I often tell my students that the only thing that is not controversial in philosophy is that everything else in it is controversial. While this might be a bit of an exaggeration, it does contain a kernel of truth, as many exaggerations do: philosophy is a highly contentious discipline. So it is remarkable the extent to which there is agreement in the philosophy of religion amongst theists, agnostics, and atheists alike that John Mackie’s argument for atheism is either invalid (...) or unsound. As a result, the focus has entirely shifted from the logical problem of evil to the so-called evidential one. But I think that this is a mistake, not necessarily because I think Mackie’s argument is sound, but rather because I reject an assumption made by apparently all parties to the debate, which is that there is only one logical problem of evil. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to defend a deductive argument that God* does not exist. As far as I can tell, the basic idea of this argument is a novel one: while Mackie’s argument has a more or less consequentialist framework, mine has a deontological one. The evil of which I will speak is that of our having been thrown into the world. (shrink)

Some have put forward a normative principle that it is immoral and highly disrespectful to create free, rational creatures (like human beings) without their prior consent. (See, for instance, Monaghan in Int J Philos Relig 88(2):181–195, 2020) If true, this principle constitutes a new argument against the existence of God since it is logically impossible to acquire the consent of someone before they are created. Thus, God’s existence is taken to be incompatible with creating any persons. I shall examine this (...) normative claim and show that it is not plausible. In the first place, it fails to meet three criteria that are commonplace to the “logical problem of evil.” In the second place, the principle has clear counterexamples that show many plausible exceptions that could justify God in creating persons. (shrink)

Critical realism provides an alternative to positivism and interpretivism. It foregrounds ontology and an evaluative approach to knowledge, while promoting eclectic reasoning, transdisciplinarity, and ethical research across the quantitative/qualitative, macro/micro and other divides. Health researchers have usefully employed critical realism, though it has also been dismissed as strange, a source of self-deception and hubris. Furthermore, it has been accused of dehumanizing many people. Responding to these charges, this article makes the case for carefully employing critical realism within and beyond social (...) studies of health. It first outlines some basic critical realist tenets before summarizing two exemplars within the sociology of health, illness and medical work. The discussion section, observing the principle of hermeticism, engages with some criticisms before offering a prolegomenon to research on the COVID-19 pandemic response. In conclusion, a ‘radical’ proposal is ventured for possible transformative action so that society is less hierarchical, more equal and salutogenic. (shrink)

Are theories ‘underdetermined by the evidence’ in any way that should worry the scientific realist? I argue that no convincing reason has been given for thinking so. A crucial distinction is drawn between data equivalence and empirical equivalence. Duhem showed that it is always possible to produce a data equivalent rival to any accepted scientific theory. But there is no reason to regard such a rival as equally well empirically supported and hence no threat to realism. Two theories are empirically (...) equivalent if they share all consequences expressed in purely observational vocabulary. This is a much stronger requirement than has hitherto been recognised— two such ‘rival’ theories must in fact agree on many claims that are clearly theoretical in nature. Given this, it is unclear how much of an impact on realism a demonstration that there is always an empirically equivalent ‘rival’ to any accepted theory would have—even if such a demonstration could be produced. Certainly in the case of the version of realism that I defend—structural realism—such a demonstration would have precisely no impact: two empirically equivalent theories are, according to structural realism, cognitively indistinguishable. (shrink)

In his preface Mr Wilson writes 'I feel that a great many adults … would do better to spend less time in simply accepting the concepts of others uncritically, and more time in learning how to analyse concepts in general'. Mr Wilson starts by describing the techniques of conceptual analysis. He then gives examples of them in action by composing answers to specific questions and by criticism of quoted passages of argument. Chapter 3 sums up the importance of this kind (...) of mental activity. Chapter 4 presents selections for the reader to analyse, followed by questions of university entrance/scholarship type. This is a book to be worked through, in a sense a text-book. (shrink)

