The Inconsistency of Morally Required Diminishment (IX-G)
Joseph Adams, Georgia State University

I argue that Hampton’s retributivism in Forgiveness and Mercy is flawed. I show that her theory is inconsistent with its Kantian commitments. I explore and tentatively reject a friendly amendment to Hampton’s argument. A guilty criminal sends a false lowering message about the relative worth of the victim. This lowering message is evidence that needs nullification. Criminals deserve punishment because we have a duty to reassert the victim’s true, equal worth through the defeat of punishment. Punishment accomplishes defeat by diminishing the criminal. Diminishment is the experience of receiving a lowering message which reveals a lower than expected level of human worth. Hampton commits to a Kantian theory of worth. Diminishment is possible only with a non-Kantian theory. Thus, if we link punishment to diminishment, then Hampton’s retributivism demands an experience that her retributivism takes to be impossible.

Restorative Justice, Retributive Justice, and the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (IX-G)
Lucy Allais, University of the Witwatersrand

There are three standard views on the moral justification of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). One view is that it was morally wrong because it was an unjustifiable compromise with justice. Those who see it as morally justified see it either as an acceptable compromise with justice, or as giving expression to a different kind of justice from retributive justice, called “restorative” justice. In this paper I question both of the approaches used to morally justify the TRC, but do not accept that it was morally unjustified. I examine the extent to which the TRC really gave expression to restorative justice and argue that this is limited. Then I suggest that there is a way of seeing the TRC as giving expression to the moral grounds underlying retributive justice. Finally, I question the extent to which restorative justice is a distinct kind of justice from retributive justice.

Ignorance Is Not Enough: Why the Ignorance Hypothesis Fails to Undermine the Conceivability and Knowledge Arguments (VII-F)
Torin Alter, University of Alabama

Daniel Stoljar’s (2006) ignorance hypothesis says that we are ignorant of a type of nonexperiential, experience-relevant truth: a truth that is not about experience but is an essential part of a set of truths that entail experiential truths. He defends both the hypothesis and the following conditional thesis (CT): the ignorance hypothesis, if true, undermines the conceivability and knowledge arguments (CA & KA). I argue that his argument for CT draws the wrong conclusion from one of his central analogies. And against CT, I argue that the ignorance hypothesis does not threaten the core epistemic claim of CA & KA, that there are experiential truths that cannot be deduced from truths about structure and dynamics. Stoljar rejects a version of that argument but, I argue, his objections depend on implausibly identifying non-structural/dynamic properties with intrinsic properties.

Toward a New Criterion of Identity for Properties (V-H)
Paul Audi, University of Nebraska–Omaha

Questions about the identity and difference of properties crop up in nearly every branch of philosophy. Is being red being disposed to reflect certain wavelengths of light? Is being good maximizing pleasure? Is being in pain being in a certain neural state? Here I make a negative point and a positive one, taking off from an example of necessarily coextensive, non-causal properties. First, I use the example to show why properties cannot be individuated either by necessary coextension or on the basis of their causal roles. Second, I use it to motivate an identity condition for properties given in terms of grounding, the non-causal relation of determination I take to be expressed by the phrase “in virtue of.” I close by saying briefly how this new criterion re-situates us with respect to the mind-body problem.

Hawthorne on the Deeply Contingent A Priori (IX-C)
Yuval Avnur, New York University

According to most contemporary philosophers there can be no deeply contingent a priori knowledge. Call that view “the orthodoxy.” Hawthorne (2002) attempts to undermine the orthodoxy by first giving an objection to an argument for the orthodoxy, and then appealing to our intuitions about three cases in which it is tempting to say that the subject has deeply contingent a priori knowledge. He notes that our intuitions about those cases are shifty, and claims that the same shiftiness occurs in cases of a posteriori knowledge. So he concludes that there is nothing especially problematic about deeply contingent a priori knowledge. In reply, I offer an argument in favor of the orthodoxy which (a) is not susceptible to Hawthorne’s first objection, (b) is consistent with the shiftiness that Hawthorne describes, and (c) presents a problem only for deeply contingent a priori knowledge, not for ordinary a posteriori knowledge.

Life-Adjustment and Life-Improvement (IX-F)
H.E. Baber, University of San Diego

Preferentists hold that preference-satisfaction alone contributes to well-being. If preferentism is true it seems to follow that ceteris paribus modifying a person’s preferences to be satisfied by what is on offer should be as good as improving the circumstances of her life to satisfy her preferences. Critics suggest that no subjective account of well-being, whether preferentist or hedonist, can explain our intuitions in these cases: unless we recognize that some states of affairs are objectively more conducive to well-being than others we cannot account for our conviction that life-adjustment is not the moral equivalent of life-improvement. Can we accommodate this conviction without signing onto an objective account of well-being? I argue that we can, if we grant that the satisfaction of (actual and possible) preferences at non-actual possible worlds contributes to well-being.

The Reality of Possible Worlds (VIII-H)
Allan Bäck, Kutztown University

Some, like Spinoza, Frege, Quine, and perhaps Plotinus, don’t care for modalities in any real sense. For them talking about mere contingencies as possible worlds only reflects our ignorance. Others see possible worlds as inevitable, either in recognizing them as real objects or at any rate in our postulating them for doing theory. Today pluralism reigns: Kripke and his camp rule over the modal domain, while others just disparage or ignore it. Here though I want to argue—none too originally but perhaps persuasively—that the logical modalities are embedded in the very conception of a formal language. I then offer a simple way to think of the modalities and of possible beings, and even of impossible beings and absurd ones without losing that robust sense of reality.

How Philosophy Can Inform the Creation of Public Policy for Workplace Accommodations – An Essay in Applied Philosophy (VI-K)
Paul Baker, Center for Advanced Communications Policy–Georgia Institute of Technology, and Andrew C. Ward, University of Minnesota–Division of Health Policy and Management

In the opening chapter of Dependent Rational Animals, Alasdair MacIntyre laments that from “Plato to Moore and since there are usually…only passing references to human vulnerabilities and affliction and to the connection between them and our dependence on others.” To redress this lacuna, we apply a variety of philosophic concepts to the issue of workplace accommodations for people with disabilities. To set the context for our discussion, we begin by recalling Isaiah Berlin’s distinction between negative freedom and positive freedom. While Berlin’s distinction is useful, it fails to capture the ethically salient issues in proposals to shift from engineered, one-of-a-kind workplace accommodations to universally designed environments that create systemic changes in the workplace. We argue in this paper that a new concept of freedom emerges from an examination of such issues, and that attempts to craft fair and just policies for workplace accommodation benefit from careful conceptual analyses.

Pegs, Boards, and Relativistic Perdurance (IV-H)
Yuri Balashov, University of Georgia

In an earlier work I developed an argument favoring one view of persistence (viz., perdurance) over its rivals, based on considerations of the relativity of three-dimensional spatial shapes of physical objects in Minkowski spacetime. The argument has since come under criticism (in the works of Theodore Sider, Kristi Miller, Ian Gibson, Oliver Pooley, and Thomas Sattig). I attempt to respond to these criticisms.

Variability and Skepticism (I-J)
Nathan Ballantyne, University of Arizona

Certain sorts of belief—those having to do with topics like politics, morality, religion and philosophy—vary with accidental features of historical and cultural background. If you had grown up there rather than here, you’d believe otherwise. Is this sort of variability a reason for skepticism? That’s the main question discussed in this paper. I sketch two promising variability arguments for skepticism.

A Problem with Kim’s Qualia-Epiphenomenalism (X-J)
Jared G. Bates, Hanover College

Kim’s (2005) qualia-epiphenomenalism arises out a commitment to two more general theses. One is that in order for a property to have physical effects, it must itself be physical or physically reducible (Conditional Reductionism). The other is that qualia are irreducible to physical properties (Property Dualism). It follows that qualia are causally inert, that is, they never rank among the causes of our behavior or any other physical happenings. I will argue here that Kim’s qualia-epiphenomenalism is in serious trouble. Specifically, I will argue that his Conditional Reductionism is at odds with his Property Dualism, and this conflict plays itself out in causal relations between qualia and cognitive states. I will conclude by pointing to some considerations that favor rejecting property dualism in favor of a thoroughly reductionist physicalism about the mind.

Prudent Inquiry and Non-Evidential Considerations (VII-F)
James Bednar, Vanderbilt University

I argue against the view that non-evidential considerations such as error-costs and the cost of inquiry determine what counts as sufficient evidence for belief. I advance an alternate account according to which these non-evidential considerations determine the manner and the extent to which it is prudent to inquire.

Is Intuition a Form of Perception? (VI-J)
John T. Bengson, University of Texas–Austin

The view that intuition is a form of perception is typically derided as an instance of mysterianism. While it is surely true that some versions of the view render intuition no less mysterious than crystal ball gazing, I believe that perceptual models of intuition enjoy substantial prima facie motivation, and that it remains possible to develop a sophisticated perceptual model which avoids familiar objections (e.g., causation). Exploiting recent work in the philosophy of perception, ontology of mind, and epistemology of the a priori, I defend one such model.”

Aristotle and the “Virtues of Will Power” (III-E)
Noell Birondo, Pomona College

Beginning in at least the 1970s, and presumably under the influence of the later Wittgenstein, certain advocates of Aristotle’s ethics have insisted that a proper validation of the virtues of character must proceed from within, or be internal to, the particular evaluative outlook fostered by a cultivation of the virtues themselves. The most influential advocate of this line of thinking has presumably been John McDowell, although Rosalind Hursthouse, in her recent book On Virtue Ethics, also explicitly embraces it. In this paper I consider the suggestion that a distinction between “the substantive virtues” and “the virtues of will power” might ultimately undermine thinking about Aristotle’s ethics in the way endorsed by McDowell and Hursthouse. That would be to reanimate an interpretation of Aristotle’s ethics that McDowell has called a “historical monstrosity.”

Duns Scotus on Formal Distinction, Identity, and Material Constitution (V-H)
Josh Blander, University of California–Los Angeles

In this paper, I situate the work of John Duns Scotus in debates about the Problem of Material Constitution (PMC). In doing so, I examine the very different accounts of identity of Peter Geach and David Wiggins. I develop the claim that Scotus’s alternative account of identity and difference, especially his formal distinction, forges a middle way between the strict or absolute identity of David Wiggins and the “relative identity” of Peter Geach. Scotus’s preferred solution does not abandon an account of identity that includes the standard, formal properties of identity; however, it also leaves room for a genuine sort of identity that nonetheless falls short of strict identity, thus accommodating the intuitions that drive alternative accounts such as Geach’s.

Psychological Explanation without Mental Quasation (X-J)
Thomas Bontly, University of Connecticut

A great deal of work in recent philosophy of mind is driven by worries about the causal efficacy (or causal relevance) of mental properties and semantic properties in particular. The worry, in brief, is that mental states or events might be causes without it being true that they cause anything in virtue of their specifically mental properties—i.e., without being causes qua mental. This worry breeds further worries: about the status of psychological explanation and, most fundamentally, about the reality of mental properties. This paper argues that such further worries are baseless. Psychological explanation is here argued to be a type of teleological explanation in which mental properties contribute to explaining an action’s function, not its occurrence. Mental properties can therefore be explanatorily relevant and thus earn their keep even if they don’t do any causal work. Several objections are discussed.

