Jake Ross

There has recently been an explosion of interest in rational and moral choice under evaluative uncertainty—uncertainty about values or reasons. However, the dominant views on such choice have at least three major problems: they are overly demanding, they are incompatible with supererogation, and they cannot be applied to agents with credence in indeterminate evaluative theories. The authors propose a unified view that solves all these problems. According to this view, permissible options maximize expected utility relative to permissible preferences, and different kinds of permissibility for options correspond to different kinds of permissibility for preferences. Thus, rationally permissible options maximize expected utility relative to rationally permissible preferences, and morally permissible options maximize expected utility relative to morally permissible preferences. The authors argue that this view has more plausible implications than its rivals not only under evaluative uncertainty but also under ordinary uncertainty.

We seem to talk about repeatable artworks, like symphonies, films, and novels, all the time. We say things like, "The Moonlight Sonata has three movements" and "Duck Soup makes me laugh". How are these sentences to be understood? We argue against the simple subject/predicate view, on which the subjects of the sentences refer to individuals and the sentences are true iff the referents of the subjects have the properties picked out by the predicates. We then consider two alternative responses that involve reading these sentences as generics, similar to "The polar bear has four paws". The first response takes these sentences to be about kinds, and the second takes the relevant noun-phrases to act as predicates. We reject these accounts, but offer a third alternative which is informed by both, and which enables us to deny the existence of repeatable artworks while endorsing the truth of sentences seemingly about them.

The morally wrong actions, it seems, are the actions that are worthy of moral disapproval. Hence, one way to approach normative ethics is to ask the following question: Toward what kinds of action is moral disapproval fitting or correct? Chapter 13 argues that we can answer this question by adopting a teleosemantic framework. The chapter proceeds in three stages. It begins by proposing and defending a teleological theory of the contents of attitudes in general. The account proposed implies that the content of an attitude depends on its functional role. Accordingly, the second part of the paper defends an account of the functional role of moral disapproval. Then the third part combines the results of the first two parts in order to determine the content, and hence the correctness conditions, of moral disapproval. The chapter concludes with some remarks about the normative implications of the resulting view. In particular, it argues for a form of moral relativism.

This chapter argues that, given certain background assumptions, a kind of idealism follows from a version of the fine-tuning thesis. The kind of idealism in question ascribes explanatory priority, not ontological priority, to the mental. The version of the fine-tuning thesis in question is the strong fine-tuning for consciousness thesis, according to which (i) the values of the fundamental physical parameters are fine-tuned for consciousness and (ii) this fine-tuning for consciousness is not the inevitable by-product of fine-tuning for something more basic than consciousness, such as life. The chapter argues that, assuming a particular account of the nature of explanation—namely, the unificationist account—the strong fine-tuning for consciousness thesis entails that consciousness plays a fundamental explanatory role in nature, and so this thesis entails explanatory idealism. The chapter concludes by arguing that similar reasoning leads to the conclusion that consciousness is the final cause of the universe.

Statements about repeatable artworks, such as ‘the Moonlight Sonata consists of three parts’, are similar to generic statements, such as ‘the giant panda eats bamboo’. The former pass tests taken as indicative of generic statements. In relation to both statements, puzzles arise concerning the reference of their subject phrases. According to ‘_referentialist accounts_’, the first sentence predicates a property of some entity referred by ‘the Moonlight Sonata’; for the second sentence it predicates a property of some entity referred to by ‘the giant panda’. There are referentialist accounts that disagree with entity referred to by those noun phrases—some refer to abstract entities, others to concrete objects. This chapter argues that these versions face problems regardless of whether applied to artwork terms or standard generic terms. This chapter proposes an alternative _non-referentialist_ account and concludes by raising, and responding to, objections to this alternative account.

This chapter is about the following question: what is the relationship between _how we ought to act_ and _how we ought to prefer that we act_? Part 1 concerns the actualist answer to this question, according to which one ought to Φ just in case one ought to prefer Φ-ing to what one would do otherwise. Part 2 concerns the possibilist answer, according to which one ought to Φ just in case one ought to prefer some option that involves Φ-ing to any option that does not involve Φ-ing. It is argued that actualism is absurd, and that, while different versions of possibilism differ in their levels of plausibility, no form of possibilism is acceptable. In part 3, some conditions of adequacy for a theory of obligation are proposed, and these are used to diagnose the failures of actualism and possibilism. An alternative theory is then presented which satisfies all these conditions.

Three challenges to the normativity of rationality are considered: the ignorance problem (which concerns cases where we are rationally required to do what we have most objective reason not to do), the wrong kind of reasons problem (which concerns cases where we seem to have overwhelming pragmatic reason to have irrational attitudes), and the mere incoherence problem (which concerns cases where a combination of attitudes is rationally prohibited, and yet we have sufficient reason for each of the constituent attitudes). After criticizing traditional responses to each of these challenges, this chapter offers an account of the connection between rationality and reasons that answers all of them and that has considerable explanatory power.

This paper compares two alternative explanations of pragmatic encroachment on knowledge (i.e., the claim that whether an agent knows that p can depend on pragmatic factors). After reviewing the evidence for such pragmatic encroachment, we ask how it is best explained, assuming it obtains. Several authors have recently argued that the best explanation is provided by a particular account of belief, which we call pragmatic credal reductivism. On this view, what it is for an agent to believe a proposition is for her credence in this proposition to be above a certain threshold, a threshold that varies depending on pragmatic factors. We show that while this account of belief can provide an elegant explanation of pragmatic encroachment on knowledge, it is not alone in doing so, for an alternative account of belief, which we call the reasoning disposition account, can do so as well. And the latter account, we argue, is far more plausible than pragmatic credal reductivism, since it accords far better with a number of claims about belief that are very hard to deny

The phenomenon of disagreement has recently been brought into focus by the debate between contextualists and relativist invariantists about epistemic expressions such as ‘might’, ‘probably’, indicative conditionals, and the deontic ‘ought’. Against the orthodox contextualist view, it has been argued that an invariantist account can better explain apparent disagreements across contexts by appeal to the incompatibility of the propositions expressed in those contexts. This paper introduces an important and underappreciated phenomenon associated with epistemic expressions — a phenomenon that we call reversibility. We argue that the invariantist account of disagreement is incompatible with reversibility, and we go on to show that reversible sentences cast doubt on the putative data about disagreement, even without assuming invariantism. Our argument therefore undermines much of the motivation for invariantism, and provides a new source for constraints on the proper explanation of purported data about disagreement

In Rethinking the Good, Larry Temkin argues for a principle that he calls the Narrow Person-Affecting View. In its simplest formulation, this principle states that a first outcome can be better than a second outcome only if there is someone who fares better in the first outcome than in the second. Temkin argues that this kind of principle gives us reason to reject the Transitivity Thesis, according to which, if A is better than B, and B is better than C, then A must be better than C. In this paper, I argue that the various formulations which Temkin has offered of the Narrow Person-Affecting View all face serious problems. I then propose an alternative view that captures the spirit of Temkin’s formulations while avoiding their difficulties. I conclude by arguing that, even if we accept such a person-affecting view, we needn’t reject the Transitivity Thesis.

Is rationality normative, in the sense that we ought to be rational, in our actions and attitudes? Recently, the claim that rationality is normative has faced several challenges. In this paper, I will take up these challenges, and aim to vindicate the normativity of rationality in the face of them. I will begin, in part 1, by outlining these challenges, and then discussing, and criticizing, some that have been offered to them in the literature. Then, in part 2, I will offer my own, unified response to these challenges

Currently, it appears that the most widely accepted solution to the Sleeping Beauty problem is the one-third solution. Another widely held view is that an agent’s credences should be countably additive. In what follows, I will argue that these two views are incompatible, since the principles that underlie the one-third solution are inconsistent with the principle of Countable Additivity (hereafter, CA). I will then argue that this incompatibility is a serious problems for thirders, since it undermines one of the central arguments for their position.

This article raises problems both for the view that safe belief is necessary for knowledge and for the view that it is sufficient. Focusing on ‘meta‐epistemic beliefs,’ or beliefs about the epistemic status of one's own beliefs, it is shown that the necessity claim has counterintuitive implications and that the sufficiency claim implies a contradiction. It is then shown that meta‐epistemic beliefs raise similar problems for a wide range of accounts of knowledge, and hence that they provide a powerful test for theories of knowledge.

It is generally thought that there are certain persons to whose welfare we should give special weight. It is commonly held, for example, that we should give special weight to our own welfare. On the strongest version of this view, we should always give overriding weight to our own welfare, and so, in considering any set of alternatives, we should always prefer the one in which we fare best. Many people would reject this strong view, for two reasons. First, many people would hold that impersonal reasons (such as reasons of total utility) can sometimes outweigh, or at least counterbalance, reasons of self-interest. Further, many people think that reasons deriving from special personal relations can sometimes outweigh, or at least counterbalance, reasons of self-interest. We can, however, formulate a much weaker, and much more plausible, version of the self-interest view that avoids both these problems. Let’s first define a person’s kin as anyone in the person’s extended family (including himself). And let’s define a person’s kith very broadly as anyone with whom that person has ever interacted. We can now formulate the weak version of the self-interest view as follows

How is what an agent ought to do related to what an agent ought to prefer that she does? More precisely, suppose we know what an agent’s preference ordering ought to be over the prospects of performing the various courses of action open to her. Can we infer from this information how she ought to act, and if so, how can we infer it? One view (which, for convenience, I will call ‘actualism’) is that an agent ought to  just in case she ought to prefer the prospect of her -ing to the prospect of her not -ing. Another view (which, for convenience, I will call ‘possibilism’) is that an agent ought to  just in case she ought to prefer the prospect of some maximally specific option that involves her -ing to the prospect of any maximally specific option that does not involve her -ing (with the quantifiers appropriately restricted). After making some preliminary clarifications in part 1, I will discuss actualism and possibilism in parts 2 and 3, respectively. I will argue, in part 2, that actualism is very far from the truth. And I will argue, in part 3, that while the standard version of possibilism faces significant problems, there are much better versions of possibilism that avoid the objections to the standard view. Ultimately, however, I will argue that even the best forms of possibilism are not acceptable. Then, in part 4, I will propose what I take to be the best view, one that is neither strictly possibilist nor actualist, and that avoids the shortcomings of both these views.