Jacques Derrida's insistence on submitting politics to the test of undecidability elicits the common accusation that an aporetic form of thought can only end in dubious conclusions concerning the pressing matter of politics and that no normative claims can emerge from a thought of radical undecidability. In this paper, I articulate the structural undecidability (aporia) that constitutes politics according to Derrida, the manner in which this structural undecidability elicits judgments, and the importance for critique of not ignoring it. In particular, (...) this structural undecidability is articulated within the event of foundation of any state or set of social relations by way of a declarative act. In addition, the aporetic structure of the political renders visible the essential relationship between (revealed) religion and politics. Ultimately, due to a necessary reference to an ultimate authority at any event of foundation, the political is always already theologico-political in character. (shrink)

What should philosophical theology look like after the critique of Onto-theology, after Phenomenology, and in the age of Speculative Realism? What does Kabbalah have to say to Philosophy? Since Kant and especially since Husserl, philosophy has only permitted itself to speak about how one relates to God in terms of the intentionality of consciousness and not of how God is in himself. This meant that one could only ever speak to God as an addressed and yearned-for holy Thou, but not (...) to God as infinite creator of all. In this book-length essay, the author argues that reality itself is made up of the Holy Name of God. Drawing upon the set-theoretical ontology of Alain Badiou, the computational theory of Stephen Wolfram, the physics of Frank Tipler, the psychoanalytical theory of Jacques Lacan, and the genius of Georg Cantor, the author works to demonstrate that the universe is a computer processing the divine Name and that all existence is made of information (the bit). As a result of this ontic pan-computationalism, it is shown that the future resurrection of the dead can take place and how it may in fact occur. Along the way, the book also offers compelling critiques of several significant theories of reality, including the phenomenological theologies of Emmanuel Levinas and Jean-Luc Marion, Process Theology, and Object-Oriented Ontology. Reality in the Name of God explores how the concepts of Jewish mysticism can be articulated and deployed as philosophical theses within current metaphysical debates. It provides a new and dynamic Structural Realist ontology of information. Ultimately, the book aims to deal a death blow to the restriction of philosophy and theology in relation to elaborations of a how a believer relates to a God outside the mind and to return thought to a direct encounter with the divine nature of reality itself and its creator"--Website of the publisher, October 19, 2020. (shrink)

I argue for the viability of one neglected way of developing supervenience-based objections to metaethical non-naturalism. This way goes through a principle known as ‘Hume’s Dictum’, according to which there are no necessary connections between distinct existences. I challenge several objections to the Hume’s Dictum-based argument. In the course of doing so, I formulate and motivate modest and precise versions of Hume’s Dictum, illustrate how arguments employing these principles might proceed, and argue that the Hume’s Dictum argument enjoys some advantages (...) relative to other supervenience-based objections to non-naturalism. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that, all else being equal, theism is more probable than naturalism on the assumption that human beings are able to arrive at a body of moral knowledge that is largely accurate and complete. I put forth this thesis on grounds that, if naturalism is true, the explanation of the content of our moral intuitions terminates either in biological-evolutionary processes or in social conventions adopted for pragmatic reasons; that, if this is so, our moral intuitions were (...) selected for their utility, not their truth; and that, if our moral intuitions were so selected, they are probably false. I defend the argument against three objections: first, that the argument amounts to a generic skeptical challenge; second, that ethical naturalism explains how our moral intuitions could have been selected for their truth; and third, that there is a pre-established harmony between the utility of moral beliefs and their truth-values. (shrink)

I examine issues in the philosophy of religion at the intersection of what possibilities there are and what a God, as classically conceived in the theistic philosophical tradition, would be able to do. The discussion is centered around arguing for an incompatibility between theism and two principles about possibility and ability, and exploring what theists should say about these incompatibilities. -/- I argue that theism entails that certain kinds and amounts of evil are impossible. This puts theism in conflict with (...) popular principles of modal recombination. However, theists have plausible explanations for the violations of recombination that they posit, and can suitably amend these principles without giving up their usefulness in accounting for what possibilities there are. -/- I also argue that despite the impossibility of these evils, God is able to bring these evils about. This puts theism in conflict with the principle that no one is able to do the impossible. However, theists can give a plausible account of why God is unique in being able to do the impossible, and have distinctive resources to address the arguments in favor of the idea that no one is able to do the impossible. And by denying this principle, theists are able to resolve several otherwise difficult puzzles, including reconciling conflicts between the divine attributes. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 2, Page 30-31, February 2012.

