In this discussion, I engage the politics of intention to explore how structural racism structures the production of meaning and the practice of reason. Building on María Lugones's analysis of intention formation as a form of practical reasoning, I explore the reasoning at work during the 2011 Stand Your Ground (SYG) hearing of black survivor of domestic violence, Marissa Alexander, to contend that structural racism—in this case, both intimate personal violence and intimate state violence against black women—enacts race/gender domination through (...) projecting constructed intentions onto black women as a strategy to rationalize punishing black women. I also discuss two key black feminist critiques of reason—Patricia Hill Collins’ discussion of “controlling images” (2000) and Michelle Cliff's concept of the “mythic mind” (1982)—to propose controlling intentions as a framework to theorize how structural racism produces fictive intentions used to rationalize the criminal punishment of survival and justify that outcome as common sense. (shrink)

The dispute about the role of class in understanding the life situations of people of color has tended to be overpolarized, between a class reductionism and an “it's only race” position. Class processes shape racial groups’ life situations. Race and class are also distinct axes of injustice; but class injustice informs racial injustice. Some aspects of racial injustice can be expressed only in concepts associated with class (e.g., material deprivation, inferior education). But other aspects of racial injustice or other harms, (...) such as racial discrimination or stigma, are not reducible to class concepts and cannot be fully addressed through class-focused policies. Overall, any attempt to fully secure racial justice for a racial group will require a combination of race-focused and class-focused policies. Anti-racist outlooks often neglect or downplay either the normative or the explanatory significance of class, or both—for example, by overlooking or downplaying the dignitary harms of class and the material harms of race; missing the historical dimension of class injustice; masking class by a narrowing of the complex normative structure of racial disparities; or not recognizing that a class-focused initiative (like raising the minimum wage) can address substantial racial justice concerns, even though not all of them. “Systemic racism” terminology recognizes class explanatorily but suppresses it normatively. Charles Mills's influential notion of “white supremacy,” while a powerful tool for conceptualizing and illuminating racial injustice, can also contribute to minimizing or masking the justice-related impact of class, as do some of Mills's specific discussions of class in various writings. (shrink)

Tommie Shelby has offered an influential, carefully stated, and well-argued set of objections to any volitional analysis of racism (VAR) as consisting centrally in certain forms of race-based disregard. Here I hope to defend aspects of VAR by analyzing, evaluating, and sometimes countering several of his major contentions, which have stood unchallenged in the literature over more than two decades. First, I sketch and respond to his Methodological objection to VAR, which criticizes VAR's reliance on language and linguistic intuitions; then (...) to a Psychological objection, which suggests that VAR implausibly distances an agent's intentions from her beliefs; and, finally, to a Psychopathological objection, which holds that VAR requires treating as unproblematic some psychological states better seen as aberrant. The following section treats three subtle counterexamples Shelby uses to challenge VAR's core contentions about what's necessary and what's sufficient for racism. I close with some gestures toward what I see as a promising approach, very different from his, to studying these topics. (shrink)

A shift in popular discourse over the last few years makes it makes it tempting to think that the answer to the question whether racism is essentially systemic is yes. My argument, however, is that there are forms of racism—things that are properly counted as instances of racism—that are distinct from and independent of systemic racism. These include ideational racism, ideological racism, racism as antipathy, and racism as prejudice and bigotry. Systemic racism does exist and is not reducible to these (...) other forms of racism. It is arguably the form of racism that should be of most concern to us, but it is not the only form that racism takes. (shrink)

Over the last twenty-five years, philosophers have offered increasingly more sophisticated accounts of the nature and wrongness of racism. But very little in this literature discusses what is distinctive to anti-Asian racism. This gap exists partly because philosophy, like much of U.S. culture, has been influenced by civic narratives that center anti-black racism in ways that leave vague anti-Asian racism. We discuss this conceptual gap and its effects on understanding anti-Asian racism. In response to this problem, we offer an account (...) of anti-Asian racism not beholden to the black-white binary. In our view, xenophobia, as a form of civic ostracism, plays a distinctive role in anti-Asian racism and admits of a complexity that is worth philosophical study. We also begin an exploration of a correlated phenomenon, namely xenophilia. It has a peculiar, often pernicious, presence in anti-Asian racism and sexism, but it is morally more complex than xenophobia. (shrink)

