This paper extends the orthodox bounds of explanatory rationalism by showing there can be an explanation of why there are positive contingent truths. A positive contingent truth is a true proposition that entails that at least one contingent concrete object exists. It is widely thought that it is impossible to explain why there are positive contingent truths. For example, it is thought by Rowe that 'God created the universe' is a positive contingent truth and therefore cannot explain why (...) there are positive contingent truths. I show, however, that the reasoning behind this orthodox view is unsound and that it is possible to explain why there are positive contingent truths. (shrink)

Debunking arguments typically attempt to show that a set of beliefs or other intensional mental states bear no appropriate explanatory connection to the facts they purport to be about. That is, a debunking argument will attempt to show that beliefs about p are not held because of the facts about p. Such beliefs, if true, would then only be accidentally so. Thus, their causal origins constitute an undermining defeater. Debunking arguments arise in various philosophical domains, targeting beliefs about morality, (...) the existence of God, logic, and others. They have also arisen in material-object metaphysics, often aimed at debunking common-sense ontology. And while most of these arguments feature appeals to ‘biological and cultural contingencies’ that are ostensibly responsible for our beliefs about which kinds of objects exist, few of them take a serious look at what those contingencies might actually be. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to remedy this by providing empirical substantiation for a key premise in these debunking arguments by examining data from cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and developmental psychology that support a ‘debunking explanation’ of our common-sense beliefs and intuitions about which objects exist. Second, to argue that such data also undermines a particular kind of rationalist defense of common-sense ontology, sometimes employed as a response to the debunking threat. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that disposition predicates do not designate entities which could be causal factors in the production of natural phenomena. Yet, the fact that an object has a given dispositional property is often taken to help explain behavior exhibited by objects to which the disposition is ascribed. Instrumentalist, realist, and rationalist analyses of disposition predicates embody three quite distinct views of how both assumptions could be correct. It is argued that the instrumentalist fails to capture basic intuitions concerning (...) the explanatory import of disposition ascriptions, the rationalist tries unsuccessfully to locate necessary connections in nature, and the realist provides an account which is intuitively satisfying without introducing otiose entities into the ontology of empirical science. (shrink)

Kieran Setiya begins Reasons Without Rationalism by outlining and arguing for a schema in terms of which he thinks we best understand the nature of normative reasons for action. This is: " Reasons: The fact that p is a reason for A to ϕ just in case A has a collection of psychological states, C, such that the disposition to be moved to ϕ by C-and-the-belief-that-p is a good disposition of practical thought, and C contains no false beliefs. " (...) As Setiya points out, Reasons contrasts with both the ‘advice’ model of normative reasons , which is the view that I myself prefer , and the ‘imitative’ model , preferred by the likes of McDowell .The intuitive idea behind Reasons should be clear enough. Insofar as normative reasons are normative, they are considerations that would justify an agent's acting in a certain way in certain circumstances: there is, thus, a justificatory dimension. But insofar as they are reasons, they are considerations on which the agent might act in those very circumstances: there is thus an explanatory dimension as well. Part of the attraction of Reasons is that it tells us why the considerations that are normative reasons have these two features: a consideration is a normative reason only if, given other things that the agent believes and desires, the disposition to be moved by a belief concerning that consideration is itself a good disposition of practical thought .Reasons is, however, just a schema. …. (shrink)

Leibniz and Kant were heirs of a biblical theistic tradition which viewed miraculous activity in the world as both possible and actual. But both were also deep explanatory rationalists about the natural world: more committed than your average philosophical theologian to its thoroughgoing intelligibility. These dual sympathies—supernaturalist religion and empirical rationalism—generate a powerful tension across both philosophers’ systems, one that is most palpable in their accounts of empirical miracles—that is, events in nature that violate one or more of (...) the natural laws. The primary goal of this chapter is to exhibit their respective efforts to resolve this tension, and to show how Kant’s noumenal ignorance doctrine allows him to set aside some key difficulties that Leibniz’s model leaves unresolved. The chapter concludes with the unorthodox suggestion that both systems leave conceptual space for the idea that finite free beings, rather than just God, can produce empirical miracles. (shrink)

양상 인식론에서의 합리주의가 본질에 대한 지식의 해명을 전제하지 않을 경우 불완전한 이론으로 남는다는 주장이 최근 들어 여러 철학자들에 의해 제기되었다. 본 연구는 이들의 비판을 받아들이면서 합리주의에게 필요한 (특정한 형태의) 본질에 대한 지식이 어떻게 획득될 수 있는지 논증함으로써 본질에 대한 인식론을 제공할 것이다. 구체적으로 본고는 합리주의를 위한 본질에 대한 지식이 본질 인식론에 어떤 제한을 가하는지 확인할 것이다. 이어 본질의 여러 측면들(특히 동일성의 측면과 설명적 측면)을 구별한 후 각 측면에 따른 인식방법의 상이성을 논할 것이다. 끝으로 설명적 본질에 대한 지식을 통해 동일성 본질에 (...) 대한 지식에 이르는 방법을 제안하고 여기서 속성의 본성에 대한 성향주의가 어떠한 이론적 토대를 제공할 수 있는지 살펴볼 것이다. (shrink)

