Abstract What is difficulty? Despite being invoked in numerous normative debates, the nature of difficulty remains poorly understood. Various accounts, tailored to different explanatory contexts, have recently been proposed in different philosophical discussions. I criticize these accounts. I then provide an alternative, empirically informed account of difficulty in terms of cognitive demand. This account captures both empirical phenomena and folk intuitions regarding difficulty. I further argue that it generalizes well, explaining many other facets of difficulty. I conclude by showcasing the broad applicability of this account by examining a set of normative debates that invoke difficulty. I demonstrate that understanding difficulty in terms of cognitive demand facilitates progress on pressing questions in the study of moral responsibility, achievement, the value of difficult actions, and moral demandingness.

Abstract Visual representations express distinctively visual content. Such content takes the form of a kind of space where objects and properties are assigned locations in relation to a viewpoint. Many have conceived of visual space as a metric three-dimensional volume, analogous to physical space. Yet this assumption, I argue, over-constrains visual content, excluding the ubiquitous phenomenon of indeterminate depth perception. In this paper, I propose that visual contents are view spaces: two-dimensional directional arrays of objects, properties and relations. View spaces prioritize visual direction as a core aspect of structure, while demoting depth to a variable feature like colour or shape. This proposal accommodates depth indeterminacy while preserving distinctive visual structure, and it aligns with the use of feature maps in vision science and computer vision. I will argue that this architectural differentiation of direction and depth is supported by a wide range of evidence from philosophy and psychology.

Abstract Absolute motion—motion relative to space itself—is detectable in the classical non-Euclidean geometries. Although this claim can be conveyed with a simple thought experiment, I argue that it was out of sight to the people who were best placed to take note of it in the nineteenth century, when non-Euclidean geometry was a central object of study. This is a perplexing state of affairs, and in the first part of this paper I offer an explanation for it. A central component of this explanation involves the shift from spatial to spatiotemporal thinking that had to wait for Einstein’s development of the theories of relativity in the early twentieth century. In the second part of this paper, I discuss how significant this lacuna was. If the possibility of detecting absolute motion had been recognized, it would have impacted all of the major positions in the philosophy of geometry. Indeed, some figures would have responded to it by claiming that space must be necessarily Euclidean after all.

Abstract This paper develops an analysis of non-epistemic deniability. On my analysis, a speaker has non-epistemic deniability for G-ing when non-acknowledgement social norms make it impermissible for others to retaliate against the speaker for G-ing. I identify two kinds of non-acknowledgement norms that generate non-epistemic deniability: two-tracking norms, which function to contain conflict within a group, and open secrecy norms, which function to inhibit the group from acting on shared knowledge. Narrowly, this paper builds on Alexander Dinges and Julia Zakkou’s recent landmark analysis of deniability. Dinges and Zakkou argue that non-epistemic deniability does not exist. I disagree. But I also use their account of epistemic deniability in order to motivate my own analysis of non-epistemic deniability. Broadly, my paper provides a case study in how speakers strategically leverage non-acknowledgement norms in order to protect their own interests at the expense of others’.

Abstract Karl Marx rejected the ideal of equality as bourgeois. And yet the most significant attempt in recent years to distinguish socialist theory from liberal egalitarian theory, G. A. Cohen’s critique of John Rawls, relies almost entirely on an egalitarian principle. Although Cohen’s critique often seems to have a great deal of intuitive force, a number of Rawls’s defenders have argued, quite convincingly, that Cohen’s critique is unsuccessful. For those of us attracted to broadly socialist ideals, there does seem to be something importantly right about Cohen’s criticisms of Rawls, and more substantively, something deeply problematic in the kinds of market-based leveraging of productive abilities that would be permitted in a fully just Rawlsian society. My diagnosis is that Cohen has the right target, but the wrong fundamental value. I develop an alternative to these liberal egalitarian approaches in contemporary socialist ethics, building on the famous slogan, ‘From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’. This alternative ideal, of Caring Solidarity, draws on rich socialist, Christian and feminist traditions, and emphasizes the importance of care, recognition and solidarity in political and economic organization. This alternative leaves a certain amount of inequality legitimately in place, whilst providing a moral framework for a radical reorganization of production.

Abstract The social contract tradition, I conjecture, is constituted by an understanding of peoples as persons. I explore this conjecture in investigating one substantial contribution to the tradition: Rousseau's. It is in the systematic consideration of the nature of persons, defined with respect to autonomy that the heart of his social contract theory may be understood. I argue that ‘arguments from principle’ in Rousseau originate from (1) considering the autonomy of individual citizens, and (2) considering the autonomy of the whole of the people as a person. The first produces a constraint on the content of laws (that they are oriented to the common good), and the second produces a constraint on the form of laws, or the way they may be permissibly given (that legislative right remains always the people's alone, and that its transfer, in despotism or representation, is collective enslavement). The latter allows us to understand Rousseau's principled argument for democracy. A crucial insight for political philosophy: further than personhood delimiting how citizens may be treated or relate to each other, personhood may delimit also the shape of social-institutional organization (namely, in conformance with one's conception of what it takes for the social totality to be a person).

Abstract Recent work on collective action appeals to a range of philosophical constructs to explain the difference between collective and individual actions—from joint or shared intentions, we-intentions, and participatory intentions, to collective beliefs and desires, mutual obligations, and so on. I believe this is a mistake. In this paper, I defend a deflationary account of collective action, which holds that the difference between individual and collective actions can be explained purely in terms of the behaviour of the participants. This account faces the challenge of explaining how collective action can be intentional if it is to be reduced to the behaviour of individuals: intentionality is usually held to distinguish actions from accidents (and thus, one would expect, collective actions from accidents), but according to some philosophers, individuals cannot intend to do collective actions. To respond to this concern, I show that individual agency can extend beyond the individual to encompass the actions of others.