How do we acquire thoughts and beliefs about particulars by looking at pictures? One kind of reply essentially compares depiction to perception, holding that picture-perception is a form of remote object-perception. Lopes’s theory that pictures refer by demonstrative identification, and Walton’s transparency theory for photographs, constitute such remote acquaintance theories of depiction. The main purpose of this paper is to defend an alternative conception of pictures, on which they are not suitable for acquainting us with particulars but for acquainting us (...) with certain kinds of properties. This conception is outlined in §4, where it is argued that pictures are useful devices for what Heal has called indexical predication. In §2 and §3, I explain why I believe that remote acquaintance theories are false, and why picture-perception cannot function as a form of extended or remote object-perception. The main reason is that the contents of picture-perceptions do not themselves provide the kind of numerical and contextual information required for singular thought. Picture-reference is instead secured by independent beliefs or linguistic communication about the causal history of pictures as objects. In other words, it is beliefs about the numerical identity of pictures as objects that anchors the reference of the representational contents of pictures. (shrink)

Setting the scene -- Sentience and the sentient mind -- Special senses and their interpretation Survival strategies -- Social strategies -- Animals of the waters -- Animals of the air -- Animals of the savannah and plains -- Animals of the forests -- Close neighbours -- Our duty of care.

In this philosophically sophisticated and historically significant work, John H. Zammito reconstructs Kant's composition of The Critique of Judgment and reveals that it underwent three major transformations before publication. He shows that Kant not only made his "cognitive" turn, expanding the project from a "Critique of Taste" to a Critique of Judgment but he also made an "ethical" turn. This "ethical" turn was provoked by controversies in German philosophical and religious culture, in particular the writings of Johann Herder and (...) the Sturm und Drang movement in art and science, as well as the related pantheism controversy. Such topicality made the Third Critique pivotal in creating a "Kantian" movement in the 1790s, leading directly to German Idealism and Romanticism. The austerity and grandeur of Kant's philosophical writings sometimes make it hard to recognize them as the products of a historical individual situated in the particular constellation of his time and society. Here Kant emerges as a concrete historical figure struggling to preserve the achievements of cosmopolitan Aufkl-rung against challenges in natural science, religion, and politics in the late 1780s. More specifically Zammito suggests that Kant's Third Critique was animated throughout by a fierce personal rivalry with Herder and by a strong commitment to traditional Christian ideas of God and human moral freedom. "A work of extraordinary erudition. Zammito's study is both comprehensive and novel, connecting Kant's work with the aesthetic and religious controversies of the late eighteenth century. He seems to have read everything. I know of no comparable historical study of Kant's Third Critique."-Arnulf Zweig, translator and editor of Kant's ;IPhilosophical Correspondence, 1759-1799;X "An intricate, subtle, and exciting explanation of how Kant's thinking developed and adjusted to new challenges over the decade from the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason to the appearance of the Critique of Judgment. "--John W. Burbidge, Review of Metaphysics "There has been for a long time a serious gap in English commentary on Kant's Critique of Judgment Zammito's book finally fills it. All students and scholars of Kant will want to consult it."--Frederick Beiser, Times Literary Supplement. (shrink)

We report the results of four empirical studies designed to investigate the extent to which an epistemic closure principle for knowledge is reflected in folk epistemology. Previous work by Turri (2015a) suggested that our shared epistemic practices may only include a source-relative closure principle—one that applies to perceptual beliefs but not to inferential beliefs. We argue that the results of our studies provide reason for thinking that individuals are making a performance error when their knowledge attributions and denials conflict with (...) the closure principle. When we used research materials that overcome what we think are difficulties with Turri’s original materials, we found that participants did not reject closure. Furthermore, when we presented Turri’s original materials to non-philosophers with expertise in deductive reasoning (viz., professional mathematicians), they endorsed closure for both perceptual and inferential beliefs. Our results suggest that an unrestricted closure principle—one that applies to all beliefs, regardless of their source—provides a better model of folk patterns of knowledge attribution than a source-relative closure principle. (shrink)

Studies of AGL have frequently used training and test stimuli that might provide multiple cues for learning, raising the question what subjects have actually learned. Using a selected subset of studies on humans and non‐human animals, Trotter et al. demonstrate how a meta‐analysis can be used to identify relevant experimental variables, providing a first step in asssessing the relative contribution of design features of grammars as well as of species‐specific effects on AGL.

