This paper discusses attempts to explain why there are more than zero instances of the causal relation. In particular, it argues for the conclusion that theism is no better placed than naturalism to provide an "ultimate causal explanation".

The system of natural deduction that originated with Gentzen , and for which Prawitz proved a normalization theorem, is re-cast so that all elimination rules are in parallel form. This enables one to prove a very exigent normalization theorem. The normal forms that it provides have all disjunction-eliminations as low as possible, and have no major premisses for eliminations standing as conclusions of any rules. Normal natural deductions are isomorphic to cut-free, weakening-free sequent proofs. This form of normalization theorem (...) renders unnecessary Gentzen's resort to sequent calculi in order to establish the desired metalogical properties of his logical system.Ultimate normal forms are well-adapted to the needs of the computational logician, affording valuable constraints on proof-search. They also provide an analysis of deductive relevance. There is a deep isomorphism between natural deductions and sequent proofs in the relevantized system. (shrink)

We are continually trying to make sense of our world through the stories we tell and are told, but in our search for coherence, we often sacrifice our freedom and the rich randomness of life. In this passionate and lucid book, Michael André Bernstein challenges our practice of "foreshadowing," in which we see our lives as moving toward a predetermined goal or as controlled by fate. Foreshadowing, he argues, demeans the variety and openness that exist in even the most ordinary (...) moments of life. And it is precisely ordinary life, with its random, haphazard, and contradictory choices, that Bernstein celebrates in his call for "sideshadowing"—an alternative practice that reminds us that every present is dense with possible futures. Bernstein sees the Holocaust as the prime example of how our tendency to "foreshadow" and "backshadow" misrepresents history. He argues eloquently against politicians and theologians who posit the Holocaust as foreordained and who depict its victims as somehow complicit with a fate that they should have been able to foresee. Instead, Bernstein proposes a radically new understanding of the relationship between the Holocaust and earlier Jewish experience, transforming how we read and write both individual and communal history. Foregone Conclusions is an extraordinarily wide-ranging book, both in its scope and in its broader intellectual and moral implications. From the latest biographies of Kafka to the peace accords between Israel and the PLO, from the role of cultural diversity in universities to the Crown Heights riots, Bernstein warns us against passively accepting our identities as being shaped primarily by historical or personal victimization. His book liberates us from stereotyped patterns of understanding the relationship between our lives as individuals and as members of racial, sexual, and historic/ethnic communities. Berstein ultimately opens a powerful new way to understand the principles governing how we read and write narratives--whether historical, personal, or literary. In striking original juxtapositions and critical evaluations of Marcel Proust, Robert Musil, and Aharon Appelfeld, Bernstein sugests the need for a new literary model based on the prosaics of daily life. Bernstein speaks directly and persuasively to many of the most pressing issues in Jewish history, Holocaust studies, literary criticism, and cultural history. Foregone Conclusions is a provocative and poignant attempt to find coherence in our world without accepting either ineluctable destiny of pure coincidence. (shrink)

Barker and Smart have argued that dispositional monism is just as susceptible to the ultimate regress problem as Armstrong’s contingent necessitation view of laws. In this response, I consider what implications this conclusion has for the dispositional essentialist project more generally. I argue that it is the monistic aspect of dispositional monism, rather than the dispositional essentialist aspect, which is the source of the problem raised by Barker and Smart. I then outline a version of dispositional essentialism which avoids (...) the ultimate problem by avoiding the commitment to monism. Despite the article by Barker and Smart, it is not time to give up on the dispositionalist project yet. (shrink)

In John Schellenberg’s important trilogy he offers us reasons, individually and cumulatively impressive, for adopting a sceptical attitude towards religious claims, both positive and negative. Part of Schellenberg’s argument consists in reminding us of the necessity of not overestimating our present state of intellectual development. In this paper, while allowing the force of the overestimation points, I consider the very real strength of the arguments he develops for atheism, and suggest that they outweigh his sceptical arguments in favour of non-commitment.Whenever (...) I hear that a writer of real ability has demonstrated away the... existence of God, I am eager to read the book, for I expect him by his talents to increase my insight into these matters. Already, before having opened it, I am perfectly certain that he has not justified... his specific [claim] because... as reason is incompetent to arrive at affirmative assertions in this field, it is equally unable, indeed even less able, to establish any negative conclusion in regard to these questions. (shrink)

Based on some interpretations about the Critique of Pure Reason, the author holds a real answer to the question about the possibility of Metaphysics remains in the uncertainty there. Without any proper Conclusion of the work, this question is displaced to the background and it is, in certain way, superseded by the question about God's existence and a future life. In II, The Transcendental Doctrine of Method, Kant points towards the Highest Good as a determining ground of the ultimate (...) end of pure reason. (shrink)

This paper presents a characterization of the ontological dependence relation between an existent and its sustaining cause, which allows to straightforwardly deduce that the being of any dependent existent is grounded on an independent one. Furthermore, an argument is given to the conclusion that there is a unique independent existent, which is therefore the ultimate ground of being.

