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Rights against the world Analysis Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Gopal Sreenivasan
For philosophers, rights against the world are equivalent to rights in rem. Contrary to what Hart thought, however, this does not make them equivalent to general rights. Rights in rem contrast with rights in personam, whereas general rights contrast with special rights. As I explain, rights against the world can be either general rights or special rights. My explanation follows Waldron’s strategy of
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The desire machine Analysis Pub Date : 2024-02-06 Paul Forrester
The experience machine poses the most important problem for hedonist theories of well-being. I argue that desire satisfactionism faces a similar problem: the desire machine. Upon entering this machine, your desires are altered through some minor neurosurgery. In particular, the machine causes you to desire everything that actually happens. The experience machine constructs a simulated world that matches
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How to ground powers Analysis Pub Date : 2024-02-02 David Builes
According to the grounding theory of powers, fundamental physical properties should be thought of as qualities that ground dispositions. Although this view has recently been defended by many different philosophers, there is no consensus for how the view should be developed within a broader metaphysics of properties. Recently, Tugby has argued that the view should be developed in the context of a Platonic
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The problem of taste to the experimental test Analysis Pub Date : 2024-01-29 Filippo Contesi, Enrico Terrone, Marta Campdelacreu, Ramón García-Moya, Genoveva Martí
A series of recent experimental studies have cast doubt on the existence of a traditional tension that aestheticians have noted in our aesthetic judgements and practices, namely the problem of taste. The existence of the problem has been acknowledged since Hume and Kant, though not enough has been done to analyse it in depth. In this paper, we remedy this by proposing six possible conceptualizations
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Logic in the deep end Analysis Pub Date : 2024-01-08 Graham Leach-Krouse, Shay Allen Logan, Blane Worley
Weak enough relevant logics are often closed under depth substitutions. To determine the breadth of logics with this feature, we show there is a largest sublogic of R closed under depth substitutions and that this logic can be recursively axiomatized.
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Artificial achievements Analysis Pub Date : 2023-12-23 Phillip Hintikka Kieval
State-of-the-art machine learning systems now routinely exceed benchmarks once thought beyond the ken of artificial intelligence (AI). Often these systems accomplish tasks through novel, insightful processes that remain inscrutable to even their human designers. Taking AlphaGo’s 2016 victory over Lee Sedol as a case study, this paper argues that such accomplishments manifest the essential features
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The symmetry regained Analysis Pub Date : 2023-12-12 Tien-Chun Lo
Collin (2022) attempts to break the symmetry between the modal ontological argument for the existence of God and the reverse modal ontological argument against the existence of God by drawing on some Kripkean lessons about a posteriori necessity. He argues that there is an undercutting defeater for taking God’s non-existence to be possible. In this paper, I reply that taking the Kripkean considerations
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Anti-haecceitism and indiscernibility Analysis Pub Date : 2023-11-07 Alexander Roberts
It is often presumed that anti-haecceitists are not committed to the identity of indiscernibles. However, I argue that anti-haecceitism implies a particularly strong thesis about when individuals are indiscernible which motivates the identity of indiscernibles. The argument is first sketched intuitively and then formalized in a system of higher-order modal logic.
