The Journal of Philosophy

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PhilPapers categorisation update! The 'Feminist Philosophy of Science' leaf has been moved up from the miscellaneous sub-category into the main category of 'General Philosophy of Science' on PhilPapers. 🧡

The early shots in the desert might be a nod to the cover art of Funkadelic’s album Maggot Brain?

Review of Christopher Moore: The Virtue of Agency: Sôphrosunê and Self-Constitution in Classical Greece - Volume 122, Issue 7, July 2025

Review of Christopher Moore, _The Virtue of Agency: Sôphrosunê and Self-Constitution in Classical Greece_ by Thomas Tuozzo @oupphilosophy.bsky.social

doi.org/10.5840/jphi...

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Abstract for Ethan Nowak's paper titled "Sociolinguistic Variation, Slurs, and Speech Acts" In this paper, I argue that the ‘social meanings’ associated with sociolinguistic variation put pressure on the standard philosophical conception of language, according to which the foremost thing we do with words is exchange information. Drawing on parallels with the explanatory challenge posed by slurs and pejoratives, I argue that the best way to understand social meanings is to think of them in speech act theoretic terms, and I develop a distinctive form of pluralism about the kinds of performances realized by means of sociolinguistic variants.

Abstract (also in alt text):

Sociolinguistic Variation, Slurs, and Speech Acts - Volume 122, Issue 7, July 2025 In this paper, I argue that the ‘social meanings’ associated with sociolinguistic variation put pressure on the standard philosophical conception of language, according to which the foremost thing we ...

"Sociolinguistic Variation, Slurs, and Speech Acts" by Ethan Nowak @ethannowak.bsky.social

doi.org/10.5840/jphi...

Freely accessible courtesy of @umeauniversitet.bsky.social

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CMU's Philosophy department is doing a search for a new department head. If you are interested, definitely apply. ALSO, if you know anyone that we should consider, please let me know. I'm happy to reach out to anyone who might be interested. (Please repost for reach!)

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Final reminder! New submissions close this Friday at 12pm Eastern. Please review our Memo to Authors prior to submitting, and remember to include at least two keywords.
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Boosting this news: The Journal of Philosophy will suspend new submissions starting next Friday, January 16, 2026, until at least mid-August.

At the close of 2025, we offer our gratitude to the global philosophical community for supporting The Journal of Philosophy in many crucial capacities: as authors, reviewers, editors, subscribers, and readers. Thank you.

World Philosophy Day | November 20, 2025 | Presidents’ Challenge The APA divisional presidents and past presidents will match up to $3,000 in donations that the APA receives on World Philosophy Day, November 20. | Donate Now | apaonline.org/donate

Happy World Philosophy Day! The current presidents and past presidents of the APA Divisions will match up to $3,000 in donations that the APA receives today, November 20. Double your impact with a gift to the APA. Donate now: apaonline.org/donate

Abstract: Suppose that, yesterday at noon, Maria considered flipping a fair coin but didn’t. What probability do you assign to “If Maria had flipped the coin, the coin would have landed heads"? Now suppose that, contrary to fact, Maria did indeed flip the coin. In that counterfactual scenario, what is the probability of “The coin will land tails"? The two questions sound strikingly similar. I argue that they sound similar because they are equivalent. The chance of a counterfactual “If A, would C" equals the chance of C, in the counterfactual scenario that A (and a similar principle holds for credence). This principle does better than similar principles that have been defended (like Skyrms’s Thesis), avoids triviality, and gives us important clues for a semantics for counterfactuals.

Abstract (also in alt text)

Probabilities of Counterfactuals Are Counterfactual Probabilities - Volume 122, Issue 6, June 2025 Suppose that, yesterday at noon, Maria considered flipping a fair coin but didn’t. What probability do you assign to “If Maria had flipped the coin, the coin would have landed heads

"Probabilities of Counterfactuals Are Counterfactual Probabilities" by Paolo Santorio
@paolosantorio.bsky.social
#newarticle #philosophy #philsky

doi.org/10.5840/jphi...

Abstract: Outside of philosophy, the idea that workers deserve to be paid according to their productive contributions is very popular. But political philosophers have given it relatively little attention. In this paper, I argue against the attempt to use this idea about desert and contribution to vindicate significant income inequality. I claim that reward according to contribution fails on its own terms when the following condition holds: the size of each worker's contribution depends on what other workers only together do. When workers only together make another more productive, that is not reflected in the sum of their own contributions. Thus reward according to contribution recognizes individual accomplishments without recognizing their dependence on collectives, dependence that is, in complex economies, ubiquitous.

