Contemporary discussions of abilities account for someone’s ‘agential possibilities’ –what she can do as an agent– in terms of different types of abilities possessed by the agent. So they distinguish between “robust” and “simple” abilities to account for what an agent can do ‘reliably’ vs what she does (can do) through luck; between “general” vs “specific” abilities to mark the distinction between what an agent can do in general, and what she can do at a particular time; and some authors also invoke more or less “global” or “local” abilities; “object-specific” abilities, etc.. In this paper, I propose a different account of agential possibilities in terms of two fundamentally different factors: abilities and opportunities. Abilities are relatively stable and intrinsic (non-relational) properties of agents. Opportunities are extrinsic (relational) properties of agents, and include both enabling factors and the absence of impeding conditions. Abilities alone determine and explain someone’s general agential possibilities; and together with opportunities, they determine particular (that is, occasion-specific) agential possibilities. After developing some details of the account, I explain the attractions of this, over the ‘types of ability’ approach.

Agents cannot break the laws of physics. Babies cannot solve maths problems. A person with a broken arm cannot lift heavy objects. Someone living in poverty cannot buy a house. There are many things that agents cannot do, and it seems that there are different types of limitations on an agent’s abilities depending on the factors involved (e.g. physical, mental, social or normative). Some limits apply to humans in general and some only to individuals. Some limits can be overcome, while others cannot. Some are viewed as deficiencies, while others are not. This raises various questions, such as: What types of factors limit an agent’s abilities? How do these factors limit our abilities, e.g. are they external or internal to these abilities? How do normative factors come into play? Do they constrain our abilities, or affect how they are evaluated? The limits of abilities and the corresponding questions and challenges have not yet been systematised. In my talk, I will make a first attempt to do so.

Our money, our bike, our computer programs, and our right to enter a library are all parts of our wealth — assets we possess. But what about our abilities? Are they pieces of wealth too? Economists have long struggled with this question. Some define wealth as a kind of ability, while others exclude abilities altogether from the concept of wealth.

In this presentation, I aim to reconcile two seemingly incompatible theses:

1. The more abilities we have, the wealthier we are.

2. Abilities are not themselves pieces of wealth.

To that end, I will draw on two distinctions. First, the distinction between entities that are pieces of wealth and entities that, while not themselves pieces of wealth, confer value on pieces of wealth. Second, inspired by Hernando de Soto, the distinction between dead and living wealth.

My claim is that our abilities increase our wealth not by adding new items to what we own, but by activating or transforming existing assets — turning dead wealth into living wealth. For example, learning to play a violin we have inherited does not increase the number of things we own, but it does increase the value of what we own.

I will conclude by suggesting that the distinction between dead and living capacities has broader implications beyond economic ontology — in particular, for how we understand the nature of artifacts.

I will consider the characterization of scientific expert trespassing testimony (henceforth ‘trespassing testimony’) by taking a step back. In particular, I will consider what type of philosophical project it is to attempt a characterization of a phenomenon such as trespassing testimony. I will argue that this methodological discussion has important consequences for both the characterization of trespassing testimony and for the diagnosis of its ramifications. Indeed, I will exemplify this by considering some criticism of my 2018 characterization and by comparing it to Ballantyne’s 2019 characterization. I will also address some accounts that appear to presuppose that trespassing testimony is invariably epistemically and ethically bad. Finally, I will begin to consider philosophical trespassing testimony. It turns out that while it may be as problematic as scientific expert trespassing testimony, it is harder to characterize. Moreover, it is harder to specify the circumstances under which the epistemic and moral consequences of philosophical trespassing testimony are negative or positive.

People are more inclined to see epistemic trespassing as a problem for others than for themselves. Consider how the term is used to denigrate opponents or disciplinary outsiders more frequently than to atone for one’s own epistemic sins. But we argue that it is in fact easier from the first-person perspective to know when one is trespassing than when others are. At bottom, knowing that someone is trespassing is not straightforward whenever we lack expertise in a relevant domain. We suggest some principles that can help us identify when a person—oneself or someone else—is trespassing epistemically.

In discussions about public trust in science, one often hears calls for more direct engagement between scientists and citizens. Such engagements, however, bring their own ethical challenges. One is how scientists can avoid overstepping the boundaries of their expertise (“epistemic trespassing”), another is the challenge of individual scientists coming to play a role as spokespeople for “science”, or a particular field of science, and thereby almost by necessity drawing on the academic work of others, without always being able to acknowledge it appropriately. These problems are intertwined with another form of “trespassing”: the ethical intricacies of trespassing into sources of authority other than the authority of the scientific expert, e.g. charismatic or traditional authority understood in a Weberian sense. I suggest that solutions to these problems need to be context sensitive, but that at least in some cases, the most ethical thing for individual scientists is to not communicate directly with the public, but rather to see this as a team task to which they should contribute indirectly.

Logical bilateralism can be very generally described as an approach to meaning and consequence on the grounds of a symmetry between certain notions, like assertion and denial, proof and refutation or truth and falsity, in that both are taken as primitive and not, as in conventional ‘unilateralist’ approaches, merely reducing the latter to the former, more primary notion. In recent years, the field of logical bilateralism has seen significant development with various systems being developed that showcase a wide scope of orientations within this framework. This ranges from using signed formulas to express speech acts in the proof system to interpreting validity via speech acts to proof systems capturing a duality of inferential relationships by displaying provability and refutability relations. In this talk I want to give an overview of the directions in bilateralism and clarify some common misconceptions. I want to show the differences between these approaches but also similarities with respect to their motivation, their technical implementations and their consequences.

In almost all logics, validities are defined in terms of truth preservation forward. That suits very well for the purpose of paving paths to truth. However, for the purpose of paving paths to falsity, which is the direction suggested in the title of colloquium, we need to take seriously the idea of falsity preservation forward. This paper explores some of the implications within the FDE family and some of their expansions. Somewhat surprisingly, there are some connections to Aristotle's thesis, one of the key principles of connexive logic.

LP is a three-valued logic in which validity is defined in terms of truth preservation forward. Falsity is not preserved backwards. This paper concerns the logic PK, which one obtains when one adds the preservation of falsity backwards to the definition of validity. It discusses the properties of this system, and its relation to other well-known logics, such as Strong Kleene logic, K_3.

In a 1939 lecture, G.E Moore notoriously offered the following argument against idealism which he deemed a “proof of an external world”: Gesturing with his hands, he asserted that there are two hands in front of him and concluded from this that there are at least two external objects and thus idealism is false.

This argumentation against idealism can be regarded as an instance of an argument schema against any philosophical theory that is revisionary in that it implies the falsity of a pretheoretically exceedingly plausible (‘Moorean’) proposition – most prominently, Moorean arguments have been put forth against scepticism and the moral error theory. A first attempt to explicate the argument schema – for any revisionary theory R implying the falsity of a Moorean proposition M – is:

(P1-I) M (e.g. ‘There were two hands in front of Moore’)

(P2-I) If M, then R (e.g. idealism) is false

(C-I) R is false

I will argue that while this argument fails to undermine revisionary theories, an alternative version of the argument schema provides an effective strategy against revisionary theories. I will finally sketch a strategy for the revisionist to attack MOORE II’s main premise and assess its prospects.

Theorien der moralischen Wahrnehmung (MW) besagen, dass wir Wahrnehmungserfahrungen mit moralischem Inhalt haben können. Wenn ich etwa wahrnehme, wie Jugendliche eine Katze anzünden, dann kann ich wahrnehmen, dass das, was die Jugendlichen tun, falsch ist. Ich werde dafür argumentieren, dass Theorien der MW auch dann attraktiv bleiben, wenn die MW keine fundamentistische Funktion für unser moralisches Wissen beanspruchen kann.

Im ersten Teil des Vortrages werde ich darlegen, warum Theorien der MW gemeinhin als attraktiv gelten. Erstens wird ihnen eine fundamentistische Funktion für unser moralisches Wissen zugeschrieben. Zweitens stimmen sie mit der phänomenologischen Unmittelbarkeit singulärer moralischer Urteile überein. Im zweiten Teil werde ich dafür argumentieren, dass das plausibelste Modell der MW auf das Konzept der cognitive penetration zurückgreift: Die MW kommt dadurch zustande, dass moralische Überzeugungen den Wahrnehmungsinhalt nicht-trivial beeinflussen. Dadurch wird die MW aber epistemisch abhängig von der penetrierenden Überzeugung und verliert ihre fundamentistische Funktion. Im dritten Teil zeige ich, dass Theorien der MW dennoch attraktiv bleiben: Nicht nur bleibt trotz cognitive penetration ihre phänomenologische Unmittelbarkeit erhalten, sondern durch Rückgriff auf die Theorie der Affordanzen lässt sich auch ein plausibler Zugang zur moralischen Motivation entwickeln.

Since our emotions often play a central role in action, it is interesting – from the perspective of agency – to consider how much of what we feel is up to us. Of the emotions, love is a particularly interesting case, given its peculiar nature and its pronounced role in shaping action. I will review key arguments for the thesis that we cannot exercise voluntary control over love (involuntarism), including the claim that volition is restricted to action, and Frankfurt’s no-reasons view. I then offer two resources in defence of the opposite position (voluntarism). I first argue that love is sensitive to attention, over which we do possess voluntary control. I then argue that the relationship between emotion and action, as envisioned by the involuntarist, is too simple; sometimes emotion precedes action, but sometimes it is the opposite. I illustrate this with Eva Illouz’s work on the transformation of the moral ecology of romantic choice.