There are two competing ways of understanding nefarious expressions of nationalism in countries like the U.S., either as xenophobia or racism. In this essay, I offer a way of capturing what is attractive in both accounts: a way of thinking about the xenophobia of U.S. nationalism that does not miss or minimize the role that race plays in condemning such expressions, but at the same time does not risk overextending the definition of racism. To do this, the essay makes a (...) case for decoupling and slightly revising the meaning of the terms “racialization” and “racial formation” while also proposing a third term, “racial disintegration.” In doing so, we find that the xenophobia directed at certain pan-racial groups, at least in places like the U.S., promotes a unique brand of White supremacy and does so in ways that maintain or reshape the nation's understanding of race and specifically its racial categories. (shrink)

Racism as an independent topic of investigation in philosophy has considerably developed since the 1990s, when it appeared as part of growing debates that, on the one hand, investigated the political meaning of race and, on the other, its ontology and whether it existed at all. Likewise, with the idea of racism, its broadly normative meaning is critiqued by some philosophers, while others ask how best to conceive of it and identify its immorality. There were a few early and significant (...) forays in philosophy about the nature of racism, of which three works stand out because of the way they set the terms of the debate: David Theo Goldberg's Racist Culture, Charles W. Mills’ The Racial Contract, and Jorge L.A. Garcia's “The Heart of Racism.”1 This collection reacts to the latter fork in the discussion but does so in ways that significantly touch on the former.The collection begins with Jorge L. Garcia's “Virtue Ethics in Social Theory: Defending a Volitional Analysis of Racism from Tommie Shelby's Challenges.” It is a clarification and defense of his influential volitional analysis of racism (VAR) from three prominent objections: that VAR inadequately accounts for the immorality of racism because it relies on the assumed wrongness of racism built into ordinary usage of the term ‘racist;’ that it mistakenly separates intention from belief; and that it does not fully account for the racism of some troubling mental states that cannot be traced back to a racist ill-will. Garcia's account of racism as fundamentally rooted in racist ill-will, along with Lawrence Blum's, is representative of agent-centered theories of racism. Not only do they attempt to explain individual or personal racism, but they also hold that racism in institutions, structures, or systems traces back to the racism of persons.Current accounts of structural racism, however, claim that it exists and operates independently of infection from intentionally racist persons, that the focus on racist persons cannot adequately account for how racism works in society, and that, instead, we should concentrate on structures and ideologies. Amelia Wirts sharply defends this view in her, “What does it mean to say ‘The Criminal Justice System is Racist’?” She explains how structural racism applies to America's criminal justice system and other “intermediate” (between individual and societal level) structures. Wirts argues that personal accounts of racism, and in particular Garcia's VAR, do not adequately account for the patterns of racial disparity in the criminal justice system or its disproportionate harm to black people. She advocates, instead, for a patterned view of structural racism, the patterns of which operate “as if it were designed to disproportionately harm” some racialized group. Additionally, Wirts adds that such patterns are particularly racist when they fuel racist ideological symbols, as the criminal justice system does in relation to the idea of the black criminal.Structural analyses of racism are powerfully instructive, and Alisa Bierria, in “Structural Racism Within Reason,” offers an account that takes an epistemic turn that advances our understanding of their meaning. More than the idea that personal and structural racism beget each other in continuous looping effects, and more than the view that racism is best understood as an ideology that provides the content to racist attitudes or policy proscriptions, she argues that structural racism structures reason. Drawing on the 2012 case of Marissa Alexander, who unsuccessfully tried to use Florida's Stand Your Ground Law to justify her firing a warning shot at her estranged, abusive husband to