[full article, abstract in English; abstract in Lithuanian] Fred Dretske motivates his denial of epistemic closure by way of the thought that the warrant for the premises of a valid argument need not transfer to the argument’s conclusion. The failure-of-transfer-of-warrant strategy has also been used by advocates of epistemic closure as a foil to Michael McKinsey’s argument against the compatibility of first person authority and semantic externalism, and also to illuminate, more generally, why certain valid arguments appear ill-suited for the (...) purpose of establishing their conclusions. This paper takes re-examines some of the central attempts to explain transmission-failure, and a central line of objection to the strategy from Begging-the-Question theorists. The ultimate goal of this paper is to promote a decidedly Dretskean explanation of the unpersuasiveness of the said arguments. (shrink)

According to J. L. Schellenberg, sceptical faith in the Ultimate is not merely permitted, but is rationally required. It is, all things considered, the response that we should make. In this article, I assess just three of Schellenberg's arguments for this bold conclusion. I explain why I find each of them unpersuasive.

Tipler has previously argued that the nature of the universe is a matter of contingency rather than necessity. Now he argues that the existence of the universe can also be demonstrated to be a matter of necessity. I argue that both arguments are fatally flawed, and that neither supports the conclusion it is intended to establish.

Mereological atomism is the thesis that everything is ultimately composed of atomic parts, i.e., parts lacking proper parts. Standardly, this thesis is characterized by an axiom that says, more simply, that everything has atomic parts. Anthony Shiver has argued that this characterization is satisfied by models that are not atomistic, and is therefore inadequate. I argue that Shiver’s conclusion can and ought to be resisted, for the models in question are atomistic in the intended sense, and even though the standard (...) characterization does not say that everything is composed of atoms, it implies so. If there is a sense in which the relevant models are problematic, it lies elsewhere. (shrink)

Andy Clark has argued that language is “in many ways the ultimate artifact” (Clark 1997, p.218). Fuelling this conclusion is a view according to which the human brain is essentially no more than a patterncompleting device, while language is an external resource which is adaptively fitted to the human brain in such a way that it enables that brain to exceed its unaided (pattern-completing) cognitive capacities, in much the same way as a pair of scissors enables us to “exploit (...) our basic manipulative capacities to fulfill new ends” (Clark 1997, pp.193-4). How should we respond to this bold reconceptualization of our linguistic abilities? First we need to understand it properly. So I begin by identifying and unpacking (and making a small “Heideggerian” amendment to) Clark’s main language-specific claims. That done I take a step back. Clark’s approach to language is generated from a theoretical perspective which sees cognition as distributed over brain, body, and world. So I continue my investigation of Clark’s incursion into linguistic territory by uncovering and illustrating those key ideas from the overall distributed cognition research programme which are particularly relevant in the present context. I then use this analysis as a spring-board from which to examine a crucial issue that arises for Clark’s account of language, namely linguistic inner rehearsal. I argue that while there is much to recommend in Clark’s treatment of this issue, some significant difficulties remain to be overcome. Via this critique of Clark’s position, alongside some proposals for how the revealed problems might be addressed, I hope to edge us that bit closer to a full understanding of our linguistic abilities. (shrink)

This article aims to demonstrate that a special category of desire – a state which is sought unconditionally, as an end (sought in and of itself) – is the only ultimate value that logical observers can conceive upon consideration of sufficient conceptual depth. This demonstration appeals to logical reasoning, and ultimately, the reader’s inability to conceive alternate conclusions which are logically consistent. Key words: A Priori, Beings, Desire, Objectivity, Ultimate value, Logicality, Morality, Moral-rationalism, Purism, Moral-realism, Realism.

The spectre of the repugnant conclusion and the search for a population axiology that avoids it has endured as a focus of population ethics. This is in part because the repugnant conclusion is often interpreted as a defining problem for totalism, while the implications of averagism and related views are taken to illustrate the theoretical cost of avoiding the repugnant conclusion. However, we show that this interpretation cannot be sustained unless one focuses only on a special case of the repugnant (...) conclusion: namely, the subset of instances of the repugnant conclusion where there is no portion of the population unaffected by the choice between population outcomes (as in Derek Parfit’s original illustration). To avoid an inappropriate focus on only this proper subset of instances of the repugnant conclusion, we formulate a general characterization of the repugnant conclusion. We then prove formally that all leading welfarist axiologies imply this conclusion, including averagism and Ng’s Theory X0 , including probabilistic and ‘very repugnant’ variants that involve the addition of negative lives. We then prove that the full range of axiologies considered by population ethics each imply an extended version of the repugnant conclusion, including axiologies that are incomplete, intransitive, rank-dependent, person-affecting, and/or pluralist. The upshot is that the repugnant conclusion does not ultimately tell against any approach to axiology, and the methodological requirement to avoid the repugnant conclusion should be dropped from population axiology. (shrink)

