenness – the (supposed) fact that there are people who non-resistantly lack belief in God – is sometimes used as an argument against theism. In this article I will show that accepting the argument from divine

AbstractI show that standard grounding conditions contradict standard conditions for the identities of propositions.

AbstractModerate Pragmatic Invariantism (MPI) has been criticized in the literature for postulating implicatures that are not straightforwardly cancellable. Defenders of MPI have responded that the data are not as clear-cut as one might wish. This paper grants the defenders of MPI, for the sake of argument, that the implicatures in question are cancellable and then turns this admission against them

AbstractOn Bicchieri's view, social norms most centrally involve a pattern of preferences among the members of a relevant population; according to Brennan, Eriksson, Goodin, and Southwood, social norms most centrally involve patterns of normative attitudes among the members of a given group. This paper argues, first, that social norms can require attitudes as well as behaviour, and, second, that the

AbstractAn array of new cases of lies is presented in support of the idea that lying does not require an intention to be deceptive. The crucial feature of these cases is that the agents who lie have some sort of motivation to lie alternative to an intention to be deceptive. Such alternative motivation comes in multiple varieties, such that we should think that the possibility of lying without an intention

AbstractI present an argument proving that there are no fundamental facts, which is similar to an argument recently presented by Mark Jago for truthmaker maximalism. I suggest that this argument gives us at least some prima facie, defeasible reason to believe that there are no fundamental facts.

Errol Lord has proposed a novel theory of rationality, what he calls Reasons Responsiveness. The theory makes rationality depend on an interesting mix of how well an agent responds to their perspective and the factivity of that perspective. In short, it says that what it is to be rational is to respond correctly to possessed objective normative reasons. To get a sense of the view it helps to first

Many philosophers argue that the error theory should be rejected because it is incompatible with standard deontic logic and semantics. We argue that such formal objections to the theory fail. Our discussion has two upshots. First, it increases the dialectical weight that must be borne by objections to the error theory that target its content rather than its form. Second, it shows that standard deontic

I am grateful for Joshua Alexander and Jonathan Weinberg’s, Avner Baz’s and Max Deutsch’s insightful comments on Philosophy Within Its Proper Bounds. I have learned a lot thinking about them, identifying points of convergence and places where differences remain unbridgeable and trying to address the most pressing criticisms. In what follows, I will engage their commentaries in turn.

There is, in my view, a striking combination in Édouard Machery’s Philosophy Within Its Proper Bounds of philosophical modesty and philosophical presumptiveness. Its call upon philosophers to give up their ambitious pursuits of metaphysical necessities, or essences, and to content themselves instead with the elucidation or analysis of our concepts, is made from within a pre-Kantian framework that takes

The Analysis Trust is sad to announce the death of Prof. Hugh Mellor, our friend, former colleague and former chair. Mellor was a distinguished philosopher who made important contributions in metaphysics and the philosophy of science, well-known especially for work on time, causation and probability.

Epistemic norm correspondence and the belief–assertion parallel

AbstractA critical survey of recent work in epistemology on higher-order evidence. It discusses the nature of higher-order evidence, some puzzles it raises, responses to those puzzles, and problems facing them. It concludes by indicating connections between debates concerning higher-order evidence in epistemology and parallel debates in ethics and aesthetics.

Fictional Discourse: A Radical Fictionalist Semantics By PredelliStefanoOxford University Press, 2020. viii + 184 pp.

Julia Maskivker’s The Duty to Vote is a very welcome contribution to the discussion of the theory of citizen participation in politics.11 This is an area that has received far too little attention from philosophers and political theorists. It is receiving more attention recently due to the spate of books by mostly libertarian writers, which argue that citizens in a democracy tend to be poorly informed

Time Travel: Probability and Impossibility By EffinghamNikkOxford University Press, 2020. 256 pp.

