A hermeneutical injustice (Fricker 2007) occurs when a gap in shared resources leaves an agent unable to make her experience intelligible to herself or others. On Miranda Fricker’s account, no individual is culpable for a hermeneutical injustice (2007; 2013; 2016). This is because community-level structures determine the shared resources we use to make our experiences intelligible—e.g. shared languages and concepts. No individual has control over community-level structures, so no individual is responsible for gaps in shared resources. Contra Fricker, I argue that, for communicative hermeneutical injustice, individuals often do have control over the resources used to make their experiences intelligible to others. When we encounter gaps in a common language (like ‘English’), language users innovate across those gaps. If a hearer rejects a suggested innovation, they might culpably preserve a gap in shared resources. Fricker (2013; 2016) has responded to similar arguments (e.g. Medina 2012; Pohlhaus 2012), arguing that these are not cases of hermeneutical injustice. My account evades this response. Every case of communicative hermeneutical injustice involves a failed innovation.
A priori philosophical anarchism says that a right to be obeyed would run up against the duty to act autonomously, so there must be no one with a right to be obeyed. More recently, a parallel criticism of moral testimony has been advanced according to which there can be no right to be believed about moral matters because it would lead us to fail in our duty to form our moral beliefs for ourselves, and thus to bear responsibility for the beliefs and the actions we perform on account of them. This essay advances an interpretation of both objections to practical deference and a novel solution drawing on G.E.M. Anscombe’s little-discussed essay, “Authority in Morals.” I argue that the concern animating a priori anarchism and this version of moral testimony pessimism is that practical deference undermines our responsibility for our actions or beliefs. Anscombe’s discussion of teaching authority affords us a way of seeing that this is wrong-headed. In fact, the right to be obeyed or believed does not—and cannot—threaten to undermine a subject’s responsibility for what she believes or does out of deference to authority.
This paper evaluates the Condorcet Jury Theorem in the context of ambiguity. It explores the effects on the assumption of voter competence when voters face situations in which they can no longer ascribe a single probability. In contrast to voting in situations where voters are able to assign such probabilities, this paper demonstrates that voters may fail to vote competently under ambiguity, even if they are honest, practically rational, and epistemically competent. Thus, the conditions under which voter competence can be guaranteed become unclear once we adopt a less idealised framework of uncertainty. Specifically, conditions that ensure voter competence under risk do not necessarily guarantee voter competence under ambiguity. The second contribution is a more positive one. It outlines a fruitful research agenda aimed at identifying collective decision procedures that are better suited to less idealised uncertainty frameworks. In this regard, the paper shows how allowing abstention can have positive effects on the epistemic benefits of voting and extends the Condorcet Jury Theorem accordingly.
Causal decision theory has typically been discussed in contexts where agents adopt sharp credences of the sort adequately represented by a single probability measure. Under this assumption, causal decision theory is committed to a number of counterintuitive verdicts in cases involving decision instability. Many of these troubles lessen for sufficiently open-minded causalists who adopt maximally imprecise credences regarding their own acts. I suggest this provides novel pragmatic support for a version of the deliberation crowds out prediction thesis according to which rational agents’ act credences should generally be imprecise in this way, and then propose an appropriate decision rule for use by causalist agents with imprecise credences.
A drawback of the standard modal ontological proof is its assumption that it's possible that there is something godlike. Kurt Gödel's ontological proof seeks to establish this possibility with the help of some axiological principles. But the axiological principles he relies on are implausible. And the same goes for other Gödelian ontological proofs in the literature. In this paper, I put forward a Gödelian ontological proof that only relies on plausible axiological principles. And I adapt the proof both for constant and varying domains. Nevertheless, the proof still needs the axiom that being godlike is positive in the sense of being a "purely good"-making property.
