Leibniz defends concurrentism, the view that both God and created substances are causally responsible for changes in the states of created substances. Interpretive problems, however, arise in determining just what causal role each plays. Some recent work has been revisionist, greatly downplaying the causal role played by created substances—arguing instead that according to Leibniz only God has productive causal power. Though bearing some causal responsibility for changes in their perceptual states, created substances are not efficient causes of such changes. This paper argues against such revisionism; not only was Leibniz a consistent advocate of concurrentism (at least in his “mature” years), but also his account of concurrentism involves both God and created substances asefficient causes of the changes in the states of created substances.

This paper argues that typical biological species are natural kinds, on a familiar realist understanding of natural kinds—classes of individuals across which certain properties cluster together, in virtue of the causal workings of the world. But the clustering is far from exceptionless. Virtually no properties, or property-combinations, characterize every last member of a typical species—unless they can also appear outside the species. This motivates some to hold that what ties together the members of a species is the ability to interbreed, others that it is common descent. Yet others hold that species are scattered individuals,of which organisms are parts rather than members. But not one of these views absolves us of the need to posit a typical phenotypic profile. Vagueness is here to stay. Some seek to explain the vagueness by saying species are united by “homeostatic property clusters”; but this view collapses into the more familiar realist picture.

Philosophers disagree about how meaning connects with history. Donald Davidson, who helped deepen our understanding of meaning, even disagreed with himself. As Ernest Lepore and Kirk Ludwig note, Davidson’s account of radical interpretation treats meaning as ahistorical; his Swampman thought experiment treats it as historical. Here I show that while Lepore and Ludwig are right that Davidson’s views are in tension, they are wrong about its extent. Unbeknownst to them, Davidson’s account of radical interpretation and Swampman thought experiment both rely—in different ways—on the same model of triangulation.I revise one of those ways to resolve the tension within Davidson’s views. I close by detailing what role history should play in Davidson’s views overall.

Some moral realists claim that moral facts are a species of natural fact, amenable to scientific investigation. They argue that these moral facts are needed in the best explanations of certain phenomena and that this is evidence that they are real. In this paper I present part of a biological account of the function of morality. The account allows the identification of a plausible natural kind that could play the explanatory role that a moral kind would play in naturalist realist theories. It is therefore a candidate for being the moral kind. I argue, however, that it will underdetermine the morally good, that is, identifying the kind is not sufficient to identify what is good. Hence this is not a natural moral kind. Its explanatory usefulness, however, means that we do not have to postulate any further (moral) facts to provide moral explanations. Hence there is no reason to believe that there are any natural moral kinds.

In this paper, I explore and defend the idea that we have epistemic responsibilities with respect to our visual searches, responsibilities that are far more fine-grained and interesting than the trivial responsibilities to keep our eyes open and “look hard.” In order to have such responsibilities, we must be able to exert fine-grained and interesting forms of control over our visual searches. I present both an intuitive case and an empirical case for thinking that we do, in fact, have such forms of control over our visual searches. I then show how these forms of control can be used to aim the visual beliefs that result from our searches toward various epistemic goals.

This article is an attempt to deepen our understanding of trust. To this end, several elements frequently present in trust-relationships are first identified, and then three underappreciated puzzles about trust are described. Next, it is argued that certain leading analyses of trust are unsatisfactory, in part, because they are unable to solve these puzzles succesfully. Finally, an alternative way of thinking about trust is proposed. It is argued that this new way of thinking about trust is bothindependently plausible and better able to solve these puzzles about trust.

I argue against Reasons Internalism, the view that possession of a normative reason for the performance of an action entails that one can be motivated to perform that action, and Motivational Existence Internalism, the view that if one is obligated to perform an action, then one can be motivated to perform that action. My thesis is that these positions cannot accommodate the fact that reasonable moral agents are frequently motivated to act only because they believe theircontemplated actions to be morally obligatory. The failure to accommodate this fact is reason to reject these two types of internalism about reasons.