AbstractThe modal argument against materialism, in its most standard form, relies on a compatibility thesis to the effect that the physical truths are compatible with the absence of consciousness. I propose an alternative modal argument that relies on an incompatibility thesis: The existence of consciousness is incompatible with the proposition that the physical truths provide (in a sense to be clarified)

AbstractWe argue that permissibility-based solutions to the paradox of supererogation encounter a nested dilemma. Such approaches solve the paradox by distinguishing moral and rational permissions. If they do not also include a bridge condition that relates these two permissions, then they violate a very plausible monotonicity condition. If they do include a bridge condition, then permissibility-based

AbstractA considerable literature has grown up around the claim of Uniqueness, according to which evidence rationally determines belief. It is opposed to Permissivism, according to which evidence underdetermines belief. This paper highlights an overlooked third possibility, according to which there is no rational doxastic attitude. I call this 'Nihilism'. I argue that adherents of the other two positions

AbstractLike other epistemic activities, inquiry seems to be governed by norms. Some have argued that one such norm forbids us from believing the answer to a question and inquiring into it at the same time. But another, hither-to neglected norm seems to permit just this sort of cognitive arrangement when we seek to confirm what we currently believe. In this paper, I suggest that both norms are plausible

AbstractI provide a novel argument in favour of majority rule. In particular, I consider the distribution of voter satisfaction in response to the outcome of a vote and prove that under certain conditions majority rule minimizes the level of inequality present in the distribution of voter satisfaction. This finding is reinforced by a computer simulation as well as an analysis of over four decades of

AbstractRecently there has been much philosophical interest in the analysis of concepts to determine whether they should be removed, revised, or replaced. Enquiry of this kind is referred to as conceptual engineering or conceptual ethics. We will call it revisionary conceptual analysis (RCA). It standardly involves describing the meaning of a concept, evaluating whether it serves its purposes, and

AbstractIt is commonly believed that blamees can dismiss hypocritical blame on the ground that the hypocrite has no standing to blame their target. Many believe that the feature of hypocritical blame that undermines standing to blame is that it involves an implicit denial of the moral equality of persons. After all, the hypocrite treats herself better than her blamee for no good reason. In the light

AbstractExistential claims are widely held to be grounded in their true instances. However, this principle is shown to be problematic by arguments due to Kit Fine. Stephan Krämer has given an especially simple form of such an argument using propositional quantifiers. This note shows that even if a schematic principle of existential grounds for propositional quantifiers has to be restricted, this does

AbstractMonism about being says that there is one way to be. Pluralism about being says that there are many ways to be. Recently, Trenton Merricks and David Builes have offered arguments against Pluralism. In this paper, I show how Pluralists who appeal to the relative naturalness of quantifiers can respond to these arguments.

AbstractDrawing from extensions of existing ideas in the logic of ground, a novel account of the grounds of necessity is presented, the core of which states that necessary truths are necessary because they stand in specific grounding connections.

Edouard Machery (2017) argues that many traditional philosophical questions are beyond our capacity to answer. Answering them seems to require using the method of cases, a method that involves testing answers to philosophical questions against what we think about real or imagined cases. The problem, according to Machery, is that this method has proved unreliable; what we think about these kinds of

Many philosophers are sceptical about the power of philosophy to refute commonsensical claims. They look at the famous attempts and judge them inconclusive. I prove that even if those famous attempts are failures, there are alternative successful philosophical proofs against commonsensical claims. After presenting the proofs I briefly comment on their significance. 1. The Initial Proof Consider the

We rigorously prove the convergence of weak solutions to a model for lipid raft formation in cell membranes which was recently proposed by Garcke et al. to weak (varifold) solutions of the corresponding sharp-interface problem for a suitable subsequence. In the system a Cahn-Hilliard type equation on the boundary of a domain is coupled to a diffusion equation inside the domain. The proof builds on

Abstract Approximation using linear positive operators is a well-studied research area. Many operators and their generalizations are investigated for their better approximation properties. In the present paper, we construct and investigate a variant of modified (p,q)(p,q)-Baskakov operators, which reproduce the test function x2x^{2}. We have determined the order of approximation of the operators via

Abstract In this paper, we investigate some growth properties of meromorphic solutions of higher-order linear difference equation A n ⁢ ( z ) ⁢ f ⁢ ( z + n ) + … + A 1 ⁢ ( z ) ⁢ f ⁢ ( z + 1 ) + A 0 ⁢ ( z ) ⁢ f ⁢ ( z ) = 0 , A_{n}(z)f(z+n)+\dots+A_{1}(z)f(z+1)+A_{0}(z)f(z)=0, where A n ⁢ ( z ) , … , A 0 ⁢ ( z ) {A_{n}(z),\dots,A_{0}(z)} are meromorphic coefficients of finite φ-order in the complex plane

Abstract A problem with parameter for an integro-differential equation is approximated by a problem with parameter for a loaded differential equation. The well-posedness of a problem with parameter for the integro-differential equation is established in the terms of the well-posedness of a problem with parameter for the loaded differential equation. A mutual relationship between the qualitative properties