What sorts of things undergird a person's character and what does the answer tell us about the person's relationship to her body, her environment, and the people who surround her? For the purpose of ascribing virtue, vice, and character, what are the boundaries of the person? Traditionally, philosophers have accepted mentalism, the view that only mental features are relevant to character. Even philosophers inclined to say that character is partially constituted by nonmental features would be inclined to accept skindividualism: a person's virtue must involve a disposition that is wholly grounded by features inside the person's skin. Drawing from arguments in the philosophy of mind and data from social psychology, I argue that skindividualism is wrong. Virtues can be extended, in the sense that the grounds for a person's virtues might not be inside that individual's skin. If this is the case, persons are not skindividuals.

Research in phenomenology and philosophy of psychiatry has suggested that psychopathological disturbances of experience often involve an alteration of one's ‘sense of possibility’, dependent upon the presence of specific ‘existential feelings’ (Ratcliffe 2012). In this paper I provide an extended account of how the engagement with certain narratives can lead to a transformation of one's sense of possibility by eliciting affective experiences that are not consonant with the person's existential feelings. More precisely, I claim that, even when the experience of some types of emotion is generally precluded by a restricted sense of possibility, such emotions may be aroused by particular self-narratives, and I explore how this dynamic can give rise to enduring and wide-ranging affective changes.

This paper examines intellectualism in the theory of action. Philosophers use ‘intellectualism’ variously, but few question its application to views on which knowledge of facts—expressible in that-clauses—is basic for understanding other kinds of knowledge, reasons for action, and practical reasoning. More broadly, for intellectualists, theoretical knowledge is more basic than practical knowledge; action, at least if rational, is knowledge-guided, and just as beliefs based on reasoning constitute knowledge only if its essential premises constitute knowledge, actions based on practical reasoning are rational only if any essential premise in it is known. Two major intellectualist claims are that practical knowledge, as knowing how, is reducible to propositional knowledge, a kind of knowing that, and that reasons for action must be (propositionally) known by the agent. This paper critically explores both claims by offering a broad though partial conception of practical knowledge and a pluralistic view of reasons for action. The aim is to sketch conceptions of knowing how and knowing that, and of the relation between knowledge and action, that avoid intellectualism but also do justice to both the importance of the intellect for human action and the distinctive character of practical reason.

In this paper, I dispute what I call psychological internalism about moral responsibility, which comprises most classic accounts as well as newer neurobiological ones, and I defend psychological externalism about moral responsibility instead. According to psychological internalism, an agent's moral responsibility is determined solely or primarily by her intentional states. I argue that psychological internalism is empirically challenged by recent findings in social psychology and cognitive science. In light of the empirical evidence, I contend that moral responsibility depends on historical and environmental factors to a much greater degree than previously appreciated. Thus, moral responsibility is not just in the head: indeed, it is much less in the head than typically assumed.

According to the phenomenal intentionality research program, a state's intentional content is fixed by its phenomenal character. Defenders of this view have little to say about just how this grounding is accomplished. I argue that without a robust account of representation, the research program promises too little. Unfortunately, most of the well-developed accounts of representation—asymmetric dependence, teleosemantics, and the like—ground representation in external relations such as causation. Such accounts are inconsistent with the core of the phenomenal intentionality program. I argue that, however counterintuitive it may seem, the best prospect for explaining how phenomenal character represents is an appeal to resemblance.

I argue that authentic photography is not able to develop to the full as a communicative representational art. Photography is authentic when it is true to its self-image as the imprinting of images. For an image to be imprinted is for its content to be linked to the scene in which it originates by a chain of sufficient, mind-independent causes. Communicative representational art (in any medium: photography, painting, literature, music, etc.) is art that exploits the resources of representation to achieve artistically interesting communication of thought. The central resources of representation are content, vehicle properties, and the interplay between these two. Whereas painting and other representational arts are able to exploit all three to communicate thought, authentic photography can exploit interplay only to a very limited degree. However, the exploitation of interplay is the culmination of communicative representational art: the natural endpoint in its development.

