Morgan’s Canon Revisited (I-K)
Sean J. Allen-Hermanson (Florida International University)
The famous ethological maxim known as “Morgan’s Canon” continues to be an object of interpretive controversy. I consider two reinterpretations of Morgan’s canon as offered by Dennett and Sober in light of two questions: First, what did Morgan intend? Second, is the re-interpretation useful within cognitive ethology? The short answers are, first, these do not capture Morgan’s intentions, and second, they do not offer anything useful to cognitive ethology. Whereas the Dennett-inspired principle implicitly leads us towards eliminativism, Sober’s canon implicitly leads to behaviorism.

Empiricism as Stance and Empiricism Naturalized (IV-G)
Marc A. Alspector-Kelly (Western Michigan University)
Bas van Fraassen has recently argued that if empiricism is construed as a doctrine—so that to be an empiricist is to believe that doctrine—it will be self-refuting. He offers instead empiricism-as-stance: to be an empiricist is to embrace a constellation of attitudes, which are not to be reduced to the endorsement of any particular doctrine. I argue that the dilemma he has identified applies to empiricism-as-stance as much as it does to doctrinal empiricism. But I also argue that the dilemma is not as devastating against doctrinal empiricism as he thinks. The lesson to learn from it is that empiricism must itself be an empirical doctrine, that is, that empiricism must be naturalized. I then briefly sketch what a naturalized empiricism would look like.

What Do Split-Brain Cases Show about the Unity of Consciousness? (I-K)
Torin Alter (University of Alabama)
What do split-brain cases show about the unity of consciousness? Do they show only that access unity (the joint accessibility of states of consciousness) can break down? Or do they also show that phenomenal unity (the joint experience of states of consciousness) can break down? Tye (2004) argues for the latter view and criticizes Bayne and Chalmers’ (2003) defense of the former. I raise two objections to Tye’s reasoning. First, an analogy to blindsight on which he relies is questionable. Second, even if the analogy works, this shows only that a single person can simultaneously have two separate sets of phenomenally conscious mental states. It does not follow that phenomenal unity can break down—at least not in any sense that would trouble those sympathetic to the idea that phenomenal consciousness is necessarily unified. Showing why there is no such implication may help to clarify this intriguing idea.

Facets of Honesty (III-K)
Judith Andre (Michigan State University)
What, if anything, unifies the various facets of honesty, so often defined negatively as the avoidance of lying, cheating, and stealing? How does avoiding self-deception fit into this moral picture? Answering these questions demands seeing honesty as a virtue, not just as the avoidance of vice. Seeing it as a virtue requires naming the particular goods that it protects, the conditions for success in achieving them, and noticing the space between avoiding vice and being virtuous—in this case, the possibility of avoiding clear dishonesty while failing to live an admirably honest life. This perspective explains why some have (mistakenly) argued that intellectual honesty is not a moral virtue, honors but challenges James Wallace’s useful explication of honesty as an exploitation of trust, and illuminates the role of being honest with oneself in being honest with others.

Sense and Sensibility (III-K)
Mariam Thalos (University of Utah)
Chrisoula Andreou (University of Utah)
We argue that having and acting on good impulses is an essential component of practical wisdom. If our reasoning is correct, then both of the following views are unacceptable: the Kantian view that practical reason is not expressed if one is ‘impelled into action’ because acting well (and not simply from luck, but from practical wisdom) involves acting from self-given laws of action; and the Humean view that one’s impulses—assuming they do not spring from reasoning—are not subject to rational evaluation at all (though they may be put aside if they conflict with one’s considered desires).

The Ethical Obligations of Corporations Concerning Global Climate Change (I-J)
Denis G. Arnold (University of Tennessee)
There is a consensus in the global scientific community that global climate change (GCC) is occurring and that it will have a dramatic and adverse impact on ecosystems, nonhuman species populations, and human populations. The philosophical literature on the ethics of GCC is surprisingly underdeveloped, and in that literature the primary subjects of ethical analysis are states, and the primary ethical issues are the fair distributions of burdens among states in reducing emissions. However, what ethical obligations, if any, the corporations that produce these emissions have concerning GCC remain unaddressed. The organization of this essay is as follows. First, the influential position that holds that free markets and responsive democracies relieve corporations of any special obligations to protect the environment is explained. Next, five objections to this “free market ‘solution’” to GCC are developed. Finally, the ethical obligations of business with regard to global climate change are identified.

Omissions: Responsibility and Causation (III-G)
Roberta Ballarin (Southern Methodist University)
I present a counterexample to Sartorio’s New Asymmetry according to which one can cause by action, but not by omission, an outcome that would have occurred anyway in the absence of the action/omission. Based on the principle that causation transmits responsibility, Sartorio claims that one cannot be responsible by omission for an outcome that would have occurred also in the absence of the omission.
On the contrary, I argue that exactly because one can be responsible by omission of an outcome that would have happened even in the absence of the omission, it follows that one can cause by omission an outcome that would have happened in the absence of the omission even in simple cases where only one threat is present. Since causation by omission is to be analyzed in terms of responsibility for the outcome, it does not have a counterfactual component requiring that the outcome be preventable.

Underdetermination and the Argument from Indirect Confirmation (IV-G)
Sorin Bangu (University of Toronto)
Underdetermination of theory by evidence is one of the most intriguing problems facing epistemology and realism today. In this paper I criticize one of the most convincing attempts to resist the underdetermination thesis, Laudan’s argument from indirect confirmation. Laudan’s main point is to reject a tacit assumption of the underdetermination theorist, namely that theories can be confirmed only by empirical evidence that follows from them. He shows that once we accept that theories can also be confirmed indirectly, by evidence not entailed by them, the skeptical conclusion does not follow. I agree that Laudan is right to reject this assumption, but I argue that his explanation as how the rejection of this assumption blocks the skeptical conclusion is flawed. I conclude that the argument from indirect confirmation is not effective against the underdetermination thesis.

Kornblith on the Value of Knowledge (V-H)
Jared G. Bates (Hanover College)
First, I examine Hilary Kornblith’s (2002) account of the normative source of knowledge, an account on which true belief has universal, pragmatic value. Then, I argue for the following two theses: (1) The account only explains the value of true belief in cost-benefit analysis; so the account does not secure the universal value of true belief. (2) Kornblith is mistaken that a cognitive system that uses true beliefs in its cost-benefit analyses will do better at satisfying its interests than a system that does not use true beliefs; so the account does not secure the pragmatic value of true belief, either.

Neglecting Indeterminacy and Behaviorism: Kim’s Critique of Quine’s Naturalized Epistemology (V-H)
Benjamin Bayer (University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign)
Jaegwon Kim’s influential argument against Quine’s naturalized epistemology is examined, and shown to neglect crucial aspects of Quine’s argument for the relevance of his project. Kim suggests that underdetermination of evidence by theory does not imply normative epistemology is dead, but ignores that Quine is concerned about not merely underdetermination, but indeterminacy of translation, i.e., meaning. Kim suggests that Quine ignores normative alternatives to Cartesianism, but ignores that Quine’s indeterminacy thesis may undermine them, as well. Finally, Kim suggests that Quine’s putative rejection of normativity is a problem for the evaluation of cognitive outputs, but Kim ignores Quine’s behaviorism, which obviates his need for a normative interpretive theory of beliefs. It is suggested that the real problems with Quine’s naturalized epistemology are to be found in his attempt to keep that behaviorism consistent with his overall project—but that Kim’s critiques obscure this.

BonJour’s Arguments against Skepticism about the A Priori (III-I)
James R. Beebe (University at Buffalo)
Laurence BonJour’s (1998) recent defense of moderate rationalism includes two arguments against skepticism about the a priori. I reconstruct both of these arguments and discuss the assumptions about the justificatory limitations of a posteriori sources of epistemic justification that lie behind them. I then defend the arguments against the charge that they are question-begging. I show that BonJour’s arguments constitute a formidable challenge to philosophers who are skeptical about the a priori but not about knowledge in general.

