Variables is a project at the intersection of the philosophies of language and logic. Frege, in the Begriffsschrift, crystalized the modern notion of formal logic through the first fully successful characterization of the behaviour of quantifiers. In Variables, I suggest that the logical tradition we have inherited from Frege is importantly flawed, and that Frege's move from treating quantifiers as noun phrases bearing word-world connection to sentential operators in the guise of second-order predicates leaves us both philosophically and technically wanting.

In our book The Inessential Indexical we argue that the various theses of essential indexicality all fail. Indexicals are not essential, we conclude. One essentiality thesis we target in the third chapter is the claim that indexical attitudes are essential for action. Our strategy is to give examples of what we call impersonal action rationalizations , which explain actions without citing indexical attitudes. To defeat the claim that indexical attitudes are essential for action, it suffices that there could be even (...) one successful impersonal action rationalization. In what follows we bolster our case against an essential connection between action and the de se (or indexicality), first by developing a range of new action models and secondly by responding to challenges from Dilip Ninan, Stephan Torre, and José Luis Bermúdez . (shrink)

There’s an interesting debate in moral and political philosophy about the nature of, and relationship between, ideal and non-ideal theory. In this paper we discuss whether an analogous distinction can be drawn in philosophy of language. Our conclusion is negative: Even if you think that distinction can be put to work within moral and political philosophy, there’s no useful way to extend it to work that has been done in the philosophy of language.

In a 2014 article in The Guardian, an Indigenous shaman of the Yanomami people of the Amazon rainforest named Davi Kopenawa offers a devastating critique of white society. It is formed of excerpts from multiple interviews, which form the basis of his memoir The Falling Sky, compiled and translated by his French anthropologist collaborator Bruce Albert. Here I bring the dual lenses of philosophy and dance studies to explore how Kopenawa’s lifelong interaction with white people facilitated his reworking of (...) Yanomami shamanic discourse into a parrhesia against the “epidemic fumes” of climate change, on behalf of the Yanomami of the Amazon, white people, and all the beings of the earth. (shrink)

American Indian Thought is a contemporary collection of twenty-two essays written by Indigenous persons with Western philosophical training, all attempting to formulate, and/or contribute to a sub-discipline of, a Native American Philosophy. The contributors come from diverse tribal, educational, philosophical, methodological, etc., backgrounds, and there is some tension among aspects of the collection, but what is more striking is the harmony and the singularity of the collection’s intent. Part of this singularity may derive from the solidarity among its authors. In (...) addition to the fact that all belong to Indigenous tribes, there is also a striking sensitivity to the interconnection between distinct Western disciplines—particularly between philosophy and poetry. I take the latter to be a thread which can be strategically woven into the center of the anthology’s weave. In this book discussion, I aim to draw out the poetic aspects of five of the anthology’s essays, which deal with philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and aesthetics, respectively. In this way, I hope to illuminate a poetic quality at the heart of the collection, and thus also of the burgeoning field of Native American or Indigenous philosophy in general. In the process, I will also consider ways in which Indigenous philosophy resonates with the Western philosophical traditions of phenomenology and American pragmatism. With the latter tradition in particular this connection has become more fully appreciated, especially through the work of Bruce Wilshire and Scott Pratt. (shrink)

A material simple is a material object that has no proper parts. Some philosophers have argued for the possibility of extended simples. Some have even argued for the possibility of heterogeneous simples or simples that have intrinsic variations across their surfaces. There is a puzzle, though, that is meant to show that extended, heterogeneous simples are impossible. Although several plausible responses have been given to this puzzle, I wish to reopen the case against extended, heterogeneous simples. In this paper, I (...) briefly canvass responses to this puzzle which may be made in defense of extended, heterogeneous simples. I then present a new version of this puzzle which targets simples that occupy atomic yet extended regions of space. It seems that none of the traditional responses can be used to successfully save this particular kind of extended simple from the new puzzle. I also consider some non-traditional defenses of heterogeneous extended simples and argue that they too are unsuccessful. Finally, I will argue that a substantial case can be made against the possibility of extended heterogeneous simples of any kind. (shrink)

