Rule A: if it's metaphysically necessary that p, we may validly infer that no one is even partly morally responsible for the fact that p. Our principal aim in this article is to highlight the importance of this rule and to respond to two recent challenges to it. We argue that rule A is more important to contemporary theories of moral responsibility than has previously been recognized. We then consider two recent challenges to the rule and argue that neither challenge (...) successfully undermines the rule's initial appeal. (shrink)

The so-called Direct Argument for the incompatibility of moral responsibility and causal determinism depends on a rule of inference called Rule A, a rule that says no one is even partly morally responsible for a necessary truth. While most philosophers think that Rule A is valid, Stephen Kearns has recently offered several alleged counterexamples to the rule. In the paper, I show that Kearns’ counterexamples are unsuccessful.

Most philosophers who study moral responsibility have done so in isolation of the concept of truth. Here, I show that thinking about the nature of truth has profound consequences for discussions of moral responsibility. In particular, by focusing on the very trivial nature of truth—that truth depends on the world and not the other way around—we can see that widely accepted counterexamples to one of the most influential incompatibilist arguments can be shown not only to be false, but also impossible.

A number of philosophers and theologians have recently challenged the common assumption that it would be impossible for God to cause humans actions which are free in the libertarian or incompatibilist sense. Perhaps the most sophisticated version of this challenge is due to W. Matthews Grant. By offering a detailed account of divine causation, Grant argues that divine universal causation does not preclude humans from being ultimately responsible for their actions, nor free according to typical libertarian accounts. Here, we argue (...) that the kind of divine universal causation that Grant proposes is incompatible with a plausible interpretation of Robert Kane’s influential conception of ultimate responsibility. This conclusion is significant since Grant seeks to harmonize his divine causal account with Kane’s articulation of ultimate responsibility. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to investigate how alternative land ethics of agricultural stakeholders may help explain recent land use changes. The paper first explores the historical development of the land ethic concept in the United States and how those ethics have impacted land use policy and use of private lands. Secondly, primary data gathered from semi-structured interviews of farmers, ranchers, and influential stakeholders are then analyzed using stakeholder analysis methods to identify major factors considered in land use decisions, (...) priorities of factors of each group, and to define relevant mental models describing each group’s view of the land ethic concept. Results show that these stakeholder groups prioritize land use factors qualitatively differently and possess strikingly different land ethics. It is concluded that shifts in stakeholder land ethics have contributed to recent land use changes. Lastly, we discuss how current agricultural policy sends mixed signals about preferred land use and the potential ramifications based on the different land ethics we’ve described. (shrink)

Using panel data from three Canadian provinces, this article examines the relationship between the de-marketing of tobacco products through provincial-level price increases and consumers’ attempts to quit smoking as measured by the uptake of tobacco replacement therapies. We ground our hypotheses in the rational addiction model and the theory of planned behavior. Our analyses suggest a positive, one-month lagged effect of a price increase of tobacco products on the uptake of tobacco replacement therapies. This effect dissipates 3 months later, suggesting (...) that there is a critical period for aggressive de-marketing of tobacco products. We discuss the implications of these results for theory and future research into de-marketing harmful consumer products. (shrink)

SummaryChristians often presume that immediate and universally extensive divine governance of human behavior is incompatible with human agency and responsibility. Against this presumption, Kathryn Tanner argues for a distinctive metalinguistic paradigm whereby Christians can coherently speak of God’s transcendence in such a way that divine action could never in principle ‘compete’ with human action. Thus, it is said, God can comprehensively will each human action without thereby compromising significant human freedom and corresponding moral responsibility. In this article, it is argued (...) that Tanner’s non-competitivist paradigm fails to circumvent a theological version of the ‘direct argument’ for the incompatibility between human moral responsibility and causal determinism. (shrink)

In recent work, W. Matthews Grant challenges the common assumption that if humans have libertarian free will, and the moral responsibility it affords, then it is impossible for God to cause what humans freely do. He does this by offering a “non-competitivist” model that he calls the “Dual Sources” account of divine and human causation. Although we find Grant’s Dual Sources model to be the most compelling of models on offer for non-competitivism, we argue that it fails to circumvent a (...) theological version of Peter van Inwagen’s direct argument for incompatibilism. In the paper, we motivate and deploy a theological take on the direct argument, and we contend that this theological rendition of the direct argument effectively dismantles Grant’s Dual Sources account of non-competitivism. (shrink)

