In a previous issue of this journal, Professor R. A. Oakes compared Blanshard’s version of the entailment view of causality with Professor E. H. Madden’s version of the natural necessity view of causality [5]. Professor Oakes, after considering their alleged differences, asserted that these two views were the same. In the same issue, Professor Madden replied to Oakes’ remarks with a list of characteristics which allegedly distinguished his natural necessity view from the entailment (...) view [3]. In what follows I propose that Madden’s list of differentiating characteristics contains no essential, irreconcilable element which separates his view from Blanshard’s. Additionally, I will consider several features of the Madden and Blanshard views not considered by either Madden or Oakes in their articles which do in fact irreconcilably distinguish them. (shrink)

I build a case for the impossibility of natural necessity as anything other than a species of metaphysical necessity – the necessity obtaining in virtue of the essences of natural objects. Aristotelian necessitarianism about the laws of nature is clarified and defended. I contrast it with E.J. Lowe’s contingentism about the laws. I examine Lowe’s solution to the circularity/triviality problem besetting natural necessity understood as relative necessity. Lowe’s way out is subject to (...) serious problems unless it is given an essentialist turn, which he declines to do. Further, his defence of contingency in terms of possible variation in the natural constants is found wanting, as is a related defence given by Kit Fine. I examine and raise problems for a recent, Lowe-inspired defence of a hybrid view of the modal status of laws given by Tuomas Tahko. Aristotelian necessitarianism, by contrast, can account for the sorts of phenomena to which contingentists typically appeal. (shrink)

The paper considers recent proposals by Armstrong, Dretske, and Tooley that revive the view that statements of laws of nature are grounded by the existence of higher order facts relating universals. Several objections to such a view are raised and an alternative analysis, recognizing general facts, is considered. Such an alternative is shown to meet a number of the objections raised against the appeal to higher order facts and it is also related to views of Hume and Wittgenstein. (...) Further objections are then raised to all the non-Humean "realist" attempts to provide special facts to ground the laws of nature. (shrink)

Nicholas Everitt's objection to my discussion of the regularity theory of causation is a common one. Ithink it misses the point, but the point it misses is in a way a delicate one, and hard to express, and the general worry he expresses is a natural one. For that reason it is important, and its importance is reflected in the fact that it is very difficult to find a satisfyingly substantive way of stating the difference between regularity theories of (...) causation and non-regularity theories of causation. I have had no new ideas about how to do this [...], but I will restate some of [my older] ideas [...], in order to try to answer Everitt [...]. (shrink)

Drawing the complex terrain of the theories of induction and of the various ways to ground inductive knowledge in the middle ages is the aim of this paper. There have already been two excellent attempts to draw this terrain. The first is by Julius R. Weinberg and the second by E. P. Bos. My attempt differs from theirs in two major respects. The first is that it is more detailed in the examination of the various theories and their relations. The (...) second is that I focus on the role of natural necessities in induction. In particular, I try to place the various conceptions of induction within a network of issues that relate to the problem of universals, natural necessities and a power-based approach to activity in nature. Here is the road map. Section 2 explains Aristotle’s views of induction, as this were mainly developed in Posterior Analytics Book II.19 and states what I take it to be the main dilemma of induction, as this was described by Sextus Empiricus: induction is either perfect and impossible or imperfect and unjustified. In section 3, I move to Thomas Aquinas and his own attempt to justify induction and the actuality of general and necessary principles based on experience by an appeal to the natural light of reason. In section 4 I discuss John Duns Scotus’s reliance on a self-evident maxim to bridge the gap between imperfect and perfect induction. Section 5 moves to William of Ockham ’s peculiar attempt to justify single-instance inductions. Then, section 6 offers a detailed account of Jean Buridan’s ground-breaking re-conceptualisation of induction and the role of intellect in it. Section 7 discusses the critique of induction by Nicolaus of Autrecourt. Finally, section 8 offers a brief account of Pseudo-Scotus’s move from knowledge to opinion. (shrink)

This provocative but persuasive book is essentially a radical attack upon the Humean conception of causality and the presentation and defense of a counter-theory, closer to everyday experience and pre-Humean traditional views. As formulated by empiricist philosophers, the Humean approach depends on two basic postulates. The philosophical analysis of any non-empirical concept must be a formal explication; any residue elements have to be accounted for in terms of their psychological origins. The world as experienced can be conceived adequately as a (...) logically independent system of things or flux of events, without the unwarranted assumption that individuals persist diachronically. As the grounds for undermining these assumptions, the authors develop a conception of causes as "powerful particulars," i.e., things which have both a nature and powers. So long as the nature remains unchanged the agent in question will continue to behave in this fashion with a natural necessity, stemming from the individual’s nature and specific powers. The opening chapter discusses the problem of conceptual and natural necessity—as distinct from logical necessity which alone is allowed by the Humean empiricists. Natural necessity is the mark of the relationship between real causes and their respective effects, whereas conceptual necessity characterizes the way our statements about such are themselves related. Later the irreducibility of natural necessity is emphasized and its differences from logical entailment spelled out. Chapter two takes up the subject of the "regularity theory and its allies." Characteristic of such are two claims: the empirical content of a causal-relationship statement is exhausted by the actual or hypothetical regularity between independent entities, and the necessity ordinarily attributed to causal production is an illusion, to be accounted for in various ways. Subsequent chapters are devoted to assaulting the pillars of the Humean notion either directly or indirectly through an illuminating and attractive account of their own theory of nature, causal powers, and natural necessity. The final chapter, entitled "Fields of Potential," indulges in speculation about the nature of ultimate entities on the basis of an extended generalization of the notion of the powerful individual, and concludes with a brief account of the historical antecedents of Faraday’s modern field theory and the metaphysical implications of a generalized field theory.—A.B.W. (shrink)

This paper contrasts two views of the necessity to manifest the rational adequacy of argumentation. The view advanced by Ralph Johnson’s program for informal logic will be compared to one based on an account of obligations incurred in speech acts. Both views hold that arguers are commonly obliged to make it apparent that they are offering adequate support for their positions, but they differ in their accounts of the nature and scope of those obligations.