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Resolving a puzzle about the fixity of the past Analysis Pub Date : 2023-10-31 Alexander Geddes
In his 2022 article ‘A puzzle about the fixity of the past’, Lampert argues that standard views concerning knowledge and the semantics of ‘actually’ conflict with a widely held principle concerning the fixity of the past. I show that his attempt to establish the conflict fails, as it rests on the implicit assumption that a past mental state or utterance involving a modal indexical must have the same
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Do formal objections to the error theory overgeneralize? Analysis Pub Date : 2023-08-25 Bart Streumer, Daniel Wodak
We recently argued that formal objections to the normative error theory generalize to other error theories that have the same form. Since many of these other error theories are very plausible, we concluded that such objections overgeneralize. Christine Tiefensee and Gregory Wheeler disagree: they grant that formal objections generalize quite far, but deny that they overgeneralize, since they take the
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A new paradox for well-being subjectivism Analysis Pub Date : 2023-08-25 Ben Davies
Subjectivists think that our well-being is grounded in our subjective attitudes. Many such views are vulnerable to variations on the ‘paradox of desire’, where theories cannot make determinate judgements about the well-being of agents who take a positive valuing attitude towards their life going badly. However, this paradox does not affect all subjectivist theories; theories grounded on agents’ prudential
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God, gluts and evil Analysis Pub Date : 2023-08-25 Jc Beall
Traditional monotheism appears to many to involve contradiction in basic 'omni' properties (e.g. omnipotence and too-heavy stones, etc.). A glut-theoretic account of such problems treats them as gluts (dual to familiar truth-value gaps): 'omnipotence' is both true of and false of God. Many philosophers, glut theorists and otherwise, acknowledge that such a glut-theoretic account of at least some traditional
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According to law Analysis Pub Date : 2023-08-25 Adam Perry
Legal discourse consists largely of legal claims. These are claims that there is a legal obligation, legal right, or other legal incident. What is the meaning of “legal obligation”, “legal right” and so on in legal claims? The standard view among philosophers of law is that “legal” indicates that, according to law, there is a moral obligation, moral right or other moral incident. Here I set out a new
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Meaning without Gricean intentions Analysis Pub Date : 2023-08-23 Carlotta Pavese, Alexandru Radulescu
Gricean theories analyse meaning in terms of certain complex intentions on the part of the speaker – the intention to produce an effect on the addressee, and the intention to have that intention recognized by the addressee. By drawing an analogy with cases widely discussed in action theory, we propose a novel counterexample where the speaker lacks these intentions but nonetheless means something and
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Symmetry’s revenge Analysis Pub Date : 2023-08-22 Joseph C Schmid
James Henry Collin recently developed a new symmetry breaker favouring the ontological argument’s possibility premiss over that of the reverse ontological argument. The symmetry breaker amounts to an undercutting defeater for the reverse possibility premiss based on Kripkean cases of a posteriori necessity. I argue, however, that symmetry re-arises in two forms. First, I challenge the purported asymmetry
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Explanatory virtues and reasons for belief Analysis Pub Date : 2023-08-22 Noah D Mckay
In this essay, I address an objection to inference to the best explanation due to Bas C. van Fraassen, according to which explanatory virtues cannot confirm a theory, since they make the theory more informative and thus less likely to be true given the probability axioms. I try to show that van Fraassen’s argument, once made precise, is deductively invalid, and that even an ampliative version of the
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Why we should not assume that ‘normal’ is ambiguous Analysis Pub Date : 2023-08-22 Jon Bebb
There is a widespread and largely unchallenged assumption within philosophy that the word ‘normal’ is ambiguous: i.e., that it can mean different things in different contexts. This assumption appears in work within topics as varied as the philosophy of biology, medicine, justification, causation, and more. In this paper I argue that we currently lack any independent reason for adopting such an assumption
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Jeffrey imaging revisited Analysis Pub Date : 2023-08-03 Melissa Fusco
In ‘The logic of partial supposition’ (Analysis vol. 81), Benjamin Eva and Stephan Hartmann investigate partial imaging , a credence-revision method which combines the partiality familiar from Jeffrey Conditioning(The Logic of Decision , 1983 ) with the formal notion of imaging familiar from Lewis’s ‘Causal decision theory’ (1981 ). They argue that because partial imaging is non-monotonic, it ‘fail[s]
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Following all the rules: intuitionistic completeness for generalized proof-theoretic validity Analysis Pub Date : 2023-07-20 Will Stafford, Victor Nascimento
Prawitz conjectured that the proof-theoretically valid logic is intuitionistic logic. Recent work on proof-theoretic validity has disproven this. In fact, it has been shown that proof-theoretic validity is not even closed under substitution. In this paper, we make a minor modification to the definition of proof-theoretic validity found in Prawitz’s 1973 paper ‘Towards a foundation of a general proof
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Are good leaders truly good? Analysis Pub Date : 2023-07-19 Susumu Cato, Akira Inoue
This paper offers a new insight on the Condorcet Jury Theorem (CJT) in the theory of epistemic democracy. This theorem states that democratic decision-making leads us to correct outcomes under certain assumptions. One key assumption is the ‘independence condition’, which requires that voters form their beliefs independently when they vote. This paper examines the role of an opinion leader as an informational
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A novel Process Reliabilist response to the Swamping Problem Analysis Pub Date : 2023-07-19 Sanford Goldberg
This paper aims to provide a novel response on behalf of Process Reliabilism to the Swamping Problem. Unlike previous responses, the present response does not involve conditional probabilities (as Goldman and Olsson do), it does not appeal to permissivism or attitudes towards epistemic risk (as Pettigrew does), it will not depend on the generality of the problem (as Carter and Jarvis do) and it does
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Neppur si muove! Reply to Correia and Rosenkranz Analysis Pub Date : 2023-07-18 Roberto Loss
Correia and Rosenkranz have recently argued in Analysis (2020, 2022) that tense realism (understood as the view that there is a real difference between past, present and future) entails realism about temporal passage (and thus the idea that there is some change in which time is the present time). I argue that their argument is either unsound or question-begging.