In his “Plantinga on Exclusivisim,” Richard Feldman argues that Alvin Plantinga, in an earlier paper, has not sufficiently addressed a particular problem for the religious exclusivist. The particular problem that Feldman thinks Plantinga has failed sufficiently to address is the problem of epistemic peer disagreement—that is, disagreement between two (or more) equally competent thinkers who share equally good reasons for, and are in equally good epistemic situations regarding, their contradictory beliefs—in matters of religious belief. To demonstrate that Plantinga has so (...) failed, Feldman introduces a principle, “B”, that purports to show that exclusivism (religious or not) tends to lead to unjustified beliefs. But I think that Feldman has failed successfully to show that B demonstrates exclusivism’s tendency to lead to unjustified beliefs; so, in the paper, I defend Plantinga, and the exclusivist more generally, from Feldman’s criticisms. (shrink)

In his “Plantinga on Exclusivisim,” Richard Feldman argues that Alvin Plantinga, in an earlier paper, has not sufficiently addressed a particular problem for the religious exclusivist. The particular problem that Feldman thinks Plantinga has failed sufficiently to address is the problem of epistemic peer disagreement—that is, disagreement between two (or more) equally competent thinkers who share equally good reasons for, and are in equally good epistemic situations regarding, their contradictory beliefs—in matters of religious belief. To demonstrate that Plantinga has so (...) failed, Feldman introduces a principle, ‘B’, that purports to show that exclusivism (religious or not) tends to lead to unjustified beliefs. But I think that Feldman has failed successfully to show that B demonstrates exclusivism’s tendency to lead to unjustified beliefs; so, in the paper, I defend Plantinga, and the exclusivist more generally, from Feldman’s criticisms. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Seth Shabo sets out to show that logical renderings of the Direct Argument for incompatibilism about moral responsibility and causal determinism, an influential incompatibilist argument for this conclusion, fail. In particular, Shabo argues that the Direct Argument—cashed out in logical terms—fails because it rests on an invalid rule of inference, Rule B. Shabo argues that Rule B, rendered logically, is subject to a counterexample that he constructs. If he’s right about this, it follows that logical versions (...) of the Direct Argument fail. In the paper, I argue that Shabo’s alleged counterexample to Rule B is unsuccessful. Since Shabo’s counterexample fails, I conclude that he has failed successfully to undermine logical versions of the Direct Argument. (shrink)

From Botticelli to birdsong, Mozart, and the Turner Prize, Roger Scruton explores what it means for something to be beautiful. This thought-provoking introduction to the philosophy of beauty draws conclusions that some may find controversial, but, as Scruton shows, help us to find greater sense of meaning in the beautiful objects around us.

It was the general practice until not at all long ago to look at Turner as one of the moderns, if not as one of the founding fathers of modern art. He was a man straddling the fence between two periods, but he was looking forward. In a history of art that marches through time, forever endorsing what is about to be forgotten, wrapping up, as it were, one style to open eagerly the package of the next, such a (...) position is most enviable for, no matter where the times may be going, it is a hallmark of greatness to be ahead of one's time. There were things to be explained, of course, Turner himself, a keen pessimist, did not approved of the future and had little use for the present.1 His love of art was schooled on Reynolds' Discourses, and he remained loyal to them; his poets were Thomson and Pope and, among contemporaries, the rather frigid but delicate Samuel Rogers, a classicist par excellence. Above all, however, Turner looked back to classical antiquity for training and guidance, and for the delectation of his heart. And the poetry of the ancients, such as he could obtain it in translation, was as important to him as their art. What does one do with a declared classicist whom a historicizing hindsight feels compelled to rescue as a man of the future by making him a Romantic? It is a challenge stylistic analysis likes to meet, for it goes beneath what it declares to be the surface of a work of art to find its style, the essence that must conform to the presumed spirit of the age in question. The triumphant result of such studies in depth is a forgone conclusion as much as it is a surprise to the uninitiated. The facade of the Louvre, for example, used to suffice to make it a building in the classical style; it took the acumen of a Wölfflin to prove that it really was "baroque." The more the artist struggled not to be of his time, the more, poor man, he betrayed to the analyst that he was of his time. The Louvre facade stands convicted of being "classicizing-baroque."2 · 1. On Turner's view of the modern art of his time see John Gage, Color in Turner: Poetry and Truth , pp.97-105. On his literary education and taste see the seminal essay by Jerrold Ziff, "Turner on Poetry and Painting, " Studies in Romanticism 3 no. 4 : 193-215. Turner's poetical writings have been edited by Jack Lindsay, The Sunset Ship: The Poems of J.M.W. Turner . For the most recent and also most elegantly practical introduction to the work and life of Turner, see the catalogue of the Turner Exhibition of the Royal Academy and the Tate Gallery, Turner, 1775-1851 . · 2. This is now a commonplace of art historical teaching. See, for example, Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, 6th ed. Horst de la Croix and Richard G. Tansey , p. 632. On the theory behind the application to the particular case, see Heinrich Wölfflin, Principles of Art History, trans. M. D. Hottinger . Philipp Fehl, artist and art historian, is currently preparing a collection of essays, Art and Morality: Studies in the History of the Classical Tradition. He is a professor in the department of art and design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "Farewell to Jokes: The Last Capricci of Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo and the Tradition of Irony in Venetian Painting" was published in Summer 1979 in Critical Inquiry. (shrink)

