{"title":"Doomsday or Multiverse Bias","authors":"Yoaav Isaacs","doi":"10.1111/phpr.70103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.70103","url":null,"abstract":"Bayesian epistemology faces serious challenges when dealing with self-locating evidence. This paper argues that, given two modest assumptions about how confirmation should work (Patterning and Live Centers), Bayesianism faces an unavoidable dilemma. We must either accept an implausible form of reasoning where our mere existence provides evidence that the future is short (Doomsday), or accept an equally implausible form where our existence favors hypotheses positing vastly more observers (Multiverse Bias). Since the underlying assumptions are hard to deny, and both horns of the dilemma are deeply unpalatable, this result reveals a major problem for Bayesian epistemology.","PeriodicalId":48136,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH","volume":"345 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-02-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147292549","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":"Why Paternalism Is Wrong (When It Is Wrong)","authors":"Jonathan Parry","doi":"10.1111/phpr.70099","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.70099","url":null,"abstract":"This paper proposes a novel reinterpretation of the familiar, if inchoate, thought that paternalism offends against an ideal of personal sovereignty. The central idea is that (competent) persons have a particular kind of normative power. Just as each of us has the right to control how others are permitted to use our bodies or property, we each have a structurally similar right to control how others are permitted to use our <i>good</i>. When others seek to benefit us without adequately consulting our will, they trespass into a domain that is ours to control, treating us as lacking rights that we in fact have. The paper argues that this theory of anti-paternalism is superior to existing accounts, is independently attractive, and rests on deeper foundations.","PeriodicalId":48136,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH","volume":"21 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-02-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147319525","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":"Guessing and Its Limits","authors":"Helena Fang","doi":"10.1111/phpr.70101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.70101","url":null,"abstract":"<jats:label/> Guessing is the thesis that, roughly put, you may believe something iff it is among the most probable answers to a salient question. The thesis is motivated by observed features of felicitous belief reports when agents confront a question they aren't certain how to answer. This paper raises a novel problem for the thesis, focusing on belief reports in <jats:italic>multi‐question</jats:italic> scenarios. I introduce and motivate a plausible inter‐question principle for belief, show that Guessing is incompatible with the principle, and argue that the resulting puzzle is intractable and significant—posing a unique challenge to the thesis. Moreover, the problem generalizes to formally parallel “question‐sensitive” accounts in epistemology and philosophy of language, calling for future research into their limits.","PeriodicalId":48136,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH","volume":"30 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-02-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146777273","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":"Mistreating Consent","authors":"Elise Woodard","doi":"10.1111/phpr.70094","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.70094","url":null,"abstract":"Consent plays an important role in our lives. Using someone's body or property without their consent is typically a serious wrong. However, there are various ways in which consensual interactions may be morally deficient. This paper articulates an underexplored way in which consent can be defective, namely by being <jats:italic>moot</jats:italic> . Moot consent occurs when others would act regardless of our consent. (Imagine Audrey consents to have sex with Brice, but if she hadn't consented, he would have had sex with her anyway.) These cases are disturbing, but it is difficult to explain why while preserving morally relevant distinctions among cases. On my view, moot consent is still valid consent, but the consent‐receiver wrongs the agent by mistreating the consent: consent fails to play a proper role in the consent‐receiver's practical deliberation and reasons for action. Cases of moot consent underscore that we care not just about the presence of consent but also about the role it plays in others' reasoning.","PeriodicalId":48136,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH","volume":"47 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146205085","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":"A New Acquaintance Theory of Introspection","authors":"Matt Duncan","doi":"10.1111/phpr.70097","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.70097","url":null,"abstract":"According to the acquaintance theory of introspection, certain special features of our knowledge of our own minds are grounded in our acquaintance with—that is, direct awareness of—our minds. The acquaintance theory is ancient, but it began to take a new shape in the 20th century. It has since become one of the leading theories of introspection. But, more recently, some philosophers have started thinking differently about what knowledge by acquaintance is, what <jats:italic>constitutes</jats:italic> it. According to late‐20th‐century acquaintance theorists, it is constituted by <jats:italic>beliefs</jats:italic> based on acquaintance. However, according to more recent acquaintance theorists, acquaintance is itself a sui generis, non‐propositional form of knowledge. This development is highly relevant to the acquaintance theory of introspection, but it has yet to be shown how. In this paper, I introduce and defend a <jats:italic>new</jats:italic> acquaintance theory of introspection. I start by describing the old acquaintance theory of introspection. Then I outline some of the most prominent objections to it, as well as standard responses. Then I introduce the new acquaintance theory of introspection and show how it is an improvement