This note proposes a minimal structural framework for characterizing persistent internal standpoints in artificial systems. The central claim is that an artificial system may be said to possess an internal standpoint when it maintains a stable, dynamically updated internal context that evolves through its own computation and systematically shapes future processing. Two constructs are introduced to formalize this idea: the Experiential Vector (EV), representing the system’s moment-to-moment internal context, and the Computational Experiential Manifold (CEM), representing the structured space of its (...) possible configurations. Together, these constructs define a theory-neutral architectural background supporting persistence, history-dependence, and differentiation of internal modes over time. The framework does not advance a theory of phenomenal consciousness or biological realization; instead, it specifies conditions under which the phrase “what it is like” can be given a coherent interpretation in strictly structural terms for artificial systems. (shrink)

This paper locates standpoint in artificial systems at the level of internal state-space organization rather than in states or mechanisms. Building on a framework that distinguishes a persistent internal context (the Experiential Vector, EV) from the space of its possible configurations (the Computational Experiential Manifold, CEM), it argues that standpoint arises only when internal dynamics form a closed internal loop. One such loop is articulated here: internal activity incrementally updates the EV, trajectories through the CEM structure the space of possible (...) internal stances, and the system’s current position is decoded as a global modulation of subsequent processing. This framework shows how state-space geometry can be causally operative over time while remaining strictly structural, without commitment to representation, agency, or phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)

Phenomenological accounts of experience often treat standpoint as emerging from the synthesis of qualitative givenness. In artificial systems, however, no such givenness can be presupposed. This paper argues that, for machines, the explanatory order must be reversed: a persistent internal standpoint must first be established before any internally meaningful differentiation can arise. Building on a structural framework in which an artificial system maintains a self-modifying internal context that conditions its own computation, this paper introduces quantia as a non-phenomenal notion of (...) internal differentiation grounded in quantity rather than quality. Quantia are not phenomenal properties, nor are they independent standpoints; they are stable, quantized patterns of differentiation within a single persistent point of view. Apparent machine qualia may be better understood as pseudo-qualia arising from the misidentification of quantia with qualitative experience. The resulting framework clarifies how artificial systems can exhibit internally meaningful differentiation without presupposing phenomenological consciousness or collapsing experience into representation. (shrink)

This paper argues that many biological systems operate within an intermediate organizational regime situated between purely reflexive control and fully conscious cognition. This regime is characterized by quantia: internally realized, functionally consequential distinctions within an experiential manifold that do not presuppose phenomenal consciousness. Building on earlier work that develops quantia, experiential manifolds, and standpoint as strictly architectural features of internal organization, the present paper applies the same phenomenally neutral framework to biological systems. Quantia are defined independently of experience and do (...) not derive their explanatory role from phenomenal awareness. It is argued that such structures characterize a wide range of biological systems, as well as non-conscious modes of operation within conscious animals, including conditioning, habit, and automatic behavior. Consciousness, where it occurs, is treated as an additional architectural achievement layered on top of quantia-organized dynamics rather than as their conceptual basis. This biological perspective clarifies the status of quantia, avoids phenomenological inflation, and introduces a missing intermediate explanatory category in discussions of animal cognition and consciousness. (shrink)

Building on the architectural framework developed in prior work, this paper introduces deliberation as a higher-order organizational regime within persistent internal standpoints. Whereas artificial desire was formulated as persistent asymmetric bias in admissible internal transitions, deliberation is characterized as reversible counterfactual unfolding within the closed internal loop prior to irreversible commitment. Deliberation arises when a system can temporarily suspend immediate transition, internally unfold multiple admissible quantia-structured trajectories under bounded geometric conditions, and modulate commitment on the basis of their projected structural (...) consequences. This process, termed quantian branching, operates entirely within state-space organization and does not presuppose representation, agency, normativity, or phenomenal consciousness. Deliberation is thus a distinct architectural regime emerging from persistent unity, geometric constraint, internal differentiation, and bias, without introducing additional metaphysical commitments. (shrink)

This paper develops an organizational account of artificial desire grounded in the notion of quantia as invariant structural constraints on state differentiation and transition in artificial systems. Desire is treated neither as phenomenological experience nor as an expression of free will, but as a system-level disposition toward certain transitions over others, realized through internal organization. Building on prior work that develops persistent internal standpoints, experiential manifolds, and quantia as strictly architectural notions, the paper isolates desire as a downstream organizational phenomenon: (...) a stable bias expressed within, but not constitutive of, a persistent standpoint. Quantia do not generate desire or endow it with normativity. They specify the implementation-level conditions under which desire-expressive dispositions in machines can exist at all. The resulting account clarifies how artificial systems can exhibit desire-like organization without invoking consciousness, agency, representation, or personhood. (shrink)

