When we praise, blame, punish, or reward people for their actions, we are holding them responsible for what they have done. Common sense tells us that what makes human beings responsible has to do with their minds and, in particular, the relationship between their minds and their actions. Yet the empirical connection is not necessarily obvious. The “guilty mind” is a core concept of criminal law, but if a defendant on trial for murder were found to have serious brain damage, which brain […]

_Mind and Language_ 23 (1):42-49. 2008 […]

In this essay I argue for the need to restore our recognition of the importance of philosophical truth in our endeavor to understand our world and our selves. In particular, I note that the physical sciences have no way of examining the axiological dimension of being - i.e., that dimension from which values spring - whereas an appreciation for, and understanding of, our values is crucial to the conduct of our personal, interpersonal, and political lives. […]

_Natural Language and Linguistic Theory_. forthcoming We examine the Doubly Inflected Construction of Sicilian (DIC; Cardinaletti and Giusti 2001, 2003, Cruschina 2013), in which a motion verb V1 from a restricted set is followed by an event verb V2 and both verbs are inflected for the same person and tense features. The interpretation of DIC involves a complex event which behaves as a single, integrated event by linguistic tests. Based on data drawn from different sources, we argue that DIC is […]

_Topoi_:1-11. forthcoming One explanation of rational peer disagreement is that agents find themselves in an epistemically permissive situation. In fact, some authors have suggested that, while evidence could be impermissive at the intrapersonal level, it is permissive at the interpersonal level. In this paper, I challenge such a claim. I will argue that, at least in cases of rational disagreement under full disclosure, there cannot be more interpersonal epistemically permissive situations than […]

Being able to ask others to do things, and thereby giving them reasons to do those things, is a prominent feature of our interpersonal lives. In this paper, I discuss the distinctive normative status of requests – what makes them different from commands and demands. I argue for a theory of this normative phenomenon which explains the sense in which the reasons presented in requests are a matter of discretion. This discretionary quality, I argue, is something that other theories cannot […]

We propose a novel account of the distinction between innate and acquired biological traits: biological traits are innate to the degree that they are caused by factors intrinsic to the organism at the time of its origin; they are acquired to the degree that they are caused by factors extrinsic to the organism. This account borrows from recent work on causation in order to make rigorous the notion of quantitative contributions to traits by different factors in development. We avoid the pitfalls […]

Contemporary analytic philosophy is dominated by meta-philosophical naturalism, the view that philosophy ought to be continuous with science. This naturalistic turn is for a significant part due to the work of W. V. Quine. Yet, the development and the reception of Quine’s naturalism have never been systematically studied. In this paper, I examine Quine’s evolving naturalism as well as the reception of his views. Scrutinizing a large set of unpublished notes, correspondence, drafts, papers, […]

In Truth and Truthfulness, Bernard Williams sought to defend the value of truth by giving a vindicatory genealogy revealing its instrumental value. But what separates Williams’s instrumental vindication from the indirect utilitarianism of which he was a critic? And how can genealogy vindicate anything, let alone something which, as Williams says of the concept of truth, does not have a history? In this paper, I propose to resolve these puzzles by reading Williams as a type of pragmatist and […]

This episode of The Oxford Comment includes discussion of sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised.As students head back to university to start their fall semester, the conversation of consent will no doubt surround them on campus. But what can actually be defined as consent? Where do students learn what consent actually means? From the time of adolescence, students are taught the notion of consent, which impacts how they view the term in their later life.On this episode of The Oxford […]

2018.09.26 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews James Doyle, No Morality, No Self: Anscombe's Radical Skepticism, Harvard University Press, 2018, 238pp., $39.95 (hbk), ISBN 9780674976504. Reviewed by Jennifer A. Frey, University of South Carolina In the 20th century, Elizabeth Anscombe was one of the most influential women working within the analytic philosophical tradition. But, according to James Doyle we have failed to understand her most significant […]

2018.09.25 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews Anna Marmodoro and Irini-Fotini Viltanioti, Divine Powers in Late Antiquity, Oxford University Press, 2017, 288pp., $95.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780198767206. Reviewed by Michael Griffin, University of British Columbia This collection explores how ancient Mediterranean philosophers, writing in Greek and Latin between about the first and fifth centuries CE, "conceptualize the idea that the divine is powerful" (1). These […]

[Revised entry by Cristina Bicchieri, Ryan Muldoon, and Alessandro Sontuoso on September 24, 2018. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, fig1.svg, fig2.svg] Social norms, the informal rules that govern behavior in groups and societies, have been extensively studied in the social sciences. Anthropologists have described how social norms function in different cultures (Geertz 1973), sociologists have focused on their social functions and how they motivate people to act (Durkheim 1895 [1982], […]

[Revised entry by Andrea Staiti on September 24, 2018. Changes to: Bibliography] Heinrich Rickert was born in Gdańsk (then Danzig, in Prussia) on May 25th 1863. His father Heinrich Rickert Sr. (1833 - 1902) was a politician and editor in Berlin. Heinrich Sr. was a liberal democrat particularly invested in the cause of the German Jews. In 1890 Heinrich Sr. founded the Society Against Anti-Semitism in Berlin (Zijderveld 2006, 9). This is an interesting fact about Rickert Jr.'s background, […]