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Epistemic Conflicts and the Form of Epistemic Rules Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2024-03-16 Aleks Knoks
While such epistemic rules as ‘If you perceive that , you ought to believe that ’ and ‘If you have outstanding testimony that , you ought to believe that ’ seem to be getting at important truths, it is easy to think of cases in which they come into conflict. To avoid classifying such cases as dilemmas, one can hold either that epistemic rules have built‐in unless‐clauses listing the circumstances under
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Deciding Under a Description Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2024-03-04 Matthew Heeney
I issue a challenge for the view that deciding‐to‐A is rendered intentional by an intention or other pro‐attitude towards deciding. Either such an attitude cannot rationalize my deciding specifically to A for a reason I take to support doing A, or, fixing for this, cannot accommodate deciding without entertaining alternatives. If successful, the argument motivates the search for an account that does
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Issue Information Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2024-03-04
No abstract is available for this article.
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Social Change, Solidarity, and Mass Agency Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Kevin Richardson
Critics of social injustice argue that the agent of transformative social change will (or should) be a mass agent; namely, an agent that is large, complex, and geographically dispersed. Traditional theories of collective agency emphasize the presence of shared intentions and common knowledge, but mass agents are too large for such cohesion. To make sense of mass agency, I suggest a new approach. On
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Counterfactual Decision Theory Is Causal Decision Theory Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2024-02-14 J. Dmitri Gallow
The role of causation and counterfactuals in causal decision theory is vexed and disputed. Recently, Brian Hedden (2023) argues that we should abandon causal decision theory in favour of an alternative: counterfactual decision theory. I argue that, pace Hedden, counterfactual decision theory is not a competitor to, but rather a version of, causal decision theory – the most popular version by far. I
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The Responses That Matter Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2024-02-02 Sebastian Köhler
We are all familiar with judgements about the persistence of people. Furthermore, we tend to structure certain attitudes and practices around such judgements because we think that personal identity matters for the relevant practical concerns. Response-dependence views try to accommodate that personal identity matters by letting relevant attitudes and practices determine the personal identity relation
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A Regularity Theory of Causation Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2024-01-09 Holger Andreas, Mario Günther
In this paper, we propose a regularity theory of causation. The theory aims to be reductive and to align with our pre-theoretic understanding of the causal relation. We show that our theory can account for a wide range of causal scenarios, including isomorphic scenarios, omissions, and scenarios which suggest that causation is not transitive.
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Does Pornography Presuppose Rape Myths? Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2024-01-03 Richard Kimberly Heck
Rae Langton and Caroline West argue that pornography silences women by presupposing misogynistic attitudes, such as that women enjoy being raped. More precisely, they claim that a somewhat infamous pictorial, ‘Dirty Pool’, makes such presuppositions, and that it is typical in this respect. I argue for four claims. (1) There are empirical reasons to doubt that women are silenced in the way that Langton
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The Utilitarian's Guide to Dreams Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2023-12-11 Adam Piovarchy
Unpleasant dreams occur much more frequently than many people realise. If one is a hedonistic utilitarian – or, at least, one thinks that dreams have positive or negative moral value in virtue of their experiential quality – then one has considerable reason to try to make such dreams more positive. Given it is possible to improve the quality of our dreams, we ought to be promoting and implementing
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Issue Information Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2023-12-03
No abstract is available for this article.
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The Matter of Coincidence Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2023-11-27 Justin Mooney
The phasalist solution to the puzzle of the statue and the piece of clay claims that being a statue is a phase sortal property of the piece of clay, just like being a child is a phase sortal property of a human being. Some philosophers reject this solution because it cannot account for cases where the statue seems to gain and lose parts that the piece of clay does not. I rebut this objection by arguing
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What Is It To Have A Language? Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2023-10-11 David Balcarras
This article defends the view that having a language just is knowing how to engage in communication with it. It also argues that, despite claims to the contrary, this view is compatible and complementary with the Chomskyan conception of language on which humans have languages in virtue of being in brain states realizing tacit knowledge of grammars for those languages.
