David Buzaglo

The via negativa conception of physicalism defines the thesis in terms of the exclusion of fundamental mentality: no property is both fundamental and mental. I argue that its appeal is best understood as resting on a deeper metaphysical ideal inherited from classical materialism—the ideal of natural continuity. Rather than proposing a rival formulation, I reconstruct this continuity ideal as the animating commitment behind many physicalist views. This reconstruction helps to systematize characteristic modal judgments in the literature and to explain the appeal of via negativa. However, if physicalism’s metaphysical motivation is tied to this ideal, then developments in contemporary physics, especially non-locality and indeterminism, may place it under pressure. Physicalism’s future thus depends on whether our evolving scientific worldview continues to sustain the continuity ideal that historically gave the view its force.

This paper examines the tension between the distinctive gravity of sexual coercion and a progressive sexual ethics that permits casual and promiscuous sex. Through a discussion of Fiona Woollard, Berit Brogaard, and Adrià Moret, I argue that leading attempts to explain the special wrongness of sexual coercion tend to move beyond a flatly permissive view of sex and toward a normatively loaded conception of the sexual domain. I then develop an alternative account that understands sexual coercion as the corruption of an ideal, and identifies that ideal with the unitive character of sex. Although this view introduces a hierarchy of sexual practices, it does not entail a conservative rejection of casual sex. Rather, it yields a more layered sexual ethics, one that distinguishes permissibility from ethical excellence and makes room for ideals of intimacy, connection, and mutual regard without denying the permissibility of non-ideal sexual practices.

This paper challenges Elise Woodard’s account of the epistemic significance of mind-change. Woodard argues that learning of others’ revisions of belief supplies higher-order evidence, encourages further inquiry, and indicates that overlooked reasons may exist. I defend a dilemma: either the mind-changer can articulate reasons for their shift, in which case the change itself adds no epistemic weight beyond those reasons, or they cannot, in which case the change is epistemically suspect. In both cases, the bare fact of mind-change does no independent epistemic work. I also argue that the significance of belief revision is context-dependent: in some milieus or temperaments change is costly and hence creditable, while in others it is cheap, routine, or even a sign of unreliability. Taken together, these arguments show that the epistemic meaning of mind-change is more limited and conditional than Woodard suggests.

This paper explores the epistemic implications of endorsing a specific category of conspiracy theories, which I term “toxic conspiracy theories” (following Basham, 2018). I contend that these theories exert a profound and distinctive impact on our belief system, not only shaping perspectives on the specific events they are purported to explain, but also influencing our broader understanding of sociopolitical reality. I delineate a surprising result of this doxastically encompassing nature of toxic conspiracy theories: if some toxic conspiracy theory is true, then a belief in a false one can be remarkably illuminating. Consequently, adherents of toxic conspiracy theories may, contrary to prevailing opinion, possess a more astute grasp of sociopolitical realities than their counterparts who eschew such conspiratorial narratives. I then move on to address an objection suggesting that toxic conspiracy theories are so overwhelmingly unlikely to render the central argument a mere academic exercise. In response I draw on various ‘particularist’ arguments to the contrary and further argue that the unlikelihood of toxic conspiracy theories cannot be determined without engagement with some foundational questions regarding the nature and integrity of our democratic institutions.

In a recent paper, Firt, Hemmo and Shenker argue that Hempel’s dilemma, typically thought to primarily undermine physicalism, is generalizable and impacts mind-body dualism and many other theories equally. I challenge this view and argue that Hempel’s dilemma admits of at least two distinct construals: a general-skeptical construal, underpinned by historically driven arguments such as the pessimistic induction, and a non-skeptical construal, driven by the specific puzzles and volatility of current physics. While the general-skeptical construal applies to all changeable deep-structure theories, the non-skeptical construal primarily targets volatile theories which harbor exclusionary ambitions. As a result, dualism largely evades both construals due to the stability of theories of the mental and their lack of exclusionary ambitions. Conversely, physicalism is uniquely susceptible to both construals due to its strong commitment to deep-structure realism, inherent exclusionary ambitions, and the volatility of certain branches of fundamental physics. The paper ultimately concludes that Hempel’s dilemma is not universally problematic, but presents a unique challenge to physicalism while being relatively congenial to dualism.