A libertarian theory of justice holds that persons are self-owners and have the Hohfeldian moral power to justly acquire property rights in initially unowned external resources. Different variants of libertarianism can be distinguished according to their stance on the famous Lockean proviso. The proviso requires, in Locke’s words, to leave ‘enough and as good’ for others, and thus specifies limits on the acquisition of property. Left-libertarians accept an egalitarian interpretation of the proviso, ‘right-libertarians’ either reject any kind of proviso or (...) accept rather weak versions of it. In be-tween there is room for moderate interpretations of the proviso, and in particular for a sufficientarian interpretation: a ‘sufficiency proviso.’ The resulting theory of justice can be called ‘moderate libertarianism.’ In this article I make a case for moderate libertarianism, so understood. I argue that moderate libertarianism has advantages over both left- and right-libertarianism because it better coheres with the most plausible rationale for endorsing a libertarian theory of justice in the first place. (shrink)

I offer an analysis of the Principle of Sufficient Reason and its relevancy for the scientific endeavour. I submit that the world is not, and cannot be, rational—only some brained beings are. The Principle of Sufficient Reason is not a necessary truth nor a physical law. It is just a guiding metanomological hypothesis justified a posteriori by its success in helping us to unveil the mechanisms that operate in Nature.

The Principle of Sufficient Reason is very seldom, if ever, referred to in the works of whom we might think of as the eminent Asian metaphysicians. In spite of this, the big picture metaphysical views available in the thought of philosophers such as Nāgārjuna, Fazang and Nishida appear to share certain structural features with views more familiar to us from our own tradition; views that explicitly accept or reject the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Nāgārjuna looks to develop a kind of (...) metaphysical infinitism, Fazang an extreme form of coherentism, and Nishida a species of foundationalism. These three positions - infinitism, coherentism and foundationalism - are typically thought to exhaust the spread of possibilities by those working within the Western tradition. -/- In spite of their similarities to positions advanced within our own tradition, the cosmologies of many of the giants of Asian philosophy are characterised by their rather striking conclusions. Amongst such conclusions for Nāgārjuna is that everything is empty; for Fazang that everything is identical to everything else; and for Nishida that everything depends on absolute nothingness. If the Principle of Sufficient Reason is playing a role in the derivation of such striking conclusions, then it looks that there are more options regarding the metaphysical structure of the world available to us than our own tradition typically courts. If, on the other hand, these striking cosmological conclusions are arrived at without any consideration of sufficient reason, then there may well be ways of reasoning about the overarching structure of reality that are powerful but unfamiliar to Western thinking. In this contribution, I explore what, if any, role the PSR might be playing in the thought of Nāgārjuna , Fazang and Nishida, and what we might be able to learn from it. (shrink)

As an important view in the epistemology of perception, dogmatism proposes that for any experience, if it has a distinctive kind of phenomenal character, then it thereby provides us with immediate justification for beliefs about the external world. This paper rejects dogmatism by looking into the epistemology of imagining. In particular, this paper first appeals to some empirical studies on perceptual experiences and imaginings to show that it is possible for imaginings to have the distinctive phenomenal character dogmatists have in (...) mind. Then this paper argues that some of these imaginings fail to provide us with immediate justification for beliefs about the external world at least partly due to their inappropriate etiology. Such imaginings constitute counterexamples to dogmatism. (shrink)

This article analyses the concept of sufficiency in relation to sustainability and discusses ethical implications for sustainable organisation in time and place. We identify three foundational conceptualisations of sufficiency related to sustainability: (1) a limits model that starts with objective boundaries imposed by the biosphere and basic human needs; (2) a preference model that treats sufficiency as a subjective inclination for moderation defined situationally; and (3) a balancing model that seeks to integrate the objective limits and subjective (...) preferences by focussing on action embedded in the socio-ecological context. This includes balancing the needs of humans with those of non-humans. The limits model builds on universal duty, the preference model on preference utilitarianism and the balancing model on action-oriented virtue ethics. The balancing model of sufficiency is well suited to meeting the needs of present and future generations as well as delivering intra- and inter-generational justice not limited to humans. (shrink)

