Traditionally, there has been a clear distinction between classical systems and quantum systems, particularly in the mathematical theories used to describe them. In our recent work on macroscopic quantum systems, this distinction has become blurred, making a unified mathematical formulation desirable, so as to show up both the similarities and the fundamental differences between quantum and classical systems. This paper serves this purpose, with explicit formulations and a number of examples in the form of superconducting circuit systems. We introduce three (...) classes of physical systems with finite degrees of freedom: classical, standard quantum, and mixed quantum, and present a unified Hilbert space treatment of all three types of system. We consider the classical/quantum divide and the relationship between standard quantum and mixed quantum systems, illustrating the latter with a derivation of a superselection rule in superconducting systems. (shrink)

Adaptation to right-shifting prisms improves left neglect for mental number line bisection. This study examined whether adaptation affects the mental number line in normal participants. Thirty-six participants completed a mental number line task before and after adaptation to either: left-shifting prisms, right-shifting prisms or control spectacles that did not shift the visual scene. Participants viewed number triplets (e.g. 16, 36, 55) and determined whether the numerical distance was greater on the left or right side of the inner number. Participants demonstrated (...) a leftward bias (i.e. overestimated the length occupied by numbers located on the left side of the number line) that was consistent with the effect of pseudoneglect. The leftward bias was corrected by a short period of visuomotor adaptation to left-shifting prisms, but remained unaffected by adaptation to right-shifting prisms and control spectacles. The findings demonstrate that a simple visuomotor task alters the representation of space on the mental number line in normal participants. (shrink)

Michael Dummett begins The Logical Basis of Metaphysics by noting that most of the work done in analytic philosophy seems disconcertingly remote from any concern with the “deep questions of great import for an understanding of the world” that the non-professional expects it to answer. In part, he says, this is because modern analytic philosophy is founded upon a more penetrating analysis of the general structure of our thoughts than was available to past ages, namely, the apparatus of modern logic, (...) beginning with Frege’s Begriffsschrift in 1879. Analytic philosophers take for granted the principles of semantic analysis embodied in the notation of modern logic. Even if they do not make use of a technical vocabulary, having taken these principles for granted is itself often enough to render their approach opaque to the layperson. Appearances aside, he claims, analytic philosophy is still concerned with the “deep questions.” And, to his credit, Dummett keeps an eye focused on some of the central questions of philosophy, those concerning metaphysical realism, throughout the book. (shrink)

Our purpose in this article is to identify and suggest resolution for two core problematics of grounded theory. First, while grounded theory provides transparency to one part of the conceptualization process, where codes emerge directly from the data, it provides no such systematic or transparent way for gaining insight into the conceptual relationships between discovered codes. Producing a grounded theory depends not only on the definition of conceptual pieces, but the delineation of a relationship between at least two of those (...) pieces. Second, the conceptualization process of grounded theory is done in hierarchical fashion, where individual codes emerge from the data but then are used to generate insight into more general concepts and thematic statements. But various works on grounded theory have failed to provide any systematic way of using data specific levels of scale (the codes) to gain insight into more macro levels of scale (concepts and themes). We offer fractal concept analysis as a means of resolving both of these issues. By using a logic structure generator, fractal concept analysis delineates self-similar conceptual frameworks at various levels of abstraction, yielding a method for linking concepts together within and between levels of scale encountered in the grounded theory coding and categorization process. We conclude that this fractal analytic technique can bolster the aims of grounded theory as a formalized and systematic process for generating theory from empirical data. (shrink)

This chapter discusses a version of the descriptive account of content which is compatible with rigidity thesis (RT) and critiques of RT. The rigidity of proper names demonstrates that utterances of sentences containing proper names, and utterances of sentences differing from those sentences only in containing non‐rigid descriptions in place of the proper names, differ in content. The fact that natural‐language proper names are rigid designators is an empirical discovery about natural language. The chapter intends to be a survey of (...) both the background and contemporary discussion of this discovery. However, the survey takes place in the context of an evaluation of the extent to which the discovery that English proper names are rigid itself threatens the descriptive picture of the content of names. The goal is to show that the exact philosophical significance of the discovery that natural‐language proper names are rigid designators is still, and should still be, a matter of controversy. (shrink)