Spinoza's guiding commitment to the thesis that nothing exists or occurs outside of the scope of nature and its necessary laws makes him one of the great seventeenth-century exemplars of both philosophical naturalism and explanatory rationalism. Nature and Necessity in Spinoza's Philosophy brings together for the first time eighteen of Don Garrett's articles on Spinoza's philosophy, ranging over the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, ethics, and political philosophy. Taken together, these influential articles provide a comprehensive interpretation of (...) that philosophy, including Spinoza's theories of substance, thought and extension, causation, truth, knowledge, individuation, representation, consciousness, conatus, teleology, emotion, freedom, responsibility, virtue, contract, the state, and eternity-and the deep interrelations among them. Each article aims to resolve significant problems in the understanding of Spinoza's philosophy in such a way as to make evident both his reasons for his views and the enduring value of his ideas. At the same time, Garrett's articles elucidate the relations between his philosophy and those of predecessors and contemporaries like Aristotle, Hobbes, Descartes, Locke, and Leibniz. Lastly, the volume offers important and substantial replies to leading critics on four crucial topics: the necessary existence of God (Nature), substance monism, necessitarianism, and consciousness. (shrink)

This paper is on Descartes’ account of modality and, in particular, his account of the necessity of the laws of nature. He famously argues that the necessity of the “eternal truths” of logic and mathematics depends on God’s will. Here I suggest he has the same view about the necessity of the laws of nature. Further, I argue, this is a plausible theory of laws. For philosophers often talk about something being nomologically or physically necessary because (...) of the laws of nature, but this necessity is thought to be metaphysically contingent. However, they struggle to explain how the laws could be genuinely necessary while being metaphysically contingent. The chief advantage of Descartes view, I argue, is that God’s will can plausibly explain both the necessity of the laws and the contingency of the laws. So, Descartes’ theistic account of laws provides a plausible explanation, perhaps the best explanation, of the contingent-necessity of laws of nature. (shrink)

In this paper I offer an alternative to the standard, mechanistic/fatalistic account of causal necessity, one compatible with the existence of laws of nature but not deterministic in the way this is usually understood.

In this article I argue for an empiricist view on laws. Some laws are fundamental in the sense that they are the result of inductive generalisations of observed regularities and at the same time in their formulation contain a new theoretical predicate. The inductive generalisations simul- taneously function as implicit definitions of these new predicates. Other laws are either explicit definitions or consequences of other previously established laws. I discuss the laws of classical mechanics, relativity theory and electromagnetism in (...) detail. Laws are necessary, whereas acciden- tal generalisations are not. But necessity here is not a modal concept, but rather interpreted as short for the semantic predicate “... is necessarily true”. Thus no modal logic is needed. The neces- sity attributed to law sentences is in turn interpreted as “necessary condition for the rest of the the- ory”, which is true since fundamental laws are implicit definitions of theoretical predicates use in the theory. (shrink)

To differentiate between the laws of nature and accidental generalizations, we must adopt a view of necessity that is capable of being realized in relationships existing among natural objects. In neo-Sadraian Islamic philosophy, metaphysical necessity is accepted as part of the cause-effect relationship. This paper compares the neo-Sadraian interpretation of necessity and necessitarian theories about the laws of nature, particularly essentialism and universal theory. By resorting to specific forms al-shûrat al-naw’iyyah, the origin of the essential (...) properties of natural objects, I argue that neo-Sadraians have proposed a perspective on metaphysical necessity that is epistemologically a posteriori. (shrink)

The focus of my dissertation is a general and comprehensive examination of Locke’s view of divine power. My basic argument is that John Locke is a theological voluntarist in his understanding of God’s creative and providential relationship with the world, including both the natural and moral order. As a voluntarist, Locke holds that God freely imposes both the physical and moral laws of nature onto creation by means of his will: this contrasts with the intellectualist perspective in which (...) the laws of nature emerge from the essences of things. For Locke, there are no intrinsically necessary laws in the created order: both physical and moral laws are arbitrary determinations of the divine will. While these laws are not intrinsically necessary, they are hypothetically necessary. Hypothetical necessity involves things that could have been otherwise, but which are necessary based on the supposition of a free action and other relevant conditions pertaining to the actor. Concerning God, we can understand hypothetical necessity in the following way: □ [ → Y]. X is a variable that ranges over a subset of contingent propositions about actions. ‘P’ is the proposition ‘God is perfect’. And Y is any proposition that is a necessary consequent of both X and P. In any possible world in which God performs X, it is the case that Y will obtain. Supposing that God decides to create beings like us, God must of necessity craft the moral laws of nature in a way that harmonizes with our nature. What grounds this necessity is that God must act consistently with the perfection of the divine nature: to give us a different law would be less than perfect. Furthermore, I argue that certain physical laws of nature – those that help to realize our nature – are also hypothetically necessary. (shrink)

Most contemporary analytic philosophers of language and mind accept the view that there is a wide class of terms, “natural kind terms”, which includes names of substances (the most common example is “water”), of species of animals, and of many other kinds of things in nature, whose meaning and reference is determined in the way explained by the theory developed in the 1970s by Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam. The theory is often referred to as “the Kripke-Putnam theory” (...) and is supposed to have such achievements as the overthrow of the earlier dominant Fregean theory of word-meanings (dubbed “descriptivism” by Kripke) as determined by the concepts in our minds, providing support for the “externalist” approach to linguistic meanings (in line with Putnam’s claim that “"Meanings" just ain’t in the head”), and the discovery that there is a wide class of truths (such as that water is H20) that are both a posteriori and necessary. Although the priority in the development of this theory belongs to Kripke, it could hardly gain such a wide acceptance without contributions by Putnam, which turned out to be very influential. However, the habitual idea of “the Kripke-Putnam theory”, as one theory, tends to play down the differences between Putnam’s and Kripke’s approaches and to hush up the fact that in his late works, of 1983 and 1990, Putnam revised and abandoned pretty much of his “Kripkean” views of 1970-ies; in particular, repudiated the pride of Kripke’s theory, the idea of necessary a posteriori truths. This article makes critical analysis and evaluation of Putnam’s ideas and arguments usually credited as important contributions to “the Kripke-Putnam theory”, and highlights the main points of the revision in late Putnam’s works. The case is made that Putnam's famous argument for externalism about meanings, the Twin-Earth thought experiment, is question-begging, fails to do justice to likely changes in the meanings of words with the development of knowledge, and conflicts with the linguistic practice in the relevantly similar case of “jade”. Putnam's argument for externalism from the division of linguistic labour is not cogent too, because “semantic deference” is itself a matter of what is there in “heads” - of some (non-expert) heads deferring to other (recognised as expert) heads. Eventually, on close inspection and in the light of Putnam's later reexplanation and revision, his account of meaning and reference turns out to be a sophisticated variety of conceptualism/internalism. (shrink)