Gauge invariance of a manifestly covariant relativistic quantum theory with evolution according to an invariant time τ implies the existence of five gauge compensation fields, which we shall call pre-Maxwell fields. A Lagrangian which generates the equations of motion for the matter field (coinciding with the Schrödinger type quantum evolution equation) as well as equations, on a five-dimensional manifold, for the gauge fields, is written. It is shown that τ integration of the equations for the pre-Maxwell fields results in the (...) usual Maxwell equations with conserved current source. The analog of the O (3, 1) symmetry of the usual Maxwell theory is found to be O (3, 2) or O (4, 1), depending on the space-time Fourier spectrum of the field. We argue that the structure that is relevant to the description of radiation in interaction with matter evolving in a timelike sense is that of O (3, 2). The noncovariant form of the field equations is given; there are two fields of electric type and one (divergenceless) magnetic type field. The Noether currents are studied, and some remarks are made on second quantization. (shrink)

The sages of Israel and natural wisdom -- Jews and natural philosophy -- Jews and science.

Is language understanding a special case of social cognition? To help evaluate this view, we can formalize it as the rational speech-act theory: Listeners assume that speakers choose their utterances approximately optimally, and listeners interpret an utterance by using Bayesian inference to “invert” this model of the speaker. We apply this framework to model scalar implicature (“some” implies “not all,” and “N” implies “not more than N”). This model predicts an interaction between the speaker's knowledge state and the listener's interpretation. (...) We test these predictions in two experiments and find good fit between model predictions and human judgments. (shrink)

The health co-benefits of CO2 mitigation can provide a strong incentive for climate policy through reductions in air pollutant emissions that occur when targeting shared sources. However, reducing air pollutant emissions may also have an important co-harm, as the aerosols they form produce net cooling overall. Nevertheless, aerosol impacts have not been fully incorporated into cost-benefit modeling that estimates how much the world should optimally mitigate. Here we find that when both co-benefits and co-harms are taken fully into account, optimal (...) climate policy results in immediate net benefits globally, overturning previous findings from cost-benefit models that omit these effects. The global health benefits from climate policy could reach trillions of dollars annually, but will importantly depend on the air quality policies that nations adopt independently of climate change. Depending on how society values better health, economically optimal levels of mitigation may be consistent with a target of 2 °C or lower. (shrink)

This paper explores the editorial influence of Joseph Banks on the Philosophical Transactions—still, at the time of his accession to the Presidency of the Royal Society in 1778, the most prestigious scientific periodical published in English. In particular, it examines how Banks forged, and wielded, personal influence over what went into the Transactions. Nominally, at least, the periodical was under the collective control of the Society's council, with significant statutory safeguards in place to prevent editorship by a presidential clique. Yet (...) this was exactly what Banks was able to speedily create and maintain. In this essay I explore how Banks accomplished this and the pressures it produced, addressing two key questions. First, I examine the social dimension of Banks's management of the Transactions (and what contemporaries thought of it), including particularly the questions of how and to whom access to the periodical was afforded or denied by Banks and his associates; and second, I consider how Banks and the Society dealt with the emerging competitive pressure of new commercial and learned society periodicals. I outline a sphere of scientific sociability partly created by informal processes of communicating, circulating, and evaluating papers developed by Banks and his close associates, and its significance for the Transactions in its engagements with other sites, genres, and conventions of scientific publication. (shrink)

