ABSTRACT Is there a category of ‘phthonic’ or malicious humour that is morally wrong because it endorses negative stereotypes, or is humour always or for the most part morally neutral? De Sousa argues that humour that trades in racist or sexist stereotypes involves an implicit endorsement of those attitudes. To think otherwise while telling or laughing at jokes that depend on pernicious stereotypes to land is to engage in self-deception, either of belief or emotion. His critics label this view as extreme and advocate for the dissociation of humour from any endorsement of immoral attitudes. It is argued here that while de Sousa’s critics are right that a joke teller need not be either asserting or implying the truth of an associated stereotype, it cannot be inferred from this that the dissociationist thesis is correct—that is, that the status of such humour as humorous is independent of pernicious stereotypes. Utilising speech act theory, an analysis of such jokes is then given that explains why they enjoy immunity to criticism, with the consequence that such jokes threaten to undermine our rationality, not just our morality. This claim is born out empirically in disparagement humour studies that suggest that jokes function psychologically to impede argument scrutiny. The complexities of self-deprecating and reclaimed humour are then explained in terms of shifts in joke frames that render the apparent ‘butt’ of the joke (the speaker) the winner and the ‘other’ (the out-group audience) the loser, unless the audience can position themselves morally to laugh with not at the butt of the joke and, with good measure, at themselves. Such jokes, properly understood, can thus be seen as playing an important role in promoting the intellectual and moral virtue of humility.

ABSTRACT Many think that welfare is a normative concept or property. I take it that claiming that the concept of welfare is normative is to claim that it follows analytically from G ’s contributing to X ’s welfare that X has a reason to have a pro-attitude toward G . I point to advantages to thinking that welfare is not normative in this sense. I then criticise arguments for why one might think that welfare is a normative concept. Here I suggest other senses in which welfare might be a normative concept. I then consider Guy Fletcher’s account, on which the property (rather than the concept) good for is normative. I argue that although moving to properties avoids some worries, it does not avoid all of them, and it does no better at motivating the view.

ABSTRACT Why care about ideal epistemic norms? Why not merely care about norms that agents like us can actually meet? In this paper, I make two claims. First, I argue that, if we want robust epistemic norms, we can’t just do idealised epistemology. We need to confirm that the results and observations that are central in idealised epistemology also obtain in other contexts. Second, I argue that, if we really want to capture the fundamental nature of epistemic normativity, we need the sort of frameworks that come from non-ideal epistemology. I develop this argument in response to ideas put forward by Jennifer Carr (2022) surrounding the distinctive properties of epistemic ideals.

ABSTRACT What should we make of systems that behave just like conscious creatures but operate via mechanisms that are profoundly different from our own? How should we even think about mechanistic similarity and difference in this context? To answer these questions, I take a closer look at the inferential machinery that allows us to justifiably draw conclusions about consciousness in others. I argue that inferences about consciousness in others are best viewed as involving analogical inferences grounded in explanatory considerations. I conclude that profound mechanistic difference severs the evidential link between behavioural evidence and subjective experience. I then draw on recent developments within the mechanistic philosophy of science to motivate a conception of mechanistic similarity that is not wedded to similarity of physical substrate and outline a strategy for resolving disputes about whether it is cognitive similarity or neural similarity that matters for inferences about consciousness.

ABSTRACT According to the Overridingness Claim, if it is morally wrong for an agent to φ , then that agent has decisive normative reasons not to φ . A common argument for the Overridingness Claim appeals to the connection between moral wrongness and moral blameworthiness. I argue that this argument fails.

ABSTRACT Traditionally, it has been thought that, assuming other conditions are satisfied, your action must be morally worthy or good if you are acting solely from good motives. There is a lively dispute as to which motives are good, but whichever motives are good, acting solely from good motives is not always good and can even be bad on the whole. We may act rightly from a good motive while being indifferent to what matters most. Indifference, I argue, can make our actions less than ideally good and at times even bad. Traditional theories, however, cannot accommodate cases of indifference by assuming absent and ineffective motives can never make a difference to an action’s moral value. Absent as well as ineffective motives can make an action less good and at times even bad. To accommodate this, we need to adopt a proportionality principle in assessing an action. An action is made good to a degree in proportion to the goodness of its effective motives. But an action is also made bad to a degree in proportion to the disproportion it exhibits through its whole set of relevant motives including not only effective motives but also absent as well as ineffective ones.

ABSTRACT Inferential expressivism makes a systematic distinction between inferences that are valid qua preserving commitment and inferences that are valid qua preserving evidence. I argue that the characteristic inferences licensed by the principle of comprehension, from x is P to x is in the extension of P and vice versa, fail to preserve evidence, but do preserve commitment. Taking this observation into account allows one to phrase inference rules for unrestricted comprehension without running into Russell’s paradox. In the resulting logic, one can derive full second-order arithmetic. Thus, it is possible to derive classical arithmetic in a consistent logic with unrestricted comprehension.

ABSTRACT The objects we interact with in virtual reality—virtual objects—raise metaphysical questions. The most central of these questions is whether virtual objects really exist, that is, whether we ought to be realists about such objects. The most prominent realist metaphysics of virtual objects is David Chalmers’ virtual digitalism—the view that virtual objects are digital objects. I propose an alternative realist account—virtual perceptibilism. On this view virtual objects are pure perceptibilia. They are public objects, like rainbows, whose existence and intrinsic nature is dependent on us as perceivers. I contrast perceptibilism with digitalism, showing the superiority of the former. As such, I demonstrate that virtual perceptibilism is the best virtual realism on offer, leaving aside the question of whether perceptibilism is superior to irrealist accounts.

ABSTRACT Morality seems to object when we believe insulting things of one another, but some worry that admitting this will also mean allowing that morality could sometimes ask us to believe what the evidence would not ordinarily allow. This strikes many as unacceptable. Can we hold that beliefs can wrong, and that this affects what we should believe, without yielding that result? According to the position I call asymmetrical moralism, we can. Morality gives reason against particular beliefs, never for others, so there is never a competition between morality and stringent evidential standards on belief. I argue this position is not viable. Anyone who thinks we can wrong each other with our beliefs should agree we can also wrong each other by withholding belief, so there is no principled way for asymmetrical moralism to constrain morality’s influence on doxastic states to a prohibition on insulting beliefs: if the moral costs of some doxastic state are reason not to hold it, there can be moral reasons for belief. I suggest anyone who wishes to hold that morality only exerts one-way pressure on belief faces a similar challenge from wrongful withholding.