This work presents a historically informed, systematic exposition of the Christology of the first seven Ecumenical Councils of undivided Christendom, from the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD to the Second Council of Nicaea in 787 AD. Assuming the truth of Conciliar Christology for the sake of argument, Timothy Pawl considers whether there are good philosophical arguments that show a contradiction or incoherence in that doctrine. He presents the definitions of important terms in the debate and a helpful (...) metaphysics for understanding the incarnation. -/- In Defense of Conciliar Christology discusses three types of philosophical objections to Conciliar Christology. Firstly, it highlights the fundamental philosophical problem facing Christology: how can one thing be both God and man, when anything deserving to be called "God" must have certain attributes, and yet it seems that nothing that can aptly be called "man" can have those same attributes? It then considers the argument that if the Second Person of the Holy Trinity were immutable or atemporal, as Conciliar Christology requires, then that Person could not become anything, and thus could not become man. Finally, Pawl addresses the objection that if there is a single Christ then there is a single nature or will in Christ. However, if that conditional is true, then Conciliar Christology is false, since it affirms the antecedent of the conditional to be true, but denies the truth of the consequent. Pawl defends Conciliar Christology against these charges, arguing that all three philosophical objections fail to show Conciliar Christology inconsistent or incoherent. (shrink)

The paper challenges the inferentialist account of concept possession that Paul Boghossian takes as a premise in his account of the transmission of justification by deductive reasoning in his paper 'Blind Reasoning'. Unorthodox speakers who reject the inferences in an alleged possession condition can still have the concept by understanding a word for it. In that sense, the inferences are not analytic. Inferentialist accounts of logical constants, theoretical terms (using the Ramsey-Carnap-Lewis method) and pejorative expressions such as 'Boche' are examined (...) and rejected. It is suggested that epistemological questions cannot be reduced to questions in the theory of thought and meaning. (shrink)

Isn't probability 1 certainty? If the probability is objective, so is the certainty: whatever has chance 1 of occurring is certain to occur. Equivalently, whatever has chance 0 of occurring is certain not to occur. If the probability is subjective, so is the certainty: if you give credence 1 to an event, you are certain that it will occur. Equivalently, if you give credence 0 to an event, you are certain that it will not occur. And so on for other (...) kinds of probability, such as evidential probability. The formal analogue of this picture is the regularity constraint: a probability distribution over sets of possibilities is regular just in case it assigns probability 0 only to the null set, and therefore probability 1 only to the set of all possibilities. (shrink)

The scientific realism debate has now reached an entirely new level of sophistication. Faced with increasingly focused challenges, epistemic scientific realists have appropriately revised their basic meta-hypothesis that successful scientific theories are approximately true: they have emphasized criteria that render realism far more selective and, so, plausible. As a framework for discussion, I use what I take to be the most influential current variant of selective epistemic realism, deployment realism. Toward the identification of new case studies that challenge this form (...) of realism, I break away from the standard list and look to the history of celestial mechanics, with an emphasis on twentieth century advances. I then articulate two purely deductive arguments that, I argue, properly capture the historical threat to realism. I contend that both the content and form of these novel challenges seriously threaten selective epistemic realism. I conclude on a positive note, however, arguing for selective realism at a higher level. Even in the face of threats to its epistemic tenet, scientific realism need not be rejected outright: concern with belief can be bracketed while nonetheless advocating core realist tenets. I show that, in contrast with epistemic deployment realism, a purely axiological scientific realism can account for key scientific practices made salient in my twentieth century case studies. And embracing the realists favored account of inference, inference to the best explanation, while pointing to a set of the most promising alternative selective realist meta-hypothesis, I show how testing the latter can be immensely valuable to our understanding of science. (shrink)

This study considers the philosophical arguments against that Extended Conciliar Christology and argues that none of them succeed in showing the doctrine to be false, or incoherent, or inconsistent.