Abstract: In this essay, I outline and defend a version of the aesthetic argument for the existence of God, according to which theism explains our capacity for subjective aesthetic experience better than its major competitor, naturalism. I argue that naturalism fails to adequately explain the nature and range of our aesthetic experiences, since these are amenable neither to standard Darwinian explanation nor to explanation in terms of more complex sociobiological mechanisms such as sexual selection or between-group selection. I concede that (...) aesthetic experience may be an evolutionary spandrel but argue that the conjunction of this thesis with naturalism is highly improbable given the prevalence of beauty in the natural world. Theism, on the other hand, furnishes a robust personal explanation of aesthetic experience, since on theism God has both good reasons to bring such experiences about and the power to do so. I address an objection to the theistic explanation from broadly negative aesthetic experiences, arguing that God plausibly has many reasons to allow these. I contend that this formulation of the argument is superior to other extant versions, since it does not depend on controversial probability judgments, dubious analogies between natural phenomena and human artefacts, or objectivism about aesthetic values. (shrink)

I examine two related arguments for the claim that if God is omnipotent, God cannot lack abilities such as the ability to do evil or to act irrationally. Both arguments concern the idea that omnipotence is inconsistent with being dominated with respect to abilities. I raise new issues in the formulation of such dominance principles about ability, and attempt to solve them. I also discuss and reject existing objections to these arguments. I conclude that these arguments are promising but not (...) conclusive, and that important work remains to be done in formulating the relevant dominance principles. (shrink)

We analyze the correspondence between a five-dimensional U(1)gauge invariant theory and four-dimensional scalar QED, where the fifth dimension (τ)is an invariant parameter of evolution of the manifestly covariant one-particle sector as well as for the full Fock space. The correspondence is represented by the limit in which the width of the photon mass distribution Δs tends to zero and large τ correlations occur. In the limiting procedure, calculation of a twopoint diagram shows that the PauliVillars regularization is intrinsically related to (...) these longrange correlations. (shrink)

In this essay, I reply to an influential objection to evolutionary debunking arguments against moral realism. According to this objection, our capacity for autonomous rational reflection allows us to grasp moral truths independently of distorting evolutionary influences, so those influences do not prevent us from having moral knowledge. I argue that rational moral reflection is not, in fact, autonomous from evolutionary influences, since it depends on our evolved, pre-reflective grasp of moral properties. I then consider and reject the suggestion that (...) realists can supply an autonomous foundation for rational moral reflection or do without any such foundation. Next, I address the allegation that my arguments have skeptical implications for rational reflection in non-moral domains. Finally, I conclude with a gesture toward a more promising route for realists who oppose debunking arguments. (shrink)

While every endpointed interval I in a linear order J is, considered as a linear order in its own right, trivially Muchnik‐reducible to J itself, this fails for Medvedev‐reductions. We construct an extreme example of this: a linear order in which no endpointed interval is Medvedev‐reducible to any other, even allowing parameters, except when the two intervals have finite difference. We also construct a scattered linear order which has many endpointed intervals Medvedev‐incomparable to itself; the only other known construction of (...) such a linear order yields an ordinal of extremely high complexity, whereas this construction produces a low‐level‐arithmetic example. Additionally, the constructions here are “coarse” in the sense that they lift to other uniform reducibility notions in place of Medvedev reducibility itself. (shrink)

This book addresses some basic questions about intrinsic value: What is it? What has it? What justifies our beliefs about it? In the first six chapters the author defends the existence of a plurality of intrinsic goods, the thesis of organic unities, the view that some goods are 'higher' than others, and the view that intrinsic value can be explicated in terms of 'fitting' emotional attitudes. The final three chapters explore the justification of our beliefs about intrinsic value, including coherence (...) theories and the idea that some value beliefs are warranted on the basis of emotional experience. Professor Lemos defends the view that some value beliefs enjoy 'modest' a priori justification. The book is intended primarily for professional philosophers and their graduate students working in ethics, value theory and epistemology. (shrink)