Max Weber's dominant scholarly concern was the development of rationalism in the West. He exemplified his interest in this theme in his two great works, Economy and Society and The Economic Ethics of the World Religions. In Wolfgang Schluchter's new book, The Rise of Western Rationalism: Max Weber's Developmental History, the author presents an analysis and re-evaluation of Weber's sociology of Western rationalism. He also wants to show Weber's relation to the sociological school of neo-evolutionism. By an (...) examination of Weber's relation to the neo-evolutionary thought of such men as Habermas and Parsons, Schluchter attempts to show that Weber's developmental historical sociology, if properly understood and formulated, is still the best explanatory model of Western rationalism in contemporary sociology. (shrink)

The paper inspects Anderson’s central thesis that Kant’s dogmatic slumber was interrupted by Hume’s critique of metaphysics in his Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, namely, by his critique of the rationalist principle of sufficient reason, which lies at the heart of dogmatic proofs of God’s existence. I recreate the meaning of “Hume’s objection,” define the larger role the principle of sufficient reason plays in Kant’s philosophy, and evaluate the explanatory potential of Anderson’s interpretation in view of Kant’s early and critical (...) texts, as well as his other autobiographical statements. Although Anderson’s hypothesis seems well-founded and even explicates the hidden connection between the entire critical project and the refutation of Spinozism, I argue it is almost impossible to reconcile it with the current research in Kant’s Entwicklungsgeschichte. (shrink)

Mathematical practice prompts theories about aprioricity, necessity, abstracta, and non-causal epistemic connections. But it is not clear what to count as the data: mathematical necessity or the appearance of mathematical necessity, abstractness or apparent abstractness, a prioricity or apparent aprioricity. Nor is it clear whether traditional metaphysical theories provide explanation or idle redescription. This paper suggests that abstract objects, rather than doing explanatory work, provide codifications of the data to be explained. It also suggests that traditional rivals—conceptualism, nominalism, realism—engage (...) different explanatory projects, and thus are not rivals at all. (shrink)

If the task of theoretical reason is to discover truth, or reasons for belief, then theoretical reason is impossible. Attempts to circumvent that by appeal to probabilities are self-defeating. If the task of practical reason is to discover what we ought to do or what actions are desirable or valuable, then practical reason is impossible. Appeals to the subjective ought or to subjective probabilities are self-defeating. Adapting Karl Popper, I argue that the task of theoretical reason is to obtain theories (...) that we can agree to instate given that they appear to have greater explanatory merit than their rivals. I then argue that the task of practical reason is to decide which ought-propositions to act on. As a consequence theoretical reason is seen as a branch of practical reason. This approach makes both theoretical and practical reason practicable and free of the defects of the usual accounts. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction: Rational Decisions as an Ideal Rational Decision Making? Assumptions and Difficulties: Preferences, Outcome Spaces, and Probabilities in the World Reasons without Decisions What Kinds of Reasons? The Failure of RCT as a Unifying Principle The Failures of RCT and Rethinking Rationality.

Abstract:Much of Western speculative metaphysics has subscribed to what has been called “explanatory rationalism,” which holds that there is a reason for everything that is and for the way everything is. Theodicies, or metaphysical attempts to solve the problem of evil, have relied on a special application of this principle of explanatory rationalism, namely, the principle of plenitude, which holds that the evil in the world is a necessary ingredient in the world's overall perfection or degree (...) of reality. This essay argues that the principle of plenitude is aesthetically motivated, and that only in art and perhaps in revealed religion can the demands of explanatory rationalism be satisfied. (shrink)

I argue that Spinoza endorses "conceptual dependence monism," the thesis that all forms of metaphysical dependence (such as causation, inherence, and existential dependence) are conceptual in kind. In the course of explaining the view, I further argue that it is actually presupposed in the proof for his more famed substance monism. Conceptual dependence monism also illuminates several of Spinoza’s most striking metaphysical views, including the intensionality of causal contexts, parallelism, metaphysical perfection, and explanatory rationalism. I also argue that (...) this priority of the conceptual does not commit Spinoza to forms of idealism or mentalism. The question of how to understand different kinds of metaphysical dependence is quite controversial in Spinoza studies; I address major alternative readings in the notes. But there I also try to draw connections to the growing debate in contemporary discussions about metaphysical dependence, as this topic is a happy point of shared interest between Spinoza and contemporary metaphysicians alike. (shrink)

Some passages throughout Spinoza’s body of works suggest that an attribute in its absolute nature provides a sufficient condition for all of its modes, including the finite ones. Other passages suggest that an attribute in its absolute nature fails to provide a sufficient condition for its finite modes. My aim is to dispel this apparent tension. I argue that all finite modes are ultimately entailed by the absolute nature of their attribute. Furthermore, I explain how the Spinozistic positions that appear (...) incompatible with this view are in fact compatible. As I see it, we should read those passages where Spinoza says that no finite mode ultimately follows from the absolute nature of its attribute as saying merely that no finite mode ultimately follows in one-by-one fashion, independent of an infinite series of other modes, from the absolute nature of its attribute. (shrink)