This Special Issue has presented a series of conversational interviews with editors of leading journals in the field of philosophy of education. This concluding article synthesises the interviews and reflects on what this project offers to early career researchers including the interviewer-authors in this issue. The contributing writers are interested in their own prospects, as well as those of the field of philosophy of education, and indeed education, and society more generally, in the context of the turbulent changes currently remodelling (...) academic lives and institutions. This has been an inspiring project to work on, producing these six interviews, on which this conclusion and special issue is based: ; _Shaping the agenda of the global civil society: an interview with Michael Peters_, by Richard Heraud and Marek Tesar. ; _Publishing and intergenerational learning in philosophy of education: an interview with Paul Smeyers, _ by Daniella J. Forster. ; _Insights from an editor’s journey: an interview with Gert Biesta, _ by Christoph Teschers. ; _Writing in the margins: an interview with Bob Davis, _ by Kirsten Locke. ; _Emerging perspectives on editorial ethics: an interview with Chris Higgins, _ by Liz Jackson. ; _The long arc of knowledge: an interview with Nicholas Burbules, _ by Georgina Stewart. Most of the Editors commented on the large amount of work involved in editing a journal: a demanding, time-consuming, but very rewarding and satisfying job. Paul Smeyers spoke of taking on the role after being approached by the publisher, when he realised there were few alternative candidates. Gert Biesta spoke of being curious to find out about the process of publishing from the inside, as well as regarding it as an honour to be asked, and being motivated by a wish to help the field. Michael Peters said his editing philosophy includes helping academics to realise that editing and publishing are related to having control over one’s own ideas: more political and philosophical than simply the technical tasks of proofreading and editing. All the Editors are motivated by a wish to improve the field, and ultimately society. An editor clearly needs to read a great deal: some of the Editors spoke about reading everything submitted, and everything published in the journal; or of having read thousands of papers in their time as editor; and the daunting commitment of time involved—about half a day per paper, or more. Several Editors spoke about the impact of the job on their own research output: one view being that the sheer time involved in editing a journal is detrimental to being an active researcher. Conversely, reading the work of so many other scholars can provide an editor with more motivation to write, while having limited writing time available encourages more decisiveness, and less perfectionism. Journals and editors need to understand their consumers: who reads what, how and when. In recent decades, reading practices have undergone a major change from paper-based to screen-based, and some of the Editors speculated that paper-based journals will soon disappear entirely. The change to reading digitally is the latest in a series of historical iterations of how the disciplines of reading interact with the mediating technologies, with each change integrating new forms while retaining what is best in their heritage. Reading, and hence also writing, played an important part in the eighteenth-century European development of human rights and the concept of equality, through widespread readership of seminal texts. The contemporary situation, in which everything can be freely read, redefines the relationship of the reader to the author, whereby reading and writing constitute a form of creative labour on the self, involving self-transformation, self-recognition, and the kinds of links that are possible between people in a digital world. (shrink)

One of the most important issues in Islamic law is that either partially or completely, or temporary or permanently, a rule can be changed for a particular group of people or everyone. Since the concept of necessity can lead to a change of an important rule like ḥarām/prohibition, this concept should be examined meticulously both in theory and in practice. The thşs study aims to analyze how and why necessities make some ḥarāms permissible and to reveal the ultimate cause (...) for this ibāḥa (permission) from the point of view of Islamic legal theory and philosophy. To achieve this aim, first, the nature of the relationship between the prohibition and the act is examined. To understand how and why necessity gives permission to some ḥarāms, it is necessary to determine the changing and unchanging elements in the case at issue. In the case of necessity, there is no change in the nature of the act and the evil, which is considered as the reason of banning. Indeed, there is a change in the conditions surrounding the act and in the state of the obligated person. However, the main factor that enables the change in ḥarām is the change in the addressing of Shāri‘, who takes into account the changes mentioned. It is seen that the changes stemming from necessity do not lead to the same results as in all permitted ḥarāms. This observation requires a thourgh examination and elaboration on what the scholars of legal theory mean by abolition of prohibition and turning it into permissible. As a result, it has been observed that permitted ḥarāms do not equally function in terms of turning into permissible and that they do not have an equal effect on other acts in the field of mubāḥ. In that case, it is possible to evaluate the permitted ḥarām acts as al-maʻfuw ʻanh/forgiven acts. Although the act could be considered part of the category of mubāḥ, it would be more correct to place them close to the line of makrūh. From the point of view of the servant, the reason why necessity makes a ḥarām act permissible is the priority of avoiding greater evil. However, to reveal His sincere servants, Allah's command to them to avoid all ḥarāms even if they die, does not contradict with His wisdom. For this reason, the ultimate cause why Allah considers the case of necessity in passing judgment is His endless mercy. All these points helped reaching some broader conclusions about legal theory, as well as some conclusions specific to the case of necessity. It turns out that to understand how necessity makes some ḥarāms permissible, one needs to comprehend the relation between the act, the obligated person, the conditions surrounding them and the Shari‘ correctly. Understanding this relationship well is also extremely important to understand the theory of ruling and the Islamic legal theory. This research has substantiated once again that the issues addressed by the Islamic legal theory and practice are linked to the theological doctrines, more than, it is commonly perceived or considered. It turns out that it is important to know the deep or subtle differences between the terms such as ḥarām-ḥalāl, maḥẓūr-ḥarām, mubāḥ-ḥalāl, fundamental mubāḥ-ma‘fuw ‘anh, etc. as well as grasping each of the rule categories. Comprehending all these concepts constitutes an important step in acquiring a true understanding of religion and the maqāṣid al-sharī‘a. In this research, it has been proven once again that each category of the rule includes different levels of ruling in itself. The reason why the acts are categorized in different levels even if they are in the same rule category is the concepts of worldly and otherworldly; evil or good arising from the the ḥarām act. This study also confirmed that the obligated person is at the center of the law. This fact reveals how difficult it is to argue that the rules of Allah are based on divine will that is independent of and disregards the act, obligated person, and conditions. On the contrary, it is understood that the interests of the servant are considered both in the rules of necessity and in the whole of the divine legislation (and even the genesis). On the other hand, this indicates a legal system that is not inflexible and dull, but rather dynamic and parallel to life. Both the fact that the real and absolute source of the rule is Shāri‘ Almighty,and that a very large area of legislative was left to the mujtahid should be considered together. This truth has been observed once again in the matter of making prohibitions permissible on the basis of necessity, and the task of determining which evil is greater was often left to the mujtahid’s consideration. (shrink)

