The actualism/possibilism debate in ethics is traditionally formulated in terms of whether true counterfactuals of freedom about the future (true subjunctive conditionals concerning what someone would freely do in the future if they were in certain circumstances) even partly determine an agent's present moral obligations. But the very assumption that there are true counterfactuals of freedom about the future conflicts with the idea that freedom requires a metaphysically open future. We develop probabilism as a solution to the actualism/possibilism debate, a (...) solution that accommodates an open future requirement for freedom. We argue that probabilism resolves the conflicting intuitions that arise between actualists and possibilists and maintains certain distinct advantages over actualism and possibilism. (shrink)

Perszyk has argued that Molinists cannot consistently endorse the consequence argument because of a structurally similar argument for the incompatibility of true Molinist counterfactuals of freedom and the ability to do otherwise. Wierenga has argued that on the proper understanding of CCFs, there is a relevant difference between the consequence argument and the anti-Molinist argument. I argue that, even on Wierenga’s understanding of CCFs, there is in fact no relevant difference between the two arguments. Moreover, I strengthen Perszyk’s challenge by (...) highlighting further relevant similarities between CCFs and facts about the laws. (shrink)

Wes Morriston contends that William Lane Craig's argument for the impossibility of a beginningless past results in an equally good argument for the impossibility of an endless future. Craig disagrees. I show that Craig's reply reveals a commitment to an unmotivated position concerning the relationship between actuality and the actual infinite. I then assess alternative routes to the impossibility of a beginningless past that have been offered in the literature, and show that, contrary to initial appearances, these routes similarly seem (...) to support the impossibility of an endless future. (shrink)

Suppose you can save only one of two groups of people from harm, with one person in one group, and five persons in the other group. Are you obligated to save the greater number? While common sense seems to say ‘yes’, the numbers skeptic says ‘no’. Numbers Skepticism has been partly motivated by the anti-consequentialist thought that the goods, harms and well-being of individual people do not aggregate in any morally significant way. However, even many non-consequentialists think that Numbers Skepticism (...) goes too far in rejecting the claim that you ought to save the greater number. Besides the prima facie implausibility of Numbers Skepticism, Michael Otsuka has developed an intriguing argument against this position. Otsuka argues that Numbers Skepticism, in conjunction with an independently plausible moral principle, leads to inconsistent choices regarding what ought to be done in certain circumstances. This inconsistency in turn provides us with a good reason to reject Numbers Skepticism. Kirsten Meyer offers a notable challenge to Otsuka’s argument. I argue that Meyer’s challenge can be met, and then offer my own reasons for rejecting Otsuka’s argument. In light of these criticisms, I then develop an improved, yet structurally similar argument to Otsuka’s argument. I argue for the slightly different conclusion that the view proposed by John Taurek that ‘the numbers don’t count’ leads to inconsistent choices, which in turn provides us with a good reason to reject Taurek’s position. (shrink)

The compatibility of determinism and the ability to do otherwise has been implicitly assumed by many to be irrelevant to the viability of compatibilist responses to the manipulation argument for incompatibilism. I argue that this assumption is mistaken. The manipulation argument may be unsound. But even so, the manipulation argument, at the very least, undermines classical compatibilism, the view that free will requires the ability to do otherwise, and having that ability is compatible with determinism. This is because classical compatibilism, (...) in conjunction with any type of reply to the manipulation argument, has counterintuitive implications. In order to avoid such implications, we need not hold that determinism is incompatible with moral responsibility. But we must hold that determinism is incompatible with the ability to do otherwise. (shrink)

In this paper I articulate and defend a new anti-theodicy challenge to Skeptical Theism. More specifically, I defend the Threshold Problem according to which there is a threshold to the kinds of evils that are in principle justifiable for God to permit, and certain instances of evil are beyond that threshold. I further argue that Skeptical Theism does not have the resources to adequately rebut the Threshold Problem. I argue for this claim by drawing a distinction between a weak and (...) strong version of Skeptical Theism, such that the strong version must be defended in order to rebut the Threshold Problem. However, the skeptical theist’s appeal to our limited cognitive faculties only supports the weak version. (shrink)