protect herself from his murderous threat, Bierra argues that structural racism extends constructed and controlling intentions onto its targets, and, as in the case she discusses, it uses those constructed and fictional intentions to justify their punishment and depriving them of equal justice.Structural analyses of racism are essential additions to the philosophical understanding of racism that have appropriately challenged the centrality of agent-centered accounts. The increasing academic focus on structural explanations, however, along with the current overuse of “systemic racism” in popular discourse, threatens to eclipse the value of accounts of agent-centered accounts. In “Is Racism Essentially Systemic?” Michael Hardimon counsels against this trend. He reminds us that racism is not essentially systemic, and that the dominance of structural explanations could obscure its other forms and even the proper understanding of structural racism. Indeed, structures once constructed might operate independently of human intention, but they are designed, initiated, and often operated by persons.After considering the direction of the current philosophical discussion about the meaning of racism and its immorality, the next set of articles expands the discussion into matters of class, xenophobia, and white nationalism. Lawrence Blum's “Race and Class Together” starts it off. Blum builds class into his analysis of racism and critiques its absence in anti-racist theory. He argues that paying attention to class is required to secure justice for the victims of racism because pursuing justice is often a matter of both. Blum contends that race and class are “normatively distinct axes of injustice” and that, depending on the question, racial injustice needs to be addressed separately. However, there are aspects of racial injustice that can only be dealt with through a class analysis and require class or combined class–race focused policies. Pointing to the fact that many of the members of groups targeted by racism (he considers blacks, Indigenous peoples, and Latinxs) share cross-class interests, which includes shared interests with some whites, which they do not share with more economically privileged members of their own groups, Blum argues that these interests should be addressed through “class-focused policies,” in a manner that will secure justice for disadvantaged racial groups.Shifting from the class-race analysis, José Jorge Mendoza, in “‘Go Back to Where You Came From!’ Racism, Xenophobia, and White Nationalism,” turns our attention toward white nationalism to examine whether it is best understood as an expression of racism or xenophobia. Although he recognizes the importance of xenophobia in white nationalism, Mendoza does not neglect its connections with racist ideas. However, he acknowledges that emphasizing the role of race in condemnations of white nationalism risks overextending the concept of race, i.e., in regards to pan-racial groups, because some members of those groups are racially identified as white. Thus, the charge of racism against white nationalism in such cases may not clearly apply. To deal with those cases, Mendoza cleverly decouples the ideas of “radicalization” and “racial formation,” and he puts forward a new concept, “racial disintegration,” to account for the operation and shifting targets of white nationalism.In the final piece, David H. Kim and I discuss xenophobia and racism in the case of “Anti-Asian Racism.” We move from general theories of racism to inquire about what is at the base of anti-Asian racism. Little is said in contemporary accounts of racism about anti-Asian racism. This is due, in part, to the high level of abstraction in those discussions but also because much of the literature takes anti-blackness as the model of racism. Our piece addresses this lacuna in a manner not beholden to the black-white binary. We discuss how the idea of anti-Asian racism is a conceptual problem in the American context dominated by that binary. We then argue that xenophobia as a form of civic ostracism, and to some extent xenophilia, play a particular role in how anti-Asian racism functions and its immorality.The pieces in this collection resonate with current events and controversies involving racism and illustrate the potential of the debate to relate to and speak those events, not just to the specialized interests of a cloistered academic conversation. Each piece demonstrates the potential for extending vital lines of debate and discussion that touches the raw nerve of the public discussion of racism. (shrink)

