The essentially comparative conception of value entails that the value of a state of affairs does not depend solely upon features intrinsic to the state of affairs, but also upon extrinsic features, such as the set of feasible alternatives. It has been argued that this conception of value gives us reason to abandon the transitivity of the better than relation. This paper shows that the support for intransitivity derived from this conception of value is very limited. On its most plausible interpretations, it merely provides a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for intransitivity. It is further argued that the essentially comparative conception of value appears to support a disjunctive conclusion: there is incommensurability of value or betterness is not transitive. Of these two alternatives, incommensurability is preferable, because it is far less threatening to our other axiological commitments.

Michael Ridge argues that metaethical expressivism can avoid its most worrisome problems by going ‘Ecumenical’. Ridge emphasizes that he aims to develop expressivism at the level of metasemantics rather than at the level of (first-order) semantics. This is supposed to allow him to avoid a mentalist semantics of attitudes and instead offer an orthodox, truth-conditional or propositional semantics. However, I argue that Ridge’s theory remains committed to mentalist semantics, and that his move to go metasemantic doesn’t bring any clear advantages to the debate between expressivism and its opponents.

This paper raises a challenge to Jonathan Schaffer’s priority monism. I contend that monism may be true at the actual world but fail to hold as a matter of metaphysical necessity, contrary to Schaffer’s view that monism, if true, is necessarily true. My argument challenges Schaffer for his reliance on contingent physical truths in an argument for a metaphysically necessary conclusion. A counterexample in which the actual laws of physics hold but the physical history of the universe is different shows that priority monism is contingently true at best. I suggest some general lessons for discussion of metaphysical dependence.

The Paradox of the Surprise Examination has been a testing ground for a variety of frameworks in formal epistemology, from epistemic logic to probability theory to game theory and more. In this paper, I treat a related paradox, the Paradox of the Undiscoverable Position (from Sorensen 1982, 1988), as a test case for the possible-worlds style representation of epistemic states. I argue that the paradox can be solved in this framework, further illustrating the power of possible-worlds style modeling. The solution also illustrates an important distinction between anti-performatory and unassimilable announcements of information.

The aim of this study is to address the “Grounding Grounding Problem,” that is, the question as to what, if anything, grounds facts about grounding. I aim to show that, if a seemingly plausible principle of modal recombination between fundamental facts and the principle customarily called “Entailment” are assumed, it is possible to prove not only that grounding facts featuring fundamental, contingent grounds are derivative but also that either they are (at least) partially grounded in the grounds they feature or they are “abysses” (i.e., derivative facts without fundamental grounds and lying at the top of an infinitely descending chain of ground).

Skepticism about the ‘wrong kind’ of reasons—the view that wrong-kind reasons are reasons to want and bring about certain attitudes, but not reasons for those attitudes—is more often assumed than argued for. Jonathan Way (2012) sets out to remedy this: he argues that skeptics about, but not defenders of, wrong-kind reasons can explain a distinctive pattern of transmission among such reasons and claims that this fact lends significant support to the skeptical view. I argue that Way’s positive case for wrong-kind reason skepticism fails. I conclude with an account of what’s needed to resolve the debate between wrong-kind reason skeptics and defenders.

The focus of this article is the question whether the notion of being in a position to know is closed under modus ponens. The question is answered negatively.

Making sense of our reasoning in disputes about necessary truths requires admitting nonvacuous counterpossibles. One class of these is the counteressentials, which ask us to make contrary to fact (and therefore contrary to possibility) suppositions about essences. A popular strategy in accounting for nonvacuous counterpossibles is to extend the standard possible worlds semantics for subjunctive conditionals by the addition of impossible worlds. A conditional A □→ C is then taken to be true if all of the nearest A worlds (whether possible or impossible) are C worlds. I argue that a straightforward extension of the standard possible worlds semantics to impossible worlds does not result in a viable account of counteressentials and propose an alternative covering law semantics for counteressentials.

A classic objection to act-consequentialism is that it is overdemanding: it requires agents to bear too many costs for the sake of promoting the impersonal good. I develop the complementary objection that act-consequentialism is underdemanding: it fails to acknowledge that agents have moral reasons to bear certain costs themselves, evenwhen itwould be impersonally better for others to bear these costs.