This paper aims to show that the skeptical realist interpretation of Hume¡¯s theory of the mind is misguided. This claim is based on the following argument: Hume¡¯s treatment of the mind shows that while it is not unreasonable to contend that some of Hume¡¯s usage of the term ¡°essence¡± may be construed as positing a transcendental self or core to the mind that can be regarded as something over and above succession of perceptions, it is not clear that they always should be so construed. Hume uses the term ¡°essence¡± in three distinct senses: (a) in the Cartesian-Spinozistic sense as a simple substance in which perceptions inhere; (b) to refer to ultimate principles or secret powers; and (c) to refer to the most striking of several features essential to an entity or effect. An examination of the texts shows that (c) dominates Hume¡¯s usage. The philosophical outcome of distinguishing these senses is to show that if (c) dominates Hume¡¯s usage, then Hume ¡¯s reference to ¡°essence¡± might commonly refer to salient features of the mind rather than affirming its existence as a distinct and independent entity.

Can an individual change their race? To answer in the affirmative is to endorse transracialism. Spencer Case has recently objected to transracialism on the grounds that it seems to raise the unwelcome prospect of accepting ¡°trans-ability¡± and ¡°trans-species¡± identity claims, which refer, respectively, to an able-bodied person identifying as disabled and a human being identifying as an animal. According to Case, this prospect not only reduces transracialism to absurdity, it reveals shortcomings with prevailing theories of transgender acceptance. I defend transracialism from Case¡¯s critique. Once we recognize what accepting ¡°trans-ability¡± identity claims involves, doing so ceases to be absurd. As for ¡°trans-species¡± identity claims, they are too disanalogous from transracial ones for a common standard of acceptance to apply to both. Regarding transgender identity claims, even if Case is right that one basis for accepting them is not well-defended, other frameworks of trans acceptance will remain available. Case¡¯s argument against accepting transracialism per se amounts to the idea that accepting transracialism would empty racial terms of meaning. I retort that this will not be true of theories of transracialism whose standard for accepting a transracial identity claim include a social component. Case therefore fails to show transracialism is an absurd idea.

There is an ongoing debate about whether any of us are ¡°first-person authoritative¡± when ascribing mental states to ourselves, and, if so, whether this constitutes a genuine philosophical puzzle. This may come as a surprise, since philosophers have been trying to explain first-person authority for several decades. It would be surprising indeed if this explanatory project turned out to be entirely bankrupt. In this paper, after improving and elaborating on earlier specifications of the phenomenon, I argue that first-person authority is real and worthy of the philosophical attention it has received.

This paper examines Georges Bataille¡¯s conceptualization of evil and excess through the framework of heterology, the ¡°science of the heterogeneous.¡± Two key aims are addressed: first, to elucidate Bataille¡¯s formulation of evil as a transgressive force that operates beyond conventional moral dichotomies, engaging with his notion of hypermorality and the intertwined nature of good and evil; second, to analyze excess as a fundamental principle of both economic and existential expenditure, highlighting its role in Bataille¡¯s critique of utility, production, and self-preservation. By tracing Bataille¡¯s engagement with figures such as Sade, Nietzsche, and Hegel, this paper points up the paradoxes inherent in his attempt to theorize the logically untenable¡ªhow excess and evil resist systematic representation and yet persist in human experience. Ultimately, the paper argues that Bataille¡¯s thought embodies a strategic failure: an intentionally unresolved dialectic that exposes the limits of knowledge, language, and philosophical rigor when confronted with the radical otherness of the heterogeneous.

This paper tries to establish the epistemic status of the intuition that love must arise naturally rather than artificially to be genuine in order to determine the ramifications for love¡¯s nature and our metaphysical theories of love. After discussing some hypothetical cases where love seems to arise artificially along with some where it seems to arise naturally in order to clarify the difference between love arising ¡°naturally¡± versus ¡°artificially¡± and shed further light on what the intuition claims, I then mount and defend an argument from cases against the intuition, which strongly suggests that love can arise naturally or artificially, and thus that the intuition is false.

I argue for a new way to present the different objections that have been raised against ethical hedonism, the view that only pleasure and displeasure have final value. The typology of objections that I propose departs from existing categorizations in three distinct ways. In doing this, I also highlight some neglected strands of critique stemming from the analysis of the nature of (dis)pleasure, which suggest promising avenues for future research.

This paper explores the relationship between the failure to defer to first-person authority and the concept of epistemic injustice. Specifically, it argues that this failure cannot be classified as either hermeneutical or testimonial injustice, as it results in a general harm to the subject as an autonomous agent rather than exclusively to their epistemic capacity. The paper achieves two main goals. First, it identifies important limits in the notion of epistemic injustice. Not all communicative interpersonal interactions that involve intertwined epistemic and ethical failures can be categorized as epistemic injustice. Second, the paper shows that the norms of deference to first-person authority are unique to this phenomenon, as are the corresponding failures to adhere to such norms.

Spinoza scholarship is riddled with questions about distinctions. Recent scholarship suggests that Spinoza might be using a particular kind of distinction whose exact understanding is a (if not the) key to many of the tantalizing but obscure claims that Spinoza seems to hold. Let¡¯s call this distinction ¡°Spinoza¡¯s special distinction.¡± I argue that Spinoza uses not one but three kinds of special distinctions because he understands attributes as cognitions without idea. I first discuss the Scotistic and Su¨¢rezian models of Spinoza¡¯s distinctions presented in recent years. I then argue that the attributes derive from an activity of substance and not from an activity of an intellect. They are therefore cognitions without idea. Attributes are the same as substance, but in relation to an intellect¡ªnot unlike to Spinoza, the idea of the circle is the circle (E2p7s, PUF 46/26¨C27) in relation to an intellect. The perception of the attributes in fact is divine action, seen from the receptive end, which is why it is receptive and not passive. Spinoza¡¯s special distinctions, then, are necessitated by substance itself. The attribute/attribute distinction fits Spinoza¡¯s definition of real distinctions, which I call real perceptions. The substance/attribute distinction cannot count as a real distinction¡ªI call it a real perception. Furthermore, Spinozistic versions of the distinctions of reasoned reason are really distinctions as adequate conceptions. I conclude that Spinoza uses distinctions of reasoned reason, perceptual distinctions and real perceptions, each with a particularly Spinozistic flavour.

Recent proposals for a ¡°critical character epistemology¡± attend to the ways in which environments, institutions, social practices, and relationships promote the development of epistemic vice whilst acknowledging that the contexts of differently situated agents demand different epistemic character traits. I argue that a tension arises between two features of critical character epistemology: the classification as ¡°epistemically corrupting¡± of environments, institutions, or structures which promote the development of epistemic vice; and commitment to normative contextualism¡ªthe doctrine that the normative status (the status of a trait as a virtue or as a vice) of some or all epistemic character traits is context-dependent. I show how these two features lead to the claim that certain traits both are epistemic virtues and hinder the development of epistemic virtues. To make such an evaluation consistent, I propose a modified form of normative contextualism: dual-level normative contextualism.

