{"title":"In Search of Essentially Predicative Entities","authors":"Michael Rieppel","doi":"10.1111/phpr.70169","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.70169","url":null,"abstract":"According to a Fregean view recently resurgent in higher‐order metaphysics, predicates do not denote objects, construed as any kind of thing a name could denote. Many common routes to that conclusion, however, don't do much to illuminate what it is about names and predicates that should prevent them from both denoting kinds of objects. This paper critically examines arguments that promise to fill this gap and establish the negative Fregean conclusion by reflection on the nature of predication. I begin with two such arguments but conclude that, when situated in a general syntactic and semantic framework, they don't succeed. I then develop a third, more promising argument, inspired by Wittgenstein's picture theory of meaning. The resulting proposal vindicates key Fregean ideas, while also departing from common views about predication in higher‐order settings. I go on to show that, despite these departures, the proposal can accommodate quantification into predicate position. Ultimately, however, the Fregean victory remains constrained, in that we have little reason to think that natural language predicates in fact function in the proposed manner.","PeriodicalId":48136,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH","volume":"75 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-10-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149226496","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Attention and the Relevance Problem","authors":"Jelle Bruineberg","doi":"10.1111/phpr.70168","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.70168","url":null,"abstract":"The relevance problem is the problem of how cognitive systems can be sensitive to what is relevant despite relevance being holistic, open‐ended, and context‐sensitive. The problem has typically been applied to higher‐order cognitive processes. In this paper, I argue that there is a hitherto unrecognized relevance problem for perceptual attention. This problem becomes apparent when considering the functions of attention: attention must not only support ongoing task performance but also remain sensitive to opportunities for task switching, latent learning, and context checking. Existing treatments of the relevance problem have largely focused on its task‐relative form: given a task, what is relevant? I argue that attention faces a more general problem that includes sensitivity to factors relevant to other interests and to cues indicating that another activity may be worth pursuing. For such features of the environment to stand out as salient, salience cannot be determined solely by bottom‐up factors and a limited set of occurrent top‐down factors, such as current goals and intentions. Rather, it must reflect the wider (if not the entire) range of an agent's latent interests in a context‐sensitive way. This motivational unencapsulation of attention poses a challenge for both contemporary accounts of attention and suggests that passive attention is much more intelligent than commonly thought.","PeriodicalId":48136,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH","volume":"2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149130287","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Collective Plural Identity","authors":"Simon Thunder","doi":"10.1111/phpr.70167","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.70167","url":null,"abstract":"I argue against a near‐universally accepted extensionality principle concerning the necessary and sufficient conditions for plural identity, that is, the relation of identity that holds between pluralities of things. The extensionality principle says that pluralities <jats:italic>xx</jats:italic> and <jats:italic>yy</jats:italic> are identical iff they are same‐membered (i.e., iff any <jats:italic>z</jats:italic> that is one of <jats:italic>xx</jats:italic> is also one of <jats:italic>yy</jats:italic> , and vice versa). I argue that the apparent intuitive case for this principle confuses facts about the nature of plural identity with facts about certain kinds of plural predication, and that other attempts to establish the extensionality principle fail. I then show that the lack of motivation for the extensionality principle translates to a lack of motivation for another widely accepted claim concerning the alleged modal rigidity of pluralities. What will emerge from my discussion is the plausibility of an account of what (for reasons that will become clear) I will call <jats:italic>collective</jats:italic> plural identity, according to which the relationship between pluralities and their members is not as intimate as has been supposed: Pluralities are neither individuated by the members (for there can be distinct, same‐membered pluralities) nor incapable of changing their members from world to world.","PeriodicalId":48136,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149093369","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Beyond Misinformation: Social Media and the Sculpting of Epistemic Agency","authors":"Carolina Flores","doi":"10.1111/phpr.70166","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.70166","url":null,"abstract":"The dominant account of social media's epistemic harms focuses on the spread of misinformation and the production of false beliefs at scale. This paper argues that the misinformation narrative, whatever its merits, has obscured a deeper and more intimate form of epistemic damage. Dominant social media platforms do not merely supply bad inputs to stable epistemic machinery. They reshape the machinery itself. I argue that social media platforms are powerful engines for sculpting epistemic agency via two mechanisms: normative learning, through which users internalize descriptive and injunctive norms about how to interact with evidence, and reinforcement learning, through which habitual patterns of epistemic response are developed. In these ways, platforms can reshape users' epistemic styles, including their testimonial policies, evidential thresholds for belief revision, and theoretical values governing how they select explanations. This should trouble us, as the constraints driving which styles are produced are systematically orthogonal to truth and ignore information about the environments agents inhabit. This discussion identifies a neglected form of epistemic hostility: not the exploitation of existing cognitive vulnerabilities to implant false beliefs, but the production of new vulnerabilities that can then be exploited. From this, more and better evidence cannot save us.","PeriodicalId":48136,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH","volume":"405 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149093370","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Vague Mereology and Borderline Connections","authors":"A. J. Cotnoir, Giulia Schirripa","doi":"10.1111/phpr.70159","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.70159","url":null,"abstract":"The summit of Mt Everest is determinately part of it; parts of the Khumbu Glacier are determinately not. In between are a range of candidate parts whose mereological status with respect to Mt Everest is unsettled. Among the various accounts of vagueness, supervaluationism has received a great deal of attention. But very little attention has been paid to supervaluational