This essay assesses the rationale for regulating research administrators as carefully as they regulate researchers. The reasons for such regulation are identical: protecting scientific integrity, ensuring responsible use of public funds, addressing the lack of effective recourse for victims, creating negative consequences for misbehaving actors, and addressing high incentives for misconduct. Whereas the reasons compelling us to regulate research administrators are obvious, counterarguments to administrative oversight are based on suggestions that the incidence and prevalence of cases of administrative misconduct are (...) too low to warrant formal regulation. I briefly describe examples of the phenomenon drawn from publicly available records. My analysis suggests that the misconduct of research administrators is both serious and worthy of better oversight. Improved oversight of research administration will help steward tax dollars appropriately and enhance the overall integrity of the scientific record and of the free pursuit of knowledge more generally. (shrink)

Jason Stanley's "Knowledge and Practical Interests" is a brilliant book, combining insights about knowledge with a careful examination of how recent views in epistemology fit with the best of recent linguistic semantics. Although I am largely convinced by Stanley's objections to epistemic contextualism, I will try in what follows to formulate a version that might have some prospect of escaping his powerful critique.

Descartes.--Hobbes.--Locke.--Pascal.--Spinoza.--Leibniz.

Proceedings of a conference held May 25-26, 2012 at the University of Notre Dame.

This book is the first systematic treatment of 'responsibilist' or character-based virtue epistemology, an approach to epistemology that focuses on intellectual ...

This paper describes the role of information architecture in the design of socially sustainable pervasive information spaces. The framing of information architecture as an essential part of Design Thinking extends current and historic notions of the field of information architecture. The discussion introduces the notion of the ‘contrived ontology’ which can be understood as the intentional meaning that design infuses in its artefacts, services and systems. Further, we argue that contrived ontology aligns with central themes within humanistic frameworks which view (...) reality as subjective construct. This forms the central theoretical meditation herein: we contend that while design is always an act of interpreted cultural determination, at the scale of Floridi’s infosphere, the immediacy and immersive social reality of technology will become frictionless within our human experience. As this occurs, there is a moral and ethical imperative to ensure social sustainability and to this end that the meanings and intentions that inform the mature design of our human-made world are visible and accountable. It is towards this end that information architecture can make a valuable contribution. (shrink)

Simon Keller and Sarah Stroud have both argued that the demands of being a good friend can conflict with the demands of standard epistemic norms. Intuitively, good friends will tend to seek favorable interpretations of their friends’ behaviors, interpretations that they would not apply to strangers; as such they seem prone to form unjustified beliefs. I argue that there is no such clash of norms. In particular, I argue that friendship does not require us to form beliefs about our friends (...) in the biased fashion suggested by Stroud and Keller. I further argue that while some slight bias in belief-formation might be permitted by friendship, any such bias would fall within the bounds of epistemic propriety. (shrink)

Unspecific evidence calls for imprecise credence. My aim is to vindicate this thought. First, I will pin down what it is that makes one's imprecise credences more or less epistemically valuable. Then I will use this account of epistemic value to delineate a class of reasonable epistemic scoring rules for imprecise credences. Finally, I will show that if we plump for one of these scoring rules as our measure of epistemic value or utility, then a popular family of decision rules (...) recommends imprecise credences. In particular, a range of Hurwicz criteria, which generalise the Maximin decision rule, recommend imprecise credences. If correct, the moral is this: an agent who adopts precise credences, rather than imprecise ones, in the face of unspecific and incomplete evidence, goes wrong by gambling with the epistemic utility of her doxastic state in too risky a fashion. Precise credences represent an overly risky epistemic bet, according to the Hurwicz criteria. (shrink)

Michael Dummett has claimed that analytic philosophy is distinguished from other schools in its belief that a comprehensive philosophical account of thought can only be attained by developing a philosophical account of language. Dummett himself argues persuasively for the priority-of-Ianguage thesis. This, in effect, metaphilosophical position is of special importance for his more straightforwardly philosophical views, for he holds that philosophical investigations of the concepts of objectivity and reality grow directly out of the philosophy of thought. But I argue that (...) some of what Dummett says about the priority of language over thought is problematic, that there may yet be a serious role for concepts within the theory of meaning, and that Dummett’s failure to acknowledge this role both hobbles his account of linguistic understanding and has deleterious consequences for his discussions of metaphysical realism-robbing him of the resources with which he might have avoided some of his anti-realist conclusions. (shrink)

Retroduction -- Contextualized self-interpretations -- Causal mechanisms -- Ontology -- Logics -- Articulation.