The Principle of Sufficient Reason says that all contingent facts must have explanation. In this 2006 volume, which was the first on the topic in the English language in nearly half a century, Alexander Pruss examines the substantive philosophical issues raised by the Principle Reason. Discussing various forms of the PSR and selected historical episodes, from Parmenides, Leibnez, and Hume, Pruss defends the claim that every true contingent proposition must have an explanation against major objections, including Hume's imaginability argument and (...) Peter van Inwagen's argument that the PSR entails modal fatalism. Pruss also provides a number of positive arguments for the PSR, based on considerations as different as the metaphysics of existence, counterfactuals and modality, negative explanations, and the everyday applicability of the PSR. Moreover, Pruss shows how the PSR would advance the discussion in a number of disparate fields, including meta-ethics and the philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

In this paper I address the objection to sufficientarianism posed by Paula Casal and Richard Arneson, that it is hard to conceive of a sufficiency threshold such that distribution is highly important just below it, and not required at all just above it. In order to address this objection, I elaborate on the idea that sufficientarianism structurally can be seen to require two separate thresholds, which may or may not overlap. I then argue that a version of such a (...) view is plausible. Lastly, I distinguish this view from related proposals in the literature. (shrink)

Douglas Diekema influentially argues that interference with parental decisions is not in fact guided by the child’s best interests, but rather by a more permissive standard, which he calls the harm principle. This article first seeks to clarify this alternative position and defend it against certain existing criticisms, before offering a new criticism and alternative. This ‘harm principle’ has been criticized for (i) lack of adequate moral grounding, and (ii) being as indeterminate as the best interest standard that it seeks (...) to replace. I argue that these are not serious problems. I take Diekema’s negative point to be right—our actual standard for intervention is not literally the best interests of the child—but I disagree with his proposed replacement. First, Diekema’s proposed harm threshold should be more carefully distinguished from Mill’s harm principle. Second, there is no reason to assume that the standard for permissible intervention coincides with the threshold for harm (or serious harm). Thus, I propose that the best alternative to the best interests standard is not a harm principle, but rather a sufficiency threshold between adequate (or ‘good enough’) and inadequate (or ‘substandard’) parenting. (shrink)

Pearl opened the door to formally defining actual causation using causal models. His approach rests on two strategies: first, capturing the widespread intuition that X = x causes Y = y iff X = x is a Necessary Element of a Sufficient Set for Y = y, and second, showing that his definition gives intuitive answers on a wide set of problem cases. This inspired dozens of variations of his definition of actual causation, the most prominent of which are due (...) to Halpern & Pearl. Yet all of them ignore Pearl’s first strategy, and the second strategy taken by itself is unable to deliver a consensus. This paper offers a way out by going back to the first strategy: it offers six formal definitions of causal sufficiency and two interpretations of necessity. Combining the two gives twelve new definitions of actual causation. Several interesting results about these definitions and their relation to the various Halpern & Pearl definitions are presented. Afterwards the second strategy is evaluated as well. In order to maximize neutrality, the paper relies mostly on the examples and intuitions of Halpern & Pearl. One definition comes out as being superior to all others, and is therefore suggested as a new definition of actual causation. (shrink)

The notion of sufficiency has recently gained some momentum in separate discourses on distributive justice ('sufficientarianism') and the environment ('eco-sufficiency'). An investigation of their relationship is warranted, as their scope overlaps in areas such as environmental justice and socio-economic policy. This paper argues that the two understandings of sufficiency are incompatible, because eco-sufficiency has adopted an extremely perfectionist view of the good life while sufficientarianism is committed to pluralism. A plausible explanation for this incompatibility relates to (...) the two different meanings of the term sufficiency as a limit (eco-sufficiency) and as a minimum requirement (sufficientarianism). (shrink)

