During the early nineteenth century the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, significantly increased the number of individuals it employed. One of the new roles created was the position of First Assistant, who oversaw the management of astronomical labor at the observatory. This article examines the contribution of Robert Main, who was the first person employed in this role. It shows that, through Robert Main’s duties and tasks, the observatory appears as a hybrid site embodying aspects of the other institutions that formed part (...) of its operational network. Moreover, it demonstrates that the transformation of the observatory during the nineteenth century was driven by his rigorous maintenance of discipline in relation to the daily operations of the site. (shrink)

In 1839 the working hours of the computers employed on the lunar and planetary reductions of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich were reduced from eleven hours to eight hours. Previous historians have explained this decrease by reference to the generally benevolent nature of the manager of the reductions, George Biddell Airy. By contrast, this article uses the letters and notes exchanged between Airy and the computers to demonstrate that the change in the working hours originated from the computers as a reaction (...) to their poor working conditions. Through the exploration of these archival materials, the article shifts the focus of the analysis to the working experience of the computers, rather than to the administrative history of the project that inevitably tends to highlight Airy's actions. By doing so, the article shows how the computers were treated as a disposable low-skilled workforce, as opposed to aspiring astronomers with considerable mathematical talent. Through this reframing, the article takes a step towards a working history of the observatory. (shrink)

ArgumentThe Greenwich Prime Meridian is one of the iconic features of the Royal Museums Greenwich. Visitors to the Museum even queue up to pose with one leg on either side of the Line. Yet, the Airy Transit Circle, the instrument that defined the meridian, is almost always excluded from these photographs. This paper examines how the instrument has become hidden in plain sight within the stories of Greenwich Time and Greenwich Meridian, as well as within the public imagination, by providing (...) an analysis of the instrument’s transformation from a working astronomical instrument to a museum object. The paper highlights the gradual decoupling of the instrument from narratives of Time and Longitude, which resulted in the Line’s popularity overshadowing the instrument that defined it. By doing so, the paper aims at showing the symbiotic relationship between the materiality of the instrument and the meridian line that it defined. Approaching the instrument through the lenses of object biographies, the paper raises the question of whether the life of the instrument came to an end once operations with it were terminated. The analysis of the Transit Circle’s life reveals that it reached its end multiple times, which shifts the emphasis away from a single and ultimate end of scientific objects to a process of gradual downfall, during which they can “end” several times. In addition, through the object biography approach, the Transit Circle no longer appears as a dead object reaching an afterlife within a museum setting. Instead, the approach demonstrates that, though the instrument can still be restored to an operational order, doubts about its accuracy, and its relevancy to today’s astronomical methods, have led the instrument to be considered obsolete, transforming it into a museum object on display. (shrink)

It is a cliché of self-help advice that there are no problems, only opportunities. The rationale and actions of the BSHS in creating its Global Digital History of Science Festival may be a rare genuine confirmation of this mantra. The global COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 meant that the society's usual annual conference – like everyone else's – had to be cancelled. Once the society decided to go digital, we had a hundred days to organize and deliver our first online festival. (...) In the hope that this will help, inspire and warn colleagues around the world who are also trying to move online, we here detail the considerations, conversations and thinking behind the organizing team's decisions. (shrink)

This book develops an Aristotelian account of the virtue of practical intelligence or "phronesis"--an excellence of deliberating and making choices--which ...

Salomon Maimon, philosophischer Autodidakt und wichtiger zeitgenössischer Kritiker Kants, schreibt in einem Kommentar, dass er angesichts des Spinozismus 'vor dem Nichts zurück schaudert'. An anderer Stelle heisst es, jene Philosophie sei 'das akosmische System'. Die schwerwiegende inhärente Problematik dieser Äusserungen wird in dem vorliegenden Band ausführlich diskutiert. Es wird der Frage nachgegangen, was es mit Maimons komplexer Beziehung zur Philosophie Spinozas auf sich hat. Dabei wird gezeigt, dass es dort zu erheblichen Kollisionen verschiedenartiger Vorstellungen vom Intellekt kommt, vom menschlichen wie (...) göttlichen. Letztlich geht es in diesem jahrhunderteübergreifenden Disput um nicht weniger als um eine tiefgreifende Bestimmung des Verhältnisses von Welt, Gott und menschlichem Denken.Indem verschiedene Zweige der Philosophie Maimons in Bezug zueinander gesetzt werden und damit ein facettenreiches Gesamtbild ergeben, wird der Versuch eines neuartigen Zugangs zu seiner Philosophie insgesamt unternommen. (shrink)

