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Some philosophers regard it as a serious possibility that we now exist within a simulation. That this hypothesis is somewhat probable has been defended extensively by Nick Bostrom. Notably, Bostrom does not defend the conclusion that we inhabit a simulation, but rather the disjunctive conclusion that the human species is very likely to die out before reaching a 'posthuman stage', that posthuman civilizations are extremely unlikely to run significant numbers of simulations, or that we almost certainly inhabit a simulation. Bostrom argues that there is no basis for strongly favouring one of these alternatives over its counterparts. The upshot is that it is fairly probable that we inhabit a simulation. I argue that posthuman civilizations are likely to be unwilling to run significant numbers of simulations, thereby undermining the case for assigning a somewhat high probability to the hypothesis that we live in a simulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the democratic provenance of the law ground a pro tanto duty to obey the law? According to the social-egalitarian argument, it does, because individuals have a pro tanto duty to uphold relations of social equality, and because, by obeying a democratically made law, they uphold relations of social equality. In this paper, I argue, however, that even if we grant the premisses of the argument, the conclusion still does not follow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a widespread and largely unchallenged assumption within philosophy that the word 'normal' is ambiguous: i.e. that it can mean different things in different contexts. This assumption appears in work within topics as varied as the philosophy of biology, medicine, justification, causation, and more. In this paper I argue that we currently lack any independent reason for adopting such an assumption. The reason that would most likely be offered in its favour requires us to ignore an alternative and equally plausible explanation for the seeming variety of different meanings that 'normal' is taken to have. Meanwhile, the well-known conjunction reduction test for ambiguity provides no evidence for the ambiguity of 'normal', and in fact suggests that maintaining this ambiguity claim is more difficult than has been initially supposed. Therefore, with the way things stand at present, it should not be assumed without argument that 'normal' is an ambiguous term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We argued that formal objections to the error theory overgeneralize and therefore fail. Christine Tiefensee and Gregory Wheeler deny this. We argue that they are wrong, for two reasons. The first concerns how we should adjudicate conflicts between formal and substantive commitments. The second concerns an overlooked tension between formal objections and non-error-theoretic views. Our discussion shows that the commitments behind formal objections to the error theory, such as the dual schema, should be regarded as much more contentious than is often assumed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

