The original essays in this volume call into question the simplistic strategy of characterizing religion by some abstract set of propositions and then judging it by means of an independently determined standard of rationality.

For centuries, philosophers, political scientists, and jurists have struggled to understand the possibilities for justice and peace among a multiplicity of sovereign states. Like Dante, who sought to organize the world under the authority of the Holy Roman Empire, many theorists have tried to explain how sovereign states should be governed to ensure stability and peace in the absence of any established higher authority. Theories of World Governance traces the various conceptual approaches to world harmony from the close of the (...) Middle Ages to today. Considering the immediate problems of order in a decentralized world community, Cornelius F. Murphy, Jr., outlines what he believes are the essential long-term conditions for world peace. Covering a wide range of disciplines -- from theology and philosophy to jurisprudence, ethics, and sociology -- Murphy explores how theorists have reflected upon the necessary components of an effective global order. At the outset, the thought of Christian Europe was shaped by a belief in a natural order established by the Creator of the universe. However, with the advent of the Enlightenment, the connections between the human and the transcendent were severed. There was a movement from a theocentric understanding of the powers of the human mind to an intellectual outlook that blurred the distinctions between the divine and human. This study in the history of ideas examines the profound effects of the fundamental shift from transcendence to immanence upon the development of international theory. Murphy discusses the thought of Leibniz, Wolff, Kant, Hegel, and Phillip Allott, among others. The study concludes with an extended reflection on the importanceof a sound political philosophy to the future well-being of the global community. Possible improvements in the existing arrangements, such as reform of the United Nations, are discussed. Murphy suggests that in order for a society of sovereign states to be transformed into a world political community, human rights and self-governance within states must first be strengthened and, at the same time, individuals of all states must begin to realize their responsibilities toward the whole human family. (shrink)

The "two-envelopes" problem has stimulated much discussion on probabilistic reasoning, but relatively little experimentation. The problem specifies two identical envelopes, one of which contains twice as much money as the other. You are given one of the envelopes and the option of keeping it or trading for the other envelope. Variables of interest include the possible amounts of money involved, what is known about the process by which the amounts of money were assigned to the envelopes, and whether you are (...) allowed to know how much money is in the envelope in hand before deciding whether to keep or trade. In an earlier study, Butler and Nickerson found that when participants were allowed to know how much was in the envelope in hand, they generally elected to trade if that amount was small relative to the range of possibilities and to keep otherwise. The present experiments showed that this propensity was independent of the amount of money in the envelopes. Participants made decisions with a strong bias for avoiding the risk of losing by trading, particularly when the amount in hand was known and large relative to the range of possible amounts, regardless of the absolute value of the gamble. The results illustrate the dependence of thinking on the context in which it occurs, and demonstrate a tendency to treat quantities that are large or small relative to a particular context in which they are encountered as though they were large or small in a more general sense. (shrink)

This dissertation consists in three essays, one in ethics, one in action theory and one at the intersection of these fields. The first essay concerns romantic love, and makes explicit both the psychological needs people commonly expect it to service and the robust yet conditional commitment it demands. The basic ideas are the following: people regularly want to form an intimate union with another, to be loved for properties of certain sorts, and to have this love generate and sustain a (...) distinctive sort of commitment to them. In particular I argue that the third idea has been underarticulated and underappreciated, and its underappreciation has given rise to seeming inconsistencies amongst peoples' wishes for lasting loving relationships. I close with a detailed account of what I term a "loving commitment." ;The second essay is devoted to a detailed examination and assessment of the Doctrine of Double Effect . I argue that in order to employ the DDE to obtain intuitively satisfying moral evaluations it needs to be supplemented by an additional principle or set of principles that specify how various aspects of the relevant action are to be classified as intended or merely foreseen. After discrediting various plausible candidates I offer a puzzle case that seems peculiarly prone to mischaracterization by the DDE. I close with some tentative suggestions as to how the DDE should be considered against the backdrop of our moral practices. ;The third essay is a detailed examination of intention, belief, intentional action, and planning, and the relations obtaining between them. I contend that plans are nothing more than clusters of intentions of greater and lesser range and immediacy and that practical rationality essentially consists in forming and acting on intentions. I then argue that while intentionally acting does not require an intention to perform that very act, Michael Bratman's powerful argument to that effect is ultimately unsatisfying. I propose that the two phenomena diverge because there is a justified belief requirement on intention that does not apply to acting intentionally, and that this justified belief requirement is tied to the intimate relation between intention and rationality. I go on to consider other features of intention, most notably its relations to skillful and habitual activity. (shrink)