The rise of experimental philosophy has placed metaphilosophical questions, particularly those concerning concepts, at the center of philosophical attention. X-phi offers empirically rigorous methods for identifying conceptual content, but what exactly it contributes towards evaluating conceptual content remains unclear. We show how x-phi complements Rudolf Carnap’s underappreciated methodology for concept determination, explication. This clarifies and extends x-phi’s positive philosophical import, and also exhibits explication’s broad appeal. But there is a potential problem: Carnap’s account of explication was limited to empirical and (...) logical concepts, but many concepts of interest to philosophers are essentially normative. With formal epistemology as a case study, we show how x-phi assisted explication can apply to normative domains. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that possession of consciousness contributes to an entity’s moral status, even if it is not necessary for moral status (Levy and Savulescu 2009). An entity is considered to have...

A substantial proportion of human embryos spontaneously abort soon after conception, and ethicists have argued this is problematic for the pro-life view that a human embryo has the same moral status as an adult from conception. Firstly, if human embryos are our moral equals, this entails spontaneous abortion is one of humanity’s most important problems, and it is claimed this is absurd, and a reductio of the moral status claim. Secondly, it is claimed that pro-life advocates do not act as (...) if spontaneous abortion is important, implying they are failing to fulfill their moral obligations. We report that the primary cause of spontaneous abortion is chromosomal defects, which are currently unpreventable, and show that as the other major cause of prenatal death is induced abortion, pro-life advocates can legitimately continue efforts to oppose it. We also defend the relevance of the killing and letting die distinction, which provides further justification for pro-life priorities. (shrink)

Recent empirical research seems to show that emotions play a substantial role in moral judgment. Perhaps the most important line of support for this claim focuses on disgust. A number of philosophers and scientists argue that there is adequate evidence showing that disgust significantly influences various moral judgments. And this has been used to support or undermine a range of philosophical theories, such as sentimentalism and deontology. I argue that the existing evidence does not support such arguments. At best it (...) suggests something rather different: that moral judgment can have a minor emotive function, in addition to a substantially descriptive one. (shrink)

A review of existing work in experimental philosophy on intuitions about free will. The paper argues that people ordinarily understand free human action, not as something that is caused by psychological states (beliefs, desires, etc.) but as something that completely transcends the normal causal order.

Research on dual character concepts has explored cases in which people think that a term applies to an object in a superficial sense but does not apply to that same object in a deeper sense. Most of this research has focused on cases of one particular type, namely, cases in which the object fails to embody the characteristic values of a particular category. However, there are also other types of cases in which we would be inclined to say that a (...) term does not apply in a deeper sense. For example, we might also say this if an object has acquired a certain status but it failed to acquire this status through a morally or legally legitimate process. Or we might say it if a person has certain emotions but these emotions are not rooted in the person’s true self. I argue that these apparently unrelated types of cases are surprisingly similar in a number of important respects. Thus, we should not be seeking a separate account for each separate type of case; we should be seeking an account that explains in a more general way what people mean when they say that a term does not apply in a deeper sense. (shrink)

Conscientious objection in healthcare has come under heavy criticism on two grounds recently, particularly regarding abortion provision. First, critics claim conscientious objection involves a refusal to provide a legal and beneficial procedure requested by a patient, denying them access to healthcare. Second, they argue the exercise of conscientious objection is based on unverifiable personal beliefs. These characteristics, it is claimed, disqualify conscientious objection in healthcare. Here, we defend conscientious objection in the context of abortion provision. We show that abortion has (...) a dubitable claim to be medically beneficial, is rarely clinically indicated, and that conscientious objections should be accepted in these circumstances. We also show that reliance on personal beliefs is difficult to avoid if any form of objection is to be permitted, even if it is based on criteria such as the principles and values of the profession or the scope of professional practice. (shrink)

Recent work in cognitive science suggests that conscious thought plays a much less central role in the production of human behavior than most think. Partially on the basis of this work, Peter Carruthers has advanced the claim that humans never consciously decide to act. This claim is of independent interest for action theory, and its potential truth poses a problem for theories of free will and autonomy, which often take our capacity to consciously decide to be of central importance. In (...) this article, I examine the nature of conscious deciding and I argue that Carruthers fails to establish the claim that humans never consciously decide to act. (shrink)

