A new approach to uderstanding the ever-changing information that bombards us. Arbesman is an expert in scientometrics, literally the science of science--how we know what we know. It turns out that knowledge in most fields evolves in systematic and predictable ways, and understanding that evolution can enormously powerful.

I provide an analysis of sentences of the form ‘To beFis to beG’ in terms of exact truth-maker semantics—an approach that identifies the meanings of sentences with the states of the world directly responsible for their truth-values. Roughly, I argue that these sentences hold just in case that which makes somethingFalso makes itG. This approach is hyperintensional and possesses desirable logical and modal features. In particular, these sentences are reflexive, transitive, and symmetric, and if they are true, then they are (...) necessarily true, and it is necessary that all and onlyFs areGs. I motivate my account over Correia and Skiles’ [11] prominent alternative and close by defining an irreflexive and asymmetric notion of analysis in terms of the symmetric and reflexive notion. (shrink)

Theoretical virtues play an important role in the acceptance and belief of theories in science and philosophy. Philosophers have well-developed views on which virtues ought and ought not to influence one’s acceptance and belief. But what do scientists think? This paper presents the results of a quantitative study with scientists from the natural and social sciences and compares their views to those held by philosophers. Some of the more surprising results are: all three groups have a preference order regarding theoretical (...) virtues, making theory choice a much more determinate matter than what has sometimes been suggested; the preference orders are very similar for the three groups; simplicity is viewed as an epistemic virtue particularly by social scientists ; and syntactic parsimony is preferred to ontological parsimony by all three groups. (shrink)

There is an ongoing debate about the ethics of research on lifespan extension: roughly, using medical technologies to extend biological human lives beyond the current “natural” limit of about 120 years. At the same time, there is an exploding interest in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to create “digital twins” of persons, for example by fine-tuning large language models on data specific to particular individuals. In this paper, we consider whether digital twins (or digital doppelgängers, as we refer to (...) them) could be a path toward a kind of life extension—or more precisely, a kind of person extension—that does not rely on biological continuity. We discuss relevant accounts of consciousness and personal identity and argue that digital doppelgängers may at least help us achieve some of the aims or ostensible goods of person-span extension, even if they may not count as literal extensions of our personhood on dominant philosophical accounts. We also consider relational accounts of personhood and discuss how digital doppelgängers may be able to extend personhood in a relational sense, or at least secure some of the goods associated with relevant relationships. We conclude by suggesting that a research program to investigate such issues is relevant to ongoing debates about the ethics of extending the human lifespan. (shrink)

Marxism has often been associated with two different legacies. The first rests on a strong exposition and critique of the logic of capitalism, grounded in a systematic analysis of the laws of motion of capitalism as a system. The second legacy refers to a strong historicist perspective grounded in a conception of social relations that emphasises the centrality of power and social conflict to the analysis of history. This article challenges the prominence of structural accounts of capitalism by showing how (...) the tension between these legacies has played out within Political Marxism, both orientations already having co-existed, somewhat uneasily, within Robert Brenner’s original contributions to the Transition Debate. Through this internal critique and re-formulation of Political Marxism, we wish to open a broader debate within Marxism on the need for a more agency-based account of capitalism, which builds more explicitly on the concept of social relations, to recover the historicist legacy of Marxism. (shrink)

I argue that Spinoza endorses "conceptual dependence monism," the thesis that all forms of metaphysical dependence (such as causation, inherence, and existential dependence) are conceptual in kind. In the course of explaining the view, I further argue that it is actually presupposed in the proof for his more famed substance monism. Conceptual dependence monism also illuminates several of Spinoza’s most striking metaphysical views, including the intensionality of causal contexts, parallelism, metaphysical perfection, and explanatory rationalism. I also argue that this priority (...) of the conceptual does not commit Spinoza to forms of idealism or mentalism. The question of how to understand different kinds of metaphysical dependence is quite controversial in Spinoza studies; I address major alternative readings in the notes. But there I also try to draw connections to the growing debate in contemporary discussions about metaphysical dependence, as this topic is a happy point of shared interest between Spinoza and contemporary metaphysicians alike. (shrink)