Favoring, Polarity, and Particularism (I-H)
Jeffrey C. Brand-Ballard (George Washington University)
We often assert general moral principles which, suitably qualified, we take as true. Moral particularists disagree. Jonathan Dancy’s particularism rests on holism—the claim that reasons can change valence or “polarity” with context. I defend a form of atomism (anti-holism) by presenting an alternative picture of the “poles” with respect to which reasons are polarized. Whereas Dancy understands atomism as the claim that a certain type of reason invariantly favors a certain type of action, I argue that a reason can be polarized with respect to an “action family,” rather than a particular action. I suggest that reasons are, indeed, invariantly polarized with respect to action families. This invariance is of a weaker kind than what Dancy challenges atomists to defend, but I think it is all atomists need to defend. Room remains for general moral principles.

Quantifying Over Cases (III-F)
Berit Brogaard (University of Missouri–St. Louis)
What do adverbs of quantification like “always,” “never,” and “seldom”quantify over? David Lewis famously argued that they quantify over cases, where, roughly, a case is an n-tuple of its participants. Lewis’s proposal has a striking implication often ignored by philosophers: it offends against Russell’s claim that descriptions are quantifiers. It has another drawback: it is unable to account for adverbial generalities without a conditional restrictor. In this paper I make a case for an alternative theory of adverbial quantification that remedies the defects of Lewis’s theory.

How Structuralism Can Solve the “Access” Problem (III-F)
Otávio A. Bueno (University of South Carolina)
According to mathematical structuralism, the subject matter of mathematics is not the study of mathematical objects, but of mathematical structures. By moving away from objects, the structuralist claims to be in a position to solve the “access” problem: structuralism explains the possibility of mathematical knowledge without requiring any access to mathematical objects. In a recent paper, Fraser MacBride challenged the structuralist response and argued that the structuralist faces a dilemma in the attempt to solve that problem (MacBride [2004]). In the present paper, I argue that MacBride’s dilemma can be resisted, and that, particularly in the version articulated by Michael Resnik (Resnik [1997]), structuralism can solve the “access” problem. I show exactly how MacBride’s dilemma fails and argue that this failure provides an opportunity to highlight a significant feature of structuralism: the way in which it articulates a fundamentally different picture of mathematical epistemology than traditional epistemology would suggest.

Does Wisdom Make You Lucky? Euthydemus 279d-280b (III-H)
Matthew C. Cashen (Washington University in St. Louis)
It is notorious that Socrates sometimes slides by with arguments that don’t really work, sometimes even coaxing his interlocutor to assent to arguments that seem agonizingly bad. Euthydemus 279d-280b is often thought to supply such an argument, one M. A. Stewart dismisses as “disastrous,” and whose apparent faults T. H. Irwin calls “recurrent, gross, and obvious.” Socrates’ aim there is to prove that wisdom (sophia) always makes people lucky (eutuchein), a claim that itself is just one step in a larger effort to prove that wisdom is the only good. My aim is to show not only that Socrates’ argument is right, but that it is uncontroversially right. After reconstructing the argument and showing why two prominent interpretations get Socrates’ meaning wrong, I advance an alternate interpretation with two advantages: it fits the text better than its competitors, and it spares Socrates of recurrent, gross, and obvious error.

Williamson’s Evidence (V-H)
E. J. Coffman (University of Notre Dame)
In Knowledge and its Limits, Timothy Williamson argues the thesis that only knowledge is evidence. This thesis conflicts with a view that pervades contemporary epistemology—viz., that certain mental items that don’t constitute knowledge (e.g., experiences, justified false beliefs, “Gettierized” justified true beliefs) qualify as evidence. In this paper, I assess Williamson’s two most promising attempts to establish that only knowledge is evidence. I reckon that both fail. The first argument considered depends on a claim that’s obviously false, while the second depends on two claims each of which is at best counterbalanced for us (i.e., such that our reasons for denying it are as strong as our reasons for accepting it). My assessment of the second argument includes an evaluation of the strongest argument for ‘Warrant Infallibilism’, the thesis that only true beliefs can have the feature that distinguishes knowledge from mere true belief.

Moore Problems for the Anti-Realist? (IV-I)
Jon M. Cogburn (Louisiana State University)
Moorean validities are any in-general invalid inferences such as P; therefore I believe that P. While these are prima facie invalid, they have no counterexamples, since any assertion of the truth of the premise pragmatically forces the conclusion to be true. I first show that Dummettian anti-realists have a seemingly impossible time explaining why Moorean validities are not valid. Then I argue that the anti-realist could restrict application of Moorean validities to inferential situations outside of the scope of things assumed hypothetically for further discharge. In conclusion, I suggest that Berkeley and Davidson’s non-trivial Moorean arguments run afoul of this restriction.

The Myth of Cartesian Qualia (I-G)
Raffaella De Rosa (Rutgers University–Newark)
The standard view of Cartesian sensations is that they lack intrinsic intentionality because they present themselves as purely qualitative features of experience (or qualia). Accordingly, Descartes’s view would be that in perceiving the color red, for example, we are merely experiencing the subjective feel of redness rather than seeming to perceive a property of bodies. In this paper, I will show that the argument and the textual evidence offered in support of SV fail to establish that Descartes held SV. Indeed, I will argue that there are textual and theoretical reasons for believing exactly the opposite, that is, that Descartes held the negation of SV (section 3). Qualia aren’t Descartes’s legacy.

Spinoza on the Indivisibility of Substance and the Inconceivability of Extension (IV-K)
Shannon Dea (University of Western Ontario)
Spinoza famously maintained that substance—and hence, extended substance—is indivisible. However, it is not entirely clear how something could be both extended and indivisible. It is perhaps for this reason that, while Spinoza’s account of substance as indivisible is often drawn upon as a foil for other positions, little scholarly attention has been devoted to Spinoza’s position in its own right. In what follows, I argue that Spinoza’s claim that substance is indivisible entails an oblique denial that extension is an attribute of substance. To this end, I give an account of Pierre Sylvain Régis’s criticism of Spinoza’s position, a criticism that helps to evince the possibility that, for Spinoza, extension is a mere mode, like time.

Can Political Liberalism Deliver Equality in the Social-Bases of Self-Respect? (III-J)
Gerald Doppelt (University of California–San Diego)
This paper examines Rawls’s important notion of equality in the social bases of self-respect and the pivotal role of his paradigm of self-respect as equal democratic rights. Can a Rawlsian respond to the objection that this paradigm ignores inequalities in economic position that can undermine self-respect (e.g. unemployment, demeaning conditions of work, unpaid domestic labor)? I examine reformulations of Rawls’s principles that seem to accommodate the objection. I argue that the more promising approach is to treat his paradigm of self-respect as a normative notion concerning the proper social bases of self-respect in an ideally just society. Rawls’s political liberalism succeeds in justifying such a notion based on a democratic ideal of free and equal persons implicit in our fundamental institutions. But it ignores rival political ideals of persons implicit in these institutions, which political liberalism needs to reconcile in order to deliver equality in the proper bases of self-respect.

Meaning, Reason, and Modality (IV-I)
Janice L. Dowell (Bowling Green State University)
One issue that has arisen over how best to interpret the two-dimensional framework is whether there is an interpretation that would ground an a priori-accessible, extension-fixing component of content for very many of our terms and sentences. David Chalmers in a series of recent papers aims to defend just such an interpretation and in so doing restore what he calls the “golden triangle” between meaning, reason, and modality. Chalmers’s strategy turns on finding an interpretation that makes his Core Thesis come out true. That thesis says that for any sentence S, S is a priori iff S has a necessary 1-intension. I’ll argue here that Chalmers’s interpretation fails to meet his requirements. That’s because Chalmers’s 1-intensions are either only a posteriori-accessible after all or there are no instances of the Core Thesis or the interpretation needed to avoid either of the former results will presuppose, rather than ground, an a priori-accessible component of content.

