David Lewis has long defended an analysis of counterfactuals in terms of comparative similarity of possible worlds.1 According to Lewis, a counterfactual of the form ̳If it were the case that A, then it would be that C‘ is (non-vacuously) true if and only if some world where A and C are both true is more similar to the actual world than any world where A is true and C is false. The purpose of th...

One of the objections against the thesis of underdetermination of theories by observations is that it is unintelligible. Any two empirically equivalent theories — so the argument goes — are in principle intertranslatable, hence cannot count as rivals in any non-trivial sense. Against that objection, this paper shows that empirically equivalent theories may contain theoretical sentences that are...

The present notes are an improved version of the notes that served as teaching materials for the course Introduction to Judgment Aggregation given at the 23rd European Summer School on Logic, Language and Information (ESSLLI’11, Ljubljana). The notes are structured as follows: Section 1 introduces the field of judgment aggregation, its relations to preference aggregation and some formal prelimi...

An important objection to the ‘‘higher-order’’ theory of consciousness turns on the possibility of higher-order misrepresentation. I argue that the objection fails because it illicitly assumes a characterization of consciousness explicitly rejected by HO theory. This in turn raises the question of what justifies an initial characterization of the data a theory of consciousness must explain. I d...

judgment mistake has its own complexities for several reasons (difference of expediencies of the two legal/judicial systems, difference of precepts for judgment mistake in judiciary and penal discussions, divisions of various judgments and law in jurisprudence, law, etc.). judgment mistake with such a nature entails numerous questions. answering the question as to whether the judgment mistake i...

A complete defense of deceptive placebo use must address this ethical objection: deceptive placebo use violates patient autonomy, because deceiving a patient about the placebo nature of a proposed treatment prevents her from giving informed consent to the treatment. Unfortunately, this objection isn't always recognized and clearly disambiguated from other ethical concerns. I consider how well s...

Stephen Maitzen argues that divine command metaethics must be mistaken because it is committed to the implausible assumption sentence ‘God (morally) good’ a tautology. In this article, I show charitable interpretation of R. M. Adams’ version not accept assumption. conclude Maitzen’s objection merely manages refute strawman metaethics.

A child's objection, refusal and dissent regarding participation in non-beneficial biomedical research must be respected, even when the parents or legal representatives have given their permission. There is, however, no consensus on the definition and criteria of a meaningful and valid child's objection. The aim of this article is to clarify this issue. In the first part we describe the problem...