According to accuracy-first epistemology, accuracy is the fundamental epistemic good. Epistemic norms — Probabilism, Conditionalization, the Principal Principle, etc. — have their binding force in virtue of helping to secure this good. To make this idea precise, accuracy-firsters invoke Epistemic Decision Theory (EpDT) to determine which epistemic policies are the best means toward the end of accuracy. Hilary Greaves and others have recently challenged the tenability of this programme. Their arguments purport to show that EpDT encourages obviously epistemically irrational behavior. (...) We develop firmer conceptual foundations for EpDT. First, we detail a theory of praxic and epistemic good. Then we show that, in light of their very different good-making features, EpDT will evaluate epistemic states and epistemic acts according to different criteria. So, in general, rational preference over states and acts won’t agree. Finally, we argue that based on direction-of-fit considerations, it’s preferences over the former that matter for normative epistemology, and that EpDT, properly spelt out, arrives at the correct verdicts in a range of putative problem cases. (shrink)

Induced by intake of the psychedelic substances LSD, psilocybin, DMT and mescaline, psychedelic experiences have been extensively described by subjects as entailing a most unusual increase in the scope and quality of their consciousness. Accordingly, psychedelic experiences have been widely characterised as an “expansion of consciousness.” This article poses the following question, as yet unaddressed in contemporary philosophy and the tradition of phenomenology: to what exactly does “expansion of consciousness” refer as a general characterisation of psychedelic experiences, and what role (...) might attention play therein? On the basis of Aron Gurwitsch’s phenomenology of attention, the following thesis is presented: (a) “expansion of consciousness” refers to a particular restructuration of consciousness in psychedelic experiences. (b) This occurs by means of certain extreme transformations in direction, scope, mode and degree of attention. In order to explicate this thesis, the characteristic features of psychedelic experiences that pertain to expansion of consciousness and attention are first systematically identified from a survey of subject reports. Second, it is demonstrated that the few previous attempts to understand expansion of consciousness in terms of attention as a filter/reducing-valve, spotlight or zoom-lens each fail to explain how consciousness is structured in psychedelic experiences. Third, it is argued that psychedelic expansion of consciousness is a general restructuration of consciousness by means of extreme attentional transformations. In conclusion, brief consideration is given to the question of whether psychedelic expansion of consciousness can have epistemic and ethical value for life. (shrink)

In De interpretatione 9, Aristotle argues against the fatalist view that if statements about future contingent singular events (e.g. ‘There will be a sea battle tomorrow,’ ‘There will not be a sea battle tomorrow’) are already true or false, then the events to which those statements refer will necessarily occur or necessarily not occur. Scholars have generally held that, to refute this argument, Aristotle allows that future contingent statements are exempt from either the principle of bivalence, or the law of (...) excluded middle. This paper offers a new interpretation of Aristotle’s refutation of fatalism. According to this interpretation, each member of a pair of contradictory future contingent statements, in virtue of expressing modal necessity, is simply false. (shrink)

Philosophers have long been tempted by the idea that objects and properties are abstractions from the facts. But how is this abstraction supposed to go? If the objects and properties aren't 'already' there, how do the facts give rise to them? Jason Turner develops and defends a novel answer to this question: The facts are arranged in a quasi-geometric 'logical space', and objects and properties arise from different quasi-geometric structures in this space.

Historically, philosophers of biology have tended to sidestep the problem of development by focusing primarily on evolutionary biology and, more recently, on molecular biology and genetics. Quite often too, development has been misunderstood as simply, or even primarily, a matter of gene activation and regulation. Nowadays a growing number of philosophers of science are focusing their analyses on the complexities of development, and in Embryology, Epigenesis and Evolution Jason Scott Robert explores the nature of development against current trends in (...) biological theory and practice and looks at the interrelations between development and evolution, an area of resurgent biological interest. Clearly written, this book should be of interest to students and professionals in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of biology. (shrink)

This article offers an analysis of marketing as an ideological set of practices that makes cultural interventions designed to infuse social relations with biopolitical injunctions. We examine a contemporary site of heightened attention within marketing: the rise of online communities and the attendant profession of social media marketing managers. We argue that social media marketers disavow a core problem; namely, that the object at stake, the customer community, barely exists. The community therefore functions ideologically. We describe the ideological gymnastics necessary (...) for maintaining momentum behind a practice that barely exists and we ponder why such ideologies are necessary, and what they allow the marketer to do. Working with such concepts as ‘the wild’, ‘communicative capitalism’, and ‘biopolitical marketing’, we explore a genre of popular business literature that proselytizes for online customer communities and we reflect on the broader implications. (shrink)