Time and the Observer Redux (II-F)
Paula J. Droege (Pennsylvania State University)
Daniel Dennett (1991) had the right idea when he used the vehicle/content distinction to separate time of representing from time represented. But Dennett drew the wrong conclusion. He thought that the separation of represented time (content) from the time of its vehicle meant that conscious content floats free, anchored only by subjective report. I believe this conclusion overlooks an alternative anchor for conscious contents. If conscious states have the function of representing the present moment, conscious contents are determined according to which elements best represent “now.” Though the demonstrative function threatens to collapse the hard-won distinction between vehicle and content, I argue the contrary: the demonstrative reveals the essential functional relation between content and object as distinct from the vehicle of representation. This theory both reinforces and undermines Daniel Wegner’s (2002; 2004; Wegner and Wheatley 1999) claim that conscious will is illusory.

Kierkegaard, MacIntyre, and the Limits of Reflection in Ethics (II-J)
Ian M. Duckles (Indiana University of Pennsylvania)
Among Kierkegaard scholars, there is a great deal of concern regarding how to deal with Alasdair MacIntyre’s treatment of Kierkegaard in his seminal work After Virtue. In this essay I seek to respond to the criticism MacIntyre levels against Kierkegaard’s Either/Or and its pseudonymous author, Judge William. I argue that MacIntyre criticism of the ethical is accurate, but that his attribution of this position to Kierkegaard is mistaken. In particular, I argue that a close examination of another work in which Kierkegaard employs the Judge William pseudonym, Stages on Life’s Way, reveals that Kierkegaard himself intended that the ethical be criticized in exactly the way MacIntyre does. In this way, Kierkegaard himself anticipates MacIntyre’s criticism of Enlightenment ethics.

Nietzsche’s Décadent: A Reading of “The Problem of Socrates” in Twilight of the Idols (III-H)
Daw-Nay Evans (DePaul University)
Twilight of the Idols is one of the few places in Nietzsche’s oeuvre where he offers a sustained analysis of both Socratic philosophy and the psychological characteristics of the historical figure known as Socrates. In this paper I show how Nietzsche’s fierce ad hominem attack against Socrates in “The Problem of Socrates” conceals a rigorous and logically sound argument that explains how Socrates’ décadence is a symptom of his over-reliance upon reason.

Color Representations as Hash Values (II-F)
Justin C. Fisher (University of Arizona)
The goal of this paper is to answer the following question:
When we have mental states that represent certain things as being colored, what properties are our mental states representing these things as having?
I first state three presumptions about the notion of representation presupposed in this question. I then present a simple overview of potential answers to this question. In that presentation, several puzzles arise that any successful theory of color must solve. With these puzzles in mind, I present the position that I favor. I argue that color representation systems work upon the same basic principles as hashing schemes employed by computer scientists, and I explain how this observation enables us to answer the question with which we began and to solve the puzzles that face other approaches.

The Transient Paragraph: An Understanding of PI §43 Aided by an Analysis of a Late Stage of Composition of the Philosophical Investigations (IV-L)
Craig Fox (University of Illinois–Chicago)
Around 1944, Wittgenstein contemplated supplementing what we know as §43 of the Philosophical Investigations with an additional paragraph. In this paper, my suggestion is that attention to this additional paragraph reveals something about the role that Wittgenstein saw §43 as playing. It becomes apparent that he did not see §43 as providing anything like a definition of meaning, nor even an account of what meaning consists in.

Wittgenstein and Kripke on the Standard Metre (IV-L)
Andrew Graham (Acadia University)
In Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein claims that it makes no sense to say of the standard metre in Paris that it is one metre long or that it is not one metre long. This claim has provoked its fair share of commentators, among whom Kripke is especially notable given his rejection of the claim in arguing for the existence of contingent a priori truths. I contend that Kripke and others misinterpret Wittgenstein, and I illuminate Wittgenstein’s remarks by connecting them to his other writings, particularly On Certainty. Although Kripke mistakenly attacks a position that Wittgenstein never asserts, Kripke’s response (particularly the concept of the contingent a priori) does offer some intriguing parallels with Wittgenstein’s ideas.

Can Women Be Philosophers for Aristotle? (V-G)
Stephanie Gregoire (St. Jerome’s University)
In this paper, I ask what Aristotle thinks is possible for women to achieve in terms of speculative and philosophical reasoning. Arguing that the corpus furnishes us only with passages affirming the inferiority of the feminine practical intellect, I suggest an interpretation of the most important of these passages, i.e. the one of Politics Book One Chapter 13 which justifies the exclusion of women from the political sphere on the grounds that her deliberation lacks authority. I then comment on where we are left as to Aristotle’s opinion about speculative matters and women, concluding that even if Aristotle seems to think that women are less apt than men for speculative reasoning, one cannot affirm that he excludes them from achieving it.

The Sense of Understanding (I-K)
Stephen R. Grimm (University of Notre Dame)
In a recent pair of papers J. D. Trout argues that the sense of understanding that we seem to enjoy of the world around us is deeply unreliable. In other words, he argues that our sense that we understand why things are one way rather than another is poorly connected with the truth about why things are one way rather than another. I claim that Trout dramatically exaggerates the de facto unreliability of our sense of understanding, a view that is borne out by recent research in cognitive psychology. Rather than conclude that the sense of understanding simply is reliable, however, I argue that a more nuanced view is required.

Reflexive Content and the Modal Argument (V-F)
Peter W. Hanks (University of Minnesota–Twin Cities)
Brendan O’Sullivan (Rhodes College)
Defenders of the mind-body identity thesis have responded to Kripke’s modal argument either by providing a real possibility to explain away the apparent conceivability of the mental without the physical, or by denying that in the mental/physical case conceivability provides a reliable guide to possibility. In his recent book Knowledge, Possibility, and Consciousness John Perry defends a version of the first strategy by applying his general distinction between subject matter content and reflexive content. Here we argue that Perry’s appeal to reflexive content does no useful work and that his response to the modal argument depends on strong and implausible views about concepts.

What’s So Special about Special Responsibilities? (I-J)
Sarah Harper (Boston College)
Though we tend to think and act as though our special responsibilities are grounded in our special relationships, or roles, a special responsibility is, by definition, one that falls differentially on one agent rather than another and that it is held with respect to one person rather than another. This suggests several ways in which our special, purportedly role-relative responsibilities might stand in relation to those that we think of as general, or role-independent: In the first place, our purportedly role-relative responsibilities may, in reality, be reducible to role-independent ones, having their source in something outside of special relationships. Alternatively, there may be both genuinely role-relative and genuinely role-independent responsibilities. Finally, our purportedly role-independent responsibilities may, in reality, be reducible to role-relative ones. In this paper, I will argue that problems with the first two views merit further exploration of the third.

Dying to Be Good: Kant and the Permissibility of Suicide (II-G)
Thomas D. Harter (University of Tennessee)
Kant argues that acts of suicide are immoral because they destroy a person’s rationality, which is the source of both one’s moral being and moral obligations. I argue, however, when one’s duty of beneficence, which is a duty to one’s moral being, conflicts with one’s duty of self-preservation or one’s duty not to commit suicide, both of which are duties to one’s animal nature, that Kant’s system of ethics permits and may require rational beings to commit suicide. In demonstrating how duties to one’s moral being are more primary than duties to one’s animal nature, I show how a suicide taking as its end a duty of beneficence aims at perfecting one’s moral nature. I then address two objections to this view: that it is contradictory for a rational being to willingly destroy itself, and that suicide for the sake of others is not suicide, but an act of martyrdom.

Natural Selection as a Realized Causal Process (I-F)
Matthew Haug (Cornell University)
Recently, some philosophers have argued against the dynamical interpretation of natural selection, according to which it is a force acting on individual organisms. They propose that selection is a formally characterized, statistical phenomenon and not a causal process. I argue that both the dynamical and statistical interpretations are mistaken. Natural selection is not a force, but it is a causal process that is realized by other physical processes. Proponents of the statistical interpretation commit two errors. First, they conflate two notions of “population.” Second, they assume that realization is a purely formal, as opposed to causal, phenomenon. This paper shows how metaphysical issues about realization normally discussed in the philosophy of mind apply to debates in philosophy of biology. Thus, it is a first step toward fleshing out the oft-noted similarities between debates in these areas.

