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553Supererogation and the Limits of ReasonsIn David Heyd (ed.), Handbook of Supererogation, Springer Nature Singapore. pp. 165-180. 2023.We argue that supererogation cannot be understood just in terms of reasons for action. In addition to reasons, a theory of supererogation must include prerogatives, which can make an action permissible without counting in favor of doing it.
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552Thing CausationNoûs. forthcoming.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.…Read more
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195Contingent GroundingSynthese 199 (1-2): 4561-4580. 2021.A popular principle about grounding, “Internality”, says that if A grounds B, then necessarily, if A and B obtain, then A grounds B. I argue that Internality is false. Its falsity reveals a distinctive, new kind of explanation, which I call “ennobling”. Its falsity also entails that every previously proposed theory of what grounds grounding facts is false. I construct a new theory.
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192Who Cares About Winning?European Journal of Philosophy 31 (1): 248-265. 2023.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, dev…Read more
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8An act type is something that an agent can do: walk to the store, climb Mount Everest, trip over a wire. Many act types can be done intentionally or non-intentionally. You can break a vase intentionally by throwing it out the window. You can break it non-intentionally while stretching your arms. Some act types cannot be done intentionally. If you commit involuntary manslaughter, you do so non-intentionally. Anscombe famously said that there are some act types that can only be done intentionally.…Read more
Nathaniel Baron-Schmitt
Center for Advanced Studies, Berlin: Human Abilities & Freie Universität Berlin
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Center for Advanced Studies, Berlin: Human Abilities & Freie Universität BerlinUnknown
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Action |
Value Theory |