Nagarjuna and Quantum physics. Eastern and Western Modes of Thought. Summary. The key terms. 1. Key term: ‘Emptiness’. The Indian philosopher Nagarjuna is known in the history of Buddhism mainly by his keyword ‘sunyata’. This word is translated into English by the word ‘emptiness’. The translation and the traditional interpretations create the impression that Nagarjuna declares the objects as empty or illusionary or not real or not existing. What is the assertion and concrete statement made by this interpretation? That nothing (...) can be found, that there is nothing, that nothing exists? Was Nagarjuna denying the external world? Did he wish to refute that which evidently is? Did he want to call into question the world in which we live? Did he wish to deny the presence of things that somehow arise? My first point is the refutation of this traditional translation and interpretation. 2. Key terms: ‘Dependence’ or ‘relational view’. My second point consists in a transcription of the keyword of ‘sunyata’ by the word ‘dependence’. This is something that Nagarjuna himself has done. Now Nagarjuna’s central view can be named ‘dependence of things’. Nagarjuna is not looking for a material or immaterial object which can be declared as a fundamental reality of this world. His fundamental reality is not an object. It is a relation between objects. This is a relational view of reality. Reality is without foundation. Or: Reality has the wide open space as foundation. 3. Key terms: ‘Arm in arm’. But Nagarjuna did not stop there. He was not content to repeat this discovery of relational reality. He went on one step further indicating that what is happening between two things. He gave indications to the space between two things. He realised that not the behaviour of bodies, but the behaviour of something between them may be essential for understanding the reality. This open space is not at all empty. It is full of energy. The open space is the middle between things. Things are going arm in arm. The middle might be considered as a force that bounds men to the world and it might be seen as well as a force of liberation. It might be seen as a bondage to the infinite space. 4. Key term: Philosophy. Nagarjuna, we are told, was a Buddhist philosopher. This statement is not wrong when we take the notion ‘philosophy’ in a deep sense as a love to wisdom, not as wisdom itself. Philosophy is a way to wisdom. Where this way has an end wisdom begins and philosophy is no more necessary. A.N. Whitehead gives philosophy the commission of descriptive generalisation. We do not need necessarily a philosophical building of universal dimensions. Some steps of descriptive generalisation might be enough in order to see and understand reality. There is another criterion of Nagarjuna’s philosophy. Not his keywords ‘sunyata’ and ‘pratityasamutpada’ but his 25 philosophical examples are the heart of his philosophy. His examples are images. They do not speak to rational and conceptual understanding. They speak to our eyes. Images, metaphors, allegories or symbolic examples have a freshness which rational ideas do not possess. Buddhist dharma and philosophy is a philosophy of allegories. This kind of philosophy is not completely new and unknown to European philosophy. Since Plato’s allegory of the cave it is already a little known. The German philosopher Hans Blumenberg has underlined the importance of metaphors in European philosophy. -/-. (shrink)

