I present evidence for a systematic complexity–coherence trade-off in cognition. I show how feasible strategies for increasing cognitive complexity along three dimensions come at the expense of a heightened vulnerability to incoherence. I discuss two normative implications of the complexity–coherence trade-off: a novel challenge to coherence-based theories of bounded rationality and a new strategy

How is it that individuals who deny experiencing visual imagery nonetheless perform normally on tasks which seem to require it? This puzzle of aphantasia has perplexed philosophers and scientists since the late nineteenth century. Contemporary responses include: (i) idiosyncratic reporting, (ii) faulty introspection, (iii) unconscious imagery, and (iv) complete lack of imagery combined with the use

Russell famously posited a type of knowledge distinct from and irreducible to propositional knowledge, which he called knowledge by acquaintance. In recent years, several epistemologists have reignited interest in knowledge by acquaintance, pointing out an array of theoretical jobs it is serviceable in performing. Nonetheless knowledge by acquaintance continues to be met with resistance and disregard

Contemporary ontologists, almost unanimously, dismiss the idea that sakes (as in ‘I did it for her sake’) exist. Likewise with the kibosh, snooks, behalves, dints, and so on. In this essay, I argue that there is no good reason for this near consensus, I begin to make a case that sakes and the like do exist, and I consider what this means more broadly for ontology.

Some philosophers have presented arguments that the all-things-considered-better-than relation admits of cycles. The most prominent arguments for this conclusion are spectrum arguments. Whether or not any spectrum arguments are sound is a topic of debate among value theorists. In this paper, I consider whether they are credible or incredible, i.e., whether or not there is anything of a distinctively

David Wallace has argued that there is no special problem for free will in the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, beyond the well-known problem of reconciling free will with physical determinism. I argue to the contrary that, on the plausible and popular “deep self” approach to compatibilism, the many-worlds interpretation does face a special problem. It is not clear on the many-worlds

Common‐sense morality has it that parents are morally justified in acting partially toward their own children. More controversial, however, is the form of partiality that obtains between prospective parents and their yet‐to‐be‐conceived future children – or ‘pre‐parental partiality’, for short. Is pre‐parental partiality morally justified? On one hand, our intuitions seem to tell us that it is. On

This paper provides a novel defence of the philosophical use of examples drawn from literature, by comparison with thought experiments and real cases. Such fictional examples, subject to certain constraints, can play a similar role to real cases in establishing the generality of a social phenomenon. Furthermore, the distinct psychological vantage point offered by literature renders it a potent resource

The Neurodiversity (ND) movement demands that some psychiatric categories be de-pathologized. It has faced much criticism, leading some to despair whether it can ever be brought together with psychiatry. In this paper, we argue for a particular understanding of this central demand of the ND movement. We argue that the demand for de-pathologizing is the rejection of (paradigmatically) autism as a hypostatic

We care about whether the people around us can take a joke. And this care has a moral tinge to it: we're more likely to trust good-humoured people, and are prone to accusing humourless people of being ‘sanctimonious buzzkills’ who need to ‘get over themselves’. But are these moralized reactions justified? And what, if anything, justifies them? This paper discusses the moral value of humour in terms

A consensus is emerging in the philosophy of science that value judgements are ineliminable from scientific inquiry. Which values should then be chosen by scientists? This paper proposes a novel answer to this question, labelled the public reason view. To place this answer on firm ground, I first redraw the boundaries of the political forum; in other words, I broaden the range of actors who have a

Many people believe that it is better to extend the length of a happy life than to create a new happy life, even if the total welfare is the same in both cases. Despite the popularity of this view, one would be hard-pressed to find a fully compelling justification for it in the literature. This paper develops a novel account of why and when extension is better than replacement that applies not just

Is acceptance an act or a state? Jonathan Cohen is often seen as a proponent of the view that acceptance is a mental act. In contrast, Michael Bratman claims that acceptance is a mental state. This paper argues that the evidence supports a more subtle approach. Linguistic intuitions about the lexical aspect of the verb ‘accept’ support the view that there is an act of acceptance and a state of acceptance