James Henry Collin recently developed a new symmetry breaker favouring the ontological argument's possibility premiss over that of the reverse ontological argument. The symmetry breaker amounts to an undercutting defeater for the reverse possibility premiss based on Kripkean cases of a posteriori necessity. I argue, however, that symmetry re-arises in two forms. First, I challenge the purported asymmetry in epistemic entitlements to the original and reverse possibility premisses. Second, relevantly similar Kripkean cases equally undercut the original possibility premiss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Correia and Rosenkranz have recently argued in Analysis (2020, 2022) that tense realism (understood as the view that there is a real difference between past, present and future) entails realism about temporal passage (and thus the idea that there is some change in which time is the present time). I argue that their argument is either unsound or question-begging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What grounds facts of the form < x = x >? One promising answer is: facts of the form < x exists>. A different promising answer is: x itself. Isaac Wilhelm has recently argued that the second answer is superior to the first. In this paper, I rebut his argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The consequence argument purports to show that determinism is true only if no one has free will. Judgments about whether the argument is sound depend on how one understands locutions of the form 'p and no one can render p false'. The main interpretation on offer appeals to counterfactual sufficiency: s can render p false just in case there is something s can do such that, were s to do it, p would be false; otherwise, s cannot render p false. Here I show that, in the context of the consequence argument, this interpretation conflicts with widely endorsed principles governing the logic of counterfactuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, there have been several attempts to use the kind of reasoning found in Fitch's knowability paradox to argue for rather sweeping metaphysical claims: Jago (2020) uses such reasoning to argue that every truth has a truthmaker, and Loss (2021) does so to argue that every fact is grounded. This strategy has been criticized by Trueman (2021) , who points out that the same kind of reasoning could be used to establish entirely opposite conclusions. In response, Jago (2021) has offered a revised argument that is meant to avoid Trueman's objection. I argue that this revised argument is in fact undermined by an objection quite similar to Trueman's. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is a widely held principle that no one is able to do something that would require the past to have been different from how it actually is. This principle of the fixity of the past has been presented in numerous ways, playing a crucial role in arguments for logical and theological fatalism, and for the incompatibility of causal determinism and the ability to do otherwise. I will argue that, assuming bivalence, this principle is in conflict with standard views about knowledge and the semantics for 'actually'. I also consider many possible responses to the argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to show that the A-theorist's argument from experience is undermined by a commitment to 'experiential punctivism' - the view that instantaneous (or near-instantaneous) experiences are metaphysically prior to durative ones. The experiences to which the A-theorist's argument appeals are those of processual events. For these experiences to constitute perceptions of temporal passage it would be necessary to perceive such processes qua processes; but, if experiential punctivism were true, this would be impossible. We could only ever perceive those processes qua temporal variation, which merely amounts to an awareness of change as described by the B-theory. If there is such a phenomenon as the passing of time, it could not be an object of our experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Act-consequentialism (C) is self-effacing for an agent iff that agent's not accepting C would produce the best outcome. The question of whether C is self-effacing is important for evaluating C. Some hold that if C is self-effacing that would be a mark against it (Williams 1973 : 134); however, the claim that C is self-effacing is also used to defend C against certain objections (Parfit 1984 : Ch. 1, Railton 1984). In this paper I will show that one argument suggested by Parfit and Railton fails to establish that C is self-effacing for individuals. However, a slightly different argument may show that C is self-effacing for groups. This raises the intriguing possibility that it might be right for an individual, but not for a group of which they are a member, to accept a moral theory. This possibility, odd though it seems, might be helpful to consequentialists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wilhelm has recently shown that widely accepted principles about immediate ground are inconsistent with some principles of propositional identity. This note responds to this inconsistency by developing two ground-theoretic accounts of propositional individuation. On one account some of the grounding principles are incorrect; on the other account, the principles of propositional individuation are incorrect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I offer a new response to the regress argument against pure powers ontologies. This involves rejecting an overlooked premiss, which is that a power's manifestation is exhaustively accounted for by the powers involved in it. Rejection of this premiss not only answers the regress argument, but also brings with it wider metaphysical consequences, including a shift away from one-category ontologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jago and Loss have recently used variations on Fitch's paradox to argue that every truth has a truthmaker, and that every fact is grounded. In this paper, I show that Fitch's paradox can also be adapted to prove the exact opposite conclusions: no truth has a truthmaker, and no fact is grounded. All of these arguments are as dialectically effective as each other, and so they are all in bad company. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I present an argument proving that there are no fundamental facts, which is similar to an argument recently presented by Mark Jago for truthmaker maximalism. I suggest that this argument gives us at least some prima facie, defeasible reason to believe that there are no fundamental facts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops an argument against causal decision theory. I formulate a principle of preference, which I call the Guaranteed Principle. I argue that the preferences of rational agents satisfy the Guaranteed Principle, that the preferences of agents who embody causal decision theory do not, and hence that causal decision theory is false. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existential claims are widely held to be grounded in their true instances. However, this principle is shown to be problematic by arguments due to Kit Fine. Stephan Krämer has given an especially simple form of such an argument using propositional quantifiers. This note shows that even if a schematic principle of existential grounds for propositional quantifiers has to be restricted, this does not immediately apply to a corresponding non-schematic principle in higher-order logic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The modal argument against materialism, in its most standard form, relies on a compatibility thesis to the effect that the physical truths are compatible with the absence of consciousness. I propose an alternative modal argument that relies on an incompatibility thesis: The existence of consciousness is incompatible with the proposition that the physical truths provide (in a sense to be clarified) a complete description of reality. I show that everyone who accepts the premises of the standard modal argument must accept the premises of the revised modal argument, but not vice versa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The KK principle states that knowing entails knowing that one knows. This historically popular principle has fallen out of favour among many contemporary philosophers in light of putative counterexamples. Recently, some have defended more palatable versions of KK by weakening the principle. These revisions remain faithful to their predecessor in spirit while escaping crucial objections. This paper examines the prospects of such a strategy. It is argued that revisions of the original principle can be captured by a generalized knowledge iteration principle, Weak-KK, which states that knowing entails the possibility of knowing that one knows. But Weak-KK is vulnerable to an unknowability result and therefore must be rejected. The arguments here suggest that retreating to weaker iteration principles is not an option for the KK enthusiast. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new cosmological argument based on considerations about grounding. I argue that, by assuming three plausible principles about grounding, we can construct a cosmological argument for the existence of a unique ungrounded being that ultimately grounds everything else. At the end of the paper I consider two possible objections, and offer my replies to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors offer a critical review of the book "Objects: Nothing Out of the Ordinary," by Daniel Z. Korman. They challenge Korman's contention that object debunking arguments can be blocked only by appeal to what Korman call "apprehension." They also question why debunking arguments cannot be blocked by a straightforward appeal to causal connections between ordinary objects and the beliefs about them.

