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Many authors assume that we are rationally required to be somewhat moved by any recognized reason. This assumption turns out to be unjustified if not false, both in general and under any non-trivial restriction. Even its most plausible forms are contradicted by the possibility of exclusionary reasons. Some have doubted the latter's possibility. But these doubts are also shown to be unfounded, and exclusionary reasons' pervasive role in normative theorizing is defended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the so-called golden rule, we ought to treat others as we want to be treated by them. This rule, in one form or another, is part of every major religion, and it has been accepted by many philosophers with various ethical views. However, if the literal golden rule is interpreted as an absolute rule, it is problematic. In this paper, I introduce a new version of this famous principle that is similar to various classical definitions. According to this variant, the rule can be formulated in the following way: If you want it to be the case that if $x$ x were in your situation and you were in $x$ x 's situation then $x$ x would do $H$ H to you, and you have a good will, then you ought to do $H$ H to x. I show how this version can be derived from a small set of highly plausible premises, and I defend it against some of the most interesting and/or common objections against the golden rule in the literature. I conclude that we have good reason to believe in this rendition of the principle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes three responses to the anti-war statements made recently by Pope Francis. The first one recapitulates the very foundations of the prevalent legal and ethical approaches to the issue of war—laid by the most influential Christian thinkers of all times, revisited on several occasions by their followers, and ultimately confirmed in the fairly recent documents articulating Catholic war ethics. The second discusses the specific mode of Francis's apparent repudiation of the doctrine of just war, implying the essential equalisation of the moral status of either warring party—even in the case of conflicts initiated and sustained by undeniable and unprovoked acts of aggression. The third examines the reasonableness and moral soundness of the Pope's implied belief in the impermissibility of an attacked political community's (unintendedly) exposing its members to the enemy's violence without having a substantiated prospect of (relatively swift) military success of its defensive undertaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Geach‐Kaplan sentence is alleged to be an example of a non‐first‐orderizable sentence, and the proof of the alleged non‐first‐orderizability is credited to David Kaplan. However, there is also a widely shared intuition that the Geach‐Kaplan sentence is still first‐orderizable by invoking sets or other extra non‐logical resources. The plausibility of this intuition is particularly crucial for first‐orderism, namely, the thesis that all our scientific discourse and reasoning can be adequately formalized by first‐order logic. I first argue that the Geach‐Kaplan sentence is, in fact, not first‐orderizable even by invoking extra non‐logical resources, in any sense that is acceptable for first‐orderism and adequately corresponds to the sense in which the Geach‐Kaplan sentence is deemed to be non‐first‐orderizable simpliciter via Kaplan's proof. To address this problem on behalf of first‐orderism, I then propose an alternative conception of first‐orderizability in the sense of which the Geach‐Kaplan sentence and any other second‐order sentences become first‐orderizable by invoking extra non‐logical resources; furthermore, in certain circumstances, they are first‐orderizable without incurring any extra ontological commitment. My analysis also turns out to yield (as a biproduct) a significant enhancement of the so‐called paradox of plurality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the worm theory, persons are (maximal) aggregates of person-stages existing at different times. Personites, on the other hand, are non-maximal aggregates of stages that are very much like persons. Their existence appears to make instances of prudential self-sacrifice morally problematic: the personites that exist at the time of the sacrifice but not at the time of the reward seem not to receive future compensation for their sacrifice. Instances of punishment appear to give rise to a similar problem. We argue that these impressions arise from a mistaken assumption about the primary bearers of properties such as suffering , receiving compensation (in the future) and having (previously) committed a crime. According to the worm theory, stages, rather than persons or personites, possess these properties. Persons and personites have these properties only derivatively. As we show, once this clarification and related ones are made, the apparent moral problems raised by the existence of personites dissolve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Placebo tests are increasingly common in applied social science research, but the methodological literature has not previously offered a comprehensive account of what we learn from them. We define placebo tests as tools for assessing the plausibility of the assumptions underlying a research design relative to some departure from those assumptions. We offer a typology of tests defined by the aspect of the research design that is altered to produce it (outcome, treatment, or population) and the type of assumption that is tested (bias assumptions or distributional assumptions). Our formal framework clarifies the extra assumptions necessary for informative placebo tests; these assumptions can be strong, and in