Receptivity and the Will (II-I)
Edward S. Hinchman (University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee)
The task of an internalist approach to agency is to explain how an agent’s all-things-considered judgment has necessary implications for action. The approach faces its chief obstacle in the possibility of two species of akratic break: between judgment and intention, and between intention and action. I argue that the two are not importantly different: in each case akrasia manifests a single species of irrational self-mistrust. I aim to vindicate internalism by showing how rational agency rests on our capacity for trusting receptivity to the verdict of judgment. To call the relation receptivity is to characterize it as fundamentally passive. To call it trusting receptivity is to ensure that the passivity is not incompatible with agency, since trust retains a crucial degree of control. I’ll argue that the best way to meet the externalist argument from akrasia is to abandon the assumption that the will must be a locus of activity.

Fodor on Concepts and Modes of Presentation (II-F)
Henry Jackman (York University)
Jerry Fodor is well known for his criticisms of non-atomistic theories of concepts and intentional content, but it has recently been argued that Fodor’s theory of concepts is ultimately subject to precisely the same objection that he finds fatal to holistic theories. I’ll argue here that while there is a way for Fodor to avoid this charge, the same strategy can be employed by defenders of some of the holistic theories that he attacks.

The Logic of Political Liberalism: A Critique of Estlund’s Acceptance Criterion (IV-J)
Christopher King (Vanderbilt University)
It is commonly thought that political propositions made legitimate through a majoritarian procedure are only weakly justified. There exists a minority for whom such proposals are not acceptable. Democracy, then, seems to entail pluralism. Philosophers have tried to accommodate both pluralism and the apparent need for stronger measures of political justification in a single theory. Some of these, like Rawls, have made this accommodation by minimizing the cognitive requirements of liberal principles. In response, Estlund has argued that weakening cognitive value diminishes the normative capacity of a political liberalism by failing to isolate the group to whom justification is addressed. Political principles, then, must be true at least minimally. I will argue that conceived in this way, Estlund’s proposal results in a normative problem comparable to that in Rawls’s version of political liberalism; and should be reformulated or abandoned.

Descartes and the Limits of Reason (I-G)
Matthew J. Kisner (University of South Carolina)
It is common to regard Descartes as exceedingly optimistic about the powers of reason. This interpretive line culminates in the claim that Descartes conceives of reason as a kind of divine power, occupying a God’s-eye perspective. This paper examines Descartes’s view on the limits of reason. I show that Descartes conceives of human reason—in opposition to divine reason—as part of the natural world, dependent on, and thus limited by other things, namely bodies and the will. I address an urgent epistemic question which arises from this view: if we cannot know the world as God knows it, then how can we claim to possess absolutely certain knowledge? An answer to this question is found in a controversial passage from the Second Replies. There Descartes argues that knowledge only requires justification from the perspective of human reason, thereby rejecting the God’s-eye perspective.

Alston’s Evaluative Particularism and Euthyphro’s Dilemma (II-J)
Dean A. Kowalski (University of Wisconsin–Waukesha)
William Alston uniquely argues that adopting evaluative particularism—the doctrine that God himself is the supreme standard of moral goodness—can resolve Euthyphro’s dilemma in a beneficial way for the divine command theorist. Taking only one aspect of Alston’s rich and complex view to task, it will be argued that even if Alston successfully resolves Euthyphro’s dilemma about moral obligation, he leaves the divine command theorist a new dilemma about moral goodness. Although this new dilemma deserves further exploration, it initially seems just as thorny as the original.

Between Human Experience and Divine Intuition: Hegel’s Response to Kant’s Limitation of our Knowledge (IV-H)
James Kreines (Yale University)
Hegel’s theoretical philosophy aims for results which are supposed to conflict with Kant’ s denial of the possibility of knowledge of things-in-themselves. Some see Hegel as aiming to surpass the limitations imposed by the conditions which mediate human knowledge. Others see Hegel as aiming more to undercut the limit by questioning the very idea that our knowledge might fall short of divine, unmediated access to reality. As we would expect with Hegel, the truth is somewhere in between Or so I argue. Hegel concentrates on Kant’s account of reason and on metaphysical and epistemological issues concerning explanation. And this allows him to separate out two different Kantian limits; Hegel aims to surpass one limit in order to undercut the other; he aims to show that, because we can have explanatory knowledge beyond the bounds of experience, we need not worry that our knowledge might be limited relative to divine, unmediated intuition.

Was Frege’s Original Logicism a Success? (III-F)
Gregory Landini (University of Iowa)
It is rarely appreciated that prior to his contradictory theory of courses-of-values Frege’s had a theory of cardinal numbers as second-level concepts. This paper argues that this “original” logicism of Frege must be regarded as a successful—if one accepts the ontology of functions and senses. The paper next investigates the possibility of forming a theory which couples Wittgenstein’s exclusive quantifiers with Frege’s original logicism.

Accusing Being: Heidegger’s Concept of Categories in Being and Time (II-K)
Daniel P. Malloy (Appalachian State University)
There is a distinction that is vital to Being and Time and yet has been relatively ignored in the literature: the distinction between existentials and categories. Existentials, characteristics of the structure of the being of Dasein, have been studied in great detail. Categories have hardly been touched on. A few articles have appeared that explicitly discuss the categories identified in it, but these have been uninterested in the concept of categories. The goal of this paper is to remedy some of these oversights. The thrust will be to come to an understanding of what Heidegger means by the term “category.”

On Moral and Religious Obligations: Some Problems for Metaethical Divine Command Theories (II-J)
Zach R. Manis (Baylor University)
In the contemporary literature on divine command theory, Adams and Evans have argued for a metaethical divine command theory of moral obligation (DCT) that fits within a broader, social theory of the nature of obligation. I argue that such versions of DCT are problematic, because they are forced to classify as “pre-moral” obligations that are paradigmatically moral. In such cases, the obligations in question possess all of the properties used to distinguish moral obligations from pre-moral obligations: namely, they are objective, overriding, and universal. Accounting for the obligation to obey God proves especially difficult for metaethical versions of DCT. Its proponents must claim that this obligation either (1) is not a moral obligation, (2) is a moral obligation whose ground is the same as other moral obligations, or (3) is a moral obligation whose ground is different from other moral obligations. All three options, I argue, are highly problematic.

Spinoza on Akrasia (IV-K)
Eugene J. Marshall (University of Wisconsin–Madison)
In the Ethics, Part IV, Spinoza gives an account of akrasia, or weakness of will, in which our rational desires are overcome by passions. In Part V, however, Spinoza offers an affect, the love of God, that cannot be overcome. So, in one’s love of God, one is immune to akrasia. Further, as we can unite this affect to other adequate ideas, those ideas gain this immunity as well. In this way, we may render ourselves incapable of suffering akrasia. Thus, though our universal knowledge of good and evil, or the second kind of knowledge, is vulnerable to being overthrown by the passions, our love of God is not. Finally, I argue that this love of God is the third kind of knowledge. So, in the second kind of knowledge, we may suffer akrasia, but in the third kind of knowledge, we are immune.

Rethinking Spinoza’s Concept of Ideas of Ideas (IV-K)
Christopher Martin (Purdue University)
One of the significant strands of thought in Book II of Spinoza’s Ethics is his concept of ideas of ideas.1 Many scholars agree that this notion commits Spinoza to the claim that for each mode of substance there is an idea of that mode, an idea of that idea, an idea of the idea of that idea and so on ad infinitum. I argue that this interpretation is mistaken, and that a more coherent reading falls out of the text. After critiquing the standard interpretation, I argue that an idea and the idea of it constitute one idea, i.e., an idea of an idea is just an idea’s awareness of itself—its self-awareness. This interpretation accords with Spinoza’s explicit discussion of this concept, avoids the absurdity of an infinite regress for each mode and makes sense of a later and difficult proposition in EII.
12p1, 2p3, 2p11, 2p20-22 and 2p43 are the principally relevant propositions here.

