This chapter contains sections titled: The Existence of Nature Argument for God The Fine‐tuning Argument for God Why Would God Create? The Problem of Evil The Argument from Pseudo‐cosmology.

There is longstanding interpretive dispute between commentators over Spinoza’s commitment to necessitarianism, the doctrine that all things are metaphysically necessary and none are contingent. Those who affirm Spinoza’s commitment to the doctrine adhere to the necessitarian interpretation whereas those who deny it adhere to what I call the semi-necessitarian interpretation. As things stand, the disagreement between commentators appears to have reached an impasse. Notwithstanding, there seems to be no disagreement among commentators on the question of necessitarianism’s philosophical plausibility (...) as a metaphysical view: the doctrine is wildly untenable. This consensus view is more relevant to the interpretive debate than few have recognized, since leading semi-necessitarian commentators take the doctrine’s alleged absurdity to be one of the most compelling reasons (if not the most compelling reason) to prefer their reading over the necessitarian interpretation: for, as a matter of methodological principle, great philosophers like Spinoza should not be ascribed ridiculous views in the absence of better evidence. -/- This dissertation seeks to defend Spinoza’s commitment to necessitarianism on both the interpretive and philosophical fronts. I argue not only that the necessitarian interpretation of Spinoza is more plausible than the semi-necessitarian interpretation on textual grounds, but that Spinoza’s necessitarianism is a serviceable philosophical view whose tenability has been almost entirely overlooked and perfunctorily rejected. The principal basis upon which I build this defense is Spinoza’s rich and fascinating view of essences—what I simply refer to as his essentialism. Spinoza’s essentialism forms the bedrock of his metaphysics and is significant not least because it underlies and informs doctrines like his necessitarianism. Spinoza’s essentialism supplies resources to answer not just interpretive problems associated with necessitarianism, but philosophical challenges to the plausibility of the doctrine. My defense of Spinoza’s necessitarianism on philosophical grounds also offers a novel way of getting past much of the current interpretive impasse among commentators by effectively undercutting the methodological motivation for the semi-necessitarian reading. In addition to my defense on the interpretive front, then, my defense on the philosophical front provides supplementary reason to a fortiori favor the necessitarian reading of Spinoza. (shrink)

It has been claimed that certain forms of individual essentialism render the Theory of Natural Selection unable to explain why any given individual has the traits it does. Here, three reasons are offered why the Theory ought to ignore these forms of essentialism. First, the trait-distributions explained by population genetics supervene on individual-level causal links, and thus selection must have individual-level effects. Second, even if there are individuals that possess thick essences, they lie outside the domain of the (...) Theory. Finally, the contingency of sexual reproduction suggests that essentialism is misguided in this arena. 1 The problem 2 A reprise of the controversy 3 Enter individual essences 4 How can selection not have individual-level effects? 5 Why can't we get rid of essences we don't like? 6 Is sex necessary? (shrink)

In the Republic, Plato argues that the soul has three distinct parts or elements, each an independent source of motivation: reason, spirit, and appetite. In this paper, I argue against a prevalent interpretation of the motivations of the spirited part and offer a new account. Numerous commentators argue that the spirited part motivates the individual to live up to the ideal of being fine and honorable, but they stress that the agent's conception of what is fine and honorable is (...) determined by social norms. I argue that while it is correct to hold that spirit aims to be fine and honorable, it is not the case that the agent’s conception of what it is to be fine and honorable is determined by social norms. Instead, there is a fact of the matter about what it is to be fine and honorable, and it is this fact that shapes the individual’s conception of the fine and honorable. I argue that being fine and honorable involves living up to your rational views about how you should behave, despite appetitive temptations to the contrary. I claim that this condition of the soul is the basis of a variety of interrelated admirable traits, some with moral and others with aesthetic connotations. (shrink)

Hume's Dictum (HD) says, roughly and typically, that there are no metaphysically necessary connections between distinct, intrinsically typed, entities. HD plays an influential role in metaphysical debate, both in constructing theories and in assessing them. One should ask of such an influential thesis: why believe it? Proponents do not accept Hume's arguments for his dictum, nor do they provide their own; however, some have suggested either that HD is analytic or that it is synthetic a priori (that is: motivated (...) by intuitions we have no good reason to question). Here I explore whether belief in HD is directly justified on either grounds. I motivate and present more formal characterizations of HD; I show that there are good prima facie cases to be made for HD's being analytic and for its being synthetic a priori; I argue that each of the prima facie cases fails, some things considered. I close by offering two suggestions for how belief in HD might be indirectly justified on argumentative grounds. (shrink)

An increasing number of scholars argue that moral judgements are adaptations, i.e., that they have been shaped by natural selection. Is this hypothesis true? In this paper I shall not attempt to answer this important question. Rather, I pursue the more modest aim of pointing out three difficulties that anybody who sets out to determine the adaptedness of moral judgments should be aware of (though some so far have not been aware of). First, the hypothesis that moral judgements are (...) adaptations has been advocated in various different specificities and scopes, and on various different levels. Second, the three kinds of evidence that have most often been appealed to by discussants of this hypothesis require additional arguments. And third, there is significant reasonable disagreement about what moral judgements essentially are. (shrink)

It was not until the middle of the twentieth century that scientists and Western societies began to label the combination of physiological and psychological responses that people display when things are getting too much and out of balance as “stress.” However, stress is commonly understood as a universal mechanism that exists across times and cultures. In a certain sense, this universality claim is correct: the physiological and endocrinological mechanisms underlying the stress response are not a modern invention of our body. (...) In another sense, the universality claim is potentially problematic: stress has become, but has not always been, a way to be a person. That is, the social practices, in which the physiological and endocrinological stress mechanisms are embedded, are not the same across times and cultures. Crucially, these social practices are not a negligible by-product, but form an essential part of the way stress is commonly understood and experienced. Against this background, one may still decide to use the word “stress” when speaking about other times and cultures. Nevertheless, one should at least be cautious when doing so for three reasons. First, using the word “stress” when referring to societies different from our own may create the impression of a similarity between then and now, which does not actually exist. Second, it may blind us to the nature of the differences between times and cultures. Third, it naturalizes a contemporary scientific concept, which is more adequately viewed as the result of complex social, historical, and societal processes. Putting the stress concept in historical context and acknowledging that its use emerged in a specific historical environment enables us to take a step back and to think about the ways that stress shapes our lives. In other words, viewing stress as a culture-bound concept can give us the possibility to reflect upon our modern societies, in which the concept emerged. (shrink)

Although the map of technology ethics is expanding, the growing subdomains within it may raise misgivings. In a recent and very interesting article, Sætra and Danaher have argued that the current dynamic of sub-specialization is harmful to the ethics of technology. In this commentary, we offer three reasons to diminish their concern about ethical proliferation. We argue first that the problem of demarcation is weakened if we attend to other sub-disciplines of technology ethics not mentioned by these authors. (...) We claim secondly that the logic of sub-specializations is less problematic if one does adopt mixed models (combining internalist and externalist approaches) in applied ethics. We finally reject that clarity and distinction are necessary conditions for defining sub-fields within ethics of technology, defending the porosity and constructive nature of ethical disciplines. (shrink)

This thesis examines necessary truth and defends a normative, or linguistic, account of it. Roughly, it holds that necessary truths state or follow from conceptual norms (i.e., norms that determine patterns of correct concept use). While the thesis touches upon logical and mathematical truth, its primary focus are those necessary truths typically expressed using natural language. The thesis has three parts. In Part I, I criticise metaphysical accounts of necessity and present and defend a normative account (...) of it. At no point do I give a history of normative accounts, but clearly their roots are to be found in the first half of the twentieth century – in the works of Wittgenstein and Carnap, for example. In Part II, I consider whether language can sustain the normative account. Some argue that the account requires language to be regimented in a way that it is not. I show that while it requires a distinction in kind between empirical and conceptual principles, it nevertheless makes room for indeterminacy regarding whether a given statement is an empirical claim or follows from conceptual norms. Finally, in Part III, I consider the relationship between the world and our conceptual scheme. I argue that denying our concepts answer to the world does not mean that they cannot be justified. The normative account does not say that we have no reasons for categorising things in a certain way, but rather that natural facts, in combination with our interests, are fit to provide them. The purpose of the thesis is to show that normative accounts of necessity can be much more robust than they are often given credit for and needn’t have the malign implications often associated with them. (shrink)

