Zeitschrift Open Access

KRITERION – Journal of Philosophy

Editors-in-Chief: Christian J. Feldbacher-Escamilla und Alexander Gebharter

Sprache: Englisch

Erstveröffentlichung: 1. Januar 1991

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KRITERION - Journal of Philosophy provides a forum for rational discussion in any field of philosophy. As dedicated to the analytic tradition, it publishes highly understandable and criticisable work making use of clear and thorough argumentation. We believe that this is the only possible way of contributing to progress in philosophy, which is the journal's main objective.

The journal was founded in 1991. Since 2021, it is published and distributed as an open access journal by De Gruyter. We are convinced that this collaboration will further increase the quality and visibility of the journal.

KRITERION - Journal of Philosophy accepts contributions in English language. All contributions go through a double-blind peer review process. Since we especially want to encourage early career authors, the journal's policy is to reach a decision on every submission within five weeks of receipt. The journal is known for providing friendly and helpful reviewer comments and suggestions of how to improve manuscripts. This becomes manifest also in our current statistics: The initial acceptance rate is 5%, the overall acceptance rate is almost 30%, and over 90% of authors receive reports from external reviewers.

KRITERION - Journal of Philosophy also publishes special issues and monographic sections. For more information on guest-editing a special issue or monographic section, please see the supplementary material below.

Open Access
What are the Contexts of Complementarities?

24. Oktober 2025

Hong Joo Ryoo

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The explanatory structure of quantum mechanics and quantum gravity is marked by complementarity: the existence of distinct, mutually incompatible descriptions that are nonetheless each empirically valid in specific observational settings. In recent work, Ryoo (2025) proposed a context-dependent mapping framework ( f c ) as an epistemic tool to capture this phenomenon. This framework maps each physically defined “context” to a set of laws that yield coherent and predictive explanations within that context. In this paper, I formally define the notion of “context” underlying the f c mapping, offer a general structural typology, and present case studies from quantum gravity and entanglement wedge reconstruction to illustrate how explanatory fragmentation is grounded in physical theory rather than epistemic limitation.
Open Access
Conference Report: SOPhiA 2025

29. Oktober 2025

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Open Access
Attitudinal Obligations and the Control Problem

12. Februar 2026

Sarah Köglsperger

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Attitudes and emotions are commonly taken not to be under our direct voluntary control. Thus, it also seems impossible for there to be obligations to have certain attitudes. Against this, proponents of attitudinal obligations argue that we have sufficient, even if not voluntary, control over our attitudes to be appropriately held responsible for them and that this implies that there are attitudinal obligations. Call this the Responsibility Argument for Attitudinal Obligation s. In this paper, I discuss the Responsibility Argument as a response to the Control Problem. I argue that the Responsibility Argument fails. Its main problem is that the type of control that we have over our attitudes and emotions, according to its proponents, is always indirect. Accordingly, there can only be obligations to perform certain actions that tend to bring about certain attitudes, but no obligations to have certain attitudes.
Open Access
Agency as Normative Kind: Constitutivism as Aristotelianism

8. Oktober 2025

Aloysius Aquinas Ventham

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This paper argues that constitutivism is not a novel account but rather collapses into Aristotelianism albeit with new, conceptually clear and philosophically rich, terminology. The paper explores the Aristotelian structure of constitutivism and responds to objections from some constitutivists (Katsafanas 2013. Agency and the Foundations of Ethics: Nietzschean Constitutivism . Oxford University Press) that Aristotelian metaethical accounts cannot meet the practicality requirement in ethics. The author concludes that if the constitutivist can respond to Enoch’s ‘schmagency’ objection, then the Aristotelian can accommodate the practicality requirement by invoking the same mechanism. This paper thus presents constitutivism as an inherently Aristotelian theory, capable of meeting the challenges posed by externalist objections, and not simply that an Aristotelian version of constitutivism can be articulated.
Open Access
The Higher-Dimensional Reality of the Specious Present