Hegel¡¯s theory of indexicality appears in the first chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit, Sensuous-Certainty (SC). Current interpretations of the meaning of the universals that Hegel attributes to indexicals diverge from one another. Such interpretations can be divided into three groups: the universals as Fregean senses, as properties expressed by predicates in complex demonstratives, and as contrastive and recollective repeatability. I argue that all three exegeses face difficulties. Fregean senses, as referent-dependent modes of presentation, are particulars rather than universals. The interpretation that appeals to predicates in complex demonstratives confuses referential indeterminacy with context sensitivity. The view of universals as contrastive and recollective repeatability misses the point of Hegel¡¯s relevant arguments regarding universals. I propose to understand the universal in question as an indexical expression type akin to David Kaplan¡¯s character (linguistic rules for expression use). In SC, Hegel argues for an expression/reference distinction by appealing to the context sensitivity of indexicals.

In his Two Treatises of Government John Locke declared that all men are naturally free, but that they can consent with others to form a civil society under government. In fact, what ¡°actually constitutes any Political Society, is nothing but the consent of any number of Freemen.¡± There are competing views about what socially defined groups Locke had in mind for the domains that are naturally free and those who consent to form a civil society, whether they are, for example, adult males with property or all adults. But I argue for a different approach. Depending on the context, Locke either referred to human beings who by nature have the disposition to be free when they reach maturity, or to those who in fact are actually free. Locke reserved the term ¡°Freemen¡± to those that are in fact free, and not just dispositionally free. Locke believed that all human beings are born with dispositional freedom, which for Locke was an important normative feature that all human beings have at birth. Nevertheless, there are various conditions in which human beings, while born with the disposition to be free, are not in fact free, specifically, criminals, slaves, servants, children, most wives, and the mentally disabled.

I characterize epistemic trust as an intellectual virtue of a responsibilist kind. I argue that an agent H places epistemic trust in agent S that p if and only if: (1) H takes S to communicate that p; (2) H believes that p; (3) H depends upon S¡¯s (perceived) communication for H¡¯s belief that p; (4) H sees S as epistemically authoritative with respect to p; and (5) H is confident that S will not purposefully lie about p. The virtuous epistemic truster does all the above while also being skilled at judging when it is epistemically appropriate to trust, motivated to trust out of a desire for epistemic goods, and competent at the characteristic activity of epistemic trust. Having classified epistemic trust as a virtue, I highlight its tremendous epistemic value in the age of misinformation. Today, although we have access to an ocean of information at the click of a button, we can fall victim to fake news, rumors, and echo chambers. Thus, it is critical that we are able to discern who to trust, when to trust them, and about which epistemic goods.

I begin by defending Heinrich Gustav Hotho¡¯s foundational edition of the Lectures on Aesthetics (LA) contra Gethmann-Siebert and others who argue for a non-systematic view of Hegel¡¯s aesthetics generally and music specifically. I defend Hegel against the common conceit that his comprehension of music was somehow deficient and introduce the Hegelian idea of absolute agency as performative in art and music. Reference to Kant¡¯s transcendental aesthetics then allows us to grasp how, in Hegel, meaningful tones arise from the vibratory oscillation between selfhood¡¯s presiding unity and its temporal self-positing. I then trace back further elements of musical architecture, such as rhythm, harmony and melody to the temporal oscillation arising from within selfhood. The fundamental ambiguity within temporal oscillation is the source of meaningfulness in music, the feeling that its experience is meaningful without telling us exactly what that meaning is. Meaningfulness forms the absolute Ur-Ton of beautiful music, which arises as determinate tones within selfhood and resonates into the soul of the listener. The temporal vanishing of musical tones within a compositional framework is a pre-linguistic expression of meaning, performative of the ambiguous oscillation between the human and the divine.

This paper aims to demonstrate how the notion of timeliness enriches our understanding of empathy and its associated virtuous hearing as discussed in liberatory virtue epistemology. I begin by showing how timeliness is relevant to empathy. Next, I apply this insight to the idea of virtuous hearing, in which empathy plays a significant role. I thus broaden the liberatory-epistemological conception of virtuous hearing as a corrective to timing-related injustice. Finally, I connect virtuous hearing with the ancient Greek concept of kairos, clarifying the conditions under which virtuous hearers must be sensitive to another¡¯s opportune timing to testify.

I propose a different strategy for developing the response to situationism from early Confucian thought. This response is criticized because of its association with antidemocratic social arrangements. I argue that the criticism is based on a failure to recognize the distinction between a theoretical account of virtue and human behavior, and a practical guide for cultivating virtue while also managing situations. Confucian virtue cultivation with integrated situation control can only be effectively implemented by sustaining certain social arrangements. But what matters is not that these arrangements are antidemocratic. I show that the requisite social arrangement can be realized in different ways. And that what matters is that they are (a) wide, meaning they involve community-level participation; (b) grounded in a tension system based on the confidence that everyone has a natural propensity for virtue and doubt about whether anyone can easily act in accordance with this propensity; and (c) focused on correcting morally relevant cognition so that people can do the right thing. My proposal also allows for a new empirically grounded approach to developing Confucian ideas on virtue.

According to the Quine-Putnam indispensability argument (QPIA), we should be realists about mathematics because mathematics is indispensable to science. QPIA¡¯s reasoning can be understood in two ways. Under the confirmational analysis, QPIA argues that mathematics is confirmed as part of our best scientific theories. Under the pragmatic analysis, QPIA argues that our scientific practices implicitly assume the truth of mathematics. The usual reasons given in favour of the pragmatic analysis are that it affords advantages to proponents of QPIA by avoiding some dependencies of the confirmational analysis. This paper argues that these reasons are indecisive, because the pragmatic analysis introduces some dependencies of its own. Nevertheless, the paper also argues, there are other reasons to prefer the pragmatic analysis. QPIA is an instance of a wider class of realist arguments¡ªindispensability arguments¡ªand the pragmatic analysis yields a preferable overall understanding of indispensability arguments than does the confirmational analysis.

Epistemic structuralism, the idea that social structures have an immense influence on our inquiries and epistemic behavior, presents a unique challenge to the emerging field of vice epistemology. The most extreme application of this challenge results in the rejection of vice explanations in favor of structural explanations for epistemic behavior. Some vice epistemologists have expressed the intuitive idea that vice explanations and structural explanations may be synthesized, but the exact details of such a synthesis have yet to be adequately examined. This paper starts by trying to gain clarity about structuralism and structuralist explanations in epistemology, then it discusses how a well-developed vice-structural explanation can be done. I end this paper by briefly noting a few crucial issues that demand further investigation.

In recent years, some political realists have argued that there is a ¡°distinctively political normativity¡± which should be used when construing and justifying political theories. Among realists focusing on a distinctively political normativity, one can identify two approaches. On the ¡°moral view,¡± it is explicitly acknowledged that moral norms have a role to play in political normativity. On the ¡°non-moral view,¡± distinctively political normativity is understood in terms of a non-moral kind of practical normativity. The non-moral view has received severe criticism, not least pertaining to its instrumental versions. Recently, however, Carlo Burelli has attempted to develop a realist account that is faithful to the non-moral view, but which is said to avoid the criticism directed against non-moral accounts in general, and the purely instrumental ones, in particular. Burelli offers a functional account of distinctively political normativity, according to which the function of providing binding collective decisions generates a normative standard that is independent of morality. Despite its many innovative features, however, we argue that it fails with regard to the most pressing concern, which is not whether functional normativity is genuine normativity, but whether it is the right normativity for its assigned role.

