Recent work on the role of norms in the use of causal language by ordinary people has led to a consensus among several researchers: The consensus position is that causal attributions are sensitive to both statistical norms and prescriptive norms. But what is a statistical norm? We argue that there are at least two types that should be distinguished-agent-level statistical norms and population-level statistical norms. We then suggest an alternative account of ordinary causal attributions about agents (the responsibility view), noting that this view motivates divergent predictions about the effect of information about each of the two types of statistical norms noted. Further, these predictions run counter to those made by the consensus position. With this set-up in place, we present the results of a series of new experimental studies testing our predictions. The results are in line with the responsibility view, while indicating that the consensus position is seriously mistaken. Consider the following scenario based on a thought experiment by Joshua Knobe (2006):Lauren and Jane both work for a company that uses a mainframe that can be accessed from terminals on different floors of its building. The mainframe has recently become unstable, so that if more than one person is logged in at the same time, the system crashes. Therefore, the company has instituted a temporary policy restricting the use of terminals so that two terminals are not used at the same time until the mainframe is repaired. The policy prohibits logging into the mainframe from the terminal on any floor except the ground floor.One day, Lauren logged into the mainframe on the authorized terminal on the ground floor at the exact same time that Jane logged into the mainframe on the unauthorized terminal on the second floor. Lauren and Jane were both unaware that the other was logging in. Sure enough, the system crashed.When this scenario is given to people without training in philosophy, they are significantly more likely to say that Jane caused the system to crash than Lauren (Livengood, Sytsma, and Rose, Not surprisingly, some philosophers have sought to explain such results away, aiming to preserve the assumption that the ordinary concept of causation is purely descriptive in character.For example, Julia Driver (2008a) suggests that ordinary causal attributions might still be best explained in terms of a type of descriptive consideration-statistical norms. Thus, it might be that Jane is identified as the cause of the system crashing, in the above example, not because she violated a prescriptive norm per se, but because she did something that is statistically atypical in doing so-it presumably being unusual to violate company policy. Subsequent empirical work has suggested against this, however. In fact, a consensus position has emerged that focuses on norms more generally: Ordinary causal attributions are thought to be directly sensitive both to behaviors being out of the prescriptive norm (impermissible) and to behaviors being out of the s...

In this paper, I argue that, as far as Gettier cases are concerned, appearances are deceiving. That is, Gettier cases merely appear to be cases of epistemic failure (i.e., failing to know that p) but are in fact cases of semantic failure (i.e., failing to refer to x). Gettier cases are cases of reference failure because the candidates for knowledge in these cases contain ambiguous designators. If this is correct, then we may simply be mistaking semantic facts for epistemic facts when we consider Gettier cases. This, in turn, is a good reason not to assign much, if any, evidential weight to Gettier intuitions (i.e., that S doesn't know that p in a Gettier case).

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Placeholder essentialism is the view that there is a causal essence that holds category members together, though we may not know what the essence is. Sometimes the placeholder can be filled in by scientific essences, such as when we acquire scientific knowledge that the atomic weight of gold is 79. We challenge the view that placeholders are elaborated by scientific essences. In our view, if placeholders are elaborated, they are elaborated by Aristotelian essences, a telos. Utilizing the same kind of experiments used by traditional essentialists—involving superficial change (study 1), transformation of insides (study 2), acquired traits (study 3), and inferences about offspring (study 4)—we find support for the view that essences are elaborated by a telos. And we find evidence (study 5) that teleological essences may generate category judgments.