Chapter 1 serves as an introduction to the vast topic of laws of nature. Thus, it first outlines the alleged characteristics of the laws of nature, namely truth, objectivity, contingency, necessity, universality, grounding counterfactuals and their role in science. Among these aspects, the peculiar modal status of laws of nature will be identified as the ‘holy grail’ of the debate. The second part of this chapter is concerned with the three main families of theories of laws of nature – (...) neo-humean, ADT and dispositional theories – which are introduced and evaluated in regard to the aforementioned characteristics. It will then be argued that among those theories, the dispositional ones show the greatest promise of being able to account for the natural necessity of the laws of nature. -/- Before a dispositional account of laws of nature can be given, dispositions themselves need to be understood. Consequently, Chapter 2 introduces various analyses of dispositions. As dispositions are pre-theoretically close to conditionals, a lot of analyses try to reduce dispositions to conditionals. This chapter critically assesses some chosen accounts: the simple conditional analysis, Carnap’s reduction sentences, the simple counterfactual conditional analysis, Lewis’ reformed conditional analysis, Malzkorn’s sophisticated con- ditional analysis, Choi and Gundersen’s context-dependent analysis, Manley and Wasserman’s gradable dispostion ascriptions, and Fara’s habituals. The prevention problem, which poses a threat to any account of dispositions, is depicted. It is argued that, ultimately, none of the conditionalising attempts is able to convince since they all exclude the problem cases which leads to explanation gaps and outlaw areas. -/- Chapter 3 contains the synchronic part of my preferred solution to the prevention problem. The notion of ‘component causes’ is introduced, and the ontological status of components discussed. Millikan’s oil drop experiment is depicted en detail. In a first step, making a distinction between dispositions and the resulting behaviour is advocated. Via the symmetry argument, mani- festations and masks are shown to be ontologically on a par. In a second step, a triadic account consisting of dispositions, wirkungen and resultant behaviour, is established. Finally, the ontological interpretation of the trias is given. It is in the nature of the dispositions to bring about the wirkungen. These interact via combinations rules like the functions f and fa or vector addition, which are built-in into to dispositions. -/- The diachronic part of my favourite interpretation, the triadic process picture of dispositions (TPD), is presented in chapter 4. The dynamics of dispo- sition manifestation are discussed and it is argued that fiddling with the trigger works only up to a certain point. Diachronic masking cases turn out to be no- torious. An excursus to action theory shows that the ontology needs to include processes, as understanding disposition manifestations as processes solves the diachronic prevention problem. The (TPD) can account for all counterexamples by taking the stimulus as the beginning of the manifestation process. -/- Chapter 5 applies the (TPD) to the debate about laws of nature. In order to judge its adequacy, the characteristics of laws of nature given in chapter 1 are consulted. As a first step, the criteria truth, objectivity, universality, grounding counterfactuals and their role in science are covered. It is sketched how the (TPD) can account for these. The second part of the chapter deals with the modal status of the laws of nature. The dispositional essentialist’s view that laws of nature are metaphysical necessary is depicted and then criticised. It is argued that metaphysical necessity is not the appropriate modal status of the laws of nature. Finally, the (TPD) account of the necessity of the laws of nature is presented: laws of nature are naturally necessary and metaphysically contingent. (shrink)

ABSTRACTFrancis Bacon’s works are pervaded by the firm belief that he was living in a new epoch. He thought of this epoch as based on knowledge and mechanical arts, which would permit dominion over nature. This dominion arises from mankind’s taking concrete action to improve the living conditions of humanity. Defining the nature of this action leads to individuate a plural historical subjectivity in Bacon’s thought. The different kinds of agency, and different kinds of technologies, define peoples in ethnological and (...) spatial terms. Imperiality, that is human dominion over nature, implies the necessity of improving the conditions of the whole mankind, in a manner that opens the way of thinking in which ‘backward’ peoples are subject to this action of improvement. Colonialism is strictly related to imperiality. The idea of colonialism, in the New World in particular, rests on the assumption that human race can improve its living conditions, exercising power over nature. Therefore, imperiality and colonialism are not simply a tool of a British dominion, but elements of the new epoch that Bacon is theorising. In this sense, imperiality and colonialism are part of the philosophical structure of Bacon’s modernity. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss and evaluate different arguments for the view that the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary. I conclude that essentialist arguments from the nature of natural kinds fail to establish that essences are ontologically more basic than laws, and fail to offer an a priori argument for the necessity of all causal laws. Similar considerations carry across to the argument from the dispositionalist view of properties, which may end up placing unreasonable constraints (...) on property identity across possible worlds. None of my arguments preclude the possibility that the laws may turn out to be metaphysically necessary after all, but I argue that this can only be established by a posteriori scientific investigation. I therefore argue for what may seem to be a surprising conclusion: that a fundamental metaphysical question – the modal status of laws of nature – depends on empirical facts rather than purely on a priori reasoning. (shrink)

Wittgenstein's earlier treatment of causation and induction remains thought‐provoking and relevant to contemporary debates in the philosophy of science. Wittgenstein's approach to causation and induction in the Tractatus emerges in the context of two separate, but related discussions. A negative discussion that aims to expose a particular understanding of natural necessity as nonsensical, and a more positive discussion concerning the role played by laws in the natural sciences. In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein suggests that internal relations hold between (...) propositions by virtue of the latter's truth‐functional structures. Causal laws are instructions that circumscribe what counts as a senseful proposition of the causal form within an optional system. The natural necessity view (NNV) criticized by Wittgenstein in the Tractatus suggests that some relations of necessary entailment arise between possible states, not by virtue of any internal relations between them, but by virtue of the obtaining of certain laws of nature. (shrink)

I argue that each object has many essences. A property E is an essence of object x if and only if E is essential to x and in every possible world everything distinct from x has the complement of E essentially. I then elaborate on the nature of essences and examine the relationship between essences and proper names. My view is that John Stuart Mill was mistaken in his belief that proper names do not express properties. In fact, proper (...) names express essences and I make use of this fact in addressing the famous problem of Hesperus and Phosphorus. (shrink)