Beliefs are most naturally formed in response to truth-related, epistemic reasons. But they are also said to be prompted and justified by non-epistemic reasons. For pragmatists who maintain such a view, sometimes the potential benefits of a belief might demand believing it even though it is not adequately grounded. For evidentialists, only evidential considerations constitute normative reasons for doxastic attitudes. This paper critically examines two arguments by Thomas Kelly and Nishi Shah from delibera?tion for evidentialism. I begin by putting these arguments in perspective by providing a context to make sense of their normative force and explain their differences. To do so, I briefly explain what I call the ¡°dispositional¡± structure of epistemic reasons. This is followed by some critical remarks about Jona?than Way¡¯s improved version of such arguments. I conclude by explaining how the dispositional account can explain why practical considerations fail to provide reasons for belief.

A population can be ideologically or affectively polarized. Ideological polarization relates to people¡¯s political beliefs, while affective polarization deals with people¡¯s feelings toward the ingroup and the outgroup. Both types of mental states, beliefs and feelings, are typically measured through direct self-report surveys. One philosophical assumption underlying this way of measuring polarization is a concrete version of the first-person authority thesis: the speaker¡¯s sincerity guarantees the truth of their mental self-ascriptions. Based on various empirical studies, the first part of this paper argues that we are particularly bad at spotting our own mental states regard?ing political issues. This, in turn, raises doubts about the accuracy of direct self-report surveys in measuring polarization. In the second part, I introduce Michael Lynch¡¯s notion of political meaning to argue that traditional surveys can still provide valuable information for detecting polarization. However, I suggest that this information pertains not to participants¡¯ beliefs and feelings, but rather to their level of commitment to the core beliefs of the political groups they identify with, which is a relevant aspect of pernicious polarization.

This paper offers a new interpretation of Bernard Williams¡¯s infamous claim that the demands of morality violate our integrity. It begins by showing how Williams¡¯s critique targets an underexplored demand for genericity in moral philosophy. It then argues that while this demand is currently a foundational methodological commitment in moral theorizing, it cannot always be met without distorting the very values that theorizing intends to accommodate. Through careful consideration of the importance of practical experience for appreciating the value of ground projects like human relationships, the paper reinterprets the integrity objection as a radical pushback against the way moral philosophy, by and large, represents the phenomenology of personal valuing. This conclusion offers two contributions. First, it reimagines a significant and yet poorly understood implication of Williams¡¯s argument. Second, it raises a new challenge in an old debate: does moral philosophy fairly represent the values it purports to be about?

The dispute over the exact nature and status of possible worlds in Leibniz¡¯s philosophy has proven difficult to resolve. The standard view, that there is one unique actual world and that possible worlds exist solely as ideas within God¡¯s understanding, sits in tension with important metaphysical and theological components of Leibniz¡¯s system. For example, Leibniz takes possible individuals to have some ¡°essence or reality¡± in themselves and to strive for existence, which allows him to ground counterfactual claims and to overcome necessitarianism. However, scholars have long seen these claims as being at odds with God¡¯s creation of one unique actual world. Catherine Wilson (2000) challenges the standard view¡¯s claim that possible worlds are substantially different from the actual world, arguing instead that Leibniz¡¯s metaphysical commitments are consistent with there being more than one actual world and that Leibniz has no way to block the claim that God would generate more than one such world. In this paper, I expand on Wilson¡¯s account and argue, contrary to the standard view, that the key theses at the heart of Leibniz¡¯s philosophical system entail modal realism¡ªfor Leibniz, there can be no ontological difference between possible and actual worlds

This article defends misanthropy against what I take to be an underappreciated objection. Several recent defenders of misanthropy have held that it should be understood as involving a critical judgment of humanity based on the belief that human life is saturated with moral failings. The first half of this article identifies a problem for this view: namely, most people do not experience their lives in ways that would seem to be entailed by the misanthrope¡¯s judgment. The second half proposes a solution to this objection¡ªan error theory for misanthropy. Several arguments are given. A common theme among them, however, is that there are good reasons to think that human beings habitually ignore and/or suppress certain displays of their moral failings. A misanthrope can also argue that beings whose lives are choked in moral failings will be more likely to overlook and to disavow them.

The paper aims at defending agent-regret as a morally significant emo?tion. To this end, it reconstructs the debate about agent-regret in the context of the problem of moral luck, focusing on the solution put forward by R. Jay Wallace in his 2013 book The View From Here. A critique is proposed of Wallace¡¯s account of the rationality of agent-regret as grounded in the objective value of what the agent lost. The paper argues that it should instead be explained in terms of the transformation of the agent and of the relationship of the agent to her own life and identity. Finally, some thoughts are offered on the ways in which agent-regret, thus construed, matters for morality.

Negative characteristics are sometimes attributed to racial groups on the basis of culture. Sometimes these cultural characteristics are invoked to explain racial disparities. Many antiracist activists and intellectuals argue that such attributions are racist and, in this respect, are no different than attributions of negative characteristics to a racial group based on biology. In a recent essay, Lawrence Blum provides a typology of different kinds of views that attribute negative cultural characteristics to racial groups. One of the views that Blum identifies treats the relevant cultural characteristics as malleable but does not attribute those characteristics to existing structural factors. Blum characterizes this type of thinking as a form of racist thought. I argue that Blum is mistaken in doing so and that there are good reasons for academics not to treat cultural explanations for racial disparities as too taboo to even consider.

Breno Santos (2022) criticizes my account for not having plausible things to say about the difference between cases of hearing something negative about a friend from a third party, and hearing from the friend herself. I deny the charge and respond to this criticism.

Attention is a finite, morally significant good. Attention is a precondition for healthy human relationships, and its absence can wrong others by cutting them off from vital human goods. At the same time, human persons have limited powers of attention. And so the question arises, when does someone legitimately command my attention? In Conversational Pressure (2020), Sanford Goldberg argues that the competent speaker has a default entitlement to normatively expect the addressee to attend, even if only for a short while. If the addressee fails to attend, the speaker is wronged. I argue that the conditions under which attention is owed to another are more restricted than Goldberg allows, and are sensitive to context and standing.

I first list what I consider to be the main virtues of Goldberg¡¯s novel and challenging account of epistemic pressure in speech exchange. I then zoom in on proper doxastic responses to assertions in conversations and argue that they comprise four things: (1) one believes the position that is testified to rather than just seeking, ensuring, trying, or aiming to believe the testifier on that proposition; (2) one believes the testifier; in other words, one wrongs the speaker not only if one disbelieves her but also when one simply fails to believe her; (3) one believes the relevant proposition rather than merely accepting, presuming, assuming, or displaying some positive propositional attitude that does not imply belief; (4) one believes the proposition in question to a sufficiently high degree. Finally, I explore how we should make sense of the epistemic partiality that friendship seems to come with. I argue that it is not merely that one seeks evidence in support of the assertion of one¡¯s friend or an interpretation that affirms the testimony of one¡¯s friend. It is also that one actually lowers the evidential bar for rationally or epistemically justifiedly believing their testimony.

