A deontologist might refuse to kill one to save five, and yet take a one-in-a-million risk of killing one to avert a one-in-a-million risk of five dying. No prominent decision theory can accommodate this pair of preferences, as weighting outcomes by a uniform probability (or risk-weighted probability) preserves their ranking.
Risk-sensitive decision theories (which permit agents to have non-neutral attitudes towards risk) require them to have the same attitude towards all kinds of risk. But there are good reasons to think that if it can be rational to have a general risk attitude across all domains, then it can be rational to have domain-specific risk attitudes: to be, say, risk averse for epistemic goods, risk neutral for pleasure, and risk seeking for aesthetic value. I develop the formal resources to model these attitudes.
I argue that the characteristic feature of deontology is a particular kind of domain-specific risk attitude. Specifically, the deontologist thinks duty violations are worse than consequentialist harms, but is comparatively risk-seeking with respect to duty violations relative to consequentialist harms.
This paper examines whether doxastic dilemma pose a challenge to pragmatism. A doxastic dilemma arises when epistemic reasons support believing p, while practical reasons support believing not-p, raising the question of what one ought to believe all things considered. Evidentialists argue that pragmatists must answer this question and determine which belief is normatively required. This challenge, however, depends on a belief principle: if one ought to believe p, then one ought not to believe not-p. I argue that pragmatists need not accept this principle. By considering cases in which practical reasons conflict with one another, I show that even incompatible belief contents may each be supported by distinct reasons and thus possess their own normative standing. Therefore, the fact that one cannot simultaneously hold both beliefs does not show that only one has normative support. Doxastic dilemmas, thus, do not successfully undermine pragmatism.
The problem of justification has long been the central question of philosophy. At stake is what accounts as sufficient justification for claiming that a statement genuinely refers to the object in question. Unless we address this ontological gap between language and the external world, we cannot confidently claim that our statements are directly related to the object we aim to describe. With this, this paper proposes a redefinition of the problem of justification by examining the persistent gap between language and the external world. Traditional accounts of epistemic justification often assume a relatively direct relation between language and reality. However, linguistic mediation complicates this relation: our access to the world is structured through concepts, interpretive frameworks, and socially conditioned practices of meaning. By clarifying the distinction between linguistic representation and worldly causation, this study redefines justification not primarily as a property of the world or isolated beliefs, but what counts as a meaningful and responsible representation of the world. By situating justification within our linguistic practices, this approach offers a more precise account of how beliefs can be answerable to a world that is never accessed except through language, concepts, and interpretations.
It's widely reported that the classical Bayesian norms of rationality break down in the face 'higher-order evidence'. On first pass, this needn’t be particularly troubling. Classical Bayesianism has many well-documented limitations. However, these limitations don't undermine its application across a wide range of cases. So, they don't directly challenge Bayesian orthodoxy. On close inspection, the problem runs deeper though. Hedden & Dorst (2022) have recently argued that almost all evidence is (in part) ‘higher-order evidence’. If they are right, and it is in fact the case that the classical Bayesian norms break down in the face of ‘higher-order evidence’, it follows that the classical Bayesian norms break down in almost all cases. In this paper, I defuse this problem. I show that it rests on the conflation of two distinct kinds of 'higher-order evidence’. Once we properly attend to the distinction between these two kinds of higher-order evidence we can accept Hedden & Dorst’s (2022) initial observation without endorsing wide-spread violations of classical Bayesianism. Hence, we can make a more accurate assessment of the scope and limits of Bayesian epistemology.
Following Dorst (2026), this paper develops a higher-order account of epistemic vagueness. I begin by reconstructing Williamson’s epistemicist account of vagueness, focusing on the margin principle. I argue that epistemic vagueness cannot be explained by first-order indiscriminability alone, since such an explanation is self-undermining. A satisfactory account therefore appeals to higher-order uncertainty. I then clarify that the margin principle rests on two assumptions: the indiscriminability of just-noticeable differences (JNDs) and gradualness. I suggest that the former must be restricted, while the latter is incompatible with empirical data and unnatural. Finally, I argue that higher-order uncertainty provides a better explanation of non-gradual patterns in epistemic vagueness, and that this explanation is supported by psychological studies on discrimination and metacognition.