SummaryThis article argues that Archibald Campbell's Necessity of Revelation can be viewed as the first application of the ‘science of human nature’, a characteristic branch of the Scottish Enlightenment, to the study of religious belief. Adopting Baconian and Newtonian methodological principles, Campbell set hypotheses, collected historical data, and inferred conclusions about the capabilities of human nature to come to fundamental religious ideas without the aid of revelation. He did so not only to reject the ‘deist’ position on the powers (...) of unassisted human reason, associated with Matthew Tindal's Christianity as Old as the Creation, but also to refute Campbell's conservative critics within the Church of Scotland who had earlier tried him for heresy. Campbell's example is that of a university professor using the experimental study of religion to defeat both radical freethinking and Calvinist orthodoxy. His work is another instance of the complicated relationship between science and religion within eighteenth-century Scotland. (shrink)

Critical readers can reasonably judge Zhuangzi’s 莊子 notion of wuwei 無爲 to offer a persuasive reply to Xunzi’s objection to Zhuangzi’s emphasis on living naturally, in light of recent theories of action. For Zhuangzi, self-cultivation is possible only when individuals attune themselves to the processes inherent in nature . Daoist wuwei depends crucially on two descriptive claims that Zhuangzi endorses and Xunzi rejects. The first claim, backed by Dreyfus’ theory of skill acquisition, is that views of self-cultivation which rely on (...) formulas and concepts stand opposed to the Way. The second claim, supported by Elster and Csikszentmihalyi’s theories of action, is that conscious deliberation is unable to facilitate self-cultivation. Zhuangzi’s normative vision requires that individuals indirectly create conditions for spontaneity, rather than pursue spontaneity directly, since any deliberate attempt at being spontaneous is self-defeating. (shrink)

The relation between natural necessity and entailment is an involved one indeed, and I am grateful to Mr. Oakes for giving me the opportunity to sharpen the nature of this relation. I shall not reply directly to him but shall develop briefly my own views in a way that contains an answer.

Determinism is a spectre that has haunted our scientifically-oriented culture from the beginning. I happen to think that it is literally a ‘spectre’, a trick of the vision, an appearance with an internal cause only, and that it is no more than the ghost of our own conceptual determinations projected outward into a world in which it has no place and no proper being. From one point of view it is no more than an alienated fantasy involving a number (...) of incoherent assumptions. Of these, one of the most important, and one of the most deeply eroded by much contemporary work, is the assumption that science and scientific understanding is a potentially completable system. From another point of view, however, the deterministic picture seems an inevitable product of scientific activity. (shrink)

Determinism is a spectre that has haunted our scientifically-oriented culture from the beginning. I happen to think that it is literally a ‘spectre’, a trick of the vision, an appearance with an internal cause only, and that it is no more than the ghost of our own conceptual determinations projected outward into a world in which it has no place and no proper being. From one point of view it is no more than an alienated fantasy involving a number (...) of incoherent assumptions. Of these, one of the most important, and one of the most deeply eroded by much contemporary work, is the assumption that science and scientific understanding is a potentially completable system. From another point of view, however, the deterministic picture seems an inevitable product of scientific activity. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Tuomas Tahko has argued for a hybrid view of the laws of nature, according to which some physical laws are metaphysically necessary, while others are metaphysically contingent. In this paper, we show that his criterion for distinguishing between these two kinds of laws — which crucially relies on the essences of natural kinds — is on its own unsatisfactory. We then propose an alternative way of drawing the metaphysically necessary/contingent distinction for laws of physics (...) based on the central kinematical/dynamical distinction used in physical theorising, and argue that the criterion can be used to amend Tahko’s own account, but also that it can be combined with different metaphysical views about the source of necessity. (shrink)

During his philosophical career Karl Popper sought to characterize natural laws alternately as strictly universal and as 'naturally' or 'physically' necessary statements. In this paper we argue that neither characterization does what Popper claimed and sketch a reconstruction of his views that avoids some of their major drawbacks.

I propose an argument for the thesis that laws of nature are necessary in the sense of holding in all worlds sharing the properties of the actual world, on the basis of a principle I propose to call the Causal Criterion of Reality . The CCR says: for an entity to be real it is necessary and sufficient that it is capable to make a difference to causal interactions. The crucial idea here is that the capacity to interact causally - (...) or to contribute to determining causal interactions - is not only the ultimate metaphysical ground for the existence of an entity, but it also provides a criterion for determining the nature of that entity, i.e. its properties. The alternative is to conceive of laws of nature as contingent: they could be different from what they are like in the actual world, where that possibility is understood to be metaphysical, not only epistemic. For the sake of this paper, I shall accept Armstrong's thesis that laws of nature are relations between universals. I also follow Armstrong in the view that both the existence and the properties of particulars are metaphysically independent of the existence and identity of other particular. However, what is controversial and what I shall challenge is his thesis that universals are like particulars in the following respect: according to Armstrong, each universal is a logically distinct entity whose existence and identity is independent of the existence and identity of other universals. My aim in this paper is to show that the identity of a universal is entirely determined by its lawful relations to other universals. The crucial premise I use is the thesis that the CCR is a universal criterion, which applies both to particulars and universals. From the thesis that the identity of a universal is exclusively determined by laws, it follows that laws are necessary in the sense that they cannot differ without the universals they link also being different. This creates a difficulty for those authors who, as Armstrong, accept the CCR but nevertheless defend the view that laws are contingent. (shrink)

In a recent paper,[3], Harold T. Walsh has argued that Whewell's commentators have in the past misunderstood his use of “necessary,” that Whewell's theory of necessary truth developed only gradually through thirty years of scholarly activity, finally finding a “mature” expression in Philosophy of Discovery, published in 1860, and that a proper understanding of Whewell's “mature” theory of necessary truth leads to a fundamental re-interpretation of the nature of the Ideas and of their role in scientific systems—that the meaning of (...) “necessity” as Whewell expresses it in Philosophy of Discovery leads, in short, to a new and more illuminating reading of his philosophy of inductive science. It is my view that the three propositions asserting Walsh's view are incorrect, expecially the two important and crucial ones and. In what follows, I shall state what seem to me to be the grounds for rejecting Walsh's view that Whewell's theory of necessity was not arrived at before 1860, and hence for rejecting his interpretation of some basic aspects of Whewell's philosophy of science. (shrink)