In this brief comment, I aim to engage with Sandy Goldberg¡¯s fruitful discussion of the doctrine of epistemic partiality in friendship (EPF), as it appears in his new book Conversational Pressure: Normativity in Speech Exchanges (2020), and to explore a seemly small distinction that I think could complicate things for the way Goldberg sees the pressures that are put on us when we are confronted with speech acts that come from or relate to friends of ours. If my distinction is shown to be successful, I believe it will impact the efficacy of Goldberg¡¯s response to EPF. My main argument focuses on the way Goldberg argues against EPF and the tension it supposedly creates with the demands of epistemic rationality. I believe that Goldberg¡¯s argument fails to capture an important distinction between our epistemic behaviors in the face of a friend¡¯s say-so and our epistemic behaviors when we encounter third-party reports about a friend. I¡¯ll argue that the route from the valuing of friendship to the epistemic reasons in support of differential doxastic outcomes when our friends are involved is not satisfactory, given that it involves what I see to be an unauthorized move from our desire to preserve a friendship to a differential doxastic reaction when someone reports negatively about our friends.

A central aim of Sandy Goldberg¡¯s project is to defend a fundamentally epistemic source of normative conversational pressure¡ªone which does not reduce to the interpersonal dimension. A second core aim is to provide an explanation of how expectations are generated by the performances within a conversation. This essay raises several challenges for chapter 2 of his book, ¡®Your Attention Please!.¡¯ From various angles, the essay challenges the central idea of that chapter: namely, that by the act of address, a speaker generates an obligation for a hearer to attend to the speaker.

Amy Flowerree (2022) offers an extended criticism of my account of (the normative dimensions of) the act of address, arguing that the notion of cooperativity cannot play the role that my argument needs it to play. Although I think she succeeds in highlighting points I had improperly ignored in my discussion, I argue that the account can be defended against her core concerns.

Rik Peels (2022) suggests that my account of the normative pressures involved in cases of testimony from a friend need to be supplemented. I respond by accepting the proposed supplements; in fact, I argue that they are implications of the view I defended.

Charity Anderson (2022) presents several worries about my views; she focuses on the role played by the notion of cooperativity in my argument, my characterization of the normativity involved in conversation, the methodology employed in the book, and possible extensions of my analysis to other modes of communication. I try to respond to each of these concerns in turn.

In this overview of Conversational Pressure (2020), I summarize the main points of the book, which aims to provide an account of the distinctly normative pressures that arise in conversation.

In this paper I remark on Tanesini¡¯s (2021) account of intellectual humility and servility as attitudes, with a focus on how this proposal intersects with the psychology literature on intellectual humility. I begin by discussing the implications this may have for empirical measures of intellectual humility, including concerns that some current measures seem to do a better job of capturing dispositional limitations-owning than virtuous intellectual humility. Additionally, I raise concerns that excluding interpersonal features and a motivation to learn from conceptualizations of intellectual humility risk vicious manifestations of intellectual humility. Finally, I build on Tanesini¡¯s (2021) ameliorative proposal centered on affirming one¡¯s values by offering some specific strategies drawn from several psychology theories. These include Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Social Learning Theory, and the Social Contact Hypothesis.

In this response I address concerns raised by Dalmiya (2022) and McElroy-Heltzel (2022) about features of the account of intellectual humility developed in The Mismeasure of the Self (2021). I focus on the worries that humility is insufficiently relational, compatible with apathy, and potentially ineffective in the service of liberatory projects. I conclude with a brief discussion of the measurement of humility.

In this precis, I offer an overview of The Mismeasure of the Self (2021). The book provides accounts of the psychology and epistemology of virtues and vices of self-evaluation such as humility, arrogance, servility, vanity and timidity. I adopt the social psychological framework of attitudes to explain that these virtues and vices are underpinned by clusters of mental states that are the product of motivated cognition, and which, in turn, promote motivated reasoning. I show that each virtue and vice is accompanied by a characteristic emotion. I assess whether we are responsible for vices and briefly describe an ameliorative intervention.

Alessandra Tanesini¡¯s The Mismeasure of the Self can be read as promoting non-ideal theory in epistemology. Tanesini articulates the virtue of intellectual humility (central for accurate self-assessment) in close connection with the human vices of superiority and inferiority. I begin by showing how her novel analysis that situates humility in a cluster of differently-functioning ¡®attitudes¡¯ enriches both the positive motivational resources and the pitfalls that a knower must negotiate. The proximity of virtues and vices in the conceptual map that constitutes humility, explains feminist claims of how subjects who are harmed as knowers can still flourish and even resist their cognitive marginalization. I then move on to critiquing Tanesini¡¯s understanding of intellectual humility because it fails to be a truly ¡®liberatory virtue.¡¯ I suggest alternative ways of connecting intellectual humility to shame and hope that still remain true to Tanesini¡¯s broader ethical context but make it potent for social justice. In spite of mindfulness of social context, Tanesini works with an epistemic selfhood bleached out of its historical and social embeddedness and hence, whose self-knowledge through humility does not involve the knowledge of the world and of others. Such an intellectual humility, I argue, cannot be justice-conducive.

This paper proposes that there is a kind of moral luck that hasn¡¯t been recognized in the philosophical literature: luck in the ¡®wide¡¯ contents of one¡¯s concepts. We will treat moral luck as occurring when an agent is morally responsible for X¡ªwhen X is a matter of luck for that agent. If moral luck is possible and content externalism is true, then there is a heretofore unrecognized kind of moral luck. We call it ¡°conceptual moral luck.¡± This new kind of moral luck poses significant problems for two major theories of morally responsible agency, Agent-Causal Libertarianism and the Real Self View.

At the center of much contemporary work on self-knowledge of our attitudes is a debate between Agentialists and Empiricists. Empiricists hold that first-person knowledge of one¡¯s own attitudes possesses a broadly empirical basis, such as observation or inference. Agentialists insist that an account of self-knowledge must make sense of the intimate connection between knowing one¡¯s attitudes and actively forming them in response to reasons. But it is plausible to suppose that a psychologically realistic account of self-knowledge will emphasize both active and passive elements. Focusing on the idea that we form self-ascriptions of belief on the basis of active deliberation, this paper outlines such a middle ground position.

Many philosophers accept an ¡®Authority Thesis¡¯ according to which self-ascriptions of one¡¯s current mental states ordinarily are or ought to be met with a distinctive presumptive of truth. Recently, however, Wolfgang Barz (2018) has argued that there is no adequately specified Authority Thesis. This, he argues, is because available specifications are either (1) philosophically puzzling but implausible, or (2) plausible but philosophically unpuzzling. I argue that there are several plausible and philosophically puzzling specifications of the Authority Thesis.

