ABSTRACT. The aim of my talk is to provide a psychology-centred interpretation of memorizing and non-reflective consciousness in terms of process metaphysics. Firstly, I will very shortly explain that fundamental processes require existentially dynamic persistence. They maintain identity as an expanding four-dimensional whole. I will also consider a recent application of process metaphysics in philosophy of biology, of what it means that organisms are such persisting processes. Finally, I will use this application in the realm of psychology, aiming for a philosophical understanding of persistence within consciousness. I will use a famous memory case-study in psychology, patient N.N., in order to underline the fundamentally procedural nature of identity in consciousness. I suggest that mental persistence does not depend on experiential continuity or single states/parts in consciousness one could reference to, but on ongoing procedural organization. The account responds to recent critiques against process ontology by exploring criteria of temporal identity.

ABSTRACT. Recently, discussions of Generalised Episodic Remembering (GER) have attracted growing attention in the philosophy of memory, driven by empirical research. A widely held, though often implicit, assumption is that GER results from aggregating multiple particular episodic memories (PEMs) and therefore depends on PEM. Drawing on the Social Interactionist Paradigm, particularly Katherine Nelson’s work on the development of episodic memory, I argue against this assumption. Instead, I suggest that memories for repeated events (what Nelson terms “generic memories”) constitute a more developmentally primitive form of memory and are in direct developmental continuity with GER. This claim has two important consequences. First, it situates GER earlier in ontogenetic development than PEM, thereby shedding light on the developmental trajectories of both memory types. Second, it enables a functional characterization of GER and its distinction from PEM ―an aspect that has been largely overlooked in the literature.

ABSTRACT. This paper defends a normative account of forgetting. We argue that forgetting is better understood as a missed opportunity to remember, which is prima facie bad. It follows that a proper view of forgetting should bear a normative component. Since none of the existing accounts can meet this desideratum, we offer the normative view of forgetting, spelled out as follows. Forgetting p occurs only when a subject: (1) previously learned p, (2) tries to remember p, (3) fails to remember p through her intellectual abilities, and (4) should remember p. We then discuss the advantages and significant consequences of this view and address potential objections.

ABSTRACT. In philosophy of psychiatry, the demarcation problem has traditionally been approached from objectivist and normativist positions, focused respectively on natural function and value-based criteria. Enactive Psychiatry aims to move beyond this dichotomy by advancing a naturalistic and pluralistic conception of normativity, yet it still faces difficulties in articulating clear criteria for pathology. This paper argues that disagreements about the functionality of symptoms do not merely reflect interpretive differences between patients and clinicians, but instead reveal a structural feature of many mental symptoms. By conceiving mental disorders as multiscale and dynamic patterns of organisation, the paper introduces the concept of functional ambivalence to account for the coexistence of functional and dysfunctional aspects within the same behaviour. Through selected clinical examples, it shows how this ambivalence helps explain symptom persistence and supports more context-sensitive clinical and ethical approaches attentive to first-person perspectives.

ABSTRACT. This research critically examines Christopher Boorse’s biostatistical model (BSM), a central account of disease within medical naturalism. It questions whether the model successfully grounds a purely descriptive, value-free concept of disease, particularly in mental health. While the BSM defines disease as a statistically atypical reduction in functional efficiency relative to a reference class, I argue that it relies on two notions of normality: explicit statistical normality and an implicit theoretical normality tied to assumptions about “natural design.” The latter depends on historically and socially shaped models of proper functioning, undermining the claim of evaluative neutrality. Moreover, statistical thresholds of dysfunction are conceptually unstable and may generate counterintuitive results, especially in contexts of biological and psychological diversity. These problems become salient in psychiatric classification systems such as the DSM-T 5, where statistical deviation risks reinforcing social norms under the guise of scientific objectivity.

ABSTRACT. This paper offers a novel argument in favor of the recent zetetic turn in epistemology, the view that epistemic obligations include obligations to inquire. My argument centers on the thesis that we typically ought to be uncertain about what our evidence supports (Cf. Dorst 2019; 2020; Lasonen-Aarnio 2020). Given this thesis, I offer cases where it’s rational for a subject to be uncertain about what her evidence supports, despite her evidence, as a matter of fact, justifying believing a proposition p. Against an evidentialist position that restricts the scope of our epistemic obligations to adjust our doxastic attitudes to fit the evidence only, I argue that in these cases, to meet this primary epistemic obligation, one must meet a subsidiary epistemic obligation: to gather additional evidence bearing on the significance of her current evidence, i.e., evidence that would allow one to discern what the primary epistemic obligation requires from her.

