Arguments from faultless disagreement appeal to the possibility of mistake-free disagreement as evidence for semantic relativism. Typically, these arguments focus on paradigmatically subjective topics such as taste, aesthetics, and comedy. Many philosophers hold that ethics is also a subjective topic. But so far, there has been little discussion of faultless disagreement in ethics. In this paper, I advance an argument from faultless moral disagreement, in favour of a relativist semantics for ethics.

This paper identifies and elucidates the underappreciated phenomenon of epistemic domination. Epistemic domination is the nonmutual capacity of one party to control the evidence available to another. Where this capacity is exercised, especially by parties that are ill-intentioned or ill-informed, the dominated party may have difficulty attaining epistemically valuable states. I begin with a discussion of epistemic domination and how it is possible. I then highlight three negative consequences that may result from epistemic domination.

What determines whether an object is an artwork? In this paper I consider what I will call ‘social’ theories of art, according to which the arthood of objects depends in some way on the art-related social practices that we have. Though such a dependence claim is plausible in principle, social theories of art tend to unpack the determining link between artworks and social practices in terms of intentional relations between the objects in question and the people involved in the relevant practices. This intentionalism has unappealing upshots. Drawing on two-dimensional approaches in social ontology, I show how social theories of art can be done differently, improving their prospects.

The paper replies to Matthew Rellihan’s recent criticism of Thomas Kroedel’s simple argument for downward causation. Rellihan argues that the simple argument equivocates between two notions of realizers of mental properties, namely total realizers and core realizers. According to Rellihan, one premise of the argument is false on each disambiguation. In response, this paper argues that the version of the argument in terms of total realizers is sound after all if we evaluate counterfactual conditionals about the non-occurrence of total realizers correctly.

If there are true contradictions, where are they? In language or in the world? According to one important view, best represented by Jc Beall (2009), only the former. In this paper, we raise a problem for this view. In order to defend a “merely semantic” version of dialetheism (aka ‘glut theory’), Beall adopts transparent accounts of truth and falsity, which gives rise to “dialethic ascent” on which true contradictions are also, contradictorily, untrue contradictions. This is a consequence of trying to restrict contradictions to language and keep them out of the world. However, in this paper, we show that this ascent carries over intensional contexts, so that, on this version of dialetheism, even if there are true contradictions, no one knows a true contradiction. This shows that contradictions have not been kept out of the world. We end by connecting this issue with the infamous ‘just true’ problem.

According to the principle of conditional power aggregation (CPA), conditional powers conjoin when the properties that bestow them conjoin. Sophie Gibb has argued that CPA is false given Shoemaker’s account of conditional powers and that this leads to a problem for his account of subset realization. In short: If CPA is rejected, subset realization fails to be an entailment relation, in which case it cannot provide a basis for non-reductive physicalism. I defend the subset account against this argument by denying that CPA fails. I argue that (i) Shoemaker’s account of conditional powers does not warrant a rejection of CPA, (ii) his account is incomplete and should be supplemented with a further sufficient condition for when a property bestows a conditional power, and (iii) this further sufficient condition supports CPA.

Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra has presented an objection to the co-intension problem. According to this objection, the examples of properties often cited to motivate the co-intension problem are actually relational properties, and so turn out not to be co-intensional. In this essay, I want to revisit Rodriguez-Pereyra’s objection and explain why I find it defective.

Timothy Williamson contends that our primary cognitive heuristic for prospectively assessing conditionals, i.e., the suppositional procedure, is provably inconsistent. Our diagnosis is that stipulations about the nature of suppositional rejection are the likely source of these results. We show that on at least one alternative, and quite natural, understanding of the suppositional attitudes, the inconsistency results are blocked. The upshot is an increase in the reliability of our suppositional heuristics across a wider range of contexts. One interesting consequence of the increased reliability is a proportional decrease in the plausibility of an error-theory that Williamson employs against widespread intuitions about the truth values of counterpossible conditionals.

Bilateralists, who accept that there are two primitive speech acts, assertion and denial, can offer an attractive definition of consequence: Y follows from X if and only if it is incoherent to assert all formulas X and to deny all formulas Y. The present paper argues that this definition has consequences many will find problematic, amongst them that truth coincides with assertibility. Philosophers who reject these consequences should therefore reject this definition of consequence.

In support of logical nihilism, according to which there are no logical laws, Gillian Russell offers purported counterexamples to two laws of logic. Russell’s examples rely on cleverly constructed predicates not found in ordinary English. I show that similar apparent counterexamples to the same logical laws can be constructed without exotic predicates but using only what ordinary language provides. We correctly analyze such arguments so that they do not actually constitute counterexamples to any logic laws. I claim that we can and should do the same for Russell’s arguments.

Reasons-first theorists claim that facts about reasons for attitudes are normatively primitive, and that all other normative facts ultimately reduce to facts about reasons. According to their view, for example, the fact that something is good ultimately reduces to facts about reasons to favour it. I argue that these theories face a challenging dilemma due to the normativity of arational lifeforms, for instance the fact that water is good for plants. If all normative facts are, ultimately, facts about reasons for attitudes, then reasons-first theorists must either (a) show that these facts do reduce to facts about reasons, or (b) concede that they do not and, instead, show that this is not a problem for their view. Both options, however, are riddled with difficulties—or so I will try to argue.

How do you make decisions under ignorance? That is, how do you decide when you lack subjective probabilities for some of your options’ possible outcomes? One answer is that you follow the Laplace Rule: you assign an equal probability to each state of nature for which you lack a subjective probability (that is, you use the Principle of Indifference) and then you maximize expected utility. The most influential objection to the Laplace Rule is that it is sensitive to the individuation of states of nature. This sensitivity is problematic because the individuation of states seems arbitrary. In this paper, however, I argue that this objection proves too much. I argue that all plausible rules for decisions under ignorance are sensitive to the individuation of states of nature.

In recent work, Jane Friedman has argued that commonly accepted epistemic norms conflict with a basic instrumental principle of inquiry, according to which one ought to take the necessary means to resolving one’s inquiry. According to Friedman, we ought to reject the epistemic norms in question and accept instead that the only genuine epistemic norms are zetetic norms—norms that govern inquiry. I argue that there is a more attractive way out of the conflict, one which reconciles the epistemic and the zetetic.

Olav Vassend has recently (2021) presented a decision-theoretic argument for updating utility functions by what he calls “utility conditionalization.” Vassend’s argument is meant to mirror closely the well-known argument for Bayesian conditionalization due to Hilary Greaves and David Wallace (2006). I show that Vassend’s argument is inconsistent with ZF set theory and argue that it therefore does not provide support for utility conditionalization.

This paper outlines a solution to the puzzle of imaginative resistance that makes—and if successful helps to vindicate—two assumptions. The solution first assumes a relationship between moral judgements and affective states of the subject. It also assumes the correctness of accounts of imaginative engagement with fiction—like Kendall Walton’s account—that treat engagement with fiction as prop-based make-believe in which works of fiction, but also appreciators of those works, figure as props. The key to understanding imaginative resistance, it maintains, is understanding how real feelings become part of fictional worlds.

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.