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Grief, Smell and the Olfactory Air of a Person Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2023-09-14 Becky Millar, Louise Richardson
Philosophical research into olfaction often focuses on its limitations. We explore instead an underappreciated capacity of the sense of smell, namely, its role in interpersonal experience. To illustrate this, we examine how smell can enable continuing connections to deceased loved ones. Understanding this phenomenon requires an appreciation of, first, how olfaction's limitations can facilitate experiences
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Kant's Racism as a Philosophical Problem Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2023-09-06 Laurenz Ramsauer
Immanuel Kant was possibly both the most influential racist and the most influential moral philosopher of modern, Western thought. So far, authors have either interpreted Kant as an “inconsistent egalitarian” or as a “consistent inegalitarian.” On the former view, Kant failed to draw the necessary conclusions about persons from his own moral philosophy; on the latter view, Kant did not consider non-White
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Issue Information Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2023-09-03
No abstract is available for this article.
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Saying (Nothing) and Conversational Implicatures Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2023-09-02 Victor Tamburini
I defend an alternative theory of conversational implicatures that does without Grice's notion of making-as-if-to-say. This theory characterises conversationally implicating that p as a way to mean that p by saying that q or by saying nothing. Cases that Grice's theory cannot capture are captured, and cases that Grice's theory misdescribes are correctly described. A distinction between conversational
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Destigmatizing the Exegetical Attribution of Lies: The Case of Kant Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2023-06-20 Ian Proops, Roy Sorensen
Charitable interpreters of David Hume set aside his sprinkles of piety. Better to read him as lying than as clumsily inconsistent. We argue that the attribution of lies can pay dividends in historical scholarship no matter how strongly the theorist condemns lying. Accordingly, we show that our approach works even with one of the strongest condemners of lying: Immanuel Kant. We argue that Kant lied
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Issue Information Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2023-06-02
No abstract is available for this article.
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The Aim of Medicine. Sanocentricity and the Autonomy Thesis Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2023-05-02 Somogy Varga
Recent criticisms of medicine converge on fundamental questions about the aim of medicine. The main task of this paper is to propose an account of the aim of medicine. Discussing and rejecting the initially plausible proposal according to which medicine is pathocentric, the paper presents and defends the Autonomy Thesis, which holds that medicine is not pathocentric, but sanocentric, aiming to promote
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Radical Misinterpretation Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2023-03-21 Edward Elliott
This paper provides an exposition and defence of Lewis' theory of radical interpretation. The first part of the paper explains what Lewis' theory was; the second part explains what it wasn't, and in so doing addresses a number of common objections that arise as a result of widespread myths and misunderstandings about how Lewis' theory is supposed to work.
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What's Wrong with Prepunishment? Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2023-03-12 Alex Kaiserman
Punishing someone for a crime before they have committed it is widely considered morally abhorrent. But there is little agreement on what exactly is supposed to be wrong with it. In this paper, I critically evaluate several objections to the permissibility of prepunishment, making points along the way about the connections between time, knowledge, desert, deterrence and duty. I conclude that, although
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Issue Information Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2023-03-02
No abstract is available for this article.
