As I have read the scholium, it divides into three main parts, not including the introductory paragraph. The first consists of paragraphs one to four in which Newton sets out his characterizations of absolute and relative time, space, place, and motion. Although some justificatory material is included here, notably in paragraph three, the second part is reserved for the business of justifying the characterizations he has presented. The main object is to adduce grounds for believing that the absolute quantities are (...) indeed distinct from their relative measures and are not reducible to them. Paragraph five takes this up for the case of time. Paragraphs eight to twelve endeavor to do this for rest and motion by appealing to their properties, causes and effects. In arguing that absolute motion is not reducible to any particular form of the relative motion of bodies with respect to one another, and thus, as is directly argued in the third argument, must be understood in terms of motionless places, Newton thereby constructs an indirect case that absolute space is indeed something distinct from any relative space. Paragraph thirteen functions as conclusion to this line of inquiry and comments on how, in the light of this, the names of these quantities are to be interpreted in the scriptures. The third and final part consists of paragraph fourteen alone, and addresses the question: given that true motion is motion with respect to absolute space, but the parts of the latter are not perceivable, is it possible for us to know the true motions of individual bodies? Newton illustrates how this may be done from the evidence provided by their apparent motions and the forces which are the causes and effects of true motion. This forms a bridge to the body of the work insofar as the purpose of the Principia, according to Newton, is to show how this, and the converse problem, of inferring true and apparent motions from the forces, can be dealt with.Part II of this paper will appear in the next issue of Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. (shrink)

In a number of publications, John Earman has advocated a tertium quid to the usual dichotomy between substantivalism and relationism concerning the nature of spacetime. The idea is that the structure common to the members of an equivalence class of substantival models is captured by a Leibniz algebra which can then be taken to directly characterize the intrinsic reality only indirectly represented by the substantival models. An alleged virtue of this is that, while a substantival interpretation of spacetime theories falls (...) prey to radical local indeterminism, the Leibniz algebras do not. I argue that the program of Leibniz algebras is subject to radical local indeterminism to the same extent as substantivalism. In fact, for the category of topological spaces of interest in spacetime physics, the program is equivalent to the original spacetime approach. Moreover, the motivation for the program--that isomorphic substantival models should be regarded as representing the same physical situation--is misguided. (shrink)

As is well know from Einstein the choice of a criterion for distant simultaneity is equivalent to stipulating one-way speeds for the transit of light. It is shown that any choice of non-standard synchrony is equivalent to a Lorentz local time boost. From this and considerations from the hole argument, it follows that there is a non-trivial sense in which distant simultaneity is conventional, at least to the extent that the “gauge freedom” arising in the hole argument is non-trivial.

After some background setting in which it is shown how Maudlin's (1989, 1990) response to the hole argument of Earman and Norton (1987) is related to that of Rynasiewicz (1994), it is argued that the syntactic proposals of Mundy (1992) and of Leeds (1995), which claim to dismiss the hole argument as an uninteresting blunder, are inadequate. This leads to a discussion of how the responses of Maudlin and Rynasiewicz relate to issues about gauge freedom and relativity principles.

One of the issues dividing "absolutists" and "relationists" is the question whether all motion is relative motion or, in the words of Earman, spacetime has "structures that support absolute quantities of motion." This paper argues that, despite the enormous literature bearing on the topic, it is problematic to formulate a general criterion for when a quantity counts as absolute in contrast to merely relative in a way that is not hopelessly parasitic on other, presumably distinct, senses of "absolute." Furthermore, I (...) suggest that the vicissitudes of the evolution of the concept of absolute motion have contributed to this difficulty. (shrink)

Isaac Newton founded classical mechanics on the view that space is something distinct from body and that time is something that passes uniformly without regard to whatever happens in the world. For this reason he spoke of absolute space and absolute time, so as to distinguish these entities from the various ways by which we measure them (which he called relative spaces and relative times). From antiquity into the eighteenth century, contrary views which denied that space and time are real (...) entities maintained that the world is necessarily a material plenum. Concerning space, they held that the idea of empty space is a conceptual impossibility. Space is nothing but an abstraction we use to compare different arrangements of the bodies constituting the plenum. Concerning time, they insisted, there can be no lapse of time without change occurring somewhere. Time is merely a measure of the cycles of change within the world. (shrink)