Philosophical work in the ethics of thought focuses heavily on the ethics of belief, with, in recent years, a particular emphasis on the ways in which we might wrong other people either through our beliefs about them, or our failure to believe what they tell us. Yet in our own lives we often want not merely to be believed, but rather to be understood by others. What does it take to understand another person? In this paper, I provide an account (...) of interpersonal understanding that speaks to this widespread human desire to be understood by others. On the view I defend, to be understood by another person is for them to see our motivating reasons as justifying reasons, whether or not they actually take our reasons to have that normative force. I then provide an explanation of why such understanding is valuable in our lives, which emphasizes how being understood by another person is a way of being more fully with them. (shrink)

Some philosophers argue that we should eschew cross-explanatory integrations of mechanistic, dynamicist, and psychological explanations in cognitive science, because, unlike integrations of mechanistic explanations, they do not deliver genuine, cognitive scientific explanations. Here I challenge this claim by comparing the theoretical virtues of both kinds of explanatory integrations. I first identify two theoretical virtues of integrations of mechanistic explanations—unification and greater qualitative parsimony—and argue that no cross-explanatory integration could have such virtues. However, I go on to argue that this is (...) only a problem for those who think that cognitive science aims to specify one fundamental structure responsible for cognition. For those who do not, cross-explanatory integration will have at least two theoretical virtues to a greater extent than integrations of mechanistic explanations: explanatory depth and applicability. I conclude that one’s views about explanatory integration in cognitive science cannot be segregated from one’s views about the explanatory task of cognitive science. (shrink)

I am concerned with epistemic closure—the phenomenon in which some knowledge requires other knowledge. In particular, I defend a version of the closure principle in terms of analyticity; if an agent S knows that p is true and that q is an analytic part of p, then S knows that q. After targeting the relevant notion of analyticity, I argue that this principle accommodates intuitive cases and possesses the theoretical resources to avoid the preface paradox.

Book synopsis: The philosophy of mind is one of the fastest-growing areas in philosophy, not least because of its connections with related areas of psychology, linguistics and computation. This Companion is an alphabetically arranged reference guide to the subject, firmly rooted in the philosophy of mind, but with a number of entries that survey adjacent fields of interest. The book is introduced by the editor's substantial Essay on the Philosophy of Mind which serves as an overview of the subject, and (...) is closely referenced to the entries in the Companion. Among the entries themselves are several ""self-profiles"" by leading philosophers in the field, including Chomsky, Davidson, Dennett, Dretske, Fodor, Lewis, Searle and Stalnaker, in which their own positions within the subject are articulated. In some more complex areas, more than one author has been invited to write on the same topic, giving a polarity of viewpoints within the book's overall coverage. (shrink)

Despite its importance in different occupational and everyday contexts, vigilance, typically defined as the capacity to sustain attention over time, is remarkably limited. What explains these limits? Two theories have been proposed. The Overload Theory states that being vigilant consumes limited information-processing resources; when depleted, task performance degrades. The Underload Theory states that motivation to perform vigilance tasks declines over time, thereby prompting attentional shifts and hindering performance. We highlight some conceptual and empirical problems for both theories and propose an (...) alternative: the Strategic Allocation Theory. For the Strategic Allocation Theory, performance on vigilance tasks optimizes as a function of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, including metacognitive factors such as the expected value of effort and the expected value of planning. Limited capacities must be deployed across task sets to maximize expected reward. The observed limits of vigilance reflect changes in the perceived value of, among other things, sustaining attention to a task rather than attending to something else. Drawing from recent computational theories of cognitive control and meta-reasoning, we argue that the Strategic Allocation Theory explains more phenomena related to vigilance behavior than other theories, including self-report data. Lastly, we outline some of the testable predictions the theory makes across several experimental paradigms. (shrink)

Adam Smith was a philosopher before he ever wrote about economics, yet until now there has never been a philosophical commentary on the Wealth of Nations . Samuel Fleischacker suggests that Smith's vastly influential treatise on economics can be better understood if placed in the light of his epistemology, philosophy of science, and moral theory. He lays out the relevance of these aspects of Smith's thought to specific themes in the Wealth of Nations , arguing, among other things, that (...) Smith regards social science as an extension of common sense rather than as a discipline to be approached mathematically, that he has moral as well as pragmatic reasons for approving of capitalism, and that he has an unusually strong belief in human equality that leads him to anticipate, if not quite endorse, the modern doctrine of distributive justice. Fleischacker also places Smith's views in relation to the work of his contemporaries, especially his teacher Francis Hutcheson and friend David Hume, and draws out consequences of Smith's thought for present-day political and philosophical debates. The Companion is divided into five general sections, which can be read independently of one another. It contains an index that points to commentary on specific passages in Wealth of Nations . Written in an approachable style befitting Smith's own clear yet finely honed rhetoric, it is intended for professional philosophers and political economists as well as those coming to Smith for the first time. (shrink)