I argue that its appearing to you that P does not provide justification for believing that P unless you have independent justification for the denial of skeptical alternatives – hypotheses incompatible with P but such that if they were true, it would still appear to you that P. Thus I challenge the popular view of ‘dogmatism,’ according to which for some contents P, you need only lack reason to suspect that skeptical alternatives are true, in order for an experience as (...) of P to justify belief that P. I pursue three lines of objection to dogmatism, having to do with probabilistic reasoning, considerations of future or hypothetically available justification, and epistemic circularity. I briefly sketch a fall-back position which avoids the problems raised. (shrink)

This article is an exercise in the virtue epistemology of the internet, an area of applied virtue epistemology that investigates how online environments impact the development of intellectual virtues, and how intellectual virtues manifest within online environments. I examine online echo chambers and epistemic bubbles (Nguyen 2020, Episteme 17(2), 141–61), exploring the conceptual relationship between these online environments and the virtue of open-mindedness (Battaly 2018b, Episteme 15(3), 261–82). The article answers two key individual-level, virtue epistemic questions: (Q1) How does immersion (...) in online echo chambers and epistemic bubbles affect the cultivation and preservation of open-mindedness, and (Q2) Is it always intellectually virtuous to exhibit open-mindedness in the context of online echo chambers and epistemic bubbles? In response to Q1, I contend that both online echo chambers and online epistemic bubbles threaten to undermine the cultivation and preservation of open-mindedness, albeit via different mechanisms and to different degrees. In response to Q2, I affirm that both a deficiency and an excess of open-mindedness can be virtuous in these online environments, depending on the epistemic orientation of the digital user. (shrink)

Contemporary interpreters have entered a new debate over Aquinas’s view on the status of human beings or persons between death and resurrection. Everyone agrees that, for Aquinas, separated souls exist in the interim. The disagreement concerns what happens to human beings—Peter, Paul, and so on. According to corruptionists, Aquinas thought human beings cease to exist at death and only begin to exist again at the resurrection. According to survivalists, however, Aquinas thought human beings continue to exist in the interim, constituted (...) by their separated souls alone. In this paper I offer a new argument in favor of corruptionism based upon Aquinas’s repeated discussions of a central though so far neglected topic: the death of Christ. To the question, “Was Christ a human being during the three days of his death?” Aquinas always answered, “No.” Examining his reasons proves that corruptionism, and not survivalism, is the right interpretation of Aquinas. (shrink)

Michael Bergmann claims that all versions of epistemic internalism face an irresolvable dilemma. We show that there are many plausible versions of internalism that falsify this claim. First, we demonstrate that there are versions of ‘‘weak awareness internalism’’ that, contra Bergmann, do not succumb to the ‘‘Subject’s Perspective Objection’’ horn of the dilemma. Second, we show that there are versions of ‘‘strong awareness internalism’’ that do not fall prey to the dilemma’s ‘‘vicious regress’’ horn. We note along the way that (...) these versions of internalism do not, in avoiding one horn of the dilemma, succumb to the dilemma’s other horn. The upshot is that internalists have many available strategies for avoiding dilemmatic defeat. (shrink)

Tracing the history of American sociology since the Civil War, the authors of this important volume explain the field′s diversity, its lack of unifying paradigms, its broad, eclectic research agenda and its general weakness as an institutional force in either academia or the policy arena. They highlight the equivocal and often contradictory missions that sociologists prescribe for themselves and the variable nature of human, financial and intellectual resources available to the profession.