Pro-life advocates commonly argue that fetuses have the moral status of persons, and an accompanying right to life, a view most pro-choice advocates deny. A difficulty for this pro-life position has been Judith Jarvis Thomson’s violinist analogy, in which she argues that even if the fetus is a person, abortion is often permissible because a pregnant woman is not obliged to continue to offer her body as life support. Here, we outline the moral theories underlying public health ethics, and examine (...) the COVID-19 pandemic as an example of public health considerations overriding individual rights. We argue that if fetuses are regarded as persons, then abortion is of such prevalence in society that it also constitutes a significant public health crisis. We show that on public health considerations, we are justified in overriding individual rights to bodily autonomy by prohibiting abortion. We conclude that in a society that values public health, abortion can only be tolerated if fetuses are not regarded as persons. (shrink)

This paper compares Joseph Rouse‘s perspective on the relation between naturalism, social normativity and ethics with the enactivist approaches of Shaun Gallagher and Hanne De Jaegher. Rouse and these enactivists draw from many of the same conceptual resources, including the philosophical insights of phenomenology , hermeneutics, the later Wittgenstein and feminist scholarship, in order to rethink naturalism in the direction of strong interdependence between the individual and their material and social environment. Rouse(2023) has expressed support for embodied, embedded, extended, and (...) enactive (4EA) approaches to cognition, saying his project “primarily intersects theirs in relations between organismic bodies and their developmental and selective environments.” Unlike Gallagher and De Jaegher, however, Rouse also incorporates the poststructuralist thinking of Nietzsche and Foucault. His proximity to the ideas of Foucault on power and subjectivity gives him a vantage on the radically socially situated nature of individual sense-making that is missing from enactivist writers’ accounts. Despite their emphasis on the primary role of intersubjectivity in the genesis and functioning of individual perceptual, affective and cognitive processes, the lingering vestiges of subjectivist volunterism and consequent reliance on individual moral blame inhabit their formulations of the ethics of social embodiment. Rouse has in the main applied his analyses to debates within philosophy of science and the post-analytic community (McDowell, Brandon, Haugeland, Rorty, Davidson, Sellars, Quine). In this paper I will instead direct Rouse’s poststructuralist articulation of naturalism toward a critical reading the recent forays into the terrain of ethics and justice by Gallagher and De Jaegher. (shrink)

It has often been suggested that people’s ordinary capacities for understanding the world make use of much the same methods one might find in a formal scientific investigation. A series of recent experimental results offer a challenge to this widely-held view, suggesting that people’s moral judgments can actually influence the intuitions they hold both in folk psychology and in causal cognition. The present target article distinguishes two basic approaches to explaining such effects. One approach would be to say that the (...) relevant competencies are entirely non-moral but that some additional factor (conversational pragmatics, performance error, etc.) then interferes and allows people’s moral judgments to affect their intuitions. Another approach would be to say that moral considerations truly do figure in workings of the competencies themselves. It is argued that the data available now favor the second of these approaches over the first. (shrink)

Perry Hendricks’ impairment argument for the immorality of abortion is based on two premises: first, impairing a fetus with fetal alcohol syndrome is immoral, and second, if impairing an organism to some degree is immoral, then ceteris paribus, impairing it to a higher degree is also immoral. He calls this the impairment principle. Since abortion impairs a fetus to a higher degree than FAS, it follows from these two premises that abortion is immoral. Critics have focussed on the ceteris paribus (...) clause of TIP, which requires that the relevant details surrounding each impairment be sufficiently similar. In this article, we show that the ceteris paribus clause is superfluous, and by replacing it with a more restrictive condition, the impairment argument is considerably strengthened. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

There are several important arguments in metaethics that rely on explanatory considerations. Gilbert Harman has presented a challenge to the existence of moral facts that depends on the claim that the best explanation of our moral beliefs does not involve moral facts. The Reliability Challenge against moral realism depends on the claim that moral realism is incompatible with there being a satisfying explanation of our reliability about moral truths. The purpose of this chapter is to examine these and related arguments. (...) In particular, this chapter will discuss four kinds of arguments – Harman’s Challenge, evolutionary debunking arguments, irrelevant influence arguments, and the Reliability Challenge – understood as arguments against moral realism. The main goals of this chapter are (i) to articulate the strongest version of these arguments; (ii) to present and assess the central epistemological principles underlying these arguments; and (iii) to determine what a realist would have to do to adequately respond to these arguments. (shrink)