I raise a problem about the possibility of metaphysics originally due to Kant: what explains the fact that the terms in our metaphysical theories (e.g., ‘property’, ‘grounding’) refer to entities and structures (e.g., properties, grounding) in the world? I distinguish a meta‐metaphysical view that can easily answer such questions (‘deflationism’) from a meta‐metaphysical view for which this explanatory

This is a contribution to a book symposium on Bias: A Philosophical Study, in which I respond to commentaries by Gabbrielle Johnson, Daniel Greco, and Selim Berker. In response to Johnson, I argue that many paradigmatic cases of bias are not best understood as involving underdetermination, and I defend my alternative account of bias against the concerns that she raises. In response to Greco, I note

It is essential that formal models come with interpretations: accounts of how the models relate to the phenomena. The traditional representation of degrees of belief as mathematical probabilities comes with a clear and simple interpretative story. This paper argues that the model of degrees of belief as imprecise probabilities (sets of probabilities) lacks a workable interpretation: The standard interpretative

There has been widespread opposition to so-called essentialism in contemporary social theory. At the same time, within contemporary analytic metaphysics, the notion of essence has been revived and put to work by neo-Aristotelians. The ‘new essentialism’ of the neo-Aristotelians opens the prospect for a new social essentialism—one that avoids the problematic commitments of the ‘old essentialism’ while

Recent work in social epistemology has begun to make use of the behavioral-scientific concept of the nudge, but without sustained attention to how it should be translated from behavioral to epistemic contexts. We offer an account of doxastic nudges that satisfies extensional and theoretical desiderata, defend it against other accounts in the literature, and use it to clarify ongoing discussions of

In this paper, I aim to identify the wrong that is done by the hearer to the testifier in all cases of testimonial injustice. I introduce the concept of testimonial injustice, as well as the existing accounts of this characteristic wrong, and I argue that the latter don’t work. Then I present my favoured account, which adapts Rachel Fraser’s account of the wrong of aesthetic injustice. I argue that

Among theories of vagueness, supervaluationism stands out for its non–truth functional account of the logical connectives. For example, the disjunction of two atomic statements that are not determinately true or false can, itself, come out either true or indeterminate, depending on its content—a consequence several philosophers find problematic. Smith (2016) turns this point against supervaluationism

The conventional discourse on existential risks (x-risks) from AI typically focuses on abrupt, dire events caused by advanced AI systems, particularly those that might achieve or surpass human-level intelligence. These events have severe consequences that either lead to human extinction or irreversibly cripple human civilization to a point beyond recovery. This decisive view, however, often neglects

The normative challenge of AI alignment centres upon what goals or values ought to be encoded in AI systems to govern their behaviour. A number of answers have been proposed, including the notion that AI must be aligned with human intentions or that it should aim to be helpful, honest and harmless. Nonetheless, both accounts suffer from critical weaknesses. On the one hand, they are incomplete: neither

Some people believe that advanced artificial intelligence systems (AIs) might, in the future, come to have moral status. Further, humans might be tempted to design such AIs that they serve us, carrying out tasks that make our lives better. This raises the question of whether designing AIs with moral status to be willing servants would problematically violate their autonomy. In this paper, I argue that

According to the standard Humean account of laws of nature, laws are selected as a result of an optimal trade-off between the scientific virtues of simplicity and strength. Roberts and Woodward have objected that such trade-offs play no role in how laws are chosen in science. We first discuss an example from automated scientific discovery which provides support for Roberts and Woodward’s point that

According to perspectivism, what I ought to do depends on my perspective. While recently popular, perspectivism faces a central puzzle. In some deliberative practices, facts outside our perspective are clearly relevant. In deliberation, we are concerned with acquiring new information. In advising, a better-informed adviser possesses relevant information I do not have. The latter case distinctly highlights

Many philosophers and linguists have been attracted to counterpart theory as a framework for natural language semantics. I raise a novel problem for counterpart theory involving simple declarative sentences with proper names. To resolve this problem, counterpart theorists must introduce the notion of a counterpart in the semantics of the non‐modal fragment of language. I develop my preferred solution:

This paper advances an analytic philosophical approach to atmospheres. We start by outlining three core characteristics of atmospheres: holism (an atmosphere is a holistic entity that emerges through the combinations of various aspects of the environment), affectivity (atmospheres are grasped corporeally and affectively), and quasi-objectivity (atmospheres cannot be captured in solely objective or