We explore a ‘Neo-Cartesian’ account of divine ultimacy that raises the concept of God to its ultimate level of abstraction so that we can do away with even the question of his existence. Our starting point is God’s relation to the logical and metaphysical order of reality and the views of Descartes and Leibniz on this topic. While Descartes held the seemingly bizarre view that the eternal truths are freely created by God, Leibniz stands for the mainstream view that (...) the eternal truths are grounded in God’s nature. We argue that the implausibility of Descartes’ doctrine stems mainly from the assumption that there is a non-epistemic notion of absolute necessity that constitutes the ultimate court of appeal for all modal questions and that this assumption is questionable. We also question the assumption that God’s ultimacy merely requires that all reality be grounded in God in the sense of mere explanation, so that it suffices if the necessary truths are grounded in God’s nature but not in God’s will. This will lead us to a reassessment of Descartes’ position. In the final and main part of the paper, we push Descartes’ doctrine of the creation of the eternal truths to its ‘logical’ conclusion with the aim of getting to a novel conception of ‘God.’. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to rebut two major criticisms of the No-Miracles Argument for Realism. The first comes from Musgrave. The second comes from Colin Howson. Interestingly enough, these criticisms are the mirror image of each other. Yet, they both point to the conclusion that NMA is fallacious. Musgrave’s misgiving against NMA is that if it is seen as an inference to the best explanation, it is deductively fallacious. Being a deductivist, he tries to correct it by turning (...) it into a valid deductive argument. Howson’s misgiving against NMA is that if it is seen as an inference to the best explanation, it is inductively fallacious. Being a subjective Bayesian, he tries to correct it by turning it into a sound subjective Bayesian argument. I will argue that both criticisms are unwarranted. (shrink)

In this two-part article series, I aim to demonstrate that a special category of desire – a state which is sought unconditionally, as an end (sought in and of itself) – is the only ultimate value that logical observers can conceive upon consideration of sufficient conceptual depth. In the first part, I attempt to demonstrate this through appealing to logical reason. In this second part, I subsequently introduce two thought experiments that collectively allow readers to test various purported (...) class='Hi'>ultimate values against their moral intuition that the desire defined herein is the ultimate value and, ultimately, against their inability to conceive alternate conclusions which are logically consistent. Keywords: A Priori; Beings; Desire; Objectivity; Ultimate Value; Logicality; Morality; Moral-Rationalism; Purism; Moral-Realism; Realism. (shrink)

We explore a ‘Neo-Cartesian’ account of divine ultimacy that raises the concept of God to its ultimate level of abstraction so that we can do away with even the question of his existence. Our starting point is God’s relation to the logical and metaphysical order of reality and the views of Descartes and Leibniz on this topic. While Descartes held the seemingly bizarre view that the eternal truths are freely created by God, Leibniz stands for the mainstream view that (...) the eternal truths are grounded in God’s nature. We argue that the implausibility of Descartes’ doctrine stems mainly from the assumption that there is a non-epistemic notion of absolute necessity that constitutes the ultimate court of appeal for all modal questions and that this assumption is questionable. We also question the assumption that God’s ultimacy merely requires that all reality be grounded in God in the sense of mere explanation, so that it suffices if the necessary truths are grounded in God’s nature but not in God’s will. This will lead us to a reassessment of Descartes’ position. In the final and main part of the paper, we push Descartes’ doctrine of the creation of the eternal truths to its ‘logical’ conclusion with the aim of getting to a novel conception of ‘God.’. (shrink)

The surprising comment Wittgenstein makes at the end of his Tractatus suggests that, even though the analysis of words is the proper method of doing philosophy, philosophy’s ultimate aim may be to experience silence. Whereas Wittgenstein never explains what he meant by his cryptic conclusion, Kant provides numerous clues as to how the same position can be understood in a more complete and systematic way. Distinguishing between the meanings of “silence,” “noise” and “sound” provides a helpful way of understanding (...) how philosophers can devote so much effort to analyzing words even though their quest is ultimately fulfilled only in a deep experience of reality that is most adequately expressed in silence. (shrink)

abstract One sometimes finds leading economic thinkers expounding the metaphysical thesis that the ultimate ethical value of an object reflects nothing about the properties of the object in itself and instead reflects the subjective tastes of the valuer. Could anything in economics qua economics provide a warrant for such ethical subjectivism? And what might tempt economists to speak on such broadly meta‐ethical issues? In this paper we argue that a partial explanation for the subjectivist cast‐of‐mind of much economic theory (...) is to be found in the recent history of price formation theory. (We focus in particular on the so‐called ‘Marginalist’ and ‘Ordinalist’ Revolutions in price theory.) We argue that although such price formation theory provides no warrant for drawing ethical subjectivist conclusions, it does provide an explanation as to why such conclusions might be drawn. Thus we explore how the particular history of the development of what is called ‘value theory’ might well lead one (albeit unwarrantedly) towards ethical subjectivism. (shrink)

Instead of postulated fixed structures and abstract principles of usual positivistic science, the unreduced diversity of living world reality is consistently derived as dynamically emerging results of unreduced interaction process development, starting from its simplest configuration of two coupled homogeneous protofields. The dynamically multivalued, or complex and intrinsically chaotic, nature of these real interaction results extends dramatically the artificially reduced, dynamically single-valued projection of standard theory and solves its stagnating old and accumulating new problems, “mysteries” and “paradoxes” within the unified (...) and causally complete picture of intrinsically evolving, dynamically complex reality. The permanently unfolding complexity progress thus revealed is fundamentally unlimited and does not need to stop at the directly observed diversity of usual matter complexity. The exciting, but rigorously substantiated and objectively inevitable prospects of further civilisation complexity development towards its superior levels of genuine sustainability and global Noosphere are outlined, with practically important conclusions for today’s critical problem solution. (shrink)