6. Januar 2026

Aleksandra Bačević

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This paper revisits the concept of the specious present to reframe the ongoing debate on temporal consciousness from a higher-dimensional perspective. Building on Henri Bergson’s notion of durée and Sonja Deppe’s interpretation of qualitative multiplicity, which addresses the tension between tense and extension, the study argues that the paradoxes in the analysis of time-consciousness stem from a spatialized yet one-dimensional framework. Rather than viewing the spatialization of time as mere misconception, I suggest considering it as a virtual dimension of reality. By distinguishing between virtual past and actual present dimensionally rather than essentially, the higher-dimensional model of the present resolves the tension between the one and the many moments – both necessary for the experience of succession – and thus supports the retentional view on temporal consciousness. Ultimately, the insights developed throughout this paper culminate in a visual model. The specious present takes on the structure of a spiral, which adopts a different dimensionality depending on the perspective – thus existing as both extended and tensed. By reconciling subjective and objective aspects of time, a phenomenologically grounded yet analytically structured account of temporal experience is developed – contributing to current debates on time-consciousness and offering new impulses for future work in the metaphysics of time.
Open Access
A Route Back to Temporary Intrinsics for Relational Accounts of Persistence

17. November 2025

Christabel Cane

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‘Relativizer’ relationalism posits temporary properties as relations that obtain between the object that instantiates them and the times at which they are instantiated. A tomato, for example, that ripens from green to orange over the course of a working week bears the greenness relation to Monday, and the orangeness relation to Friday. David Lewis (Lewis, David. 1986. On the Plurality of Worlds . Oxford: Blackwell and Lewis, David. 1988. “Rearrangement of Particles: Reply to Lowe.” Analysis 48: 65–72) takes ‘relativizer’ relationalism to imply that all temporary properties are extrinsic, given that the times through which an object persists are distinct from and external to such objects. If Monday and Friday are independent of our ripening tomato, its colour properties do not come down solely to the way that the tomato is, given that they are at least partially dependent upon these times. A great deal of work has been done in the name of defending relationalism. Many of these responses involve a modification of the ‘relativizer’ view, developing more sophisticated relationalist accounts. This paper will clarify, motivate and defend naïve ‘relativizer’ relationalism. I begin this task with an examination of the view and Lewis’ critique of it within an explicitly relativistic framework. I argue that vestigial Newtonian background assumptions of ‘absolute’ space and time lend force to the problem, and, concomitantly, put relationalism at an unfair disadvantage. If temporary properties are cast as relations that obtain between objects and ‘absolute’ times, then it seems dubious that these properties are intrinsic. However, if we understand these properties to be relations that an object bears to the spacetime region it occupies, a natural solution presents itself. I suggest that ‘relativizer’ relationalists endorse the identity view of supersubstantivalism, which identifies an object with the spacetime region it occupies. This allows these relationalists to recast temporary intrinsics as reflexive relations. Drawing on Rosen’s, (Rosen, Gideon. 2010. “Metaphysical Dependence: Grounding and Reduction.” In Modality: Metaphysics, Logic, and Epistemology , edited by B. Hale, and A. Hoffmann, 109–36. Oxford: Oxford University Press and Francescotti’s (Francescotti, Robert. 1999. “How to Define Intrinsic Properties.” Noûs 33 (4): 590–609) and Francescotti, Robert. 2014. “Intrinsic/Extrinsic: A Relational Account Defended.” In Companion to Intrinsic Properties , 175–98. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter) work on intrinsics, I present the case for thinking that these special relations count as bona fide intrinsic properties.
Open Access
The Aesthetic Risk of AI: The Threat of Recommender Systems to Aesthetic Welfare