An inferentialist semantics — one that claims that the meaning of a judgement is determined by its role in reasoning — faces the problem of how to account for the seemingly noninferential transition from the perceptual to the conceptual. Robert Brandom characterises his response to this problem as ‘strong inferentialism’, claiming that in certain contexts the meaning of a judgement can be determined noninferentially, such as when a perceptual judgement is formed in response to an observation. Brandom contrasts strong inferentialism with ‘hyperinferentialism’ which has no role for these kinds of noninferential transitions. This would entail that perceptual judgements are somehow premises and conclusions of inferences, which Brandom argues would be a more consistent though ultimately unsustainable position. However, that perceptual experiences are premises and conclusions of inferences is a central claim of the recently developed active inference framework in neuroscience. Moreover, the semiotics that Charles Sanders Peirce developed late in his life can be understood as hyperinferentialist. In this paper, I argue for a reading of Peirce that emphasises the ways in which he anticipates the insights of active inference. In turn, this reading gives a naturalistically plausible account of how an inferentialist can accommodate perceptual judgements.
I am a PhD candidate at the Monash Centre for Consciousness and Contemplative Studies (M3CS). My research focuses on the philosophy of predictive processing and active inference theories. My current work engages with the classical pragmatism of Charles Sanders Peirce to argue for... Read More →
Tuesday July 7, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am NZST MSB1.05
Lucretius thought of his teaching as being "of high matters". The same can be said of Plato's, whose dialogues, as J. N. Findlay said, "point beyond themselves [and] if one does not go beyond, one cannot understand them." Beyond Plato's dialogues we find a deep epistemological fabric that weaves the intellect (the mind) into a complex architecture of knowledge. Plato's luminescent column is, as we understand it, his metaphor for that which binds the intellect with its subsequent ontological categories, first and foremost its daimōn, i.e. the human being's "divine power" according to Plato. In the column, light colligates all the mental categories and also holds the "entire celestial revolution", both bound by the doctrine of Necessity. Plato's poetic, metaphoric, analogic and allegoric writing style - his solution to language's inability to convey the ineffable - shouldn't mislead us into a reductive understanding based on mysticism, whether religious, pagan, or allegorical. What we are confronted with is the first non-fragmented attempt in the West to map out the entire ontological cognitive process, a precise description of the path of "knowing", the path of a science that leads to the "perfect end".
When we try to imagine something and we form a mental image, there is indeed something that we imagine. But what settles the issue of what we are imagining? One possibility is that we imagine whatever we were trying to imagine by forming our mental image. This view respects the intuition that we have privileged access to the contents of our mental states. But it is in tension with the possibility of misidentification errors in the imagination: Sometimes, we try to imagine some object, and we end up forming a mental image of a different object because we have a false belief about what the intended object of our imagination looks like. This possibility has prompted some to claim that, sometimes, the causal origin of the mental images that we form while trying to imagine something is what determines the contents of our imaginings. This view accommodates misidentification errors, but it does so at the cost of giving up the idea that we have privileged access to the contents of our mental states. I offer a view about the source of the contents of our imaginings that accommodates misidentification errors while preserving privileged access to the contents of our imaginings.