Physicalism in an Infinitely Decomposable World (I-F)
Barbara G. Montero (City University of New York)
Might the world be structured, as Leibniz thought, so that every part of matter is divided ad infinitum? The physicist David Bohm accepted infinitely decomposable matter, and even Steven Weinberg, a staunch supporter of the idea that science is converging on a final theory, admits the possibility of an endless chain of ever more fundamental theories.1 However, if there is no fundamental level, physicalism, thought of as the view that everything is determined by fundamental phenomena and that all fundamental phenomena are physical, turns out false, for in such a world, there are no fundamental phenomena, and so fundamental phenomena determine nothing. While some take physicalism necessarily to posit a fundamental level, here I show how a correct understanding of physicalism, that is, one that expresses what is at stake in the debate between physicalists and anti-physicalists, allows for its truth even in an infinitely decomposable world.
1Weinberg Dreams of a Final Theory p. 230-240.

Terrorism and the Ethics of War (V-I)
Stephen L. Nathanson (Northeastern University)
My aim in this paper is to explain why moral condemnations of terrorism lack credibility and what is required to remedy this problem. One obvious reason for the lack of credibility is the selective and hypocritical use of both the word “terrorism” and the moral principles appealed to in condemning terrorism, especially by political leaders. But the problem is deeper than this.
I argue that all of the standard views about the ethics of war—commonsense morality, political realism, Walzer’s theory in Just and Unjust Wars, and traditional just war theory—approve some terrorist acts or their moral equivalents. Hence, none of these views provides a solid, principled basis for condemning all terrorist acts. Finally, I argue that moral credibility requires accepting a very rigorous form of the principle of noncombatant immunity that condemns both terrorist acts and many collateral damage killings.

R. M. Hare, Non-Moral “Oughts” and the Value of Reason and Consistency (V-J)
Nathan Nobis (University of Alabama–Birmingham)
R. M. Hare developed a much discussed morally irrealist position called “universal prescriptivism.” I argue, however, that Hare’s arguments in favor of universal prescriptivism are unsound. I argue (1) that premises in Hare’s arguments for moral universal prescriptivism suggest analogous arguments for epistemic universal prescriptivism, (2) that view is false and is reasonable to reject—since epistemic evaluations, including claims about the value of reason and consistency, are not prescriptions—and so (3) the arguments for moral prescriptivism are not sound, since they have false major premises. Thus, Hare’s views should not be seen as a serious rival to moral realisms. Since, elsewhere, I have argued that moral expressivisms are vulnerable to this same kind of objection, these combined results put moral realism on a more secure basis.

Reflexive Content and the Modal Argument (V-F)
Peter W. Hanks (University of Minnesota–Twin Cities)
Bremdan O’Sullivan (Rhodes College)
Defenders of the mind-body identity thesis have responded to Kripke’s modal argument either by providing a real possibility to explain away the apparent conceivability of the mental without the physical, or by denying that in the mental/physical case conceivability provides a reliable guide to possibility. In his recent book Knowledge, Possibility, and Consciousness John Perry defends a version of the first strategy by applying his general distinction between subject matter content and reflexive content. Here we argue that Perry’s appeal to reflexive content does no useful work and that his response to the modal argument depends on strong and implausible views about concepts.

What’s the Harm in a Little Self-Deception? (I-H)
Joseph Quinn Olechnowicz (Florida State University)
Self-deception is harmful. Sometimes it is harmful in a way such that the harms incurred are not obvious or immediate. This might lead some to consider self-deception to a certain extent as either normal or healthy. I argue against this claim stating that self-deception is likely to be discovered, forcing the agent to choose between continued self-deception (and consequent loss of rational capacity), or realization of the harmful fact and her own capability for self-deception. Unless it can be shown that these costs will not be incurred the proponent of “healthy” self-deception has claimed normative ground that does not belong to him. Rather than being healthy or adaptive behavior, self-deception puts one in danger of entering a spiral of irrational behaviors accompanied by a loss of valuable rational capacity needed to escape this spiral.

Gibbard on Thick Concepts and Normative Facts (V-J)
Andrew Payne (St. Joseph’s University)
Allan Gibbard has opposed the use of thick concepts to support the claim that there are normative facts. Thick concepts possess both descriptive and evaluative meaning, but Gibbard argues that moral judgments using thick concepts do not possess normativity in virtue of their representing facts in the world. Therefore the use of thick concepts does nothing to show that there are normative facts. A fuller account of moral judgments using thick concepts is presented to show that they do have normativity in virtue of their representing facts in the world. Thick concepts are specific ethical concepts which represent agents as exemplifying patterns of beliefs, desires, and intentions. When a judgment using thick concepts is normative, its normativity is explained in part by the judgment’s representation of the beliefs, desires, and intentions of an agent: those facts in the world which count as normative facts.

The Doctrine of the Hermeneutical Circle and Traditional Epistemology (II-K)
Myron A. Penner (Trinity Western University)
It is often asserted that the “hermeneutical circle” raises problems for traditional Cartesian epistemology. Using Merold Westphal as a guide to the Doctrine of the Hermeneutical Circle, in the following paper I investigate how and in what sense the Doctrine could be problematic for Cartesian epistemology. It turns out that the Doctrine is consistent with Cartesian epistemology in its most robust form, where knowledge requires truth, certainty, and properly basic beliefs. The Doctrine, together with an additional and often implicit assumption that the world can neither determine nor dictate its own interpretation, does pose a problem for Cartesian epistemology. However, I show that the most plausible interpretation of the implicit assumption, together with the Doctrine of the Hermeneutical Circle, entails rejecting only the Cartesian certainty requirement for knowledge. The Doctrine poses no problem for other traditional epistemologies in which knowledge requires truth and properly basic beliefs.

The Equality-Difference Dilemma and Contemporary Feminist Politics (IV-J)
Diane Perpich (Vanderbilt University)
Legal scholar Martha Minnow has argued that if ignoring differences among groups is problematic, focusing on such differences may be equally so. Ignoring difference leaves us with a false neutrality harmful to socially subordinated groups, while insisting on group difference can lead to re-stigmatization and entrenched prejudice and disadvantage. If the difference no less than equality, then, brings us to an impasse, can social groups such as women, Blacks, or gays effectively articulate a political identity without giving new purchase to already prevailing stereotypes? This paper considers recent proposals by Nancy Fraser and Joan Scott to move beyond the binary opposition between equality and difference then sketches a third possibility that looks beyond differences rooted in identity as the primary basis for claims to unjust treatment or unequal status, focusing instead on reciprocal and asymmetrical capabilities and vulnerabilities as the source for such claims.

On Kant’s Distinctions Between Perfect and Imperfect and Narrow and Wide Duties (IV-H)
Jeppe Platz (University of Tennessee)
In the community of Kant scholars it is widely assumed that we can treat Kant’s distinctions between perfect and imperfect and narrow and wide duties as synonymous. In this essay I argue (a) that Kant meantthese distinctions to capture different divisions of duties, hence itis an exegetical mistake to assume synonymy; and (b) that thesedistinctions captures aspects of duty that make sense beyond theframework of Kant’s ethical philosophy, hence we have pragmaticreasons to attend to them.

Internalism and the Problem of Scatter (I-I)
Ted L. Poston (University of Missouri)
Ernest Sosa, in his recent book with Laurence Bonjour Epistemic Justification (2003), presses the problem of scatter for internalism as a reason to favor externalism. I diagnose the scatter problem and argue that it does not provide a reason for externalism. The scatter problem is significant and highlights a fundamental disagreement bet ween internalist and externalist theories of justification. The foundational divergence, I argue, is whether to formulate the most basic epistemic principles with intentional concepts or concepts that occur in the natural sciences. It may be thought that formulating a basic epistemic principle with intentional concepts gives rise to the scatter problem. One of my aims is to argue that this is mistaken. Another aim is to suggest that the most basic epistemic principles should be formulated using intentional concepts.

