ABSTRACT According to an influential line of argument, the past must be finite because no infinite series can be formed by successive addition. The present paper pinpoints the non sequitur at the heart of this argument, disentangles the ambiguities that disguise it, and dismantles the misleading picture of ‘traversing the infinite’ that gives the argument so much of its allure. Finally, the paper critically

ABSTRACT Most philosophers in the death literature believe that death can be bad for the person who dies. The most popular view of death’s badness—namely, deprivationism—holds that death is bad for the person who dies because, and to the extent that, it deprives them of the net good that they would have accrued, had their actual death not occurred. Deprivationists thus face the challenge of locating

ABSTRACT It seems plausible that visual experiences of darkness have perceptual phenomenal content that clearly differentiates them from absences of visual experiences. I argue, relying on psychological results concerning auditory attention, that the analogous claim is true about auditory experiences of silence. More specifically, I propose that experiences of silence present empty spatial directions

ABSTRACT According to the ‘expertise defence’, experimental findings suggesting that intuitive judgments about hypothetical cases are influenced by philosophically irrelevant factors do not undermine their evidential use in (moral) philosophy. This defence assumes that philosophical experts are unlikely to be influenced by irrelevant factors. We discuss relevant findings from experimental metaphilosophy

(2021). Being Evil: A Philosophical Perspective. Australasian Journal of Philosophy. Ahead of Print.

ABSTRACT I critically examine some deflationary theories of properties, according to which properties are ‘shadows of predicates’ and quantification over them serves a mere quasi-logical function. I start by considering Hofweber’s internalist theory, and pose a problem for his account of inexpressible properties. I then introduce a theory of properties that closely resembles Horwich’s minimalist theory

ABSTRACT This paper proposes a new reductive theory of modality, called the moodless theory of modality. This theory, and not modal realism, is the closest modal analogue of the tenseless theory of time. So, if the tenseless theory is true, and the temporality–modality analogy is good, it is the moodless theory that follows. I also argue that the moodless theory, considered on its own, is better than

(2021). Summoning Knowledge in Plato’s Republic. Australasian Journal of Philosophy. Ahead of Print.

ABSTRACT Many defend the thesis that when someone knows p, they couldn’t easily have been wrong about p. But the notion of easy possibility in play is relatively under-theorized. One structural idea in the literature, the principle of Counterfactual Closure (CC), connects easy possibility with counterfactuals: if it easily could have happened that p, and if p were the case then q would be the case

ABSTRACT Many intelligent, capable, and successful individuals believe that their success is due to luck, and fear that they will someday be exposed as imposters. A puzzling feature of this phenomenon, commonly referred to as imposter syndrome, is that these same individuals treat evidence in ways that maintain their false beliefs and debilitating fears: they ignore and misattribute evidence of their

ABSTRACT Sometimes it seems that an existing bearer of value should be preserved even though it could be destroyed and replaced with something of equal or greater value. How can this conservative intuition be explained and justified? This paper distinguishes three answers, which I call existential, attitudinal, and object-affecting conservatism. I raise some problems for existential and attitudinal

ABSTRACT I begin by developing a challenge for the Higher-Order Thought variant of Higher-Order representational theories of consciousness. The challenge is to account for the distinctive phenomenal character of visual experience—its presentational character. After setting out the challenge, I articulate a novel form of Higher-Order theory that can account for presentational character—the Map Theory

(2021). Death, Immortality, and Meaning in Life. Australasian Journal of Philosophy. Ahead of Print.

ABSTRACT A (not the) history of the Australasian Journal of Philosophy is presented in a series of snapshots, some of them with 360° angles, taken at ten-year intervals from the time of its foundation to the time of writing. Attention is paid to influences on the AJP ranging from the social and political to the individual, from the financial to the technical, from the historical to the geographical

(2021). Freedom and Responsibility in Neoplatonist Thought. Australasian Journal of Philosophy. Ahead of Print.

(2021). Almost Over: Aging, Dying, Dead. Australasian Journal of Philosophy. Ahead of Print.

ABSTRACT While pragmatic arguments are traditionally seen as supporting decision theory, recent discussions suggest the possibility of pragmatic arguments against this theory. I respond to two such arguments, and clarify what it would take for arguments of this sort to succeed.