Those who oppose human embryonic stem cell research argue for a clear position on the metaphysical and moral status of human embryos. This position does not differ whether the embryo is present inside its mother’s reproductive tract or in a cryopreservation tank. It is worth examining, however, whether an embryo in “suspended animation” has the same status as one actively developing in utero. I will explore this question from the perspective of Thomas Aquinas’s metaphysical account of human nature. I conclude (...) that a cryopreserved human embryo counts, both metaphysically and morally, as a person; and thus the utilization of such embryos for inherently destructive research purposes is impermissible. (shrink)

With its focus on intellectual virtues and their role in the acquisition and transmission of knowledge and related epistemic goods, virtue epistemology provides a rich set of tools for educational theory and practice. In particular, characteristics under the rubric of "responsibilist" virtue epistemology, like curiosity, open-mindedness, attentiveness, intellectual courage, and intellectual tenacity, can help educators and students define and attain certain worthy but nebulous educational goals like a love of learning, lifelong learning, and critical thinking. This volume is devoted to (...) exploring the intersection between virtue epistemology and education. It assembles leading virtue epistemologists and philosophers of education to address such questions as: Which virtues are most essential to education? How exactly should these virtues be understood? How is the goal of intellectual character growth related to other educational goals, for example, to critical thinking and knowledge-acquisition? What are the "best practices" for achieving this goal? Can growth in intellectual virtues be measured? The chapters are a prime example of "applied epistemology" and promise to be a seminal contribution to an area of research that is rapidly gaining attention within epistemology and beyond. (shrink)

A longstanding philosophical tradition holds that the primary objects of hearing are sounds rather than sound sources. In this case, we hear sound sources by—or in virtue of—hearing their sounds. This paper argues that, on the contrary, we have good reason to believe that the primary objects of hearing are sound sources, and that the relationship between a sound and its source is much like the relationship between a color and its bearer. Just as we see objects in seeing their (...) colors, so we hear sound sources in hearing their sounds. (shrink)

In ‘The Ockhamization of the event sources of sound’ (2013), Roberto Casati, Elvira Di Bona, and Jérôme Dokic argue that ‘ockhamizing’ Casey O’Callaghan’s account of sounds as proper parts of their event sources yields their preferred view: that sounds are identical with their event sources. This article argues that the considerations Casati et al. marshal in favor of their view are actually stronger considerations in favor of a quite different view: a variant on the Lockean conception of sounds as ‘sensible (...) qualities’ that treats sounds as audible properties of their event sources. (shrink)

This paper is a contribution to the emerging field of comparative metaethics, which aims to analyse the metaethical views of philosophical traditions outside the Western mainstream. It argues that the metaethical views implicit in the mediaeval Chinese school of Tiantai Buddhism can be reconstructed in contemporary terms in order to develop two novel views. These views are moral dialetheism and moral trivialism. The taxonomy of contemporary metaethical views, in epistemic terms, is exhausted by either partial success, or complete error, theories. (...) They claim, respectively, either that some moral judgments are true (and some false) or that all moral judgments are false. There are also noncognitivist and nonfactualist views, claiming that all moral judgments are technically neither true nor false. In opposition to this moral truth gap, moral dialetheism and moral trivialism offer a moral truth glut. These views say, respectively, that some moral judgments and their negations are true and that all moral judgments and their negations are true. The upshot of this metaethical reconstruction of Tiantai Buddhism is that it allows us to complete the contemporary metaethical taxonomy, and to contribute to the therapeutic goal of finding ways to utilize metaethical reflection for the sake of release from the pathologies of morality. (shrink)

Winning essay of the American Society for Aesthetics' inaugural Peter Kivy Prize. Extends Kivy's notion of sonic picturing through engagement with recent work in philosophy of perception. Argues that sonic pictures are more widespread and more aesthetically and artistically important than even Kivy envisioned. Topics discussed include: the nature of sonic pictures; the nature of sounds; what we can (and more importantly, cannot) conclude from musical listening; sonic pictures in film; beatboxing as an art of sonic picturing; and cover songs (...) as sonic pictures. To be published in the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. (shrink)

Confirmational holism is at odds with Jeffrey conditioning --- the orthodox Bayesian policy for accommodating uncertain learning experiences. Two of the great insights of holist epistemology are that (i) the effects of experience ought to be mediated by one's background beliefs, and (ii) the support provided by one's learning experience can and often is undercut by subsequent learning. Jeffrey conditioning fails to vindicate either of these insights. My aim is to describe and defend a new updating policy that does better. (...) In addition to showing that this new policy is more holism-friendly than Jeffrey conditioning, I will also show that it has an accuracy-centered justification. (shrink)

