Imposing pure risks—risks that do not materialise into harm—is sometimes wrong. The Harm Account explains this wrongness by claiming that pure risks are harms. By contrast, The Autonomy Account claims that pure risks impede autonomy. We develop two objections to these influential accounts. The Separation Objection proceeds from the observation that, if it is wrong to v then it is sometimes wrong to risk v-ing. The intuitive plausibility of this claim does not depend on any account of the facts that ground moral wrongness. This suggests a close relationship between the factors that make an act wrong and the factors that make risking that act wrong, which both accounts fail to recognise. The Determinism Objection holds that both accounts fail to explain the wrongness of pure risks in a deterministic world. We then develop an alternative—The Buck-Passing Account—that withstands both objections.

The Mystery Room problem is a close variant of the Mystery Bag scenario (due to Titelbaum). It is argued here that dealing with this problem requires no revision of the Bayesian formalism, since there exists a solution to this problem in which indexicals or demonstratives play no essential role. The solution does require labels, which are internal to the probabilistic model. While there needs to be a connection between at least one label and one indexical or demonstrative, that connection is external to the probabilistic model that is used to determine the relevant conditional probability; hence, it does not complicate the update procedure.

In this paper, I present a novel paradox that pertains to a variety of representational states and activities. I begin by proving that there are certain contingently true propositions that no one can occurrently believe.Then, I use this to develop a further proof by which I derive a contradiction, thus giving us the paradox. Next, I differentiate the paradox fromthe Liar Paradox, and I show how a common response to the different variations of the Liar Paradox fails to avoid the type of paradox provided in this paper. Finally, I demonstrate how the general ideas behind the paradox regarding occurrent belief can be extended to a wide range of other representational states and activities.

Hedonism claims that all and only pleasure is intrinsically good. One worry about Hedonism focuses on the “only” part: Are there not things other than pleasure, such as personal projects and relationships, that are intrinsically good? If so, it can be objected that Hedonism is incomplete. In this paper, I defend Hedonism against this objection by arguing for a distinction between goodness and desirability that understands “desirability” as a deontic concept, in terms of “reason to desire”, but goodness as an evaluative concept. Based on this distinction, I attempt to show that Hedonists should accept that things other than pleasure, such as personal projects and relationships, are desirable for their own sakes but deny that these things are intrinsically good [Corrections added on 3 May 2019 after first online publication: The original abstract text is now the first paragraph of the paper’s introduction. An updated abstract has been added.]

According to all varieties of virtue reliabilism, knowledge is always gained through the exercise of epistemic competences.These competences can be conceived as competences to form true beliefs, or as competences to know. I will present a short but decisive argument against the idea that knowledge is always gained through the exercise of competences to know.The competence to know isn’t necessary for gaining knowledge.

Agnieszka Jaworska and Julie Tannenbaum recently developed the ingenious and novel person-rearing account of moral status, which preserves the commonsense judgment that humans have a higher moral status than nonhuman animals. It aims to vindicate speciesist judgments while avoiding the problems typically associated with speciesist views. We argue, however, that there is good reason to reject person-rearing views. Person-rearing views have to be coupled with an account of flourishing, which will (according to Jaworska and Tannenbaum) be either a species norm or an intrinsic potential account of flourishing. As we show, however, person-rearing accounts generate extremely implausible consequences when combined with the accounts of flourishing Jaworska and Tannenbaum need for the purposes of their view.

We propose an analysis of backward causation in terms of interventionism that can avoid several problems typically associated with backward causation. Its main advantage over other accounts is that it allows for reducing the problematic task of supporting backward causal claims to the unproblematic task of finding evidence for several ordinary forward directed causal hypotheses.

According to a view that goes by “Humeanism,” causal facts supervene on patterns of worldly entities.The simplest form of Humeanism is the constant conjunction theory: a particular type-F thing causes a particular type-G thing iff (i) that type-F is conjoined with that type-G thing and (ii) all F’s are conjoined with G’s. The constant conjunction theory implies that all causation is extrinsic, in the following sense: for all positive causal facts pertaining to each possible region, it’s extrinsic to that region that those causal facts pertain to it. Actual Humeans don’t accept the constant conjunction theory; they accept more sophisticated versions of Humeanism. But I argue that they, too, are committed to the thesis that all causation is extrinsic. In arguing for this claim, I use a discussion from Brian Weatherson as a springboard. Weatherson argues that on a plausible Humean view, some regions are such that all of their possible duplicates have the same or similar natural laws. I show that this is false. If Humeanism is true, then for every possible region, there are possible duplicates of that region with utterly alien natural laws. As a consequence, no causal facts pertain intrinsically to any region.