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The procreation asymmetry, improvable-life avoidance and impairable-life acceptance Analysis Pub Date : 2023-07-14 Elliott Thornley
Many philosophers are attracted to a complaints-based theory of the procreation asymmetry, according to which creating a person with a bad life is wrong (all else equal) because that person can complain about your act, whereas declining to create a person who would have a good life is not wrong (all else equal) because that person never exists and so cannot complain about your act. In this paper, I
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Does the unity of reason imply that epistemic justification is factive? Analysis Pub Date : 2023-07-11 Jaakko Hirvelä
Some externalists have recently argued that the unity of theoretical and practical reason implies that epistemic justification is factive. It is argued that arguments for the factivity of epistemic justification either (i) equate two actions that are in fact different, or (ii) make the unwarranted assumption that the by-relation transmits justification. The unity of reason does not imply that epistemic
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Grounding identity in existence facts: a reply to Wilhelm Analysis Pub Date : 2023-06-10 Neil Mehta
What grounds facts of the form
? One promising answer is: facts of the form . A different promising answer is: xitself. Isaac Wilhelm has recently argued that the second answer is superior to the first. In this paper, I rebut his argument. -
Austerity in Mohist ethics Analysis Pub Date : 2023-05-20 Bradford Jean-Hyuk Kim
Fraser highlights an unattractive feature of Mohist ethics: the Mohists, while criticizing their Confucian contemporaries, restrict one’s pursuits to the most basic sorts of goods. Fraser suggests that the Mohists assume the perpetuity of scarce resources, which leads to a commitment to austerity, which in turn leads them to deny a plausible third way between austerity and excess. In their defence
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Lying: revisiting the ‘intending to deceive’ condition Analysis Pub Date : 2023-04-14 Vladimir Krstić
This paper refines the received analysis of deceptive lies. This is done by assessing some cases of lies that are supposedly not intended to deceive and by arguing that they actually involve sophisticated strategies of intentional deception. These lies, that is, merely seem not to be intended to deceive and this is because our received analysis of deceptive lies is insufficiently sophisticated. We
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Why Aren’t I Part of a Whale? Analysis Pub Date : 2023-04-14 David Builes, Caspar Hare
We start by presenting three different views that jointly imply that every person has many conscious beings in their immediate vicinity, and that the number greatly varies from person to person. We then present and assess an argument to the conclusion that how confident someone should be in these views should sensitively depend on how massive they happen to be. According to the argument, sometimes
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There is no aesthetic experience of the genuine Analysis Pub Date : 2023-04-05 Mark Windsor
Many hold that aesthetic appreciation is sensitive to the authenticity or genuineness of an object. In a recent body of work, Carolyn Korsmeyer has defended the claim that genuineness itself is an aesthetic property. Korsmeyer’s aim is to explain our aesthetic appreciation of objects that afford a sense of being ‘in touch with the past’. In this paper, I argue that genuineness cannot explain our appreciation
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Bullshit questions Analysis Pub Date : 2023-03-31 Dennis Whitcomb
This paper argues that questions can be bullshit. First it explores some shallowly interrogative ways in which that can happen. Then it shows how questions can also be bullshit in a way that is more deeply interrogative.
