In this paper I respond to Marcello Di Bello’s criticisms of the ‘normic account’ of the criminal standard of proof (Di Bello 2019). In so doing, I further elaborate on what the normic account predicts about certain significant legal categories of evidence, including DNA and fingerprint evidence and eyewitness identifications.

Moral Puzzles and Legal Perplexities: Essays on the Influence of Larry Alexander, by HurdHeidi, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. xxvi + 488.

Suppositional theories of conditionals take apparent similarities between supposition and conditionals as a starting point, appealing to features of the former to provide an account of the latter. This paper develops a novel form of suppositional theory, one which characterizes the relationship at the level of semantics rather than at the level of speech acts. In the course of doing so, it considers

I argue for an alternative to Quine’s conception of observation sentences, one that better satisfies the roles Quine envisages for them, and that otherwise respects Quinean constraints. After reviewing a certain predicament Quine got into in balancing the needs of the intersubjectivity of observation sentences with his notion of the stimulus meaning of an observation sentence, I push for replacing

Friedrich Waismann: The Open Texture of Analytic Philosophy, edited by MakovecDejanShapiroStewart. London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2019. Pp. xvi + 346.

Debating the A Priori, by BoghossianPaul and WilliamsonTimothy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. xi +259.

Everything, More or Less: A Defence of Generality Relativism, by StuddJ. P.. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. xiv + 279.

For the Love of Metaphysics: Nihilism and the Conflict of Reason from Kant to Rosenzweig, by NisenbaumKarin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. xii + 280.

The Structure of Truth: The 1970 John Locke Lectures, by DavidsonDonald, edited with an introduction by Cameron Domenico Kirk-Giannini and Ernie Lepore. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. 120.

Aristotle’s De motu animalium: Symposium Aristotelicum, by RappChristofPrimavesiOliver, with a new critical edition of the Greek text by Oliver Primavesi and an English translation by Benjamin Morison. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. viii + 554.

The Morality of Defensive Force, by QuongJonathan. New York, NY and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. 217.

AbstractContrary to Lewis (1981) and Vihvelin (2013), I argue that free will in a deterministic world is an ability to break a law of nature or to change the remote past. Even if it were true, as Lewis and Vihvelin think, that an agent who is predetermined to perform a particular act might not break a law or change the remote past by doing otherwise, it would nevertheless be true that he is able to

This index is intended as a complete bibliographical source for work published in MIND. Entries are divided into two sections: Articles, Symposia, Discussions, Critical Notices, Editorial Introductions, and Graduate Essay Prize 2017 and Book Reviews. Articles, symposia, discussions, and editorial introductions are listed by the title and by the author's name. Critical notices and book reviews are listed

This index is intended as a complete bibliographical source for work published in MIND. Entries are divided into two sections: Articles, Symposia, Discussions, Critical Notices, Editorial Introductions, and Graduate Essay Prize 2017 and Book Reviews. Articles, symposia, discussions, and editorial introductions are listed by the title and by the author's name. Critical notices and book reviews are listed

This index is intended as a complete bibliographical source for work published in MIND. Entries are divided into two sections: Articles, Symposia, Discussions, Critical Notices, Editorial Introductions, and Graduate Essay Prize 2017 and Book Reviews. Articles, symposia, discussions, and editorial introductions are listed by the title and by the author's name. Critical notices and book reviews are listed

At Meno 87b-c,11 and again in the Protagoras,22 Socrates33 commits himself to the biconditional that all knowledge,44 and only knowledge, is teachable:

AbstractIn this paper, I use interventionist causal models to identify some novel Newcomb problems, and subsequently use these problems to refine existing interventionist treatments of causal decision theory. The new Newcomb problems that make trouble for existing interventionist treatments involve so-called ‘exotic choice’—that is, decision-making contexts where the agent has evidence about the outcome

AbstractTruth-theoretic deflationism holds that truth is simple, and yet that it can fulfil many useful logico-linguistic roles. Deflationism focuses on axioms for truth: there is no reduction of the notion of truth to more fundamental ones such as sets or higher-order quantifiers. In this paper I argue that the fundamental properties of reasonable, primitive truth predicates are at odds with the core

MIND, Volume 128, Issue 512, October 2019, Pages 1013-1044, https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzz035.