In the ḥadīth sources it is being conveyed that the companions (ṣaḥāba) refrained from asking questions to the Prophet. This situation is generally associated with the verse of sūrat al-Māʾida 5:101. An-Navvās b. Samʿān (d. 50/670), Abū Umāma al-Bāhilī (d. 86/705) and Anas b. Mālik (d. 93/711-12) are among the companions who consider this situation as the ban on the asking questions. The concern that asking questions may cause additional obligations that were not presumed to be obligatory also attracts attention (...) in these records. Keeping all numerous questions addressed to the Prophet in mind we may ask if there is a Prophetic prohibition on asking questions. We will seek an answer to this question, which constitutes the main axis of this article, especially in the framework of the narrations mentioned among the reasons of the al-Māʾida 101. We will evaluate the information concerned in their historical context and internal coherence inductively. Our investigation differs in this respect from the investigations, which dealt with the disapproval of excessive and unnecessary questions. As a result of our research, we think that it is possible to talk about a ban on asking questions about religious issues in the last three years of the Medina period. We will first discuss the dating and nature of this ban, from which only Bedouin and visitors who come to Madina were excluded. Then, we especially will evaluate the theological consequences of answer of the Prophet, which mentioned in the same context, of whether the pilgrimage is religious duty for every year. In the last part of the article, the prohibition of asking questions will be discussed in the light of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s principle “Der hermeneutische Vorrang der Frage”, which deals with the effect of the questions on the direction and nature of the answer.Summary: It is reported in Qurʾān and Ḥadīth that the Prophet Muḥammad (PBUH) was asked a lot of questions and he responded based on the revealed knowledge or his own. He did not like the questions which remain outside of the daily religious life like the questions whether he is able to know the end of the world or to show miracle. There are some reports which covey that the Prophet frowned upon some questions because they could cause new assignments or lead to complicate the existing ones. The Companions like an-Nawwās b- Samʿān (d. 50/670), Abū Umāma al-Bāhilī (d. 86/705) and Anas b. Mālik (d. 93/711-12) have been describing this situation as the ban of asking of religious implications.This issue which companions formulated exactly as the ban of the asking questions was regarded in research until now just as the depreciation of the Prophet upon the unnecessary questions. In this interpretation the idea played a role that the ban of the asking may not conform to the religious pedagogic of the Prophet and the real existence of a lot of asked questions contradict that. Therefore the imperative “do not ask” in al-Māʾida 5:101 (O believers, do not ask about things which, if made known to you, may vex you) were interpreted not as the prohibition of the asking questions in real sense, but as just the depreciation of the unnecessary questions.We argue that it is possible to talk about a prohibition of the asking questions in real sense. We are of the view that the asking to religious matters was prohibited in the last years of the Medina period. In a time of Madina period when the fundamental principles of Islam emerged the questions of companions let the Prophet think that they may lead to additional religious obligations. Therefore the Prophet warned his companions in these words: “Do not ask me about the details of the things which I do not mention to you” and “Allāh Taʿālā has remained silent about some things, out of compassion for you, not forgetfulness so do not seek after them.”The imperative “do not ask” in al-Māʾida 5:101 has to been understood in the light of the Prophet’s advice as quoted above. According to the expressions of the companions reported in hadith collections, it is obvious that the imperative “do not ask” signifies not only “do not ask unnecessary questions”, but “do not ask questions related to theology matters in general”.Anas b. Mālik served the Prophet nine or ten years and was not criticised by the Prophet anytime. A companion like Anas cannot have refrained from the asking questions because they may be unnecessary. Anas interpreted “ do not ask” in al-Māʾida 5:101 in words: “We were forbidden in the Qurʾān that we ask the Prophet anything". Anas’s observation reveals that the companions considered the “do not ask” in al-Māʾida 5:101 as a general prohibition for the questions to religious issue.According to our research it seems this ban was promulgated in last three years of Medina Period, and Bedouin and visitors were excluded. Al-Nawwās b. Samʿān noticed that the ban of the asking questions was only for the residents in Medina: “I was in Medina one year. The reason why I did not stay in Medina was my wish to ask the Prophet a religious issue. So, whoever stayed in Medina was not permitted to ask the Prophet questions.” Abū Umāma al-Bāhilī interpreted the ban of the asking in al-Māʾida 5:101 as a general ban. He reported that the companions give a garment (burda) as gift to a Bedouin in order to let him ask the Prophet questions. The ban on asking questions in Medina was not related to unnecessary questions. It was indeed related to the questions that might have caused addition to already well-defined obligatory rulings in Islam. Accordingly, the questions became unnecessary because they were asked in the time of revelation. With the ban of the asking the Prophet questions accentuated that God and his Messenger are aware what necessary and what was not. It means that God can intervene if it is necessary. For that they do not need ask the Prophet. Aṭ-Ṭabarī, al-Qurṭubī, en-Nawawī, Ibn RaJab el-Ḥanbalī and Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī are the scholars who interpreted the ban of asking in this general sense.We especially will evaluate the theological consequences of the Prophet’s response, as reported in the sources: “ If I said yes, the pilgrimage will be a religious duty for every year.” Here one may not misconstrue that the Prophet could determine the religious obligations arbitrarily. He meant that the believers have to practice only that which were revealed to them. The Prophet wanted to teach his followers the principle that became essential rule of Islamic jurisprudence: “What is not forbidden is permitted”.The Prophet did not perform tarāwīḥ-prayer in congregation in the month of fasting due to the apprehension that it might become obligatory for the believers and they would not be able to follow it. In this human reaction of the Prophet we see that the Prophet did not consider himself as the founder of the Islamic norms. In this context the following questions are important: Does God consider the human questions when making something obligatory? Is God influenceable in terms of His orders? Ibn Ḥajar observes: The scholars of Ahl al-Sunnah accept the causality in terms of the Islamic norms. Accordingly something can become a religious norm because the humans asked about that. But God’s decision does not depend on the humans. God can consider human questions, if He so wills. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:15 LOCKE, HUME AND THE NATURE OF VOLITIONS 1. The concept of a volition plays a key role in the theories of mind that both Locke and Hume devise. It is central to the views each develops on the nature of action and of explanations of actions, on the character of practical reasoning, on the nature of desire, on the ways in which, most usefully, to categorize the several (...) kinds of mental states and events. Without attending closely to their concepts of volition, one cannot get quite clear about the views of each, and the considerations thought to support those views, on the vexed questions of free action and of responsibility. Whether it be Locke or Hume, then, there is good reason to scrutinize what he says of volitions. Why take them together? The principal reason is that the views of each, when considered closely, throw a quite considerable light on those of the other (or so I hope to show). But there is a philosophical point as well. A theory of volitions more adequate than either proposes must borrow from each. What is amenable to being borrowed, and what ought to be borrowed, are fairly readily seen when the two theories are put face to face. I concentrate on three central issues: the question whether volitions are thoughts; the relationship of volition to practical reasoning; the links between volitions and their effects. Hume's views on these topics are to be found chiefly in the Treatise and the first Enquiry; Locke's, of course, in the Essay. Locke's recently published correspondence with the Dutch theologian Philippus van Limborch is, however, essential reading here, and I have made extensive use of it. 16 2. Locke and Hume agree that volitions are indefinable psychological primitives that must be invoked in an analysis of voluntary action (T 399, EHU 69, E 249). They agree, too, in a number of the things that each says in his efforts to characterize volitions. They differ, however, on a fundamental point, Hume's volitions are 'internal impression[s]' (T 399); Locke's are 'thought[s] of the Mind' (E 235). As internal impressions Humean volitions are feelings akin to, but not 'properly speaking' (T 399) instances of, passions. They are like the 'direct passions' (desire and aversion, grief and joy, hope and fear) in two respects: they are 'immediate effects of pain and pleasure' (T 399); they are 'propense and averse motions of the mind' (T 574), and thus bear a special relation to action. Though they are not thoughts they have causal, thus contingent, links to thoughts, including in particular thoughts whose content specify the so-called 'immediate object of volition' (E 66). As 'distinct impression[s]' (T 625) volitions do not modify the thoughts of their objects in the logically intimate way in which, in Hume's view, the feeling essential to belief 'modiffies] the conception' (T 625) of what is believed. Hume frequently compares volitions to commands (T 623, 629, 632; EHU 48, 64, 65, 67, 68). He also, not surprisingly, denies them truth values: because they are not capable of 'an agreement or disagreement either to the real relations of ideas, or to real existence and matter of fact' it is 'impossible... they can be pronounced either true or false' (T 458; compare T 415). Locke's volitions are thoughts, not feelings; and they have their own contents and objects. '[T]he proper and only object of the will', he writes, 'is some action of ours' (E 258); in forming a volition one 17 'wills to number', say, or 'wills to walk' (C 405). Locke never says as much, but his overall theory is best read as requiring volitions to be thoughts without truth values. He contrasts 'Will' or 'the Power of Volition1 with 'Understanding' or 'the Power of Thinking' (E 128). Since 'Volition' is as much a 'Mode... £f thinking' as is 'Reasoning' or 'Judging' (E 227), however, the contrast is most plausibly taken as one between thoughts that do and thoughts that do not purport to represent the way the world is. Locke's distinction, to be examined below, between volitions and 'last judgements of the understanding' suggests the... (shrink)

In Averroes’s epistemology, knowledge is universal, but it is always singular in terms of the known. Averroes believes that there is no need for an activity, even in the sense that used by those who have the idea of "kumūn" rational forms being formed by other rational forms of the same kind, or for a power such as in the example of polishing a mirror to reflect an image. Similarly, he argues that there are no discrete abstract forms of existing (...) things because otherwise, everyone would have to know everything. Although there are different degrees and levels, the existence of absolute metaphysical forms is subject to change and increases with the multiplication of their subjects. There are three means of knowledge: sensation, imagination, and intellect. Unlike the sensation and perception modes in animals, humans perceive the outer appearance of objects as well as their unique meanings and distinctions. Like animals, the function of sensation in humans is to mediate the self. While perception is abstract and spiritual in one sense, it is material and concrete in another. Averroes does not find it correct to link the knowledge of the contingents of the world to the eternal knowledge of God. Beacuse this implies that there is a difference in God's knowledge between the state of the world's existence and non-existence. In addition, human knowledge about contingents is deficient and changeable, whereas God's knowledge is the cause of the existence of contingents and is unchanging. Ultimately, it does not seem possible for humans to comprehend the nature of God's knowledge. It is agreed with Alexander of Aphrodisias that there should be a distinction between the active and imaginative intellects, but he differs from him in the point that the imaginative intellect disappears. According to Averroes, the active intellect in action is eternal, unlike Themistius’ view. According to Averroes, the intellect is neither a pure potentiality nor a distinct substance. That is to say, if the imaginative intellect were an actual thing, it could not perceive other things. If the intellect were absolute, everyone would know the same things. Similarly, if the intellect were absolute plurality, there would be no unity and connection between intellects. If the intellect were merely an accepting capacity, it could not perceive absence. According to Averroes, the active intellect is not a distinct intellect that gives form or governs the spheres, but rather the form and purpose of the imaginative intellect. There are two powers of this intellect: to abstract the concepts in their potential state from their matter and to make them actual and accepting them. In conclusion, it can be said that Averroes made a substance-centered philosophy regarding the possibility and reality of knowledge, and while he did not deviate from the Aristotelian line, he had to make new openings. Paradoxically, he tries to explain both the actual/abstract and potential/material aspects of the intellect that are postulated by introducing an original soul theory with the imaginative intellect. Therefore, he places importance on both a priori knowledge and sensation and imagination. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:15 LOCKE, HUME AND THE NATURE OF VOLITIONS 1. The concept of a volition plays a key role in the theories of mind that both Locke and Hume devise. It is central to the views each develops on the nature of action and of explanations of actions, on the character of practical reasoning, on the nature of desire, on the ways in which, most usefully, to categorize the several (...) kinds of mental states and events. Without attending closely to their concepts of volition, one cannot get quite clear about the views of each, and the considerations thought to support those views, on the vexed questions of free action and of responsibility. Whether it be Locke or Hume, then, there is good reason to scrutinize what he says of volitions. Why take them together? The principal reason is that the views of each, when considered closely, throw a quite considerable light on those of the other (or so I hope to show). But there is a philosophical point as well. A theory of volitions more adequate than either proposes must borrow from each. What is amenable to being borrowed, and what ought to be borrowed, are fairly readily seen when the two theories are put face to face. I concentrate on three central issues: the question whether volitions are thoughts; the relationship of volition to practical reasoning; the links between volitions and their effects. Hume's views on these topics are to be found chiefly in the Treatise and the first Enquiry; Locke's, of course, in the Essay. Locke's recently published correspondence with the Dutch theologian Philippus van Limborch is, however, essential reading here, and I have made extensive use of it. 16 2. Locke and Hume agree that volitions are indefinable psychological primitives that must be invoked in an analysis of voluntary action (T 399, EHU 69, E 249). They agree, too, in a number of the things that each says in his efforts to characterize volitions. They differ, however, on a fundamental point, Hume's volitions are 'internal impression[s]' (T 399); Locke's are 'thought[s] of the Mind' (E 235). As internal impressions Humean volitions are feelings akin to, but not 'properly speaking' (T 399) instances of, passions. They are like the 'direct passions' (desire and aversion, grief and joy, hope and fear) in two respects: they are 'immediate effects of pain and pleasure' (T 399); they are 'propense and averse motions of the mind' (T 574), and thus bear a special relation to action. Though they are not thoughts they have causal, thus contingent, links to thoughts, including in particular thoughts whose content specify the so-called 'immediate object of volition' (E 66). As 'distinct impression[s]' (T 625) volitions do not modify the thoughts of their objects in the logically intimate way in which, in Hume's view, the feeling essential to belief 'modiffies] the conception' (T 625) of what is believed. Hume frequently compares volitions to commands (T 623, 629, 632; EHU 48, 64, 65, 67, 68). He also, not surprisingly, denies them truth values: because they are not capable of 'an agreement or disagreement either to the real relations of ideas, or to real existence and matter of fact' it is 'impossible... they can be pronounced either true or false' (T 458; compare T 415). Locke's volitions are thoughts, not feelings; and they have their own contents and objects. '[T]he proper and only object of the will', he writes, 'is some action of ours' (E 258); in forming a volition one 17 'wills to number', say, or 'wills to walk' (C 405). Locke never says as much, but his overall theory is best read as requiring volitions to be thoughts without truth values. He contrasts 'Will' or 'the Power of Volition1 with 'Understanding' or 'the Power of Thinking' (E 128). Since 'Volition' is as much a 'Mode... £f thinking' as is 'Reasoning' or 'Judging' (E 227), however, the contrast is most plausibly taken as one between thoughts that do and thoughts that do not purport to represent the way the world is. Locke's distinction, to be examined below, between volitions and 'last judgements of the understanding' suggests the... (shrink)