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

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Causation Debate in Modern Philosophy: 1637–1739J. A. CoverKenneth Clatterbaugh. The Causation Debate in Modern Philosophy: 1637–1739. New York and London: Routledge, 1999. Pp. xi + 239. Cloth, $75.00. Paper, $21.00.Over the scholastics and earliest moderns, Hume had an advantage of hindsight in declaring that "There is no question, which on account of its importance, as well as difficulty, has caus'd more disputes both among ancients and modern (...) philosophers, than this concerning the efficacy of causes, or that quality which made them be followed by their effects" (Treatise I.iii.14). Between the scholastics and Hume fell (i) Descartes, (ii) classical mechanists such as Hobbes and Gassendi, (iii) the Cartesians Le Grand and Malebranche, (iv) the explanatory rationalists Spinoza and Leibniz, (v) later experimental mechanists such as Boyle, Rohault and Newton, and (vi) the so-called empiricists Locke and Berkeley. This book presents an accessible and admirably broad overview of the modern debate about causation, without sacrificing serious attention to textual details. With two chapters on (i) and one apiece on (ii) - (vi), Clatterbaugh earns for himself and his reader a helpfully synoptic picture of philosophical shifts in the causation debate in the hundred years separating Descartes' Discourse and Hume's Treatise. By the end of the (modern) day, (1) the four-fold causes of Aristotelian-Scholasticism have given way to efficient causation alone; (2) no pre-existing forms in efficient causes are to be found, nor indeed any substantial active powers whatever; (3) there is no deep sense in which causes communicate reality to effects; (4) necessary connection has gone by the board; (5) divine causation has no place in a natural philosophy of causation. No surprises there, but Clatterbaugh's effort reminds us afresh of the varied and torturous routes to such shifts, helping advanced students better (or newly) appreciate them in the comfortable space of 200 pages.Of those pages, a third are devoted to Descartes and the Cartesians. That's not inappropriate, given the importance and difficulty of Descartes's response to Aristotelian-Scholastic accounts of causation, and its influence on occasionalist sentiments on the Continent. The tenor and value of this book may be illustrated by reflecting on the first of these—a rich and frustrating business, both in Descartes's texts and in Clatterbaugh's book. Suppose we grant Descartes the back of his hand to substantial forms and active formal causes as at best "unexplanatory" (counseling Regius): his "at-least-as-much-reality-in-the-cause-as-in-the-effect" principle might be treated as the basis of "an alternative" metaphysical account of causation (19-32). Well, it might be so-treated: but three versions of the principle later, the reader will be excused for judging it little more than a necessary condition for some event-pair x,y counting as a cause-effect pair. If the scholastic appeal to active forms is unexplanatory, then Descartes's [End Page 600] principle—which isn't Descartes's principle at all but a scholastic commonplace—can scarcely fill the explanatory gap. Glossed as a predictable consequence of some strong form of influxus physicus, it is embarrassed by Foucher's objection (that mind bears no likeness to body) and by the weight of texts urging that accidents are individual to their bearers. Having offered us no deep metaphysical story about what in the world answers to 'vis,' Descartes is at best a bungling "interactionist" (here appropriating Clatterbaugh's word for someone whose apparent talk of secondary causes we are asked to respect as expressing a strict and considered philosophical commitment). One can only side with Voetius in reckoning Descartes's replacement of forms by purely quantitative, mechanical principles of motion as expressing a mere "disposition of the movable to move... not an activity of an efficient cause, but merely a necessary condition and a causa sine qua non" (my emphasis: Selectarum Disputationum I [1648-59], 873). Descartes has no deep theory about the nature of causation.Is that too harsh? Had this book a different target, one could fairly complain that the author too infrequently steps away from the texts and commentators to offer and defend a... (shrink)

William Whewell’s 19th century philosophy of science is sometimes glossed over as a footnote to Kant. There is however a key feature of Whewell’s account worth noting. This is his appeal to Aristotle’s form/matter hylomorphism as a metaphor to explain how mind and world merge in successful scientific inquiry. Whewell’s hylomorphism suggests a middle way between rationalism and empiricism reminiscent of experience pragmatists like Steven Levine’s view that mind and world are entwined in experience. I argue however that Levine (...) does not adequately explain exactly how mind and world entwine. He could nonetheless do so if he appealed to Whewell’s hylomorphic metaphor. We may prefer a reductive metaphysical explanation, but I suggest that pragmatists only have recourse to metaphor in this case. Both reductive and metaphorical explanations can enjoy great explanatory power if they exhibit a suitable measure of what I will call sematic distance. Semantic distance measures how close or how far apart explanandum and explanans are from each other in meaning. Metaphorical explanation - as evident in Whewell’s hylomorphism and as detailed via the notion of semantic distance - presents a valuable new explanatory tool to those who hold that mind and world are entwined sans recourse to metaphysics. (shrink)