8. Juli 2025

Samuel Walker Bennett

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Recommender systems (RSs) on platforms like Netflix and Spotify personalize user experiences but also raise concerns about their impact on aesthetic welfare. This paper evaluates two important arguments against RS-driven platforms. The satisfaction argument claims that RSs harm aesthetic welfare by steering users toward profitable content that is less satisfying because it is less aligned with their personal tastes. I argue that while RS-driven platforms may exhibit a bias toward promoting profitable content, they are unlikely to do so aggressively enough to significantly harm user satisfaction, as such a strategy carries inherent risks and offers uncertain profit advantages compared to catering to users’ existing preferences. Moreover, even if RSs consistently steer engagement toward profitable content that diverges from a user’s personal taste, they would likely need to reshape user preferences in the process to maintain engagement. In such cases, aesthetic enjoyment would remain largely intact, as the altered taste would align with the promoted content. The autonomy argument suggests that RSs push users into patterns of aesthetic engagement that conflict with their core aesthetic values – such as those who prefer niche or non-mainstream content – due to apparent RS biases favoring popular and mainstream material. I contend that such authenticity concerns are not particularly worrisome when the core value in question lacks independent normative significance. For example, there is no strong reason to claim that aesthetic users should or need to engage with non-mainstream content. Ultimately, this paper challenges claims about the harms of RS-driven platforms, arguing that their impact on aesthetic well-being is less significant than often assumed.
Open Access
The Inescapability of Law and the Duty of the Rule of Recognition

20. Oktober 2025

Fernando Campos

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H.L.A. Hart’s legal positivism identifies the rule of recognition as the foundational concept grounding a legal system, emphasizing its basis in social practice rather than moral evaluation. Hart argues for a strict conceptual separation between law and morality, allowing the rule of recognition to neutrally establish criteria for legal validity. Nevertheless, debate surrounds whether this rule inherently creates obligations for legal officials. While some scholars, such as Julie Dickson, argue it merely confers powers without imposing duties, others, notably Jules Coleman and Neil MacCormick, insist it necessarily entails obligations – specifically the duty to adhere exclusively to the recognized criteria when identifying valid laws. This obligation arises from officials committed internal acceptance of the rule, ensuring the system’s normative coherence and stability. Thus, despite controversy over its precise characterization, Hart’s conception ultimately presents the rule of recognition as a fundamentally duty-creating social practice essential for any developed legal system.
Open Access
Degrees of Compositionality (In the Realm of Idioms)

25. März 2025

Thorben Petersen

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This paper outlines and motivates a degrees view of compositionality. The degrees view says that the meanings of complex natural language expressions are determined by the meanings and syntactic structure of their parts to varying degrees. The initial motivation for proposing such a view is that it solves a serious problem with the compositionality principle, which arises if the meanings of complex expressions are taken to be fully determined by the meanings and combinatorial structure of their parts. This seems to be the standard understanding of compositionality, but natural languages are ripe with expressions, whose meanings are compositionally underdetermined. This striking feature of natural languages is captured by the degrees view, which attributes an undiminished role to compositionality and proposes that complex expressions are generally compositional, albeit with varying intensity. In order to provide further motivation for the degree-theoretic perspective, this paper also examines the meta-semantics of idiomatic phrases, which are widely held to defy compositionality by definition. As predicted by the degrees view, the analysis reveals that there are different types of idiomatic phrases, some of which are more compositional than others.
Open Access
Kuhn on Values: Resolving the Puzzles Concerning Science

8. Dezember 2025

Priya Singh

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Laudan identifies two fundamental puzzles concerning science, revealing its Janus-faced nature: the puzzle of agreement and the puzzle of disagreement. For him, existing accounts of scientific change fail to resolve both puzzles. He particularly challenges Kuhn’s account in order to advance his reticulated model of scientific rationality. In this regard, this paper pursues two related aims: First, it argues that Laudan’s model falls short in adequately accounting for both dimensions of science as he himself defines them, and generates new problems absent in Kuhn. Second, it establishes overlooked continuities between the earlier and later Kuhn, arguing that Laudan’s critique applies only to these two stages and not to a transitional phase. In this transitional phase, Kuhnian values uniquely address both of Laudan’s puzzles by integrating both shared values and subjective considerations. Thus, I argue that only Kuhn’s Janus-faced conception of values truly explains the dual character of science.
Open Access
Persistent Value Relations: Varieties and Explanation

