# Zachary Goodsell

> Zachary William Lee Goodsell is assistant professor of philosophy (Presidential Young Professor) at the National University of Singapore. He works on logic, decision theory, epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, mathematics, language, and artificial intelligence. He was Bersoff Faculty Fellow at New York University in 2023–24 and received his PhD from the University of Southern California in 2023.

Contact: zacharyw.goodsell@gmail.com

## Main pages

- [Homepage](https://www.zacharygoodsell.com/): bio, publications with summaries, work in progress, projects, and talks
- [CV](https://www.zacharygoodsell.com/CV.pdf): full curriculum vitae (PDF)
- [PhilPeople profile](https://philpeople.org/profiles/zachary-goodsell)
- [Google Scholar](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=YEXcLRcAAAAJ&hl=en)

## Projects and events

- [AI Philosophy Competition](https://www.zacharygoodsell.com/ai-philosophy-competition.html): a competition for primarily AI-generated philosophy essays, judged by a committee of philosophers, to gauge AI's philosophical capabilities. Submission deadline October 31, 2026. See also the [detailed rules](https://www.zacharygoodsell.com/ai-philosophy-competition-rules.html) and [FAQ](https://www.zacharygoodsell.com/ai-philosophy-competition-faq.html).
- [Logical Maps](https://www.zacharygoodsell.com/logical-maps/): databases of connections between principles on a topic, with search, attribution, and visualisation. First instantiated for [decision theory with unbounded utility](https://www.zacharygoodsell.com/logical-maps/unbounded-utility/).
- [Problems for Bayesianism Workshop](https://www.zacharygoodsell.com/bayesianism-workshop.html): workshop at the National University of Singapore, 6–8 August 2025.

## Publications

- "Unknowable Truths" (with Juhani Yli-Vakkuri and John Hawthorne). Journal of Philosophy 123 (2): 77–101, 2026. Reviews the Church-Fitch argument against verificationism, doubts its effectiveness, and refutes verificationism with a new argument.
- "Symmetries of Value." Noûs 60: 16–37, 2026. Proposes that the ranking of prospects is invariant under positive affine transformations of utility and reversed under negative ones.
- "A Categorical Theory of Truth" (with Juhani Yli-Vakkuri). Language, Truth, and Reality, pp. 49–58, 2025. A theory of truth entailing that the Tarskian definition of truth is correct.
- "Symmetry, Invariance, and Imprecise Probability" (with Jake Nebel). Mind 134 (535): 758–773, 2025. Evaluates alleged consequences of the paradoxes of measure for the philosophy of probability.
- "Morality Does Not Encroach" (with John Hawthorne). Knowledge and Rationality: Essays in Honor of Stewart Cohen, 2025. Argues moral encroachment is in tension with important ideas in epistemology.
- "Arithmetic is Necessary." Journal of Philosophical Logic 53: 1145–1159, 2024. Establishes the noncontingency of arithmetical sentences from weaker assumptions than "Arithmetic is Determinate".
- "Decision Theory Unbound." Noûs 58: 669–695, 2024. A general axiomatic framework for decision theory with unbounded value.
- "Tossing Morgenbesser's Coin." Analysis 82 (2): 214–221, 2022. Argues against inferring counterfactual independence from causal independence.
- "Arithmetic is Determinate." Journal of Philosophical Logic 51: 127–150, 2021. Arithmetical truths are determinately true in a minimal plural modal logic for determinacy.
- "A St Petersburg Paradox for Risky Welfare Aggregation." Analysis 81 (3): 420–426, 2021. Shows the principle of Anteriority is inconsistent with plausible principles of axiology and decision theory.
- "What is an Extended Simple Region?" (with Michael Duncan and Kristie Miller). Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 101 (3): 649–659, 2020.

## Work in progress and other writing

- "An Intuitionistic Vindication of Classical Probabilism"
- "Unbounded Utility and Background Risk"
- "Mathematical Contingency" (with Neil Barton)
- "A Rational Society Has No Knowledge Norm of Assertion"
- "Possibility in Intuitionistic Higher-Order Logic"
- "Logical Foundations" (with Juhani Yli-Vakkuri)
- "LF: a Foundational Higher-Order Logic" (with Juhani Yli-Vakkuri), 2024
- "Unbounded Utility," PhD dissertation, University of Southern California, 2023