Neural correlates of consciousness (for brevity NCC) are foundational to the scientific study of consciousness. Chalmers (2000) has provided the most informative and influential definition of NCC, according to which neural correlates are minimally sufficient for consciousness. However, the sense of sufficiency needs further clarification since there are several relevant senses with different entailments. In section one of this article, we give an overview of the desiderata for a good definition of NCC and Chalmers’s definition. The second section analyses (...) the merit of understanding the sufficiency of neural correlates for corresponding consciousness according to three relevant types of sufficiency: logical, metaphysical, and physical. In section three, a theoretical approach to consciousness studies is suggested in light of the sense in which NCC are sufficient for consciousness. Section four addresses a concern some might have about this approach. By the end, it will become apparent that our conception of NCC has important implications for research methodology, neuroethics, and the vitality of the search for NCC. (shrink)

This chapter provides an overview and critical discussion of cosmological arguments for theism, with special focus on the Kalam argument and arguments from contingency.

In the standard analysis of economic institutions--which include social conventions, the working rules of an economy, and entitlement regimes --economists invoke the same theories they use when analyzing individual behavior. In this profoundly innovative book, Daniel Bromley challenges these theories, arguing instead for "volitional pragmatism" as a plausible way of thinking about the evolution of economic institutions. Economies are always in the process of becoming. Here is a theory of how they become. Bromley argues that standard economic accounts see institutions (...) as mere constraints on otherwise autonomous individual action. Some approaches to institutional economics--particularly the "new" institutional economics--suggest that economic institutions emerge spontaneously from the voluntary interaction of economic agents as they go about pursuing their best advantage. He suggests that this approach misses the central fact that economic institutions are the explicit and intended result of authoritative agents--legislators, judges, administrative officers, heads of states, village leaders--who volitionally decide upon working rules and entitlement regimes whose very purpose is to induce behaviors that constitute the sufficient reasons for the institutional arrangements they create. Bromley's approach avoids the prescriptive consequentialism of contemporary economics and asks, instead, that we see these emergent and evolving institutions as the reasons for the individual and aggregate behavior their very adoption anticipates. These hoped-for outcomes comprise sufficient reasons for new laws, judicial decrees, and administrative rulings, which then become instrumental to the realization of desired individual behaviors and thus aggregate outcomes. (shrink)

What, if anything, do we owe others as a basic minimum? Sufficiency theorists claim that we must provide everyone with enough – but, to date, few well-worked-out accounts of the sufficiency threshold exist, so it is difficult to evaluate this proposition. Previous theories do not provide plausible, independent accounts of resources, capabilities, or welfare that might play the requisite role. Moreover, I believe existing accounts do not provide nearly enough guidance for policymakers. So, this article sketches a mechanism (...) for arriving at an account of the minimally good life that can help locate the sufficiency threshold. (shrink)

This article identifies value‐satiability sufficientarianism as a distinctive version of the sufficiency view, which has been ignored in the literature on distributive justice. This is unfortunate because value‐satiability sufficientarianism is much better equipped than alternative sufficiency views to cope with the standard objections against sufficiency. Most often, sufficientarianism refers to satiability as a feature of moral principles and reasons. But value‐satiability sufficientarianism also invokes satiability in the space of value‐theory, as it determines the sufficiency threshold at (...) the point where justice‐relevant values have been completely fulfilled. The article gives examples of how this view is widely apparent in the literature, and it provides some reasons in its favour. It then presents the two standard objections against sufficientarianism – the threshold objection and the indifference objection – and argues that these critiques do not apply to value‐satiability sufficientarianism. The general argument of the article therefore proves sufficientarianism more difficult to refute than is commonly credited. (shrink)