Daniel C. Dennett has long maintained that the Consequence Argument for incompatibilism is confused. In a joint work with Christopher Taylor, he claims to have shown that the argument is based on a failure to understand Logic 101. Given a fairly plausible account of having the power to cause something, they claim that the argument relies on an invalid inference rule. In this paper, I show that Dennett and Taylor's refutation does not work against a better, more standard version of the Consequence Argument. Therefore, Dennett and Taylor's alleged refutation fails. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Berkeley's 'master argument' for idealism has been the subject of extensive criticism. Two of his strongest critics, A.N. Prior and J.L. Mackie, argue that due to various logical confusions on the part of Berkeley, the master argument fails to establish his idealist conclusion. Prior (1976) argues that Berkeley's argument 'proves too little' in its conclusion, while Mackie (1964) contends that Berkeley confuses two different kinds of self-refutation in his argument. This paper proposes a defence of the master argument based on intuitionistic argument. It begins by giving a brief exposition of the master argument and Prior's and Mackie's criticism. The following section explains why we might read the master argument along intuitionistic lines. The final section demonstrates that, according to intuitionistic logic, Berkeley's argument withstands the criticisms of Prior and Mackie. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cosmological arguments for the existence of God face a gap problem. This is the problem of convincingly arguing that their intermediate conclusions that some first cause or necessary being exists provide evidence for their main conclusion that God exists. This paper develops a simple and innovative approach to solving this problem, applicable to many cosmological arguments. According to the proposal, the best explanation for why the necessary being is found to have necessary existence is that it is a perfect being. Since a perfect being would be God, the intermediate conclusions of the relevant cosmological arguments provide abductive evidence for their main conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a series of articles in this journal, Michael Tye (2002) and Paul Noordhof (2001, 2002) have sparred over the correct explanation of the putative invalidity of the following argument: the pain is in my fingertip; the fingertip is in my mouth; therefore, the pain is in my mouth. Whereas Tye explains the failure of the argument by stating that "pain "creates an intensional context, Noordhof maintains that the "in" in 'the pain is in my fingertip' is not spatial, but has state-attributing character. In this paper, we offer a third account, explaining the failure of the argument through state-attributing pragmatic implicatures. Empirical evidence is provided in support of this account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We provide a Bayesian justification of the idea that, under certain conditions, the absence of an argument in favour of the truth of a hypothesis H constitutes a good argument against the truth of H. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Variations on the argument “Inferences are moves from meaningful statements to meaningful statements; hence the meanings cannot be inferential roles” are often used as knock-down argument against inferentialism. In this short paper I indicate that the argument is simply a non sequitur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the arguments regarding the essays about animalism by Paul Snowdon and Stephan Blatti. Topics mention including description and application of animalism, principle of the supervenience of the mind and potential problem for animalism which arise from the diachronic multiple personality.

