LLM Works Index

A Shelter from Luck: The Morality System Reconstructed (2022)

Offers a synthesis of Williams’s critical remarks on Kantian morality; the key idea is that modern morality strives to shelter life from luck.

Type: paper · Citation: In Morality and Agency: Themes from Bernard Williams. András Szigeti and Matthew Talbert (eds.), 184–211. New York: Oxford University Press. 2022. doi:10.1093/oso/9780197626566.003.0009

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/a-shelter-from-luck-the-morality-system-reconstructed/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUEASF.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/a-shelter-from-luck-the-morality-system-reconstructed.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/a-shelter-from-luck-the-morality-system-reconstructed.txt

Topics: agency, ethics, blame, obligation, moral-luck, history-of-philosophy, luck, morality-system, kantianism, voluntariness, responsibility, value-conflict, practical-philosophy, williams, history of philosophy, practical philosophy

Bernard Williams on Philosophy and History (2025)

For Bernard Williams, philosophy and history are importantly connected. His work exploits this connection in a number of directions: he believes that philosophy cannot ignore its own history the way science can; that even when engaging with philosophy’s history primarily to produce history, one needs to draw on philosophy; and that when doing the history of philosophy primarily to produce philosophy, one still needs a sense of how historically distant past philosophers are, because the point of reading them is to confront something different from the present. But Williams also holds that systematic philosophy itself needs to be done historically, engaging not just with its own history, but with that of the concepts it seeks to understand. To explore these different ways in which philosophy and history intertwine, this volume assembles specially commissioned contributions by A. W. Moore, Terence Irwin, Sophie Grace Chappell, Catherine Rowett, Marcel van Ackeren, John Cottingham, Gerald Lang, Lorenzo Greco, Paul Russell, Carla Bagnoli, Peter Kail, David Owen, Giuseppina D’Oro, James Connelly, Matthieu Queloz, Nikhil Krishnan, John Marenbon, Ralph Wedgwood, Garrett Cullity, Hans-Johann Glock, Geraldine Ng, Ilaria Cozzaglio, Amanda R. Greene, and Miranda Fricker. They critically appraise Williams’s work in and on the history of philosophy as well as his ‘historicist turn’ and his use of genealogy. The resulting collection uniquely combines substantive discussions of historical figures from Homer to Wittgenstein with methodological discussions of how and why the history of philosophy should be done, and how and why philosophy should draw on history.

Type: book · Citation: Edited with Marcel van Ackeren. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2025. doi:10.1093/9780191966361.001.0001

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/books/bernard-williams-on-philosophy-and-history/ · PDF: https://academic.oup.com/book/61415 · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/bernard-williams-on-philosophy-and-history.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/bernard-williams-on-philosophy-and-history.txt

Topics: bernard-williams, history, philosophical-method, genealogy, metaphilosophy, methodology-of-the-history-of-philosophy

Can AI Rely on the Systematicity of Truth? The Challenge of Modelling Normative Domains (2025)

Argues that the asystematicity of normative domains, stemming from the plurality, incompatibility, and incommensurability of values, poses a challenge to AI’s ability to comprehensively model these domains and underscores the indispensable role of human agency in practical deliberation.

Type: paper · Citation: Philosophy & Technology 38 (34): 1–27. 2025. doi:10.1007/s13347-025-00864-x

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/can-ai-rely-on-the-systematicity-of-truth-the-challenge-of-modelling-normative-domains/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUECAR-2.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/can-ai-rely-on-the-systematicity-of-truth-the-challenge-of-modelling-normative-domains.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/can-ai-rely-on-the-systematicity-of-truth-the-challenge-of-modelling-normative-domains.txt

Topics: ai, asystematicity, epistemology-of-ai, llm, philosophy-of-technology, practical-deliberation, normative-domains, normativity, practical-philosophy, systematicity, systematicity-challenge, theoretical-philosophy, truth, truthfulness, value-alignment, practical philosophy, theoretical philosophy

Choosing Values? Williams contra Nietzsche (2021)

Highlights enduring epistemic and metaphysical difficulties for any project of evaluating and improving the values we live by, including contemporary work in conceptual ethics and engineering, and argues that attempts to sidestep these difficulties fall prey to “Saint-Just’s illusion”—the mistake of believing that a set of values from one political context can be successfully transplanted into a different political context.

Type: paper · Citation: The Philosophical Quarterly 71 (2): 286–307. 2021. doi:10.1093/pq/pqaa026

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/choosing-values-williams-contra-nietzsche/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUECVW.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/choosing-values-williams-contra-nietzsche.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/choosing-values-williams-contra-nietzsche.txt

Topics: conceptual-ethics, conceptual-engineering, conceptual-change, genealogy, history-of-philosophy, 19th-century, 20th-century, metaethics, meta-philosophy, pluralism, political-philosophy, value-theory, political-context, revaluation-of-values, nietzsche, value-change, practical-philosophy, theoretical-philosophy, values, williams, history of philosophy, practical philosophy, theoretical philosophy

Conceptual Engineering and the Politics of Implementation (2022)

Argues that how much control we have over conceptual change is itself something we can control, and while some domains require the institutionalization of the power to enforce conceptual innovations, because there are strong practical pressures to coordinate on a single harmonized technical terminology, there are also liberal and democratic rationales for making conceptual engineering hard to implement by default.

Type: paper · Citation: Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 103 (3): 670–691. 2022. With Friedemann Bieber. doi:10.1111/papq.12394

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/conceptual-engineering-and-the-politics-of-implementation/ · PDF: https://philarchive.org/archive/QUECEA · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/conceptual-engineering-and-the-politics-of-implementation.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/conceptual-engineering-and-the-politics-of-implementation.txt

Topics: bieber, conceptual-engineering, conceptual-ethics, conceptual-change, conceptual-uptake, coordination, democracy, institutional-design, implementation, language-policy, liberalism, power, social-epistemology, politics, practical-philosophy, theoretical-philosophy, practical philosophy, theoretical philosophy

Davidsonian Causalism and Wittgensteinian Anti-Causalism: A Rapprochement (2018)

Seeks a rapprochement in the longstanding debate between Davidsonian causalists and Wittgensteinian anti-causalists by arguing that both sides can agree that reasons are not causes, but that intentional explanations are causal explanations.

Type: paper · Citation: Ergo 5 (6): 153–72. 2018. doi:10.3998/ergo.12405314.0005.006

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/davidsonian-causalism-and-wittgensteinian-anti-causalism-a-rapprochement/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUEDCA.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/davidsonian-causalism-and-wittgensteinian-anti-causalism-a-rapprochement.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/davidsonian-causalism-and-wittgensteinian-anti-causalism-a-rapprochement.txt

Topics: causalism, causal-theory-of-action, reasons-vs-causes, action-explanation, explanation, davidson, analytic-philosophy, 20th-century, history-of-philosophy, interpretation, intentional-explanation, metaphysics-of-action, philosophy-of-mind, philosophy-of-language, philosophy-of-action, theoretical-philosophy, anti-causalism, wittgenstein, history of philosophy, theoretical philosophy

Debunking Concepts (2023)

Argues that the debunking of concepts should extend beyond assessing their epistemological merits to include their evaluation on moral, social, and political grounds, based on their societal functions and effects.

Type: paper · Citation: Midwest Studies in Philosophy 47 (1): 195–225. By invitation. 2023. doi:10.5840/msp2023111347

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/debunking-concepts/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUEDCB.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/debunking-concepts.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/debunking-concepts.txt

Topics: concepts, conceptual-ethics, debunking, genealogical-debunking, genealogy, history-of-philosophy, ideology-critique, metaphysics, methodology, political-philosophy, practical-philosophy, critical-theory, ethics, epistemology, social-functions, theoretical-philosophy, practical philosophy, theoretical philosophy

Defending Genealogy as Conceptual Reverse-Engineering (2024)

Responds to commentaries by Cheryl Misak, Alexander Prescott-Couch, and Paul Roth.

