of (from British Columbia Philosophy Graduate Conference) In moral reasoning, we sometimes encounter situations where what our ethical principles tell us to do and what we actually do conflict. In legal ethics, such anomalies arise for lawyers in defending a client who commits perjury. Wallace argues that such lawyers have not mastered the practice of truth-telling, and thus suffer from some sort of moral deficiency. However, due to the complexities of legal practice, particularly the value of truth and evidence, (...) lawyers must learn to accommodate cases of perjury into their moral taxonomies, and this is not a simple feat. In addition, I examine the ethics of lying in everyday life, such as in cases of protecting reputation or feelings. As such, I posit that Wallace is oversimplifying the situation and individuals in “perjured client” cases actually have a better and more realistic grasp on the exercise of practical ethics than he claims. (shrink)

Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments offers an account of moral responsibility. It addresses the question: what are the forms of capacity or ability that render us morally accountable for the things we do? A traditional answer has it that the conditions of moral responsibility include freedom of the will, where this in turn involves the availability of robust alternative possibilities. I reject this answer, arguing that the conditions of moral responsibility do not include any condition of alternative possibilities. In the (...) terms that have become familiar, the book thus defends a compatibilist account of moral responsibility. (shrink)

What ontology does realism about the quantum state suggest? The main extant view in contemporary philosophy of physics is wave-function realism . We elaborate the sense in which wave-function realism does provide an ontological picture, and defend it from certain objections that have been raised against it. However, there are good reasons to be dissatisfied with wave-function realism, as we go on to elaborate. This motivates the development of an opposing picture: what we call spacetime state realism , a view (...) which takes the states associated to spacetime regions as fundamental. This approach enjoys a number of beneficial features, although, unlike wave-function realism, it involves non-separability at the level of fundamental ontology. We investigate the pros and cons of this non-separability, arguing that it is a quite acceptable feature, even one which proves fruitful in the context of relativistic covariance. A companion paper discusses the prospects for combining a spacetime-based ontology with separability, along lines suggested by Deutsch and Hayden. (shrink)

I attempt to get as clear as possible on the chain of reasoning by which irreversible macrodynamics is derivable from time-reversible microphysics, and in particular to clarify just what kinds of assumptions about the initial state of the universe, and about the nature of the microdynamics, are needed in these derivations. I conclude that while a “Past Hypothesis” about the early Universe does seem necessary to carry out such derivations, that Hypothesis is not correctly understood as a constraint on the (...) early Universe’s entropy. (shrink)

I criticize the widely-defended view that the quantum measurement problem is an example of underdetermination of theory by evidence: more specifically, the view that the unmodified, unitary quantum formalism (interpreted following Everett) is empirically indistinguishable from Bohmian Mechanics and from dynamical-collapse theories like the GRW or CSL theories. I argue that there as yet no empirically successful generalization of either theory to interacting quantum field theory and so the apparent underdetermination is broken by a very large class of quantum experiments (...) that require field theory somewhere in their description. The class of quantum experiments reproducible by either is much smaller than is commonly recognized and excludes many of the most iconic successes of quantum mechanics, including the quantitative account of Rayleigh scattering that explains the color of the sky. I respond to various arguments to the contrary in the recent literature. (shrink)

The concept of a relational self has been prominent in feminism, communitarianism, narrative self theories, and social network theories, and has been important to theorizing about practical dimensions of selfhood. However, it has been largely ignored in traditional philosophical theories of personal identity, which have been dominated by psychological and animal theories of the self. This book offers a systematic treatment of the notion of the self as constituted by social, cultural, political, and biological relations. The author's account incorporates practical (...) concerns and addresses how a relational self has agency, autonomy, responsibility, and continuity through time in the face of change and impairments. This cumulative network model of the self incorporates concepts from work in the American pragmatist and naturalist tradition. The ultimate aim of the book is to bridge traditions that are often disconnected from one another--feminism, personal identity theory, and pragmatism--to develop a unified theory of the self. (shrink)

I respond to the frequent objection that structural realism fails to sharply state an alternative to the standard predicate-logic, object / property / relation, way of doing metaphysics. The approach I propose is based on what I call a ‘math-first’ approach to physical theories (close to the so-called ‘semantic view of theories') where the content of a physical theory is to be understood primarily in terms of its mathematical structure and the representational relations it bears to physical systems, rather than (...) as a collection of sentences that attempt to make true claims about those systems (a ‘language-first’ approach). I argue that adopting the math-first approach already amounts to a form of structural realism, and that the choice between epistemic and ontic versions of structural realism is then a choice between a language-first and math-first view of metaphysics; I then explore the status of objects (and properties and relations) in fundamental and non-fundamental physics for both versions of math-first structural realism. (shrink)