SUMMARY1 The rational soul becomes the constant and dimensionless Euclidean point in all experience - defining the situations in which it finds itself, but itself undefined and undefinable in any situation. It is in nature but not of nature. Just as the dimensionless Euclidean point can occupy infinite positions on a line and yet remain unaltered, so the immortal, active intellect remains unaffected by the world in which it finds itself. It is not influenced by age, sense data, sickness or (...) death. It is the knower whose nature is pure knowing or reason. This is in great part the basic assumption that runs through the history of Aristotelean and modern symbolic logics24.The rational soul grasps identity, reasons consistently, and knows objectively for though it is in the world it is not of the world. Thus it is unnecessary and impossible to relate its truth to time or place or condition. As the source of understanding it need not be understood. It understands in that it knows. It is this which places the objective knower and observer outside of all systems of knowledge that it creates in philosophy, science and theology, and frees it from subjective interpretation. It is the absolute observer beyond self-observation.252 Language, values, and meanings reflect the absolute viewpoint of the dimensionless observer beyond the necessity of observation. The task of this observer is to know trie world just as the task of the animal and plant soul is motion and reproduction. The rational soul performs its task beyond nature as surely as animals and plants perform their tasks in nature. This is why it is possible to discuss the necessary evolution of living organisms in nature, but unnecessary to discuss the necessary or unnecessary nature of the evolution of this discussion. This is one of the reasons why determinism or predestination which seem so clearly applicable to nature, need not be applied to theories of determinism and predestination. These are principles grasped in reality beyond nature and totally inapplicable to the non-natural spirit that comprehends their essences. Thus self-reflexive questions about the questioner are as irrelevant as would be questions historically of “in what sense might the definition of dimensionless point itself be dimensioned or dimension-less?”26 Questions, on the other hand, that relate to the observed world are important for they can be truly answered (where questions as to the nature of the questioner cannot). In this view reality is not nature, but rather it is from reality that the objective observer, philosopher, scientist, and theologian understands and controls nature.3 Logic, the science of reason, is the science of all sciences. It reflects the pure and innate rational nature of the knowing intellect or soul. It is pure form beyond nature. Its realm is that of first principles or axioms. These too are in the world but not of it, as with Plato's eidos and Aristotle's universals. They are clear, true and self-evident. This explains the on going use of axiomatized revelations in studies in the natural and social sciences, the arts and the humanities. In symbolic logics, natural languages are in and of the world, but meta-languages are the constructs of pure intellectual activity and thus not natural. The abstract tends to become the more real, the less it can be found in nature. Rational souls, however, share a common reality that is as universal for Frege as it was for Aristotle.274 The occidental object tradition in general breaks out of the nature continuum by withdrawing into reality where the intellect knows and manipulates the world in philosophy, science, and theology from its position in and understanding of reality. Nature is a sub-set of reality and not vice versa. Axioms are the laws and determinants of nature and logic, but they are not nature.28 This means that at the basis of the occidental continuum of nature there is a qualitative and irreducible dichotomy of reality vs. nature. This has been most useful in the history of occidental science, but it produces a world view in which nature may lose the race with reality. SUMMARY IIIn the first portion of my paper, I discussed the implications of the Euclidean egg for philosophy and science as nature is understood and manipulated from reality. I shall now turn to what I see as the implications of the three-legged chicken view that the human intellect is in and of nature and that reality is a perspective in nature and is not simply the other of an irreducible qualitative dichotomy. Although there are an endless number of such implications that I could explore, the following, it seems to me are the most important:1 In the natural continuum there is no “dimensionless real” which can serve either as the locus of an external observer or a fixed position in nature. There is no perspective which is not an aspect of that upon which it is a perspective. The Chinese sage, for example, is one who sees himself/herself as one with or within natural process. This is expressed in a number of ways. Fung Yu-lan speaks of the difference between having no knowledge and having no-knowledge.34 Within such a continuum there can be no abstracting out of the absolute and unchanging. The nameless is the source of the named. First principles are the process itself and these principles are the alternation of opposites:“The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth;The Named is the mother of all things.Therefore let there always be non-being so we may see their subtlety, And let there always be being so we may see their outcome. The two are the same.“352 An empty mind is not a blank mind. Where Aristotle viewed the mind as a blank tablet at birth to be filled by sense experience, Hsun Tzu speaks of its emptiness. It is the emptiness of the Tao itself:“The mind is constantly storing up things, and yet it is said to be empty. The mind is constantly marked by diversity, and yet it is said to be unified. The mind is constantly moving, and yet it is said to be still. Inevitably it will see things for itself. And although the objects it perceives may be many and diverse, if its acuity is of the highest level, it cannot become divided within itself.”36The nature in which and of which the mind is both perspective and aspect remains a totality. Being a totality, it is empty of itself just as any part of a whole, while a part of the whole, is empty of the whole. My ideas of myself are both of myself and empty of myself. This point can be illustrated with the simple example of knowing and speaking about two hands – one of which is mine, and the second of which belongs to someone else. 1 can objectify the second hand and fill my blank mind with information and observations about it, but I continue to remain outside of it –the arbiter in my statements of its nature and reality. However, in knowing my own hand, the hand known is also the knower and what I know represents a perspective upon an aspective of a totality of which “I–my–hand” are aspects. Being an aspect of the whole is being empty of the whole. If mind is in and of nature, any perspective on nature is an aspect of the whole. A blank mind is an unnatural mind outside of nature, filling up with impressions of nature. An empty mind is nature viewing nature as aspect and perspective. The occidental would be ashamed to reach old age and still have a blank mind. The Chinese sage would be ashamed to reach old age and still not recognize that the mind is empty.3 If mind is in nature and like nature, then language too reflects natural flow and change and process. It is one thing for me to talk about myself and another for me to talk about someone else. In the case of the latter, I may insist that objectively this other subject fits into this or that category and even administer tests to determine that it does do indeed so. But when I talk about myself, the speaker and the object of speech are one and the same. The terms I select do represent a dichotomy of sorts, but it is one of aspect and perspective and not subject and object. When I say “this is my hand” for example, the words create distinctions which are aspects of awareness but do not create an / that is or is not my hand. Language does not model or even represent reality as opposed to nature. It makes reality possible as something that nature says or thinks. Reality through language is an aspect of nature and thus a perspective upon itself as aspect. This is an important distinction that translators often miss.4 Logic in this natural continuum is concerned with distinctions in a very different sense. As a consequence of the unity of nature and mind, three kinds of distinction in experience are manifested: (a) Those distinctions which come into being as aspects of the changing world.The 10,000 things are in this sense aspects and not separate “identities” as some philosophers and scientists presuppose.37 (b) Those distinctions which come into being as aspects of the human mind. These are impressions of and thoughts about the infinite distinctions of which the restless mind is capable, (c) Those distinctions which come into being by way of the mind's use of symbols. These are the distinctions which permit us to stabilize and store our experiences, preserve the answers to our questions, and name the world into compartments and relationships.Implicit in these three assumptions which connect the distinguishing mind to the unity of a nature of'10,000‘ aspects, is an inferential process of aspect to perspective to knowledge to understanding to attitude to action/response. The reasoning mind synthesizes some aspect of experience in nature with a perspective upon this aspect. This synthesis, in turn, is an aspect of mind and the reasoning process proceeds from it to a perspective upon it which is knowledge and understanding. Knowledge and understanding in turn are aspects of thinking and the reasoning process proceeds from them to a perspective upon them which is an attitude. Attitude in turn is an aspect of thinking and the reasoning process proceeds from it to a perspective upon it which is reflected in the reasoning individual's actions and responses. This inferential process is a continuum which proceeds from aspects of experience to perspectives in thought to action and response. In this sequence an aspect is always connected by a perspective which becomes an aspect, until action/non-action, response occurs. This is as applicable to the details of life as it is to mastering life as a whole. When this inference process is incomplete many problems may result, ranging from action without understanding to the confusion of aspect and perspective with one another or to “obsession with distinctions.”38In practice this is a logic of paradox. The human being is aware that he or she is a living-dying aspect of nature, but an aspect which is also a perspective upon nature's aspects of living and dying. This paradox is the process around which a profound logic of aspect/perspective is developed by the sage. This view of logic within a continuum does not mean that there is no principle of identity, contradiction or excluded middle present – as some Chinese and European philosophers assume.These principles are also implicit in the knowing of my hand versus the knowing of the hand of another. However, the content, meaning, and application of these principles may vary just as when I say propriety, I mean propriety, and when the Chinese says li he means li but the context, meaning and application of the term may differ in each case.5 Aspect logic as it relates mind to nature in a cosmological totality is a series of syntheses in a cyclic continuum organizing thinking in phases. Each phase is an aspect/perspective synthesis which becomes an aspect of a further aspect/perspective synthesis. This progression might be described thusly: The synthesis of nature/human which is Tao (non-being) translates into the aspects of being (the 10,000 things), and as such is a synthesis of aspect and perspective. This synthesis of aspect and perspective translates into an aspect of ideas and as such is a synthesis of perception and conception. This synthesis of perception and conception translates into an aspect of knowledge, and as such is a synthesis of knowledge and understanding (understanding is a perspective upon knowledge) i.e., no-knowledge. This synthesis of knowledge and understanding translates into an aspect of purpose, and as such is a synthesis of purpose and action. The perspective here on action is aesthetic and/or moral. This synthesis of purpose and actions translates again into an aspect of nature and as such is a synthesis beyond individual aspects and perspective, i.e. Tao. Thus there is a cyclic dynamic in the system which remains open to further development.Tai Chen in his Inquiry Into Goodness connects this cycle of syntheses with wisdom and benevolence:Because there are mind and intelligence, the superior man knows that the perfection of the Way of Man depends completely upon nature. When he looks at the signs of the natural (Cheng), he knows the beginning of things; when he cherishes the virtue of supreme illumination, (Shen-ming), he knows the end of things. Proceeding from mind and intelligence to the attainment of the virtue of supreme intelligence, [the superior man] in his treatment of things in the world will cause the world to return to [the principles of] benevolence; and in his treatment of the capability inherent in things, he will cause the world to follow wisdom (Chih).39. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:15 LOCKE, HUME AND THE NATURE OF VOLITIONS 1. The concept of a volition plays a key role in the theories of mind that both Locke and Hume devise. It is central to the views each develops on the nature of action and of explanations of actions, on the character of practical reasoning, on the nature of desire, on the ways in which, most usefully, to categorize the several (...) kinds of mental states and events. Without attending closely to their concepts of volition, one cannot get quite clear about the views of each, and the considerations thought to support those views, on the vexed questions of free action and of responsibility. Whether it be Locke or Hume, then, there is good reason to scrutinize what he says of volitions. Why take them together? The principal reason is that the views of each, when considered closely, throw a quite considerable light on those of the other (or so I hope to show). But there is a philosophical point as well. A theory of volitions more adequate than either proposes must borrow from each. What is amenable to being borrowed, and what ought to be borrowed, are fairly readily seen when the two theories are put face to face. I concentrate on three central issues: the question whether volitions are thoughts; the relationship of volition to practical reasoning; the links between volitions and their effects. Hume's views on these topics are to be found chiefly in the Treatise and the first Enquiry; Locke's, of course, in the Essay. Locke's recently published correspondence with the Dutch theologian Philippus van Limborch is, however, essential reading here, and I have made extensive use of it. 16 2. Locke and Hume agree that volitions are indefinable psychological primitives that must be invoked in an analysis of voluntary action (T 399, EHU 69, E 249). They agree, too, in a number of the things that each says in his efforts to characterize volitions. They differ, however, on a fundamental point, Hume's volitions are 'internal impression[s]' (T 399); Locke's are 'thought[s] of the Mind' (E 235). As internal impressions Humean volitions are feelings akin to, but not 'properly speaking' (T 399) instances of, passions. They are like the 'direct passions' (desire and aversion, grief and joy, hope and fear) in two respects: they are 'immediate effects of pain and pleasure' (T 399); they are 'propense and averse motions of the mind' (T 574), and thus bear a special relation to action. Though they are not thoughts they have causal, thus contingent, links to thoughts, including in particular thoughts whose content specify the so-called 'immediate object of volition' (E 66). As 'distinct impression[s]' (T 625) volitions do not modify the thoughts of their objects in the logically intimate way in which, in Hume's view, the feeling essential to belief 'modiffies] the conception' (T 625) of what is believed. Hume frequently compares volitions to commands (T 623, 629, 632; EHU 48, 64, 65, 67, 68). He also, not surprisingly, denies them truth values: because they are not capable of 'an agreement or disagreement either to the real relations of ideas, or to real existence and matter of fact' it is 'impossible... they can be pronounced either true or false' (T 458; compare T 415). Locke's volitions are thoughts, not feelings; and they have their own contents and objects. '[T]he proper and only object of the will', he writes, 'is some action of ours' (E 258); in forming a volition one 17 'wills to number', say, or 'wills to walk' (C 405). Locke never says as much, but his overall theory is best read as requiring volitions to be thoughts without truth values. He contrasts 'Will' or 'the Power of Volition1 with 'Understanding' or 'the Power of Thinking' (E 128). Since 'Volition' is as much a 'Mode... £f thinking' as is 'Reasoning' or 'Judging' (E 227), however, the contrast is most plausibly taken as one between thoughts that do and thoughts that do not purport to represent the way the world is. Locke's distinction, to be examined below, between volitions and 'last judgements of the understanding' suggests the... (shrink)