At least for those who uphold the rationality of morality, ethics and practical reason are not two distinct topics: an ethically sound agent is one whose practical reason functions as it should. Take, for instance, the greatest historical figures. Aristotle claimed that no virtue of character can exist without practical wisdom—the excellence of practical, deliberative reason. And Kant thought that the categorical imperative, the ultimate moral principle that governs a good will, was at the same time the fundamental principlof (...) practical reasoning because the will simply ispractical reason. Even before any philosophical theory of the connection between acting well and the exercise of a rational power is in view, our moral practices strongly suggest that there is one. For we take it for granted that, in an important range of cases, when an agent fails to act as she should, something has gone awry with the agent and not just with her acts, and, furthermore, that the agent herself may be held responsible for this. In calling an agent who acts unethically "irrational," we are saying these two things. (shrink)

The concept of ultimate reality has an important role in the metaphysics of religious pluralism. John B. Cobb—a process philosopher in the Whiteheadian tradition—has suggested not only two ultimates, like other process philosophers, but three ultimates: God, creativity, and the cosmos. Based on this, I argue, firstly, that Cobb’s tripartite conception of the ultimate offers greater conceptual resources for inter-religious dialog than, for example, John Hick’s conception of ultimate reality or ‘the Real’. In support of this first (...) claim, I will apply Cobb’s conception of the ultimate to Zen-Buddhism, thus exemplifying the resources of this conception. Secondly, given the conclusion that Cobb’s conception of the ultimate does indeed offer greater conceptual resources, I further explicate how panentheism, understood as the thesis of a transcendent, immanent divine being who is bilaterally related to the world, can be read in terms of Cobb’s conception of the ultimate. I thus argue that panentheism in general inherits and retains many of the conceptual resources of Cobb’s understanding of the ultimate, and can be seen as a preferable position in relation to religious pluralism. Finally, I conclude from the example of Zen-Buddhism that, although Cobb’s conception offers greater resources for engaging in a dialog from a metaphysical point of view, work has to be done to adequately address questions on the level of soteriology. (shrink)

The article reveals the problem of the ultimate base of cognition as one of the most important since formation of gnoseology and actual in the modern philosophy. The conclusion is drawn that, despite the logic uncertainty, the analysis of a problem of the ultimate bases of knowledge represents methodologically valuable criterion of true. Thus use of the given criterion probably only at synthesis of logic and anthropological aspects that assumes unity of sensual, rational and intuitive ways of knowledge. (...) It allows avoiding the conflict of theory of knowledge and psychology while decision of a problem of the ultimate bases, preserving scientific principles of objectivity and consistency. (shrink)

Ultimate is a competitive team sport that is played, even at the highest level of competition, without external referees. The key to Ultimate as a self-refereed sport is the so-called ‘Spirit of the Game’. As this paper aims to show, the Spirit of the Game closely resembles Habermas’s theory of communicative action. This suggests that Habermas’s theory might be used to spell out the philosophical presuppositions of the Spirit of the Game. Most importantly, the requirements for players to (...) serve as referees of their own game specified in the ‘Rules of Ultimate’ turn out to be reformulation of the four validity claims of communicative action. Moreover, the Spirit of the Game can be interpreted as aiming towards facilitating real-life decision-making procedures that resemble as much as possible Habermas’s concept of an ideal speech situation. On the other hand, Ultimate might serve as a case study for exploring how Habermas’s idea of rational deliberation works in the practice of a competitive sporting environment. Most importantly, it makes manifest that self-refereeing is a trust-based system. This suggests that communicative rationality can only unfold its power—the unforced force of the better argument—within a context in which participants trust that everyone participates in good faith towards the common goal of finding the best decision. Hence, investigating the case of Ultimate allows us to draw broader conclusions about the requirements for rational deliberation to work in practice. (shrink)

:Many critics of bioenhancement go to considerable lengths to establish the existence of reasons against pursuing bioenhancements but do little to establish the absence of reasons in favor. This suggests that they accept what Allen Buchanan has called the conclusive reasons view. According to this view, our reasons against bioenhancement are obviously decisive, so there is no need to balance them against countervailing reasons. Buchanan criticizes the CRV by showing that the reasons most commonly adduced against bioenhancement are not decisive, (...) or, at least, not obviously so.In this article, I suggest that both Buchanan and the authors to whom he is responding underestimate the strength of the case for the CRV. There are, I argue, harm-based reasons against bioenhancement that provide stronger support to the CRV than the reasons that have most often been adduced by critics of enhancement. However, I then argue that even these harm-based reasons are not obviously decisive. Thus, I ultimately agree with Buchanan about the falsity of the CRV, though I disagree with him about the reasons for its falsity. (shrink)

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)

This essay explores the fear of secession in two different context: the exit of a member State from EU and the secession of a territorially concentrated group from a member State of the EU. The case of the recent Brexit and the crisis in Catalonia are taken as case studies to comprehend theoretically which secession could «constitute» EU as a Federation. In the second part, I exemplify how from the international perspective secession can be considered as an «ultimate right» (...) and that if one can talk of such a thing as legality when referring to secession that can be done only in the sense of a liminal legality: a legality that reside in the border area between the internal and the international legal order. In the last part of the essay, I shall try to use Catalonia as test to evaluate both the opinion of the International Court of Justice on Kosovo and the famous Reference of the Canadian Supreme Court on Québec. In the conclusion of the essay, I will also verify if Catalonia can be read through the lens of the Just-Cause Theories of Secession. (shrink)