Type: paper · Citation: Analysis 84 (2): 385–400. 2024. Symposium on my The Practical Origins of Ideas. By invitation. doi:10.1093/analys/anad010

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/defending-genealogy-as-conceptual-reverse-engineering/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUEDGA.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/defending-genealogy-as-conceptual-reverse-engineering.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/defending-genealogy-as-conceptual-reverse-engineering.txt

Topics: analysis, concepts, conceptual-engineering, conceptual-reverse-engineering, genealogical-method, genealogy, history, history-of-philosophy, history-of-ideas, idealisations, meta-philosophy, misak, naturalism, practical-philosophy, prescott-couch, pragmatic-genealogy, function, theoretical-philosophy, history of philosophy, practical philosophy, theoretical philosophy

Does Philosophy Have a Vindicatory History? Bernard Williams on the History of Philosophy (2017)

Develops Williams’s suggestion that for philosophy to ignore its history is for it to assume that its history is vindicatory. The paper aims to offer a fruitful line of inquiry into the question whether philosophy has a vindicatory history by providing a map of possible answers to it. It first distinguishes three types of history: the history of discovery, the history of progress, and the history of change. It then suggests that much of philosophy lacks a vindicatory history, for reasons that reflect philosophy’s character as a humanistic discipline.

Type: paper · Citation: Studia Philosophica 76: 137–52. 2017. doi:10.24894/StPh-en.2017.76008

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/does-philosophy-have-a-vindicatory-history-bernard-williams-on-the-history-of-philosophy/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUEDPH.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/does-philosophy-have-a-vindicatory-history-bernard-williams-on-the-history-of-philosophy.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/does-philosophy-have-a-vindicatory-history-bernard-williams-on-the-history-of-philosophy.txt

Topics: history-of-philosophy, historiography, meta-philosophy, philosophy-of-history, analytic-philosophy, 20th-century, humanistic-discipline, philosophy, theoretical-philosophy, vindicatory-history, williams, history of philosophy, theoretical philosophy

Doing History Philosophically and Philosophy Historically (2025)

Distinguishes four different connections between philosophy and history. (1) Philosophy cannot ignore its own history in the way that science can. (2) When engaging with philosophy’s history primarily to produce history, one still has to draw on philosophy. (3) Even doing history of philosophy philosophically—that is, primarily to produce philosophy—requires a keen sense of how historically distant from us past philosophers were, because the point of reading them is to confront something different from the present. (4) Systematic philosophy itself needs to be done historically, engaging not necessarily with its own history, but with that of the concepts it seeks to understand.

Type: paper · Citation: With Marcel van Ackeren. In Bernard Williams on Philosophy and History. Marcel van Ackeren and Matthieu Queloz (eds.), 14–30. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2025. doi:10.1093/9780191966361.003.0003

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/doing-history-philosophically-and-philosophy-historically/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/VANDHP-4.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/doing-history-philosophically-and-philosophy-historically.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/doing-history-philosophically-and-philosophy-historically.txt

Topics: history-of-philosophy, methodology, historiography, meta-philosophy, philosophy-of-history, analytic-philosophy, 20th-century, theoretical-philosophy, van-ackeren, williams, history of philosophy, theoretical philosophy

Dropping Anchor in Rough Seas: Co-Reasoning with Personalized AI Advisors and the Liberalism of Fear (2025)

A political critique of personalized AI advisors through the lens of the liberalism of fear. Highlights the asymmetries of power involved and argues that personalization risks stabilizing domination by translating structural injustices into individualized aspirational challenges. Three political constraints on personalized AI are then proposed: the priority of non-domination, the public contestability of operative norms, and the recognition of non-personalizable civic burdens.

Type: paper · Citation: Philosophy & Technology 38 (170): 1–7. 2025. Invited commentary. doi:10.1007/s13347-025-01006-z

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/dropping-anchor-in-rough-seas-co-reasoning-with-personalized-ai-advisors-and-the-liberalism-of-fear/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUEDAI.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/dropping-anchor-in-rough-seas-co-reasoning-with-personalized-ai-advisors-and-the-liberalism-of-fear.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/dropping-anchor-in-rough-seas-co-reasoning-with-personalized-ai-advisors-and-the-liberalism-of-fear.txt

Topics: ai, ai-ethics, ai-governance, algorithmic-power, algorithmic-trust, aspirational-values, autonomy, deliberation, dependency, epistemic-asymmetry, liberalism, liberalism-of-fear, non-domination, personal-ai, personalization, political-theory, political-philosophy, power-asymmetry, structural-injustice, value-alignment, contestability, practical-philosophy, theoretical-philosophy, practical philosophy

Ethics Beyond the Limits: New Essays on Bernard Williams’ Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (2023)

Reviews a collection of essays on Williams's *Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy* and offers a substantive defense of Williams against Humean critiques, arguing that Williams does employ vindicatory genealogies for basic ethical concepts like obligation, but separates these from their distortion within the morality system. Synthesizes diverse interpretations of Williams's relativism of distance and practical necessity, recasting them not as skepticism but as inquiries into authenticity and the irreducible first-person nature of deliberation. Frames the collection as evidence that Williams's project was not merely destructive, but a liberating attempt to legitimize ethical thoughts that exist outside the rigid constraints of modern moral theory.

Type: paper · Citation: Mind 132 (525): 234–243. 2023. doi:10.1093/mind/fzaa077

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/ethics-beyond-the-limits-new-essays-on-bernard-williams-ethics-and-the-limits-of-philosophy/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUEEBT.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/ethics-beyond-the-limits-new-essays-on-bernard-williams-ethics-and-the-limits-of-philosophy.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/ethics-beyond-the-limits-new-essays-on-bernard-williams-ethics-and-the-limits-of-philosophy.txt

Topics: bernard-williams, williams, ethics, ethics-and-the-limits-of-philosophy, genealogy, morality-system, metaethics, deliberation, practical-philosophy, practical philosophy

Explainability through Systematicity: The Hard Systematicity Challenge for Artificial Intelligence (2025)

Offers a framework for thinking about “the systematicity of thought” that distinguishes four senses of the phrase, defuses the alleged tension between systematicity and connectionism that Fodor and Pylyshyn influentially diagnosed, and identifies a “hard” form of the systematicity challenge that continues to defy connectionist models.

Type: paper · Citation: Minds and Machines 35 (35): 1–39. 2025. doi:10.1007/s11023-025-09738-9

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/explainability-through-systematicity-the-hard-systematicity-challenge-for-artificial-intelligence/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUEBIA.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/explainability-through-systematicity-the-hard-systematicity-challenge-for-artificial-intelligence.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/explainability-through-systematicity-the-hard-systematicity-challenge-for-artificial-intelligence.txt

Topics: ai, coherence, cognitive-architecture, connectionism, explainable-ai, explainability, fodor, philosophy-of-ai, rationality, systematization, theory-of-mind, systematicity, theoretical-philosophy, conceptual-change, theoretical philosophy, history of philosophy

Explication or Amelioration? Carnapian Clarification as the Normative Basis for Conceptual Engineering (forthcoming)

As conceptual engineering fractures into explication pursuing exactness and amelioration pursuing justice, the field risks losing its focus. I argue that unifying these projects requires retrieving a crucial insight from Rudolf Carnap: that attempts to improve concepts must start with the preliminary stage of practical clarification. However, Carnap’s account of clarification in terms of predictive proficiency remains normatively inert and biased towards exactness. I expand it into a normative diagnosis of the needs underpinning a concept’s inferential structure. This reveals whether properties like vagueness are flaws that need fixing or features worth preserving.

Type: paper · Citation: The Monist. Special issue on Explication and Conceptual Engineering.

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/explication-or-amelioration-carnapian-clarification-as-the-normative-basis-for-conceptual-engineering/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUEEOA.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/explication-or-amelioration-carnapian-clarification-as-the-normative-basis-for-conceptual-engineering.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/explication-or-amelioration-carnapian-clarification-as-the-normative-basis-for-conceptual-engineering.txt

Topics: carnap, clarification, normativity, explication, amelioration, conceptual-engineering, vienna-circle, definition, concepts, conceptual-analysis, theoretical philosophy, practical philosophy

From Paradigm-Based Explanation to Pragmatic Genealogy (2020)

Why would philosophers interested in the points or functions of our conceptual practices bother with genealogical explanations if they can focus directly on paradigmatic examples of the practices we now have? This paper offers three reasons why the genealogical approach earns its keep and formulates criteria for determining when it is called for.

