Sayid Bnefsi

We care not only about what experiences we have, but when we have them too. However, on the B-theory of time, something’s timing isn’t an intrinsic way for that thing to be or become. Given B-theory, should we be rationally indifferent about the timing per se of an experience? In this paper, I argue that B-theorists can justify time-biased preferences for pains to be past rather than present and for pleasures to be present rather than past. In support of this argument, I appeal to the doctrine of temporal parts or “four-dimensionalism” for short. When held in conjunction with a certain evaluative principle about whose experiences matter, four-dimensionalism reconciles B-theory with some time-biased preferences.

Future-biased agents care not only about what experiences they have, but also when they have them. Many believe that A-theories of time justify future bias. Although presentism is an A-theory of time, some argue that it nevertheless negates the justification for future bias. Here, I claim that the alleged discrepancy between presentism and future bias is a special case of the cross-time relations problem. To resolve the discrepancy, I propose an account of future bias as a preference for certain tensed truths properly relativized to the present.

Recently in Analysis, Ned Markosian (2019) has argued that a popular theory in the metaphysics of time—the Spacetime Thesis—falsely predicts that a normal musical performance is just as aesthetically valuable if it is rotated “sideways,” that is, if it is made to occur all at once. However, this argument falsely assumes that changing how something is oriented in space, and changing its duration in time, are analogous. That said, assuming they were analogous, Markosian’s argument is still unsuccessful. For the analogy on which Markosian’s argument depends entails that if one can experience sideways music as it was originally, then one can prove that sideways music is just as aesthetically valuable.

Tom Dougherty (2013) argues that the following moral principles are inconsistent: (α) it is impermissible to benefit many people slightly rather than save someone’s life, and (β) it is permissible to risk someone’s life slightly to benefit them slightly. This inconsistency has highly counterintuitive consequences for non-consequentialist moral theories. However, Dougherty’s argument, the “Repetition Argument,” relies on a premise that ignores a morally important distinction between acting with statistical knowledge and acting with individualized knowledge. According to this premise, if it is permissible to make it near certain that a distribution obtains, then it is permissible to bring about that distribution. I will argue that this premise proves too much for the Repetition Argument, and so we should reject it. Finally, to further motivate my own objection, I show that a recent objection to the Repetition Argument by James R. Kirkpatrick (2018) does not resolve the inconsistency.

This paper presents and defends a novel meta‐epistemological thesis, epistemic isomorphism, according to which our relations to others and to ourselves have the same pattern of relevance to our rationality. This means that correct epistemological theorizing will give formal parity to interpersonal and intrapersonal epistemic norms, such that what holds interpersonally also holds, mutatis mutandis, intrapersonally. In addition to arguing for epistemic isomorphism, the paper presents some epistemological case studies in which it is shown that the methodological and argumentative strategies used by epistemologists in these case studies give expression to the idea of epistemic isomorphism as well as the argument presented here for its truth. Finally, the paper considers a possible counterexample to epistemic isomorphism based on an agent‐centered theory of justification, but it shows how to reconcile this theory with epistemic isomorphism.