The basis of having a direct moral obligation to an entity is that what we do to that entity matters to it. The ability to experience pain is a sufficient condition for a being to be morally considerable. But the ability to feel pain is not a necessary condition for moral considerability. Organisms could have possibly evolved so as to be motivated to flee danger or injury or to eat or drink not by pain, but by “pangs of pleasure” (...) that increase as one fills the relevant need or escapes the harm. In such a world, “mattering” would be positive, not negative, but would still be based in sentience and awareness. In our world, however, the “mattering” necessary to survival is negative—injuries and unfulfilled needs ramify in pain. But physical pain is by no means the only morally relevant mattering—fear, anxiety, loneliness, grief, certainly do not equate to varieties of physical pain, but are surely forms of “mattering.” An adequate morality towards animals would include a full range of possible matterings unique to each kind of animal, what I, following Aristotle, call “telos”. Sometimes not meeting other aspects of animal nature matter more to the animal than does physical pain. “Negative mattering” means all actions or events that harm animals—from frightening an animal to removing its young unnaturally early, to keeping it so it is unable to move or socialize. Physical pain is perhaps the paradigmatic case of “negative mattering”, but only constitutes a small part of what the concept covers. “Positive mattering” would of course encompass all states that are positive for the animal. An adequate ethic for animals takes cognizance of both kinds. The question arises as to how animals value death as compared with pain. Human cognition is such that it can value long-term future goals and endure short-run negative experiences for the sake of achieving them. In the case of animals, however, there is no evidence, either empirical or conceptual, that they have the capability to weigh future benefits or possibilities against current misery. We have no reason to believe that an animal can grasp the notion of extended life, let alone choose to trade current suffering for it. Pain may well be worse for animals than for humans, as they cannot rationalize its acceptance by appeal to future life without pain. How can we know that animals experience all or any of the negative or positive states we have enumerated above? The notion that we needed to be agnostic or downright atheistic about animal mentation, including pain, because we could not verify it through experience, became a mainstay of what I have called “scientific ideology”, the uncriticized dogma taught to young scientists through most of the 20th century despite its patent ignoring of Darwinian phylogenetic continuity. Together with the equally pernicious notion that science is “value-free”, and thus has no truck with ethics, this provided the complete justification for hurting animals in science without providing any pain control. This ideology could only be overthrown by federal law. Ordinary common sense throughout history, in contradistinction to scientific ideology, never denied that animals felt pain. Where, then, does the denial of pain and other forms of mattering come from if it is inimical to common sense? It came from the creation of philosophical systems hostile to common sense and salubrious to a scientific, non-commonsensical world view. Reasons for rejecting this philosophical position are detailed. In the end, then, there are no sound reasons for rejecting knowledge of animal pain and other forms of both negative and positive mattering in animals. Once that hurdle is cleared, science must work assiduously to classify, understand, and mitigate all instances of negative mattering occasioned in animals by human use, as well as to understand and maximize all modes of positive mattering. (shrink)

The term ‘human nature’ can refer to different things in the world and fulfil different epistemic roles. Human nature can refer to a classificatory nature (classificatory criteria that determine the boundaries of, and membership in, a biological or social group called ‘human’), a descriptive nature (a bundle of properties describing the respective group’s life form), or an explanatory nature (a set of factors explaining that life form). This chapter will first introduce these three kinds of ‘human nature’, together with (...) seven reasons why we disagree about human nature. In the main, this chapter focuses on the explanatory concept of human nature, which is related to one of the seven reasons for disagreement, namely, the scientific authority inherent in the term ‘nature’. I will examine why, in a number of historical contexts, it was attractive to refer to ‘nature’ as an explanatory category, and why this usage has led to the continual contestation of the term within the sciences. The claim is that even if the contents of talk about ‘nature’ varied historically, the term’s pragmatic function of demarcation stayed the same. The term ‘nature’ conveys scientific authority over a territory; ‘human nature’ is a concept used to divide causes, as well as experts, and thereby conquer others who threaten to invade one’s epistemic territory. Analysing this demarcation, which has social as well as epistemic aspects, will help us to understand why the explanatory role has been important and why it is unlikely that people will ever agree on either the meaning or the importance of ‘human nature’ as an explanatory category. (shrink)

Recent Cartesian scholarship postulates two Descartes, separating Descartes into a scientist and a metaphysician. The purpose varies, but one has been to show that the metaphysical Descartes, of the Meditations, is less genuine than the scientific Descartes. Accordingly, discussion of God and the soul, the evil demon, and the non-deceiving God were elements of rhetorical strategy to please theologians, not of serious philosophical argumentation. I agree in finding two Descartes, but the two I identify are not scientist and philosopher, but (...) practitioner and methodologist of the mathematical sciences on the one hand, and metaphysician of a new, general science of nature on the other. This chapter examines the transition to the second Descartes, and especially the metaphysical turn. It proposes that although Descartes' doubt was methodological and he felt no serious threat from skepticism and absolute certainty was not his primary goal. Rather, the doubt was used to reform the intellect, or to teach the use of the pure intellect (and to obtain certainty in that domain). Further, Descartes' metaphysics was primarily in the service of his natural philosophy (where in the main he did not claim absolute certainty). He did not talk about God and the soul in order to fool the theologians. His discussion of the relation between God and human reason was part of a metaphysical strategy in which, through his doctrine on the eternal truths, he separated knowledge of the first principles of natural philosophy (gained by the natural light) from theological cognition (through the light of grace), thereby seeking to render his metaphysics distinct from the proper domain of theology. (shrink)

Charles S. Peirce attempted to develop his semiotic theory of cognitive signs interpretation, which are originated in our basic perceptual operations that quasi-prove the truth of perceptual judgment representing reality. The essential problem was to explain how, by a cognitive interpretation of the sequence of perceptual signs, we can represent external physical reality and reflectively represent our cognitive mind’s operations of signs. With his phaneroscopy introspection, Peirce shows how, without going outside our cognitions, we can represent external reality. Hence Peirce (...) can avoid the Berkeleyian, Humean, and Kantian phenomenologies, as well as the modern analytic philosophy and hermeneutic phenomenology. Peirce showed that with the trio of semiotic interpretation – abductive logic of discovery of hypotheses, deductive logic of necessary inference, and inductive logic of evaluation – we can reach a complete proof of the true representation of reality. This semiotic logic of reasoning is the epistemic logic representing human confrontation in reality, with which we can achieve knowledge and conduct our behavior. However, Peirce did not complete his realistic revolution to eliminate previously accepted nominalistic and idealistic epistemologies of formal logic and pure mathematics. Here, I inquire why Peirce did not complete his historical realist epistemological revolution and following that inquiry I attempt to reconstruct it. (shrink)