The Ethical Basis of a Market for Carbon (IV-G)
Idil Boran, York University

The idea of a “carbon market” is at the heart of current policy debates on the issue of combating climate change. A widely-discussed method of trading emissions is cap-and-trade, which consists in setting a cap for total greenhouse gas emissions and providing allowances, which can be traded between sources to keep overall emissions level in line with the cap. The aim of this paper is to respond to worries that this market-based method of controlling emissions may be a compromise on ethics for the sake of efficiency. The paper argues that carbon trading is supported by an ethical principle, in light of which is proposed a formulation of the ethics of carbon trading that combines both efficiency and fairness. The proposed formulation provides a valuable basis for businesses to understand their corporate responsibilities on the issue of climate change.

Aristotle on Identity and Persistence (III-E)
John Francis Bowin, University of California–Santa Cruz

In Physics 4.11, Aristotle refers to a sophistical puzzle in which “being Coriscus-in-the-Lyceum is different from being Coriscus-in-the-market-place.” Following Sarah Broadie, I take this puzzle to threaten the persistence through time of changing entities. Aristotle’s answer to the puzzle is that the changing thing “is the same in respect of that, by [means of] being which at any time it is [what it is], … but in definition it is different.” What this means, I argue, is that while the accidental unities Coriscus-in-the-Lyceum and Coriscus-in-the-market-place are different in definition, they are not different without qualification. That is, Coriscus may be described as either a persisting substrate of change (viz., as a substance as defined in Categories 5 and Posterior Analytics 1.22) or as one or more accidental unities like Coriscus-in-the-Lyceum and Coriscus-in-the-market-place. Described as the former, Coriscus persists, but described as the latter, he does not.

Republic V: What Our Cognitive Powers Cannot Be (I-H)
Ayca Boylu, University of Virginia

The lengthy argument at the end of Book V of Plato’s Republic (476c-479e) is the only place to turn to see whether Plato was in fact committed to the Two-World View (TW, the view that objects of episteme and the objects of doxa are exclusively different). All the interpretations of this argument (TWA) agree on the fact that Plato is an advocate of TW except the interpretation put forward by Gail Fine. On her interpretation, the objects of episteme are true propositions and the objects of doxa are true propositions and false propositions just as in orthodox contemporary epistemology. There have been various criticisms of her interpretation of TWA, yet her interpretation of the crux of TWA (what I shall call the “Powers Argument”) has not received close examination. In this paper, I argue that Fine’s interpretation needs to be rejected given the textual evidence we have.

Perspectival Properties and the Perceptual Priority of Depth (III-H)
Robert E. Briscoe, Loyola University New Orleans

Integral to Alva Noe’s “enactive” account of visual perception is the claim that in order to perceive an object’s 3D shape it is necessary both to see its perspectival shape (P-shape), i.e., the shape of the patch projected by the object on the frontal plane, and to understand how its P-shape would undergo transformation as a function of possible bodily movements. In this paper, I argue that phenomenological and experimental studies provide compelling evidence that our first, conscious visual awareness of the world is perceptually organized in terms of visible surfaces arrayed in depth. Indeed, they show that our ability perceptually to individuate discrete P-shapes on the frontal plane is psychologically dependent on our ability to see the 3D organization of the visual scene beyond the frontal plane. But, if this is right, then P-shapes cannot play the perceptually basic role conferred on them by the enactive account.

Compatriot Priority, Health in Developing Countries, and Our Global Responsibilities (III-G)
Gillian Brock, University of Auckland

How should we weigh up the responsibilities we have to compatriots and non-compatriots? So far discussion of obligations to compatriots and non-compatriots has been conducted at a fairly abstract level, and lacks specificity with respect to what exactly our obligations to compatriots or non-compatriots are in a particular domain. By examining particular issues we get a richer sense of what is possible and what might be involved. This kind of analysis can then in turn better inform our theoretical views. I discuss issues related to our responsibilities for health care, both at home and abroad. Using the ideas developed with respect to responsibilities concerning health care I go on in the final section to a more general discussion of what this implies about how we should weigh up responsibilities to compatriots and non-compatriots.

Belief and Motivation (I-I)
Danielle Bromwich, University of Toronto

Cognitivist motivational internalism (CMI) is the thesis that, roughly, if one believes that “It is right to ?,” then one will be motivated to ?. This thesis—which captures the practical nature of morality—is in tension with a Humean constraint on belief: belief cannot motivate action without the assistance of desire. When defending CMI, it is tempting to argue that, while most beliefs satisfy the Humean constraint, moral beliefs do not. However, succumbing to this temptation places one under a burden to justify what is motivationally exceptional about moral beliefs. In this paper, I offer a way of defending CMI, which does not require accepting that there is anything motivationally unusual about moral beliefs. I argue that no belief satisfies the Humean constraint: all beliefs are capable of motivating at least one action without the assistance of desire.

The Duck’s Leg: Descartes’ Distinction of Reason (VII-H)
Deborah J. Brown, University of Queensland

Descartes’ distinction of reason ratiocinatae holds between inseparable extremes—between a substance and its attributes or between attributes of the same substance. It has been interpreted either as a distinction in thought alone, which implies no metaphysical compositionality in the thing conceived, or as a distinction in number and in re between inseparable metaphysical components of one and the same thing. I argue that neither of these interpretations fits with Descartes’ texts or with the Scholastic background to his use of this terminology, and propose a third according to which there is a foundation in re for the distinction of reason but one that does not rely on a numerical distinction between substances and their attributes or attributes of the same substance.

Decompounded Complexity in Locke’s Abstract Ideas (II-F)
D. Kenneth Brown, California Polytechnic State University

Though Locke asserts the complexity of “decompounded” abstract ideas, a straightforward understanding of decomposition seems strongly to imply the reduction of complexity such that some decompounded ideas are simple. However, Locke also holds that mental activity cannot produce its own simple ideas. Thus, critics have argued that Locke must relax his commitments that simple ideas are only passively received while complex ideas are coextensive with ideas produced by mental activity. Yet, an account of how decomposition could necessarily produce a complex idea is readily available to Locke. The mental activity involved in decomposition can be analyzed into “reflective simple ideas,” ideas of mental operations that are necessary elements of complex ideas. On this strictly compositionalist interpretation, any product of decomposition would necessarily be complex, consisting of whatever survives the decompounding and the reflective simples that comprise the ideas of the mental operations involved in decompounding.

Language, Thought, Logic, and Existence (IX-I)
Richard Brown, City University of New York–LaGuardia College

As is well known, we can prove that everything that exists necessarily exists in S5. Perhaps as well known is Kripke’s two-part solution. First we forbid axioms with free variables and second we forbid the use of singular terms. One way to do the latter is via Nominal Description Theory (NDT): a name N is semantically equivalent to the description that mentions the name, e.g., “the-bearer-of-‘N’.” But how do we reconcile NDT with the thesis of rigid designation? I argue that we need to distinguish a semantic theory that aims to give an account of thoughts (P-semantics) from one that aims to give an account of English sentence types (L-semantics). I then introduce frigidity as the claim that there are no L-semantic singular terms. The causal theory of reference is a P-semantic theory and together with NDT we can then formulate L-semantic descriptions that capture singular thoughts without singular terms.

The Ontology of Action and Divine Agency (VII-K)
Andrei A. Buckareff, Marist College

I assume that if the God of Judeo-Christian-Islamic theism exists, then God is an agent who has performed intentional actions. I argue that if God is such an agent, then God cannot exist outside of time. This is because of how action-tokens relate to event-tokens. Specifically, every action-token is identical to an event-token. And every event-token is such that it can be indexed to some moment(s) of time. I call this the “action-event identity thesis,” or “AE,” for short. If AE is correct, then God acts in time. I argue that we have some good reasons to accept AE and, thus, reject the possibility of atemporal agency. So the conception of God as a timelessly eternal agent is untenable.

Hume’s Causal Reconstruction of the Perceptual Relativity Argument in Treatise 1.4.4 (II-F)
Annemarie Butler, Iowa State University

In Treatise 1.4.4, “Of the modern philosophy,” on behalf of modern philosophers, Hume presented a causal version of a perceptual relativity argument for the primary-secondary qualities distinction. Some commentators have complained that this was contrived: Hume’s predecessors appealed solely to contrary qualities arguments or other conceptual arguments. I argue that Hume had to formulate the argument differently from his predecessors for two reasons. First, the putative conclusion was not supposed to be an epistemological point, but rather a matter of fact that the causes of the impressions of secondary qualities do not resemble their impressions. Second, the argument had to abide by his discoveries about causal reasoning—and by doing so, he was able to expose the bad causal reasoning. Hume went on to criticize the primary-secondary qualities distinction; but even though he rejected the conclusion, he tried to present an argument aimed at making the distinction.

Locality and Necessity (X-I)
Ben Caplan, Ohio State University and David Sanson, Ohio State University

In a pair of papers, Guy Rohrbaugh and Louis deRosset argue that tables have their material origins essentially. Unlike familiar arguments for this conclusion, which start from general modal principles, Rohrbaugh and deRosset’s new route starts from particular worldly phenomena: hunks, tables, and the actual causal-historical paths leading from the former to the latter. We are sympathetic both to the conclusion and to Rohrbaugh and deRosset’s new route to it. But we don’t think their new route is entirely successful. We spell out a requirement that their new route relies on and argue that their attempt to ground it fails. We conclude by suggesting that essential dependencies create problems for their new route.

Conscientious Objection, Emergency Contraception, and Public Policy (VI-K)
Robert F. Card, State University of New York–Oswego

Many defenders of medical professionals’ rights to conscientious objection (CO) regarding emergency contraception (EC) draw an analogy to CO status in the military. Such professionals object to EC since it has the possibility of harming zygotic life, yet I argue that this analogy cannot be used to support their case. If we accept this analogy and utilize jurisprudence to frame the associated public policy, those who refuse to dispense EC would not have their objection honored. Legal precedent holds that one must consistently object to all forms of the relevant activity. In the case at hand, then, these professionals must also oppose breastfeeding and the rhythm method since it is possible that these may act to prevent pregnancy after fertilization. These results are absurd, and reveal that such objectors do not offer a jurisprudentially consistent objection to harming zygotic life. Additionally, there are good reasons to reject the analogy itself.

Disjunctive Obligations and Implicature (III-I)
Fabrizio Cariani, University of California–Berkeley

A classic counter-example by Ross (1941) put pressure on the principle of Inheritance,
A|= B => (a is required to do A) |= (a is required to do B)
Ross pointed out that (1), but not (2), seems true:
(1) You are required to clean the kitchen.
(2) You are required to clean the kitchen or play soccer.
Defenders of deontic logics in which (1) holds propose Gricean approaches based on Grice’s maxim of Quantity. After articulating a precise version of the Gricean strategy, I argue that, while it may explain some phenomena, it does not get to the heart of Ross’s puzzle. Implicatures derived through the maxim of Quantity are suppressed in certain embeddings and in some non-assertive speech acts. The intuitions involved in Ross’s puzzle are preserved also in these types of contexts; I conclude on this basis that the Gricean approach is unsatisfactory.

