The distinction between doing and allowing (DDA); intentional and non-intentional agency (DDE); and agent-relative versus agent-neutral values have been invoked to support the deontological nature of moral thought. Consequentialists claim that, since these distinctions can be incorporated into value theory, all plausible deontological theories ultimately reduce to consequentialism. I argue: first, that while the DDA and DDE can be framed in agent-neutral terms, they must be interpreted in agent-relative terms; second, that even when interpreted in agent-relative terms, the DDA and DDE compel non-consequentialist understandings; and third, that these three distinctions function as non-consequentialist constraints on deliberation about action, thus resisting attempts to ‘consequentialize’ them. The conclusion is that, far from being a mere variant of consequentialism, deontology is a distinct moral theory—one that offers a principled rejection of the consequentialist ‘compelling idea’ that it is always permissible to bring about the outcome with the best possible consequences.

Ceremonies, such as weddings, funerals, graduations, coronations, presidential inaugurations, and many other celebratory occasions play a central role in human life and society. But while their importance is emphasised in sociology and anthropology, as well as in Chinese, African and other philosophical traditions, ceremonies have received far less attention in Western philosophy, and when discussed are often, though not universally, dismissed as over-elaborate, or expressions of superstition. In this paper I will consider the nature and value of ceremonies, exploring both the positive and negative roles of ceremonies in human life, as well as considering how ceremonies can help us think about individual and group values.

In this paper I argue for a specific and highly challenging form of empathy involved in caring for young children – empathy that is an active and normally temporally extended exploration of the target subject’s complex and dynamic emotional life, guided by an epistemic aim of psychological understanding. I further argue that engagement in this empathetic work is liable to disable the caregiver’s normal emotional functioning in a way that can give rise to a sense of self-alienation. I end the paper by identifying three ways in which engagement in this special form of empathetic activity can also serve to enrich the caregiver’s life, or contribute to her flourishing.

It has been argued that assertion is governed by both a knowledge norm and a surety norm. According to a standard view (Unger, 1975; Williamson, 2000), the knowledge norm is more fundamental. The surety norm can be derived from the knowledge norm. This orthodoxy has recently been challenged. Goodman and Holguin (2022) have argued for an alternative picture in which the surety norm is more fundamental. The knowledge norm can be derived from the surety norm and a further norm according to which one should be sure only of what one knows. In this paper, I defend the orthodox view from Goodman and Holguin’s challenges. I provide objections to their account of how the knowledge and surety norms are related and to their arguments against the orthodox view.

The relationship between political philosophy and real-life politics is one that is heavily contested. On the one hand, it has been argued that political affiliation is a biasing force that stands in the way of our ability as political philosophers to maintain an objective perspective (Van der Vossen, 2015; 2020). On the other hand, it has been argued that political philosophers run the risk of bias whether they are politically active or not (Jones, 2020). In this paper, I nuance the debate at hand: I specify what kind of activism we should be concerned with as a biasing force, elaborate on what biases we should aim to mitigate as political philosophers, as well as what tools we have at our disposal in combatting biases within the discipline. This allows me to argue that participation in certain forms of political activism can be a powerful method for avoiding the most pernicious and pervasive biases we are prone to, namely biases against marginalised groups, and in favour of the political status quo. This has the implication that we must avoid a blanket ban on political activism within political philosophy, and instead recognise the epistemic merits of political activism where it is due.

This paper analyses the tension between the double focus on critique and alterity within decolonial discourses. We argue that an excess of critical thinking could lead to scepticism, whereas an overemphasis on alterity could result in dogmatism. Consequently, since both approaches end up obstructing epistemic decolonization, we argue that it is necessary to strike a balance between critique and alterity; a balance that does not resolve the tension, but seeks to reveal its underlying relation. The first section locates decolonial theory within the framework of critical theory. We highlight how Quijano, Dussel and Mignolo invoke the critical tradition, whilst simultaneously claiming that a radical departure from it is necessary. Turning more explicitly to Dussel in Section 2, we explain Dussel’s analectics as a method to localize discourses, in which globally excluded perspectives are foregrounded. In the third section, we defend Dussel’s universalism and rationalism against criticisms from Castro-Gómez and Vallega by interpreting him as a relational thinker. Ultimately, the paper concludes that the success of epistemic decolonization hinges on its ability to reconcile classic notions of universality and rationality in a manner that avoids dogmatism and scepticism, namely by a continual grounding of philosophical discourse in material life.

Stephen Yablo suggested that the relation of mental properties to physical properties is the same as that between red and scarlet: one of determinable property to determinate property. So just as being scarlet is a specific way of being red, on Yablo’s proposal a subject’s having a certain neurological property (c-fibres firing, say) is a specific way of a subject’s having a certain mental property (pain, in this case). I explain the virtues of this theory, in particular as defended and developed by Jessica Wilson, but raise some problems for it. I then describe a novel theory of the mental/physical relationship, which inverts the Yablo-Wilson proposal. On this theory mental properties, notably phenomenal properties – or, as I will say, qualia – are determinates of determinable physical properties. I explain the virtues of this view, and argue that they at least match, and plausibly exceed, those of the Yablo-Wilson theory. In particular, this new theory is able to account for certain prominent perplexities of the mind/body problem that tend to go unexplained. I distinguish the view from nearby theories, in particular the increasingly popular ‘Russellian monism’. I end by likening it to a recent interpretation of Aristotle’s philosophy of mind due to David Charles.