In the international bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, the renowned psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of (...) cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems shape our judgments and decisions. -/- Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Winner of the National Academy of Sciences Best Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and selected by The New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of 2011, Thinking, Fast and Slow is destined to be a classic. (shrink)

Numerous jurisdictions have recently raised the age of retirement or plan to do so. Pressure to extend people's working lives is due to population aging, which makes it harder to fund retirement through existing methods. Raising the retirement age can improve the ‘dependency ratio’ by increasing the fraction of the population that works (and pays taxes) relative to the fraction retired. This article gives sustained attention to connecting the case for retirement with one view about wellbeing, according to which old (...) age is subject to distinctive goods. The importance of being able to access these goods in old age favours an eventual exit from labour market participation that retirement provisions enable. This view is stronger than one that treats retirement as merely a safety net to enable people to stop work only when advanced aging makes it unreasonably burdensome. At the same time, the view likely does not justify status quo retirement ages, meaning that some increase to the retirement age might be defensible. The article also seeks to illuminate ways in which different aspects of population aging – in particular the distinction between dependency ratios and inequalities in longevity – bear differently on the wider debate about justice and retirement. (shrink)

There’s the question of what there is, and then there’s the question of what ultimately exists. Many contend that, once we have this distinction clearly in mind, we can see that there is no sensible debate to be had about whether there are such things as properties or tables or numbers, and that the only ontological question worth debating is whether such things are ultimate (in one or another sense). I argue that this is a mistake. Taking debates about ordinary (...) objects as a case study, I show that the arguments that animate these debates bear directly on the question of which objects there are and cannot plausibly be recast as arguments about what’s ultimate. I then address the objection that, because they are easy answerable, questions about what there is cannot be a proper subject of ontological debate. (shrink)

It is common to hear talk of the aim of belief and to find philosophers appealing to that aim for numerous explanatory purposes. What belief 's aim explains depends, of course, on what that aim is. Many hold that it is somehow related to truth, but there are various ways in which one might specify belief 's aim using the notion of truth. In this article, by considering whether they can account for belief 's standard of correctness and the epistemic (...) norms governing belief, I argue against certain prominent specifications of belief 's aim given in terms of truth, and advance a neglected alternative. (shrink)

This two-part volume collects the complete fragments and most important testimonies for the leading presocratic philosophers. The Greek and Latin texts are translated on facing pages and accompanied by a brief commentary for each philosopher.

In each of these areas, he reviews the contributions of earlier care theorists and then extends their arguments to provide a more complete description of the ...

Physicalism is the thesis that everything is physical, or as contemporary philosophers sometimes put it, that everything supervenes on, or is necessitated by, the physical. The thesis is usually intended as a metaphysical thesis, parallel to the thesis attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Thales, that everything is water, or the idealism of the 18th Century philosopher Berkeley, that everything is mental. The general idea is that the nature of the actual world (i.e. the universe and everything in it) conforms (...) to a certain condition, the condition of being physical. Of course, physicalists don't deny that the world might contain many items that at first glance don't seem physical — items of a biological, or psychological, or moral, or social nature. But they insist nevertheless that at the end of the day such items are either physical or supervene on the physical. (shrink)