Self Visitation and Traveler Time (IV-H)
John W. Carroll, North Carolina State University

The self-visitation paradox asks how a time traveler can travel back in time to visit his younger self without thereby having contradictory properties. One answer to the paradox holds that the properties should be relativized to the personal time or proper time of the time traveler. This answer is shown to fail for three different reasons.

How to Manipulate an Incompatibilistically Free Agent (X-F)
Roger Clarke, University of British Columbia

Cases of manipulation usually feature in the debate on moral responsibility as problems for the compatibilist. To the extent that libertarians are seen to have a problem with cases of manipulation, discussion of the problem usually centers on Frankfurt cases. These are cases where libertarian criteria counterintuitively absolve the protagonist of responsibility for his actions. I offer another type of case, making the opposite sort of problem: libertarian criteria counterintuitively hold my protagonist responsible for her actions. The two types of cases together pose a dilemma for the libertarian. The most promising criticism of Frankfurt cases works by making simple acts (like choosing, deciding, etc., as opposed to complex acts like voting, driving, walking, etc.) the focus of moral responsibility, but the most promising libertarian treatment of my new cases requires focusing on complex acts instead.

State Domination and the Problem of Indeterminacy (IX-J)
Victoria Costa, Florida State University

Christopher McMahon has recently argued that Philip Pettit’s account of state domination suffers from a serious indeterminacy in cases in which there is reasonable disagreement concerning which public policies track the common interests of citizens. McMahon claims that in those cases any decision resulting from democratic procedures will be licensed and should count as non-dominating. This would make Pettit’s theory largely useless as guide to policy. This paper examines Pettit’s response to this criticism, and then argues that Pettit’s account does not suffer from the particular indeterminacy that McMahon has in mind. However, it does involve an indeterminacy of another, and deeper, kind.

Multiple Realization in Comparative Perspective (I-F)
Mark B. Couch, Seton Hall University

Arguments for multiple realization depend on the idea that the same kind of function is realized by different kinds of structures. It is important to such arguments that we know that the kinds appealed to have been individuated properly. In the philosophical literature, though, claims about how to individuate kinds are frequently decided on intuitive grounds. This paper criticizes this way of approaching kinds by considering how practicing researchers think about the matter. I will consider several examples from physiology in which the practice of researchers conflicts with Putnam and Fodor’s standard account of the issues.

The Metaphysics of Love (VII-G)
Lisa Damm, University of California–San Diego

In this paper, I attempt to answer the question, “What is the metaphysical object romantic love?” by assuming a psychological reductionist should endorse view of identity and arguing for the normative view of love that I believe a psychological reductionist should endorse. I explain why Derek Parfit argues that relation R is the relation that matters in cases where survival is at stake and there is a conflict between R and identity. Similarly, I consider hypothetical cases where love is in question and I argue that relation R is what matters and that as R branches love should also branch. Specifically, I construct a concept based on relation R called quasi-love and I argue that these objections are only pragmatic worries which fail to derail my normative claim about when love should be sustained.

On a Putative Moral Duty to Participate in Biomedical Research (III-G)
Inmaculada De Melo-Martin, Cornell University

Because of the important benefits that biomedical research offers to humans, some have argued that people have a moral obligation to participate in research. Although the defense of such a putative moral duty has raised controversy, few scholars, on either side of the debate, have attended to the social context in which research takes place and where such an obligation will be discharged. The purpose of this paper is thus to bring attention to the social context in which a putative duty to participate in research obtains. I will focus on several institutional aspects of the research enterprise: compensation for injury related-research; access to biomedical research products; and practices affecting the scientific and social value of biomedical research. By reflecting on the social context in which a presumed duty to participate in research will obtain, this paper shows that decontextualized discussions of this putative moral obligation are problematic.

Imagining De Re and the Symmetry Thesis of Narration (I-E)
Nicholas Diehl, University of California–Davis

One of the central issues in the study of narratives is the question of the symmetry of narration across different media; is narration in film or in graphic novels structurally like narration in literature, or is there some fundamental difference apart from media constraints? In this paper I defend one piece of the symmetry thesis; I argue, contra Berys Gaut, that narration across media is symmetrical with respect to the existence of overarching fictional narrators. Regardless of the medium in which a narrative is presented, we are prescribed to imagine a fictional narrator for a narrative work if and only if we are prescribed to imagine de re of the text of that work that it represents a fictional work. I first defend the biconditional claim; then I offer examples from film and comic books to show that my claim is not merely trivially satisfied.

Mill’s Misleading Moral Mathematics (III-F)
Ben Eggleston, University of Kansas and Dale Miller, Old Dominion University

The debate over whether Mill is better read as an act or a rule utilitarian began in the 1950s and has continued ever since. We shall argue that in certain passages in which Mill initially appears to be endorsing the act-utilitarian moral theory, he is really doing something quite different. Insofar as he is endorsing any particular view at all, it is not act utilitarianism—nor is it even a moral theory. Instead, it is a view about how to assess individual actions that informs, but does not translate without modification into, Mill’s rule-utilitarian moral theory.

Chasing (Away) the Trace of Dogma: Reconsidering the Role of Presence, through Husserl’s Inner Time-Consciousness and Derrida’s Speech and Phenomena (VIII-F)
Andreas Elpidorou, Boston University

The current paper is divided into three main parts: first, I provide a description of the Husserlian account of time-consciousness in which the fundamental role of absence is explicated. The second part is devoted to an exposition of the Derridean reading of Husserl’s theory of temporality. In this section, I first articulate the reasons why Derrida considers presence to be derivative from absence, and, second, I illustrate how this, according to Derrida, leads to the conclusion that Husserl’s phenomenological project undermines itself. Finally, the paper argues against the sustainability of Derrida’s position and, in turn, establishes the conclusion that presence is always interwoven with absence.

Refuting Skepticism with Heidegger and Searle (IV-F)
Chad A. Engelland, John Carroll University

Both Heidegger and Searle develop a “transcendental” approach to refute skepticism. They argue that metaphysical realism, independent of any theory about what is real, is the necessary presupposition for every theory. The theory of skepticism, then, is transcendentally refuted by its own realist presupposition. Searle misreads Heidegger as an anti-realist, but in fact Heidegger emphasizes an essential condition for realism, access; realism is not just about the independence of things but about our access to them as independent. According to Searle’s own terms, Heidegger is resolutely realist. Within this fundamental agreement, the two thinkers nonetheless differ regarding the character of the presupposition: Searle takes it to be a condition for statements and Heidegger for being human. Both refute skepticism by calling attention to its realist presupposition even though they differ in the end regarding the presupposition’s significance.

The Ineffability of Visual Experience (VI-J)
Emily Esch, College of Saint Benedict/Saint John’s University

There are certain things we can’t know unless we’ve had the right kind of experience. If I’ve never tasted pineapple, for example, no amount of description is going to provide me with knowledge of what pineapple tastes like. Unlike cases in which I lack knowledge because there is a problem with my justification, the reason that I can’t know what it’s like to taste pineapple unless I’ve tasted it is that I can’t entertain the appropriate belief about the taste of pineapple. Beliefs about what experiences are like cannot be communicated through language alone; in other words, these beliefs are partly ineffable. In this paper I try to locate the source of the ineffability of our visual experiences by closely examining three of their phenomenological features. I distinguish between a weak and strong notion of ineffability and argue that visual experiences are ineffable in the stronger sense.

What Is Lying? (VI-I)
Don Fallis, University of Arizona

In order to lie, you have to say something that you believe to be false. But lying is not simply saying what you believe to be false. Philosophers have made several suggestions for what the additional condition might be. For example, it has been suggested that the liar has to intend to deceive (Augustine 395, Bok 1978, Mahon 2006), that she has to believe that she will deceive (Chisholm and Feehan 1977), or that she has to warrant the truth of what she says (Carson 2006). In this paper, I argue that none of the existing definitions of lying identify a necessary condition on lying. I claim that lying is saying what you believe to be false when you believe that the following norm of conversation is in effect: “Do not say what you believe to be false” (Grice 1989, 27). And I argue that this definition handles all of the counter-examples to the existing definitions.

Materialism and the Psychology of Explanation (VII-I)
Brian Fiala, University of Arizona

Here I sketch a strategy for rendering the explanatory gap consistent with materialism about phenomenal consciousness. Whereas many extant materialist strategies emphasize the unique characteristics of our concepts of phenomenal consciousness, my proposed strategy will focus on the unique cognitive profile of explanation. The goal is to account for the explanatory gap as a by-product of the relatively less mysterious psychological features of explanation, thus de-mystifying the gap. First, I argue that good explanations are normally accompanied by a characteristic phenomenology: the *aha!* feeling. Second, I argue that the *aha!* feeling is doubly dissociable from good explanation. Third, I suggest that the explanatory gap may be a case of a good explanation in the absence of the *aha!* feeling. Finally, I consider prospects for pursuing the strategy further.

Saving Time: How Attention Explains the Utility of Supposedly Superfluous Representations (III-H)
Jason Ford, University of Minnesota–Duluth

I contend that Alva Noë’s Enactive Approach to Perception fails to give an adequate account of the periphery of attention. Noë claims that our peripheral experience is not produced by the brain’s representation of peripheral items, but rather by our master of sensorimotor skills and contingencies. I offer a two-pronged assault on this account of the periphery of attention. The first challenge comes from Mack and Rock’s work on inattentional blindness, and provides robust empirical evidence for the semantic processing (and hence representation) of some wholly unattended stimuli. The second challenge draws on LaBerge’s theory of attention to provide a substantial advantage to peripheral representations, saving time whenever we shift the focus of our attention to something which had been in the periphery, allowing us to respond to that thing more quickly than would be possible if Noë’s account of perception were correct.

Truth at a World for Modal Propositions (III-K)
Christopher Evan Franklin, University of California–Riverside

Existentialism maintains that individual essences and singular propositions are ontologically dependent upon the individuals they involve. However, such a position runs into immediate problems since it is incompatible with the usual analysis of possibility in terms of truth in a possible world. Existentialists respond to this problem by distinguishing two senses in which a proposition can be true with respect to a world: true in a world and true at a world. In this paper I will explore some of the implications this distinction has for modal metaphysics. Specifically, I will be concerned with providing truth conditions for modal propositions that respect the existentialist’s ontology.

Kant and the Principle of Instrumental Rationality: Is There More Than One Categorical Imperative? (X-H)
Tamra Frei, Michigan State University

There is little of Immanuel Kant’s moral theory that is not heavily contested. Still one point that supporters as well as critics of Kant have tended to agree on is the following. Although Kant identifies different versions of the Categorical Imperative, he is committed to there only being one categorical command of practical reason. I argue that this interpretation of is false. A close reading of The Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals reveals that there is another non-moral categorical demand of practical rationality, namely, The Hypothetical Imperative. This imperative adjures us to take what we know to be the necessary and available means to our ends or else give up those ends. Moreover, I argue that because The Hypothetical Imperative is the fundamental principle of all means-ends reasoning, including reasons of prudence, the traditional Kantian way of distinguishing moral from prudential obligations fails.

The Individual Variability Problem (II-E)
Dimitria Electra Gatzia, Syracuse University

In this paper, I argue that the individual variability problem, i.e., the widespread intrasubjective and intersubjective color variations among normal subjects (subjects who do not have any color deficiencies), threatens both physicalism and subjectivism about color.