To sum up the main results of this study: I have disentangled two distinct patterns of argument that Taylor runs together in his attempt to show that there is a reason or explanation for the world as a whole. The first is based on the causal dependency of things in the world, the second is based on their logical contingency. It seems to make the most sense of Taylor's discussion if we interpret him not as invoking the principle of sufficient (...) reason at the crucial juncture, but as using these arguments to give backing to that principle by showing that it applies to the world in its totality. However, these arguments do not succeed in doing that. The first fails because it depends on a remote analogy between the world as a whole and the physical objects in the world. Concerning the second, an analysis of the logic of why-questions about the existence of things has revealed that the logical contingency of something is not a ground for thinking it has an explanation. The only promising interpretation of the principle of sufficient reason that we have found is as a causal principle pertaining to things in nature. (shrink)

Some adaptationist explanations are regarded as maximally solid and others fanciful just-so stories. Just-so stories are explanations based on very little evidence. Lack of evidence leads to circular-sounding reasoning: “this trait was shaped by selection in unseen ancestral populations and this selection must have occurred because the trait is present.” Well-supported adaptationist explanations include evidence that is not only abundant but selected from comparative, populational, and optimality perspectives, the three adaptationist subdisciplines. Each subdiscipline obtains its broad relevance in evolutionary (...) biology via assumptions that can only be tested with the methods of the other subdisciplines. However, even in the best-supported explanations, assumptions regarding variation, heritability, and fitness in unseen ancestral populations are always present. These assumptions are accepted given how well they would explain the data if they were true. This means that some degree of “circularity” is present in all evolutionary explanations. Evolutionary explanation corresponds not to a deductive structure, as biologists usually assert, but instead to ones such as abduction or induction. With these structures in mind, we show the way to a healthier view of “circularity” in evolutionary biology, and why integration across the comparative, populational, and optimality approaches is necessary. (shrink)

In this paper, I intend to present the way in which contingency and causal determinism relate in some major late-medieval views on the metaphysics of causation. I will focus on Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, and John Buridan. First, I will show that Scotus’s new insights into the metaphysics of modalities had important consequences for the way contingency was related to causality: Ockham and Buridan do not consider contingency as a by-product of the necessary emanation of (...) God any more but as a distinctive property of God as the first cause and, therefore, of the created world as a whole. Second, I will show that the growing interest from Scotus onward in explaining and justifying inductive reasoning led to an extensive analysis of the nature and function of the principle of the uniformity of nature. Third, I will explain why the progressive psychologization of final causes led to the exclusion of final explanations from physics. The consequence of this process is the development a new way of conceiving chance and hazard, and the separation between free and natural agents. We can speak here of a tendentially mechanistic picture of the world. (shrink)

Experimental economics offers new tools for the measurement of social norms. In this article, we argue that these advances have the potential to promote our understanding of human behavior in fundamental ways, by expanding our knowledge beyond what we learn by simply observing human behavior. We highlight how these advancements can inform not only economic and social theory, but also policymaking.We then describe and critically assess three approaches used in economics to measure social norms. We conclude our overview with (...) a list of recommendations to help empirical researchers choose among the different tools, depending on the nature and constraints of their research projects. (shrink)

Three classic distinctions specify that truths can be necessary versus contingent,analytic versus synthetic, and a priori versus a posteriori. The philosopher reading this article knows very well both how useful and ordinary such distinctions are in our conceptual work and that they have been subject to many and detailed debates, especially the last two. In the following pages, I do not wish to discuss how far they may be tenable. I shall assume that, if they are reasonable (...) and non problematic in some ordinary cases, then they can be used in order to understand what kind of knowledge the maker’s knowledge is. By this I mean the sort of knowledge that Alice enjoys when she holds the information that Bob’s coffee is sweetened because she just put two spoons of sugar in it herself. The maker’s knowledge tradition is quite important but it is not mainstream in modern and analytic epistemology and lacks grounding in terms of exactly what sort of knowledge one is talking about. My suggestion is that this grounding can be provided by a minimalist approach, based on an information-theoretical analysis. In the article, I argue that we need to decouple a fourth distinction, namely informative versus uninformative, from the previous three and, in particular, from its implicit association with analytic versus synthetic and a priori versus a posteriori; such a decoupling facilitates, and is facilitated by, moving from a monoagent to a multiagent approach: the distinctions qualify a proposition, a message, or some information not just in themselves but relationally, with respect to an informational agent; the decoupling and the multiagent approach enable a re-mapping of currently available positions in epistemology on these four dichotomies; within such a re-mapping, two positions, capturing the nature of a witness’ knowledge and of a maker’s knowledge, can best be described as contingent, synthetic, a posteriori, and uninformative and as contingent, synthetic, weakly a priori, and uninformative respectively. In the conclusion, I indicate why the analysis of the maker’s knowledge has important consequences in all those cases in which the poietic intervention on a system determines the truth of the model of that system. (shrink)

Why morality cannot be based on faith in God -- Isms -- Absence of evidence is evidence of absence -- The insidiousness of interpretation -- You will obey -- Sally, Butch, and Plato's dilemma -- The fundamentals of secular morality -- What it means to be moral -- Where do you get your morals? -- The secular seven -- Challenges to secular morality -- Accounting for immorality -- Genocidal century -- Secular solutions -- Moral relativism.

I would like to stress Vadim Mikhailovich's [Mezhuev's] position and clarify our conversation about culturology. It is constantly repeated that culturology is a science. It is my profound conviction that culturology is not a science. Culturology is a distinctive phenomenon of Russian culture and represents a certain intellectual movement. If one briefly surveys the history of its emergence, its philosophical origin becomes obvious. This intellectual movement consists of three levels, if one takes into account the "-logy" ending. First, the (...) philosophical level, from which in the 1970s culture began to be conceived as a special field of knowledge in our country. Then, humanistic knowledge: a great many representatives of the humanities in Russia-historians, art specialists, art critics, essayists-studied culture. Finally, there is the socioscientific tendency, which is just beginning to form in Russia and carries the internationally accepted name of social and cultural anthropology. All of us are synergistically attracted to these three tendencies, which comprise what is called culturology. The question of how these three tendencies of knowledge are correlated in the framework of the given intellectual movement is, in my view, extremely important. For quite some time now, there has been no reflection in Russia on the foundations of scientific and philosophical knowledge, but such reflection is necessary. To advance along the road of rational knowledge it is important to reflect in what cognitive space we find ourselves, what we are doing within its boundaries, and for what reason. From this point of view, neither philosophers nor representatives of the humanities or the social sciences will renounce their positions of observer. Moreover, I agree with Mezhuev that there is no single philosophy, humanistic conception, or theory of culture. Anyone who is engaged professionally in the study of cultural phenomena can choose his initial foundations. As Vadim Mezhuev correctly notes, the significance of philosophy for other types of knowledge lies in the fact that there are borderline areas of man's existence in the world. However, they are identified in different ways by different philosophies: positivism, phenomenology, classical Platonism, Aristotelianism, Kantianism, and so forth. Representatives of humanistic and socioscientific knowledge are free to choose any metaphysics. Philosophers will continue to attend to their business in their subject area, and scientists in theirs. But it is important periodically to determine rationally when there must be close and complementary relations between the three components of this intellectual movement and when they must exist in parallel. Then questions such as who has priority and who is the guardian of truth will not arise. If the tendencies have diverged in parallel, then the representatives of each of them are occupied within their domains with questions which are irrelevant in other fields of knowledge or for other theoretical models. At the end of the twentieth century, to pose the question of scientism or antiscientism is senseless because today we know that there are different forms of rationality and that science is not the only, and is quite a narrow, form of rationality. Myth too is rational. It is expressed in categories and has a particular inner logic. We recognize myth as a rational cultural entity, because it is represented in symbolic form as an ordered sequence of judgments, as an artifact. But it differs from scientific theory. That is why it is fruitful to reflect on what forms of rationality are relevant to what levels of knowledge. I agree with Ogurtsov, who says that these forms penetrate in one way or another into every culturally institutionalized form of knowledge. Indeed, in philosophical knowledge there are elements of everyday, mythological, and scientific knowledge, but this does not negate the distinctive nature of the philosophical form of knowledge. In science there are elements of metaphysics, mythology, and everyday knowledge, but this does not cancel the particularities of the scientific form of knowledge. The same is true of the humanistic form, which is in principle irremovable from the framework of institutionalized knowledge, at least for now. I do not agree with Ogurtsov that I give the humanistic form of knowledge a negative evaluation. Humanistic knowledge begins to be significant in a period of a cognitive paradigm shift. This, we can say, is apparent today, at a time of transition from the grand style of modernism in its postmodern mode to the building of the foundations for a new whole. The point is that the humanistic form of knowledge enables us to isolate at the outset those areas of the unknown at which we arrive because of the limitations inherent in other forms of rationality. It is closest to everyday and empirical categories of knowledge and forms of ideas; hence, particularism, image syncretism, and mobility are its distinctive features. But without this humanistic level no further step is possible in either scientific or philosophical knowledge. The breakdown into these forms of knowledge- philosophical, humanistic, and scientific-may be primitive, but we have to start our reflection on the foundations of our cognitive relationship to our surroundings somewhere. The identification of the forms of knowledge makes it possible to draw the conclusion that, unlike philosophical and humanistic knowledge, socioscientific knowledge is modeled on the natural sciences. From this it becomes obvious that the distinctive features of the object of social sciences determine also the special nature of the categorial apparatus, operationalization, selection method, and information analysis. I do not insist that the model I suggest must be accepted. Other models can be constructed. But let us start with a simpler comparison of types of knowledge and later we shall differentiate them. I started from this level because in our culture such a division is apparent and generally accepted. There are the philosophical, humanistic, and scientific forms of knowledge. They are irreducible to one another, they perform entirely different functions in the knowledge of man's relationship to the environment, and express different views about how man lives in culture. I agree that philosophy is exactly existence in culture with a singling out of the limits of this existence. But representatives of humanistic and socioscientific knowledge also deal with existence in culture. What is important for the philosopher is the direction of knowledge from within to the outside; for the representative of humanistic knowledge it is the description of how he exists among a multitude of seemingly diverse and divergent artifacts and processes; and for the scientist it is the order of the philosophically and humanistically defined reality in order to control it the better. (shrink)