(2021). Correction. Australasian Journal of Philosophy. Ahead of Print.

(2020). A Critical Introduction to Fictionalism. Australasian Journal of Philosophy. Ahead of Print.

ABSTRACT According to comparativism, comparative confidence is more fundamental than absolute confidence. In two recent AJP papers, Stefánsson has argued that comparativism is capable of explaining interpersonal confidence comparisons. In this paper, I will argue that Stefansson’s proposed explanation is inadequate; that we have good reasons to think that comparativism cannot handle interpersonal comparisons;

ABSTRACT One of the core issues where interpreters of Kant disagree concerns his alleged Noumenalism—the claim that the objects of our experience, which are in space and time, are underpinned by entities that are not spatio-temporal and that non-spatio-temporally cause our representations of empirical objects. Although there is much textual evidence in favour of Noumenalism, non-Noumenalists have also

ABSTRACT In this journal, Middleton and Murgueitio Ramírez argue that absolute velocity is measurable, contrary to the received wisdom. Specifically, they claim that ‘there exists at least one reasonable analysis of measurement according to which the speedometer in [a world called “the Basic World”] measures the absolute velocity of the car.’ In this note, I critically respond to that claim: the analysis

ABSTRACT This paper aims to show that any account of how artworks lie must acknowledge (I) that artworks can lie at different levels of their content—what I call ‘surface’ and ‘deep’—and (II) that, for an artwork to lie at a given level, a norm of truthful communication such as Grice’s Maxim of Quality must apply to it. A corollary is that it’s harder than you might think for artworks to lie: Quality

(2020). Our Fundamental Problem by Nicholas Maxwell McGill-Queen's Uni Press 2020. Australasian Journal of Philosophy. Ahead of Print.

ABSTRACT An influential way of distinguishing inferential from non-inferential processes appeals to representational states: an agent infers a conclusion from some premises only if she represents those premises as supporting that conclusion. By contrast, when some premises merely cause an agent to believe the conclusion, there is no relevant representational state. While promising, the appeal to representational

ABSTRACT Most theorists agree that our social order includes a distinctive legal dimension. A fundamental question is that of whether reference to specific legal phenomena always involves a commitment to a particular moral view. Whereas many philosophers advance the ‘positivist’ claim that any correspondence between morality and the law is just a function of political circumstance, natural law theorists

ABSTRACT Multiple realization occurs when a natural kind is variably realized at more basic levels and the common physical structure of the realizers is not essential for supporting nomological statements. It has been suggested that this phenomenon may be an outcome of natural selection acting over multiple realizers that perform an adaptive function. In this paper, we make the following contributions

ABSTRACT This paper identifies a number of questions that any plausible theory of epistemic blame ought to answer. What is epistemic blame? When is someone an appropriate target of epistemic blame? And what justifies engaging in epistemic blame? I argue that a number of problems arise when we try to answer these questions by using existing conceptions of moral blame. I then consider and reject Brown’s

ABSTRACT Proponents of the causal theory of perception have applied the theory to questions about which particular objects or events are perceived, which parts are perceived, and which properties are perceived. In each case, they insist that successful perception is causally dependent on what is perceived. The causal theory rests on an important insight regarding the information-carrying role of perception

ABSTRACT Generality relativism is the view that any domain of quantification can always be expanded. The view promises to resolve a broad range of paradoxes, but, without an explanation of how domains expand, it sounds very mysterious. Proponents of linguistic versions of generality relativism try to demystify the view by likening domain expansions to semantic change. They think that domains expand

ABSTRACT The manifest fact of experiential unity—namely, that a single experience often seems to be composed of multiple features and multiple objects—was lodged as a key objection to the Buddhist no-self view by Nyāya philosophers in the classical Indian tradition. We revisit the Nyāya-Buddhist debate on this issue. The early Nyāya experiential unity arguments depend on diachronic unification of experiences

ABSTRACT Can there be mathematical explanations of physical phenomena? In this paper, I suggest an affirmative answer to this question. I outline a strategy to reconstruct several typical examples of such explanations, and I show that they fit a common model. The model reveals that the role of mathematics is explicatory. Isolating this role may help to re-focus the current debate on the more specific