AbstractA popular claim in recent philosophy of mind and action is that events only exist once they are over. This has been taken to have the consequence that many temporal phenomena cannot be understood ‘from the inside’, as they are unfolding, purely in terms of events. However, as I argue here, the claim that events exist only when over is incoherent. I consider two ways of understanding the claim

AbstractRecent work on formal theories of truth has revived an approach, due originally to Tarski, on which syntax and truth theories are sharply distinguished—‘disentangled’—from mathematical base theories. In this paper, we defend a novel philosophical constraint on disentangled theories. We argue that these theories must be epistemically stable: they must possess an intrinsic motivation justifying

AbstractMoral agency is limited, imperfect, and structurally constrained. This is evident in the many ways we all unwittingly participate in widespread injustice through our everyday actions, which I call ‘structural wrongs’. To do justice to these facts, I argue that we should distinguish between summative and formative moral criticism. While summative criticism functions to conclusively assess an

AbstractDecision theory and folk psychology purport to represent the same phenomena: our belief-like and desire- and preference-like states. They also purport to do the same work with these representations: explain and predict our actions. But they use different concepts. Can we account for the concepts of one with the other’s? If not, we’d have two competing representations and systems of prediction

It is common for an object to present different colour appearances to different perceivers, even when the perceivers and viewing conditions are normal. For example, a Munsell chip might look unique green to you and yellowish green to me in normal viewing conditions. In such cases, there are three possibilities. Ecumenism: both experiences are veridical. Nihilism: both experiences are non-veridical

According to essentialism, metaphysical modality is founded in the essences of things, where the essence of a thing is roughly akin to its real definition. According to potentialism (also known as dispositionalism), metaphysical modality is founded in the potentialities of things, where a potentiality is roughly the generalized notion of a disposition. Essentialism and potentialism have much in common

This index is intended as a complete bibliographical source for work published in MIND. Entries are divided into two sections: Articles, Symposia, Discussions, Critical Notices, Editorial Introductions, and Graduate Essay Prize 2017 and Book Reviews. Articles, symposia, discussions, and editorial introductions are listed by the title and by the author's name. Critical notices and book reviews are listed

AbstractIn this article I critically discuss some recent English language books in African philosophy. Specifically, I expound and evaluate key claims from books published by sub-Saharan thinkers since 2017 that address epistemology, metaphysics, and value theory and that do so in ways of interest to an audience of at least Anglo-American-Australasian analytic philosophers. My aim is not to establish

AbstractAugustine famously claims every word is a name. Some readers take Augustine to thereby maintain a purely referentialist semantic account according to which every word is a referential expression whose meaning is its extension. Other readers think that Augustine is no referentialist and is merely claiming that every word has some meaning. In this paper, I clarify Augustine’s arguments to the

Rational agents are supposed to maximize expected utility. But what are the options from which they choose? I outline some constraints on an adequate representation of an agent’s options. The options should, for example, contain no information of which the agent is unsure. But they should be sufficiently rich to distinguish all available acts from one another. These demands often come into conflict

AbstractIt is both a matter of everyday experience and a tenet of sociological theory that people often occupy a range of social roles and identities, some of which are associated with mutually incompatible properties. But since nothing could have incompatible properties, it is not clear how this is possible. It has been suggested, notably by Kit Fine (1982, 1999, 2006), that the puzzling relation

The phenomenological movement begins in the Prolegomena to Husserl’s Logical Investigations as a philosophy of logic. Despite this, remarkably little attention has been paid to Husserl’s arguments in the Prolegomena in the contemporary philosophy of logic. In particular, the literature spawned by Gilbert Harman’s work on the normative status of logic is almost silent on Husserl’s contribution to this

Transparency and Self-Knowledge, by ByrneAlex. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. 227.

AbstractIn his Political Treatise, Spinoza repeatedly compares states to human beings. In this interpretation of the comparisons, I present a progressively more restrictive account of Spinoza’s views about the nature of human beings in the Ethics and show at each step how those views inform the account of states in the Political Treatise. Because, like human beings, states are individuals, they strive

Equal Justice: Fair Legal Systems in an Unfair World, by Wilmot-SmithFrederick. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019. Pp. 256.