I present an intractable puzzle for the currently popular view that belief is weak—the view that expressions like ‘S believes p’ ascribe to S a doxastic attitude towards p that is rationally compatible with low credence that p. The puzzle concerns issues that arise on considering beliefs in conditionals. I show that proponents of weak belief either cannot consistently apply their preferred methodology when accommodating beliefs in conditionals, or they must deny that beliefs in conditionals can be used in reasoning.

Perry Hendricks’ original impairment argument for the immorality of abortion is based on the impairment principle (TIP): if impairing an organism to some degree is immoral, then ceteris paribus, impairing it to a higher degree is also immoral. Since abortion impairs a fetus to a higher degree than fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) and giving a fetus FAS is immoral, it follows that abortion is immoral. Critics have argued that the ceteris paribus is not met for FAS and abortion, and so (...) we proposed the Modified Impairment Principle (MIP) to avoid these difficulties. Dustin Crummett has responded, arguing that MIP is open to various counterexamples which show it to be false. He also shows that MIP can generate moral dilemmas. Here, we propose a modification to MIP that resolves the issues Crummett raises. Additionally, Alex Gillham has criticized our appropriation of Don Marquis’ ‘future like ours’ reasoning about the wrongness of impairment. We show that his objections have minimal implications for our argument. (shrink)

In defending his interest-relative account of knowledge in Knowledge and Practical Interests (2005), Jason Stanley relies heavily on intuitions about several bank cases. We experimentally test the empirical claims that Stanley seems to make concerning our common-sense intuitions about these bank cases. Additionally, we test the empirical claims that Jonathan Schaffer seems to make in his critique of Stanley. We argue that our data impugn what both Stanley and Schaffer claim our intuitions about such cases are. To account for these (...) results, one must develop a better conception of the connection between a subject's interests and her body of knowledge than those offered by Stanley and Schaffer. (shrink)

Rob Lovering has developed an interesting new critique of views that regard embryos as equally valuable as other human beings: the moral argument for frozen human embryo adoption. The argument is aimed at those who believe that the death of a frozen embryo is a very bad thing, and Lovering concludes that some who hold this view ought to prevent one of these deaths by adopting and gestating a frozen embryo. Contra Lovering, we show that there are far more effective (...) strategies for preserving the lives of frozen embryos than adoption. Moreover, we point out that those who regard the deaths of frozen embryos as a very bad thing will generally regard the deaths of all embryos as a very bad thing, whether they are discarded embryos, aborted embryos or embryos that spontaneously abort. This entails these other embryos must be taken into account when considering moral obligations, as well as other human lives at risk from preventable causes. (shrink)

Though Mathias Risse and Gabriel Wollner’s On Trade Justice admirably incorporates the history of European philosophy and U.S. government, their otherwise reasonable proposals rest on dubious grounds. The book derives both much of its appeal, and its primary vulnerability, from a cluster of central terms that are situated precariously at the intersection of metaphors and concepts, or what Lakoff and Johnson call “metaphorical concepts.” In this article, I explore the three most important such terms, as featured in the following paraphrase (...) of theirs: “Trade is an embedded ground of justice.” For each italicized term, I conclude, Risse and Wollner vacillate between its most conceptual and metaphorical meanings, thereby attempting to (a) stretch “trade” to identify prehistoric exchange with global capitalism, so as to (b) rebrand the contextual “ground” of this universal activity as a foundation, even though (c) foundations “embedded” in other foundations simply reduce to their lowest common denominator. The latter, in this case, is global capitalism, the most immoral practices of which they are thereby pressured to defend, including temporary forms of the very exploitation that they so persuasively reconceive and otherwise condemn. (shrink)

