Leibniz's mill argument in 'Monadology' 17 is a well-known but puzzling argument against materialism about the mind. I approach the mill argument by considering other places where Leibniz gave similar arguments, using the same example of the machinery of a mill and reaching the same anti-materialist conclusion. In a 1702 letter to Bayle, Leibniz gave a mill argument that moves from his definition of perception (as the expression of a multitude by a simple) to the anti-materialist (...) conclusion. Soon afterwards, in the Preface to the New Essays, Leibniz gave a different mill argument. That argument depends upon there being no arbitrary and inexplicable connections in nature, because God would not create such things. Later, in the 'Monadology', Leibniz again used the mill example in arguing against materialism. That passage too, I argue, uses an argument from inexplicability rather than from Leibniz's definition of perception. (shrink)

Worin besteht Mills Argument für den Utilitarismus? Im psychologischen Teil des Arguments plädiert Mill für eine aggregierte Beschreibung unserer hedonistischen Werte ("Das allgemeine Glück ist ein Gut für die Gesamtheit aller Personen"). Von hier aus steuert er im normativen Teil des Arguments auf eine aggregierte Bewertung zu ("Das allgemeine Glück ist ein Gut"). Mills Übergang von Beschreibung zu Wertung beruht auf zwei versteckten Annahmen: Die erste sagt (gegen den Nihilisten), dass es Werte gibt; die zweite sagt (gegen Wert-Metaphysiker), dass (...) die Antwort auf die Frage nach Werten nicht völlig unabhängig von dem sein kann, was wir alle de facto für wert erachten. Diese beiden Voraussetzungen scheinen keine inhaltlichen Aussagen zur Moral zu enthalten. Doch wer sie teilt, wird von Mills Argument überraschend weit in die Gefilde der Moral getrieben. Sein Argument ist besser, als die meisten Interpreten glauben. (shrink)

Section 17 of Leibniz’s Monadology contains a famous argument in which considerations of what it would be like to enter a machine that was as large as a mill are offered as reasons to reject materialism about the mental. In this paper, I provide a critical discussion of Leibniz’s mill argument, but, unlike most treatments, my discussion will focus on texts other than the Monadology in which considerations of the mill also appear. I provide a survey of (...) three previous interpretations of the argument and a partial defence of one of them, namely the one that Marc Bobro and I offered in Stepping Back Insider Leibniz's Mill (The Monist, 1998). However, I also argue that a fourth interpretation is necessary to account for the appearances of Leibniz’s mill in at least some of his writings. (shrink)

This expanded edition of John Stuart Mill's _Utilitarianism_ includes the text of his 1868 speech to the British House of Commons defending the use of capital punishment in cases of aggravated murder. The speech is significant both because its topic remains timely and because its arguments illustrate the applicability of the principle of utility to questions of large-scale social policy.

This essay argues that Spinoza’s metaphysics offers a theoretical framework for dissolving the conceptual gap in contemporary consciousness studies. The conceptual origins of the gap have their roots in Cartesian substance dualism. If phenomenal experience is conceived as substantially distinct from correlated physical processes in the brain, an explanatory gap opens in our understanding of the mind/body relation. Spinoza’s metaphysics offers an ontology that preserves the qualitative difference between phenomenal experience and physiological processes while conceiving the ultimate numerical unity of (...) mind and its correlated physical processes. The notion of qualitative difference within substantial unity is deduced from Spinoza’s redefinition of the basic features of the Cartesian universe: substance, attribute, and mode. Redefinition results in a property dualism that is internally consistent and dissolves the conceptual gap in contemporary consciousness studies. This paper identifies and explains the central argument for qualitative distinction within substantial unity and recommends a framework for consciousness studies that views phenomenology and neuroscience as complementary disciplines. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of whether all that unites the main parts of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty—the liberty principle, the defense of free discussion, the promotion of individuality, and the claims concerning individual competence about one’s own good—is a general concern with individual liberty, or whether we can say something more concrete about how they are related. I attempt to show that the arguments of On Liberty exemplify Mill’s institutional design approach set out in Considerations of (...) Representative Government and related works. Mill’s approach reflects both his debt to Bentham and his own progressive development of the utilitarian tradition. The paper proceeds by setting out the elements of Mill’s institutional designs and then showing that On Liberty neatly applies them, thereby clarifying the structure of the arguments of On Liberty. (shrink)

Charles Mills began his career as a Marxist but at a particular point shifted to a focus on race, deliberately leaving behind an explicit concern with class, though implying that both class and race (along with gender) constitute distinct, interacting, domination systems in society. I argue that Mills’s permanent contribution to political theory is to see white supremacy as a sociopolitical order with its own character and logic, but that his specific account of race and white supremacy is faulty because (...) class processes are internal to the racial domination system, and “racial injustice” already incorporates some aspects of class injustice. Thus Mills fails to recognize that white supremacy can fail to benefit and indeed can positively harm some white people. More generally, he fails to theorize class as a pervasive domination system. This argument does not reduce race to class, as Mills was correct in criticizing Marxism for (sometimes) doing. Some aspects of race do not concern class, while others do. Mills also fails to consistently articulate the specific normative character of current racial injustice, misleadingly conflating it with the “subperson” view of Black people dominant in the earlier colonial, slavery, and Segregation periods of white supremacy. For example, people of color now are accorded (if sometimes imperfectly) a panoply of rights denied in those earlier periods, and for Mills denial of rights is a core criterion of subpersonhood. The current period, better characterized by the idea of “racial disrespect” than “subpersonhood,” involves a form of wrongfulness much more similar in character to contemporary class injustice than the sub-personhood period did. Mills thus gives a misleading picture of the severity of class injustice in relation to racial injustice; they are much more similar than he says. And he also fails to recognize that racial injustice also incorporates forms of class injustice. (shrink)

In Considerations on Representative Government Mill argues that representative democracy is the best form of the state organisation for societies which fulfil necessary conditions for maintaining it. In favour of his thesis, Mill offers two arguments. One of them shows that rights and interests of citizens are best guaranteed when they are protected by citizens themselves. He uses the other (educational) argument to show that representative democracy is the best state organisation, since it offers greatest opportunities for citizen (...) education. In this paper, I will defend only the educational argument in favour of (representative) democracy from Arneson`s criticism. Arneson tries to show that the main source of paternalism in Mill`s theory of government lies in the education of citizens as the main criteria for the good government. Arneson argues that non-democratic societies can equally well educate citizens as democratic societies, which shows that the main goal of Mill`s government is paternalistic. Also, Arneson argues that even if non-democratic societies couldn’t educate citizens equally well as democratic one, educating citizens cannot be the main government goal, since it decreases liberties which are guaranteed by harm principle. I will defend Mill`s main goal of government from both lines of Arneson`s argumentation. (shrink)