This paper considers three possible ways of understanding the claim that the American criminal justice system is racist: individualist, “patterns”-based, and ideology-based theories of institutional racism. It rejects an individualist explanation of institutional racism because such an explanation fails to explain the widespread prevalence of anti-black racism in this system or indeed in the United States. It considers a “patterns” account of institutional racism, where consistent patterns of disparate racial effect mimic the structure of intentional projects of racial subjugation like (...) slavery or Jim Crow. While a “patterns” account helpfully directs attention to the effects of policies and practices that make up an institution, it does not fully explain the deep roots of anti-blackness in the criminal justice system in the United States. The paper concludes by defending an ideology-based theory of institutional racism for understanding the criminal justice system because the stereotype of the black criminal has a mutually reinforcing relationship with the patterns of disparate outcome for black people in the criminal justice system. This relationship creates a looping effect where the stereotype of the black criminal fuels the disproportionate involvement of black people in the criminal justice system, and the disproportionate representation of black people with felony records, in prisons, brutalized in police encounters, and so on reinforces the idea that black people are especially prone to criminality. Ideological approaches to racism that integrate attention to the patterns of disparate effect best explain what it means to say that the criminal justice system is racist. (shrink)

This essay argues that gratitude for one's own life is an intelligible attitude to have. It does so by arguing that reducing pro-attitudes in response to unintentional benefits to “appreciation” is too broad. Instead, such “appreciation” can be understood as gratitude if such benefits satisfy a number of conditions that track or are analogous to why we care about interpersonally bestowed benefits. One's own life satisfies those four conditions, which can make gratitude for it intelligible—when it is perceived as a (...) benefit. (shrink)

In virtue of what do some considerations count in favor or against actions? Some philosophers have recently been interested in hybrid answers to this question. For instance, it might be that some facts about reasons are brute, and some are explained in terms of agents’ acts of will. Such views face a challenge: they need a story about how reasons grounded in one way combine with reasons grounded in other ways to yield overall verdicts about what to do. This paper (...) assesses the two most prominent accounts of how that happens, and offers an alternative that captures what's most plausible about each. (shrink)

This paper is about two controversial inference-patterns involving counterfactual or subjunctive conditionals. Given a plausible assumption about the truth-conditions of counterfactuals, it is shown that one can't go wrong in applying hypothetical syllogism (i.e., transitivity) so long as the set of worlds relevant for the conclusion is a subset of the sets of worlds relevant for the premises. It is also shown that one can't go wrong in applying antecedent strengthening so long as the set of worlds relevant for the (...) conclusion is a subset of that for the premise. These results are then adapted to Lewis's theory of counterfactuals. (shrink)

This paper argues that hate differs from mere disliking in terms of its “depth,” which is understood via a notion of “othering,” whereby one rejects at least some aspect of the identity of the target of hate, identifying oneself as not being what they are. Fleshing this out reveals important differences between personal hate, which targets a particular individual, and impersonal hate, which targets groups of people. Moreover, impersonal hate requires focusing on the place hate has within particular sorts of (...) communities, enabling a further important distinction between “insider” and “outsider” hate in terms of whether the hater includes members of the targeted group within a particular community or rejects them as “beneath” membership in that community. (shrink)

Discussions of virtue signaling to date have focused exclusively on the signaling of the moral virtues. This article focuses on intellectual virtue signaling: the status-seeking advertising of supposed intellectual virtues. Intellectual virtue signaling takes distinctive forms. It is also far more likely to be harmful than moral virtue signaling, because it distracts attention from genuine expertise and gives contrarian opinions an undue prominence in public debate. The article provides a heuristic by which to identify possible instances of intellectual virtue signaling. (...) When people with no relevant expertise rapidly move to offer their opinions on a wide range of topics as soon as these topics become fashionable or newsworthy, and especially when these opinions are contrarian, we should suspect them of intellectual virtue signaling. (shrink)

This paper critically surveys 20 years of recent work on radical skepticism. It focuses on three key issues. First, it starts by exploring how philosophers have recently challenged our understanding of radical skeptical arguments. It then unpacks and critically evaluates some influential reactions to radical skepticism: structuralism, knowledge-first epistemology, epistemological disjunctivism, and hinge epistemology. Third, it explores some novel developments of pragmatism, like pragmatic skepticism, gauges its anti-skeptical import, and reflects on the ways in which radical skeptical epistemology and ethics (...) might meet. (shrink)

The future of trial lies in customization. Throughout the Anglo-American world, the public model of criminal and civil procedure is gradually giving way to a private contractual paradigm, one which allows the litigating parties to tailor the evidentiary and procedural landscape of trial to fit their specific needs and preferences. Procedural and evidence rules are shifting from mandatory safeguards of public values to default rules and bargaining chips within the hands of the litigating parties. There is growing recognition in the (...) ability of litigating parties in civil trials and of defendants in criminal trials to waive evidentiary and procedural rights, such as the right of cross-examination, the right to trial by jury, or the right to appeal. Courts are exhibiting a willingness to enforce choice of procedure and choice of evidence agreements, such as agreements to restrict the presentation of otherwise admissible evidence or to allow for presentation of otherwise inadmissible evidence. (shrink)