In this article, I present a two-pronged argument for the immorality of contemporary, asymmetric drone warfare, based on my new interpretations of the just war principles of “proportionality” and “moral equivalence of combatants” (MEC). The justification for these new interpretations is that drone warfare continues to this day, having survived despite arguments against it that are based on traditional interpretations of just war theory (including one from Michael Walzer). On the basis of my argument, I echo Harry Van der Linden’s (...) call for “an international treaty banning all weaponized UAV [uninhabited aerial vehicles].”. (shrink)

Higher-order defeat occurs when one loses justification for one's beliefs as a result of receiving evidence that those beliefs resulted from a cognitive malfunction. Several philosophers have identified features of higher-order defeat that distinguish it from familiar types of defeat. If higher-order defeat has these features, they are data an account of rational belief must capture. In this article, I identify a new distinguishing feature of higher-order defeat, and I argue that on its own, and in conjunction with the other (...) distinguishing features, it favors an account of higher-order defeat grounded in non-evidential, ‘state-given reasons’ for belief. (shrink)

Cohen (2023) takes a fair and measured approach to the question of what ChatGPT means for bioethics. The hype cycles around AI often obscure the fact that ethicists have developed robust frameworks...

According to the psychological account of personal identity, our identity is based on the continuity of psychological connections, and so we do not begin to exist until these are possible, some months after conception. This entails the psychological account faces a challenge from the non-identity problem—our intuition that someone cannot be harmed by actions that are responsible for their existence, even if these actions seem clearly to cause them harm. It is usually discussed with regard to preconception harms, but in (...) the context of the psychological account, it is also applicable to prenatal harms. Inflicting prenatal injury is widely thought to be morally impermissible, but if the injury is identity-determining on the psychological account, then no-one seems to be harmed—rather, the injury is responsible for bringing them into existence. Here, I argue that identity-determining injuries can routinely occur on the psychological account, and that this undermines the account. I assess Nicola Williams’ proposal to salvage the account based on a trans-world account of personal identity, and show that it is unsuccessful. I then show that Jeff McMahan’s embodied mind account of personal identity is also susceptible. I conclude that identity-determining prenatal injuries pose a significant challenge for the psychological account and its variants, and provide a reason for supporting alternative accounts that fix personal identity at conception. (shrink)

Roughly, psychological egoism is the thesis that all of a person's intentional actions are ultimately self-interested in some sense; psychological altruism is the thesis that some of a person's intentional actions are not ultimately self-interested, since some are ultimately other-regarding in some sense. C. Daniel Batson and other social psychologists have argued that experiments provide support for a theory called the "empathy-altruism hypothesis" that entails the falsity of psychological egoism. However, several critics claim that there are egoistic explanations of the (...) data that are still not ruled out. One of the most potent criticisms of Batson comes from Elliott Sober and David Sloan Wilson. I argue for two main theses in this paper: (1) we can improve on Sober and Wilson’s conception of psychological egoism and altruism, and (2) this improvement shows that one of the strongest of Sober and Wilson's purportedly egoistic explanations is not tenable. A defense of these two theses goes some way toward defending Batson‘s claim that the evidence from social psychology provides sufficient reason to reject psychological egoism. (shrink)

People sometimes try to call others’ beliefs into question by pointing out the contingent causal origins of those beliefs. The significance of such ‘Etiological Challenges’ is a topic that has started attracting attention in epistemology. Current work on this topic aims to show that Etiological Challenges are, at most, only indirectly epistemically significant, insofar as they bring other generic epistemic considerations to the agent’s attention. Against this approach, we argue that Etiological Challenges are epistemically significant in a more direct and (...) more distinctive way. An Etiological Challenge prompts the agent to assess whether her beliefs result from practices of indoctrination, and whether she should reduce confidence in those beliefs, given the anti-reliability of indoctrination as a method of belief-acquisition. Our analysis also draws attention to some of the ways in which epistemic concerns interact with political issues—e.g. relating to epistemic injustice, identity-based discrimination, and segregation—when we’re thinking about the contingent causal origins of our beliefs. (shrink)