Two traditions in action theory offer different accounts of what distinguishes intentional action from mere behavior. According to the causalist tradition, intentional action has certain distinguished causal antecedents, and according to the Anscombian tradition, intentional action has certain distinguished epistemological features. I offer a way to reconcile these ostensibly conflicting accounts of intentional action by way of appealing to “ability-constituting knowledge”. After explaining what such knowledge is, and in particular its relationship to inadvertent virtue and knowledge-how, I suggest that, among (...) other things, appealing to ability-constituting knowledge can help us flesh out what it is for an agent’s reasons to non-deviantly cause and sustain her purposive behavior. (shrink)

This study focuses on one of the newer forms of software piracy, known as digital piracy, and uses the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) as a framework to attempt to determine factors that influence digital piracy (the illegal copying/downloading of copyrighted software and media files). This study examines factors, which could determine an individual’s intention to pirate digital material (software, media, etc.). Past piracy behavior and moral obligation, in addition to the prevailing theories of behavior (Theory of Planned Behavior), were (...) studied to determine the influence on digital piracy intention. Based on the results of this study, planned behavioral factors in addition to past piracy behavior and moral obligation were found to influence an individual’s intention to pirate digital material. Attitude, past piracy behavior, perceived behavior control, and moral obligation explained 71 percent of the intention to pirate variance. Using these results, a better understanding of why individuals pirate is presented and can be used to help combat digital piracy. (shrink)

A kind of intellectual project characteristic of Ernest Sosa is to resolve an apparently flat-out dispute by showing that it is not after all a zero-sum game. His irenic goal is to do justice to both sides and give each of them most of what it wants. In his subtle paper ‘Abilities, Concepts, and Externalism’ he applies this strategy to the dispute between internalism and externalism in the philosophy of mind. It is a pleasure to engage in discussion with a (...) philosopher of Sosa’s fair-mindedness and analytical skills. (shrink)

Rational thinkers respect their evidence. Properly understood, that is a platitude. But how can one respect one's evidence unless one knows what it is? So must not rational thinkers know what their evidence is?

Hearing Things is the first work to treat systematically the relation between Cavell's pervasive authorial voice and his equally powerful, though less discernible, impulse to produce a set of usable philosophical methods.

The full-text of this article is not currently available in ORA, but the original publication is available at springerlink.com.

Political liberalism offers perhaps the most developed and dominant account of justice and legitimacy in the face of disagreement among citizens. A prominent objection states that the view arbitrarily treats differently disagreement about the good, such as on what makes for a good life, and disagreement about justice. In the presence of reasonable disagreement about the good, political liberals argue that the state must be neutral, but they do not suggest a similar response given reasonable disagreement about what justice requires. (...) A leading political liberal, Jonathan Quong, has recently offered a rebuttal to this asymmetry objection. His reply rests on an innovative distinction between justificatory and foundational disagreement. Quong claims that disagreements about justice in a well ordered society are justificatory while disagreements about the good are foundational, and suggests that this fact blocks the asymmetry objection. We assess Quong's solution and argue that it fails to justify legitimate state action on matters of justice but not the good. We conclude that the asymmetry objection continues to undermine political liberalism. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

In a recent Opinion article, Sui and Humphreys [1] argue that experimental findings suggest self is ‘special’, in that self-reference serves a binding function within human cognitive economy. Contrasting their view with other functionalist positions, chiefly Dennett's [2], they deny that self is a convenient fiction and adduce findings to show that a ‘core self representation’ serves as an ‘integrative glue’ helping to bind distinct types of information as well as distinct stages of psycho- logical processing. In other words, where (...) Dennett regards self as analogous to a center of gravity, a simplification posited by observers, Sui and Humphreys regard self as a function that modulates mental processes. In practice, however, the concept of ‘self’ they employ is not unlike Dennett's. We side with Sui and Humphreys in hold- ing that self-reference modulates mental processes: reference to self during a task can bind memory to source, increase perceptual integration, and link attention to decision making, among other things. What is more, these functions are not reducible to other factors such as semantic coding, familiarity, or reward [3]. But whereas Sui and Humphreys contribute important empirical detail, the binding functions they describe are compatible with Dennett's version of functionalism, which treats self as an artifact of social process. (shrink)

