Daniel Nolan

Impossible Worlds: A Modest Approach

Reasoning about situations we take to be impossible is useful for a variety of theoretical purposes. Furthermore, using a device of impossible worlds when reasoning about the impossible is useful in the same sorts of ways that the device of possible worlds is useful when reasoning about the possible. This paper discusses some of the uses of impossible worlds and argues that commitment to them can and should be had without great metaphysical or logical cost. The paper then provides an account of reasoning with impossible worlds, by treating such reasoning as reasoning employing counterpossible conditionals, and provides a semantics for the proposed treatment.

Moral fictionalism versus the rest

In this paper we introduce a distinct metaethical position, fictionalism about morality. We clarify and defend the position, showing that it is a way to save the ‘moral phenomena’ while agreeing that there is no genuine objective prescriptivity to be described by moral terms. In particular, we distinguish moral fictionalism from moral quasi-realism, and we show that fictionalism possesses the virtues of quasi-realism about morality, but avoids its vices.

What’s Wrong With Infinite Regresses?

It is almost universally believed that some infinite regresses are vicious, and also almost universally believed that some are benign. In this paper I argue that regresses can be vicious for several different sorts of reasons. Furthermore, I claim that some intuitively vicious regresses do not suffer from any of the particular aetiologies that guarantee viciousness to regresses, but are nevertheless so on the basis of considerations of parsimony. The difference between some apparently benign and some apparently vicious regresses, then, turns out to be a matter of a more general assessment of costs and benefits, making viciousness of regresses in some cases less of a local matter than is usually thought.

The A Posteriori Armchair

A lot of good philosophy is done in the armchair, but is nevertheless a posteriori. This paper clarifies and then defends that claim. Among the a posteriori activities done in the armchair are assembling and evaluating commonplaces; formulating theoretical alternatives; and integrating well-known past a posteriori discoveries. The activity that receives the most discussion, however, is the application of theoretical virtues to choose philosophical theories: the paper argues that much of this is properly seen as a posteriori.

It’s a kind of magic: Lewis, magic and properties

David Lewis’s arguments against magical ersatzism are notoriously puzzling. Untangling different strands in those arguments is useful for bringing out what he thought was wrong with not just one style of theory about possible worlds, but with much of the contemporary metaphysics of abstract objects. After setting out what I take Lewis’s arguments to be and how best to resist them, I consider the application of those arguments to general theories of properties and relations. The constraints Lewis motivates turn out to yield an argument for concretism about possible individuals that is quite different from the better-known Lewisian arguments for that position. The discussion also touches on the puzzling question of whether things are the way they are because of the properties they have, or are the properties and relations the way they are because of the things that have them.

Naturalised Modal Epistemology

The metaphysics of necessity and possibility has flourished in the last half-century, but much less attention has been paid to the question of how we know what can be the case and what must be the case. Many friends of modal metaphysics and many enemies of modal metaphysics have agreed that while empirical discoveries can tell us what is the case, they cannot shed much light on what must be the case or on what non-actual possibilities there are. In this paper, in contrast, I discuss and defend naturalistic approaches to discovering the facts about necessity and possibility. After some remarks about what methodological naturalism in philosophy might amount to, I argue that naturalistic method in modal investigations may not need to be particularly revisionary of much of what is currently being done in modal investigation. I then discuss a number of respects in which a naturalistic orientation in modal investigation may improve on our current epistemic situation.

The Dangers of Pragmatic Virtue

Abstract Many people want to hold that some theoretical virtues—simplicity, elegance, familiarity or others—are only pragmatic virtues. That is, these features do not give us any more reason to think a theory is true, or close to true, but they justify choosing one theoretical option over another because they are desirable for some other, practical purpose. Using pragmatic virtues in theory choice apparently brings with it a dilemma: if we are deciding what to accept on the basis of considerations that are not truth-conducive, it looks like we should either refrain from believing what we accept, and adopt some sort of instrumentalist attitude to the theories we cherish; or alternatively, we stand charged with engaging in theoretical irrationality in our belief formation. This paper discusses the appropriate response to this dilemma.

Epistemic dispositions. Reply to Turri and Bronner

We reply to recent papers by John Turri and Ben Bronner, who criticise the dispositionalised Nozickian tracking account we discuss in “Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know.” We argue that the account we suggested can handle the problems raised by Turri and Bronner. In the course of responding to Turri and Bronner’s objections, we draw three general lessons for theories of epistemic dispositions: that epistemic dispositions are to some extent extrinsic, that epistemic dispositions can have manifestation conditions concerning circumstances where their bearers fail to exist, and that contrast is relevant to disposition attributions.

Fearing spouses in Aristotle's Ta Oikonomika

One of the surviving chapters of the Oikonomika attributed to Aristotle contains one unusual piece of advice: that spouses should fear each other. What could be going on? The work which the Loeb Classical Library classifies as Book 3 of the Oikonomika attributed to Aristotle is a curious piece. It has come down to us only via medieval translations into Latin. (I will be quoting the Loeb text and translation except where noted.) It is not certain that it is by Aristotle, and it is not certain whether it is even a part of the work attributed to Aristotle in ancient times. For want of a better name, let me refer to its author, whoever that was, as ‘Aristotle’, and let me refer to this piece as Book 3 of Ta Oikonomika – but with the caveats that it may not have been by the Stagirite, and its ancient source may not have even been one typically attributed to Aristotle, although it was so attributed at some stage. For what it is worth I am inclined to think that it was part of a work attributed to Aristotle by the ancients, and it was written by one of the Peripatetics, or at least an ancient Greek philosopher of Aristotle’s time or later. If it was not part of Aristotle’s Oikonomika, it may be part or all of an otherwise lost ancient work attributed to Aristotle on marriage (Rose, 1971: 180–2, 644–7). If G. C. Armstrong, the Loeb translator, is right, the writer of our text seems to have knowledge of Xenophon’s Oikonomicos, which would put the earliest date of composition sometime in the generation before Aristotle. I will be taking it to shed light on one ancient Greek ideal of marriage, and so if it did transpire that this book was an ancient Roman or medieval forgery, that would undercut some of the conclusions of this paper; but there is no evidence that it is not a Peripatetic work, at least. A text on ‘Economics’ was a genre well known in the ancient world, and it typically concerned itself with the proper management of a household: a very rich, often rural household at that. The chapter with

Consequentialism and side constraints

Theories according to which pursuit of the good should be limited by absolute side constraints on action face a serious intuitive cost when it comes to considering high-stakes cases. Five options for such theories in the face of this problem are examined and found wanting.