The question of how dreams can offer personal guidance and solutions has ignited the interest of humankind for thousands of years. Nonetheless, dreams have often been considered epistemically irrelevant or even deceptive, becoming the target of sceptical debates. Burgeoning research on the function of dreaming for memory integration as well as the development of dream engineering techniques aimed at harnessing dreams for creativity and learning call for a reassessment of the role of dreaming in epistemology. This work addresses unresolved questions concerning the potential use of sleep experiences for knowledge generation. By focusing on the concept of insight and how it is employed in the scientific literature on dreaming to implicitly uphold epistemic goals, I argue that at least a subset of dream uses, when adequately constrained, disclose opportunities for epistemic exploration and expansion. I will proceed by examining three cases and the conditions under which dreams can give rise to knowledge: lucid dreaming, creative ideation at sleep onset, and waking insight following dream discussion. My goal is to show how empirical work on dream consciousness carries tacit assumptions that have far-reaching implications for the epistemology of dreaming and the use of dreams for therapeutic purposes, thus warranting conceptual analysis.
Many philosophers claim that a special inner awareness persists in the background of all our conscious states. However, various attempts to gather phenomenological evidence for this view have yielded conflicting results. The dominant alternative strategy involves considerations of a more theoretical nature, such as appealing to inner awareness as the best explanation for things like memory, attention, self-knowledge, and disorders of consciousness. But this theoretical strategy has failed to convince the sceptics since they always find alternative (and in their view, better) explanations of the target phenomena. The result is a dialectically deadlocked debate over what is supposed to be a central dimension of consciousness. This talk motivates a return to the phenomenological strategy and makes an initial case for a hitherto underutilized technique in the contemporary debate—meditation—as a way to establish the ubiquity of inner awareness.
I am a fourth year PhD student and Associate Lecturer at ANU, where I am supervised by Victoria McGeer, Frank Jackson, and Daniel Stoljar. My main area of specialization is the philosophy of mind, and more specifically on various issues about consciousness and self-consciousness... Read More →
Imagination is an intriguing faculty of our mind. Its objects often do not exist in the external world but entirely within the mental, such as the “golden mountain.” However, there are limits to imagination when paradoxical concepts such as the “round square” are examined. Such concepts disclose the logical contradiction away from possible worlds and locate themselves in the impossible, also referred to as non-sense. But as Wittgenstein suggests, even non-sense can retain meaning in certain contexts, through language games or philosophical play. This paper will examine the limits of imagination by exploring the objects of imagination and their non-sense, often reflected in language. Further, the study will compare the philosophical non-sense to the psychoanalytical non-sense. By aligning the philosophical concern of the impossible with Lacan’s interpretation of the unconscious, this study contends that non-sense, when viewed through the functioning of the unconscious, becomes intelligible and does not mark an epistemic failure rather unravels the unconscious meaning that resists representation. Thus, letting the logical limits of thought serve as a pathway to its meaning, suggesting that non-sense can itself be meaningful.
Whole-brain simulation seems to support mind uploading if computational functionalism about consciousness is true. Implementationists deny this: a digital brain model running on a computer may represent rather than implement consciousness-relevant computation. Dung and Kersten (2025) argue that such constraints cannot be general conditions on computational implementation, since mainstream theories imply that ordinary computers implement computations, whereas implementationist constraints would rule out such systems. I argue that this response moves too quickly. Implementationist constraints are, in fact, substantively equivalent to constraints in mainstream theories of physical computation: computational structure must be borne by objective mechanistic, causal, or dynamical processes. Strictly applied, these theories may not license high-level software implementation. They distinguish low-level physical/digital computations from the looser sense in which computer science says machines “implement” programs. On this reading, implementationists can deny that ordinary computers implement the high-level computation described by a brain model, without denying that they implement some lower-level computation. This does not refute mind uploading. Rather, it clarifies its hardest challenge: computationalist defenders of simulated consciousness must explain how that possibility remains open while taking seriously the prima facie appeal of implementationist theories that privilege objective physical processes.