The idea of using responsibility in the allocation of healthcare resources has been criticized for, among other things, too readily abandoning people who are responsible for being very badly off. One response to this problem is that while responsibility can play a role in resource allocation, it cannot do so if it will leave those who are responsible below a “sufficiency” threshold. This paper considers first whether a view can be both distinctively sufficientarian and allow responsibility to play a (...) role even for those who will be left with very poor health. It then draws several further distinctions that may affect the application of responsibility at this level. We conclude that a more plausible version of the sufficientarian view is to allow a role for responsibility where failure to do so will leave someone else who is not responsible below the sufficiency threshold. However, we suggest that individuals must exhibit “sufficient responsibility” in order for this to apply, involving both a sufficient level of control and an avoidable failure to respond adequately to reasons for action. (shrink)

Past appraisal studies have shown that single appraisals are neither sufficient nor necessary for emotions but no study has examined the same issue with appraisal configurations (combinations of different single appraisals). Undergraduate participants repeatedly indicated their negative emotions (anger, sadness, fear, and guilt) and relevant appraisals as they occurred, or immediately after, in their everyday environments. The results not only replicated past findings on single appraisals but also suggested that appraisal configurations are neither sufficient nor necessary for these negative emotions.

Scoring rules measure the deviation between a forecast, which assigns degrees of confidence to various events, and reality. Strictly proper scoring rules have the property that for any forecast, the mathematical expectation of the score of a forecast p by the lights of p is strictly better than the mathematical expectation of any other forecast q by the lights of p. Forecasts need not satisfy the axioms of the probability calculus, but Predd et al. [9] have shown that given a (...) finite sample space and any strictly proper additive and continuous scoring rule, the score for any forecast that does not satisfy the axioms of probability is strictly dominated by the score for some probabilistically consistent forecast. Recently, this result has been extended to non-additive continuous scoring rules. In this paper, a condition weaker than continuity is given that suffices for the result, and the condition is proved to be optimal. (shrink)

Telic sufficientarianism is the view that it is better, other things equal, if people are lifted above some sufficiency threshold of special moral importance. In a recent contribution, Shlomi Segall has raised the following objection to this position: The telic ideal of sufficiency can neither be grounded on any personal value, nor any impersonal value. Consequently, sufficientarianism is groundless. This article contains a rejoinder to this critique. Its main claim is that the value of autonomy holds strong potential (...) for grounding sufficiency. It argues, firstly, that autonomy carries both personal value for its recipient as well as impersonal value, and that both of these values are suitable for grounding sufficiency. It thus follows that we should reject both and. Secondly, although autonomy is presumably the strongest candidate for grounding sufficiency, the article provides some counterargument to Segall's rejection of the other candidates — the impersonal value of virtue; the personal value for the allocator; and the personal value for others. If the arguments are sound, they show that we need not worry about sufficientarianism being groundless. (shrink)

Matteo Bonotti’s book on Partisanship and Public Reason in Diverse Societies is grounded on a theory of partisanship that sees the demands of public reason as internal to the very definition of a party. Bonotti suggests that partisanship is not only compatible with but essential to the stability and legitimacy of a well-ordered liberal society. My paper aims to raise some questions internal to the liberal account of partisanship so as to probe the methodological foundations and plausibility of the liberal (...) framework taken as a whole. My argument is that the assumption of a sufficiently just liberal society on which the book grounds its defence of partisanship makes us ill-equipped to face some of the most critical challenges that liberal societies face in the world that we live. (shrink)

This paper outlines a conceptual framework for a sufficiency economy, defining sufficiency as the space between a generalizable notion of human wellbeing and ungeneralisable excess. It assumes an objective and universal concept of human needs to define a ‘floor’ and the concept of planetary boundaries to define a ‘ceiling’. This is set up as an alternative to the dominant preference satisfaction theory of value. It begins with a brief survey of the potential contributions of sufficientarianism and limitarianism to (...) this endeavor before outlining a theory of objective, universal human need. This recognizes the contextual variable nature of need satisfiers and the distinct methodology required to adjudicate necessities. It then turns to the planetary boundaries literature and utilizes a sequence of causal and normative reasoning to derive an operational ceiling and the concept of ungeneralisable luxuries. The final section addresses how the concepts of floors and ceilings might be operationalized via forms of dialogic democracy but noting the absence of any such institutions at the global level. Its policy conclusion is that a safe climate cannot be achieved through supply-side mitigation alone, and that fair demand-side mitigation necessarily requires a clear distinction between necessities and unnecessary luxuries, between which (hopefully) lies a space of sufficiency. (shrink)

