In “New Troubles for the Qualia Freak,” Michael Tye argues that phenomenal character cannot be an intrinsic micro­physical property of experiences (or be necessitated by intrinsic microphysical properties) because this would entail that experience could occur in a chunk of tissue in a Petri dish. Laudably, Tye attempts to defend the latter claim rather than resting content with the counter-intuitiveness of the associated image. However, I show that his defense is problematic in several ways, and ultimately that it still amounts to no more than an appeal to the unargued intuition that experience could not occur in something small enough to fit in a Petri dish.

Frank Hindriks (2007) has attempted to derive a (restricted, moral) variant of Timothy Williamson’s (2000) knowledge rule for assertion on the basis of a more fundamental belief expression analysis of that speech act. I show that his attempted derivation involves a crucial equivocation between two senses of ‘must,’ and therefore fails. I suggest two possible repairs; but I argue that even if they are successful, we should prefer Williamson’s fully general knowledge rule to Hindriks’s restricted moral norm.

In “A Modest Proposal: Accounting for the Virtuousness of Modesty,” Irene McMullin characterizes the modest person as striking a delicate balance between accurate self-assessment and sensitivity to the feelings of others. She criticizes ‘egalitarian’ understandings of this process as unrealistically demanding, and instead proposes an account based on Sartrean facticity and self-awareness. In this brief comment, I defend the egalitarian accounts, arguing for a specifically Kantian explanation of modesty that combines the best of both the egalitarian and Sartrean views, and is based on basic Kantian concepts of dignity and autonomy. On this account, the modest person honestly assesses her own successes according to her autonomously determined standards, yet exhibits modesty to others out of the recognition of the equal worth and dignity of all persons.

In response to Mark D. White’s Kantian critique of my article “A Modest Proposal: Accounting for the Virtuousness of Modesty,” I argue that invoking Kant’s notions of dignity and respect in order to provide an egalitarian account of modesty brings with it conceptual commitments that are not always easy to reconcile with the moral phenomenology of that virtue. In light of this I question White’s claim that a Kantian account of modesty offers a better explanation than the existential phenomenological approach that I endorse.

This paper provides a detailed account of the normal importance of self-knowledge. I critique two previous accounts, one developed by Bilgrami (1998; 1999; 2006) and the other inspired by Putnam (1981). It is argued that the former conflates self-beliefs with the intentional states that these higher-order beliefs are about, whereas the latter shows only that true beliefs of certain kinds—as opposed to true self-beliefs simpliciter—improve our chances of survival. Self-knowledge is valuable for four reasons. First, it improves our chances of survival because it enables us to assess our intentional states and adjust our behavior. Second, it plays a critical role in effecting cooperation because the efficient pursuit of common goals requires that one communicate to others information about one’s beliefs and desires. Third, it provides protection against psychopathologies such as anxiety and narcissism because it enables the agent to assume responsibility for his thoughts and actions. Fourth, it enhances the agent’s self-confidence and happiness because the less he doubts that his successes are the result of his acting on his attitudes and abilities, the more self-confident and happier he is. I conclude with a discussion of the disadvantages of self-knowledge and the advantages of self-ignorance and self-error.

This article critically examines two central concepts in normative theory—ethical life and morality—by comparing the pragmatist approach with that of Critical Theory. This is done by way of a close scrutiny of Axel Honneth’s reading of the pragmatist philosophers John Dewey and George H. Mead. This focus on Honneth’s use of pragmatism serves as a port of entry to provide a comparative analysis of pragmatism and Critical Theory’s approaches to normativity. As I intend to show, Honneth’s troubles with making sense of the pragmatist approach to normativity are a litmus test of some persistent ambiguities at the heart of his understanding of normativity. I set the stage by reconstructing Honneth’s reading of Dewey (§ II) and Mead (§ III). That will provide the background against which to set up a comparison between the pragmatist conception of normativity and that of Critical Theory, with a view to assessing their relative validity. I then relate Honneth’s reading of the pragmatists to his own philosophical project and to the important place occupied in it by the same dualism of ethical life and morality (§ IV).