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Defense of a Libertarian Interpretation of Descartes' Account of Judgment1 Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2023-02-19 Lex Newman
Widespread scholarly agreement has it that Descartes' theory of judgment favors a compatibilist interpretation. This essay explains and rebuts the standard arguments made on behalf of compatibilist readings, while explaining and defending a libertarian interpretation. Along with relevant Fourth Meditation doctrines and texts, my analysis encompasses a much discussed 1645 letter discussing his account
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How to Collaborate Well Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2023-02-19 Katherine Sweet
In this paper, I answer the question, how do we collaborate well with others? I first look at cases of good collaboration, contrasting them briefly with some cases of poor collaboration; I then describe the similarities between the good cases, such as shared aims, shared planning of projects, shared norms among collaborators. The conclusion is that collaborating well involves shared norms, derived
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Self-Esteem: On the Form of Self-Worth Worth Having Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2023-02-09 Jessica Isserow
Self-esteem is traditionally regarded as an important human good. But it has suffered a number of injuries to its good name. Critics allege that endeavours to promote self-esteem merely foster narcissism or entitlement, and urge that we redirect our efforts elsewhere. I argue that such criticisms are symptomatic of a normative decline in how we think and theorize about self-esteem rather than a defect
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The Force of Habit Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2023-02-07 William Hornett
Habits figure in action-explanations because of their distinctive force. But what is the force of habit, and how does it motivate us? In this paper, I argue that the force of habit is the feeling of familiarity one has with the familiar course of action, where this feeling reveals a distinctive reason for acting in the usual way. I do this by considering and rejecting a popular account of habit's force
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Immigration, Naturalization, and the Purpose of Citizenship Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2023-01-20 Daniel Sharp
It is widely believed that immigrants, after some time, acquire a claim to naturalize and become citizens of their new state. What explains this claim? Although existing answers (may) succeed in justifying some of immigrants' rights claims, they cannot justify the claim that immigrants are owed the opportunity to naturalize because these theories lack a sufficiently rich account of the purpose of citizenship
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Extending Kindness: A Confucian Account Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2023-01-20 Waldemar Brys
The Confucian philosopher Mengzi believes that ‘extending’ one's kindness facilitates one's moral development and that it is intimately tied to performing morally good actions. Most interpreters have taken Mengzian kindness to be an emotional state, with the extension of kindness to centrally involve feeling kindness towards more people or in a greater number of situations. I argue that kindness cannot
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Robert Greville on Sins, Privations, and Dialetheism Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2023-01-13 Patrick J. Connolly
In the history of Western philosophy, dialetheism – the view that some sentences are both true and false – has been unpopular. This paper recovers a previously overlooked episode in the history of dialetheism. Specifically, it reconstructs a section of Robert Greville's The Nature of Truth (1640) in order to show that he was a dialetheist. Greville's consideration of the view that evil is a privation
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Issue Information Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2022-12-04
No abstract is available for this article.
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Biological Explanations of Social Inequalities Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2022-10-07 Dan Lowe
Inequalities of social goods between gender, racial, or other groups call out for explanation. Such inequalities might be explained by socialization and discrimination. But historically some have attributed these inequalities to biological differences between social groups. Such explanations are highly controversial: on the one hand, they have a very troubling racist and sexist history, but on the
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Issue Information Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2022-09-06
No abstract is available for this article.
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Being Fully Excused for Wrongdoing Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2022-08-26 Daniele Bruno
On the classical understanding, an agent is fully excused for an action if and only if performing this action was a case of faultless wrongdoing. A major motivation for this view is the apparent existence of paradigmatic types of excusing considerations, affecting fault but not wrongness. I show that three such considerations, ignorance, duress and compulsion, can be shown to have direct bearing on
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Fictional Characters and Characterisations Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2022-08-23 Niall Connolly
Realists about fictional characters posit a certain theoretical role and a candidate to fill this role. I will delineate the role realists take fictional characters like Emma Woodhouse to fill, and I will argue that it is better filled by what I will call ‘characterisations’. In explaining what I mean by ‘characterisations’, I will show that the existence of these entities is comparatively uncontroversial
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The Cognitive Demands of Friendship Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2022-07-22 Anna Brinkerhoff
Recently, some philosophers have argued that friendship demands that we have positive beliefs about our friends even when such beliefs go against the evidence. Call this the doxastic account of the cognitive demands of friendship. I consider both motivations and worries for the doxastic account before developing a new account: the attentional account. According to it, friendship places demands on how
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On General and Non-General Abilities Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2022-07-22 Simon Kittle
I distinguish two ways an ability might be general: (i) an ability might be general in that its possession doesn't entail the possession of an opportunity; (ii) an ability might be general in virtue of pertaining to a wide range of circumstances. I argue that these two types of generality – I refer to them with the terms ‘general’ and ‘generic’, respectively – produce two orthogonal distinctions among
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Sentientism, Motivation, and Philosophical Vulcans Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2022-07-12 Luke Roelofs
If moral status depends on the capacity for consciousness, what kind of consciousness matters exactly? Two popular answers are that any kind of consciousness matters (Broad Sentientism), and that what matters is the capacity for pleasure and suffering (Narrow Sentientism). I argue that the broad answer is too broad, while the narrow answer is likely too narrow, as Chalmers has recently argued by appeal