Can a reliabilist theory of justified belief be extended to account for justified credence? In exploring this question, this paper first takes as its target Tang¡¯s (2016, 2021) reliabilist account of justified credence, which is inspired by William Alston¡¯s ¡°indicator reliabilism¡± (or ¡°internalist externalism¡±) about justified belief. I point out a neglected shortcoming in Tang¡¯s account, which concerns its failure to properly explain degrees of justification. Fortunately, Alston¡¯s epistemology contains the resources which can be developed to remedy this defect. The central idea here is that the justificatory status of a credence can not only be (ultima facie) defeated by a subject¡¯s own perspective, but also be (ultima facie) enhanced by that. Finally, it is argued that this idea applies to beliefs as well.

In this paper, I discuss the relation between logical theory and evidence in the context of an anti-exceptionalist approach to logic. I hold not only that current versions of anti-exceptionalism failed to appreciate the fact that logical evidence is theory laden, but also that benefits for the view are expected when we engage with the appropriate philosophy of science. I make the discussion more vivid by considering the cases of both the Liar and Russell paradoxes, and disputes between the classical and dialetheist approaches to them. Disputes between these parties involve different understandings of the logical terminology involved in the evidence (the paradoxes), and they illustrate how the data gets contaminated with theory. As a result of the discussion, I conclude that pragmatical considerations are better guides to evaluate disputes in such cases, with scientific fertility being the criterion of legitimacy for a logical system.

Picturing is a poorly understood element of Sellars¡¯s philosophical project. We diagnose the problem with picturing as follows: on the one hand, it seems that it must be connected with action in order for it to do its job. On the other hand, the representational states of a picturing system are characterized in descriptive and seemingly static terms. How can static terms be connected with action? To solve this problem, we adopt a concept from recent work in Sellarsian metaethics: the idea of a material practical inference, which (we argue) features centrally in how we picture. The key distinction is that the picturing of nonhuman animals involves only Humean material practical inference, in which representational states are corrected only by feedback from the environment and not from discursive interactions. The resulting view shows that Sellars¡¯s contributions to practical philosophy (especially theory of action and metaethics) cannot be separated from his contributions to philosophy of mind, language, and cognitive science. Further, the view makes it clear that picturing is neither a version of the Given, nor is it a fifth wheel to inferential role in explaining representation, but is essential to Sellars¡¯s model of how animals¡ªincluding humans¡ªrepresent their environment.

The paper offers a theory of cruelty that includes the following claims: First, cruelty is best understood as a disposition to take delight in the very infliction of suffering on others. Thus understood, cruelty is the same phenomenon as that studied and operationalized by psychologists in the last decade or so under the heading of everyday sadism. Second, for people to be cruel, they need not have proper understanding of the moral standing of their victims. Third, ascriptions of cruelty do not depend on judgments regarding the moral wrongness of the assumed cruel act. Fourth, since cruelty is primarily a property of agents rather than of actions, and since actions are not always a reliable indication of cruelty, identifying cruelty is a more challenging task than usually thought.

I examine the possibility of civic friendship to solve the problem of over-doing democracy, paying close attention to how it can counter affective polarization and social homogeneity. In Section I, I explore civic friendship as a solution to polarization. In section II, I argue that Talisse¡¯s civic friendship¡ªin the context of nonpolitical collaboration¡ªis akin to Aristotle¡¯s utility and pleasure-friendships. Given the nature of civic friendship, in Section III¨CVI I make amendments to Talisse¡¯s proposal. I argue that if civic friendship is to address not only desaturation but polarization, and it has these Aristotelian features, then the cultivation of taste, equity, and ethical attentiveness are necessary.

Here are two different explanations for the apocalyptic state of American politics. According to one story, we have been subject to systemic polarization. Social mobility and media filtering have divided us into like-minded enclaves, which irrationally boosts our self-confidence. This turns out to be a deeply symmetrical story. According to the other story, we have been subject to propaganda. Certain media sources have been systematically spreading misinformation. This story is usually told asymmetrically. I argue that current evidence better supports the asymmetrical propaganda story. I then diagnose the popularity of the polarization story. Though many are eager to accept debunking accounts of the political extremes, they often fail to adequately consider analogous debunking accounts of the political center. But the mechanisms of polarization should also effect the center. And the tendency to leap to accept a systemic polarization story, without sufficient empirical evidence, itself bears the mark of motivated reasoning.

The four critical essays responding to Overdoing Democracy exhibit a thematic progression. Some take issue with the conception of democracy that underlies my book, while others emphasize my diagnostic and prescriptive accounts. This essay follows that progression in addressing my critics.

Overdoing Democracy is an important contribution to the literature on (deliberative) democracy, as it offers a sobering diagnosis of the risks and pitfalls of (overdoing) democracy in the form of internal critique. But the book does not go far enough in its diagnosis because it is not sufficiently critical towards some of the basic assumptions of deliberative conceptions of democracy. In particular, Talisse does not sufficiently attend to the inevitable power struggles in a society, where different groups and individuals must protect their own (often conflicting) interests instead of working towards a ¡®common good.¡¯ In this essay, I contrast two different visions of democracy and politics, one based on ideals of consensus and cooperation, and another on the inevitability of perennial conflict. I then briefly present an alternative to deliberative conceptions of democracy that has gained traction in recent decades, known as agonism. Next, I offer a short reconstruction of Talisse¡¯s proposal, and finally I sketch a critical assessment of some of his main claims and assumptions from an agonistic perspective.

Ian Kidd and David Cooper each develop a revisionist conception of misanthropy as the critical judgment and moral condemnation of humanity based on entrenched, ubiquitous, and pervasive human failings. I offer two objections to this revisionist conception since it equates the imputation of humanity with misanthropy and because it fails to address the worse form of misanthropy, which is the hatred and contempt of humanity. In the final section, I argue that we should not become misanthropes or develop a misanthropic stance. Misanthropy fails to make important distinctions about vulnerability and moral responsibility among people, allows for the renunciation of moral responsibility, and undermines the moral community.

Democracy is in trouble, and it is democracy¡¯s own fault¡ªthat is Robert Talisse¡¯s intriguing contention is his recent book, Overdoing Democracy: Why We Must Put Politics in its Place (2019). What gets democracy into trouble, according to Talisse, is the idea that a democratic form of government is intrinsically valuable, which in turn entails a deliberative conception of democracy that, in combination with the social-psychological fact of social sorting, leads to rampant polarization. According to Talisse, we therefore need to put democracy in its place by resisting the expansive view of the scope of democracy and making room for non-political spaces of interaction, in which we can form civic friendships. However, in what follows, I argue that what Talisse has actually provided is an excellent reason for rejecting rather than merely mitigating the detrimental effects of the idea that democracy is intrinsically valuable. Specifically, we ought to stop fetishizing democracy and instead embrace an instrumentalist view of democracy as a social practice that is instituted and maintained for purposes external to itself. Once we do this, democracy no longer needs saving from itself.