We frequently praise or blame people for what they believe or fail to believe as a result of their having investigated some matter thoroughly, or, in the case of blame, for having failed to investigate it, or for carelessly or insufficiently investigating. For instance, physicists who, after years of toil, uncover some unknown fact about our universe are praised for what they come to know. Sometimes, in contrast, we blame and may even despise our friends for being ignorant of certain ecological facts as a result of their refusing to countenance the evidence. The purpose of this paper is to explore what underlies the legitimacy of this practice—the praise or blame of people for what they know or fail to know as a result of investigation or otherwise—namely, the ability to exercise control over one’s doxastic states, and, in particular, as I will argue, one’s ability to exercise indirect generic control over one’s doxastic states.

This paper argues for the following three claims. First, the Agrippan mode from disagreement does not play a secondary role in inducing suspension of judgment. Second, the Pyrrhonist is not committed to the criteria of justification underlying the Five Modes of Agrippa, which nonetheless does not prevent him from non-doxastically assenting to them. And third, some recent objections to Agrippan Pyrrhonism raised by analytic epistemologists and experimental philosophers fail to appreciate the Pyrrhonist’s ad hominem style of argumentation and the real challenge posed by the mode from disagreement.

Fictional realists hold that fictional characters are real entities. However, Anthony Everett (2005) notes that some fictions leave it indeterminate whether character A is identical to character B, while other fictions depict A as simultaneously identical and distinct from B. Everett argues that these fictions commit the realist to indeterminate and impossible identity relations among actual entities, and that as such realism is untenable. This paper defends fictional realism: for fictions depicting non-classical identity between A and B, the realist should hold that there are two salient fragments, one with a single character (named both ‘A’ and ‘B’) and the other with two (named ‘A’ and ‘B’, respectively). Truth according to the fiction depicting indeterminate identity is determined by supervaluating over truth according to those salient fragments. For fictions depicting impossible identity, truth is determined by subvaluating over truth according to those two salient fragments.

A popular defense of physicalist theories of consciousness against anti-physicalist arguments is the “phenomenal concept strategy” (PCS). According to PCS there are phenomenal concepts that designate phenomenal properties, and whose use requires adopting the first person perspective with respect to those properties, thus allowing an epistemic gap between the phenomenal and the physical without requiring a metaphysical gap. One version of PCS is the quotational version, according to which phenomenal concepts are in part constituted by the very properties they designate. The advertising for this version of PCS is that it does better justice to the phenomenology of consciousness than alternative versions. But in doing so, I argue, it threatens to reintroduce dualism. This can be avoided by adopting a Russellian account of physical concepts, but even with this we seem to be committed to a non-physicalist Russellian account of consciousness, and perhaps even a Russellian panpsychism. This can be avoided only by holding that, even though we now cannot see how the phenomenal supervenes on the physical, it does anyway, and perhaps future developments will make this clear. Thus, what starts out as a Type B physicalist strategy becomes a Type C strategy (following David Chalmers 2002 on this typology).

This paper explores the epistemological problem of holding something to be true while building on Wittgenstein’s later philosophy. I claim that it was Frege’s criticism of psychologism in logic that gave a boost to Wittgenstein’s reflections on this issue, an issue that already occupies a central place in Kant’s theory of knowledge. I shall endeavour to show that Wittgenstein’s considerations on rule-following and the systematic character of belief not only make evident the shortcomings of Frege’s explanation of how the mind works but also take a step forward in overcoming the flaws of Kantian epistemology. The later Wittgenstein, I argue, goes further than Kant in the recognition that truth cannot attain more objectivity than the expression of our holding for true, but this does not mean endorsing any subjectivism.

Does moral philosophy corrupt? Socrates spent his days talking with many others about goodness and virtue and suchlike, and, partly as a result of showing them how very ignorant they were about such things, he was eventually charged with corrupting the youth. Much more recently, Raimond Gaita has claimed that there are some things it is evil to believe or even to think, and that academic philosophy nevertheless instructs us to seriously consider such things. He lays two charges, that this is corrupt in itself, and corrupt in the effects it risks—anyone who seriously considers whether evil is an illusion is already morally corrupt, he claims, not to mention the risk that they might end up actually believing it. The aim of this paper is to examine whether moral philosophy as practiced today is susceptible to Gaita’s charges.

