Agential Systems and Causal Deviance (VIII-G)
Jesús Aguilar, Rochester Institute of Technology
A plausible strategy to defend the Causal Theory of Action from deviant causal chains is grounded on the proposal that an intentional bodily movement must be sensitive to the content of the mental state that causes it. This strategy is directly challenged by causally deviant cases where bodily movements are produced through the intervention of a second agent. In this essay I criticize John Bishop’s influential answer to this challenge. In particular, I criticize Bishop’s alleged “Final Breakthrough” concerning the necessary and sufficient conditions for an intentional action which is a central part of his answer to causal deviance.

Democratic Deliberation, Public Reason, and Environmental Politics (IX-G)
Scott Aikin, Vanderbilt University
The activity of democratic deliberation is governed by the norm of public reason—namely, that reasons justifying public policy must both be pursuant of shared goods and be shareable by all reasonable discussants. Environmental policies based on controversial theories of value, as a consequence, are in danger of breaking the rule that would legitimate their enforcement.

Reliance in Shared Intention (VIII-G)
Facundo Martin Alonso, Stanford University
Bratman (1999a) and Tuomela and Miller (1988) propose that we regard the intentions of individuals in shared intention as intentions in favor of the joint activity. In this paper I explore what cognitive attitudes an individual is required to have in order for him to intend the joint activity in the way involved in shared intention. I argue that both Bratman and Tuomela and Miller are right in claiming that the content of these cognitive attitudes must include the other participants’ intentions in favor of the joint activity (Bratman) and their respective actions (Tuomela and Miller). However, I claim that these authors are wrong in thinking that these cognitive attitudes need to be beliefs. I argue that an individual’s reliance on the other participant’s relevant intentions and actions provides sufficient epistemic elements, even in the absence of belief, for him to intend the joint activity.

Why Fitness Is Not a Propensity (IV-G)
Andre Ariew, University of Missouri–Columbia
Zachary J. Ernst, University of Missouri–Columbia
Recently advocates of the propensity interpretation of fitness have turned critics. To accommodate examples from the population genetics literature they conclude that fitness is better defined more broadly as a family of propensities rather than the propensity to contribute descendants to some n generation. We argue that the propensity theorists have misunderstood the deeper ramifications of the examples they cite: these examples demonstrate why there are factors outside of propensities that determine type fitness.

On Idiom, Ambiguity, and What Is Said (XII-E)
Madeleine Arseneault, University of Wisconsin–Madison
There are a host of expressions whose meaningfulness goes beyond their compositionally derived ordinary meaning. Unlike metaphor, idiomatic phrases have received considerably little attention from philosophers of language. Presumably this is because idiomatic phrases are accommodated into the lexicon of the language and are treated as a limit of, while not a challenge to, semantic compositionality. I reexamine idiomatic phrases and how they inform the concepts of ambiguity and saying. I draw out a surprising consequence of the standard view of idiom. I argue that the standard view is committed to holding that it is unintelligible to describe idioms as cases of saying one thing but meaning something else by it. Though this might not constitute a refutation of the standard view, I think it warrants a reexamination of idiomaticity.

The Zero-One Rule (IX-J)
H. E. Baber, University of San Diego
Understanding well being in terms of preference-satisfaction makes interpersonal comparisons of well being problematic. Preferences are usually represented by means of an ordinal utility function, which does not provide any account of how much well being the satisfaction of a given preference provides or allow for interpersonal comparisons. We can contrive a bounded cardinal representation of people’s preferences, by assigning 1 to the top of each individual’s utility function and 0 to the bottom, which allows for interpersonal comparisons of utility. Daniel Hausman and others, however, suggest that this Zero-One rule produces results that are counterintuitive and incompatible with some of our firmest moral convictions. I argue that an informed preference account of well being fortified with the Zero-One rule is neither counterintuitive nor inconsistent with our moral convictions. Individuals at the same level of their personal preference rankings, however greedy or modest they are, are equally well off.

Employment Freedom (VII-J)
Anne Baril, University of Arizona
A person’s employment so permeates the rest of her life that if she doesn’t have a real choice about her employment, she can’t properly be said to have a real choice about the way she lives her life. Effective freedom— the actual ability to make real, substantial decisions about the direction of one’s life—requires effective freedom with respect to one’s choice of employment (“work freedom”). I propose that work freedom is not merely a matter of acceptable alternatives, but also of the number and diversity of choices one has about what kinds of effective freedom one will have as a result of one’s employment. Number and diversity of such choices is not the whole story, however; some choices matter more than others. Finally, which kinds of choices make a difference to one’s

Hume, Distinctions of Reason, and Differential Resemblance (IV-E)
Donald L.M. Baxter, University of Connecticut
In explaining the distinction of reason, Hume’s main concern is to resolve a tension with his principle that “all ideas, which are different, are separable.” However, a deeper problem arises. Hume holds that the same thing, even a simple, uncomposed, thing, can resemble something in one respect and differ from it in another. Additionally, Hume thinks that the respects of resemblance are numerically identical with the thing itself. Unfortunately, it follows that in the identical respect of resemblance, the same thing does and does not resemble something else. Differential resemblance yields a contradiction. The contradiction undermines not only his account of distinctions of reason, but also his account of abstract ideas, and ultimately the Empiricist program of deriving all ideas from inner and outer sense.

Kant’s Critique of Leibniz on the Distincition between Sensible and Intellectual Representations (V-I)
Steven M. Bayne, Fairfield University
Kant believed Leibniz failed to realize there is a distinction in kind between intellectual and sensible representations. Kant believed Leibniz thought the difference between concepts and sensible intuitions was a only a difference of degree not type—that is, concepts and sense perceptions turn out to be the same type of mental representation and they only differ from each other in terms of their relative distinctness. Concepts possess this distinctness, while sense perceptions do not. Kant believed that Leibniz held sense perceptions to be nothing but sets of confused concepts. I argue that although this interpretation seems initially plausible, the textual evidence for it is at best inconclusive. I then argue that there are clear texts in which Leibniz does seem to draw a distinction in kind between sensible and intellectual representations. Finally, I argue that these passages cannot consistently be reinterpreted as being consistent with the Kantian interpretation of Leibniz.

Know-how and Concept Possession (III-H)
John T. Bengson, University of Texas–Austin
Marc Moffett, University of Wyoming
The relation between know-how and ability is rather puzzling: Why do some know-how attributions entail ability attributions while others do not? Our answer is that know-how attributions that entail ability attributions ascribe to the subject the possession of ability-based concepts. Although the mere possession conditions for such concepts may be relatively cheap, the sort of reasonable mastery of these concepts that is presupposed by know-how attributions requires that the subject possess certain abilities. We end by showing how considerations such as these suggest that the key to an adequate philosophical theory of the nature of know-how is not the relation between know-how and ability, but the connection between know-how and concept possession.

Sibley and Defeasible Reasons: Holism about Reasons in Aesthetic Evaluations (III-E)
Anna Bergqvist, University of Reading
In this paper, I outline a new reading of Sibley’s conception of prima facie reasons in aesthetic evaluations, which is outlined in his article “General Criteria and Reasons in Aesthetics.” Sibley seems to think that there are general prima facie aesthetic reasons, for he maintains that there are general features or criteria whose aesthetic value-polarity is inherently positive or negative when taken in isolation from other features with which they may interact. So there is some excuse for approaching Sibley’s position in terms of Rossian intuitionism. Nevertheless, I shall argue that Sibley’s overall discussion of aesthetic reasoning and aesthetic evaluation is more akin to a version of holism that figures in Jonathan Dancy’s recent defence of moderate particularism, which employs the notion of a default reason instead of that of a prima facie reason. In particular, it is my aim to show that Sibley would do better to abandon the notion of inherent or prima facie aesthetic polarity for features that may be possessed by artworks (and hence to aesthetic evaluations), since this conception is at odds with his discussion of the way the actual aesthetic polarity of such features is always contextually determined.

Relational Autonomy and Human Capabilities (V-G)
Suze Berkhout, University of British Columbia
The growing interest in alternative conceptions of autonomy within philosophy in general, and medical ethics in particular, reflects many of the reasons given for rejecting the individualistic, decision-focused account of autonomy. But outside of the demand for attention to background social and material conditions, there is little suggestion of exactly how to make these assessments meaningful when dealing with individual patients within a medical context. Here I argue that Nussbaum’s capability approach is able to operationalize a general conception of relational autonomy to the extent that would be necessary for its practical use within medicine. Focusing on capabilities better reflects the aims and objectives of medical practice and medical ethics, while providing a means of establishing where interventions and policy might make an impact on the health and well being of individuals and the communities within which they live.

Justice as a Self-regarding Virtue (XIII-G)
Paul Bloomfield, University of Connecticut
The benefit of being a just person has long appeared inscrutable at best. Assuming that self-respect is a benefit to a person, an argument is given for the conclusion that without the virtue of justice a person cannot have self-respect. The argument proceeds by an investigation of the role of supervenience in justice (understanding supervenience here as treating like cases alike), the need for fair judgment in order to possess self-knowledge, and the need for the latter for self-respect.

The Normativity of Rationality (XIII-F)
Jason M. Bridges, University of Chicago
There is a familiar conception of rationality according to which rationality is wholly a matter of internal consistency—of how well a person’s propositional attitudes hold together, rather than of how well they track the actual reasons for and against them. Is rationality, in this sense, normative? We folk seem to think so. Accusing someone of irrationality, in the sense in question, is a criticism, and it appears to carry the implication that the person ought to change her attitudes so as to eliminate the irrationality. But difficulties arise when we try to get a clear philosophical picture of how normative principles of “subjective” rationality are supposed to operate. In this talk, I will critique two recent accounts of the normativity of subjective rationality, due to John Broome and Niko Kolodny, and propose an alternative. My primary positive suggestion is that the key to making sense of norms of rationality is to see that they govern only a special kind of conduct on our part: what we might call rational self-management.

