THE ASSIMILATION ARGUMENT AND THE ROLLBACK ARGUMENT

Seth Shabo has presented a new argument that attempts to codify familiar worries about indeterminism, luck, and control. His ‘Assimilation Argument’ contends that libertarians cannot distinguish overtly randomized outcomes from exercises of free will. Shabo claims that the argument possesses advantages over the Mind Argument and Rollback Argument, which also purport to establish that indeterminism is incompatible with free will. I argue first that the Assimilation Argument presents no new challenges over and above those presented by the Rollback Argument, and second that the Rollback Argument itself neither presents a deep challenge to, nor raises the cost of, accepting libertarianism.     

THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT AND THE DEVIL

The 'parody objection' to the ontological argument for the existence of God advances parallel arguments apparently proving the existence of various absurd entities. I discuss recent versions of the parody objection concerning the existence of 'AntiGod' and the devil, as introduced by Peter Millican and Timothy Chambers. I argue that the parody objection always fails, because any parody is either (i) not structurally parallel to the ontological argument, or (ii) not dialectically parallel to the ontological argument. Moreover, once a parody argument is modified in such a way that it avoids (i) and (ii), it is, ironically, no longer a parody – it is the ontological argument itself.     

DEMONS AND THE ISOLATION ARGUMENT

Justifying a belief gives reason to think that the belief is true. So our concept of justification contains a 'truth connection'. I canvass a number of proposals for analysing this. In the end, two competing conceptions of the truth connection remain: the first, that justifying a belief makes the belief objectively probable, the second, that justifying a belief makes the belief probable in a world which would make true our other beliefs. I discuss reasons for embracing and rejecting these two versions of the truth connection. Ultimately, the two versions appear to represent distinct but equally plausible conceptions of justification. I conclude by rejecting the proposal that these truth connections respectively capture internalist and externalist conceptions of justification.     

DEFLATIONISM AND THE SUCCESS ARGUMENT

Deflationists about truth typically deny that truth is a causal–explanatory property. However, the now familiar 'success argument' attempts to show that truth plays an important causal–explanatory role in explanations of practical success. Deflationists have standardly responded that the truth predicate appears in such explanations merely as a logical device, and that therefore truth has not been shown to play a causal–explanatory role. I argue that if we accept Jackson and Pettit's account of causal explanations, the standard deflationist response is inconsistent, for on this account even logical properties can be causally explanatory. Therefore the deflationist should remain neutral as to whether truth is a causal–explanatory property, and focus instead on the claim that truth, if it is a property, is a merely logical one.     

THE KANTIAN ARGUMENT FOR CONSEQUENTIALISM

A critical examination of Parfit's attempt to reconcile Kantian contractualism with consequentialism, which disputes his contention that the contracting parties would lack decisive reasons to choose principles that ground prohibitions against harming of the sort to which non-consequentialists have been attracted. ¹     

AN ARGUMENT FOR THE MANY

If one believes vagueness to be an exclusively representational phenomenon, one faces the problem of the many: in the vicinity of Kilimanjaro, there are many 'mountain-candidates', all, apparently, with more or less equal claim to be mountains. David Lewis has defended a radical claim: that all these billions of mountain-candidates are mountains. I argue that the supervaluationist about vagueness should adopt Lewis's proposal, on pain of losing their best explanation of the seductiveness of the sorites paradox.     

DENNETT ON THE BASIC ARGUMENT

Abstract: I argue that Dennett does not adequately support his rejection of the “Basic Argument” for the incompatibility of causal determinism and the sort of free will that involves genuine access to alternative possibilities (sometimes referred to as the “Consequence Argument”). In addition, I seek to highlight the plausibility and importance of the incompatibilist's interpretation of this sort of free will.