Publications

How to Manipulate an Incompatibilistically Free Agent (penultimate draft)

Forthcoming in American Philosophical Quarterly

Manipulation cases are usually seen as a problem for compatibilists, and a strength for incompatibilist theories. I present a new case of indirect manipulation, which I claim does not interfere with the manipulated agent's freedom under libertarian criteria. I argue that the only promising libertarian response to my case would undermine Widerker's response to Frankfurt cases, which I take to be the best libertarian strategy for dealing with Frankfurt-type manipulation. I outline a satisfactory compatibilist explanation of my case.

"The Ravens Paradox" Is a Misnomer

2010: Synthese 175(3): 427-440. DOI: 10.1007/s11229-009-9560-6.

The ravens paradox is about confirmation, not ravens. Yet the standard Bayesian solution to the ravens paradox relies on background information particular to ravens, specifically that there are many more non-black things than there are ravens. I show that there are instances of the ravens paradox where this assumption does not hold, where the standard Bayesian solution fails to explain the paradox. I go on to defend a solution whereby hypotheses are to be formalized differently in different contexts of inquiry; in the context of the ravens paradox, I argue that the hypothesis that all ravens are black should be formalized as "For all x, x is black," with the quantifier restricted to ravens.

In Preparation

Preface Writers Are Consistent

I argue for a solution to the preface paradox according to which the preface writer does not have inconsistent beliefs, and that this solution is superior, in particular, to the popular probabilistic solution of the paradox for two reasons. First, my solution does not rely on any controversial view about the relationship between degrees of belief and outright belief. Second, the probabilistic solution explains the rationality of the preface writer's beliefs by claiming that they are only inconsistent in a rationally permissible way. This makes poor sense of the preface situation; it makes better sense to say that the preface writer has consistent beliefs.

This paper is based on Chapter 3 of my dissertation, Belief in Context.

Last updated November 6, 2011.

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Roger Clarke

rclarke at interchange dot ubc dot ca