In this paper, I argue that facts about an individual’s sexual identity are partially or fully grounded in facts about their sexual orientation, where an individual’s sexual identity (e.g. being queer, being straight) has to do with the social position they occupy, and their sexual orientation (e.g. being homosexual, being heterosexual) has to do with the sexual dispositions they have. The main argument for this orientation-based theory is that it gets the right results in cases in which an individual hasn’t come out yet to themselves or others. I reply to Matthew Andler’s argument against the orientation-based theory, which is that it gets the wrong results in cases having to do with (a) intergenerational gay friendship and (b) “str8 dudes,” men who have sex with men but who present themselves online as straight. I also argue that, at least in the case of being queer, Andler’s own cultural theory is consistent with sexual identity facts being partially grounded in sexual orientation facts.
Is the term ‘racist’ being applied so widely that it is losing its moral force? Theorists and pundits from across the political spectrum think that it is. They call such a change of meaning “conceptual inflation” and argue that we should try to stop it by restricting the use of ‘racist’ or replacing ‘racist’ with new expressions. But what evidence do we have that ‘racist’ is inflated? Economists do not track currency inflation with mere vibes; they use measurements such as the consumer price index. For example, using CPI, it is observable that there has been considerable US dollar inflation over the last three decades or so: $1.00 in 1989 has the purchasing power of $2.54 in 2024. If ‘racist’ has undergone a similar transformation, as critics of conceptual inflation contend, how could that be measured? In this paper we use an apparent time study, a technique drawn from sociolinguistics, to measure whether ‘racist’ is undergoing conceptual inflation. An apparent time study looks at the linguistic behavior of people of different ages as a way of measuring linguistic variation over time. We distinguish two processes that constitute conceptual inflation: extension expansion and intensity bleaching. Across three studies, we found some equivocal evidence that ‘racist’ has undergone extension expansion—its reference class may have slightly expanded—but no evidence that it has undergone intensity bleaching—its moral force remains the same. By comparing ‘racist’ with other terms that have plausibly undergone meaning change, like ‘queer,’ we argue that claims about the conceptual inflation of ‘racist,’ as they are standardly understood, are overblown.
According to an act-based conception of propositions, propositions are types of cognitive or linguistic acts. Such accounts are advertised as having major metaphysical and epistemological advantages over traditional platonic accounts. However, existing versions of such accounts appeal to platonic properties and relations in order to account for the contents expressed by predicates, reintroducing many of the problems they aim to solve. Characterizing both that a is F and that it's F as different types of ``assertibles'' (the former can be asserted full-stop and the latter can be asserted of things), the issue can be seen as a limitation of existing act-based approaches: they apply only to a restricted class of assertibles. In this paper, I show how adopting a normative functionalist approach to linguistic meaning enables one to generalize the act-based approach to all assertibles such that no appeal to extrinsic properties and relations is needed. I show, further, how this radicalized act-based account provides the resources for a satisfactory account of our knowledge of objective states of affairs, properties, and relations (which I dub ``instantiables'') in terms of our mastery of linguistic norms.
Statistical fairness criteria are widely used for diagnosing and ameliorating algorithmic bias. However, these fairness criteria are controversial as their use raises several difficult questions. I argue that the major problems for statistical algorithmic fairness criteria stem from an incorrect understanding of their nature. These criteria are primarily used for two purposes: First, evaluating AI systems for bias, and, second, constraining machine learning optimization problems in order to ameliorate such bias. The first purpose typically involves treating each criterion as a necessary condition for fairness. The second use involves treating criteria as sufficient conditions for fairness. Since the criteria are used for both roles, some researchers have treated them as both necessary and sufficient conditions, i.e., as definitions of algorithmic fairness. However, serious problems have been raised for the use of these fairness criteria. Under ordinary circumstances, it is impossible to satisfy multiple criteria at the same time. Moreover, there are counterexamples to both the sufficiency and necessity for fairness of each criterion. I argue that we should instead understand fairness criteria as merely providing evidence of fairness. In other words, satisfaction (or violation) of these criteria should be understood as potential evidence of fairness (or bias). Whether a criterion counts as evidence in a particular case will depend on stakeholders' background knowledge and the specific features of the system's task. This evidence account of fairness conditions provides guidance for recognizing both the appropriate uses and the limitations of fairness criteria.