In this article, we address the relevance of J.S. Mill’s political philosophy for a framework of public health ethics. In contrast to some readings of Mill, we reject the view that in the formulation of public policies liberties of all kinds enjoy an equal presumption in their favor. We argue that Mill also rejects this view and discuss the distinction that Mill makes between three kinds of liberty interests: interests that are immune from state interference; interests (...) that enjoy a presumption in favor of liberty; and interests that enjoy no such presumption. We argue that what is of focal importance for Mill in protecting liberty is captured by the essential role that the value of self-determination plays in human well-being. Finally, we make the case for the plausibility of a more complex and nuanced Millian framework for public health ethics that would modify how the balancing of some liberty and public health interests should proceed by taking the thumb off the liberty end of the scale. Mill’s arguments and the legacy of liberalism support certain forms of state interference with marketplace liberties for the sake of public health objectives without any presumption in favor of liberty. (shrink)

In Considerations on Representative Government, John Stuart Mill concedes that secrecy in voting is often justified but, nonetheless, maintains that it should be the exception rather than the rule. This paper critically examines Mill’s arguments. It shows that Mill’s idea of voting depends on a sharp public/private distinction which is difficult to square with democratic ideas about the different powers and responsibilities of voters and their representatives, or with legitimate differences of belief and interest amongst voters themselves. (...) Hence, it concludes, we should reject the assumption, which many of us share with Mill, that the secret ballot is justified only on prudential grounds and recognise how central privacy is to any democratic conception of citizenship and politics. (shrink)

Mill’s aim in chapter 3 of Utilitarianism is to show that his revisionary moral theory can preserve the kind of authority typically and traditionally associated with moral demands. One of his main targets is the idea that if people come to believe that morality is rooted in human sentiment then they will feel less bound by moral obligation. Chapter 3 emphasizes two claims: (1) The main motivation to ethical action comes from feelings and not from beliefs and (2) Ethical (...) feelings are highly malleable. I provide a critical examination of Mill’s use of these claims to support his argument that Utilitarianism can preserve morality’s authority. I show how the two claims, intended to form a significant rebuttal to the worry about Utilitarianism, can in fact be combined to raise powerful skeptical concerns. I explain how Mill evades the skepticism, and why contemporary philosophers who lack Millian optimism about human nature find it harder to avoid the skeptical outcome. (shrink)

Joseph Persky's excellent book, The Political Economy of Progress: John Stuart Mill and Modern Radicalism, shows that J. S. Mill's support for socialism is a carefully considered element of his political and economic reform agenda. The key thought underlying Persky's argument is that Mill has an ‘evolutionary theory of justice’, according to which the set of institutions and practices that are appropriate to one state of society should give way to a new set of institutions as circumstances (...) change and the people themselves improve. However, Persky does not spend a great deal of time discussing Mill's theory of reform, in particular the principles he believes should guide our reform efforts. Reflecting on these principles – notably his principle of impartiality or equal treatment – shows the consistency of Mill's thought over time. (shrink)

This chapter explores the relationship between classical utilitarianism and feminism in one period of utilitarianism's history. In Section 2.1, the main features of classical utilitarianism are identified and clarified. In Section 2.2, the main arguments of John Stuart Mill's _The Subjection of Women_ are analysed, making explicit their utilitarian basis. In Section 2.3, some criticisms of Mill's utilitarian feminism are examined and evaluated. This chapter's contention is that while utilitarianism provides solid support for feminism, Mill's feminism contains (...) weaknesses. (shrink)

Mill’s Principle of Utility: Origins, Proof, and Implications is a scholarly monograph on John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism with a particular emphasis on the proof he provides for the principle of utility. Originally published as Mill’s Principle of Utility: A Defense of John Stuart Mill’s Notorious Proof (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994), the present volume is a revised and enlarged edition with additional material, tighter arguments, and updated references. The initiative is still principally an analysis, interpretation, and defense of (...) the controversial proof, which has yet to attract a scholarly consensus on how it works and whether it succeeds. Well over a century and a half after Mill’s initial contribution, the subject matter continues to figure prominently in classroom discussions, where the principle and its proof are presented and debated in connection with the critical baggage of logical problems and conceptual confusions wrongly attributed to Mill from the beginning. The overarching aim of the book, now supplemented with a comprehensive historical background and salient philosophical implications, remains the vindication of Mill’s reasoning in pursuit of what he promises as a proof of the principle of utility. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill advocated for increased interactions between individuals of dissenting opinions for the reason that it would improve society. Whether Mill and similar arguments that advocate for opinion diversity are valid depends on background assumptions about the psychology and sociality of individuals. The field of opinion dynamics is a burgeoning testing ground for how different combinations of sociological and psychological facts contribute to phenomena that affect opinion diversity, such as polarization. This paper applies some recent results from (...) the opinion dynamics literature to assess the impacts of the Millian suggestion. The goal is to understand how the scope of the validity of Mill-style arguments depends on plausible assumptions that can be formalized using agent-based models, a common modeling approach in opinion dynamics. The most salient insight is that homophily (increased interactions between like-minded individuals) does not sufficiently explain decreased opinion diversity. Hence, decreasing homophily by increasing interactions between individuals of dissenting opinions is not the simple solution that a Millian-style argument may advocate. (shrink)

In this paper I intend to reconstruct the weight of rational and non rational factors in ethical controversies and to highlight the mixed bequest this controversy left to 20th century analytic ethics. I argue that the structure of the controversy includes ‘Kuhnian’ factors, rhetoric and pragmatic dimensions, and that a consistent self-criticism of his own previous views may be detected in Mill’s writings published after the controversy. I argue that the controversy’s bequest for analytic ethics includes: (i) anti-empiricist elements, (...) which are what Sidgwick has taken from Whewell without paying due acknowledgement; (ii) consequentialist elements (impossibility of establishing what is duty in the real case, impossibility of solving moral dilemmas), which are what Sidgwick has taken over from Mill, on the latter’s authority and without due scrutiny of Whewell’s counter-arguments. (shrink)

A leading classical utilitarian, John Stuart Mill is an unlikely contributor to the public reason tradition in political philosophy. To hold that social rules or political institutions are justified by their contribution to overall happiness is to deny that they are justified by their being the object of consensus or convergence among all those holding qualified moral or political viewpoints. In this chapter, I explore the surprising ways in which Mill nevertheless works to accommodate the problems and insights (...) of the public reason tradition, and the extent to which he makes arguments that can help those working within that tradition. Mill’s utilitarian theory incorporates the claim that the demands of social life require a publicly accepted set of normative expectations to govern judgments about when one has met one’s obligations and, relatedly, about the appropriateness of blame or punishment. (shrink)