Seventeenth-century Iberian and Italian Scholastics had a concept of a truthmaker (verificativum) similar to that found in contemporary metaphysical debates. I argue that the seventeenth-century notion of a truthmaker can be illuminated by a prevalent seventeenth-century theory of truth according to which the truth of a proposition is the mereological sum of that proposition and its intentional object. I explain this theory of truth and then spell out the account of truthmaking it entails.

When a symbol is a marker of a primary bearer of value and, secondarily, a bearer of value itself, then it has symbolic value. Philosophers have long been suspicious of symbolic values, often regarding them as illusory or irrelevant. I suggest that arguments against symbolic values either overgeneralize or else require premises that can only be supported if the normative significance of some symbolic considerations is presupposed. Humans need symbols to represent identity facts to themselves and others. Symbolic values thereby contribute to individuals’ control over their own agency.

Moral responsibility, I argue, requires agents to do what is within their abilities to act morally. This means that an agent is to blame just in case his wrongdoing is due to an underperformance, that is, to a failure to do what he can to act morally. I defend this account by considering a skeptical argument about responsibility put forth by Gideon Rosen and by Michael Zimmerman. I explain why the epistemic condition they endorse is inadequate and why my alternative epistemic condition, which directly follows from my general condition on culpability, should be preferred. I then defend my view against potential criticisms.

The revival of analytic metaphysics in the latter half of the twentieth century is typically understood as a consequence of the critiques of logical positivism, Quine's naturalization of ontology, Kripke's Naming and Necessity, clarifications of modal notions in logic, and the theoretical exploitation of possible worlds. However, this explanation overlooks the work of metaphysicians at the height of positivism and linguisticism that affected metaphysics of the late twentieth century. Donald C. Williams is one such philosopher. In this paper I explain how Williams's fundamental ontology and philosophy of time influenced in part the early formation of David Lewis's metaphysics. Thus, Williams played an important role in the revival of analytic metaphysics.

What, if anything, makes death bad for the deceased themselves? Deprivationists hold that death is bad for the deceased iff it deprives them of intrinsic goods they would have enjoyed had they lived longer. This view faces the problem that birth too seems to deprive one of goods one would have enjoyed had one been born earlier, so that it too should be bad for one. There are two main approaches to the problem. In this paper, I explore the second approach, by Anthony Brueckner and John Martin Fischer, and suggest that it can be developed so as to meet deprivationists’ needs. On the resulting view, metaphysical differences between the future and the past give rise to a corresponding axiological difference in the intrinsic value of future and past experiences. As experiences move into the past, they lose their intrinsic value for the person.

This essay considers the implications for the powers metaphysic of the no-successor problem: As there are no successors in the set of real numbers, one state cannot occur just after another in continuous time without there being a gap between the two. I show how the no-successor problem sets challenges for various accounts of the manifestation of powers. For powers that give rise to a manifestation that is a new state, the challenge of no-successors is similar to that faced on Bertrand Russell's analysis by causal relations. Powers whose manifestation is a processes and powers that manifest through time (perhaps by giving rise to changing through time) are challenged differently. To avoid powers appearing enigmatic, these challenges should be addressed, and I point to some possible ways this might be achieved. A prerequisite for addressing these challenges is a careful focus on the nature and timing of the manifesting and manifestation of powers.

This article reflects on some of the complexities in Williams' discussion of moral luck. It compares this discussion with previous work, especially by Adam Smith, and argues that Williams' fear that the phenomenon of moral luck threatens the coherence of our moral concepts is unfounded.

Nietzsche's discussions of nihilism are meant to bring into view an intriguing pathology of modern culture: that it is unable to sustain ‘higher values’. This paper attempts to make sense of the nature and import of higher values. Higher values are a subset of final values and are distinct from foundational values. Higher values are characterized by six features: demandingness, susceptibility toward creating tragic conflicts, recruitment of a characteristic set of powerful emotions, perceived import, exclusionary nature, and their tendency to instantiate a community. The paper considers Nietzsche's arguments for the claim that we are committed to instituting some set of higher values. The cost of not doing so is vitiating our deepest aim and precluding a central form of happiness.