An invited talk delivered at the Logos Institute of Analytic Theology at the University of St Andrews. The topic was on the coherence of the doctrine of the Incarnation. I sought to introduce my solution to the logical challenge against the doctrine of the incarnation and also my own metaphysical model of the incarnation (called the transformational model). This talk summarises my article on this topic published previously in IJPR (termed 'On the metaphysics of the incarnation'). Handouts for the talk (...) are included in the file. (shrink)

This chapter presents the core challenge before Hamlet as that of achieving authenticity in the face of inner multiplicity. Authenticity—which this chapter will take to mean (1) acting on the (2) knowledge of (3) what one truly is, beneath one’s various masks and social roles—becomes a particularly pressing need under conditions of (early) modernity, when traditional forms of action-guidance are at least halfway off the table. But authenticity is highly problematic when the self that is discovered turns out to be (...) multiple. Which self, exactly, should one be true to? Hamlet’s solution, this chapter suggests, is an “actor’s ethos,” in which each of his aspects is given its day in the sun, granted full commitment by means of what we now call “method acting.” That is what Hamlet learns from the players—and that too is what we stand to learn from _Hamlet_: not an idea but a method. (shrink)

Linguistic intervention in rational decision making is standardly captured in terms of information change. But the standard view gives us no way to model interventions involving expressions that only have an attentional effects on conversational contexts. How are expressions with non‐informational content – like epistemic modals – used to intervene in rational decision making? We show how to model rational decision change without information change: replace a standard conception of value (on which the value of a set of worlds reduces (...) to values of individual worlds in the set) with one on which the value of a set of worlds is determined by a selection function that picks out a generic member world. We discuss some upshots of this view for theorizing in philosophy and formal semantics. (shrink)

How should we understand validity? A standard way to characterize validity is in terms of the preservation of truth (or truth in a model). But there are several problems facing such characterizations. An alternative approach is to characterize validity epistemically, for instance in terms of the preservation of an epistemic status. In this paper, I raise a problem for such views. First, I argue that if the relevant epistemic status is factive, such as being in a position to know or (...) having conclusive evidence for, then the account runs into trouble if we endorse certain familiar logical principles. Second, I argue that if the relevant epistemic status is non-factive, such as is rationally committed to or has justification for believing, then a similar problem arises if we endorse the logical principles as well as a sufficiently strong epistemic “level-bridging” principle. Finally, I argue that an analogous problem arises for the most natural characterization of validity in terms of rational credence. (shrink)

I begin by distinguishing four different versions of the argument from evil that start from four different moral premises that in various ways link the existence of God to the absence of suffering. The version of the argument from evil that I defend starts from the premise that if God exists, he would not allow excessive, unnecessary suffering. The argument continues by denying the consequent of this conditional to conclude that God does not exist. I defend the argument against Skeptical (...) Theists who say we are in no position to judge that there is excessive, unnecessary suffering by arguing that this defense has absurd consequences. It allows Young Earthers to construct a parallel argument that concludes that we are in no position to judge that God did not create the earth recently. In the last section I consider whether theists can turn the argument from evil on its head by arguing that God exists. I first criticize Alvin Plantinga’s theory of warrant that one might try to use to argue for God’s existence. I then criticize Richard Swinburne’s Bayesian argument to the same conclusion. I conclude that my version of the argument from evil is a strong argument against the existence of God and that several important responses to it do not defeat it. (shrink)

The concept of acting intentionally is an important nexus where ‘theory of mind’ and moral judgment meet. Preschool children’s judgments of intentional action show a valence-driven asymmetry. Children say that a foreseen but disavowed side-effect is brought about 'on purpose' when the side-effect itself is morally bad but not when it is morally good. This is the first demonstration in preschoolers that moral judgment influences judgments of ‘on-purpose’ (as opposed to purpose influencing moral judgment). Judgments of intentional action are usually (...) assumed to be purely factual. That these judgments are sometimes partly normative — even in preschoolers — challenges current understanding. Young children’s judgments regarding foreseen side-effects depend upon whether the children process the idea that the character does not care about the side-effect. As soon as preschoolers effectively process the ‘theory of mind’ concept, NOT CARE THAT P, children show the side-effect effect.idea.. (shrink)