Formula and Comparison: Against the Uniqueness of Art (II-H)
Henry J. Pratt (Bucknell University)
Proponents of the claim that artworks are, by nature, immune to evaluative comparison tend to pay special attention to formulae. They argue that formulaic creation and evaluation of artworks is impossible, that artworks can only be made and judged as unique objects, and that this precludes comparison. Some artworks, notably those made by Komar and Melamid, seem to play into this argument. However, I suggest that more plausible interpretations of these artworks lead to the opposite conclusion. Surprisingly, formulaic techniques can have an important role to play in artistic practices, and hence cannot be used to inveigh against art’s comparability.

Lange on Stability (I-F)
Kenneth A. Presting (University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill)
A recent paper by Marc Lange, “Laws and Their Stability” (Synthèse 2005, v. 144 pp. 415-432), brings into sharp relief the complexities which can arise from taking human language and intuition as a source of information about metaphysics. Lange presents an interesting thesis—that certain sets, such as the logical or physical necessities, may be identified as stable by testing the logical relations between the sentences in the set, as compared to the sentences excluded from the set, using certain counterfactual conditionals.
I will argue that Lange’s definition of stability is circular, despite some strenuous work on his part to avoid that problem. Along the way, I will show that the acceptance and correctness of counterfactuals in several fields has more to do with our human need to discuss possibilities we need not (or cannot) fully describe than with the laws that necessarily govern our practical lives.

Epistemic Circularity Squared? Skepticism about Common Sense (III-I)
Baron Reed (Northern Illinois University)
Epistemic circularity occurs when a subject forms the belief that a faculty F is reliable through the use of F. Although this is often thought to be vicious, externalist theories generally don’t rule it out. For some philosophers, this is reason to reject externalism. However, Michael Bergmann defends externalism by drawing on the tradition of common sense in two ways. First, he concedes that epistemically circular beliefs cannot answer a subject’s doubts about her cognitive faculties. But, he argues, subjects usually don’t have such doubts, so epistemically circular beliefs are rarely called upon to play this role. Second, following Thomas Reid, Bergmann argues that we have noninferential, though epistemically circular, knowledge that our faculties are reliable. I argue, however, that Bergmann’s view is undermined by doubts a subject should have and that there is no plausible explanation for how we can have noninferential knowledge that our faculties are reliable.

Assertion and its Constitutive Norms (V-F)
Michael A. Rescorla (University of California–Santa Barbara)
William Alston, John Searle, Timothy Williamson, and many other philosophers advocate the restrictive model of assertion, according to which certain constitutive assertoric norms restrict what propositions one may assert. I advocate the dialectical model of assertion, which treats assertion as constituted by the dialectical obligations one undertakes in asserting a proposition. On my view, constitutive norms of assertion constrain how one must react when a fellow conversationalist challenges one’s assertion, but they do not constrain what one should assert in the first place. I argue that various linguistic phenomena commonly taken to support the restrictive model actually support the dialectical model.

Kant, Free Harmony, and Aesthetic Ideas (II-H)
Kenneth F. Rogerson (Florida International University)
I want to consider a particularly troublesome problem internal to Kant’s theory of beauty. In the “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment” Kant argues that an object is beautiful if and only if it is able to give us pleasure, the source of which is a mental state similar to cognition called the “free harmony of the imagination and the understanding.” The problem for Kant scholars is how to make sense of a harmony between the faculty of sense perception (the imagination) and the faculty of rules for organization of those perceptions (the understanding) which is nonetheless “free” of any conceptual rule ordering. I argue that Kant’s doctrine of aesthetic ideas solve this problem.

Kitcher and the Obsessive Unifier (IV-G)
Jeffrey Roland (Louisiana State University)
According to Philip Kitcher’s account of scientific progress, one of the two basic ways science progresses is explanatorily—by increasing unifying power. A natural worry about this view is that too enthusiastically seeking unification will lead us to impose structure where there is none, thus yielding a less accurate rather than more accurate picture of the world. Kitcher has addressed this worry under the heading obsessive unifier. In this paper, I argue that his response to the obsessive unifier worry is unsatisfactory. I further suggest that the worry can be answered by adopting a causal realism more robust than Kitcher is in a position to accept.

Ambiguity Beyond Number (V-F)
Paul Saka (University of Houston)
The recent republication of Brendan Gillon’s work on ambiguity (its re-republication, actually), following the outline sketched by Davidson and Harman, continues to promote dubious views about ambiguity: that all ambiguity is either structural or lexical; that structural ambiguity can be represented by means of brackets; that lexical ambiguity can be represented by subscripts; and that ambiguity poses no principled difficulties for semantic theory in general, or for Davidsonian semantics in particular. I argue, first, that Gillon’s subscripts do not succeed in treating lexical ambiguity, they only label or defer the problem. Second, there are other kinds of ambiguity that subscripts do not even purport to treat, including polysemy, figurative language, speech-act ambiguity, and indexicality and vagueness. (Indexicality and vagueness, contrary to usual classifications, must count as varieties of ambiguity according to truth-conditional semantics, or so I argue.)

Moral Worth and Common Sense: Kant’s Use of Example (II-G)
Cynthia A. Schossberger (Southern Illinois University–Edwardsville)
The aim of this essay is two-fold: in the first part I argue that, contrary to popular interpretation, Kant does not—indeed, cannot—intend to give an example of moral worth at all in Groundwork I; and in the second part I argue that the role of common sense, although not much commented upon, is central to Kant’s moral philosophy. In the remainder of the text I examine specific examples and try to make sense of Kant’s claim that common sense understanding of morality can suffice for producing sound moral judgments. I close by noting that there is a connection between Kant’s early views about common sense and example and his later introduction (in the third Critique) of judgment as a faculty for moral decision-making.

Can the Mere Passage of Time Justify a Belief? A Defense of Memory Foundationalism (I-I)
Robert W. Schroer (Arkansas State University)
According to memory foundationalism, seeming to remember that P is prima facie justification for believing that P. There is a common objection to this theory: If I previously believed that P without justification, and then later seem to remember that P, it appears that the mere passage of time has somehow allowed me to acquire justification for a previously unjustified belief. Indeed, this holds true even if I remember that my previous belief that P was not justified!
In this paper, I explore and respond to this objection. In doing so, I recast memory foundationalism: Instead of maintaining that seeming to remember that P is prima facie justification for believing that P, I maintain that it is prima facie justification for believing that in the past I believed that P with justification. This, in turn, gives the memory foundationalist the resources necessary to properly handle the aforementioned objection.

Consumer Choice and Moral Responsibility (I-J)
David Schwartz (Randolph Macon Woman’s College)
While much has been written under the rubric of business ethics, this work has focused mostly on the ethical practices of corporations and other collective entities. While the emphasis on corporate responsibility is understandable, it has left unexamined a source of significant ethical interest—the moral responsibilities of consumers. This essay offers some rudimentary observations and analyses regarding consumer responsibility and the ethics of consumer choice. It surveys several ways consumer products can raise ethical concerns, and it presents three normative views concerning the consumer’s relation to these moral concerns. With this background in place, the paper then focuses critically on one of the three normative views, namely that the act of purchasing a product can render a consumer complicit in—and hence morally culpable for—­wrongdoing associated with that product.

Kant’s Later Argument for a Duty of Beneficience (II-G)
Melissa Seymour (Indiana University–Bloomington)
Kant offers at least three nonequivalent derivations for a duty of beneficence. Two of these derivations are found in the Groundwork and correspond to the first and second formulations of the categorical imperative, the Formula of Universal Law and the Formula of Humanity. While most readers of Kant are familiar with these arguments, far less attention has been paid to a third argument offered by Kant in his later writings (The Critique of Practical Reason and the Doctrine of Virtue). My aim in this paper is to demonstrate that only this later argument is capable of sustaining a duty of beneficence understood as a duty to make the happiness of others one’s end. To this end I begin by examining the deficiencies of Kant’s two Groundwork arguments and then consider how Kant’s later argument is able to succeed where his earlier accounts failed.