The year 1905 has been called Einstein's annus mirabilis in virtue of three ground-breaking works completed over the span of a few months --- the light quantum paper (Einstein, 1905a), the Brownian motion paper (Einstein, 1905c), and the paper on the electrodynamics of moving bodies introducing the special theory of relativity (Einstein, 1905d). There are prima facie reasons for thinking that the origins of these papers cannot be understood in isolation from one another. Due to space limitations, we concentrate primarily (...) on the light quantum paper, since, in key respects, it marks the turning point for the annus mirabilis. The task is to probe, not just how the idea of the light quantum might have occurred to Einstein, but, more importantly, what convinced him that the idea was not just a quixotic hypothesis, but an unavoidable and demonstrable feature of radiation. The crucial development, we suggest, arose from comparing the energy fluctuations that following rigorously from the Stefan-Boltmann law, as well as from Wien's distribution formula for blackbody radiation, with what it is reasonable to expect from Maxwell's electromagnetic theory of light. A special case of this is addressed in (Einstein, 1904). The outcome for the general case leads naturally to the central theoretical argument of the light quantum paper, the expectation of Brownian-like motion, and several of the key results for the electrodynamics of moving bodies. (shrink)

What is science, and what is it not? Is falsifiability the key to drawing this line? How and why does science work? Should we worry whether science is talking about a "real" world? And should we stop thinking there is a single thing we can call "the scientific method"? With Deborah Mayo, Robert Rynasiewicz, and Drew Arrowood.

The question whether distant simultaneity has a factual or a conventional status in special relativity has long been disputed and remains in contention even today. At one point it appeared that Malament had settled the issue by proving that the only non-trivial equivalence relation definable from causal connectability is the standard simultaneity relation. Recently, however, Sarkar and Stachel claim to have identified a suspect assumption in the proof by defining a non-standard simultaneity relation from causal connectability. I contend that their (...) critique is based on a misunderstanding of the criteria for the definability of a relation, a misunderstanding that Malement's original treatment helped to foster. There are in fact a variety of notions of definability that can be brought to bear. They all, however, require a condition that suffices to secure Malament's result. The non-standard relation Sarkar and Stachel claim to be definable is not so definable, and, I argue, their proposal to modify the notion of “causal definability” is misguided. Finally, I address the relevance of Malament's result to the thesis of conventionalism. (shrink)

I address a number of questions concerning the interpretation of local time and the corresponding states theorem (CST) of the Versuch, questions which have been addressed either incompletely or inadequately in the secondary literature. In particular: (1) What is the relation between local time and the behavior of moving clocks? (2) What is the relation between the primed field variables and the electric and magnetic fields in a moving system? (3) What is the relation of the CST to the principle (...) of relativity and requirements of covariance? (4) Does the introduction of local time and the primed field variables constitute a hypothesis, i.e., an addition to or a modification of the basic theory? (shrink)

In this paper, we introduce a suppositional view of linguistic practice that ranges over fiction, science, and mathematics. While having similar con- sequences to some other views, in particular Linsky and Zalta’s plenitudinous platonism, the view advocated here both differs fundamentally in approach and accounts for a wider range of phenomena and scientific discourse.

One finds, even in texts by distinguished physicists, diverse enunciations of the correspondence principle. Typical is that quantum mechanics should agree with classical mechanics in some appropriate limit. Most commonly, the limit specified is that of high quantum numbers, or of large masses and orbits of large dimensions. But sometimes it is specified as mean behavior when large numbers quanta are involved, or sometimes even as just the average of quantum mechanical variables. Sometimes, the principle is even taken as a (...) prescription for replacing the classical dynamical observables with an appropriate mathematical operator. In 1918, however, Bohr proposed what he would later call the correspondence principle as a way of deriving amplitudes and polarizations of emitted and absorbed spectral lines. I will begin with Bohr's principle and trace the evolution of correspondence considerations through the 1920's, with a view as to whether in each case it is supposed to play the role of a theorem, an adequacy constraint, an inductive hypothesis or a heuristic. (shrink)

A number of writers have suggested that laws of nature must be universal in space and time. Just what this claim amounts to is the focus of the present study. I consider and compare a number of interpretations of the requirement, with especial reference to an example by Tooley which seems paradigmatic of the antithesis of universality in space and time. I also sketch a number of other concepts of "local", "global", and "universal", each of which should be kept distinct (...) from "universality in space and time ". I leave open the issue whether or not laws must satisfy any of the requirements. (shrink)

1.Here is a well known theorem. Consider the homogeneous Maxwell equations(where E and H are functions of x, y, z, and t, and ).Use the coordinate substitutionsand the following substitutions for the field variablesThen, if terms depending on second and higher powers of (v/c) are dropped, the resulting equations have the same form as the original homogeneous Maxwell equations, i.e.