In recent decades political philosophers have increasingly been engaged with the issue of educational equality. However, egalitarians typically focus on achieving equality in the distribution of education, and ignore the relevance of an alternative, relational conception of equality. An exception to this is Elizabeth Anderson, who applies relational egalitarian principles to education in her 2007 article ‘Fair Opportunity in Education: A Democratic Equality Perspective’. Although Anderson remains one of the few relational egalitarians to consider what this ideal requires in education, (...) her arguments have received less attention than they deserve. In this article I examine Anderson's theory of fair educational opportunities for a democratic society of equals and develop an internal critique of her approach. I suggest that the sufficientarian standard Anderson proposes for education has the propensity to undermine the process of integration and the relations of equality she aspires to. Even if all children receive a sufficient education, inequality above the threshold could result in social divisions and status differentials that encourage informal segregation because people typically prefer to associate with other people who are similar to themselves. The article will finish by considering what implications this has for Anderson's relational egalitarian approach to education. (shrink)

Sufficient conditions for first-order-based sequent calculi to admit cut elimination by a Schütte–Tait style cut elimination proof are established. The worst case complexity of the cut elimination is analysed. The obtained upper bound is parameterized by a quantity related to the calculus. The conditions are general enough to be satisfied by a wide class of sequent calculi encompassing, among others, some sequent calculi presentations for the first order and the propositional versions of classical and intuitionistic logic, classical and intuitionistic modal (...) logic S4, and classical and intuitionistic linear logic and some of its fragments. Moreover the conditions are such that there is an algorithm for checking if they are satisfied by a sequent calculus. (shrink)

The Clarke/Rowe version of the Cosmological Argument is sound only if the Principle of Sufficient Reason is true, but many philosophers, including Rowe, think that there is not adequate evidence for the principle of sufficient reason. I argue that there may be indirect evidence for PSR on the grounds that if we do not accept it, we lose our best justification for an important principle of metaethics, namely, the Principle of Universalizability. To show this, I argue that all the other (...) justifications of the Principle of Universalizability on offer, including Richard Hare's, are inadequate. (shrink)

Climate change highlights the relevance of population ethics. Should we attempt to maximize the combined welfare of future people? Many versions of Utilitarianism hold that we should. However, most Utilitarian theories have quite unpleasant implications when applied to all future generations.In this article, I consider the prospects for a Telic Sufficientarian theory of welfare . According to this theory, shortfalls from a sufficient level of welfare are morally bad, and this is all that matters as far as welfare is concerned (...) . Telic Sufficientarianism avoids the familiar problems haunting Utilitarian theories, but runs into trouble elsewhere. I argue that these problems are not fatal to the view. (shrink)

A common objection to sufficientarianism is that it allows large inequalities above the threshold. A sharpened form of this objection highlights that this indifference also encompasses large inequalities in the distribution of burdens. Consider the burdens that follow from climate change. A theory that does not rule out placing these burdens on the worst off (of the sufficiently well off) will appear implausible to many. This paper assesses ways of addressing this objection and defends a revised conception of sufficientarianism that (...) can demand fair distribution of burdens (and benefits) above the sufficiency threshold, without giving up core sufficientarian theoretical commitments. (shrink)

Natural conditions are provided that are sufficient to ensure that causality as defined by approaches that use counterfactual dependence and structural equations will be transitive.

