This article considers a puzzling conflict between two positions that are each compelling: (a) it is irrational for an agent to pay to avoid ‘free’ evidence, and (b) rational agents may have imprecise beliefs. An important aspect of responding to this conflict is resolving the question of how rational (imprecise) agents ought to make sequences of decisions—we make explicit what the key alternatives are and defend our own approach. We endorse a resolution of the aforementioned puzzle—we privilege decision theories that merely permit avoiding free evidence over decision theories that make avoiding free information obligatory.

I explore the evolution of strategies in an Augmented Stag Hunt game that adds a punishing strategy to the ordinary Stag Hunt strategies of cooperating, which aims for optimality, and defecting, which “plays it safe.” Cooperating weakly dominates punishing and defecting is the unique evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS). Nevertheless, for a wide class of Augmented Stag Hunts, polymorphic strategies combining punishing and cooperating collectively have greater attracting power for replicator dynamics than that of the ESS. The analysis here lends theoretical support to the altruistic punishment hypothesis in the social sciences.

Social scientists report difficulties in drawing out testable predictions from the literature on intersectionality theory. We alleviate that difficulty by showing that some characteristic claims of the intersectionality literature can be interpreted causally. The formalism of graphical causal modeling allows claims about the causal effects of occupying intersecting identity categories to be clearly represented and submitted to empirical testing. After outlining this causal interpretation of intersectional theory, we address some concerns that have been expressed in the literature claiming that membership in demographic categories can have causal effects.

I address a question recently raised by Simon Saunders concerning the relationship between the space-time structure of Newton-Cartan theory and that of what I will call “Maxwell-Huygens space-time.” This discussion will also clarify a connection between Saunders’s work and a recent paper by Eleanor Knox.

This article investigates and resolves the question whether gauge symmetry can display analogs of the famous Galileo’s ship scenario. In doing so, it builds on and clarifies the work of Greaves and Wallace (“Empirical Consequences of Symmetries”) on this subject.

Michael and MacLeod’s paper on theories of reference for intentional concepts addresses neglected connections between theories of reference and Theory of Mind debates. Unfortunately, their paper neither shows the negative effects of descriptivism on theories of reference for intentional concepts nor provides an adequate picture of how the sort of theory they advocate might explain either the reference of intentional concepts or the puzzles of development on which they focus. In this article, I give reasons to think that the prospects are dim for applying causal approaches to the major topics raised by Michael and MacLeod.

Floridi’s Theory of Strongly Semantic Information posits the Veridicality Thesis (i.e., information is true). One motivation is that it can serve as a foundation for information-based epistemology being an alternative to the tripartite theory of knowledge. However, the Veridicality thesis is false, if ‘information’ is to play an explanatory role in human cognition. Another motivation is avoiding the so-called Bar-Hillel/Carnap paradox (i.e., any contradiction is maximally informative). But this paradox only seems paradoxical, if (a) ‘information’ and ‘informativeness’ are synonymous, (b) logic is a theory of inference, or (c) validity suffices for rational inference; a, b, and c are false.