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Against classical paraconsistent metatheory Analysis Pub Date : 2023-03-31 Koji Tanaka, Patrick Girard
There was a time when ‘logic’ just meant classical logic. The climate is slowly changing, and non-classical logic cannot be dismissed off-hand. However, a metatheory used to study the properties of non-classical logic is often classical. In this paper, we will argue that this practice of relying on classical metatheories is problematic. In particular, we will show that it is a bad practice because
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A modified Kripkean theory of negative existentials Analysis Pub Date : 2023-01-14 Chaoan He
In a 2019 paper, Hausmann raised a new and interesting problem for Kripke’s account of negative existentials. He argued that Kripke’s account leads to the absurd consequence that anybody who has good reasons to believe that there are no propositions also has good reasons to believe that he or she does not exist. In this paper I propose a modified Kripkean theory, which is invulnerable to a Hausmann-like
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Absence of evidence against belief as credence 1 Analysis Pub Date : 2022-12-27 Andrew del Rio
On one view of the traditional doxastic attitudes, belief is credence 1, disbelief is credence 0 and suspension is any precise credence between 0 and 1. In ‘Rational agnosticism and degrees of belief’ (2013) Jane Friedman argues, against this view, that there are cases where a credence of 0 is required but where suspension is permitted. If this were so, belief, disbelief and suspension could not be
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Demonstratives and cognitive significance revisited Analysis Pub Date : 2022-11-01 Filipe Martone
The issue of whether a theory of demonstratives should be able to handle Frege’s Puzzle seems rather old hat, but it was not so much resolved as left hanging. This paper tries to remedy that. I argue that a major problem not previously noticed affects any theory of demonstratives that aims at dealing with Frege’s Puzzle. This problem shows itself in cases in which the cognitive significance of a single
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Epistemic excuses and the feeling of certainty Analysis Pub Date : 2022-10-17 Jacques-Henri Vollet
Gerken’s On Folk Epistemology, 2017). In this paper, I rely on independent work in epistemology and cognitive science to suggest a novel account of epistemic excuses in terms of epistemic feelings. In contrast to other existing accounts, this account is immune from the above objection and can thus be used to rescue the knowledge norm.
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Do tiny contributions make a difference? Reply to Barnett Analysis Pub Date : 2022-10-08 Martin Montminy
Barnett’s 2017 paper ‘No free lunch’, the answer is ‘yes’: even tiny contributions can make a morally relevant difference. To defend this answer, Barnett raises an objection against the rival view that tiny contributions never make any difference. I argue that we should reject both Barnett’s and the rival view. I propose an alternative account that reflects the vagueness at play in the outcome of tiny
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A puzzle about the fixity of the past Analysis Pub Date : 2022-04-23 Fabio Lampert
Abstract It is a widely held principle that no one is able to do something that would require the past to have been different from how it actually is. This principle of the fixity of the past has been presented in numerous ways, playing a crucial role in arguments for logical and theological fatalism, and for the incompatibility of causal determinism and the ability to do otherwise. I will argue that
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Multidisjunctivism’s no solution to the screening-off problem Analysis Pub Date : 2022-03-23 Haiming Hua
Abstract Naïve realism is the view that veridical experiences are fundamentally relations of acquaintance to external objects and their features, and multidisjunctivism is the conjunction of naïve realism and the view that hallucinatory experiences don’t share a common fundamental kind. Multidisjunctivism allegedly removes the screening-off worry over naïve realism, and the relevant literature suggests
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The actual challenge for the ontological argument Analysis Pub Date : 2022-03-22 Marco Hausmann
Abstract Many versions of the ontological argument have two shortcomings: First, despite the arguments put forward, for example, by Hugh Chandler and Nathan Salmon, they assume that S5 is the correct modal logic for metaphysical modality. Second, despite the classical arguments put forward, for example, by David Hume and Immanuel Kant or the more recent arguments put forward, for example, by John Findlay
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Justification and being in a position to know Analysis Pub Date : 2022-03-18 Daniel Waxman
Abstract According to an influential recent view, S is propositionally justified in believing p iff S is in no position to know that S is in no position to know p. I argue that this view faces compelling counterexamples.
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Erratum to: Is global consequentialism more expressive than act consequentialism? Analysis Pub Date : 2022-03-16 Elliott Thornley
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On a causal principle in an argument for a necessary being Analysis Pub Date : 2022-03-03 Noël Blas Saenz
Abstract In Necessary Existence, Pruss and Rasmussen give an argument for a necessary being employing a modest causal principle. Here I note that, when applied to highly general and fundamental matters, the principle may well be false (or at least not so obvious).
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Universalism doesn’t entail extensionalism Analysis Pub Date : 2022-02-28 Loss R.
AbstractIn the literature on mereology it is often accepted that mereological universalism entails extensionalism. More precisely, many accept that, if parthood is assumed to be a partial order (and, thus, the relevant theory of parthood is taken to be at least as strong as ‘core mereology’), the thesis that every plurality of entities has a mereological fusion entails the thesis that different composite
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Confession of a causal decision theorist Analysis Pub Date : 2022-02-26 Elga A.
Abstract(1) Suppose that you care only about speaking the truth, and are confident that some particular deterministic theory is true. If someone asks you whether that theory is true, are you rationally required to answer ‘yes’? (2) Suppose that you face a problem in which (as in Newcomb's problem) one of your options – call it ‘taking two boxes’ – causally dominates your only other option. Are you
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A plan-based causal decision theory Analysis Pub Date : 2022-02-25 Rothfus G.