Some contractualist egalitarians try to accommodate a concern for numbers by embracing a pluralist strategy. They incorporate the belief that the number of people affected matters for what distribution one ought to bring about by arguing that their primary contractualist concern for justifiability to each may be outweighed by aggregative considerations. The present contribution offers two arguments against such a pluralist strategy. First, I argue that advo- cates of the pluralist strategy are forced to abandon the rationale behind the criterion (...) of universal acceptability. Second, I show that pluralist contractualists will be unable to avoid the dreaded conclusion that originally motivated their contractualism. Ultimately, these arguments matter for the nature of egalitarian- ism. They should give those in search of sound distributive principles a reason to make sense of their egalitarian commitment in a non-contractualist way. If a sound set of distributive principles includes comparative and relational princi- ples, while contractualist egalitarianism does not lend itself to being pluralistically combined with non-individualist principles, telic egalitarianism may after all be part of the truth in distributive ethics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: The Singular Voice of Being: John Duns Scotus and Ultimate Difference by Andrew Lazella Christopher Cullen S.J. Andrew Lazella, The Singular Voice of Being: John Duns Scotus and Ultimate Difference. Medieval Philosophy: Texts and Studies. New York: Fordham University Press, 2019. Pp. x + 260. $72.00. ISBN: 9780823284573. John Duns Scotus (c. 1265–1308) is aptly called the Subtle Doctor. His thought is filled with (...) subtleties and distinctions that embody medieval Scholasticism's attempt to master the science of metaphysics, especially as it had been recast by the rediscovery of Aristotle's Metaphysics—a text that Scotus wrote about at length. Andrew Lazella's book, The Singular Voice of Being: John Duns Scotus and Ultimate Difference aims precisely at presenting the subtleties of Scotus' answer to Parmenides with the Eleatic's denial of the reality of the multiplicity of beings and of change. Lazella first illumines in detail Scotus's central metaphysical doctrine, namely, that the mind attains a univocal concept of being. But the problem then becomes, as Lazella rightly perceives, that this "univocity of being" might seem to be in danger of collapsing being into a Parmenidean monism. Hence, the urgency for Scotus "to divide being at its joints" (as Lazella refers to the task; 2). Scotus has to find the ultimate differences that demarcate the multiplicity and divisions of being, if his univocity of being is not to collapse being into a false unity. Lazella shows how Scotus attempts to escape the monism of Parmenides while also avoiding a Heraclitean flux and multitude that destroys the possibility of knowledge and science. For Scotus, only the univocal concept of being is adequate to this task. An analogy of being is inadequate, primarily because it is on the side of equivocation. The univocal concept is "the singular voice of being" that illumines the unity of the finite world, with its vast multitude of things, and that also grounds the concepts of a natural theology of the infinite God. Lazella insightfully begins the book by presenting Scotus's work as an answer to Parmenides and thus to the most basic of all metaphysical questions, as discussed above. Part 1 of the book includes three chapters: the first two discuss in detail the univocal concept that unites beings, and [End Page 237] chapter 3 outlines the concept of the ultimate difference that divides being. Lazella highlights a threefold taxonomy of ultimate differences that are found in the modes, species, and individuals of being. Part 2 of the book includes three chapters, one on each of the "regions" of ultimate difference: chapter 4 treats the intrinsic modes of being; chapter 5 the ultimate specific differences that account for the diversity of species; and chapter 6 presents the ultimate individual difference, i.e., "thisness" or haeceitas, which accounts for the reality of the individual substances. A helpful conclusion summarizes the argument of the book as a whole."In his early Quaestiones super Praedicamenta Aristotelis, Scotus says that things are univocally named when they share not only the same term (vox) or name (nomen) but also the same account (ratio)" (17). The opposite extreme from univocty is equivocity. Equivocity obtains when things only share a name but have different accounts. In between these two extremes is analogy: "Analogical names require that the name signify multiple rationes, which are unified according to some order or relation" (17). This account of these three terms is uncontroversial. Lazella thinks that Scotus's turn to univocity, as the ground of metaphysics, is driven largely by his epistemology. For Scotus, "cognition is rooted in sensible accidents and is unable to gain access to the real essences of substances themselves" (6). Hence the isomorphism between mind and reality cannot be secured without a univocal concept of being, contra the views of the majority of his fellow thirteenth-century Scholastics, such as Bonaventure and Aquinas. A key point is that, for Scotus, the intelligible species, or likeness, abstracted from the phantasm by the agent intellect, is not understood as a mirror that re-presents the form found in the concrete substances of the world. For Scotus, the intelligible species is no longer understood as a formal sign that... (shrink)

In the following reflection Claudio Corradetti and Allen Wood engage in a controversy concerning the possibilities and the limits of textual interpretation. Should an interpreter still be authorized to call an author’s interpretation the logical stretch of text beyond its black printed letters? The authors offer two different standpoints on what can still be defined as textual interpretation. Whereas for Allen Wood a clear-cut separation must be kept between what a text shows and what an interpreter argues starting from the (...) text, for Claudio Corradetti such distinction remains internal to textual exegesis in so far as the interpreter’s conclusions follow a logical pattern of jus tification starting from evidential hints. (shrink)