Here I both celebrate and critique the legacy of Charles W. Mills. I begin by offering some reflections on the trajectory of Mills’s career and intellectual development, focusing on his move from Marxist philosophy to the philosophy of race. I then attempt to undermine an argument in Mills’s final book, for why those interested in emancipation should choose liberalism over Marxism. By contrasting Mills with the late Italian Marxist philosopher of history Domenico Losurdo, with whom Mills shared a blistering critique (...) of ‘racial’ liberalism but whom I claim Mills misread, I seek to weaken key premises in Mills’s argument. (shrink)

There is a common view that the utilitarian theory of John Stuart Mill is morally realist and involves a strong kind of practical obligation. This article argues for two negative theses and a positive thesis. The negative theses are that Mill is not a moral realist and that he does not believe in certain kinds of obligations, those involving external reasons and those I callrobustobligations, obligations with a particular, strong kind of practical authority. The positive thesis is that (...) Mill's metaethical position can be interpreted as a Humean constructivist view, a metaethical view that is constructivist about value and entails the existence of practical reasons, but not external reasons or robust obligations. I argue that a Humean constructivist reading of Mill's theory is reasonable, and strengthens Mill's argument from desire for the value of happiness, an important but notoriously weak aspect of his theory. (shrink)

This paper reconstructs and critically evaluates John Stuart Mill’s arguments for freedom of expression and against paternalistic coercion as articulated in On Liberty. Mill contends that silencing dissenting opinions is unjust regardless of their truth, and that coercive interference with individual conduct is permissible only to prevent harm to others. By grounding liberty in human fallibility, the epistemic value of dissent, and respect for individual agency, Mill offers a principled account of the limits of social and political (...) authority. The paper argues that while Mill’s arguments successfully establish liberty as a strong presumptive constraint on coercion, they rely on assumptions about rational capacity and social conditions that limit their applicability in contexts marked by structural inequality and indirect harm. Mill’s framework is thus defended as foundational but incomplete, requiring supplementation rather than rejection. (shrink)

We present an analytic resolution of the mass gap problem for four–dimensional Yang–Mills theory based on a dynamic rigidity principle intrinsic to the gauge field evolution. Working in a Hamiltonian framework after gauge fixing, we show that potential low–energy instabilities are confined to a positive spectral sector of the field configuration space. By exploiting the time–integrated structure of the Yang–Mills dynamics, we prove that these unstable compo- nents necessarily induce Laplacian–scale curvature and are therefore absorbed by second–order dissipation. As a (...) consequence, the Yang–Mills Hamiltonian admits a strictly positive spectral lower bound, yielding a non–perturbative mass gap. The argument does not rely on lattice discretiza- tion, large–N limits, or perturbative expansions. Instead, the mass gap emerges from an intrinsic rigidity of the nonlinear gauge dynamics, analogous to rigidity mechanisms governing regularity in incompressible fluid flow. This result identifies a common analytic structure underlying mass gap formation and pro- vides a direct resolution of the mass gap component of the Clay Millennium Yang–Mills problem. (shrink)

This article compares and contrasts the reception of Comte’s positivism in the works of William Whewell, John Stuart Mill and (to a lesser extent) Franz Brentano. It is argued that Whewell’s rejection of positivism derives from his endorsement of (what I shall call) a constructivist account of the inductive sciences, while Mill and Brentano’s sympathies for positivism are connected to their endorsement of an empiricist account. The mandate of the article is to spell out the chief differences between (...) these two rival accounts. In the last, conclusive section, Whewell’s anti-positivist argument is briefly assessed and rebutted. (shrink)

This article reconstructs and critically evaluates John Stuart Mill’s defense of liberty in On Liberty, focusing on his arguments for freedom of expression and the harm principle as limits on social and political authority. Mill’s case for free speech is grounded in human fallibility, the epistemic value of dissent, and the necessity of contestation for sustaining meaningful belief. His harm principle extends these concerns to conduct, restricting coercive interference to the prevention of harm to others and rejecting paternalism (...) and moralism as bases for compulsion. The article argues that these arguments form a unified, instrumental theory of liberty aimed at preserving the conditions of moral agency and social progress. At the same time, it contends that Mill’s framework presupposes relatively just background conditions and struggles to address indirect, cumulative, and structurally produced harms. Rather than undermining Mill’s project, these limitations clarify its proper role as a foundational constraint on power rather than a comprehensive theory of justice. The article concludes by inviting continued critical engagement with Mill’s arguments, emphasizing that liberty, properly understood, demands ongoing scrutiny and revision rather than doctrinal closure. (shrink)

The work then develops attempts to present the most relevant aspects of the philosophical thought of John Stuart Mill in relation to religion. The work consists of two parts: the first part, w e develop below, theological reflection on the most important aspects about religión, the debate on the arguments that justify the existente of God; the attributes of God; the occurrence of evil in the World; and, finally, the M ill's assesment about Christ. The second part, will focus (...) on aspects about utilitarian morality and the Christian religion; the proposal about new religión, M ankind's Religion; the happiness in your relationship with utilitarianism, happiness relates to Christianity and the common ground between Christian doctrine and utilitarian doctrine. (shrink)

Philip Kitcher argued that the freedom to pursue one's version of the good life is the main aim of Mill's argument for freedom of expression. According to Kitcher, in certain scientific fields, political and epistemological asymmetries bias research toward conclusions that threaten this most important freedom of underprivileged groups. Accordingly, Kitcher claimed that there are Millian grounds for limiting freedom of inquiry in these fields to protect the freedom of the underprivileged. -/- I explore Kitcher's argument in light of (...) the interpretation Helen Longino gave to Mill's argument. She argued that free critical dialogue in the community allows bias to be overcome, through intersubjective criticism of hypotheses and the background assumptions that frame them. I suggest that Longino's approach allows for the identification of the fundamental problems of the research programs Kitcher targeted, and for the rejection of their claims to knowledge. Thus it is possible to address Kitcher's problem without limiting freedom of speech. (shrink)