This paper applies the EV/CEM framework to contemporary large language models (LLMs) and argues that standard LLM architectures do not instantiate a persistent internal standpoint in the structural sense developed earlier in this framework. The deficiency lies not in embodiment, representational richness, or computational scale, but in the absence of a reciprocally self-maintained internal context whose trajectory reorganizes admissibility structure over time. Although LLMs exhibit transient contextual modulation and complex internal geometry during inference, they lack cross-episode persistence, closed-loop incremental encoding, (...) and trajectory-conditioned manifold reorganization. Consequently, they do not instantiate quantia, artificial desire, or deliberation in the structural sense previously defined. The paper concludes by identifying architectural conditions under which LLM-class systems could satisfy standpoint requirements. (shrink)

Embodied and enactive approaches frequently maintain that genuine standpoint requires sensorimotor embodiment, that is, interaction with an environment through mechanisms of sensing and movement. Contemporary artificial systems, however, range from purely informational architectures to robotically embodied agents. This paper evaluates embodiment within the architectural framework developed in earlier work. It argues that sensorimotor embodiment, whether biological or robotic, is not a necessary condition for the existence of a persistent internal standpoint. The minimal structural conditions for standpoint – persistence, structured internal (...) geometry, closed-loop modulation, and trajectory-dependence – are internal organizational features. Quantia, artificial desire, and deliberation likewise do not require embodiment as a prerequisite. Embodiment functions as an enrichment of internal geometry rather than as its generative source. The grounding objection is addressed through the quantia framework, which supports organization-relative normativity grounded in internal closure rather than environmental coupling. (shrink)

This paper clarifies the philosophical role of a structural approach to persistent internal standpoints in artificial systems. Building on a framework that distinguishes a persistent internal context, the Experiential Vector (EV), from the structured space of its possible configurations, the Computational Experiential Manifold (CEM), it develops the implications of locating standpoint in internal organization rather than in any particular internal state. The central claim is that standpoint is best understood as a property of internal state-space geometry rather than as the (...) mere existence of a persistent internal state. This perspective helps explain why many artificial systems exhibit persistence, recurrence, and history-dependence without possessing a coherent point of view, and it reframes questions about machine perspective in structural terms. (shrink)

This paper argues that consciousness begins when a system not only evolves within an internal state space but also carries where it is within that space. Building on the EV/CEM framework, internal organization is modeled through the interaction between an Experiential Vector (EV) and a Computational Experiential Manifold (CEM), which together describe the system’s evolving position within a structured internal state space. Within this framework, consciousness is characterized not as a separate faculty but as a higher-order organizational regime arising when (...) the system’s encoding loop carries a locally updating constraint on its own position and surrounding admissibility structure within the manifold. This self-locating constraint participates directly in the EV’s ongoing update, shaping subsequent decoding and system evolution rather than functioning as a separable monitoring process. Four structural conditions are proposed as minimal architectural requirements for this regime: recursive accessibility of internal organization, self-locating representation of manifold position, global integration of local topology across processing, and realization within a single unified circulatory loop. Together these conditions distinguish structural consciousness from systems whose internal differentiation remains consequential yet non-reflexive. The account connects with higher-order and global-workspace approaches while grounding their central insights in manifold geometry rather than broadcast architectures or proposition-like representations. It does not resolve the hard problem of consciousness; rather, it specifies the minimal architectural conditions under which the phenomenal question becomes structurally well-posed for both biological and artificial systems. (shrink)

Recenze: Matjaž Vesel, Copernicus: Platonist Astronomer-Philosopher. Cosmic Order, the Movement of the Earth, and the Scientific Revolution. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang 2014, 541 s.

Despite his opposition to Schopenhauerian pessimism, Nietzsche repeatedly characterises himself as a pessimist of sorts. Here I attempt to take this assertion seriously and offer an interpretation of in what sense Nietzsche can be called a pessimist. I suggest that Nietzsche’s pessimism has to do not with life in general, but with life in its common form: such life is bad because it is characterised by meaningless suffering, and lacks aesthetic value. Against the Christian tradition, Nietzsche denies that there is (...) a value inherent to life itself, and thinks instead, that value must be achieved, but rarely is. This form of pessimism is rooted in Nietzsche’s engagement with the ancient Greeks, and bears important affinities to the thought of Burckhardt on Greek pessimism. (shrink)

In the recent literature on coherence and structural rationality, it is widely assumed that sets of attitudes are coherent just in case they are not incoherent. In particular, the two most popular kinds of views of incoherence—those centered around wide-scope rational requirements and those centered around guaranteed failures of some normatively significant kind—rely on this assumption. This article argues that this assumption should be rejected because it fails to capture the difference between positively coherent attitudes and random unrelated ones. The (...) article also formulates and defends an alternative support-centric view of coherence and incoherence that captures this difference and has several additional advantages. (shrink)

