I offer a new way of thinking about immortality: like atmospheric convection, it might be sensitive to initial conditions (the butterfly effect). Bernard Williams famously argued that eternal life would become boring or alienating. But suppose our world is a non-linear dynamical system: the laws of nature and the past determine the future but there is no lower limit on a future-altering difference in the initial state. So, eternal life might have unending possibilities for fascination while remaining sta-ble enough to help us preserve our identity and character. This is not to say that eternity would be enjoyable. It might be awful. Nor does it entail that we should accept it. A mortal life might be better or equal. But non-linearity shows new ways to enjoy and understand eternity.

Philosophers have described the human perspective on climate change as a perfect moral storm. I take a new angle on that, storm: I argue that our relevant desires feature a particularly problematic case of seemingly consistent but genuinely inconsistent desires. We have, first, non-indexical desires such as a desire to (make the sacrifices necessary to) stop polluting our environment at some point. We have, second, indexical desires such as a desire not to (make the sacrifices necessary to) stop polluting our environment this year. Our indexical and non-indexical desires are inconsistent. Such inconsistency is obvious in most short-term, individual cases such as when we need to make a dentist appointment. But when it comes to climate change, that inconsistency is masked by factors such as longevity and bitter divisions. This is, unfortunately, why humanity may continue putting off the collective action required to address climate change.

I argue that to remove all backward-looking grounds and justification from the practice, as some theorists recommend, is to remove (not revise) moral responsibility. The most paradigmatic cases of moral responsibility must feature desert and retributive elements. So, moral responsibility must be (at least partially) backward-looking. When we hold people responsible, one reason we do so is that we believe that they deserve punishment or reward simply in virtue of the action for which we hold them responsible. None of this rebuts responsibility skepticism. For instance, forward-looking theories might adopt Myisha Cherry's proposal: anger as love without blameworthiness.

Despite their differences, responsibility theories of all types (skeptics, forward-looking, backward-looking) concur on the following conditional: If someone deserved to suffer for an act, then they would be blameworthy for that act. Here I sketch a way of rejecting that conditional. In particular, using some of Śāntideva’s distinctions, I offer a new way of thinking about desert: Wrongdoers deserve to, and do, suffer for their wrongdoings, but they do not deserve our blame. It may be that vice is (part of) its own deserved punishment, whether or not anyone can have the free will required for blameworthiness. More generally, wrongdoers may not deserve negative responses of any kind from anyone else, yet they may still deservedly suffer in proportion to their wrongdoings.

Self-control requires intentionally resisting what we most want to do. Yet we do what we most want to do, if we do anything intentionally at that time (The Law of Desire). Therefore, self-control is impossible. So runs a well-studied puzzle. The three standard accounts assume that if a desire is our strongest desire, then it is stronger than all others. But that assumption is false. For we may have desires of equal strength. I describe cases which feature tied desires, self-control, and doing what we most want to do. Following insights from computer science (Buridan's Principle), equal-strength desires are possible any time we try to decide. My proposal may also be used to bolster all three standard analyses.

Despite their differences, responsibility theories of all types (skeptics, forward-looking, backward-looking) concur on the following conditional: If someone deserved to suffer for an act, then they would be blameworthy for that act. Here I sketch a way of rejecting that conditional. In particular, using some of & Sacute;antideva's distinctions, I offer a new way of thinking about desert: Wrongdoers deserve to, and do, suffer for their wrongdoings, but they do not deserve our blame. It may be that vice is (part of) its own deserved punishment, whether or not anyone can have the free will required for blameworthiness. More generally, wrongdoers may not deserve negative responses of any kind from anyone else, yet they may still deservedly suffer in proportion to their wrongdoings.

Resentment is a negative reaction to expressions of bad will. Gratitude is a positive reaction to expressions of good will. To give up resentment, when someone has wronged you, is to forgive them. We might expect an analog for giving up gratitude. The practice features in some ordinary and extraordinary moments in our lives. But it is unnamed and unstudied. I clarify what giving up gratitude is. I identify three types of ordinary and important cases. I then attend to implications; in particular, my account sheds light on restorations of gratitude analogous to un-forgiving. Restoring gratitude may help to repair relationships, and restoring your once-lost gratitude may be morally required in some contexts. More generally, by taking account of gratitude as a dynamic attitude that may be given up and restored as fits the situation and one's judgment, we may better understand the power and flexibility of gratitude's everyday function.