This paper distinguishes two different uses of the analogy between colors and values, the projectivist and the objectivist. The projectivist use of the analogy has a long history, which goes back to Hume. The objectivist use of the analogy is a fairly recent addition. The core contention of this paper is that the projectivist’s use fails, and that only the objectivist offers a genuine use for the analogy between colors and values.

This article explores the ties existing between the philosophies of Alasdair MacIntyre and Hans-Georg Gadamer. A comparison between these two contemporary authors shows that they diverge fundamentally as to the role accorded to language in their thinking. For Gadamer, language occupies the place royale. MacIntyre doesn’t accord it the same role and, in so doing, intends to restore metaphysics to its place of honor. Gadamer is felt to have masked the roles of both theoria and metaphysics in Aristotle’s philosophy. That said, the convergences between the two philosophers are quite numerous. This article studies them in detail. Essentially, they have to do with the central role of ethos for both of them. The comparison concludes with a particular focus on one last divergence. If they are very close to one another in measuring the influence of ethos on all human inquiry, they ultimately diverge as to the telos of that inquiry, a sign of their different understandings of language.

This paper argues that Michael Dummett’s proposed distinction between a declarative sentence’s “assertoric content” and “ingredient sense” is not in fact supported by what Dummett presents as paradigmatic evidence in its support.

Noel Hendrickson argues that the coarse-grained account of action individuation is unwittingly committed to the metaphysical thesis that all causation is deterministic. I show that the argument does not succeed. On one of the interpretations, all the argument shows is that the minimalists are committed to deterministic causation in a manner of speaking, which is quite compatible with sui generis indeterministic causation. On another, the problem is that minimalism is taken to be committed to a necessary identity claim where the view is only committed to a contingent identity claim. I explore other strategies of saving the argument. In particular, I consider whether the argument will succeed if the designators in question are rigid. I argue that there are principled reasons for thinking that such a strategy must fail.

Stage Theory is the view that ordinary objects are instantaneous things. Nevertheless, an object O can have counterparts, which are instantaneous objects appropriately related to O. O “persists” by way of its counterparts. In this paper, I argue that stage theory implies that persons cannot do temporally extended acts, since in order to do such an act, one must do each part of the act, and no instantaneous person can do each part of a temporally extended act. Thus, since it is obvious that persons do temporally extended acts, we should reject stage theory.

In reply to my criticism of his argument for the fine-grained theory of action individuation, Hendrickson proposes a new argument. He notes that there is a kind of indeterminacy with respect to Caesar’s death in the case of Brutus’s stabbing of Caesar that is missing in the case of Brutus’s killing of Caesar. He argues that the best explanation for the indeterminacy is given by the fine-grained view. I show that the argument fails for similar reasons. Minimalists have good reasons not to accept a crucial premise, viz., that the indeterminacy is metaphysical rather than merely linguistic.

In “Doing Without Morality” Richard Kraut argues that Aristotle does not work with moral concepts such as moral rightness and duty. One of his arguments is that Aristotle treats wit as a virtue of character but not a moral virtue in Nicomachean Ethics IV.8 and that this treatment should be extended to all the virtues of character. Though sympathetic to his conclusion, I offer three reasons for thinking that wit is ill-suited to play the role in which Kraut casts it: first, what Aristotle says about wit elsewhere in the NE calls its status as a character virtue into question; second, the taxonomy of virtue and vice implicit in NE IV suggests that wit is not a full-fledged character virtue; and third, in Eudemian Ethics III.7 Aristotle holds that wit is not a virtue of character. Along the way I discuss some intriguing complexities in Aristotle’s taxonomy of virtues and vices and suggest that Aristotle has the resources to make a principled distinction between personality and character traits.

This paper offers a new look at Whitehead’s criticism of Leibniz’s metaphysics and at the role this criticism plays in the broader context of Whitehead’s philosophy. A re-evaluation of Whitehead’s reading is called for since he takes his own system as an elaboration of the Leibnizian one, and as an effort to overcome what he deemed its major difficulties. Whitehead’s alternative, which is formulated in terms of real connectivity among basic constituents, is aimed at solving what he takes to be the most problematic issue within Leibniz’s system, namely, the analysis of phenomenal continuity. However, I claim that Whitehead’s criticism obscures the fact that he is much closer to Leibniz than he is willing to admit.