William Hornett

Philosophers often think agency is essentially connected with rationality, intention, or control. However, Minimalists argue that agency is just the power to cause a change; acids and boulders are agents too. Many philosophers treat Minimalism as a wild outlier, assuming its falsity without argument. My paper has three main aims: first, to show that Minimalism is actually an incredibly plausible theory; second, to show that it is false; and third, to defend an alternative theory of agency. I begin by providing a new argument for thinking that Minimalism is attractive as the default view of agency. I then argue that despite this attraction it is wrong, and I use it as a foil to defend my own view that agency is the distinctively animal power of discretion. I do this by first arguing for Deflationism about refraining, and then showing that this supports an argument for thinking that agency is a kind of two‐way power. Finally, I show how to arbitrate disputes about the extent of agency, as well as arguing that, if I am right about agency's nature, then it is prevalent throughout the animal kingdom.

It is natural to think that one person touches another when their bodies make direct contact. However, much interpersonal touch is not like this. We often touch people through things like their clothing. But this raises a puzzle: How can you touch someone without directly touching the surface of their body? Moreover, where particular moral violations and crimes essentially involve touch, an account of when one person mediately touches another is required to determine when the relevant wrong or crime has occurred. We introduce and articulate this novel puzzle before rejecting five plausible solutions. We then develop and defend our own account, on which one person touches another through some medium when the medium acts as a certain kind of person boundary determined by social norms concerning intimacy.

Mazviita Chirimuuta’s The Brain Abstracted (2024) is a fascinating intervention into the philosophy of mind and neuroscience, containing deeply interesting ideas and arguments. Our aim is to critically probe whether Haptic Realism is neutral on some substantive issues which Chirimuuta would like it to be neutral on. Firstly, it is unclear whether Haptic Realism is compatible with Chirimuuta’s metaphysical neutrality. Causal notions feature heavily in Haptic Realism, including construction and interaction, without which it is unclear what the haptic component of Haptic Realism amounts to. We argue that the interpretation of these causal notions forces a choice that jeopardises metaphysical neutrality, since it is doubtful that there are any relevantly neutral theories of causation. Secondly, we ask the question ‘Do all brains have neurons?’ Haptic Realism trades on the idea of ideal patterns, patterns that are coaxed into existence by the interaction between practitioners and the world. If ideal patterns only exist within the confines of the lab, and neurons are idealizations, then brains out in the wild do not have neurons. Worryingly, this commitment of Haptic Realism undermines our ability to project neurological knowledge that we gain from studying particular brains to what is happening inside the everyday human beings.

When I fiddle with my hair, or adjust my posture, it is plausible that these activities fall well below my cognitive radar. Some have argued that these are examples of ‘sub‐intentional actions’, actions which are not intentional under any description at all. If true, they are direct counterexamples to the dominant view on which the difference between actions and other events is their intentionality. In this paper, I argue that the case for sub‐intentional actions fails. Firstly, I show that the main argument for the sub‐intentionality of these actions has a structural fault. Secondly, I argue that two apparently natural ways to remedy this fail. Thirdly, I argue that one of the main arguments for thinking of the phenomena as actions undermines thinking of them as sub‐intentional. Finally, I argue that a natural defensive move for the defender of sub‐intentional actions actually undermines the theoretical significance of the view. Ultimately, my aim is to show that although the case for sub‐intentional actions seemed both simple and compelling, it is in fact deeply troubled.

Habits figure in action‐explanations because of their distinctive force. But what is the force of habit, and how does it motivate us? In this paper, I argue that the force of habit is the feeling of familiarity one has with the familiar course of action, where this feeling reveals a distinctive reason for acting in the usual way. I do this by considering and rejecting a popular account of habit's force in terms of habit's apparent automaticity, by arguing that one can do something out of habit and from deliberation, before going on to defend The Familiarity View.

In this paper, I defend a new theory of the nature and individuation of perceptual capacities. I argue that we need a theory of perceptual capacities to explain modal facts about what sorts of perceptual phenomenal states one can be in. I defend my view by arguing for three adequacy constraints on a theory of perceptual capacities: perceptual capacities must be individuated at least partly in terms of their place in a hierarchy of capacities, where these capacities include the senses themselves; an adequate account of perceptual capacities must be sensitive to empirical considerations; and an adequate account should accommodate the nature of the capacity to perceive. I arrive at these constraints by considering how Schellenberg’s view fails, before defending and developing my alternative in line with the constraints. I defend a view on which there are few, coarse-grained perceptual capacities which can fulfil complex explanatory roles because they are evaluatively gradable on many axes. Finally, on my view, perceptual capacities bear a particularly close relation to the sensory modalities themselves.