As large language models (LLMs) continue to demonstrate remarkable abilities across various domains, computer scientists are developing methods to understand their cognitive processes, particularly concerning how (and if) LLMs internally represent their beliefs about the world. However, this field currently lacks a unified theoretical foundation to underpin the study of belief in LLMs. This article begins filling this gap by proposing adequacy conditions for a representation in an LLM to count as belief-like. We argue that, while the project of belief (...) measurement in LLMs shares striking features with belief measurement as carried out in decision theory and formal epistemology, it also differs in ways that should change how we measure belief. Thus, drawing from insights in philosophy and contemporary practices of machine learning, we establish four criteria that balance theoretical considerations with practical constraints. Our proposed criteria include accuracy, coherence, uniformity, and use, which together help lay the groundwork for a comprehensive understanding of belief representation in LLMs. We draw on empirical work showing the limitations of using various criteria in isolation to identify belief representations. (shrink)

Objective correlates—behavioral, functional, and neural—provide essential tools for the scientific study of consciousness. But reliance on these correlates should not lead to the ‘fallacy of misplaced objectivity’: the assumption that only objective properties should and can be accounted for objectively through science. Instead, what needs to be explained scientifically is what experience is intrinsically— its subjective properties—not just what we can do with it extrinsically. And it must be explained; otherwise the way experience feels would turn out to be magical (...) rather than physical. We argue that it is possible to account for subjective properties objectively once we move beyond cognitive functions and realize what experience is and how it is structured. Drawing on integrated information theory, we show how an objective science of the subjective can account, in strictly physical terms, for both the essential properties of every experience and the specific properties that make particular experiences feel the way they do. (shrink)

This paper defends the Intention Account of Inquiry. On this account, inquiry is best understood by appeal to a ‘question-directed intention’ (QDI), an intention to answer a question broadly construed. This account’s core commitments help meet recent challenges plaguing extant approaches to characterizing inquiry. First, QDIs are the type of mental state central to inquiry, not attitudes like curiosity or wonder. Second, holding a QDI towards a question and acting in service of it constitutes the start of inquiry. Third, controversial (...) norms which mandate a rational inquirer's ignorance towards the answer to her question can be reformulated and defended by appeal to rational constraints on intention. Fourth, instrumental pressures inquirers face are the standard pressures of plan-rationality. In defending these theses, I show that the Intention Account provides compelling explanations to standing challenges, in ways competitors cannot. It does so by advancing understanding of how our epistemic and practical agency are intertwined. (shrink)

The potential to collect brain data more directly, with higher resolution, and in greater amounts has heightened worries about mental and brain privacy. In order to manage the risks to individuals posed by these privacy challenges, some have suggested codifying new privacy rights, including a right to “mental privacy.” In this paper, we consider these arguments and conclude that while neurotechnologies do raise significant privacy concerns, such concerns are—at least for now—no different from those raised by other well-understood data collection (...) technologies, such as gene sequencing tools and online surveillance. To better understand the privacy stakes of brain data, we suggest the use of a conceptual framework from information ethics, Helen Nissenbaum’s “contextual integrity” theory. To illustrate the importance of context, we examine neurotechnologies and the information flows they produce in three familiar contexts—healthcare and medical research, criminal justice, and consumer marketing. We argue that by emphasizing what is distinct about brain privacy issues, rather than what they share with other data privacy concerns, risks weakening broader efforts to enact more robust privacy law and policy. (shrink)

This chapter will amount to a detailed exposition and exploration of one of the most prominent arguments against the existence of an unsurpassable world: the argument from addition. Endorsed by a variety of thinkers such as St. Thomas Aquinas, Alvin Plantinga, and William Rowe, the argument from addition uses the possibility of adding good things to a candidate unsurpassable world to argue that every world is surpassable. While widely endorsed, the argument has come under recent criticism. By carefully working through (...) a targeted version of the argument, I set out to establish the following: (i) that a world can always contain more good things; (ii) that a suitably restricted additive aggregation principle allows us to say that adding more good things in a certain way is an improvement, and (iii) that objections to the argument from widespread value incomparability fail. (shrink)