Type: paper · Citation: Mind 129 (515): 683–714. 2020. doi:10.1093/mind/fzy083

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/from-paradigm-based-explanation-to-pragmatic-genealogy/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUEFPE.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/from-paradigm-based-explanation-to-pragmatic-genealogy.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/from-paradigm-based-explanation-to-pragmatic-genealogy.txt

Topics: explanation, functions, genealogy, pragmatic-genealogy, history, history-of-philosophy, historiography, methodology, state-of-nature, williams, craig, fricker, fictionalism, pragmatism, paradigm-based, theoretical-philosophy, theoretical philosophy

Function-Based Conceptual Engineering and the Authority Problem (2022)

Identifies a central problem for conceptual engineering—the problem of establishing the authority of engineered concepts—and argues that this problem cannot generally be solved by appealing to increased precision, consistency, or other theoretical virtues. Solving the problem requires engineering to take a functional turn and attend to the functions of concepts. This also helps us alleviate Strawsonian worries about changes of topic.

Type: paper · Citation: Mind 131 (524): 1247–1278. 2022. doi:10.1093/mind/fzac028

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/function-based-conceptual-engineering-and-the-authority-problem/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUEFCE.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/function-based-conceptual-engineering-and-the-authority-problem.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/function-based-conceptual-engineering-and-the-authority-problem.txt

Topics: amelioration, authority, authority-problem, concept-legitimacy, conceptual-engineering, conceptual-ethics, conceptual-functions, conceptual-revision, hermeneutics, meta-philosophy, normativity, functions, politics, practical-philosophy, strawson, theoretical-philosophy, practical philosophy, theoretical philosophy

Genealogy and Knowledge-First Epistemology: A Mismatch? (2019)

Timothy Williamson’s knowledge-first epistemology holds that the concept of knowledge is primitive and explanatorily fundamental. This seems to leave little room for attempts to give a genealogical explanation of the concept of knowledge, much less ones that explain the formation of the concept of knowledge in terms of the concept of belief, as E.J. Craig does. Yet I argue that Craig’s genealogy of the concept of knowledge not only is compatible with knowledge-first epistemology, but actually lends succour to it.

Type: paper · Citation: The Philosophical Quarterly 69 (274): 100–120. 2019. doi:10.1093/pq/pqy041

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/genealogy-and-knowledge-first-epistemology-a-mismatch/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUEGAK.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/genealogy-and-knowledge-first-epistemology-a-mismatch.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/genealogy-and-knowledge-first-epistemology-a-mismatch.txt

Topics: craig, epistemology, genealogy, pragmatic-genealogy, history-of-philosophy, methodology, williams, knowledge, knowledge-first, knowledge-first-epistemology, epistemic-concepts, genealogical-method, theoretical-philosophy, theoretical philosophy

Genealogy, Evaluation, and Engineering (2022)

Argues that genealogical explanations can be used to evaluate and improve conceptual practices, taking as an example the demand for conceptual innovation around notions of legitimacy created by the increasing power of international institutions.

Type: paper · Citation: The Monist 105 (4): 435–51. By invitation. 2022. doi:10.1093/monist/onac010

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/genealogy-evaluation-and-engineering/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUEGCE.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/genealogy-evaluation-and-engineering.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/genealogy-evaluation-and-engineering.txt

Topics: conceptual-engineering, enlightenment, functional-explanation, evaluation, genealogy, genealogical-method, history-of-philosophy, ideology-critique, conceptual-ethics, international-institutions, legitimacy, methodology, practical-philosophy, practices, theoretical-philosophy, traditions, pragmatic-genealogy, conceptual-change, normativity, history of philosophy, practical philosophy, theoretical philosophy

How Genealogies Can Affect the Space of Reasons (2020)

Attempts to derive reasons from claims about the genesis of something are often said to commit the genetic fallacy—they conflate genesis and justification. One way for genealogies to side-step this objection is to focus on the functional origins of practices. But this invites a second objection, which maintains that attempts to derive current from original function suffer from continuity failure—the conditions in response to which something originated no longer obtain. This paper shows how normatively ambitious genealogies can steer clear of both problems.

Type: paper · Citation: Synthese 197 (5): 2005–2027. 2020. doi:10.1007/s11229-018-1777-9

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/how-genealogies-can-affect-the-space-of-reasons/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUEHGC.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/how-genealogies-can-affect-the-space-of-reasons.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/how-genealogies-can-affect-the-space-of-reasons.txt

Topics: continuity, genealogy, pragmatic-genealogy, genetic-fallacy, history-of-philosophy, bernard-williams, craig, epistemology, historicism, normativity, philosophy-of-reasons, rationality, conceptual-change, space-of-reasons, theoretical-philosophy, theoretical philosophy

Ideas that Work (2021)

Type: paper · Citation: Aeon: A World of Ideas, June 24, 2021.

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/ideas-that-work/ · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/ideas-that-work.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/ideas-that-work.txt

Internalism from the Ethnographic Stance: From Self-Indulgence to Self-Expression and Corroborative Sense-Making (2025)

Argues that Bernard Williams’s internalism about reasons is the philosophical underpinning of his liberalism, and that it needs to be understood in relation to his later work on the normativity of genealogical explanation and the ethnographic stance, where we imaginatively inhabit a conceptual and motivational perspective without endorsing it.

Type: paper · Citation: The Philosophical Quarterly 75 (3): 1094–1120. 2025. doi:10.1093/pq/pqae051

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/internalism-from-the-ethnographic-stance-from-self-indulgence-to-self-expression-and-corroborative-sense-making/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUEIFT.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/internalism-from-the-ethnographic-stance-from-self-indulgence-to-self-expression-and-corroborative-sense-making.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/internalism-from-the-ethnographic-stance-from-self-indulgence-to-self-expression-and-corroborative-sense-making.txt

Topics: deliberation, ethics, ethnographic-stance, phenomenology-of-deliberation, genealogy, history, history-of-philosophy, internal-reasons, internalism, metaethics, motivation, subjectivism, sense-making, liberalism-of-fear, liberalism, practical-philosophy, theoretical-philosophy, williams, history of philosophy, practical philosophy, theoretical philosophy

Law as a Test of Conceptual Strength (forthcoming)

Reads Williams’s “What Has Philosophy to Learn from Tort Law?” as a radicalization of Austin’s insight that tort law is where the concepts of common sense are truly put on trial. Identifies seven features of tort litigation that subject notions like fault, intention, negligence, and voluntariness to extraordinary pressure. Explains, by contrasting tort law with criminal law, how differences in evidential standards, case profiles, and doctrines of strict liability display both the power and the weak points of our responsibility-tracking concepts.

Type: paper · Citation: In Bernard Williams on Law and Jurisprudence: From Agency and Responsibility to Methodology. Veronica Rodriguez-Blanco, Daniel Peixoto Murata and Julieta Rabanos (eds.). Oxford: Hart. In Press. https://philpapers.org/archive/QUELAA.pdf

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/law-as-a-test-of-conceptual-strength/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUELAA.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/law-as-a-test-of-conceptual-strength.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/law-as-a-test-of-conceptual-strength.txt

Topics: conceptual-strength, conceptual-engineering, conceptual-testing, fault, intention, negligence, legal-epistemology, legal-philosophy, evidence, history-of-philosophy, jurisprudence, law, legal-realism, practical-philosophy, responsibility, philosophy-of-law, theoretical-philosophy, tort, tort-law, williams, conceptual-change, practical philosophy

Left Wittgensteinianism (2021)

Focusing on the social and political conceptual practices that Wittgenstein neglected, the paper presents a novel, more dynamic interpretation of Wittgenstein’s model of conceptual change, on which conceptual change becomes intelligible not just as a brute, exogenous imposition on rational discourse, but as endogenous and reason-driven. This counters the socially conservative tendencies of existing interpretations and renders intelligible the possibility of radical critique within a Wittgensteinian framework.

Type: paper · Citation: European Journal of Philosophy 29 (4): 758–77. 2021. With Damian Cueni. doi:10.1111/ejop.12603

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/left-wittgensteinianism/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUELW.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/left-wittgensteinianism.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/left-wittgensteinianism.txt

Topics: conceptual-change, conceptual-engineering, conceptual-ethics, critique, history, history-of-philosophy, bernard-williams, historicist, language-games, political-philosophy, practical-philosophy, reason, normativity, pluralism, theoretical-philosophy, wittgenstein, history of philosophy, practical philosophy, theoretical philosophy

Making Past Thinkers Speak to Us Through Pragmatic Genealogies (2023)

Instead of treating Hobbes and Hume as answering the same questions we ask today, this article proposes that we start from the practical predicaments their political concepts addressed in their own time. Hume’s account of property and Hobbes’s account of sovereign power are reconstructed as historically local, yet structurally revealing, responses to predicaments—over conflict, security, and cooperation—that still structure our political life.

