Much recent political philosophy has focused on the role of responsibility within liberal-egalitarian theories of justice. John Rawls's theory, in particular, has come in for criticism in virtue of its account of responsibility, which Rawls takes to be tied to his account of primary goods. Primary goods themselves have been rejected as the appropriate ‘currency’ (or metric) of distributive justice, while Rawls's treatment of responsibility has been criticized as implausible or even inconsistent. These criticisms have given rise to much of the constructive work political philosophy has done after Rawls's Theory — one may think of the work of Richard Arneson, G. A. Cohen, Ronald Dworkin, and John Roemer, for whom a major concern is to make more room for a suitable notion of responsibility. Their efforts are shaped by a distinction between ‘choice’ and ‘circumstance’: individuals should possess distributive shares in accordance with their choices (for which they are responsible) and be compensated for disadvantages they have because of their circumstances (for which they are not).

Modesty is a surprisingly complicated character trait. Most of us feel that we intuitively understand what modesty is, and we feel confident that we can recognize modesty when it is exhibited in others. However, it is difficult to provide a detailed account of modesty without discovering that it is not nearly as simple as one initially presumes it to be. For example, in her recent book Uneasy Virtue, Julia Driver proposes a definition of modesty that seems uncomplicated until further reflection reveals it to be more intricate and contentious than it appears. Driver claims that modesty is the virtue of being disposed to persistently underestimate one's self-worth despite available evidence suggesting that this estimation is incorrect. There is something compelling about such a concise definition of modesty, but Driver's view implies that a modest agent is truly ignorant of her natural talents, accomplishments or other attributes that contribute to assessments of her self-worth. It is this feature of Driver's definition that has generated debate since she first presented her view of modesty in an influential article that preceded her book.

In 1988, Michael Nyman composed the score for Peter Greenaway's film Drowning by Numbers (or did something that we would ordinarily think of as composing that score). We can think of Nyman's compositional activity as a ‘generative performance’ and of the sound structure that Nyman indicated (or of some other abstract object that is appropriately related to that sound structure) as the product generated by that performance (ix). According to one view, Nyman's score for Drowning by Numbers — the musical work — is the product generated by Nyman's compositional activity (namely, an abstract object) and, more generally, artworks are identified with the products generated by compositional or other creative activities. Let's call this view The Product Theory. By contrast, according to another view, Nyman's score for Drowning by Numbers is the generative performance itself (namely, Nyman's compositional activity) and, more generally, artworks are identified with generative performances themselves.

Amongst the virtues extolled within analytic metaphysics are universality and parsimony. We value an account of what there is that includes everything, and we want a metaphysics that not only excludes what there isn't, but that also avoids the vice of double-counting. This vice leads to redundancies in one's ontology, such as asserting or entailing that there are, for example, minds over and above matter (if one is a materialist in the philosophy of mind), or groups of people over and above the individual people in those groups (if one is an individualist in the social sciences). An ontological view must be sufficiently pluralistic to achieve universality or completeness, yet sparse enough to respect parsimony or non-redundancy.

I'll begin this paper with an autobiographical example — an instance of a common enough kind of case involving agents who are faced with making a choice they strongly care about, but who have tendencies that incline them towards choosing an option they prefer not to choose. Later in the paper, I apply some of the general lessons learned from this case to a philosophically more familiar example of a hard-to-make choice, and to the well-known problem the example generates for the idea of rational agency: Gregory Kavka's toxin puzzle (Kavka 1983).

Some time ago I did a bungy jump. Nothing remarkable in that (nor in the fact that I have, or had, a great fear of heights; the desire to overcome a fear of heights is common among bungy jumpers).