Historicism, Informalism, and the Constitutive–Empirical Distinction (IX-C)
Nathaniel Goldberg, Ohio University

Michael Friedman has recently added a new chapter to Rudolf Carnap and W.V. Quine’s debate concerning analyticity. Friedman does so by offering a replacement for Carnap’s conception of analyticity—Friedman’s own “constitutive apriority”—that combines Carnap’s conception with insights from Thomas Kuhn’s informal, historical approach to science. Moreover, Friedman contends that Kuhnian informalism immunizes his conception of constitutive apriority against Quine’s “well-known and widely accepted attack” on Carnap’s conception of analyticity. In this paper I show that, unbeknownst to him, Friedman’s conception is immune to this attack in virtue of his appeal to historicism itself. This is fortunate, since, as I explain, Friedman’s appeal to informalism is problematic.

The Value of Feeling-Centered, First Personal Phenomenological Experiences in Kant’s Practical Philosophy (X-H)
Jeanine Grenberg, St. Olaf College

How can Kantians, after affirmation of the limits of experience in the Critique of Pure Reason, hope to engage legitimately in the pursuit of knowing ourselves as free? Whereas Kant interpreters like Allison, Korsgaard, and Ameriks have avoided attributing to Kant appeal to actual experiences of freedom/obligation to initiate practical reflection, Kant himself takes what can only be described as experiences of obligation and freedom both as a common starting point for explicitly practical reflection, and as proof of already completed philosophical reflections. But what warrant does he have for doing so when he has already argued we cannot have experience of intelligible ideas like this? Ultimately, Kant succeeds in identifying a first personal, feeling-centered phenomenological experience of oneself as an agent that is distinct enough from empirical experience of objects so as to warrant appealing to it as the ground of practical thinking without violating the limits of experience.

Counterfactual Reasoning in Frankfurt Cases (X-F)
Charles Hermes, University of Texas–Arlington

Kadri Vihvelin has claimed that prior sign Frankfurt cases are logically defective. While there is a simple argument that appears to ground many commentators’ insistence that Jones could not have done otherwise in Frankfurt cases the argument suffers from two potential defects. First, the argument is in the form of a hypothetical syllogism. Yet, this is an invalid inference for counterfactuals. Second, in one of the premises the event depicted in the consequent occurs prior to the event depicted in the antecedent. Many theorists believe that this is sufficient for making the counterfactual a backtracking counterfactual and believe that all backtracking counterfactuals are false in standard contexts. I demonstrate that the first problem can easily be rectified. Further, the second problem develops only by misapplying the notion of a “backtracking counterfactual.”

Folk Psychological and Phenomenological Accounts of Social Perception (VI-J)
Mitchell Herschbach, University of California–San Diego

Theory theory and simulation theory share the assumption that mental states are unobservable, and that mental state attribution requires an extra psychological step beyond perception. Recently phenomenological and conceptual arguments have been made against theory theory and simulation theory as accounts of everyday social perception. Here I evaluate objections to theory theory offered by Dan Zahavi (2005), and objection to simulation theory offered by Shaun Gallagher (2005, 2007). I argue that their phenomenological claims are more narrowly focused than they appear, and do not rule out theory theory or simulation theory as accounts of social perception, particularly as descriptions of the subpersonal processes underlying social perception.

Agent-Relative Teleology and the Doing/Allowing Distinction (II-D)
Avram Hiller, Wake Forest University

Recently, a number of philosophers, including Michael Smith, Amartya Sen, and Douglas Portmore, have argued that consequentialism is consistent with the supposition that agents are required to maximize agent-relative rather than agent-neutral value. This view, agent-relative teleology (ART), is distinctive because it combines (1) a teleological principle of right action according to which an agent ought to perform the action which maximizes good, and (2) an acceptance of commonsense judgments about constraints and options that seem to fit more comfortably within a deontological framework. However, no advocate of ART has supplied anything close to a normative “theory of the agent-relative good,” and I argue that it is doubtful that ART can supply one while also maintaining the kind of doing/allowing distinction needed to countenance commonsense moral judgments.

A Defense of Exclusive Public Reason (I-G)
Christie Hartley, Georgia State University, and Lori Watson, University of San Diego

While political liberalism’s account of public reason was intended to show how a just society in which citizens are deeply divided over religious and philosophical beliefs is possible, many have argued that the demands of public reason are too burdensome for religiously-oriented citizens. For many commentators, the question as to how far political liberalism can accommodate religious citizens’ authentic participation in democratic deliberation is seen as turning on whether political liberalism adopts an inclusive or exclusive account of public reason. We argue for an exclusive account of public reason on matters of constitutional essentials and basic justice. We claim that commonly cited reasons for inclusive accounts of public reason are not consistent with the basic tenets of political liberalism and that political liberals have good reason to prefer an exclusive account of public reason when matters of basic justice and constitutional essentials are at stake.

What’s Bad about Bad Faith? (VI-I)
Allan Hazlett, Fordham University, and Simon Feldman, Connecticut College

We discuss the concept of authenticity (and its opposite, inauthenticity or “bad faith”), and argue against a common assumption: that bad faith is bad, but distinct from lying. We examine several conceptions of bad faith that make this assumption, and argue, in each case, that the supposed badness of bad faith is not motivated. We then propose an alternative critique of bad faith, on moral grounds.

Belief, Alienation and Intention (IX-D)
David Hunter, Ryerson University

Some philosophers hold that the idea of an unendorsed belief is as incoherent as the idea of an unendorsed intention. Aside from over-intellectualizing belief, this view obscures the interesting relations between endorsed belief and intention. In section 1, I argue that deep similarities between belief and desire make it likely that just as there are unendorsed desires so there can be unendorsed beliefs. In section 2, I describe what an unendorsed belief would be and, in section 3, I discuss some examples. I conclude by suggesting that an endorsed belief is like an intention and that this reveals one important sense in which, in Anscombe’s phrase, belief is essentially practical and not merely contemplative.

Desire Accounts of Value: Actual versus Informed (IV-I)
Stan Husi, Rice University

My paper challenges the widespread conviction that the informed version of desire satisfaction accounts (IDA) of value or well-being presents an improvement over the actual version (ADA). My comparative assessment proceeds by introducing three prominent objections against ADA, and arguing that IDA fails to do better with respect to those objections. They are first that ADA is too inclusive; that, secondly, ADA opens up an implausible solution of achieving a perfect life by eliminating ambitious desires; thirdly, that ADA disallows desiring the bad. The reason why IDA is no better than IDA is that IDA cannot guarantee generating informed versions that would remove those problems. Given the vast variability in agents and desire sets, it is unlikely that adding information would generate the required kind of informed version for each agent. In the final section I address the possibility that further information might actually undermine an agent’s most precious desires.

Empathy and Instinct: A Challenge to Philosophical Conceptions of Folk Psychology (I-I)
Anne Jacobson, University of Houston

The central thesis argued herein is that some empathetic actions may be instinctive; that is, an account of instinctive empathetic actions is compatible but with the development of cognitive neuroscience. Recent philosophy has neglected “instinct” as a topic. Cognitive neuroscience, however, contains the foundations for an account, which we will employ. We will also use empathetic actions to raise some general questions about the adequacy of recent philosophy’s understanding of action. In doing so, we will put our discussion in the context of a question being raised by some neuroscientists; namely, How does the brain give rise to the mind and its psychology, to the extent that it does? This question reflects a dilemma for researchers that requires a reexamination of fundamental theoretical tools. The resolution of the dilemma and the account of instinctive action place in doubt the universal applicability of belief-desire psychology to action explanations.

Epistemic Closure and Bayesian Evidentialism (IX-H)
David Jehle, Cornell University

The purpose of this paper is to bring out a tension between knowledge closure and a certain brand of evidentialism about knowledge. I argue that closure and my version of (Bayesian) evidentialism about knowledge cannot be held simultaneously. So we face a choice: reject closure or reject evidentialism. Since my evidentialism is so modest, I say we should reject closure.

Can Moore’s Proof Rationally Persuade without Transmitting Warrant? (I-J)
Daniel M. Johnson, Baylor University

There has been a recent renewal of interest in G.E. Moore’s proof of an external world. I begin my discussion of the proof by tracing the current debate, from Crispin Wright to Jim Pryor and Martin Davies, concluding with the most recent contribution by Ram Neta. Taking a hint from Neta, I argue that even if Moore’s proof cannot justify its conclusion (transmit warrant from premises to conclusion), it is nevertheless capable of rationally persuading a doubter. To make this point, I argue that Neta’s account of the means by which Moore’s proof persuades is mistaken and offer my own diagnosis. I conclude by arguing that, in light of this diagnosis, the proof’s persuasiveness can be rational if skeptical doubt is irrational.

Reproductive Technologies, the Parental Love Objection, and Moral Development (II-I)
William P. Kabasenche, Washington State University

In a number of reports, the President’s Council on Bioethics has discussed an objection to certain uses of reproductive and genetic technologies that appeals to the kind of love parents ought to show their children. The concern is that parents who exercise selective control over the kinds of children they will welcome are acting in a manner contrary to the kind of unconditional love that most people intuitively recognize as being a vital part of good parenting. I elaborate on and defend this objection to some uses of these technologies. In particular, I aim to show that the practice of engaging with this technology is in tension with the kind of trajectory of character formation we generally want parents to undergo. I discuss character formation in terms of virtues and emotion-dispositions relevant to loving and being properly related to one’s children.

On the Supposed Advantage of Individualism about Overdetermination (IX-E)
Christopher Kane, Tulane University of New Orleans

In this paper I will discuss cases of overdetermination, and then respond to the threat that they pose to the counterfactual analysis of causation. I will begin by briefly outlining the counterfactual analysis of causation I defend. I will then describe the structure of a case of overdetermination, and introduce an example to give a focus to the discussion. I will then lay out two possible positions, distinguished by Jonathan Schaffer in his (2003), that one might take toward cases of overdetermination, individualism and collectivism. The counterfactual analysis is committed to collectivism, but Schaffer argues that individualism is the more plausible position. I will defend the counterfactual analysis by refuting Schaffer’s case for the superiority of individualism.

Context, Compositionality, and Metaphor (IX-I)
Hanna Kim, Washington and Jefferson College

The central point of this paper is to show that recently developed semantic resources, which aim to reconcile compositionality with the context-sensitivity of natural language, can be used to yield a compositional account of metaphor. If the newly developed resources can indeed be extended in this way, as I argue that they can, what this amounts to is either a powerful consideration against adopting the resources of theorists who seek to explain all context-sensitivity semantically, or a powerful consideration against those who believe metaphor to be merely a matter of language use.

Practical Reason, Commensurability, and Political Legitimacy (I-G)
Christopher Stewart King, University of Tennessee

Political liberalism asserts two kinds of principles of political justification. One of these is procedural (i.e., fairness) and the other is substantive. Substantive justifications are plural since they derive from the numerous reasonable, comprehensive moral doctrines typical of a democratic society. It has been thought that political justification understood in this way is incoherent. This is because justification would depend on two kinds of normative principles without suggesting how they are compatible with each other. By developing an idea of constructivist practical reason, I show how the principle of fairness (as a political value) may be constructed from the non-political values represented by various reasonable doctrines—hence, how it is not incompatible with them.