Can a belief source confer justification when we lack antecedent justification for believing that it’s reliable? A negative answer quickly leads to skepticism. A positive answer, however, seems to commit one to allowing pernicious reasoning known as “epistemic bootstrapping.” Puzzles surrounding bootstrapping arise because we illicitly assume either that justification requires doxastic awareness of a source’s epistemic credentials or that there is no requirement that a subject be aware of these credentials. We can resolve the puzzle by splitting the horns (...) and requiring a non-conceptual awareness of, or direct acquaintance with, a source’s legitimacy. Requiring non-conceptual as opposed to doxastic awareness halts the regress and avoids the skeptical results. On the other hand, requiring non-conceptual awareness also guarantees that we are aware of evidence for a source’s reliability prior to using that source to form justified beliefs; we thereby avoid the problem of allowing epistemic bootstrapping to generate the illicit gains in justification. (shrink)

To be a liberal is, among other things, to grant basic liberties some degree of priority over other aspects of justice. But why do basic liberties warrant this special treatment? For Rawls, the answer has to do with the allegedly special connection between these freedoms and the ‘two moral powers’ of reasonableness and rationality. Basic freedoms are said to be preconditions for the development and exercise of these powers and are held to warrant priority over other justice-relevant values for that (...) reason. In the first half of the article I mount an internal critique of this Rawlsian line, arguing that it is flawed in two main ways. First, it overestimates the contribution of basic freedom to moral personality. Second, it underestimates the contribution of non-liberty resources to moral personality. In the second half of the article I repair these flaws. The result is a new, intriguingly radical version of justice as fairness, one with surprising—yet plausible—implications for economic and gender justice. (shrink)

Some philosophers argue that all concepts cannot have the same representational structure, because no single kind of representation has been successful in accounting for the phenomena related to the formation and application of concepts. Here, I argue against this “appeal to cognitive science” by demonstrating that different theories of the kind concept cohere with different interpretations of the argument. To circumvent the threat of relativism, I argue that theories of concept should be understood as working hypotheses, which are provisionally accepted (...) to facilitate the investigation and explanation of the mind/brain. From this perspective, theories of concept are to be evaluated as part of a comparative analysis of the different kinds of cognitive science they inspire. (shrink)

Are the real numbers rich enough to measure intelligence? We generalize a result of Alexander and Hutter about the so-called Legg-Hutter intelligence measures of reinforcement learning agents. Using the generalized result, we exhibit a paradox: in one particular version of the Legg-Hutter intelligence measure, certain agents all have intelligence 0, even though in a certain sense some of them outperform others. We show that this paradox disappears if we vary the Legg-Hutter intelligence measure to be hyperreal-valued rather than real-valued.

This paper concerns the grounds of nonground: what it is in virtue of that facts of the form [F1 does not ground F2] hold. While the literature on iterated ground is expansive, there is comparatively little written on the grounds of nonground. I argue that nonground is grounded in distinctness from ground. If F1 does not ground F2, then [F1 does not ground F2] is grounded in the fact that F1 is distinct from that which does ground F2. While this (...) proposal strikes me as natural, it faces puzzles involving conjunction, contingency, and cardinality. The bulk of this paper explores how the view might be precisified, and how these puzzles might be resolved. (shrink)

Purity is the principle that fundamental facts only have fundamental constituents. In recent years, it has played a significant role in metaphysical theorizing—but its logical foundations are underdeveloped. I argue that recent advances in higher-order logic reveal a subtle ambiguity regarding Purity’s interpretation; there are stronger and weaker versions of that principle. The arguments for Purity only support the weaker interpretation, but arguments that employ it only succeed if the stronger interpretation is true. As a result, nearly every metaphysician who (...) has appealed to Purity has made a mistake—in that the inferences that they make are not justified by the arguments that they provide. (shrink)