A Neglected Premise in Aristotle’s Argument for the Unity of the Virtues (V-G)
Kevin Sharpe (Purdue University)
Aristotle’s argument for the unity of the virtues in Book VI of the Nicomachean Ethics relies on the following two premises: (i) the instantiation of any virtue requires the possession of wisdom and (ii) wisdom requires the instantiation of every virtue. While (i) has received extensive attention, (ii) is generally left undeveloped by commentators. The aim of this paper is to offer an original interpretation of Aristotle’s argument for (ii). I argue that Aristotle’s argument relies on his account of deliberation and in particular his conception of boulêsis, or rational wish. I show how Aristotle employs wish within hin moral psychology to connect the agent’s moral character with the intellectual process of deliberation in such a way that only the morally virtuous can be wise.

On the Conceivability of an Omniscient Interpreter (IV-I)
Mark Silcox (University of Central Oklahoma)
This paper presents a re-examination of the “omniscient interpreter” argument against global skepticism that Donald Davidson first published in the 1970s, only to repudiate it some twenty years later. I argue that the argument’s persuasiveness has been largely underestimated. I defend it against the charge made by Richard Fumerton and Richard Foley that Davidson assumes the actual existence of an omniscient interpreter. I also criticize Bruce Vermazen’s proposal that some of Davidson’s more general philosophical commitments are incompatible with the very conceivability of an omniscient being. I suggest that if the argument does have a flaw, it is only that the methodology of belief attribution Davidson endorses makes it difficult to understand how an omniscient being could engage in the interpretation of human speech and thought.

Sophisticated Substantivalism and Spacetime Symmetries (III-G)
Bradford Skow (University of Massachusetts–Amherst)
Substantivalists believe in space and time. Sophisticated substantivalists agree but reject the existence of possibilities that differ merely non-qualitatively. This allows them to block modal arguments against substantivalism that turn on substantivalism’s commitment to such possibilities. I argue that sophisticated substantivalism is untenable, because it is incompatible with the standard way of thinking about the relationship between time-reversal invariance and the direction of time. We think that if (1) a theory is time-reversal invariant— if, according to that theory, anything that can happen forward can happen backward—then (2) there is no intrinsic difference (according to that theory) between the future and the past. But (1) and (2) entail the existence of possibilities that differ merely non-qualitatively. So they are incompatible with sophisticated substantivalism.

The Coherence of Rationalism (III-I)
Andrew D. Spear (University at Buffalo)
Albert Casullo has provided a compelling analysis of three major arguments against empiricism: the “generality argument,” the “meta-reasons argument,” and the “revisability argument.” Casullo maintains that each of these arguments has an alternative formulation that is equally effective against rationalism, leaving rationalism and empiricism stalemated. I argue that the central element in Casullo’s case for a stalemate is the generality argument. The meta-reasons and revisability arguments are not compelling against rationalism unless the generality argument is. It is not. The generality argument affects rationalism only if an account of general mental content is impossible, and this has not been established. Consequently, the other two arguments are not compelling against rationalism. Further, the generality argument is a principled objection to empiricism. In light of this, these arguments retain their original force against empiricism. There is no stalemate.

Nature, Freedom, and Sublime Feeling in Kant’s Critique of Judgment (II-H)
Molly Sturdevant (DePaul University)
This essay is a contribution to the philosophical study of the sublime, taking for its subject matter Kant’s account of sublime feeling as occasioned by nature in the Critique of Judgment.1 To focus only on sublime feeling aroused by nature is a focus which Kant himself does not always appear to estimate highly. Adorno has observed similar doubt historically cast over the choice of nature rather than art in aesthetic judgment. Despite Kant’s apparently threadbare recommendation of the sublime as subject matter, and conscious of Adorno’s observations of a historical prejudice against nature in aesthetic judgment, this paper is a sustained investigation of what Kant means by “sublime feeling,” with a view towards showing its significance for aesthetic judgment in Kant’s philosophy in general, and finally towards proposing a Kantian response to the historical prejudice observed by Adorno.
1Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, (1790), Werner S. Pluhar, trans.: Hackett Pub. Co., 1987.

Why Pragmatists Must Be Perfectionists (IV-J)
Robert Talisse (Vanderbilt University)
The author sketches a version of deliberative democracy based in a Peircean pragmatist epistemology and then argues that deliberative democracy so construed must adopt a stance called epistemic perfectionism. Like all perfectionisms, epistemic perfectionism is at odds with neutralist varieties of liberalism. So, the conclusion is that if the pragmatist conception of deliberative democracy is correct, then proper democracy cannot be liberal.

The Third Man, Resemblance Regress, and Parmenides: A New Interpretation (III-H)
Charlie Tanksley (University of Virginia)
The Third Man Argument has drawn the lion’s share of the attention paid the Parmenides since Vlastos’s seminal paper; this has led to a tendency to misread and misrepresent the second regress argument—the Resemblance Regress. The second regress builds on the idea that forms are paradigms in order to show a staggering conclusion: that particulars cannot be like forms or vice versa. Here I offer a new interpretation of the argument that draws on what comes both before and after it in the dialogue. This new interpretation stands apart from extant interpretations in its ability to explain how Socrates might have thought suggesting that forms are paradigms would avoid the regress of the TMA and in its emphasis on the Resemblance Regress as an integral part of a build up to the final argument of the first section of the Parmenides.

Indirect Consequentialism, Suboptimality, and Friendship (III-K)
Matthew A. Tedesco (Beloit College)
One familiar challenge to consequentialism is that it leads to alienation in our friendships. Indirect consequentialism attempts to answer this challenge by understanding consequentialism as a criterion of rightness rather than as a decision-making procedure. Elinor Mason’s defense of the theory focuses on the optimality of the pro-friendship disposition as the proper target of consequentialist evaluation, rather than the optimality of any particular friendship. Robert F. Card has charged that this reading underscores a fatal flaw in indirect consequentialism—its inability to reject seriously problematic friendships for their suboptimality. I argue that Card’s criticism, considered more carefully, not only fails to undermine Railton’s and Mason’s indirect consequentialism, but in fact provides considerations that both help us to better understand the theory, and ultimately weigh in favor of it over Card’s own brand of sophisticated consequentialism.

Sense and Sensibility (III-K)
Mariam Thalos (University of Utah)
Chrisoula Andreou (University of Utah)
We argue that having and acting on good impulses is an essential component of practical wisdom. If our reasoning is correct, then both of the following views are unacceptable: the Kantian view that practical reason is not expressed if one is “impelled into action” because acting well (and not simply from luck, but from practical wisdom) involves acting from self-given laws of action; and the Humean view that one’s impulses—assuming they do not spring from reasoning—are not subject to rational evaluation at all (though they may be put aside if they conflict with one’s considered desires).

Emergent Substance (III-G)
Patrick Toner (University of Virginia)
I present a theory of substance that allows me to entirely avoid a number of otherwise pressing philosophical difficulties; namely, the Problem of Material Constitution, the Problem of the Many, the Overdetermination Argument, the Vagueness Argument for Unrestricted Composition, the Unity of Consciousness Argument, and the Problem of Individuation. People say some very striking things in response to these problems. I will solve all of them by saying only one striking thing. I am unaware of any other ontological view that can solve all of them in one fell swoop. Further, I will show that even that one striking thing is not really difficult to believe. It also has a most impressive pedigree, since it is derived from the work of St. Thomas Aquinas.