Supervenience: From Synchronic to Diachronic (I-F)
James C. Klagge, Virginia Tech

Philosophers concerned with the supervenience of one kind of property on another kind of property have generally assumed that if supervenience holds across possible worlds at a time (synchronic), then it also holds through time (diachronic). In this paper I examine cases that seem to violate diachronic supervenience. These cases involve either changing ascriptive judgments, or else conceptual change over time. I reject a counterargument that tries to embed diachronic judgments within strong synchronic supervenience. Reflection on issues of diachronic supervenience show that there is a rather thin basis for ontological supervenience, after all.

The Apriori in Chess (X-J)
Bernard W. Kobes, Arizona State University

I show how perceptual and apriori elements of chess knowledge may be cleanly distinguished. Examples suggest that apriori elements may be either demonstrative (i.e., implicitly proof-based) or inductive, and may be socially distributed. The examples illuminate liberalized neo-rationalist accounts of apriori warrant, such as that of Tyler Burge. A further example suggests a complication, however, for Burge’s treatment of computer-enabled apriori warrant.

On Having No Reason: Dogmatism and Bayesian Confirmation (IX-H)
Peter Kung, Pomona College

Recently in epistemology a number of authors have mounted Bayesian objections to dogmatism. These objections depend on a Bayesian principle of evidential confirmation: Evidence E confirms hypothesis H just in case Pr(H|E)>Pr(H). I argue using Keynes’ distinction between risk and uncertainty that the Bayesian principle fails to accommodate the intuitive notion of having no reason to believe. Consider as an example an unfamiliar card game: at first, since you’re unfamiliar with the game, you assign credences based on the indifference principle. Later you learn the how the game works and discover that the odds dictate you assign the very same credences. Examples like this show that that if you initially have no reason to believe H, then intuitively E can give you reason to believe H even though Pr(H|E)≤Pr(H). I show that without the principle, the objections to dogmatism fail.

A Deflationary Account of the Unity of Color (II-E)
Charlie Kurth, University of California–San Diego

Ordinary visual experience and psychophysical experimentation supports the claim that colors have certain structural properties—e.g., red is more similar to orange than it is to green; blues are opposed to yellows. On what is perhaps the dominant view, these “unity relations” are taken to be, in some way, essential to colors. The constraint that results is substantial: The requirement that any viable account of what colors are must entail that they have the unity relations essentially. But this dominant view of the unity relations, and thus the resulting the unity constraint, is seriously mistaken. I argue that there is no way to substantiate the influential claim that the unity relations are essential to the colors. Rather, they must be understood in a more deflationary manner. The result is a very different conception of the role of the unity constraint in debates about color and color ontology.

A Rather Deliberate Misunderstanding: On Nietzsche’s Resentment of Pyrrho (III-J)
S. Pierre Lamarche, Utah Valley State College

In this paper, I identify some of the main affinities between Pyrrho and Pyrrhonian scepticism and Nietzsche’s thought. I then identify the two main criticisms that Nietzsche makes of Pyrrho, namely, that his thinking betrays weakness and decadence, and that he is a “fanatic” for his own unbelief in the importance of all things. I argue that both criticisms are weak and forced, and themselves, arguably, betray a resentment of the Pyrrhonian way of life, or agoge, on Nietzsche’s part. As such, I finish the paper by suggesting that such resentment could be rooted in the fact that Pyrrho’s therapy—his sceptical way of life—may have allowed him to elude the decadence and sickness of his culture, something which Nietzsche’s own thinking and practice of life was unsuccessful at accomplishing.

Recollection in Plato’s Meno: Method, Myth, or Necessary Hypothesis? (III-J)
Elaine Landry, University of Calgary

I argue that recollection, in Plato’s Meno, should not be taken as a method, and, if it is taken as a myth, it should not be taken as a mere myth. I show that recollection ought to be taken as a necessary hypothesis for learning. I then argue that the only methods demonstrated are the elenchus and the hypothetical method. I show that the hypothetical method cannot be taken as part of the elenchus, but this does not mean that the elenchus is abandoned. Rather, I argue that the elenchus is being supplemented by the hypothetical method. Beyond supplementing the elenchus with the hypothetical method, the limits of the latter are also made clear. Thus, by considering how the slave-boy situation fits in with structural aspects of the dialogue, I conclude that Plato, in the Meno, is well aware of both the benefits and the limits of the hypothetical method.

The Genesis of Emilie du Châtelet’s Cosmological Argument (VII-L)
Marcy Lascano, California State University–Long Beach

In this paper I argue that, contrary to many commentators, the cosmological argument in Emilie du Châtelet’s Institutions de physique is not a mere retelling of Leibniz. I argue her argument is also Lockean, as are her related arguments regarding God’s attributes. I show that du Châtelet begins with Locke’s argument and shores up its weaknesses using Leibniz’s PSR. I demonstrate where she follows Locke, what Leibnizian elements she brings in, and how this enables her to avoid the mistakes commonly attributed to Locke’s argument. I argue that while du Châtelet accepts Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit, she rejects Locke’s stronger causal principle. I also show how she utilizes the PSR to demonstrate the attributes of God. Here I examine her arguments for the immutability and the singularity of God, and show that these arguments succeed where Locke’s fail.

Fundamental Laws and Properties (X-I)
Noa Latham, University of Calgary

This paper argues that there is no significant metaphysical distinction between the view that fundamental laws of nature are metaphysically necessary and the view that they are metaphysically contingent but have a lesser nomic or natural necessity. I offer two ways of illustrating this on the assumption that fundamental properties are purely relational, or role properties. One involves consideration of the law that the electron/proton mass ratio is 1:1836; the other involves the artificial laws of a world conforming to Conway’s Game of Life. Then I argue that this conclusion also holds if fundamental properties have intrinsic natures, and offer a reason for thinking they must indeed do so. My view effectively treats laws and role properties as a package which can be presented in a way that gives all the causal/explanatory work to laws, all the work to role properties, or divides the labor among laws and role properties.

From Realizer Functionalism to Nonreductive Physicalism (X-J)
JeeLoo Liu, California State University–Fullerton

It has been noted in recent literature that functionalism can be separated into two varieties: one that emphasizes the role state, the other that emphasizes the realizer state. The former is called “role functionalism,” while the latter has been called “realizer functionalism” or “filler functionalism.” The separation between role functionalism and realizer functionalism is important because it mars the distinction traditionally made between functionalism and the identity theory. However, the distinction has not been made clear. In this paper, I begin with an analysis of role and realizer functionalism by tracing back to their origins. I shall then advocate token realizer functionalism as the correct model for the mind-brain relation. Finally, I will explain how token realizer functionalism supports nonreductive physicalism. I will be focusing on Jaegwon Kim’s reductionism, not only because he is unquestionably the leader of the reductionist camp, but also because his view closely resembles realizer functionalism.

The Problems of Judgment and the Categories: Heidegger’s Thinking about Transcendental Logic (IV-F)
Leslie MacAvoy, East Tennessee State University

In this paper, I offer a critical reconstruction of Heidegger’s reading of transcendental logic, based on his writings in the Frühe Schriften. I argue that one of Heidegger’s primary interests is the problem of the categories and that he ultimately does not find a solution in neo-Kantianism because it lacks an account of subjectivity that is adequate to address the issues of judgment raised by this problem. Finally, I suggest that in the end Heidegger may have realized that a notion of meaning developed in relation to a theory of intentional subjectivity might promise more for resolving the problem of the categories than the notion of judgment.

Hope, Fantasy, and Motivation (IX-D)
Adrienne Martin, University of Pennsylvania

The standard foil for recent theories of hope is the belief-desire analysis advocated by Hobbes, Day, Downie, and others. According to this analysis, to hope for S is no more and no less than to desire S while believing S is possible but not certain. Opponents of the belief-desire analysis argue that it fails to capture one or another distinctive feature (or function) of hope. Here, I focus on the role of imagination in hope and discuss its implications for hope’s relation to practical commitment or end-setting. I argue that fantasizing—an imaginative activity with narrative structure and egoistic function—is a paradigmatic feature of hope. In attending to the role of fantasizing, we see that the hope for S neither always moves us forward in pursuit of S (contra Victoria McGeer and others), nor always draws on the motivational force of previous commitments to S (contra Cheshire Calhoun).

The Possibility Requirement in Plato’s Republic (I-H)
Mason Marshall, Vanderbilt University

Myles Burnyeat has maintained that for Socrates and his interlocutors in the Republic, the effort they put into describing their hypothetical aristocratic city will have been “idle daydreaming, mere wish-fulfillment” unless they show that this city is possible. Burnyeat’s argument, though, is not conclusive, and appealing to a certain pair of passages in the dialogue—one in Book V and another in Book IX—other commentators (such as Julia Annas) have denied that possibility ends up being a significant concern in the Republic. To the contrary, I argue that throughout the dialogue—and not just before the Book V passage, as it might seem—Socrates and his interlocutors adhere to the possibility requirement: they proceed as if a city is best only if it is possible. This feature of the Republic makes their argument for the bestness of the aristocratic city far harder to defend than it might otherwise be.

Fragile Events and the Causal Relation (IX-E)
Jonathan Matheson, University of Rochester

In this paper I defend the claim that maximally-fragile-events are the proper relata of the causal relation. In other words, the things that are causes and effects are maximally-fragile-events alone. Call this thesis the Fragility Thesis (FT). It is standard, though not uncontroversial, to take events as the relata of the causal relation; but it is highly contested that maximally-fragile-events alone play this role. In this paper I show how a counterfactual account of causation coupled with FT can provide a simple conceptual account that avoids the problems that have faced other counterfactual accounts of causation, as well as suggest that the consequences of adopting such an account are not as outrageous as they may seem.

Tye, Introspection, and Phantom Limbs (VII-I)
Kevin McCain, University of Rochester

Michael Tye’s representationalism is a prominent physicalist account of phenomenal consciousness. An integral part of Tye’s theory is his explanation of the role that introspection plays in our awareness of the phenomenal character of mental states. Tye claims that through introspection we are “directly aware” of external qualities and because of this direct awareness of external qualities we are aware of the phenomenal character of our experiences. In this paper I argue that phantom limb pains pose a significant problem for Tye’s theory because there are no external qualities to be directly aware of when one has a phantom limb pain, and, hence, on Tye’s account one can have no awareness of the phenomenal character of a phantom limb pain. In addition to exposing this problem, I explore the strengths and weaknesses of four potential solutions that Tye may adopt in response to this problem.

The Inadequacy of Lewis’s Response to the Humphrey Objection (VIII-H)
Michael William McGlone, University at Buffalo–State University of New York

In this paper I consider Saul Kripke’s well-known Humphrey objection to David Lewis’s views on de re modality and Lewis’s response to that objection. I show that Lewis’s response is fundamentally flawed.

Filial Duties of Care (III-G)
Joseph R. Millum, National Institutes of Health

Many grown children provide care for their elderly parents. Some, however, do not. Where someone is indifferent to their parents’ welfare, does he/she still have a filial duty to care for them? In this paper, I assess the extent of filial duties through a critique of the four justifications given for them-friendship, debt, gratitude, and special goods. I concentrate on the last two. The gratitude account is the only one that can justify a duty of care even for people who are not interested in their parents’ well-being. I argue, contrary to A. John Simmons, that parents are owed gratitude just for fulfilling their parental duties. Special goods accounts are a new addition to the literature. I argue that they must derive any force they have from general duties to benefit others, but that these duties will not normally require that children, in particular, should benefit their parents, in particular.