The grammatical manipulation and production of language is a great deceiver. We have become habituated to accept the use of well-constructed language to indicate intelligence, understanding and, consequently, intention, whether conscious or unconscious. But we are not always right to do so, and certainly not in the case of large language models (LLMs) like ChapGPT, GPT-4, LLaMA, and Google Bard. This is a perennial problem, but when one understands why it occurs, it ceases to be surprising that it so stubbornly (...) persists. This paper will have three main sections. In the Introduction I will say a little about language, its aetiology, and useful sub-divisions into natural and cultural. In the second section I will explain the current situation with regard to large language models and fill in the background debates which set the problem up as one of increased complexity rather than one of a qualitatively different kind from narrow or specific AI. In the third section I will present the case for the missing phenomenological background and why it is necessary for the co-creation of shared meaning in both natural and cultural language, and I will conclude this section by presenting a rationale for why this situation arises and will continue to arise. Before we do any of this, I need to clarify one point: I do not wish to challenge the ascription of artificial general intelligence (AGI) to LLMs, indeed I think agnosticism is best in this respect, but I do challenge the more serious, and erroneous, ascription of understanding, intention, reason, and consciousness to them. And so, I am making two points: an epistemological one about why we fall into error in our ascription of a mental life to LLMs, and an ontological one about the impossibility of LLMs being or becoming conscious. (shrink)

Lockean accounts of personhood propose that an individual is a person just in case that individual is characterized by some advanced cognitive capacity. On these accounts, human beings with severe cognitive impairment are not persons. Some accept this result—I do not. In this paper, I therefore advance and defend an account of personhood that secures personhood for human beings who are cognitively impaired. On the account for which I argue, an individual is a person just in case that individual belongs (...) to a natural kind that is normally characterized by advanced cognitive capacities. Since “human being” is just such a natural kind, individual human beings can be persons even when they do not themselves have advanced cognitive capacities. I argue, furthermore, that we have good reason to accept this account of personhood over rival accounts since it is uniquely able to accommodate the intuitive concept of an impaired person. (shrink)

Recently it has been argued that we cannot intend at will. Since intentions cannot be true or false, our involuntariness cannot be traced to “the characteristic of beliefs that they aim at truth”, as Bernard Williams convincingly argues. The alternative explanation is that the source of involuntariness is the shared normative nature of beliefs and intentions. Three analogies may assimilate intentions to beliefs vis-à-vis our involuntariness: first, beliefs and intentions aim at something; second, beliefs and intentions are transparent to (...) the true and the good respectively; third, beliefs and intentions are answers to questions other than that of whether to endorse them. The purpose of this paper is to argue that attempts to ground involuntariness in normativity rather than truth imply that we cannot act at will. I assume that actions are the paradigm case of doing something at will, and utilize this assumption as a restriction on any account of our inability to believe at will: it should not be possible to generalize it to actions. Any account of doxastic involuntarism that implies that we cannot act at will is false—if we cannot act at will, what can we do at will? I close by offering a notion of doing something at will that is based on Williams’ insight that truth—rather than reason—matters to our inability to believe at will. (shrink)

In this paper, I respond to Adolf Grünbaum’s charge that the cosmological problem to which the theological doctrine of divine creation would, if true, be a solution is really only a pseudoproblem. My discussion focuses on three questions: Why does the possible world that is in fact actual obtain, rather than any of the other possible worlds? Why does a possible world with the natural laws of the actual world obtain, rather than some possible world with a different nomological (...) structure? And why does a possible world in which some contingent things exist obtain, rather than the possible world in which nothing contingent exists? I argue that each of these questions can be understood in such a way that it avoids Grünbaum’s pseudoproblem charge. I also argue that the second and third questions give rise, if pressed, to problems that science cannot solve. Their ultimate answers are either appeals to inexplicable brute facts, which are not explanatory, or appeals to extrascientific explanations, which could be theological. (shrink)

Introduction 3 Chapter One: Natural Cognition 11 Chapter Two: Maturational Naturalness 31 Chapter Three: Unnatural Science 83 Chapter Four: Natural Religion 145 Chapter Five: Surprising Consequences 223.

In this paper, I argue that unification is neither necessary nor sufficient for explanation. Focusing on the versions of the unificationist theory of explanation of Kitcher and of Schurz and Lambert, I establish three theses. First, Kitcher’s criterion of unification is vitiated by the fact that it entails that every proposition can be explained by itself, a flaw that it is unable to overcome. Second, because neither Kitcher’s theory nor that of Schurz and Lambert can solve the problems (...) of asymmetry and accidental generalizations, it follows that unification is not sufficient to ground explanation. Third, some good explanations are disunifying, which entails that unification is not necessary for explanation either. (shrink)

This article is concerned with a distinction Jeff McMahan draws between just and justified wars. It argues that this distinction does not accord with the content of McMahan’s conceptual distinction between just and justified threats; nor does it correspond with the way in which McMahan applies this distinction to the jus in bello tactical bomber scenario. McMahan claims that the tactical bomber’s conduct, assuming it foreseeably causes collateral damage, can only be justified, but not just, while war can be just (...) despite foreseeably resulting in the killing and maiming of innocent people. This claim is incoherent. The incoherence can be overcome, though, within McMahan’s own conceptual framework. For contingent reasons that have to do with the nature of at least modern warfare, justified wars are virtually always unjust. Since agents are generally morally required to prevent themselves from getting into situations in which they can (or must) perform morally justified acts that are unjust, distinguishing between these two types of war is not merely a matter of terminology. This article is a plea for the recognition of the tragedy of justified wars, a tragedy which is only authentic if it could not have been prevented by the agents who wage these wars. (shrink)

Intentions matter. They have some kind of normative impact on our agency. Something goes wrong when an agent intends some end and fails to carry out the means she believes to be necessary for it, and something goes right when, intending the end, she adopts the means she thinks are required. This has even been claimed to be one of the only uncontroversial truths in ethical theory. But not only is there widespread disagreement about why this is so, there (...) is widespread disagreement about in what sense it is so. In this paper I explore an underdeveloped answer to the question of in what sense it is so, and argue that resolving an apparent difficulty with this view leads to an attractive picture about why it is so. (shrink)

"Reason and faith," the encyclical the starting point and focus on that grid has a bit of basic human dignity, which raise the status of the people there are things on top of everything else, and make absolutely privileged, that is, beyond the freedom to pursue of the privilege. Hella Cleveland Meadows said: "I have tried to know myself."敎were the interpretation of this motto and there is a coincidence site lattice theory: "" You should be aware of their own, "and (...) this motto is inscribed in Carbondale non-temple frieze on the bottom of the beams. a truth of this maxim that any one person, if you want the creature, the highlights were the reason why the nature of man, you have to pursue the truth. "and that philosophy is" to understand people's there is a fundamental truth of the way. " Like two wings of faith and reason, to enhance people's contemplative truth of the spirit. "Encyclical" God distinguished from the road leading to human and human-path leading to God, but not to separate the two, because down the road and up the road to cycle between the role and complementary role. Man up the road leading to God's being responded to Aristotle in "Metaphysics," said the first sentence: "Everyone has a natural desire for knowledge", while the highest activity of this knowledge refers permit the existence of God and its main properties . For this reason, the encyclical were敎praise Greek philosophy, metaphysics because it is certainly faith is bound to open. And open to the faith or philosophy of the first tasks required to re-find it in the "explore the full significance of life and the wisdom of last rate", the second request or task is "to understand certain people have the ability to find the truth", and the first three requirements or task more emphasis on "a philosophy based on the physical is necessary.". (shrink)

Present world is the victim of conflicts on the basis of misunderstanding of religious dogmas of different religions, irrationality, ignorance and intolerance. People are moving away from knowledge, truth and reason. Indeed people accept false beliefs, hallucinations and myths. The role of religious plurality in philosophy is not to integrate and harmonize religions, especially religions cannot, and rather it is the business of religious pluralism to learn, think and acquire knowledge about the variety of religious beliefs, statements and injunctions. This (...) paper determines the function of intelligence/intellect to understand religious pluralism. How and where we make mistake in the plurality of religions. In this paper there is no issue to describe the conflict between faith and reason however reason is only to think and clear the ambiguities which we are using either to integrate one religion with another or to refute the religious dogmas of other religions. That is why authority places a significant part which teaches humans how to use their reason to bring peace, tranquility and acceptance in the plurality of religions. Mostly the scholar who practicing their religions and without having the authority and knowledge of other religions they are vehemently criticizing other religions. This paper shows that what is authority and where to use it. Who are authoritative persons? If authority in one religion is transferred to another what would happen. What would happen if authority is misrepresented? This paper further illuminates the concept of rational outlook to modify and learn from different religious; furthermore we can discuss the nature of consciousness or awareness in exploring religious pluralism. Is it necessary for a person who believes in one religion to learn another religion in order to resolve the controversies and evils in different religions conditional to authority? The more we mixing up religions into each other, the more religious conflicts arise. Therefore this paper tries to furnish people's mind with consciousness about religions realities and state of affair, inculcate world with rational outlook to ponder, analyze, understand and evaluate as well tolerate and accept the truth and authenticity in the domain of religions. This study analyzes and stress on the exertion of relative vision in accordance and intimation with reason, authority and moral consciousness to resolve the conflicts, diversities and issues in the field of religious pluralism. (shrink)

A central debate in early modern philosophy, between empiricism and rationalism, turned on the question which of two cognitive faculties—sensibility or understanding—should be accorded logical priority in an account of the epistemic credentials of knowledge. As against both the empiricist and the rationalist, Kant wants to argue that the terms of their debate rest on a shared common assumption: namely that the capacities here in question—qua cognitive capacities—are self-standingly intelligible. The paper terms this assumption the Layer-Cake Conception of Human Mindedness (...) and focuses on Kant’s argument against the empiricist version of the assumption, in particular, as that argument is developed in the B version of the Transcendental Deduction in the Critique of Pure Reason. The paper seeks to show how a proper understanding of the structure of the B Deduction reveals its aim to be one of making sense of each of these two capacities (sensibility and understanding) in the light of the other. For the front of the argument that is directed against the empiricist, this means coming to see how a reading of the text that is informed by the layer-cake conception (and which therefore takes the Transcendental Aesthetic to furnish us with the full story about the nature of our faculty for sensory apprehension) is mistaken. For the front of the argument which is directed against the rationalist, this requires coming to see how a mere inversion of the central claim of such a reading would be equally wrong. It would require seeing how a discursive faculty of understanding able to traffic in nothing more than empty concepts would no more amount to a genuinely cognitive power than would a faculty of intuition able to traffic in nothing more than blind intuitions. That is, it requires seeing how each of these faculties depends on its relation to the other to be the sort of faculty that it is in a finite rational being. (shrink)

There is a widespread view according to which descriptive metaphysics is not ‘real’ metaphysics. This paper argues that first-order philosophical disagreements cannot be settled without re-opening the debate about the nature of philosophical enquiry and that failure to scrutinize and justify one’s own metaphilosophical stance leads to arguments which are circular or question begging.