Although Trautman (1966) appears to give a unified‐field treatment of electrodynamics in Newtonian spacetime, there are difficulties in cogently interpreting it as such in relation to the facts of electromagnetic and magneto‐electric induction. Presented here is a covariant, nonunified field treatment of the Maxwell‐Lorentz theory with absolute space. This dispels a worry in Earman (1989) as to whether there are any historically realistic examples in which absolute space plays an indispensable role. It also shows how Trautman's formulation can be rendered (...) coherent, albeit at the cost of deunification, by reinterpreting the Maxwell tensor as a composite object involving, in part, elements from Newtonian spacetime. (shrink)

Many take Malaments result that the standard Einstein simultaniety relation is uniquely definable from the causal structure of Minkowski space-time to be tantamount to a refutation of the claim that criterion for simultaneity in the special theory of relativity (STR) is a matter of convention. I call into question this inference by examining concrete alternatives and suggest that what has been overlooked is why it should be assumed that in STR simultaneity must be relative only to a frame of reference (...) (or an inertial observer) and not to other parameters as well. (shrink)

It is customarily thought that in addition to the class of observed phenomena there is a larger class of observable phenomena. For a theory to be empirically adequate, it must be true on this larger class. It is denied that there is such a thing as the class observable over and above observed phenomena. This does not entail that empirical adequacy reduces to agreement with just the observed facts. Observability is a feature of abstract items in the models of theories, (...) and thus conditions their empirical import. This doctrine of observability yields a brand of empiricism that a realist might live with. (shrink)

Nearly all accounts of the genesis of special relativity unhesitatingly assume that the theory was worked out in a roughly five week period following the discovery of the relativity of simultaneity. Not only is there no direct evidence for this common presupposition, there are numerous considerations which militate against it. The evidence suggests it is far more reasonable that Einstein was already in possession of the Lorentz and field transformations, that he had applied these to the dynamics of the electron, (...) and that portions of the 1905 paper had actually been drafted well before the epistemological analysis of time. (shrink)

For much of this century it was widely assumed in philosophical circles that the relational doctrine of space, time, and motion had finally been established beyond the point of reasonable controversy. In large part this was due to a widespread perception that the theory of relativity is itself a relational theory. Indeed, some of Einstein’s own pronouncements foster this impression. For example, in his definitive formulation of general relativity of 1916, he argued the need for a generalization of the principle (...) of special relativity in order to eliminate the “factitious” causal role he saw inertial frames playing in classical mechanics and special relativity. ‘The laws of physics must be of such a nature that they apply to systems of reference in any kind of motion’. Einstein claimed this requirement is fulfilled by satisfaction of the Principle of General Covariance—that the equations expressing the laws of nature remain valid under arbitrary coordinate substitutions. This, he says, ‘takes away from space and time the last remnant of physical objectivity.’. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between eugenics, disability, and dehumanization, with a focus on forms of eugenics beyond Nazi eugenics.

Ethical principles and precepts -- The evolution of morality -- Ethics and law -- Exchange and reciprocity : conflict in personal relationships -- Ethics and the physical sciences -- Ethics and medicine -- Ethics and politics -- Ethics and business -- Ethics and war -- What does all this mean for the future? -- Appendix : relations to moral philosophy.

The impressive variation amongst biological individuals generates many complexities in addressing the simple-sounding question what is a biological individual? A distinction between evolutionary and physiological individuals is useful in thinking about biological individuals, as is attention to the kinds of groups, such as superorganisms and species, that have sometimes been thought of as biological individuals. More fully understanding the conceptual space that biological individuals occupy also involves considering a range of other concepts, such as life, reproduction, and agency. There has (...) been a focus in some recent discussions by both philosophers and biologists on how evolutionary individuals are created and regulated, as well as continuing work on the evolution of individuality. (shrink)

This paper offers an overview of "the species problem", arguing for a view of species as homeostatic property cluster kinds, positioning the resulting form of realism about species as an alternative to the claim that species are individuals and pluralistic views of species. It draws on taxonomic practice in the neurosciences, especially of neural crest cells and retinal ganglion cells, to motivate both the rejection of the species-as-individuals thesis and species pluralism.

