What is the connection between valid inference and true conditionals? Many conditional logics require that when A is a logical consequence of B, 'if B then A' is true. Taking counterlogical conditionals seriously leads to systems that permit counterexamples to that general rule. However, this leaves those of us who endorse non-trivial accounts of counterpossible conditionals to explain what the connection between conditionals and consequence is. The explanation of the connection also answers a common line of objection to non-trivial counterpossibles, which is based on a transition from valid arguments to the corresponding conditionals. It also contributes to the wider project of illuminating the connections between contexts of utterance, on the one hand, and the truth-conditions of conditionals uttered in those contexts, on the other.

Marriages come in a very wide variety: if the reports of anthropologists and historians are to be believed, an extraordinarily wide variety. This includes some of the more unusual forms, including marriage to the dead; to the gods; and even to plants. This does suggest that few proposed marriage relationships would require 'redefining marriage': but on the other hand, it makes giving a general theory of marriage challenging. So one issue we should face is how accepting we should be of the reports: to what extent reported 'marriages' really are marriages. This paper defends the view that almost all of these reported marriages are in fact marriages, and suggests some theoretical approaches that may be generous enough to account for this.

When charitable matching occurs, both the person initially offering the matching donation and the person taking up the offer may well feel they have done something better than if they had donated on their own without matching. They may well feel they deserve some credit for the matched donation as well as their own. Can they both be right? Natural assumptions about charitable matching lead to puzzles that are challenging to resolve in a satisfactory way.

This paper argues that all of the standard theories about the divisions of space and time can benefit from, and may need to rely on, parsimony considerations. More specifically, whether spacetime is discrete, gunky or pointy, there are wildly unparsimonious rivals to standard accounts that need to be resisted by proponents of those accounts, and only parsimony considerations offer a natural way of doing that resisting. Furthermore, quantitative parsimony considerations appear to be needed in many of these cases.

Zurvanism was an ancient variant of Zoroastrianism. According to Zurvanism, the great powers of good and evil, Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu, were the sons of a greater god Zurvan, associated with time. According to Eudemus of Rhodes, some Persian thinkers, presumably Zurvanists, took there to be three great principles underlying the world: light, darkness, and greatest of all time (or perhaps, according to Eudemus, space). This paper explores what metaphysics might underlie these doctrines, and what contemporary options we have for making sense of a metaphysics where time is the ultimate principle. Among the options explored is the option that despite appearance many of the entities of the concrete world are identical to stretches of time, or are somehow aspects of stretches of time; that they include times as parts, or are included in times as parts; that they are somehow properties of time; or hylomorphic compounds of which time is the matter; that the world is somehow a mixture of time, light, and dark; or that somehow the ends or teloi of everyday objects and processes are to be found among good, evil, and time.

Williamson proposes that a ‘suppositional procedure’ is a central heuristic we use to evaluate the truth of conditionals, though he also argues that this method often leads us astray. An alternative approach to the link between supposition and conditionals is to claim that we are guided by our antecedent conditional judgements in our supposing, and in particular in our determining which things follow from an initial supposition. This alternative explanation of the close link between conditionals and supposition is developed and compared to Williamson's proposal.

Abstract David Lewis rejected consequentialism in ethics. However, two aspects of his meta-ethical views do not sit naturally with this anti-consequentialism. Lewis endorses a conception of rationality where to be rational is to maximise value of a certain sort; it seems possible to be both rational and moral; and yet he rejects conceptions of moral action as acting to maximise moral value, and arguably suggests that maximising moral value is sometimes impermissible. The second tension is that his meta-ethics is primarily an account of value, including moral value, and his story about moral motivation goes via a motivational connection to value. Yet his anti-consequentialism seems to commit him to rejecting a story of moral action given entirely in terms of pursuit of moral value. This chapter explores what a Lewisian’s options are here. It also makes the case that, despite first appearances, Lewis is perhaps best interpreted as an agent-relative consequentialist.

Possible worlds have found many applications in contemporary philosophy: from theories of possibility and necessity, to accounts of conditionals, to theories of mental and linguistic content, to understanding supervenience relationships, to theories of properties and propositions, among many other applications. This chapter introduces some of the ways theories of impossible worlds have been used to deal with problems that arise for more standard possible-worlds analyses in philosophy. It discusses some questions about the nature and extent of impossible worlds. The chapter also discusses some important objections to the project of employing impossible worlds in philosophical theorizing. Probably the main use of possible worlds in philosophy has been in theories of mental and linguistic representation.

Impossible fictions have lessons to teach us about linguistic representation, about mental content and concepts, and about uses of conceivability in epistemology. An adequate theory of impossible fictions may require theories of meaning that can distinguish between different impossibilities; a theory of conceptual truth that allows us to make useful sense of a variety of conceptual falsehoods; and a theory of our understanding of necessity and possibility that permits impossibilities to be conceived. After discussing these questions, strategies for resisting the picture of impossible fictions presented here and in Part I are discussed. Perhaps apparently impossible fictions describe possibilities after all; or perhaps impossible fictions are all trivial; or perhaps some apparently intelligible impossible fictions are unintelligible after all.