Legal rationalist: law claims to give its subjects reasons for action. Normative reasons intuition: Reasons for action being key, the obvious way to establish that law makes a practical difference in people's deliberations is by arguing that the law claims to give reasons for action to its subjects. Explanatory Reasons Intuition: "And while it is possible to be confused about our normative reasons, it seems unlikely that everyone is confused all the time; so the fact that people consistently take (...) the law as their motivating reason and guide their conduct by the law does seem to suggest that the law does provide normative reasons for its subjects." And if it’s a necessary feature of law that it claims authority, then the argu- ment seems to establish that law claims to provide reasons for its subjects. Schematically the argument as a whole goes like this: The law claims to be a legitimate authority. If a legitimate authority directs a subject to φ the subject is obligated to φ ). The fact that an agent is obligated to φ is a reason for her to φ. So the law claims that its directives are reasons......Obligations as Reason-Giving : the fact that A is obligated to φ is itself a reason for A to φ. Unfortunately for the Legal Rationalist, OAR is false. Legal obligation has certain features which mean that the fact that a certain action’s being legally obligatory cannot itself constitute a reason to perform that action." Will explain away the intuitions in terms of triggering, and show how law can make a normative difference that is consistent with the falsity of OAR. Law's claim, and normative impact, can be captured exclusively in terms of second-order reasons. PartofwhatHartisafterhereistheideathatdeliberationon the matter of whether or not to φ is closed or settled by the obligation. But deliberation is cut off because the law has reached some sort of conclusion or answer or verdict on the question of whether or not to φ. The legal obligation not to φ contains a practical verdict about φing: it is not to be done. This idea – that the legal obligation not to φ provides or contains a verdict that φing is not to be done – is the idea that legal obligation is verdictive. For something to be verdictive is for it to express or embody a verdict or conclusion as to what ought to be done. It is plausible to say that wrongness is verdictive. So to say that such-and-such an action would be wrong is to express a verdict on that action – it is one which should not be done. To get a handle on the idea of the verdictive it helps to contrast it with the contributory. A contributory consideration is one which contributes to the verdict, by increasing the weight on the verdict’s side. So that φing would harm someone, or would cause extreme suffering, or would have costs that vastly outweighed any benefits, say, would be contributory considerations on the side of the verdict that φing would be wrong." "Wrong" is verdictive, and so it cannot itself be a reason for the action - it cannot be a reason for itself. Obligation and wrong in law are very close, and obligation should be treated as verdictive. This shows us that OAR is false. (shrink)

Neurosis can be interpreted as a methodological condition which any aim-pursuing entity can suffer from. If such an entity pursues a problematic aim B, represents to itself that it is pursuing a different aim C, and as a result fails to solve the problems associated with B which, if solved, would lead to the pursuit of aim A, then the entity may be said to be "rationalistically neurotic". Natural science is neurotic in this sense in so far as a basic (...) aim of science is represented to be to improve knowledge of factual truth as such (aim C), when actually the aim of science is to improve knowledge of explanatory truth (aim B). Science does not suffer too much from this neurosis, but philosophy of science does. Much more serious is the rationalistic neurosis of the social sciences, and of academic inquiry more generally. Freeing social science and academic inquiry from neurosis would have far reaching, beneficial, intellectual, institutional and cultural consequences. (shrink)

This chapter explores an objection to explanatory universalism, the doctrine that the principle of sufficient reason is true or everything has an explanation. This objection is a direct argument to the conclusion that the PSR yields the existence of an omni-explainer, i.e. something that explains everything. The objection crucially relies on the assumption that explanation is dissective in its explanandum place, and its conclusion conflicts with the irreflexivity of explanation. So the chapter considers two responses to the mentioned objection. (...) The first response consisting in restricting the irreflexivity of explanation is criticised in connection with topics in the metaphysics of grounding. The second response consisting in denying that explanation is dissective is vindicated. Finally, the chapter argues that a plausible revised version of the principle that explanation is dissective, the PSR, and the irreflexivity of explanation together yield a striking picture of our universe. (shrink)

The abductivist reply to skepticism is the view that commonsense explanations of the patterns and regularities that appear in our sensory experiences should be rationally preferred to skeptical explanations of those same patterns and regularities on the basis of explanatory considerations. In this article I critically examine Laurence BonJour’s rationalist version of the abductivist position. After explaining why BonJour’s account is more defensible than other versions of the view, I argue that the notion of probability he relies upon is (...) deeply problematic, that he incorporates an implausible double-standard concerning a priori and a posteriori justification, and that his view is vulnerable to skepticism about the a priori. I suggest that some of these problems are due to idiosyncratic commitments BonJour makes and that abductivists would be better off without them. I conclude with some suggestions about how to improve BonJour’s abductivist response to skepticism. (shrink)

Abductivists claim that explanatory considerations (e.g., simplicity, parsimony, explanatory breadth, etc.) favor belief in the external world over skeptical hypotheses involving evil demons and brains in vats. After showing how most versions of abductivism succumb fairly easily to obvious and fatal objections, I explain how rationalist versions of abductivism can avoid these difficulties. I then discuss the most pressing challenges facing abductivist appeals to the a priori and offer suggestions on how to overcome them.

Critical notice of Paul Feyerabend's Farewell to Reason. The basic difficulty with Feyerabend's argument is not that he goes too far in rejecting traditional philosophical views but that he does not go far enough. We should indeed dismiss philosophical attempts to forge a "direct line to heaven" and forswear introducing "caricatures" of the rationalist's conception of reason to accommodate the complexities of history. But we should also shun the temptation to regard tradition as a surrogate for reason and to elevate (...) freedom and democracy to the status of explanatory philosophical principles. It is no less a mistake to follow the relativist and fetishize cultural diversity than it is to follow the rationalist and fetishize reason. To recognise that we are on our own is not to repudiate rationalism in favour of relativism, but to bid farewell as firmly and as finally to both. (shrink)

When an agent performs an action because she takes something as a reason to do so, does she take it as a normative reason for the action or as an explanatory reason? In Reasons Without Rationalism, Setiya criticizes the normative view and advances a version of the explanatory view. This paper advances a version of the normative view and shows that it is not subject to Setiya's criticisms. It also shows that Setiya's explanatory account is subject (...) to two fatal flaws, viz., that it raises questions about the occurrence of one motivational "because" within the scope of another which it cannot answer, and that it cannot accommodate the fact that, if an agent can φ for the reason that p, then she could take p as a reason to φ without φ-ing. (shrink)