Wutausbrüche können bekanntlich destruktiv sein und negative Folgen für die Beteiligten und ihre Beziehung haben. Zunehmend rückt jedoch auch das konstruktive Potenzial der Wut in den Fokus philosophischen Interesses. Beispielsweise werden der Wut wertvolle evaluative, kommunikative und motivationale Funktionen zugeschrieben. Dies wirft die Frage auf, unter welchen Voraussetzungen Wut dieses Potenzial realisieren kann. Zur Beantwortung dieser Frage fokussiere ich mich auf die Adressat*innen der Wut und untersuche ihre Verantwortung für das Gelingen oder Scheitern der durch den Wutausbruch initiierten Kommunikation. Ich entwickle das Konzept der anger literacy, um zu zeigen, wie eine Analyse der expressiven, assertiven und direktiven Kraft der Wut die Adressat*innen zu einer angemessenen Aufnahme der Wut befähigen kann. Dazu gehe ich in vier Schritten vor: Erstens unterscheide ich die expressive, die assertive und die direktive Kraft der Wut; zweitens erläutere ich den Begriff der Aufnahme der Wut; auf dieser begrifflichen Grundlage entfalte ich drittens das Konzept der anger literacy und erläutere, inwiefern es hilfreich ist, um die Verantwortung der Adressat*innen für das Gelingen der Kommunikation besser zu verstehen; abschließend diskutiere ich zwei mögliche Einwände.

This paper discusses the moral specificity of sexual encounters and the consequences this has for the moral magic of consent in the sexual realm. In general, the philosophical debate on consent treats sexual encounters as any other encounter whose moral status depends on consent. On this understanding, if everyone involved (validly) consents to the sexual encounter in question, then at least no one is wronged by it. Otherwise, it is a sexual violation. The non-consenting party is wronged because it is a violation of their rights. I will argue that the conclusion to analogy does not work, and that sexual encounters do indeed have special moral properties compared to other encounters whose moral status depends on consent. I will argue this along the lines of intimacy, vulnerability and embodiment. Intimacy and vulnerability entail specific duties for persons sharing the intimate or vulnerable encounter/relationship, and embodiment makes it impossible to distinguish between rights-holders and rights-objects. Taken together, these three features make sexual encounters insufficiently comparable to other encounters whose moral status depends on consent. I will conclude that consequently the moral magic of consent works differently when it comes to sexual encounters.

In my talk, I argue against Joshi’s and McKenna’s claim that, in conversational exchanges which aim at the truth, we have a duty to listen and in favor of our (somewhat constrained) liberty to listen. In section 1, I present Joshi’s and McKenna’s arguments for a duty to listen which highlight the importance of our shared epistemic resources and our duty to do our fair share in maintaining them. In section 2, I point out an important aspect of listening Joshi and McKenna ignore which is its inherent invasiveness and the danger that this constitutes. The fact that we cannot unhear what people tell us and that we cannot keep it from affecting us speaks in favor of granting us the liberty to decide for ourselves when to listen, or so I contend. In section 3, I introduce some constraints on our liberty to listen which, contrary to what Joshi and McKenna argue, stem from moral commitments rather than from epistemic values. I end by discussing two objections.

This paper critically examines Miranda Fricker's virtue-ethical approach to addressing testimonial injustice, acknowledging its limitations and proposing a novel perspective. We analyze two main criticisms of Fricker's account: the impracticality of acquiring individual virtues due to implicit biases and meta-blindness, and the need for collective responses to address socially rooted epistemic injustices. While recognizing these critiques, we argue that individual efforts can still significantly impact unjust credibility deficits in certain contexts. To this end, we introduce the concept of "speaker virtues" to complement Fricker's focus on hearer virtues, and argue, that this extended framework can empower victims and restores their agency as knowers. Drawing on recognition theory, we demonstrate how victims' engagement in a "struggle for recognition of credibility" can resolve specific instances of epistemic injustice and contribute to broader social change. The paper addresses potential objections, particularly concerns about placing burdens on victims, and concludes by highlighting the advantages of this integrated approach in providing practical strategies for addressing epistemic injustice in various contexts.

This paper provides a systematic understanding of a certain class of reactive attitudes by offering a novel account of the role of hope in interpersonal relationships. Following Peter Strawson’s position in “Freedom and Resentment” (1962), a particular view of reactive attitudes (e.g. resentment, indignation and guilt) has become commonplace: They are reactions to the disappointment of normative expectations. However, this does not adequately describe all reactive attitudes: We may feel anger at a lover who wants to spend much time alone; we may feel remorse for hurting another even though we have not frustrated a legitimate expectation; we may feel grateful even though the other has not exceeded normative expectations. I provide a systematic account of these reactive attitudes that Stephen Darwall has recently termed “non deontic”: They are reactions to the disappointment or fulfillment of hopes. This also allows for a new understanding of hope: To have hope in relation to another person just is to be susceptible to non-deontic reactive attitudes. An important consequence is that, contra Darwall, non-deontic reactive attitudes can be normatively evaluated – they are more or less justified because they are responses to more or less justified hopes.

It can be profoundly unclear whether we are blameworthy for harms in which we have been causally involved. But how should one then respond? More specifically, should one offer an apology? This paper introduces Pascal’s Apology, drawing inspiration from Pascal’s Wager. Just as Pascal argued that belief in God is the safer bet under uncertainty, Pascal’s Apology suggests that apologising is the safer moral choice—better to apologise and risk unnecessary admission than to withhold apology and risk moral failure. The paper develops this idea by distinguishing between the “in case” and “(as) if” models of apology, constructing the strongest version of Pascal’s Apology and addressing criticisms against so-called conditional apologies. However, I argue that Pascal’s Apology ultimately fails as an erroneous workaround. It retains a strong connection to fault, assuming that under perfect knowledge, one should apologise only if at fault. I challenge this assumption, arguing instead that the obligation to apologise rests on other factors. In particular, the prevention of expressive harm—such as conveying disrespect or neglect—can generate an obligation to apologise, even in the absence of fault. This analysis sheds new light on the nature and moral significance of apologies.

Most theorists agree that once something is in the past, you are either responsible for it or not. Enoch (2012) and Mason (2019) argue, however, that you can make yourself responsible in some cases, that is, become responsible for past action by taking responsibility now. Both contend to capture important data points in our everyday practices. Call any such view Responsibility Expansionism (RE). This paper examines whether RE is tenable, argues that both views are unsatisfactory, and offers a novel way to defend RE.

I first clarify RE and place it within the literature on responsibility. Second, I discuss Enoch’s normative power account and Mason’s emotional engagement account and argue that both are unsuccessful, raising three problems for each. I carve out their common problematic denominator to provide an alternative. Third, I defend RE by amending the pluralist view, an account of taking responsibility for wrongdoing. I show how it does all the explanatory work the other accounts aim to do, and that it allows for RE by locating the expansion at a change in operative norms the agent subsumes under instead of in specific self-conceptions. Thus, we can indeed become responsible by taking responsibility, although not quite so mysteriously.

Moral responsibility is tied to certain interpersonal practices – practices to which so-called reactive attitudes, most paradigmatically blame and praise, are central. We take up this broadly Strawsonian idea and discuss a problem arising from it. The responsibility-relevant practices would seem to have capacitarian prerequisites, i.e. individuals are the appropriate targets of the reactive attitudes only if they possess certain capacities – e.g. rational or interlocutory capacities. At the same time, participation in our responsibility-practices has the distinct advantages of reciprocity and normative directedness, from which individuals who lack the relevant capacities should also benefit. However, those who permanently lack the requisite capacities – such as people with severe cognitive disabilities (SCDs) – seem to be excluded from these advantages of our responsibility-practices, given their clear capacitarian prerequisites. We propose a solution to this problem: although it is inappropriate to adopt reactive attitudes towards people with SCDs, it is appropriate to relate to them as participants in other, non-capacitarian practices that are isomorphic to responsibility-practices and thus retain their advantages. At the centre of these practices lie relations of attentiveness and responsiveness, as discussed most prominently in care ethics.

Since we lack an empirically confirmed theory of consciousness that can be applied to artificial systems, some recent approaches explore indicators that provide at least some evidence for the presence of consciousness in artificial systems. Such approaches look for probability-raising indicators of consciousness that make it more likely that a given system is conscious.

I argue that we also need an explicit account of negative indicators of consciousness. A negative indicator is a factor that can significantly decrease the probability that a system is conscious. I propose a distinction between two types of negative indicators: indirect and direct negative indicators. While indirect negative indicators influence the extent to which other indicators are probability-raising, direct negative indicators lower the probability that an artificial system is conscious, regardless of which other indicators are present.

The advent of machine learning (ML) has led to the development of highly complex and opaque artificial intelligence (AI) systems. The opacity of these systems raises significant societal challenges concerning, e.g., fairness, trustworthiness, safety, responsibility, and autonomy. A widely proposed solution to these challenges is explainable AI (XAI). XAI is a research field aiming to explain the behavior of complex AI systems by mostly focusing on computational approaches. The explanations provided by XAI approaches are intended to induce understanding about opaque systems that allows various stakeholders to tackle the challenges described above.

While XAI is certainly helpful in at least some contexts, we believe that it is also crucially limited and thus not (yet) up to addressing many of the challenges it is intended for. In this paper, we highlight four reasons for XAI’s shortfall: (1) XAI fails to deliver faithful explanations, (2) even faithful explanations may fail to induce the right kind of understanding, (3) XAI may not provide the right kind of information, and (4) addressing some societal challenges requires more than explainability. We shall consider each of these points in turn before suggesting solutions.