I argue against the currently prevalent view that algebraic quantum field theory (AQFT) is the correct framework for philosophy of quantum field theory and that “conventional” quantum field theory (CQFT), of the sort used in mainstream particle physics, is not suitable for foundational study. In doing so, I defend that position that AQFT and CQFT should be understood as rival programs to resolve the mathematical and physical pathologies of renormalization theory, and that CQFT has succeeded in this task and AQFT (...) has failed. I also defend CQFT from recent criticisms made by Doreen Fraser. (shrink)

Rational agency may be thought of as intentional activity that is guided by the agent's conception of what they have reason to do. The paper identifies and assesses three approaches to this phenomenon, which I call internalism, meta-internalism, and volitionalism. Internalism accounts for rational motivation by appeal to substantive desires of the agent's that are conceived as merely given; I argue that it fails to do full justice to the phenomenon of guidance by one's conception of one's reasons. Meta-internalism explains (...) this phenomenon by postulating higher-order dispositions, consitutive of (rational) agency itself, which causally interact with the agent's normative beliefs to produce corresponding motivations to action. I show that meta-internalism comes to grief over cases of akrasia, insofar as it leaves no room for the capacity for rational guidance when agents voluntarily act at variance with their judgments about what they have reason to do. Volitionalism, I contend, improves on both internalism and meta-internalism. Its distinctive feature is the postulation of a kind of motivation that is directly subject to the agent's control, and independent of the dispositions and desires to which the agent is passively subject. (shrink)

Practical reason is the general human capacity for resolving, through reflection, the question of what one is to do. Deliberation of this kind is practical in at least two senses. First, it is practical in its subject matter, insofar as it is concerned with action. But it is also practical in its consequences or its issue, insofar as reflection about action itself directly moves people to act. Our capacity for deliberative self-determination raises two sets of philosophical problems. First, there are (...) questions about how deliberation can succeed in being practical in its issue. What do we need to assume — both about agents and about the processes of reasoning they engage in — to make sense of the fact that deliberative reflection can directly give rise to action? Can we do justice to this dimension of practical reason while preserving the idea that practical deliberation is genuinely a form of reasoning? Second, there are large issues concerning the content of the standards that are brought to bear in practical reasoning. Which norms for the assessment of action are binding on us as agents? Do these norms provide resources for critical reflection about our ends, or are they exclusively instrumental? Under what conditions do moral norms yield valid standards for reasoning about action? The first set of issues is addressed in sections 1-3 of the present article, while sections 4-5 cover the second set of issues. (shrink)

T. M. Scanlon's magisterial book What We Owe to Each Other is surely one of the most sophisticated and important works of moral philosophy to have appeared for many years. It raises fundamental questions about all the main aspects of the subject, and I hope and expect that it will have a decisive influence on the shape and direction of moral philosophy in the years to come. In this essay I shall focus on four sets of issues raised by Scanlon's (...) systematic argument, with the aim of clarifying some of Scanlon's central assumptions and presenting alternatives at several key points. The perspective from which I offer these comments is that of a reader who is sympathetic to Scanlon's general approach but not yet convinced on various points of detail. (shrink)

A defence of the idea that there are sui generis duties of love: duties, that is, that we owe to people in virtue of standing in loving relationships with them. I contrast this non-reductionist position with the widespread reductionist view that our duties to those we love all derive from more generic moral principles. The paper mounts a cumulative argument in favour of the non-reductionist position, adducing a variety of considerations that together speak strongly in favour of adopting it. The (...) concluding section connects this debate with larger issues in moral theory concerning the general idea of obligation. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 3, Page 634-645, September 2021.

Every process studied in any science other than physics defines an arrow of time – to say nothing for the directedness of the processes of causation, inference, memory, control, and counterfactual dependence that occur in everyday life. The discussion in this chapter is confined to the arrow of time as it occurs in physics. The chapter briefly discusses those features of microscopic physics, which seem to conflict with time asymmetry. It explains just how this conflict plays out in the important (...) context of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. The chapter then reviews the main strategies available for resolving the conflict between reversible microdynamics and irreversible macrodynamics, working within the context of the quantitative, time‐irreversible evolution laws that seem to apply to large‐scale phenomena. Finally, it offers a broad the discussion covering other arrows of time within physics. (shrink)

Following Lewis, it is widely held that branching worlds differ in important ways from diverging worlds. There is, however, a simple and natural semantics under which ordinary sentences uttered in branching worlds have much the same truth values as they conventionally have in diverging worlds. Under this semantics, whether branching or diverging, speakers cannot say in advance which branch or world is theirs. They are uncertain as to the outcome. This same semantics ensures the truth of utterances typically made about (...) quantum mechanical contingencies, including statements of uncertainty, if the Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics is true. The ‘incoherence problem’ of the Everett interpretation, that it can give no meaning to the notion of uncertainty, is thereby solved. IntroductionMetaphysicsPersonal fissionBranching worldsPhysicsObjections. (shrink)