Obviously medicine should be evidence-based. The issues lie in the details: what exactly counts as evidence? Do certain kinds of evidence carry more weight than others? (And if so why?) And how exactly should medicine be based on evidence? When it comes to these details, the evidence-based medicine (EBM) movement has got itself into a mess – or so it will be argued. In order to start to resolve this mess, we need to go 'back to basics'; and that means (...) turning to the philosophy of science. The theory of evidence, or rather the logic of the interrelations between theory and evidence, has always been central to the philosophy of science – sometimes under the alias of the 'theory of confirmation'. When taken together with a little philosophical commonsense, this logic can help us move towards a position on evidence in medicine that is more sophisticated and defensible than anything that EBM has been able so far to supply. (shrink)

This book investigates the central role of reason in Islamic intellectual life. Despite widespread characterization of Islam as a system of belief based only on revelation, John Walbridge argues that rational methods, not fundamentalism, have characterized Islamic law, philosophy and education since the medieval period. His research demonstrates that this medieval Islamic rational tradition was opposed by both modernists and fundamentalists, resulting in a general collapse of traditional Islamic intellectual life and its replacement by more modern but far shallower (...) forms of thought. However, the resources of this Islamic scholarly tradition remain an integral part of the Islamic intellectual tradition and will prove vital to its revival. The future of Islam, Walbridge argues, will be marked by a return to rationalism"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Arbitrary state and corporate powers are helping to turn the Internet into a global surveillance dragnet. Responses to this novel form of power have been tepid and ineffective. Liberal critiques of surveillance are constrained by their focus on privacy, security and the underlying presupposition that freedom consists only of freedom from interference. By contrast, Foucauldian critiques rejecting liberalism have been well rewarded analytically, but have proven incapable of addressing normative questions regarding the relationship between surveillance and freedom. Quite apart from (...) these debates, neorepublicans have excavated a third concept of freedom, understood as non-domination. Could neorepublicanism overcome the limitations of liberal and Foucauldian critiques of surveillance? We argue, positively, that neorepublicanism can accommodate much of the Foucauldian analyses while also incorporating a normative critique of surveillance vis-à-vis freedom. We further argue, negatively, that surveillance power has outstripped the capacities of traditional republican institutional responses to domination. We conclude by considering ways in which neorepublicanism can be recalibrated to address the novelty of surveillance power while adhering to the ideal of non-domination. Two ways of addressing the problem are proposed: an offensive, dedicated surveillance antipower and a defensive republican amplification of privacy. (shrink)

Man controls and dominates the habitat of most animals, both domestic and wild and there is a need for a pragmatic, workable approach to the problem of reconciling animal welfare with economic forces and the needs of man. It is the author's contention that much of the current philosophical discussion of animal welfare is misdirected now that it is possible to measure to some extent what animals think and feel and how much they can appreciate their quality of life. The (...) book deals with farm animals, pets, wild animals and laboratory animals and dicusses their environmental requirements, fear and stress, their response to pain, injury, disease and death, behaviour and aggression, and the implications of biotechnology and genetic engineering. Finally, the book tries to reconcile reverence for life with the inescapability of killing and reviews the prospects of preserving and enhancing quality of life for animals through legislations, education, economic and moral incentives. (shrink)

John Turri gives an example that he thinks refutes what he takes to be “G. E. Moore's view” that omissive assertions such as “It is raining but I do not believe that it is raining” are “inherently ‘absurd'”. This is that of Ellie, an eliminativist who makes such assertions. Turri thinks that these are perfectly reasonable and not even absurd. Nor does she seem irrational if the sincerity of her assertion requires her to believe its content. A commissive counterpart (...) of Ellie is Di, a dialetheist who asserts or believes that The Russell set includes itself but I believe that it is not the case that the Russell set includes itself. Since any adequate explanation of Moore's paradox must handle commissive assertions and beliefs as well as omissive ones, it must deal with Di as well as engage Ellie. I give such an explanation. I argue that neither Ellie's assertion nor her belief is irrational yet both are absurd. Likewise neither Di's assertion nor her belief is irrational yet in contrast neither is absurd. I conclude that not all Moore-paradoxical assertions or beliefs are irrational and that the syntax of Moore's examples is not sufficient for the absurdity found in them. (shrink)

