How we understand Descartes's physics rests on how we interpret his ontological commitment to individual bodies, and in particular on how we account for their individuation. However, Descartes's contemporaries (notably, Cordemoy and Leibniz) as well as contemporary philosophers (notably, Kenny and Garber) have seen Descartes's account of the individuation of bodies as deeply flawed. In the first part of this paper, I discuss how the various problems and puzzles involved in Descartes's account of the individuation of bodies arise, and the relevance of these problems for his physics. With an eye toward resolving these puzzles, I argue for an interpretation of the Cartesian ontology in which bodies are not individuated by motion but, instead, are mind-dependent. As part of this reading, I demonstrate the sense in which we can clearly and distinctly perceive bodies, and also the senses in which the real, conceptual, and modal distinctions apply to them.

Recent scholarship in philosophy of science and technology has shown that scientific and technological decision making are laden with values, including values of a social, political, and/or ethical character. This paper examines the role of value judgments in the design of machine-learning (ML) systems generally and in recidivism-prediction algorithms specifically. Drawing on work on inductive and epistemic risk, the paper argues that ML systems are value laden in ways similar to human decision making, because the development and design of ML systems requires human decisions that involve tradeoffs that reflect values. In many cases, these decisions have significant—and, in some cases, disparate—downstream impacts on human lives. After examining an influential court decision regarding the use of proprietary recidivism-prediction algorithms in criminal sentencing, Wisconsin v. Loomis, the paper provides three recommendations for the use of ML in penal systems.

A great deal of attention has been paid in recent years to the functional roles of intentions in intentional action. In this paper we sketch and defend a position on this issue while attacking a provocative alternative. Our position has its roots in a cybernetic theory of purposive behavior and is only part of the larger task of understanding all goal-directed behavior. Indeed, a unified model of goal-directed behavior, with appropriate modifications for different types of systems, is a long-range ambition.

Husserl's theory of perception is remarkable in several respects. For one thing, Husserl rigorously distinguishes the parts and properties of the act of consciousness — its content — from the parts and properties of the object perceived. Second, Husserl's repeated insistence that perceptual consciousness places its subject in touch with the perceived object itself, rather than some representation that does duty for it, vindicates the commonsensical and phenomenologically grounded belief that when a thing appears to us, it is precisely that thing, rather than some other thing (its ‘appearance’), that we perceive. Third, his distinction between empty and intuitive acts, and his descriptions of their complex interplay in perceptual consciousness, provides a way of making sense of the fact that an object can be perceived even when some of its parts and properties are not. Finally, his theory of perceptual acts as constituents of higher-order acts of fulfilment provides one of the few detailed accounts in the philosophical literature of how a perceptual experience can transform a mere thought into knowledge, despite the fact that the relation between perception and belief is not a logical or inferential one.

Several science studies scholars report instances of scientific “hype,” or sensationalized exaggeration, in journal articles, institutional press releases, and science journalism in a variety of fields (e.g., Caulfield and Condit 2012). Yet, how “hype” is being conceived varies. I will argue that hype is best understood as a particular kind of exaggeration, one that explicitly or implicitly exaggerates various positive aspects of science in ways that undermine the goals of science communication in a particular context. This account also makes clear the ways that value judgments play a role in judgments of “hype,” which has implications for detecting and addressing this problem.

Causation is a topic of perennial philosophical concern. As well as being of intrinsic interest, almost all philosophical concepts — such as knowledge, beauty, and moral responsibility — involve a causal dimension. Nonetheless, attempts to provide a satisfactory account of the nature of causation have typically led to barrages of counterexamples. I hope to show that a number of the difficulties plaguing theories of causation have a common source.

Most philosophical theories of causation describe a binary relation between cause and effect, or at any rate, a relation that reduces to such a binary relation when certain background information is held fixed. Indeed, most theories provide the same general account of when this relation holds: in order to evaluate whether C causes E, we must make a comparison between two cases, which we may neutrally label as C and ∼C. Where theories of causation differ, of course, is in precisely what is being so compared. Regularity theories of causation require a comparison between what actually happens whenever C occurs, and what actually happens, elsewhere and elsewhen, when C does not occur.