21. Juli 2025

Henrik Andersson, Andrés G. Garcia

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Some things hold value in a way that makes them superior to others, regardless of how much of the lesser values are involved. Philosophers have often found this idea of persistent betterness to be puzzling. In this paper, we argue that superiority belongs to a broader class of persistent value relations, including stubborn varieties of equality and parity, each of which will be exemplified and analysed. Our account explains these relations through the inherent properties of what is being compared without relying on infinite value or the notion of a diminishing value contribution. This approach offers a clearer understanding of the nature and grounds of persistent value relations.
Open Access
Conference Report: The Fifth International Conference of the German Society for Philosophy of Science (GWP.2025), 24–26 March, 2025

6. Mai 2025

Leon Assaad

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Open Access
A New Look at Shoemaker’s Theory of Properties

30. Januar 2026

Sungho Choi

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Sydney Shoemaker has advanced a theory of properties that serves as a locus classicus of the view that properties must be individuated by the causal powers that they confer on their instances. His theory is not only important in its own right but also it has deep and far-reaching implications for plenty of philosophical issues, for instance, dispositional essentialism, the dispositional/categorical distinction, the ontological status of laws of nature, to name a few. Curiously enough, however, its validity hasn’t been carefully examined so far. In the early part of this paper, I will defend Shoemaker’s view that properties are not powers but nonetheless clusters of conditional powers from one possible objection. In its later part, however, I will point out a crucial flaw of Shoemaker’s view, presenting a counterexample to the idea that properties are necessarily associated with certain sets of conditional powers. From this I will conclude that Shoemaker’s theory of properties is in trouble.
Open Access
Causal Inference in Econometrics: A Causal Interpretation of Regression Analysis

23. Juli 2025

Zhitao Zhang

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Econometricians apply statistical tools to estimate the effects of policies based on observational data. Although econometricians consider the type of inference they are dealing with in their research to be a type of causal inference, they usually avoid direct use of causal terminology. Econometricians and statisticians often rely on the Rubin Causal Model to interpret regression analysis as a type of causal inference. In this paper, I argue (with a focus on instrumental variable estimation) that this endeavour is doomed to failure. I develop an alternative causal interpretation of regression analysis based on structural equation models and show how this interpretation can avoid the problems.
Open Access
Trivialisms about Explanatory Gap

20. Januar 2026

Cong Chen

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A spectre of anti-physicalism haunts philosophy of mind: we seem unable to explain how the phenomenal arises from the physical. Rather than repeat clichés about the profundity of this explanatory gap, in this paper, I defend a set of Trivialisms, which suggest the phenomenal explanatory gap may not be as special as widely assumed. I start with surveying Schaffer’s modest Trivialism, combining anti-exceptionalism (gaps are everywhere) and the thesis of non-specialness (the phenomenal one is not uniquely special), and respond to Aleksiev’s critique. Then I develop a more radical Trivialism, arguing from epistemic insensitivity that we have fewer reasons to posit the phenomenal gap than others (e.g., mereological). Finally, I address some potential objections including those from metaontological deflationism, the possibility of a priori metaphysical knowledge, among others.
Open Access
On Drawing the Tensed-Tenseless Divide in Philosophy of Time in the Analytic Tradition

17. Juli 2025

Michael Grech

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Since McTaggart’s seminal argument (McTaggart, J. M. E. 1908. “The Unreality of Time.” Mind 17 (68), McTaggart, J. M. E. 1927. The Nature of Existence, Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), philosophers of time have been split within the tensed and tenseless camps. This division presumes that there are criteria in virtue of which philosophers of time have belonged to either camp. Yet, the criteria presented in time-related literature are frequently inaccurate. The paper addresses this issue by laying down what is common to all philosophers that since the publication of McTaggart’s argument have belonged to the tensed/tenseless camp, and in virtue of which they should be considering as belonging to this camp. It considers and rejects three ways in which the tensed-tenseless divide has frequently been characterised; in terms of shared views regarding the meaning or truth of tokens of tensed sentences, of whether one believes in passage or in terms of whether one believes in tensed facts. It finally suggests two criteria which adequately serve to mark the chasm-lines between the two camps.