Type: paper · Citation: In Historiography and the Formation of Philosophical Canons. Sandra Lapointe and Erich Reck (eds.), 171–191. New York: Routledge. 2023. doi:10.4324/9781003184294-9

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/making-past-thinkers-speak-to-us-through-pragmatic-genealogies/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUEMPT.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/making-past-thinkers-speak-to-us-through-pragmatic-genealogies.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/making-past-thinkers-speak-to-us-through-pragmatic-genealogies.txt

Topics: canons, canon-formation, historiography, history, history-of-philosophy, hobbes, hume, early-modern-philosophy, 17th-century, 18th-century, political-concepts, property, sovereignty, political-philosophy, practical-philosophy, pragmatic-genealogy, methodology, philosophy-of-history, theoretical-philosophy, history of philosophy, practical philosophy, theoretical philosophy

Mechanistic Indicators of Understanding in Large Language Models (forthcoming)

Draws on detailed technical evidence from research on mechanistic interpretability (MI) to argue that while LLMs differ profoundly from human cognition, they do more than tally up word co-occurrences: they form internal structures that are fruitfully compared to different forms of human understanding, such as conceptual, factual, and principled understanding. We synthesize MI’s most relevant findings to date while embedding them within an integrative theoretical framework for thinking about understanding in LLMs. As the phenomenon of “parallel mechanisms” shows, however, the differences between LLMs and human cognition are as philosophically fruitful to consider as the similarities.

Type: paper · Citation: Philosophical Studies. With Pierre Beckmann. doi:10.48550/arXiv.2507.08017

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/mechanistic-indicators-of-understanding-in-large-language-models/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/BECMIO.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/mechanistic-indicators-of-understanding-in-large-language-models.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/mechanistic-indicators-of-understanding-in-large-language-models.txt

Topics: ai-safety, computational-cognition, cognition, emergent-behavior, explainable-ai, feature-geometry, interpretability, latent-space, machine-understanding, llm, mechanistic-interpretability, philosophy-of-ai, representation-learning, theoretical-philosophy, understanding, conceptual-change, theoretical philosophy

Moralism as a Dualism in Ethics and Politics (2024)

Argues that both moralism in ethics and political moralism originate from a problematic dualism that transforms the useful distinction between the moral and the non-moral into a rigid divide. As the historical comparison with ancient Greek thought shows, this obscures genuine conflicts of values and fails to adequately address complex political realities such as “dirty hands” situations.

Type: paper · Citation: Political Philosophy 1 (2): 432–462. 2024. doi:10.16995/pp.17532

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/moralism-as-a-dualism-in-ethics-and-politics/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUEMAA.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/moralism-as-a-dualism-in-ethics-and-politics.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/moralism-as-a-dualism-in-ethics-and-politics.txt

Topics: dirty-hands, ethics, ethical-theory, history-of-philosophy, moralism, moral-nonmoral-distinction, moral-prudence-dualism, value-conflict, moral-luck, agency, responsibility, politics, political-realism, practical-philosophy, theoretical-philosophy, will, williams, history of philosophy, practical philosophy

Needs of the Mind: How Aptic Normativity Can Guide Conceptual Adaptation (forthcoming)

The article offers an account of “needs of the mind” in terms of a distinctively aptic normativity--a normativity of fittingness. After reconstructing the history of different conceptions of needs and their gradual subjectivization, the article focuses on conceptual needs and argues that they register a cognitive privation that goes beyond a shortage of words, marking a mismatch between our conceptual repertoire and our situation that reorients conceptual engineering from detached amelioration to situated adaptation. This makes a needs-first approach uniquely suited to guiding conceptual adaptation in times of technological disruption.

Type: paper · Citation: Philosophical Studies. 2026. doi:10.1007/s11098-026-02511-3

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/needs-of-the-mind-how-aptic-normativity-can-guide-conceptual-adaptation/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUENOT.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/needs-of-the-mind-how-aptic-normativity-can-guide-conceptual-adaptation.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/needs-of-the-mind-how-aptic-normativity-can-guide-conceptual-adaptation.txt

Topics: aptic-normativity, conceptual-adaptation, needs, normativity, practical-philosophy, privacy, philosophy-of-language, theoretical-philosophy, conceptual-change, functions, practical philosophy, theoretical philosophy, history of philosophy

Nietzsche as a Critic of Genealogical Debunking: Making Room for Naturalism without Subversion (2019)

Argues that contrary to popular belief, Nietzsche’s genealogical method does not seek to subvert by revealing immanent and lowly naturalistic origins—quite the opposite: Nietzsche is a critic of genealogical debunking thus conceived, on the grounds that it threatens to make a universal acid of reflection in a world increasingly disenchanted by scientific advances. Instead, Nietzsche advocates an outlook which makes room for naturalistic understanding and redraws the contrast between vindicatory and subversive genealogies within the space of naturalistic origins.

Type: paper · Citation: The Monist 102 (3): 277–297. 2019. With Damian Cueni. doi:10.1093/monist/onz010

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/nietzsche-as-a-critic-of-genealogical-debunking-making-room-for-naturalism-without-subversion/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUENAA.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/nietzsche-as-a-critic-of-genealogical-debunking-making-room-for-naturalism-without-subversion.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/nietzsche-as-a-critic-of-genealogical-debunking-making-room-for-naturalism-without-subversion.txt

Topics: genealogical-debunking, genealogical-method, metaethics, history-of-philosophy, naturalism, continental-philosophy, 19th-century, value-theory, nietzsche, practical-philosophy, theoretical-philosophy, history of philosophy, practical philosophy, theoretical philosophy

Nietzsche’s Conceptual Ethics (2022)

While Nietzsche appears to engage in two seemingly contrary modes of concept evaluation—one looks to concepts’ effects, the other to what concepts express—this article offers an account of the expressive character of concepts which unifies these two modes and yields a powerful approach to practical reflection on which concepts to use.

Type: paper · Citation: Inquiry 66 (7): 1335–1364. Proceedings of the International Society of Nietzsche Studies. 2023. doi:10.1080/0020174X.2022.2164049

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/nietzsche-s-conceptual-ethics/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUENCE.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/nietzsche-s-conceptual-ethics.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/nietzsche-s-conceptual-ethics.txt

Topics: conceptual-ethics, conceptual-engineering, concept-evaluation, expressivism, genealogy, genealogical-method, naturalism, revaluation-of-values, neo-pragmatism, metaethics, pragmatism, cultural-critique, expressive, philosophy-of-language, 19th-century, continental-philosophy, history-of-philosophy, kant, nietzsche, practical-philosophy, theoretical-philosophy, values, history of philosophy, practical philosophy, theoretical philosophy

Nietzsche’s English Genealogy of Truthfulness (2021)

Based on various posthumous fragments, the article reconstructs Nietzsche’s little-known early genealogical account of how the value of truth and the cultivation of the virtue of truthfulness originated not from a pure love of truth, but from the practical necessity of social cooperation.

Type: paper · Citation: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 103 (2): 341–63. 2021. doi:10.1515/agph-2018-0048

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/nietzsche-s-english-genealogy-of-truthfulness/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUENEG.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/nietzsche-s-english-genealogy-of-truthfulness.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/nietzsche-s-english-genealogy-of-truthfulness.txt

Topics: basel-period, genealogy, genealogical-method, 19th-century, pragmatic-genealogy, history-of-philosophy, language, nietzsche, practical-philosophy, social-cooperation, value-of-truth, continental-philosophy, social-epistemology, theoretical-philosophy, truthfulness, history of philosophy, practical philosophy, theoretical philosophy

Nietzsche’s Pragmatic Genealogy of Justice (2016)

Examines Nietzsche’s view that the ideal of justice is a contingent political development emerging only when parties of roughly equal power need a system of exchange and requital to avoid mutually assured destruction, meaning the applicability of norms of justice is originally tied to distributions of power. This perspective reframes justice as a human-made solution to the recurring problem of social order. Understanding these origins vindicates justice as an indispensable invention for social life.