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The Apple of Kant's Ethics: i-Maxims as the Locus of Assessment Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2022-07-11 Samuel Kahn
I want to distinguish between maxims at three levels of abstraction. At the first level are what I shall call individual maxims, or i-maxims: maxim tokens as adopted by particular rational beings. At the second level are abstract maxims, or a-maxims: abstract principles distinct from any individual who adopts them. At the third level are maxim kinds, or k-maxims: sets of various action-guiding principles
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Predication and Hume's Conceivability Principle Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2022-07-09 Hsueh Qu
In this paper, I will make the case that an associative account of predication in Hume seems to allow for impossible predicative conceptions—that is, the conceiving of impossible states of affairs involving subjects instantiating properties or qualities—which violate his Conceivability Principle. The natural response is to argue that such conceptions are not clear and distinct, but substantive worries
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Relativism and Two Kinds of Branching Time Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2022-07-06 Dilip Ninan
This essay examines the case for relativism about future contingents in light of a distinction between two ways of interpreting the ‘branching time’ framework. The first step of the relativist argument is to argue for the ‘Non-Determination Thesis’, the view that there is no unique actual future. The second step is to argue from the Non-Determination Thesis to relativism. I show that first step of
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Disagreement, the Independence Thesis, and the Value of Repeated Reasoning Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2022-06-21 Ethan Brauer
The problem of peer disagreement is to explain how you should respond when you and a peer have the same evidence bearing on some proposition P and are equally competent epistemic agents, yet have reached opposite conclusions about P. According to Christensen's Independence Thesis, in assessing the effect of your peer's disagreement, you must not rely on the reasoning behind your initial belief. I note
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Second Thoughts About My Favourite Theory Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2022-06-09 Johan E. Gustafsson
A straightforward way to handle moral uncertainty is simply to follow the moral theory in which you have most credence. This approach is known as My Favourite Theory. In this paper, I argue that, in some cases, My Favourite Theory prescribes choices that are, sequentially, worse in expected moral value than the opposite choices according to each moral theory you have any credence in. In addition, this
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Issue Information Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2022-05-31
No abstract is available for this article.
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From the Heterogeneity Problem to a Natural-Kind Approach to Pleasure Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2022-05-31 Antonin Broi
The heterogeneity problem, which stems from the alleged difficulty of finding out what all pleasant experiences have in common, is largely considered as a substantial issue in the philosophy of pleasure, one that is usually taken as the starting point for theorizing about the essence of pleasure. The goal of this paper is to move the focus away from the heterogeneity problem and toward an alternative
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Your Mother Should Know: Pregnancy, the Ethics of Abortion and Knowledge through Acquaintance of Moral Value Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2022-05-25 Fiona Woollard
An important strand in the debate on abortion focuses on the moral status of fetuses. Knowledge of the moral value of fetuses is needed to assess fetuses' moral status. As Errol Lord argues, acquaintance plays a key role in moral and aesthetic knowledge. Many pregnant persons have acquaintance with their fetus that provides privileged access to knowledge about that fetus' moral value. This knowledge
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Bearing Witness: The Duty of Non-indifference and the Case for Reading the News Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2022-05-11 Brookes Brown
Ignorance of current events is ordinarily treated as a moral failing. In this article, I argue that much of this ire is misplaced. The disengaged are no less positioned to do good or dispense beneficence, no more arrogant or complicit than those glued to the headlines. Nonetheless, I contend that citizens do have moral reason to remain informed – they ought not be indifferent to others. This, I show
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Understanding the Relationship Between Disability and Enhancement Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2022-05-01 Lysette Chaproniere
This paper assesses how views of disability and enhancement can combine. It is hard to maintain that disabilities and enhancements are both undesirable. Disability-positive views can combine with support for or opposition to enhancement, but not with the view that enhanced traits reliably increase well-being. It is consistent to hold that disability is bad and enhancement good; the plausibility of
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In Defense of Constitutivism About Epistemic Normativity Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2022-04-15 David Horst
Epistemic constitutivism (EC ) holds that the nature of believing is such that it gives rise to a standard of correctness and that other epistemic normative notions (e.g., reasons for belief) can be explained in terms of this standard. If defensible, this view promises an attractive and unifying account of epistemic normativity. However, EC faces a forceful objection: that constitutive standards of
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Measuring Social Welfare by Proximity to an Optimum Population Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2022-03-21 Karin Enflo
This essay introduces a new type of measure of social welfare, where populations are evaluated by their resemblance to an optimum population, which is an (in principle) possible population with the highest degree of social welfare, relative to some circumstances. Here, it is argued to be the largest possible population where everyone fares maximally well. The new measure is responsive to quality of
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A Partnership for the Ages Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2022-03-11 Richard H. Dees
Burke suggests that we should view society as a partnership between the past, the present, and the future. I defend this idea by outlining how we can understand the interests of the past and future people and the obligations that they have towards each other. I argue that we have forward-looking obligations to leave the world a decent place and backward-looking obligations to respect the legacy of
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Issue Information Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2022-03-01
No abstract is available for this article.