Like many realists about causation and causal powers, Aristotle uses the language of necessity when discussing causation, and he appears to think that by invoking necessity, he is clarifying the manner in which causes bring about or determine their effects. In so doing, he would appear to run afoul of Humean criticisms of the notion of a necessary connection between cause and effect. The claim that causes necessitate their effects may be understood—or attacked—in several ways, however, and so (...) whether the view or its criticism is tenable depends on how we understand the necessitation claim. In fact, Aristotelian efficient causation may be said to involve two distinct necessary connections: one is a relation between causes considered as potential, while the other relates them considered as active. That is, the claims that (1) what has the power to heat necessarily heats what has the power to be heated, and that (2) a particular flame which is actually under a pot necessarily heats it, both of which appear to be true for Aristotle, involve distinct notions of necessity. The latter kind of necessity is based on the facts, as Aristotle sees them, about change, whereas the former is based in the nature of properties. Though different, both kinds of necessity are instances of what contemporary philosophers would call metaphysical necessity, and together they also amount to a theory of causal determination. (shrink)

In `Essence and Modality', Kit Fine proposes that for a proposition to be metaphysically necessary is for it to be true in virtue of the nature of all objects whatsoever. Call this view Fine's Thesis. This paper is a study of Fine's Thesis in the context of Fine's logic of essence (LE). Fine himself has offered his most elaborate defense of the thesis in the context of LE. His defense rests on the widely shared assumption that metaphysical necessity (...) obeys the laws of the modal logic S5. In order to get S5 for metaphysical necessity, he assumes a controversial principle about the nature of all objects. I will show that the addition of this principle to his original system E5 leads to inconsistency with an independently plausible principle about essence. In response, I develop a theory that avoids this inconsistency while allowing us to maintain S5 for meta- physical necessity. However, I conclude that our investigation of Fine's Thesis in the context of LE motivates the revisionary conclusion that metaphysical necessity obeys the principles of the modal logic S4, but not those of S5. I argue that this constitutes a distinctively essentialist challenge to the received view that the logic of metaphysical necessity is S5. (shrink)

This chapter considers various views about the precise nature of possible worlds, but each view is compatible with this initial characterization. It considers modality, particularly focusing on metaphysical possibility, necessity, and impossibility, that broadest kind of modality. The chapter offers an example of why one might care about this issue, an example of why the study of modality matters to philosophy more generally. It is plausible that modality is importantly connected to understanding. The chapter focuses on two contrasting (...) views about the nature of possible worlds, Concretism and Abstractionism. The fundamental difference between Concretism and Abstractionism is whether possible worlds are concrete or abstract. Concretism is the view that possible worlds are like parallel universes. Concretism requires Modal Indexicalism and denies Modal Anti‐Indexicalism. The chapter describes the ways that the Concretism carries out its reduction of possibility and actuality. (shrink)

What is the relation between metaphysical necessity and essence? This paper defends the view that the relation is one of identity: metaphysical necessity is a special case of essence. My argument consists in showing that the best joint theory of essence and metaphysical necessity is one in which metaphysical necessity is just a special case of essence. The argument is made against the backdrop of a novel, higher-order logic of essence, whose core features are introduced (...) in the first part of the paper. The second part investigates the relation between metaphysical necessity and essence in the context of HLE. Reductive hypotheses are among the most natural hypotheses to be explored in the context of HLE. But they also have to be weighed against their non-reductive rivals. I investigate three different reductive hypotheses and argue that two of them fare better than their non-reductive rivals: they are simpler, more natural, and more systematic. Specifically, I argue that one candidate reduction, according to which metaphysical necessity is truth in virtue of the nature of all propositions, is superior to the others, including one proposed by Kit Fine, according to which metaphysical necessity is truth in virtue of the nature of all objects. The paper concludes by offering some reasons to think that the best joint theory of essence and metaphysical necessity is one in which the logic of metaphysical necessity includes S4, but not S5. (shrink)

In this book I have tried to develop an analysis of the concept of an empirical law, an analysis that differs in many ways from the alternative analyse's found in contemporary literature dealing with the subject. 1 am referring especially to two well-known views, viz. the regularity and necessity views, which have given rise to many interesting papers and books within the philosophy of science. In developing my own views, it very soon became clear to me that the mere (...) restatement of these alternative views, followed by a discussion of their defects and an explanation of my own view, would not suffice to show what 1 regard as basically unsound in these views. If we seriously consider the well-known difficulties facing the regularity view, we have to consider the possibility that the time has arrived to stop our attempts to solve, by means of patch-work additions, the fundamental problem of empirical laws within the traditional context of logical positivist doctrines. I have tried to find a solution which is based on a different philosophical context, the main incentive being that the discouraging results of the customary attempts to solve the problem might have been the outcome of the fundamental philosophical setting within which the problem had been formulated and within which everyone looked for a solution. The problem of empirical laws is not a problem existing by its own rights - it is shaped by an underlying point of view or theoretical framework. For this reason I have started with a brief sketch of the logical positivist context. However, I want to stress the fact that my intention was not to offer an historical exposition, but an exposition which becomes meaningful when related to the subsequent arguments concerning empirical laws. The notion of direct or theory-free observation has been taken as the fundamental characteristic of the logical positivist point of view. This view has been further characterised by means of five theses, among which is the thesis that observational terms are isolated or theory-independent units of extensional meaning. These terms are then supposed to be the starting-points of meaning and the end-points of confirmation, and these very characteristics mark the privileged position such terms have in a logical positivist philosophy. The post-positivist view, on the other hand, is characterised by the opposing notion of theory-loaded observation. This notion leads to other conclusions which radically oppose some of the theses of logical positivism. The notion of theory- loaded observation itself, although often clearly stated, has not yet been systematically elucidated, and I have made an attempt to do this in ch. I after my sketch of the logical positivist context. This seemed to me to be necessary in order to make my post-positivist point of view as clear as possible, before tackling the problem of empirical law itself. I have paid special attention to the lawlikeness of concepts and their confirmation and falsification. These epistemological issues are followed by a separate examination of Goodman's riddle in ch. II, because it lies somewhere between the lawlikeness of concepts and the lawlikeness of laws. If Goodman's riddle is taken as a serious problem, as I think it should, it is primarily a problem of concept or theory formation and not a problem of induction. In ch. III the regularity view has been examined and the well-known difficulties related to such a view are considered, assuming the knowledge gained in ch. I. This has led to some interesting results, especially in connection with the analysis of counterfactuals and the confirmation of 'normal' singular conditionals, to which I return in the last chapter. Three different views of the necessity view are briefly stated and investigated in ch. IV. RESCHER'S view is, I think, close to mine, which has been developed in ch. V. However, there are fundamental epistemological differences between our views. In the last chapter I have given my own analysis of the concept of an empirical law, which should not be taken as a synthesis of a regularity and a necessity view, but as opposed to both. It is, as far as particulars may count, the result of an analysis of the concepts 'regularity' and 'necessity'. I have tried to argue that the greatest shortcoming of the regularity view lies in the fact that the proponents of such a view have not been really concerned with the concept of 'regularity' itself. They usually take this concept to be intuitively clear enough to serve as basis for their analysis. Their attacks upon the necessity view are based on the reproach that 'necessity' is a very obscure concept, and that it should, therefore, be avoided in the philosophy of science. We could, however, reproach them in a similar way, since the concept of 'regularity' is anything but clear. One may say that an empirical law formulates a 'regularity in nature', but we can only do justice to the function a law has in science, if we are ready to view this regularity as a necessary connection, which does not exist in an observer-independent reality, but in a theoretically co-constituted empirical world. This investigation does not pretend to answer all questions concerning empirical laws. It should, therefore, not be regarded as complete, but neither should the arguments and suggestions be regarded as completely free from ambiguity. Much remains to be done in order to offer a generally acceptable theory and better understanding. (shrink)