Ontological nihilism is the radical-sounding thesis that there is nothing at all. This chapter first discusses how the most plausible forms of this thesis aim to be slightly less radical than they sound and what they will have to do in order to succeed in their less radical ambitions. In particular, they will have to paraphrase sentences of best science into ontologically innocent counterparts. The chapter then points out the defects in two less plausible strategies, before going on to argue (...) that strategies that look more promising, including one based on Quine's predicate-functor language, face the same defects. (shrink)

My aim in this chapter is to push back against the tendency to emphasize Mill’s break from Bentham rather than his debt to him. Mill made important advances on Bentham’s views, but I believe there remains a shared core to their thinking—over and above their commitment to the principle of utility itself—that has been underappreciated. Essentially, I believe that the structure of Mill’s utilitarian thought owes a great debt to Bentham even if he filled in that structure with a richer (...) conception of human nature and developed it in more liberal directions. This commonality is revealed, in particular, in Mill’s own institutional designs and practical reform proposals in Considerations on Representative Government and related writings. If this is right, then the tendency of interpreters to highlight their differences rather than their similarities has been to the detriment of both Mill and Bentham scholarship, and so to our understanding of the rise of liberal utilitarianism. (shrink)

The history of the recovery movement began with a pushback against treatment, and the philosophies that it was founded upon still have relevant applications to contemporary social work practice. Financial aspects of service provision for people with serious mental illnesses have enabled other actors in the medical model of psychosis treatment to benefit, while disempowering and dehumanizing the consumers of those services. Since then, other movements like Psychopolitics and the Mad Movement have helped empower psychosis survivors to advocate for their (...) right to self-determination amid the epistemological pressure to identify as disabled. Social workers would like to believe that the field has moved beyond the philosophies that perpetuated institutionalization of people with serious mental illnesses. Contemporary examples, however, reveal how social services in the US maintain the status quo of sanism for psychosis survivors. (shrink)

The problem of religious disagreement between epistemic peers is a potential threat to the epistemic justification of one’s theistic belief. In this paper, I develop a response to this problem which draws on the central epistemological thesis of skeptical theism concerning our inability to make proper judgements about God’s reasons for permitting evil. I suggest that this thesis may extend over to our judgements about God’s reasons for self-revealing, and that when it does so, it can enable theists to remain (...) steadfast amid disagreement with epistemic peers who hold a contrary theistic belief (i.e., atheistic belief). For if we’re unable to make proper judgements about God’s reasons for self-revealing, then for all we know, God has some reason for not revealing Himself to our apparent epistemic peer. Thus, their epistemic credentials needn’t provide reason to reduce one’s confidence to such a degree as to no longer uphold one’s theistic belief. (shrink)

Sociology is experiencing what can only be described as hyperdifferentiation of theories - there are now many approaches competing for attention in the intellectual arena. From this perspective, we should see a weeding out of theories to a small number, but this is not likely to occur because each of the many theoretical perspectives has a resource base of adherents. As a result, theories in sociology do not compete head on with each other as much as they coexist. This seminal (...) reference work was brought together with an eye to capturing the diversity of theoretical activity in sociology - specifically the forefront of theory. Contributors describe what they themselves are doing right now rather than what others have done in the past. The goal of this volume is to allow prominent theorists working in a variety of traditions - who wouldn't usually come together - to review their work. The chapters in this volume represent a mix of theoretical orientations and strategies, but these these theories are diverse and represent the prominent theoretical discussions in sociology today. Some areas included are: Section I: Theoretical Methodologies and Strategies Section II: The Cultural Turn in Sociological Theorizing Section III: Theorizing Interaction Processes Section IV: Theorizing from the Systemic and Macrolevel Section V: New Directions in Evolutionary Theorizing Section VI: Theorizing on Power, Conflict, and Change SectionVII: Theorizing from Assumptions of Rationality This handbook will be of interest to those wanting a broad spectrum and overview of late 20th - early 21st century sociological theory. (shrink)

Raymond Turner first provides a logical framework for specification and the design of specification languages, then uses this framework to introduce and study ...

