This article examines the fortunes of American government in light work James M. Buchanan, Virginia school political economist whose thinking on constitutional revolution played a formative, if largely unrecognized, role shaping tax revolt. By looking backwards, to an earlier wave and spending limits enacted South during Redemption era, forwards, increasingly regressive nature local revenue gen...

In this paper I develop a theory of reasons that has strong similarities to Peter Klein’s infinitism. The view I develop, Framework Reasons, upholds Klein’s principles of avoiding arbitrariness (PAA) and avoiding circularity (PAC) without requiring an infinite regress of reasons. A view of reasons that holds that the ‘reason for’ relation is constrained by PAA and PAC can avoid an infinite regr...

Some philosophers have claimed that it is meaningless or paradoxical to consider the probability of a probability. Others have however argued that second-order probabilities do not pose any particular problem. We side with the latter group. On condition that the relevant distinctions are taken into account, second-order probabilities can be shown to be perfectly consistent. May the same be said...

This paper critically evaluates the regress argument for infinitism. The dialectic is essentially this. Peter Klein argues that only an infinitist can, without being dogmatic, enhance the credibility of a questioned non-evident proposition. In response, I demonstrate that a foundationalist can do this equally well. Furthermore, I explain how foundationalism can provide for infinite chains of ju...

Scientific method may be viewed either as an argument justifying a conclusion or as a procedure for finding the right answer to some question. Both conceptions occasion the problem of empirical regresses. According to the former approach, it is hard to say what the point of a regress is. According to the latter, we can solve for the strongest sense of singlemethod performance that could be cove...