Saul Kripke, in a series of classic writings of the 1960s and 1970s, changed the face of metaphysics and philosophy of language. Christopher Hughes offers a careful exposition and critical analysis of Kripke's central ideas about names, necessity, and identity. He clears up some common misunderstandings of Kripke's views on rigid designation, causality and reference, and the necessary a posteriori and contingent a priori. Through his engagement with Kripke's ideas Hughes makes a significant contribution to ongoing debates on, inter (...) alia, the semantics of natural kind terms, the nature of natural kinds, the essentiality of origin and constitution, the relative merits of 'identitarian' and counterpart-theoretic accounts of modality, and the identity or otherwise of mental types and tokens with physical types and tokens. No specialist knowledge in either the philosophy of language or metaphysics is presupposed; Hughes's book will be valuable for anyone working on the ideas which Kripke made famous in the philosophy world. (shrink)

I want to make sense of the view that singular causation involves a metaphysical necessary connection. By this I understand, where A and B are particulars, that ifA causes B then in every possible world in which A (or an A-indiscernible) or B (or a B-indiscernible) occurs, A (or an Aindiscernible) and B (or a B-indiscernible) occur. In the singularist approach that I will favour causal facts do not supervene on laws, causal relata are best understood as tropes, causation (...) is founded on the nature of its terms, and the necessity thus involved does not entail essentialism, determinism, and other usual problems. (shrink)

Humeans and non-Humeans reasonably agree that there may be necessary connections between entities that are identical or merely partly distinct—between, e.g., sets and their individual members, fusions and their individual parts, instances of determinates and determinables, members of certain natural kinds and certain of their intrinsic properties, and (especially among physicalists) certain physical and mental states. Humeans maintain, however, that as per “Hume’s Dictum”, there are no necessary connections between entities that are wholly distinct;1 and in particular, no necessary (...) causal connections between such entities (even when the background conditions requisite for causation are in place). The Humean’s differential treatment appears principled, in reflecting that commonly accepted necessary connections involve constitutional relations, whereas wholly distinct entities (notably, causes and effects) do not constitute each other. I’ll argue, however, that the appearance of principle is not genuine, as per the following conditional: Constitutional→Causal: If one accepts certain constitutional necessities, one should accept certain causal necessities. This result provides needed leverage in assessing the two main frameworks in the metaphysics of science, treating natural kinds, causes, laws of nature, and the like. These frameworks differ primarily on whether Hume’s Dictum is taken as a working constraint on theorizing; and it has proved difficult for either side to criticize the other without presupposing their preferred stance on the dictum, hence talking past one another. The arguments for Constitutional→Causal are based, however, in general and independent considerations about what facts in the world might plausibly warrant our beliefs in certain constitutional necessities involving broadly scientific entities. The Humean can respond to these arguments, which reveal a deep tension in their view, at attendant costs of implausibilty and adhocery. The non-Humean framework doesn’t face any such tension between constitutional and causal necessities, however, and so in this respect comes out ahead. (shrink)

In conclusion, then, the notion of temporal necessity is certainly queer and perhaps a misnomer. It really has little to do with temporality per se and everything to do with counterfactual openness or closedness. We have seen that the future is as unalterable as the past, but that this purely logical truth is not antithetical to freedom or contingency. Moreover, we have found certain past facts are counterfactually open in that were future events or actualities to be other than (...) they will be, these past facts would have been different as a consequence. God's beliefs about the future are such past facts. Moreover, the effects of actions which God would have taken had He believed differently are also such past facts. Oddly enough, then, virtually any past fact is potentially counterfactually open, and the only necessity that remains is purely de facto. We, of course, do not in general know which events of the past depend counterfactually on present actions, and those cases we do know about seem rather trivial. Our intuitions of the necessity, unalterability, and unpreventability of the past as opposed to the future stem from the impossibility of backward causation, which is precluded by the dynamic nature of time and becoming. But the counterfactual dependence of God's beliefs on future events or actualities is not a case of backward causation: rather future-tense propositions are true in virtue of what will happen, given a view of truth as correspondence, and God simply has the essential property of knowing all and only true propositions. With regard to the future, virtually all facts are counterfactually open, and therefore future-tense propositions are not temporally necessary. Propositions thus move from being temporally contingent to being temporally necessary when all the opportunities to affect things counterfactually have slipped by. Hence, the mere fact that an event is past is no indication that it is counterfactually closed. This is especially evident in the case of God's foreknowledge. If we say that God foreknows that I shall do x and therefore I cannot refrain from doing x, lest I change God's past foreknowledge, we are being deceived by a modality which has nothing to do with my power or freedom. All that is impossible is the conjunction of God's foreknowledge that p and of ~ p; but this modality in sensu composito has no bearing on my ability to act such that ~ p would be true and God would have foreknown differently. Temporal necessity, then, turns out to be only obliquely temporal and modally weak, certainly no threat to freedom or divine foreknowledge. (shrink)

That laws of nature play a vital role in explanation, prediction, and inductive inference is far clearer than the nature of the laws themselves. My hope here is to shed some light on the nature of natural laws by developing and defending the view that they involve genuine relations between properties. Such a position is suggested by Plato, and more recent versions have been sketched by several writers.~ But I am not happy with any of these accounts, not (...) so much because they lack detail or engender minor difficulties, though they do, but because they share a quite fundamental defect. My goal here is to make this defect clear and, more importantly, to present a rather different version of this general conception of laws that avoids it. I begin by considering several features of natural laws and argue that these are best explained by the view that laws involve properties, that this involvement takes the form of a genuine relation between properties, and, finally, that the relation is a metaphysically necessary one. In the second section I start at the other end, and by reflecting on the nature of properties arrive at a similar account of natural laws. In the final section I develop this account in more detail, with emphasis on the nature of the relation between properties it invokes. Along the way several natural objections to the account are answered. (shrink)

