This article presents a general philosophically-motivated framework for modeling moral agency explicitly in any non-cooperative game. In addition to choosing their strategy, agents in this framework can choose among an appropriate exogenous set of moralities that depends on the context of the game being modeled. Further, agents can also choose the degree to which they wish to be moral through the use of mixed strategies. We develop two separate models to demonstrate how the framework can be applied. In the first model, agents choose between absolute empathy and absolute selfishness while playing prisoner’s dilemma. In the second model, agents choose between absolute Kantian universalizing and absolute selfishness while playing a public goods game. For both models, the degree of morality exhibited by the agents is determined endogenously rather than assigned parametrically by the modeler. Based on our findings and other theoretical and empirical justifications, we recommend a broader adoption of our framework.

The traditional problem of free will has reached an impasse; we are unlikely to see progress without rethinking the terms in which the problem had been cast. Our approach offers an alternative to the standard terms of the debate, by developing an authorially parameterized approach articulated within a two-dimensional semantics for temporal predicates.

According to Augustine, abstract objects are ideas in the mind of God. Because numbers are a type of abstract object, it would follow that numbers are ideas in the mind of God. Call such a view the “Augustinian View of Numbers” (AVN). In this paper, I present a formal theory for AVN. The theory stems from the symmetry conception of God as it appears in Studtmann (2021). I show that the theory in Studtmann’s paper can interpret the axioms of Peano Arithmetic minus the induction schema. This fact allows for the development of arithmetic in a natural way. The development eventuates in a theory that can interpret second-order arithmetic. The conception of God that emerges by the end of the discussion is a conception of an infinite, ineffable, self-cause that contains objects that not only serve as numbers but also encode information about each other.

This article presents a general framework for modeling moral agency explicitly. The framework can be incorporated into any non-cooperative game. It allows players to be morally autonomous, i.e., players in the framework are modeled as having the ability to simultaneously choose not just their action strategies but also their moral principles. We demonstrate the framework by developing an example where agents can choose whether to empathize or not while playing a one-shot simultaneous prisoner’s dilemma. We find that if agents are given the agency to choose whether to empathize or not, the resulting symmetric Nash equilibrium involves a mixed strategy such that players are more likely to cooperate if cooperating results in a larger benefit to the other player and less likely to cooperate if cooperating imposes a larger cost on themselves. Based on our findings as well as other theoretical and empirical justifications, we present several compelling reasons to recommend a broader adoption of our framework.

AbstractThe Nash counterfactual considers the question: what would happen were I to change my behaviour assuming no one else does. By contrast, the Kantian counterfactual considers the question: what would happen were everyone to deviate from some behaviour. We present a model that endogenizes the decision to engage in this type of Kantian reasoning. Autonomous agents using this moral framework receive psychic payoffs equivalent to the cooperate-cooperate payoff in Prisoner’s Dilemma regardless of the other player’s action. Moreover, if both interacting agents play Prisoner’s Dilemma using this moral framework, their material outcomes are a Pareto improvement over the Nash equilibrium.

In this paper, I present what I call the symmetry conception of God within 1st order, extensional, non-well-founded set theory. The symmetry conception comes in two versions. According to the first, God is that unique being that is universally symmetrical with respect to set membership. According to the second, God is the universally symmetrical set of all sets that are universally symmetrical with respect to set membership. I present a number of theorems, most importantly that any universally symmetrical set is identical to its essence, that show that the two symmetry conceptions intersect with some dominant theological conceptions of God. The theorems also show that both of the symmetry conceptions of God entail that God has a fractal like structure.

AbstractAristotle's categorial scheme had an unparalleled effect not only on his own philosophical system, but also on the systems of many of the greatest philosophers in the Western tradition. The set of doctrines in the Categories, known as categorialism, play, for instance, a central role in Aristotle's discussion of change in the Physics, in the science of being qua being in the Metaphysics, and in the rejection of Platonic ethics in the Nicomachean Ethics. Plainly, the enterprise of categorialism inaugurated by Aristotle runs deep in the philosophical psyche. Even so, despite its wide-reaching influence—and, indeed owing to that influence—any attempt to describe categorialism faces a significant difficulty: experts disagree on many of its most important and fundamental aspects. This article argues that Aristotle's categorial scheme, as is the case with many works in the history of philosophy, is best illuminated by opposing beams of interpretive light. It examines how Aristotle arrived at his list of categories and considers the connection between Aristotle's categories and his hylomorphism.

There is a very deep tension that exists at the heart of Aristotle’s metaphysical system in virtue of the fact that his works seem to contain two distinct and not obviously commensurate ontologies: an early ontology that Aristotle outlines in the Categories and a later ontology that he develops in his physical–metaphysical treatises. In this paper I briefly describe the two ontologies, discuss the sources of conflict and outline different scholarly speculations about the relationship between the two.

If there is one utterly inescapable problem for the metaphysician, it is this: is metaphysics itself a theoretically legitimate discipline? Is it, in other words, capable of a systematic and well-confirmed set of theoretical results? And if not, why not? From its inception, metaphysics has found itself exercised by the nagging worry that its own inquiries might reveal it to be a subject without an object, or a mode of inquiry without a method. Such concerns were voiced as early as Plato's discussion of the battle between the Gods and Giants. Since then, no era of its history has spared metaphysics some rehearsal of this question. In Empiricism and the Problem of Metaphysics, Paul Studtmann defends an empiricist critique of metaphysical theorizing. At the heart of the critique is an empiricist view of a priori knowledge, according to which all a priori knowledge is empirical knowledge of the results of effective procedures. Such a view of a priori knowledge places severe limits on the scope a priori speculation and indeed places beyond our ken the types of claims that metaphysicians as well as traditional epistemologists and ethicists have typically wanted to make.

Chapter 1 Chapter One. The Problem of Metaphysics Chapter 2 Chapter Two. Modal Concepts Chapter 3 Chapter Three. The A Priori Chapter 4 Chapter Four. Metaphysics-A Historical Survey Chapter 5 Chapter Five. Epistemology-Skeptical Arguments Chapter 6 Chapter Six. Ethics-The Is/Ought Gap Chapter 7 Chapter Seven. Objections and Replies

In this paper, I address both the interpretive and philosophical issues concerning prime matter. My aim is to show that a philosophically interesting account of prime matter can be articulated that strongly coheres with, even if it is not necessitated by, Aristotle's texts. In articulating the interpretation, I first examine a view defended by both Richard Sorabji and Robert Sokolowski according to which prime matter is extension. Such a view, I argue, is problematic for a number of reasons. Nonetheless, it provides a convenient starting point for the view I defend according to which prime matter is intimately linked to, though not identical with, extension.