The paper discusses Bernard Williams’ argument that immortality is rationally undesirable because it leads to insufferable boredom. We first spell out Williams’ argument in the form of a dilemma. We then show that the first horn of this dilemma, namely Williams’ requirement of the constancy of character of the immortal, is defensible. We next argue against a recent attempt that accepts the dilemma, but rejects the conclusion Williams draws from it. From these we conclude that blocking the second horn of (...) the dilemma is the best way to respond to Williams. Our objection contends that Williams overlooks a basic feature of human existence, namely curiosity, and that his negative evaluation of an eternal life is therefore unconvincing. (shrink)

The Sleeping Beauty problem—first presented by A. Elga in a philosophical context—has captured much attention. The problem, we contend, is more aptly regarded as a paradox: apparently, there are cases where one ought to change one’s credence in an event’s taking place even though one gains no new information or evidence, or alternatively, one ought to have a credence other than 1/2 in the outcome of a future coin toss even though one knows that the coin is fair. In this (...) paper we argue for two claims. First, that Sleeping Beauty does gain potentially new relevant information upon waking up on Monday. Second, his credence shift is warranted provided it accords with a calculation that is a result of conditionalization on the relevant information: “this day is an experiment waking day” (a day within the experiment on which one is woken up). Since Sleeping Beauty knows what days d could refer to, he can calculate the probability that the referred to waking day is a Monday or a Tuesday providing an adequate resolution of the paradox. (shrink)

In recent years the normativity of thought and meaning has been the subject of an extensive debate. What is at issue is whether intentionality has normative features, and if so, whether that constitutes a problem for naturalistic attempts to account for intentional phenomena. The origin of the debate is Saul Kripke’s interpretation of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, published in Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. Kripke claimed, on behalf of Wittgenstein, that dispositional accounts of linguistic meaning - accounts, i.e., which (...) attempt to reduce semantic phenomena to facts about how speakers are disposed to employ words - fail to ground the factuality of semantic statements. From this, and other arguments, the far reaching conclusion was drawn by Kripke’s Wittgenstein that there are no semantic facts, that every application of a word is “a leap in the dark”. This position has become known as meaning scepticism. In the present essay, it will be argued that meaning scepticism is incoherent, but that the normativity argument is interesting in its own right. The development of the debate will be traced, primarily through detailed consideration of the writings of Paul Boghossian, who has shifted the focus from the normativity of linguistic meaning to that of belief. It will be contended that even though Boghossian’s attempt to locate a normativity of belief fails, there is a related form of normativity that has to do with the intrinsic badness of false beliefs. Also, suggestions made by Kripke regarding the normativity of intentions will be investigated, and related to contemporary arguments in the philosophy of rationality. The tentative conclusion is that there are some interesting kinds of normativity associated with the intentional, but of a somewhat different variety than those usually discussed. (shrink)