some cases similar assumptions would justify a different procedure allowing the researcher to relax the research design's assumptions rather than test them. Properly designed and interpreted, placebo tests can be an important device for assessing the credibility of empirical research designs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I raise three problems for Pummer's account of impermissible yet praiseworthy actions. First, Pummer does not offer a plausible account of the motives of his agents, and this presents a major obstacle to evaluating those agents' conduct. Second, the success of his argument hinges on a problematic way of individuating actions. Finally, there is a better candidate for a type of action that is both praiseworthy and impermissible, but this candidate presents novel challenges for Pummer's account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to perdurantist accounts of persistence, transtemporal aggregates of stages, 'worms', are 'the referents of ordinary terms, members of ordinary domains of quantification, subjects of ordinary predications, and so on...on the stage view...it is instantaneous stages rather than worms that play this role'. I argue the stage theory should be preferred as an account of personal persistence. I consider the way in which four‐dimensionalist accounts of personal persistence are organized and the conditions which, arguably, any plausible account of personal persistence should satisfy. I sketch a semantics for the stage theory which yields a stage‐theoretical account of personal persistence that satisfies these conditions. I argue that standard purdurantist accounts do not. I conclude that standard purdurantist accounts fail because, while persons view themselves and their worlds from the time‐bound first‐person perspective of stages, purdurantist accounts privilege the atemporal view of persons as four‐dimensional aggregates of stages or 'worms'. Perdurantist accounts produce counterintuitive results in fission cases because there is a discrepancy between a person's time‐bound first‐person perspective and the purdurantist view from nowhen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plausibility pleading requirements articulated by the U.S. Supreme Court in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly and Ashcroft v. Iqbal continue to confound even well-intentioned courts. But for courts inclined to avoid grappling with modern applications of existing law, they provide ideal camouflage: a way of relying on procedural justifications to ostensibly sidestep substantive law decisions--while in effect creating de facto law that robs litigants of their day in court. These negative, unintended consequences of Twombly and Iqbal are vividly illustrated in recent federal litigation brought under the Fair Housing Act involving claims of landlord liability for tenant-on- tenant harassment. This Article demonstrates how plausibility pleading, when improperly applied in cases involving unsettled law, creates substantive law sub silentio with powerful consequences. These decisions, couched as procedural rulings, in fact impose substantive limits on the rights of both the parties and future litigants, insulate courts from potentially critical appellate review, and hinder the development of legal protections. After all, absent explicit splits in authority, the already small likelihood of attracting Supreme Court or congressional attention becomes infinitesimal. In response, this Article recommends a framework for analyzing novel legal claims that promotes the development of a more coherent body of substantive law while limiting judicial time spent on objectively meritless claims. This approach is consistent with the policies underlying the Supreme Court's adoption of plausibility pleading and, in the specific example we address, with Congress's broad remedial goals in enacting the Fair Housing Act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows that there is a liar-like paradox that arises for rational credence that relies only on very weak logical and credal principles. The paradox depends on a weak rational reflection principle, logical principles governing conjunction and principles governing the relationship between rational credence and proof. To respond to this paradox, we must either reject even very weak rational reflection principles or reject some highly plausible logical or credal principle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The experience machine poses the most important problem for hedonist theories of well-being. I argue that desire satisfactionism faces a similar problem: the desire machine. Upon entering this machine, your desires are altered through some minor neurosurgery. In particular, the machine causes you to desire everything that actually happens. The experience machine constructs a simulated world that matches your preexisting desires. The desire machine reconstructs your conative state to match the preexisting world. Desire satisfactionism recommends entering the desire machine because you will then have more satisfied desires, but this is unintuitive. In this paper, I consider how desire satisfactionists might avoid the result that entering the desire machine increases one's well-being. First, I further motivate why this problem arises. Second, I consider coherence-based norms of rational desire change. Finally, I argue that introducing a substantive account of fitting desire is the only plausible solution, but that this response requires abandoning pure subjectivism about well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we put forward two novel arguments against the counterfactual comparative account (CCA) of harm and benefit. In both arguments, the central theme is that CCA conflicts with plausible judgements about benefit