Already a subscriber? - Login here
Not yet a subscriber? - Subscribe here

Browse by:



Displaying: 1-20 of 45 documents


book reviews

1. The Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 116 > Issue: 10
Stephen Mumford

view |  rights & permissions | cited by

2. The Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 116 > Issue: 10

view |  rights & permissions | cited by

3. The Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 116 > Issue: 9
Ittay Nissan-Rozen

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
A new explanation for the fairness of lotteries is presented. The explanation draws on elements of John Broome's and Richard Bradley's accounts, but is distinct from both of them. I start with Broome's idea that the fairness of lotteries has something to do with satisfying claims in a way which is proportional to their strength. I present an intuitive explication of "the strength of a claim" and show that under this explication, the "personal good" for an individual gained by some proposition becoming true has a decreasing marginal contribution to the strength of the individual's claim for the proposition to be true. Then I use Bradley's account to deduce Broome's claim that fairness demands satisfying claims in a way which is proportional to their strength. Several implications of this account are discussed.

comments and criticism

4. The Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 116 > Issue: 9
J. T. M. Miller

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
The natural name theory, recently discussed by Johnson (2018), is proposed as an explanation of pure quotation where the quoted term(s) refers to a linguistic object such as in the sentence ‘In the above, ‘bank’ is ambiguous’. After outlining the theory, I raise a problem for the natural name theory. I argue that positing a resemblance relation between the name and the linguistic object it names does not allow us to rule out cases where the natural name fails to resemble the linguistic object it names. I argue that to avoid this problem, we can combine the natural name theory with a type-realist metaphysics of language, and hold that the name is natural because the name is an instance of the kind that it names. I conclude by reflecting on the importance of the metaphysics of language for questions in the philosophy of language.

book reviews

5. The Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 116 > Issue: 9
Hille Paakkunainen

view |  rights & permissions | cited by
6. The Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 116 > Issue: 9
Kris McDaniel

view |  rights & permissions | cited by

7. The Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 116 > Issue: 9

view |  rights & permissions | cited by

8. The Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 116 > Issue: 8
Justin D’Ambrosio

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
In this paper, I develop and defend a new adverbial theory of perception. I first present a semantics for direct-object perceptual reports that treats their object-positions as supplying adverbial modifiers, and I show how this semantics definitively solves the many-property problem for adverbialism. My solution is distinctive in that it articulates adverbialism from within a well-established formal semantic framework and ties adverbialism to a plausible semantics for perceptual reports in English. I then go on to present adverbialism as a theory of the metaphysics of perception. The metaphysics I develop treats adverbial perception as a directed activity: it is an activity with success conditions. When perception is successful, the agent bears a relation to a concrete particular, but perception need not be successful; this allows perception to be fundamentally non-relational. The result is a novel formulation of adverbialism that eliminates the need for representational contents, but also treats successful and unsuccessful perceptual events as having a fundamental common factor.

9. The Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 116 > Issue: 8
Saul Smilansky

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Moral life sometimes involves life-and-death decisions, and philosophers often consider them by examining intuitions about ideal cases. Contemporary philosophical discourse on such matters has been dominated by Trolley-type cases, which typically present us with the need to make decisions on whether to sacrifice one person in order to save a larger number of similar others. Such cases lead to a distinct view of moral dilemmas and of moral life generally. The case I present here, “Hostage Situation,” is quite unlike them and should generate intuitions that differ greatly from those brought forth by standard Trolley-type cases. The implications are surprising and suggest that familiar and widely prevalent perceptions of the normative field are inadequate.

10. The Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 116 > Issue: 8

view |  rights & permissions | cited by

11. The Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 116 > Issue: 7
Trevor Teitel

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
The hole argument purports to show that all spacetime theories of a certain form are indeterministic, including General Relativity. The argument has sparked an industry of searching for a metaphysics of spacetime with the right modal implications to rescue determinism. In this paper, I first argue that certain prominent replies to the hole argument—namely, those that appeal to an essentialist doctrine about spacetime—fail to deliver the requisite modal implications. My argument involves showing that threats to determinism like the hole argument are more general than has heretofore been recognized. I then propose a novel essentialist doctrine about spacetime that successfully rescues determinism, what I call sufficiency metric essentialism. However, I ultimately argue that this doctrine is independently problematic, and teaches us that no essentialist doctrine about spacetime can succeed. I close by suggesting some lessons for future work on spacetime and the metaphysics of physics more broadly, and also drawing some morals for contemporary metaphysics, in particular about whether essence can be used to articulate a precise structuralist doctrine, and the relationship between essence and modality.