We propose that, for the purpose of studying theoretical properties of the knowledge of an agent with Artificial General Intelligence (that is, the knowledge of an AGI), a pragmatic way to define such an agent’s knowledge (restricted to the language of Epistemic Arithmetic, or EA) is as follows. We declare an AGI to know an EA-statement φ if and only if that AGI would include φ in the resulting enumeration if that AGI were commanded: “Enumerate all the EA-sentences which you (...) know.” This definition is non-circular because an AGI, being capable of practical English communication, is capable of understanding the everyday English word “know” independently of how any philosopher formally defines knowledge; we elaborate further on the non-circularity of this circular-looking definition. This elegantly solves the problem that different AGIs may have different internal knowledge definitions and yet we want to study knowledge of AGIs in general, without having to study different AGIs separately just because they have separate internal knowledge definitions. Finally, we suggest how this definition of AGI knowledge can be used as a bridge which could allow the AGI research community to import certain abstract results about mechanical knowing agents from mathematical logic. (shrink)

In Metaphysics Λ, Aristotle appeals to the prime mover: an unmoved mover that is the first moving cause of the world. Elsewhere, he calls the science concerned with the prime mover ‘theology’ (Meta. E.1, 1026a19). But what is the point of this science? On a common view, its purpose is to give an account of the prime mover itself, and especially to prove its existence. By contrast, I argue that Aristotle’s theology in Metaphysics Λ is ‘nature-bound’: it ultimately aims at (...) explaining facts about the perceptible world, in particular the motion of heavenly bodies and the cycle of generation of perishable substances. (shrink)

Conviction Narrative Theory (CNT) is a theory of choice underradical uncertainty– situations where outcomes cannot be enumerated and probabilities cannot be assigned. Whereas most theories of choice assume that people rely on (potentially biased) probabilistic judgments, such theories cannot account for adaptive decision-making when probabilities cannot be assigned. CNT proposes that people usenarratives– structured representations of causal, temporal, analogical, and valence relationships – rather than probabilities, as the currency of thought that unifies our sense-making and decision-making faculties. According to CNT, (...) narratives arise from the interplay between individual cognition and the social environment, with reasoners adopting a narrative that feels “right” to explain the available data; using that narrative to imagine plausible futures; and affectively evaluating those imagined futures to make a choice. Evidence from many areas of the cognitive, behavioral, and social sciences supports this basic model, including lab experiments, interview studies, and econometric analyses. We identify 12 propositions to explain how the mental representations (narratives) interact with four inter-related processes (explanation, simulation, affective evaluation, and communication), examining the theoretical and empirical basis for each. We conclude by discussing how CNT can provide a common vocabulary for researchers studying everyday choices across areas of the decision sciences. (shrink)

We show that if a countable structure M in a finite relational language is not cellular, then there is an age-preserving $N \supseteq M$ such that $2^{\aleph _0}$ many structures are bi-embeddable with N. The proof proceeds by a case division based on mutual algebraicity.

According to Phenomenal Conservatism (PC), if it seems to a subject S that P, S thereby has some degree of (defeasible) justification for believing P. But what is it for P to seem true? Answering this question is vital for assessing what role (if any) such states can play. Many have appeared to adopt a kind of non-reductionism that construes seemings as intentional states which cannot be reduced to more familiar mental states like beliefs or sensations. In this paper I (...) aim to show that reductive accounts need to be taken more seriously by illustrating the plausibility of identifying seemings and conscious inclinations to form a belief. I briefly close the paper by considering the implications such an analysis might have for views such as PC. (shrink)

In this article, I explore an important difference between circumstantial luck on the one side and resultant and constitutive luck on the other. In section 1, I argue that, in circumstantial luck, the object of luck and the object of moral judgment are different even though, in resultant and constitutive luck, they are the same. In section 2, I explain that this difference (1) has the potential to undermine the regress argument for moral luck; (2) makes viable the “selective moral (...) luck” argument strategy (affirming some species of moral luck but denying others); and (3) has implications for the heritability of luck. (shrink)

Machery and Weiskopf argue that the kind concept is a natural kind if and only if it plays an explanatory role in cognitive scientific explanations. In this paper, we argue against this explanationist approach to determining the natural kind-hood of concept. We first demonstrate that hybrid, pluralist, and eliminativist theories of concepts afford the kind concept different explanatory roles. Then, we argue that we cannot decide between hybrid, pluralist, and eliminativist theories of concepts, because each endorses a different, but equally (...) viable, specification of the explananda of cognitive science. It follows that an explanationist approach to determining the natural kind-hood of concept fails, because there is no consensus about whether or not concept should be afforded an explanatory role in our best cognitive scientific explanations. We conclude by considering what our critique of explanationism could imply for further discussions about the explanatory role of concepts in cognitive science. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is two-fold: to provide a philosophical justification for the counterintuitive attitude that Judaism seems to have towards proselytism; and to extend the case so as to create a general argument, applicable to all religions, against many forms of proselytism.