David Hume famously criticized rationalist theories of practical reason, arguing that reason alone is incapable of yielding action, and that some passionate element must be supplied. Contemporary theories of Humean inspiration develop a causal-explanatory model of action in terms of the joint operation of two distinct mental states: beliefs and desires, one inert and representational, the other dynamic. Such neo-Humean theories claim that since desires, unlike beliefs, are not subject to direct rational evaluation, an act can be said to (...) be rational only in the sense that it is instrumental to realizing the agent’s desires. The historical Hume appears to have embraced a “sceptical solution” involving a more dynamic conception of belief, while admitting a default sense in which both beliefs and actions can be deemed reasonable or unreasonable. (shrink)

The book "Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience" is an engaging criticism of cognitive neuroscience from the perspective of a Wittgensteinian philosophy of ordinary language. The authors' main claim is that assertions like "the brain sees" and "the left hemisphere thinks" are integral to cognitive neuroscience but that they are meaningless because they commit the mereological fallacy—ascribing to parts of humans, properties that make sense to predicate only of whole humans. The authors claim that this fallacy is at the heart of Cartesian (...) dualism, implying that current cognitive neuroscientists are Cartesian dualists. Against this claim, we argue that the fallacy cannot be committed within Cartesian dualism either, for this doctrine does not allow for an intelligible way of asserting that a soul is part of a human being. Also, the authors' Aristotelian essentialistic outlook is at odds with their Wittgensteinian stance, and we were unconvinced by their case against explanatory reductionism. Finally, although their Wittgensteinian stance is congenial with radical behaviorism, their separation between philosophy and science seems less so because it is based on a view of philosophy as a priori. The authors' emphasis on the a priori, however, does not necessarily commit them to rationalism if it is restricted to conceptual or analytical truths. (shrink)

The topic of a priori knowledge is approached through the theory of evidence. A shortcoming in traditional formulations of moderate rationalism and moderate empiricism is that they fail to explain why rational intuition and phenomenal experience count as basic sources of evidence. This explanatory gap is filled by modal reliabilism -- the theory that there is a qualified modal tie between basic sources of evidence and the truth. This tie to the truth is then explained by the theory (...) of concept possession: this tie is a consequence of what, by definition, it is to possess (i.e., to understand) one’s concepts. A corollary of the overall account is that the a priori disciplines (logic, mathematics, philosophy) can be largely autonomous from the empirical sciences. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume 28, Number 1, April 2002, pp. 83-111 Hume on Regulating Belief and Moral Sentiment KATHLEEN WALLACE There have been numerous discussions in recent years of Hume's general point of view. Some of the issues raised have been (1) Is the general point of view the moral point of view? (2) Is the general point of view necessary in order for a judgment to count as a (...) moral judgment? (3) Does the general point of view provide a justificatory perspective or is it a psychological explanatory concept that explains how moral judgments are made without necessarily offering a standard or normative basis for moral judgments? (4) If a general point of view yields some notion of impartiality, then how does it do so without introducing rationalistic elements that would undermine the sentimentalist approach Hume defends?1 In this paper I offer an interpretation of Hume's general point of view in morals as, employing a photographic analogy, a kind of focusing activity. It allows for strengthening of sentiments for those remote and, through contrariety, weakening of sentiments for those near such that we are moved to focus on those effects that are typical and, through conversing with others, arrive at general principles of praise or blame. I also examine the general point of view in comparison to what Hume has to say about regulation of belief. The comparison with belief sheds new light, I think, on how production of contrariety through the general point of view is regulative in morals. On my interpretation of the general point of view, it does not undermine Hume's sentimentalist thesis in morals, but rather is a device by which sentiment is properly aroused and directed. The comparison with the belief-regulating Kathleen Wallace is Professor of Philosophy, Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY115491000, USA. e-mail: [email protected] 84 Kathleen Wallace mechanism of Book 1 of the Treatise also suggests some ways in which Hume's treatment of the general point of view is part of a unified or systematic treatment of regulation, that for Hume regulation is itself a kind of virtuecognitive, passional, or moral.2 In what follows I will first briefly discuss the notion of regulation with respect to belief about matters of fact, that is, causal relations. This will be helpful in setting up the scope of regulation in morals, since the latter involves, but is not limited to, regulation of belief. The discussion of belief will be followed by a longer discussion of the general point of view and the issue of regulation in morals. Finally, I will draw explicit comparisons between the two kinds of regulation that both illuminate moral regulation and secondarily suggest that Hume has a unified treatment of regulation. 1. The Generalizing Propensity and General Rules In Treatise 1.3.13 Hume explicitly discusses what he calls "general rules" (T.3.13.7-12; SBN 146-50). Shou'd it be demanded why men form general rules, and allow them to influence their judgment, even contrary to present observation and experience, I shou'd reply, that in my opinion it proceeds from those very principles, on which all judgments concerning causes and effects depend. Our judgments concerning cause and effect are deriv'd from habit and experience; and when we have been accustom'd to see one object united to another, our imagination passes from the first to the second, by a natural transition, which precedes reflection, and which cannot be prevented by it. (T 1.3.13.8; SBN 147) There are two tendencies that Hume identifies under "generalizing." The first is an error-prone generalizing tendency of the imagination and the second is the tendency to form corrections, in the understanding to form general rules for regulating inferences. Hume calls both these tendencies species of "generalizing " because in each case the mind moves beyond what is immediately present before it and supplements with an idea or a device from its own activity.3 There is some debate among commentators about whether Hume makes a sharp distinction between reflective, deliberate generalizing (such as that involved in the formation of the rules by which to judge of causes and effects ) and... (shrink)

