Alexander Pruss's Blog

Suppose that a random variable X is uniformly distributed (in some intuitive sense) over some space. Then : P ( X  =  y )= P ( X  =  z ) ...

While writing an earlier post , I came across a curious phenomenon. It is, of course, quite familiar that we have incompatible reasons that ...

I am very much drawn to the objective causal tendency interpretation of chances. What makes a quantum die have chance 1/6 of giving any of i...

Years ago, for my older kids' coding education, I made a Minecraft mod  that lets you program in Python. Now I made a Scratch extension ...

I used to think that it is trivial and uncontroversial that if one intends something, one intends it as an end or as a means. Some people (...

Scanlon argues that intentions do not affect the permissibility of non-expressive actions because our intentions come from our reasons, and ...

Some people, maybe as part of a response to the closeness problem for Double Effect, think: Whenever I intend A while knowing that A ine...

On property dualism, we are wholly made of matter but there are irreducible mental properties. What material object fundamentally has the i...

Here is an interesting argument against substance dualism: Something only exists simultaneously with my body when it exists in space. My ...

Every so often, I have undergraduates questioning the reduction of the mental to the physical on the basis of love . One rarely meets the id...

There is causation in the physical world. Causation is irreducible. Our fundamental physics does not use the concept of causation. So, o...

Functionalism says that of metaphysical necessity, whenever x has the same functional state as a system y with internal mental state M , t...

The Principle of Double Effect (PDE) is traditionally a defense against a charge of bringing about an effect that is absolutely wrong to int...

Kamm’s Principle of Triple Effect (PTE) says something like this: Sometimes it is permissible to perform an act ϕ that has a good intende...

Assume the correct physics has precise particle positions (similar questions can be asked in other contexts, but the particle position conte...