Nonconsequentialists hold it is harder to justify harmfully using a person than to justify harming a person to a moderately greater degree as a side effect. This can be embarrassing. Suppose it is normally permissible to kill a person as a side-effect of saving three others’ lives, but not to crush a person’s legs as a means of doing so. Facing three options—let three people die; kill one as a side effect of saving them; crush the one’s legs as a means of saving them—the nonconsequentialist excludes as impermissible only the last, forcing at least one death where there need be none. In response, Frances Kamm proposes the Principle of Secondary Permissibility, which says the instrumental leg-crushing is permissible, here, as the better fate for the same victim. But this raises the question of generalization: if the lesser instrumentalizing harm is better for the victim, why is it harder to justify than the greater side-effect harm? Secondary permissibility puts pressure on nonconsequentialist principles. I develop this challenge, then offer a new account of secondary permissibility to meet it.
Should we say a little bit of cancer? Many argue that we should avoid the phrase and instead relabel early cancers as a strategy to prevent overtreatment. Against this, I argue that we should not shy away from saying a little bit of cancer, and, moreover, that shying away misses a key opportunity to address the problem of overtreatment. Drawing on speech act theory, I examine the diagnosis of cancer as an illocutionary speech act and argue for a revisionist strategy which seeks to shift the normative force of the cancer diagnosis qua speech act. I show how this strategy offers distinct advantages vis-& agrave;-vis alternative approaches to tackling the problem of overtreatment.
Relationalism about perception (aka na & iuml;ve realism) construes the phenomenal character of conscious perception as at least partially constituted by the perceived items. According to the "austere" forms of this view, perceiving does not consist in representing the perceived items as being a certain way. Instead, austere relation-alists maintain that representing a perceived item occurs in response to conscious perception of that item and consists in judging it to be a certain way. But this is called into question by empirical evidence suggesting that conscious perception can be preceded by unconscious perceptual judgment and that perception can occur un-consciously. In response, the austere relationalist can either contest the evidence, or (re)develop their view in a way that makes it compatible with the evidence. I argue for a version of the latter strategy that consists in specifying austere relationalism in terms of the Purely Relational theory of perception. The resulting account has original and interesting ramifications for perception and perceptual consciousness. Most notably, it allows the austere relationalist to dispense with the obscure notion of unanalysable conscious acquaintance.
This paper offers an original interpretation of the Daodejing (sic)(sic)(sic) as containing a distinctive account of creation. In my reading, the Daodejing envisions the creation of the cosmos by Dao (1) as a movement from the absence of phenomenal forms to phenomenal forms and (2) as a movement from nothingness to existence. I interpret creation as a unique metaphysical operation that explains how (1) and (2) are possible. The paper is organized into two sections. First, I introduce the distinctions between the lack and presence of phenomenal forms (& sect;1.1) and between nothingness and existence (& sect;1.2), using them to map the distinction between Dao and the created world. Then, I propose my account of the Daodejing's metaphysics of creation (& sect;2.1) and elaborate on its connection with the previously drawn distinctions while answering a potential objection (& sect;2.2). I conclude with some considerations about the connections between the Daodejing's view of creation and its soteriology.
Accounts of structural violence characterize the institutional and bureaucratic production of systematic population-level harms as violence while also construing these harms as inadvertent and unintentional. We argue that such conceptions are poorly suited to capture the relationship between administrative systems and the production of violence under settler colonialism. We offer an account of administrative violence as an organizing feature of settler colonial institutions that produces population-level harms for some and benefits for others, by design, as a rule rather than an exception. We theorize three epistemic mechanisms of administrative violence: simplification, containment, and epistemic apartheid. We demonstrate how settler administrative systems use such mechanisms to automate the production of harm for targeted populations.
Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason famously purports to preclude rational cognition of objects beyond possible experience (“rational ignorance”). On the prevailing approach (popularized by Strawson’s Bounds of Sense), the conditions on immediate, experiential cognition explain why rational cognition cannot extend beyond it. Yet I argue that the prevailing approach risks surrendering reason to heteronomy, shackling reason to external constraints that no self-respecting rationalist could accept. I argue that Kant instead develops an autonomous approach to rational ignorance, on which reason’s own principles and the conditions proper to rational cognition jointly explain why rational cognition cannot extend beyond possible experience. I sketch a reconstruction of his argument for rational ignorance based on this approach. In brief, even if rational principles that would take us beyond possible experience are true (and cognizable as such), it is impossible for us to subsume any cognitions under them.