The potential to collect brain data more directly, with higher resolution, and in greater amounts has heightened worries about mental and brain privacy. In order to manage the risks to individuals posed by these privacy challenges, some have suggested codifying new privacy rights, including a right to “mental privacy.” In this paper, we consider these arguments and conclude that while neurotechnologies do raise significant privacy concerns, such concerns are—at least for now—no different from those raised by other well-understood data collection (...) technologies, such as gene sequencing tools and online surveillance. To better understand the privacy stakes of brain data, we suggest the use of a conceptual framework from information ethics, Helen Nissenbaum’s “contextual integrity” theory. To illustrate the importance of context, we examine neurotechnologies and the information flows they produce in three familiar contexts—healthcare and medical research, criminal justice, and consumer marketing. We argue that by emphasizing what is distinct about brain privacy issues, rather than what they share with other data privacy concerns, risks weakening broader efforts to enact more robust privacy law and policy. (shrink)

Many people believe that philosophy makes no progress. Members of the general public often find it amazing that philosophers exist in universities at all, at least in research positions. Academics who are not philosophers often think of philosophy either as a scholarly or interpretative enterprise, or else as a sort of pre-scientific speculation. And many well-known philosophers argue that there is little genuine progress in philosophy. Daniel Stoljar argues that this is all a big mistake. When you think through (...) exactly what philosophical problems are, and what it takes to solve them, the pattern of success and failure in philosophy is similar to that in other fields. In philosophy, as elsewhere, there is a series of overlapping topics that determine what the subject is about. In philosophy, as elsewhere, different people in different historical epochs and different cultures ask different big questions about these topics. And in philosophy, as elsewhere, big questions asked in the past have often been solved: Stoljar provides examples. Philosophical Progress presents a strikingly optimistic picture of philosophy - not a radical optimism that says that there is some key that unlocks all philosophical problems, and not the kind of pessimism that dominates both professional and non-professional thinking about philosophy, but a reasonable optimism that views philosophy as akin to other fields. (shrink)

The paper aims to offer an account of the cognitive capacities involved in judgements about thought experiments, without appealing to the notions of analyticity or intuition. I suggest that we employ a competence in the application of the relevant concepts. In order to address the worry that this suggestion is not explanatory, I look at some theories of concepts discussed in psychology, and I use them to illustrate how such competence might be realized. This requires, crucially, distinguishing between concepts and (...) ways of applying concepts, or conceptions. I end by considering a possible objection and comparing my account with a similar one defended by David Papineau. (shrink)

Syntax and semantics in Łukasiewicz infinite-valued sentential logic Ł are harmonized by revising the Bolzano-Tarski paradigm of “semantic consequence,” according to which, θ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\theta $$\end{document} follows from Θ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\Theta $$\end{document} iff every valuation v that satisfies all formulas in Θ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\Theta $$\end{document} also satisfies θ.\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\theta.$$\end{document} For θ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} (...) \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\theta $$\end{document} to be a consequence of Θ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\Theta $$\end{document}, we also require that any infinitesimal perturbation of v that preserves the truth of all formulas of Θ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\Theta $$\end{document} also preserves the truth of θ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\theta $$\end{document}. An elementary characterization of Łukasiewicz implication shows that the Łukasiewicz axiom →Y)→→X)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$ \rightarrow Y ) \rightarrow \rightarrow X )$$\end{document} guarantees the continuity and the piecewise linearity of the implication operation →\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\rightarrow $$\end{document}, an appropriate fault-tolerance property of any logic of [0,1]\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${{\,\mathrm{[0,1]}\,}}$$\end{document}-valued observables. The directional derivability of the functions coded by all ψ∈Θ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\psi \in \Theta $$\end{document} and by θ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\theta $$\end{document} then provides a quantitative formulation of our refinement of Bolzano-Tarski consequence, which turns out to coincide with the time-honored syntactic Ł-consequence. (shrink)

In this paper, I motivate the view that quantitative parsimony is a theoretical virtue: that is, we should be concerned not only to minimize the number of kinds of entities postulated by our theories (i. e. maximize qualitative parsimony), but we should also minimize the number of entities postulated which fall under those kinds. In order to motivate this view, I consider two cases from the history of science: the postulation of the neutrino and the proposal of Avogadro's hypothesis. I (...) also consider two issues concerning how a principle of quantitative parsimony should be framed. (shrink)

This book seeks to bring together the pragmatic theory of 'meaning as use' with the traditional semantic approach that considers meaning in terms of truth conditions. Daniel Gutzmann's new approach captures the entire meaning of complex expressions and overcomes the empirical gaps and conceptual problems associated with previous analyses.