Corroborating evidence supports a proposition that is already supported by other initial evidence. It bolsters or confirms the original body of evidence. Corroboration has striking psychological and epistemic force: It potently affects how people do and should assess the target proposition. This essay investigates the distinctive powers of corroborating evidence. Corroboration does not simply increase the quantifiable probability of the adjudicated claim. Drawing on the relevant alternatives framework, I argue that corroboration winnows remaining uneliminated error possibilities. This illuminates the independence, (...) weight, and non-fungibility of corroborating evidence. I compare corroborating evidence to prudential safeguards, like fire doors, that forfend against non-epistemic harms. I thereby sketch a general, non-quantificational model of risk management. Finally, I turn to legal corroboration requirements and the epistemic significance of corroboration for legal proof. (shrink)

A criminal conviction can trigger numerous burdensome legal consequences beyond the formal sentence. Some charge that these “collateral” legal consequences (CLCs) constitute additional measures of punishment, which raises the further question of whether judges should consider these CLCs when making sentencing decisions, reducing the formal sentence in proportion to the severity of the CLCs the defendant will face. The idea that all CLCs constitute forms of punishment reflects a particular conception of punishment, which I call the “minimalist view.” In this (...) paper, I argue against the minimalist view. I contend that on a more adequate conception of punishment, some but not all CLCs constitute punishment. I also argue that whether judges should consider CLCs in sentencing decisions depends on whether the relevant CLCs constitute punishment. (shrink)

Recent studies have shown that recidivism scoring algorithms like COMPAS have significant racial bias: Black defendants are roughly twice as likely as white defendants to be mistakenly classified as medium- or high-risk. This has led some to call for abolishing COMPAS. But many others have argued that algorithms should instead be given access to a defendant's race, which, perhaps counterintuitively, is likely to improve outcomes. This approach can involve either establishing race-sensitive risk thresholds, or distinct racial ‘tracks’. Is there a (...) moral difference between these two approaches? We first consider Deborah Hellman's view that the use of distinct racial tracks (but not distinct thresholds) does not constitute disparate treatment since the effects on individuals are indirect and does not rely on a racial generalization. We argue that this is mistaken: the use of different racial tracks seems both to have direct effects on and to rely on a racial generalization. We then offer an alternative understanding of the distinction between these two approaches—namely, that the use of different cut points is to the counterfactual comparative disadvantage, ex ante, of all white defendants, while the use of different racial tracks can in principle be to the advantage of all groups, though some defendants in both groups will fare worse. Does this mean that the use of cut points is impermissible? Ultimately, we argue, while there are reasons to be skeptical of the use of distinct cut points, it is an open question whether these reasons suffice to make a difference to their moral permissibility. (shrink)

Introduction and Discussion of a Special Issue in philosophy of law "Philosophical Dimensions of the Trial" -/- .

* Special Issue on the Philosophical Dimensions of the Trial* This summarises and discusses the contributions.

Content note: This paper discusses rape throughout.Abstract. In this paper, I consider arguments in favor of jury trials. While I find these generally persuasive, I argue that there can be cases where juries are not fit for purpose. In those cases, I argue that they should be replaced by judge-only trials. In doing so, I propose a framework for determining whether a type of case is unsuitable for jury trials. Partly in response to low conviction rates, there have been recent (...) suggestions that rape trials should be conducted without juries. I suggest that there is strong evidence that these offences qualify under the criteria I have described. As a result, I argue that judge-only trials should be adopted for trying rape cases. (shrink)

This paper considers challenges resulting from the use of advanced artificial judicial intelligence (AAJI). We argue that these challenges should be considered through the lens of value alignment. Instead of discussing why specific goals and values, such as fairness and nondiscrimination, ought to be implemented, we consider the question of how AAJI can be aligned with goals and values more generally, in order to be reliably integrated into legal and judicial systems. This value alignment framing draws on AI safety and (...) alignment literature to introduce two otherwise neglected considerations for AAJI safety: specification and assurance. We outline diverse research directions and suggest the adoption of assurance and specification mechanisms as the use of AI in the judiciary progresses. While we focus on specification and assurance to illustrate the value of the AI safety and alignment literature, we encourage researchers in law and philosophy to consider what other lessons may be drawn. (shrink)

Despite the alleged roles played by structures, substances, and facts in mathematical and metaphysical theorizing, in this paper I provide a strategy to dispense with them. It is argued that one need not be committed to the existence of these posits nor with the metaphysically inflationary interpretations that support them. An alternative, deflationary approach is then sketched.

