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59How to Be IrrationalIn Kevin McCain, Scott Stapleford & Matthias Steup (eds.), Seemings: New Arguments, New Angles, Routledge. pp. 94-108. 2023.
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51Can We Know Anything? A DebateRoutledge. 2023."In this book, Michael Huemer and Bryan Frances debate whether - and how - we can gain knowledge of the world outside of our own minds. Starting with opening statements, the debate moves through two rounds of replies. Frances argues that we lack knowledge because, for example, we cannot rule out the possibility that we are brains in vats being artificially stimulated in such a way as to create an illusion of living in the real world. Huemer disagrees that we need evidence against such possibilit…Read more
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20A Mental Files Theory of Mind: How Children Represent Belief and Its AspectualityIn Teresa Lopez-Soto, Alvaro Garcia-Lopez & Francisco J. Salguero-Lamillar (eds.), The Theory of Mind Under Scrutiny: Psychopathology, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind and Artificial Intelligence, Springer Nature Switzerland. pp. 35-70. 2023.The standard view on explicit theory of mind development holds that children around the age of 4 years start to ascribe beliefs to themselves and others. At this age they begin to master FB tasks in which they have to ascribe a mistaken belief to someone else. The emerging competence in FB tasks goes hand in hand with the developing ability to master various tasks that also require the understanding of different perspectives, like the alternative naming game, false sign or identity tasks. Mental…Read more
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49Free Will and Determinism in the World of Minority ReportIn Susan Schneider (ed.), Science Fiction and Philosophy: From Time Travel to Superintelligence, Wiley-blackwell. 2009.In this chapter, the author uses the film Minority Report as a means of reflecting on the age‐old topic of free will. Traditionally, having free will is thought to require two things: alternate possibilities and self‐control. Soft determinism is the view that determinism is true, and yet we have free will anyway. It is not rational to embrace hard determinism, since hard determinism, in conjunction with norms implicit in reasoning, leads to a conclusion that rationally undermines hard determinis…Read more
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1Revisionary intuitionismIn Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred Dycus Miller & Jeffrey Paul (eds.), Objectivism, subjectivism, and relativism in ethics, Cambridge University Press. 2008.
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Values and morals : outline of a skeptical realismIn Ernest Sosa & Enrique Villanueva (eds.), Metaethics, Wiley Periodicals. 2009.
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1Devil's advocates: on the ethics of unjust legal advocacyIn Emily Crookston, David Killoren & Jonathan Trerise (eds.), Ethics in Politics: The Rights and Obligations of Individual Political Agents, Routledge. 2017.
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Defending liberty: the commonsense approachIn Gregory Salmieri & Robert Mayhew (eds.), Foundations of a Free Society: Reflections on Ayn Rand's Political Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh Press. 2019.
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32The knowledge (“true belief”) error in 4- to 6-year-old children: When are agents aware of what they have in view?Cognition 230 (C): 105255. 2023.
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89Is Political Authority an Illusion?: A DebateRoutledge. 2021.What gives some people the right to issue commands to everyone else and force everyone else to obey them? And why should people obey the commands of those with political power? These two key questions are the heart of the issue of political authority, and, in this volume, two philosophers debate the answers. Michael Huemer argues that political authority is an illusion and that no one is entitled to rule over anyone. He discusses and rebuts the major theories supporting political authority's rig…Read more
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23The litmus test for the development of a metarepresentational Theory of Mind is the false belief task in which children have to represent how another agent misrepresents the world. Children typically start mastering this task around age four. Recently, however, a puzzling finding has emerged: Once children master the FB task, they begin to fail true belief control tasks. Pragmatic accounts assume that the TB task is pragmatically confusing because it poses a trivial academic test question about …Read more
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84On Liberty and Cruelty: A Reply to Walter BlockStudia Humana 11 (1): 32-42. 2022.A standard argument for ethical vegetarianism contends that factory farming – the source of nearly all animal products – is morally wrong due to its extreme cruelty, and that it is wrong to buy products produced in an extremely immoral manner. This article defends this argument against objections based on appeal to libertarian political philosophy, the supposed benefit to animals of being raised for food, and nonhuman animals’ supposed lack of rights.