ABSTRACT. In “The Epistemic and the Zetetic,” Friedman explores how to accommodate zetetic norms in epistemic normativity. Friedman argues that (a) zetetic norms conflict with non-zetetic norms often regarded as epistemic: if accepted together, they issue incoherent guidance. Friedman argues that, insofar as (b) zetetic norms are genuine epistemic norms and (c) epistemic normativity cannot contain norms that issue incoherent guidance, we need to (d) reject those non-zetetic norms accepted in contemporary epistemology as not genuinely epistemic. This is (e) the least costly way to accommodate the zetetic in epistemic normativity. In this paper, I argue against (e) by rejecting (c). I argue that the conflicts that concern Friedman can also occur between different zetetic norms. Therefore, Friedman must explain why these conflicts can occur in zetetic normativity but not epistemic normativity. I conclude by arguing that incoherence within a normative domain is commonplace and not as undesirable as Friedman claims.

ABSTRACT. In this presentation, I investigate the relationship between possessing knowledge-how to φ and grasping the tasks that are involved in φ. A natural approach says: if an agent knows how to φ, then the agent grasps every task that constitutes φ. I argue that this is wrong. There are cases where an agent knows how to φ even though the agent does not grasp some fine-grained tasks. I then consider a revised approach: knowing how to φ requires grasping only the essential tasks. I argue that this proposal also fails. Then I suggest completely different approach on this matter : rather than analysing knowledge-how in terms of tasks, we should analyse tasks in terms of knowledge-how. So, in order to resolve this problem, I introduce know-how-first view. Based on this, I show how this view dissolves this problem and explain why we should adopt this view by highlighting two advantages.

ABSTRACT. This talk articulates the notion of “knowledge by lived experience,” which refers to a type of knowledge acquired through having a particular condition or life experience. This form of knowledge has played a central role in various discussions, especially in healthcare research, corresponding policymaking, and the philosophy of psychiatry. It has also been argued for in contexts such as sports and the arts—for example, in the arguably privileged position of trained dancers in perceiving certain aspects of dance performance. Despite its central role in these discussions, various scholars have pointed out the lack of systematicity in its definition. This talk addresses this conceptual gap and advances a notion of knowledge by lived experience as a unique type of knowledge, focusing on its specific epistemic warrants, which could be applied across diverse contexts of discussion.

ABSTRACT. Observational theories of self-knowledge presuppose a common scheme according to which this particular kind of knowledge amounts to knowledge of objects. I argue that this general scheme is problematic when it comes to accounting for the epistemic features of self-knowledge. To support this claim, I maintain that both the Inner Sense View and the Acquaintance Theory rely on some version of this scheme. I then present two objections to it: (1) the scheme does not allow for an adequate explanation of the agential features of self-knowledge, and (2) the scheme presupposes that identification is necessary for self-knowledge, a claim that is controversial. Finally, I compare the two theories with respect to their ability to respond to these objections and conclude that any theory that presupposes this basic scheme will face serious difficulties in addressing them.

ABSTRACT. Narrowly understood, conceptual analysis is the process of finding adequate definitions of target concepts by suggesting tentative definitions (understood as individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions) and revising them in the light of possible counterexamples. I argue that the method can be fruitfully studied formally as an epistemic game played by two agents, to be called `Chisholm' and `Gettier', respectively. Whereas the role of Chisholm is to obtain a sequence of definitions that eventually converges to the target definition, the role of Gettier is to prevent this by putting counterexamples to the necessity or sufficiency of the definitions chosen by Chisholm. I will show that, by conceiving about the method in this way, we get insight into several normative features that are specific to conceptual analysis, including the role of positive examples, the asymmetry between counterexamples to necessity and to sufficiency and the irrationality of dogmatically ignoring the evidence.

ABSTRACT. In this paper, I will first show that open texture can occur in mathematical concepts, before showing how such concepts can also be defined in a closed textured way. I will rely on the polyhedron example given by Lakatos to illustrate how open texture can occur in mathematics. Afterwards, I will show how open texture arises due to the idea that definitions ought to capture our intuitive understanding of concepts. I will argue that a different understanding of definitions as stipulative could be used to block out intuitions, thus shielding mathematical concepts from intuitive counterexamples. I will show how this understanding of stipulative definitions can already be found in Lakatos’ three levels of formality of mathematical proofs. Stipulative definitions correspond to a formal understanding of mathematical proofs. The price to pay for this understanding of concepts is the loss of intuitive access to mathematical concepts.