and prudence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We argue that P. F. Strawson's hugely influential account of moral responsibility in 'Freedom and Resentment' (FR) is inextricably bound up with his barely known account of morality in 'Social Morality and Individual Ideal' (SMII). Reading FR through the lens of SMII has at least three far-reaching implications. First, the ethics–morality distinction in SMII gives content to Strawson's famous distinction between personal and moral reactive attitudes, which has often been thought to be a merely formal distinction. Second, the ethics–morality distinction sheds light on the scope of moral responsibility in FR, which is narrower than commentators think. Third, Strawson's discussion of morality shows that he was not insensitive to issues of power, as several critics have claimed. The link between morality and power helps to make clear that Strawson allows for criticism of our moral responsibility practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Science learning is an important part of the K-12 educational experience, as well as in the lives of students. This study considered students' science learning as they engaged in the instruction of scientific issues with social relevance. With classroom environments radically changing during the COVID-19 pandemic, our study adapted to teachers and students as they were forced to change from more traditional, in-person instructional settings to virtual, online instruction settings. In the present study, we considered science learning during a scaffold-facilitated process, where secondary students evaluated the connections between lines of scientific evidence and alternative explanations about fossil fuels and climate change and gauged the plausibility of each explanation. Our investigation focused on the relations between students' levels of evaluations, shifts in plausibility judgments, and knowledge gains, and examined whether there were differences in these relations between in-person classroom settings and virtual classroom settings. The results revealed that the indirect relational pathway linking higher levels of evaluation, plausibility shifts toward a more scientific stance, and greater knowledge gains was meaningful and more robust than the direct relational pathway linking higher levels of evaluation to greater knowledge gains. The results also showed no meaningful difference between the two instructional settings, suggesting the potential adaptiveness and effectiveness of properly-designed, scaffolded science instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I respond to Tim Smartt's (2023) skepticism about epistemic blame. Smartt's skepticism is based on the claims that (i) mere negative epistemic evaluation can better explain everything proponents of epistemic blame say we need epistemic blame to explain; and (ii) no existing account of epistemic blame provides a plausible account of the putative force that any response deserving the label "blame" ought to have. He focuses primarily on the prominent "relationship-based" account of epistemic blame to defend these claims, arguing that the account is explanatorily idle, and cannot distinguish between epistemically excused and epistemically blameworthy agents. I argue that Smartt mischaracterizes the account's role for judgments of epistemic relationship impairment, leading to mistaken claims about the account's predictions. I also argue that the very feature of the account that Smartt mischaracterizes is key to understanding what epistemic blame does for our epistemic responsibility practices that mere negative epistemic evaluation cannot. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One important challenge for contingentists is that they seem to be unable to account for the meaning of some apparently meaningful modal discourse that is perfectly intelligible for necessitists. This worry is particularly pressing for higher-order contingentists, contingentists who hold that it is not only contingent which objects there are, but also contingent which semantic values there are for higher-order variables to quantify over. Objections against higher-order contingentism along these lines have been presented in Williamson (Mind 119(475):657–748, 2010; Modal logic as metaphysics, Oxford University Press, 2013, ch. 7), and Fritz and Goodman (Mind 126(504):1063–1108, 2017). This paper presents a way for contingentists to respond to these challenges. The upshot is that the contingentist can account for the meaningfulness of the problematic modal claims by pretending necessitism to be true, but in some cases it turns out to be indeterminate whether they are true. I defend this strategy against the objections against pretence-strategies presented in Fritz and Goodman (Mind 126(504):1063–1108, 2017, §4). Furthermore, I defend the plausibility of the resulting indeterminacy from the contingentist's perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the explanatory role of 'status-truths' such as essence-truths, necessity-truths and law-truths? A plausible principle, suggested by various authors, is Ground by Status, according to which status truths ground their prejacents. For instance, if it is essential to a that p, then this grounds the fact that p. But Ground by Status faces a forceful objection: it is inconsistent with widely accepted principles regarding the logic of grounding (Glazier in Philos Stud 174(11):2871–2889, 2017a, Synthese 174(198):1409–1424, 2017b; Kappes in Synthese 199(1–2):2575–2595, 2020, Philos Stud 178(4):1267–1284, 2021). I defend Ground by Status against this objection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I defend a novel way of working out the Balancing View of Ought, that is, the view that whether one ought to take some action depends on nothing but the balance of the reasons for the action and those against it or for its alternatives. I show that the Balancing View needs to be complemented by certain principles of reason transmission, at least one of which might seem rather surprising. The result is an attractive theoretical package that allows for compelling explanations of noteworthy normative phenomena, including ones that the Balancing View has been claimed to be at odds with. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Divers argued that there are modal truths that are inconvenient for the canonical Lewisian theory of modality. Noonan and Jago proposed an answer to the challenge, by invoking a duplicate interpretation of the modal truths. Here, I present a slightly different kind of modal truth that would prove inconvenient even for a Lewisian who accepts Noonan and Jago's proposal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Num 25 is clearly a composite text, the manner of its compilation is still debated. This article presents a new analysis of the chapter as a test case for a fundamental issue in contemporary pentateuchal studies: whether the Pentateuch represents mainly a compilation of independent sources or a series of redactional strata. The analysis is focused on internal considerations of Num 25, suspending any theory of the formation of the Pentateuch, the nature of the Priestly writings, or the status of the book of Numbers. I conclude that Num 25 is more likely to consist of three independent narratives than several layers placed one on top of the other, and suggest several methodological considerations that can be helpful in analyzing other texts in the Pentateuch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article defends the existence of borderline consciousness. In borderline consciousness, conscious experience is neither determinately present nor determinately absent, but rather somewhere between. The argument in brief is this. In considering what types of systems are conscious, we face a quadrilemma. Either nothing is conscious, or everything is conscious, or there's a sharp boundary across the apparent continuum between conscious systems and nonconscious ones, or consciousness is a vague property admitting indeterminate cases. Assuming mainstream naturalism about consciousness, we ought to reject the first three options, which forces us to the fourth, indeterminacy. Standard objections to the existence of borderline consciousness turn on the inconceivability of borderline cases. However, borderline cases are only inconceivable by an inappropriately demanding standard of conceivability. I conclude with some plausible cases and applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is computational explanation? Many accounts treat it as a kind of causal explanation. I argue against two more specific versions of this view, corresponding to two popular treatments of causal explanation. The first holds that computational explanation is mechanistic, while the second holds that it is interventionist. However, both overlook an important class of computational explanations, which I call limitative explanations. Limitative explanations explain why certain problems cannot be solved computationally, either in principle or in practice. I argue that limitative explanations are not plausibly understood in either mechanistic or interventionist terms. One upshot of this argument is that there are causal and non-causal kinds of computational explanation. I close the paper by suggesting that both are grounded in the notion of computational implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a series of arguments aimed at showing that, for an important subclass of social rules—non‐summary rules—no adequate metaphysical account has been given, and it tentatively suggests that no such account can be given. The category of non‐summary rules is an important one, as it includes the rules of etiquette, fashion, chess, basketball, California state law, descriptive English grammar, and so on. This paper begins with behavioristic accounts of the conditions for the existence of such rules, and proceeds through progressively more complex accounts, all the way to what are labeled 'normative attitude accounts,' which are prima facie plausible and particularly popular. In each case it is argued that the type of account under consideration cannot explain the existence of the relevant type of social rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some philosophers think that if someone acts wrongly while falsely believing that her act is permissible, this moral mistake cannot excuse her wrongdoing. And some think that this is because it is morally blameworthy to fail to appreciate the moral significance of non‐moral facts of which one is aware, such that mistakenly believing that one's act is permissible when it is in fact wrong is itself morally blameworthy. Here I challenge the view that it is blameworthy to fail to appreciate the moral significance of non‐moral facts of which one is aware. This view seems okay if we focus on examples of people mistakenly believing that their wrongful acts are permissible. But it is not remotely plausible when we consider other varieties of moral mistake – such as believing that one's action is required when it is in fact supererogatory, believing that one's action is wrong when it is in fact permissible, and believing false things about the moral properties of others' actions and of merely possible actions. The upshot is that those who maintain that moral mistakes cannot excuse are sent back to the drawing board; we need a new explanation of why this would be the case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the relationship between inquiry and epistemology? Are epistemic norms the norms that guide us as