The Middle Persian literature from the early Islamic centuries frequently deals with practical theological issues faced by the Zoroastrian communities under foreign domination. Here, we present a number of questions regarding a Zoroastrian’s conversion to Islam and his subsequent repentance and desire to return to Zoroastrianism and answers given by ninth- and tenth-century Zoroastrian priestly authorities. It is shown how the priests cite ancient traditions found in the Pahlavi versions of Avestan texts to justify their answers, and then apply them (...) to the contemporary social reality. (shrink)

According to actualism, an agent ought to φ just in case what would happen if she were to φ is better than what would happen if she were to ~φ. We argue that actualism makes a morally irrelevant distinction between certain counterfactuals, given that an agent sometimes has the same kind of control over their truth-value. We then offer a substantive revision to actualism that avoids this morally irrelevant distinction by focusing on a certain kind of control that is available (...) to an agent. Finally, we show how this revised view has two additional advantages over actualism. (shrink)

I draw upon Helen Steward's concept of agential settling to argue that freedom requires an ability to change the truth‐value of tenseless future contingents over time from false to true and that this ability requires a metaphysically open future.

Recent experimental studies dispute the position that commonsense morality accepts ‘Ought’ Implies ‘Can’, the view that, necessarily, if an agent ought to perform some action, then she can perform that action. This paper considers and supports explanations for the results of these studies on the hypothesis that OIC is intuitive and true.

Even though sign-systems are a crucial part of society, critical realism, as developed by Roy Bhaskar, does not yet have an adequate theory of signs and semiosis. The few suggestions that Bhaskar offers can be advanced through the semiotics of C.S. Peirce. In doing so, however, it becomes necessary to reconsider Bhaskar's ontological domains of the real, the actual, and the subjective, and expand the last domain into one of semiosis. This new understanding of ontological domains, incorporating Peirceian semiotics, provides (...) the basis for rethinking the ontology of society: the customary dyad structures/agents becomes the triad structures/agents/discourses, each of which possesses material, sociological, and meaningful aspects. (shrink)

According to deliberation compatibilism, rational deliberation is compatible with the belief that one’s actions are causally determined by factors beyond one’s control. This paper offers a counterexample to recent accounts of rational deliberation that entail deliberation compatibilism. The counterexample involves a deliberator who believes that whichever action she performs will be the result of deterministic manipulation. It is further argued that there is no relevant difference between the purported counterexample and ordinary doxastic circumstances in which a determinist deliberates.

The actualism/possibilism debate in ethics is about whether counterfactuals of freedom concerning what an agent would freely do if they were in certain circumstances even partly determines that agent’s obligations. This debate arose from an argument against the coherence of utilitarianism in the deontic logic literature. In this chapter, we first trace the historical origins of this debate and then examine actualism, possibilism, and securitism through the lens of consequentialism. After examining their respective benefits and drawbacks, we argue that, contrary (...) to what has been assumed, actualism and securitism both succumb to the so-called nonratifiability problem. In making this argument, we develop this problem in detail and argue that it’s a much more serious problem than has been appreciated. We conclude by arguing that an alternative view, hybridism, is independently the most plausible position and best fits with the nature of consequentialism, partly in light of avoiding the nonratifiability problem. (shrink)

I argue that the theory of moral responsibility defended by John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza is incompatible with the metaphysical possibility of time travel.

