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Propositions
(Metaphysics Research Lab, 2007)
This encyclopedia article explores the basics of what philosophers mean by the word 'proposition.' The term 'proposition' has a broad use in contemporary philosophy. It is used to refer to some or all of the following: the ...
What should deflationism be when it grows up?
(Springer Verlag, 2005)
I argue that a popular brand of deflationism about truth, disquotationalism, does not adequately account for some central varieties of truth ascription. For example, given Boyle's Law is ''The product of pressure
and ...
"Tat tvam asi": An Important Identity Statement or a Mere Tautology
(University of Hawaii Press, 1984)
Before one can reasonably investigate the question of whether two things are identical, it stands to reason that one must have a clear understanding not only of what counts as a thing but, even more importantly, of what ...
Four-Dimensionalism and the Puzzles of Coincidence
(2005)
Often cited in defense of four-dimensionalism about the persistence of material objects is its treatment of the so-called puzzles of coincidence. These puzzles include the statue/lump, the ship of Theseus, Tibbles the cat, ...
Robustness and Conceptual Analysis in Evolutionary Game Theory
(University of Chicago Press, 2005)
A variety of robustness objections have been made against evolutionary game theory.
One of these objections alleges that the games used in the underlying model are too
arbitrary and oversimplified to generate a robust ...
Are all names of the Absolute synonymous?
(University of Hawaii Press, 1983)
In one way different names of the Absolute may be synonymous,and in another way not synonymous. Using Frege's terminology, words may have the same reference but different "senses." Just as "Morning Star" and "Evening Star" ...
On the possibility of nonaggregative priority for the worst off.
(Cambridge University Press, 2008)
We shall focus on moral theories that are solely concerned with promoting the benefits (e.g., well-being) of individuals and shall explore the possibility of such theories' ascribing some priority to benefits to those who ...
Response-Dependence, Rigidification, and Objectivity
(Springer Verlag, 1996)
A response-dependent account of a given attribute, such as redness or wrongness, identifies the attribute with the disposition to produce specified sorts of response in specified sorts of being under specified conditions. ...
Infinite Utility and Temporal Neutrality
(Cambridge University Press, 1994)
Suppose that time is infinitely long towards the future, and that each feasible action produces a finite amount of utility at each time. Then, under appropriate conditions, each action produces an infinite amount of ...
Left-Libertarianism as a Promising Form of Liberal Egalitarianism
(Center for Philosophic Exchange SUNY Brockport, 2009)
Left-libertarianism is a theory of justice that is committed to full self-ownership and to an egalitarian sharing of the value of natural resources. It is, I shall suggest, a promising way of capturing the liberal egalitarian ...
Brute Luck, Option Luck, And Equality Of Initial Opportunities
(University of Chicago, 2002)
In the old days, material egalitarians tended to favor equality of outcome advantage, on some suitable conception of advantage (happiness, resources, etc.). Under the influence of Dworkin's seminal articles on equality , ...
Libertarianism and the State
(Cambridge University Press, 2006)
Classical liberalism emphasizes the importance of individual liberty and contemporary (or welfare) liberalism tends to emphasize some kind of material equality. The best known form of libertarianism—right-libertarianism—is ...
Teleology, Consequentialism, and the Past
(Spring Verlag, 1988)
Act teleological theories are theories that judge an action permissible just in case its outcome is maximally good. It is usually assumed that act teleological theories cannot be past-regarding, i.e., make the permissibility ...
Of Mice and Men: Equality and Animals
(Springer Verlag, 2005)
Can material egalitarianism (requiring, for example, the significant promotion of fortune) include animals in domain of the equality requirement? The problem can be illustrated as follows: If equality of wellbeing is what ...
On the Possibility of Paretian Egalitarianism
(Journal of Philosophy, 2005)
We here address the question of how, for a theory of justice, a concern for the promotion of equality can be combined with a concern for making people as well off as possible. Leximin, which requires making the worst off ...
Why Left-Libertarianism Isn't Incoherent, Indeterminate, or Irrelevant: A Reply to Fried
(Wiley-Blackwell, 2005)
Over the past few decades, there has been increasing interest in left-libertarianism, which holds (roughly) that agents fully own themselves and that natural resources (land, minerals, air, etc.) belong to everyone in some ...
Capabilities vs. Opportunities for Well-being
(Wiley-Blackwell, 2005)
Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum have argued that justice is concerned, at least in part, with the distribution of capabilities (opportunities to function). Richard Arneson, G.A. Cohen, and John Roemer have argued that ...
Initiating Coordination
(Philosophy of Science, 2007)
How do rational agents coordinate in a single-stage, noncooperative game? Common knowledge of the payoff matrix and of each player's utility maximization among his
strategies does not suffice. This paper argues that utility ...
Standard Decision Theory Corrected: Assessing Options When Probability is Infinitely and Uniformly Spread
(Springer Verlag, 2000)
Where there are infinitely many possible [equiprobable] basic states of the world, a standard probability function must assign zero probability to each state—since any finite probability would sum to over one. This generates ...
Left-Libertarian Theories of Justice
(Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1999)
Libertarian theories of justice hold that agents, at least initially, own themselves fully, and thus owe no service to others, except through voluntary action. The most familiar libertarian theories (e.g., Nozick [1974]) ...