Cryonics is the practice of cryopreserving the bodies or brains of legally dead individuals with the hope that these individuals will be reanimated in the future. A standard argument for cryonics says that cryonics is prudentially justified despite uncertainty about its success because at worst it will leave you no worse off than you otherwise would have been had you not chosen cryonics, and at best it will leave you much better off than you otherwise would have been. Thus, it (...) is a good, no-risk bet; in game-theoretic terms, cryonics is a weakly dominant strategy relative to refraining from utilizing cryonics. I object to this argument for two reasons. First, I argue that there is a practically relevant chance that cryonics will put you into an inescapable and very bad situation. Hence, cryonics is neither a no-risk bet nor a weakly dominant strategy. Second, I argue that the experience of being reanimated and living in the distant future would likely be transformative, and this likelihood undermines your justification for thinking that reanimation would be beneficial to you. I conclude that the standard argument does not show that cryonics is prudentially justified. (shrink)

The pessimistic hypothesis is the hypothesis that life is bad for us, in the sense that we are worse off for having come into existence. Suppose this hypothesis turns out to be correct — existence turns out to be more of a burden than a gift. A natural next thought is that we should stop having children. But I contend that this is a mistake; procreation would often be permissible even if the pessimistic hypothesis turned out to be correct. Roughly, (...) this is because we are often in a position to know that future people will approve of having been created, and their approval will not be inappropriate even if they are worse off for having been created. And our respect for the attitudes of future people can permit us to create them. (shrink)

In this volume of newly commissioned essays, leading moral philosophers offer a comprehensive overview of virtue ethics.

Infants acquire their first words through interactions with social partners. In the first year of life, infants receive a high frequency of visual and auditory input from faces, making faces a potential strong social cue in facilitating word-to-world mappings. In this position paper, we review how and when infant gaze to faces is likely to support their subsequent vocabulary outcomes. We assess the relevance of infant gaze to faces selectively, in three domains: infant gaze to different features within a face (...) ; then to faces ; and finally to more socially relevant types of faces. We argue that infant gaze to faces could scaffold vocabulary construction, but its relevance may be impacted by the developmental level of the infant and the type of task with which they are presented. Gaze to faces proves relevant to vocabulary, as gazes to eyes could inform about the communicative nature of the situation or about the labeled object, while gazes to the mouth could improve word processing, all of which are key cues to highlighting word-to-world pairings. We also discover gaps in the literature regarding how infants’ gazes to faces or to different types of faces relate to vocabulary outcomes. An important direction for future research will be to fill these gaps to better understand the social factors that influence infant vocabulary outcomes. (shrink)

Plato's dialogues frequently criticize traditional Greek myth, yet Plato also integrates myth with his writing. Daniel S. Werner confronts this paradox through an in-depth analysis of the Phaedrus, Plato's most mythical dialogue. Werner argues that the myths of the Phaedrus serve several complex functions: they bring nonphilosophers into the philosophical life; they offer a starting point for philosophical inquiry; they unify the dialogue as a literary and dramatic whole; they draw attention to the limits of language and the limits (...) of knowledge; and they allow Plato to co-opt cultural authority as a way of defining and legitimating the practice of philosophy. Platonic myth, as a species of traditional tale, is thus both distinct from philosophical dialectic and similar to it. Ultimately, the most powerful effect of Platonic myth is the way in which it leads readers to participate in Plato's dialogues and to engage in a process of self-examination. (shrink)

Sometimes, learning about the origins of a belief can make it irrational to continue to hold that belief—a phenomenon we call ‘genealogical defeat’. According to explanationist accounts, genealogical defeat occurs when one learns that there is no appropriate explanatory connection between one’s belief and the truth. Flatfooted versions of explanationism have been widely and rightly rejected on the grounds that they would disallow beliefs about the future and other inductively-formed beliefs. After motivating the need for some explanationist account, we raise (...) some problems for recent versions of explanationism. Learning from their failures, we then produce and defend a more resilient explanationism. (shrink)