12. The Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 116 > Issue: 7
Benjamin Eva

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
The principle of indifference (PI) states that in the absence of any relevant evidence, a rational agent will distribute their credence equally among all the possible outcomes under consideration. Despite its intuitive plausibility, PI famously falls prey to paradox, and so is widely rejected as a principle of ideal rationality. In this article, I present a novel rehabilitation of PI in terms of the epistemology of comparative confidence judgments. In particular, I consider two natural comparative reformulations of PI and argue that while one of them prescribes the adoption of patently irrational epistemic states, the other (which is only available when we drop the standard but controversial “Opinionation” assumption from the comparative confidence framework) provides a consistent formulation of PI that overcomes the most salient limitations of existing formulations.

13. The Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 116 > Issue: 7

view |  rights & permissions | cited by

14. The Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 116 > Issue: 6
Simon Goldstein

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
According to one tradition, uttering an indicative conditional involves performing a special sort of speech act: a conditional assertion. We introduce a formal framework that models this speech act. Using this framework, we show that any theory of conditional assertion validates several inferences in the logic of conditionals, including the False Antecedent inference (that not A implies if A, then C). Next, we determine the space of truth-conditional semantics for conditionals consistent with conditional assertion. The truth value of any such conditional is settled whenever the antecedent is false, and whenever the antecedent is true and the consequent is false. Then, we consider the space of dynamic meanings consistent with the theory of conditional assertion. We develop a new family of dynamic conditional-assertion operators that combine a traditional test operator with an update operation.

15. The Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 116 > Issue: 6
Jacob Beck

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
In the 1980s, a number of philosophers argued that perception is analog. In the ensuing years, these arguments were forcefully criticized, leaving the thesis in doubt. This paper draws on Weber’s Law, a well-entrenched finding from psychophysics, to advance a new argument that perception is analog. This new argument is an adaptation of an argument that cognitive scientists have leveraged in support of the contention that primitive numerical representations are analog. But the argument here is extended to the representation of non-numerical magnitudes, such as luminance and distance, and shown to apply to perception and not just cognition. The relevant sense of ‘analog’ is also clarified, and two powerful objections are addressed. Finally, the question whether perception’s analog vehicles are located in conscious experience is explored and related to a well-known controversy within psychophysics.

16. The Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 116 > Issue: 6

view |  rights & permissions | cited by

17. The Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 116 > Issue: 5
Sophie Horowitz

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Epistemologists often assume that rationality bears an important connection to the truth. In this paper I examine the implications of this commitment for permissivism: if rationality is a guide to the truth, can it also allow some leeway in how we should respond to our evidence? I first discuss a particular strategy for connecting permissive rationality and the truth, developed in a recent paper by Miriam Schoenfield. I argue that this limited truth-connection is unsatisfying, and the version of permissivism that supports it faces serious challenges; so, for mainstream permissivism, the truth problem is still unsolved. I then discuss a strategy available to impermissivists, according to which rationality bears a quite strong connection to truth. I argue that this second strategy is successful.

18. The Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 116 > Issue: 5
Brad Armendt

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
The problem of the man who met death in Damascus appeared in the infancy of the theory of rational choice known as causal decision theory. A straightforward, unadorned version of causal decision theory is presented here and applied, along with Brian Skyrms’s deliberation dynamics, to Death in Damascus and similar problems. Decision instability is a fascinating topic, but not a source of difficulty for causal decision theory. Andy Egan’s purported counterexample to causal decision theory, Murder Lesion, is considered; a simple response shows how Murder Lesion and similar examples fail to be counterexamples, and clarifies the use of the unadorned theory in problems of decision instability. I compare unadorned causal decision theory to previous treatments by Frank Arntzenius and by Jim Joyce, and recommend a well-founded heuristic that all three accounts can endorse. Whatever course deliberation takes, causal decision theory is consistently a good guide to rational action.

comments and criticism

19. The Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 116 > Issue: 5
Theron Pummer

abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Suppose two children face a deadly threat. You can either do nothing, save one child by sacrificing your arms, or save both by sacrificing your arms. Here are two plausible claims: first, it is permissible to do nothing; second, it is wrong to save only one. Joe Horton argues that the combination of these two claims has the implausible implication that if you are not going to save both children, you ought to save neither. This is one instance of what he calls the ALL OR NOTHING PROBLEM. I here present CONDITIONAL PERMISSIONS as the solution. Although saving only one child is wrong, it can be conditionally permissible, that is, permissible given what you are not going to do. You ought to save both children or save neither, but if you are not going to save both, you ought to do the next best thing (save one) or save neither.

20. The Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 116 > Issue: 5

view |  rights & permissions | cited by