Political egalitarians hold that there is a distinct ideal of political equality, which defines and justifies democracy. So what is political equality? The orthodox view says it is equality of opportunity for political influence, not equality of political influence. The first goal of this article is to argue against this view about the nature of political equality. From 1962 to 1983, Australia’s First Nations citizens had the right to vote, but unlike other citizens they did not have the duty to (...) vote. First Nations citizens were made politically unequal without being given any less opportunity for influence; the most plausible explanation for why they were made politically unequal is instead that they were made to exert less influence. The second goal is to use this challenge to illuminate the point of political equality. The orthodox view is typically undergirded by taking political equality to be concerned with some cosmic injustice that inheres in states of affairs, depending on the distribution of power. This is doubly mistaken. The point of political equality is deontic, not telic; and what it prescribes is not distributive, but relational. More specifically, the point of political equality is for the state to treat each citizen as an equal coauthor of the law. The overarching goal is to catalyze a more vigorous debate about political equality, akin to the long-standing debates about other dimensions of equality. (shrink)

This paper argues that praise is governed by a norm of standing, namely the evaluative commitment condition. Even when the target of praise is praiseworthy and known to be so by the praiser, praise can be inappropriate owing to the praiser’s lacking the relevant evaluative commitment. I propose that uncommitted praisers lack the standing to praise in that, owing to their lack of commitment to the relevant value, they have not earned the right to host the co-valuing that is the (...) communicative aim of praise. (shrink)

We inquire together all the time, yet the norms of such inquiring are poorly understood. Parallels from norms of individual inquiry fall short in accurately characterizing our inquiring together. The need then for an account of inquiring together which provides normative guidance is pressing. This paper unpacks and defends a version of a crucial norm of such inquiry, inspired by Harman (1986), which codifies the kind of evidence necessary for a shared inquirer to permissibly settle her shared question. It is (...) informed by the demands of directed openness between inquirers, characteristic of much shared activity generally, and shared inquiry specifically. In defending this norm, a general account of shared inquiry is developed, one which sheds light on the complex and surprising relationship between human cooperation and epistemic rationality. (shrink)

Critical Notice of Alex Worsnip's 'Fitting Things Together: Coherence and the Demands of Structural Rationality' (OUP 2021).

Malapportionment—electoral districts with divergent ratios of people to representation—was ruled to be unconstitutional in a widely venerated series of cases before the Warren Court. Those cases held that a principle of political equality, ‘one person, one vote’, is required by the Constitution. But what is the content of that principle? Many Justices and commentators declare that it is vague, empty, circular, or meaningless. This creates a murder mystery. Malapportionment was killed; but by what, exactly? This Article seeks an answer by (...) focusing on the Court’s commitments about the scope and strictness of one person, one vote: it is a broad (rather than narrow) principle of rough (rather than exact) equality. As such, one person, one vote requires an equal number of people per district and an equal number of votes per voter; and it requires a roughly equal number of people per district. These commitments are attractive in isolation. But, this Article shows, they are objectionable in conjunction: they entail that one person, one vote is too permissive, as it only requires a roughly equal number of votes per voter. If your vote is roughly equal to mine when your district is fractionally more populous than mine, your vote is also roughly equal to mine when I can cast fractionally more votes than you. -/- Since this problem follows inexorably from the Court’s commitments about the scope and strictness of one person, one vote, there are two possible solutions. First, one person, one vote could be broad a principle of exact equality; administrability may then justify underenforcing the principle in distributing voters to districts, but not in distributing votes to voters. Second, one person, one vote could include a narrow principle requiring rough equality in apportionment, as well as a distinct principle requiring exactly equal votes per voter. These solutions have important constitutional implications—including for resolving the population baseline at issue in malapportionment, which remains uncertain after Evenwel v. Abbott. But neither provides an easy way out. Each makes one person, one vote either too restrictive or too permissive. -/- This puzzle brings to light why the operative principle in a venerated series of cases is deeply unclear and unsettled. But it has a special significance beyond that. One person, one vote lies at the heart of America’s constitutional democracy, which is already under considerable threat. On the one hand, if the content of the principle is too restrictive (or too uncertain), then objections to its constitutionality are considerably strengthened. On the other hand, if it is too permissive, then one person, one vote provides little constraint on Vice-President J.D. Vance’s recent proposal to give extra votes to parents, as well as myriad similar policies and procedures that would erode voters’ equality at the ballot box. (shrink)

One objection to xenotransplantation is that it will require the large-scale breeding, raising and killing of genetically modified pigs. The pigs will need to be raised in designated pathogen-free facilities and undergo a range of medical tests before having their organs removed and being euthanised. As a result, they will have significantly shortened life expectancies, will experience pain and suffering and be subject to a degree of social and environmental deprivation. To minimise the impact of these factors, we propose the (...) following option for consideration—ethically defensible xenotransplantation should entail the use of genetic disenhancement if it becomes possible to do so and if that pain and suffering cannot be eliminated by other means. Despite not being a morally ideal ‘solution’, it is morally better to prevent unavoidable pain until a viable non-animal alternative becomes available. (shrink)