Responsibility is a moral quality of caring that is central to child health policies. In contemporary UK these policies are based on behavioural psychology and underpinned by individualism, an ideology central to neoliberal governance. Amid the complexities of “obesity” and inequalities, there is a multi-layered stigmatisation of parents as moral associates. Few studies consider the lived realities of food policy processes from the standpoint of class. This critical qualitative research draws on theorists who explain processes of power and class: Foucault, (...) Gramsci, Bourdieu and Marx. Its objectives are: (a) to understand the lived experience of parents as they interact with food policy; (b) to explore how parents resist stigmatisation; and (c) to reflect on implications for policy and practice. Methods: Using purposive sampling, 31 ethnographically-informed interviews were carried out in a London borough, with policy actors: policymakers, implementers and parents as policy recipients, including 12 working-class mothers. Results: A core theme of “responsibilities” emerged with four interconnecting sub-processes that provide insight into how stigmatisation and resistance evolve through policy. Discussion: As have others, this study reveals the idea of responsibility as fundamental to the processes of soft power. Child health is a priority for participants and a “ruling idea”. The diffusion of responsibility throughout policy leads to confusion about where it lies. New subjectivities are formed in line with ideas of governmentality. Parents engage with policy at multiple sites that elicit symbolic violence, and stigma sows social divisions. Against this background, working-class parents are left in a state of cognitive dissonance between being made responsible (responsibilisation), and feeling responsible (self-blaming) for their children’s weight while lacking the material resources to provide an optimal nutritious diet. Resistance is interwoven and is essentially found in parents’ policy alternatives that diverge from UK government policy. Conclusion: Critical qualitative research using multiple theorists is valuable in understanding how parents interact with policy in a complex social world. With UK policy failing, useful insights are provided into how involving parents in policymaking might determine a meaningful collective responsibility, with a political ethic of care and unity between parents that would advance health equity. (shrink)

The author explores the idea that no behavior, even that of criminals, has any ultimate intentional basis, and that all decisions and beliefs occur by accident only.

Workplace politeness concerns the structural, interactional and individual level. Using the example of mobbing, it is illustrated how small acts of impoliteness can lead to the destruction a person psychologically and physically. Particularly, so-called downward mobbing is an increasing problem worldwide; most of the cases are orchestrated by superiors, the people subordinates depend on the most. Data clearly illustrate the social toxin created by up to 45 seemingly small actions in five areas of work life. These actions result in health (...) hazards and ultimately loss of jobs. By example of workplace harassment, it is illustrated how systematic acts of impoliteness are used to manipulate a person's emotion and identity, to ensure anxiety-born solidarity in others while abusing power, with high costs for the target, the organisation, and society. The discussion gives way to considerations about intercultural cooperation at the workplace, showing similarities between subtle devaluations in intercultural communication called microaggression and what has been discussed as mobbing. Overall, impoliteness is deconstructed as a sign of degrading social bonds, security and health, thereby raising awareness of the importance of intercultural interaction without microaggression. The practical value of linguistic impoliteness research and its connection to work psychology becomes apparent. (shrink)

PARANORMAL IS ABNORMAL ACTION OF MIND ON MATTER.\\ ONE NEEDS FIRST A THEORY OF NORMAL ACTION OF MIND ON MATTER.\\ CLASSICAL THEORY INADEQUATE: NO `MIND' IN THE DYNAMICS.\\ QUANTUM THEORY IS FORMULATED AS A THEORY OF MIND-MATTER INTERPLAY!\\ SIMPLER THAN CLASSICAL PHYSICS!\\ I SHALL:\\ 1. SHOW HOW QUANTUM THEORY OF MIND-MATTER IS CONSTRUCTED.\\ 2. DO TWO IMPORTANT MIND-MATTER CALCULATIONS.\\ 3. LOOK AT RAMIFICATIONS FOR PARANORMAL.

. A heuristic search procedure for inventing legal arguments is built on two tools already widely in use in argumentation. Argumentation schemes are forms of argument representing premise‐conclusion and inference structures of common types of arguments. Schemes especially useful in law represent defeasible arguments, like argument from expert opinion. Argument diagramming is a visualization tool used to display a chain of connected arguments linked together. One such tool, Araucaria, available free at , helps a user display an argument on the (...) computer screen as an inverted tree structure with an ultimate conclusion as the root of the tree. These argumentation tools are applicable to analyzing a mass of evidence in a case at trial, in a manner already known in law using heuristic methods and Wigmore diagrams . In this paper it is shown how they can be automated and applied to the task of inventing legal arguments. One important application is to proof construction in trial preparation. (shrink)

The scope of someone's consent is the range of actions that they permit by giving consent. The Scope of Consent investigates the under-explored question of which normative principle governs the scope of consent. To answer this question, the book's investigation involves taking a stance on what constitutes consent. By appealing to the idea that someone can justify their behaviour by appealing to another person's consent, Dougherty defends the view that consent consists in behaviour that expresses a consent-giver's will for how (...) a consent-receiver behaves. The ultimate conclusion of the book is that the scope of consent is determined by certain evidence that bears on the appropriate interpretation of the consent. (shrink)