theories of mereological relations themselves, and formal mereologies set within supervaluational logics are largely unexplored. In this paper, we provide two formal semantics for a vague mereology. We start with a simple supervaluational system using overlap as a primitive under a global consequence relation, but argue that it is unsatisfactory. We then develop a richer framework based on the idea of borderline connections, and expand it to a modal semantics of precisifications with a determinacy operator under a local consequence relation. We then prove a range of results, including the equivalence between borderline connection and indeterminate overlap, the vagueness of minimal and maximal fusions, and the distinction between mereological and compositional vagueness. The framework is intended to be compatible with a range of philosophical interpretations, including epistemic, semantic, and ontic views of vagueness.","PeriodicalId":48136,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149123164","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Teleological Inference","authors":"Benjamin Claessens","doi":"10.1111/phpr.70165","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.70165","url":null,"abstract":"How do we acquire teleological beliefs? A teleological belief is a belief that some event or process occurs for the sake of a purpose. Such beliefs include beliefs about actions, natural functions, and the meaning of life. This article will advance a theory of teleological inference. I will argue (1) that we acquire teleological beliefs by statistical inference, (2) that we conceive of a purpose as a type of difference‐maker, and (3) that we infer purposive relations as apparent difference‐making relations. The proposed theory claims empirical, phenomenological, and theoretical support. Empirically, it best explains the teleological bias: the universal human disposition to endorse teleological explanations of phenomena. It also explains a range of observed interactions between causal, normative, and purposive judgment. The theory suggests that mental state attributions play no essential role in teleological inference and explains the phenomenal character of agentive experience.","PeriodicalId":48136,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH","volume":"32 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149123205","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"There Are No Abilities to Succeed","authors":"David Heering","doi":"10.1111/phpr.70164","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.70164","url":null,"abstract":"There is an essential connection between the concept of an ability and various forms of practical and cognitive success. In particular, it is in virtue of exercising their abilities that agents’ general practical and cognitive endeavors, their doings and believings, become achievements—intentional actions or instances of knowledge. Abilities enable success. In this paper, I challenge the ubiquitous idea that when agents succeed, they are exercising the ability <jats:italic>to succeed</jats:italic> , that is, that abilities enable success as abilities to succeed. My argument is that while achievements are highly specific, the content of what an ability is an ability to do (its prejacent) is always general. Hence, the relevant achievements never appear in the prejacents of abilities exercised in achievement; there are no abilities to succeed. I draw out some general lessons for the philosophy of abilities.","PeriodicalId":48136,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149124459","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Question of Referentiality","authors":"Eliot Michaelson","doi":"10.1111/phpr.70162","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.70162","url":null,"abstract":"Most theorists have offered different accounts of reference fixing for names, demonstratives, and indexicals. Indeed, this variety can seem an inevitable response to a certain class of hard cases. Here, I will offer a unified account of reference fixing equally capable of handling these cases. Then, I will show how to extend the account to help Predicativists about names and Quantificationalists about demonstratives accommodate these cases as well. One interesting upshot of this strategy is that it offers a way of explaining what makes a term referential that doesn't appeal to logical form.","PeriodicalId":48136,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149124475","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Therapeutic Insight and Aspect Perception","authors":"Adrian Kind, William Child","doi":"10.1111/phpr.70163","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.70163","url":null,"abstract":"In psychotherapy patients gain new insights into their mental life. Although philosophers have used examples from psychotherapy to make points in debates on self‐knowledge, there has been little serious effort to understand the nature and epistemology of therapeutic insight events. The paper fills that gap. It is argued that an understanding of such insights can be achieved by considering them through the lens of Wittgenstein's discussion of aspect perception. It is claimed that therapeutic insight can be understood in analogy to aspect perception, and that the interpersonal process leading to insight is in its central features analogous to the interpersonal occurrence of aspect perception.","PeriodicalId":48136,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH","volume":"7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148993694","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Epistemology and Semantics of Ignorance","authors":"Mona Simion, Christoph Kelp, Lilith Mace","doi":"10.1111/phpr.70156","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.70156","url":null,"abstract":"This paper is concerned with ignorance. It develops a novel, full account of the nature and epistemic normativity of objectual and factual ignorance, degrees of ignorance, comparative ignorance, and the semantics of permissible outright attributions of ignorance of facts and phenomena. On this account, objectual ignorance of a phenomenon P is inversely proportional to fully comprehensive and maximally well‐connected knowledge of P: The closer an agent A approximates fully comprehensive and maximally well‐connected knowledge of P, the lower the degree of ignorance of A with regard to P. In turn, “A is ignorant with regard to a phenomenon P” is true in a context c just in case A approximates fully comprehensive and well‐connected knowledge of P distantly enough to surpass a threshold on degrees of objectual ignorance determined by <jats:italic>c</jats:italic> . Factual ignorance wh‐ of a fact F is directly proportional to the number of possible answers to the embedded wh‐ question that one must properly eliminate in order to have a complete answer to the embedded wh‐ question: The closer an agent A approximates a full answer to the embedded wh‐ question, the lower the degree of ignorance of A with regard to F. In turn, “A is ignorant wh‐ of a fact F” is true in context c if and only if A approximates a full answer to the embedded wh‐ question distantly enough to surpass a threshold of degrees of factual ignorance determined by c.","PeriodicalId":48136,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148915407","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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