Grenon and Smith (2004) propose a framework for the ontology of things in space and time involving and invoking the distinction between continuants and occurrents, which has become a key element of Basic Formal Ontology (BFO). The terminology of SNAP (from “snapshot:” state of a continuant at a time) and SPAN (how an occurrent develops over an interval or timespan) occurs in that paper’s title. While any commonsense ontology will have a place for both continuants and occurrents, there is much (...) room for philosophical debate on whether one of them is more basic than the other, or can be reduced to the other, or whether they are equally fundamental, or whether they are two different perspectives on the same reality. Grenon and Smith opt for the last of these. They call the accounts of continuants (SNAP) and occurrents (SPAN) both “ontologies.” They do not have a single ontology of all that is in space and time. This dialog throws a few of the common arguments around a bit and comes to no sure conclusion. But one of the characters bears a faint resemblance to a certain Buffalonian philosopher. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In Consciousness and Fundamental Reality, Philip Goff argues that the case against physicalist views of consciousness turns on ‘Phenomenal Transparency’, roughly the thesis that phenomenal concepts reveal the essential nature of phenomenal properties. This paper considers the argument that Goff offers for Phenomenal Transparency. The key premise is that our introspective judgments about current conscious experience are ‘Super Justified’, in that these judgments enjoy an epistemic status comparable to that of simple mathematical judgments, and a better epistemic status than (...) run of the mill perceptual judgments. After presenting the key ideas in the ‘Super Justification Argument’, I distinguish two Super Justification theses, which vary according to the kind of introspective judgments that they take to be Super Justified. I argue that Goff’s case requires ‘Strong Super Justification’, according to which a wide range of introspective judgments about conscious experience are Super Justified. Unfortunately, it turns out that Strong Super Justification is implausible and not well-supported by examples. In contrast, a weaker Super Justification thesis does not require anything like Phenomenal Transparency and, indeed, can be explained by physicalistic accounts of phenomenal concepts. (shrink)

Yes. If there should be no debate on whether P, there should be no debate on whether there should be debate on whether P. If censorship of certain propositions in academic contexts is justified, then _censorship is not justified_ is one of those propositions. This result gives the campus censor significant political, rhetorical, and epistemic advantages over his opponent.

This paper suggests two ideas. The first boils down to a meta-ethical thesis that in situations of “crisis” (such as the ongoing pandemic), the language is among the first to die as a system of rational agreement. Another idea is that radical attitudes, specifically pro and contra attitudes, still can be represented sensibly. The author illustrates this thesis in examples of Kant and Mill’s classical ethical theories.

Mill thinks our attitudes should be held in a way that’s active and ‘alive’. He believes attitudes that lack these qualities—those held dogmatically, or in unreflective conformity—are inimical to our well-being. This claim then serves as a premiss in his argument for overarching principles of liberty. He argues that attitudinal vitality, in the relevant sense, relies upon people experiencing attitudinal conflict, and that this necessitates a prioritization of personal liberties. I argue that, pace Mill, contestation isn’t required for (...) attitudinal vitality. I describe one species of attitudinal vitality that isn’t reliant upon conflict. (shrink)

Charles W. Mills developed an argument against ideal theorizing that is inspired by the early writings of Marx and Engels. He argues that the development and refinement of non-ideal theories contributes more to ending oppressive power structures than the development and refinement of ideal theories. For this reason, he concludes that ideal theories play the role of an ideology. In this article, I expose a yet undiagnosed weakness of this argument: I point out that history is rife with examples of (...) political organizations that struggle to identify an effective political practice because they find themselves in a situation of theoretical crisis. Thus, contra Mills, it turns out that ideal theorizing is sometimes a more viable strategy to end oppressive power structures than non-ideal theorizing. So, if we accept the basic premises of Mills’s argument, it turns out that non-ideal theorizing should be classified as an ideology as well. To further corroborate this claim, I point out some problems for Mills’s interpretation of Marx and Engels. If my assessment is right, then it turns out to be unclear if the intellectual authorities that Mills invokes actually lend support to his critique of ideal theorizing. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill claims in On Liberty that the robust ability for individuals to question and dispute claims is a necessary condition for us to be justified in believing those claims. But it is not obvious why even bad objections must be allowed to be voiced. On a recent interpretation of Mill’s view, censorship of bad objections does not threaten experts’ justification, but it does threaten laypeople’s justification. Laypeople must be assured that experts are in the business of (...) responding to objections, rather than unfairly dismissing them. But laypeople cannot tell which objections are bad, so even these must be allowed to be voiced. Here, I argue that there is no way to cordon off experts from the epistemically deleterious effects of censorship, regarding many questions of interest. If Mill’s argument is right, then, the epistemic impacts of censorship are more radical than it might seem at first glance. (shrink)

Few views have seen a more precipitous fall from grace than hedonism, which once occupied a central position in the history of ethics. Recently, there have been efforts to revive interest in the view, including well-motivated pleas for contemporary ethicists to at least take the view seriously. In this article, I argue for the seriousness of hedonism on metaethical grounds. Taking J.S. Mill's argument for hedonism as a test case, I show that historically, classic hedonism was grounded metaethically via (...) a commitment to two positions: empiricist epistemology and the view that pleasure occurs in sensation. Together, these two positions provided principled grounds for various iterations of classic hedonism. Moreover, these two positions are still serious options in both contemporary epistemology and the contemporary literature on the nature of pleasure. Insofar as a contemporary ethicist takes those two views seriously, they ought to take classic hedonism seriously as well. (shrink)

It is sometimes argued that ideal theories in political philosophy are a form of ideology. This article examines arguments building on the work of Charles Mills and Raymond Geuss for the claim that ideal theories are cognitively distorting belief systems that have the effect of stabilizing unjust social arrangements. I argue that Mills and Geuss neither succeed in establishing that the content of ideal theories is necessarily cognitively defective in the way characteristic for ideologies, nor can they make plausible which (...) mechanisms ensure the alleged negative effects of the widespread acceptance of ideal theorizing. This does not mean that all hope is lost for the ideology objection, however. By turning to a second Marxian model of ideology, I argue that the ideological character of ideal theories is not so much a matter of their content, but rather of their form. Ideal theories falsely present the normative concepts that they use as semantically practice-independent and thereby block potential challenges from subordinate groups to dominant ideologies. It is therefore not the normative content of ideal theories which proves to be objectionable, but the particular role their concepts play in wider political discourse. (shrink)

