Jan Willem Wieland

This book on infinite regress arguments provides (i) an up-to-date overview of the literature on the topic, (ii) ready-to-use insights for all domains of philosophy, and (iii) two case studies to illustrate these insights in some detail. Infinite regress arguments play an important role in all domains of philosophy. There are infinite regresses of reasons, obligations, rules, and disputes, and all are supposed to have their own moral. Yet most of them are involved in controversy. Hence the question is: what exactly is an infinite regress argument, and when is such an argument a good one?

Strategic ignorance is a widespread phenomenon. In a laboratory setting, many participants avoid learning information about the consequences of their behaviour in order to act egoistically. In real life, many consumers avoid information about their purchases or the working conditions in which they were produced in order to retain their lifestyle. The question is whether agents are blameworthy for such strategically ignorant behaviour. In this paper, I explore quality of will resources, according to which agents are blameworthy, roughly, depending on their moral concern. The account I will propose—the Maximal Account—has three innovative features: it utilizes a suitable concept of maximal moral concern, it offers an accountability version of the account which significantly differs from the more familiar attributability variant, and it maintains that agents without maximal concern are blameworthy.

Suspension of Judgment What does it take to suspend one’s judgment? In this introduction to the special issue ‘Scepticism and the suspension of judgment’, I present a conceptual analysis of suspension of judgment (what it is, what it isn’t, and why we might want to do it). Basically I argue that suspension is a mental attitude of neutrality. If you suspend judgment on a certain proposition, you are neutral towards its truth. In addition, I make a few suggestions on how to further analyse this attitude of neutrality, and distinguish it from other attitudes such as doubt and inquisitiveness.

The general view is that metaphysical explanation is asymmetric. For instance, if resemblance facts can be explained by facts about their relata, then, by the asymmetry of explanation, these latter facts cannot in turn be explained by the former. The question however is: is there any reason to hold on to the asymmetry? If so, what does it consist in? In the paper we approach these questions by comparing them to analogous questions that have been investigated for scientific explanations. Three main asymmetry criteria have been proposed for the latter: (i) causation, (ii) unification, and (iii) explanatory dependence. We argue that the last criterion, but not the former two, can be of help to metaphysical explanation: metaphysical explanations are asymmetric if the explanatory dependence criterion (in modified format) holds of them.

This paper is about the Problem of Order, which is basically the problem how to account for both the distinctness of facts like a’s preceding b and b’s preceding a, and the identity of facts like a’s preceding b and b’s succeeding a. It has been shown that the Standard View fails to account for the second part and is therefore to be replaced. One of the contenders is Anti-Positionalism. As has recently been pointed out, however, Anti-Positionalism falls prey to a regress argument which is to prove its failure. In the paper we spell out this worry, show that the worry is a serious one, and distinguish four possible strategies for Anti-Positionalism to deal with it.

Much of present-day epistemology is divided between internalists and externalists. Different as these views are, they have in common that they strip justification from its dialectical component in order to block the skeptic’s argument from disagreement. That is, they allow that one may have justified beliefs even if one is not able to defend it against challenges and resolve the disagreements about them. Lammenranta (2008, 2011a) recently argued that neither internalism nor externalism convinces if we consider the argument in its most interesting format. In this paper I zoom in on this debate, and fix further details of Lammenranta’s lead. Specifically, I will side with skepticism that justification is dialectical, yet only if certain conditions are in place.

Is the content of our thoughts determined by norms such as ‘if I know that p, then I ought to believe that p’? Glüer & Wikforss (2009a) set forth a regress argument for a negative answer. The aim of this paper is to clarify and evaluate this argument. In the first part I show how it (just like an argument from Wittgenstein 1953) can be taken as an instance of an argument schema. In the second part, I evaluate the relevant premises in some detail, and argue that the dialectical situation is slightly more complicated than a ‘dilemma of regress and idleness’, as Glüer & Wikforss have dubbed it.

This article critically reviews a new collection on Pyrrhonism edited by Diego Machuca, Pyrrhonism in Ancient, Modern, and Contemporary Philosophy, which fits within the recent focus on the systematic, philosophical import of Pyrrhonism. In this article I both situate and summarize the problems posed by the authors regarding the Pyrrhonist's position (concerning its coherence, its theoretical motivation, and its practical motivation), and indicate to what extent Pyrrhonists might be able to meet them. I conclude that, so far, Pyrrhonism, i.e. the view which propagates global suspension of belief, remains a promising option.