: The explanatory priority of natural science is an hallmark of pragmatism in the Peircean tradition. In his case the pride of place accorded to natural science applied in the first instance to science conceived concretely as an empirically constrained hypothetico-deductive methodology but the privileging spilled over to actual scientific explanations conceived of as converging on a complete explanation in the limit. However, from his perspective this privileging of natural science did not exclude metaphysical explanation but rather required it. In (...) this paper I intend to explore the several different senses of "metaphysical inquiry" in the Peircean project as a step toward endorsing some and questioning others.Key-words: metaphysics, science, pragmatism, tychism, synechism, agapism.Resumo: A prioridade explicativa da ciência natural é uma marca distintiva do pragmatismo na tradição de Peirce. Em seu caso, o lugar de destaque concedido à ciência natural referia-se, em primeiro lugar, à ciência concebida concretamente como uma metodologia hipotético-dedutiva constrangida empiricamente, mas esse privilégio se alastrou para explicações científicas efetivas concebidas como se convergissem, no limite, para uma explicação completa. Contudo, nessa sua perspectiva, esse privilégio da ciência natural não excluía a explicação metafísica, mas antes a requeria. Neste artigo pretendo explorar os diversos sentidos de "inquirição metafísica" no projeto peirceano, como um passo em direção a endossar alguns e questionar outros.Palavras-chave: metafísica, ciência, pragmatismo, tiquismo, sinequismo, agapismo. (shrink)

Epistemological foundationalism can be generally characterized as the thesis that in order for there to be any genuine knowledge at all, there must be some self-authenticating instances of knowledge which epistemically ground the whole edifice. This position can be seen to involve three distinct claims: there are self-authenticating, noninferential pieces of knowledge; these privileged instances can be infallibly recognized as such so as to be able to function in grounding other knowledge claims; and without some such instances functioning in this (...) way, knowledge would have no foundation and skepticism would ensue. Although adherents of this ideal run the gamut from Aristotle to Husserl, it is usually identified with the epistemological problematic introduced by Descartes and Locke. The particular formulations of this general ideal differ to the extent that the self-authenticating instances are recognized as being sense-data, phenomenological essences, or intellectual principles. (shrink)

This paper takes up again the perennial issue of the foundations of empirical knowledge. the general issue is seen to have three distinct though interrelated facets: those of "meaning", "justification", and "truth". first, how is it that our statements about the world acquire meaning; secondly, how is it that our beliefs about the world are justified; and thirdly, in what precisely consists the truth or falsity of the propositional content of our beliefs? answers to these questions are invariably interdependent, and (...) both classically and on the contemporary scene "the foundationalist" and "the coherentist" pictures of knowledge have been the dominant alternatives. after discussing each of these clear though stark views in some detail, i endeavor to construct and defend what i characterize as a mitigated foundational account of knowledge. (shrink)

In this age when idealistic themes such as contextualistic theories of meaning and coherence theories of truth are again becoming commonplace in epistemology and philosophy of science, it should be profitable to recall some of the great representatives of the idealistic tradition in order to reexamine their views on the issues of epistemology and their interpretations of science. The purpose of this paper is to examine, if only partially, idealistic views on this latter issue, i.e., on the nature of science.

In this paper I would like to explore Sellars' answers to these general epistemological questions in order to get clear about the sense in which he can be said to be in the empiricist tradition broadly construed and to ascertain what resources he has available to demarcate science from other (rationally acceptable or unacceptable) forms of inquiry. My contention will be that to the degree that one moves away from the notion of basic empirical proposition in the strong sense it (...) becomes increasingly difficult to draw the distinction between empiricism and other general epistemological traditions and increasingly difficult to distinguish science frow other forms of inquiry. Moreover, this latter difficulty tends to render vacuous the claims of scientific realism. (shrink)