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Blameworthiness, Control, and Consciousness Or A Consciousness Requirement and an Argument For It Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2022-02-28 Michael Hatcher
I first clarify the idea that blameworthiness requires consciousness as the view that one can be blameworthy only for what is a response to a reason of which one is conscious. Next I develop the following argument: blameworthiness requires exercising control in a way distinctive of persons and doing this, in view of what it is to be a person, requires responding to a reason of which one is conscious
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Issue Information Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2021-12-05
No abstract is available for this article.
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Existence and Believability Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2022-02-03 Dominik Kauss
This paper argues that true singular existentials are rationally indubitable. After the claim is clarified and motivated (Section 1), it is defended against objections inspired by Cartesian skepticism and semantic externalism (Section 2), a Fregean fine-grained conception of propositional content (Section 3), Kripke's causal theory of reference (Section 4), a Stalnakerian coarse-grained conception
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Who Reclaims Slurs? Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2022-01-26 Bianca Cepollaro, Dan López de Sa
Reclamation is usually taken to be the phenomenon wherein in-groups employ a slur to express pride, foster camaraderie, or subvert discriminatory structures. We provide data showing that, under some special circumstances, out-groups successfully reclaim slurs too. Thus, the mainstream restriction to in-groups is merely an approximation of the correct extension of the phenomenon – of who does actually
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Structural Rationality and the Property of Coherence Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2022-01-20 Marc-Kevin Daoust
What is structural rationality? Specifically, what is the distinctive feature of structural requirements of rationality? Some philosophers have argued, roughly, that the distinctive feature of structural requirements is coherence. But what does coherence mean, exactly? Or, at least, what do structuralists about rationality have in mind when they claim that structural rationality is coherence? This
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The Black Box in Stoic Axiology Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2022-01-04 Michael Vazquez
The ‘black box’ in Stoic axiology refers to the mysterious connection between the input of Stoic deliberation (reasons generated by the value of indifferents) and the output (appropriate actions). In this paper, I peer into the black box by drawing an analogy between Stoic and Kantian axiology. The value and disvalue of indifferents is intrinsic, but conditional. An extrinsic condition on the value
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Aesthetic Acquaintance Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2022-01-03 James Shelley
If, as Richard Wollheim says, the Acquaintance Principle is ‘a well-entrenched principle in aesthetics,’ it would be surprising if there were not something true at which those who have asserted it have been aiming. I argue that the Acquaintance Principle cannot be true on any traditional epistemic interpretation, nor on any usability interpretation of the sort Robert Hopkins has recently suggested
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Fake Dispositional Sentences: Manley and Wasserman's Misstep Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2021-12-23 Sungho Choi
Manley and Wasserman's PROP account of dispositions has been influential in the recent debate about the nature of dispositions. In this paper, I will bring under scrutiny one crucial step in Manley and Wasserman's reasoning leading to the PROP account. The step is one where they abandon what they call ‘MOST’, the idea that x is disposed to M when C iff x would M in most cases where C obtains. I will
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Creating and Redirecting Threats Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Pub Date : 2021-12-20 Victor Mardellat
In the third volume of On What Matters, Derek Parfit argued that the distinction between imposing a newly created threat on someone and making what threatens some people instead threaten someone else has no genuine moral significance. This article's central thesis is that although there is much to learn from Parfit's arguments, they are ultimately unsuccessful at establishing that the redirected versus