Though the notion of common-sense plays an important role in Kant’s aesthetic theory, it is not immediately clear what Kant means by this term. This essay works to clarify the role that common-sense plays in the logic of Kant’s argument. My interpretive hypothesis is that a careful examination of the way common-sense functions in Kant’s account of judgments of taste can help explain what this notion means. I argue that common-sense names the capacity to discern the relation between the cognitive (...) faculties by means of a feeling, and I conclude that this understanding of common-sense lays the groundwork for an account of the unity of judgments of taste. I conclude that attending to Kant’s notion of common-sense is especially important because it highlights the anthropological significance of Kant’s account of beauty. (shrink)

This is the text of The Lindley Lecture for 1994, given by Samuel Scheffler, an American philosopher.

In Nicholas Smyth’s recent article, “When Does Self-Interest Distort Moral Belief,” he argues that self-interest undermines justification for moral belief if it justifies itself. In so doing, he opposes the standard account, which says that, to the extent that a person’s moral belief is explained by her egoistic or parochial interests, that belief is less justified. However, Smyth’s attack on the standard account, and the principle that he proposes to replace it with, do not withstand critical scrutiny, and that is (...) what this article is intended to show. To that end, the article is divided into three sections. In the first, I explain the standard account and provide some background. In the second, I critically examine Smyth’s three arguments against the standard account. In the third, I explain and attack Smyth’s own principle. I conclude that Smyth’s principle should not be accepted, and the standard account should not be rejected, at least on the basis of Smyth’s arguments: self-interest undermines justification in general, as per the standard account, not only when it justifies itself. (shrink)

Some research suggests that moral behavior can be strongly influenced by trivial features of the environment of which we are completely unaware. Philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists have argued that these findings undermine our commonsense notions of agency and responsibility, both of which emphasize the role of practical reasoning and conscious deliberation in action. We present the results of four vignette-based studies (N = 1,437) designed to investigate how people think about the metaphysical and moral implications of scientific findings that reveal (...) our susceptibility to automaticity and situational influences. When presented with lightly fictionalized narratives about these findings, participants exhibit no tendency toward changing judgments of freedom and responsibility compared to control groups. This suggests that people seem unwilling to adopt skeptical attitudes about agency on the basis of these scientific findings. (shrink)

Representationalists and anti-representationalists disagree about whether a naturalisation of mental content is possible and, hence, whether positing mental representations in cognitive science is justified. Here, I develop a novel way to think about mental representations based on a philosophical description of (cognitive) science inspired by cognitive instrumentalism. On this view, our acceptance of theories positing mental representations and our beliefs in (something like) mental representations do not depend on the naturalisation of content. Thus, I conclude that if we endorse cognitive (...) instrumentalism about mental representations, then we can finally leave the dispute between representationalism and anti-representationalism behind. (shrink)

There is an ongoing debate about the ethics of research on lifespan extension: roughly, using medical technologies to extend biological human lives beyond the current “natural” limit of about 120 years. At the same time, there is an exploding interest in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to create “digital twins” of persons, for example by fine-tuning large language models on data specific to particular individuals. In this paper, we consider whether digital twins (or digital doppelgängers, as we refer to (...) them) could be a path toward a kind of life extension—or more precisely, a kind of person extension—that does not rely on biological continuity. We discuss relevant accounts of consciousness and personal identity and argue that digital doppelgängers may at least help us achieve some of the aims or ostensible goods of person-span extension, even if they may not count as literal extensions of our personhood on dominant philosophical accounts. We also consider relational accounts of personhood and discuss how digital doppelgängers may be able to extend personhood in a relational sense, or at least secure some of the goods associated with relevant relationships. We conclude by suggesting that a research program to investigate such issues is relevant to ongoing debates about the ethics of extending the human lifespan. (shrink)

In the recent literatures in which moral understanding has played a starring role, it is assumed that moral understanding is a species of explanatory understanding. That is, it is assumed that instances of moral understanding are of the form ‘S understands why p,’ where p is some explicitly moral proposition, paradigmatically about an action being morally right or wrong. This paper highlights some shortcomings of this explanatory picture of moral understanding and articulates a different, complementary account on which the object (...) of moral understanding is the relation of normative support between a proposition and an action. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article is a response to contributions by Tina Rulli and Jay Wallace to a symposium on my book Why Worry about Future Generations? I respond to questions Rulli raises about my ‘Value Dependence Thesis' and about the status of ‘meliorative projects’. I respond to questions Wallace raises about the nature of humanity as an object of love and attachment. I also address points he makes about the relation between reasons of beneficence and the attachment-independent reasons provided by the (...) value of humanity. (shrink)