Simon May has argued that the notion of a principled compromise is incoherent. Reasons to compromise are always in his view strategic: though we think that the position we defend is still the right one, we compromise on this view in order to avoid the undesirable consequences that might flow from not compromising. I argue against May that there are indeed often principled reasons to compromise, and that these reasons are in fact multiple. First, compromises evince respect for persons that (...) we have reason to think of as our epistemic peers, and acknowledgement of our own finitudes as moral reasoners. Second, compromises are often made morally necessary by the shortfalls that unavoidably separate democratic institutions from democratic ideals. Third, compromises express a desirable form of democratic community. And fourth, compromises are often justified from a consequentialist point of view, in that they allow for the realization of values that would not be realized as well by the failure to compromise. (shrink)

Introduction : the future taken seriously -- The future of democratic societies : a theory of intergenerational justice -- The temporal landscape of contemporary society : a theory of acceleration -- How do we know the future? : a theory of future studies -- How is the future decided? : a theory of decision -- Who is in charge of the future? : a theory of responsibility -- Chronopolitics : a theory of social rhythm -- Politics in a post-heroic society (...) : a theory of political contingency -- The political construction of collective hope. (shrink)

In Lukács: Praxis and the Absolute, Daniel Andrés López reassembles Lukács’s philosophy of praxis on a Hegelian basis, as a conceptual-historical totality, both defending him and proposing an unprecedented, immanent critique that raises problems for Marxian philosophy as a whole.

Granting that there could be true subjunctive conditionals of libertarian freedom (SCLs), I argue (roughly) that there could be such conditionals only in connection with individual "possible creatures" (in contrast to types). This implies that Molinism depends on the view that, prior to creation, God grasps possible creatures in their individuality. In making my case, I explore the notions of counterfactual implication (that relationship between antecedent and consequent of an SCL which consists in its truth) and counterfactual relevance (that feature (...) of an antecedent in virtue of which it counterfactually implies something or other). (shrink)

Supererogatory acts—good deeds “beyond the call of duty”—are a part of moral common sense, but conceptually puzzling. I propose a unified solution to three of the most infamous puzzles: the classic Paradox of Supererogation (if it’s so good, why isn’t it just obligatory?), Horton’s All or Nothing Problem, and Kamm’s Intransitivity Paradox. I conclude that supererogation makes sense if, and only if, the grounds of rightness are multi-dimensional and comparative.

This paper defends the epistemic account of the normativity of requests. The epistemic account says that a request does not create any reasons and thus does not have any special normative power. Rather, a request gives reasons by revealing information which is normatively relevant. I argue that compared to competing accounts of request normativity, especially those of David Enoch and James H.P. Lewis, the epistemic account gives better answers to cases of insincere requests, is simpler, and does a better job (...) incorporating the importance of relationships. I also defend the epistemic account from three objections: that requests are important because they constitute consent, that requests and wishes must be normatively different, and that some requests do not provide any new information. (shrink)

It has become customary to conceptualize the living cell as an intricate piece of machinery, different to a man-made machine only in terms of its superior complexity. This familiar understanding grounds the conviction that a cell's organization can be explained reductionistically, as well as the idea that its molecular pathways can be construed as deterministic circuits. The machine conception of the cell owes a great deal of its success to the methods traditionally used in molecular biology. However, the recent introduction (...) of novel experimental techniques capable of tracking individual molecules within cells in real time is leading to the rapid accumulation of data that are inconsistent with an engineering view of the cell. This paper examines four major domains of current research in which the challenges to the machine conception of the cell are particularly pronounced: cellular architecture, protein complexes, intracellular transport, and cellular behaviour. It argues that a new theoretical understanding of the cell is emerging from the study of these phenomena which emphasizes the dynamic, self-organizing nature of its constitution, the fluidity and plasticity of its components, and the stochasticity and non-linearity of its underlying processes. (shrink)

