The main aim of this paper is to advance, clarify, and defend a definition of relativism. On the definition, relativism does not contrast with absolutism, is not the same as pluralism, contrasts with universalism and nihilism, and is compatible with both moral objectivity and moral subjectivity. Advantages of the definition are noted, but the bulk of the paper is devoted to detailed discussions of the concepts that figure in the definition or are entailed by it. Such concepts include those of a moral code, of conflict between moral codes, and of a convention.

Moral injury describes the effects of violence on veterans beyond what trauma discourse can describe. I put moral injury in conversation with a separate but related concept, dirty hands. Focusing on Michael Walzer's framing of dirty hands and Jonathan Shay's understanding of moral injury, I argue that moral injury can be seen as part of the dirt of a political leader's dirty hands decisions. Such comparison can focus more attention on the broader institutional context in which such dirty hands decisions are executed, while contributing to the growing vocabulary of moral conflict, trauma, and harm.

I here discuss an argument frequently dismissed as a fallacy – the slippery slope or camel's nose. The argument has three forms – analogical, argumentative, and prudential. None of these provides a deductive guarantee, but all can provide considerations capable of influencing the intellect. Our evaluation of such arguments reflects our background social and evaluative assumptions.

According to A-theories of time, the metaphysical ground of change and dynamicity is provided by a continuous shifting in which events are past, present and future (A-determinations). It is often claimed that these theories make better sense of our experience of dynamicity than their rival, the B-theories; according to the latter, dynamicity is grounded solely in the irreducible earlier-than relations (B-relations) which obtain between events or states of affairs. In this paper, I argue that the experience of time's dynamicity, on the contrary, cannot be accounted for solely in terms of representations of irreducible A-determinations, because any representation which is adequate to ground these experiences must itself involve representation of irreducible B-relations, while it needs not involve representation of A-determinations. Even if, as a matter of contingent fact, our experiences of dynamicity consisted of representations of successions of A-determinations, what would account for them being experiences of dynamicity would be solely the B-theoretic relations of succession, rather than the irrelevant A-theoretic nature of the relata.

I suggest a reconstruction of Kant's theory of perception – in particular his notions of intuition, concept, sensible impression, sensation, synthesis and combination – informed by the progress of philosophy and human and animal psychology since his time. I take from Burge the distinction between unconceptualized perception of objects (found in animals, infants, and to some extent in adult humans) and our conceptualized, judgmental perceptual experience. Kant concentrated on the latter, but he can be seen to leave room for the former, especially if we make clearer distinctions than he did between sensible impression and sensation, and between synthesis and combination.

This paper is a critical notice of Andrea Kern's book Sources of Knowledge. In the first part, I outline some criteria of adequacy I believe any credible philosophical account of knowledge should meet. In the second, I consider how Kern's book measures up to those criteria. Finally, I offer a sympathetic and constructive discussion of a number of key elements of Kern's approach, including the relation of her position to the philosophy of John McDowell, from which Kern draws inspiration; her defence of disjunctivism; her concept of a rational capacity for knowledge and its acquisition; and her understanding of scepticism.