The book has two aims. First, to examine the extent and significance of the connection between Hume's aesthetics and his moral philosophy; and, second, to consider how, in light of the connection, his moral philosophy answers central questions in ethics. The first aim is realized in chapters 1-4. Chapter 1 examines Hume's essay "Of the Standard of Taste" to understand his search for a "standard" and how this affects the scope of his aesthetics. Chapter 2 establishes that he treats beauty (...) in nature and art and moral beauty as similar in kind, and applies the conclusions about his aesthetics to his moral thought. Chapter 3 solves a puzzle to which this gives rise, namely, how individuals both accept general standards that they also contravene in the course of aesthetic and moral activity. Chapter 4 takes up the normative aspect of Hume's approach by understanding moral character through his view of moral beauty. The second aim of the book is realized in chapters 5-7 by entertaining three objections against Hume's moral philosophy. First, if morality is an immediate reaction to the beauty of vice and the deformity of virtue, why is perfect virtue not the general condition of every human individual? Second, if morality consists of sentiments that arise in the subject, how can moral judgments be objective and claim universal validity? And third, if one can talk of "general standards" governing conduct, how does one account for the diversity of moral systems and their change over time? The first is answered by showing that like good taste in aesthetics, 'right taste' in morals requires that the sentiments are educated; the second, by arguing against the view that Hume is a subjectivist and a relativist, and the third, by showing that his approach contains a view of progress left untouched by any personal prejudices Hume himself might harbor. The book concludes in chapter 7 by showing how Hume's view of philosophy affects the scope of any normative ethics. (shrink)

According to evidentialists about inferential justification, an agent’s evidence—and only her evidence—determines which inferences she would be justified in making, whether or not she in fact makes them. But there seem to be cases in which two agents would be justified in making different inferences from a shared body of evidence, merely in virtue of the different competences those agents possess. These sorts of cases suggest that evidence does not have the pride of place afforded to it by evidentialists; competence (...) seems to play at least as important a role as evidence in explaining which inferences an agent would be justified in making. -/- In this paper, I consider how two versions of evidentialism about inferential justification might try to account for the role of competence in inference, and I present problems specific to each version. I end by sketching and briefly defending an alternative to these evidentialist views, “inferential dogmatism”. While dogmatic views have gotten some attention in debates around non-inferential justification, they have largely been ignored in debates around inferential justification and are to that extent novel. (shrink)

It is not my claim that the ‘L¨ owenheim-Skolem paradox’ is an antinomy in formal logic; but I shall argue that it is an antinomy, or something close to it, in philosophy of language. Moreover, I shall argue that the resolution of the antinomy—the only resolution that I myself can see as making sense—has profound implications for the great metaphysical dispute about realism which has always been the central dispute in the philosophy of language.

Given its ubiquitous presence in everyday experience, it is surprising that the phenomenology of doing—the experience of being an agent—has received such scant attention in the consciousness literature. But things are starting to change, and a small but growing literature on the content and causes of the phenomenology of first-person agency is beginning to emerge.2 One of the most influential and stimulating figures in this literature is Daniel Wegner. In a series of papers and his book The Illusion of Conscious (...) Will (ICW) Wegner has developed.. (shrink)