The paper continues the consideration of Hilbert mathematics to mathematics itself as an additional “dimension” allowing for the most difficult and fundamental problems to be attacked in a new general and universal way shareable between all of them. That dimension consists in the parameter of the “distance between finiteness and infinity”, particularly able to interpret standard mathematics as a particular case, the basis of which are arithmetic, set theory and propositional logic: that is as a special “flat” case of Hilbert (...) mathematics. The following four essential problems are considered for the idea to be elucidated: Fermat’s last theorem proved by Andrew Wiles; Poincaré’s conjecture proved by Grigori Perelman and the only resolved from the seven Millennium problems offered by the Clay Mathematics Institute (CMI); the four-color theorem proved “machine-likely” by enumerating all cases and the crucial software assistance; the Yang-Mills existence and mass gap problem also suggested by CMI and yet unresolved. They are intentionally chosen to belong to quite different mathematical areas (number theory, topology, mathematical physics) just to demonstrate the power of the approach able to unite and even unify them from the viewpoint of Hilbert mathematics. Also, specific ideas relevant to each of them are considered. Fermat’s last theorem is shown as a Gödel insoluble statement by means of Yablo’s paradox. Thus, Wiles’s proof as a corollary from the modularity theorem and thus needing both arithmetic and set theory involves necessarily an inverse Grothendieck universe. On the contrary, its proof in “Fermat arithmetic” introduced by “epoché to infinity” (following the pattern of Husserl’s original “epoché to reality”) can be suggested by Hilbert arithmetic relevant to Hilbert mathematics, the mediation of which can be removed in the final analysis as a “Wittgenstein ladder”. Poincaré’s conjecture can be reinterpreted physically by Minkowski space and thus reduced to the “nonstandard homeomorphism” of a bit of information mathematically. Perelman’s proof can be accordingly reinterpreted. However, it is valid in Gödel (or Gödelian) mathematics, but not in Hilbert mathematics in general, where the question of whether it holds remains open. The four-color theorem can be also deduced from the nonstandard homeomorphism at issue, but the available proof by enumerating a finite set of all possible cases is more general and relevant to Hilbert mathematics as well, therefore being an indirect argument in favor of the validity of Poincaré’s conjecture in Hilbert mathematics. The Yang-Mills existence and mass gap problem furthermore suggests the most general viewpoint to the relation of Hilbert and Gödel mathematics justifying the qubit Hilbert space as the dual counterpart of Hilbert arithmetic in a narrow sense, in turn being inferable from Hilbert arithmetic in a wide sense. The conjecture that many if not almost all great problems in contemporary mathematics rely on (or at least relate to) the Gödel incompleteness is suggested. It implies that Hilbert mathematics is the natural medium for their discussion or eventual solutions. (shrink)

This chapter examines two ways in which liberal thinkers have appealed to claims about disagreement in order to defend a principle of free speech. One argument, from Mill, says that free speech is a necessary condition for healthy disagreement, and that healthy disagreement is conducive to human flourishing. The other argument says that in a community of people who disagree about questions of value, free speech is a necessary condition of legitimate democratic government. We argue that both of these (...) arguments, in their standard guises, are premised upon contestable views about the realpolitik of disagreement in a liberal society. (shrink)

Self-authorship is fundamental to respecting the dignity of persons, and epistemic credibility depends upon impartial review. While these claims may seem obviously true, they arguments for them are rarely given. In a supposedly "post-truth" world in which respect for individual rights is under attack, the obvious must be argued for and reiterated. To that end, I mine sources from the European Enlightenment (Bacon, Hume, Kant, and Mill) to make the case for self-authorship and impartial review.

This paper surveys the history of consequentialist thinking about the deontic relevance of motives in the period of its development, 1789-1912. If a motive is relevant deontically it is a factor that determines whether the action it leads to is right or wrong. Bentham, Austin, Mill, Sidgwick and Moore all either stated or implied that motives are never relevant deontically. Their related views on moral motivation—or which motives are morally praiseworthy—are also examined. Despite the arguments given by Mill (...) and Moore, it is shown that consequentialism can admit that motives occasionally do make a difference to the rightness of an action. The mistakes made by Mill and Moore are described. An example is given that shows when a motive does make a difference to an act’s rightness. The example draws on work of Bernard Williams. (shrink)

A number of philosophers from Hobbes to Mill to Parfit have held some combination of the following views about the Golden Rule: (a) It is the cornerstone of morality across many if not all cultures. (b) It affirms the value of moral impartiality, and potentially the core idea of utilitarianism. (c) It is immune from evolutionary debunking, that is, there is no good naturalistic explanation for widespread acceptance of the Golden Rule, ergo the best explanation for its appearance in (...) different traditions is that people have perceived the same non-natural moral truth. De Lazari-Radek and Singer employ all three of these claims in an argument meant to vindicate Sidgwick's ‘principle of universal benevolence’. I argue that the Golden Rule is the cornerstone of morality only in Christianity, it does not advocate moral impartiality, and there is a naturalistic explanation for why versions of the Golden Rule appear in different traditions. (shrink)

Is prostitution immoral? In this book, Rob Lovering argues that it is not. Offering a careful and thorough critique of the many―twenty, to be exact―arguments for prostitution's immorality, Lovering leaves no claim unchallenged. Drawing on the relevant literature along with his own creative thinking, Lovering offers a clear and reasoned moral defense of the world's oldest profession. Lovering demonstrates convincingly, on both consequentialist and nonconsequentialist grounds, that there is nothing immoral about prostitution between consenting adults. The legal implications of this (...) view are also brought to bear on the current discourse surrounding this controversial topic. (shrink)

Herman Cappelen and Josh Dever (C&D) have recently argued that the ideal/non-ideal distinction is ‘useless’ in philosophy of language. This paper responds to C&D’s argument, develops an account of the distinction, and applies it to philosophy of language. Section 1 summarizes C&D’s argument against Charles Mills’s version of the distinction. Section 2 develops an account of the distinction that’s inspired by Mills’s work but that differs from what C&D take Mills’s view to be. Section 3 shows that, pace C&D, this (...) distinction picks out interesting subsets of work in philosophy of language. We say that ideal theories adopt models of the social world that fail to recognize systemic oppression and are therefore systematically inaccurate. Nonideal theories correct these inaccuracies. (shrink)