This article argues against the long-enduring practice of Josephan scholarship to treat the termsτύραννος(‘tyrant’) andλῃστής(‘brigand’) as a collocation, or as undistinguished terms of invective employed by Josephus against various Jewish antagonists in hisBellum Judaicum(=BJ). Towards this aim, the article first examines the frequency in which these two terms appear together throughout the text of theBJ, before turning to a critical examination of particular passages that feature the terms, in order to prove that they are, in fact, not used as undistinguished (...) terms of invective but as terms pertaining to two distinct classes of people: renegade aristocrats vying with their peers for absolute power (the ‘tyrants’) and their gangs of foot soldiers comprising men from the lower classes (the ‘brigands’). The article concludes that Josephus used these terms in this manner in order to convey to his readership, which largely consisted of Roman aristocrats, that the ringleaders of the Judaean revolt which raged betweena.d.66–73 were akin to renegades who periodically wreaked havoc on Rome's own aristocracy, often with devastating consequences for class and country alike. (shrink)

The Article argues that, contrary to its state-centered conception, citizenship is determined, managed and controlled in three distinct yet intertwined territorial spheres: the local, the national and the global. Without claiming that the national sphere is vanishing or becoming irrelevant for the determination of rights, duties, group belonging and participation in public life, I argue that sub-national territorial units as well as supranational political organizations are increasingly impacting citizenship. All three spheres take part in deciding who shall be entitled to (...) various rights, what shall be the exact content of those rights, and who shall have the power to make such determinations. Yet each sphere bases its citizenship on a distinct logic and on a different set of assumptions and justifications: the local on residency; the national on lineage or place of birth; and the global on belonging to humanity. The Article demonstrates the ways in which citizenship is impacted by the three spheres and the different forms of legitimation that each sphere enjoys. The realization that our citizenship is a product of developments and activities in all three levels has theoretical, analytical and practical implications. (shrink)

In this paper I articulate and defend a new anti-theodicy challenge to Skeptical Theism. More specifically, I defend the Threshold Problem according to which there is a threshold to the kinds of evils that are in principle justifiable for God to permit, and certain instances of evil are beyond that threshold. I further argue that Skeptical Theism does not have the resources to adequately rebut the Threshold Problem. I argue for this claim by drawing a distinction between a weak and (...) strong version of Skeptical Theism, such that the strong version must be defended in order to rebut the Threshold Problem. However, the skeptical theist’s appeal to our limited cognitive faculties only supports the weak version. (shrink)

The new dispositionalists defend the position that an agent in a deterministic Frankfurt-style case has the ability to do otherwise, where that ability is the one at issue in the principle of alternative possibilities. Focusing specifically on Kadri Vihvelin's proposal, I argue against this position by showing that it is incompatible with the existence of structurally similar cases to FSCs in which a preemptive intervener bestows an agent with an ability.

Offering the perspectives of some of the most respected thinkers in transpersonal psychology and consciousness studies, this book explores the farther reaches ...

According to the Dilemma Defense, it is question-begging against the incompatibilist defender of the principle of alternative possibilities (PAP) to assume that the agent in a deterministic Frankfurt-style case (FSC) cannot do otherwise in light of causal determinism, but is nevertheless morally responsible. As a result, Fischer (Philos Rev 119:315–336, 2010; Analysis 73:489–496, 2013) attempts to undermine PAP in a different manner via a deterministic FSC. More specifically, Fischer attempts to show that if causal determinism rules out an agent’s moral (...) responsibility, it is not in virtue of its eliminating the agent’s alternative possibilities. I contend that, once we focus upon the distinction between entailment and explanation, the incompatibilist defender of PAP can successfully rebut Fischer’s argument. I argue for this claim while granting Fischer a number of assumptions that only render a defense of PAP more difficult. Additionally, I cast doubt upon Palmer’s (Synthese 191:3847–3864, 2014) critique of Fischer’s argument, which in turn renders my defense of PAP all the more critical. (shrink)