Type: paper · Citation: British Journal for the History of Philosophy 25 (4): 727–49. 2017. doi:10.1080/09608788.2016.1266462

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/nietzsche-s-pragmatic-genealogy-of-justice/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUENPG.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/nietzsche-s-pragmatic-genealogy-of-justice.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/nietzsche-s-pragmatic-genealogy-of-justice.txt

Topics: genealogy, genealogical-method, social-order, power, exchange, history-of-philosophy, political-philosophy, 19th-century, justice, nietzsche, practical-philosophy, pragmatism, history of philosophy, practical philosophy

Nietzsches affirmative Genealogien (2019)

Argues that alongside his well-known critical genealogies, Nietzsche also developed “affirmative genealogies” that are not historically situated. These genealogies investigate the “practical origins” of concepts like justice and truth, showing how they arise instrumentally from fundamental human needs. By presenting these concepts as naturalistically intelligible and practically indispensable, this approach offers an affirmative justification, which I connect to Nietzsche’s later idea of an “economic justification of morality.”

Type: paper · Citation: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 67 (3): 429–439. By invitation. 2019. doi:10.1515/dzph-2019-0034

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/nietzsches-affirmative-genealogien/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUENAG-2.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/nietzsches-affirmative-genealogien.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/nietzsches-affirmative-genealogien.txt

Topics: affirmative, affirmative-genealogy, genealogies, history, history-of-philosophy, justice, morality, nietzsche, practical-philosophy, theoretical-philosophy, truth, history of philosophy, practical philosophy, theoretical philosophy

On Ordered Pluralism (2020)

Beginning with the debate concerning “moral justice forgiveness” and “gifted” forgiveness, this paper critically examines Miranda Fricker’s method for ordering plural conceptions of a practice. It argues that the selection of a paradigm case, such as “moral justice forgiveness,” is not absolute, but depends on which functional aspect of the practice one wishes to explain.

Type: paper · Citation: Australasian Philosophical Review 3 (3): 305–11. 2019. doi:10.1080/24740500.2020.1859234

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/on-ordered-pluralism/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUEOOP.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/on-ordered-pluralism.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/on-ordered-pluralism.txt

Topics: forgiveness, fricker, conceptual-pluralism, conceptual-disagreement, conceptual-engineering, metaethics, methodology, paradigms, paradigm-based-explanation, pluralism, practical-philosophy, moral-psychology, practical philosophy

On the Fundamental Limitations of AI Moral Advisors (2025)

Argues that while the asystematicity of truth militates against the personalization of AI moral advisors, it also imposes limitations on generalist AI moral advisors.

Type: paper · Citation: Philosophy & Technology 38 (71): 1–4. 2025. Invited commentary. doi:10.1007/s13347-025-00896-3

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/on-the-fundamental-limitations-of-ai-moral-advisors/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUEOTF.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/on-the-fundamental-limitations-of-ai-moral-advisors.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/on-the-fundamental-limitations-of-ai-moral-advisors.txt

Topics: ai, ai-ethics, decision-support, deliberation, epistemic-limits, asystematicity, llm, moral-deliberation, moral-advisors, normativity, philosophy-of-technology, value-alignment, personalization, practical-philosophy, theoretical-philosophy, practical philosophy, theoretical philosophy

On the Self-Undermining Functionality Critique of Morality (2023)

Reconstructs Reginster’s account of Nietzsche’s critique of morality as a “self-undermining functionality critique” and raise three problems for it.

Type: paper · Citation: European Journal of Philosophy 31 (2): 501–508. By invitation. 2023. doi:10.1111/ejop.12874

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/on-the-self-undermining-functionality-critique-of-morality/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUEOTS-2.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/on-the-self-undermining-functionality-critique-of-morality.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/on-the-self-undermining-functionality-critique-of-morality.txt

Topics: functionality, function, genealogy, genealogical-debunking, pragmatic-genealogy, asceticism, history-of-philosophy, metaethics, moral-psychology, morality, morality-system, value-theory, value-of-values, 19th-century, nietzsche, practical-philosophy, reginster, history of philosophy, practical philosophy

Précis of The Practical Origins of Ideas (2024)

Summarizes my book for a symposium in *Analysis*.

Type: paper · Citation: Analysis 84 (2): 341–344. 2024. Symposium on my The Practical Origins of Ideas. By invitation. doi:10.1093/analys/anad011

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/pr-cis-of-the-practical-origins-of-ideas/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUEPOT-2.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/pr-cis-of-the-practical-origins-of-ideas.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/pr-cis-of-the-practical-origins-of-ideas.txt

Topics: analysis, conceptual-engineering, book-symposium, genealogy, pragmatic-genealogy, history-of-philosophy, history-of-ideas, practical-origins, state-of-nature, function, methodology, epistemology, naturalism, practical-philosophy, précis, theoretical-philosophy, history of philosophy, practical philosophy, theoretical philosophy

Reasons of Love and Conceptual Good-for-Nothings (forthcoming)

Appealing to the instrumentality of concepts raises the worry of yielding the "wrong kind of reasons." Drawing on Susan Wolf’s work on "reasons of love," I argue this worry is misplaced. I further explore Wolf’s notion of "valuable good-for-nothings" to demonstrate how non-instrumental values ultimately reinforce the importance of reasons of love in concept use.

Type: paper · Citation: In Themes from Susan Wolf. Michael Frauchiger and Markus Stepanians (eds.). Berlin: De Gruyter. In Press.

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/reasons-of-love-and-conceptual-good-for-nothings/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUEROL.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/reasons-of-love-and-conceptual-good-for-nothings.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/reasons-of-love-and-conceptual-good-for-nothings.txt

Topics: concepts, conceptual-ethics, conceptual-engineering, reasons-for-concepts, meaning-in-life, nonmoral-value, love, motivation, normativity, practical-philosophy, reasons-of-love, value-theory, wolf, practical philosophy

Revealing Social Functions through Pragmatic Genealogies (2020)

This paper argues that state-of-nature stories, read as dynamic models rather than history, can reveal how key normative practices meet collective needs of coordination, conflict-management, and non-domination. Drawing on Hume’s genealogy of justice, Williams’s genealogy of truthfulness, and related work, it shows how concepts like property, knowledge, and testimonial justice underpin social cooperation and political legitimacy. In doing so, it offers social and political philosophers a way to explain both the persistence of ideas and institutions and the grounds on which they can be criticized.

Type: paper · Citation: In Social Functions in Philosophy: Metaphysical, Normative, and Methodological Perspectives. Rebekka Hufendiek, Daniel James, and Raphael Van Riel (eds.), 200–218. London: Routledge. 2020. doi:10.4324/9780429435393

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/revealing-social-functions-through-pragmatic-genealogies/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUERSF.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/revealing-social-functions-through-pragmatic-genealogies.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/revealing-social-functions-through-pragmatic-genealogies.txt

Topics: coordination, genealogy, genealogical-method, history, history-of-philosophy, hume, nietzsche, methodology, methodological-pragmatism, non-domination, normative, practical-philosophy, pragmatic-genealogy, functionalism, political-philosophy, social-epistemology, social-ontology, political-theory, state-of-nature, modeling, function, normative-methodology, social-functions, theoretical-philosophy, history of philosophy, practical philosophy, theoretical philosophy

The Authority and Politics of Epiphanic Experience (forthcoming)

In response to Chappell’s work on epiphanies, the article first questions the normative authority of epiphanic experiences over more sober reflection, warning that their power can distort our values and lead to a kind of “transcendent ventriloquism” before challenging Chappell’s political solution of “conversational justice,” arguing that its rationalist constraints ultimately undermine the very experiential and emotional dimension that epiphanies were meant to champion.

Type: paper · Citation: Zeitschrift für Ethik und Moralphilosophie (ZEMO) – Journal for Ethics and Moral Philosophy. Forthcoming.

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/the-authority-and-politics-of-epiphanic-experience/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUETAA-2.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/the-authority-and-politics-of-epiphanic-experience.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/the-authority-and-politics-of-epiphanic-experience.txt

Topics: authority, epiphanies, experience, politics, practical-philosophy, conceptual-change, practical philosophy

The Double Nature of DNA: Reevaluating the Common Heritage Idea (2016)

Addresses the political and legal conflict over gene patenting by reevaluating the influential idea that the human genome is the “common heritage of mankind.” Argues that the human genome is best understood not as a form of shared property, but as a repository of information to which we have a fiduciary relationship, which creates duties of preservation and access. This “preservationist heritage idea” largely dissolves the conflict with the patenting of genes themselves, though it also reveals how recent court decisions still make room for the patenting of commercially relevant molecules deriving from human DNA.