James Sterba has constructed a powerful argument for there being a conflict between the presence of evil in the world and the existence of God. I contend that Sterba’s argument depends on a crucial assumption, namely, that God has an obligation to act according to the principle of meticulous providence. I suggest that two of his analogies confirm his dependence on this requirement. Of course, his argument does not rest on either of these analogies, but they are illustrative of the (...) role that meticulous providence plays in his argument. I then investigate the ethical principles Sterba invokes in his use of meticulous providence and suggest that not only do we often not predicate goodness of human persons based on these principles of obligation, but that these principles are much too stringent to function to determine moral obligations and moral goodness. From there, I contend that to think that God has a similar obligation regarding meticulous providence in order to be good encounters several serious problems, especially with respect to the soul-building Sterba wants to preserve. I conclude by considering Sterba’s reply in terms of a limited application of meticulous providence. (shrink)

This paper develops a new framework for combining propositional logics, called "juxtaposition". Several general metalogical theorems are proved concerning the combination of logics by juxtaposition. In particular, it is shown that under reasonable conditions, juxtaposition preserves strong soundness. Under reasonable conditions, the juxtaposition of two consequence relations is a conservative extension of each of them. A general strong completeness result is proved. The paper then examines the philosophically important case of the combination of classical and intuitionist logics. Particular attention is (...) paid to the phenomenon of collapse. It is shown that there are logics with two stocks of classical or intuitionist connectives that do not collapse. Finally, the paper briefy investigates the question of which rules, when added to these logics, lead to collapse. (shrink)

In our thought, we employ rules of inference and belief-forming methods more generally. For instance, we (plausibly) employ deductive rules such as Modus Ponens, ampliative rules such as Inference to the Best Explanation, and perceptual methods that tell us to believe what perceptually appears to be the case. What explains our entitlement to employ these rules and methods? This chapter considers the motivations for broadly internalist answers to this question. It considers three such motivations—one based on simple cases, one based (...) on a general conception of epistemic responsibility, and one based on skeptical scenarios. The chapter argues that none of these motivations is successful. The first two motivations lead to forms of internalism—Extreme Method Internalism and Defense Internalism—that are too strong to be tenable. The third motivation motivates Mental Internalism (Mentalism), which does not fit with plausible accounts of entitlement. (shrink)

The papers that make up this special issue do not take idealized abstractions of context as their point of departure but rather start with the actual phenomena under study and later generalize. We agree that, more often than not, giving a formal model and providing a theory of a loaded notion – such as context – can lead to important insights. Thus, precise models of context and accompanying theories are useful. However, given the widely different fields, methodologies and worldviews within (...) which people study, an approach that starts with the root phenomena/problems and only attempts normalization and generalization post hoc might be a more productive way to proceed. (shrink)

Pascal’s wager uses decision theory to argue that it is rational to attempt to nurture belief in God, based on the expected utility of believing (infinite happiness) compared to not believing (at best, only finite happiness). A belief in an eternal conscious torment in hell (infinite suffering) for non-believers makes the differences in expected utility even more apparent, strengthening the argument. Similar reasoning can also be used to calculate the expected moral value of actions, including procreation. Under theism, if possible (...) future children might suffer eternal conscious torment, the expected moral value of procreation is extremely negative. This implies that theists have a moral obligation not to procreate, which for most theists, entails a moral obligation to be celibate or to undergo sterilisation surgery. (shrink)

Well before the COVID-19 pandemic, proponents of digital psychiatry were touting the promise of various digital tools and techniques to revolutionize mental healthcare. As social distancing and its knock-on effects have strained existing mental health infrastructures, calls have grown louder for implementing various digital mental health solutions at scale. Decisions made today will shape the future of mental healthcare for the foreseeable future. We argue that bioethicists are uniquely positioned to cut through the hype surrounding digital mental health, which can (...) obscure crucial ethical and epistemic gaps that ought to be considered by policymakers before committing to a digital psychiatric future. Here, we describe four such gaps: The evidence gap, the inequality gap, the prediction-intervention gap, and the safety gap. (shrink)