1.Summary The key terms. 1. Key term: ‘Sunyata’. Nagarjuna is known in the history of Buddhism mainly by his keyword ‘sunyata’. This word is translated into English by the word ‘emptiness’. The translation and the traditional interpretations create the impression that Nagarjuna declares the objects as empty or illusionary or not real or not existing. What is the assertion and concrete statement made by this interpretation? That nothing can be found, that there is nothing, that nothing exists? Was Nagarjuna denying (...) the external world? Did he wish to refute that which evidently is? Did he want to call into question the world in which we live? Did he wish to deny the presence of things that somehow arise? My first point is the refutation of this traditional translation and interpretation. 2. Key terms: ‘Dependence’ or ‘relational view’. My second point consists in a transcription of the keyword of ‘sunyata’ by the word ‘dependence’. This is something that Nagarjuna himself has done. Now Nagarjuna’s central view can be named ‘dependence of things’. Nagarjuna is not looking for a material or immaterial object which can be declared as a fundamental reality of this world. His fundamental reality is not an object. It is a relation between objects. This is a relational view of reality. This is the heart of Nagarjuna’s ideas. In the 19th century a more or less unknown Italian philosopher, Vincenzo Goberti, spoke about relations as the mean and as bonds between things. Later, in quantum physics and in the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead we are talking about interactions and entanglements. These ideas of relatedness or connections or entanglements in Eastern and Western modes of thought are the main idea of this essay. Not all entanglements are known. Just two examples: the nature of quantum entanglements is not known. Quantum entanglements should be faster than light. That's why Albert Einstein had some doubts. A second example: the completely unknown connections between the mind and the brain. Other examples are mysterious like the connections between birds in a flock. Some are a little known like gravitational forces. 3. Key terms: ‘Arm in arm’. But Nagarjuna did not stop there. He was not content to repeat this discovery of relational reality. He went on one step further indicating that what is happening between two things. He gave indications to the space between two things. He realized that not the behaviour of bodies, but the behaviour of something between them may be essential for understanding the reality. This open space is not at all empty. It is full of energy. The open space is the middle between things. Things are going arm in arm. The middle might be considered as a force that bounds men to the world and it might be seen as well as a force of liberation. It might be seen as a bondage to the infinite space. 4. Key term: Philosophy. Nagarjuna, we are told, was a Buddhist philosopher. This statement is not wrong when we take the notion ‘philosophy’ in a deep sense as a love to wisdom, not as wisdom itself. Philosophy is a way to wisdom. Where this way has an end wisdom begins and philosophy is no more necessary. A.N. Whitehead gives philosophy the commission of descriptive generalization. We do not need necessarily a philosophical building of universal dimensions. Some steps of descriptive generalization might be enough in order to see and understand reality. There is another criterion of Nagarjuna’s philosophy. Not his keywords ‘sunyata’ and ‘pratityasamutpada’ but his 25 philosophical examples are the heart of his philosophy. His examples are images. They do not speak to rational and conceptual understanding. They speak to our eyes. Images, metaphors, allegories or symbolic examples have a freshness which rational ideas do not possess. Buddhist dharma and philosophy is a philosophy of allegories. This kind of philosophy is not completely new and unknown to European philosophy. Since Plato’s allegory of the cave it is already a little known. (Plato 424 – 348 Befor Current Era) The German philosopher Hans Blumenberg has underlined the importance of metaphors in European philosophy. 5. Key terms: Quantum Physics. Why quantum physics? European modes of thought had no idea of the space between two this. They were bound to the ideas of substance or subject, two main metaphysical traditions of European philosophical history, two main principles. These substances and these subjects are two immaterial bodies which were considered by traditional European metaphysics as lying, as a sort of core, inside the objects or underlying the empirical reality of our world. The first European scientist who saw with his inner eye the forces between two things had been Michael Faraday (1791-1867). Faraday was an English scientist who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism. Later physicists like Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg and others followed his view in modern physics. This is a fifth point of my work. I compare Nagarjuna with European scientific modes of thought for a better understanding of Asia. I do not compare Nagarjuna with European philosophers like Hegel, Heidegger, Wittgenstein. The principles and metaphysical foundations of physical sciences are more representative for European modes of thought than the ideas of Hegel, Heidegger and Wittgenstein and they are more precise. And slowly we are beginning to understand these principles. Let me take as an example the interpretation of quantum entanglement by the British mathematician Roger Penrose. Penrose discusses in the year of 2000 the experiences of quantum entanglement where light is separated over a distance of 100 kilometers and still remains connected in an unknown way. These are well known experiments in the last 30 years. Very strange for European modes of thought. The light should be either separated or connected. That is the expectation most European modes of thought tell us. Aristotle had been the first. Aristotle (384 - 322 Before Current Era) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and a teacher of Alexander the Great. He told us the following principle as a metaphysical foundation: Either a situation exists or not. There is not a third possibility. Now listen to Roger Penrose: “Quantum entanglement is a very strange type of thing. It is somewhere between objects being separate and being in communication with each other” (Roger Penrose, The Large, the Small and the Human Mind, Cambridge University Press. 2000 page 66). This sentence of Roger Penrose is a first step of a philosophical generalization in a Whiteheadian sense. 6. Key terms: ‘The metaphysical foundations of modern science’ had been examined particularly by three European and American philosophers: E. A. Burtt, A.N. Whitehead and Hans-Georg Gadamer, by Gadamer eminently in his late writings on Heraclitus and Parmenides. I try to follow the approaches of these philosophers of relational views and of anti-substantialism. By ‘metaphysical foundations’ Edwin Arthur Burtt does not understand transcendental ideas but simply the principles that are underlying sciences. -/- 7. Key terms: ‘Complementarity’, ‘interactions’, ‘entanglements’. Since 1927 quantum physics has three key terms which give an indication to the fundamental physical reality: Complementarity, interactions and entanglement. These three notions are akin to Nagarjuna’s relational view of reality. They are akin and they are very precise, so that Buddhism might learn something from these descriptions and quantum physicists might learn from Nagarjuna’s examples and views of reality. They might learn to do a first step in a philosophical generalisation of quantum physical experiments. All of us we might learn how objects are entangled or going arm in arm. [The end of the summary.] -/- « Wenn du gerade das, wodurch auch immer du gefesselt bist, erkennst, wirst du zur Freiheit gelangen. Wenn du diesen speziellen Pfad verwirklichst, gelangst du in einem Leben zur Buddhaschaft. Deswegen verhält es sich folgendermaßen : Wenn plötzlich die Geistesregung « Begierde » enststeht, dann betrachte, ohne ihr zu folgen, direkt ihre Essenz und verweile in dieser Betrachtung, ohne Ablenkungen zuzulassen. Auf diese Weise reinigt Begierde sich selbst, ohne aufgegeben zu werden, da sie ohne Grundlage und Ursprung entsteht. Das wird « Befreiung in sich selbst », « unterscheidende ursprüngliche Weisheit » oder Buddha Amitabha » genannt ». Jigden Sumgön, Licht, das die Dunkelheit durchbricht, Otter Verlag, München 2006, Seite 47, 48 . (shrink)