Type: paper · Citation: The Journal of Political Philosophy 24 (1): 47–66. 2016. doi:10.1111/jopp.12063

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/the-double-nature-of-dna-reevaluating-the-common-heritage-idea/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUETDN.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/the-double-nature-of-dna-reevaluating-the-common-heritage-idea.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/the-double-nature-of-dna-reevaluating-the-common-heritage-idea.txt

Topics: common-heritage, dna, bioethics, biotechnology, commons, fiduciary-duty, genetics, genomic-data, intellectual-property, law, legal-philosophy, patent-ethics, patents, political-philosophy, practical-philosophy, practical philosophy

The Dworkin–Williams Debate: Liberty, Conceptual Integrity, and Tragic Conflict in Politics (2024)

By reconstructing the little-known Dworkin-Williams debate over whether political concepts like liberty and equality can and should be reconciled to avoid conflict, the article explores the nature of political values, the limits of philosophical intervention in politics, the challenge of pluralism, and the conditions for political legitimacy in the face of inevitable conflict and loss.

Type: paper · Citation: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 109 (1): 3–29. 2024. doi:10.1111/phpr.13002

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/the-dworkin-williams-debate-liberty-conceptual-integrity-and-tragic-conflict-in-politics/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUETDD.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/the-dworkin-williams-debate-liberty-conceptual-integrity-and-tragic-conflict-in-politics.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/the-dworkin-williams-debate-liberty-conceptual-integrity-and-tragic-conflict-in-politics.txt

Topics: conceptual-integrity, conceptual-engineering, conflict-of-values, equality, legitimacy, non-ideal-theory, political-realism, political-values, dworkin, history-of-philosophy, liberty, pluralism, practical-philosophy, tragic-conflict, theoretical-philosophy, williams, conceptual-change, history of philosophy, practical philosophy

The Essential Superficiality of the Voluntary and the Moralization of Psychology (2022)

Argues that the notion of the voluntary is an essentially superficial notion that does important work on the condition that we do not try to metaphysically deepen it, and that attempts to deepen it illustrate a problematic tendency to warp our conception of the mind under pressure from moral aspirations.

Type: paper · Citation: Philosophical Studies 179 (5): 1591–1620. 2022. doi:10.1007/s11098-021-01720-2

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/the-essential-superficiality-of-the-voluntary-and-the-moralization-of-psychology/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUETES.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/the-essential-superficiality-of-the-voluntary-and-the-moralization-of-psychology.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/the-essential-superficiality-of-the-voluntary-and-the-moralization-of-psychology.txt

Topics: history, history-of-philosophy, justice, moralization, moral-psychology, agency, freedom, responsibility, fairness, practical-philosophy, psychology, superficiality, theoretical-philosophy, philosophy-of-action, voluntariness, voluntary, history of philosophy, practical philosophy, theoretical philosophy

The Ethics of Conceptualization: Tailoring Thought and Language to Need (2025)

Philosophy strives to give us a firmer hold on our concepts. But what about their hold on us? Why place ourselves under the sway of a concept and grant it the authority to shape our thought and conduct? Another conceptualization would carry different implications. What makes one way of thinking better than another? This book develops a framework for concept appraisal. Its guiding idea is that to question the authority of concepts is to ask for reasons of a special kind: reasons for concept use, which tell us which concepts to adopt, adhere to, or abandon, thereby shoring up—or undercutting—the reasons for action and belief that guide our deliberations. Traditionally, reasons for concept use have been sought either in timeless rational foundations or in concepts’ inherent virtues, such as precision and consistency. Against this, the book advances two main claims: that we find reasons for concept use in the conceptual needs we discover when we critically distance ourselves from a concept by viewing it from the autoethnographic stance; and that sometimes, concepts that conflict, or exhibit other vices such as vagueness or superficiality, are just what we need. By considering not what concepts are absolutely best, but what concepts we now need, we can reconcile ourselves to the contingency of our concepts, determine the proper place of efforts to tidy up thought, and adjudicate between competing conceptions of things—even things as contested as liberty or free will. A needs-based approach separates helpful clarification from hobbling tidy-mindedness, and authoritative definition from conceptual gerrymandering.

Type: book · Citation: Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2025. doi:10.1093/9780198926283.001.0001

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/books/the-ethics-of-conceptualization/ · PDF: https://fdslive.oup.com/www.oup.com/academic/pdf/openaccess/9780198926252.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/the-ethics-of-conceptualization.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/the-ethics-of-conceptualization.txt

Topics: conceptual-ethics, conceptual-engineering, normativity, authority, theoretical-virtues, liberty-and-free-will

The Invented Inventor: Adapting Intellectual Property to Generative AI (manuscript)

As AI increasingly drives discovery, the concept of inventor faces severe strain. Recent judicial decisions, such as the Swiss Federal Administrative Court’s 2025 DABUS ruling, expose a deepening tension: courts demand intellectual creation by a natural person even as human contributions to AI-assisted discovery become increasingly nominal. This paper approaches the resulting tension from the standpoint of political philosophy rather than jurisprudence: the strain AI places on the concept of inventorship is too fundamental to be resolved by interpretative methods taking existing conceptual architectures for granted. Inspired by Hume’s genealogy of property, the paper reconstructs the historical “need matrices” that forged the concept of inventorship, tracing its evolution from Venetian guild economics through Romantic genius ideology to corporate R&D. This reveals the concept to be an overburdened bundle serving four social functions: incentivising innovation, disseminating knowledge, legitimating monopolies, and resolving priority disputes. It also clarifies the mismatch between the concept and the emerging realities of AI-driven discovery. To resolve this mismatch, we must disaggregate the concept of inventorship and develop specialised conceptual resources for each of these functions. If we invented the notion of inventor to perform certain functions, we can reinvent it to perform them better.

Type: paper · Citation: Under review

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/the-invented-inventor-adapting-patent-law-to-generative-ai/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUETII.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/the-invented-inventor-adapting-patent-law-to-generative-ai.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/the-invented-inventor-adapting-patent-law-to-generative-ai.txt

Topics: intellectual-property-rights, patents, inventor, genealogy, ai, conceptual-adaptation, conceptual-engineering, conceptual-ethics, property, practical philosophy

The Points of Concepts: Their Types, Tensions, and Connections (2019)

By distinguishing four senses in which concepts might be said to have a “point,” this paper resolves the tension between the ambition of point-based explanations to be informative and the claim—central to Dummett’s philosophy of language, but also to the literature on thick concepts—that mastering concepts already requires grasping their point.

Type: paper · Citation: Canadian Journal of Philosophy 49 (8): 1122–1145. 2019. doi:10.1080/00455091.2019.1584940

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/the-points-of-concepts-their-types-tensions-and-connections/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUETPO-4.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/the-points-of-concepts-their-types-tensions-and-connections.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/the-points-of-concepts-their-types-tensions-and-connections.txt

Topics: concepts, conceptual-ethics, conceptual-functions, conceptual-engineering, meaning, meta-philosophy, normativity, dummett, pragmatics, points, theoretical-philosophy, thick-concepts, theoretical philosophy

The Practical Origins of Ideas: Genealogy as Conceptual Reverse-Engineering (2021)

Why did such highly abstract ideas as truth, knowledge, or justice become so important to us? What was the point of coming to think in these terms? In The Practical Origins of Ideas, Matthieu Queloz presents a philosophical method designed to answer such questions: the method of pragmatic genealogy. Pragmatic genealogies are partly fictional, partly historical narratives exploring what might have driven us to develop certain ideas in order to discover what these do for us. The book uncovers an under-appreciated tradition of pragmatic genealogy which cuts across the analytic–continental divide, running from the state-of-nature stories of David Hume and the early genealogies of Friedrich Nietzsche to recent work in analytic philosophy by Edward Craig, Bernard Williams, and Miranda Fricker. However, these genealogies combine fictionalizing and historicizing in ways that even philosophers sympathetic to the use of state-of-nature fictions or real history have found puzzling. To make sense of why both fictionalizing and historicizing are called for, the book offers a systematic account of pragmatic genealogies as dynamic models serving to reverse-engineer the points of ideas in relation not only to near-universal human needs, but also to socio-historically situated needs. This allows the method to offer us explanation without reduction and to help us understand what led our ideas to shed the traces of their practical origins. Far from being normatively inert, moreover, pragmatic genealogy can affect the space of reasons, guiding attempts to improve our conceptual repertoire by helping us determine whether and when our ideas are worth having.