Van Inwagen's General Composition Question (GCQ) asks what conditions on an object and its constituents make the object a whole that these constituents compose, as opposed to an object linked to the constituents by a relation other than composition. The answer is traditionally expected to cite no mereological terms, to hold of metaphysical necessity and to be such that no defeating scenarios can be conceived (e.g., a scenario in which the conditions are met but the constituents fail to genuinely compose (...) the object). While not all writers agree on setting these high expectations on the principles that constitute answers to the GCQ (Hawley 2006), there is a yet unsettled issue concerning the principles’ naturalistic accreditation: Could putative principles be constrained and informed by advanced physical knowledge? Arguing positively, we outline two styles of principles worthy of naturalistic authority. In an explorative spirit, we notice that each style incurs certain costs. First, the principle in question may fail some of the above expectations set in an aprioristic context. Second, it may require a specific meta-theoretic understanding of what it takes to achieve naturalistic accreditation. Finally, it may address the GCQ “piecemeal” and fail to generalize to objects of all physical sorts.1. (shrink)

Traditionally, accounts of natural kinds have run the gamut from strongly conventionalist to strongly realist views. Recently, however, there has been a significant shift toward more conventionalist-sounding positions, even (perhaps especially) among philosophers interested in scientific classification. The impetus for this is a trend toward making anthropocentric features of categories, namely, capacities to facilitate human epistemic (and other) interests via inductive inference, central to an account of kinds. I argue that taking these features seriously is both defensible and compatible with (...) conventionalism, but not compatible with a traditional realism about kinds specifically. Moreover, hopes of achieving compatibility by revising and extending kind realism—into what I call “hyperrealism”—face an insuperable dilemma. The news for realists is not all bad, however: though kind realism proves untenable, closely associated realisms underlying the objectivity of kind discourse may be viable nonetheless. (shrink)

What is the so-called “question of ontology?” Is the question of ontology genuinely a question about “categories” (Lowe 2006), “structure” (Sider 2011), “existence” (Thomasson 2015), or rather “reality” (Fine 2009)? In this article, I defend the neo-Sellarsian approach to the question of ontology, a novel, naturalistic approach according to which the foundational question of ontology is about “understanding the manifest and the scientific images of the world, and their multiple relationships.” First, I argue for the thesis of Impure Eliminativism, a (...) form of constructive pluralism about the question of ontology by which the substantivity of questions of ontology which are not the neo-Sellarsian one is to be built upon certain relations with the neo-Sellarsian question of ontology. Second, I argue for the categorial plasticity of the two images and their relations in connection with the hypothesis of Weak Epistemic Factualism. Third, and lastly, I argue for a person-based ontology framed in terms of the crucial notions of “fact” and “understanding” in response to the eliminativist categorizations of the two images and their relationships proposed by substantialism and structuralism. (shrink)

Naturalism, as I understand it, includes cosmological naturalism, ontological naturalism and methodological naturalism. After clarifying these three theses I argue that the combination of ontological with methodological naturalism is untenable. I do so by providing a pro tanto case against ontological naturalism and show that it can be resisted, but only by abandoning methodological naturalism. The pro tanto case is that ontological naturalism requires a version of what I call Redundancy Nominalism, but methodological naturalists should either reject it or at (...) very least treat it, and hence ontological naturalism, as a speculation. (shrink)

I explore the view that metaphysics is essentially imaginative. I argue that the central goal of metaphysics on this view is understanding, not truth. Metaphysics-as-essentially-imaginative provides novel answers to challenges to both the value and epistemic status of metaphysics.