Some commentators have argued that there is no room in Aristotle's natural science for simple, or unconditional, physical necessity, for the only necessity that governs all natural substances is hypothetical and teleological. Against this view I argue that, according to Aristotle, there are two types of unconditional physical necessity at work in the material elements, the one teleological, governing their natural motions, and the other non-teleological, governing their physical interaction. I argue as well (...) that these two types of simple necessity also govern everything made out of the elements, that is, all other natural substances and artifacts. (shrink)

The central focus of my dissertation is the study of the naturality in Leibniz's philosophy. Leibniz makes a number of statements concerning natural predication, including: the soul is naturally immortal; personal identity naturally presupposes the identity of the soul; reflective apperception cannot naturally deceive; matter cannot naturally think or act at a distance. These claims are not only central to Leibniz's philosophy of mind, but to his system as a whole; moreover, some of them constitute the basis of his (...) criticism of Locke in the New Essays. Nevertheless, these claims have never received the attention they deserve, nor have they been studied as a whole. ;In the course of my thesis, I argue that Leibniz's statements concerning naturality are best understood as involving a type of necessity which is weaker than logical, or metaphysical, necessity. I develop the position that a subject S is naturally P if and only if: It is logically or metaphysically possible for S not to be P , and It is logically or metaphysically impossible for S to be not-P except through miraculous divine intervention. Simply put, I argue that these two conditions follow from Leibniz's views on inherence in combination with the logical version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which he thinks entails that every event has a cause. ;The thesis is divided into two main parts. The first studies the general concepts, such as inherence and contingent predication, which are necessary to understand the notion of natural necessity and to show that it plays a legitimate role in Leibniz's system. The second part examines in detail some particular cases of natural necessity, such as the natural veridicality of reflection and the natural immortality of the soul, as well as the natural inability of matter to think. (shrink)

In his influential paper ‘‘Essence and Modality’’, Kit Fine argues that no account of essence framed in terms of metaphysical necessity is possible, and that it is rather metaphysical necessity which is to be understood in terms of essence. On his account, the concept of essence is primitive, and for a proposition to be metaphysically necessary is for it to be true in virtue of the nature of all things. Fine also proposes a reduction of conceptual and logical (...) necessity in the same vein: a conceptual necessity is a proposition true in virtue of the nature of all concepts, and a logical necessity a proposition true in virtue of the nature of all logical concepts. I argue that the plausibility of Fine's view crucially requires that certain apparent explanatory links between essentialist facts be admitted and accounted for, and I make a suggestion about how this can be done. I then argue against the reductions of conceptual and logical necessity proposed by Fine and suggest alternative reductions, which remain nevertheless Finean in spirit. (shrink)

Lady Mary Shepherd’s critique of Hume’s account of causation, his worries about knowledge of matters of fact, and the contention that it is possible for the course of nature to spontaneously change relies primarily on three premises, two of which – that objects are merely bundles of qualities and that the qualities of an object are individuated by the causal powers contributed by those qualities – anticipate contemporary metaphysical views in ways that she should be getting credit for. The remaining (...) premise – that it is impossible for an object to begin to exist uncaused – seems more old fashioned. I argue that Shepherd can do without her old-fashioned premise and that she provides the materials for arguing that her remaining premises demonstrate a stronger anti-Humeanism than is maintained even by the contemporary representatives of those views, even though she may have to concede more to Humeanism than she would like. (shrink)

In this paper Whewell’s concept of necessity is scrutinized and its historical development is outlined (ca. 1833-1860). Particular attention will be paid to how Whewell interpreted the laws of the inductive sciences as being necessary since the laws of nature are concretizations of the Fundamental Ideas which can be partially described by Axioms.

In this discussion note I reply to some criticisms that Marc Lange (2022) has directed at my Humean view of scientific laws (Bhogal, 2020) -- about whether Humean views can make sense of the apparent fact that laws are counterfactually invariant. The key idea of my response is that the Humean should think of their reduction of the laws to the Humean mosaic as closely related to other views where we reduce one domain to another but still allow that (...) the higher-level domain can be `autonomous' of the lower-level in some respects -- like, for example, the view that the special sciences reduce to physics but can still can work autonomously of physics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Practical Necessity, Freedom, and History: From Hobbes to Marx by David JamesMeghan RobisonDavid James. Practical Necessity, Freedom, and History: From Hobbes to Marx. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. 256. Hardback, $70.00.In his newest monograph, David James offers an elaborate, well-wrought reflection on human freedom and its limits by considering five canonical modern philosophers: Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, and Marx. Judging from the table of contents, (...) the book appears to be a work in the history of philosophy: each of the chronologically organized chapters examines a different aspect of necessity, history, and freedom in one of the five philosophers just mentioned. By focusing on those thinkers, James tracks a progression in the modern reflection on the nature of freedom and its relation to constraint. Specifically, he argues that such a progression culminates, with Marx, in finally getting the right understanding of the relation between freedom and two kinds of necessity—one practical, the other historical. This is an extremely ambitious book, and its scope is extensive: by its end, James has considered more than thirty philosophical works spanning nearly two hundred years. Yet, even though it makes several contributions to various longstanding scholarly debates, Practical Necessity, Freedom, and History is not a work of intellectual history. Its main seven chapters—each of which offers a richly complex interpretative analysis that is sure to challenge any reader, even a specialist—are preceded by an introduction that explains that the book's aim is to contribute to a vision of society where necessity and freedom are reconciled. This aim is not a mere framing device but structures the book's contents as well its interpretive method.On James's account, the project of reconciling freedom with necessity—which was initiated by Rousseau in the eighteenth century and then developed by each of the modern philosophers examined in this book (with the exception of Hobbes [9])—remains incomplete. James explains this incompleteness as in part due to the success of the "two-liberties" conception of freedom outlined by Isaiah Berlin which he understands as the "liberal" idea according to which liberty begins and ends where others are prohibited from interfering in one's freedom and the "neo-republican" idea according to which the mere threat of domination is a constraint on freedom. Both views of liberty are essentially negative, James argues, and also deficient because they entail an impoverished and incorrect idea of constraint. To get beyond this viewpoint, James proposes to augment the idea of constraint that such a viewpoint entails by including both additional forms of practical constraint and a positive idea of freedom as self-determination (1). James explains the importance of the concept of self-determination by stressing the role it played in "gaining control over social and historical conditions and forces that generate avoidable practical constraints on human agency that may or may not interfere in people's lives" (2). To this end, he locates a productive tension between freedom as self-determination and practical constraint: the former is limited by the latter which, at the same time, it seeks to abolish. The "two-liberties" view cannot grasp this tension, James argues, because, in tying agency back to a "clearly identifiable agent," it overlooks the plural nature of freedom (2). In short, freedom and necessity remain unreconciled because we have not understood the nature of constraint and its relation to freedom as self-determination.James seeks to fill this "knowledge gap" by returning to what Kant, Hegel, and Marx said on freedom and necessity (both practical and historical) when they reflected on the transition to a society in which freedom and necessity are eventually reconciled. Specifically, James tries to identify new possibilities implicit in those three thinkers' accounts and to "kick the tires," so to speak, by looking for holes in their understanding of practical necessity. In particular, he focuses on what Kant's, Hegel's, and Marx's understanding of freedom and necessity might entail about the role of suffering in the transition toward a society in which freedom and necessity are reconciled. In combing through those three thinkers' arguments for inconsistencies, contradictions, and pregnant loose threads, James strives to... (shrink)