Environmental policies to promote environmentally sustainable economic activity have often concentrated on larger firms. However, increasing attention is being paid to the role of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and entrepreneurial actors. In this paper, we examine how policy tools are being used to improve the environmental performance of SMEs and to redirect entrepreneurial energies in more environmentally benign directions. The empirical section adopts a case-based comparative method to examine four instances of policymaking, drawn from different countries and industry sectors. (...) The paper argues that while some interventions have proved effective in their own terms, better integrated approaches are required to address today's complex and deep-rooted sustainability challenges. The paper identifies several policy implications including the need to: clarify the purpose of any intervention, address potential interactions and trade-offs; select appropriate tools based on informed reviews of the options; remain sensitive to context-specific factors; and devise effective vehicles for the promotion and governance of entrepreneurial initiatives. (shrink)

A brief account of educational aims, focussing on preparation for a life of autonomous well-being.

Natural language contains many examples of sound-symbolism, where the form of the word carries information about its meaning. Such systematicity is more prevalent in the words children acquire first, but arbitrariness dominates during later vocabulary development. Furthermore, systematicity appears to promote learning category distinctions, which may become more important as the vocabulary grows. In this study, we tested the relative costs and benefits of sound-symbolism for word learning as vocabulary size varies. Participants learned form-meaning mappings for words which were either (...) congruent or incongruent with regard to sound-symbolic relations. For the smaller vocabulary, sound-symbolism facilitated learning individual words, whereas for larger vocabularies sound-symbolism supported learning category distinctions. The changing properties of form-meaning mappings according to vocabulary size may reflect the different ways in which language is learned at different stages of development. (shrink)

I argue that incomprehensibility (what the ancient skeptics called acatalepsia) plays a central role in the skepticism of both Bayle and Hume. I challenge a commonly held view (recently argued by Todd Ryan) that Hume, unlike Bayle, does not present oppositions of reason--what Kant called antimonies.

Foreword I. Critical rationalism is a genuinely new philosophical perspective. It is not, however, one systematic view. The development of it by Popper and ...

1. 1735-1738 -- 2. 1738-1743 -- 3. 1743-1754 -- 4. 1755-1765 -- 5. 1765-1775 -- 6. 1776-1786 -- 7. 1787-91.

Whiskey Lao -- Fair warning -- Randomness at large -- We the addicted -- The best possible world -- The importance of being doomed -- Moral responsibility -- The upper limit to the value of possible worlds.

Could one give expression to a doctrine of essentialism without running afoul of semantical problems that are alleged to beggar systems of quantified modal logic? An affirmative answer is, I believe, called for at least in the case of individual essentialism. Individual essentialism is an ontological thesis concerning a kind of necessary connection between objects and their (essential) properties. It is not or anyhow not primarily a semantic thesis, a thesis about meanings, for example. And thus we are implicitly counselled (...) not to seek for the logical reconstruction of such necessities in theories in which necessity is a de ditto matter. A more natural-seeming target is an understanding of the structure of idioms of de re necessity. Of course, de re necessities may turn out to be special cases of necessities de ditto, with what consequences it is interesting to speculate upon, but it would be preferable if the theory of individual essences were to be prosecuted initially at least without prejudice to this other matter. A theory of individual essences therefore may find it a convenience to recognize a special category of open sentence by means of which to represent de re attributions of necessity. (shrink)

Everyone loves something or somebody, and most people are concerned with loving another person like themselves, all equal. This book is based on the belief that getting clear about the concept and meaning of love between equals is essential for success in our practical lives. For how can we love properly unless we have a fairly clear idea of what love is? The book is written in ordinary language and for the ordinary person, without jargon or philosophical technicalities. It aims (...) to show that love between equals involves a single basic disposition, though that disposition expresses itself in various ways. Thus, after an introduction explaining the need for analysis and clarification, the author then deals in order with love as desire or need; with intrinsic friendship and sharing the self; with basic difficulties concerning power, dependence, altruism and paranoia; with sex and erotic love; and finally with the value in human life of love between equals. The work as a whole gives clear, coherent and practical guidance for all who wish to grasp what such love is really like. (shrink)