inquirers—as agents in the pursuit of knowledge and understanding? Recently, there has been growing support for what I, following Friedman (Philosophical Review 129(4):501–536, 2020), will call the zetetic turn in epistemology, the view that all epistemic norms are norms of inquiry. This paper investigates the prospects of an inquiry-centered approach to epistemology and develops several motivations for resisting it. First, I argue that the norms of inquiry are most plausibly seen as practical, not as distinctively epistemic. Second, I argue that a zetetically-grounded epistemology is unable to properly account for the rationality of belief. It fails to account for cases where intuitively irrational beliefs promote inquiry, or where intuitively rational beliefs are zetetically useless or counterproductive to inquiry. The main upshot is this: there must be a source of epistemic normativity that isn't ultimately zetetic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emerging during a Cold War era of nuclear uncertainty, refined in decades of neoliberal turbulence, and used today for modeling climate futures, scenario thinking has now entered the domain of the Anthropocene novel. This article argues for the adoption of scenarios as a formal strategy of two contemporary realist novels engaged in updating the genre to present scales of crisis: Tom McCarthy's Remainder (2005) and Ben Lerner's 10:04 (2014). As these novels process new forms of risk in a time of epochal fracture, they likewise signal a conceptual break in realism's capacity to imagine new configurations for the present based on the shape of things past. Scenarios prioritize plausibility over predictability, emphasizing the importance of storytelling in processing an age of planetary crisis while also showing the limits of statistical methods of world‐building. By attending to the many configurations that could emerge from the volatile state of the present, scenario fiction seeks to preempt unmediated outcomes and insure the novel's critical extension into all possible futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The following article evaluates two common arguments for preterist interpretations of Mark 13:24‐27, collectively dubbed the 'time‐text' argument. These two arguments support symbolic and/or historicised interpretations. Our thesis is that the first argument is unsound and the second commits the informal fallacy of false dilemma. Owing to these problems, the arguments and preterist interpretations should be rejected in favour of more plausible futurist interpretations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Augmented reality (AR) integrates virtual content into a consumer's perception of the real world. While academic interest in AR is growing, most prior research has focused on consumer evaluations of AR content and neglected the physical context in which AR content is consumed. Addressing this research gap, two experimental studies showed that context (e.g., experiencing a virtual sofa at home vs. in a university classroom) impacts consumer judgments and evaluations. The results reveal two primary effects of context. First, contexts in which virtual objects meet users' personal and cultural expectations associated with a specific location (e.g., a sofa in a living room) increase plausibility. However, such functionally appropriate contexts (counterintuitively) decrease local presence (i.e., the perception that the virtual product is "here"). Study 2 extends this model by showing that plausibility (a rational and deliberate assessment of AR content) and local presence both impact utilitarian benefits, whereas local presence has a stronger effect on perceived physical tangibility. The findings extend prior theory on the psychological mechanisms impacting judgment and presence in AR, and they provide managers with important insights regarding the influence of context on downstream variables in their AR and metaverse marketing strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can we distinguish the permissible use of aesthetic features in persuasive communication from their manipulative misuse? The paper reconstructs the basic argument (proposed by Stoics and others in antiquity) that persuasive speech should be aesthetically austere. The argument, it is suggested, is fundamentally sound. But the view it sustains is subject to challenge, on the grounds that it is implausible and impractical in the real world. By making clear the grounds on which the "austere" view is justified, and by making precise the arguments that underlie those challenges, the paper identifies and evaluates three different possible responses to those challenges. The most promising of these accepts the argument for "austerity" but proposes a more moderate interpretation of its conclusion. In doing so, it takes up the challenge of providing a defensible rationale for distinguishing the permissible from the impermissible use of aesthetic features in persuasive communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Subjectivists think that our well-being is grounded in our subjective attitudes. Many such views are vulnerable to variations on the 'paradox of desire', where theories cannot make determinate judgements about the well-being of agents who take a positive valuing attitude towards their life going badly. However, this paradox does not affect all subjectivist theories; theories grounded on agents' prudential values can avoid it. This paper suggests a new paradox for subjectivist theories which has a wider scope, and includes such prudential judgement theories. I outline the new paradox and show how two plausible idealisztions (coherence and consideration) will not help. Subjectivists about well-being must either add an additional idealization that can solve the paradox of judgement or explain why such paradoxes do not constitute serious objections to a theory of well-being. [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]

