Contemporary political theorists have tended to ignore the question of parental authority in their exploration of the nature and origins of political authority. Nevertheless, seminal …
My dissertation aims at throwing new light on the problem of agency, by pursuing a reductionist project about agent causation. In Chapter 1, I provide …
Surprising observations should not steer us toward alternative hypotheses of objective chance, because the pattern-seeking aspect of human psychology gives rise to irrational feelings of …
We take ourselves to be able to access the truth about logic, mathematics, and other nonempirical matters, but it is difficult to reconcile the possibility …
One of Aristotle’s core theses is hylomorphism, the view that things are composed of matter (hule) and form (morphe). In recent years, Aristotle’s hylomorphism has …
There has been increasing attention to the pervasiveness of so-called “bad sex”: apparently consensual sexual encounters that are nonetheless experienced as violating, degrading, and even …
In this thesis, I explore the relevance of computational reinforcement learning to the philosophy of rationality and concept formation. I first argue that the framework …
Recently, a literature has arisen around a novel semantic paradox, known as the v-Curry. Modeled after Curry’s paradox, we begin with the sentence “the inference …
This work addresses a cluster of problems in action theory, philosophical aesthetics, and moral psychology. The first three chapters present an account whereby a class …
This dissertation attempts to answer three related questions about so-called "structural injustice". First, what features of structural injustice distinguish it from mere collections of injustices …
The “conceptualism” debate asks whether perception is conceptual or nonconceptual. It has arisen in different forms and guises throughout the history of philosophy. This thesis …
This dissertation explores the relationship between individuals’ everyday actions and the justice or injustice of entire societies. It is a conceptual and sociological investigation of …
Explanations can be perplexing. Suppose you want to explain why something, A, happens by pointing to something else, B. For this explanation to be illuminating, …