In trying to decide between two choices, I might try to compare them in order to determine which alternative is better with respect to some appropriate choice value. But could it happen that the two choices fail to compare? Much of the debate about this question has centred on the issue of whether the items could be incomparable. If they are incomparable, then they fail to compare with respect to the relevant choice value. However, what has largely been neglected is the possibility that the choices fail to compare by instead being noncomparable. If they are noncomparable, then they are not covered by any appropriate choice value, such that the formal preconditions for a comparison does not obtain. This paper argues that the concept of noncomparability may be at least as important as that of incomparability for explaining why choices fail to compare, if they do.

A brief synopsis of Overdoing Democracy: Why We Must Put Politics in its Place (Oxford University Press, 2019), which introduces the book.

Discussions of loyalty typically focus on its alleged tendency to encourage pernicious attachments to collectivities. The present article intervenes in these discussions by asking how considerations of loyalty in limit-situations (Karl Jaspers) might illuminate neglected ethico-political intricacies. Rather than suggesting that loyalty, independently of circumstances, is always a virtue or a vice this article explores how loyalty¡¯s complex synergies in limit-situations sometimes advance rather than oppose cosmopolitan justice. This perspective, I claim, helps us see that, instead of always making us partial, as many contemporary discourses on loyalty assume, loyalty sometimes makes us partisan in an ethico-politically enabling sense.

Following in the tradition of Montaigne and Rousseau, a number of recent philosophers have argued that reflection on the relationship between humankind and certain animals yields good reasons for a misanthropic verdict on the former. One reason, of course, is the terrible treatment and exploitation of animals by human beings. Another reason¡ªthe one focused on and endorsed in this paper¡ªis that humankind does very badly in the moral comparison with animal species that Hume thought was essential to any moral verdict on our species. I argue that animals are favored by such a comparison since they are free of the vices and moral failings of human beings. To the objection that, in that case, they are also without the virtues that we have, my reply is that this objection is mistaken. (Even if it weren¡¯t, animals would come off better than humankind, since it is morally more important to be without vices than to have virtues.) Simply put, the ¡°innocence¡± of animals¡ªperhaps like that of young children¡ªis incompatible with being morally vicious, but it is not incompatible with manifesting and exercising certain virtues. Innocence does not exclude experiencing benign moral emotions, such as compassion.

With David Cooper and others, I argue that it is conceptually and ethically good to broaden the conception of misanthropy beyond that of hatred of humans. However, I hold that not everyone with misanthropic thoughts is a misanthrope. I propose thinking of a misanthrope as one who appraises the moral perception of misanthropy to be appropriate, weighty, and governing of other aspects of one¡¯s moral outlook or character. I conclude that pessimism without misanthropy may be more ethically appropriate for some of us with misanthropic thoughts who wish to reject the identity of a misanthrope.

The Continuum Hypothesis seems to be a counterexample to David Chalmers¡¯s A Priori Scrutability thesis, according to which there is a compact class of truths (the scrutability base) from which all truths are a priori scrutable. Chalmers¡¯s three-part answer to this problem (which I call the ¡°Chalmers trilemma¡±) runs as follows: either the Continuum Hypothesis is indeterminate; or adding a new axiom will settle the issue; or, if these two options do not work, we should add the Continuum Hypothesis (or its negation) to the scrutability base. I argue that Chalmers¡¯s answer is unsatisfactory: the first horn of the trilemma can be interpreted in several ways, and either it departs from common mathematical practice and rests on weak analogies, or it shares the same problems with two other horns; the second horn does not provide good reasons to believe that from a fixed system of axioms all truths about our world are scrutable; the third horn of the trilemma renders Chalmers¡¯s project empty.

A dialectical conception of justification helps conciliationists about peer disagreement establish the symmetry considerations on which their account is premised. On this conception, appeals to personal or hidden forms of evidence fail to provide a symmetry breaker that would allow one to dismiss a conflicting peer opinion. Furthermore, the act of citing the same evidence repetitively tends to illegitimately beg the question against the peer, no matter how accurate one¡¯s own overall assessment of this evidence. However, the dialectical conception of justification does not automatically vindicate conciliationism. In many of the most interesting cases of peer disagreement there are vast bodies of dialectically sharable evidence that can ultimately provide enough non-question-begging epistemic resources to settle the dispute, even if appealing to those resources violates the independence requirement¡ªa further premise of conciliationism. Absent modifications to the independence requirement, it would therefore be premature to embrace conciliationism.

I argue that misanthropy is systematic condemnation of the moral character of humankind as it has come to be. Such condemnation can be expressed affectively and practically in a range of different ways, and the bulk of the paper sketches the four main misanthropic stances evident across the history of philosophy. Two of these, the Enemy and Fugitive stances, were named by Kant, and I call the others the Activist and Quietist. Without exhausting the range of ways of being a philosophical misanthrope, these four suffice to justify my main claim that misanthropy should not be seen specifically in terms of hatred and violence. We should attend to the varieties of philosophical misanthropy, especially since doing so reveals a deeper phenomenon I call the misanthropic predicament.

Barz (2018) contends that there is no specification of the phenomenon of first-person authority that avoids falsity or triviality. This paper offers one. When a subject self-ascribes a current conscious mental state in speech, there is a presumption that what she says is true. To defeat this presumption, one must be able to explain how she has been led astray.

I argue that we have good textual reason to read Kant¡¯s notion of ¡°self-conceit,¡± and his theory of immorality more generally as being founded on the claim that we have the tendency to think that our ability to achieve happiness is our most valuable feature. I explain how this is not the same as the claim that we are arrogant or think we are better than others. Self-conceit (and the standard of assessment it implies) can lead to the opinion that one is worth more than others, when life is going well. When life goes badly, however, it leads to the opinion that one is worth less. I explain how this reading of self-conceit also amounts to a better theory of immorality, since we ought not to hold that interpersonal arrogance is at the heart of all immorality.

Most philosophical discussions of disagreement have used idealized disagreements to draw conclusions about the nature of disagreement. I closely examine an actual, non-idealized disagreement in dinosaur paleobiology and show that it can not only teach us about the features of some of our real world disagreements, but can help us to argue for the possibility of reasonable real world disagreement.

What is it about the concept of absurdity that allows it to be applied to everything from the nature of existence to statistical methodologies to slapstick comedy? This article seeks an answer in the structure of how we experience the phenomena regularly cited to substantiate absurdity claims, namely those putatively labeled ¡®confusing,¡¯ ¡®humorous,¡¯ or both. Taking its cue from evolutionary and phenomenological accounts of humor and confusion, and responding to the canonical statements of Albert Camus and Thomas Nagel, the essay proposes that certain structures of experience parallel the structure of absurdist arguments.

I argue that the norms of assertion are engendered by the function of assertions, and that the function of assertions is, roughly, to facilitate the transmission of information from those who have it to those who need it. Assertions can play this role if they are governed by two norms. One norm is deontic in nature, and specifies the conditions under which a speaker may issue an assertion. I argue that the deontic norm permits A to issue an assertion to B if and only if: (1) doing so would improve B¡¯s epistemic position with regards to the proposition thus conveyed, and (2) the proposition conveyed is justified (for A) in a way, and to a degree, appropriate to the purposes for which B is likely to use it. The other is not deontic; it says what it is for an assertion to be good, qua assertion. This is a truth norm. Assertions ought to be true, in that an assertion is good, qua assertion, when it is true.