Ladyman and Ross argue that analytic metaphysics is a misguided enterprise that should give way to a naturalized metaphysics that aims to reconcile everyday and special-scientific ontologies with fundamental physics as the authoritative source of knowledge on the general structure of the universe. Le Bihan and Barton (argue, as against this, that analytic metaphysics remains useful as a basis for the body of work in AI known as “applied ontology.” They stop short of claiming, however, that analytic metaphysics is useful (...) as metaphysics. I consider a basis for making the stronger claim: Smith's project for building what he claims to be metaphysical foundations for applied ontology (and for AI generally). Ultimately, the stronger claim is rejected; but in the course of this dialectic new aspects of the naturalistic metaphysical project come to light, including relationships between it and the traditional metaphysical project of providing foundations for philosophical semantics of truth and reference. (shrink)

Obviously, science matters to philosophy. But is philosophy also constrained by science? Naturalism is roughly the view that answers positively. However, even among proponents of naturalism, how science constrains philosophy has always been (and still is) a subject of debate. There are two basic dimensions in which the debate takes place, which give rise to two different kinds of naturalism: ontological and methodological. The former concerns what there is, while the latter deals with the methods whereby we acquire knowledge and (...) beliefs. Ontological Naturalism is loosely the view that all of what there is belongs to the natural world, where the natural world is the world described by the natural sciences. By maintaining, in turn, that the ultimate structure of the world is what the natural sciences say it to be, it is to some extent close to Physicalism, according to which what most fundamentally exist are the entities and properties posited by basic physics. On the other hand, methodological naturalism is often thought of as making an epistemological claim akin to scientism—the claim that the best (perhaps the unique) approach to acquiring knowledge is that of natural sciences. Accordingly, it holds that the very same methods used to arrive at scientific theories are the only legitimate ones to be employed by philosophy.Each of these horns of naturalism implies important consequences for our understanding of the relationship between science and many areas of philosophy, including metaphysics. From the methodological point of view, naturalism might be said to entail the denial that our conception of reality needs to include whatever is exclusively accessible to metaphysical theorizing (or to “first philosophy”), understood as a distinct mode of inquiry that lacks ties to the results and practices of the sciences. Indeed, methodological naturalism is usually assumed to reject the project of a priori theorizing, and it is perhaps hard to see how the traditional metaphysics, as well as current analytical metaphysics, might be in the business of developing and assessing synthetic theories of the world supported by a posteriori evidence. From the ontological point of view, naturalism sees science as already giving us a full account of everything, including our place within that picture. Despite this, the debate around the nature of metaphysics remains very much alive (and complex), spreading its influence all across philosophy and our view of the world. The upshot is that much of metaphysical work is nowadays motivated by the naturalist desire to accommodate what the natural sciences have taught us about the world. This special issue stems exactly from the ongoing debate between naturalist and non-naturalist metaphysicians and aims to assess the prospects of naturalized projects in metaphysics and their relationships to traditional metaphysics.Are science and metaphysics separable enterprises? Should allowable metaphysical theories be constrained by and continuous with natural sciences? Does successful scientific research presuppose metaphysics? These are some of the questions addressed in the contributions comprising this special issue. In response, most of them undertake theoretical commitments of a general naturalist stamp, others challenge their philosophical cogency, while still others discuss and contrast the various versions of naturalism that are currently at the center of many metaphysical debates—which often involve some mixture of the two above-mentioned ones, in different proportions. As a result, this special issue hopes to represent the state of the art drawn from different perspectives, helping somehow to clarify extent and ongoing work in metaphysics with respect to the challenges posed by naturalist thinking and eventually to pave the way for future developments and discussions.The issue opens with Don Ross's paper “A flexible, sloppy blob? Ontology, AI, and the role of metaphysics.” In it, Ross defends a naturalized metaphysics that, in contrast with traditional metaphysical projects, is driven directly by fundamental physics. Therefore, since fundamental physics is taken to be the authoritative source of knowledge on the general structure of the universe, metaphysics should neither be separated from nor transcend it. In particular, he rejects more recent works on building metaphysical foundations for applied ontology—e.g., metaphysics for the foundations of AI—as somehow apt to vindicate the value of analytic metaphysics for the edifice of human knowledge. At the same time, however, he points