{"title":"Reference change: an enduring puzzle","authors":"Atheer Al-Khalfa","doi":"10.1007/s11098-026-02530-0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-026-02530-0","url":null,"abstract":"I set up a puzzling contrast using two well-known cases: Evans’ (1973) case of Madagascar and Kripke’s (1977) Leaf Raking case. Despite their apparent similarity, only the former has traditionally been thought to involve reference change. However, it’s not clear why this is so. I survey a number of influential and contemporary accounts that fail to explain the contrast in a satisfactory way. The challenge posed by cases of reference change therefore endures. Interestingly, the challenge endures for proponents of Kripke’s well-known causal picture of reference fixing, as well as for proponents of Evans’ accounts which were attempts to improve upon that picture. After drawing some lessons, I briefly sketch a positive path forward.","PeriodicalId":48305,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES","volume":"136 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2026-08-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148842977","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 place of ‘remembering’ in folk epistemology","authors":"Jakub Rudnicki","doi":"10.1007/s11098-026-02598-8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-026-02598-8","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48305,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES","volume":"7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2026-08-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148769060","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":"Is AI ethics about AI?","authors":"Alexander Williams Tolbert","doi":"10.1007/s11098-026-02533-x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-026-02533-x","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48305,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES","volume":"59 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2026-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148728790","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":"Fundamental principles: purity and neutrality","authors":"Jessica Leech","doi":"10.1007/s11098-026-02595-x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-026-02595-x","url":null,"abstract":"I offer a new position in debates about the <jats:italic>Purity Principle,</jats:italic> roughly, whether the fundamental truths/facts may have nonfundamental constituents. Purity is intuitively compelling and plays an important role in many debates. Nevertheless, there are also reasons to doubt Purity. In this paper I attempt to retain the grain of truth in the Purity Principle by proposing a different, less-demanding <jats:italic>Neutrality Principle,</jats:italic> roughly, that fundamental truths or facts turn only their fundamental constituents.","PeriodicalId":48305,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2026-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148728808","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":"What’s unfair about resultant moral luck?","authors":"Anna Nyman","doi":"10.1007/s11098-026-02591-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-026-02591-1","url":null,"abstract":"A popular reason for denying resultant moral luck has to do with its alleged unfairness. In this paper, I argue that although two existing objections against the unfairness argument are unsuccessful, it ultimately fails. First, I criticize the objection that the unfairness argument commits a category mistake. Second, I criticize the objection that because morality is unfair, the unfairness of resultant moral luck provides no evidence against its existence. Nevertheless, the unfairness argument fails because it cannot be fleshed out in a dialectically forceful way. The argument fails, in other words, because it cannot tip the scales in favor of denying resultant moral luck.","PeriodicalId":48305,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES","volume":"13 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2026-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148728796","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 soft-liners must be responsibility skeptics or bite the bullet","authors":"Chris Cho","doi":"10.1007/s11098-026-02594-y","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-026-02594-y","url":null,"abstract":"Soft-line compatibilism has come to occupy a privileged position in the debate over manipulation arguments against compatibilism. By identifying a responsibility-relevant difference between manipulated and ordinary agents, soft-liners promise to accommodate the intuition that manipulated agents are not responsible while preserving ordinary responsibility judgments. I argue that this promise cannot be kept. Soft-liners face a dilemma. On the one hand, if the conditions they identify as responsibility-undermining fully excuse manipulated agents, they commit themselves to a form of responsibility skepticism, since structurally similar forms of influence pervade ordinary agency as well. If, on the other hand, soft-liners maintain that manipulation merely mitigates rather than eliminates responsibility, they abandon the no responsibility intuition that motivates their view in the first place, and collapse into a hard-line position. Either way, soft-lining loses its dialectical advantage. The upshot is that the most promising compatibilist response to manipulation arguments must engage directly with the hard-line strategy, explaining why the no-responsibility intuition is ultimately to be resisted.","PeriodicalId":48305,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES","volume":"360 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2026-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148693325","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":"Think of the children: on the responsibility of children and other evolving agents","authors":"D. D. Brandenburg","doi":"10.1007/s11098-026-02590-2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-026-02590-2","url":null,"abstract":"On the margins of normative competence, matters of responsibility become ambiguous. Can a 6-year-old be considered responsible for stealing? Is a 14-year-old blameworthy for plagiarizing on a test? Parents, educators, and philosophers provide different and seemingly conflicting answers to these types of questions. The ages at which children can be considered legally culpable also vary widely between democratic states. One reason for this is that, for evolving agents, it is difficult to assess whether they are insufficiently able to do what is expected of them, or whether they are able but unwilling to do what is expected of them. This gives rise to what I will refer to as a ‘can’t-or-won’t dilemma’. The two options are to either exculpate the person on the basis of insufficient ability, or to consider them responsible for wrongdoing. But neither option seems entirely satisfactory or appropriate in the light of uncertainty about a person’s level of normative competence. Recent alternative approaches to responsibility aim to address this problem by providing accounts of responsibility which do not rely on capacity criteria. On these accounts so called ‘marginal agents’ are in some way considered responsible for what they do. I discuss these solutions and argue that they do not resolve or dissolve the dilemma. Instead, their real contribution lies in how they can alleviate the dilemma. This insight helps move the debate forward, and has implications for how we think about adults too.","PeriodicalId":48305,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2026-07-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148587173","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}