Some conceptions of the role of philosophers in climate change focus mainly on theoretical progress in philosophy, or on philosophers as individual citizens. Against these views, I defend a skill view: philosophers should use our characteristic skills as philosophers to combat climate change by integrating it into our teaching, research, service, and community engagement. A focus on theoretical progress, citizenship, expertise, virtue, ability, social role, or power, rather than on skill, can allow for some of these contributions. But the skill view, I argue, uniquely captures the breadth of philosophers’ role in climate change; promises to make us more effective in practice; and offers a compelling way to overcome our own lingering climate denial by integrating climate change into all aspects of philosophical activity.

This article compares early nineteenth-century English and Scottish theories of the mind and the way that it develops to findings in today's developmental psychology and neuroscience through a close observation of the work of Elizabeth Hamilton (1756–1816). Hamilton was a Scottish writer and philosopher who produced three pedagogical works in her lifetime, consisting of her carefully formulated philosophy of mind and practical suggestions to caretakers and educators. Although Hamilton has received relatively little attention in modern philosophical literature, her understanding of the mind and the way it develops—based on her nuanced understanding of associationism and Scottish faculty psychology—is overwhelmingly supported by empirical findings today. In addition to utilizing Hamilton's work for the sake of understanding early nineteenth-century philosophy of mind, I argue that a large portion of Hamilton's work should be used to inform future research programs, early caregiving guides, and educational methods.

Standpoint epistemology is committed to the view that some epistemic advantage can be drawn from the position of powerlessness. Call this the epistemic privilege thesis. This thesis stands in need of explication and support. In providing that explication and support, I first distinguish between two readings of the thesis: the thesis that marginalized social locations confer some epistemic advantages (the epistemic advantage thesis) and the thesis that marginalized standpoints generate better, more accurate knowledge (the standpoint thesis). I then develop the former by appealing to the notion of epistemic peers available in the disagreement literature. I next turn to the latter thesis, arguing that consciousness-raising plays an analogous role in the achievement of a standpoint as training does in the achievement of expertise. The upshot of this analysis is that it clarifies that while marginalization is necessary (though not sufficient) for epistemic advantage, it is neither necessary nor sufficient for epistemic privilege.

This paper introduces a framework for thinking about ontological questions—in particular, the Special Composition Question—and shows how the framework might help support something like an account of restricted composition. The framework takes the form of an account of natural objects, in analogy with David Lewis's account of natural properties. Objects, like properties, come in various metaphysical grades, from the fundamental, fully objective, perfectly natural objects to the nomologically otiose, maximally gerrymandered, perfectly non-natural objects. The perfectly natural objects, I argue, are the mereological simples, and (roughly) a collection composes an object of degree-n naturalness if and only if its members are arranged F-wise, for some property F that appears in the degree-n natural laws. Arbitrary composites turn out to be perfectly non-natural objects and are metaphysical bystanders. Ordinary composite objects fall in between. Some—e.g., atoms—are very (though not perfectly) natural; others—e.g., tables—are highly non-natural.

Within the philosophy of time there has been a growing interest in positions that deny the reality of time. Those positions, whether motivated by arguments from physics or metaphysics, have a shared conclusion: time is not real. What has not been made clear, however, is exactly what it entails to deny the reality of time. Time is unreal, sure. But what does that mean?

There has (within the recent literature) been only one sustained attempt to spell out what it would mean to endorse a (so-called) temporal error theory, a theory that denies the reality of time: Baron and Miller's (2015) ‘What Is Temporal Error Theory?’ Despite the fact that their paper makes significant strides in spelling out what would be required, my claim in this paper is that their position must be rejected and replaced. In addition to rejecting Baron and Miller's position, I also offer that replacement.

When Locke mentions polygamy in his writings, he does not condemn the practice and even seems to endorse it under certain conditions. This attitude is out of step with that of many of his contemporaries. Identifying the philosophical reasons that lead Locke to have this attitude about polygamy motivates our project. Because Locke never wrote a treatise on ethics, we look to a number of different texts, but focus on An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Essays on the Law of Nature in order to outline his basic ethical theory. We argue that this theory, the elements of which include moral mixed modes, the law of nature, and the comparison of these modes with this law, is broad enough to accommodate practices such as polygamy. Our interpretation shows that Locke's line of thought on marriage is strikingly flexible for the seventeenth century and even compared to some public debates on marriage in our time.