out how his naturalist (methodological) naturalist approach neither incorporates nor implies a physicalistic reduction.Ferdinando Ceravolo and Steven French, in their contribution “What is a Naturalized Principle of Composition?” also support the project of a methodologically naturalized metaphysics. They focus on Van Inwagen's General Composition Question (GCQ). Specifically, they address the issue concerning whether GCQ could be underpinned by principles that are found to be naturalistically acceptable—that is, constrained and informed by advanced physical knowledge. Arguing positively, they outline two candidates for naturalistically accredited principles of composition and explore the various costs of choosing between them.Along the same lines, in his essay “Naturalism and the Question of Ontology,” Javier Cumpa argues for a naturalistic approach in metaontology based on the project of Wilfrid Sellars. He proposes a naturalistic criterion of relational substantivity for ontological questions, which is held to be naturalistic insofar as it relies on the epistemic value and the degree of understanding of the world in line with science that those questions provide us. Cumpa's view is certainly methodologically naturalist, however, although ontologically he does not seem to be committed to metaphysical notions such as ontological categories, he endorses what he calls an “Impure Eliminativism about Categories.”A more straightforward version of eliminativism is advocated by Otávio Bueno in his chapter “Dispensing with Facts, Substances, and Structures.” He contends that, even though ontological categories (i.e., structures, substances, and facts) play a central role in metaphysical theorizing, we do not need to be committed to their existence. Unlike metaphysical realists – who see true thought or assertion as adequately shaped in terms of the correct representation of completely thought and/or language independent bits of reality – he accounts for metaphysical discourse by offering a naturalist account of the linguistic practice that govern it, but without the ontological commitments that realism recommends. Nevertheless, by dropping realism he does not aim to drop metaphysics as an important form of understanding the world. In order to qualify metaphysical judgements as meaningful, he explores and invokes a distinctive deflationary strategy. The result is a view that takes metaphysical discourse literally but without ontologically inflationary maneuvers.The same deflationary strategy is pursued by Anjan Chakravartty in his piece “Last Chance Saloons for Natural Kind Realism.” But rather than on ontological categories in general, he focuses on natural kinds, arguing against realist views that contend for their mind-independent existence. Nevertheless, he shows how a deflationary approach to kinds, while rejecting kind realism, can be integrated with broader realist doctrines such as scientific realism. That is, we need not be committed to either the existence of these posits or with the metaphysically inflationary interpretations that support them in order to invoke these items in scientific theorizing and to vindicate as objective or mind-independent the truth or falsity of scientific as well as everyday claims about natural kinds.In contrast to the previous standpoints, in her article “Metaphysics as Essentially Imaginative and Aiming at Understanding,” Michaela M. McSweeney defends a non-naturalist view of metaphysics. She explores the idea that metaphysics is essentially imaginative and (at least in part) “up to us.” But treating metaphysics as essentially imaginative makes metaphysics methodologically different from scientific inquiry and more akin to art. Nevertheless, she maintains, it can still be deemed epistemologically valuable to the extent that imagination can lead to understanding. On her view, the central goal of the metaphysical project thus turns out to be understanding rather than truth.The closing paper of the issue investigates precisely the relationship between methodological naturalism and ontological naturalism. In “Methodological naturalism undercuts ontological naturalism,” Peter Forrest argues that the combination of ontological with methodological naturalism is untenable. According to his view, one way to defend ontological naturalism is to retain a version of nominalism: specifically, what he calls Redundancy Nominalism (a kind of deflationary nominalism). On the other hand, methodological naturalism requires adopting Categorial Realism. This means being a realist about universals in at least a minimal way. As a result, the fundamental description that methodological naturalism requires proves be contrary to ontological naturalism, whose precondition, in turn, is not available to methodological naturalists. This leads him to criticize ontological naturalism as a belief but, at the same time, to vindicate it as a speculation. (shrink)

There are essentially two ways to develop the Peircean idea that future contingents are all false. One is to provide a quantificational semantics for "will," as is usually done. The other is to define a quantificational postsemantics based on a linear semantics for "will." As we will suggest, the second option, although less conventional, is more plausible than the first in some crucial respects. The postsemantic approach overcomes three major troubles that have been raised in connection with Peirceanism: the apparent (...) scopelessness of "will" with respect to negation, the failure of Future Excluded Middle, and the so-called zero credence problem. (shrink)