Contemporary philosophers of mind tend to assume that the world of nature can be reduced to basic physics. Yet there are features of the mind consciousness, intentionality, normativity that do not seem to be reducible to physics or neuroscience. This explanatory gap between mind and brain has thus been a major cause of concern in recent philosophy of mind. Reductionists hold that, despite all appearances, the mind can be reduced to the brain. Eliminativists hold that it cannot, and that (...) this implies that there is something illegitimate about the mentalistic vocabulary. Dualists hold that the mental is irreducible, and that this implies either a substance or a property dualism. Mysterian non-reductive physicalists hold that the mind is uniquely irreducible, perhaps due to some limitation of our self-understanding. In this book, Steven Horst argues that this whole conversation is based on assumptions left over from an outdated philosophy of science. While reductionism was part of the philosophical orthodoxy fifty years ago, it has been decisively rejected by philosophers of science over the past thirty years, and for good reason. True reductions are in fact exceedingly rare in the sciences, and the conviction that they were there to be found was an artifact of armchair assumptions of 17th century Rationalists and 20th century Logical Empiricists. The explanatory gaps between mind and brain are far from unique. In fact, in the sciences it is gaps all the way down.And if reductions are rare in even the physical sciences, there is little reason to expect them in the case of psychology. Horst argues that this calls for a complete re-thinking of the contemporary problematic in philosophy of mind. Reductionism, dualism, eliminativism and non-reductive materialism are each severely compromised by post-reductionist philosophy of science, and philosophy of mind is in need of a new paradigm. Horst suggests that such a paradigm might be found in Cognitive Pluralism: the view that human cognitive architecture constrains us to understand the world through a plurality of partial, idealized, and pragmatically-constrained models, each employing a particular representational system optimized for its own problem domain. Such an architecture can explain the disunities of knowledge, and is plausible on evolutionary grounds. (shrink)

For Aristotle, demonstrative knowledge is the result of what he calls ‘intellectual learning’, a process in which the knowledge of a conclusion depends on previous knowledge of the premises. Since demonstrations are ultimately based on indemonstrable principles (the knowledge of which is called ‘νοῦς’), Aristotle is often described as advancing a foundationalist doctrine. Without disputing the nomenclature, I shall attempt to show that Aristotle’s ‘foundationalism’ should not be taken as a rationalist theory of epistemic justification, as if the first principles (...) of science could be known as such independently of their explanatory connections to demonstrable propositions. I shall argue that knowing first principles as such involves knowing them as explanatory of other scientific propositions. I shall then explain in which way noetic and demonstrative knowledge are in a sense interdependent cognitive states – even though νοῦς remains distinct from (and, in Aristotle’s words, more ‘accurate’ than) demonstrative knowledge. (shrink)

It can be shown by means of a paradox that, given the Principle of Sufficient Reason, there is no conjunction of all contingent truths. The question is, or ought to be, how to interpret that result: _Quid sibi velit?_ A celebrated argument against PSR due to Peter van Inwagen and Jonathan Bennett in effect interprets the result to mean that PSR entails that there are no contingent truths. But reflection on parallels in philosophy of mathematics shows it can equally be (...) interpreted either as a proof that there are "too many" contingent truths to combine in a single conjunction or as a proof that the concept _contingent truth_ is indefinitely extensible and there is no such thing as "all contingent truths." Either interpretation would reconcile PSR with contingent truth, but the natural rationales of those interpretations are at odds. This essay argues that the second interpretation is a more satisfactory explanation of why, if PSR is true, there should be no conjunction of all contingent truths. This sheds new light on the nature of the explanatory demand embedded in PSR and uncovers a number of surprising implications for the commitments of rationalism. (shrink)

Part I -- Scientific Composition and the New Mechanism. - 1. Laura Franklin-Hall: New Mechanistic Explanation and the Need for Explanatory Constraints. - 2. Kenneth Aizawa: Compositional Explanation: Dimensioned Realization, New Mechanism, and Ground. - 3. Jens Harbecke: Is Mechanistic Constitution a Version of Material Constitution?. - 4. Derk Pereboom: Anti-Reductionism, Anti-Rationalism, and the Material Constitution of the Mental. Part II -- Grounding, Science, and Verticality in Nature. - 5. Jonathan Schaffer: Ground Rules: Lessons from Wilson. - 6. (...) Jessica Wilson: The Unity and Priority Arguments for Grounding. - 7. Carl Gillett: The Metaphysics of Nature, Science, and the Rules of Engagement. - 8. Andrew Melnyk: Grounding and the Formulation of Physicalism. - 9. Alyssa Ney: Grounding in the Philosophy of Mind: A Defense. (shrink)