This is Thomas Reid's greatest work. It covers far more philosophical ground than the earlier, more popular Inquiry. The Intellectual Powers and its companion volume, Essays on the Active Powers of Man, constitute the fullest, most original presentation of the philosophy of Common Sense. In the process, Reid provides acutely critical discussions of an impressive array of thinkers but especially of David Hume. In Reid's eyes, Hume had driven a deep tendency in modern philosophy to its ultimate conclusions (...) by creating a phantom-world of so-called 'ideas' that sprang from objects of observation; the self was a conglomeration of perceived ideas; and the will as the source of action was nothing but the balance of passionate impulses. -/- Reid's Common Sense philosophy answers these problems by suggesting that sceptics, such as Hume, unavoidably affirm what they purport to deny, namely the existence of a stable external world, of other minds, of the continuity of their own minds, and of their own and other people's ability to ascribe and accept responsibility for actions. We can understand all of this by proper empirical observation and philosophical analysis of the activity of the mind. Reid's major positive contribution to philosophy is a detailed account of the various innate powers of the mind. While particularly influential in the first half of the nineteenth century, Reid's work has retained a significant role in philosophy, not least in recent years. At the same time, his role in the Scottish Enlightenment is becoming much better understood. -/- This is the only properly established text. It is accompanied by manuscript lectures on the nature and immortality of the soul, as well as helpful editorial annotation and introduction, making it useful to a wide variety of readers. -/- Key Features: -/- Accurate, reliable and critically established text; The Introduction explains the work's genesis and its place in Reid's system; Annotations provide an understanding of Reid's context; An Appendix contains manuscript material covering an important topic not represented in the hitherto published work. (shrink)

This is Thomas Reid's greatest work. It covers far more philosophical ground than the earlier, more popular Inquiry. The Intellectual Powers and its companion volume, Essays on the Active Powers of Man, constitute the fullest, most original presentation of the philosophy of Common Sense. In the process, Reid provides acutely critical discussions of an impressive array of thinkers but especially of David Hume. In Reid's eyes, Hume had driven a deep tendency in modern philosophy to its ultimate conclusions (...) by creating a phantom-world of so-called 'ideas' that sprang from objects of observation; the self was a conglomeration of perceived ideas; and the will as the source of action was nothing but the balance of passionate impulses.Reid's Common Sense philosophy answers these problems by suggesting that sceptics, such as Hume, unavoidably affirm what they purport to deny, namely the existence of a stable external world, of other minds, of the continuity of their own minds, and of their own and other people's ability to ascribe and accept responsibility for actions. We can understand all of this by proper empirical observation and philosophical analysis of the activity of the mind. Reid's major positive contribution to philosophy is a detailed account of the various innate powers of the mind. While particularly influential in the first half of the nineteenth century, Reid's work has retained a significant role in philosophy, not least in recent years. At the same time, his role in the Scottish Enlightenment is becoming much better understood.This is the only properly established text. It is accompanied by manuscript lectures on the nature and immortality of the soul, as well as helpful editorial annotation and introduction, making it useful to a wide variety of readers.Key FeaturesAccurate, reliable and critically established textThe Introduction explains the work's genesis and its place in Reid's systemAnnotations provide an understanding of Reid's contextAn Appendix contains manuscript material covering an important topic not represented in the hitherto published work. (shrink)

Where much contemporary philosophy seeks to stave off the "threat" of nihilism by safeguarding the experience of meaning--characterized as the defining feature of human existence--from the Enlightenment logic of disenchantment, this book attempts to push nihilism to its ultimate conclusion by forging a link between revisionary naturalism in Anglo-American philosophy and anti-phenomenological realism in recent French philosophy. Contrary to an emerging "post-analytic" consensus which would bridge the analytic-continental divide by uniting Heidegger and Wittgenstein against the twin perils of scientism (...) and skepticism, this book short-circuits both traditions by plugging eliminative materialism directly into speculative realism. (shrink)

In this book, Carlos Montemayor and Harry Haladjian consider the relationship between consciousness and attention. The cognitive mechanism of attention has often been compared to consciousness, because attention and consciousness appear to share similar qualities. But, Montemayor and Haladjian point out, attention is defined functionally, whereas consciousness is generally defined in terms of its phenomenal character without a clear functional purpose. They offer new insights and proposals about how best to understand and study the relationship between consciousness and attention by (...) examining their functional aspects. The book's ultimate conclusion is that consciousness and attention are largely dissociated. -/- Undertaking a rigorous analysis of current empirical and theoretical work on attention and consciousness, Montemayor and Haladjian propose a spectrum of dissociation—a framework that identifies the levels of dissociation between consciousness and attention—ranging from identity to full dissociation. They argue that conscious attention, the focusing of attention on the contents of awareness, is constituted by overlapping but distinct processes of consciousness and attention. Conscious attention, they claim, evolved after the basic forms of attention, increasing access to the richest kinds of cognitive contents. -/- Montemayor and Haladjian's goal is to help unify the study of consciousness and attention across the disciplines. A focused examination of conscious attention will, they believe, enable theoretical progress that will further our understanding of the human mind. (shrink)

Where much contemporary philosophy seeks to stave off the "threat" of nihilism by safeguarding the experience of meaning--characterized as the defining feature of human existence--from the Enlightenment logic of disenchantment, this book attempts to push nihilism to its ultimate conclusion by forging a link between revisionary naturalism in Anglo-American philosophy and anti-phenomenological realism in recent French philosophy. Contrary to an emerging "post-analytic" consensus which would bridge the analytic-continental divide by uniting Heidegger and Wittgenstein against the twin perils of scientism (...) and skepticism, this book short-circuits both traditions by plugging eliminative materialism directly into speculative realism. (shrink)