ABSTRACT On the traditional picture, accidents must inhere in substances in order to exist. Berkeley famously argues that a particular class of accidents—the sensible qualities—are mere ideas—entities that depend for their existence on minds. To defend this view, Berkeley provides us with an elegant alternative to the traditional framework: sensible qualities depend on a mind, not in virtue of inhering

ABSTRACT It is often taken for granted that our desires can contribute to what it is rational for us to do. This paper examines an account of desire—the ‘guise of the good’— that promises an explanation of this datum. I argue that extant guise-of-the-good accounts fail to provide an adequate explanation of how a class of desires—basic desires—contributes to practical rationality. I develop an alternative

ABSTRACT Suppose that, while you are dreamlessly asleep, the sizes of and distances between all objects in the world are uniformly multiplied. Would you be able to detect this global inflation? Intuitively, no. But would your experience of size remain accurate? Intuitively, yes. On these grounds, some have concluded that our experiences do not represent size and instead represent modes of presentation

ABSTRACT In the contemporary philosophical literature, ideal virtue is often accused of setting a standard more appropriate for saints or gods than for human beings. In this paper, I undermine divinity-infused depictions of the fully virtuous, and argue that ideal virtue is, indeed, human. I focus on the virtuous person’s imperviousness to temptation, and contend that this imperviousness is not as

ABSTRACT The Causal Exclusion Problem is raised in many domains, including the metaphysics of macroscopic objects. If there is a complete explanation of macroscopic effects in terms of the microscopic entities that compose macroscopic objects, then the causal efficacy of the macroscopic will be threatened with exclusion. I argue that we can avoid the problem if we accept that macroscopic objects are

ABSTRACT According to the Psychological-Continuity Account of What Matters, you are justified in having special concern for the well-being of a person at a future time if and only if that person will be psychologically continuous with you as you are now. On some versions of the account, the psychological continuity is required to be temporally ordered, whereas, on other versions, it is allowed to be

ABSTARCT When people go shopping, they enter a building. But the shop cannot be identified with the building, because it would remain the same shop if it moved to another building or if it became an e-store. Daniel Korman [2019] uses these two observations to argue that establishments are immaterial objects. However, all that follows is that establishments are not buildings. I argue that establishments

ABSTRACT This paper defends a controversial view about personal identity. It argues that it is possible to endorse both Phenomenalism and Materialism about persons. Phenomenalism is the view that personal identity is grounded in phenomenal consciousness. Materialism is the view that we are material objects. Many believe that the two views are incompatible. In this paper, I show that it is possible

ABSTRACT We argue that Roberts’s argument for the thesis that absolute velocity is not measurable in a Newtonian world is unsound, because it depends on an analysis of measurement that is not extensionally adequate. We propose an alternative analysis of measurement, one that is extensionally adequate and entails that absolute velocity is measured in at least one Newtonian world. If our analysis is

ABSTRACT Moral abolitionists argue that ordinary moral discourse has downsides substantial enough to warrant abandoning the discourse in favour of some replacement(s). Their most common critique is that the ‘realist’ character of moral discourse inhibits important forms of self-awareness. Until recently, metaethicists had operated on the assumption that abolitionism depends on error theory. To this

ABSTRACT Adverbialism is the view that to have a conscious perceptual experience is to be consciously experiencing in a certain way, and that this way is not to be understood in relational or representational terms. We might compare what it is for a conscious being to be experiencing in a certain way with what it is for a string to be vibrating in a certain way. This paper makes a new case for adverbialism

Rachel Zuckert’s Herder’s Naturalist Aesthetics is part of the recent wave of interest in Herder’s philosophical work. However, it is also unique in offering a novel view of one of Herder’s most pa...

In The Moral Nexus, R. Jay Wallace undertakes an investigation into the nature of morality, one that he calls ‘intermediate’, meaning that it fits between meta-ethical and first-order normative inq...