In this article, I confront Jessica Flanigan’s recent attempt to show not merely that women have a right to commit prenatal injury, but also that women who act on this right are praiseworthy and should not be criticized for this injury. I show that Flanigan’s arguments do not work, and I establish presumptive grounds against any such right—namely, prenatal injury, by definition, involves intentional or negligent harm and, as such, may be subsumed under a wider class of actions that are (...) presumptively wrong. (shrink)

According to Kantian moral religion, because there is a duty to promote the highest good, we are warranted in believing in God and immortality. However, this article shows that the duty to promote the highest good is incoherent, and that popular conceptualizations of the highest good cannot avoid this incoherence. After arguing, additionally, against attempts to ground Kantian moral religion on the highest good in some role other than the object of duty, it is shown that Kant seems to have (...) been aware of the original problem, suggesting an explanation for why he abandoned the highest good around 1800. (shrink)

BackgroundThe health sector aims to improve health outcomes and access to healthcare. At the same time, the sector relies on unsustainable environmental practices that are increasingly recognised to be catastrophic threats to human health and health inequities. As such, a moral imperative exists for the sector to address these practices. While strides are currently underway to mitigate the environmental impacts of healthcare, less is known about how health researchers are addressing these issues, if at all.MethodsThis paper uses an interview methodology (...) to explore the attitudes of UK health researchers using data-intensive methodologies about the adverse environmental impacts of their practices, and how they view the importance of these considerations within wider health goals.ResultsInterviews with 26 researchers showed that participants wanted to address the environmental and related health harms associated with their research and they reflected on how they could do so in alignment with their own research goals. However, when tensions emerged, their own research was prioritised. This was related to their own desires as researchers and driven by the broader socio-political context of their research endeavours.ConclusionTo help mitigate the environmental and health harms associated with data-intensive health research, the socio-political context of research culture must be addressed. (shrink)

In collective action problems, large numbers of contributions together produce a good outcome, but any one contribution often makes no difference. Many philosophers think that act consequentialism implies that individuals should not contribute in these cases, given that their contributions cannot be expected to affect the outcome. Nearly everyone has assumed that the relevant expected effects of an action are those effects that are counterfactually dependent on what a given agent does. This assumption is at the heart of causal decision (...) theory. In contrast, evidential decision theory evaluates actions on the basis of whatever can be expected to happen, given that the agent performs some action, where this includes events that are simply correlated with the action. I show that causal and evidentialist versions of act consequentialism can diverge in collective action problems. Evidential decision theory can require us to do our part even when causal decision theory does not. (shrink)

Matthew Leisinger (2020) argues that previous interpretations of John Locke’s account of akrasia (or weakness of will) are mistaken and offers a new interpretation in their place. In this essay, we aim to recapitulate part of this debate, defend a previously articulated interpretation by responding to Leisinger’s criticisms of it, and explain why Leisinger’s own interpretation faces textual and philosophical problems that are serious enough to disqualify it as an accurate reconstruction of Locke’s views. In so doing, we aim to (...) shed further light on Locke’s views on the various ways in which humans are prone to err in their pursuit of happiness. (shrink)

Super-Humeans argue that the most parsimonious ontology of the natural world compatible with our best physical theories consists exclusively of particles and the distance relations between them. This paper argues by contrast that Super-Humean reduction goes insufficiently far, by showing there to be a more parsimonious ontology compatible with physics: Ultimate-Humeanism. This novel view posits an ontology consisting solely of the particles and distance relations required for the existence of a single brain. Super-Humeans impose conditions on what counts as an (...) ontology of the natural world to avoid their view slipping into this kind of ontology, but these conditions are arbitrarily imposed and once this is exposed, Super-Humeans face a dilemma. Either they can embrace Ultimate-Humeanism as the minimal ontology of the natural world compatible with physics, or (more likely) they can rethink the methodology that got them there. Overall, this paper argues that Super-Humeanism currently lacks principled motivation, outlines a framework for naturalistic ontological reductions, and exposes the consequences of unchecked adherence to a simplicity-driven methodology. (shrink)