Sea Battle Semantics (VII-J)
Berit Brogaard, University of Missouri–Saint Louis
The assumption that the future is open makes well known problems for traditional semantics. We have a strong intuition to the effect that today’s occurrence of the sentence, “there will be a sea battle tomorrow,” while truth-valueless today, will have a determinate truth-value by tomorrow night. Yet given traditional semantics, sentences that are truth-valueless now cannot later “become” true. Relativistic semantics supposedly does a better job accommodating our intuitions about future contingents than does non-relativistic semantics. I will argue, however, that our intuitions about future contingents cannot by themselves motivate such a paradigm shift, for, initial appearances to the contrary, standard non-relativistic semantics (plus an account of truth-value gaps) can accommodate both of our intuitions about future contingents.

The Dissolution of a Dilemma: Why Darwinian Considerations Don’t Confront Moral Realism with Hard Choices (IX-K)
Kevin Brosnan, University of California–Santa Cruz
What are the implications, if any, for the epistemic status of our moral beliefs, if they were formed by a process that is independent of presumptive moral facts? On Street’s (2006) view, the implication is that our moral beliefs are very probably false, while on Joyce’s (2006), the implication is that they are unjustified. Street claims (albeit cautiously) that the content of our moral beliefs was produced by natural selection, and Joyce, that natural selection is the best explanation for our capacity to form beliefs about what is right and wrong. They agree that evolution by natural selection is a process that operates independently of presumptive moral facts. I will argue (a) that this is not always the case, and (b) that even it it were, it implies neither that our moral beliefs are probably false nor that they are unjustified.

What Kant Means by “Objective Reality” and Its Bearing on the Transcendental Deductions (V-I)
Aaron Bunch, Washington State University
Contrary to a pervasive and natural view (held by Allison, Beck, and others), I argue that in Kant’s works the “objective reality” of a concept denotes the reality of the concept itself and does not require the actuality of its corresponding object. A “real” concept, on my view, is one that has a possible object, since a “concept” without any possible application would be no concept at all, but only a meaningless word, a chimera, or a “figment of the brain” (to use some of Kant’s favorite language). I argue that the natural view, which requires the instantiation of the concept for its objective reality, cannot make sense of Kant’s deductions and makes the very project of transcendental critique incoherent. My view, however, makes sense of Kant’s deductions and shows how the a priori legitimation of knowledge claims is possible.

Is Ugliness a Pure Aesthetic Category in Kant’s Theory of Taste? (VII-H)
Joseph Cannon, Northwestern University
A central claim in Henry Allison’s Kant’s Theory of Taste is that “ugliness” is for Kant a pure aesthetic category. In this paper I will argue that this is incorrect. A pure judgment of taste pronounces something beautiful or not-beautiful. Ugliness is not a pure aesthetic category—judgments of which for Kant must be disinterested—but a category that is intrinsically interested. Thus, judgments that declare something ugly cannot be pure aesthetic judgments. For Kant, when we claim that an object is ugly, we make an aesthetic claim bound up with either a moral claim or a prudential claim. I show that one does not find a pure aesthetic account of ugliness in Kant’s text, and additionally show that the attempt to introduce one produces intractable problems for the requirement that judgments of taste be disinterested.

Modality, Individuation, and the Ontology of Art (IX-H)
Ben Caplan, Ohio State University
Carl Matheson, University of Manitoba
David Davies uses the work-relativity of modality (according to which different works composed at the same time are not equally modally flexible with respect to musico-historical context) to argue for The Performance Theory (according to which a musical work is a performance) and against The Contextualized Product Theory (according to which a musical work is a product that is generated by a performance and that is individuated in part by the musico-historical context in which it is produced). We argue that The Contextualized Product Theory can accommodate the work-relativity of modality if The Performance Theory can.

The Simple View of Collective Agency (VIII-G)
Sara Rachel Chant, University of Missouri–Columbia
In this paper, I argue that at least some collectives possess a kind of collective agency that is on a par with the richest form of human agency. I argue for this conclusion by considering the implications of two straightforward methodological principles. The first is that whatever account of collective agency we consider, it ought to be in analogy to existing accounts of individual agency. The second is that the ability to perform actions should be considered the most important mark of agency.

Descartes on Consciousness and Forms of Thought (VI-I)
David L. Clemenson, University of St. Thomas–Minnesota
Descartes’s view of thoughts as self-perceptions implies that all thoughts are ideas; this seems at first to contradict his claim (Third Meditation, AT VII 37) that many thoughts are not ideas, strictly speaking. However, closer analysis reveals not only that there is no contradiction here, but that the self-perception involved in pure perceptions (“ideas” in the strict sense of AT VII 37) is radically confused: all such perceptions, no matter how distinctly they may exhibit their proper objects, fail to exhibit themselves distinctly even as things (the case is different with “impure” perceptions such as volitions; here self-perception may be perfectly distinct). If sensory ideas of cold, heat, colors, etc. are pure self-perceptions (as the Fourth Replies, AT VII 233 would suggest) then the foregoing holds out hope for a clear and consistent explanation of the material falsity and radical confusion of sensory ideas in Cartesian theory.

Luck and Standard Libertarianism (IV-F)
E. J. Coffman, University of Notre Dame
“Standard Libertarianism” (SL) says that you act freely on a given occasion only if the past and laws of nature do not entail your acting as you do then. The so-called “Luck Argument” is one of the premier objections to SL. I here provide a reply to the Luck Argument that’s superior to ones prominent in the literature. Section 1 presents a common version of the Luck Argument, and highlights a challenge its proponents face. Section 2 identifies two desiderata of a reply to the Luck Argument, and uses them to reveal considerable shortcomings of prominent replies. Section 3 assesses the best extant version of the Luck Argument, one due to Alfred Mele. I present two replies to Mele’s argument, each of which meets Section 2’s desiderata. Section 4 evaluates another version of the Luck Argument, one involving an account of luck different from Mele’s. I argue that this version impugns nothing in SL’s neighborhood.

Reliability and Probability (XI-H)
Juan Comesaña, University of Wisconsin–Madison
It can often be heard in the hallways, and occasionally read in print, that a reliabilist theory of epistemic justification runs into trouble regarding fair lottery cases. My main aim in this paper is to argue that this is not so. Nevertheless, fair lottery cases do force us to pay close attention to the relation between reliability and probability.

Aristotle on Mathematical Existence (V-F)
Philip Corkum, University of Alberta
Both literalists and fictionalists deny the existence of a world of mathematical objects distinct from the empirical world. Literalists argue that mathematical objects simply exist in the empirical world; on this account, mathematical statements assert true beliefs about perceivable objects. Fictionalists, on the other hand, hold that mathematical objects do not exist at all; on this account, mathematical statements express merely fictional attitudes. Although these two positions are apparently quite opposed to one another, they nonetheless have been both ascribed to Aristotle. Indeed, Aristotle’s philosophy of mathematics exhibits some of the features characteristic of literalism and some of the features characteristic of fictionalism. However, Aristotle’s position also exhibits features interestingly different from both literalism and fictionalism. In this paper, I’ll discuss literalism and fictionalism, the ascription of literalism and fictionalism to Aristotle, and the points of agreement and disagreement among Aristotle, literalists, and fictionalists.

How Reliable Is That Monkey? (XI-H)
Stephen Crowley, Boise State University
Naturalism is currently a popular position within epistemology. Not all naturalisms however are equally naturalistic. I focus on an “ideal type” of naturalism (which I call Epistemology as Science, or EaS for short) that represents the empirical extreme in the continuum of naturalized epistemologies. Current work in the EaS framework standardly links EaS with a reliabilist approach to knowledge and justification. I argue that although this alliance is immune, by its own lights, to standard epistemic criticisms of reliabilism, serious challenges to its adequacy are raised by current work in comparative psychology on uncertainty monitoring in monkeys.

Better Brains, Better Selves? The Ethics of Neuroenhancements (V-G)
Richard Dees, University of Rochester
The idea of enhancing our abilities through medical means makes most people uncomfortable. People have a vague feeling that altering our brains messes with the core of our personalities and the core of ourselves. It changes who we are, and doing so seems wrong, even if the exact reasons for the unease are difficult to define. However, the lack of such a clear argument against them has led some to argue that we should permit their use on a general principle of allowing people to do what they want as long as they do not harm others. In this paper, I will suggest that most of the arguments against neuroenhancements fail, and the ones that do succeed—the arguments that such changes undermine our integrity and that they prevent us from living authentic lives—will condemn only a few of the uses that are proposed.
Anti-Berkeley (IV-E)

Georges Dicker, State University of New York–Brockport
I am not a Berkeleyan. This isn’t because I don’t appreciate the force of the good Bishop’s arguments against matter, for I think that many of them are highly effective against their targets. I also find Berkeley’s skeptical arguments, in sections 18-20 of the Principles of Human Knowledge, very powerful; though of course they can’t show that matter doesn’t exist, since it would be fallacious to argue that because we cannot know or be justified in believing that matter exists, therefore it does not exist. But putting these epistemological arguments to one side, I think that the targets of Berkeley’s arguments against matter fall into two classes: (1) demonstrably unsound arguments, and (2) arguments directed against views that no friend of matter needs to hold. This is too broad a thesis to defend in a 30-minute paper. So I ignore arguments that I believe fall into class (1); nor do I try to show that all of Berkeley’s remaining arguments against matter fall into class (2). But I support the hypothesis that they do, by reference to three key parts of Berkeley’s case against matter-his attacks on material substance/substratum, on representationalism, and on the distinction between primary and secondary qualities-leaving for other occasions the question of whether other Berkeleyan arguments against matter are amenable to a similar treatment.