According to T. M. Scanlon's buck‐passing account, the normative realm of reasons is in some sense prior to the domain of value. Intrinsic value is not itself a property that provides us with reasons; rather, to be good is to have some other reason‐giving property, so that facts about intrinsic value amount to facts about how we have reason to act and to respond. The paper offers an interpretation and defense of this approach to the relation between reasons and values. (...) I start by acknowledging the role that substantive values play in specifications of our reasons, noting that this poses an apparent challenge to the buck‐passing account. The challenge can be met, however, if we adopt a deliberative understanding of substantive value, an interpretation that I proceed to develop and defend. In conclusion I consider recent attempts to capture the agent‐relativity of reasons within a teleological framework for thinking about the relation between reasons and values. I argue that these approaches rest on a deliberative understanding of value; the teleological framework thus turns out to illustrate the basic insight of the buck‐passing approach, rather than offering an alternative to it. (shrink)

This is a preliminary version of an article to appear in the forthcoming Ashgate Companion to the New Philosophy of Physics.In it, I aim to review, in a way accessible to foundationally interested physicists as well as physics-informed philosophers, just where we have got to in the quest for a solution to the measurement problem. I don't advocate any particular approach to the measurement problem (not here, at any rate!) but I do focus on the importance of decoherence theory to (...) modern attempts to solve the measurement problem, and I am fairly sharply critical of some aspects of the "traditional" formulation of the problem. (shrink)

Mathematically, gauge theories are extraordinarily rich --- so rich, in fact, that it can become all too easy to lose track of the connections between results, and become lost in a mass of beautiful theorems and properties: indeterminism, constraints, Noether identities, local and global symmetries, and so on. -/- One purpose of this short article is to provide some sort of a guide through the mathematics, to the conceptual core of what is actually going on. Its focus is on the (...) Lagrangian, variational-problem description of classical mechanics, from which the link between gauge symmetry and the apparent violation of determinism is easy to understand; only towards the end will the Hamiltonian description be considered. -/- The other purpose is to warn against adopting too unified a perspective on gauge theories. It will be argued that the meaning of the gauge freedom in a theory like general relativity is (at least from the Lagrangian viewpoint) significantly different from its meaning in theories like electromagnetism. The Hamiltonian framework blurs this distinction, and orthodox methods of quantization obliterate it; this may, in fact, be genuine progress, but it is dangerous to be guided by mathematics into conflating two conceptually distinct notions without appreciating the physical consequences. (shrink)

An extended analysis is given of the program, originally suggested by Deutsch, of solving the probability problem in the Everett interpretation by means of decision theory. Deutsch's own proof is discussed, and alternatives are presented which are based upon different decision theories and upon Gleason's Theorem. It is argued that decision theory gives Everettians most or all of what they need from `probability'. Contact is made with Lewis's Principal Principle linking subjective credence with objective chance: an Everettian Principal Principle is (...) formulated, and shown to be at least as defensible as the usual Principle. Some consequences of (Everettian) quantum mechanics for decision theory itself are also discussed. -/- [NB: this this long (70 pages) and occasionally rambling online-only paper has been almost entirely superseded by material in subsequent; if something is not included in them it usually means that I have had second thoughts. I include it for completeness only. (shrink)

Mental fictionalism maintains that: (1) folk psychology is a false theory, but (2) we should nonetheless keep using it, because it is useful, convenient, or otherwise beneficial to do so. We should (or do) treat folk psychology as a useful fiction—false, but valuable. Yet some argue that mental fictionalism is incoherent: if a mental fictionalist rejects folk psychology then she cannot appeal to fictions in an effort to keep folk psychological discourse around, because fictions presuppose the legitimacy of folk psychology. (...) Call this the Argument from Cognitive Collapse. In this paper, I defend several different mental fictionalist views against cognitive collapse. (shrink)

Reasons and Recognition brings together fourteen new papers on an array of topics from the many areas to which Scanlon has made path-breaking contributions, ...