Neurosis can be interpreted as a methodological condition which any aim-pursuing entity can suffer from. If such an entity pursues a problematic aim B, represents to itself that it is pursuing a different aim C, and as a result fails to solve the problems associated with B which, if solved, would lead to the pursuit of aim A, then the entity may be said to be "rationalistically neurotic". Natural science is neurotic in this sense in so far as a basic (...) aim of science is represented to be to improve knowledge of factual truth as such, when actually the aim of science is to improve knowledge of explanatory truth. Science does not suffer too much from this neurosis, but philosophy of science does. Much more serious is the rationalistic neurosis of the social sciences, and of academic inquiry more generally. Freeing social science and academic inquiry from neurosis would have far reaching, beneficial, intellectual, institutional and cultural consequences. (shrink)

For forty years I have argued that we urgently need to bring about a revolution in academia so that the basic task becomes to seek and promote wisdom. How did I come to argue for such a preposterously gigantic intellectual revolution? It goes back to my childhood. From an early age, I desired passionately to understand the physical universe. Then, around adolescence, my passion became to understand the heart and soul of people via the novel. But I never discovered how (...) to tell stories in order to tell the truth. So, having failed to become a physicist, and failed to become a novelist, I studied philosophy at Manchester University and then, in six weeks of inspiration, discovered that the riddle of the universe is the riddle of our desires. Philosophy should be about how to live, and should not just do conceptual analysis. I struggled to reconcile the two worlds of my childhood ambitions, the physical universe and the human world. I decided they could be reconciled with one another if one regarded the two accounts of them, physics and common sense, as myths, and not as literal truths. But then I discovered Karl Popper: truth is too important to be discarded. I revised my ideas: physics seeks to depict truly only an aspect of all that there is; in addition, there is the aspect of the experiential features of the world as we experience it. I was immensely impressed with Popper’s view that science makes progress, not by verification, but by ferocious attempted falsification of theories. I was impressed, too, with his generalization of this view to form critical rationalism. Then it dawned on me: Popper’s view of science is untenable because it misrepresents the basic aim of science. This is not truth as such; rather it is explanatory truth – truth presupposed to be unified or physically comprehensible. We need, I realized, a new conception of science, called by me aim-oriented empiricism, which acknowledges the real, problematic aims of science, and seeks to improve them. Then, treading along a path parallel to Popper’s, I realized that aim-oriented empiricism can be generalized to form a new conception of rationality, aim-oriented rationality, with implications for all that we do. This led on to a new conception of academic inquiry. From the Enlightenment we have inherited the view that academia, in order to help promote human welfare, must first acquire knowledge. But this is profoundly and damagingly irrational. If academia really does seek to help promote human welfare, then its primary tasks must be to articulate problems of living, and propose and critically assess possible solutions – possible actions, policies, political programmes, philosophies of life. The pursuit of knowledge is secondary. Academia needs to promote cooperatively rational problem solving in the social world, and needs to help humanity improve individual and institutional aims by exploiting aim-oriented rationality, arrived at by generalizing the real progress-achieving methods of science. We might, as a result, get into life some of the progressive success that is such a marked feature of science. Thus began my campaign to promote awareness of the urgent need for a new kind of academic inquiry rationally devoted to helping humanity create a wiser world. (shrink)

The paper argues against Peacocke's moderate rationalism in modality. In the first part, I show, by identifying an argumentative gap in its epistemology, that Peacocke's account has not met the Integration Challenge. I then argue that we should modify the account's metaphysics of modal concepts in order to avoid implausible consequences with regards to their possession conditions. This modification generates no extra explanatory gap. Yet, once the minimal modification that avoids those implausible consequences is made, the resulting account (...) cannot support Peacocke's moderate rationalism. (shrink)

Karl Popper is famous for having proposed that science advances by a process of conjecture and refutation. He is also famous for defending the open society against what he saw as its arch enemies – Plato and Marx. Popper’s contributions to thought are of profound importance, but they are not the last word on the subject. They need to be improved. My concern in this book is to spell out what is of greatest importance in Popper’s work, what its failings (...) are, how it needs to be improved to overcome these failings, and what implications emerge as a result. The book consists of a collection of essays which dramatically develop Karl Popper’s views about natural and social science, and how we should go about trying to solve social problems. Criticism of Popper’s falsificationist philosophy of natural science leads to a conception of science that I call aim-oriented empiricism. This makes explicit metaphysical theses concerning the comprehensibility and knowability of the universe that are an implicit part of scientific knowledge – implicit in the way science excludes all theories that are not explanatory, even those that are more successful empirically than accepted theories. Aim-oriented empiricism has major implications, not just for the academic discipline of philosophy of science, but for science itself. Popper generalized his philosophy of science of falsificationism to arrive at a new conception of rationality – critical rationalism – the key methodological idea of Popper’s profound critical exploration of political and social issues in his The Open Society and Its Enemies, and The Poverty of Historicism. This path of Popper, from scientific method to rationality and social and political issues is followed here, but the starting point is aim-oriented empiricism rather than falsificationism. Aim-oriented empiricism is generalized to form a conception of rationality I call aim-oriented rationalism. This has far-reaching implications for political and social issues, for the nature of social inquiry and the humanities, and indeed for academic inquiry as a whole. The strategies for tackling social problems that arise from aim-oriented rationalism improve on Popper’s recommended strategies of piecemeal social engineering and critical rationalism, associated with Popper’s conception of the open society. This book thus sets out to develop Popper’s philosophy in new and fruitful directions. The theme of the book, in short, is to discover what can be learned from scientific progress about how to achieve social progress towards a better world. (shrink)