Mindreading enables us to predict other people’s behaviour and facilitates appropriate action, including mindshaping, i.e., influencing other people’s minds to make them think or act in certain ways, e.g., exercised by politicians. Many higher animals like chimps and jays are also believed to engage in mindreading since, like humans, they lack the computational powers to track complex behaviours but consider the perspective and presence of others in doing what they do, e.g., food caching.

We suggest a form of pervasive mindreading that involves artificial intelligence, in particular, machine (or deep) learning technology. Hence, the label deep mindreading. Big tech companies like Meta, X, Google, and others, can draw on a wealth of personal data from individuals and make use of machine learning systems to detect patterns in their behaviours. These person profiles allow them to make accurate predictions about how and when people will vote, think, click, buy, act, and so on, based on what they believe, desire, and prefer, to engage in mindshaping (e.g., personalized advertising). In contrast to humans and animals, AI has the computational power to track behaviours to engage in mindreading and mindshaping. This privacy invasion raises ethical concerns.

Mind wandering (MW)—spontaneous, self-generated thought—is phenomenologically effortless, yet paradoxically linked to cognitive control, a process typically associated with mental effort. Influential accounts posit that cognitive control sustains MW by shielding internal thoughts from external interference and organizing them into a connected sequence. However, this raises a puzzle: if cognitive control is effortful, why does MW feel effortless? I resolve this tension by integrating the segmented structure of MW with the opportunity cost theory of mental effort. While cognitive control incurs mental effort, which reflects the opportunity cost (the value of forgone alternatives), MW’s segmented structure—thematically clustered thoughts forming brief segments, separated by topic shifts—prevents sustained investment of cognitive resources in any single segment/topic. Each segment briefly engages control, but rapid transitions reset costs before they accumulate to the extent that leads to phenomenological effortfulness. Thus, MW leverages control transiently across discrete segments, reconciling its reliance on control with its low-effort quality. This reframes the cognitive control view: control operates locally within each segment, not globally across the entire MW episode. My account thus deepens our understanding of MW and resolves the tension between the typical effortfulness of cognitive control and MW’s phenomenological effortlessness.

Blame can sting a lot when it’s something we care about. To be blamed for baking an ugly cake would matter a little, to be blamed for being selfish matters more. Similarly, when a stranger blames me for a particular act I might not take it to heart as much as when I’m blamed for the same thing by a close friend. This paper aims to explore what these varying strengths can mean for our understanding of blame, as well as for the existence of various normative categories. In particular, it will look at some of the more extreme cases: cases when we get blamed by bad people, or for bad reasons. I’ll begin by clarifying the ‘bad blame’ phenomenon that I want to pinpoint. Next, I’ll show how we might be tempted to dismiss these cases as not being real instances of blame, either in terms of whether the blamer has the standing to blame or in terms of whether the blame is fitting. Finally, I’ll argue that this doesn’t account for all types of bad blame – and that something different is going on that can actually make genuine blame seem good for us.

Some responses are such that the agents are praiseworthy for them. A benevolent agent who made some sacrifice to help someone in need is morally praiseworthy. And someone who managed to solve an important scientific problem is epistemically praiseworthy. The question that arises is whether there is a unified explanation of what makes agents praiseworthy?

I argue that there is: in both the moral and the epistemic domain, what makes an agent praiseworthy for her response is that it manifests a degree of sensitivity that exceeds the degree of sensitivity one can fittingly expect of her.

I start with a widespread view about what makes agents morally praiseworthy: the “Quality of Will View”. While this view is highly compelling in the moral case, at first sight, one might think it is not extendable to the epistemic case. However, I argue that it is, when described a bit differently: first, I suggest that we should conceive of the manifestation of morally good will as the manifestation of moral sensitivity. Second, I lay out the structurally analogous notion of epistemic sensitivity, and I make a case for a view about what makes agents epistemically praiseworthy in terms of this notion.

According to the prudential companions in guilt argument (Fletcher 2018; 2021, Ch. 6):

1. If arguments for the moral error theory succeed, then analogues of these arguments establish the prudential error theory. (The parity premise.)

2. The prudential error theory is false; some prudential judgements attributing properties like being good (better) or bad (worse) for x are true. (The prudential existence premise.)

Therefore,

3. Arguments for the moral error theory fail.

My focus in this talk is on evaluating the parity premise, specifically with respect to what is probably the most influential argument for moral error theory in contemporary analytic philosophy, the argument from reasons. According to the argument from reasons, moral facts entail that a certain type of normative reason exists, but there are no such reasons. I contend that the parity premise succeeds with respect to some but not all the ways in which the argument from reasons has been developed in the literature.

Constitutivism is a popular strategy in metaethics that seeks to ground normativity in certain kinds of features that are constitutive of agency (Korsgaard 2009; Velleman 2009). Enoch’s so-called »shmagency challenge« called the normative source of agency itself into question and kindled a debate over how agency can be shown to be normatively non-arbitrary (Enoch 2006, 2011). A large portion of this debate revolves around the question whether agency is inescapable, i.e. the idea that being an agent is non-optional and that shmagency is simply not a position one could coherently occupy (Ferrero 2009, 2018; Katsafanas 2013; O’Hagan 2013; Velleman 2009). However, the debate is somewhat locked in a stalemate because there seems to be no clear way how to decide on the question of the (non-)intelligibility of shmagency other than relying on one’s metaethical intuitions, which prompted Enoch to note a certain kind of »they-just-don’t-get-it feeling« (Enoch 2011, 228) on both sides of the debate. This paper will sketch a way out of this stalemate by showing how the shmagency challenge is semantically defective.

Die marktwirtschaftlichen Praktiken zugrundeliegende Profit-Orientierung ist immer wieder Gegenstand von Kritik. Besonders zu Kriegs- und Krisenzeiten, in denen sich soziale Ungleichheit verschärft, fordern viele eine stärkere Besteuerung von besonders hohen Gewinnen. Gegner staatlicher Interventionen lehnen aus Gerechtigkeitsforderungen abgeleitete

Eingriffe in die unternehmerische Freiheit ab. Diese Ablehnung folgt einer zentralen Kritik, die neoliberale Theorien gegenüber wohlfahrtsökonomischen Ansätzen formulieren, nämlich, dass

diese a) normative Forderungen stellen, obwohl die Kenntnis von Gerechtigkeitsprinzipien epistemisch fraglich ist und b) auf starken Idealisierungen beruhen, die auf reale Umstände nicht übertragbar sind (Friedman, 1961; Eucken, 1952). Diese Kritik fußt auf einem Selbstwiderspruch neoliberaler Theorien, die ein anti-normativistisches und nicht-ideales Selbstverständnis haben. Aus diesem heraus erheben sie Anspruch auf Handlungsanleitung: Ihre zentrale Aufgabe sehen sie in der Suche nach jenen Rahmenbedingungen, die – anstelle

größtmöglicher politischer Freiheit – maximale ökonomische Freiheit zum Ideal erheben. Das neoliberale Selbstverständnis als nicht-ideale und anti-normativistische Theorie gründet dabei gerade auf der Ablehnung eines kollektiven Erkenntnisgewinns, auf den wohlfahrtsökonomische Ansätze verweisen (Samuelson, 1947). Für eine politische Handlungsanleitung bedarf es aber sowohl mit Blick auf ideale Gerechtigkeits- als auch auf

ideale Wirtschaftstheorien eines deliberativen Entscheidungsprozesses zur fallspezifischen Anwendung der aus Idealtheorien entnommenen Prinzipien (O`Neill, 1987). Hierin liegt ein zentraler Selbstwiderspruch.

Workfare ist ein Wohlfahrtsregime, welches den Erhalt sozialer Leistungen an arbeitsbezogene Bedingungen knüpft. Das Paternalismus Argument für Workfare besagt, Workfare sei einer bedingungslosen Grundsicherung vorzuziehen, da es dazu führe, dass mehr Menschen eine Arbeit aufnehmen und Arbeit besser für die arbeitenden Individuen selbst sei als bezahlte Arbeitslosigkeit. Das Paternalismus Argument steht vor folgendem Dilemma. Entweder es wird als a priori Argument konzipiert und basiert auf der fragwürdigen axiologischen Prämisse, dass Arbeit als solche für die arbeitenden Personen intrinsisch wertvoll ist; oder es wird als a posteriori Argument konzipiert und basiert auf fragwürdigen axiologischen und empirischen Prämissen, nämlich, dass alle konkreten Arbeitsverhältnisse aus kontingenten Gründen wertvoll sind.

Eine geläufige Version des a posteriori Arguments besagt, dass alle konkreten Arbeitsinstanzen aus kontingenten Gründen zumindest ein gewichtiges Gut aufweisen, nämlich soziale Anerkennung bzw. daraus resultierender Selbstwert. Das Problem mit dieser Variante ist, dass nicht ohne Weiteres davon ausgegangen werden darf, dass dieses Gut jede beliebige Kombination anderer Güter (und Übel) überwiegt.

Anstatt alle bedürftigen arbeitslosen Menschen langfristig zur Arbeit zu zwingen, wie es ein Workfare-Regime zur Folge hätte, könnte ein „feinkörnigerer“ Ansatz verfolgt werden, wonach nur solche Personen durch ein Workfareregime zur Arbeit gezwungen würden, die über Gelegenheiten zu guter Arbeit verfügen.