It is traditional to ascribe to Locke the view that every person who acquires natural property rights by labouring on resources is obligated to leave sufficient resources for everyone else. But during the last several decades, a number of authors have contributed to a compelling textual case against this reading. Nevertheless, Locke clearly indicates that there is something wrong with distributions in which some suffer while others thrive. But if he does not endorse the traditional proviso, what exactly is the (...) problem? In this paper, I offer a solution to this puzzle. I argue that according to Locke, once people use their natural rights to acquire large properties, many individuals are unable to enjoy the material and moral wellbeing, or “preservation,” that is the end of natural law. For even if such large properties pose no problem for material preservation, they foster arbitrary power that offends against moral preservation. (shrink)

A. G. Long presents a new account of the importance of conversation in Plato's philosophy.

Most of the historically salient versions of the Cosmological Argument rest on two assumptions. The first assumption is that some contingeney (i.e., contingent fact) is such that a necessity is required to explain it. Against that assumption we will argue that necessities alone cannot explain any contingency and, furthermore, that it is impossible to explain the totality of contingencies at all.The second assumption is the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Against the Principle of Sufficient Reason we will argue that it is (...) unreasonable to require, as the Principle of Sufficient Reason does, that any given whole of contingent facts has an explanation. Instead, it depends on the results of empirical investigation whether or not one should ask for an explanation of the given whole.We argue that if a cosmological argument invokes either of the two assumptions, then it fails to prove that a necessity is needed to explain the universe of contingent facts. (shrink)

There are more refugees than many states have a duty to accept. As a result, many states are permitted to accept only some refugees and not others. This raises the question of how states should select these refugees. I defend the claim that states should resettle the worst‐off refugees, and maximize the number of refugees gaining a sufficiently decent life. When resettling the worst off conflicts with maximising the number gaining a sufficiently decent life, states should select refugees to maximise (...) aggregate benefits, with benefits holding greater weight the further refugees are from a sufficiency threshold. The only exception to this rule is when it entails wrongful discrimination, in which case states should only follow this rule if victims of discrimination benefit and consent to its implementation. (shrink)

The Principle of Sufficient Reason is a powerful and controversial philosophical principle stipulating that everything must have a reason or cause. This simple demand for thoroughgoing intelligibility yields some of the boldest and most challenging theses in the history of metaphysics and epistemology. In this entry we begin with explaining the Principle, and then turn to the history of the debates around it. A section on recent discussions of the Principle will be added in the near future.

According to the Principle of Sufficient Reason (henceforth ‘PSR’), everything has an explanation or sufficient reason. This paper addresses three questions. First, how continuous is the contemporary notion of grounding with the notion of sufficient reason endorsed by Spinoza, Leibniz, and other rationalists? In particular, does a PSR formulated in terms of ground retain the intuitive pull and power of the PSR endorsed by the rationalists? Second, to what extent can the PSR avoid the formidable traditional objections levelled against it (...) if it is formulated in terms of ground? And finally, how might historical discussion of the PSR shed light on the contemporary notion of grounding? (shrink)

In many-valued logics with the unit interval as the set of truth values, from the standard negation and the product (or, more generally, from any strict Frank t-norm) all measurable logical functions can be derived, provided that also operations with countable arity are allowed. The question remained open whether there are other t-norms with this property or whether all strict t-norms possess this property. We give a full solution to this problem (in the case of strict t-norms), together with convenient (...) sufficient conditions. We list several families of strict t-norms having this property and provide also counterexamples (the Hamacher product is one of them). Finally, we discuss the consequences of these results for the characterization of tribes based on strict t-norms. (shrink)

In this paper, we will discuss Peter van Inwagen’s contribution to the epistemological debate about revealed peer disagreement. Roughly, this debate focuses on situations in which at least two participants disagree on a certain proposition based on the same evidence. This leads to the problem of how one should react rationally when peer disagreement is revealed. Van Inwagen, as we will show, discusses four possible reactions, all of which he rejects as unsatisfying. Our proposal will be to point to hidden (...) assumptions in van Inwagen’s reasoning and ask whether he is willing to reject at least one of these to get rid of the problem. In short, our thesis amounts to the following: Of the two epistemological claims, which we call “Weak” and “Full-blown Fallibilism”, van Inwagen cannot simultaneously accept the first and reject the latter, while this is what he seems to suggest. Revealing this potential dilemma for van Inwagen’s position will lead to a more detailed discussion of how “rationality”, “truth”, “evidence” and “justification” interrelate and how a closer look at their relation might help solving the puzzle of revealed peer disagreement. (shrink)