Type: book · Citation: Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2021. doi:10.1093/oso/9780198868705.001.0001

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/books/the-practical-origins-of-ideas/ · PDF: https://fdslive.oup.com/www.oup.com/academic/pdf/openaccess/9780198868705.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/the-practical-origins-of-ideas.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/the-practical-origins-of-ideas.txt

Topics: conceptual-engineering, genealogy, pragmatism, history, truth, knowledge

The Self-Effacing Functionality of Blame (2021)

Introduces the concept of “self-effacing functionality” to reconcile two opposing views on blame. While blame serves an important regulatory function, this very functionality requires that it be justified by non-instrumental moral reasons rather than by its functionality. This approach preserves the insights of instrumentalist accounts while vindicating the authority of our moral reasons for blame.

Type: paper · Citation: Philosophical Studies 178 (4): 1361–1379. 2021. doi:10.1007/s11098-020-01479-y

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/the-self-effacing-functionality-of-blame/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUETSF.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/the-self-effacing-functionality-of-blame.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/the-self-effacing-functionality-of-blame.txt

Topics: blame, accountability, reactive-attitudes, moral-psychology, ethics, functionality, normativity, moral-reasons, justification, practical-philosophy, responsibility, practical philosophy

The Shaken Realist: Bernard Williams, the War, and Philosophy as Cultural Critique (2023)

Offers a new reading of *Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy* by bringing out the wider cultural resonances of the book. Far from being simply a critique of academic tendencies, the book turns out to be about ethical issues that acquired particular urgency in the wake of WWII: the primacy of character over method, the obligation to follow orders, and the possibility of combining truth, truthfulness, and a meaningful life.

Type: paper · Citation: European Journal of Philosophy 31 (1): 226–247. 2023. With Nikhil Krishnan. doi:10.1111/ejop.12794

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/the-shaken-realist-bernard-williams-the-war-and-philosophy-as-cultural-critique/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/KRITSR-4.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/the-shaken-realist-bernard-williams-the-war-and-philosophy-as-cultural-critique.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/the-shaken-realist-bernard-williams-the-war-and-philosophy-as-cultural-critique.txt

Topics: cultural-critique, ethics, ethics-and-the-limits-of-philosophy, analytic-philosophy, postwar, obedience, authority, 20th-century, british-philosophy, philosophy-of-history, realism, existentialism, philosophy-of-culture, history-of-philosophy, nietzsche, practical-philosophy, truthfulness, war, williams, wwii, history of philosophy, practical philosophy

Theorizing the Normative Significance of Critical Histories for International Law (2022)

Addresses the question of whether the tainted history of international law should affect our present-day evaluation of it. It argues that critical histories derive their power in three primary ways: by subverting the historical claims that support a practice's authority, by failing to meet the normative expectations readers bring to the past, and by tracing the functional continuities that link past problems to the present. The framework explains how history can be normatively significant even when its direct influence on legal argument is unclear.

Type: paper · Citation: Journal of the History of International Law 24 (4): 561–587. 2022. With Damian Cueni. doi:10.1163/15718050-12340207

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/theorizing-the-normative-significance-of-critical-histories-for-international-law/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/CUETTN · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/theorizing-the-normative-significance-of-critical-histories-for-international-law.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/theorizing-the-normative-significance-of-critical-histories-for-international-law.txt

Topics: critical-history, critical-legal-studies, genealogy, historiography, international-relations, legitimacy, legal-philosophy, methodology, political-theory, postcolonial, authority, history, history-of-philosophy, international-law, normativity, practical-philosophy, theoretical-philosophy, practical philosophy

Tracing Concepts to Needs (2021)

Type: paper · Citation: The Philosopher 109 (3): 34—39. 2021. https://philpapers.org/archive/QUETCT.pdf

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/tracing-concepts-to-needs/ · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/tracing-concepts-to-needs.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/tracing-concepts-to-needs.txt

Two Orders of Things: Wittgenstein on Reasons and Causes (2017)

Situating Wittgenstein in the causalism/anti-causalism debate in the philosophy of mind, this paper argues that Wittgenstein’s arguments differ from those of his immediate successors; that he anticipates current anti-psychologistic trends; and that he is perhaps closer to Davidson than historical dialectics suggest.

Type: paper · Citation: Philosophy 92 (3): 369–97. 2017. doi:10.1017/S0031819117000055

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/two-orders-of-things-wittgenstein-on-reasons-and-causes/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/MATTOO-11.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/two-orders-of-things-wittgenstein-on-reasons-and-causes.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/two-orders-of-things-wittgenstein-on-reasons-and-causes.txt

Topics: causation, action-theory, action-explanation, analytic-philosophy, reasons-vs-causes, philosophy-of-language, 20th-century, history-of-philosophy, interpretation, language-games, philosophy-of-mind, rational-explanation, reasons-and-causes, theoretical-philosophy, hermeneutics, wittgenstein, history of philosophy, theoretical philosophy

Une normativité sans histoire ? Foucault, Engel et la normativité de la vérité (forthcoming)

By shielding the concept of truth from Foucauldian historicism, Pascal Engel ends up leaving the “virtues of truth” even more exposed to Foucault’s negative genealogy. This article proposes a more ambitious reading of the positive genealogy of these virtues, demonstrating that cultivating accuracy and sincerity as intrinsic values is a functional necessity rather than a historical accident. Vindicating these dispositions’ status as virtues provides a more robust defence against both Foucauldian cynicism and contemporary indifference to truth.

Type: paper · Citation: Forthcoming in Dialogue : Revue canadienne de philosophie

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/une-normativite-sans-histoire-foucault-engel-et-la-normativite-de-la-verite/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUEUNS.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/une-normativite-sans-histoire-foucault-engel-et-la-normativite-de-la-verite.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/une-normativite-sans-histoire-foucault-engel-et-la-normativite-de-la-verite.txt

Topics: truth, normativity, epistemic-norms, epistemic-virtues, belief, assertion, foucault, engel, williams, truthfulness, genealogy, practical philosophy, theoretical philosophy

Virtue Ethics and the Morality System (2024)

Shows that “morality systems” in Williams’s sense are not confined to Kantian ethics, but are characterized by the organizing ambition to shelter human agency from contingency. Argues that this ambition and the reconceptualization of human psychology it draws on can be traced back to Stoicism.

Type: paper · Citation: Topoi 43 (2): 413–424. 2024. With Marcel van Ackeren. doi:10.1007/s11245-023-09964-9

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/virtue-ethics-and-the-morality-system/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUEVEA.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/virtue-ethics-and-the-morality-system.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/virtue-ethics-and-the-morality-system.txt

Topics: history-of-philosophy, ethics, moral-luck, morality-system, moral-psychology, blame, ancient-philosophy, aristotle, normativity, practical-philosophy, political-philosophy, kantian-ethics, bernard-williams, stoic-ethics, virtue-theory, stoicism, theoretical-philosophy, van-ackeren, virtue-ethics, williams, history of philosophy, practical philosophy

Virtues, Rights, or Consequences? Mapping the Way for Conceptual Ethics (2024)

Maps out the ways in which moral and political reflection on which concepts to use might take its cue from virtue-ethical, deontological, and consequentialist traditions, flagging the main difficulties facing each approach.

Type: paper · Citation: Studia Philosophica: The Swiss Journal of Philosophy 83 (1): 9–22. 2024. doi:10.24894/StPh-en.2024.83002

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/virtues-rights-or-consequences-mapping-the-way-for-conceptual-ethics/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUEVRO.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/virtues-rights-or-consequences-mapping-the-way-for-conceptual-ethics.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/virtues-rights-or-consequences-mapping-the-way-for-conceptual-ethics.txt

Topics: conceptual-ethics, conceptual-engineering, conceptual-evaluation, metaethics, normative-ethics, conceptual-ethics-methodology, rights, duties, consequentialism, deontology, moral-psychology, political-philosophy, practical-philosophy, virtue-ethics, practical philosophy

Whence the Demand for Ethical Theory? (2021)

Offers a practical derivation of the need for public and judicial reasoning to take a more discursive and consistent form than private deliberation (a theme more fully explored in ch. 10 of my second book).