It is widely held that every person is a person essentially, where being a person is having special mental properties such as intelligence and self-consciousness. It follows that nothing can acquire or lose these properties. The paper argues that this rules out all familiar psychological-continuity views of personal identity over time. It also faces grave difficulties in accounting for the mental powers

An essentialist theory of modality claims that the source of possibility and necessity lies in essence, where essence is (obviously) then not to be defined in terms of necessity. Hence such theories owe us an account of why it is that the essences of things give rise to necessities in the way required. A new approach to understanding essence in terms of the notion of generalized identity promises to

The Logic in Philosophy of Science, by HalvorsonHans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. viii + 296.

Why Free Will is Real, by ListChristian. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019. Pp. ix + 216.

The Stability of Belief: How Rational Belief Coheres with Probability, by LeitgebHannes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. xiv + 365.

The Instrument of Science: Scientific Anti-realism Revitalised, by RowbottomDarrell P.. Abingdon: Routledge, 2019. Pp. 216.

What is a bias? Standard philosophical views of both implicit and explicit bias focus this question on the representations one harbours, for example, stereotypes or implicit attitudes, rather than the ways in which those representations (or other mental states) are manipulated. I call this approach representationalism. In this paper, I argue that representationalism taken as a general theory of psychological

Being for Beauty: aesthetic agency and value, by LopesDominic McIver. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. xii + 266.

Chance in the World: A Humean Guide to Objective Chance, by HoeferCarl. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. xvii + 247.

Normative Externalism, by WeathersonBrian. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. xiii + 245.

The ethical thought of the Danish philosopher K.E. Løgstrup (1905-1981) is currently enjoying a revival of interest within Anglophone philosophy.1 In particular, Løgstrup’s signature theory of expressions of life – the theory that some phenomena expressive of human interdependence, such as trust and compassion, are fundamental to our capacity to respond excellently to the needs of others – is receiving

This paper argues that the problematic of rule following in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations and Heidegger's analysis of anxiety in Being and Time have analogous structures. Working through these analogies helps our interpretation of both of these authors. Contrasting sceptical and anti-sceptical readings of Wittgenstein helps us to resolve an interpretive puzzle about what an authentic

What is Philosophy For?, by MidgleyMary. London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2018. Pp.1-223.

Kant on Laws, by WatkinsEric. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. xv + 297.

Ways to be Blameworthy: Rightness, Wrongness, and Responsibility, by MasonElinor. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. viii + 227.

Just Words: On Speech and Hidden Harm, by McGowanMary Kate. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. xi + 209.

Group Duties: Their Existence and Their Implications for Individuals, by CollinsStephanie. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. vii + 218.

Meanings as Species, by RichardMark. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. vii + 212.

How to Count Animals, more or less, by KaganShelly. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. 320.

Moral Psychology with Nietzsche, by LeiterBrian. Oxford: OUP, 2019. Pp. x + 198.

The Exchange of Words, by MoranRichard. Oxford: OUP, 2018. Pp. 254.

In a recent article, Hofweber (2019) presents a new, and surprising, argument for idealism. His argument is surprising because it starts with an apparently innocent premiss from the philosophy of language: that ‘that’-clauses do not refer. I do not think that Hofweber's argument works, and my first aim in this paper is to explain why. However, I agree with Hofweber that what we say about ‘that’-clauses

AbstractThe paper discusses Ian Wells’s recent argument (Wells 2019) that there is a decision problem in which followers of Evidential Decision Theory end up poorer than followers of Causal Decision Theory despite having the same opportunities for money. It defends Evidential Decision Theory against Wells’s argument, on the following grounds. (i) Wells's has not presented a decision problem in which

What is the relationship between conceptual engineering and metasemantic externalism? Sally Haslanger has argued that metasemantic externalism justifies the seemingly counterintuitive consequences of her proposed conceptual revisions. But according to Herman Cappelen, metasemantic externalism makes conceptual engineering effectively impossible in practice. After raising objections to Haslanger’s and

When one has both epistemic and practical reasons for or against some belief, how do these reasons combine into an all-things-considered reason for or against that belief? The question might seem to presuppose the existence of practical reasons for belief. But we can rid the question of this presupposition. Once we do, a highly general ‘Combinatorial Problem’ emerges. The problem has been thought to

This paper proposes a new model of graded modal judgement. It begins by problematizing the phenomenon: given plausible constraints on the logic of epistemic modality, it is impossible to model graded attitudes toward modal claims as judgements of probability targeting epistemically modal propositions. This paper considers two alternative models, on which modal operators are non-proposition-forming: