Nathaniel Baron-Schmitt

We point out an important, overlooked parallel between causation and grounding. Certain cases of causation, such as trumping preemption, reveal causation to be extrinsic: what causes what can depend on what is happening in other parts of the universe. Parallel cases of grounding reveal that the same is true of grounding. This raises a number of important questions — in particular, what determines what causes what and what grounds what? We answer: these are determined by “ennoblers”, a special kind of fact that serves as a second-order explanation.

This paper is about the logic of progressive aspect. We defend a new principle, which we call ‘Progressive Specificity’. Progressive Specificity says that if you are Ving, and to V is to X or Y, then you are Xing or you are Ying. We offer seven arguments for Progressive Specificity, which explore connections with credences, counterfactuals, indicatives, ‘wish’ reports, implicatures, and more. These arguments extend to the futurative progressive, showing that prevailing accounts of the futurative, which treat it as conveying plans, must be rejected. We consider two types of apparent counterexamples to Progressive Specificity: verbs of selection, such as ‘decide’, and verbs of creation, such as ‘build’. We then respond to an objection that Progressive Specificity gives rise to objectionable arbitrariness about what things are doing. Our response appeals to the close connection between Progressive Specificity and the principle of Conditional Excluded Middle. This connection, previously unexplored, provides additional support for Progressive Specificity, and paves the way toward a conditional account of the progressive.

Anscombe famously said that there are some act types that can only be done intentionally. We defend this claim: some act types are essentially intentional. We argue that Ving intentionally is itself essentially intentional: it is not possible to be non-intentionally Ving intentionally. And we show how this explains why various other act types—such as trying, lying, and thanking—are essentially intentional. Finally, building on Piñeros Glassock (2020) and Beddor & Pavese (2022), we explain how this makes trouble for the thesis that if I am Ving intentionally, I know that I am Ving.

According to orthodoxy, the most fundamental kind of causation involves one event causing another event. I argue against this event‐causal view. Instead, the most fundamental kind of causation is thing causation, which involves a thing causing a thing to do something. Event causation is reducible to thing causation, but thing causation is not reducible to event causation, because event causation cannot accommodate cases of fine‐grained causation. I defend my view from objections, including C. D. Broad's influential “timing” argument, and I conclude with implications for agent‐causal theories of free will.

Why do we so often care about the outcomes of games when nothing is at stake? There is a paradox here, much like the paradox of fiction, which concerns why we care about the fates and threats of merely fictional beings. I argue that the paradox threatens to overturn a great deal of what philosophers have thought about caring, severing its connection to value and undermining its moral weight. I defend a solution to the paradox that draws on Kendall Walton's solution to the paradox of fiction, developing his idea that it be extended to games. The solution takes games to involve make‐believe: in particular, players and spectators make‐believe that the outcome of the game matters. I also explore how the phenomenon extends beyond games. And I explore some moral implications: in particular, my view preserves the idea that we have reason not to impede others in their pursuit of what they care about.

When, if ever, do we wrong ourselves? The Self-Other Symmetric answer is: when we do to ourselves what would wrong a consenting other. The standard objection, which has gone unchallenged for decades, is that Symmetry seems to imply that we wrong ourselves in too many cases—where rights are unwaivable, or “self-consent” is lacking. We argue that Symmetry not only survives these would-be counterexamples; it explains and unifies them. The key to Symmetry is not, as critics have supposed, the bizarre claim that we must literally give ourselves consent if we are to avoid wronging ourselves. Instead, it is that we authorize ourselves simply by making decisions, just as we can authorize others by making decisions jointly.