Think Like a Character: Analyzing Arguments in Fictional Contexts (IX-H)
Nicholas Diehl, University of California–Davis
There are many philosophical puzzles associated with truth in fiction, among them the problem of how we are to make sense of arguments involving fictional truths. We commonly make inferences involving these propositions in the course of reading fiction and these inferences appear to be ordinary inferences, governed by ordinary logical rules. Yet it is clear from recent counterexamples that there can be significant problems with ordinary valid deductive argument forms when we attempt to apply them to fictional contexts, suggesting that arguments about fictions must be analyzed differently than their actual world counterparts. This paper explains the puzzle of arguments about fictions and provides a new analysis of the deductive arguments we make while reading fiction. I argue that arguments involving fictional truths only succeed when we recognize the standing prescription to think about these arguments as a character in the fiction would.

Construction Without Spatial Constraints: Locke on Geometrical Reasoning (XI-I)
Mary Domski, University of New Mexico
In a number of recent articles, Emily Carson (2002, 2005a, 2005b) has brought attention to what she takes to be a tension in Locke’s account of geometrical reasoning. On the one hand, Locke claims that our ideas of geometrical figures are simple modes that the mind creates by modifying the simple idea of space. On the other hand, Locke claims that we can have certain knowledge in mathematics because mathematical objects are ideal, that is, because they are products of the understanding. According to Carson, a clear tension in this general argument begins to emerge once we consider that our construction of geometrical figures is constrained by the general conditions of space. As a result of these constraints, the simple modes of space are not free creations of the understanding, and thus, not ideal in the sense Locke claims them to be. Consequently, the certainty of mathematical knowledge becomes problematic at best and untenable at worst. My goal in this paper is to offer a reply on Locke’s behalf. For while I agree with Carson that our creation of geometrical figures must be constrained by something, I do not agree that these constraints are tied to features of space we learn from experience. By appealing to Locke’s presentation of the simple idea of space in Book II of the Essay, I want to show that space, by his definition, cannot play a restrictive role on our constructions. I will thus suggest that any constraints must be “internal” to our constructions, i.e., such constraints must be tied to the power of the imagination. By embracing the imagination as that which determines which figures we can or cannot create, I will argue that Locke can preserve the ideality of geometrical figures on which he grounds the certainty of geometrical knowledge.

Connubium Rationis et Experientiae: Christian Wolff on the Relation Between Empirical and Rational Psychology (V-I)
Corey Dyck, Boston College
Rational psychology was first introduced among the topics of metaphysics by Christian Wolff; nevertheless, historians of philosophy borrow their conception of rational psychology not from Wolff but from Kant who subjects this science to critical scrutiny in the Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Accordingly, rational psychology is often identified as a rationalist psychology and associated with the abjuration of observation typically associated with philosophical rationalism. By contrast, I demonstrate that Wolff accorded an important function to those observations catalogued in empirical psychology within rational psychology. While empirical and rational psychology are distinguished in method and emphasis, the latter was considered to be heavily reliant upon the former for its principles and for confirmation of its results. This conception of rational psychology prevailed until Kant’s introduction of the (non-empirical) I think as the sole text of rational psychology.

Genetic Discrimination in Health Insurance: An Ethical and Economic Analysis (V-G)
Ben Eggleston, University of Kansas
Current research on the human genome holds enormous promise for improvements in health care, but it poses an immediate ethical challenge in the area of health insurance, by raising the question of whether insurers should be allowed to take genetic information about customers into account in the setting of premiums. It is widely held that such discrimination is immoral and ought to be illegal, and the prevalence of this view is understandable, given the widespread belief, which I endorse, that every individual has a right to affordable health care. But prohibiting genetic discrimination in health insurance is not an effective way to protect this right. On the contrary, I argue that because of the nature of insurance as a product sold in a competitive market, such a prohibition is misguided, and its worthy aims must, instead, be pursued through reforms in our country’s system of publicly provided health care.

Margins of Error in Value Comparisons (I-I)
Nicolas Espinoza, Royal Institute of Technology
In this paper margin of error principles for comparative value judgements are outlined. They are based on the idea that if a proposition concerning the value relation between two value bearing options is true, but there are sufficiently similar cases in which it is false, it is not available to be known. To demonstrate the usefulness of the principles, they are applied in building an epistemological case against the so-called small-improvement argument (SIA), which is often considered the strongest case for value incomparability. If we acknowledge margins for error in comparative value judgement, it follows that some of the crucial steps in SIA are epistemically unwarranted.

Tye-Dyed Teleology and the Inverted Spectrum (I-G)
Jason Ford, University of Minnesota–Duluth
Michael Tye’s considered position combines representationalism with externalism about color, so he needs to block the possibility that two people might have experiences that are identical with respect to representational content but differ in their phenomenal character. Tye’s responses to the problem of the inverted spectrum in Color, Content and Consciousness (2000) and “Visual Qualia and Visual Content Revisited” (2002) rely on a teleological approach to the evolution of vision to secure the grounds upon which people with normal color vision can be justly called “right” and those with inverted color vision can be called “wrong.” This paper shows that no biologically acceptable concept of teleology will allow Tye to draw the distinction he needs. Tye’s failure illustrates a hazard which any attempt to explain mental content using natural selection must be careful to avoid.

Aristotle and McDowell on “Second Nature” (IX-F)
David Forman, University of Nevada–Las Vegas
The concept of “second nature” is central to McDowell’s project of reconciling thought’s autonomy or spontaneity with its external constraint by the world. And of central importance here is his appeal to Aristotle: Aristotle’s account of ethical character formation as the development of a second nature serves as a model meant to reassure us that the acquisition of norms responsive to an autonomous space of reasons does not detach the realm of thought from nature in general and human nature in particular. But far from providing such reassurance, the Aristotelian account of second nature (when considered as an account of norms in general—as required by McDowell’s project) actually encourages an anxiety about the how the acquisition of conceptual abilities could be possible.

A Case for Pragmatic Encroachment (or for Semi-skepticism) (IX-L)
Jeremy Fantl, University of Calgary
Matthew McGrath, University of Missouri–Columbia
According to received tradition in epistemology, whether one knows that p is solely a matter of truth-related factors wrt p, whether these are conceived internalistically or externalistically. Call this doctrine epistemological purism. My aim in this paper is to show that such purism fits poorly with fallibilism, which I understand as the thesis that for a wide range of ordinary propositions p, we know that p even though our probability for p is less than 1. The poor fit stems from certain pragmatic aspects of knowledge, and most fundamentally from a certain link between knowledge and rational action. Most of the paper is devoted to establishing this link. In doing so, I draw upon some recent work in the theory of practical reason and claim that knowledge plays a certain fundamental normative role. In the last part of the paper, I turn the question of which should go—fallibilism or purism—assuming I am right that fallibilist purism is untenable. Some might think the answer is easy: drop fallibilism. But, as I will argue, the price of dropping fallibilism is skepticism or at least a robust form of semi-skepticism. To avoid semi-skepticism, I argue, we must endorse “pragmatic encroachment” and so deny purism.

The Practical Contradiction Interpretation Reconsidered (VI-K)
Richard Galvin, Texas Christian University
In his treatment of the Formula of Universal Law, Kant famously claims that maxims which cannot be conceived as universal laws denote violations of duties of perfect obligation. Readers have naturally viewed the contradiction in conception test (CC) as playing a central role in Kant’s moral philosophy. My focus here will be on how various versions of the Practical Contradiction Interpretation (PCI) have addressed two issues related to CC, viz. how to formulate the maxim, and exactly how maxims of actions that violate perfect duties, and only those maxims, generate contradictions when raised to the status of a universal law. I will examine three proposals for how to formulate the maxim, each of which faces serious difficulties. Next I shall examine one prominent version of PCI, which includes a specific stipulation regarding the formulation of the maxim, as well as a template for generating contradictions in conception for maxims of actions that violate perfect duties. I will then provide a detailed analysis of one recent attempt to modify PCI in response to serious objections raised against it. I argue that this attempt to rescue PCI is unsuccessful, and conclude that sympathetic interpreters of Kant should abandon PCI in favor of its principal competitor, the Logical Contradiction Interpretation.

Sexual Coercion and the Problem of Preemptive Consent (I-H)
Jeff Gauthier, University of Portland
In his recent book, Alan Wertheimer disputes feminist theorists who would move away from a consent criterion in rape law and argues that the transformative power of consent is not imperiled by conditions of inequality. In my paper, I argue that even if we accept Wertheimer’s general account of coercion, we need not follow him in finding that gender inequality is irrelevant to the validity of sexual consent. I argue that a broad range of quid pro quos involving the exchange of sex for other goods may be judged coercive using Wertheimer’s criterion. Moreover, I argue that the general failure to acknowledge the coerciveness of these proposals plays a key part in the evidentiary difficulties that accompany a certain class of rape prosecutions.

Acquaintance and De Re Belief (V-H)
Heimir Geirsson, Iowa State University
Donnellan argues that Leverrier does not have de re knowledge of Neptune. It is further plausible to conclude that if Leverrier does not have de re knowledge of Neptune then those to whom he passes the name “Neptune” do not have such knowledge either. Nevertheless, many direct designation theorists have embraced the view that one acquires beliefs of objects, or de re beliefs, when one sincerely assents to a sentence expressing a singular proposition. Given the appeal of Donnellan’s view it appears that the direct designation theorists have made it too easy to acquire de re beliefs of an object.

Perceptual Experience and Error (X-I)
James Genone, University of California–Berkeley
Many philosophers, psychologists, and cognitive scientists hold the view that perceptual experiences are, in some sense, representational. I begin by differentiating two versions of this thesis: first, the view that perceptual experiences involve awareness by a subject of a representation of her environment, and second, that perceptual experiences have representational content. After mentioning some general reasons for rejecting the first version of the view, I turn to focus on the second version and consider several challenges that have been raised to it by the disjunctive theory of perceptual experience. I argue that these challenges can only hope to undermine the view that perceptual experiences have representational content if an alternative account can be provided that respects the motivations behind the representational content view. I attempt to achieve this by sketching and defending a relational view of perceptual experience in such a way as to give an adequate account of illusory and hallucinatory

Generalism about Practical Reasons: A Defense from the Analogy with the Epistemic (IV-I)
Joshua Gert, Florida State University
The point of this paper is to undermine the support that particularism in the domain of epistemic reasons might seem to give to particularism in the domain of practical reasons. In the epistemic domain, there are two related notions: truth and the rationality of belief. Epistemic reasons are related to the rationality of belief, and not directly to truth. Because of this, they inherit the messiness of human nature and its idiosyncratic cognitive limitations. In the domain of practical reasons, however, the role of truth is taken by the notion of objective rationality. Practical reasons are directly relevant to this objective notion, and therefore the reasons to expect holism and particularism in the epistemic domain do not transfer to the domain of practical rationality. This undermines one popular strategy for rendering particularism about practical reasons plausible.

Parallels between the Ethics of Embyonic Stem Cell Research and Abortion (III-K)
Marin Gillis, University of Nevada–Reno
Bioethicists have been concerned with the relationship between the ethics of abortion and stem cell research. Many think that analogies between the two debates should not be drawn. While I agree that the essential moral question in the stem cell debate is not that of the absolute moral value of the embryo, I hold that some arguments in the abortion debate are relevant to understand significant moral issues in stem cell research. In particular, once moral issues in abortion are properly understood we may also understand how women may be harmed in stem cell research and therapy.

Touch at a Distance: A Case for Spatial Experience (X-G)
Brian Glenney, University of Southern California
Is there a commonality between visual and tactile experiences? I argue that some visual and tactile experiences are both spatial in that they share the same spatial content, the same shape or number properties for instance, while lacking any sensory content, such as color or texture properties. I argue that the use of sensory substitution devices (SSD), an apparatus which provides content like visual images usually unavailable to a particular sense modality like touch, is a clear case of spatial experience. Users of SSDs report having novel experiences that lack sensory content but yet clearly include spatial content. I conclude by arguing that the competing sensorimotor account of experience does not correctly explain such novel experiences.

Names and Public Language (VIII-I)
Stavroula Glezakos, Wake Forest University
The influential theory of names developed by Saul Kripke in Naming and Necessity possesses many virtues, not least among them the provision of “an explanation of how a name in local use can be connected with a remote referent.” Kripke motivates his view, which has come to be known as the direct reference theory of names, by providing examples that amply demonstrate that typical speakers do not possess the descriptive or conceptual means to uniquely identify the referents of many of the names that they use; he then develops a framework which locates the mechanism of reference not in those who use names, but in the names themselves. Essential to the direct reference account is the notion of a shared, public language. Kripke writes that a name comes into existence via an “initial baptism” of a referent; once created, a name can be passed from one language user to another. The notion of a public and passable name is a necessary element in Kripke’s explanation of how a language user who does not possess identifying information sufficient to specify a referent can nonetheless refer: success in reference stems from the fact that the name being used can be traced from user to user all the way back to its introduction as a name of a particular object, the referent. In this paper, I highlight a serious deficiency in the picture developed by Kripke: its failure to include an explanation of how language users are able to stand in the proper relations to names in the public language. I argue that the direct reference picture’s embrace of public language names, while providing a mechanism by means of which a name can be connected with a remote referent, comes at the cost of an explanation of how a local user attains the required connection to that name.

Testimonial Defeat: A Reply to Lackey (XIII-E)
Jeffrey Glick, Rutgers University
In her 1999 paper, Jennifer Lackey attempts to undermine the view that in cases of testimony the speaker must know that p when she testifies that p if the hearer is to come to know that p via the speaker’s assertions. Her criticisms are centered around the fact that problems with the epistemic status of a statement for a speaker do not necessarily transfer from speakers to hearers in cases of testimony. In such cases, her audience can come to know that p on the basis of her testimony even though the speaker does not herself know that p. This paper seeks to dissolve Lackey’s criticisms. In any case of testifying that p where the speaker does not know that p, there will always be a defeater which arises as a result of the testimonial act.

Ontological Conventionalism: The New Essentialism (VIII-H)
Dana Lynne Goswick, University of California–Davis
I argue that we are not justified in endorsing Kripkean Essentialism because Kripke has never bridged the Modal Gap. That is, he has never provided a satisfactory explanation of how we make the leap from our mere imaginative inability to conceive of object o lacking property p to the claim that o has p essentially. I examine the most promising attempt to close the Modal Gap: Bealer’s Moderate Rationalist theory of a posteriori necessity. I explain why I think Bealer fails to close the Modal Gap. Finally, I present a new version of Essentialism which retains Kripke’s Essentialist conclusions while also solving the Modal Gap.

Democracy and Children’s Suffrage (VIII-J)
Jason Hanna, University of Colorado–Boulder
I challenge the arguments typically offered in favor of child disfranchisement by showing that they speak against universal adult suffrage. My thesis is conditional: if all adults are allowed to vote, then nearly all children should be allowed to vote. I argue, first, that concerns about voters’ political knowledge support the implementation of voter competency tests rather than age limits. Second, I show that the rationale behind child disfranchisement could be used to support the disfranchisement of most adults. I then consider the objection that child disfranchisement is justified because we must balance the need for an inclusive electorate against the need for an informed electorate. This objection fails because it implies that some adults should be disfranchised or given less voting power than other adults. Finally, I argue that it is unreasonable to disfranchise children on the grounds that their political preferences would be shaped by their parents.

A Puzzle about Other-directed Time-bias (X-K)
Caspar Hare, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Many of us, when we think about our own joys and miseries, are time-biased. We don’t just care about what happens to us, we also care about when it happens. In particular, we care about whether it is past or future—other things being equal, we would prefer bad things to be past and good things to be in the future. But what happens when we think about the joys and miseries of other people? Are we time-biased on their behalf? That depends. Our other-directed time-bias is sensitive, in a curious way, to things that typically come with distance. I argue that it should not be so.

Meta-metaethics: Moderate Skepticism about Some Concepts of Metaethical Inquiry (X-H)
James Harold, Mount Holyoke College
The dispute in metaethics between cognitivists and non-cognitivists is at bottom a dispute over the correct way to characterize our psychology: are moral judgments beliefs, or a kind of pro-attitude? In this paper, I argue that this dispute comes to nothing; it dissolves in the light of a reasonable skepticism about folk psychology, and with it, the distinction between cognitivism and non-cognitivism collapses. I begin by briefly reviewing some contemporary positions in metaethics on cognitivism and non-cognitivism that are intended to emphasize the supposed psychological differences between the two views. I show that the appearance of a clear difference between these views depends on one’s having a very strong commitment to the accuracy and completeness of certain concepts of folk psychology. I then review several arguments that support moderate skepticism about folk psychology. I conclude that folk concepts like “belief” are not well-defined enough to settle this metaethical dispute.

Externalism and Conceptual Analysis (I-G)
Jussi Haukioja, University of Turku
Does an externalist theory of the meaning of natural kind terms commit one to the view that conceptual analysis about natural kinds is impossible? It is clear that externalism makes the application conditions of natural kind terms a posteriori, but what about reference-fixing conditions? Can one come to know, merely on the basis of reflecting on one’s own semantic intuitions, which properties fix the reference of a natural kind term? Many philosophers have recently claimed that the externalist has to answer in the negative to this question as well. In this paper, I distinguish between three ways of specifying reference-fixing conditions and argue that standard forms of externalism are in fact committed to the a priori knowability of reference-fixing conditions in one of these senses. I will also claim that we should be optimistic about the possibility of the other two.

The Myth of Factive Verbs (V-J)
Allan J. Hazlett, Brown University
Most philosophers believe that certain two-place predicates which denote relations between persons and propositions—“knows,” “learns,” “remembers,” and “realizes,” for example—are factive in this sense: that S knows p entails p, that S learned p entails p, and so on. But it is false that these expressions are factive, in this sense. It is my business in this paper to convince you that this is so, to explain why it appears plausible that these expressions are factive, and to propose an alternative account of the implication from (for example) “S knows p” to the truth of p.

Fitting Attitudes and Welfare (I-I)
Chris Heathwood, University of Colorado–Boulder
The purpose of this paper is to present a new argument against so-called fitting attitude analyses of value, according to which, roughly, for something to be intrinsically good is for there to be reasons to want it for its own sake. The argument is indirect. First, I submit that advocates of such a theory should also, for the sake of theoretical unity, endorse a fitting attitude analysis of a closely related but distinct concept: the concept of welfare. Then I argue directly against fitting attitude analyses of welfare. This argument, which is the focus of the paper, is based on the idea that whereas whether an event is good for a person doesn’t change over time, the attitudes it is rational to have towards such an event can change over time. Therefore, one cannot explain the former in terms of the latter, as fitting attitude analyses attempt to do.