In a fascinating and challenging article in this journal, Kadri Vihvelin presents a spirited and vigorous critique of the strategy of defending compatibilism about causal determinism and moral responsibility that employs (in part, at least) the ‘Frankfurt-examples.’ Here is her presentation of such an example:

Our understanding of classical mechanics (CM) has undergone significant growth in the latter half of the twentieth century and in the beginning of the twenty-first. This growth has much to do with the explosion of interest in the study of nonlinear systems in contrast with the focus on linear systems that had colored much work in CM from its inception. For example, although Maxwell and Poincaré arguably were some of the first to think about chaotic behavior, the modern study of chaotic dynamics traces its beginning to the pioneering work of Edward Lorenz (1963). This work has yielded a rich variety of behavior in relatively simple classical models that was previously unsuspected by the vast majority of the physics community (see Hilborn 2001). Chaos is a property of nonlinear systems that is usually characterized by sensitive dependence on initial conditions (SDIC). In CM the behavior of simple physical systems is described using models (such as the harmonic oscillator) that capture the main features of the systems in question (Giere 1988).

There is one important point about which Fischer and I are in agreement. We agree that determinism is compatible with moral responsibility. We disagree about the best way of defending that claim. He thinks that Frankfurt's strategy is a good one, that we can grant incompatibilists the metaphysical victory (that is, agree with them that determinism means that we are never able to do otherwise) while insisting that we are still morally responsible. I think this a huge mistake and I think the literature spawned by Frankfurt's attempt to undercut the metaphysical debate between compatibilists and incompatibilists is a snare and a delusion, distracting our attention from the important issues.

Externalism with respect to content is the thesis that the contents of an individual's mental states are fixed, not just by the intrinsic physical characteristics of the individual, but also in part by the external circumstances of the individual. This idea can be illustrated by means of thought experiments involving pairs of ‘twins’ who are identical with respect to their intrinsic features yet who differ mentally because of differences in their environments. The thoughts of a thirsty earthling may turn to water. Suppose that an earthling has a molecule-for-molecule twin on a very distant planet, a planet identical to Earth except that wherever Earth has H2O, Twin Earth has XYZ, which is superficially indistinguishable from water. When the twin is thirsty, her thoughts will turn instead to twater, as we may call it. Externalism about content is a metaphysical thesis, but it has epistemological implications. Many have argued that externalism is incompatible with a suitably rigorous thesis about the authoritative, introspective self-knowledge we seem to have with respect to our own thought contents.

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.

In the criminal law, the law of attempts is of comparatively recent vintage. It is part of an important contemporary legal trend towards early intervention in the criminal process. There are now a substantial number of crimes on the books that, like the crime of attempt, only require that the perpetrator start down the road to carrying out his criminal intentions and do not require him actually to have harmed (or, in some cases, even identified) his victim. Besides the law of attempts, these new crimes include conspiracy and solicitation, forgery and counterfeiting, the possession offences (drugs, burglary tools, counterfeit money, automobile master keys, etc.), even corruption of youth (children). In all these cases, the law is stepping in to forestall harm, rather than waiting until a harm has already happened.

In recent work on a priori justification, one thing about which there is considerable agreement is that the notion of truth in virtue of meaning is bankrupt and infertile. (For the sake of more readable prose, I will use ‘TVM’ as an abbreviation for ‘the notion of truth in virtue of meaning.’) Arguments against the worth of TVM can be found across the entire spectrum of views on the a priori, in the work of uncompromising rationalists (such as BonJour (1998)), of centrist moderates (such as Boghossian (1997)), and of uncompromising empiricists (such as Devitt (2004)). My aim is to dispute this widespread opinion.

The outline is as follows: first, §§II-III consist of preliminary stage-setting. Then, in §IV I will argue that some of the most prevalent arguments against the worth of TVM — in particular, one which is given clear expression by Quine (1970), and is recently reinforced by Boghossian (1997) — do not engage with the core idea motivating TVM. After deflecting this charge of incoherence, the aim of §§V-VIII is to work toward developing a useful conception of TVM.

In most of our communicative transactions we are confident of success. We read the newspaper and are normally pretty sure that we have understood the text. We usually think we understand what is said in the TV broadcast and in casual conversation, and only rarely do subsequent events make us revise our judgment that we did. But that we are confident of success, even if we are right, and even if we are both right and justified, does not mean that we have a clear idea of what success consists in.

Ideas about successful communication have had a prominent place in the philosophy of language in recent decades, mostly as a step on the way to meaning theoretical claims. This has been the case with philosophers like Wittgenstein, Quine, Davidson, Dummett, and Evans. Mostly, the discussion of communicative success has been of limited extent, serving as a subordinate part of some longer argument.