Human rights abuses and gross crimes can be supported by a wide range of legally permitted professional activities. Originating in German criminal law, the term “neutral acts” emphasizes such activities’ normal appearance, linking it to an alleged normative neutrality ruling out responsibility for complicity. At the descriptive level, the unsuspicious appearance of these acts is emphasized, filtered out from morally and legally culpable consequences and presented as the essential feature, which is also intended to mark the limits of the actor's responsibility. To what extent business-related contributions to crime should enjoy immunity from accountability is a relevant issue for domestic and international law, as well as soft law aiming at preventing corporate complicity in human rights violations.

This paper critically engages with arguments in favor of business acts’ liability neutralization, focusing on three types: first, weighing up interests, second, alleged lack of subjective liability and third, alleged lack of objective liability. Inquiring strategies of neutralization can help define a normative framework for complicity through allegedly neutral actions, ruling out apparently sound arguments and exposing their undue implications.

Mitigating climate change requires reducing overall greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. International climate treaties, such as the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement, are negotiated and signed in order to distribute mitigation burdens among different countries. But before we can decide which countries should reduce GHG emissions and by how much, we need to know who emitted how much. The most prominent carbon emissions accounting mechanisms are production-based (PBEA), and consumption-based emissions accounting (CBEA). PBEA assigns emissions based on the production of goods and services while CBEA assigns emissions based on the consumption of those goods and services. One way of deciding between emissions accounting mechanisms is based on fairness considerations. We call this ‘fair emissions accounting’. In this paper, we present a common approach to fair emissions accounting (Common Approach) and argue that it is misguided. Instead, we offer our Moral Responsibility Approach as an alternative. We argue that the primary consideration from a fairness perspective ought to be who ought to take moral responsibility for emissions. We provide some criteria for moral responsibility in the context of climate change and present a moderate defense of CBEA as the mechanism that, on balance, best meets these criteria.

Experiences such as cooking and eating together or participating in a wine tasting suggest that we can attend together to the flavours of foods and drinks. But is joint attention to flavour really possible? This paper focuses on two challenges from the case of flavour that existing accounts of joint attention do not address. First, the object question. How can we have the same object of attention if, as in most cases of tasting together, we are not literally tasting the same particular object? Second, the attention coordination question. Since the things we taste may not be public objects we can point to and follow with our gaze, how can we monitor and affect how the other attends to the object? I will argue that a form of joint attention can be established independently of vision, and that communication-based accounts of joint attention are especially well-suited to explain this.

Aphantasia, a cognitive norm variant characterized by the reduced or absent ability to form visual mental imagery, has been a recent topic of interest in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience. A thus far little discussed finding is that the affected often report having been unaware of their own imagery inability for decades of their life, a phenomenon which is here referred to as aphantasia nescience (the lack of knowledge about one’s own aphantasia). This paper presents a possible solution for the puzzle of how aphantasics (people with aphantasia) can remain in a state of aphantasia nescience. It is argued that aphantasic children learn how to play the language game of visualization, that is, to use the term visualization (and related terms) in socially desirable ways, leading both them and their visualizing peers to remain unaware of the aphantasics’ deviant phenomenology. It is suggested that the presented analysis can function as a template for exploring other cases (e.g., anendophasia) where deviant phenomenology remains undiscovered due to the behavioral abilities of the affected.

Phenomenal structuralism claims that each phenomenal character is fully individuated in terms of its relations to other phenomenal characters. This conflicts with the widely held view that phenomenal character is an intrinsic affair, i.e., that what it is like to undergo a particular experience is solely a matter of that experience’s intrinsic properties. Rather than offering another direct argument for phenomenal structuralism, the aim of this talk is to develop an error theory about intrinsicalism that explains how we come to believe that phenomenal character is intrinsic, why we hold onto this belief, and why it is nevertheless mistaken.

To this end, I will appeal to several considerations and point out how they account for the persistence of intrinsicalist intuitions: First, introspection and memory suggest that experiences are independent and self-contained, fostering the impression that what it is like to undergo a particular experience is wholly independent of other experiences. Second, it is cognitively more efficient to treat phenomenal properties as non-relational properties. Third, linguistic behavior further reinforces the impression that phenomenal character is intrinsic. The upshot is that phenomenal intrinsicalism is much less plausible than it is commonly taken to be, thereby making room for phenomenal structuralism.

Various philosophers claim that emotions are best understood as specific evaluative attitudes or properties thereof taken towards non-evaluative representational contents (Ben-Ze’ev 2001, 2010; Berninger 2016, 2017; Deonna and Teroni 2012, 2015, 2020; Döring 2014; Teroni 2007, 2016). I call this branch of theories the Attitudinal Approach to the Metaphysics of Emotions (henceforth also merely “attitudinal approach”. The talk discusses three of the major motivations underlying this branch of theories, explores three basic metaphysical directions in which this approach could be developed and argues that a view I call “relationalism” can best do justice to these motivations.

The claim that “adaptivity is a prerequisite for cognition” has been central to enactivism (Di Paolo 2005, Thompson 2007), a framework aimed at explaining how cognition arises from the dynamics of life. However, there is a substantiated worry that adaptivity functions as a "Trojan horse," subtly reintroducing representational assumptions into an ostensibly anti-representational framework (Villalobos 2013). Adaptivity in its current conceptualisation undermines enactivism’s promise as a revolutionary alternative to representational cognitive science. Enactivists describe adaptivity as involving self-monitoring, anticipatory regulation, and meta-adaptation—processes traditionally aligned with representationalist cognitive science. This tension is particularly evident in anticipatory regulation, where embodied prediction, though framed as emergent and situated, risks collapsing into a form of representationalism. Unfortunately, enactivists fail to provide a non-representational explanation for how these adaptive mechanisms operate. Thus, if enactivism is to uphold its non-representationalist commitment, it must offer a clearer account of how adaptive capacities emerge solely through dynamic, embodied interactions. As a potential solution, I propose reconceptualising anticipation as temporally extended, implicitly predictive interaction patterns. On this account, anticipation that seemingly trades in internal representations is explained as mechanisms of learned lagged-response mechanisms. This explanation preserves the anticipatory and yet non-representational character of adaptivity.

Internalist and pluralist accounts of what gender a person has, particularly those that rest their case on an ameliorative methodology, require a normatively acceptable concept of gender identity. But many existing accounts of gender identity, I suspect, risk legitimizing pernicious social views. I argue that this is the case because there is a broad consensus among emancipatory ameliorative theorists that holds that accounts of gender identity should secure First-Person Authority (FPA) over one’s gender. I break from this consensus and argue that our concept of gender identity should be such that it allows for individuals to be wrong – and perhaps even for it to be ethical to correct them – about their gender (identity) in some cases where they have harmful beliefs (e.g., when they are transphobic). I introduce and defend my ameliorative account of gender identity, which I call the Cognitive Disposition View (CDV). According to CDV, to have a certain gender identity is to be disposed to desire and experience as intrinsic a certain gender categorization (concerning a given class system of gender) when one holds a sufficiently small amount of pernicious social beliefs.

McDowell unterscheidet bekanntlich zwischen einer biologischen ersten Natur und einer kulturellen zweiten Natur des Menschen, mit dem Ziel, die Natürlichkeit der Vernunft zu sichern, indem sie im Sinne der zweiten Natur als ein Kulturphänomen ausgewiesen wird. Was aber berechtigt McDowell, die Kultur als eine zweite Natur zu fassen? Er selbst betrachtet beide Naturen als zwei Arten eines Genus, deren Einheit er rein negativ durch ihre gemeinsame Abgrenzung vom Übernatürlichen bestimmt. Dies ist jedoch unzureichend, da es noch eine zweite Art des Nicht-Natürlichen gibt, die McDowell vernachlässigt: das Künstliche. Um dieses Defizit zu beheben, verorte ich daher die zweite Natur zunächst im Spannungsverhältnis von Natur und Artefakt bei Aristoteles, um zu zeigen, dass sie sich von der ersten darin unterscheidet, dass sie zwar ebenso ein inneres Bewegungsprinzip ist, aber kein angeborenes, sondern ein erworbenes. Hierin liegt eine Analogie zu Artefakten, die ihre Form ebenfalls erwerben, indem sie durch eine äußere Ursache in Form gebracht werden. Um Artefakt und zweite Natur voneinander abzugrenzen, bedarf es daher eines anderen Sinns von 'erworben', den nur der Begriff der Erziehung bereitstellen kann. McDowells szientistische Konzeption der ersten Natur gestattet ihm aber letztlich nur einen Begriff von Erziehung als Abrichtung, als kausale Konditionierung durch den Erzieher.

The linguistic relativity hypothesis posits that languages shape non-linguistic cognition, leading to divergent thought patterns among speakers of different languages. Recently, linguistic relativity has gained significant traction in contemporary philosophy of mind, enactivism, and cognitive science. I argue that the focus on this hypothesis has led to a reductive conception of cognition, where linguistic elements are isolated from other cultural influences. This partitive conception of the mind is implausible, and I propose that a more promising approach is to investigate the mind’s action in ecologically valid real-life conditions. To achieve this, philosophers of mind should adopt an interdisciplinary approach, incorporating insights from anthropology and cognitive linguistics, and recognizing the interdependence of quantitative and qualitative research methods. My presentation will critically examine the internal logic of the linguistic relativity hypothesis and its methodological challenges, drawing on debates at the intersection of philosophy of mind and anthropology. I will argue that a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between language, culture, and cognition is necessary to fully comprehend the complex dynamics of human cognition.