We highlight a particular meta-philosophical assumption; namely, the philosophical ¡°Claim-Claim¡± to the effect that meaningful philosophical utterances are, at least in core cases, descriptive claims. In Section I, we explain the Claim-Claim and describe its place in contemporary philosophy. In Section II, we sketch some of its stultifying implications. In Section III, we attempt to make these implications vivid by considering a case study. Specifically, we show that the Claim-Claim has had a pernicious effect on recent attempts to make sense of Martin Heidegger¡¯s philosophical project. Section IV explains Heidegger¡¯s positive pragmatic account, while Section V is a brief and polemical attempt to advance an alternative to the status quo.

Ever since Bernard Williams (1993) made the character Elina Makropulos central to his case against the desirability of immortality, a debate has raged on between philosophers who join him in arguing that immortal life would lack meaning, and those who defend the prospects of meaningful everlasting existence. I will argue that a never-ending existence offers more hope for personal meaning and value than ordinary finite existence does. To illustrate the idea that having a necessary ending spoils life¡¯s meaning, I introduce a new literary example¡ªLeonid Andreyev¡¯s Lazarus¡ªto juxtapose with Elina Makropulos. Lazarus personifies the notion that the transient significance of life simply evaporates in comparison with the infinite nothingness of death. Among other things, dying means the destruction of the first-personal sense of value we build up and attribute to our lives through conscious experience, memories, and agency.

The much-discussed ¡°claimability objection¡± holds that it is unjustified to believe that all individuals have a human right to subsistence because the bearers of the correlative duties are not sufficiently determined. This argument is based on the so-called ¡°claimability-condition¡±: S has a right to P if and only if the duty-bearer is sufficiently determined. Practice-based theorists defend the human right to subsistence by arguing that if we take the existing human rights practice seriously, there is no indeterminacy about the allocation of duties. In this paper, I challenge this (apparently compelling) defense of the human right to subsistence with a dilemma. If the claimability condition is true, the practice-based defense fails to undermine the claimability objection because the duty-bearer is determined in some, but not all, cases. If practice-based theorists reject the claimability condition, they generate an account of human rights that is problematic from the practical perspective because it may contain duties that are unable to guide action.

It is natural to think that the badness of false belief explains the badness of lying. In this paper, I argue against this: I argue that the badness of false belief does not explain the badness of lying and that, given a popular account of the badness of lying, the badness of false belief is orthogonal to the badness of lying.

Conceptions of omissions standardly come in two flavours: omissions are construed either as mere absences of actions or are closely related to paradigmatic ¡®positive¡¯ actions. This paper shows how the semantics of the verb ¡®to omit¡¯ constitutes strong evidence against the view of omissions as involving actions. Specifically, by drawing from an influential fourfold typology of verbal predicates popularised by Zeno Vendler, I argue that declarative statements involving reference to omissions are semantically stative, which is a finding that makes serious trouble for the conception of omissions as being closely related to paradigmatic actions. But references to omissions, in certain linguistic contexts, undergo a shift of meaning to describe processes or activities engaged in by the agent. Still, despite the semantic flexibility of the verb ¡®to omit¡¯, its processive reading does not straightforwardly support the second conception of omissions. A subsidiary aim of this paper is to offer a sketch of the metaphysics of processive action in order to show what those who claim that omissions are closely related to actions might be committed to.

Is it possible for there to be facts about reality with a logical structure that is in principle unrepresentable by us? I outline the main motivations for thinking that this question should receive a positive answer. I then argue that, upon inspection, the view that such structurally ineffable facts are possible is self-defeating and thus incoherent. My argument is based on considerations about the fundamental role that the purely formal concept of an object plays in our propositional representations and its intimate connection with subject-predicate structure.

Most philosophers of the self would take what David Barnett calls ¡®The Datum¡¯¡ªthat ¡°pairs of people themselves are incapable of experience¡±¡ªto merit its name. Barnett argues abductively from The Datum to Simplicity, the view that conscious beings must be simple. The truth of Simplicity would upend almost all materialist accounts of what we are, so Barnett¡¯s argument and attempted rebuttals of it merit scrutiny. Rory Madden charges Barnett with overlooking a rival, better explanation, deriving from Integrity: the thesis that our na?ve conception of a conscious subject demands that conscious beings be topologically integrated. The content of this na?ve conception is supposed to be superior to Simplicity in explaining The Datum. I argue here that Madden is mistaken: the requirement of topological integration cannot explain The Datum, and Barnett¡¯s argument survives Madden¡¯s challenge.

In Morals from Motives (2001), Michael Slote proposed an agent-based approach to virtue ethics in which the morality of an action derives solely from the agent¡¯s motives. Among the many objections that have been raised against Slote¡¯s account, this article addresses two problems associated with the Kantian principle that ought implies can. These are the problems of ¡°deficient¡± and ¡°inferior¡± motivation. These problems arise because people cannot freely choose their motives. We cannot always choose to act from good motives; nor can we always avoid acting from bad ones. Given this, Slote¡¯s account implies that we sometimes cannot do what we ought to do, contrary to Kant¡¯s principle. In this article, I propose an alternative agent-based account which, I argue, circumvents these problems. While people cannot choose their motives, they can choose their intentions. By characterizing virtuous action, as I do, in terms of good intentions rather than in terms of good motives, the conflict between what people can do and what they ought to do is resolved.

The aim of this paper is to offer an account of the grounding of deep friendships within the context of virtue ethics. While drawing on Aristotle¡¯s justification of so-called character friendships, it goes some distance in reconciling Aristotle¡¯s highly moralistic view with a prevalent counterview according to which we are drawn toward close friends for reasons that are essentially aesthetic, amoral, and irrational. It is argued that there are resources within Aristotelian virtue ethics (not exploited by Aristotle himself) that enable us to overcome some of the difficulties of his exclusively moralistic view and bring it into better harmony with common-sense conceptions; yet preserving the claim that vicious people cannot form truly deep friendships. The paper aims at an ¡®individuality-adjusted moralized view¡¯ of the grounding of deep friendships: a conciliatory view that yet remains closer to an amendment of the moralized view than to a middle-ground synthesis.

Biases affect much of our epistemic lives. Do they affect how we understand things? For Linda Zagzebski, we only understand something when we manifest intellectual virtues or skills. Relying on how widespread biases are, J. Adam Carter and Duncan Pritchard raise a skeptical objection to understanding so conceived. It runs as follows: most of us seem to understand many things. We genuinely understand only when we manifest intellectual virtues or skills, and are cognitively responsible for so doing. Yet much of what we seem to understand consists in conceptions whose formation could have easily been due to biases instead, and the work of biases is opaque to reflection. If conceptions constituting how we understand things could have easily been due to biases, then we are not cognitively responsible for them because we cannot reflectively appraise what we understand. So, we are mistaken in thinking we genuinely understand most of the time. I will defend the grounding of understanding in intellectual virtues and skills from Carter and Pritchard¡¯s objection. We are cognitively responsible for understanding when we manifest our expertise. We can do so, I will argue, without being required to reflectively appraise what we understand.