According Leibniz's thesis of universal expression, each substance expresses the whole world, i.e. all other substances, from its particular, unique viewpoint, or, in other words, the complete individual notion of a substance — the comprehensive notion which includes, in internal terms, everything truly attributable to a substance — is such a universal expression of, or ‘involves,’ every other substance, or, as Leibniz also frequently states, from any given complete individual notion one can ‘deduce’ or ‘infer’ or ‘demonstrate,’ or from it ‘follows,’ or it ‘leads to,’ (all truths about) the whole world. On the other hand, in Leibniz's view each (created) substance is internally individuated, self-sufficient and independent of other (created) substances, and the complete individual notion of a substance is such that it respects this requirement. Leibniz also says, with an apparent intention of pronouncing his doctrines of expression and self-sufficiency at the same time, that each substance is ‘as if a world apart,’ or like a ‘multiplication’ or ‘concentration’ of the world.

According to inferential role semantics (IRS), for an expression to have a particular meaning or express a certain concept is for subjects to be disposed to make, or to treat as proper, certain inferential transitions involving that expression. Such a theory of meaning is holistic, since according to it the meaning or concept any given expression possesses or expresses depends on the inferential relations it stands in to other expressions.

It is widely recognised that this holism leads to two prima facie problems for IRS. First, since no two speakers share the same beliefs, they will inevitably be disposed to make, or treat as correct, different inferential transitions involving an expression. Hence, according to IRS, the same word in different mouths will possess a different meaning and be understood in different ways. It seems to follow that communication is impossible.

The question of content externalism's compatibility with a plausible account of self-knowledge has been the subject of much debate in recent years. If the very content of my thoughts depends on external factors beyond me, factors that can only be known a posteriori, what happens to the traditional assumption that we know our own thoughts directly, without having to rely on any empirical investigations of the environment?

Two decades ago, Tyler Burge presented what has become the standard compatibilist reply to this challenge. Burge focused on a certain class of judgments, what he calls ‘basic self-knowledge,’ such as I think (with this very thought) that water is wet. Exploiting the fact that reflexive judgments of this sort reemploy the content of the first-order thought, such that no ‘content mistakes’ are possible, Burge argued that externalism is perfectly compatible with the traditional view that we know our own thoughts directly and authoritatively.

Some theories of language, thought, and experience require their adherents to say unpalatable things about human individuals whose capacities for rational activity are seriously diminished. Donald Davidson, for example, takes the interdependence of the concepts of thought and language to entail that thoughts may only be attributed to an individual who is an interpreter of others’ speech. And John McDowell's account of human experience as the involuntary exercise of conceptual capacities can be applied easily only to individuals who make some reasonable judgments, because conceptual capacities are paradigmatically exercised in judgments. In both cases, we seem forced towards an error theory about any ordinary understanding of impaired human individuals as minded, or as undergoing human experience.

I will here present a number of problems concerning the idea that there is ontological vagueness, and the related claim that appeal to this idea can help solve some vagueness-related problems. A theme underlying the discussion will be the distinction between vagueness specifically and indeterminacy more generally (and, relatedly, the distinction between ontological vagueness and ontological indeterminacy). Even if the world is somehow ontologically indeterminate it by no means follows that it is, properly speaking, ontologically vague.

This paper is about the relationship between Frege's discussions of informative identity statements in the Begriffsschrift and ‘On Sense and Reference’. The question of how these discussions relate to one another has a more-or-less standard answer that goes like this. In the Begriffsschrift Frege proposes a metalinguistic solution to the puzzle about how an identity statement can be informative. He says that what you find out when you discover that, for example, Hesperus is identical with Phosphorus, is that the two names ‘Hesperus’ and ‘Phosphorus’ are names for the same thing. In ‘On Sense and Reference’ Frege rejects this solution on the ground that it treats identity statements as statements about names rather than statements about objects. His new solution is that if ‘a = b’ is potentially informative for co-referring ‘a’ and ‘b’ this is because ‘a’ and ‘b’, though they refer to the same object, are associated with different ways of being presented with the object: finding out that a = b is finding out that the objects presented in these ways are the same.