Does the qualitative "sting" of past pain inevitably elude our mnemonic grasp? This paper argues that the qualitative character of pain is best understood as a measure of presentness. Building on Montero’s observation that pain is inherently "occurrent," I propose an interpretation wherein occurrent states denote strictly "new" sensations. I evaluate the work of Coninx and de Brigard, who suggest that episodic memory can involve genuine sensory re-experiencing of past pain. I contend, however, that these sensations are not retrieved qualitative states but are instead novel, "new" pains triggered by the present act of recollection. By analyzing de Brigard’s account of permissible pain recollection alongside recent neuropsychological findings, I demonstrate that these sensations fail to escape characterization as occurrent, present states. I conclude that pain is phenomenologically indexed to the "now"; to "remember" the feeling of pain is not to travel back in time, but to generate a new qualitative state in the present. This suggests that the very nature of pain serves as a biological and experiential marker of temporal presence.
Phenomenological theories of pleasure, according to which pleasures are constituted by a common phenomenal quality, face the seemingly intractable heterogeneity problem: that pleasures feel too phenomenally heterogeneous to be constituted by a common phenomenal quality. First, I argue that the heterogeneity problem is forceful mainly due to the isolatability requirement, according to which the pleasure-making quality, if phenomenal, must also be isolatable. Second, I argue that we should reject the isolatability requirement as it assumes that the pleasure-making quality is sufficiently sensation-like. Third, I argue that phenomenological theories, of both the distinctive feeling and hedonic tone kinds, have the resources necessary to reject the isolatability requirement. Finally, I conclude that without the isolatability requirement, the heterogeneity problem loses much of its force against phenomenological theories, and phenomenological theories become as plausible, if not more plausible than its chief rival, attitudinal theories.
Masters Research Scholar, National University of Singapore
Hi, I’m Jolly! My primary research concerns the nature of pleasure. I’m currently working on defending a commonsensical view of pleasure’s nature, phenomenological theories of pleasure, according to which pleasure is essentially a feeling. I’ll be presenting this research... Read More →
Wednesday July 8, 2026 3:00pm - 3:55pm NZST MSB1.05
The boundary problem is a component of the hard problem of consciousness. Whereas the binding problem is concerned with what unifies different experiential components (e.g. sights and sounds) within a co-conscious whole, the boundary problem is concerned with what puts an end to unification—what prevents my experience from ‘spilling over’ and incorporating your experience, say. Many inventive solutions to the boundary problem have been offered, e.g. phenomenal bonding relations in panpsychism, and topological segmentations in EM-field theories of consciousness. But, whatever their merits, there hasn't been much serious questioning as to whether experience does, in fact, have boundaries. I’d like to advance a deflationary account which denies boundaries. I take analogous views in the metaphysics of time and personal identity as precedents. One upshot of this account is to dissolve the boundary problem, making the hard problem a bit easier in that respect.
In the increasingly interdisciplinary study of conspiracy theories - conspiracy theory theory - there is a debate (at least in philosophy) between generalism (the view that there is something generally wrong about conspiracy theories) and particularism (the view that conspiracy theories ought to be assessed on their relative merits, and thus no assumption can be made about their warrant sans some investigation of the particular theory). In this panel discussion three of the main contributors to that debate (Charles Pigden, M R. X. Dentith, and Steve Clarke) discuss why it seems that particularism is the dominant view (at least among philosophers), whether generalists are right to claim that non-philosophers agree with generalism, and whether there is some intermediate position between the two views.