The ambiguity theory of 'knows' is the view that 'knows' and its cognates have more than one propositional sense – i.e. more than one sense that can properly be used in 'knows that' etc. constructions. Given that most of us are 'intuitive invariantists' – i.e. most of us initially have the intuition that 'knows' is univocal – defenders of the ambiguity theory need to offer an explanation for the semantic blindness present if 'knows' is in fact ambiguous. This paper is an attempt to offer such an explanation. Section 1 contains a general argument for the ubiquity of semantic blindness for ambiguous; the upshot being that semantic blindness for the ambiguity of 'knows' is thus unsurprising as a result. And Section 2 offers more specific arguments for why 'knows' is the type of ambiguous word we're very unlikely to quickly recognize is ambiguous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for the following disjunction: either we do not live in a world with a branching temporal structure, or backwards time travel is nomologically impossible, given the initial state of the universe, or backwards time travel to our space-time location is impossible given large-scale facts about space and time. A fortiori, if backwards time travel to our location is possible, we do not live in a branching universe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intentionalism about visual experiences is the view according to which the phenomenal character of a visual experience supervenes on the content of this experience. One of the most influential objections to this view is about blur: seeing a fuzzy contour clearly and seeing a sharp contour blurrily have different phenomenal character but the same content. I argue that this objection does not work if we understand perceptual content simply, and not particularly controversially, as partly constituted by the sum total of perceptually attributed properties, some determinable, some determinate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proponents of semiotic arguments against the commodification of certain goods face the following challenge: formulate your argument such that it does not appeal to immoral consequences, nor is really an argument showing that we ought to reform the meaning we give to commodification. I here attempt to meet this challenge via appeal to the notion of what I call proto-on-a-par value. Under this construal, the semiotic argument yields that the commodification of certain goods necessarily signals value choice, where value choice ought not to be signaled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional definitions of lying require that a speaker believe that what she asserts is false. Sam Fox Krauss (Analysis 2017) seeks to jettison the traditional belief requirement in favour of a necessary condition given in a credence-accuracy framework, on which the liar expects to impose the risk of increased inaccuracy on the hearer (the 'worse-off requirement'). He argues that this necessary condition importantly captures nearby cases as lies which the traditional view neglects. I argue, however, that Krauss's own account suffers from an identical drawback of being unable to explain nearby cases; and even worse, that account fails to distinguish cases of telling lies from cases of telling the truth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent article, Murali Ramachandran endorses a principle that he thinks can help us solve the surprise test puzzle and cause problems for a Williamsonian argument against KK principles. But in this paper I argue that his principle is false and as a result it cannot do either. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a well-known moral quandary concerning how to account for the rightness or wrongness of acts that clearly contribute to some morally significant outcome – but which each seem too small, individually, to make any meaningful difference. One consequentialist-friendly response to this problem is to deny that there could ever be a case of this type (e.g. a case where a collection of individually harmless acts causes a grave harm). This paper pursues this general strategy, but in an unusual way. Existing arguments for the consequentialist-friendly position are sorites-style arguments. Such arguments imagine varying a subject's predicament bit by bit until it is clear that a relevant difference has been achieved. The arguments offered in this paper are structurally different, and do not rely on any sorites series. For this reason, they are not vulnerable to objections that have been leveled against the sorites-style arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the collection of manuscripts, called Truth and Truthbearers, on the aspect of a proposition. It provides a general information on aims and objectives, specific arguments, and methodology. The collection deals with propositions that have fixed and unchanging values that can change over time.

An essay is presented on the strengthened consequence argument for incompatibilism. It aims to show the truth of determinism from the remote past and the laws of nature with argument that relies on two inference rules. It explores the relationship between unavoidability and logical necessity represented by material implication.