This paper considers the place of children within liberal-democratic society and its related political morality. The genesis of the paper is two considerations which are in tension with one another. First, that there must be some point at which children are divided from adults, with children denied the rights which go along with full membership of the liberal community. The justification for the difference in the statue between these two groups must be rooted in some notion of capacities, since these (...) are the only relevant differences between adults and children. Second, that linking an individual's capacities to her status undermines the central liberal commitment of political equality. This dilemma explains what I term the threshold view, which holds that children become adult citizens upon reaching an age of competence and that above this level differences in abilities cease to matter to an individual's status. While this view has attractions, this paper argues that this view must eventually be rejected because of its inability to deal with the actual process of human development. In its place, the paper proposes a modification to this view which sees the threshold constrained by moral demands and applied indirectly to age groups rather than individuals. These constraints preserve the commitment to equality in a way consistent with a plausible view of children's place in society. (shrink)

The question 'What is the criterion of identity for directions?' might be construed as asking either 'When do lines have the same direction?' or 'When are directions identical?'. Frege's answer 'When they are parallel' fits the former question, not the latter, for it specifies a relation other than identity between lines, not directions. Jonathan Lowe thinks the latter question more fundamental, and claims that Frege's criterion can be reformulated to answer it: 'When some line with one is parallel to some (...) line with the other'. At p. 147 of Identity and Discrimination I make three points against this view: Lowe's construal does not permit a principled rejection of an intuitively unacceptable answer to the original question, On pain of circularity, Lowe's answer uses conceptual resources beyond those of Frege's, and thus is not a mere reformulation, Lowe's question seems to make the hopeless demand for something more basic than 'x = y Lowe's reply 'One-level versus two-level identity criteria' does not address or . I shall follow him in discussing only. (shrink)

Creativity is often portrayed as an X-factor that accounts for the spontaneous generation of the absolutely new. Yet the obsession with novelty implies a focus on final products and a retrospective attribution of their forms to unprecedented ideas in the minds of individuals, at the expense of any recognition of the form-generating potentials of the relations and processes in which persons and things are made and grown. In these processes, practitioners are characteristically called upon to copy the works of past (...) masters. However, though they may be guided by a script or score, every practitioner has to improvise his or her own passage through the array of tasks the performance entails. With examples from music, calligraphy and lace-making, I show that the wellsprings of creativity lie not inside people’s heads, but in their attending upon a world in formation. In this kind of creativity, undergone rather than done, imagination is not so much the capacity to come up with new ideas as the aspirational impulse of a life that is not just lived but led. But where it leads is not yet given. In opening to the unknown — in exposure — imagination leads not by mastery but by submission. Thus the creativity of undergoing, of action without agency, is that of life itself. (shrink)

The book covers a broad range of key topics, including theories of properties and particulars, the notion of truth-makers, powers and possibilities, material composition, and a variety of issues related to time and causation.

This book presents in translation writings by six medieval philosophers which bear on the subject of conscience. Conscience, which can be considered both as a topic in the philosophy of mind and a topic in ethics, has been unduly neglected in modern philosophy, where a prevailing belief in the autonomy of ethics leaves it no natural place. It was, however, a standard subject for a treatise in medieval philosophy. Three introductory translations here, from Jerome, Augustine and Peter Lombard, present the (...) loci classici on which subsequent discussions drew; there follows the first complete treatise on conscience, by Philip the Chancellor, while the two remaining translations, from Bonaventure and Aquinas, have been chosen as outstanding examples of the two main approaches which crystallised during the thirteenth century. (shrink)

THE DANISH chemist and physicist Hans Christian Oersted (1777-I 851) is recognized by historians of science primarily as the discoverer of electromagnetism. His experiments in 1820 demonstrated a definite lawlike relationship between electrical and magnetic phenomena. The quite general question of whether there is in science such a thing as a “logic of discovery” can in this case be given a more precise formulation. Why was Oersted, rather than another of the many scientists interested in electricity and magnetism in the (...) nineteenth century, the fortunate one to have made the discovery, and thus to have his name immortalized in the history of science? What events, ideas, or methods were responsible for the discovery? (shrink)