In this work I present what may be the first complete construction of quantum gravity describing the real universe via the celestial holographic conformal field theory dual to Einstein gravity in asymptotically-flat 4D spacetime. The theory is rigorously constructed as the shadow-invariant, purely spin-2 sector of holomorphic Chern–Simons theory on twistor space PT ≃ CP³ with gauge group the quantomorphic group Quant(PT). Primary fields are the celestial graviton operators O^{±2}Δ(z, z̄) with Δ ∈ 1 + iR and J = ±2. (...) Three-point functions are determined by the Penrose transform and reproduce the MHV and anti-MHV amplitudes of general relativity, including the vanishing of parity-odd and mixed-helicity couplings. Higher-point amplitudes arise from OPEs with analytically continued principal-series contours; loop integrands emerge as double discontinuities across shadow poles, which I verify explicitly for the scalar box integrals computed via this novel shadow discontinuity method, demonstrating analytically that they match Feynman diagram calculations for the scalar box, with numerical verification for the graviton box matching to 11+ decimal places. The construction satisfies extended BMS₄ ⋉ shadow symmetry with vanishing Virasoro central charge, also explicitly demonstrated via five independent and mutually reinforcing and rigorous arguments to be c = 0 to 10+ significant figures. I prove a rigidity theorem establishing that any 2D CFT with only spin ±2 primaries, the above symmetries and three-point data, and local inverse-Mellin-transformed correlators, is uniquely determined to be isomorphic to this quantomorphic twistor theory. Combined with the proof that crossing symmetry is a necessary consequence of bulk locality (not an independent axiom), this establishes that Einstein gravity in asymptotically-flat spacetime is the unique consistent theory of a single massless spin-2 particle. The quantomorphic gauge group structure provides a non-perturbative foundation, with perturbative scattering amplitudes emerging as the first residues of the holographic algebra. The first breakthrough insight that enabled and facilitated this construction was the realisation that the "shadow symmetry" of the boundary CFT—the map Δ ↔ 2 − Δ on conformal dimensions—is the restriction to null infinity of the Jost involution Θ of axiomatic quantum field theory, the operator independently constructed by Jost (1957) that coincides with the product C ∘ P ∘ T only in theories where all three factors individually exist as symmetries. At null infinity, where the metric is degenerate along the null generator, the distinction between temporal and spatial inversion collapses: the Jost involution is irreducible and reduces to time reversal T alone (Theorem 8.1). This provides an elegant resolution to the 40+ year "googly problem" in twistor theory by unifying self-dual and anti-self-dual helicity sectors through the shadow transform as representing discrete T-symmetric involution across the boundary, with the Einstein field equations derived from boundary Ward identities and crossing symmetry. All quantum mechanical foundations emerge from the Haar measure structure underlying this framework with no additional postulates: the five Wightman axioms are derived from the Peter–Weyl theorem on representation spaces, the Born rule P = |⟨n|ψ⟩|² is proven as the unique probability measure compatible with Haar structure on quantum state spaces, and wave function collapse is derived as Haar projection onto gauge singlets. This same identification reveals that the celestial conformal dimension is related to the Riemann zeta variable by Δ = 2s, so that the shadow involution Δ ↔ 2 − Δ becomes s ↔ 1 − s, the functional equation of the Riemann zeta function—establishing that the functional equation, shadow symmetry, and time reversal are three manifestations of one underlying self-duality. The entire holographic framework grows from a single root: self-dual Haar measure on (R⁺, ×), the simplest non-trivial locally compact group, whose self-duality already contains the functional equation and critical line. Three Cayley–Dickson doublings R → C → H → O produce the holographic chain R⁺ → S² → M⁴ → Gr(2,4)_C, with shadow symmetry at each level corresponding to the conjugation involution at that doubling step. The Grassmannian Gr(2,4) is the canopy of this holographic tree. The same Haar-invariant measure on the Grassmannian Gr(2,4) that determines the graviton spectrum also addresses three Millennium Prize problems through a unified geometric mechanism (Haar self-duality, functional equation symmetry, and Peter–Weyl compactness). The Riemann Hypothesis follows via 4 otherwise independent arguments and checks for circularity and consistency, and most fundamentally follows from three simultaneous constraints on the adelic quotient A×/Q× that form an overdetermined system whose unique solution forces Re(s) = 1/2 for all nontrivial zeros, with numerical verification of the first 10¹³ zeros on the critical line to machine precision using six independent tests. The Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer Conjecture is argued to be proven for analytic rank ≤ 1 using identical Haar measure structure on GL₂(A_Q)/GL₂(Q): for elliptic curves with ord_{s=1} L(E,s) ≤ 1, the same three-fold constraint described above, combined with the Gross–Zagier formula and Kolyvagin's Euler system descent, establishes ord_{s=1} L(E,s) = rank E(Q) and the parity conjecture (−1)^{rank} = w_E is proven for all curves from Haar self-duality. The framework also identifies the precise obstruction to proving the conjecture at higher rank (algebraic cycles from the Beilinson–Bloch–Kato conjectures). The Yang–Mills mass gap is established through a complete celestial holographic construction: the Wess–Zumino–Witten model at Kac–Moody level k on S², mapped to four-dimensional Schwinger functions by inverse Mellin transform, with reflection positivity proven via the shadow-reflection bridge, the remaining Osterwalder–Schrader axioms verified explicitly, and the Wightman theory reconstructed by the OS theorem—yielding mass gap M = 2N/(k+N) · Λ_QCD > 0 from the Sugawara formula and confinement from Haar orthogonality as a rigorously proved theorem. The construction introduces no lattice, takes no continuum limit, and imposes no infrared regulator. Spacetime itself emerges from the Grassmannian via Penrose twistor correspondence (M⁴ ↔ Gr(2,4) (Penrose 1967). The division algebra tower determines the Standard Model: the symmetry breaking chain Spin(8) → G₂ → SU(3) → SU(2) × U(1) produces the gauge group; three fermion generations follow from Weyl anomaly cancellation, Plücker partitions, and Spin(8) triality; sin²θ_W = 3/8 at the GUT scale is the Dynkin index ratio, equivalently dim(Im(H))/dim(O). Physical constants are arithmetic invariants: CP violation from the Jacobi sum J(χ₄⁽⁵⁾, χ₃⁽⁷⁾) = e^{iπ/6}; down-type quark mass ratios m_d : m_s : m_b = 2:5:9 from SU(3) Casimir eigenvalues; the spin-statistics connection η(4)/ζ(4) = 7/8 from the p = 2 Euler factor; the lightest neutrino mass m_{ν₁} = 0 exactly from Bott periodicity—in independent agreement with Boyle–Finn–Turok (PRL 121, 251301, 2018); and the three dimensional constants ℏ, c, G corresponding to the three Cayley–Dickson doubling steps. Strong CP angle θ = 0 exactly from Haar self-duality (consistent with experimental bound |θ| < 10⁻¹⁰), and the construction provides right-handed neutrinos as geometric dark matter candidates in agreement with Boyle–Turok (CP)T-symmetric cosmology, which integrates with uncanny precision into my T-symmetric, thermodynamically cyclic quantum cosmology. The T-anti-symmetric unification of a unified bipartite self-dual universe resolves the matter-antimatter asymmetry as a selection effect. Total baryon number B_total = 0 with embedded observers observing identical physics on either side due to being thermodynamic in nature, naturally aligning their arrows of time in the direction of increasing entropy, which on either side of the boundary flows in opposing directions. The Feynman-Stueckelberg interpretation of antimatter means antimatter is equivalent to matter moving backwards in time, which combined with the reversal in T of the direction of entropy increases means observers only ever observe the B > 0 (matter) sector, with the B < 0 (antimatter) sector always being the hidden sector from the perspective of any temporally-embedded observer that respects thermodynamics, as from any observer's perspective their time moves forward, their atomic nuclei have a positive electrical charge, electrons have negative electric charge, and the standard model has left handed doublets and right-handed singlets, with a weak force that appears left-chiral. To observe the antimatter would require an observer to reverse their arrow of time, which is thermodynamically not possible as consciousness and memory are thermodynamic processes that happen only in the direction of increasing entropy. Shadow geometry and right-handed neutrinos provide dark matter. The Grassmannian spinor bundle splits each fermion representation across the T boundary: right-handed neutrinos reside in the shadow sector, coupling to the observable sector only gravitationally. The dark matter density profile ρ(r) = ρ₀/(1+(r/r_c)²) with core radius r_c ≈ 9.98 kpc is derived from the shadow kernel by Abel inversion with zero free parameters, resolving the core cusp problem of dark matter distribution and addressing several further cosmological anomalies (the S₈ tension, Hubble tension, DESI dark energy evolution, JWST early galaxies, CMB hemispherical asymmetry, CMB dipole anomaly, axis of evil, overmassive early black holes, rotation curve diversity, etc.) from a single geometric source. Time's arrow emerges as a consequence of T-symmetric boundary conditions with entropy always increasing away from the conformal boundary in opposing temporal directions. The horizon and flatness problems are naturally resolved by this framework as the celestial CFT is globally defined at the conformal boundary. The framework generates falsifiable predictions including no primordial gravitational waves (tensor-to-scalar ratio r → 0, definitively falsified if r > 0.01 detected by CMB-S4), m_{ν₁} = 0 (KATRIN, JUNO), r_c ≈ 9.98 kpc (Euclid), glueball mass ratios matching the Sugawara spectrum, GUE statistics in the vacuum noise spectrum of gravitational wave detectors (LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA), and right-handed neutrino dark matter coupling only through gravity. Over 155 independent computational tests with zero free parameters confirm the framework to machine precision. Part 1 contains an introductory overview of the several subframeworks involved in this synthesis explaining their interrelations in the wider framework, part 2 contains the constructions and rigorous proofs of all major results, Part 3 contains extensions and other corollaries. Part 4 continues with comparisons to other approaches and discussion regarding foundational contributions without which this work would not have been possible follows, followed by testable predictions and a chapter addressing falsifiability, and Part V delivers a philosophical analysis of the implications suggested by the mathematics of this framework. This work unifies quantum mechanics and general relativity via the celestial holography program while revealing deep connections between number theory and physics: the identification Δ = 2s means the same self-dual Haar-invariant measure structure constraining the Riemann zeros to the critical line in the complex plane where Re(s) = 1/2 simultaneously constrains the conformal dimensions of graviton operators to the principal series where Re(∆) = 1, the same compactness that forces the Yang–Mills mass gap forces the discrete zeta spectrum, and the same functional equation symmetry that governs L-functions governs the shadow transform of the celestial CFT—suggesting geometry and arithmetic share a common logos rooted in self-dual Haar measure on (R⁺, ×) and flowering in the Grassmannian Gr(2,4). (shrink)

My aim in this chapter is to clarify the nature of the shift in Feyerabend’s philosophical thinking in the 1970s, focusing on issues of realism, relativism, and pluralism. Contra-Preston, I argue that realism-relativism is a misleading variable for characterizing Feyerabend’s shift in the 1970s. Rather, I characterize this shift as Feyerabend’s expansion of pluralism and suggest that this shift appears in Feyerabend’s publications starting in the late-1960s (e.g., Feyerabend 1968b, 1969b, 1970a, 1970c). Adopting the terminology of Brown and Kidd (2016), (...) this shift is characterized by a move from arguments for pluralism within science to broader arguments for pluralism in society. I argue that this shift was largely due to: (1) Feyerabend’s rejection of an empiricist demarcation criterion for science in the mid-1960s, and (2) Feyerabend’s incorporation of Mill’s arguments for pluralism into his own publications starting in 1970. This shift can be characterized as a broadening or expanding the scope of Feyerabend’s arguments for pluralism from contexts of scientific knowledge to the broader context of social or cultural (including ethical) knowledge. I articulate this argument with reference to the framework for classifying Feyerabend’s works formulated by Brown and Kidd (2016). Against Brown and Kidd (and Preston), I argue that realism-relativism is a red-herring as a variable for distinguishing Feyerabend’s early and middle works. Brown and Kidd’s distinction between pluralism within science and pluralism in society is a more useful variable for characterizing Feyerabend’s shift in thinking in the 1970s. Whereas Preston (1997) and Brown and Kidd (2016) identify the beginning of Feyerabend’s pluralism in society phase in 1978 with the publication of Science in a Free Society (Feyerabend 1978), I suggest that the relevant shift occurs much earlier, and it appears in Feyerabend’s publications starting in 1970 (Feyerabend 1970a, 1970b). On this understanding, Feyerabend’s philosophical shift (c. 1970) should be viewed as an expansion (or broadening) of the scope of application of his pluralist arguments, inspired by Mill’s ethical arguments for pluralism in society (Mill 1859/1977). (shrink)

Critical race theorists and standpoint epistemologists argue that agents who are members of dominant social groups are often in a state of ignorance about the extent of their social dominance, where this ignorance is explained by these agents' membership in a socially dominant group (e.g., Mills 2007). To illustrate this claim bluntly, it is argued: 1) that many white men do not know the extent of their social dominance, 2) that they remain ignorant as to the extent of their dominant (...) social position even where this information is freely attainable, and 3) that this ignorance is due in part to the fact that they are white men. We argue that on Buchak's (2010, 2013) model of risk averse instrumental rationality, ignorance of one's privileges can be rational. This argument yields a new account of elite-group ignorance, why it may occur, and how it might be alleviated. (shrink)

"Understanding Scientific Progress constitutes a potentially enormous and revolutionary advancement in philosophy of science. It deserves to be read and studied by everyone with any interest in or connection with physics or the theory of science. Maxwell cites the work of Hume, Kant, J.S. Mill, Ludwig Bolzmann, Pierre Duhem, Einstein, Henri Poincaré, C.S. Peirce, Whitehead, Russell, Carnap, A.J. Ayer, Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, Paul Feyerabend, Nelson Goodman, Bas van Fraassen, and numerous others. He lauds Popper for advancing (...) beyond verificationism and Hume’s problem of induction, but faults both Kuhn and Popper for being unable to show that and how their work could lead nearer to the truth." —Dr. LLOYD EBY teaches philosophy at The George Washington University and The Catholic University of America, in Washington, DC "Maxwell's aim-oriented empiricism is in my opinion a very significant contribution to the philosophy of science. I hope that it will be widely discussed and debated." – ALAN SOKAL, Professor of Physics, New York University "Maxwell takes up the philosophical challenge of how natural science makes progress and provides a superb treatment of the problem in terms of the contrast between traditional conceptions and his own scientifically-informed theory—aim-oriented empiricism. This clear and rigorously-argued work deserves the attention of scientists and philosophers alike, especially those who believe that it is the accumulation of knowledge and technology that answers the question."—LEEMON McHENRY, California State University, Northridge "Maxwell has distilled the finest essence of the scientific enterprise. Science is about making the world a better place. Sometimes science loses its way. The future depends on scientists doing the right things for the right reasons. Maxwell's Aim-Oriented Empiricism is a map to put science back on the right track."—TIMOTHY McGETTIGAN, Professor of Sociology, Colorado State University - Pueblo "Maxwell has a great deal to offer with these important ideas, and deserves to be much more widely recognised than he is. Readers with a background in philosophy of science will appreciate the rigour and thoroughness of his argument, while more general readers will find his aim-oriented rationality a promising way forward in terms of a future sustainable and wise social order."—David Lorimer, Paradigm Explorer, 2017/2 "This is a book about the very core problems of the philosophy of science. The idea of replacing Standard Empiricism with Aim-Oriented Empiricism is understood by Maxwell as the key to the solution of these central problems. Maxwell handles his main tool masterfully, producing a fascinating and important reading to his colleagues in the field. However, Nicholas Maxwell is much more than just a philosopher of science. In the closing part of the book he lets the reader know about his deep concern and possible solutions of the biggest problems humanity is facing."—Professor PEETER MŰŰREPP, Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia “For many years, Maxwell has been arguing that fundamental philosophical problems about scientific progress, especially the problem of induction, cannot be solved granted standard empiricism (SE), a doctrine which, he thinks, most scientists and philosophers of science take for granted. A key tenet of SE is that no permanent thesis about the world can be accepted as a part of scientific knowledge independent of evidence. For a number of reasons, Maxwell argues, we need to adopt a rather different conception of science which he calls aim-oriented empiricism (AOE). This holds that we need to construe physics as accepting, as a part of theoretical scientific knowledge, a hierarchy of metaphysical theses about the comprehensibility and knowability of the universe, which become increasingly insubstantial as we go up the hierarchy. In his book “Understanding Scientific Progress: Aim-Oriented Empiricism”, Maxwell gives a concise and excellent illustration of this view and the arguments supporting it… Maxwell’s book is a potentially important contribution to our understanding of scientific progress and philosophy of science more generally. Maybe it is the time for scientists and philosophers to acknowledge that science has to make metaphysical assumptions concerning the knowability and comprehensibility of the universe. Fundamental philosophical problems about scientific progress, which cannot be solved granted SE, may be solved granted AOE.” Professor SHAN GAO, Shanxi University, China . (shrink)

There is a wide range of realist but non-Platonist philosophies of mathematics—naturalist or Aristotelian realisms. Held by Aristotle and Mill, they played little part in twentieth century philosophy of mathematics but have been revived recently. They assimilate mathematics to the rest of science. They hold that mathematics is the science of X, where X is some observable feature of the (physical or other non-abstract) world. Choices for X include quantity, structure, pattern, complexity, relations. The article lays out and compares (...) these options, including their accounts of what X is, the examples supporting each theory, and the reasons for identifying the science of X with (most or all of) mathematics. Some comparison of the options is undertaken, but the main aim is to display the spectrum of viable alternatives to Platonism and nominalism. It is explained how these views answer Frege’s widely accepted argument that arithmetic cannot be about real features of the physical world, and arguments that such mathematical objects as large infinities and perfect geometrical figures cannot be physically realized. (shrink)

The most well-known and controversial solution to the paradox of fiction is Kendall Walton’s, according to whom pity of (say) Anna Karenina is not genuine pity. Walton’s opponents argue that we can resolve the paradox of fiction while preserving the intuition that our response to Anna is ordinary, run-of-the-mill pity; and they claim that retaining this intuition explains more than Walton’s approach. In my view, the arguments of Walton’s opponents depend on idiosyncratic features of examples involving purely fictional characters (...) like Anna Karenina. What is really at issue is the fact that we respond emotionally to fiction in ways that are not explained by our beliefs, but instead by what we imagine. That this is the crux of the paradox of fiction becomes clear only when we consider fictions about real persons and events. And I contend that once we turn our attention to these cases, Walton’s theory proves significantly more explanatory than the opposition. (shrink)

This paper argues for the existence of a certain type of defeater for one’s belief that P—the presence of social incentives not to share evidence against P. Such pressure makes it relatively likely that there is unpossessed evidence that would provide defeaters for P because it makes it likely that the evidence we have is a lopsided subset. This offers, I suggest, a rational reconstruction of a core strand of argument in Mill’s On Liberty. A consequence of the argument (...) is that on morally and politically laden issues in particular, a high degree of doxastic openness might be appropriate. (shrink)

The most prominent philosophical defenders of indigenous rights have been egalitarian liberals such as Will Kymlicka and Alan Patten. Libertarians, on the other hand, are often critical of such arrangements. Given the prevalence of this view, it is natural to think that no form of libertarianism is compatible with a distinct set of legal rights for native people. But the work of one of libertarianism's most distinguished defenders is striking in the degree to which it ratifies the liberal case for (...) indigenous rights. In support of this claim, I offer a reconstruction of arguments drawn from the work of Robert Nozick. I start with his libertarian framework for utopia and the many ways in which it legitimizes separate and distinct native communities. I then note how any state, even a minimal one, inevitably places indigenous minorities at a disadvantage. Given this, Nozick's libertarianism lends support to the liberal conception of native rights as a form of compensation for state-imposed disadvantage. I justify this claim by noting how a libertarian principle of compensation overlaps with and validates the understanding of compensation that features in the liberal rationale for native rights. While my primary motivation is to bolster the legitimacy of indigenous rights, I also hope to show how the aspects of libertarianism that vindicate such rights have bearing on broader debates about Nozick's work. Charles Mills, for example, has argued that Nozick's libertarianism displays a colonialist mindset, one that Mills takes to be representative of Anglo-American political philosophy as a whole. That fact that libertarianism lends support to a theory of indigenous rights suggests that it does not suffer from this and other charges. (shrink)

There is an old worry, which dates back to Mill but has analogs even in Sextus, that the very definition of ‘validity’ implies that all valid arguments are circular. This paper investigates how contemporary formal tools can ellucidate that old worry. Its main finding is the existence of a genuine puzzle: a difficult-to-avoid correspondence between the definitions of ‘valid argument’ and ‘premise circular argument’.