The article reflects on Harry Field's argument against non-sceptical mathematical Platonism that targets a number of commitments, including massive correlation between mathematical beliefs and mind-independent non-causal mathematical facts, principled reason to believe to be unexplainable, and the absence of a reason to reject mathematical Platonism. The author explains the argument as the reliability challenge to mathematical Platonism or the Benacerraf-Field argument.

In this article, the author argues that the consequence argument does not support any thesis that could reasonably be called incompatibilism. It highlights the most important argument for incompatibilism. It explains the difference between Strict Incompatibilism (SI) and Restricted Incompatibilism Schema (RIS). Steps that the author follows in formalizing the consequence argument are mentioned.

The article discusses the difficulty of the theoretical questions about conditionalization in the Bayesian argument. It examines the probability theory of standard Bayesian argument with adequate conclusion. It also cites the indefinite probabilities of direct inference in Bayesian argument that involve relational properties.

The overgeneration argument attempts to show that accepting second-order validity as a sound formal counterpart of logical truth has the unacceptable consequence that the Continuum Hypothesis is either a logical truth or a logical falsehood. The argument was presented and vigorously defended in John Etchemendy’s The Concept of Logical Consequence and it has many proponents to this day. Yet it is nothing but a seductive fallacy. I demonstrate this by considering five versions of the argument; as I show, each is either unsound or lacks a troubling conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A literary criticism of the book "The Order of Public Reason: A Theory of Freedom and Morality in a Diverse and Bounded World" by Gerald Gaus is presented. It explores the two arguments presented by Gaus on his work about moral demands and why neither argument is successful. It argues how the account of moral demands contradicts the reasoning for the public justification veto.

I argue against the Primary Sound Account of Echoes (PSAE) – the view that an echo of a sound just is that sound. I then argue that if my case against PSAE is successful, distal theories of sound are false. The upshot of my arguments, if they succeed, is that distal theories are false. Towards the end, I show how some distal theories can be modified to avoid this conclusion and note some open questions to which the modified theories give rise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to David Lewis, the prisoner's dilemma (PD) and Newcomb's problem (NP) are really just one dilemma in two different forms (Lewis 1979). Lewis's argument for this conclusion is ingenious and has been widely accepted. However, it is flawed. As this paper shows, the considerations that Lewis brings to bear to show that the game he starts with is an NP equally show that the game is not a PD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The No-Miracles Argument has a natural representation as a probabilistic argument. As such, it commits the base-rate fallacy. In this article, I argue that a recent attempt to show that there is still a serviceable version that avoids the base-rate fallacy fails, and with it all realistic hope of resuscitating the argument. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Externalists in epistemology often reject the KK principle – which says that if a person knows that p, then they know that they know that p. This paper argues that one standard argument against the KK principle that many externalists make is fallacious, as it involves illicit substitution into an intensional context. The fallacy is exposed and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is there some large number of very mild hangnail pains, each experienced by a separate person, which would be worse than two years of excruciating torture, experienced by a single person? Many people have the intuition that the answer to this question is No. However, a host of philosophers have argued that, because we have no intuitive grasp of very large numbers, we should not trust such intuitions. I argue that there is decent intuitive support for the No answer, which does not depend on our intuitively grasping or imagining very large numbers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent paper, I argue that Perky’s famous experiments do not show what they are often taken to show. Bence Nanay has criticised my argument on two grounds. I argue against both his lines of objection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pascal’s Wager holds that one has pragmatic reason to believe in God, since that course of action has infinite expected utility. The mixed strategy objection holds that one could just as well follow a course of action that has infinite expected utility but is unlikely to end with one believing in God. Monton (2011. Mixed strategies can’t evade Pascal’s Wager. Analysis 71: 642–45.) has argued that mixed strategies can’t evade Pascal’s Wager, while Robertson (2012. Some mixed strategies can evade Pascal’s Wager: a reply to Monton. Analysis 72: 295–98.) has argued that Monton is mistaken. We show that Monton is correct, highlight the crucial assumptions that he relies on, and shed some light on the role of mixed strategies in decision theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]