ABSTRACT Cognitive penetrability refers to the possibility that perceptual experiences are influenced by our beliefs, expectations, emotions, or other personal-level mental states. In this paper, I focus on the epistemological implication of cognitive penetration, and examine how, exactly, aetiologies matter to the justificatory power of perceptual experiences. I examine a prominent theory, according

ABSTRACT One challenge in providing an adequate definition of physical disability is that of unifying the heterogeneous bodily conditions that count as disabilities. We examine recent proposals by Elizabeth Barnes [2016], and Dana Howard and Sean Aas [2018], and show how this debate has reached an impasse. Barnes’s account struggles to deliver principled unification of the category of disability, whilst

ABSTRACT W.L. Craig has argued that the universe has a beginning because (1) the infinitude of the past entails the existence of actual infinite multitudes of past intervals of time, and (2) the existence of actual infinite multitudes is impossible. Puryear has rejected (1) and argued that what the infinitude of the past entails is only the existence of an actual infinite magnitude of past time. But

ABSTRACT Constitutive panpsychism is the doctrine that macro-level consciousness—that is, consciousness of the sort possessed by certain composite things such as humans—is built out of irreducibly mental (or proto-mental) features had by some or all of the basic physical constituents of reality. On constitutive panpsychism, changes in macro-level consciousness amount to changes in either the way that

ABSTRACT Some epistemologists hold that all rational norms are fundamentally concerned with the agent’s states or attitudes at an individual time [Hedden 2015, 2016; Moss 2015]; others argue that all rational norms are fundamentally concerned with processes [Podgorski 2017]. This distinction is not drawn in discussions of emotional rationality. As a result, a widely held assumption in the literature

This is a careful study of the more methodological chapters of the Posterior Analytics. Bronstein probes Aristotle’s accounts of demonstration, definition, and induction. He rejects an intuitionist...

ABSTRACT This paper offers a detailed reconstruction of Frege’s theory of side-thoughts (Nebengedanken) and its relation to other parts of his pragmatics, most notably to the notion of colouring (Färbung), to the notion of presupposition (Voraussetzung), and to his implicit notion of multi-propositionality. I also highlight some important differences between the subsemantic categories employed by Frege

ABSTRACT In this article, robust evidence is provided showing that an individual’s moral character can contribute to the aesthetic quality of their appearance, as well as being beautiful or ugly itself. It is argued that this evidence supports two main conclusions. First, moral beauty and ugliness reside on the inside, and beauty and ugliness are not perception-dependent as a result; and, second, aesthetic

ABSTRACT The apparent consistency of Sobel sequences (example below) famously motivated David Lewis to defend a variably strict conditional semantics for counterfactuals. If Sophie had gone to the parade, she would have seen Pedro. If Sophie had gone to the parade and had been stuck behind someone tall, she would not have seen Pedro. But if the order of the counterfactuals in a Sobel sequence is reversed—in

ABSTRACT Contrary to the contemporary view that negation is a logical operation that modifies the mere content of a thought or judgment, but not the act of thinking or judging it, Kant maintains that negation is an act of logical apperception through which I exclude a thought or judgment from what ‘I think.’ In this paper, I argue against two interpretations of Kant’s account of logical negation. According

ABSTRACT There has been recent interest in the idea that, when metaphysicians disagree over the truth of (say) ‘There are numbers’ or ‘Chairs exist’, their dispute is merely verbal. This idea has been taken to motivate quantifier variance, the view that the meanings of quantifier expressions vary across different ontological languages, and that each of these meanings is of equal metaphysical merit

ABSTRACT Humean metaphysical views have often been criticised for leading to inductive scepticism. If there is no glue holding the world together, as the Humean believes, then there seems to be no basis on which to infer from past to future. However, Humeans have typically been unconcerned. After all, they say, everyone has a problem with induction. But if we look at the connection between induction

(2021). Knowing Our Limits. Australasian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 99, No. 1, pp. 208-208.

(2021). Reflections on Human Inquiry: Science, Philosophy, and Common Life. Australasian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 99, No. 1, pp. 209-209.

ABSTRACT A version of Meno’s paradox applies to intellectualism about knowledge-how. If one does not know that p, one does not know (of any way w) that w is a way of working out that p. According to intellectualists, the latter such knowledge constitutes knowledge how to work out that p. One thus knows how to work out that p only if one already knows that p. But if this is right, nobody can work anything