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Special Issue: 10 Years in Multiverse: Reflections and perspectives for the set-theoretic multiverse; Guest Editor: Matteo de Ceglie

Special Issue: Lakatos’ Undone Work: The Practical Turn and the Division of Philosophy of Mathematics and Philosophy of Science; Guest Editors: Sophie Nagler, Hannah Pillin, Deniz Sarikaya

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Special Issue: Bayesian Epistemology: Perspectives and Challenges, Edited by Jürgen Landes

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Special Issue: Popularizing Philosophy, Edited by Frauke Albersmeier & Alexander Christian

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Die Zeitschrift KRITERION – Journal of Philosophy veröffentlicht Sonder- und Themenhefte, die sich auf wichtige und neu aufkommende Themen im Bereich der Forschung konzentrieren. Die Zeitschrift hat ein strenges Verfahren eingeführt, um sicherzustellen, dass alle Manuskripte für Sonderausgaben denselben Qualitätsstandards und Peer-Review-Verfahren unterliegen wie reguläre Manuskripte. Weitere Informationen über die Peer-Review-Politik der Zeitschrift finden Sie in den "Hinweisen für Autoren".

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Band 39 | Heft 1-2 Special Issue: 10 Years in Multiverse: Reflections and perspectives for the set-theoretic multiverse; Guest Editor: Matteo de Ceglie

Please submit your manuscript via https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/kriterion. You will be guided through the whole peer reviewing and submission process. Before submission, please have a look at our Guidelines for Authors.

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For publishing in KRITERION — Journal of Philosophy article processing charges (APCs) apply. APCs are used to cover the costs of the peer-review process,　professional typesetting and copyediting, as well as online hosting, long-term preservation, distribution to libraries and content aggregators worldwide, and extensive promotion to potential readers. APCs are not paid by individual authors but are usually covered by an author’s affiliation or research grants. Currently, the regular fee is EUR 1,500.00 (subject to change). More information about open access funding can be found here.

Authors whose affiliation or research grants do not cover APCs receive a waiver. To this end, they are asked to e-mail to kriterion@degruyterbrill.com after submitting their article. There are no submission charges.

Please note that it is the author’s responsibility to apply for a waiver upon submission of the article.

Editors-in-Chief:

Christian J. Feldbacher-Escamilla (University of Cologne, Germany)
Alexander Gebharter (Marche Polytechnic University, Ancona, Italy)

Contact: kriterion@degruyter.com

Advisory Board:

Elisa Aaltola (University of Turku, Finnland)
Dieter Birnbacher (Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany)
Elke Brendel (University of Bonn, Germany)
Daniel Cohnitz (Utrecht University, The Netherlands)
Catarina Dutilh Novaes (VU Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
Nadine Elzein (University of Warwick, Coventry, UK)
Clark Glymour (Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA)
Hilary Greaves (University of Oxford, UK)
Sally Haslanger (MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA)
Vera Hoffman-Kolss (University of Bern, Switzerland)
Max Kistler (University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France)
Edouard Machery (University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA)
Michela Massimi (University of Edinburgh, UK)
Jeanne Peijnenburg (University of Groningen, The Netherlands)
Adina Roskies (Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA)
Maria Sekatskaya (Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany)
Kordula Świętorzecka (UKSW, Warsaw, Poland)
Johanna Thoma (London School of Economics, London, UK)
Barbara Vetter (FU Berlin, Germany)

Editorial: https://doi.org/10.1515/krt-2021-0001

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Erstveröffentlichung:

1. Januar 1991

eISSN: 2750-977X

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