Skepticism and Objective Contexts: A Critique of DeRose (I-J)
Giovanni Mion, University of Cincinnati

In the paper, I contrast my contextualist account of skepticism with Keith DeRose’s account. I agree with DeRose’s claim that when the skeptic and her opponent meet in the same context, their claims are truth-value-less. But I agree with him on the basis of different conception of context sensitivity. According to DeRose, the content of context sensitive expressions in general, and of “knowledge” in particular, is personally indicated. Instead, for me, the content of context sensitive expressions in general, and of “knowledge” in particular, is objectively determined by the topic of the conversation and the environment in which the conversation takes place. Since “knowledge” is context relative (and, therefore, there are no invariant epistemological constraints underlying the shifting standards of everyday justification), the question whether in general we have knowledge of the external world is ill-formed. Therefore, the conversation between the skeptic and her opponent lacks a genuine conversational topic.

Moral History, Racial Rumors, and Rational Reconstruction (II-H)
Robert D. Murray, Ryerson University

Anthony K. Appiah argues that insofar as positions in the philosophy of race cannot be rationally reconstructed they ought to be given up. But because of our moral history the perspectives and narratives of racial groups are at cross-purposes. That means that attempts at rational reconstruction will exemplify the racial issues they are meant to address. Accordingly, racial perspectives and narratives have to be disentangled to facilitate rational reconstruction. I want to briefly illustrate the significance of the social sciences to this end by appeal to racial rumors-racial stereotypes and conspiracy theories. Racial rumors are a fitting subject in this context because their content is quite objectionable to the out-group, but racial rumors can also be understood in terms of their causes and functions, which provide a type of understanding across perspectives at cross-purposes. To this end, the social sciences can help disentangle moral history and facilitate reconstruction.

Replication without Replicators: Rediscovering an Unfashionable Model of Selection (VIII-G)
Bence Nanay, Syracuse University

According to an influential view of selection, it consists of repeated cycles of replication and interaction. It has been argued that this view is wrong: replication is not necessary for evolution by natural selection. I analyze the seven most influential arguments for this claim and point out that although they are valid, if we modify the notion of replication, they lose their force. According to this new concept of replication it is not entities (replicators), but properties that replicate.

Rights Theories, Utilitarianism, and the Killing of Civilians (VII-K)
Stephen L. Nathanson, Northeastern University

While it is common for people to say that terrorism is always wrong because it intentionally kills civilians, many philosophical views concede that intentionally killing civilians can sometimes be morally right. Anyone who wants to show that terrorism is always wrong must establish that killing civilians intentionally is always wrong. According to a widespread view, held by both friends and foes of utilitarianism, utilitarianism cannot justify an absolute ban on attacking civilians. If such a ban is to be justified, it will have to rely on a rights-based or other deontological theory. In this paper, I challenge the conventional wisdom by showing that rights-based approaches have no special advantage for defenders of absolute noncombatant immunity. Whatever problems a utilitarian may have justifying absolute noncombatant immunity, rights theories are beset by at least equally powerful obstacles to justifying the view that intentionally killing civilians in war is always wrong.

Can Narrative Provide an Account of Subjectivity? (VII-G)
Joseph Neisser, Sam Houston State University

Consciousness is subjective in the sense that it is always “first-person” or “for-me.” The subjective point of view is experienced “from-the-inside” of consciousness. But just whose point of view is this? One contemporary proposal is that the first-person point of view is the point of view of a narrative self. I argue that the narrative model does not apply to subjectivity, and that the narrative self should be distinguished from the “I” of the first-person perspective. Roughly, narratives always employ the first-person pronoun “I” to identify some person, but the distinctive features of subjectivity are marked by a different, non-identifying use of the pronoun “I.” Identification free self-reference is the criterial mark of the first-person perspective, but the narrative model does not meet this criterion. Therefore, narrative lacks the resources to account for subjectivity.

Critical Performance: Meditations on a Lark (I-E)
Jonathan A. Neufeld, Vanderbilt University

What could it mean to criticize a musical work in performance? A recent violin performance sympathetically presents what I take to be a politically regressive work. What were the performer’s options? Daniel Barenboim gives one answer. He claims that to perform is to “live a piece.” The notion of “living the work” is closely bound to a persistent presupposition made both by philosophers and musicians that there is an obligation to perform a work in its best possible light. Roger Scruton’s account of the “life in tones” allows us, perhaps in spite of itself, a deeper understanding of what’s at stake in living the work. I argue that the language of “life” easily slips into an uncritical view where the ideal performer speaks in one voice with the work and that a commitment to perform entails neither univocity between performer and work nor the performer’s affirmation of the work.

Apportioning Explanatory Responsibility (V-G)
Robert Northcott, University of Missouri–Saint Louis

Sober (1988) and Sober et al (1992) are two of the leading discussions of how to apportion causal responsibility, in other words, of what it means to say (and how to measure) that one cause of something is more important than another. Drawing from this and other influential recent work in causation and causal explanation, in this paper I present a formal definition of causal strength. I use it to criticize one distinction made in the Sober papers, but also then to explore a separate issue emphasized in Sober et al (1992). In particular, it turns out that the explanandum-dependence of explanatory (as opposed to merely causal) responsibility requires a significant elaboration of existing notions of causal strength. I develop definitions of explanatory responsibility that take account of this explanandum-dependence, covering both the deterministic and probabilistic cases.

An Unlikely Pedigree: Husserlian Influences on Ryle’s Concern with Category Mistakes (VIII-F)
John Kurth O’Connor, Fordham University

Gilbert Ryle, not Edmund Husserl, is the thinker whose name first comes to mind in connection with the phrase “category mistakes.” Indeed, Ryle is deservedly well-known for his concern to diagnose category mistakes at the heart of traditional philosophical problems and for his systematic attempt to avoid such mistakes in his own work. Nonetheless, as I will argue, a) Husserl deserves to be known for precisely these concerns as well, and b) this similarity is no accident. In the first part I argue that Ryle’s writings on phenomenology reveal a consistent interpretation that points to Husserl’s influence on Ryle, specifically on questions of method and the importance of logical grammar. Then, in the second part, I explain how Husserlian phenomenology is a systematic attempt to avoid historically pervasive category mistakes at the root of logic and epistemology. Husserl, not Ryle, is the 20th century’s original philosopher of the category mistake.

Aristotle on Pathos: From Qualitative Change to Emotion (III-E)
Marjolein Oele, University of San Francisco

Within the context of renewed interest in the concept of the emotions, this paper investigates the origin of the concept of emotion (pathos) in Aristotle. Usually, “pathos” is translated as feeling or emotion, and its significance is generally restricted to that of Aristotle’s psychology. However, I demonstrate that Aristotle’s understanding of pathos draws heavily upon his conception of pathos as qualitative change—as discussed, for example, in Categories 8. By drawing connections between pathos as emotion and pathos as qualitative change, I explore the original distinctions that guide Aristotle’s discussion of pathos as emotion in his Nicomachean Ethics. Moreover, I show that Aristotle ultimately moves beyond his own rigid distinction between dispositions (including virtues and vices) and emotions. I argue that the emotions have far greater ethical significance for Aristotle than is usually granted, since dispositions such as virtue and vice can ultimately not be radically separated from our emotions.

Supervenience, Deflationism, and the Success Argument (III-K)
Onyoung Oh, City University of New York–Graduate Center

Recently, a compatibilist solution to the conflict between deflationism about truth and the success argument has been proposed by Nic Damnjanovic. The crux of the conflict between deflationism and the success argument is that while a correspondence theorist argues that truth plays a serious causal-explanatory role in a success explanation, a deflationist thinks that truth is causally impotent: its role is purely logical. According to Damnjanovic, however, there is no genuine conflict between deflationism and the success argument. The standard (Horwich-style) response to the success argument, says Damnjanovic, can be interpreted as supporting a supervenience account of truth. But then, the causal-explanatoriness of truth can be defended by Jackson and Pettit’s distinction between causal efficacy and causal relevance. I will raise two objections to Damnjanovic: first, he fails to provide a supervenience account of truth; and second, deflationism, by its nature, is not compatible with the supervenience account of truth.

The Irony of the Double Impulse (IX-D)
Thomas M. Olshewsky, University of Kentucky

Hume’s ultimate irony lies in the role he requires for sympathy in the move from direct passions to indirect through the effects of the double impulse of impressions and ideas. This role must be presupposed in order to understand the double impulse as the basis for other-regarding indirect passions; yet, sympathy is itself an other-regarding passion, and cannot be held to account for itself. That Hume may have seen this problem himself in his treatment of the double impulse in Treatise, Book II, is suggested in the changes he made in his account of the passions in the Dissertation. When we couple this irony with the problems involved in attempting to make a “feeling theory” serve as a base for moral motivation, we find Hume’s ultimate irony lies in his intended moral theory being reduced to an aesthetic one.

Reflective Judgment’s Principle of Nature’s Purposiveness and its “Subjective” and “Merely Subjective” Applications (X-H)
Lara Ostaric, St. Michael’s College

In Kant literature, the principle of taste and the logical principle of nature’s purposiveness are considered as (1) two distinct principles, (2) as the former being subordinated to the latter, and (3) as the latter being subordinated to the former. In this paper, I give reasons why I find these positions unsatisfying and argue that the principle of taste and the logical principle of nature’s purposiveness are particular applications of the more general principle of nature’s purposiveness, namely, a “merely subjective” and “subjective” respectively. I also show that a unifying a priori principle that applies to both aesthetic and teleological judgments is demanded by Kant’s systematic aims according to which the principle of taste and the principle of logical purposiveness stand in a complementary as opposed to a merely accidental relation to one another.

The Problem of the Speckled Hen and Acquaintance (X-G)
Michael Pace, Chapman University

The problem of the speckled hen originated in the early twentieth century as an objection to classical foundationalists. Such theorists typically thought that acquaintance with an experiential property sufficed for infallible justification about that property. However, if one sees a hen with, for example, twelve speckles, one is arguably acquainted with the property of being twelve-speckled, despite the fact that most people do not have infallible justification for believing that they are having an experience as of a twelve-speckled hen. Ernest Sosa has recently pressed a version of the problem against neo-classical foundationalists who appeal to the relation of acquaintance to ground empirical justification, and several philosophers have recently attempted to defend the theory against Sosa’s arguments. In this paper, I argue that these recent attempts are unsuccessful.

Pereboom on the Frankfurt Cases (X-F)
David Palmer, University of Texas–Austin

Frankfurt cases are thought experiments, pioneered by Harry Frankfurt (1969), designed to undermine the principle of alternative possibilities (PAP), the principle that a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise. PAP adherents typically appeal to what’s often called the “dilemma defense” to argue that the Frankfurt cases don’t undermine PAP. Derk Pereboom (2001; 2005) has recently proposed a Frankfurt case, “Tax Evasion,” which he believes avoids the dilemma defense. In this paper, I argue that his case still falls prey to this difficulty, leaving it unproblematic for PAP defenders.