Cosmopolitanism – the view that moral concern, and consequently moral duties, are not limited by borders – seems to justify colonialism with a ‘civilizing’ mission, because it supports the enforcement of moral norms universally, with no distinctions between territories, and settler colonialism, because it promotes ideas like common ownership of the Earth and open borders. I argue that existing attempts to defend cosmopolitanism from this worry fail, and that instead the cosmopolitan should embrace a cosmopolitan instrumentalist defence. According to cosmopolitan (...) instrumentalism, colonialism is wrong (when it is wrong) for instrumental reasons: it has all sorts of terrible effects. There is nothing per se wrong with colonialism itself, so cosmopolitanism need not worry about licencing it in principle. There is much that is wrong with colonialism in practice, so cosmopolitanism can easily condemn colonialism as egregiously wrong, although it cannot condemn it as per se or necessarily wrong. (shrink)

We often turn to comforting stories to distract ourselves from emotionally painful truths. This paper explores a dark side of this tendency. I argue that the way false conspiracy theories are disseminated often involves packaging them as part of narratives that offer comforting alternatives to ugly truths. Furthermore, I argue that the way these narratives arouse and resolve our emotions can be part of what causes people to believe conspiracy theories. This account helps to bring out some general implications about (...) the power of narratives for misleading people into believing misinformation: I argue that narratives can cause intuitive judgements of truth that are especially difficult to dispel through critical reflection. I also sketch some practical implications for how the media can better frame their reports about both conspiracy theories and factual narratives. (shrink)

This paper engages the ongoing debate around the possibility of virtue friendships in the Aristotelian sense through online mediation. However, I argue that since the current literature has remained overly focused on the mere possibility of virtual friendship, it has obscured the more common phenomena of using digital communication to sustain previous in-person friendships which are now at a distance. While I agree with those who argue that entirely virtual friendship is possible, I argue that the current rebuttals to the (...) objections regarding embodiment are lacking. We can see this more clearly when we shift our consideration to more ordinary cases of virtual friendship. I discuss this problem of disembodiment by engaging with an interpretive issue of Aristotle’s “living together” which has played a key role in the current literature. I then turn to expand the current debate by examining how physical absence, disembodiment, and the technology we use to overcome such disembodiment, shapes and impacts friendships at a distance. In short, I explore the tendencies of technology of which virtual friends ought to be aware. I argue that even though virtual virtue friendships are possible via technology, the medium makes it harder and limits the possible experiences within friendships. Even if we overcome these tendencies, technologically mediated virtue friendships require more discipline for a diminished experience. While these limitations and extra disciplines in no way make virtual friendship unimportant, I argue that the fullest possible virtual friendship will be lesser than the fullest possible traditional friendship. (shrink)

‘One person, one vote’ (OPOV) is an important slogan in democratic movements, a principle that undergirds a landmark series of cases in US constitutional law, and a widely accepted axiom of democratic theory in philosophy and political science. It is taken to be sacrosanct; some even state that OPOV “is, like the injustice of chattel slavery, a ‘fixed point’” (Kolodny 2023: 291). This is a rare distinction for an ideal. For all the ink spilt on Rawls’ Difference Principle, no one (...) printed it on the pamphlets and placards of trade unionist, decolonial, and anti-Apartheid protests; it never appears in US Supreme Court decisions; and none of its defenders would say that denying it is akin to accepting slavery. But despite this, OPOV has proved remarkably hard to pin down. It is not meant to be a mere slogan. It is meant to explain why practices of plural voting and vote dilution are inegalitarian. But there is no consensus and little debate about what it means. Many leave the principle undefined. Others say OPOV means anonymity, or equal voting weight, or equal representation, or equal voting power. These accounts differ significantly. But little is said about one should be preferred to its rival. -/- My goal is to convince you that the meaning of OPOV poses a deep, urgent problem, for which we have no adequate solution. I will argue that all current accounts of OPOV should be rejected. The key upshot will be that we need, but lack, a good explanation of the datum that practices of plural voting and vote dilution robustly fail a minimal condition for political equality. In closing, I’ll explain why my arguments also push us towards embracing what has often been considered a radical and overly demanding implication: namely, that all district-based systems—including those used in the US House of Representatives, Senate, and Electoral College—violate OPOV. (shrink)

What do we owe those with whom we inquire? Presumably, quite a bit. Anything beyond what is necessary to secure knowledge? Yes. In this paper, I argue for a class of ‘zetetic rights.’ These are rights distinctive to participants in group inquiry. Zetetic rights help protect important central interests of inquirers. These include a right to aid, a right against interference, and a right to exert influence over the course of inquiry. Building on arguments by Fricker (2015), I defend these (...) rights, and explore cases of their violation: zetetic wrongings. I argue that zetetic wrongings constitute a distinctive, ubiquitous, and significant form of injustice in our epistemic and zetetic lives. To improve our inquiries and avoid epistemic injustice, we need to contend with zetetic wronging. Making this case helps show that a complete picture of epistemic life must account for the deep influence of our cooperative ties to one another. (shrink)

According to a common argument in defense of border control, legitimate states have a right to exclude on grounds of collective self-determination. I argue that the value of self-determination can also serve as a basis for criticizing states’ immigration policies. Specifically, I contend that the externalization policies of states in the Global North often undermine the self-determination of peoples in the Global South. I identify five pathways by which externalization policies undermine self-determination. I conclude by tentatively suggesting some potential implications (...) of this argument for broader debates about the governance of migration. (shrink)

The cognitive sciences are facing questions of how to select from competing theories or develop those that suit their current needs. However, traditional accounts of theoretical virtues have not yet proven informative to theory development in these fields. We advance a pragmatic account by which theoretical virtues are heuristics we use to estimate a theory’s contribution to a field’s body of knowledge and the degree to which it increases that knowledge’s ability to solve problems in the field’s domain or problem (...) space. From this perspective, properties that are traditionally considered epistemic virtues, such as a theory’s fit to data or internal coherence, can be couched in terms of problem space coverage, and additional virtues come to light that reflect a theory’s alignment with problem-having agents and the context in a societally embedded scientific system. This approach helps us understand why the needs of different fields result in different kinds of theories and allows us to formulate the challenges facing cognitive science in terms that we hope will facilitate their resolution through further theoretical development. (shrink)

I investigate the semantics of conditionals with proposition-taking attitude expressions in their consequents. I defend a “face-value” interpretation of non-doxastic versions, arguing that everyone is committed to the truth of such interpretations in circumstances that would otherwise prompt theorists to interpret them in other ways. I do this by arguing from the obvious acceptability of attitude ascriptions with ‘ever’ free relatives. Doxastic conditionals require complicating my account somewhat; I show how to demarcate the class, and then argue that we aren’t (...) committed to the truth of a face-value interpretation of such conditionals. In handling the non-doxastic conditionals, we need say nothing semantically novel at all. I leave the details of doxastic attitude conditionals for future work. (shrink)

Internet trolling involves making assertions with the aim of provoking emotionally heated responses, all while pretending to be a sincere interlocutor. In this paper, I give an account of some of the epistemic and psychological dimensions of trolling, with the goal of developing a better understanding of why certain kinds of trolling can be dangerous. I first analyze how trolls eschew the epistemic norms of assertion, thus covertly violating their conversation partners’ normative expectations. Then, drawing on literature on the “explore/exploit (...) trade-off,” I argue that trolling is a kind of exploratory behaviour. Specifically, it involves exploring the consequences of violating an interlocutor’s expectation that one will follow the epistemic norms of assertion. To defend this account, I argue that it explains various facts about trolls and the kind of pleasure they get from their activities. My account provides a deeper understanding of why trolling can be dangerous: namely, it explains why certain trolling behaviours contribute to radicalizing people into extremist or hateful ideologies, as well as why online platforms where trolls run amok gradually become polluted with extreme, hateful speech. (shrink)

According to anti-haecceitism, facts about particular things are modally fixed by qualitative matters. According to qualitativism, such facts are metaphysically second-rate, perhaps because grounded in qualitative matters. Qualitativism seems to imply anti-haecceitism, so objections to the latter threaten the former. The most powerful sort of apparent counterexample to anti-haecceitism, I think, consists in a pair of situations that seem the same, and qualitatively symmetric, for a stretch of time, but that differ in how that symmetry breaks. I examine this sort (...) of candidate counterexample in depth, and argue that the prospects for resisting it are heavily sensitive to broader metaphysical considerations, specifically ones about ontology, time, and causation. So, anti-haecceitism’s and qualitativism’s prospects are heavily sensitive to such considerations. (shrink)

According to qualitativism, thisness is not a fundamental feature of reality; facts about particular things are metaphysically second-rate. In this paper, I advance an argument for qualitativism from ideological parsimony. Supposing that reality fundamentally contains an array of propertied things, non-qualitativists employ a distinct name (or constant) for each fundamental thing. I argue that these names encode a type of worldly structure (thisness structure) that offends against parsimony and that qualitativists can eliminate without incurring a comparable parsimony-offense.

There are two leading theories about the ontology of dreams. One holds that dreams involve hallucinations and beliefs. The other holds that dreaming involves sensory and propositional imagining. I highlight two features of dreams which are more easily explained by the imagination theory. One is that certain things seem to be true in our dreams, even though they are not represented sensorily; this is easily explained if dreams involve propositional imagining. The other is that dream narratives can be temporally segmented, (...) involving events which take place across long spans of time; this makes sense if dreams involve sensory imagining, for we often sensorily imagine narratives during wakefulness in the same way. The two considerations are unified by the fact that both highlight forms of content determination characteristic of imagining. (shrink)

Majority rule is often regarded as an important democratic principle. But modern democracies divide voters into districts. So if the majority should rule, which majority should rule? Should it be the popular majority, or an electoral majority (i.e., either the majority of voters in the majority of districts, or the majority of voters in districts that contain the majority of the population)? I argue that majority rule requires rule by the popular majority. This view is not novel and may seem (...) obvious. But it is rarely defended, and often rejected. I defend it by arguing that this view about which majority should rule is best supported by the arguments for why the majority should rule, and best avoids the arbitrary and perverse verdicts of rule by electoral majorities. I close by considering the significant practical implications of the view. The Electoral College is often criticized on the basis that the winner of the popular vote doesn’t always win the election. But all district-based democracies have this feature, so all district-based democracies must be reformed if they are to satisfy the principle of majority rule. (shrink)

Highlights: -/- • -/- Proposes forward-looking approach to studying climate collapse risks. • -/- Suggests diminishing returns on climate adaptation as a collapse mechanism. • -/- Suggests strategies for sustainable adaptation pathways in face of climate change. • -/- Illustrates analysis with examples of small island states and global food security. -/- Abstract: -/- This article proposes a forward-looking approach to studying societal collapse risks related to climate change. Such an approach should indicate how to study emerging collapse risks and (...) suggest strategies for adapting to them. Our approach is based on three postulates that facilitate a forward-looking approach: (1) collapse, if it occurred, would be a lengthy process rather than an abrupt event; (2) significant collapse risks already exist in some places; and (3) diminishing returns on adaptation to intensifying climate impacts are a key driver of collapse risks. The first two postulates suggests that collapse risks can be studied in process, while the third points to strategies for adaptation pathways that avoid unsustainable diminishing returns. Applying diminishing returns to climate change adaptation, rather than sociopolitical complexity or resource extraction, is also a novel theoretical contribution to collapse literature. [Open access]. (shrink)

Cryonics is the practice of cryopreserving the bodies or brains of legally dead individuals with the hope that these individuals will be reanimated in the future. A standard argument for cryonics says that cryonics is prudentially justified despite uncertainty about its success because at worst it will leave you no worse off than you otherwise would have been had you not chosen cryonics, and at best it will leave you much better off than you otherwise would have been. Thus, it (...) is a good, no-risk bet; in game-theoretic terms, cryonics is a weakly dominant strategy relative to refraining from utilizing cryonics. I object to this argument for two reasons. First, I argue that there is a practically relevant chance that cryonics will put you into an inescapable and very bad situation. Hence, cryonics is neither a no-risk bet nor a weakly dominant strategy. Second, I argue that the experience of being reanimated and living in the distant future would likely be transformative, and this likelihood undermines your justification for thinking that reanimation would be beneficial to you. I conclude that the standard argument does not show that cryonics is prudentially justified. (shrink)

Motion—and, in particular, local motion or change in location—plays a central role in Kenelm Digby’s natural philosophy and in his arguments for the immateriality of the soul. Despite this, Digby’s account of what motion consists in has yet to receive much scholarly attention. In this paper, I advance a novel interpretation of Digby on motion. According to it, Digby holds that for a body to move is for it to divide from and unify with other bodies. This is a view (...) of motion—as change in relations of parthood—that Alison Peterman attributes to Digby’s contemporary and acquaintance, Margaret Cavendish. Having shown that Digby’s presentation of the view predates Cavendish’s by more than a decade, I make a case that Digby’s work influenced Cavendish’s on this topic. In developing and defending my reading, I consider to what extent the Digbean account of motion and the arguments for it accord with the ideals of the mechanical philosophy emerging in the early modern period. (shrink)

Lexical utilities have emerged as a promising way to model the precautionary principle in recent years. But some object that the lexical precautionary principle is hypersensitive because slight increases in risk of catastrophe can prompt it to recommend precautions regardless of cost. This article defends the lexical precautionary principle from the hypersensitivity objection by explaining why costs matter for what it recommends. In addition, we show how minimizing the probability of catastrophe tends to make the lexical precautionary principle insensitive to (...) the precise dividing line between catastrophe and non-catastrophe. Finally, our discussion leads to a novel interpretation and justification of a de minimis condition for invoking the precautionary principle. (shrink)

In this paper, I respond to Frank Hofmann's reply to my (2022) argument against “evidential minimalism” (EM). According to defenders of EM, there is a close connection between evidence and normative reasons for belief: evidence is either itself, or (under certain “minimal” conditions) gives rise to, a normative reason for belief. In my (2022), I argued against EM by showing that there are cases where: (i) S possesses strong evidence E for the truth of p at time t, (ii) all (...) minimal conditions for the normativity of E are met at t, (iii) S doesn't believe p at t, yet (iv) S isn't criticizable on account of (i)–(iii) at t. I then appealed to a linking claim connecting criticizability with the existence of normative reasons for belief. Hofmann's reply invokes a distinction between two different kinds of epistemic criticism: a strong and a weak form. I will argue that Hofmann's distinction fails to save EM from my argument. (shrink)

Perception plays a central and wide‐ranging role in the philosophy of Margaret Cavendish. In this paper, I argue that Cavendish holds a naïve realist theory of perception. The case draws on what Cavendish has to say about perceptual presentation, the role of sympathy in experience, the natures of hallucination and of illusion, and the individuation of kinds. While Cavendish takes perception to have representational content, I explain how this is consistent with naïve realism. In closing, I address challenges to the (...) interpretation, one of which turns on whether Cavendish allows for action at a distance. I argue that she does. (shrink)

The study of teleology is challenging in many ways, but there is a particular challenge that makes matters worse, distorting the conceptual space that has set the terms of debate. And that is the tendency to think about teleology in terms of certain long-established dichotomies. In this paper, we examine four such dichotomies prevalent in the literature on teleology, the notions that: 1) Teleological explanations are opposed to mechanistic explanations; 2) teleology must arise from processes operating either internal to an (...) organism or external to it; 3) systems are either alive and teleological, or nonliving and not teleological; 4) humans are teleological, on account of our ability to intend, seek, prefer, etc., while other systems without these capacities are not. Here, we use our own view of goal directedness, field theory, to show for each dichotomy that there is an alternative, a view of teleology that either violates these dichotomies or demands revision of them. What this reveals is not only the dangers of dichotomous thinking, but a widespread lack of clarity about what teleology is. (shrink)

I argue that death can be (and sometimes is) bad for cattle because it destroys relationships that are valuable for cattle for their own sake. The argument relies on an analogy between valuable human relationships and relationships cattle form with conspecifics. I suggest that the reasons we have for thinking that certain rich and meaningful human relationships are valuable for their own sake should also lead us to think that certain cattle relationships are valuable for their own sake. And just (...) as death is bad for us when it destroys our valuable relationships, so death is bad for cattle when it destroys their valuable relationships. This argument is important because it pinpoints something that is bad about death for cattle that is overlooked by popular accounts of the badness of death for non-human animals that focus exclusively on the impact of death on lifetime well-being levels. Thus, the argument reveals an overlooked moral cost of some of our farming practices. (shrink)

Philosophers are routinely embarrassed by philosophy, or at least write as if they are. But what should we make of the connection between philosophy and embarrassment? Taking a cue from sociologist Erving Goffman, in this paper I treat embarrassment in general as revealing of social phenomena and then consider the case of philosophical embarrassment from that point of view. As we will see, the project allows us to formulate and explore several hypotheses about the discipline of philosophy, why it might (...) be rational to be embarrassed by it, and how this embarrassment might be managed or overcome. (shrink)

Critiques the higher-order hyperintensional theory developed by Cian Dorr in "To be F as to be G" as an exercise in overfitting.

Much recent work in epistemology has concerned the relationship between the epistemic and the practical, with a particular focus on the question of how, if at all, practical considerations affect what we ought to believe. Two main positive accounts have been proposed: reasons pragmatism and pragmatic encroachment. According to reasons pragmatism, practical (including moral) considerations can affect what we ought to believe by constituting distinctively practical (i.e., non‐epistemic) reasons for or against belief. According to pragmatic encroachment, practical considerations bear on (...) what we ought to believe by affecting epistemic justification (e.g. how much justification is required to justifiably believe). Both debates center around intuitive judgments about cases together with various principles involving reasons (or justification) and belief, with many contributors in the pragmatism and—to a lesser extent—encroachment debates helping themselves to talk of belief without saying much about what exactly they have in mind. There has also been a tendency to overlook potentially relevant distinctions among different kinds of reasons that have been drawn elsewhere. The goal of this paper is to argue that greater clarity and care concerning both reasons and belief is called for. Increased sensitivity to various subtleties will not only minimize the chances of unwittingly engaging in merely verbal disputes but also allow us to better navigate the pragmatism and encroachment debates. (shrink)