Some interpreters take the arguments at Cratylus 439D3–440C1 to argue for Forms. Some interpreters also believe that these arguments are elliptical or contain lacunae. I accept that the arguments are elliptical. However, I deny that they contain lacunae. I present the most natural construal of the text and argue that it neither trades on Forms nor postulates Forms. To make my case, I show that Cratylus 439D3–440C1 has a modest end, which is to refute a particular notion of flux.

Some interpreters take the arguments at Cratylus 439D3–440C1 to argue for Forms. Some interpreters also believe that these arguments are elliptical or contain lacunae. I accept that the arguments are elliptical. However, I deny that they contain lacunae. I present the most natural construal of the text and argue that it neither trades on Forms nor postulates Forms. To make my case, I show that Cratylus 439D3–440C1 has a modest end, which is to refute a particular notion of flux.

Vagueness is a familiar but deeply puzzling aspect of the relation between language and the world. It is highly controversial what the nature of vagueness is -- a feature of the way we represent reality in language, or rather a feature of reality itself? May even relations like identity or parthood be affected by vagueness? Sorites arguments suggest that vague terms are either inconsistent or have a sharp boundary. The account we give of such paradoxes plays a pivotal role for (...) our understanding of natural languages. If our reasoning involves any vague concepts, is it safe from contradiction? Do vague concepts really lack any sharp boundary? If not, why are we reluctant to accept the existence of any sharp boundary for them? And what rules of inference can we validly apply, if we reason in vague terms? Cuts and Clouds presents the latest work towards a clearer understanding of these old puzzles about the nature and logic of vagueness. The collection offers a stimulating series of original essays on these and related issues by some of the world's leading experts. (shrink)

Any study of the 'Scientific Revolution' and particularly Descartes' role in the debates surrounding the conception of nature (atoms and the void v. plenum theory, the role of mathematics and experiment in natural knowledge, the status and derivation of the laws of nature, the eternality and necessity of eternal truths, etc.) should be placed in the philosophical, scientific, theological, and sociological context of its time. Seventeenth-century debates concerning the nature of the eternal truths such as '2 + 2 = 4' (...) or the law of inertia turn on the question of whether these truths were created along with nature, or were uncreated and subsisting in God's mind. One's answer to that question has direct consequences for conceptions of the necessity/contingency of mathematical and natural knowledge, how knowledge of such truths is accomplished by humans, and what grounds these truths. In this paper, I review the positions of four successors to Descartes' philosophy on the question of the eternal truths to illustrate how in specific ways that question with its theological, metaphysical, modal, and epistemological dimensions concerned the objectivity and certainty of the discoveries of the new science. Author Recommends: Clarke, Desmond. Descartes' Philosophy of Science . University Park, Penn State Press, 1982. This work provides an account of Descartes as a practicing scientist whose rationalism is mitigated by reliance on experiment and experience. Author re-examines Descartes' philosophical and scientific works in this new light. Dear, Peter. Revolutionizing the Sciences: European Knowledge and its Ambitions, 1500–1700 . Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2001. This work provides a useful overview of the issues and thinkers of the Scientific Revolution. Of particular relevance is chapter 8 on Cartesian and Newtonian science. Funkenstein, Amos. Theology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century . Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1986. This work is an advanced study of the theological and metaphysical foundations of early modern science. Discussions include questions of God's nature, God's knowledge in relation to human knowledge, providence, the laws of nature, and the truths of mathematics. In particular, chapter 3 discusses Descartes' account of the eternal truths and divine omnipotence. Garber, Daniel. Descartes' Metaphysical Physics . Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1992. This work examines how Descartes' metaphysical doctrines of God, soul, and body set the groundwork for his physics. It includes a study of God and the grounds for the laws of physics (chapter 9). Henry, John. The Scientific Revolution and the Origins of Modern Science . 3rd ed. New York, Palgrave, Macmillan Press, 2008. This work provides a brief, general, and informative overview of the Scientific Revolution, including the themes of method, magic, religion, and culture. Osler, Margaret J. Divine Will and the Mechanical Philosophy: Gassendi and Descartes on Contingency and Necessity in the Created World . Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994. This work is an examination and comparison of the mechanical philosophies of Gassendi and Descartes. It offers in-depth discussion of the issue of voluntarism and intellectualism in the period and how that related to conceptions of laws of nature and the eternal truths. Shapin, Steven. The Scientific Revolution . Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1996. This work provides a critical synthesis of as well as a guide to recent scholarship in the history of science for a general readership. Online Materials Dr. Robert A. Hatch's Scientific Revolution Website: http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/rhatch/pages/03-Sci-Rev/SCI-REV-Home/ A compendium of resources for the study of Scientific Revolution. Early English Books Online: http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home Early English Books Online (EEBO) contains digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473 to 1700. Early Modern Resources: http://www.earlymodernweb.org.uk/emr/ Early Modern Resources is a gateway for all those interested in finding electronic resources relating to the early modern period in history. Gallica, the Digital Library of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France: http://gallica.bnf.fr/ An ever-growing digital library which includes numerous primary and secondary texts of relevance to Descartes and his role in Scientific Revolution. Hatfield, Gary, 'René Descartes', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Spring 2009 ed. Ed. Edward N. Zalta; URL: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2009/entries/descartes/ Slowik, Edward, 'Descartes' Physics', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Winter 2008 ed. Ed. Edward N. Zalta; URL: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/descartes-physics/ Syllabus Sample Syllabus: Cartesian Science The following is five weeks covering Cartesian Science in a course on Descartes or the Scientific Revolution, or 17th-century theories of matter, or related themes on early modern truth and method, especially on the continent. This material is best suited to a graduate level audience, but it could be modified to suit an upper-division undergraduate course, as the readings are basically primary texts whose context and background can be explained in lectures. Week 1: Cartesian Revolution in France • Scientific method • Role of mathematics and experiment • Certainty of scientific knowledge Readings: Hatfield, Gary, 'René Descartes', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Spring 2009 ed. Ed. Edward N. Zalta; URL: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2009/entries/descartes/ Descartes, Discourse on Method , Parts 1–3 Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy , First Meditation. Week 2: Descartes' Scientific Treatises • Mechanization and mathematization of nature • Primary–secondary quality distinction Readings: Discourse on Method, Parts 4–6 Selections from Descartes' Scientific Essays: The World or Treatise on Light (ATXI 3–48); Treatise on Man (ATXI 119–202); Optics (ATVI 82–147). Slowik, Edward, 'Descartes' Physics', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Winter 2008 ed. Ed. Edward N. Zalta; URL: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/descartes-physics/ Henry, John, 'The Mechanical Philosophy,' chapter 5. The Scientific Revolution and the Origins of Modern Science . 3rd ed. Macmillan, 2008. Week 3: Descartes' Theory of Nature • Descartes' derivation of the law of conservation and the three laws of motion • God's role in the metaphysics and physics of nature Readings: Selections from Principles of Philosophy, Preface (all); Letter to Elizabeth; Part I: 1–8; Part II: 1–45, 55, 64; Part III: 1–4, 15–19, 45–47; Part IV: 187–207. John Henry, 'Religion and Science,' chapter 6. The Scientific Revolution and the Origins of Modern Science . 3rd ed. Macmillan, 2008. Week 4: Post-1650 Cartesian Science: Necessity and Contingency in Nature • Debates on God, Creation, and Causes Readings: Easton, Patricia, 'What is at Stake in the Cartesian Debates on the Eternal Truths?' Philosophy Compass 4.2 (2009): 348–62. Malebranche, Nicolas, 'Elucidation 10', from The Search after Truth (1674). Note: All selections available in Nicolas Malebranche (1992). Philosophical Selections , edited by S. Nadler, Hackett. Gottfried Leibniz (1714) Monadology . Week 5: Causes in Nature and Morals • Theodicy as an explanation of defect and evil in a lawful universe: Malebranche v. Leibniz Readings: Nicolas Malebranche, Elucidation XVI (on occasionalism), and Treatise on Nature and Grace, Discourse One, Part 1. Gottfried Leibniz (1706), Theodicy. Focus Questions Weekly questions can be used to focus the readings. This can be done in a web or e-mail discussion thread, as a weekly assignment, or for in class discussion. I require students to post a short paragraph in response to the question or some posting by a classmate on the question. Students are required to post by 10 a.m. the day before we meet for class on a course website. Week 1: According to Descartes, what role does skepticism play in scientific reasoning? Week 2: Comment on the following: 'But I am supposing this machine to be made by the hands of God, and so I think you may reasonably think it capable of a greater variety of movements than I could possibly imagine in it, and of exhibiting more artistry than I could possibly ascribe to it' [ Treatise on Man ; ATXI 120]. Week 3: What is Descartes' conception of the relation between the metaphysics and physics of nature? Week 4: Critically discuss the positions of Descartes, Malebranche, and Leibniz on what provides the foundation for the certitude of natural knowledge? Week 5: Explain why both Malebranche and Leibniz consider moral sin to be analogous to natural defect? Seminar/Project Idea Hold a debate on the question of the status of the eternal truths. The proposition will be Descartes' position: 'Eternal truths must be both created and necessary if certainty in science is to be possible'. Format: 1. At the beginning of the 5-week module, students will be assigned to one of three roles: Team A, Team B, and judge's panel. Students will be given the debate proposition, but will not be told which team will take the affirmative and which team the negative until the time of the debate. 2. Recommend a variation on the Classic Debate Format to encourage the development of argument: sequence begins with affirmative construction (8 minutes), negative construction (8 minutes), second affirmative construction (8 minutes), second negative construction (8 minutes), first negative rebuttal (4 minutes), first affirmative rebuttal (4 minutes), final negative rebuttal (4 minutes) and final affirmative rebuttal (4 minutes). 3. Judges Panel: will consist of 3–4 judges who will assess the performance of Teams A and B. Judgment should be based on the persuasiveness of the team position. 4. Debate will be held at the end of the fifth week, or semester, whichever makes most sense given the course length and structure. Acknowledgements The author gratefully acknowledges the immensely helpful comments and suggestions by the participants in her graduate seminar on the Scientific Revolution: Benjamin Chicka, Sarah Jacques-Ross, Richard Ross, Marcella Stockstill, and Zohra Wolters. (shrink)