Unlike Yiddish ( fargin ) and Sanskrit ( muditā ), English has no single word to describe the practice of sharing someone else’s joy at their success. Sympathetic joy has also escaped attention in philosophy. We are familiar with schadenfreude, begrudging, envy, jealousy, and other terms describing either (a) pleasure at someone else’s misfortune or (b) displeasure at someone else’s good fortune. But what, exactly, is sympathetic joy? I argue that it is a short-term or long-term feeling of great delight at another’s good fortune, requiring no more than minimal understanding of the relevant person and event. It is intensified relative to understanding, sharing, and positive disposal. It is importantly different from empathetic emotions and also from vicarious pride. It may be group-directed. Empirical research suggests it occurs fairly often, activates the brain in the same way as does sympathetic sadness, and may increase our well-being. It is primarily not a reactive attitude (an emotional reaction to good or bad will), but, rather, a sign of good will toward another.

Article Christof Rapp and Oliver Primavesi (eds.), Aristotle’s De motu animalium: Symposium Aristotelicum, with a new critical edition of the Greek Text by Oliver Primavesi and an English translation by Benjamin Morison. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. viii + 554. ISBN 9780198835561, GBP 55 was published on August 1, 2022 in the journal Rhizomata (volume 10, issue 1).

How is willpower possible? Which desires are relevant to well-being? Despite a surge of interest in both questions, recent philosophical discussions have not connected them. I connect them here. In particular, the puzzle of synchronic self-control says that synchronic self-control requires a contradiction, namely, wanting not to do what we most want to do. Three responses have been developed: Sripada’s divided mind view, Mele’s motivational shift thesis, and Kennett and Smith’s non-actional approach. These responses do not incorporate distinctions from desire-satisfaction theories of well-being. I argue that distinguishing between behavioural desires and genuine-attraction desires disarms one objection to synchronic self-control. Conversely, disarming that objection salvages an axiologically crucial claim in recent versions of desire-satisfaction theory.

The problem known as Buridan's Ass says that a hungry donkey equipoised between two identical bales of hay will starve to death. Indecision kills the ass. Some philosophers worry about human analogs. Computer scientists since the 1960s have known about the computer versions of such cases. From what Leslie Lamport calls 'Buridan's Principle'-a discrete decision based on a continuous range of input-values cannot be made in a bounded time-it follows that the possibilities for human analogs of Buridan's Ass are far more wide-ranging and securely provable than has been acknowledged in philosophy. We are never necessarily decisive. This is mathematically provable. I explore four consequences: first, increased interest of the literature's solutions to Buridan's Ass; second, a new asymmetry between responsibility for omissions and responsibility for actions; third, clarification of the standard account of akrasia; and, fourth, clarification of the role of credences in normative decision-theory.

I reconstruct Aristotle's explanation for why and how birds are capable of natural flight. For Aristotle, air is a markedly different external resting point in comparison with water and earth, and nature has designed birds so as to take advantage of the unique way in which air affects the inequality between (a) the pushing downward, that is, the downward force and (b) the resistance. My discussion sheds some light on Aristotle's anticipation of some aspects of modern fluid dynamics and aerodynamics.

I argue that there is an interesting and underexplored sense in which some negative reactive attitudes such as anger are often absurd. I explore implications of this absurdity, especially for our understanding of forgiveness.

Why does someone, S, deserve blame or reproach for an action or event? One part of a standard answer since Aristotle: the event was caused, at least in part, by S's bad will. But recently, there's been some insightful discussion of cases where the event's causes do not include any bad will from S and yet it seems that S is not off the hook for the event. Cheshire Calhoun, Miranda Fricker, Elinor Mason, David Enoch, Randolph Clarke, and others include in this category some cases of glitches, forgetfulness, inattentiveness, the actions of one's children or one's country, and certain instances of explicit bias and implicit bias. Enoch and Mason argue that in these cases, S should extend the realm of S's responsibility. Drawing on Aristotle's emphases on retrospective attitudes and the non-voluntary, this paper attempts to clarify the relation between quality of will and blameworthiness. I analyze cases where (a) S is clearly not morally responsible for an action or event, E, yet (b) S deserves reproach for E unless S has the appropriate retrospective attitudes (such as regret) or the absence of inappropriate attitudes toward E.

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-021-10225-0