Sartre¡¯s phenomenology of the image in L¡¯Imaginaire includes analytical distinctions between the mind¡¯s comportments towards perceptual objects, images, and signs, which he refers to as different forms of consciousness. Sartre denies any possible convergence between imaging and sign consciousness, arguing that there are essential differences in the way they relate to the notions of resemblance, positionality, and affect. This essay argues against his phenomenological distinctions by stressing the continuity of imaging with sign consciousness: between images and words. In particular, it argues that his understanding of the sign as affectless is questionable and that there is no reason to believe that images and signs cannot elicit similar affects or perform the same functions. Consequently, it is possible to interpret Sartre¡¯s physical images or ¡°analoga¡± as pictorial signs: his phenomenological descriptions of physical images may indeed be recast in the language of the sign and reformulated as acts of consciousness that involve pictorial signs.

This paper raises objections to what I call the Cartesian Doxastic Argument for free will: the argument that it is probably true that we are free on the grounds that there is already widespread intuitive belief in that claim. Richard Swinburne provides the best extant defense of the argument, using his principle of credulity (PoC), which holds that beliefs are probably true merely on the believer¡¯s evidence that they believe it. I argue that the PoC is either too liberal, justifying intuitively unjustified beliefs, or else is inapplicable in practice. I then show that attempts to reformulate the principle to avoid liberality render it too weak to support the Cartesian Doxastic Argument. These failures suggest that any version of the argument that relies on similar principles is likely to fail.

This paper considers the following claim: In order to live well, your first concern must be with yourself. I show how the truth in this claim can be captured by a eudaimonist framework. I distinguish two sorts of self-concern: (1) self-care and (2) self-responsibility. I examine each of these notions. I also consider different senses in which either sort of self-concern might be one¡¯s first concern. I identify the place of each of these ideas in a properly developed eudaimonism. As part of my discussion, I respond to the egoism challenge to eudaimonism, and I outline a thoroughly non-egoistic form of eudaimonism.

Interactionism has emerged as a promising approach to moral character in the wake of the situationist challenge and the character-situation debate. This paper will consider whether interactionism is troubled by a familiar problem from the philosophy of mind: the coupling-constitution or causal-constitution fallacy (C-C fallacy). In relation to character, this issue pertains to whether the external factors featured in interactionist models are partly constitutive of the agent¡¯s character, or whether they merely play a causal role. In contrast to some other interactionist theorists, I argue that interactionism doesn¡¯t need to make distinctions regarding causation and constitution, and would be better off without attempting to do so. Making such claims would only add metaphysical baggage to interactionism that won¡¯t aid in its goal of providing an empirically adequate moral psychology of character. Interactionists are thus better off evading the C-C fallacy challenge, rather than attempting to meet it head-on.

The idea that conscious control, or more specifically akratic wrongdoing, is a necessary condition for blameworthiness has durable appeal. This position has been explicitly championed by volitionist philosophers, and its tacit influence is broadly felt. Many responses have been offered to the akrasia requirement espoused by volitionists. These responses often take the form of counterexamples involving blameworthy ignorance: i.e., cases where an agent didn¡¯t act akratically, but where they nevertheless seem blameworthy. These counterexamples have generally led to an impasse in the debate, with volitionists maintaining that the ignorant agents are blameless. In this paper, I explore a different sort of counterexample: I consider agents who have acted akratically, but whose very conscious awareness of their wrongdoing complicates their blameworthiness. I call these cases of ¡°complex akrasia,¡± and I suggest that they are a familiar aspect of moral life. I interpret these cases as supporting non-volitionist accounts, and particularly Quality of Will accounts.

In her (2004) Varieties of Meaning, Ruth Millikan makes the claim that ¡°no interesting theoretical line can be drawn¡± between biological purposes and intentional purposes. I argue that, contrary to her view, there are some interesting lines to be drawn. It is plausible that both intentions and the neural mechanisms that lie behind them have proper functions, but this does not license the inference that intentions are purposeful only because of their proper biological function. I use the proximate/ultimate distinction to argue that agents¡¯ intentions are proximately purposeful, while their neural substrates are ultimately purposeful, and therefore that the former are not reducible to the latter, even if one adopts Millikan¡¯s account of derived proper functions.

I show that defenses of the Humean theory of motivation (HTM) often rely on a mistaken assumption. They assume that desires are necessary conditions for being motivated to act because desires (and other non-cognitive states) themselves have a special, essential, necessary feature, such as their world-to-mind direction of fit, that enables them to motivate. Call this the Desire-Necessity Claim. Beliefs (and other cognitive states) cannot have this feature, so they cannot motivate. Or so the story goes. I show that: (a) when pressed, a proponent of HTM encounters a series of prima facie counterexamples to this Claim; and (b) the set of claims that seem to naturally complement the Desire-Necessity Claim as well as provide successful responses to these counterexamples turn out to deny the truth of this same claim. As a result, the Humean implicitly grants that it is at least equally plausible, if not more plausible, to claim that desires are not able to motivate in virtue of what they necessarily possess. Instead, desires contingently possess features that enable them to motivate.

This paper derives, from Richard Moran¡¯s work, three different accounts of doxastic Transparency¡ªroughly, the view that when a rational person wants to know whether she believes that p, she directs her attention to the truth-value of p, not to the mental attitude she has vis-¨¤-vis p. We investigate which of these is the most plausible of the three by discussing a number of (classes of) examples. We conclude that the most plausible account of Transparency is in tension with the motivation behind Transparency accounts: it is disconnected from the deliberative stance.

In this paper, I propose and defend an antiphysicalist argument, namely, the imagination argument, which draws inspiration from Frank Jackson¡¯s knowledge argument, or rather its misinterpretation by Daniel Dennett and Paul Churchland. They interpret the knowledge argument to be about the ability to imagine a novel experience, which Jackson explicitly denies. The imagination argument is the following. Let Q be a visual phenomenal quality that is imaginable based on one¡¯s phenomenal experience. (1) It is not possible to imagine Q solely based on complete physical knowledge. (2) If it is not possible to imagine Q solely based on complete physical knowledge, then physicalism is false. (3) Therefore, physicalism is false. Even though objections have been raised to this argument in the literature, there is, as far as I know, no explicit defense of it. I argue that the imagination argument is more plausible than the knowledge argument in some respects and less plausible in others. All things considered, it is at least as interesting and serious a challenge to physicalism as the knowledge argument is.

One of the longest standing objections levied against virtue ethics is the Self-Absorption Objection. Proponents of this objection state that the main problem with neo-Aristotelian accounts is that the virtuous agent¡¯s motive is to promote her own eudaimonia. In this paper, I examine Christopher Toner¡¯s attempt to address this objection by arguing that we should understand the virtuous agent as acting virtuously because doing so is what it means to live well qua human. I then go on to defend Toner¡¯s view from two of Anne Baril¡¯s criticisms: that his account is un-Aristotelian, and that his account does not take seriously the importance of the virtuous agent organizing her life in a way that is good for her. In doing so, I pave the way for neo-Aristotelian virtue ethicists to develop an adequate response to the self-absorption objection along Toner¡¯s lines.