In this paper, we will put some timely network approaches, used in "cultural evolutionary theory" (CET) to the test, comparing their specific explanatory power. CET applies Darwinian principles to understand how traits like language, technology and norms spread, mutate, and persist. We evaluate four CET network models: (a) Phylogenetic Trees, (b) Death-Birth Networks, (c) Interaction Graphs and (c) Trait Networks. (a) excel at modeling vertical transmission but struggle with horizontal exchange. (b) reveal feedback between network structure and trait evolution but oversimplify edge dynamics (c) capture dynamic trait transmission but are often quite complicated. (d) effectively model co-evolving traits but neglect social agents.

We then evaluate these different models against the background of four classical philosophy of science explanations: Causal-Mechanical, Statistical Relevance, Unificationist and Pragmatic explanations. Each model has strengths and weaknesses concerning each kind of explanation. This comparative analysis illuminates which approaches best explain different aspects of CET.

In models of natural selection, fitness is often defined as an organism’s number of descendants. Due to stochastic factors, this number is commonly treated as a random variable. Proponents of the Propensity Interpretation of Fitness (PIF) acknowledge this by defining fitness as a token organism’s propensity to leave descendants. However, as Sober (2022) has argued, such single-case propensities are epistemically inaccessible: we cannot reliably estimate them when each organism provides only one “trial.” While some authors suggest that cloning experiments might help secure the epistemic accessibility of token fitnesses, Eagle (2004) has shown that experimentally generated frequencies alone cannot pin down single-case propensities, as different propensity assignments can be compatible with the same frequencies.

In response, this talk proposes a “long-run” propensity interpretation of fitness, defining fitness as the propensity of organism types to produce a certain number of descendants in the long run, with a specific limiting frequency. With suitable inductive uniformity assumptions, this approach allows empirical testing of fitness-value hypotheses through their inductive consequences for finite frequencies. By showing how to apply fitness measures so construed to prima facie problematic cases such as cyclic or chaotic evolutionary dynamics, I defend this approach against various objections in the literature.

Democratic theorists and social epistemologists often celebrate the epistemic benefits of diversity. One of the cornerstones is the ‘diversity trumps ability’ theorem and simulation results by Hong and Page (2004). Ironically, the interplay between diversity and ability is rarely studied in radically different frameworks. In fact, Hong and Page’s landscape models apply predominantly to decision problems where the groups must find the optimal decision among thousands of options. Their landscape models are ineffective in binary and sparse decision problems (i.e., involving a few options). To fill this gap, I will introduce a new source reliability framework for binary decision problems, where agents rely on imperfect sources to identify the best solution. I use this new source reliability framework to assess whether, when, and (if so) why diversity trumps expertise in binary decision problems

An aspect of the indigenous struggle against colonial oppression is the struggle for the inclusion of their knowledge in policymaking. Perceived as epistemically inferior to science, indigenous knowledge and thus interests are systematically excluded in science-based policy. This article advances an anti-colonial political philosophy of science. As indigenous knowledge feeds into the necessary political value judgements in policy-relevant science, indigenous knowledge inclusion, I contend, should be treated as a political, not solely epistemic, matter. I further argue that indigenous peoples, not just scientists, should have the power to make such political value judgements given the politics of representation under coloniality.

Kripke (1980) argues that the reference of a name gets fixed to an entity by a baptism and can then be transmitted via chains of communication, provided that the speaker has the intention of preserving reference. An influential problem with this view is that there seem to be cases, such as the famous “Madagascar” case, where all of Kripke's requirements for reference-preservation are met, and yet the name switches its referent. Evans (1973) argues that such cases force us to move from a causal to a hybrid view of reference. Similarly, Michaelson (2021) proposes temporal externalism as a solution. We argue that the relevant cases can be dealt with without abandoning or modifying the Kripkean view. All we need is (i) the familiar distinction, due to Kripke (1977), between semantic reference and speaker reference (and the intentions that underlie them) and (ii) a counterfactual test that allows us to establish which of them has priority for the relevant speakers. This solution develops Kripke’s (1980: 163) idea that a present intention to refer can “override” an intention to preserve a distant link to the original usage of the name.

It is commonly held that Davidson’s truth-conditional theory of meaning cannot serve to characterize the concept of truth. The thought is that such a theory of meaning presupposes the concept of truth and, taking it as given, explains meaning in terms of it. This point is then used to argue further that one cannot be both a deflationist about truth and a truth-conditional theorist of meaning (Dummett, 1959; see also Horwich 1990, Gupta 1993, Brandom 2009).

I will argue that the commonly held view I have just sketched is radically misguided. Properly understood, a Davidsonian theory of meaning is equally explanatory of both truth and meaning, insofar as it makes precise the claim that neither notion is intelligible independently of the other. I will show that Dummett’s influential argument fails. And I will suggest that Davidsonian deflationism is not only possible, but also more promising than its deflationist alternatives.

Some philosophers argue that pure quotations can refer to different kinds of objects, including expressions, signs, pronunciations, concepts, and meanings (Washington 1992; Saka 1998; García-Carpintero 2003, 2017, 2018). In this paper, I criticise extant accounts of this feature of quotations (García-Carpintero 2017, 2018; Saka 1998, 2006; Gómez-Torrente 2011) and propose an original version of Davidson’s (1979) theory that accounts for it.

My proposal consists of two claims. First, a quotation is made up of (i) a demonstrative pronoun (surfacing as the quotation marks) and (ii) a truth-conditionally inert expression that is displayed to make itself, or an entity related to it, available for being referred to by the pronoun. Second, a quotation has a referent only relative to a linguistic context: the appropriate object of demonstration, and hence the referent of a quotation, is selected by the predicate in whose argument position the quotation occurs. I formally represent the predicate’s capacity of selecting a referent as a contextual restriction imposed by the predicate.

Additionally, I argue that my proposal allows me to defend a preliminary account of reports containing the so-called ‘quotative ‘be like’’, thus filling a significant gap in the philosophical and semantic literature on quotational contexts.

In this paper I argue that views according to which 'able' to is a gradable notion like 'tall' or 'open' face a dilemma. I argue further that the dilemma motivates an alternative view. According to this alternative, judgments involving the comparative 'more able' are better understood as judgments expressing comparative uncertainty about what we are able to do.

Viele Ansätze der Religionskritik, prominent vertreten durch Marx und Freud, möchten religiöse Überzeugungen nicht auf ontologischer Ebene kritisieren, sondern auf rein epistemologischer: Gott mag zwar existieren, wir haben aber keine guten Gründe an seine Existenz zu glauben. In eben diesem Sinne bezieht auch Tugendhat mit seiner Religionskritik Position, genauer gesagt seine Kritik am Monotheismus. Diese entwickelt er dabei im Kontext seiner anthropologischen und tugendethischen Arbeiten. Menschen, verstanden als "Ich-Sager", werden zwangsläufig mit ihrer eigenen Sterblichkeit konfrontiert. Die Tugend der intellektuellen Redlichkeit wiederum fordert uns auf, nicht etwas zu glauben, nur weil es mit angenehmen Folgen (Hoffnung, Freude, Beruhigung) verbunden ist. Angesichts der Entwicklung unseres Weltwissens, so Tugendhat, können religiöse Überzeugungen aber nur als genau das verstanden werden: Wunschdenken. Von Autoren wie Freud will sich Tugendhat nun aber dadurch unterscheiden, mit moderaten anthropologischen Annahmen zur Verfassung des Menschen zu operieren, um sich so dem Vorwurf zu entziehen, allzu voraussetzungsreiche Prämissen zu unterstellen, die seine Religionskritk begründen. Doch selbst wenn man Tugendhats Anthropologie und Tugendethik akzeptiert, zeigt sich, dass er religionstheoretisch allzu gewichtige Annahmen impliziert, die seine Religionskritik letztlich auch zumindest in ihrer Stärke scheitern lassen.

Der Begriff „Religion“ ist umstritten und nur schwer zu definieren. Zudem scheint es keinen univoken Begriff zu geben, sondern nur analoge und vielleicht auch teils lediglich äquivoke Religionsbegriffe. Ziel meines Beitrags ist diesen Schwierigkeiten mit einem Wittgensteinschen Ansatz beizukommen. Die zentrale These meines Beitrags ist, dass wir Religion als Lebensmuster denken müssen und uns von einer irrigen Suche nach dem Wesen der Religion befreien müssen. Statt (platonische) Wesensschau zu betreiben und nach einer invarianten Definition der Religion zu suchen, müssen wir die Religion als Lebensmuster verstehen und uns Klarheit über ihre Grammatik verschaffen. Die Religion ist keine Lehre und keine Theorie, sondern eine Beschreibung eines tatsächlichen Vorgangs im Leben des Menschen. Religion ist somit ein anthropologisches Phänomen, das sich empirisch seit den Anfängen der Menschheit nachweisen lässt, etwa als Hoffnung auf eine andere, jenseitige Welt und auf ein mögliches Weiterleben nach dem Tod oder als betend-bittende Verehrung eines göttlichen oder heiligen Wesens. Religion ist ein Lebensmuster im menschlichen Lebensteppich. Lebensmuster bilden die Grundlage für eine Wortverwendung und bezeichnen nach Wittgenstein Regelmäßigkeiten sprachlichen und nicht-sprachlichen Handelns, welche mit gewissen Variationen im Leben der Menschen wiederkehren, von ihnen als zusammengehörige Einheiten aufgefasst und darum mit einem Wort benannt werden.