ABSTRACT. The Applicability Problem is the problem of explaining why mathematics is applicable to the empirical sciences. This problem is revived and reformulated by the physicist Eugene Wigner under the title “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences”. In this work, Wigner argues that the applicability of mathematics is a miracle, “a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve”.

In my view, to find an explanation for this relationship, we must first understand the explanandum itself. More fundamental than the why-question (why is mathematics applicable in the natural sciences) is the how-question (how is mathematics applicable in the natural sciences). By examining how mathematics has been used across different eras and fields within the natural sciences, understand the relationship between mathematics and the sciences. By distinguishing pseudo-problems from the genuine problems of applicability, we open new paths for philosophical reflections on the nature of mathematics and the sciences.

ABSTRACT. Time and again in the last seventy-five years scholars discussed whether Plato developed a theory of relations. But what does it even mean for Plato to have developed a theory of relations? In this contribution, I discuss the Fregean framework on relations and contrast it with two other frameworks, one of which I attribute to Plato. In presenting these frameworks, I develop on both their linguistic and their metaphysical peculiarities. By focussing on a passage from the Phaedo and then cautiously generalizing the results to other dialogues, I thus add a new and innovative line of inquiry on this long-lasting problem.

ABSTRACT. Are Plato's Forms universals or particulars? Scholars disagree.

According to some, Forms are universals (see e.g. G. Fine 1993); according to others, they are particulars (or individual particulars, see Marmodoro 2021 and forthcoming). In these two different views, universals and particulars are characterised as follows:

• Universals are properties that are actually multi-located at once. • Particulars are entities that are non-recurrent.

There is however a third option, that Forms are neither universals nor particulars. This view has an important pedigree for instance in Alexander of Aphrodisias, Boethius, Avicenna and Duns Scotus (see Sirkel 2011, Tweedale 1984, Lloyd 2004, Noone 2003), who endorses the thesis that:

• Neutrals are properties that are neither actually multi-located at once nor non-recurrent.

My aim in this paper is to revive this view and argue that Plato’s Forms are neutrals on the basis of some passages from Plato’s Middle and Late Dialogues.

ABSTRACT. I argue that Aristotle’s conception of human rationality is additive rather than transformative. Against Matthew Boyle’s transformativist reading—on which rationality permeates and thereby reconstitutes all the principal psychic powers—I defend three Aristotelian constraints: (i) De Anima’s extensional model of the soul as an ordered set of irreducible capacities; (ii) the operational autonomy of perception and appetite; and (iii) the “otherness” of nous as something that ‘comes from outside’ (thurathen). I show that Boyle’s reading clashes with these constraints and so undermines the explanatory work Aristotle assigns to the differentiated soul in ethics and psychology. Two test cases—akratic action and the experience of hearing an unfamiliar language—exhibit perception and desire as inputs that need not be rationally transformed. I then sketch a positive, Aristotelian additivism: rationality is added to animal capacities and is initiated and stabilized through the normative practice of language, enabling extended deliberation and choice.

ABSTRACT. In recent work, I have defended an inferential expressivist account of deontic modals, according to which the meaning of 'must' and 'may' is explained in terms of their inferential connections to directives. In this talk, I plan to extend this account to so-called weak necessity deontic modals such as 'ought' and 'should'. I will argue that certain imperatives ought to be understood as effecting a tentative proposal to add an action to the addressee's to-do list. I will then show that these tentative imperatives can be used to provide an inferential expressivist of weak necessity deontic modals. If time permits, I will also discuss how the issue of how to treat weak necessity deontic modals in an inferential expressivist framework turns out to bear important connections with the issue of how to account for the phenomenon of free choice.

ABSTRACT. Presentism, the view that only present entities exist, faces a well-known challenge regarding causation: if past events are not real, how can they stand in causal relations to present events? Existing responses attempt to preserve causal connections across time while maintaining presentist commitments. This paper argues that these responses fail to address a deeper, semantic difficulty. I introduce the Parity Principle, which holds that binary relations require relata of the same ontological type to be well-formed. Since presentism assigns present and past events to fundamentally different ontological categories--the existent and the non-existent--any causal claim relating a past event to a present event is not merely false but ill-typed. This semantic objection differs from the standard metaphysical worry about missing truthmakers. It shows that presentism does not merely fail to ground causal claims; it renders them inexpressible. The argument has significant implications for the presentist's ability to accommodate ordinary explanatory discourse.