Blindsight in Monkeys, Lost and Perhaps Found (IV-G)
Sean Hermanson, Florida International University
The study of blindsight might contribute to general investigations of animal consciousness. Perhaps whether there is something that it is like to be a given animal perceiving visually depends on whether it exhibits the neurological and behavioral profile of conscious vision versus that of a non-conscious “natural blindsight.” One difficulty for this project is finding a way for an animal to non-verbally indicate whether or not it is perceiving consciously. Interestingly, it has become routine to claim that the work of Stoerig and Cowey shows that monkeys with lesions in the primary visual cortex have blindsight. However, Mole and Kelly argue that this conclusion is unwarranted because their evidence is compatible with an alternative hypothesis positing a deficit in attention and perceptual working memory. I describe a revised experimental paradigm that can distinguish between these hypotheses. I also offer reasons for thinking that the blindsight hypothesis will prevail.

Dispositional and Counterfactual Logic (I-F)
Charles Hermes, Florida State University
Recently, the problems of finks, masks, and mimics made counterfactual accounts of dispositions much less attractive. Many theorists remain hopeful, however, that merely being more precise in stating what the antecedent of the relevant counterfactual is will solve these problems. Nevertheless, even if these problems can be rectified, a more serious problem exists. The logic of dispositional ascription is distinct from standard counterfactual logic. The reason for these differences is that unusual features of the world that are extrinsic to an object are not relevant in ascribing dispositions to that object. Nevertheless, two principles of standard counterfactual logic ensure that these features will be relevant in counterfactual evaluation. Endorsing a counterfactual analysis of dispositions requires endorsing a non-standard account of counterfactuals that rejects these principles. Nevertheless, one of these principles is essential in any adequate analysis of counterfactuals. So, counterfactual accounts of dispositions are doomed.

A Puzzle about Emotion, Perception, and Rationality (XII-F)
Larry A. Herzberg, University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh
Two overlapping strands of recent work in the philosophy of emotion present a prima facie puzzle. The first recognizes that emotions are properly evaluated in terms of their rationality. The second holds that types of emotion are literally kinds of perception. When one tries to weave these strands together, a puzzle is generated by the fact that perceptions are generally held not to be evaluable in terms of their rationality, on the grounds that such normative assessment requires a responsible subject, and subjects are not responsible for their perceptions. In his book Gut Feelings: A Perceptual Theory of Emotion (2004), Jesse Prinz accepts these grounds but tries to weave the strands together anyway. I argue in this paper that the solution he offers to the puzzle is, at best, incomplete, but that his theory of emotion contains the resources necessary for a more adequate solution.

Open Borders and the Right to Immigration (XII-G)
Peter Higgins, University of Colorado–Boulder
Liberals and cosmopolitans have argued that the moral equality of individuals entails that liberal states must acknowledge a universal human right to immigration. To the contrary, I argue that liberal cosmopolitan arguments in favor of such a right make false assumptions about the social location of those affected by the admissions policies of liberal states, especially with respect to their gender, race, and class. Such assumptions mask the fact that acknowledgement of this right by liberal states would benefit most those who are already relatively advantaged (including residents of liberal states themselves), while positively harming those currently most disadvantaged by the global economic order. For this reason, I argue that, in order to be just, even by their own standards, the admissions policies of liberal states must take account of the social location of those affected by them and the effect open borders would have in perpetuating economic inequalities globally.

The Freedom of Collective Agents (IV-F)
Frank Hindriks, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
Conceiving of groups as collective agents that perform joint actions, I propose an analysis of the conditions under which a group is free to perform a joint action. According to a reductive account of group freedom, a group is free if and only if (the requisite number of) the individuals who constitute the group are free. It is argued here, contra Kramer (2003), that individual freedoms are neither necessary nor sufficient for group freedom. I offer an alternative account of group freedom in terms of the ability of the members to perform their parts of a joint action jointly.

On Matter and Two Models of Change in Aristotle’s Physics A (V-F)
Beverly Hinton, West Virginia University
There are two uses of ex hou that Aristotle employs to talk about change. One use is that “out of which” a change occurs, i.e., that which is replaced in the change—the privation. The other use is that “out of which” a substance is constituted—the matter. Aristotle appears to conflate these two uses in his account of change in Physics A 7. I argue that there is no confusion; instead, every change is out of a substratum in which the functions of matter and privation are both made possible by a more general concept of matter. I examine Aristotle’s two models of change to show that privation is said at the same time to be in opposition to matter and to be a part of matter. As such, the concept of matter for Aristotle is best seen as a principle of complexity.

The Phenomenon of Trust in Clinical Settings (XII-H)
Anita Ho, University of British Columbia
In recent decades, the traditional model of the trusting physician-patient relationship has been subject to criticisms. However, many patients indicate in memoirs and surveys that they trust their physicians and prefer to go along with their recommendations rather than take on the deliberative process and choose a particular medical option on their own. Why would patients trust their physicians’ judgment and actions, so much so that they sometimes defer decision-making to those professionals? If being free from internal and external controlling influences and possessing the capacity for self-knowledge and intentional action are important for agency, does trust conflict with one’s autonomy? This essay argues that appropriate trust and autonomy complement each other. Patients cannot make autonomous decisions without trust in the professionals and the medical enterprise, and trust is appropriate only if it enhances patient autonomy.

Later Selves and Legal Paternalism (VII-K)
Louis-Philippe Hodgson, York University
I defend a new way to reconcile certain types of paternalistic intervention with the doctrine of individual sovereignty: the idea that competent adults should be free to make their own choices, and their own mistakes. I proceed in two steps. I first argue that an authorization to use force against one’s future self cannot be irrevocable: each person has the right to decide what can be done to her body at any given moment, and cannot alienate that right through an act of authorization. I then show that setting off a mechanism that will cause injury to one’s future self violates that right, and that consequently a competent adult can justifiably be prevented from doing so. This suggests a justification for forbidding certain dangerous activities (taking certain recreational drugs, or riding a motorcycle without a helmet, for instance) that is paternalistic, yet compatible with the doctrine of individual sovereignty.

Truth, Superassertability, and Conceivability (I-F)
Glen Hoffmann, Ryerson University
The superassertability theory of truth, inspired by Crispin Wright (1992), claims that a statement is true iff it is superassertable in the following sense: it possesses indefeasible warrant, i.e., warrant that cannot be defeated by any improvement of our information. While initially promising, the superassertability theory of truth is vulnerable to an inexorable difficulty highlighted by Van Cleve (1996) and Horgan (1995): it is formal/informally illegitimate in a similar sense that unsophisticated epistemic theories of truth are generally believed to be. A formal/informal legitimacy argument against the superassertability theory of truth has a non-question begging basis, I claim, in the form of a plausible conceivability/possibility thesis—it is conceivable and, as a result, possible that any statement might be superassertable yet false (or vice versa).

Kantian Respect: Why Should Humanity, Not the Good Will, Be Treated as an End in Itself? (VII-I)
Zachary Hoskins, Washington University in St. Louis
Kant instructs us to respect humanity as an end in itself. On one popular interpretation, “humanity” for Kant consists in the capacity to set ends. I argue for a broader interpretation of humanity as including a disposition toward morality. Another, related problem remains, however. Kant maintains that humanity has unconditional worth and hence warrants respect. But this appears to contradict his claim that a good will is the only unconditional good. Why would Kant not instruct us to respect a good will, rather than humanity, as an end in itself? On Kant’s account, I contend, it would be incredibly difficult to respect a good will, because we could not pick out instances of it with any certainty. Motives may be opaque, and it may never be clear whether an agent exhibits a good will. All rational agents, however, have the disposition toward a good will (i.e., humanity), which warrants respect.

If You Like Pina Coladas... (IX-I)
L. Bryce G. Huebner, University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill
If you like pina coladas... One might think that even if we had a complete story regarding the neurophysiology of wetness, there would remain what Joe Levine has called an “explanatory gap.” I don’t buy it, and I don’t think you should either! In this paper, I argue that the explanatory gap can be dissolved by way of a strategy of divide and conquer. I claim that there are actually two sorts of gaps, neither of which is all that problematic for the materialist.

A Challenge to Pettit’s Republican Theory of Freedom (III-G)
Waheed Hussain, University of Pennsylvania
In his influential book Republicanism, Philip Pettit argues that we should understand freedom in terms of the absence of domination. The republican theory is meant to chart a third way between traditional approaches to freedom associated with both positive and negative liberty. In this paper, I argue that insofar as the republican theory is clearly an alternative to views associated with positive freedom, it suffers from a serious weakness: it lacks the resources to criticize distinctively modern forms of oppression that work, not by preventing people from doing what they want, but by shaping what they happen to want in the first place. I go on to argue that the only reasonable way to account for the facts of oppression in the modern world is to think of freedom in terms of positive liberty.

Properly Functioning Vision: On Block on Noë? (X-I)
Anne Jacobson, University of Houston
It is a commonplace among those working on the philosophy of vision that contemporary vision neuroscience follows David Marr’s computational approach closely. Two claims characteristic of recent work show up in Ned Block’s review of Alva Noë’s Action in Perception. (1) Any contribution from outside the brain is merely causal and does not affect the supervenience base for vision; (2) If A and B are in the same brain state, then they each have the same experiential state, where the latter exemplifies a category important in understanding vision. I argue in contrast that vision science importantly is and should be concerned with explaining human successes, which has a large effect on the taxonomy and the research questions considered central. It turns out relatedly that Block’s category of “same experiential state” revealed in philosophical thought experiments cannot be useful in cognitive neuroscience.

Disappearing Appearances: A Critique of Alva Noë’s Approach to Spatial Perceptual Content (I-E)
René Jagnow, University of Georgia
A round plate seen from an angle looks elliptical. How is it possible to see one shape, even though it looks another shape? This question has an important phenomenal aspect. The roundness of the plate is perceptually present in the experience. Alva Noë has recently argued that his version of the enactive approach to perception is able to explain this phenomenal aspect. In this paper, I argue that Noë’s proposal is problematic because his notion of appearances as occlusion properties is phenomenologically inadequate. On Noë’s enactive approach, appearances as occlusion properties would have to be dependent on the perceiver’s actions while simultaneously retaining their independence from other perceived properties. I show on phenomenological grounds that it is not possible to define a notion of appearance that fulfills both conditions.