Mit Iris Murdoch lässt sich auf eine Weise über den Zusammenhang von Religion und Moral nachdenken, die eine Lücke im zeitgenössischen philosophischen Diskurs füllt: ihr geht es nicht um die Begründung von Moral, etwa unter Verweis auf einen göttlichen Gesetzesgeber, sondern um die Bedeutung von metaphysischen Annahmen für die praktische Herausforderung, ein moralisch gutes Leben zu führen. Sie ist der Überzeugung, dass es von meinem ganz grundlegenden Bild der Welt und des Menschen darin abhängt, wie gut ich mich tatsächlich moralisch verbessern kann. Ihr eigenes moralphilosophisches Projekt ist zu verstehen als das Angebot eines solchen metaphysischen Hintergrundbildes, das 1. in vieler Hinsicht von Religion inspiriert ist, aber letztlich ohne die für religiöse Weltbilder typischen starken metaphysischen Annahmen (etwa die der Existenz Gottes) auskommen will, und 2. im Hinblick auf die praktische Frage besonders wirksam sein soll. Ich verteidige Murdochs Vorgehen gegen das Bedenken, sie würde praktische Erwägungen geltend machen, wo nur epistemische gelten dürfen, in Auseinandersetzung mit einem aktuellen erkenntnistheoretischen Ansatz des Religionsphilosophen Paul Moser: eine Metaphysik, die Annahmen über die moralisch transformative Kraft der von ihr stipulierten zentralen Größe (das Gute bzw. Gott) enthält, darf sich auch an ihrer tatsächlichen psychischen Wirksamkeit im Hinblick auf moralische Verbesserung messen lassen.

Based on a variant of Bjørdal's (1999) definition of positivity (DP), I will show that the possibility part of Gödel's ontological proof can be achieved using only the axiom of non-positivity of not being identical with itself (A) and that with another variant of DP even the necessity proof can be given with axiom A alone.

In this talk I will discuss the adequacy of prominent relations of theory equivalence as relations of theoretical synonymy.

A relation of theoretical synonymy should characterize the equivalence of formal theories with respect to their meaning or content. In logic and philosophy of science, the relation of definitional equivalence or its generalization, bi-interpretability, are predominantly used for this purpose. I will consider examples of theories that are bi-interpretable and argue that they should not be understood as synonymous. To do this, I will introduce five general principles of theoretical synonymy that seem intuitively plausible but are not satisfied by definitional equivalence or bi-interpretability. This gives rise to questioning the adequacy of bi-interpretability as a relation of theoretical synonymy.

Finally, I will briefly outline what interesting strengthenings of bi-interpretability might look like.

Bi-interpretability is a widely accepted standard of equivalence for first-order theories, understood both semantically via definable inner models and syntactically via mutually inverse (up to isomorphism) interpretations. However, in model-theoretic practice, interpretations frequently employ parameters, yielding bi-interpretability with parameters as an induced standard of equivalence. Despite their prevalence, interpretations with parameters remain understudied from both logical and philosophical perspectives, with Visser characterizing their category as "terra incognita."

This paper addresses this gap through three main contributions. First, I examine key examples including the Klein-Beltrami model and the geometrization of arithmetic. Second, I develop a systematic semantic analysis of interpretations with parameters using uniformly definable families of models, showing how they induce relation-valued profunctors between categories of models. This perspective yields a novel characterization of bi-interpretability with parameters and a new categorical invariant.

Finally, I analyze the semantic status of parameters, arguing against their treatment as additional constants, since this yields a coarser notion of equivalence. Instead, I propose understanding parameters as well-behaved Hilbertian ε-terms, developing a notion of interpretation in the ε-calculus. The main technical conjecture is that bi-interpretability with parameters coincides with bi-interpretability in the ε-calculus, providing another perspective on this notion of equivalence.

In this talk I consider the notion of logical duality with regard to some constructive logics. My approach is mainly semantic -- the dualization procedures are based on some important properties of truth values used in constructive logics. In the focus of consideration is an important logic of the constructivist family, constructive logic with strong negation, also known as Nelson's logic of constructible falsity. The logics in question are equipped with suitable proof systems in the form of binary consequence systems, in particular such a system is formulated for Nelson's explosive logic N3. It is shown how this logic can be dualized semantically and syntactically, and how Nelson's logic and its dual can be combined in the general framework of a bi-Nelson logic. In particular, I provide a definition of truth and falsity conditions for the connective of dual Nelson's implication and construct the respective binary consequence proof system in the FMLA-FMLA logical framework. A bi-Nelson logic in a language without implication and dual implication turns out to be the first-degree entailment fragment of the logic R-Mingle, whereas adding implication and dual implication leads to a system similar to Nelson's logic S.

Work in the field of feminist logic is still rather scarce and the field itself remains a contested area of study, but still, it is developing. One approach concentrates on analyzing logical systems with respect to structural features that may perpetuate discrimination or, on the other hand, features that may be helpful for resisting and opposing it. Upon this assumption, we want to investigate possible applications of queer feminist views on logic with respect to a very specific group, namely contradictory logics, i.e., logical systems containing contradictions in their set of theorems. We want to show that bringing together contradictory logics and reasoning about queer feminist issues may prove fruitful both as a ‘real-life’ motivation for these rather marginalized logical systems and as a formal basis for a philosophical field that is still characterized by a distrust of formalism.

Myside bias is the tendency to favour one's prior beliefs in the gathering and evaluation of evidence. Despite it being a bias, it is unclear whether myside bias should always be considered epistemically irrational and which, if any, intervention it requires. It is also unclear which demarcation criteria we could use to make out rational and irrational applications of myside reasoning. The consensual and veritistic effects of myside bias are relevant to these issues, but they remain largely unknown. Can agents that deliberate with a myside bias ever come to agreement? How would interventions against myside bias shape our pathway to the truth? This talk contributes to our understanding of myside bias by exploring these consensual and veritistic dynamics in a computational model of artificial, rational agents. Simulations on the model suggest that there are at least two types of myside bias with significantly different epistemic effects. These results contribute to understanding the function of myside bias in our reasoning and when we should intervene.

Recent work in formal social epistemology has employed agent-based models from the Bala-Goyal framework to study the mechanisms involved when the so-called "Tobacco strategy" undermines collective inquiry. Motivated by limitations of these models, we propose an alternative based on a recently introduced framework for normative argument exchange across networks. We implement representations of two distinct types of industry influence: 'Obfuscating' directs inquiry to experiments with low expected value of information. 'Misleading' filters private research and only communicates misleading signals from the world. We explored the impacts of both strategies on the polarization & mean error of, and flow of information through, social networks of scientists via computer simulations. We conclude that even against highly optimistic background assumptions and in a less simplified model of inquiry, industry influence poses a significant potential threat.

In this paper, I introduce a new non-summative account of group beliefs for agential groups. My account makes use of the notion of common belief, which is well studied and formalized in game theory and multi-agent epistemic logic. I argue that group beliefs for agential groups can be accounted for in terms of propositions that are commonly believed to be believed by some members of the group, provided that no member has objections to let these propositions be the group’s stance. I argue that this account has several promising features. First, it satisfies Lackey’s Group Lie Desideratum. Second, it allows the ascriptions of background group beliefs, something the joint acceptance accounts are seemingly unable to do. Third, it allows the ascriptions of the correct group beliefs in cases in which there is a systematic mismatch between privately held beliefs and openly shared expressions of beliefs, something Lackey’s Group Agent Account is seemingly unable to address.

I argue against the mainstream views of ignorance and the lack of true beliefs as a necessary condition for an x to qualify as ignorance. I argue that the lack of true belief condition is not compatible with ignorance instances developed by critical theorists, for example white ignorance. I then conclude that we should seek a perspective that does not use the lack of true belief as a condition for an x to be an instance of ignorance. I propose instead the Potentia view of ignorance, focusing on the lack of epistemic agency in the ignorant subject, which can be formulated as: S is ignorant of P iff S has the potentia to know that P. I defend that the Potentia view has many advantages, one of them being to be compatible with critical theories such as white ignorance.

In the epistemology of disagreement, Conciliationism argues that encountering peer disagreement on controversial matters rationally requires belief suspension, as the disagreement itself defeats justification. This implies an extensive skepticism about philosophical statements. This contribution defends the consistency of the skeptical argument from disagreement against claims of self-defeat by disentangling it from Conciliationism and grounding it instead in the Pyrrhonian dialectic of the criterion. The argument is structured around Thomas Grundmann’s critique that the skeptical argument relies on justified philosophical beliefs, contravening its conclusion. The presentation first challenges Grundmann’s analysis of self-defeat. It then reconstructs a more viable Pyrrhonian disagreement-based skeptical argument independent of Conciliationism. This improved argument avoids the self-defeating charge and is not bound to command suspension of judgment. This makes disagreement skepticism compatible with practical reasons for retaining one’s philosophical beliefs.

The principle of total evidence (PTE) asserts that rational agents should conditionalize their degrees of belief on the total evidence that is accessible to them. In the first part of this talk I will justify the optimality of the PTE from the viewpoint of individual rationality, in the sense of expected utility maximization. My proposed justification of the PTE is based on a seminal proof of Good (1967) which shows that by conditionalizing degrees of beliefs on new pieces of evidence or information, the expected individual utility of the actions of a rational agent can only increase but not decrease.

In the second part I will demonstrate that in spite of its individual optimality, the PTE may become suboptimal for the collective rationality when interests are in conflict. This scenario can arise when the acquiration of a certain piece of information by a rational agent carries a great risk of being "misused" in a way that, in spite of being useful for the individual, causes great harm to others and, thus, decreases the overall utility-sum (or aggregated utility) for the whole collective.