This introduction provides an overview of the current state of the debate on the epistemic condition of moral responsibility. In sect. 1, we discuss the main concepts ‘ignorance’ and ‘responsibility’. In sect. 2, we ask why agents should inform themselves. In sect. 3, we describe what we take to be the core agreement among main participants in the debate. In sect. 4, we explain how this agreement invites a regress argument with a revisionist implication. In sect. 5, we provide an overview of the main responses to the regress argument. In sect. 6, we address the question why blameless ignorance excuses. In sect. 7, we describe further issues that are addressed in the book. In sect. 8, we conclude with some discussion of future directions the debate might take.

What is the Problem of Universals? In this paper we take up the classic question and proceed as follows. In Sect. 1 we consider three problem solving settings and define the notion of problem solving accordingly. Basically I say that to solve problems is to eliminate undesirable, unspecified, or apparently incoherent scenarios. In Sect. 2 we apply the general observations from Sect. 1 to the Problem of Universals. More specifically, we single out two accounts of the problem which are based on the idea of eliminating apparently incoherent scenarios, and then propose modifications of those two accounts which, by contrast, are based on the idea of eliminating unspecified scenarios. In Sect. 3 we spell out two interesting ramifications.

Infinite regress arguments show up in many philosophical debates. But what actually is a regress argument? This article reviews two theories: the Paradox Theory and the Failure Theory. According to the Paradox Theory, regress arguments can be used to refute an existentially or universally quantified statement (e.g. to refute the statement that at least one discussion is settled, or the statement that discussions are settled only if there is an agreed-upon criterion to settle them). According to the Failure Theory, regress arguments can be used to demonstrate that a certain solution fails to solve an existentially or universally quantified problem (e.g. to demonstrate that a certain solution fails to settle all discussions, or that it fails to settle even one discussion). In the literature, the Paradox Theory is fairly well-developed, and this article shows that the Failure Theory can be supplied with similar tools.

This dissertation is on infinite regress arguments in philosophy. Its main goals are to explain what such arguments from many distinct philosophical debates have in common, and to provide guidelines for using and evaluating them. Two theories are reviewed: the Paradox Theory and the Failure Theory. According to the Paradox Theory, infinite regress arguments can be used to refute an existentially or universally quantified statement (e.g. to refute the statement that at least one discussion is settled, or the statement that discussions are settled only if there is an agreed-upon criterion to settle them). According to the Failure Theory, infinite regress arguments can be used to demonstrate that a certain solution fails to solve an existentially or universally quantified problem (e.g. to demonstrate that a certain solution fails to settle all discussions, or that it fails to settle even one discussion). In the literature, the Paradox Theory is fairly well-developed, and this dissertation provides the Failure Theory with the same tools.

Infinite regress arguments play an important role in many distinct philosophical debates. Yet, exactly how they are to be used to demonstrate anything is a matter of serious controversy. In this paper I take up this metaphilosophical debate, and demonstrate how infinite regress arguments can be used for two different purposes: either they can refute a universally quantified proposition (as the Paradox Theory says), or they can demonstrate that a solution never solves a given problem (as the Failure Theory says). In the meantime, I show that Black’s view on infinite regress arguments (1996, this journal) is incomplete, and how his criticism of Passmore can be countered

In this journal, Vishnu Sridharan presents a novel objection to attributionism, the view according to which agents are responsible for their conduct when it reflects who they are or what they value. The key to Sridharan's objection is that agents can fulfil all attributionist conditions for responsibility while being under the control of a manipulator. In this paper, we show that Sridharan's objection falls prey to a dilemma—either his manipulator is counterfactually robust, or she is not—and that neither of its horns undermines attributionism.

If an argument can be reconstructed in at least two different ways, then which reconstruction is to be preferred? In this paper I address this problem of argument reconstruction in terms of Ryle’s infinite regress argument against the view that knowledge-how requires knowledge-that. First, I demonstrate that Ryle’s initial statement of the argument does not fix its reconstruction as it admits two, structurally different reconstructions. On the basis of this case and infinite regress arguments generally, I defend a revisionary take on argument reconstruction: argument reconstruction is mainly to be ruled by charity (viz. by general criteria which arguments have to fulfil in order to be good arguments) rather than interpretation.