ABSTRACT. I will defend “relativistic presentism” in two senses, namely (i) presentism in a relativistic setting, valid for special relativity as well as for general relativity, and (ii) with the present being a spatially extended region characterized by relative simultaneity. The argument is based on the crucial distinction between “temporal existence” and “temporal location” made by Correia and Rosenkranz. They themselves, however, consider only lightcone structure, not (invariant) proper times, and therefore oversee that “absolute” (existence) does not have to be identified the physicists’ “invariance” but can be combined with frame-dependency: the relativity of simultaneity merely concerns temporal location, not temporal existence, and does therefore not contradict the absoluteness of presentist existence.

ABSTRACT. Special and General Relativity pose significant challenges for A-theories of time, particularly regarding the thesis that time is genuinely dynamic. While Correira and Rosenkranz (2018) provide a sophisticated logical framework for modeling tensed facts in relativistic settings without reducing them to B-theoretical relations, critics including Friebe (2020), Loss (2021), Deng (2021) have demonstrated that their model fails to capture genuine temporal passage. Friebe argues that their spatiotemporaryism loses temporal character through its failure to incorporate proper time and timelike trajectories, while Loss shows their principles cannot distinguish a moving present from a "stuck" one. Building on these critiques, I propose a relativistic dynamical model that adapts De Florio, Frigerio, and Giordani's (2021) Moving Spotlight framework. By incorporating proper time - the invariant physical quantity representing temporal evolution along worldlines - this model provides dynamicity while successfully representing relativistic phenomena including the twin paradox and closed timelike curves.

ABSTRACT. In this paper, I offer an explanation of necessity and contingency that draws on Josh Parsons’ (2000, 2004) distinction between distributional and non-distributional properties. Distributional properties are those patterns of properties that an object instantiates as it extends. For instance, the chequered pattern on a chessboard is a spatial distributional property, and the colour gradient a tomato takes as it ripens is a temporal distributional property. Parsons takes non-uniform temporal distributions (like that of the tomato) to constitute change. In the spirit of this, I offer an account of necessary properties as those properties that an object uniformly instantiates across possible worlds, and of contingent properties as non-uniform modal distributions. I then put this extended taxonomy of properties to the task of solving a selection of modal metaphysics puzzles.

ABSTRACT. Vetter's (2015, 2021) proposal of potentialism faces a number of challenges. In particular, so-called alien possibilities, such as the possibility that natural laws could have been different, do not seem to be accountable in terms of potentialities, as potentialism attempts to do. Faced with this challenge, I argue that potentialism has two options: either it abandons its actualism and commits to a kind of Platonism, or it rejects alien possibilities as genuine possibilities. Rejecting actualism implies losing some of the salient theoretical virtues of potentialism. On the other hand, I argue that it cannot reject alien possibilities as genuine possibilities either. The reason is that we need to incorporate alien possibilities to account for our practices of scientific theorizing. I explore the remaining theoretical options in metaphysics of the metaphysical modality starting from this dilemma.

ABSTRACT. Although the basic tenet of Hedda Hassel Mørch’s Phenomenal Powers view (PP) is that phenomenal properties (at least some macrophenomenal ones) are causal powers, she has recently proposed that her view supports a Powerful Qualities View (PQV) of properties. In this talk, after a brief survey of the various versions of PQV, I argue that PP fits more naturally one specific version, the Grounding View (GV). Then, after presenting the argument from Revelation against the causal efficacy of phenomenal properties and Mørch’s proposal to avoid its epiphenomenalist consequences, I argue that her attempt fails because under one interpretation of the proposal (suggested by Philip Goff) PP does not fit any of the versions of PQV, while under another, PP is incompatible with GV.

ABSTRACT. I examine whether a purely non-punitive criminal justice system could inadvertently create new systemic incentives for crime. In precarious circumstances, incapacitation may function as a de facto substitute for welfare, generating perverse incentive structures. There is evidence that some individuals facing extreme deprivation (including homeless, elderly, and marginalized persons) may commit minor offenses, particularly during winter, to secure shelter, food, or medical care through incarceration. Importantly, this phenomenon persists even within criminal justice systems that are themselves highly detrimental to human dignity and personal security. A further concern is that a non-punitive system could incentivize highly lucrative, one-time crimes. Adopting a non-punitive approach could thus exacerbate these incentive problems. Crucially, basic needs should be provided by appropriate social institutions rather than produced as by-products of the criminal justice, which is poorly suited to meet such needs and may further traumatize already vulnerable persons.