Torture, Necessity, and Moral Integrity (VII-K)
Steven Patterson, Marygrove College

A great many Americans accept the notion that torture may be engaged in under circumstances such as those we face with respect to the “war on terror.” Against such an enemy, with the only apparent alternatives being the doing of wrong in response and perishing, it would seem that the restrictions on doing wrong are temporarily lifted or at least that culpability for doing wrong is reduced. This is the animating idea behind what has come to be known as the “lesser evil” defense of interrogational torture. The moral version of the “lesser evil” defense turns crucially on the idea of necessity, on the notion that torture is morally justified under the circumstances. In this paper I argue that this sort of argument has some critical flaws, among them overreliance on strained hypotheticals (like the omnipresent “ticking bomb” case), arbitrariness, and an unacceptable miminization of the importance of moral integrity.

Understanding Trumping (IX-E)
L.A. Paul, University of Arizona

Cases of causal preemption have received extensive discussion, and, while philosophers differ on how serious the problems are or how to handle them in an analysis, their structure and interpretation is well understood. Not so for a new sort of case, recently introduced by Jonathan Schaffer, which he calls trumping preemption. I dispute Schaffer’s interpretation of trumping and argue that the examples have been misunderstood.

Sexual Harassment in the Classroom: Exploring the Limits of Free Speech (VI-K)
Thomas W. Peard, Baker University

Courts have found college instructors liable for hostile environment sexual harassment in the classroom even where the conduct at issue is principally, if not solely, the instructor’s speech. This paper focuses on the moral issue of whether prohibition under Title IX of sexually harassing speech by an instructor in a college classroom unduly interferes with the liberty of the instructor to engage in such speech. This liberty issue raises the classical philosophical question of the moral limits of social coercion. In addressing the liberty issue, I state and apply an analytical framework derived from Joel Feinberg’s work The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law. On the basis of this analysis, I conclude that Title IX does not constitute an immoral restriction of the instructor’s liberty in such cases.

The Real Flaws in the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act (II-I)
Yvette Pearson, Old Dominion University

Though the present state of the assisted reproductive technology (ART) industry in the United States suggests it would be foolhardy to oppose federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research (hESCR), the most recent effort to expand federal funding for hESCR—the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2007—was deeply flawed and ought to have been vetoed, albeit for reasons other than those offered by the Bush administration and other opponents of hESCR. Instead of a critical assessment of the text of the bill, both proponents of SCREA and President Bush relied on their stock arguments for or against hESCR. This paper exposes serious problems with SCREA and recommends more careful scrutiny by proponents of future legislation aimed at increasing federal support for hESCR.

Mundane or Incredible!? (V-G)
Gordon L. Pettit, Western Illinois University

This paper explores the difference between something being merely extremely improbable but believable and something being literally incredible—unbelievably improbable. In the former case, a rational person would not expect a special explanation for the occurrence, but in the latter, she does. John Leslie and Peter van Inwagen have proposed principles that can be used to distinguish when a particularly improbable event may reasonably attributed to mere chance and when the rational person should expect a more robust explanation. I show the weaknesses of their principles and propose a revised principle that is more suited for the task.

Dirty Cheap Contextualism (III-I)
Mark Timothy Phelan, University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill

Contextualists argue that the semantics of knowledge ascriptions are context sensitive. A recent challenge to this position concerns the manner in which it is to be implemented. Just what is it about knowledge ascriptions that makes them semantically context sensitive? I examine Peter Ludlow’s recent answer to this question. I discuss a problem for Ludlow’s position, and offer an emendation of the position that avoids the problem and better fits the evidence.

Coreference and Transitivity (III-I)
Angel Pinillos, Arizona State University

Sometimes two representations designate the same thing “de jure.” This happens with “Mark Twain” and “he” in a sincere use of “Mark Twain is taller than Samuel Clemens, but he is not as handsome.” Other times, coreference is “de facto,” as with the pair “Mark Twain” and “Samuel Clemens.” One goal of this paper is to give an analysis of de jure coreference and highlight its importance. The second goal is to show that de jure coreference is not a transitive relation (even when understood as a discourse-internal notion). If I am right, then the phenomenon probably resists explanation in terms of traditional linguistic tools. I end by indicating how the notion should be understood.

Similarity & Acquaintance: A Dilemma (X-G)
Ted Poston, University of South Alabama

There is an interesting and instructive problem with Richard Fumerton’s acquaintance theory of noninferential justification. Fumerton’s explicit account requires acquaintance with the truth-maker of one’s belief and yet he admits that one can have noninferential justification when one is not acquainted with the truth-maker of one’s belief but instead acquainted with a very similar truth-maker. On the face of it this problem calls for clarification. However, there are skeptical issues lurking in the background. This paper explores these issues by developing a dilemma for an acquaintance theory.

Sleeping Beauty, Conditionalization, and Knowledge De Praesenti (VII-F)
Joel Pust, University of Delaware

The two most plausible answers to the Sleeping Beauty problem are 1/2 and 1/3. Lewis (2001), who defends 1/2, and Elga (2000), who defends 1/3, agree that Beauty should conditionalize on her new knowledge when she is told, on Monday afternoon, that it is Monday. In this paper, I demonstrate that a number of accounts of temporally indexical belief imply that it is impossible for Beauty to conditionalize on Monday afternoon. If such conditionalization is impossible, Elga’s argument for 1/3 fails and the defender of 1/2 is absolved of any need to endorse the extremely counterintuitive claim which Lewis thought himself forced to accept by his defense of 1/2.

Natural Rightness (IV-I)
Jason Raibley, California State University–Long Beach

This paper presents and explains a version of subjectivist ethical naturalism. I propose that non-instrumental goodness is constituted by the property of being what we would be disposed, under ideal conditions, to value for its own sake. I link this proposal with a view of the nature of moral rightness on which the choiceworthiness of an action consists in the degree to which that action promotes and protects our non-instrumental values. I construe both of these theses as synthetic statements of property identity. I explain how the thesis about rightness suggests pluralism at the normative level. I relate my views to previous work done by David Lewis, Peter Railton, and Richard Boyd on the metaphysics and semantics of goodness and rightness, indicating my debts, as well as my view’s advantages.

How Heidegger Should Have Read Plato (IV-F)
Mark Ralkowski, University of New Mexico

I argue that Heidegger’s interpretation of Plato is flawed for two reasons. First, if one does not assume, as Heidegger does, that Plato was a doctrinal philosopher, it is not obvious that Plato was the founder of ontotheology and subjectivism. Second, if Heidegger had fully appreciated Plato’s political pessimism, he could have discovered a useful anticipation of his own later critique of technology in Plato’s protracted critique of Periclean Athens. In order to make this last point, I show that Plato’s representation of Socrates can be understood as an inversion of Thucydides’ representation of Alcibiades, who embodies Periclean-Athenian individualism and imperialism better than anyone or anything else. Finally, I argue that this is no trivial matter: had Heidegger recognized this feature of Plato’s thought, and appropriated it rather than his unabashedly Promethean reading of the Republic, he might have avoided his naïve and disastrous political decisions in 1933.

Knowledge Never Makes a Mistake: The Incompatibility of False Belief and Knowledge in Plato’s Thaetetus (V-J)
Naomi Reshotko, University of Denver

By assuming that everything is either known or not-known, Plato finds false belief to be incompatible with both knowledge and ignorance in the middle section of the Theaetetus. While this might appear to be an impossible view to maintain, I argue that it is actually a reprise of a thesis that is familiar to us from the Euthydemus: “knowledge never makes a mistake” (280a7). Furthermore, Plato’s assumption that knowledge is all or nothing is justified when we heed his claim that he is, in the false belief section of the dialogue, looking for knowledge within the content of our own minds (“that activity of the soul when it is busy by itself” [187a4-6]). It is common for many philosophers to assume that the content of our minds is completely accessible to us and thus the easiest thing to know and known completely. If Plato can show that knowing the contents of one’s own mind is incompatible with false belief—and therefore impossible, the thesis that we know what is beyond our own minds is also on unstable ground. I argue that Plato’s strategy in the wax block is to explore the possibility that we have a relationship other that that of knowing or not-knowing our own conceptions. In fact, the wax block succeeds in accounting for one kind of heterodoxy, but only when both the perception and the imprint are treated as not known. Thus, only those who have a relationship other than knowledge with the content of their own minds can entertain false beliefs. Of course, everyone has false beliefs, so everyone has a relationship other than knowledge with the contents or their own minds.

Protecting the Environment from the Law? Why Humphrey’s Irreversibility Defense of Direct Action Fails (IV-G)
Walter J. Riker, Vanderbilt University

Is environmental “non-democratic” direct action against legitimate democratic laws morally justified? Forms of environmental direct action include crop damage and tree-sitting. This is one kind of response to (what appears to be) an extreme instance of an otherwise fairly common sort of moral dilemma faced by citizens in modern pluralist democracies: what should a citizen do when her sincere moral convictions seem to require her to break legitimate democratic laws? Civil disobedience, direct action, and revolutionary activity are three distinct possibilities. I describe the features of morality and law that open the door to justified forms of political resistance. I then discuss and ultimately reject Mathew Humphrey’s (2006) “irreversibility” justification of environmental direct action. First, Humphrey’s irreversibility justification contains a fatal flaw. This is sufficient to refute Humphrey’s view. Second, and more generally, direct action fails to respond to the law’s demand for recognition and respect.

Timothy Williamson on Knowledge and Evidence: A Critique (X-G)
Aaron Rizzieri, Arizona State University

Timothy Williamson has argued that a person S’s total evidence is constituted solely by propositions that S knows. This theory of evidence entails that a false belief can not be a part of S’s evidence base for a conclusion. I argue by counterexample that this thesis (E=K for now) forces an implausible separation between what it means to be justified and rational, and what it means to base one’s beliefs on the evidence. Furthermore, I argue that E=K entails the implausible result that there are cases in which a well-evidenced belief can not itself serve as evidence for a further conclusion, and the result that there can be rational and justified inferred beliefs that have no evidence for them whatsoever.

An Expressive Model of the Self (VII-G)
Anthony Rudd, St. Olaf College

This paper sketches an alternative to both neo-Lockean theories of personal identity, which reduce the self to a bundle of particular states, and neo-Cartesian theories, which reduce it to a characterless “bare locus” capable of supporting any states whatsoever. A genuine alternative to both these views needs to see the self as internally related to its particular states, neither reducible to them, nor comprehensible apart from them. A person’s feelings (as Wittgenstein stressed) find expression in his/her bodily behavior. But as we come to know someone, we come to see how those particular feelings are themselves expressive of longer-term dispositions. I argue that we should see those in turn as expressive of the self—the substance whose dispositions they all are—and that this enables us to defend the common-sense view of the person as a distinct individual character, which neither Cartesian nor Lockean accounts can do.

Stage Theory and Proper Names (IV-H)
Pablo Rychter, LOGOS Barcelona

Stage theory is a view about how ordinary objects (artefacts, animals, persons, etc.) are located in time. According to the view, ordinary objects are instantaneous—they exist at only one instant. In the current debate on persistence, stage theory is defended by T. Sider and K. Hawley. In this paper I focus on the under-discussed issue of what stage theorists should say about the semantics of ordinary proper names, like “London” or “G.W. Bush.” I will consider the sketchy remarks that stage theorists actually make about this issue, present some problems they face, and finally offer what I take to be the best view available for them.