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25Justice Before the LawSpringer Verlag. 2021.America’s legal system harbors serious, widespread injustices. Many defendants are sent to prison for nonviolent offenses, including many victimless crimes. Convicts often serve draconian sentences in crowded prisons rife with abuse. Almost all defendants are convicted without trial because prosecutors threaten defendants with drastically higher sentences if they request a trial. Most Americans are terrified of encountering any kind of legal trouble, knowing that both civil and criminal courts a…Read more
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155Reply to Walter Block on Ethical VegetarianismStudia Humana 10 (1): 41-50. 2021.I address Walter Block’s recent criticisms of my book, Dialogues on Ethical Vegetarianism. Methodologically, Block relies too much on appeals to contentious and extreme assumptions. Substantively, most of his objections are irrelevant to the central issue of the book. Those that are relevant turn on false assumptions or lead to absurd consequences. In the end, Block’s claim to oppose suffering cannot be reconciled with his indifference to a practice that probably causes, every few years, more su…Read more
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48A Defense of Jury NullificationIn David Boonin (ed.), Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Public Policy, Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 39-50. 2018.In the practice of “jury nullification,” a jury votes to acquit a defendant despite sufficient evidence of lawbreaking, on the grounds that a conviction would be unjust, usually because the law itself is unjust or because the expected punishment would be unduly harsh. This practice is widely condemned by judges. Nevertheless, in the case of an unjust law or unduly harsh punishment, there are no good arguments against jury nullification, and there is one powerful argument in its favor: it is prim…Read more
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115Gun Rights as Deontic ConstraintsSocial Theory and Practice 45 (4): 601-612. 2019.In earlier work, I argued that gun prohibition is unjustified because it violates an individual right to self-defense. Here, I defend that argument against objections posed by Nicholas Dixon and Jeff McMahan to the effect that the right of citizens to be free from gun violence counterbalances the right of self-defense, and that gun prohibition does not violate the right of self-defense because it renders everyone overall safer.
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67When All Else Fails: The Ethics of Resistance to State Injustice (review)The Philosophers' Magazine 85 114-116. 2019.
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2256Existence Is Evidence of ImmortalityNoûs 55 (1): 128-151. 2021.Time may be infinite in both directions. If it is, then, if persons could live at most once in all of time, the probability that you would be alive now would be zero. But if persons can live more than once, the probability that you would be alive now would be nonzero. Since you are alive now, with certainty, either the past is finite, or persons can live more than once.
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1Finite MindsIn Rodrigo Borges, Branden Fitelson & Cherie Braden (eds.), Knowledge, Scepticism, and Defeat: Themes from Klein, Springer Verlag. 2019.
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441Debunking leftward progressRatio 32 (4): 312-324. 2019.In earlier work, I argued that observed changes in moral values over human history are best explained as cognitive progress: societies tend over the long term to move closer to the objective moral truth. It is also true that, in recent decades, liberal democracies have moved strongly in the direction of greater government regulation and wealth redistribution. Does this mean that extensive regulation and redistribution are objectively good? I argue that the answer is no; these recent trends are i…Read more
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67The Problem of Memory KnowledgePacific Philosophical Quarterly 80 (4): 346-357. 1999.When one recalls that P, how is one justified in believing that P? I refute the three most natural answers to this question: a memory belief is not justified by a belief in the reliability of memory; a memory experience does not provide a new, foundational justification for a belief; and memory does not merely preserve the same justification a belief had when first adopted. Instead, the justification of a memory belief is a product of both the initial justification for adopting it and the justif…Read more
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207Approaching InfinityPalgrave Macmillan. 2016.Approaching Infinity addresses seventeen paradoxes of the infinite, most of which have no generally accepted solutions. The book addresses these paradoxes using a new theory of infinity, which entails that an infinite series is uncompletable when it requires something to possess an infinite intensive magnitude. Along the way, the author addresses the nature of numbers, sets, geometric points, and related matters. The book addresses the need for a theory of infinity, and reviews both old and new …Read more
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2716Abstract: In earlier work, I argued that individuals have a right to own firearms for personal defense, and that as a result, gun prohibition would be unjustified unless it at least produced benefits many times greater than its costs. Here, I defend that argument against objections posed by Nicholas Dixon and Jeff McMahan to the effect that the right of citizens to be free from gun violence counterbalances the right of self-defense, and that gun prohibition does not violate the right of self-def…Read more
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42Paradox Lost: Logical Solutions to ten Puzzles of PhilosophyPalgrave Macmillan. 2018.Paradox Lost covers ten of philosophy’s most fascinating paradoxes, in which seemingly compelling reasoning leads to absurd conclusions. The following paradoxes are included: The Liar Paradox, in which a sentence says of itself that it is false. Is the sentence true or false? The Sorites Paradox, in which we imagine removing grains of sand one at a time from a heap of sand. Is there a particular grain whose removal converts the heap to a non-heap? The Puzzle of the Self-Torturer, in which a seri…Read more
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126Self-Locating BeliefsIn Paradox Lost: Logical Solutions to ten Puzzles of Philosophy, Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 219-243. 2018.Beauty is put to sleep and woken up either once or twice, depending on the flip of a coin; after each waking, she will fall asleep and forget having woken. Upon waking, what should be her credence that the coin came up heads? Some say 1/2; others say 1/3. I propose that evidence supports a theory for you when your having that qualitative evidence would be more likely if the theory were true than if it were false. This view supports the “1/3” answer to the Sleeping Beauty problem. It also has app…Read more
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271Lob der UntätigkeitIn Thomas Leske (ed.), Wider Die Anmaßung der Politik: Über Das Unrecht der Drogen-, Einwanderungs- Und Waffengesetze Und Die Tugend der Politikverdrossenheit, Thomas Leske. 2015.Den Beteiligten des Politikbetriebs einschließlich Wählern, Aktivisten und Spitzenpolitikern fehlt häufig der grundlegende Sachverstand für die jeweiligen politischen Entscheidungen. Selbst Experten verstehen gesellschaftliche Mechanismen kaum und können deren Auswirkung kaum vorhersagen. Nur auf einfachste und unstrittige politische Behauptungen ist Verlass. Teilweise rührt das daher, dass politisches Wissen schwer zu erlangen ist, und teilweise daher, dass der Einzelne keinen ausreichenden Ans…Read more
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359Amerikas ungerechter Krieg gegen die DrogenIn Thomas Leske (ed.), Wider Die Anmaßung der Politik: Über Das Unrecht der Drogen-, Einwanderungs- Und Waffengesetze Und Die Tugend der Politikverdrossenheit, Thomas Leske. 2015.Soll der Freizeitkonsum von Drogen wie Marihuana, Kokain, Heroin und LSD einem gesetzlichen Verbot unterliegen? Drogengegner sagen ja. Sie behaupten für gewöhnlich, Drogenkonsum sei sowohl für den Nutzer als auch für die Gesellschaft allgemein äußerst schädlich – vielleicht sogar unmoralisch, und sie glauben, diese Tatsachen seien als Verbotsgrund ausreichend. Freigabebefürworter sagen nein und berufen sich dabei für gewöhnlich auf eines oder mehrere von drei Argumenten: Erstens behaupten einige…Read more
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44Gibt es ein Recht, Schusswaffen zu besitzen?In Thomas Leske (ed.), Wider Die Anmaßung der Politik: Über Das Unrecht der Drogen-, Einwanderungs- Und Waffengesetze Und Die Tugend der Politikverdrossenheit, Thomas Leske. 2015.Menschen haben ein Anscheinsrecht (engl. prima facie right), Schusswaffen zu besitzen. Dieses Recht ist bedeutsam sowohl in Hinblick auf die Rolle, die Waffenbesitz im Leben von Waffenbegeisterten spielt, als auch auf den Selbstverteidigungsnutzen von Schusswaffen. Dieses Recht wird auch nicht durch den gesellschaftlichen Schaden privaten Waffenbesitzes verdrängt. Dieser Schaden wurde stark aufgebauscht und ist vermutlich erheblich kleiner als der Nutzen privaten Waffenbesitzes. Und ich lege dar…Read more
Boulder, Colorado, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |