Our self-understanding as human agents includes a commitment to three crucial claims about human agency: that agents must be active, that actions are part of the natural order of the universe, and that intentional actions can be explained by the agent's reasons for acting. While all of these claims are indispensable elements of our view of ourselves as human agents, they are in continuous conflict and tension with one another, especially once one adopts the currently predominant view of what the (...) natural order must be like. One of the central tasks of philosophy of action consists in showing how, despite appearances, these conflicts can be resolved and our self-understanding as agents be vindicated. The mainstream of contemporary philosophy of action holds that this task can only be fulfilled by an event-causal reductive view of human agency, paradigmatically embodied in the so-called 'standard model' developed by Donald Davidson. Erasmus Mayr, in contrast, develops a new agent-causal solution to these conflicts and shows why this solution is superior both to event-causalist accounts and to Von Wright's intentionalism about agency. He offers a comprehensive theory of substance-causation on the basis of a realist conception of powers, which allows one to see how the widespread rejection of agent-causation rests on an unfounded 'Humean' view of nature and of causal processes. At the same time, Mayr addresses the question of the nature of reasons for acting and complements its substance-causal account of activity with a non-causal account of acting for reasons in terms of following a standard of success. (shrink)

In the last two chapters of his book ‘From Normativity to Responsibility’, Joseph Raz developed, in outline, an intriguing account of responsibility, which is based on what he called the Rational Functioning Principle and on the idea of a domain of secure competence. With these two ideas, Raz argued, we could best delimit the scope of ‘responsibility’ in the sense of something ‘being to one’s credit or discredit as a rational agent’. In the following, I will argue that, while identifying (...) some crucial aspects of our being agents ‘in the world’, Raz’s account does not fully capture the extent of the kind of responsibility he was interested in. In particular, unintentional failures that are due to the malfunctioning of capacities which are too unreliable to count as secure competences may well fall within the scope of responsibility thus understood. I will suggest Raz’s account should be supplemented by considerations drawn from ‘quality of will’ approaches, which can (inter alia) deal better with such cases. (shrink)

In a recent reply to our article, “What is Interpretability?,” Prasetya argues against our position that artificial neural networks are explainable. It is claimed that our indefeasibility thesis—that adding complexity to an explanation of a phenomenon does not make the phenomenon any less explainable—is false. More precisely, Prasetya argues that unificationist explanations are defeasible to increasing complexity, and thus, we may not be able to provide such explanations of highly complex AI models. The reply highlights an important lacuna in our (...) original paper, the omission of the unificationist account of explanation, and affords us the opportunity to respond. Here, we argue that artificial neural networks are explainable in a way that should satisfy unificationists and that interpretability methods present ways in which ML theories can achieve unification. (shrink)

In “Causality and Determination”, Anscombe stressed that, in her view, physical determinism and free action were incompatible. As the relevant passage suggests, her espousal of incompatibilism was not merely due to specific features of human ‘ethical’ freedom, but due to general features of agency, intentionality, and voluntariness. For Anscombe went on to tentatively suggest that lack of physical determination was required for the intentional conduct of animals we would not classify as ‚free‘, too. In this paper, I examine three different (...) lines of argument to establish Anscombe’s latter suggestion, which are based on general considerations about the causal efficacy of psychological-agential phenomena, the nature of agency, and the specific features of intentional agency. I start with Anscombe’s own claim from “The Causation of Action” that microphysical determinism would make psychological and personal phenomena epiphenomenal, before I turn to the view of ‘Agency Incompatibilism’, that genuine agency requires the absence of antecedent necessitation, and, lastly, to concerns about some crucial features of intentional agency which we find in both human and animal agents. (shrink)

Constitutivists about moral norms are often suspected of providing an overly “self-centered” account of morality which does not take seriously enough morality’s interpersonal nature. This worry see...

It has often been noted that many of our intuitive assessments of particular actions suggest that there is an asymmetry between blameworthy and praiseworthy actions with regard to the question of whether moral responsibility requires that the agent could have acted otherwise. It is a quite different question, though, whether such an asymmetry between good and bad cases can be supported by more systematic considerations. In this paper, I will develop a new argument for a restricted version of the asymmetry, (...) by showing that in cases of praiseworthy actions responsibility cannot generally presuppose that the agent could have acted otherwise. This argument will be based on a distinction between two different kinds of roles that moral norms can play in determining whether an action is right and in guiding our deliberation. That agents can sometimes be responsible for their praiseworthy actions even though they cannot act otherwise is best seen as a reflection of the fact that moral norms can prohibit treating certain courses of action as genuine options at all. (shrink)

Abilities, in contrast to mere dispositions, propensities, or tendencies, abilities seem to be features of agents that put the agent herself in control. But what is the distinguishing feature of abilities vis‐à‐vis other kinds of powers? Our aim in this paper is to point, in answer to this question, to a crucial feature of abilities that existing accounts have tended to neglect: their adaptivity. Adaptivity is a feature of how abilities are exercised. The main reason for its relative neglect has (...) been that most extant accounts have focused solely on whether abilities are exercised successfully in certain possible situations and have mostly understood the exercise of an ability in terms of complete successful performance. We begin by pointing out two aspects of abilities with regard to which current accounts seem (at best) incomplete: control and exercise. We then introduce adaptivity as we understand it, and end by putting it to work in developing a fuller understanding of abilities that does better than current accounts. (shrink)

On a traditional view of human agency, intentional actions are performed sub specie boni: Agents, in acting intentionally, must see some good in what they are doing. This view has come under heavy criticism, which has partly focussed on several putative counterexamples, and partly on the view’s underlying rationale. In this paper, I defend one version of the sub specie boni view and try to show that it still deserves its old standing as the “default view” about acting with an (...) intention. For, as I argue, this view helps us to make sense of some crucial features of intentions – in particular, that we are sometimes rationally permitted to abandon intentions in the light of obstacles and costs –­, for which an alternative explanation will be hard to find. (shrink)

Kantians may be unable to derive all of benevolence from reverence for rational agency, but the remaining lacuna is not as extensive as Arpaly thinks. For while we should take seriously Kantian worries about separating benevolence from reverence, a considerable part of benevolence can be explained in terms of reverence for rational agency on a plausible intepretation of the latter. Furthermore, Kantians have an irreducible role for benevolence within their ethics, which is different from the role of a self-standing virtue.

We argue that artificial networks are explainable and offer a novel theory of interpretability. Two sets of conceptual questions are prominent in theoretical engagements with artificial neural networks, especially in the context of medical artificial intelligence: Are networks explainable, and if so, what does it mean to explain the output of a network? And what does it mean for a network to be interpretable? We argue that accounts of “explanation” tailored specifically to neural networks have ineffectively reinvented the wheel. In (...) response to, we show how four familiar accounts of explanation apply to neural networks as they would to any scientific phenomenon. We diagnose the confusion about explaining neural networks within the machine learning literature as an equivocation on “explainability,” “understandability” and “interpretability.” To remedy this, we distinguish between these notions, and answer by offering a theory and typology of interpretation in machine learning. Interpretation is something one does to an explanation with the aim of producing another, more understandable, explanation. As with explanation, there are various concepts and methods involved in interpretation: Total or Partial, Global or Local, and Approximative or Isomorphic. Our account of “interpretability” is consistent with uses in the machine learning literature, in keeping with the philosophy of explanation and understanding, and pays special attention to medical artificial intelligence systems. (shrink)

This book critically explores indigenous sub-Saharan African agrarian thought. Indigenous African agrarian philosophy is an uncharted and largely overlooked area of study in the burgeoning fields of African philosophy and philosophy of nature. The book shows that wherever human beings have lived, they have been preoccupied with exploring ways to ensure the sustainable management of limited resources at their disposal, to attain to their basic needs: food, shelter, and security. The book also shows that agriculture and the way people relate (...) with nature are an essential, but generally neglected, determinant of the emergence and orientation of all philosophical traditions. In traditional, pre-colonial African culture, it was difficult to separate agriculture from African relational ontology. Agriculture and the use of natural resources were at the centre of community life and influenced the social, political, economic, and spiritual worldviews of the people. In their contact with nature through agriculture, different beliefs, knowledge systems, norms, moral outlooks, cultural practices and institutions emerged and have been valorized to guide societies on how to sustainably manage the environment. As a way of life, then, agriculture was deeply connected with indigenous beliefs, values, and practices which transcended a wide range of issues related to ecological ethics, food ethics, religion, traditional medicine, political economy, social organisation, biological reproduction and species survival, indigenous knowledge, and property rights. This book will thus be a valuable resource for policy makers and researchers in diverse fields such as philosophy, geography, sociology, anthropology, and development studies. (shrink)

This volume includes the texts of Erasmus's 1524 diatribe against Luther,De Libero Arbitrio, and Luther's violent counterattack,De Servo Arbitrio.

This book offers a discussion of the kalām cosmological argument, and presents a defence of a version of that argument after critically evaluating three of the most important versions of the argument. It argues that, since the versions of the kalām cosmological argument defended by Philoponus (c. 490–c. 570), al-Ghazālī (1058– 1111), and the contemporary philosopher, William Lane Craig, all deny the possibility of the existence of an actual infinite, these arguments are incompatible with Platonism and the view that God (...) foreknows an endless future. This conclusion, however, is not a problem for the proponents of the kalām cosmological argument, for the book shows how the argument can be defended without denying the possibility of the actual infinite. -/- In order to offer a comprehensive analysis of Philoponus and al-Ghazālī’s cosmological arguments, the book draws on recent English translations of some of their works. Next, the book advances a detailed argument against the popular argument based on the impossibility of an actual infinite. Finally, the book offers a unique defence of the kalām cosmological argument by defending philosophical arguments for a beginning of time that do not deny the actual infinite, evaluating which hypothesis best explains the discoveries of modern cosmology, and offering an argument in support of the premise that, if the universe came into existence, then God brought it into existence. (shrink)

First published in Paris in 1511, _The Praise of Folly _has__enjoyed enormous and highly controversial success from the author’s lifetime down to our own day.__It has__no rival, except perhaps Thomas More’s _Utopia, _as the most intense and lively presentation of the literary, social, and theological aims and methods of Northern Humanism. Clarence H. Miller’s highly praised translation of _The Praise of Folly, _based on the definitive Latin text, echoes Erasmus’ own lively style while retaining the nuances of the original (...) text. In his introduction, Miller places the work in the context of Erasmus as humanist and theologian. In a new afterword, William H. Gass playfully considers the meaning, or meanings, of folly and offers fresh insights into one of the great books of Western literature. _Praise for the earlier edition:_ “An eminently reliable and fully annotated edition based on the Latin text.”—_Library Journal_ “Exciting and brilliant, this is likely to be the definitive translation of _The Praise of Folly _into__English.”—Richard J. Schoeck. (shrink)

In this essay, I challenge the contemporary social practice of conceptualizing crime as solely an individual’s fault and one’s responsibility. The individuation of the person is highly impersonal, causes fragmentation, marginalisation of the individual, and the destruction of the traditional practice of considering an individual as an integral part of the society. In contrast to this perspective, I make a case for a communal correctional system that is based on a traditional African social therapeutic system. This is a system that (...) considers crime as causing ontological disorder or disharmony especially in communities that are communitarian in nature, and which considers all crimes as disrupting communal harmony. Furthermore, I argue that correcting wrongdoing is also an opportunity for communities to introspect themselves, i.e. reconsider existing practices and views for the community’s benefit and that of a faltering individual. My focus in this essay is on revealing African understanding of crime and correcting it as a plausible alternative to the existing western correcting system. Keywords: Community, individual, crime, reconciliation, restorative justice, social therapy, harmony. (shrink)

A common argument in support of a beginning of the universe used by advocates of the kalām cosmological argument (KCA) is the argument against the possibility of an actual infinite, or the “Infinity Argument”. However, it turns out that the Infinity Argument loses some of its force when compared with the achievements of set theory and it brings into question the view that God predetermined an endless future. We therefore defend a new formal argument, based on the nature of time (...) (just as geometrical reasoning is based on the nature of space), which addresses more directly the question of beginningless time. (shrink)

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.