I believe that Tom is the proud father of a baby boy. Why do I think his child is a boy? A natural answer might be that I remember that his name is ‘Owen’ which is usually a boy’s name. Here I’ve given information that might be part of a causal explanation of my believing that Tom’s baby is a boy. I do have such a memory and it is largely what sustains my conviction. But I haven’t given you just (...) any causally relevant information, I’ve given my grounds for my belief. I’ve given reasons that might justify me in supposing that Tom’s baby is a boy. Less naturally, the question might be taken as a request for a broader causal explanation of my holding this belief. Appropriate answers might cite all manner of facts concerning the evolution of the human race, why I chose to pursue philosophy and hence came to know Tom, the mechanisms of email transmission, the firing of various neurons, the circumstances of concept formation as a result of which I’m able to grasp the thought that Tom’s baby is a boy, and so on. It is an interesting question what distinguishes the narrower set of answers that I first suggested. I won’t pursue that here. I assume you have a good enough sense of the distinction I’m drawing. We might call the narrower set of answers justifying reasons, the kind of reasons I might cite in justifying my belief. Answers of the first sort are clearly relevant to epistemological evaluation. In assessing whether you know p or are rational in believing it to the degree you do, I will naturally want to consider what reasons you have for your belief. In deliberating myself about whether to believe p, in seeking an answer to the question of whether p, I will naturally consider what reasons or grounds I have to suppose that p. But what I want to focus on here is how explanations of the broader sort bear on such questions as whether to believe p. From a third-person perspective we can ask, ‘In assessing the epistemic status of S’s belief that p, what is the relevance of causal information that lies outside of the realm of justifying reasons?’ From the first-person standpoint we can ask ‘In seeking to answer whether p, how should such causal information affect my deliberations?’ At first it might seem that such broader causal information could have little relevance if any. Like any belief my belief that p can be traced back to innumerable causes from far and wide.. (shrink)

The theme of this collection of articles by Jonathan Turner is that sociology can be a true science, and it can develop abstract laws explaining the operative dynamics of the social universe. Rather that blindly worshipping sociology's masters, however, Turner attempts to reinvent sociology as a science that learns the valuable lessons of classical theory and then moves on.

Written by leading theorists and empirical researchers, this book presents new ways of addressing the old question: Why did religion first emerge and then continue to evolve in all human societies? The authors of the book--each with a different background across the social sciences and humanities -- assimilate conceptual leads and empirical findings from anthropology, evolutionary biology, evolutionary sociology, neurology, primate behavioral studies, explanations of human interaction and group dynamics, and a wide range of religious scholarship to construct a deeper (...) and more powerful explanation of the origins and subsequent evolutionary development of religions than can be currently found in what is now vast literature. While explaining religion has been a central question in many disciplines for a long time, this book draws upon a much wider array of literatures to develop a robust and cross-disciplinary analysis of religion. The book remains true to its subtitle by emphasizing an array of both biological and sociocultural forms of selection dynamics that are fundamental to explaining religion as a universal institution in human societies. In addition to Darwinian selection, which can explain the biology and neurology of religion, the book outlines a set of four additional types of sociocultural natural selection that can explain fill out the explanation of why religion first emerged as an institutional system in human societies, and why it has continued to evolve over the last 200,000 years of societal evolution. These sociocultural forms of natural selection are labeled by the names of the early sociologists who first emphasized them; and these can be seen as a necessary supplement to the type of natural selection theorized by Charles Darwin. Explanations of religion that remain in the shadow cast by Darwin's great insights will, it is argued, remain narrow and incomplete when explaining a robust sociocultural phenomena like religion. (shrink)

This is a three-part exchange on the relationship between belief and credence. It begins with an opening essay by Roger Clarke that argues for the claim that the notion of credence generalizes the notion of belief. Julia Staffel argues in her reply that we need to distinguish between mental states and models representing them, and that this helps us explain what it could mean that belief is a special case of credence. Roger Clarke's final essay reflects on the compatibility of (...) the previously discussed views with dualist and monist interpretations of our mental states and our ways of modeling them. (shrink)

Excerpt from Lessons in Logic The chief need of the teacher of logic in our high-schools and colleges is a text-book which will meet the peculiar requirements of the classroom. Many of the text-books now in use are written by men whose theory of the nature and value of knowledge, influenced as it is by false philosophical principles, is distrusted by the teacher who uses the books, and is not unlikely to upset the minds of the pupils. Others, while written (...) on the soundest philosophical principles, take little or no account of pedagogical methods, and present the theory of logic without sufficient regard for the difficulties which beset beginners in this study. The present text-book aims at supplying both these defects. It is based on the traditional scholastic theory of knowledge, and, wherever it touches on philosophical principles, the principles which it invokes in justification of the rules of logic are those of scholastic psychology and metaphysics. It aims at removing, as far as is possible, the technical difficulties of the study of logic, and tries to approach the problems of logic by the route which extended experience in the classroom has proved to be the easiest. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)