Counterfactual Exemplar-Based Virtue Accounts of Right Action (VII-I)
Robert Johnson, University of Oklahoma
Russell Jones, University of Oklahoma
Rosalind Hursthouse and Linda Zagzebski defend different versions of counterfactual exemplar-based virtue theory. Their theories share the following definition of right action: [R] A right act in some circumstances is an act a virtuous agent might characteristically do in like circumstances. Our central purpose in this essay is to evaluate counterfactual exemplar-based virtue theories of the sort proposed by Hursthouse and Zagzebski in light of two related objections to [R]. One of these, which we call the Williams objection, is familiar in the literature. According to this objection, theories of the sort we are considering often give mistaken evaluation or bad advice to non-virtuous people. The second objection is not developed in the literature, but is hinted at by Gilbert Harman. The Harman objection is that [R] often fails to give any action-guidance and evaluation for non-virtuous people. After spelling out these two objections, taking particular care to develop the less familiar Harman objection, we consider how [R] might avoid both objections. The discussion turns on developing the concept of like circumstances. We argue that the strength of the objections depends on the conception of like circumstances adopted; changing the conception of like circumstances may weaken or eliminate the force of the objections. However, a problem still remains for [R], for it is important to Hursthouse and Zagzebski that counterfactual exemplar-based virtue ethics remain practical. We argue that adopting a conception of like circumstances which weakens or eliminates the force of the Williams and Harman objections results in an unacceptable loss of practicality for [R].

Singular-Term Semantics Simplified (VII-J)
John Justice, Randolph-Macon Woman’s College
Singular-term semantics has been intractable. Frege took the referents of singular terms to be their semantic values, which left vacuous terms without values. Russell separated the semantics of definite descriptions from the semantics of proper names, which caused truth-values to be composed in two different ways and still left vacuous names without values. Montague gave all noun phrases sets of verb-phrase extensions for values, which created type mismatches when noun phrases were objects. There is a type of value for noun phrases that dissolves the difficulties besetting singular-term semantics.

Constitutivism and Self-Knowledge (XIII-F)
Paul Katsafanas, Harvard University
Lately, a new account of practical reason has found its place among the familiar contenders: constitutivism. Constitutivists argue that we can derive substantive conclusions about reasons for acting from an account of the nature of action itself. One of the foremost proponents of this view is David Velleman. In this essay, I argue that Velleman’s constitutivist project fails. While objections to Velleman’s account of intentional action are common, I take a different approach. I show that even if we grant Velleman the analysis of action, his arguments fail to establish any substantive conclusions about practical reason. Put differently: even if Velleman were right about the nature of action, he would be wrong about practical reason.

Punishment and Collective Responsibility (XII-I)
Erin I. Kelly, Tufts University
Worries about proper regard for the rights of offenders are difficult to settle with a deterrence rationale for punishment. General deterrence especially is hard to justify, because it certainly seems like we are “using” someone when we make an example out of him in order to discourage other people from committing crimes. A deterrence rationale may also seem to permit punishing either too little or too much. I propose a solution to these worries that appeals to the idea of collective responsibility rather than individual blameworthiness. I use the idea that offenders bear collective responsibility for the social harm their crimes cause in order to develop a nonretributivist account of proportionality in sentencing.

Spinoza on the Intelligence of the Passions (IV-E)
Matthew J. Kisner, University of South Carolina
Since Spinoza’s ethics revolves around mastering negative emotions, one might imagine that the passions do not have a positive role to play in a virtuous life. This paper aims to show that Spinoza’s philosophy allows for a more complicated understanding of the value of our passivity. Since pleasure and pain correspond to changes in our perfection and most passions are forms of pleasure and pain, it follows that the passions provide a kind of intelligence about the state of our perfection which is important to practical reasoning, for instance, indicating what contributes to or hinders our perfection. I defend this claim from two objections: (1) since the passions are ideas of the body, they are too confused to provide genuine intelligence; (2) since pains can sometimes be good and pleasures sometimes bad, pain and pleasure must not reliably indicate increases or decreases in our

Many-One Identity and the Trinity (X-J)
Shieva J. Kleinschmidt, Rutgers University
Trinitarians claim there are three Divine persons each of which is God, and there’s only one God. It seems they want three to equal one. It just so happens, some metaphysicians claim exactly that. They accept the Strong Composition Thesis (SC): each fusion is identical to the plurality of its parts. I evaluate SC’s application to the doctrine of the Trinity and argue it fails to give the Trinitarian any options he/she didn’t already have. Further, while SC does give us a new way to assert polytheism, its help requires us to endorse a claim that undercuts any Trinitarian motivation for the view.

Why Theism Requires a Multiverse (And Why It Is the Best of All Possible Worlds) (III-F)
Klaas Kraay, Ryerson University
Theism holds that there exists a being who is unsurpassable in power, knowledge, and goodness, and who is the creator and sustainer of all that is. In contemporary analytic philosophy of religion, divine creation is construed like this: God surveys the set of actualizable possible worlds, and selects one on the basis of its axiological properties. I argue that given some plausible assumptions, theists should maintain that the world God selects is a multiverse. I first introduce a schema for discussing the axiological properties of possible worlds. This schema suggest that there are three candidate hierarchies of actualizable worlds: either there is exactly one unsurpassable world, or infinitely-many, or none. I describe an argument for atheism on each hierarchy. I then introduce the multiverse, and explain why theism requires it. I claim that the multiverse precludes the latter two hierarchies of possible worlds, together with their respective arguments for atheism.

Does Spontaneity Relate Rationally to Receptivity? (X-G)
Apaar Kumar, Emory University
Contra the view held by Davidson and Sellars that sense-impressions can only relate to our beliefs and active judgments in a causal way, I argue that McDowell provides a coherent philosophical framework that can indeed serve as the basis for our being able to view sensory perceptions as rational justifications for our beliefs or judgments. I show how we can coherently argue that the objects we receive from the world can rationally relate to our beliefs and judgments if we construe rational justifications as justification by “pointing” from thinking to objects in the world, if we conceptualize experience as a mutually-constituting relation, and, finally, if we accept that human beings operate in the realm of second nature and not “disenchanted” nature.

Why There Is No Epistemic Partiality in Friendship (XIII-G)
Jennifer Lackey, Northern Illinois University
In recent papers, both Sarah Stroud and Simon Keller have argued on behalf of what I call the Epistemic Partiality in Friendship Thesis (henceforth, the EPFT), which consists of the following two claims: first, friendship requires certain beliefs where our friends are concerned and, second, such beliefs—and the practices leading to their formation—are often epistemically irrational or biased. The EPFT, if correct, would have important consequences, not only for discussions in ethics and moral theory, but also for various issues in epistemology. For if the EPFT is true, we seem to face a choice: be a good friend or be a good believer. In this paper, however, I argue that the EPFT is false—friendship does not require epistemic irrationality or bias. We can, then, be both good friends and good believers and, hence, there is no need to worry about conflicts between friendship and epistemic rationality.

Collective Epistemic Virtues (XIII-E)
Reza Lahroodi, University of Northern Iowa
At the intersection of social and virtue epistemology, lies the important, yet so far entirely neglected, project of articulating the social dimensions of epistemic virtues. Perhaps the most obvious way in which epistemic virtues may be social is that they may be possessed or instantiated by social groups and collectives. We often speak of groups as if they could instantiate epistemic virtues. It is tempting to think of these expressions as ascribing virtues, not to the groups themselves, but to their members. I argue that this temptation should be resisted. I show that individualist accounts of group virtues are either too weak or too strong. I then formulate a non-individualist account modeled after Margaret Gilbert’s influential account of collective beliefs. Crucial disanalogies between collective traits and beliefs, I argue, make the success of this model unlikely. I end with some questions the future work on collective epistemic virtues should engage.

Knowledge, Assertion, and Risk (V-H)
William S. Larkin, Southern Illinois University–Edwardsville
I will propose a Moorean solution to the puzzle that arises from considering such propositions as: (L) My multi-million-dollar-lottery ticket is a loser. We normally deny knowing propositions like L, resist flat out asserting them, and avoid using them in our practical deliberations even though our epistemic relation to them is very often stronger than it is to more ordinary propositions. I will argue that knowledge and risk tolerance naturally come apart with respect to propositions like L, and then I will rely on a new act account of assertion to explain why it is normally inappropriate to assert or attribute knowledge of such propositions.

Virtue Ethics and Deontic Constraints (XIII-G)
Mark LeBar, Ohio University
One important objection to virtue ethical theories is that they apparently must account for the wrongness of a wrong action in terms of a lack of virtue (or presence of vice) in the agent, and not in terms of the effects of the action on its victim. We take such effects to ground deontic constraints on how we may act, and virtue theory appears unable to account for such constraints. I claim, however, that eudaimonist virtue theory can account for wrongness in just this way. I draw on recent work by Stephen Darwall on the “second-person standpoint,” in which we see others as independent sources of claims on us—as sources of “deontic constraints.” We have reason to occupy that standpoint as a matter of virtue, and thus virtuous agents should and will have reasons to respect deontic constraints.