Practical wisdom (hereafter simply ‘wisdom’), which is the understanding required to make reliably good decisions about how we ought to live, is something we all have reason to care about. The importance of wisdom gives rise to questions about its nature: what kind of state is wisdom, how can we develop it, and what is a wise person like? These questions about the nature of wisdom give rise to further questions about proper methods for studying wisdom. Is the study of (...) wisdom the proper subject of philosophy or psychology? How, exactly, can we determine what wisdom is and how we can get it? In this chapter, we give an overview of some prominent philosophical answers to these questions. We begin by distinguishing practical wisdom from theoretical wisdom and wisdom as epistemic humility. Once we have a clearer sense of the target, we address questions of method and argue that producing a plausible and complete account of wisdom will require the tools of both philosophy and empirical psychology. We also discuss the implications this has for prominent wisdom research methods in empirical psychology. We then survey prominent philosophical accounts of the nature of wisdom and end with reflections on the prospects for further interdisciplinary research. (shrink)

Fictionalism is the view that the claims of a target discourse are best seen as being fictional in some way, as being expressed in some pretense manner, or as not being about the traditional posits of the discourse. The contemporary taxonomy of fictionalist views is quite elaborate. Yet, there is a version of fictionalism that has failed to develop and which corresponds to the earliest form of the view found in the history of philosophy, East and West. I call this (...) view “reactionary fictionalism.” I argue that traces of reactionary fictionalism can be found in Classical Daoism, Madhyamaka Buddhism, and Pyrrhonian Skepticism. Reactionary fictionalism is a kind of fictionalism that differs from both the hermeneutic and revolutionary kinds discussed today. Hermeneutic fictionalism says we already treat the claims of a target discourse in a fictional manner. Revolutionary fictionalism recommends we all start treating the claims of a target discourse in a fictional manner for reasons mostly of social utility. Reactionary fictionalism recommends, by contrast, that only those concerned with obtaining maximal therapeutic release from the pathology of literally asserting genuine beliefs in the claims of a target discourse should react in a pretense manner to inescapable contexts demanding the use of the claims of that discourse. I aim to show that reactionary fictionalism was a technique utilized in premodern skeptical traditions as a means for enduring one's condemnation to near‐permanent sociality. I recommend slotting reactionary fictionalism into our present taxonomy once we note that employing fictionalism can have a primarily therapeutic motivation and not merely a semantic, epistemic, or metaphysical one. (shrink)

The value problem in epistemology is rooted in a commonsense intuition to the effect that knowledge is more valuable than true belief. Call this the “guiding intuition.” The guiding intuition generates a problem in light of two additional considerations. The first is that knowledge is (roughly) justified or warranted true belief.[1] The second is that on certain popular accounts of justification or warrant (e.g. reliabilism), its value is apparently instrumental to and hence derivative from the value of true belief.[2] But (...) if knowledge is justified true belief and the value of justification is derivative from that of true belief, how is it that knowledge is more valuable than true belief? (shrink)

There is a debate among moral error theorists. It concerns what is to be done with moral discourse once it is believed to be systematically false or untrue. It has been called the ‘now what’ problem. Should error theorists abolish morality or insulate themselves in some way from this nihilistic consequence of belief in error theory? Assertive moral abolitionism aims to have error theorists avoid any insulation and abolish morality altogether. Revolutionary moral fictionalism aims for insulation by having error theorists (...) start treating morality as a useful fiction. There are certain problems with assertive moral abolitionism and revolutionary moral fictionalism, however. This paper argues for a hybrid view that combines the best parts of both views. I call this position ‘reactionary moral fictionalism.’ It says it might be wise for certain individual error theorists to abolish morality in most cases, but remain quiet about their abolition. It also says that these error theorists should use morality as a fiction in those situations where it would be practically detrimental not to use moral discourse. In such situations, the error theorist should employ moral fictionalism. A fictionalist approach should thus be used only as a passive reaction to contexts where it cannot be avoided. The advice offered to certain individual error theorists by reactionary moral fictionalism is thus ‘abolish morality when one can, but use morality as a fiction when one has to.’ It is argued that this solution to the ‘now what’ problem offers superior therapeutic benefits for these individuals and could possibly serve as a compromise between assertive moral abolitionism and revolutionary moral fictionalism. (shrink)