Concept Acquisition without Representation (IV-E)
William Dylan Sabo, University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill

Contemporary debates in concept acquisition presuppose that cognizers can only acquire concepts on the basis of concepts they already have, and thus requires that they have at least some innate concepts. I argue that this presupposition, which I call the Conceptual Mediation Thesis, should be rejected. I argue that distinguishing between indicating states and representing states of cognizers provides the basis for an alternative account of concept acquisition. On this account, concepts are acquired via indicating states of perceptual systems. This alternative shows how concepts can be acquired without using representations, and so how a cognizer with no concepts to begin with could go on to acquire some.

The Pond, the Envelope, and the Vintage Sedan: Taking Global Poverty Seriously (III-F)
Walter E. Schaller, Texas Tech University

I argue that, contrary to Peter Singer and Peter Unger, we cannot determine our obligations with respect to global poverty by appeal to analogies like (Shallow) Pond (or Vintage Sedan). Although intuitively very compelling, such analogies are misleading. In Pond, it is possible to rescue the Drowning Child, whereas it is not possible to rescue everyone on the verge of death from starvation or disease. Global poverty is more like a modified Pond case where there is an endless stream of endangered toddlers. Just as we would be justified in allowing some to fall into the pond in order to build a fence around the pond, thereby saving a greater number, so, with respect to global poverty, we are justified in spending our money on long-range goods (medical research, education), even if we thereby allow children to die whom we could have rescued. But this undermines the Pond Analogy.

Heidegger’s Critique of Husserl’s Species Theory of Meaning (II-B)
Joseph K. Schear, California Polytechnic State University

In his Logical Investigations, Husserl endorsed a form of platonism about propositional meanings, against the various forms of psychologism circulating at the turn of the 20th century. A platonist about meaning holds that propositions are entities that exist prior to and independently of the acts and processes of thinking subjects. In his Being and Time period, Heidegger mercilessly attacked Husserl’s platonism about meaning. The aim of the paper is to assess one key prong of this attack. I argue that Husserl’s theory of meaning emerges from Heidegger’s criticism unscathed. However, I conclude by offering an interpretive hypothesis about how one might read the failed objection in a more charitable light; that is, as marking Heidegger’s existential phenomenology as an extension of, rather than a departure from, the anti-psychologistic agenda of the original Husserlian “breakthrough to phenomenology.”

Perceptual Content, Representations, and Relations (VIII-J)
Susanna Schellenberg, Australian National University

I defend a way of thinking of perception as both representational and relational. I argue that an intentionalist view on which perception represents objects is compatible with a relationalist view on which perception is a matter of standing in an awareness relation to objects, if the content of experience is understood in terms of potentially gappy content schemas. By acknowledging that perception is both relational and representational, the problems of pure relational and pure intentionalist accounts can be avoided. In contrast to pure relationalism, the view I defend can explain how veridical and hallucinatory experiences may be phenomenologically indistinguishable. Both experiences share a content schema that grounds the phenomenal character of the experience. But in contrast to pure intentionalism, the view I defend can account for the particularity of perception. In the case of a hallucinatory experience, the content schema is gappy. In the case of a veridical experience, the gap is filled by an object or an object-dependent mode of presentation of an object. Traditionally, there are two fundamentally different ways of thinking about perception. According to relationalism, perception is essentially a matter of standing in an awareness or an acquaintance relation to objects. According to intentionalism, perception is essentially a matter of representing objects. Relationalism can easily account for the particularity of perception, while intentionalism can easily account for how a perception and a hallucination can be phenomenologically indistinguishable. But two desiderata of any theory of perception should be to account for the particularity of perception and to explain the possibility of phenomenological indistinguishability. I argue that thinking of the content of experience in terms of potentially gappy content schemas allows for a straightforward way to account for both desiderata.

It Takes Two: Sexual Strategies and Game Theory (VIII-G)
Armin Schulz, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Buss’s Sexual Strategies Theory is one of the major evolutionary psychological research programs, but, as this paper seeks to show, it has unstable theoretical foundations. Since mate choice is a cooperative decision, the prediction of evolved sexual strategies requires careful analysis of the entire evolutionary game the two sexes have played; instead of this, however, Buss concentrates almost exclusively on what is adaptive for the two sexes individually. This disconnect between Buss’s methodology and the nature of his subject is shown to not yet be sufficiently appreciated in the literature, and to be unfortunate also for obscuring further tests and predictions of the theory.

Revenge and Expression (III-K)
Lionel S. Shapiro, University of Connecticut

There is a standard objection against accounts that purport to explain how the presence of a Liar sentence doesn’t preclude a language L from expressing the notion of truth in L. According to this objection, such accounts avoid one paradox only to succumb to another of the same kind. Even if a language can contain its own truth-predicate, we can identify another intelligible notion it can’t express on pain of immediate contradiction via Liar-like reasoning. My paper seeks to undermine this “revenge” objection by bringing to light a key assumption on which it rests—an assumption about what is involved in any language’s “expressing a notion.” What makes matters delicate is that this assumption is easily mistaken for various language-specific claims. I argue that such look-alikes, while true, are irrelevant. Only the original assumption can underwrite an effective charge of revenge, and that assumption is unwarranted and self-undermining.

The Agent Relativity of Directed Reasons (II-D)
Kenneth E. Shockley, University at Buffalo

Directed reasons are reasons that rely for their normative significance on the authority one individual has with respect to another. Acts such as promising seem to generate such reasons. These reasons seem paradigmatically agent relative: they do not hold for all agents. This paper provides a defense of the claim that the form of agent relativism seemingly required by directed reasons is innocuous, and poses no general problem for a practice dependent account of directed reasons, and, therefore, for consequentialism. While the position I present does not constitute a complete teleological account of value, it points toward a way of integrating directed reasons into a practice-based account of value. The position presented also remains consistent with the so called Compelling Idea that often motivates consequentialism: it is always permissible for an agent to do what will lead to the outcome that is best.

Legitimacy as Affirmation (IX-J)
Edward H.K. Song, Louisiana State University

In the political and social sciences, the idea of legitimacy focuses on the attitudes of acceptance or affirmation that citizens might express toward their state. In contrast, most liberal political theorists typically advance accounts that see legitimacy as a matter of justice. A state is legitimate only when it is just, and they worry that such attitudinal accounts ignore important normative questions concerning the exercise of state power. In this paper, I attempt to defend a Rawlsian account of legitimacy as affirmation that points out the normative import of citizens’ actual attitudes toward their states, and highlights a shortcoming of these typical liberal accounts of legitimacy. Such an account of legitimacy as affirmation offers novel ways of negotiating traditional debates about legitimacy and political obligation between Kantians and Lockeans, and illuminates an arena of concern that has been ignored by the vast majority of contemporary liberal political theorists.

The World Ought to be Otherwise: Theodor Adorno’s Theory of Aesthetic Autonomy and a New Categorical Imperative (I-E)
Murray W. Skees, University of North Florida

This paper shows the fundamental ethical aspect to Adorno’s understanding of aesthetic autonomy. This fact is crucial to Adorno’s claim regarding the autonomy of art and its subsequent social importance. I argue that, for Adorno, autonomous art develops a new categorical imperative. Adorno’s aesthetic theory gives art ethical import. The implication is that art, unconsciously and unintentionally, is politically and ethically one of the few remaining authentic modes of existence. Art is the refuge of freedom in a world in which subjectivity itself is no longer a viable mode of existence for individual human agents. Moreover, Adorno’s understanding of a law immanent to art, whose obedience results in free activity, is not given its truly radical implication without understanding it in terms of Kantian morality.

Local and Global Relativity Principles (VII-J)
Bradford Skow, University of Massachusetts–Amherst

This paper discusses the relationship between a global version of the principle of relativity and a local version of the principle. I argue that the global principle entails the local one. I discuss a counterexample to this entailment and explain why it fails. I conclude with some remarks about the relationship between locality and relativity principles.

Is Homeostasis Too Much to Ask of Natural Kinds? (I-F)
Matthew Slater, University of Idaho

The Homeostatic Property Cluster account of natural kinds offers an appealing improvement to traditional essentialist and cluster accounts. I offer two worries about the notion of causal homeostasis and its role in higher taxa natural kinds. But it may be possible to leave these problems behind by focusing on what the mechanisms in proffered cases achieve (rather than the mechanisms themselves).

God, Evil, and Closure (VII-K)
Jeffrey Alan Snapper, Northern Illinois University

Is theistic belief reasonable in the face of evil? Evidential atheists say that it is not, arguing that our inability to detect God-justifying goods for many evils undermines the reasonability of theistic belief. I do four things here. (1) I briefly present the skeptical theist’s response to the evidential argument from evil. (2) I then provide the following agnostic rejoinder: the skeptical theist’s principle governing reasonable belief undercuts not only the reasonability of atheism, but also that of theism. (3) In exploring the agnostic rejoinder I show that its Closure principle must employ dynamic epistemic operators to preserve validity. Finally, (4) I show that the agnostic rejoinder fails both because dynamic epistemic operators do not close under known entailment and because skepticism about inferences from inscrutable to gratuitous evil does not entail skepticism about inferences from non-basic evidence for God’s existence to the nonexistence of gratuitous evil.

What’s the Matter with Price Gouging? (VIII-I)
Jeremy Snyder, Simon Fraser University

When prices for basic commodities increase in the event of a natural or man-made disaster, these price increases are often condemned as “price gouging” or “profiteering.” But it is not clear what kind of moral wrong is charged by these terms. In this paper I offer an account of the moral wrongness of what is commonly referred to as price gouging. In order for the price increase to count as an instance of morally wrongful price gouging, the increase must be on a “necessary good,” beyond what can be justified by higher risks or costs, and create an “unrefusable offer” for the customer. While this definition of price gouging strays somewhat from common use of “price gouging,” it is a virtue of my account that it avoids some of the vague uses of the term.

What Is It To Be Pornographic? (V-I)
Jorn Sonderholm, Georgetown University

In a recent paper, Michael C. Rea considers the question of what pornography is. First, he examines a number of existing definitions of pornography and after having rejected them all, he goes on to present his own preferred definition. Rea is of the opinion that pornography has essential features, and what he proposes is a “real” definition of pornography. This paper is a contribution to the ongoing debate about what pornography is. The first part of the paper (sections two to four) is negative in nature. The ambition is here to establish a counterexample to Rea’s definition of pornography. The second part of the paper (sections five and six) is more positive in spirit. A suggestion is made about what is a necessary condition for something to be an instance of pornography, and the suggestion is thereafter defended against an objection found in the literature.

Epistemic Two-dimensionalism and the Epistemic Argument (IX-C)
Jeff Speaks, University of Notre Dame

One of Kripke’s fundamental objections to descriptivism was that it misclassifies certain sentences involving names as expressing a priori rather than a posteriori propositions. Few now defend descriptivism in the form criticized by Kripke; but many endorse two-dimensionalism as a kind of successor theory. Contemporary two-dimensionalists often explicitly disavow the idea that names are typically synonymous with associated descriptions, and so are not o