This is a bilingual edition of the selected peer-reviewed papers that were submitted for the International Symposium on Jesuit Studies on the thought of the Jesuit Francisco Suárez (1548-1617). The symposium was co-organized in Seville in 2018 by the Departamento de Humanidades y Filosofía at Universidad Loyola Andalucía and the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies at Boston College. Suárez was a theologian, philosopher and jurist who had a significant cultural impact on the development of modernity. Commemorating the four-hundredth anniversary of (...) his death, the symposium studied the work of Suárez and other Jesuits of his time in the context of diverse traditions that came together in Europe between the late Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and early modernity. (shrink)

Pharmacy Ethics: A Foundation for Professional Practice provides a model for examining and resolving ethical dilemmas, thereby helping student pharmacists understand the ethical decision-making process in professional practice.

An anthology of the life and teachings of Tsongkhapa that includes transcendental aspects of sutra, tantra, insight meditation, mystic conversations, spiritual songs, and a new introduction by Robert Thurman.

Written by the preeminent democratic theorist of our time, this book explains the nature, value, and mechanics of democracy. In a new introduction to this Veritas edition, Ian Shapiro considers how Dahl would respond to the ongoing challenges democracy faces in the modern world. “Within the liberal democratic camp there is considerable controversy about exactly how to define democracy. Probably the most influential voice among contemporary political scientists in this debate has been that of Robert Dahl.”—Marc Plattner, _New York (...) Times_ “An excellent introduction for novices, as well as a trusty handbook for experts and political science mavens.”—_Publishers Weekly_. (shrink)

In the good old days, when general philosophy of science ruled the Earth, a simple division was often invoked to talk about philosophical issues specific to particular kinds of science: that between the natural sciences and the social sciences. Over the last 20 years, philosophical studies shaped around this dichotomy have given way to those organized by more fine-grained categories, corresponding to specific disciplines, as the literatures on the philosophy of physics, biology, economics and psychology--to take the most prominent four (...) examples--have blossomed. In general terms, work in each of these areas has become increasingly enmeshed with that in the corresponding science itself, increasingly naturalistic (in at least one sense of that term), and in my view, increasingly interesting. (shrink)

Essentialism is widely regarded as a mistaken view of biological kinds, such as species. After recounting why (sections 2-3), we provide a brief survey of the chief responses to the “death of essentialism” in the philosophy of biology (section 4). We then develop one of these responses, the claim that biological kinds are homeostatic property clusters (sections 5-6) illustrating this view with several novel examples (section 7). Although this view was first expressed 20 years ago, and has received recent discussion (...) and critique, it remains underdeveloped and is often misrepresented by its critics (section 8). (shrink)

Charles Darwin was one of the first to propose a unified framework with which to understand human and animal behavior. The foundation of Darwin’s framework is his theory of descent with modification. What Darwin was convinced that theory allowed him to say about human and animal behavior is exemplified in the ‘continuity thesis.’ As Darwin put it, ‘there is a much wider interval in mental power between one of the lowest fishes, as a lamprey or lancelet, and one of the (...) higher apes, than between an ape and a man; yet this interval is filled up by numberless gradations’ (Darwin 1871 [1936]: 453). Darwin’s continuity thesis is the foundation of contemporary studies of animal behavior; it is, along with contemporary evolutionary theory, what unifies the field of animal behavior. (shrink)