AbstractIn ‘An argument against causal decision theory’, Jack Spencer shows that standard formulations of causal decision theory run afoul of his Guaranteed Principle. In the sequential choice problem he employs to make this case, the transgression stems from an awkward discrepancy between how causalists typically value present vs future acts. This note suggests a version of causal decision theory
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Political Liberalism for Feminists Analysis Pub Date : 2022-02-16 Ebels-Duggan K.
That women perform a disproportionate amount of unpaid caregiving and household work is well established. Gina Schouten characterizes this gendered division of labour as ‘the linchpin of gender injustice’ (4).11 Yet liberal commitments to privacy, pluralism and the authority people have to direct their own lives seemingly limit the legitimacy of government policies that could disrupt it. Such policies
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Smithies on Self-Knowledge of Beliefs Analysis Pub Date : 2022-02-08 Gertler B.
In The `Epistemic Role of Consciousness, Declan Smithies develops a systematic, cohesive account of beliefs, phenomenal consciousness, epistemic justification and rationality. The arguments for the various elements of the account are extremely rigorous, and the account is impressively broad in scope. This commentary will focus on Smithies' views about self-knowledge. Specifically, I will examine his
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Making Morality Work By Holly M. Smith Analysis Pub Date : 2022-02-08 Smith H.
Making Morality Work BY SmithHolly MOxford University Press, 2018. XIV + 410 pp.
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A Qualified Defence of Expected Value Maximization Analysis Pub Date : 2022-02-08 Ross J.
What should we do if we do not know which action is best or most choiceworthy? One answer to this question is that we should always maximize expected value or choiceworthiness. In Making Morality Work, Holly Smith argues against this answer. In what follows, I will begin by reviewing Smith’s main criticism of expected value maximization (EVM), along with the alternative she proposes to it. I will then
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The Epistemic Role of Consciousness By Declan Smithies Analysis Pub Date : 2022-02-08 Smithies D.
The Epistemic Role of Consciousness BY SmithiesDeclanOxford University Press, 2019. xiv + 456 pp
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From Non-Usability to Non-Factualism Analysis Pub Date : 2022-02-08 Clarke-Doane J.
Holly Smith has done more than anyone to explore and defend the importance of usability for moral theories. In Making Morality Work, she develops a moral theory that is almost universally usable. But not quite. In this article, I argue that no theory is universally usable, in the sense that is most immediately relevant to action, even by agents who know all the normative facts.11 There is no moral
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Smithies’s Mentalism and E = K Analysis Pub Date : 2022-02-08 Byrne A.
Central to the project of Smithies’s excellent The Epistemic Role of Consciousness (2019) is a doctrine he calls mentalism, that ‘epistemic justification depends solely on your mental states, rather than the reliability of their connections to the external world’ (193). That is by no means a trivial thesis. However, it does not pin down what is distinctive of Smithies’s synoptic theory of epistemology
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Perceptual Imagination and Perceptual Memory Edited by Fiona Macpherson and Fabian Dorsch Analysis Pub Date : 2022-02-08 De Brigard F.
Perceptual Imagination and Perceptual MemoryEdited by Fiona Macpherson and Fabian DorschOxford University Press, 2018. xiv + 254 pp.
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Erratum to: A ground-theoretical modal definition of essence Analysis Pub Date : 2022-01-26 De Rizzo J.
Analysis (2021), https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/anab004
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Interpretivism and Inferentialism Analysis Pub Date : 2021-12-04 Chalmers D.
Robbie Williams’ (2020) book The Metaphysics of Representation is the new leading edge of the program of naturalizing intentionality. Williams brings sophisticated ideas from many areas of philosophy to bear on this key problem in the philosophy of mind. Many philosophers will characterize their own views by how they relate to Williams’ view. I will do the same here.
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Presence and Real Likenesses1 Analysis Pub Date : 2021-12-04 Kulvicki J.
Real Likenesses (2020) attempts to reshape current thinking about the figurative arts. It is not a new account of depiction, because Morris doubts that an interesting representational kind transcends the various media of painting, photography, drawing and film. Nor is it a collection of essays about various visual arts. Though painting and photography feature prominently, the last two chapters focus
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Reply to Critics Analysis Pub Date : 2021-12-04 Williams J.
Dickie, Pautz and Chalmers provide three probing, creative critiques of The Metaphysics of Representation (Williams 2020, henceforth: MR). I select some highlights to discuss, regretfully passing over much of interest.11