Standard decision theory ranks risky prospects by their expected utility. This ranking does not change if the values of all possible outcomes are uniformly shifted or dilated. Similarly, if the values of the outcomes are negated, the ranking of prospects by their expected utility is reversed. In settings with unbounded levels of utility, the expected utility of prospects is not always defined, but

Teitel (Mind 128:39-68, 2019) argues that the following three doctrines are jointly inconsistent: i) the doctrine that metaphysical necessity reduces to essence; ii) the doctrine that possibly something could fail to exist; and iii) the doctrine that metaphysical necessity obeys a modal logic of at least S4. This paper presents a novel solution to Teitel’s puzzle, regimented in a higher-order logical

Advocates of longtermism point out that interventions which focus on improving the prospects of people in the very far future will, in expectation, bring about an astronomical amount of good (or agent‐neutral value). As such, longtermists claim we have compelling moral reason to engage in long‐term interventions. In this paper, I show that longtermism is in conflict with plausible deontic scepticism

If the legitimate exercise of political power requires justifiability to all citizens, as John Rawls’s influential Liberal Principle of Legitimacy states, then what should we say about the legitimacy of institutions and actions that have a significant impact on the interests of future citizens? Surprisingly, this question has been neglected in the literature. This paper questions the assumption that

This paper challenges Sosa’s account of the epistemic propriety of suspension of judgment. We take the reader on a test drive through some common problem cases in epistemology and argue that Sosa makes accurate and apt suspension both too easy and too hard.

This paper investigates a novel question about the relationship between belief and deliberation: Is it ever rationally permissible to believe an answer to a question Q prior to concluding one's deliberation about Q? This question differs from a more commonly discussed one, insofar as it asks about the rationality of believing that p before settling on p as the answer to some question Q. By contrast

The modal theory of luck, according to one influential version of it, holds that an event is lucky if and only if it actually obtains but fails to obtain in some close possible worlds, holding fixed certain initial conditions for the event. There have been some notable critiques of the theory. But they are not fully satisfactory, for they succumb to two typical and compelling strategies of defending

Let's say that I fully know that if I know that , I know that I know that , I know that I know that I know that , and so on. Let's say that I partially know that if I know that but I don't fully know that . What, if anything, do I fully know? What, if anything, do I partially know? One response in the literature is that I fully know everything that I know; partial knowledge is impossible. This response

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Nietzsche makes a number of remarks that suggest that he thinks that art and truth are antithetical – indeed that he thinks that the value of art lies in its falsification of aspects of the world that would otherwise prove unbearable. ‘Truth is ugly,’ he says: ‘We possess art lest we perish of the truth.’ But the argument of the present paper is that the falsification reading is unsustainable, and

Not all actions are intentional actions. What separates merely doing something from intentionally doing something? One point of separation seems to be luck. Too much luck, or luck of a certain variety, seems to undermine the possibility of acting intentionally. This naturally leads to the idea that intentional action presupposes reliable success. I argue against this idea. Taking inspiration from Gareth

The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Volume 76, Issue 1, March 2025.

This paper examines cases in which an individual’s misunderstanding improves the scientific community’s understanding through “corrective” processes that produce understanding from poor epistemic inputs. To highlight the unique features of valuable misunderstandings and corrective processes, we contrast them with other social-epistemological phenomena including testimonial understanding, collective

AI technologies have shown remarkable capabilities in various scientific fields, such as drug discovery, medicine, climate modeling, and archaeology, primarily through their pattern recognition abilities. They can also generate hypotheses and suggest new research directions. While acknowledging AI’s potential to aid in scientific breakthroughs, the paper shows that current AI models do not meet the

Russell (Proc Aristot Soc 11:108–128, 1911; The Problems of Philosophy, Thornton Butterworth Limited, London, 1912) argued that perceptual experience grounds a species of non-propositional knowledge, “knowledge by acquaintance,” and in recent years, this account of knowledge has been gaining traction. I defend on its basis a connection between moral and epistemic failure. I argue, first, that insufficient