ABSTRACT. Social punishment, particularly practices such as canceling, public shaming, and deplatforming, plays an increasingly prominent role in contemporary public debate. This paper examines the relationship between legal punishment and social punishment through a comparison of two high-profile cases: Roman Polanski and Chris Brown. While both figures faced significant social sanctions, only Brown was held legally accountable, whereas Polanski avoided legal consequences. The paper asks whether prior legal punishment should affect the legitimacy of imposing social punishment. Drawing on recent philosophical accounts of social punishment, the paper situates this issue within broader debates on the permissibility of social sanctions. It advances the central claim that legal punishment and social punishment constitute independent normative systems and argues that the legitimacy of social punishment cannot be assessed solely on the basis of whether legal accountability has occurred.

ABSTRACT. Practices of social punishment (such as canceling, shaming, or boycotting) are commonly understood as informal sanctions imposed in response to wrongdoing. Contemporary debate about these practices is divided between two rival camps: optimists, who see them as potentially morally valuable under certain conditions, and pessimists, who regard them as morally impermissible. This paper argues that this debate overlooks an important position. It claims that engaging in social punishment can be understood as the exercise of a liberty covered by the general right to do wrong. On this view, even when social punishment is morally objectionable, individuals may nonetheless have good moral reasons to engage in it. The argument does not amount to a defense or endorsement of social punishment, nor does it presuppose its legal protection. The paper develops and evaluates an argument for understanding social punishment as a right to do wrong, highlighting its advantages and addressing potential objections.

ABSTRACT. In the recent literature one can identify three issues that any account of the normative status of the fittingness of attitudes and emotions ought to explain: (1) sometimes fittingness appear demand-like, at other times permission-like; (2) sometimes fittingness gives rise to authoritatively or substantively normative reasons, sometimes it does not; (3) the fitting intensity of responses can change even though the object remains constant and retains its evaluative qualities. In my talk, I propose that a contrastive view of the relevant notion of fittingness can make progress on either issue. An attitude X is always fitting rather than another attitude Y. Contrastive fittingness facts only give rise to option-restricted obligations (1). They explain why, sometimes, fittingness does not look relevant (2). Finally, fittingness is relative to the resolution applied to one's attitudinal options (3).

ABSTRACT. Analytic philosophers often treat love as a mental state or attitude, and focus on what kind of reasons might support this attitude and how to explain its distinctive features, like its particularity and constancy. This paper develops an alternative conception, inspired by Erich Fromm and bell hooks, on which love is understood as a practice: a cluster of emotional, cognitive, and practical dispositions and commitments such as attention, honesty, affirmation of the beloved’s subjectivity, and respect for their autonomy. On this view, loving someone well is an achievement that requires sustained effort. Moreover, this practice serves important existential and emotional functions, fulfilling our need for meaning, connection, and secure attachment. I argue that this theory of love can help address some of the standard philosophical questions about love’s reasons and its distinctive features, and opens new ethical questions about what love demands from us.

ABSTRACT. The discussion about what discrimination is and under what circumstances it is wrong has grown in recent years and is characterised by relatively little unity regarding the central wrong-making feature of discrimination. A focal point of this disagreement can be found in the question of whether the analysis of social meaning, namely, scrutinising an action against the background of past and present exclusion of specific groups, plays a role as an objective element in determining what wrongful discrimination is. It is shown that arguments against social meaning as an objective element underestimate the context sensitivity of the concept. Moreover, accounts that emphasise harm or disrespect as the central wrong-making feature cannot be coherently defended without referring to social meaning. The disrespect account cannot explain when conventional disrespect constitutes basic disrespect, and the harm account would need to rely on felt stigmatic harms, leading to unintuitive consequences.

ABSTRACT. Presentism and its rivals, Permanentism and the Growing Block Theory, offer competing answers to the question of what there presently is. I know what these different theories say on the matter—what, in Quine's phrase, they take to be the values of variables. I know that these theories say different things and literally contradict one another. I also have a fair idea which theories are ontologically more parsimonious than others, and which are ideologically simpler and logically more powerful than others. Yet I sometimes wonder what is really at stake in the debate between Presentists and their opponents. Drawing on joint work with Fabrice Correia over the past decade and a half, I will explore some candidate answers and, along the way, try to clarify what I mean by that very question.