Some theories of justice hold that individuals placed in fortunate circumstances through no merit or choice of their own are morally obligated to aid individuals placed in unfortunate circumstances through no fault or choice of their own. In these theories what are usually regarded as obligations of benevolence are reinterpreted as strict obligations of justice. A closely related view is that the institutions of a society should be arranged in a way that gives priority to helping people placed in unfortunate circumstances through no fault or choice of their own. Any theory of this type needs a way of assessing individuals’ circumstances to determine who is fortunate and who is unfortunate.

I shall argue that the standard for assessing people's circumstances to determine what they owe and are owed according to distributive justice should be the welfare or well-being level that they can attain, given their circumstances. This claim, that the ‘currency of justice’ should be welfare, has attracted criticisms that some have thought decisive. My counterclaim is that if we adopt an objective account of welfare and properly accommodate concerns about individual responsibility, the criticisms can be drained of their force.

Propositional attitudes, like believing and asserting, are relations between agents and propositions. Agents are individuals who do the believing and asserting; propositions are things that are believed and asserted. Propositional attitude ascriptions are sentences that ascribe propositional attitudes to agents. For example, a propositional attitude ascription α believes, or asserts, that S is true iff the referent of a bears the relation of believing, or asserting, to the proposition expressed by s. The questions I will address have to do with the precise nature of propositions, and the attitudes, like belief, that we bear to them.

I will assume both that propositions are the semantic contents of sentences, and that the proposition expressed by a sentence is a structured complex made up of the semantic contents of the parts of the sentences that express it.

Infinitism, a theory of the structure of justification most recently developed and defended by Peter Klein, is the view that justification is a matter of having an infinite series of non-repeating reasons for a proposition. I argue that infinitism is preferable to foundationalism in that only infinitism can plausibly account for two important features of the structure of justification: 1) justification admits of degrees and 2) complete justification makes sense.

The analysis of function-ascribing statements, such as “the function of x is y”, is proving to be a difficult matter. It is difficult because we are only beginning to see the complexity which is involved in ascribing functions. The process of discovery has been slow and tedious, with each newly constructed analysis of the meaning of functional ascriptions yielding insights into the structure of functional analysis and functional explanation. However, as each analysis is, in turn, dismantled, we seem to see our insights slip away. In the wake of each exchange, a new member is added to the list of desiderata for an analysis of function-ascribing statements. Thus, the matter of finding a proper analysis of function attributions becomes more and more complex.

There appear to be a number of general things which can be said about forgiveness. If these are left sufficiently vague they seem to be applicable to all the situations in which the term is used.

First, there can be no question of forgiveness unless an injury has been inflicted on somebody by a moral agent. There must be something to forgive; and the injury that is to be forgiven must be one for which a moral agent can be held responsible. One cannot forgive a rock for falling on one's foot or a cougar for attacking one's child—even though a child might kick the rock and a father might shoot the cougar.

1. There is no dearth of objections to Rawls's A Theory of justice. Scores of articles and several books begin by praising the rigor and depth of Rawls's book — and end by concluding that it is thoroughly mistaken. In the present essay I will not add to the list of negative responses to A Theory of Justice. Instead I will attempt to reply to Rawls's critics in a way which makes a positive contribution to his theory.

2. Among the many objections that have been raised against Rawls's theory, two are of paramount importance. It is these two objections I shall attempt to meet. They may be formulated as follows.

Few arguments in contemporary philosophy have had more influence than Harry Frankfurt's ‘Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsiblity.’ In that famous paper Frankfurt noted that all parties to the traditional debate about the compatibility of free will and moral responsibility with determinism had subscribed to a common assumption. They had assumed the truth of something Frankfurt called ‘the Principle of Alternate Possibilities,’ which he expressed as follows:

In the traditional debate incompatibilists argued that if determinism is true, then no one can ever do otherwise, while compatibilists argued that there is a morally relevant sense in which even a deterministic agent can do otherwise. Frankfurt proposed to show that PAPis false, thereby undercutting the traditional debate.

There is a certain view abroad in the land concerning the philosophical problems raised by Tarskian semantics. This view has it that a Tarskian theory of truth in a language accomplishes nothing of interest beyond the definition of truth in terms of satisfaction, and, further, that what is missing — the only thing that would yield a solution to the philosophical problem of truth when added to Tarskian semantics — is a reduction of satisfaction to a non-semantic (and ultimately physical) relation. It seems to me that this view either misidentifies the philosophical problem altogether, or encourages a seriously misleading picture of the nature of the problem.

The view I have in mind is nowhere more persuasively at work than in a recent paper by Hartry Field.1 In this paper Field argues that a Tarskian theory of truth for a natural language is impossible if we insist on Tarski's case-by-case elimination of ‘satisfies'. More fundamentally, however, he argues that a Tarskian theory could provide nothing of philosophical interest beyond the admittedly interesting reduction of truth to satisfaction, and his ground for this claim is, roughly, that a Tarskian theory does not reduce its primitive semantic relation — satisfaction — to a non-semantic relation.

It's well-known that Kant believed that intuition was central to an account of mathematical knowledge. What that role is and how Kant argues for it are, however, still open to debate. There are, broadly speaking, two tendencies in interpreting Kant's account of intuition in mathematics, each emphasizing different aspects of Kant's general doctrine of intuition. On one view, most recently put forward by Michael Friedman, this central role for intuition is a direct result of the limitations of the syllogistic logic available to Kant. On this view, Kant's reasons for introducing intuition are taken to be logical or mathematical, rather than philosophical. The other tendency, which I shall try to develop here, emphasizes an epistemological or phenomenological role for intuition in mathematics arising out of what may loosely be called Kant's ‘antiformalism.’

This paper, which focuses specifically on the case of geometry, falls into two parts. First, I consider Kant's discussion of intuition in the Metaphysical Exposition of the concept of space.

Propositional Attitudes defends an account of ‘believes’ on which the verb is contextually sensitive. x believes that S says (quite roughly) that x has a belief which is ‘well rendered’ or acceptably translated by S; since contextually variable information about what makes for a good translation helps determine the extension of ‘believes,’ the verb is contextually sensitive. Sider and Soames criticize this account. They say it has unacceptable consequences in cases in which we make multiple ascriptions of belief to a single individual - as happens, for example, when we say that Odile believes such and such, that the woman in the corner believes so and so, but are ignorant of the identity of Odile and the woman in the corner.

I will distinguish two objections along these lines, and argue that neither is forceful. The objections differ as to whether or not the speaker mistakenly presupposes that the believers under discussion are distinct.

Many theorists hold that there is, among value concepts, a fundamental distinction between thin ones and thick ones. Among thin ones are concepts like good and right. Among concepts that have been regarded as thick are discretion, caution, enterprise, industry, assiduity, frugality, economy, good sense, prudence, discernment, treachery, promise, brutality, courage, coward, lie, gratitude, lewd, perverted, rude, glorious, graceful, exploited, and, of course, many others. Roughly speaking, thick concepts are value concepts with significant descriptive content. I will discuss a number of problems having to do with how best to understand the notion of a thick concept. Thick concepts have been widely discussed in the metaethical literature. But some important problems concerning what thick concepts are supposed to be have not been squarely addressed even in the most systematic of these discussions. Here I want to highlight these problems.

We sometimes blame persons, and we sometimes give them credit for the emotions they feel. We could, for example, speak of feeling hatred, resentment or envy as “reprehensible” in suitable circumstances, or say “He's to blame for feeling that way.” We could speak of feeling sympathy, affection or indignation as “commendable” in suitable circumstances, or say “He deserves credit for feeling that way.” And it is not just that we are assessing such emotion as somehow good or bad — in addition we may reproach or censure a person for the emotions he feels, or we may regard it as a credit to him that he feels as he does. In short, we apportion or impute responsibility to persons sometimes for the emotions they feel, and one important indication of this fact is in the sorts of judgments we can make about emotions.

Laplacean determinism remains a popular theory among philosophers and scientists alike, in spite of the fact that the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics, with which it is inconsistent, has been around for more than fifty years. There are a number of reasons for its continuing popularity. One, recently articulated by Honderich, is that there are too many possible interpretations of quantum mechanics, and the subject is too controversial even among physicists to be an adequate basis for overturning determinism. Nevertheless, quantum mechanics is an enormously successful theory, considering the quantity and variety of its predictions which have been verified under conditions never dreamt of by its originators; and the Copenhagen Interpretation is the only widely accepted interpretation of it. Although a hidden variable theory consistent with the results of quantum mechanics is not impossible, one of its major advocates admits that it is highly speculative, and far from adequately developed. Yet such a theory would be needed to reconcile Laplacean determinism with quantum mechanics; most of the controversies alluded to by Honderich are irrelevant.