It is common wisdom that today’s medicine focuses too much on treating those who are sick and too little on preventing the sickness in the first place. This essay proposes that Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount challenges that assumption and the preventive medicine to which it has given rise. In light of Jesus’ teaching, the essay identifies four apparent problems with much of preventive medicine. It then offers four heuristics that might form a basic Christian logic for (...) medicalizing risk—for discerning when and why it would be fitting, wise, and faithful for Christians to make use of medicine to avoid future illness and death. (shrink)

Kant’s theory of citizenship replaces the French revolutionary triptych of liberty, equality and fraternity with freedom (Freiheit), equality (Gleichheit) and civil self-sufficiency (Selbständigkeit). The interpretative question is what the third attribute adds to the first two: what does self-sufficiency add to free consent by juridical equals? This article argues that Selbständigkeit adds the idea of interdependent independence: the independent possession and use of citizens’ interdependent rightful powers. Kant thinks of the modern state as an organism whose members are (...) agents possessed of rightful (productive) powers, whose interdependent mode of exercise independently of unilateral permission matters for right. The empirical form of that ideal, according to Kant, is a republic of independent commodity producers. I will show that this reading of Selbständigkeit can consistently explain Kant’s disenfranchisement of women, wage labourers and landless farmers; that it offers a robust alternative to influential republican, libertarian and proprietarian interpretations of the Kantian state; and that it can buttress an original account of community as productive interdependence. (shrink)

In this paper, we motivate, propose and defend the following two conditions as individually sufficient and disjunctively necessary for moral responsibility: PODMA —originally proposed by Coren, Acta Analytica, 33, 145–159,, now cast as sufficient rather than necessary—and the TWC*, which amends versions presented by Young, 961–969, 2016; Philosophia, 45, 1365–1380, 2017). We explain why there is a need for new necessary and sufficient conditions, how these build on and improve existing ideas, particularly in relation to Frankfurt-style counterexamples and the continuing (...) discussion on their effectiveness, and why PODMA and the TWC* are good candidates. Finally, we defend the proposal against anticipated objections in order to clarify why we think these individually sufficient and disjunctively necessary conditions are plausible and able to inform the ongoing debate on the role of alternate possibilities in the ascription of moral responsibility. (shrink)

Peter van Inwagen presented a powerful argument against the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which I henceforth abbreviate as ‘PSR’. For decades, the consensus was that this argument successfully refuted PSR. However, now a growing consensus holds that van Inwagen’s argument is fatally flawed, at least when ‘sufficient reason’ is understood in terms of ground, for on this understanding, an ineliminable premiss of van Inwagen’s argument is demonstrably false and cannot be repaired. I will argue that this growing consensus is mistaken (...) and that a powerful argument relevantly similar to van Inwagen’s should still concern us, even when we understand ‘sufficient reason’ in terms of ground. (shrink)

Research on human causal induction has shown that people have general prior assumptions about causal strength and about how causes interact with the background. We propose that these prior assumptions about the parameters of causal systems do not only manifest themselves in estimations of causal strength or the selection of causes but also when deciding between alternative causal structures. In three experiments, we requested subjects to choose which of two observable variables was the cause and which the effect. We found (...) strong evidence that learners have interindividually variable but intraindividually stable priors about causal parameters that express a preference for causal determinism. These priors predict which structure subjects preferentially select. The priors can be manipulated experimentally and appear to be domain-general. Heuristic strategies of structure induction are suggested that can be viewed as simplified implementations of the priors. (shrink)