From oral culture, through the advent of literacy, to the introduction of printing, to the development of electronic media, communication structures have radically altered culture in profound ways. As the first book to take a critical realist approach to culture, Theatre, Communication, Critical Realism examines theatre and its history through the interaction of society’s structures, agents, and discourses. Tobin Nellhaus shows that communication structure—a culture’s use and development of speech, handwriting, printing, and electronics—explains much about why, when, and how (...) theatre has transformed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Politics and Peace Tobin Siebers University ofMichigan To Perpetual Peace. Whether this satirical inscription on a certain Dutch shopkeeper's sign, on which a graveyard was painted, holds for men in general, or especially for heads ofstate who can never get enough of war, or perhaps only for the philosophers who dream this sweet dream, is not for us to decide. However, the author of this essay does set (...) out one condition.... The practical politician must not claim, in the event of a dispute with a theorist, to detect some danger to the nation in those views that the political theorist expresses openly and without ulterior motive.... By this clausula salvatoria, the author ofthis essay will regard himselfto be expressly protected in the best way possible from all malicious interpretation. (Immanuel Kant, Preface to Perpetual Peace) My goal is to work my way back to Kant's defensive preface to Perpetual Peace, the prophetic essay situated by many at the origin ofmodern conceptions ofpeace and international diplomacy. Suffice it to say for the moment that the following reflections are intended to reveal the epitaph in Kant's epigraph—the eternal repose residing in perpetual peace. Imagining relation One of the master ideas to come down to us from the eighteenth century holds that the imagination is central to all relations between self and other, however one might designate this otherness. The imagination is central to Adam Smith's idea of sympathy, and Kant uses it as a bridge to 86Tobin Siebers unify his critical philosophy. Whether referring to objects or other people, we require a faculty by which to extend understanding to them, and this faculty continues even today to be described as imaginative. Postmodern theorists, for example, conceive of human relations in terms of identity politics, but at the core of identification is the power to imagine, be it the power to sympathize or to conceive of a party different from oneself. In effect, then, relation is itself a function of the imagination. Moreover, no relation, I want to claim, exists for long that cannot be well imagined, for which some symbolic object or idea cannot be found. The four dominant modes of relation are religion, aesthetics, ethics, and politics.1 They deserve to be called modes insofar as they name different others to which the self (or another principal) may relate imaginatively. Religion is about the relation of goodness between subject and god called the sublime. Often nature, fate, or providence as personified forces or overarching systems are also called sublime. Aesthetics is about the relation of goodness between subject and object called beauty. Ethics is about the relation of goodness between subjects called character or virtue. Finally, politics is about the relation ofgoodness between communities called peace. Peace may seem at first glance to be an odd choice to name the relation of goodness in politics. A more obvious candidate might be the idea of utopia. But utopia comes into being as a concept only with Thomas More's treatise in 1516, and this late invention seems to exclude its being considered as the privileged good of politics. Moreover, the traditional opposition between ethics and politics exposes the unfitness ofutopia as a candidate for the political good. Ethics and politics are often at war because ethics does not want to sacrifice even one person to improve the relations among other people. Ethics strives for a wholly inclusive community, but it defines this community as a collection of autonomous individuals having value in themselves only as ends and never as means to an end. If ethics aims at a wholly inclusive community of individuals, then "utopia" may be described by rights as an ethical concept, regardless ofthe fact that Utopian desire seems to stress the wrong perspective on this community, coming as it does from the collective rather than the individual point of view. The ethical dimension of the Utopian is made obvious by the realization that a 1 I will not discuss cognition, although it is surely dominant, because its objects are various, whereas the modes ofrelation of interest to me here tend to represent their objects as being of a certain kind. Politics and Peace87 utopia... (shrink)

: Drawing from work in feminist moral philosophy, Tobin argues that the most common methodology used in practical ethics is a questionable methodology for addressing practical problems across diverse cultural contexts because the kind of impartiality it requires is neither feasible nor desirable. She then defends an alternative methodology for practical ethics in a global context and uses her proposed methodology to evaluate a problem that confronts many Sunni Muslim women around the world.

Contrary to the commonly held position of Luis de Molina, Thomas Flint and others, I argue that counterfactuals of divine freedom are pre-volitional for God within the Molinist framework. That is, CDFs are not true even partly in virtue of some act of God’s will. As a result, I argue that the Molinist God fails to satisfy an epistemic openness requirement for rational deliberation, and thus she cannot rationally deliberate about which world to actualize.