Recent years have seen the emergence of what Martin Smith [2022] called the hardest paradoxes for closure to date. These hybrid paradoxes combine features of the lottery and the preface paradox in a way that (i) puts pressure on the claim that justification is closed under conjunction (henceforth, simply closure) but (ii) resists familiar closure-preserving solutions previously put forward in response to the original paradoxes. This gives rise to the following question: can closure be saved from the new hybrid paradoxes and, if so, how? This paper puts forward what is likely to be the most promising (general) strategy for solving the new paradoxes in a way that's compatible with closure, considers the most prominent attempts to implement this strategy, but argues that they are ultimately unsuccessful. Hence, it's concluded that the case against closure still stands. The paper also corrects some misconceptions about the nature of the hybrid paradoxes and weighs in on the question of what really is the hardest paradox for closure.

We tend to prefer those theories of which we know (or suspect) that they

are closer to truth. The relation of having greater or lesser closeness-to-truth

(verisimilitude, truthlikeness) can therefore be interpreted as a preference rela-

tion and investigated within the context of the rich research about ‘combinative

preferences’ and preference logic. The general concept of verisimilitude has been

studied extensively over the course of the past fifty years. So far, however, this

research programme has rarely examined the logical properties of the relation

‘closer to truth’, and a general logic of truthlikeness is still lacking. Our present

work constitutes a step towards such a logic. We focus on a particular ‘question-

relative’ relation of comparative verisimilitude that is defined in terms of how

well the competing theories address a set of underlying questions. We show

that verisimilitude has logical properties that are very much different from those

of other preference-relations, such as relations of plausibility, or of comparative

possibility. Nonetheless, verisimilitude does also satisfy a number of interesting

axioms and properties that are shared by other preference-relations.

Dispositional actualism (DA) has the theoretical advantage over many other theories in the metaphysics of modality that it successfully grounds the modalities on some thisworldly empirically accessible entities, the dispositions or potentials of things and persons. But previous accounts also suffer from serious problems. We argue for a new account of dispositional actualism that avoids these problems; we call it Cognitive Capacities DA account (CDA); it centres upon a disjunctive analysis of modality that includes cognitive powers in addition to physical powers. This account is recommended not only because of its high intuitive plausibility, demonstrated by the close connection between modality and cognition that has been accepted by many philosophers over the centuries. First and foremost, as we claim, it guarantees for maximal material adequacy of the analysis of modality. Our theses are as follows: (I) Cognitive capacities in which some modalities are grounded are cognitive powers or bundles of interacting cognitive powers which together manifest themselves in a cognitive output. (II) Both metaphysical and logical modalities can be analysed in terms of these cognitive capacities. Finally, (III) an analysis of modalities should be framed in terms of both physical powers and cognitive capacities to have maximal material adequacy.

Compatibilists about mental causation maintain that every effect of a mental cause also has a sufficient physical cause. This, many object, looks suspiciously like overdetermination. In response, compatibilists argue that there is a key difference between overdetermination and compatibilist mental causation: While the overdetermining causes in genuine overdetermination are independent, the causes in compatibilist mental causation are grounding-related. For this reason, they cannot overdetermine their effects.

In this paper, I argue that, to the contrary, grounding-related causes can sometimes overdetermine their effects. I present a novel counterexample, which arguably qualfies as a case of grounding-related causes overdetermining an effect. I show how this counterexample refutes two proposed necessary conditions on overdetermination, by Kroedel and Schulz (2016), and Stenwall (2021). Finally, I suggest a way to modify Stenwall’s proposal such that it no longer misclassifies the counterexample.

Dispositions’ status as explanatorily potent or impotent has long been a point of contention in the literature, with discussion typically centering on their causal potency. My aim in this presentation is not to argue for or against dispositions’ causal potency, but to consider how we might expand their explanatory potency to include non-causal cases. In the cases I consider, however, it is not enough that a disposition be instantiated for it to exhibit this non-causal explanatory potency: it must also manifest. In fact, it must manifest continuously.

I begin by elucidating dispositional manifestation, distinguishing between what I term the ‘state’ and ‘process’ views of the phenomenon. In light of these views, I develop an account of what it means for a disposition to manifest continuously in the relevant sense. I go on to claim that cases of continuous manifestation can be differentiated according to the explanatory roles played by the dispositions involved in them. Specifically, I claim that dispositions can play an ‘ongoing explanatory role’ for what they bring about when manifested, whereas in other cases they do not. In the former, dispositions can exhibit non-causal explanatory potency and, in a sense, ‘sustain’ the products of their manifestation.

The Personite Problem (Johnston 2016, 2017) purports to show that perdurantism contrasts with our moral and prudential practices. Johnston considers this result an objection to perdurantism. The key claim is that personites have the same moral status of persons, where a personite is a proper part of a person that shares her mind and some relevant part of her body.

Johnston’s Master Argument for the claim that personites have the same moral status of persons is based on three premises. Importantly, the property of having a moral profile for persons is determined by a basis of intrinsic properties. I argue that the basis of properties for a personite is different, and this makes Johnston’s premise (2) false. Specifically, I argue for the claims: i) That the mental attitudes for personites are systematically wrong is grounded on the fact that these attitudes are true when possessed by the person and that the personite is a proper part of the person: ii) The mind of the personite extrinsic and depends on its person. I also dismiss the objection that the basis of properties of the personite determines a different moral status that produces a revenge personite problem.

This talk outlines an unorthodox view of grounding that solves problems with generalisations and negations. Concerning conjunctions, the principle that any contents p, q jointly ground (p & q) mirrors an introduction rule and a principle of semantic composition for conjunctive sentences. The strategy is to model other grounding principles after similar introduction and composition principles. Grounding is construed as non-factual but as reality-transferring: the truth of p, q is transferred to (p & q). Universal generalisations are not grounded by their instances (plus some dubious totality fact). Instead, the grounding is trans-categorial: any predicable F grounds (everything Fs); predicable F’s reality status of being present at every object is transformed into the truth of (everything Fs). Applied to existential generalisations, this predicables account solves Fine’s puzzles. The account of the grounding of negations assumes grounding by absence: any content p grounds its negation not-p; the irreality (falsity) of the ground is transformed into the reality (truth) of the groundee. A moderate Platonism is suggested: grounding facts are non-worldly though objective facts that correspond to our introductory inferential practices; they generate logical structures in the concrete world without such structures having to be part of the world in advance.

Until recently, metaphysical foundationalism, i.e., the idea that there are fundamental (ungrounded) facts that serve as the metaphysical (explanatory) basis of all derivative facts, was the dominant view about the structure of reality. Recently, however, more and more philosophers have raised objections against metaphysical foundationalism and developed rival views, such as metaphysical infinitism and coherentism. It has been argued that those rival views can accommodate the explanatory desiderata of a theory of the structure of the world at least as well as metaphysical foundationalism, if not better. The paper investigates the dialectic of the debate between metaphysical foundationalism vs. anti-foundationalism, by paying special attention to infinitism. It targets a key assumption in the discussion by arguing that the real issue isn’t which theory best meets a fixed set of explanatory desiderata, but rather what those very desiderata should be in the first place.

My aim in this talk is to investigate the relationship between the following three doctrines: (i) normative non-naturalism, (ii) the supervenience of the normative on the natural, and (iii) essentialism about metaphysical necessity, the view that metaphysical necessity is reducible to essence. Gideon Rosen (2020), elaborating on an argument by Kit Fine (2002), has recently argued that these three doctrines form an inconsistent triad. I will argue on the basis of the higher-order logic of essence HLE developed in Ditter (2022) that Rosen’s argument fails and I will establish the joint consistency of the three doctrines within the framework of HLE. The talk will also illustrate how methods from higher-order metaphysics can be brought to bear on questions about the metaphysics of properties.

A recently emerged form of deflationism about metaphysical modality (Clarke-Doane 2019, 2021; Priest 2021) challenges the very project of defining what metaphysical modality really is. Rather than reducing it to another modal or non-modal notion (e.g., apriority or analyticity), new deflationists argue that the concept of metaphysical necessity is intrinsically indeterminate or indefinitely extensible. They claim that for any proposition P judged metaphysically necessary, one can always introduce an alternative notion of necessity under which P is possible. This leads to a form of modal pluralism, akin to logical or set-theoretic pluralism. Just as it makes no sense to seek the “real” axioms of set theory, new deflationists argue that searching for the definitive interpretation of “could have been” is misguided. In this talk, I will evaluate this novel deflationist stance, outlining the different strategies it employs. Ultimately, however, I will defend a traditional monist approach to metaphysical modality. By critically examining the indeterminacy strategy that underpins modal pluralism, I will highlight its weaknesses and argue that a unified, monist view remains a viable and preferable alternative.

It seems appropriate to esteem parents for having and raising children, which suggests that there are reasons to have children that are not self-interested. This paper characterizes these reasons. I argue that there are reasons to have children that are neither self-interested nor moral. It is sometimes argued that the value of the human species generates reasons to have children in order to preserve the human species. Yet this view not only fails to illuminate our typical esteem for parents; it also faces the objection that such reasons are not concerned with what ultimately matters: individuals. I argue that there are non-self-interested reasons to have children that depend upon one's subjective appreciation of having a child, and I contribute to illuminating the more general idea that there are non-self-interested "reasons of love" that depend on one's subjective attraction. I develop a view of reasons of love according to which only individuals are worthy of love.

Seit 2020 müssen Kinder für pflegebedürftige Eltern Unterhalt zahlen bei 100.000 Euro Jahresbruttoeinkommen. Müssten Kinder das auch ohne gesetzliche Verpflichtung aus Dankbarkeit tun, wenn sie können? Mit dieser Frage macht der Vortrag die Kategorie supererogativer Handlungen für die Angewandte Ethik attraktiv.

