It is a mistake to think that instrumental rationality fixes a single standard for judging or describing actions. While there is a core conception of instrumental rationality, we appeal to different elaborations of that conception for different purposes. An action can be instrumentally rational in some sense(s) but not in others. As we learn more about behavior, it is possible to add useful elaborations of the core conception of instrumental rationality. In this paper, I propose a newelaboration based on Frederic Schick’s work on understandings.

This paper revisits a puzzle that arises for theories of knowledge according to which one can know on the basis of merely inductive grounds. No matter how strong such theories require inductive grounds to be if a belief based on them is to qualify as knowledge, there are certain beliefs (namely, about the outcome of fair lotteries) that are based on even stronger inductive grounds, while, intuitively, they do not qualify as knowledge. This paper discusses what is often regardedas the most promising classical invariantist solution to the puzzle, namely, that beliefs about the outcomes of fair lotteries do not qualify as knowledge because they are too lucky to do so (or, relatedly, because they do not satisfy a safety condition on knowledge), while other beliefs based on potentially weaker inductive grounds are not too lucky (or, relatedly, because they are safe). A case is presented that shows that this solution to the puzzle is actually not viable. It is argued that there is no obvious alternative solution in sight and that therefore the puzzle still awaits a classical invariantist solution.

Leibniz’s widely influential account of time provides a significant puzzle for those seeking to locate this account within his hierarchical ontology. Leibniz follows his scholastic predecessors in supposing that there are different grades of being, with substances being the most real and all other things possessing their reality via their relationships to substance. Following this picture, Leibniz suggests that phenomenal bodies only possess the being that they derive from the substances (i.e., monads) that ground them. Some would argue that time likewise only possesses its being based on the bodies that it relates. Contrary to this suggestion (i.e., that time is twice removed from substances), I will argue that time is derived directly from rational souls. Thus, I will argue that time is on an ontological par with the phenomenal world of bodies.

In Part One of Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, Kant repeatedly refers to a “proof ” that human nature has a necessary and universal “evil propensity,” but he provides only obscure hints at its location. Interpreters have failed to identify such an argument in Part One. After examining relevant passages, summarizing recent attempts to reconstruct the argument, and explaining why these do not meet Kant’s stated needs, I argue that the elusive proof must have atranscendental form (called quasi-transcendental because Kant never uses “transcendental” in Religion). With deceptive simplicity, the section titles of Part One, viewed as components in an architechtonic system of religion, constitute steps in just such a proof.

Virtue ethicists sometimes say that a right action is what a virtuous person would do, characteristically, in the circumstances. But some have objected recently that right action cannot be defined as what a virtuous person would do in the circumstances because there are circumstances in which a right action is possible but in which no virtuous person would be found. This objection moves from the premise that a given person ought to do an action that no virtuous person would do, to the conclusion that the action is a right action. I demon-strate that virtue ethicists distinguish “ought” from “right” and reject the assumption that “ought” implies “right.” I then show how their rejection of that assumption blocks this “right but not virtuous” objection. I conclude by showing how the thesis that “ought” does not imply “right” can clarify a further dispute in virtue ethics regarding whether “ought” implies “can.”

It is sometimes claimed that ordinary objects, such as mountains and chairs, are not material in their own right, but only in virtue of the fact that they are constituted by matter. As Fine puts it, they are “onlyderivatively material” (2003, 211). In this paper I argue that invoking “constitution” to account for the materiality of things that are not material in their own right explains nothing and renders the admission that these objects are indeed material completely mysterious. Although there may be metaphysical contexts in which mysterianism can be accepted with equanimity, I further argue, the question of the materiality of quotidian objects is not one of them.

Arguments for value incommensurability ultimately depend on a certain diagnosis of human motivation. Incommensurablists hold that each person’s basic ends are not only irreducible but also incompatiblewith one another. It isn’t merely that some goals can’t, in fact, be jointly realized; values actually compete for influence. This account makes a mistake about the nature of human motivation. Each valueunderwrites a ceteris paribus evaluation. Such assessments are mutually compatible because the observation that there is something to be said for an outcome from a particular perspective allows for any ultimate evaluation of that outcome. Values can be irreducible without thereby being incommensurable.

Many viewers presented with a round plate tilted to their line of sight will report that they see a round plate that looks elliptical from their perspective. Alva Noë thinks that we should take reports of this kind as adequate descriptions of the phenomenology of spatial experiences. He argues that his so-called enactive or sensorimotor account of spatial perceptual content explains why both the plate’s circularity and itselliptical appearance are phenomenal aspects of experience. In this paper, I critique the phenomenal adequacy of Noë’s sensorimotor account of spatial perceptual content. I begin by showing that some ofits central claims are in conflict with the phenomenology of perceptual experience. I then argue that shape appearances have no phenomenal reality, thus undermining this central motivation for his account.

Currently, one of the most influential theories of consciousness is Rosenthal’s version of higher-order-thought (HOT). We argue that the HOT theory allows for two distinct interpretations: a one-componentand a two-component view. We further argue that the two-component view is more consistent with his effort to promote HOT as an explanatory theory suitable for application to the empirical sciences.Unfortunately, the two-component view seems incapable of handling a group of counterexamples that we refer to as cases of radical confabulation. We begin by introducing the HOT theory and by indicating why we believe it is open to distinct interpretations. We then proceed to show that it is incapable of handling cases of radical confabulation. Finally, in the course of considering various possible responses to our position, we show that adoption of a disjunctive strategy, one that would countenance both one-component and two-component versions, would fail to provide any empirical or explanatory advantage.

The point of the present article is to investigate whether the key conceptions of epochē and reduction as found in Husserl’s phenomenology can be brought to bear in a fruitful rereading of the speech of Socrates in Plato’s Symposium. In pursuit of this goal, I will begin by revisiting the traditional reading of this speech in terms of a scala amoris in which the erotic subject is guided from attachment to a series ofinferior objects to the Beautiful and Good itself such that the value of all preceding attachments is suspended. The critique that this approach to love instrumentalizes all but the transcendent Good is one that is found both within and without the text. In opposition to this reading, however, I will suggest that Husserl’s notions of epochē and reduction enable us to read the speech not as an instrumentalizing scala but in terms of a reflective distance in which our immersion in and with the erotic object is suspended so that we might reappropriate the real meaning of erotic engagement. According to this reading, Plato does not negate the particular or lower forms of eros but reinscribes them with a value derived from their position in relation to the ultimate. The suspension of the lower forms, then, is not final but is merely employed in order to let what occurs in erotic engagement show itself.

Hard determinists hold that we never have alternative possibilities of action—that we only can do what we actually do. This means that if hard determinists accept the “ought implies can” principle, they mustaccept that it is never the case that we ought to do anything we do not do. In other words, they must reject the view that there can be “ought”- based moral reasons to do things we do not do. Hard determinists who wish to accommodate moral reasons to do things we do not do can instead appeal to Humean moral reasons that are based on desires to be virtuous. Moral reasons grounded on desires to be virtuous do not depend on our being able to act on those reasons in the way that “ought”-based moral reasons do.

After drawing a distinction between two kinds of dualism—numerical dualism (defined in terms of identity) and modal dualism (defined in terms of supervenience)—we argue that Descartes is a numericaldualist, but not a modal dualist. Since most contemporary dualists advocate modal dualism, the relation of Descartes’ views to the contemporary philosophy of mind are more complex than is commonly assumed.