Type: paper · Citation: American Philosophical Quarterly 58 (2): 135–46. 2021. With Damian Cueni. doi:10.2307/48614001

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/whence-the-demand-for-ethical-theory/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/CUEWTD.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/whence-the-demand-for-ethical-theory.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/whence-the-demand-for-ethical-theory.txt

Topics: scalability, context-sensitivity, institutional-reasoning, discursive-justification, ethical-theory, genealogy, history-of-philosophy, metaethics, public-deliberation, legitimacy, practical-philosophy, public-reason, conceptual-change, history of philosophy, practical philosophy

Why We Care about Understanding: Competence through Predictive Compression (manuscript)

Offers a unifying account of understanding by reverse-engineering the function of both the state and the concept. Arges that we care about understanding because it grounds robust competence. Our concept of understanding evolved as an efficient proxy to track this elusive property, allowing us to identify who to trust and learn from. This highlights the sociality of understanding and how it shapes the character of human understanding. Understanding is the result of convergent pressures to predict the world using cognitive models that are not only accurate, but also compressed enough to be stored, demonstrated, and transmitted.

Type: paper · Citation: With Pierre Beckmann.

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/why-we-care-about-understanding-competence-through-predictive-compression/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUEWWC-2.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/why-we-care-about-understanding-competence-through-predictive-compression.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/why-we-care-about-understanding-competence-through-predictive-compression.txt

Topics: competence, cognitive-science, compression, epistemic-trust, epistemic-value, epistemology, model-based-explanation, predictive-processing, social-epistemology, predictive-compression, theoretical-philosophy, trust, understanding, conceptual-change, theoretical philosophy

Williams’s Debt to Wittgenstein (2025)

Argues that several aspects of Bernard Williams's style, methodology, and metaphilosophy can be interpreted as evolving dialectically from those of Wittgenstein.

Type: paper · Citation: In Bernard Williams on Philosophy and History. Marcel van Ackeren and Matthieu Queloz (eds.), 283–316. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2025. With Nikhil Krishnan.

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/williams-s-debt-to-wittgenstein/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUEWDT.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/williams-s-debt-to-wittgenstein.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/williams-s-debt-to-wittgenstein.txt

Topics: history, history-of-philosophy, analytic-philosophy, 20th-century, krishnan, british-philosophy, late-wittgenstein, philosophy-of-language, bernard-williams, metaphilosophy, theoretical-philosophy, williams, wittgenstein, history of philosophy, theoretical philosophy

Williams’s Pragmatic Genealogy and Self-Effacing Functionality (2018)

Reconstructs Williams’s genealogical investigation into the social function of the norms of truthfulness and brings out its social and political implications. Develops an understanding of this “pragmatic” form of the genealogical method which reveals it to be uniquely suited to dealing with practices exhibiting what I call “self-effacing functionality”—practices that are functional only insofar as and because we do not engage in them for their functionality.

Type: paper · Citation: Philosophers’ Imprint 18 (17): 1–20. 2018. doi:2027/spo.3521354.0018.017

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/williams-s-pragmatic-genealogy-and-self-effacing-functionality/ · PDF: https://philpapers.org/archive/QUEWPG.pdf · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/williams-s-pragmatic-genealogy-and-self-effacing-functionality.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/williams-s-pragmatic-genealogy-and-self-effacing-functionality.txt

Topics: bernard-williams, ethics, functionality, genealogy, genealogical-method, history-of-philosophy, naturalism, pragmatic-genealogy, practical-philosophy, self-effacing-practices, theoretical-philosophy, truthfulness, williams, history of philosophy, practical philosophy, theoretical philosophy

Wittgenstein on the Chain of Reasons (2016)

This article examines Wittgenstein’s conception of rationality through the central image of the “chain,” arguing that reasons are defined by their relational role in making actions intelligible rather than by intrinsic properties. The author contends that unlike chains of causes, chains of reasons are necessarily finite and anchored in communal reason-giving practices, meaning that justification inevitably ends at the boundaries of a specific language game. Ultimately, the paper suggests that this finite structure liberates agents from the misleading expectation of infinite justification while simultaneously limiting the reach of reasons to the specific practices that sustain them.

Type: paper · Citation: Wittgenstein-Studien 7 (1): 105–30. 2016. doi:10.1515/witt-2016-0108

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/wittgenstein-on-the-chain-of-reasons/ · PDF: https://philarchive.org/archive/QUEWOT · Markdown: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/wittgenstein-on-the-chain-of-reasons.md · Plain text: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/llm/papers/wittgenstein-on-the-chain-of-reasons.txt

Topics: action-theory, chain-of-reasons, analytic-philosophy, 20th-century, epistemology, history-of-philosophy, normativity, justification, language-games, philosophy-of-language, rationality, reasoning, reasons-and-causes, rule-following, philosophy-of-mind, theoretical-philosophy, wittgenstein, history of philosophy, theoretical philosophy

Conceptual Engineering (forthcoming)

Conceptual engineering reorients analytic philosophy from the descriptive analysis of existing concepts to the normative task of assessing and improving representational devices to better serve our theoretical and practical purposes. This entry traces the method’s intellectual genealogy from Rudolf Carnap’s explication and pragmatist reconstruction to the contemporary ‘functionalist’ and ‘ameliorative’ frameworks championed by Haslanger, Simion, and Kelp. It concludes by examining the discipline’s current ‘applied turn,’ surveying how recent scholarship from 2024 to 2026 has operationalized these methods to address concrete problems in social ontology, artificial intelligence, and medicine.

Type: paper · Citation: In Metzler Handbuch Analytische Philosophie. Hans-Johann Glock, Christoph Pfisterer and Stefan Roski (eds.). Stuttgart: Metzler.

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/conceptual-engineering/

Topics: conceptual-engineering, analytic-philosophy, explication, ameliorative-inquiry, normativity, social-ontology, theoretical philosophy

Kein Sicherheitsnetz der Wahrheit: Warum Normativität für LLMs schwierig bleibt (2025)

Type: paper · Citation: meta(φ) 13 (1): 51—89. 2025.

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/kein-sicherheitsnetz-der-wahrheit-warum-normativitaet-fuer-llms-schwierig-bleibt/

Naturalizing Minds: Genealogies of Thought in Hume and Nietzsche (forthcoming)

Claims that once we recognize the genealogical form taken by Hume's and Nietzsche's methodological pragmatism, we can see how both manage to avoid cruder views that identify the meaning, truth, or value of things with their effects.

Type: paper · Citation: In Hume and Nietzsche. Peter Kail and Paolo Stellino (eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/naturalizing-minds-genealogies-of-thought-in-hume-and-nietzsche/

Topics: genealogies, genealogy, genealogical-method, methodological-pragmatism, history-of-philosophy, hume, 18th-century, 19th-century, mind, nietzsche, pragmatic-genealogy, pragmatism, naturalism, early-modern-philosophy, theoretical-philosophy, history of philosophy, theoretical philosophy

Re-Engineering the Concept of Understanding for AI (manuscript)

Argues that the concept of understanding needs to be re-engineered for artificial cognition in a way that is empirically informed by mechanistic interpretability research and theoretically informed by a grasp of the functions of the concept.

Type: paper · Citation: With Pierre Beckmann.

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/re-engineering-the-concept-of-understanding-for-ai/

Topics: ai, conceptual-engineering, functions, mechanistic-interpretability, theoretical-philosophy, understanding, conceptual-change, theoretical philosophy

Systematizers: Reason, Machines, and the Rise of Systematic Thought in Early Modern Philosophy, 1517–1790 (manuscript)

Philosophers tend to treat the drive towards systematic thought as a timeless demand of rationality. But there is a counter-tradition warning this "will to a system" can function as a substitute for moral character, an aesthetic fetish, or a dangerous universalization machine. In response to these critics of systematization, this book offers a genealogical reconstruction of the ideal of cognitive systematicity between 1500 and 1800, asking not just *how* thought became systematic, but *why*.

Type: paper · Citation: Book manuscript.

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/systematizers-reason-machines-and-the-rise-of-systematic-thought-in-early-modern-philosophy-1517-1790/

Topics: systematicity, genealogy, early-modern-philosophy, conceptual-needs, rationalism, authority, history of philosophy

The Romantic Roots of Internalism (forthcoming)

Uncovers the links between reasons internalism and the Romantic tradition, and shows that internalism does not merely translate Romantic ideas into more technical language, but transforms them.

Type: paper · Citation: With Nikhil Krishnan.

Entry: https://www.matthieuqueloz.com/entries/the-romantic-roots-of-internalism/

Topics: history-of-philosophy, internalism, romanticism, conceptual-change, internal-reasons, krishnan, history of philosophy