1. Schulden Kinder Dankbarkeit?

1.1. Wäre Undankbarkeit gegenüber Eltern Verbrechen (Hume), müsste sie bestraft werden.

1.2. Wäre Dankbarkeit Rechtspflicht (Mill), könnten Eltern Dankbarkeitsbezeugungen einfordern, womit der ästhetische Mehrwert von Dankbarkeitsempfindungen verloren ginge.

1.3. Wäre Dankbarkeit Tugendpflicht (Kant), könnte sie unvernünftig ausufern.

2. Weil man das (vgl. 1) vernünftigerweise nicht wollen kann, ist Dankbarkeit gegen Eltern nicht Pflicht (Bleisch 2017), sondern Kandidat für freiwillige Supererogation.

2.1. Falls Dankbarkeit existentielle Interessen (z.B. Lebenspläne) gefährdet, ist sie Ultraerogation. Darum dürften Eltern noch nicht einmal bitten.

2.2. Weil Dankbarkeit i.d. Regel keine existentiellen Interessen gefährdet, ist sie Anstandserogation, die man klugerweise tun sollte.

3. Einschränkungen.

3.1. Dankbarkeit ist reziproke Anstandserogation, weil eine Wohltat vorausgegangen sein muss. Das bloße Ins-Sein-Setzen ist keine Wohltat.

3.2. Es kann unzumutbare Ultraerogation sein, den Eltern Vergehen verzeihen zu müssen.

3.3. Man darf aus Dankbarkeit keine Verbrechen begehen.

3.4. Bei konkurrierenden Verpflichtungen können moralische Dilemmata. entstehen.

Obwohl Menschen mit Demenz immer wieder darauf hinweisen, dass Privatheit für sie ein wichtiges Gut darstellt, finden sie in der Diskussion um Privatheit so gut wie keine Berücksichtigung. Dies liegt an zentralen Annahmen auf begrifflicher wie normativer Ebene, die dazu führen, dass viele Theorien keine adäquaten Aussagen über die Privatheit von Menschen mit Demenz treffen können.

Auf normativer Ebene liegt dies insbesondere in der Verknüpfung von Autonomie und Privatheit begründet, die zwar richtig und wichtig ist, allerdings all diejenigen außer Acht lässt, die nicht (länger) autonom sein können. Das gilt besonders auch für Menschen mit Demenz, die im Laufe der Erkrankung die kognitiven Fähigkeiten verlieren, die für Autonomie notwendig sind. Deshalb sollten wir unseren Blick stattdessen auf die emotionalen Fähigkeiten lenken, die auch bis in die späte Phase der Erkrankung hinein intakt bleiben. Diese sind entscheidender Teil intimer Erfahrungen, die in ihrem Vollzug wiederum auf Privatheit angewiesen sind, weil Privatheit den Ausschluss externer Blicke und Perspektiven ermöglicht.

Mit einem Rückbezug auf Intimität lässt sich deshalb auch für Menschen mit Demenz ein Schutz ihrer Privatheit begründen, selbst wenn sie nicht mehr zu autonomen Handeln in der Lage sind.

According to the balancing view of obligation, one ought to do something iff doing so is favoured by the balance of reasons, i.e., iff one’s reasons for doing it outweigh one’s reason for not doing it. According to standard views in deontic logic, what one ought to do is governed by substantive logical rules. Combining such a view with the balancing view then allows us to derive broadly logical principles governing the balance of reasons for logically related actions. Such principles, however, cry out for explanation in terms of corresponding principles governing individual reasons, their weights, and the ways they combine. A pressing question therefore emerges for proponents of the balancing view: Is there a plausible set of such principles which generates a plausible logic of obligation? My talk addresses the special case of that question which targets so-called standard deontic logic and argues for an optimistic conclusion: I identify a set of natural, though not uncontroversial principles governing reasons that generates, via the balancing view, an essentially standard deontic logic. I go on to briefly consider possible variations on the principles and discuss their relation to similar principles that have been proposed in the literature.

The idea that impossibilities have a role to play in a semantic analysis of validity is becoming widely accepted on various grounds, including grounds of relevance. I argue that this is a mistake, that it has led to various foundational objections to relevance logic, and that these objections are avoidable given a semantics that clearly distinguishes two types of conditional or inferential fallacies, namely, those concerning truth preservation from those concerning a relation between content or subject matter. I argue that we should avoid the use of impossibilities employed in the standard Kripke semantics for relevance logic in favor of a coarse-grained notion of content, and argue for the benefits of such an approach. Since this discussion generalizes to more than relevance logic, I discuss the the role that impossibilities might have to play more generally in logical analysis.

In previous publications, it was shown that finite non-deterministic matrices are quite powerful in providing semantics for a large class of normal and non-normal modal logics. However, some modal logics, such as those whose axiom systems contained the Löb axiom or the McKinsey formula, were not be analyzed via non-deterministic semantics. Furthermore, other modal rules than the rule of necessitation were not yet characterized in the framework.

In this presentation, we will overcome this shortcoming and present a novel approach for constructing semantics for normal and non-normal modal logics that is based on restricted non-deterministic matrices. This approach not only offers a uniform semantical framework for modal logics, while keeping the meaning of the involved modal operators the same, and thus making different systems of modal logic comparable. It might also lead to a new understanding of the concept of modality.

Michael Sandel has recently argued that at the heart of contemporary pop-

ulist uprisings lies the belief in meritocracy, i.e., the idea that high positions

in business and society should be allocated according to talent and effort.

Meritocratic thinking, he claims, leads to hubris among the winners (as well

as humiliation among the losers). To curb the hubris, he suggests that we

should allocate high positions in society on the basis of lotteries. If no one

can claim that their position in life is their own doing, this will make people

less arrogant and more open to considerations of the common good.

Such measures, however, would quite radically impact both the way

in which we allocate positions and jobs as well as the way in which we relate

to our positions and jobs. Before we opt for them, we should therefore

think about possible trade-offs and side effects. In this paper, I aim to out-

line four dimensions that should be taken into account: efficiency, (moral)

psychology, justification and symbolism. With regards to all four dimensions,

or so I will argue, there are possible trade-offs to be considered. It is therefore

less than clear that we should opt for Sandel's solution.

Suppose there are irreducibly collective interests. Suppose, that is, that at least some groups have interests that are irreducible to the interests of individuals. What might these collective interests consist in? In this paper, I examine three accounts of group interests, applying the Parfitian trichotomy of hedonism, subjectivism, and objective list theory to groups. To start, I briefly argue that group agents do indeed have irreducible interests. Then I defend the following three claims. First, hedonism fails as an account of collective interests. Second, subjectivism-for-group-agents (though not for non-agent groups) is a reasonable option but faces the same problems as subjectivism-for-individuals. Hence, one’s evaluation of the subjectivist account of collective interests should depend on what one thinks about the familiar debates about subjectivism-for-individuals. Third, objective list theory initially appears difficult to apply to groups, but a type of perfectionism-for-group-agents warrants further examination. I conclude with an indirect argument for irreducibly collective interests.

Recent work on empathy has drawn attention to several important political functions that empathy can play in democracy: empathy can help reduce political polarization, facilitate understanding, and improve deliberation. For empathy to play these political roles, it seems that it must be possible for democratic citizens to empathize with social groups; however, philosophers typically conceive of empathy as a dyadic phenomenon which takes place between an individual empathizer and an individual target person whose perspective they empathize with. This generates a puzzle for defenders of empathy’s democratic functions: is it possible to genuinely empathize with groups? If so, how should we make sense of this idea? If not, can we still vindicate the important political functions of empathy? This paper explores the available options for grappling with this puzzle. The most straightforward adaption of empathy to groups—empathizing with group agents—comes with controversial metaphysical commitments. However, we consider several alternative ways to understand group empathy—empathy with representative members of groups; empathy with hypothetical agents who we take to be representative of a group; and empathy with shared group “perspectives”. The latter proposal, we show, offers a promising way to understand group empathy and to vindicate its political functions.

Many relational egalitarians argue that friendship embodies the ideal of equality and can illuminate what it means to relate as equals on a broader social scale (Viehoff 2014, 2019; Scheffler 2015; Kolodny 2014; Wilson 2019). However, Joseph Chan (2021) has provided a forceful critique of this view, arguing that friendship is not governed by the norms of relational equality. While persuasive, Chan’s critique may lead one to think that friendship has no relevance for our normative theorizing. In this paper, I argue that this is not so, and that the model of good personal friendship can inspire a different approach to social justice—relational sufficientarianism (Bengtson & Nielsen 2023; Lippert-Rasmussen 2021). This is because friendship is governed by the norm of reciprocity, which requires us to reciprocate the relational benefits (e.g., care, concern, support, or love) received from our friend. While the norm of reciprocity may sometimes (incidentally) lead to equality of such benefits within friendship, its primary purpose is to prevent our friendships from becoming lopsided. Good friends relate as “sufficients” by not allowing each other to fall below the minimal threshold of relational benefits enjoyed within the relationship. Good friendship, thus, offers us a different understanding of what relational justice requires.

In the second half of “Two Dogmas”, Quine argued that there could be empirical grounds to revise logic–at least in principle. Since then the most popular proposal for what those empirical grounds might be has involved quantum mechanics. Still, most logicians seem to think that even this does not give us good enough reason for revision. This paper considers and evaluates an alternative proposal: perhaps the experiences acquired in virtual reality give us reason to adopt an assessment-sensitive logic.