Some externalists have recently argued that the unity of theoretical and practical reason implies that epistemic justification is factive. It is argued that arguments for the factivity of epistemic justification either (i) equate two actions that are in fact different, or (ii) make the unwarranted assumption that the by-relation transmits justification. The unity of reason does not imply that epistemic justification is factive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

John Stuart Mill is considered one of the great representatives of the liberal tradition. Despite such consideration having plausibility, it is possible to affirm that Mill's practical philosophy is related to another tradition of Western political thought: republicanism. This article aims to present a similar aspect between Mill's proposals of republican theories, more precisely, the proposals of the neo-Roman theory of republicanism. For this, this article refers to a work by Mill that is not associated with his theory of freedom, the work The Subject of Women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an introduction to dynamic epistemic logic through some formal systems that allow to represent knowledge and beliefs of one or more agents, as well as epistemic actions that can modify them. Specifically, we present the public announcements logic, action models and plausibility models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The R packages Dire and EdSurvey allow analysts to make a conditioning model with new variables and then draw new plausible values. This is important because results for a variable not in the conditioning model are biased. For regression-type analyses, users can also use direct estimation to estimate parameters without generating new plausible values. Dire is distinct from other available software in R in that it requires fixed item parameters and simplifies calculation of high-dimensional integrals necessary to calculate composite or subscales. When used with EdSurvey, it is very easy to use published item parameters to estimate a new conditioning model. We show the theory behind the methods in Dire and a coding example where we perform an analysis that includes simple process data variables. Because the process data is not used in the conditioning model, the estimator is biased if a new conditioning model is not added with Dire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to argue against the real possibility of languages without subject‐predicate structure, so‐called feature‐placing languages. They were first introduced by Strawson (1959/1990), later given formal expression through Quine's Predicate Functor Logic (Quine, 1960, Quine, 1971/Quine, 1976, Quine, 1992), and further elaboration in (Hawthorne & Cortens, 1995). I argue that, on the presumption that feature‐placing languages are not mere notational variants on first‐order languages, the idea of such languages is incoherent. The argument for this view rests on two highly plausible views about the conditions for the possibility of sentential meaning in natural languages. If accepted, these two views jointly imply that the sentences of feature‐placing languages lack sufficient internal structure to meet the conditions for sentential meaning. Feature‐placing languages cannot then count as genuine languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a critical overview of a set of normative theories, namely Tianxia 天下 (all-under-heaven), whose purpose is to provide a renewed conceptual framework for the improvement of the world system. First, the article introduces the origins, main features, and differences within Tianxia, before discussing two major criticisms leveled against it. The article then argues that the most powerful parts of these criticisms come from the challenges posed against Tianxia's legitimacy. The article elaborates on this and introduces two additional challenges of the same kind which were not discussed before. While the article leaves open the question of whether Tianxia is a realistic utopia, it insists that meaningful discussion of Tianxia must take legitimacy challenges seriously. It ends with a discussion concerning whether China can be understood as a civilization-state and how this understanding affects Tianxia's reception as a realistic utopia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we examine the role of the body in constituting specific social interactions via religious media ecologies from the perspective of the enactive embodied cognition. Religious media ecologies give affordances for conversation and interaction which amplify not only religious but also social beliefs and turn subjective judgements into an intersubjective reality. Hence, despite the traditional emphasis on rational, verbal forms of social interaction, we consider the human body to be something of a cognitive pattern or map, representing important social senses and relations. Thematizing the proximity between embodied cognition and religious media ecologies can bring together philosophy and sociology, while addressing a range of prominent thinkers in an original way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short paper states a new objection against "spectrum arguments" for nontransitive betterness. It is shown that defenders of such arguments must reject one of two very plausible principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The view that abstracta cannot exert causal power is pretty common in metaphysics. According to Friedell (2020), however, this view is mistaken. In a recent paper in this journal, he has argued that at least some abstracta are causally efficacious. My goal in what follows is to demonstrate that, given certain plausible methodological assumptions, Friedell 2020's argument is not as strong as it might at first seem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contingentism is the view that it is contingent which things exist. Despite its plausibility, advocates of contingentism face a well-known 'challenge' to demonstrate that they can draw what appear to be intelligible modal distinctions (Williamson Modal Logic as Metaphysics. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013). In this article, I argue that if certain controversial modal principles fail, the challenge contingentists face becomes much more difficult. Whereas extant challenges concern contingentists' inability to draw quite theoretical second-order modal distinctions, I present a challenge which concerns contingentists' inability to draw simpler first-order distinctions. This indicates that in certain modal settings there may well be significant first-order barriers to maintaining contingentism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 'The logic of partial supposition' (Analysis vol. 81), Benjamin Eva and Stephan Hartmann investigate partial imaging , a credence-revision method which combines the partiality familiar from Jeffrey Conditioning(The Logic of Decision , 1983) with the formal notion of imaging familiar from Lewis's 'Causal decision theory' (1981). They argue that because partial imaging is non-monotonic, it 'fail[s] to provide a plausible account of the norms of partial subjunctive suppositions'. In this note, I present a notion of partial imaging that does satisfy monotonicity, and discuss some of the applications and ramifications. The account frames conditioning as a form of imaging, and rejects Gärdenfors's principle of linearity in 'Imaging and conditionalization' (1982). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The axiological account of deep disagreements is described and defended. This proposal understands this notion in terms of the existential importance of the topic of disagreement. It is argued that this account provides a straightforward explanation for the main features of deep disagreements. This proposal is then compared to the contemporary popular view that deep disagreements are essentially hinge disagreements – i.e. disagreements concerning clashes of one's hinge commitments, in the sense described by the later Wittgenstein. It is claimed that hinge disagreements are only plausibly deep disagreements insofar as there can be a specific class of hinge commitments that are axiological in nature, thereby lending further support to the axiological account of deep disagreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We draw out significant consequences of a relatively popular theory of metaphysical modality—branching actualism—for cosmological arguments for God's existence. According to branching actualism, every possible world shares an initial history with the actual world and diverges only because causal powers (or dispositions, or some such) are differentially exercised. We argue that branching actualism undergirds successful responses to two recent cosmological arguments: the Grim Reaper Kalam argument and a modal argument from contingency. We also argue that branching actualism affords a response to one popular defense of the classic contingency argument. What results are new difficulties for several cosmological arguments arising from the metaphysics of modality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research data shows fear to be the predominant emotion accompanying thoughts of one's own death. This is because there's no convincing evidence of exactly what to expect thereafter. There's also considerable confusion about which of the three main traditional hypotheses1 of the 'after-life' is correct. The problem is that none of them can be empirically proven to be true. The upside is that this allows for equally plausible alternatives. In this essay I present a fourth, more reassuring, hypothesis that's much more useful in reducing the fear of death and the 'there-after.'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we evaluate the effect of managerial entrenchment on corporate information production using the voting outcomes of shareholder-initiated proposals intended to mitigate managerial entrenchment. We focus on the proposals that are passed or rejected by a small margin of votes, which generate plausibly exogenous variations in managerial entrenchment. We find that a reduction in managerial entrenchment enhances corporate information production. The effects are stronger for firms with greater information asymmetries and severer agency frictions. Overall, the evidence is consistent with the view that reducing managerial entrenchment enhances corporate disclosure by aligning the incentives of managers and shareholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When people make plausibility judgments about an assertion, an event, or a piece of evidence, they are gauging whether it makes sense that the event could transpire as it did. Therefore, we can treat plausibility judgments as a part of sensemaking. In this paper, we review the research literature, presenting the different ways that plausibility has been defined and measured. Then we describe the naturalistic research that allowed us to model how plausibility judgments are engaged during the sensemaking process. The model is based on an analysis of 23 cases in which people tried to make sense of complex situations. The model describes the user’s attempts to construct a narrative as a state transition string, relying on plausibility judgments for each transition point. The model has implications for measurement and for training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]