The objective of this study was to examine whether the “step back and watch” attitude of mindfulness manifests in less emotional behavior. We hypothesized that the “acceptance” facet of mindfulness, but not the “presence” facet, is negatively associated with the magnitude of emotional behavior in four tests, i.e., rating of words, rating of aversive and neutral pictures, and evaluative conditioning . Additionally, we hypothesized that the acceptance facet is associated with increased reaction time in an emotional Stroop test, and that (...) the presence facet is associated with decreased RT and lower error rate. The sample consisted of N = 247 non-clinical adults and was tested in a cross-sectional study. The results provide partial evidence that the acceptance facet of mindfulness may be associated with less aversive reactions towards aversive stimuli. Future studies should substantiate these findings but also determine their clinical relevance. (shrink)

Both spiritual experiences and mindfulness as a psychological variable have been identified as components of wellbeing and health. As there is uncertainty about their relationship, we have investigated the impact of spiritual experiences and mindfulness as well as their interaction on distress in chronically ill patients. The unidimensional Daily Spiritual Experiences Scale, the multidimensional Exceptional Experiences Questionnaire, the Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory, and the Brief Symptom Inventory were administered to 109 chronically ill patients. Fifty-eight patients reported regular and frequent spiritual or (...) contemplative practice from different traditions over an average of 14.7 years. Patients with regular spiritual practice reported more positive spiritual experiences, were more mindful and less distressed. A stepwise linear regression analysis revealed that the EEQ subscale “negative spiritual experiences” was the most important single predictor for psychological distress. In contrast, both the EEQ subscale “positive spiritual experiences” as well as the DSES that also captures positives daily encounters with a transcendental realm or entity did not account for a significant amount of variance in distress. Further analysis of the regression model, confirmed that NSE was still the largest predictor for distress and that mindfulness and the interaction between mindfulness and NSE were the most important buffers protecting individuals from distress. Thus, mindfulness seems not only to be a clinically important protective factor for buffering generic distress, but particularly for distress derived from NSEs. This suggests that in addition to directly facilitating well-being and health by means of positive spiritual experiences, at least some form of regular spiritual or meditative techniques seem to endow an individual with a certain degree of resilience against negative spiritual experiences that is likely a consequence of increased mindfulness. If these findings are vindicated by further studies, spiritual experiences should not be conceived and measured as univariate but rather multivariate constructs. (shrink)

I attempt to answer the question of what Aristotle's criteria for 'being a substance' are in the Categories. On the basis of close textual analysis, I argue that subjecthood, conceived in a certain way, is the criterion that explains why both concrete objects and substance universals must be regarded as substances. It also explains the substantial primacy of concrete objects. But subjecthood can only function as such a criterion if both the subjecthood of concrete objects and the subjecthood of substance (...) universals can be understood as philosophically significant phenomena. By drawing on Aristotle's essentialism, I argue that such an understanding is possible: the subjecthood of substance universals cannot simply be reduced to that of primary substances. Primary and secondary substances mutually depend on each other for exercising their capacities to function as subjects. Thus, subjecthood can be regarded as a philosophically informative criterion for substancehood in the Categories. (shrink)