1. Happiness, then and now -- Happiness, eudaimonia, and practical reasoning -- Happiness as eudaimonia -- Happiness and virtuous activity -- New directions from old debates -- 2. Happiness then: the sufficiency debate -- Aristotle's case against the sufficiency thesis -- 3. Happiness now: rethinking the self -- Socrates' case for the sufficiency thesis -- Epictetus and the stoic self -- The Stoics' case for the sufficiency thesis -- The embodied conception of the self -- The embodied conception and psychological (...) well-being -- The Stoics' case against the embodied conception. (shrink)

This paper is about the nature of God’s pre-creation knowledge of possible creatures. I distinguish three theories: non-qualitative singularism, qualitative singularism, and qualitative generalism, which differ in terms of whether the relevant knowledge is qualitative or non-qualitative, and whether God has singular or merely general knowledge of creatures. My main aim is to argue that qualitative singularism does not depend on a version of the Principle of Identity of Indiscernibles to the effect that, necessarily, qualitatively indiscernible individuals are identical. It (...) follows that qualitative singularism does not depend on the view that possible creatures categorically have qualitative individual essences. (shrink)

Quentin Smith has argued that quantum-cosmological theory is incompatible with theism. The two claims that Smith argues render theism inconsistent with Hawking’s theory are that of the initial creation of the universe by God and His continued conservation of it. His primary argument is that divine decision and Hawking’s wave function entail contradictory probabilities that the universe begin to exist and continue to evolve in a certain way. I attempt to refute the argument by providing a schema that accommodates probabilities (...) conditioned on divine decision as well as those conditioned on the wave function with respect to these two issues. (shrink)

This article focuses on the main methods used in analytic metaphysics. It first considers five important sources of constraints on metaphysical theorizing: linguistic and conceptual analysis, consulting intuitions, employing the findings of science, respecting folk opinion, and applying theoretical virtues in metaphysical theory choice such as preferring simpler theories, or preferring more explanatory theories. It then examines the role of formal methods in metaphysics as well as the role of metaphysical communities, traditions, and the place of the history of metaphysics (...) in contemporary work. It also discusses the issue of whether metaphysics should be seen as an enterprise that will yield knowledge of metaphysical matters or whether it should have more modest epistemic goals. Finally, it explores the question of how much of metaphysics is a priori. (shrink)

Exploring materialism and social relationships in modern culture Material Culture and Mass Consumption offers an in-depth exploration of objects, objectification, ideology, and materialism in modern society. Drawing from Hegel, Marx, Munn, and Simmel, the discussion delves into the physicality of the material world and attempts to understand materialism as a form of cultural expression. Targeting mass production as the root of mass consumption, rather than the result, this book positions material goods at odds with genuine social interaction and questions these (...) relationships from the abstract to the intensely specific. (shrink)

I ask you to X. You now have a reason to X. My request gave you a reason. How? One unpopular theory is the epistemic account, according to which requests do not create any new reasons but instead simply reveal information. For instance, my request that you X reveals that I desire that you X, and my desire gives you a reason to X. Peter Schaber has recently attacked both the epistemic account and other theories of the reason-giving force of (...) requests. Schaber defends a new theory of the reason-giving force of requests according to which request give reasons because it is valuable for requesters and requestees that requests have this power. In this paper I argue that Schaber's attack on the epistemic account fails, and that his own theory ought to be rejected because it faces compelling objections. (shrink)

An anthology of works on the philosophy of economics, including classic texts and essays exploring specific branches and schools of economics. Completely revamped, this edition contains new selections, a revised introduction and a bibliography. The volume contains 26 chapters organized into five parts: Classic Discussions, Positivist and Popperian Views, Ideology and Normative Economics, Branches and Schools of Economics and Their Methodological Problems and New Directions in Economic Methodology. It includes crucial historical contributions by figures such as Mill, Marx, Weber, Robbins, (...) Knight, and Veblen and works by most of the leading contemporary figures writing on economic methodology, including five Nobel Laureates in Economics. (shrink)

Supererogatory acts are those that lie “beyond the call of duty.” There are two standard ways to define this idea more precisely. Although the definitions are often seen as equivalent, I argue that they can diverge when options are infinite, or when there are cycles of better options; moreover, each definition is acceptable in only one case. I consider two ways out of this dilemma.