Aristotle's use of the phrase τὰ καλούμενα στοιχεȋα is usually taken as evidence that he does not really think that the things to which this phrase refers, namely, fire, air, water, and earth, are genuine elements. In this paper I question the linguistic and textual grounds for taking the phrase τὰ καλούμενα στοιχεȋα in this way. I offer a detailed examination of the significance of the phrase, and in particular I compare Aristotle's general use of the Greek participle καλούμενος (-η, (...) -ον) in other contexts. I conclude that his use of the phrase τὰ καλούμενα στοιχεȋα does not carry ironical or sceptical connotations, and that it ought to be understood as a neutral report of a contemporary opinion that the elements of bodies are fire, air, water, and earth. I leave aside the question as to whether or not Aristotle himself endorses this opinion. (shrink)

Here is a rather mundane set of claims about the stapler on my desk: The function of my stapler is to staple sheets of paper together. If the stapler is loaded with staples, but for some reason will not staple papers, the stapler is malfunctioning. That is, it is not doing what it is supposed to do. It is defective, or misshapen, misaligned or inadequate to its task, or in some other way normatively defective: there is something wrong with it. (...) The reason that my stapler has its function, and is capable of having something wrong with it, is that my stapler is designed to staple sheets of paper together. Some human being sat down at some point and formed intentions about the production of objects which would, if everything went as planned, staple sheets of paper together. As a result of this person’s intentions, my stapler was produced, and because of the particular content of these intentions, my stapler was bestowed with its particular function. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, Volume 53, Issue 3, Page 334-355, Fall 2022.

Focusing on new disciplines in 19th-century German universities, this book reexamines certain critical junctures in the traditional historical picture of the role of the scientist in modern Western society.

Thomas Hobbes claimed to have founded the discipline of civil philosophy. This book offers a new reading of his intellectual development, arguing that he was dubious about the place of rhetoric in civil society and came to see it as a pernicious presence within philosophy - a position from which he did not retreat.

Choice is a sine qua non of contemporary life. From childhood until death, we are faced with an unending series of choices through which we cultivate a sense of self, govern conduct, and shape the future. Nowadays, individuals increasingly experience and enact consumer choice online through web-based platforms such as Yelp.com, TripAdvisor.com and Amazon.com. These platforms not only provide a sprawling array of goods and services to choose from, but also reviews, ratings and ranking devices and systems of classification to (...) navigate this landscape of choice. This paper suggests a radical reconsideration of platform architectures and design features to consider how they reconfigure and respecify choice, ‘choosers’, and choice-making practices. Platforms are not simply cameras that present choice and enable comparisons between different options, but are more akin to engines that govern, drive and expand choice, configuring users within particular discourses, practices and subjectivities. In making sense of the entangled trajectories of consumer choice, platform architectures and Big Data, I suggest that ‘hyper-choice’ emerges as a condition of the contemporary platform-driven web. I examine hyper-choice not only in terms of the relationship between platforms and a growing abundance of choice, but more importantly how platforms reconfigure choice in ways that go beyond and fundamentally challenge existing understandings of what choice is, who and what is involved in producing knowledge about choice, and what it means to be a ‘chooser’. (shrink)

Through both an historical and philosophical analysis of the concept of possibility, we show how including both potentiality and actuality as part of the real is both compatible with experience and contributes to solving key problems of fundamental process and emergence. The book is organized into four main sections that incorporate our routes to potentiality: potentiality in modern science [history and philosophy; quantum physics and complexity]; Relational Realism [ontological interpretation of quantum physics; philosophy and logic]; Process Physics [ontological interpretation of (...) relativity theory; physics and philosophy]; on speculative philosophy and physics [limitations and approximations; process philosophy]. We conclude that certain fundamental problems in modern physics require complementary analyses of certain philosophical and metaphysical issues, and that such scholarship reveals intrinsic features and limits of determinism, potentiality and emergence that enable, among others, important progress on the quantum theory of measurement problem and new understandings of emergence. (shrink)