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Nonclassical logic and skepticismAsian Journal of Philosophy 2 (2): 1-14. 2023.
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Decision Theory without LuminosityMind 133 (530): 346-376. 2023.Our decision-theoretic states are not luminous. We are imperfectly reliable at identifying our own credences, utilities and available acts, and thus can never be more than imperfectly reliable at identifying the prescriptions of decision theory. The lack of luminosity affords decision theory a remarkable opportunity — to issue guidance on the basis of epistemically inaccessible facts. We show how a decision theory can guarantee action in accordance with contingent truths about which an agent is …Read more
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Tolerance and the distributed soritesSynthese 196 (3): 1071-1077. 2019.On some accounts of vagueness, predicates like “is a heap” are tolerant. That is, their correct application tolerates sufficiently small changes in the objects to which they are applied. Of course, such views face the sorites paradox, and various solutions have been proposed. One proposed solution involves banning repeated appeals to tolerance, while affirming tolerance in any individual case. In effect, this solution rejects the reasoning of the sorites argument. This paper discusses a thorny p…Read more
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Decision Theory UnboundNoûs. forthcoming.
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Non-Measurability, Imprecise Credences, and Imprecise ChancesMind 131 (523): 892-916. 2021.– We offer a new motivation for imprecise probabilities. We argue that there are propositions to which precise probability cannot be assigned, but to which imprecise probability can be assigned. In such cases the alternative to imprecise probability is not precise probability, but no probability at all. And an imprecise probability is substantially better than no probability at all. Our argument is based on the mathematical phenomenon of non-measurable sets. Non-measurable propositions cannot re…Read more
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Accurate Updating for the Risk SensitiveBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 73 (3): 751-776. 2020.Philosophers have recently attempted to justify particular belief revision procedures by arguing that they are the optimal means towards the epistemic end of accurate credences. These attempts, however, presuppose that means should be evaluated according to classical expected utility theory; and there is a long tradition maintaining that expected utility theory is too restrictive as a theory of means–end rationality, ruling out too many natural ways of taking risk into account. In this paper, we…Read more
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A New Problem for Quantum MechanicsBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 73 (3): 631-661. 2022.In this article I raise a new problem for quantum mechanics, which I call the control problem. Like the measurement problem, the control problem places a fundamental constraint on quantum theories. The characteristic feature of the problem is its focus on state preparation. In particular, whereas the measurement problem turns on a premise about the completeness of the quantum state (‘no hidden variables’), the control problem turns on a premise about our ability to prepare or control quantum sta…Read more
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Just As Planned: Bayesianism, Externalism, and Plan CoherencePhilosophers' Imprint 23. 2023.Two of the most influential arguments for Bayesian updating ("Conditionalization") -- Hilary Greaves' and David Wallace's Accuracy Argument and David Lewis' Diachronic Dutch Book Argument-- turn out to impose a strong and surprising limitation on rational uncertainty: that one can never be rationally uncertain of what one's evidence is. Many philosophers ("externalists") reject that claim, and now seem to face a difficult choice: either to endorse the arguments and give up Externalism, or to rej…Read more
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Superiority Discounting Implies the Preposterous ConclusionUtilitas 34 (4): 493-501. 2022.Many population axiologies avoid the Repugnant Conclusion by endorsing Superiority: some number of great lives is better than any number of mediocre lives. But as Nebel shows, RC follows from the Intrapersonal Repugnant Conclusion: a guaranteed mediocre life is better than a sufficiently small probability of a great life. This result is concerning because IRC is plausible. Recently, Kosonen has argued that IRC can be true while RC is false if small probabilities are discounted to zero. This arti…Read more
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Intrinsically Desiring the VagueProceedings of the Aristotelian Society. forthcoming.
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A simple solution to the hardest logic puzzle everAnalysis 68 (2): 105-112. 2008.
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Graded RatifiabilityJournal of Philosophy 119 (2): 57-88. 2022.
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ContextologyPhilosophical Studies 179 (11): 3187-3209. 2022.Contextology is the science of the dynamics of the conversational context. Contextology formulates laws governing how the shared information states of interlocutors evolve in response to assertion. More precisely, the contextologist attempts to construct a function which, when provided with just a conversation’s pre-update context and the content of an assertion, delivers that conversation’s post-update context. Most contextologists have assumed that the function governing the evolution of the c…Read more
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Deference Done BetterPhilosophical Perspectives 35 (1): 99-150. 2021.There are many things—call them ‘experts’—that you should defer to in forming your opinions. The trouble is, many experts are modest: they’re less than certain that they are worthy of deference. When this happens, the standard theories of deference break down: the most popular (“Reflection”-style) principles collapse to inconsistency, while their most popular (“New-Reflection”-style) variants allow you to defer to someone while regarding them as an anti-expert. We propose a middle way: deferring…Read more
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Infinite Aggregation and RiskAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 101 (2): 340-359. 2023.For aggregative theories of moral value, it is a challenge to rank worlds that each contain infinitely many valuable events. And, although there are several existing proposals for doing so, few provide a cardinal measure of each world's value. This raises the even greater challenge of ranking lotteries over such worlds—without a cardinal value for each world, we cannot apply expected value theory. How then can we compare such lotteries? To date, we have just one method for doing so (proposed sep…Read more
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Wishing, Decision Theory, and Two-Dimensional ContentJournal of Philosophy 120 (2): 61-93. 2023.This paper is about two requirements on wish reports whose interaction motivates a novel semantics for these ascriptions. The first requirement concerns the ambiguities that arise when determiner phrases, such as definite descriptions, interact with ‘wish’. More specifically, several theorists have recently argued that attitude ascriptions featuring counterfactual attitude verbs license interpretations on which the determiner phrase is interpreted relative to the subject’s beliefs. The second re…Read more
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The Qualitative ThesisJournal of Philosophy 119 (4): 196-229. 2022.The Qualitative Thesis says that if you leave open P, then you are sure of if P, then Q just in case you are sure of the corresponding material conditional. We argue the Qualitative Thesis provides compelling reasons to accept a thesis that we call Conditional Locality, which says, roughly, the interpretation of an indicative conditional depends, in part, on the conditional’s local embedding environment. In the first part of the paper, we present an argument—due to Ben Holguín—showing that, with…Read more
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A Suppositional Theory of ConditionalsMind 130 (520). 2021.