The purpose of cognitive diagnostic modeling is to classify students' latent attribute profiles using their responses to the diagnostic assessment. In recent years, each diagnostic classification model makes different assumptions about the relationship between a student's response pattern and attribute profile. The previous research studies showed that the inappropriate DCMs and inaccurate Q-matrix impact diagnostic classification accuracy. Artificial Neural Networks have been proposed as a promising approach to convert a pattern of item responses into a diagnostic classification in some research (...) studies. However, the ANNs methods produced very unstable and unappreciated estimation unless a great deal of care was taken. In this research, we combined ANNs with two typical DCMs, the deterministic-input, noisy, “and” gate model and the deterministic-inputs, noisy, “or” gate model, within a semi-supervised learning framework to achieve a robust and accurate classification. In both simulated study and real data study, the experimental results showed that the proposed method could achieve appreciated performance across different test conditions, especially when the diagnostic quality of assessment was not high and the Q-matrix contained misspecified elements. This research study is the first time of applying the thinking of semi-supervised learning into CDM. Also, we used the validating test to choose the appropriate parameters for the ANNs instead of using typical statistical criteria. (shrink)

One of the chief aims of Donald Davidson's later work was to show that participation in a certain causal nexus involving two creatures and a shared environment–Davidson calls this nexus “triangulation”–is a metaphysically necessary condition for the acquisition of thought. This doctrine, I suggest, is aptly regarded as a form of what I call transcendental externalism. I extract two arguments for the transcendental-externalist doctrine from Davidson's writings, and argue that neither succeeds. A central interpretive claim is that the arguments are (...) primarily funded by a particular conception of the nature of non-human animal life. This conception turns out to be insupportable. The failure of Davidson's arguments presses the question of whether we could ever hope to arrive at far-reaching claims about the conditions for thought if we deny, as does Davidson, the legitimacy of the naturalistic project in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Greek and Roman Philosophy After Aristotle brings together over twenty-five of the most important works of Western philosophy written from 322 B.C.E. — the death of Aristotle — to the close of the third century C.E. Eminent philosopher Jason Saunder's choices for this concise volume emphasize the range and significance of the leading philosophers of the Hellenistic Age. Supplemented by Dr. Saunder's enlightening introduction, descriptive notes, and extensive bibliography, these readings provide an essential introduction for students and general readers (...) alike to the enormous influence of Greek philosophy on the formative years of Christianity as well as the early Christians' distrust of it. Published initially in 1966 as part of The Free Press paperback series Readings in the History of Philosophy, this affordable volume introduces Lucretius, Epicurus, Epictetus and Stoicism, Sextus Empiricus, Lucian, Philo of Alexanderia, and Plotinus, as well as seminal figures from early Christian thought, including St. Paul and Clement of Alexandria. JASON L. SAUNDERS held positions in philosophy at the University of California at San Diego, and at The City College of New York. Dr. Saunders was the author of The History and Philosophy of Ancient and Renaissance Stoicism, Greek and Latin Philosophy of Aristotle, Philosophy of Neo Stoicism, and Justus Lipsius: The Philosopher of Renaissance Stoicism. [Back cover text from 1994 reprint.]. (shrink)

Event-causal libertarians maintain that an agent’s settling of whether certain states-of-affairs obtain on a particular occasion can be reduced to the causing of events (e.g., bodily motions, coming to a resolution) by certain mental events or states, such as certain desires, beliefs and/or intentions. Agent-causal libertarians disagree. A common critique against event-causal libertarian accounts is that the agent’s role of settling matters is left unfilled and the agent “disappears” from such accounts—a problem known as the disappearing agent problem. Recently, Franklin (...) (Philos Stud 170:413–432, 2014) has argued that an “enriched” event-causal account can overcome this problem. Franklin, however, doesn’t consider whether, as Pereboom (J Philos 99:499–531, 2015) argues, the agent as decider of “torn decisions” disappears from even enriched accounts. As I show here, Franklin’s enriched account takes some modifying if it is to overcome Pereboom’s torn decision problem—a special case of the disappearing agent problem. However, as I also show, there is a more fundamental problem facing event-causal libertarian accounts. It is implausible that an agent qua event or state simultaneously settles whether and how she intervenes. The upshot is that events and/or states lack an ability essential to completely fulfilling an agent’s role qua settler. This isn’t a problem for agent-causal accounts like the one offered by Steward (A metaphysics for freedom. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2012) because in as much as an agent qua substance settles whether her body moves in certain ways on certain occasions she simultaneously settles whether and how she intervenes. As a consequence, event-causal libertarians face a dilemma, or rather several, that agent-causal libertarians do not. This may ultimately be explained by the irreducibility of causation by agents to causation by events. (shrink)