Abstract (also in alt text)

Desert and Economic Interdependence - Volume 122, Issue 6, June 2025 Outside of philosophy, the idea that workers deserve to be paid according to their productive contributions is very popular. But political philosophers have given it relatively little attention. In th...

"Desert and Economic Interdependence" by Evan Behrle
#newarticle #philosophy #philsky

🏆 Winner of the 2024 Erik Olin Wright Prize 🏆

doi.org/10.5840/jphi...

Abstract: We argue that if there are laws of nature, then there must also be accidents. If the “laws” in a world suffice to determine the world’s entire history, then these “laws” cannot play various central roles characteristic of laws, and thus (we conclude) they are not laws at all. Many proposed accounts of lawhood (primitivist accounts, universals accounts, the Best System Account, the Package Deal Account, essentialist accounts) inappropriately permit worlds with laws but no accidents. We identify two otherwise dissimilar accounts that correctly (on our view) deem such worlds impossible; one is Humean and the other is non-Humean.

Abstract (also in alt text)

The Necessity of Accidents - published on November 12, 2025 We argue that if there are laws of nature, then there must also be accidents. If the “laws” in a world suffice to determine the world’s entire history, then these “laws” cannot play various central ro...

"The Necessity of Accidents" by Christopher Dorst and Marc Lange
#onlinefirst #newarticle #philosophy #philsky

doi.org/10.5840/jphi...

Please note! To work through a backlog of accepted papers and reduce time to publication, JPhil will suspend new submissions starting Friday, January 16, 2026. We expect to reopen submissions on Monday, August 17, 2026. New submissions will not be processed or considered during this time.

@jadamcarter.bsky.social

Easy Practical Knowledge - published on October 16, 2025 We explore new connections between the epistemologies of mental rehearsal and suppositional reasoning to offer a novel perspective on skilled behavior and its relationship to practical knowledge. We a...

"Easy Practical Knowledge" by Timothy R. Kearl and J. Adam Carter
#openaccess #onlinefirst #newarticle #philosophy #philsky

doi.org/10.5840/jphi...

Wandering Inquiry - published on October 9, 2025 Inquiry is guided, in the minimal sense that it is not haphazard. It is also often thought to have as a natural stopping point ceasing to inquire, once inquiry into a question yields knowledge of an a...

"Wandering Inquiry" by Susanna Siegel #newarticle
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doi.org/10.5840/jphi...

Saving Conceptual Role Expressivism from Defect - Volume 122, Issue 5, May 2025 Recently, it has been suggested that expressivism’s commitments about normative judgments should be cashed out in terms of conceptual role semantics. However, conceptual role expressivism has a centra...

"Saving Conceptual Role Expressivism from Defect" by Sebastian Köhler #newarticle #philosophy #philsky

doi.org/10.5840/jphi...

Chance as a Guide to Life: The Other Principal Principle - Volume 122, Issue 5, May 2025 When choosing between actions having the same two possible outcomes, we should choose the act for which the conditional chance of the preferred outcome, given its performance, is higher. This simple p...

"Chance as a Guide to Life: The Other Principal Principle" by Richard Bradley #newarticle #philosophy #philsky

doi.org/10.5840/jphi...

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Call for Directors Academic Philosophy Data and Analysis, a long running project that collects and analyzes data on graduate experience and employment outcomes for philosophy PhDs, is seeking to expand its leadership. W...

“Academic Philosophy Data and Analysis (philosophydata.org), a long running project that collects and analyzes data on graduate experience and employment outcomes for philosophy PhDs, is seeking to expand its leadership…from 1 to 3 directors”

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Congratulations to Caspar Jacobs on the selection of his JP paper, "Comparativist Theories or Conspiracy Theories?," for the 2024 Philosopher's Annual!

doi.org/10.5840/jphi...

Article Title: "Alethic Pluralism and Kripkean Truth"; Abstract: According to alethic pluralism, there are different ways of being true, that is, there is a plurality of truth properties, each of which pertains to a specific domain of discourse. This paper shows how such a plurality can be represented in a coherent formal framework by means of a Kripke-style construction that yields intuitively correct extensions for distinct truth predicates. The theory of truth we develop can handle at least three crucial problems that have been raised in connection with alethic pluralism: mixed compounds, mixed inferences, and semantic paradoxes.

#newarticle "Alethic Pluralism and Kripkean Truth" by Andrea Iacona, Stefano Romeo, and Lorenzo Rossi

doi.org/10.5840/jphi...

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