Alexander Pruss's Blog

Here is an initially plausible idea: A promise can take an action that absent the promise is merely permissible and turn it into an action...

Consider two cases where a patient ended up with an implanted device D that benefits the patient by ameliorating an otherwise fatal medical...

Suppose that causation across temporal gaps is possible: that an object x can have a direct effect in a future time, with no intermediate c...

Open Theist Christians tend to think that there are some things God knows about the future, and these include the content of God’s promises ...

Given a time t and a world w , possible or not, say that w is t -possible if and only if there is a possible world w t that matches w in...

To promise something, I need to communicate something to you. What is that thing that I need to communicate to you? To a first approximation...

Suppose you have inherited a heavily-automated house with a DIY voice control system made by an eccentric relative who programmed various fu...

A normative power is supposed to be a power to directly change normative reality. We can, of course, indirectly change normative reality by...

What is the difference between trusting that someone will ϕ and merely predicting their ϕ ing? Here are two suggestions that don’t quite p...

I have long argued that desire is not the same as consent: the fact that I want you to do something does not constitute consent to your doin...

I have long found promises to punish puzzling. The problem with such promises is that normally a promisee can release the promisor from a pr...

On a conventionalist theory of promises, there is a social institution of promising, somewhat akin to a game, and a promise is a kind of com...

Suppose Alice and Bob are perfect utilitarians or perfect amoral egoists in any combination. They are about to play a game where they raise ...

Here’s a natural thing to say. The sentence “I promise to try to ϕ ” should be analyzed as straightforwardly an instance of the schema: ...

Consider a variant of my teenage Hitler case . You’re a hospital anesthetist and teenage Hitler is about to have an emergency appendectomy. ...

Can you be entitled to a gift from someone? Gratuitousness Intuition: Gifts are gratuitous, and if you’re entitled to receive something fr...

The idea of a marriage engagement is kind of weird. On its face, it seems to be a promise to make a promise: the two people promise each oth...

Suppose Alice is an misanthropic immortal who lives in a universe of happy people. Suppose, too, that Alice is an immortal. Then one day Ali...

It seems that for a promise to be sincere, you have to intend to keep it. But this is false. Suppose you offer to lend me a microscope upon...

Consider two different spies: Betrayer: Alice is in a position of trust among the enemy. She is then recruited to work against those who t...