Abstract Die moderne Physik besteht nicht nur aus neuen Entdeckungen und Erfindungen durch die Relativitätstheorie und durch die Quantenphysik. Sie besteht auch aus völlig neuen Sichtweisen und flexiblen Denkweisen von Zusammenhängen und Verschränkungen zwischen den Dingen. Die moderne Physik hat sich von dem Klischee des Schwarz-Weiß-Denkens verabschiedet, für das es nur getrennte Dinge, ohne fließende Übergänge gibt. Solche unbeweglichen, dogmatischen schwarzweißen Denkweisen können wir zurückverfolgen bis zu dem griechischen Philosophen Aristoteles. In der Zeit der Klassischen Mechanik hatten sie einen überwältigenden (...) Erfolg. Galilei behauptete, das Buch der Natur sei in der Sprache der Mathematik geschrieben. Das war die sehr kurzgefasste Formulierung der Klassischen Mechanik. Die moderne Physik hat sich keineswegs von der Mathematik verabschiedet, ganz und gar nicht. Doch der heilige Ernst und der starre und absolute Dogmatismus hat nachgelassen. Moderne Denkweisen in der Physik können mit den Begriffen von fließenden Übergängen, von Zwischenstufen, von Zusammenhängen zwischen den Dingen und von Schwingungen gekennzeichnet werden. Seit Faraday und Maxwell hat sich eine Verschiebung der Untersuchungsobjekte ergeben: Seit der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts, seit ca 1850, drehen sich die Denkmodelle der modernen Physik nicht mehr um getrennte, isolierten Körper, die im Nichts schwimmen, sondern um die Zwischenräume zwischen den Körpern und um die flexiblen Beziehungsgeflechte zwischen den Dingen und um die Netzwerke, die die Dinge umgeben. Das sind ganz neue physikalische Denkweisen, die durchaus Dunkelzonen und Zweifel und Ungewissheiten kennen, die den Bereich der Exaktheit überschatten. Neue Beiträge der physikalischen Denkweisen sind auch durch eine Flexibilität bei der Bildung von Begriffen gekennzeichnet. Sie lassen sich nicht auf einige wenige Begriffe oder auf eine starre und exakte Festlegung der Wortwahl festnageln. -/- „Jede Philosophie bezieht ihre Farbe von der geheimen Lichtquelle eines Vorstellungshintergrunds, der niemals ausdrücklich in ihrenGedankenketten auftaucht“ (Whitehead) (1) . (shrink)

Social interactions are essential for animals to reproduce, defend their territory, and raise their young. The conserved nature of social behaviors across animal species suggests that the neural pathways underlying the motivation for, and the execution of, specific social responses are also maintained. Modern tools of neuroscience have offered new opportunities for dissecting the molecular and neural mechanisms controlling specific social responses. We will review here recent insights into the neural circuits underlying a particularly fascinating and important form of social (...) interaction, that of parental care. We will discuss how these findings open new avenues to deconstruct infant‐directed behavioral control in males and females, and to help understand the neural basis of parenting in a variety of animal species, including humans. (shrink)

Bertrand russell, In his paper on "vagueness," claims that all language is vague. His first argument is that language is vague because all words-Physical-Object words, Logical words, Proper names, Etc.-Are vague. Or, To state the argument more fully: a word is vague if it is a word the extent of whose application is essentially doubtful; all words have an extent of application that is essentially doubtful; hence all words are vague. There are several difficulties, Most of which result from russell's (...) use of the phrase 'essentially doubtful'. Physical-Object words may be used vaguely. But to say that words may be used vaguely is not the same as saying that they are vague. Similar considerations apply to logical words. Concerning proper names I argue, First, That, Given russell's theory, He cannot consistently maintain that they are vague, And, Second, That the evidence he offers is not evidence for the vagueness of proper names but evidence that we are sometimes in doubt whether or not to give an entity a name. Russell's second argument is that language is a system, And, Since the system is vague, The component parts of the system must be vague. The argument has its difficulties. (shrink)