Why Frankfurt-Examples Don’t Need to Succeed to Succeed (IV-F)
Felipe Leon, University of California–Riverside
Neal A. Tognazzini, University of California–Riverside
Ordinarily, Frankfurt-style counterexamples to the Principle of Alternative Possibilities are considered a success if they identify a metaphysically possible scenario according to which an agent is morally responsible for some action even though the agent could not have done otherwise. Many have contributed to the project of attempting to construct a successful FSC; many have contributed to the project of arguing against the possibility of constructing a successful FSC. In this paper, we distinguish between two different senses in which one might consider FSCs successful. We argue that although FSCs may fail in the traditional sense, they may still succeed in another. If this is right, then we can still learn something interesting about moral responsibility from FSCs without getting entrenched in the more technical debates about them.

A Defense of Intuitions (XI-J)
S. Matthew Liao, Oxford University
Radical experimentalists argue that their empirical studies show that intuitions vary according to factors such as cultural and educational background, and what other cases have recently been considered. Accordingly, radical experimentalists believe that we should give up relying on intuitions as evidence in philosophy. In this paper, I argue that the studies presented by the radical experimentalists in fact show that some intuitions are reliable. I then propose a way of understanding how intuitions can conflict, and I argue that on this understanding, both moderate experimentalism and intuition as evidence approaches to philosophy can play a role in helping to resolve these conflicts. The upshot is that we should embrace moderate experimentalism, but reject radical experimentalism.

Wittgenstein’s Expressivism (XI-J)
Richard Liebendorfer, Minnesota State University–Mankato
I will describe and attempt to make plausible a view I will attribute to Wittgenstein, a view I will call an expressive view of conceptual content. My strategy will be to develop a little bit, a precious little bit of history against which I will attempt to sketch the view in question. Specifically, I will develop some contrasting views of Cartesian rationalism, Humean empiricism, as well as Kant’s response to those views. What I’m calling Wittgenstein’s expressivism is developed as a response to problems with classical rationalism, classical empiricism, and Kant’s response to them.

Crossing Species Boundaries: A Feminist Critique of Human-Nonhuman Chimeras (XII-D)
Pamela Lomelino, University of Colorado–Boulder
In this paper, I examine a particular article, Baylis and Robert’s “Crossing Species Boundaries” (American Journal of Bioethics, 2003), in order to illustrate the extent to which a feminist critique is called for in the current Bioethical debate regarding the moral permissibility of creating human-nonhuman chimeras. In addressing the common objections in the literature, as well as Baylis and Robert’s proposed objection. I argue that all of these objections rely on harmful and mistaken stereotypes regarding “human” and “nonhuman.” In arguing this, it is my hope to evoke the reader to understand the importance of addressing these stereotypes as a necessary part of an ethical analysis of creating these chimeras.

Is Consistency in the Application of Unjust Laws a Form of Justice? (I-H)
Alistair M. Macleod, Queen’s University
Partly on the footing that justice requires consistency (or uniformity, or equality) of treatment—with similar cases having to be treated similarly—it is still sometimes supposed that consistency in the application even of unjust laws or rules to particular cases is a form of justice. On this view judgments about the justice or injustice of law- or rule-applying decisions are logically independent of judgments about the justice or injustice of the laws or rules they presuppose. I distinguish two versions of this “independence” thesis. According to the first, the lack of connection between judgments about the justice of laws and rules on the one hand and judgments about the justice of the decisions that apply these laws and rules to particular cases on the other is taken to be grounded in the claim that the former have normative force while the latter are normatively neutral. According to the second, there is no connection despite the fact that judgments of both sorts have normative force. The first version of the independence thesis is false because—unlike the term “rights” to which talk about the “just” and the “unjust” is often assumed to be systematically related—”just” and “unjust” haven’t acquired any purely descriptive connotation. In discussing the (somewhat more plausible) second version, I examine—and reject—five arguments that have been presented in its support. I conclude that while consistency in the application of laws and rules to particular cases is a necessary condition of justice in the administration of these laws and rules it is not a sufficient condition of a special form of justice.

The Role of Emotion in Decision and Moral Evaluation (II-H)
Michelle Maiese, Emmanuel College
In this paper, I challenge the traditional view that emotions are an affront to reasoning and deliberation and argue that just as emotion plays a central role in decision-making, it also assumes center stage in effective moral evaluation. As individuals engage in decision-making and moral evaluation, they do not process all of the information that is potentially available to them, but instead select and highlight certain features. This ability to delimit and filter information is key to solving what I describe as the “frame problem” for decision-making and moral evaluation and depends largely on the various patterns of discrimination and salience involved in emotional engagement. My central claim is that because affect-based framing is an integral part of information processing for creatures like us, decision-making and moral judgment that involves the emotions will turn out to be more effective and efficient.

On Essentially Conflicting Desires (IV-I)
Patricia Marino, University of Waterloo
Some philosophers have argued that desire-ambivalence—wanting A and not-A—is rare and possibly irrational. Others have tried to show that pressure toward evaluative coherence can ground the non-relativity of normative reasons and moral obligation. This raises the question, just what is wrong with “inconsistent” desires? I argue for two claims. First, the proper characterization of “desiderative inconsistency” involves not logical form—whether the desires have the form A and not-A—but, rather, whether there is a possible world in which one’s desire are mutually fulfillable. Second, the “essential” conflicts involved in desiderative inconsistency are quite common and no worse than contingent ones. If this is right, it can be rational and appropriate to be desideratively inconsistent, and those relying on evaluative coherence will have to find another explanation of its normative status.

Why Not the Self-knowledge Rule? (XI-H)
Berislav Marusic, University of California–Berkeley
My aim is to pose a challenge for proponents of the Knowledge Account of assertion and belief: Why should we not instead prefer the Self-Knowledge Account? According to this proposal, the Self-Knowledge Rule governs belief and assertion: “One must: assert or believe p only if one knows that one knows p.” The main arguments for the Knowledge Account also support the Self-Knowledge Account. For instance, the challenge, “How do you know?” is explained by both accounts, and both accounts predict that it is impermissible to assert or believe that one will lose the lottery. Moreover, independent arguments for the Self-Knowledge Account are available: Failures of higher-order knowledge undermine our first-order claims and beliefs. I conclude that the Knowledge Account stands in need of further defense.

Modal Property Comprehension (V-J)
Ulrich Meyer, Colgate University
To define new property terms, we combine already familiar ones by means of certain logical operations. Given suitable constraints, these logical operations may presumably include the resources of standard first-order logic: truth-functional connectives and quantification over objects. What is less clear, however, is whether we can also use modal operators for this purpose. The aim of this paper is to clarify what is involved in this question, and to argue in favor of modal property definitions. To define new property terms, we combine already familiar ones by means of certain logical operations. Given suitable constraints, these logical operations may presumably include the resources of standard first-order logic: truth-functional connectives and quantification over objects. What is less clear, however, is whether we can also use modal operators for this purpose. The aim of this paper is to clarify what is involved in this question, and to argue in favor of modal property definitions.

Some Identity Statements in Plato: An Old Puzzle in the Sophist and a New Sense of “To Be” (V-F)
Richard Mohr, University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign
In addition to the common senses of “to be” used in identity statements of the sort “Jones is Prime Minister” and “The lion is a four-legged mammal,” there exists in both English and Attic Greek a sense of “to be” that states identities of another sort, exemplified by the sentences “Business is business,” “I’m not myself today,” “Let Poland be Poland,” and “Enough is enough.” The function of these sentences—I call them simple identities—is to assert the existence of an essence. Simple identities are not disguised descriptions, not analytically true statements, not telescoped definitions. Nor are they vacuous, for they affirm states of affairs. We should not be surprised that simple identity provides a resource for understanding key elements in Plato’s metaphysics. For Platonism is basically the view that some simple identity statements are true.

Getting a Clue about Consequences: Counterfactual Semantics, Agent Ability, and the Epistemic Objection (II-H)
Eric Moore, Longwood University
James Lenman’s “Consequentialism and Cluelessness” offers a new and ingenious version of the epistemic objection to consequentialism. His basic point is that the remote consequences of any action will often swamp its nearby, visible consequences, and that this fact renders consequentialism extremely implausible. In this paper, I argue that a proper interpretation of the relevant counterfactuals shows just the opposite: the visible consequences of an action will usually outweigh its distant effects.

Practical Reasoning and the Varieties of Agency (IV-I)
Jennifer Morton, Stanford University
I use an argument modeled on Hume’s discussion of the conditions of justice to motivate the idea that practical reason might vary depending on an agent’s psychology and environment. I argue that we should be skeptical of constitutive aim theories of agency that attempt to derive the norms of practical reasoning from a substantial aim because they fail to take into account this variety. I develop an argument against David Velleman’s theory of agency in particular by making a case for a whimsical agent that doesn’t aim at self-knowledge. If we weaken the aim of self-knowledge enough to account for this kind of agency, the theory ends up losing its normative grip on us. However, if we strengthen it, the theory ends up not being able to make sense of a whimsical agent as such.

Teleology and Embryonic Personhood (III-D)
Timothy Mosteller, California Baptist University
This paper argues to the conclusion that teleology is real in human organisms, and because it implies personhood, the intentional killing of early stage human embryos is morally unjustified. First, I present reasons to believe that teleology is necessarily present in the natural world, especially in biological organisms. Second, I argue that the concept of biological teleology is conceptually tied directly to the concept of personhood for human beings. Third, I argue that if human beings are persons at every stage of teleological development, then the intentional disruption of teleological development is morally unjustified.