It has been argued by some that the argument from vagueness is one of the strongest arguments in favor of the theory of temporal parts. I will neither support nor dispute this claim here. Rather, I will present a version of the argument from vagueness, which – if successful – commits one to the existence of modal parts. I argue that a commitment to the soundness of the argument from vagueness for temporal parts compels one to commit to the soundness (...) of the argument from vagueness for modal parts. I say compels, but not entails; an objection to one of the arguments highlights analogous ways to reject the other, making it difficult to endorse one and reject the other. This would be a significant conclusion, if true, since there are far fewer who currently commit themselves to modal parts than the many who currently commit themselves to temporal parts. (shrink)

The Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics - better known as the Many-Worlds Theory - has had a rather uneven reception. Mainstream philosophers have scarcely heard of it, save as science fiction. In philosophy of physics it is well known but has historically been fairly widely rejected. Among physicists, it is taken very seriously indeed, arguably tied for first place in popularity with more traditional operationalist views of quantum mechanics. In this article, I provide a fairly short and self-contained introduction to (...) the Everett interpretation as it is currently understood. I use little technical machinery, although I do assume the reader has encountered the measurement problem already. (shrink)

A systematic analysis is made of the relations between the symmetries of a classical field and the symmetries of the one-particle quantum system that results from quantizing that field in regimes where interactions are weak. The results are applied to gain a greater insight into the phenomenon of antimatter.

Reason and Value collects 15 new papers by leading contemporary philosophers on themes from the work of Joseph Raz. Raz has made major contributions in a wide range of areas, including jurisprudence, political philosophy, and the theory of practical reason; but all of his work displays a deep engagement with central themes in moral philosophy. The subtlety and power of Raz's reflections on ethical topics make his writings a fertile source for anyone working in this area. Especially significant are his (...) explorations of the connections between practical reason and the theory of value, which constitute a sustained and penetrating treatment of a set of issues at the very center of moral philosophy as it is practiced today. The contributors to the volume acknowledge the importance of Raz's contributions by engaging critically with his positions and offering independent perspectives on the topics that he has addressed. The volume aims both to honour Raz's accomplishments in the area of ethical theorizing, and to contribute to an enhanced appreciation of the significance of his work for the subject. (shrink)

Some mereologists boast that their view of parts and wholes is ontologically innocent.[Lewis 1991: 72-87] They claim that a fusion is nothing over and above its parts; once you’ve committed to the parts, you get the fusion for free. In other words, fusions are not a further ontological commitment beyond the commitment to the parts. There are various proposals to explain how it is that fusions can come about so cheap. Perhaps the most straightforward of these explanations, and the one (...) I will be concerned with in this paper, is to accept the Strong Composition Thesis:2, 3.. (shrink)

Questions about the possibility and nature of moral motivation occupy a central place in the history of ethics. Philosophers disagree, however, about the role that motivational investigations should play within the larger subject of ethical theory. These disagreements surface in the dispute about whether moral thought is necessarily motivating – ‘internalists’ affirming that it is,‘externalists’ denying this. [...] There are also important questions about the content of moral motivations. A moral theory should help us to make sense of the fact (...) that people are often moved to do the right thing, by identifying a basic motive to moral behaviour that is both widespread and intelligible, as a serious source of reasons. (shrink)

I investigate the consequences for semantics, and in particular for the semantics of tense, if time is assumed to have a branching structure not out of metaphysical necessity (to solve some philosophical problem) but just as a contingent physical fact, as is suggested by a currently-popular approach to the interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Richard Healey’s The Quantum Revolution in Philosophy is a terrific book, and yet I disagree with nearly all its main substantive conclusions.1 1 The purpose of this review is to say why the book is well worth your time if you have any interest in the interpretation of quantum theory or in the general philosophy of science, and yet why in the end I think Healey’s ambitious project fails to achieve its full goals.

I make the case that the Universe according to unitary quantum theory has a branching structure, and so can literally be regarded as a "many-worlds" theory. These worlds are not part of the _fundamental_ ontology of quantum theory - instead, they are to be understood as structures, or patterns, emergent from the underlying theory, through the dynamical process of decoherence. That they are structures in this sense does not mean that they are in any way unreal: indeed, pretty much all (...) higher-level ontology in science, from tables to phonons to tigers, is likewise emergent. Unitary quantum theory is therefore a "many-worlds" theory without any modification of the mathematical structure of the theory: the Everett interpretation does not consist in adding worlds to the formalism, but in realising that they are there already. Our grounds for accepting the reality of those worlds is no more, but no less, than our grounds for accepting any other not-directly observable consequence of an empirically very successful theory. (shrink)

I develop the decision-theoretic approach to quantum probability, originally proposed by David Deutsch, into a mathematically rigorous proof of the Born rule in (Everett-interpreted) quantum mechanics. I sketch the argument informally, then prove it formally, and lastly consider a number of proposed ``counter-examples'' to show exactly which premises of the argument they violate. (This is a preliminary version of a chapter to appear --- under the title ``How to prove the Born Rule'' --- in Saunders, Barrett, Kent and Wallace, (...) "Many worlds? Everett, quantum theory and reality", forthcoming from Oxford University Press.). (shrink)