Longtermism and social risk-taking

A social planner who evaluates risky public policies in light of the other risks with which their society will be faced should judge favourably some such policies even though they would deem them too risky when considered in isolation. I suggest that a longtermist would—or at least should—evaluate risky polices in light of their prediction about future risks; hence, longtermism supports social risk-taking. I consider two formal versions of this argument, discuss the conditions needed for the argument to be valid, and briefly compare these conditions to some risky policy options with which actual public decision-makers are faced

Introduction: The experience of noise

In this introduction, we cover some ways in which the topic of noise is discussed today, and then point to some important open questions about noise and its experience. We then provide a synopsis of the papers collected in the volume

What can we know about unanswerable questions?

I present two arguments that aim to establish logical limits on what we can know. More specifically, I argue for two results concerning what we can know about questions that we cannot answer. I also discuss a line of thought, found in the writings of Pierce and of Rescher, in support of the idea that we cannot identify specific scientific questions that will never be answered

Variable-Sharing as Relevance

A challenge for relevant logicians is to delimit their area of study. I propose and explore the definition of a relevant logic as a logic satisfying a variable-sharing property and closed under detachment and adjunction. This definition is, I argue, a good definition that captures many familiar logics and raises interesting new questions concerning relevant logics

The Normative Power of Resolutions

This article argues that resolutions are reason-giving: when an agent resolves to φ, she incurs an additional normative reason to φ. I argue that the reasons we incur from making resolutions are importantly similar to the reasons we incur from making promises. My account explains why it can be rational for an agent to act on a past resolution even if temptation causes preference and even judgment shifts at the time of action, and offers a response to a common objection to the normativity of resolutions known as the bootstrapping problem, on which if resolutions were reason-giving they would problematically allow us to bootstrap any action into rationality simply by resolving to perform it

Nietzsche on the Eternal Recurrence

The idea of the eternal recurrence is that everyone will live the exact same lives again an infinite number of times. Nietzsche appreciates that this would multiply the value of a single life by infinity, justifying intense emotional responses. His unpublished notes provide a cosmological argument for the eternal recurrence that anticipates Poincaré’s recurrence theorem. Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra describes its hero discovering this idea and struggling to accept the recurrence of all bad things. He eventually comes to love the eternal recurrence because it will bring back all the joys of his life, and teaches this idea to others