Deference, respect and intensionality

This paper is about the standard Reflection Principle (van Fraassen, 1984) and the Group Reflection Principle (Elga, 2007; Bovens & Rabinowicz, 2011; Titelbaum, 2012; Hedden, 2015). I argue that these principles are incomplete as they stand. The key point is that deference is an intensional relation, and so whether you are rationally required to defer to a person at a time can depend on how that person and that time are designated. In this paper I suggest a way of completing the Reflection Principle and Group Reflection Principle, and I argue that so completed these principles are plausible. In particular, they do not fall foul of the Sleeping Beauty case (Elga, 2000), the Cable Guy Paradox (Hajek, 2005) , Arntzenius' prisoner cases (Arntzenius, 2003), or the Puzzle of the Hats (Bovens & Rabinowicz, 2011).