Kant’s theory of evil, presented most fully in his Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, has been consistently misinterpreted since he first presented it. As a result, readers have taken it to be a mess of inconsistencies and eccentricities and so have tried to mine it for an insight or two, dismissed it altogether, or sought to explain how Kant could have gone so wrong. In this work, I provide an interpretation of Kant’s theory of evil that renders it (...) consistent and plausible. The main problem Kant tries to solve with his theory of evil is the problem of willful immorality: how can someone who sees her moral obligations as overridingly authoritative willingly (and so culpably) transgress them? Kant’s answer is that we do so by indulging various “moral fantasies” – ways of reconceiving the moral law or one’s status in relation to it. By entertaining, e.g., the fantasy that one is exempt from the moral law’s commands (“the exceptionalist fantasy”), or that one cannot live up to them (“despondency”), or that one need only to live up to society’s standards rather than moral demands (“the adequacy fantasy”) – one persuades oneself that the duty the moral law demands one to perform is only optional. Moral fantasies appeal only because of the presence, in everyone, of the “propensity to evil,” which makes the moral law’s commands seem less authoritative, thereby strengthening one’s sensuous desires. As a result, moral fantasies thereby diminish the urgency of moral obligations, and so tempt us to entertain them. Scholars of Kant have missed this explanation of wickedness because they have restricted their attention to the Religion, a work whose gnomic statements on evil are difficult to interpret when isolated from the larger context of Kant’s thinking. Assaying Kant’s thinking on immorality from the mid-1780s to the late 1790s shows that Kant’s main concern with evil was not so much its nature, but its very possibility. Evaluating the Religion in this context reveals it to be a fruitful resource for explaining the moral psychology of immorality, a problem we still deal with today, and that is possibly. (shrink)

Originally published under the title: Tsong Khapa's Speech of gold in the Essence of true eloquence.

This book provides a series of challenges to Jorge J. E. Gracia’s views on metaphysics and categories made by realist philosophers in the Aristotelian and Thomistic traditions. Inclusion of Gracia’s responses to his critics makes this book a useful companion to Gracia’s _Metaphysics and its Task: The Search for the Categorial Foundation of Knowledge_.

Introduction The contemporary study of society is fired by our quest for scientific truth. The very spirit of our age is tangible evidence ...

Entrepreneurs sometimes make unethical decisions that have devastating effects on their companies, stakeholders, and themselves. We suggest that insights into the origins of such actions can be acquired through attention to personal motives and their impact on moral disengagement—a cognitive process that deactivates moral self-regulation, thus enabling individuals to behave in ways inconsistent with their own values. We hypothesize that entrepreneurs’ motivation for financial gains is positively related to moral disengagement, while their motivation for self-realization is negatively related to this (...) process. Results obtained with a sample of founding entrepreneurs offered support for the first prediction, as well as support for the prediction that moral disengagement is positively related to the tendency to make unethical decisions. (shrink)

Where does the mind begin and end? Most philosophers and cognitive scientists take the view that the mind is bounded by the skull or skin of the individual. Robert Wilson, in this provocative and challenging 2004 book, provides the foundations for the view that the mind extends beyond the boundary of the individual. The approach adopted offers a unique blend of traditional philosophical analysis, cognitive science, and the history of psychology and the human sciences. The companion volume, Genes and (...) the Agents of Life, explores the theme in the biological sciences. Written with verve and clarity, this ambitious book will appeal to a broad swathe of professionals and students in philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, and the history of the behavioural and human sciences. You can download the table of contents here. (shrink)

What place does freedom have in Confucianism? We find a wide spectrum of views on the matter: some deny that Confucians value or even conceive of freedom, while others celebrate uniquely exalted forms of Confucian freedom. This paper examines the range of proposals, finding consensus among these diverse views in that all identify distinctive Confucian emphases on (i) subjective affirmation of the good and (ii) the cultivation of desires and intentions to align with that good. The variation among views of (...) Confucian freedom does not result from disparate interpretations of Confucian teachings. Rather, their divergence lies in affirming or denying that these core aspects of Confucian thought should be seen as ‘freedom.’ This reveals an undiscussed, fundamental question regarding Confucian freedom: Can and should we see the traditional Confucian moral ideal—that is, Confucian goodness and sagely virtue—as versions of freedom? What do we gain by doing so? (shrink)

Several recent commentators have suggested that for fully rational agents who find themselves in iterated prisoner's dilemmas of indefinite length, co-operation is the rational strategy. Their argument is that these fully rational agents can be taught, through the co-operative actions of other agents, to bypass the dominant move of noncooperation and co-operate instead. The proponents of the “teaching strategy” seem to have ignored the compelling argument of Jordan Howard Sobel. While the teaching argument may work for agents who are less (...) than purely rational, Sobel has pointed out that hyperrational utility maximizers cannot be taught; they reason deductively, not inductively, as the “teaching argument” requires. (shrink)