There is a very plausible principle linking abilities and possibilities: If S is able to Φ, then it is metaphysically possible that S Φ’s. Jack Spencer recently proposed a class of counterexamples to this principle involving the ability to know certain propositions. I renew an argument against these counterexamples based on the unknowability of Fitch propositions. In doing so, I provide a new argument for the unknowability of Fitch propositions and show that Spencer’s counterexamples are in tension with a principle (...) weaker than the one linking abilities and possibilities. (shrink)

In this surprising book, Allan V. Horwitz argues that our current conceptions of mental illness as a disease fit only a small number of serious psychological conditions and that most conditions currently regarded as mental illness are cultural constructions, normal reactions to stressful social circumstances, or simply forms of deviant behavior.

Assessment of those with whom one finds oneself in dispute is indispensable in the epistemology of disagreement. The assessment of one’s opponents is necessary in order to determine whether a particular disagreement constitutes evidence of a likely error in one’s own understanding. However, assessment of an opponent’s capacity to know the matter in dispute is only possible when the conditions for knowledge are not themselves open to debate. Consequently, epistemic significance can only be recognised in disagreements among those who are (...) in tacit or explicit agreement about what constitutes justification in a given case. The result is that the epistemic significance that disagreement possesses is always strictly conditional upon prior assumptions. The difference between a peer disagreement and a non-peer disagreement cannot indicate whether one is or is not more likely to be right than one’s opponent in an absolute sense, only whether one is or is not more likely to be right given the presupposed conditions. (shrink)

Being the parents of a premature infant can be extremely stressful. Even when parents know that there is a high chance of premature birth, they are often in shock when their infant arrives too earl...

In this essay, I address an objection to inference to the best explanation due to Bas C. van Fraassen, according to which explanatory virtues cannot confirm a theory, since they make the theory more informative and thus less likely to be true given the probability axioms. I try to show that van Fraassen’s argument, once made precise, is deductively invalid, and that even an ampliative version of the argument (i) implies, absurdly, that no theory is confirmed by its fit with (...) empirical data; (ii) fails to account for confirmatory closure under deduction; and (iii) falsely presupposes that a theory and its sub-theories can be competing explanations. (shrink)

This article attempts to think through the logic and distinctiveness of the early Royal Society's position as a metropolitan knowledge community and chartered corporation, and the links between these aspects of its being. Among the knowledge communities of Restoration London it is one of the best known and most studied, but also one of the least typical and in many respects one of the least coherent. It was also quite unlike the chartered corporations of the City of London, exercising almost (...) none of their ordinary functions and being granted very limited power and few responsibilities. I explore the society's imaginative and material engagements with longer-established corporate bodies, institutions and knowledge communities, and show how those encounters repeatedly reshaped the early society's internal organization, outward conduct and self-understanding. Building on fundamental work by Michael Hunter, Adrian Johns, Lisa Jardine and Jim Bennett, and new archival evidence, I examine the importance of the city to the society's foundational rhetoric and the shifting orientation of its search for patronage, the development of its charter, and how it learned to interpret the limits and possibilities of its privileges through its encounters with other chartered bodies, emphasizing the contingent nature of its early development. (shrink)

Over the past decade, attention to epistemically significant disagreement has centered on the question of whose disagreement qualifies as significant, but ignored another fundamental question: what is the epistemic significance of disagreement? While epistemologists have assumed that disagreement is only significant when it indicates a determinate likelihood that one’s own belief is false, and therefore that only disagreements with epistemic peers are significant at all, they have ignored a more subtle and more basic significance that belongs to all disagreements, regardless (...) of who they are with—that the opposing party is wrong. It is important to recognize the basic significance of disagreement since it is what explains all manners of rational responses to disagreement, including assessing possible epistemic peers and arguing against opponents regardless of their epistemic fitness. (shrink)

Brock and Glasgow recently introduced a new definition of paradox and argue that this conception of paradox itself leads to paradox, the so-called Paradox Paradox. I show that they beg the questions during the course of their argument, but, more importantly, do so in a philosophically interesting way: it reveals a counterexample to the equivalence between being a logical truth and having a probability of one. This has consequences regarding norms of rationality, undermining the grounds for the Conjunction Fallacy.