A monomethod bias still prevails in the psychology of religion, with the developing field studying the relationship between religiosity, spirituality and health being almost completely dominated by questionnaire research. This comes as a surprise, because the experiential side of religion, spirituality, can by definition be regarded as inner and private experiences of transcendence that have frequently been described as being of utmost importance. At first glance, from this perspective, standardized questionnaire scales appear to be inappropriate for “measuring the unmeasurable”. Until (...) now, no questionnaire instrument developed for the purpose of assessing spiritual and religious experiences has been qualitatively double-checked for intermethod validity. In order to throw light on whether questionnaire instruments are appropriate for measuring domains of spiritual and transcendental experiences, we tested a newly developed questionnaire instrument, the Exceptional Experience Questionnaire , for intermethod validity by conducting post-questionnaire interviews . This revealed that the EEQ was able to grasp these experiences within reasonable limits. However, two thirds of our interview sample said that the study had changed how they viewed these experiences. These findings suggest that the reactivity of quantitative instruments in grasping spiritual and transcendental domains should be taken into account, especially when devising longitudinal designs and further research is clearly needed. As a consequence, introducing a reflective circle of results stemming from both quantitative and qualitative approaches is recommended as the most useful and appropriate research tool for studying spiritual or mystical experiences, if not all constructs. (shrink)

There is an argument against abortion that should be rejected. It is the argument that abortion is the killing of an innocent human being, and since the killing of an innocent human being is immoral, abortion is therefore immoral. The major premise should be corrected to read: ?Generally speaking, the killing of innocent human beings is immoral'; for in some situations morality demands the killing of the innocent. Moreover, given the deep structure of English and the differences between unborn and (...) born progeny, the question of whether a human fetus is a human being is best answered in the negative. (shrink)

The authors argue that the time is ripe for national and corporate leaders to move consciously towards the development of global ethics. This papers presents a model of global ethics, a rationale for the development of global ethics, and the implications of the model for research and practice.

Hubertus Kohle ist ein Kunsthistoriker und Hochschullehrer, der sich besonders mit seinen Forschungen zur Kunst der europäischen Aufklärung und des 19. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland einen Namen gemacht hat. Schon früh hat er seine Disziplin digitalen Verfahren und Konzepten geöffnet und setzt sich seit Jahren für das elektronische Publizieren im Open Access ein. Aktuell widmet er sich als einer der beiden Leiter des renommierten DFG-Schwerpunktprogramms „Das digitale Bild“ auch fachübergreifend dem Thema des Digitalen. Anlässlich seines 60. Geburtstags ehren ihn zahlreiche Freunde (...) und akademische Weggefährten mit der vorliegenden Festschrift, die inhaltlich an die Schwerpunkte seines kunsthistorischen Wirkens anknüpft – von den analogen Anfängen, die der Kunst des Aufklärungszeitalters gewidmet waren, bis hin zum aktuellen Feld der „Digitalen Kunstgeschichte“. Diese Festgabe versteht sich als experimentelle Online-Publikation, die dem Jubilar zum Geburtstagstermin in einer ersten Version rein virtuell präsentiert wird. Da es sich dabei bewusst um ein „digital work in progress“ handelt, werden später weitere Beiträge ergänzt (im Inhaltsverzeichnis im unteren Abschnitt zu finden), die die Festschrift zu einem finalen E-Book komplettieren, das dann Ende 2019 parallel auch als eine analoge Buchausgabe erhältlich ist. (shrink)

As transnational interactions increase, cross-cultural conflict concerning ethical issues is inevitable. This article presents a model for assisting decision makers in selecting appropriate strategies for addressing cross-cultural ethical conflict. A theoretical framework for the model is developed based on the literature on international business ethics and on conflict resolution. The model is illustrated through several case examples. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.

Can the evidence provided by software systems meet the standard of proof for civil or criminal cases, and is it individualized evidence? Or, to the contrary, do software systems exclusively provide bare statistical evidence? In this paper, we argue that there are cases in which evidence in the form of probabilities computed by software systems is not bare statistical evidence, and is thus able to meet the standard of proof. First, based on the case of State v. Loomis, we investigate (...) recidivism predictions provided by software systems used in the courtroom. Here, we raise problems for software systems that provide predictions that are based on bare statistical evidence. Second, by examining the case of People v. Chubbs, we argue that the statistical evidence provided by software systems in cold hit DNA cases may in some cases suffice for individualized evidence, on a view on which individualized evidence is evidence that normically supports the relevant proposition (Smith, in Mind 127:1193–1218, 2018). (shrink)

The field of health promotions faces considerable ethical and programmatic challenge – and we believe opportunity – in addressing the relative normativity of the concept(s) of health and its professional handling. To date, distinctions of objective and subjective indicants of “health” have fostered normative tension(s) within the utilitarian ethics of health promotions, which we opine to be anathema to the ultimate goal(s) of attaining and sustaining healthy individuals and societies. Objective and subjective metrics and values should be reconciled, as reciprocal (...) and complementary on both idiosyncratic and systemic levels. In this light, we propose that a philosophical and ethical approach, based primarily upon Schmitz’s New Phenomenology and its specific understanding of subjectivity could afford epistemological bases for non-normative engagement of health promotion within a structural–functional framework of ethics. We dialectically address its potential benefit, limitations and value for health promotion and health care ethics and present an approach which points towards a more substantial encouragement of diversity through the legitimation of subjectivity. (shrink)

Corporate concentration is currently being discussed as a core reason for the crisis of democratic capitalism. It is seen as a prime mover for wage stagnation and alienation, economic inequalities and discontent with democracy. A tacit coalition of progressive anti-monopoly critiques and small business promoters considers more deconcentrated corporate structures to be a panacea for the crisis of democratic capitalism, arguing that small firms in competition are better for employment, equality and democracy. This paper offers a brief outline of ideas (...) of the anti-monopoly and small business ideal and critically evaluates whether a more deconcentrated economy may live up to these promises. While we agree that the plea for strengthened antitrust enforcement contains relevant and promising prospects for reform, our analysis concludes on a decidedly critical note. In particular, we caution against romanticized notions of the small capitalist firm. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of what we can legitimately say about things in themselves in Kant's critical doctrine. Many Kant scholars believe that Kant allows that things in themselves can be characterized through the unschematized or ‘pure’ concepts of our understanding such as ‘substance’ or ‘causality’. However, I show that on Kant's view things in themselves do not conform to the unschematized categories : the pure categories, like space and time, are merely subjective forms of finite, discursive cognition. I (...) then examine what this interpretation might entail for central aspects of Kant's system such as his doctrine of noumenal freedom. (shrink)

Spirituality is a topic of recent interest. Mindfulness, for example, a concept derived from the Buddhist tradition, has captivated the imagination of clinicians who package it in convenient intervention programs for patients. Spirituality and religion have been researched with reference to potential health benefits. Spirituality can be conceptualised as the alignment of the individual with the whole, experientially, motivationally and in action. For spirituality to unfold its true potential it is necessary to align this new movement with the mainstream of (...) science, and vice versa. Hence, both a historical review, and a systematic attempt at integration is called for, which we are trying to give here. It is useful to go back to one of the roots: parapsychology. Parapsychology was founded as a counter movement to the rising materialist paradigm in the 19th century. Adopting the methods of the natural sciences, it tried to prove the direct influence of consciousness on matter. After 125 years this mission must be declared unaccomplished. Surveying the database of parapsychological research it is obvious that it will not convince sceptics: Although there are enough exceptional findings, it has in general not been possible to reproduce them in replication experiments. This is, however, a characteristic signature of a category of effects which we call effects of generalised entanglement, predicted by a theoretical model analogous to quantum theory. Using this perspective, parapsychological effects can be understood, and the original aim of the founding fathers can be recovered, as well as a new, systematic understanding of spirituality be gained. Generalised entanglement is a formal and scientific way of explaining spirituality as alignment of an individual with a whole, which, according to the model, inevitably leads to non-local correlations. (shrink)

Although Kant is often considered the founding father of the controversial principle ‘Ought Implies Can’ (OIC), it is not at all clear how Kant himself understands and defends this principle. This essay provides a substained interpretation of Kant's views on OIC. I argue that Kant endorses two versions of OIC: a version that is concerned with our physical capacities, and a version that posits a link between moral obligation and a volitional power of choice. I show that although there are (...) important senses in which Kant's conception of OIC differs from the way in which OIC is discussed in recent philosophy, his account raises important issues for contemporary theory: for instance, it highlights the extent to which acceptance or rejection of OIC reflects convictions about the sources of normativity. (shrink)

It is standardly assumed that, in Kant, “free agency” is identical to moral agency and requires the will or practical reason. Likewise, it is often held that the concept of “spontaneity” that Kant uses in his theoretical philosophy is very different from, and much thinner than, his idea of practical spontaneity. In this paper I argue for the contrary view: Kant has a rich theory of doxastic free agency, and the spontaneity in empirical thought (which culminates in judgments of experience) (...) is essentially the same sort of spontaneity found in the practical use of reason. Accordingly, the faculties of understanding and practical reason both possess genuine autonomy. (shrink)