Ian Hacking’s wide-ranging and penetrating analysis of science contains two well-developed lines of thought. The first emphasizes the contingent history of our inquiries into nature, focusing on the various ways in which our concepts and styles of reasoning evolve through time, how their current application is constrained by the conditions under which they arose, and how they might have evolved differently. The second is the mistrust of the idea that the world contains mind-independent natural kinds, preferring nominalism to ‘inherent (...) structurism’. These two pillars of thought seem at first to be mutually reinforcing: the lack of natural structure can help make sense of scientific variability and revision, while variability and revision provide reason to suspect that natural structure is little more than idealization. In what follows, I argue that these two pillars not only fail to support each other, but in fact conflict. One of them must fall, and it is clear which. (shrink)

There is growing support for the view that social categories like men and women refer to “objective types” (Haslanger 2000, 2006, 2012; Alcoff 2005). An objective type is a similarity class for which the axis of similarity is an objective rather than nominal or fictional property. Such types are independently real and causally relevant, yet their unity does not derive from an essential property. Given this tandem of features, it is not surprising why empirically-minded researchers interested in fighting oppression and (...) marginalization have found this ontological category so attractive: objective types have the ontological credentials to secure the reality (and thus political representation) of social categories, and yet they do not impose exclusionary essences that also naturalize and legitimize social inequalities. This essay argues that, from the perspective of these political goals of fighting oppression and marginalization, the category of objective types is in fact a Trojan horse; it looks like a gift, but it ends up creating trouble. I argue that objective type classifications often lack empirical adequacy, and as a result they lack political adequacy. I also provide, and in reference to the normative goals described above, several arguments for preferring a social ontology of natural kinds with historical essences. (shrink)

How is love different from lust or infatuation? Do love and marriage really go together “like a horse and carriage”? Does sex have any necessary connection to either? And how important are love, sex, and marriage to a well-lived life? In this lively, lucid, and comprehensive textbook, Raja Halwani pursues the philosophical questions inherent in these three important aspects of human relationships, exploring the nature, uses, and ethics of romantic love, sexuality, and marriage. The book is structured in (...) three parts: _Love_ begins by examining how romantic love differs from other types of love, such as friendship and parental love. It asks which properties of love are essential, whether people have a choice in whom they love, and whether lovers have moral obligations to one another that differ from those they owe to others _Sex_ demonstrates the difficulty in defining sex and the sexual, and examines what constitutes good and bad sex in terms of pleasure, 'naturalness', and moral permissibility. It offers theoretical and applied ethical approaches to a wide range of sexual phenomena _Marriage_ traces the history of the institution, and describes the various forms in which marriage exists and the reasons why people marry. It also surveys accounts of why people should or should not marry, and introduces the main arguments for and against gay marriage. Features include: suggestions for further reading online eResource site with dowloadable discussion questions a clear, jargon-free writing style. (shrink)

The belief that laws of nature are contingent played an important role in the emergence of the empirical method of modern physics. During the scientific revolution, this belief was based on the idea of voluntary creation. Taking up Peter Mittelstaedt’s work on laws of nature, this article explores several alternative answers which do not overtly make use of metaphysics: some laws are laws of mathematics; macroscopic laws can emerge from the interplay of numerous subsystems without any specific microscopic nomic (...) structures (John Wheeler’s “law without law”); laws are the preconditions of scientific experience (Kant); laws are theoretical abstractions which only apply in very limited circumstances (Nancy Cartwright). Whereas Cartwright’s approach is in tension with modern scientific methodology, the first three strategies count as illuminating, though partial answers. It is important for the empirical method of modern physics that these three strategies, even when taken together, do not provide a complete explanation of the order of nature. Thus the question of why laws are valid is still relevant. In the concluding section, I argue that the traditional answer, based on voluntary creation, provides the right balance of contingency and coherence which is in harmony with modern scientific method. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 29.3 (1999) 40-62 [Access article in PDF] Syncretism and Its Synonyms: Reflections on Cultural Mixture Charles Stewart * The subject matter of anthropology has gradually changed over the last twenty years. Nowadays ethnographers rarely search for a stable or original form of cultures; they are usually more concerned with revealing how local communities respond to historical change and global influences. The burgeoning literature on transnational flows of ideas, (...) global institutions, and cultural mixture reflects this shift of attention. This increased awareness of cultural interpenetration has, furthermore, been instrumental in the critique of earlier conceptions of "culture" that cast it as too stable, bounded, and homogeneous to be useful in a world characterized by migrations (voluntary or forced), cheap travel, international marketing, and telecommunications. 1 Contemporary social theory has accordingly turned to focus on phenomena such as globalization, transnational nationalism, and the situation of diaspora communities. In this body of literature the word syncretism has begun to reappear alongside such related concepts as hybridization and creolization as a means of portraying the dynamics of global social developments.In what follows I consider some current attempts to theorize mixture before turning to examine the suitability, or not, of the terms listed above. Anthropologists and other social scientists have expressed ambivalence about all three terms--syncretism, hybridity, and creolization. I discuss these reservations before presenting a genealogical consideration of the single term syncretism. My purpose in considering the history of syncretism up to the present is not to enforce a standard usage confined to the domain of religion; nor is it my goal to promote syncretism to a position of primus inter pares in the company of all other terms for mixture. I see my approach instead as an attempt to illustrate historically that syncretism has an objectionable but nevertheless instructive past. If this past can be understood, then we are in a position to consciously reappropriate syncretism [Shaw and Stewart 2] and set the ethnographic study of cultural mixture on new tracks.This might seem too minimalist to readers who currently have no reservations about the term, but many anthropologists, on both sides of the Atlantic, have personally expressed to me strong reservations about ever employing the word syncretism. If asked why they hold this view, they are often unable to articulate a specific reason. Some, however, did express one or both of the following objections: (1) syncretism is a pejorative term, one that derides mixture, and/or (2) syncretism presupposes "purity" in the [End Page 40] traditions that combine. Both of these reservations will be considered below, but it is the broad disagreement within the anthropological community on the appropriateness of the very term syncretism that has stimulated this inquiry. Such ambivalence reflects basic uncertainties about how to conceptualize cultural mixture. Current Discussions of Mixture Cultures, if we still wish to retain this term (and I do), are porous; they are open to intermixture with other, different cultures and they are subject to historical change precisely on account of these influences. 2 This has no doubt always been the case. Certainly decolonization and the entry into a postmodernity where master narratives of purity and homogeneity are vulnerable to doubt have contributed to valorizing recognitions of mixture where formerly they had been stigmatized as inauthentic and hence uninteresting for anthropological study. Research in the Caribbean, in Sidney Mintz's view, started relatively late precisely because this region "was considered theoretically unfruitful... its peoples supposedly lacked culture, or were culturally bastardized" [303].Cultural borrowing and interpenetration are today seen as part of the very nature of cultures [Glissant 140-41; Rosaldo, Foreword xv]. To phrase it more accurately, syncretism describes the process by which cultures constitute themselves at any given point in time. Today's hybridization will simply give way to tomorrow's hybridization, the form of which will be dictated by historico-political events and contingencies. In examining cultural hybridity, writers such as Edward Said and James Clifford [Predicament 14-15] have lifted syncretism out of the framework of acculturation. Syncretism is no longer a transient "stage" which will disappear when, with time, assimilation occurs. As Said... (shrink)

I try to return the focus of the philosophy of history to the nature of understanding, with a particular emphasis on Louis Mink’s project of exploring how historical understanding compares to the understanding we find in the natural sciences. On the whole, I come to a conclusion that Mink almost certainly would not have liked: that the understanding offered by history has a very similar epistemic profile to the understanding offered by the sciences, a similarity that stems from the fact (...) that both are concerned with grasping how the objects of their study are structured, or how the various elements of the things they study depend upon and relate to one another. At the same time, however, I claim that historical inquiry naturally puts us in a position to acquire further epistemic goods, including the old-fashioned epistemic good of wisdom, which is plausibly constituted by knowledge of how to live well. This is something the natural sciences cannot offer, and it is part of the reason why history is such an important form of inquiry. (shrink)

In my dissertation I aim to further our understanding of practical reasons and practical reasoning. In chapter one I evaluate and reject the most commonly accepted accounts of practical reasons, viz., Objectivism and Humeanism. They each offer an account of the conditions under which we have reasons, but they cannot tell us why these conditions have normative significance for us. I also argue that we cannot use a claim about the relationship between reasons and motivation to (...) determine the nature of practical reasons. ;In chapter two I claim that an acceptable account of what motivates us to act must be compatible with the fact that actions are things we do. I argue that neither desire-based nor belief-based accounts of motivation can accommodate this fact, and I sketch an alternative account according to which we are motivated to act by our decisions. ;I argue in chapter three that to make decisions is to hold oneself subject to certain constitutive laws about how to make decisions. I also claim that person P has a reason to do A if and only if it would be correct for P to decide to do A. A decision is correct, I contend, just in case it conforms with the constitutive laws of decision-making. Furthermore, the conditions under which we have reasons to act have this special status for us because we cannot avoid making decisions about how to act. ;In chapter four I claim that it seems as if there is no room in the world, as science understands it, for the performance of actions. I respond to this worry in two steps. First, I claim that our making decisions and carrying them out in action is compatible with the fact that our bodies move in accordance with physical laws. Second, I argue that our decisions are our own doings in a very deep sense. Therefore, the scientific world view does not preclude the kind of self-expression essential to action. (shrink)

International criminal law (ICL) is an achievement, but at the same time a challenge to the traditional conception of the principle of legality (_lex praevia_, _scripta_, and _stricta_ – Sect. 1). International criminal tribunals have often based conviction for international crimes on unwritten norms the existence and scope of which they have failed to substantiate. In so doing, they have evaded the objection that they were applying _ex post facto_ criminal laws. This approach, the relaxation of the concept of law (...) by including norms whose existence is doubtful, has apparently served to maintain a concept of strict legality, but it is unsatisfying (Sect. 2). In my opinion, the strict principle of legality that has linked its absolute validity to the positivity of law is not the correct premise. It makes sense to state that positivity and validity do not necessarily go hand in hand (Sect. 3). Applied to ICL, this means that it is neither necessary nor convincing to “conceal” supra-positive law as positive law, as some decisions of the international criminal tribunals do. For this reason, I consider that Radbruch’s formula, consisting in admitting that there are supra-positive limits which positive law must respect in order to be valid, is well-founded (Sect. 4). The path taken by this significant philosopher of law is methodologically convincing, and it squarely faces the problem of the value of positive law. Nevertheless, if we admit Radbruch’s formula and thereby the limited value of positive law (if we claim that the validity of the law depends on it respecting supra-positive minimums of justice), we must also face the problem of the definition of supra-positive values, the epistemological difficulties of having access to them (Sect. 5), and the question of the scope and enforceability of supra-positive law (Sect. 6). In summary, this article aims to explain why Radbruch’s formula offers a convincing conceptual basis for international criminal legality and, in doing so, aims to contribute to the discussion about the foundations of ICL. (shrink)