Recognition of the plasticity of development — from gene expression to neuroplasticity — is increasingly undermining the traditional distinction between structure and function, or anatomy and behavior. At the same time, dynamic systems theory — a set of tools and concepts drawn from the physical sciences — has emerged as a way of describing what Maurice Merleau-Ponty calls the “dynamic anatomy” of the living organism. This article surveys and synthesizes dynamic systems models of development from biology, neuroscience, and psychology in (...) order to propose an integrated account of growth, learning, and behavior. Key to this account is the concept of self-differentiation or symmetry-breaking. I argue that development can be understood as a cascade of symmetry-breaking events brought about by the ongoing interactions of multiple, nested, nonlinear dynamic systems whose self-organizing behaviors gradually alter their own anatomical conditions. I begin by introducing the concept of symmetry-breaking as a way of understanding anatomical development. I then extend this approach to motor development by arguing that the organism’s behavior grows along with its body, like a new organ. Finally, I argue that the organism’s behavior and its world grow together dialectically, each driving the other to become more complex and asymmetrical through its own increasing asymmetry. Thus development turns out to be a form of cognition or sense-making, and cognition a form of development. (shrink)

In his Animadversiones on Machiavelli's The Prince (1661), Hermann Conring, one of the most famous of the early modern German professors of politics, further developed the constitutional reading of Machiavelli's The Prince, following in the footsteps of Bodin and the German political theorists of the previous generation such as Arnisaeus, Contzen, and Besold. For Conring, Machiavelli's exaggerated analysis of tyranny and his heavy emphasis on popular liberty offered not so much a realist political science but a dangerous prelude to the (...) monarchomachic theory of popular sovereignty and a fatalistic concession to sin. Conring, a committed Aristotelian with Arminian sympathies, preferred a more empirical constitutional analysis (and a theory of the state) which did not favor any particular faction of the state (i.e. the people over the nobility) as the unique source of stability or instability and which explained the necessity for wickedness as the result of poor constitutional design rather than a realistic view of human nature and fate. (shrink)

Ronald Giere and others aspire to 'naturalize science' by examining scientific activity as they would any other natural phenomenon — scientifically. Giere aims to fashion a theory of science that is naturalistic, realistic, and evolutionary, and to thus carve for himself a niche between foundationalist philosophies of science (positing abstract criteria of rationality) on the one hand, and relativist sociologies of science on the other. Giere's approach is appealing because it allows that science is a human endeavor pursued by humans (...) using human cognitive skills. The cognitive skills most salient to science, in Giere's view, are the ability to represent the world more or less accurately, and the ability to choose more or less accurately between available theories. These skills, Giere believes, have been endowed by evolution. We believe that Giere's account is inadequate because it gives short shrift to rationality. Giere places too much emphasis on natural modeling skills and on natural heuristics for judging the relative merits of these models, and too little emphasis on the systematic attempts to reflect on, find fault with, and modify, models that characterize so much of scientific activity. This aspect of science and other human endeavor — the creative, contemplative, reflective, in short the rational aspect of representation — is all but lacking in Giere's study. Thus, Giere's account of science, like other naturalist accounts, excludes precisely that which is most important, and which most needs to be explained, about science. (shrink)

In this essay, I defend a mind-body dualism, according to which human minds are immaterial substances that exercise non-redundant causal powers over bodies, against the notorious problem of psychophysical causation. I explicate and reply to three formulations of the problem: (i) the claim that, on dualism, psychophysical causation is inconsistent with physical causal closure, (ii) the claim that psychophysical causation on the dualist view is intolerably mysterious, and (iii) Jaegwon Kim’s claim that dualism fails to account for causal pairings. Ultimately, (...) I conclude that these objections fail and that dualist interactionism is no more problematic or mysterious than physical causation. (shrink)