The Role of Certainty (I-I)
Timm Triplett (University of New Hampshire)
I argue that both foundationalists and their critics have misunderstood the proper role epistemically certain beliefs play in a person’s epistemic system. All sides in this debate have assumed that, if there are any epistemically certain contingent propositions in one’s belief system, their role must be to serve as the foundational or basic propositions which ultimately provide the justification for all other justified empirical beliefs. I propose an alternative account according to which epistemically certain beliefs are not basic, but they help explain how nonconceptual sensory contents that are basic can bridge the divide between the nonconceptual and the conceptual, and thereby provide justification for our beliefs. This account removes an important difficulty faced by strong versions of foundationalism.

Agent Causation and the Alleged Impossibility of Rational Free Action (II-I)
Chris Tucker (Purdue University)
Galen Strawson has claimed that “the impossibility of free will and ultimate moral responsibility can be proved with complete certainty.” Strawson, I take it, thinks that this conclusion can be established by one argument which he has developed. In this argument, he claims that rational free actions would require an infinite regress of rational choices, which is, of course, impossible for human beings. In my paper, I argue that agent causation theorists need not be worried by Strawson’s argument. For argument causation theorists are able to deny a key principle which drives the regress. Oversimplifying things a bit, the principle states that if one is responsible for her rational actions, then she was antecedently responsible for the reasons on which she acted.

A Reductionist Account of Aristotelian Powers to Cause Change (V-G)
Thomas M. Tuozzo (University of Kansas)
The question of whether in Aristotle’s view the potentials involved in change are irreducible, or whether they admit of a more fundamental metaphysical characterization that makes no reference to change, has been the subject of debate. But this debate has generally concerned the potential to undergo change; the reducibility question has not been discussed with reference to the equally important potential to cause change. My purpose here is to complete the reductionist interpretation of Aristotle’s analysis of change by defending a reductionist account of Aristotelian potentials to cause change. The interpretation I offer maintains that, at the fundamental metaphysical level, there is, in fact, nothing “potential” about potentials to cause change. They are as actual as they can be, and do not increase in actuality with they bring about change.

Disconnecting Intersubjectivity and Ethics (II-K)
David T. Vessey (University of Chicago)
Axel Honneth has criticized Hans-Georg Gadamer’s account of intersubjectivity as failing to provide the critical resources necessary for a satisfactory ethical theory. According to Honneth, Gadamer inherits from Martin Heidegger the view that reflection can only distort and never inform authentic relations to others and, as a result, he fails to appreciate the constructive role of a third or generalized other. I argue that Honneth has misinterpreted Gadamer, treating a discussion of hermeneutic experience as an account of intersubjectivity when in fact Gadamer explicitly rejects I-Thou accounts of intersubjectivity. In general, though, Honneth makes the common mistake of arguing that the conceptual resources of one’s ethical theory is limited by the conceptual resources provided by one’s theory of intersubjectivity, a mistake Gadamer does not make.

On State Self-Defense and Guantanamo Bay (V-I)
Steven E. Viner (Washington University in St. Louis)
In this paper, I contend that the current policy of indefinitely imprisoning “enemy combatants” in detention facilities like those at Guantanamo Bay cannot be morally justified according to a right of state self-defense. I first argue that current international laws directly pertaining to state self-defense, i.e., immediacy, necessity, and proportionality, need to be supplemented with what I term the “accountability limitation.” The accountability limitation requires states to take the best measures available to ensure that innocent persons or non-threats are not directly targeted by any defensive use of force. The accountability limitation is a necessary addition to international law because any right of state self-defense would not justify the direct targeting of persons who are not threats or not engaged in an attack. I then argue that the current policy of indefinite imprisonment fails to meet the accountability limitation.

I Ought, Therefore I Can (V-J)
Peter B. M. Vranas (Iowa State University)
I defend the following version of the ought-implies-can principle (OIC): by virtue of conceptual necessity, an agent at a given time has an (objective, pro tanto) obligation to do only what that agent at that time has the ability and opportunity to do. In short, obligations correspond to ability plus opportunity. My argument has three premises: (1) obligations correspond to reasons for action; (2) reasons for action correspond to potential actions; (3) potential actions correspond to ability plus opportunity. In the bulk of the paper I address two objections to OIC based on putative counterexamples.

Anger, Pain, and Forgiveness (I-H)
Andrea Westlund (University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee)
Recent philosophical literature on forgiveness has, with a few exceptions, converged on the view that to forgive is to overcome resentment for moral reasons. Running through much of this literature is a largely unexamined presumption about the emotional texture of forgiveness itself: it is typically taken for granted that overcoming (that is, eliminating) resentment and/or other negative emotions is a necessary condition for genuine forgiveness. The view that forgiveness requires overcoming resentment has sometimes been mistakenly attributed to Joseph Butler. Drawing on Butler’s own view, along with Robin Dillon’s recent work on self-forgiveness, I argue that forgiveness does not in fact require overcoming anger at the wrongdoer, at least not in all its forms. To forgive is to gain control over one’s negative emotions, accepting them as now part of one’s life but reinterpreting them as compatible with genuine goodwill toward the wrongdoer.

Kant’s Transcendental Proofs of Mental Content Externalism (IV-H)
Kenneth R. Westphal (University of East Anglia)
The Critique of Pure Reason provides two genuinely transcendental proofs for (not “from”) mental content externalism. “Mental content externalism” is the thesis that various putatively “mental” contents can be had or can be identified only due to features of our environment. Proving this thesis transcendentally provides powerful support for realism sans phrase about the objects of human knowledge. One proof concerns the transcendental affinity of the sensory manifold (§2); the other concerns causal relations (§§3, 4). Both provide proofs for realism sans phrase regarding objects and events in our environs (§5).

Inter-Group Forgiveness in Multicultural Democracies: Self-Respect and Self-Esteem as Evaluative Criteria (III-J)
Kai Chong Wong (Washington University in St. Louis)
Communities frequently disagree about when forgiving is acceptable. Some victimized communities refuse to forgive even after the offending communities have made ample amends, whereas others forgive without demanding the wrongdoers to change their ways. These different understandings of forgiveness are attributed to communities’ different historical, cultural, or religious backgrounds. But if forgiveness depends only on a community’s own view, intergroup forgiveness would not be productive due to the absence of overarching evaluative criteria.
In this paper, I maintain that self-respect and self-esteem, in both individual and collective senses, provide the evaluative criteria for assessing inter-group forgiveness in multicultural democracies. Specifically, I discuss the social and political bases of these values and their grounding in basic democratic institutions. I argue that victimized communities can determine whether to forgive their perpetrators on the basis of whether the latter are committed to support the social and political bases of their self-respect and self-esteem.

How To Do Things with Reasons (II-I)
Wayne Wu (University of California–Berkeley/Carnegie Mellon University)
The philosophy and moral psychology of rational action have often been guided by two claims argued for by Donald Davidson: (A) reason-explanation of action is a species of causal explanation and (B) reasons are causes. I argue against these claims, dealing briefly with (B) but focusing on (A). By closely examining how explanations of action work, specifically, how we pose and answer questions about agent’s and their actions, I show that these questions often do not behave like typical questions requesting causal-explanation. I conclude that it is doubtful whether reason-explanations are causal and outline an alternative conception of how we do things with reasons in explaining action: we use our own capacities for practical reasoning to provide a non-causal justification of why people act.

Will, Intellect, and Cartesian Virtue (I-G)
Andrew D. Youpa (Southern Illinois University–Carbondale)
Descartes appears to maintain that the will is free in so far as the intellect is clear and distinct. The less clear and distinct the intellect is, the less freedom the will possesses. Conversely, the clearer the intellect, the greater the will’s freedom. Thus the will, it seems, is in an important sense subordinate to the intellect. Yet, Descartes also maintains that virtue involves resolution. Without resolution, there is nothing to prevent an individual from undertaking what he does not regard as the best alternative. Thus the intellect appears to be subordinate to the will. In this paper I attempt to reconcile these seemingly conflicting views. First, I briefly present a moderate intellectualist reading of Cartesian freedom. Second, I argue that his theory of will is best understood as involving higher and lower orders of motivation. Cartesian virtue, I conclude, is a higher-order motivational disposition allied with reason.