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A Simpler, More Compelling Money Pump with ForesightJournal of Philosophy 117 (10): 578-589. 2020.One might think that money pumps directed at agents with cyclic preferences can be avoided by foresight. This view was challenged two decades ago by the discovery of a money pump with foresight, which works against agents who use backward induction. But backward induction implausibly assumes that the agent would act rationally and retain her trust in her future rationality even at choice nodes that could only be reached if she were to act irrationally. This worry does not apply to BI-terminating…Read more
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A St Petersburg Paradox for risky welfare aggregationAnalysis 81 (3): 420-426. 2021.
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Building low level causation out of high level causationSynthese 199 (3-4): 9927-9955. 2021.I argue that high level causal relationships are often more fundamental than low level causal relationships. My argument is based on some general principles governing when one causal relationship will metaphysically ground another—a phenomenon I term derivative causation. These principles are in turn based partly on our intuitive judgments concerning derivative causation in a series of representative examples, and partly on some powerful theoretical considerations in their favour. I show how the…Read more
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Fragile KnowledgeMind 131 (522): 487-515. 2022.This paper explores the principle that knowledge is fragile, in that whenever S knows that S doesn’t know that S knows that p, S thereby fails to know p. Fragility is motivated by the infelicity of dubious assertions, utterances which assert p while acknowledging higher-order ignorance whether p. Fragility is interestingly weaker than KK, the principle that if S knows p, then S knows that S knows p. Existing theories of knowledge which deny KK by accepting a Margin for Error principle can be con…Read more
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What are the chances you’re right about everything? An epistemic challenge for modern partisanshipPolitics, Philosophy and Economics 19 (1): 36-61. 2020.The American political landscape exhibits significant polarization. People’s political beliefs cluster around two main camps. However, many of the issues with respect to which these two camps disagree seem to be rationally orthogonal. This feature raises an epistemic challenge for the political partisan. If she is justified in consistently adopting the party line, it must be true that her side is reliable on the issues that are the subject of disagreements. It would then follow that the other si…Read more
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Aggregation Without Interpersonal Comparisons of Well‐BeingPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 105 (1): 18-41. 2022.This paper is about the role of interpersonal comparisons in Harsanyi's aggregation theorem. Harsanyi interpreted his theorem to show that a broadly utilitarian theory of distribution must be true even if there are no interpersonal comparisons of well-being. How is this possible? The orthodox view is that it is not. Some argue that the interpersonal comparability of well-being is hidden in Harsanyi's premises. Others argue that it is a surprising conclusion of Harsanyi's theorem, which is not pr…Read more
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Why Take Both Boxes?Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 99 (1): 27-48. 2019.
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Reasoning beyond belief acquisitionNoûs 56 (2): 416-442. 2021.I argue that we can reason not only to new beliefs but to basically any change in attitude we can think of, including the abandonment of belief (contra John Broome), the acquisition of non-belief attitudes like relief and admiration, and the elimination of the same. To argue for this position, which I call generalism, I defend a sufficient condition on reasoning, roughly that we can reason to any change in attitude that is expressed by the conclusion of an argument we can be convinced by. I then…Read more
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Kolmogorov Conditionalizers Can Be Dutch BookedReview of Symbolic Logic 1-36. forthcoming.A vexing question in Bayesian epistemology is how an agent should update on evidence which she assigned zero prior credence. Some theorists have suggested that, in such cases, the agent should update by Kolmogorov conditionalization, a norm based on Kolmogorov’s theory of regular conditional distributions. However, it turns out that in some situations, a Kolmogorov conditionalizer will plan to always assign a posterior credence of zero to the evidence she learns. Intuitively, such a plan is irra…Read more
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An argument against causal decision theoryAnalysis 81 (1): 52-61. 2021.
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Avoiding Dutch Books despite inconsistent credencesSynthese 198 (12): 11265-11289. 2020.It is often loosely said that Ramsey The foundations of mathematics and other logical essays, Routledge and Kegan Paul, Abingdon, pp 156–198, 1931) and de Finetti Studies in subjective probability, Kreiger Publishing, Huntington, 1937) proved that if your credences are inconsistent, then you will be willing to accept a Dutch Book, a wager portfolio that is sure to result in a loss. Of course, their theorems are true, but the claim about acceptance of Dutch Books assumes a particular method of ca…Read more
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The Case for ComparabilityNoûs 57 (2): 414-453. 2023.We argue that all comparative expressions in natural language obey a principle that we call Comparability: if x and y are at least as F as themselves, then either x is at least as F as y or y is at least as F as x. This principle has been widely rejected among philosophers, especially by ethicists, and its falsity has been claimed to have important normative implications. We argue that Comparability is needed to explain the goodness of several patterns of inference that seem manifestly valid, th…Read more
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