over the old theory—in some ways, a vast improvement.","PeriodicalId":48136,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH","volume":"39 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-02-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146198730","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":"Dispositions and Dependence","authors":"Lisa Vogt","doi":"10.1111/phpr.70095","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.70095","url":null,"abstract":"According to the principle <jats:sc>No Upwards Essence</jats:sc> , there are no cases in which some essentially depends on , yet grounds . One of the most pressing objections that afflict Dispositional Essentialism (DE) is that it violates <jats:sc>No Upwards Essence</jats:sc> and is therefore untenable. In this paper, I defend DE against this objection. First, I argue that DE only violates <jats:sc>No Upwards Essence</jats:sc> in the presence of further contentious assumptions that proponents of DE are not necessarily forced to accept. And second, I argue that <jats:sc>No Upwards Essence</jats:sc> should not be adopted: The extant arguments in favor of the principle are wanting, and it is subject to counterexamples.","PeriodicalId":48136,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-02-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146198729","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":"Words, Articulations, and Utterance Plans","authors":"Luca Gasparri","doi":"10.1111/phpr.70096","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.70096","url":null,"abstract":"Under what conditions does an externale (a sequence of speech sounds, a mark of ink) qualify as an articulation of a word? Standard approaches to the issue appeal to intentions and to the satisfaction of performance standards, but these treatments are challenged by the intuitive admissibility of unintentional and anomalous tokens. Recently, alternatives appealing to the role of lexical access in word production have been considered, but these, I argue, are threatened by counterexamples of their own. In this paper, I leverage formal and empirical insights into the architecture of utterance production to present a new hypothesis. The main idea is this: for an externale produced by a speaker to qualify as a token of a word, it must originate from the execution of an utterance score that incorporates the local standards over the word's form. I explain how this approach threads the needle between some key desiderata and can accommodate the case studies that challenge its competitors.","PeriodicalId":48136,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146169480","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":"Justifying Futile Climate Resistance","authors":"Ten-Herng Lai, Edmund Tweedy Flanigan","doi":"10.1111/phpr.70092","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.70092","url":null,"abstract":"Many have attempted to justify certain acts of disruptive climate activism by appealing to, at least in part, their effectiveness. Accordingly, they help raise awareness, assure others that many will participate in the collective action, pressure politicians, call for change in governmental policies, and/or directly frustrate environmentally damaging industries. But what if the climate disaster is inevitable? What if climate protests and resistance are futile? Should this be the case, we cannot appeal to the instrumental value realized to justify the costs (or even harm) imposed by activists, as those would be gratuitous costs (or harm). Nevertheless, we believe that futile climate activism can be justified as fitting protest, that is, as a form of fitting expression against serious disregard for the lives of others. Violent climate resistance can satisfy the conditions of correct directedness, type appropriateness, proportionality, and adequacy, and is thus called for in situations of futility. The conditions of fitting protest may have further implications for protests that aim to bring about political or social change.","PeriodicalId":48136,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH","volume":"30 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-02-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146169479","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":"Valuings as Sentiments","authors":"Mauro Rossi, Christine Tappolet","doi":"10.1111/phpr.70093","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.70093","url":null,"abstract":"We are valuing beings, beings who possess the capacity to value things. But what is it “to value” something? The most common accounts in the literature hold that to value an item is either to have a first‐order or a second‐order desire toward it; or to believe that item to be valuable; or to care about that item; or to have a combination of all these mental states. In our paper, we raise some objections against all these accounts and defend a new affective account of valuings. Unlike standard affective accounts, according to which the term “valuing” refers to a single type of affective state, such as care, we hold that “valuing” refers to the members of a class of affective states, namely, the class of sentiments. On our view, to value something is to have a particular sentiment toward it. Since sentiments can be of different types, our account implies that there are as many ways of valuing things as there are types of sentiments.","PeriodicalId":48136,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH","volume":"38 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146129363","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":"Epistemic Cans","authors":"Timothy Kearl, Christopher Willard-Kyle","doi":"10.1111/phpr.70091","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.70091","url":null,"abstract":"We argue that S is in a position to know that p iff S can know that p. Thus, what makes position-to-know-ascriptions true is just a special case of what makes ability-ascriptions true: compossibility. The novelty of our compossibility theory of epistemic modality lies in its subsuming epistemic modality under agentive modality, the modality characterizing what agents can do.","PeriodicalId":48136,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2026-01-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146072127","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}