Prolife theorists typically hold to the claim that all human beings possess equal moral status from conception and consequently possess a right to life. This, they believe, entails that abortion is impermissible in all circumstances. Critics characterize this as an extreme anti-abortion position, as it prima facie allows no exceptions, even in cases of rape. Here, I examine whether the prolife claim regarding equal moral status is compatible with a more attractive moderate stance that permits an exception in the case (...) of rape. I show that Judith Jarvis Thomson's analysis of rights can be used to modify the prolife position in this way, but that doing so involves concessions that prolife theorists are unlikely to find acceptable. (shrink)

Moral skeptics maintain that we do not have moral knowledge. Traditionally they haven’t argued via skeptical hypotheses like those provided by perceptual skeptics about the external world, such as Descartes’ deceiving demon. But some believe this can be done by appealing to hypotheses like moral nihilism. Moreover, some claim that skeptical hypotheses have special force in the moral case. But I argue that skeptics have failed to specify an adequate skeptical scenario, which reveals a general lesson: such arguments are not (...) a promising avenue for moral skeptics to take. They’re ultimately weaker when applied to morality compared to perception. (shrink)

The extensive involvement of nonconscious processes in human behaviour has led some to suggest that consciousness is much less important for the control of action than we might think. In this article I push against this trend, developing an understanding of conscious control that is sensitive to our best models of overt action control. Further, I assess the cogency of various zombie challenges—challenges that seek to demote the importance of conscious control for human agency. I argue that though nonconscious contributions (...) to action control are evidently robust, these challenges are overblown. (shrink)

It seems obvious that phenomenally conscious experience is something of great value, and that this value maps onto a range of important ethical issues. For example, claims about the value of life for those in a permanent vegetative state, debates about treatment and study of disorders of consciousness, controversies about end-of-life care for those with advanced dementia, and arguments about the moral status of embryos, fetuses, and non-human animals arguably turn on the moral significance of various facts about consciousness. However, (...) though work has been done on the moral significance of elements of consciousness, such as pain and pleasure, little explicit attention has been devoted to the ethical significance of consciousness. In this book Joshua Shepherd presents a systematic account of the value present within conscious experience. This account emphasizes not only the nature of consciousness, but the importance of items within experience such as affect, valence, and the complex overall shape of particular valuable experiences. Shepherd also relates this account to difficult cases involving non-humans and those with disorders of consciousness, arguing that the value of consciousness influences and partially explains the degree of moral status a being possesses, without fully determining it. The upshot is a deeper understanding of both the moral importance of phenomenal consciousness and its relations to moral status. This book will be of great interest to philosophers and students of ethics, bioethics, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of mind and cognitive science. (shrink)

In ’Abortion and deprivation: a reply to Marquis’, Anna Christensen contends that Don Marquis’ influential ’future like ours’ argument for the immorality of abortion faces a significant challenge from the Epicurean claim that human beings cannot be harmed by their death. If deprivation requires a subject, then abortion cannot deprive a fetus of a future of value, as no individual exists to be deprived once death has occurred. However, the Epicurean account also implies that the wrongness of murder is also (...) not grounded in the badness of death, which is strongly counterintuitive. There is an alternative: we can save our intuitions by adopting a more moderate Epicurean account such as that proposed by David Hershenov, who grounds the wrongness of killing in the prevention of the benefit of further good life rather than in the badness of death. Hershenov’s account, however, is equally applicable to Marquis’ argument: abortion similarly prevents a fetus from enjoying the benefit of a future like ours. Consequently, we conclude that Christensen’s criticism of Marquis’ argument fails to undermine his reasoning. (shrink)

There are well-known quasi-formal arguments that identity is a "strict" relation in at least the following three senses: (1) There is a single identity relation and a single distinctness relation; (2) There are no contingent cases of identity or distinctness; and (3) There are no vague or indeterminate cases of identity or distinctness. However, the situation is less clear cut than it at first may appear. There is a natural formal theory of identity that is very close to the standard (...) classical theory but which does not validate the formal analogues of (1)-(3). The core idea is simple: We weaken the Principle of the Indiscernibility of Identicals from a conditional to an entailment and we adopt a weakly classical logic. This paper investigates this weakly classical theory of identity (and related theories) and discusses its philosophical ramifications. It argues that we can accept a reasonable theory of identity without committing ourselves to the uniqueness, necessity, or determinacy of identity. (shrink)