All Truths Are Known? The Church-Fitch Paradox and the Problem of Transworld Knowability (VII-J)
Julien Murzi, University of Sheffield
A well-known argument, first published by Frederic Fitch, purports to show that semantic anti-realism, the view that all truths are knowable, collapses into a naive form of idealism, according to which all truths will be known by someone at some time. Following Berit Brogaard and Joe Salerno, the paper endorses the view that the proof can be seen as classically invalid. Brogaard and Salerno’s proposal requires transworld knowability, i.e., in the most striking case, possible knowledge of actual truths. Such a notion faces serious problems. According to Timothy Williamson, it is necessarily trivial. His argument has it that we can’t have substantial knowledge of what’s happening in any particular possible world. Yet, it seems, we do have knowledge of particular possible worlds. What has gone wrong? This paper defends a counterfactual account of transworld knowledge by providing two arguments against Williamson’s objection.

John Stuart Mill on Economic Justice and the Alleviation of Poverty (IX-G)
Stephen L. Nathanson, Northeastern University
In spite of the great interest in J. S. Mill’s political thought and in problems of poverty and economic justice, Mill’s views on these subjects are seldom discussed. This results partly from their appearing in his generally unread Principles of Political Economy but also from erroneous extrapolations from On Liberty and Utilitarianism. In this paper, I sketch some of Mill’s ideas on justice and poverty alleviation and their relation to Mill’s utilitarianism. Like socialists, Mill condemned the economic distribution of his time, but he mainly argues for a reformed capitalism whose principles of justice require distribution of resources based on people’s “exertions” and on the abstinence required for investing capital. He applies these ideas to issues like land ownership, inheritance, and state assistance to the poor. In addition, Mill stresses high productivity, population control, free education, and equal status for women as means for combatting poverty.

The Contingency of Existence (IX-M)
Michael Nelson, University of California–Riverside
There are strong intuitions that what actually exists might not have existed and that there might have existed things that do not actually exist. For example, it is highly plausible that I might never have been and it is highly plausible that, although actually there are not, there might have been talking donkeys. There are powerful arguments, however, that these intuitions are mistaken. In this paper I present those arguments and consider ways of dealing with them.

Physical Causation and Difference-making (VIII-H)
Alyssa Ney, University of Rochester
This paper examines the relationship between physical and difference-making accounts of causation. It then considers in a preliminary way the consequences that this issue has for a current debate regarding mental causation.

Generics and Plural Quantification (I-F)
Bernhard Nickel, Harvard University
Generics both characterize kinds and state generalizations about the instances of kinds. Many theorists endorse an ambiguity view that mirrors this distinction, taking bare plural expressions in generics to be ambiguous between reference to kinds and reference to their instances. I argue that this ambiguity view is untenable, and that we can achieve better empirical coverage by giving semantics for plural expressions that follow the work of George Boolos.

The “Structure” of Physics: A Case Study (V-K)
Jill North, Yale University
We are familiar with talking about the “structure” posited by a given theory of physics, such as the spacetime structure of relativity. We also talk of the “existence” of these structures. What, exactly, do we mean by this? What is “structure” in this sense, and what do we mean by the existence of one structure rather than another? Modern theories of physics are formulated in mathematical language, using abstract mathematical objects. What does the structure of the mathematics used to formulate a theory tell us about the physical structure of the world according to that theory? This is particularly puzzling when there are different mathematical formulations of a given theory. Different mathematical formulations mean different mathematical structures. Then what do we infer from the theory about the structure of the world? Do different mathematical formulations posit different structures, or are they mere notational variants, different ways of describing the same underlying structure? I consider these questions by looking at the case of Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulations of classical mechanics. I argue that, contrary to the usual view, these are not genuinely equivalent. For there is a difference in structure, and this is an all-important difference. I suggest more generally that we should be realists about structure.

What’s Right with the Open Question Argument (X-H)
Susana Nuccetelli, University of Texas–Pan America
A qualified defense of Moore’s open question argument recasts OQA in two different versions, depending on the variety of reductive naturalism each attempts to undermine. One is a non-question-begging extended argument that can transmit by entailment the a priority of premises to the conclusion that no thesis of semantic naturalists is true. This argument rests on the contention that Moorean questions have the privileges of cogito-like thoughts. The other, a non-deductive argument against metaphysical naturalism, takes the failure of semantic naturalism as suggesting that some good reason is needed for the naturalists’ view that value predicates and purely descriptive predicates are co-extensional. Since the only reason that is consistent with these naturalists’ reductive program rests on an implausible view of the relevant identity statements, it follows that the burden of proof is on them.

Relations and Powers (XI-I)
Walter Ott, Virginia Tech
After decades of abuse at the hands of the Cartesians, the Aristotelian notion of power was resuscitated by Robert Boyle and John Locke. A chief complaint against powers was that they were ontologically mysterious, since, on the Scholastic view, they are not reducible to the size, shape, and motion of extended substances. In the first two sections, I explain how Locke and Boyle “sanitize” the notion of power by treating it as a species of relation and then arguing for a reductive account of relations generally. In the third, I turn to some implications for the question of Locke’s commitment to mechanism. Given Locke’s reductionism, God cannot imbue bodies with powers independent of their primary qualities.

Threats, Punishment, and Proportionality (XII-I)
Japa Pallikkathayil, Harvard University
In this paper, I argue against justifications of the practice of punishment which begin by attempting to justify threats of punishment, like those views advocated by Warren Quinn and Larry Alexander. I argue that views of this kind cannot make sense of the thought that the severity of a punishment should in some way reflect the severity of the crime. Although this is a very plausible constraint on permissible acts of punishment, it cannot be simply tacked on to this kind of view without argument and the structure of this kind of view makes such an argument difficult to provide.

Are Persons Mere Containers for Well Being? (IX-J)
Martin Peterson, University of Cambridge
It is widely believed that consequentialists are committed to the view that persons are mere containers for well being. I challenge this argument by proposing a new version of consequentialism, according to which the identities of persons matter in themselves. It is shown that the new theory, two-dimensional prioritarianism, is a natural extension of traditional prioritarianism. In resemblance with the latter, the two-dimensional view holds that well being matters more for persons who are at a low absolute level than for persons who are better off. However, two-dimensional prioritarianism also holds that it is worse to be deprived of a given number of units than it is to gain the same number of units, even if the new distribution is a permutation of the original one.

The Paradox of Divine Forgiveness (III-F)
Glen Pettigrove, Massey University
The paradox of divine forgiveness suggests it is unreasonable to be comforted by the thought that God forgives acts that injure human victims. A plausible response to the paradox suggests that the comfort derives from the belief that God’s forgiveness releases the wrongdoer from punishment for her misdeed. This response is shown to be flawed. A more adequate response is then developed out of the connection between forgiveness and reconciliation.

What Can a Drunk Really Know? Solving a Puzzle for Pragmatism (V-H)
Jamie Phillips, Clarion University
Let Epistemic Pragmatism [EP] refer to the theory that an agent, S, knows some proposition, p, only if some pragmatic condition is met, and let us assume that the justification for EP is grounded on the epistemic/pragmatic intuition [PI] that the importance of p to S raises or lowers the evidential standards (or justificational thresholds) necessary for S to know p. Robert Howell has recently argued that EP, so stipulated and defended, faces a trilemma leading to either skepticism, to the denial of the deductive closure principle, or to the rejection of PI itself. The only way to avoid this initial trilemma, claims Howell, is to face a dilemma leading on both hands to the unfortunate result that drinking increases knowledge. In this paper I intend show that both Howell’s arguments should be rejected that it remains an important, and open, question whether knowledge always contains an ineliminable pragmatic component.

Motor Perception: A Third Way to Perceive Pictures? (III-E)
Alessandro Pignocchi, Institut Jean Nicod
Philosophers traditionally distinguish two ways of perceiving pictures: we can perceive the content of the picture (what the picture represents) or its design (the picture as an object, with its own physical properties). Traditional questions regard the factors that determine what the content of a picture is, and the relations between the content and the design (Gombrich 2002, Wolheim 2003). I will argue that the perception of the design has not received sufficient attention from researchers, and that many pictorial phenomena could be understood in a more efficient way by separating design perception into two essentially distinct kinds of perception; first, the perception of the picture as a historical object. Properties of the picture are in this case perceived as pertaining to an object that has neither representational nor historical properties. Second, the motor perception, in this case properties are perceived as the result of the actions of an intentional agent. I will give arguments drawing on neuroscience to show that at the functional level the motor perception is a natural third kind of perception. I will then suggest that motor perception should have particular subjective manifestations that have been neglected by phenomenologists. Motor perception allows us to explain and describe very punctual pictorial phenomena, and it then could be a good field to see neuropsychology and phenomenology make progress hand in hand.

Cognitive Abilities and the Conceptualist/Nonconceptualist Debate (X-I)
Ted Poston, University of South Alabama
In a recent paper “Are there different kinds of content?” Richard Heck argues for nonconceptualism, the thesis that perceptual content is different in kind than cognitive content. Heck’s argument is interesting and helps to regiment and clarify the central issue between conceptualists and nonconceptualists. I defend conceptualism against Heck’s central argument. Conceptualists can utilize a number of Heck’s points to clarify and argue for their own view. Additionally, I explain how the debate between conceptualists and nonconceptualists has been misled by conceiving of cognitive abilities as involving language-like representation. Once this picture is set aside Heck’s central argument for nonconceptualism collapses and the conceptualist claim has a much more natural and unobjectionable formulation.

Generality, Complexity, and Approaches to Explanation (V-K)
Angela Potochnik, Stanford University
On the assumption that explanations are causal, the question may be posed of which among the potentially many causal factors influencing an event should be included in the event’s explanation. This problem is particularly pressing when facing the task of explaining events that result from highly complex causal processes, such as cumulative evolutionary change, for such events have multitudinous causal influences. One possible solution is maximal inclusion: perhaps the best explanation would include all factors that make a difference to the occurrence of an explanandum. I argue, to the contrary, that some subset of the causal factors at work often provides the best e