M R. X. Dentith is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the International Center for Philosophy at Beijing Normal University at Zhuhai. Their chief research interests concern the epistemic analysis of conspiracy theories, rumours, fake news, and the epistemology of secrecy. In 2014... Read More →
An agent makes an epistemic trade-off when she forms a belief, that is prima facie irrational, to achieve some larger epistemic good (such as the attainment of a more valuable belief). Most epistemologists contend that trade-offs are impermissible; however, I argue that examples of permissible trade-offs can be found in a recognizable phenomenon in social epistemology: the adoption of unique belief-formation norms by agents in epistemic roles (e.g., scientists, reporters, etc.). On my view, these norms are authoritative since they help the agents who occupy these roles transmit specialized knowledge to the public. And just like ethical role norms, epistemic role norms often conflict with the norms that govern typical agents. Agents in these roles are thus permitted to form prima facie irrational beliefs so that others can achieve a larger epistemic good (the acquisition of specialized knowledge), which fits the definition of a trade-off. As an example, I analyze mid-century belief-formation norms that instructed anthropologists to irrationally disbelieve any moral claim about the practices of other cultures. These norms led to the adoption of irrational morally relativistic beliefs; however, they were a necessary step to ending the Eurocentric biases that led early anthropologists to adopt implausible theories.
Recent work on the philosophy of conspiracy theory in Philosophy has largely consolidated around the thesis of Particularism. Particularists argue that we cannot make broad generalisations about the class of conspiracy theories. Instead, we have to assess particular instances of conspiracy theories on their merits. However, like many emerging consensus positions in philosophy, particularism is not unassailed. Generalists argue that we have reasons to treat conspiracy theories - as a class - as epistemically suspect, and they have found particularism as a thesis to be wanting. In this paper I examine both how generalists have described particularist positions, as well we how particularists have articulated particularism. I argue that if generalists want to challenge the particularist consensus, then it is going to be important to show that their construals of particularist positions accurately reflect what particularists argue for if they want to then show where particularism asa. thesis falls down. That is, I will ask and then answer the question of what, exactly, generalists need to show in order to both undermine particularism and challenge the particularist consensus.
M R. X. Dentith is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the International Center for Philosophy at Beijing Normal University at Zhuhai. Their chief research interests concern the epistemic analysis of conspiracy theories, rumours, fake news, and the epistemology of secrecy. In 2014... Read More →
Thursday July 9, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST MSB1.05
Keith DeRose's (1992, 2009, 2011) epistemic contextualism maintains that when S makes a knowledge attribution, the truth conditions of the statement "S knows that P" vary in a specific way depending on the context of S's assertion. This "specific way" is jointly determined by both epistemic and practical factors. In particular, the claim that stakes (as a practical factor) affect knowledge attributions has been challenged by experimental philosophy, generating a substantial body of literature (among others, Beaman & Francis 2023; Buckwalter 2021; Dinges & Zakkou 2020; Francis, Beaman & Hansen 2019; Pinillos 2012, 2024; Porter et al. 2024; Rose et al. 2019; Shurakov 2025; Wu 2023). However, I argue that when experimental philosophy tests these claims, it fails to clearly distinguish between the interpretations of objective knowledge and knowledge attributions under different theoretical frameworks. Consequently, existing experimental results fail to provide an objective evaluation of DeRose's contextualism. Therefore, this paper will argue that, due to the failure to clearly distinguish between knowledge attributions and objective knowledge, the empirical findings of experimental philosophy cannot provide an objective assessment of DeRose's contextualism.
Hearer-oriented etiological functionalism explains the epistemic norm of assertion by appeal to assertion’s characteristic epistemic function. On the version defended by Christoph Kelp and Mona Simion, assertion characteristically functions to generate testimonial knowledge in audiences, and an assertion is epistemically permissible when it is disposed to do so under normal conditions. The view is stronger than a crude actual-success condition, because it asks about normal functioning. The view is also more social than speaker-centered rule accounts, because it places the hearer at the center of evaluation. I argue that confidentiality practices create a deeper problem for the account than existing discussion has recognized. Some true assertions that would predictably give a hearer testimonial knowledge of their content are epistemically impermissible, because the hearer’s knowledge of that content would block the route to the knowledge the inquiry is organized to secure. The argument concerns a constitutive epistemic role. A promotional gain alone would not suffice. Finite inquirers sometimes need managed ignorance in order to know what they often set out to know. Science makes the pattern vivid, and ordinary evaluative practices display the same pattern.