This paper explores a novel notion of self-explanation that combines ideas from two sources: the tripartite account of explanation, according to which a proposition can help explain another either in the capacity of a reason why the latter obtains or in the capacity of an explanatory link, and the notion of an empty-base explanation, which generalizes the ideas of explanation by zero-grounding and explanation by status. After having introduced these ideas and the novel notion of self-explanation, I argue that (...) the latter has the potential to resist extant arguments against the possibility of self-explanation. In the remainder of the paper, I discuss candidates for such self-explanatory propositions and suggest possible applications for Humeanism about laws of nature, the debate on the grounds of ground, the rationalist tradition, and philosophical theology. (shrink)

Modal dualism is the claim that there is a space of epistemically possible worlds that exceeds the space of metaphysically possible worlds. In the present paper, I argue that modal dualism is false. I do so via an argument that differs from most previous arguments against modal dualism in that it does not rely on controversial semantic or epistemological assumptions like descriptivism, internalism or modal rationalism. The point of my argument is, instead, that modal dualism is internally inconsistent because (...) it is the result of the failure to draw the proper conclusions from the abandonment of these semantic and epistemological assumptions. The relevant inconsistency manifests itself in the modal dualist notion of epistemic modality. For this notion to play the explanatory roles assigned to it by modal dualists, it has to be a notion of a genuinely epistemic kind of modality. But the only way to make sense of such a notion is via just those semantic or epistemological assumptions that the modal dualist is keen to avoid. Anyone willing to abandon these assumptions has to go further and detach the epistemic from the modal altogether. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.3 (2003) 417-418 [Access article in PDF] Heidi M. Ravven and Lenn E. Goodman, editors. Jewish Themes in Spinoza's Philosophy. Albany: The State University of New York Press, 2002. Pp. ix + 290. Cloth, $78.50. Paper, $26.95.The current anthology presents an important contribution to the study of Spinoza's relation to Jewish philosophy as well as to contemporary scholarship of Spinoza's metaphysics and political (...) theory.In the opening essay, Lenn Goodman takes upon himself the ambitious task of evaluating Spinoza's positions as to several central disputes throughout the history of philosophy. In this rich and extensive essay Goodman argues that Spinoza's radical rationalism makes him pursue syntheses between traditionally opposed poles. Lee Rice's article, "Love of God in Spinoza," carefully analyzes Spinoza's concept of love and suggests the existence of three kinds of love parallel to the three kinds of knowledge. Warren Montag addresses the unresolved issue of Spinoza's relation to the Kabbalah. Montag sides with Deleuze against the association of Spinozism with the Neo-Platonic theory of emanation, arguing that unlike the Neo-Platonists and Kabbalists, Spinoza's view of God rules out any hierarchy, and does not assume a descent from primal simplicity into complexity. Edwin Curley contributes a beautiful reading of the story of Job and of Maimonides' interpretation of the story. Curley follows Maimonides' discussion of the various positions regarding the question of divine providence and his attempt to identify the speeches of the characters of the book of Job with each of these positions. Following a sensitive consideration of various attempts to [End Page 417] recover Maimonides' own rather concealed view about providence, Curley concludes that "[W]hatever you think Maimonides' final word on Job is, our examination of him certainly supports [Spinoza's] claim that [Maimonides] reads Scripture in terms of Platonic or Aristotelian speculations" (170).Warren Zev Harvey's essay addresses Spinoza's most neglected work, the Compendium of the Grammar of the Hebrew Language. Apart from providing an outline of Spinoza's work as a Hebrew grammarian ("a noun-intoxicated grammarian") and pointing out some of Spinoza's more eccentric views about the nature of the Hebrew language, Harvey makes a compelling case for the importance of the book for the study of Spinoza's metaphysics. He points out a fascinating analogy which Spinoza draws between the parts of speech: (proper) noun, adjectives, and participles, and Spinoza's key metaphysical terms: substance, attributes, and modes. (Think about the weighty implications of this analogy for Curley's interpretation of the substance-mode relation.) According to Harvey, Spinoza's claim that all Hebrew words are derived from nouns is a linguistic parallel to Spinoza's pivotal metaphysical doctrine which makes all things be in the substance (or God). Kenneth Seeskin's article discusses the views of Maimonides and Spinoza on the question of creation and God's relation to the world. Seeskin reconstructs an interesting critical dialogue between these two philosophers. According to Seeskin, both philosophers held that an effect must be similar to its cause. Maimonides' commitment to Negative Theology and to the denial of any common measure between God and finite things forced him to deny causal or explanatory relation between God and the world. What Maimonides can suggest instead is rather to prove that the emergence of the world ex nihilo and according to the divine will, is possible, and even likely given certain astronomical facts of medieval science. Thus, Maimonides would hold that "although we have grounds for believing that creation occurred, we will never be in a position to say how" (120). For Spinoza, such a view constitutes nothing but a "sanctuary of ignorance." Thus, according to Seeskin, Spinoza affirms a clear causal relation between God and the world of finite things insofar as God is said to explain the world. While I tend to agree with most aspects of this analysis, it is important to note that Spinoza also claims that "between the finite and infinite there is no relation" (Letter 54). This... (shrink)