Garrett on the Irrationality of Pure Time Preferences Abstract In “Experience and Time,” Brian Garrett poses a challenge to friends of the rationality of pure time preferences. In this discussion note, we accept the challenge and provide two kinds of cases wherein some pure time preferences could be deemed rational.

Hylomorphism: a Critical Analysis Abstract In this essay, I examine those versions of hylomorphism that attribute to form a very strong explicative role. According to them, form is both the source of new emergent powers and expression of the finalist structure of organisms. The main aim of this essay is to show that these two aspects do not holdup because the form only exercises a structural function, but does not exert an autonomous explanatory function. The form only allows the material components to develop those powers that are not manifest in themselves, outside the configuration that forms as structure gives them. If the higher faculties of the human mind are really emergent over the neurophysiological ones, hylomorphism cannot explain it. As a consequence, hylomorphism does not have the resources to oppose materialism, on the one hand, and dualism, on the other.

In Defence of the Shareability of Fregean Self-Thought Abstract Consider the Unshareability View, namely, the view that first person thought or self-thought—thought as typically expressed via the first person pronoun—is not shareable from subject to subject. In this article, I (i) show that a significant number of Fregean and non-Fregean commentators of Frege have taken the Unshareability View to be the default Fregean position, (ii) rehearse Frege’s chief claims about self-thought and suggest that their combination entails the Unshareability View only on the assumption that there is a one-to-one correspondence between way of thinking and thought-individuating cognitive value, (iii) outline an account of self-thought that rejects the assumption and keeps intact all of Frege’s chief claims, and (iv) respond to a number of worries to the effect that this proposal yields undesirable results from the point of view of the individuation of self-thought at the level of cognitive value.

Why Don’t Philosophers Do Their Intuition Practice? Abstract I bet you don’t practice your philosophical intuitions. What’s your excuse? If you think philosophical training improves the reliability of philosophical intuitions, then practicing intuitions should improve them even further. I argue that philosophers’ reluctance to practice their intuitions highlights a tension in the way that they think about the role of intuitions in philosophy.

Philosophical Accounts of First-Order Logical Truths Abstract Starting from certain metalogical results (the completeness theorem, the soundness theorem, and Lindenbaum-Scott theorem), I argue that first-order logical truths of classical logic are a priori and necessary. Afterwards, I formulate two arguments for the idea that first-order logical truths are also analytic, namely, I first argue that there is a conceptual connection between aprioricity, necessity, and analyticity, such that aprioricity together with necessity entails analyticity; then, I argue that the structure of natural deduction systems for FOL displays the analyticity of its truths. Consequently, each philosophical approach to these truths should account for this evidence, i.e., that first-order logical truths are a priori, necessary, and analytic, and it is my contention that the semantic account is a better candidate.

Mental Files and Naïve Semantic Accounts of Substitution Failure Abstract Ever since Kripke’s influential arguments against descriptivism philosophers have attempted to provide solutions to Frege’s puzzle of substitution failure that adhere to Naïve Semantics—the view that names contribute their referents and referents alone to propositions expressed by sentences containing them. Recently, philosophers have also appealed to psychological objects called mental files, which are used to represent and store information on individuals, in solving the puzzle. Combining the two promises to revive a simple commonsensical theory while, at least prima facie, doing away with the need to rely on Fregean senses. Though I welcome the combined approach, I argue that the only plausible version of it is a pretense-based one.

What Does the Zombie Argument Prove? Abstract In this paper, I argue that the first and the third premises of the zombie argument cannot be jointly true: zombies are either inconceivable beings or the possible existence of them does not threaten the physicalist standpoint. The tenability of the premises in question depends on how we understand the concept of a zombie. In the paper, I examine three popular candidates to this concept, namely zombies are creatures who lack consciousness, but are identical to us in their (a) functional organization, (b) entire physical makeup, and (c) microphysical structure. The main aim of the paper is to argue that none of these conceptions conveys a consistent zombie-concept to us, which, at the same time, would be dangerous for physicalism. In the conclusion, I argue that the source of this failure can be found in the logical fallaciousness of the argument, namely the premises simply presuppose the truth of the conclusion.

Knowledge How, Procedural Knowledge, and the Type-Token Action Clause Abstract This paper argues that the propositions “S knowing how to Φ entails that S has the ability to Φ” and “S knowing how to Φ does not entail the ability to Φ” can both be true and non-contradictory when true, so long as one distinguishes between Φ as an action-type and Φ as an action-token. In order to defend this claim, recent work by Young (on the type-token action clause), Levy (on knowledge how and motor representations), and Gaultier (on procedural knowledge) is discussed with a view to integrating into a coherent and novel position certain commonalities within their respective views. As a consequence of this integration, a revised version of Young’s type-token action clause is suggested that provides comprehensive support for the assertion that knowing how to Φ both does and does not necessitate the ability to Φ, depending on whether one is talking about action types or action tokens.

The Inductive Route Towards Necessity Abstract It is generally assumed that relations of necessity cannot be known by induction on experience. In this paper, I propose a notion of situated possibilities, weaker than nomic possibilities, that is compatible with an inductivist epistemology for modalities. I show that assuming this notion, not only can relations of necessity be known by induction on our experience, but such relations cannot be any more underdetermined by experience than universal regularities. This means that any one believing in a universal regularity is as well warranted to believe in the corresponding relation of necessity.

Musical Ontology and the Question of Persistence Abstract According to certain models of the musical work-performance relationship, musical works persist through time. Dodd and Thomasson argue that perdurantist accounts of musical persistence—according to which musical works persist by having temporal parts at every time they exist—are untenable, and Tillman argues that musical endurantism—according to which persisting works are wholly present at each time they exist—avoids Dodd’s worries. In this paper, I argue that both Dodd’s and Thomasson’s arguments—and Tillman’s response—rely on assumptions linking theories of persistence to common-sense views about musical works and, moreover, that these assumptions are unwarranted. As a result, only an attitude of neutrality towards questions about the nature of musical persistence is warranted.