It is a common intuition that nonhuman animals (hereafter, ‘animals’) communicate among themselves and even with us humans. But what is animal communication? Our intuition suggests that we can apply the same concept of communication to both animals and humans. But is there a theoretical account of communication that can vindicate this intuition? And if there is, what is the payoff of such an account? I argue that vindicating the intuition that animals communicate like humans do is more challenging than one might initially think. I show that the dominant accounts of animal and human communication in the literature (i.e. biological, informational and Gricean) are neither designed nor able to vindicate this intuition. I then derive two basic constraints on what should count as a plausible Maximally Unified Account of animal and human communication (MUA), i.e. an account that is able to vindicate the intuition, discussing two accounts that meet these conditions: Millikan’s theory of intentional signs (2004; 2017) and Green’s theory of organic meaning (2019). Finally, I assess the utility of an MUA such as Millikan’s and Green’s in the studies of animal and human communication.
While intimately familiar, gender eludes theorizing. We argue that well-known challenges to gender’s analysis originate in a subtle ambiguity: questions about gender sometimes express questions about gender categories themselves (e.g., womanhood, manhood, and so on), while at other times expressing questions about what makes someone a member of these categories. Distinguishing these questions accentuates gender’s connections to morality, making a novel “anti-realist” (or as we call it, “unrealist”) view of gender, especially natural. Gender’s relations to identity, sex, and social position are illuminated along the way. Taking cues from both historical and contemporary debates in metaethics about the roles that attitudes can play in metaphysical and semantic analysis, we introduce and begin developing a comprehensive non-ameliorative framework for explicating gender’s nature and our thought and talk about it. In a slogan, on the view we defend: You belong to the gender category to which you intrinsically desire to belong.
Research on intuitions about philosophical thought experiments shows a striking pattern. Often, there are powerful intuitions on one side and also powerful intuitions on the exact opposite side. A question now arises about how to understand this pattern. One possible view would be that it is primarily a matter of different people having different intuitions. I present evidence for the view that this is not the correct understanding. Instead, I suggest, it is primarily a matter of individual people having conflicting intuitions. That is, it is primarily a matter of individual people having an intuition on one side and also having an intuition on the opposite side.
Logical inferentialism is the view that the meaning of logical constants is implicitly defined by the operational rules that govern their behaviour in proofs—particularly in sequent calculus proofs, according to an increasingly dominant tendency. A tenable articulation of this view presupposes a clarification of certain crucial aspects, such as the criteria for rule harmony and what constitutes a normal proof. Sequent calculus inferentialists typically frame these aspects in terms of proofs from axioms, rather than derivations from assumptions. Logical metainferentialism calls into question this dogma, building on the idea, advocated in “The original sin of proof-theoretic semantics” (Dicher & Paoli 2021), that meaning determination is relative to sequent-to-sequent derivability relations of Gentzen systems. We advance a suggestion towards a metainferentially appropriate reformulation of harmony, and explore its potential by focussing on a case study, the calculi for FDE and its extensions.
Various philosophers accept moral views that are impartial, additive, and risk-neutral with respect to betterness. But, if that risk neutrality is spelt out according to expected value theory alone, such views face a dire reductio ad absurdum. If the expected sum of value in humanity's future is undefined—if, e.g., the probability distribution over possible values of the future resembles the Pasadena game, or a Cauchy distribution—then those views say that no real-world option is ever better than any other. And, as I argue, our evidence plausibly supports such a probability distribution. Indeed, it supports a probability distribution that cannot be evaluated even if we extend expected value theory according to one of several extensions proposed in the literature. Must we therefore reject all impartial, additive, risk-neutral moral theories? It turns out that we need not. I show that, by instead adopting a strong enough extension of expected value theory, we can evaluate that problematic distribution and potentially salvage those moral views.