Impossible fictions are valuable evidence both for a theory of fiction and for theories of meaning, mind and epistemology. This article focuses on what we can learn about fiction from reflecting on impossible fictions. First, different kinds of impossible fiction are considered, and the question of how much fiction is impossible is addressed. What impossible fiction contributes to our understanding of "truth in fiction" and the logic of fiction will be examined. Finally, our understanding of unreliable narrators and unreliable narration in fiction needs to accommodate stories that, on the face of it, cannot possibly be true.

Readers of fictions sometimes resist taking certain kinds of claims to be true according to those fictions, even when they appear explicitly or follow from applying ordinary principles of interpretation. This "imaginative resistance" is often taken to be significant for a range of philosophical projects outside aesthetics, including giving us evidence about what is possible and what is impossible, as well as the limits of conceivability or readers' normative commitments. I will argue that this phenomenon cannot do the theoretical work that has been asked of it. Resistance to taking things to be fictional is often best explained by unfamiliarity with kinds of fictions than any representational, normative, or cognitive limits. With training and experience, any understandable proposition can be made fictional and be taken to be fictional by readers. This requires a new understanding both of imaginative resistance and what it might be able to tell us about topics like conceivability or the bounds of possibility.

This paper discusses an infinite regress that looms behind a certain kind of historical explanation. The movement of one barbarian group is often explained by the movement of others, but those movements in turn call for an explanation. While their explanation can again be the movement of yet another group of barbarians, if this sort of explanation does not stop somewhere we are left with an infinite regress of barbarians. While that regress would be vicious, it cannot be accommodated by several general views about what viciousness in infinite regresses amounts to. This example is additional evidence that we should prefer a pluralist approach to infinite regresses.

Roughly speaking, the extension of an expression is what it picks out in our world: an object for a name, a set of objects for a predicate, and so on. Sometimes information about the extensions of terms is not enough to fully specify how those expressions contribute to the truth-value of sentences that they appear in. Many hold there is a further aspect of meaning, the intension of an expression. This is enough to at least determine the extension of an expression in any possible circumstance. Increasingly, theorists are recognizing distinctions between expressions that have the same extension in any possible worlds: these distinctions are known as hyperintensional distinctions. A number of philosophical disagreements are framed in terms of these questions, in the philosophy of language and beyond. There are issues about whether we even need to go beyond extensional language for a theory of the world, and if we do so whether we need hyperintensional distinctions as well, and if so for what. There are also questions that arise about what framework we should employ for an intensional semantics, or a hyperintensional one.

This paper explores a special kind of loop of grounding: cosmic loops. A cosmic loop is a loop that intuitively requires us to go “around” the entire universe to come back to the original ground. After describing several kinds of cosmic loop scenarios, the chapter discusses what can be learnt from these scenarios about constraints on grounding; the conceivability of cosmic loops; the possibility of cosmic loops; and the prospects for salvaging local reflexivity, asymmetry, and transitivity of grounding in a world containing a cosmic loop of ground. The considerations raised in this paper also bear on what we should think about relations that are meant to support grounding relations: in particular, revisions to theories of the part–whole relation are discussed.

In this paper, I take up three tasks in turn. The first is to set out what Routley thought we should demand of an all-purpose universal logic, and some of his reasons for those demands. The second is to sketch Routley's own response to those demands. The third is to explore how else we could satisfy some of the theoretical demands Routley identified, if we are not to follow him in endorsing Routleyan Ultralogic as a foundational logic. As part of this third project, I articulate what seems to me a preferable way of going to respond to the challenges Routley correctly identifies: and while I doubt what I will have to say would have convinced Routley himself, I will try to show that the approach I prefer has several advantages over Routley's.

We appear to talk about states of entities and of systems all of the time. Talk of states is commonplace in ordinary talk about the world: we naturally talk about the state of our clothes, or the state of the economy, or the state of the floor in a child's bedroom. Almost any area of inquiry helps itself to talk of states. Computer programming is all about how to ensure that computers in one state transition into another. A major part of chemistry seems to concern how one state of a system leads to another via a series of chemical reactions. Psychology would be transformed if we refused to believe in psychological states. Economists are asked to comment on the state of the economy, or sections of the economy. And so on.

Philosophical PerspectivesVolume 30, Issue 1 p. 294-308 Original Article Chance and Necessity Daniel Nolan, Daniel Nolan University of Notre DameSearch for more papers by this author Daniel Nolan, Daniel Nolan University of Notre DameSearch for more papers by this author First published: 15 March 2017 https://doi.org/10.1111/phpe.12076Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume30, Issue1Special Issue: MetaphysicsDecember 2016Pages 294-308 RelatedInformation

AbstractThis article focuses on the main methods used in analytic metaphysics. It first considers five important sources of constraints on metaphysical theorizing: linguistic and conceptual analysis, consulting intuitions, employing the findings of science, respecting folk opinion, and applying theoretical virtues in metaphysical theory choice such as preferring simpler theories, or preferring more explanatory theories. It then examines the role of formal methods in metaphysics as well as the role of metaphysical communities, traditions, and the place of the history of metaphysics in contemporary work. It also discusses the issue of whether metaphysics should be seen as an enterprise that will yield knowledge of metaphysical matters or whether it should have more modest epistemic goals. Finally, it explores the question of how much of metaphysics is a priori.