What is the relation between what is good for you and how well you are doing? It is common and natural to think that the latter asymmetrically depends upon the former. I call this the molecular model of well-being, which holds that how well you are doing depends directly upon the presence of independently specifiable welfare goods in your life. Just about every contemporary theory of well-being embodies the form specified by the molecular model. Here I articulate and defend an alternative way to think about well-being, a way based upon the notion of approximation. According to the approximation model of well-being, how well you are doing directly instead depends upon how closely you resemble an ideal way to live. One person is doing better than another just in case the life of the first more closely approximates the ideal life. To make this case I briefly sketch a substantive theory of well-being that employs it: what I take to be Aristotle’s view of well-being, which works as a proof of concept. We see that the approximation model of well-being can explain some patterns of value better than the molecular model can.

In the entirety of his corpus, Spinoza uses the phrase ‘simplest bodies’ [corporibus simplicissimis] exactly twice and never offers an explanation of what it means. That said, it appears to play a fundamental role in his thought. This paper evaluates two twentieth-century readings of Spinoza in order to present a new original theory of simplest bodies. Ultimately, I present a reading of Spinoza which accepts a nuanced amalgamation of these accounts. I argue that the right understanding of Spinozistic simplest bodies is something like the following: simplest bodies are portions of extension featuring motive homogeneity among their necessarily infinite parts. For Spinoza, simplest bodies thus feature no mereological simplicity at all, but rather only motive simplicity, in that they are properly characterized by a single ratio of motion and rest.

Neopragmatists – some of whom might be called ‘global expressivists’ – reject metaphysics and take talk of concepts to be talk of the mastery of contingent linguistic practices that have been shaped by human nature. As a result, it may seem much harder for them to account for the sorts of necessary connections – whether conceptual or metaphysical – defended in so much of contemporary analytic philosophy. In some cases, this is right: the connections are really there, and neopragmatists will have to rise to the challenge of explaining them. But in other cases, it may turn out that the putative necessary connections are illusions that neopragmatist lenses can help one see through. In this paper, I try to reveal the workings behind one illusion and to rise to one challenge. In each case the point is a double one; to shed light on the first-order issue and to illustrate the virtues of neopragmatism as a general approach to philosophical problems. And there is a third point: that in some cases the philosophically interesting conclusion about a set of related concepts will only be that there are some ‘for the most part’ connections between them.

The publication of Inoue Tetsujirō’s (1855–1944) The Philosophy of the Japanese Yangming School (1900) marked the birth of ‘Japanese philosophy’. In the early exploration of Japanese philosophy, the existence of a ‘twofold other’ – the ‘others’ of ‘philosophy’ and of kanji and kango components of Chinese origin in the Japanese script and language – became an unavoidable problem. In modernizing traditional scholarship to adapt it to the Western paradigm of ‘philosophy’, the first problem was the ‘other’ of ‘philosophy’. Discussions of the kokugo reform and the nationalization of the Japanese language originated precisely from kanji and kango representing the ‘other’. Inoue actively advocated abolishing kanji and creating a ‘new national script’ (shin kokuji). Nevertheless, he took the kanbun texts of early modern Confucianism as his object, and wrote his three ‘Japanese philosophy’ books, the so-called Trilogy of Tokugawa Confucianism. We argue that Inoue overcame the inconsistency in his positions on language politics and philosophy and paved the way to construct ‘Japanese philosophy’ through his ‘pan-philosophical’ outlook while advocating the creation of a new national script only for linguistic convenience. Thus, he was able to avoid the problem of twofold ‘otherness’ and cohere his theoretical position. However, Inoue’s path was soon abandoned.

According to J. S. Mill’s liberty principle, the only legitimate justification for restricting the freedom of competent adults is to prevent harm to others. However, this is ambiguous between two interpretations. The harm causation version (Brown, 1972) has it that only conduct that is itself harmful is liable to interference. In contrast, the general prevention of harm version (Lyons, 1979) allows interference with conduct that does not itself cause harm, such as refusals to assist others, so long as this interference prevents harm from occurring.

Mark Tunick (2024) has recently offered new arguments for the harm causation interpretation, suggesting that only this can explain Mill’s resistance to legal interference with prostitutes. This paper challenges Tunick’s arguments. First, I show that Mill does not clearly restrict interference to the proximate causes of harm. While he prefers interference to focus on the clients, rather than singling out the prostitutes, he is prepared to countenance interference with the prostitutes as well. Further, his preference for focusing on the clients is explicable, even if not required by the liberty principle.