The emerging contemporary natural philosophy provides a common ground for the integrative view of the natural, the artificial, and the human-social knowledge and practices. Learning process is central for acquiring, maintaining, and managing knowledge, both theoretical and practical. This paper explores the relationships between the present advances in understanding of learning in the sciences of the artificial, natural sciences, and philosophy. The question is, what at this stage of the development the inspiration from nature, specifically its (...) computational models such as info-computation through morphological computing, can contribute to machine learning and artificial intelligence, and how much on the other hand models and experiments in machine learning and robotics can motivate, justify, and inform research in computational cognitive science, neurosciences, and computing nature. We propose that one contribution can be understanding of the mechanisms of ‘learning to learn’, as a step towards deep learning with symbolic layer of computation/information processing in a framework linking connectionism with symbolism. As all natural systems possessing intelligence are cognitive systems, we describe the evolutionary arguments for the necessity of learning to learn for a system to reach humanlevel intelligence through evolution and development. The paper thus presents a contribution to the epistemology of the contemporary philosophy of nature. (shrink)

In this paper I argue against the commonly received view that Kripke's formal Possible World Semantics (PWS) reflects the adoption of a metaphysical interpretation of the modal operators. I consider in detail Kripke's three main innovations vis-à-vis Carnap's PWS: a new view of the worlds, variable domains of quantification, and the adoption of a notion of universal validity. I argue that all these changes are driven by the natural technical development of the model theory and its related (...) notion of validity: they are dictated by merely formal considerations, not interpretive concerns. I conclude that Kripke's model theoretic semantics does not induce a metaphysical reading of necessity, and is formally adequate independently of the specific interpretation of the modal operators. (shrink)

Most streams of Christianity have emphasized the unknowability of God, but they have also asserted that Christ is the criterion through whom we may have limited access to the depths of God, and through whose life and death we can formulate the doctrine of God as Triune. This standpoint, however, leads to certain complications regarding ‘translating’ the Christian message to adherents of other religious traditions, and in particular the question, ‘Why do you accept Christ as the criterion?’, is one that (...) Christian thinkers have attempted to answer in different ways. There are two influential responses to this query in recent Christian thought: an ‘evidentialist’ approach which gradually moves from a theistic metaphysics to a Christ-centred soteriology, and an ‘unapologetic’ standpoint which takes God's self-disclosure in Christ as the perspectival lens through which to view the world. The opposition between these two groups is primarily over the status of ‘natural theology’, that is, whether we may speak of a ‘natural’ reason, which human beings possess even outside the circle of the Christian revelation, and through which they may arrive at some minimalist understanding of the divine reality. I outline the status of ‘natural theology’ in these strands of contemporary Christian thought, from Barthian ‘Christomonism’ to post-liberal theology to Reformed epistemology, and suggest certain problems within these standpoints which indicate the need for an appropriately qualified ‘natural theology’. Most of the criticisms leveled against ‘natural theology’, whether from secular philosophers or from Christian theologians themselves, can be put in two groups: first, the arguments for God's existence are logically flawed, and, second, even if they succeed they do not point to the Triune God that Christians worship. In contrast to such an old-fashioned ‘natural theology’ which allegedly starts from premises self-evidently true for all rational agents and leads through an inexorable logic to God, the qualified version is an attempt to spell out the doctrinal beliefs of Christianity such as the existence of a personal God who interacts with human beings in different ways, and outline the reasons offered in defence of such statements. In other words, without denying that Christian doctrines operate at one level as the grammatical rules which structure the Christian discourse, such a natural theology insists on the importance of the question of whether these utterances are true, in the sense that they refer to an objective reality which is independent of the Christian life-world. Such a ‘natural theology’, as the discussion will emphasize, is not an optional extra but follows in fact from the internal logic of the Christian position on the universality of God's salvific reach. (shrink)

The emerging contemporary natural philosophy provides a common ground for the integrative view of the natural, the artificial, and the human-social knowledge and practices. Learning process is central for acquiring, maintaining, and managing knowledge, both theoretical and practical. This paper explores the relationships between the present advances in understanding of learning in the sciences of the artificial (deep learning, robotics), natural sciences (neuroscience, cognitive science, biology), and philosophy (philosophy of computing, philosophy of mind, natural philosophy). (...) The question is, what at this stage of the development the inspiration from nature, specifically its computational models such as info-computation through morphological computing, can contribute to machine learning and artificial intelligence, and how much on the other hand models and experiments in machine learning and robotics can motivate, justify, and inform research in computational cognitive science, neurosciences, and computing nature. We propose that one contribution can be understanding of the mechanisms of ‘learning to learn’, as a step towards deep learning with symbolic layer of computation/information processing in a framework linking connectionism with symbolism. As all natural systems possessing intelligence are cognitive systems, we describe the evolutionary arguments for the necessity of learning to learn for a system to reach human-level intelligence through evolution and development. The paper thus presents a contribution to the epistemology of the contemporary philosophy of nature. (shrink)