The truthmaker literature has recently come to the consensus that the logic of truthmaking is distinct from classical propositional logic. This development has huge implications for the free will literature. Since free will and moral responsibility are primarily ontological concerns (and not semantic concerns) the logic of truthmaking ought to be central to the free will debate. I shall demonstrate that counterexamples to transfer principles employed in the direct argument occur precisely where a plausible logic of truthmaking diverges from classical (...) logic. Further, restricted transfer principles (like the ones employed by McKenna, Stump, and Warfield) are as problematic as the original formulation of the direct argument. (shrink)

The Direct Argument is an important argument for demonstrating that moral responsibility is incompatible with determinism because it makes no presuppositions about the nature of free will. One of the inference rules employed in the Direct Argument is rule A: If a proposition is broadly logically necessary, then it is true and no one is, nor ever has been, even partially morally responsible for the fact that the proposition is true. While inference rule A is assumed by all parties to (...) the debate, I demonstrate that the rule is invalid. (shrink)

Recent work in the truthmakers literature demonstrates that the logic of truthmaking is distinct from classical logic. Since free will is an ontological issue, and not merely a semantic issue, arguments about free will ought to be sensitive to these developments. In Truthmakers and the Direct Argument, Hermes argues that one of the main arguments for incompatibiilsm fails precisely where the truthmakers literature would predict. Here, I argue that similar problems make the Consequence Argument untenable.

Humean interpretations claim that laws of nature merely summarize events. Non-Humean interpretations claim that laws force events to occur in certain patterns. First, I show that the Lewis/Ramsey account of lawhood, which claims that laws are axioms or theorems of the simplest strongest summary of events, provides the best Humean interpretation of laws. The strongest non-Humean account, the scientific essentialist position, grounds laws of nature in essential non-reducible dispositional properties held by natural kinds. The scientific essentialist account entails that laws (...) are a posteriori necessary truths. After showing that these are the best Humean and non-Humean accounts, I demonstrate that the Lewis/Ramsey account is better equipped for interpreting dispositions and counterfactuals. One distinction between the two accounts is whether counterfactuals, whose antecedents are physically possible, sometimes require closest worlds with different laws than the laws of the base world. On the Lewis/Ramsey account non-legal worlds will be necessary. If laws are merely summaries of events that occur then a world where the events are drastically different will often have different laws. The scientific essentialist, however, must demand that laws are the same in counterfactual reasoning because she grounds counterfactual reasoning in the essential dispositional properties of natural kinds. Recently, problems have developed for counterfactual analysis of dispositions due to finkish dispositions, mimicked dispositions, and masked dispositions. These difficulties have led some to abandon reductive accounts of dispositions. Doing so makes positions like scientific essentialism tenable. Yet, while scientific essentialism demands that dispositional properties cannot be reduced to categorical properties, the Humean has the opposite commitment. If dispositional properties are primitives in our ontology, then there is a stronger tie between events than Humeans admit. So, another major disagreement between these accounts is whether dispositions can be reduced. After examining why many attempts at reducing dispositions have failed, I offer one suggestion of how to reduce dispositions and demonstrate that keeping dispositional properties as primitives in our ontology is worse than the solution I offer. (shrink)

Almost everyone agrees, under some interpretation, that a world is nomologically accessible if and only if it obeys the laws of the base world. This surface agreement, however, has led many to attach little importance to different interpretations, thereby conflating two distinct concepts of nomological accessibility. According to the Shared Law Account (hereafter SL), a target world is nomologically accessible from the base world if, and only if, all and only the laws of the base world are laws at the (...) target world. The Compossible Events Account (hereafiter CE) holds that a target world is nomologically accessible from the base world if, and only if, all events of the target world are compossible with the laws of the base world. After demonstrating that these accounts are distinct, I shall show that the distinction matters. Not only is the correct modal system for nomic necessity determined by which characterizes accessibility, but some arguments against Humean supenfenience depend upon SL. In the final section I show that CE is the correct interpretation. (shrink)

Direct source incompatibilism (DSI) is the conjunction of two claims: SI-F: there are genuine Frankfurt-style counterexamples (FSCs); SI-D: there is a sound version of the direct argument (DA). Eric Yang ( 2012 ) responds to a recent criticism of DSI (Campbell 2006 ). We show that Yang misses the mark. One can accept Yang’s criticisms and get the same result: there is a deep tension between FSCs and DA, between SI-F and SI-D. Thus, DSI is untenable. In this essay, we (...) use an important yet overlooked distinction between truthmakers and determiners to help drive this point home. (shrink)

The guiding question in this essay is, how might we speak of silence—interpret silence—without objectifying it and losing a sense of it in the way we speak of it. That means that prioritizing the value of direct linguistic language, comprehension, interpreting what other hermeneuts say about silence, or attempting to make it visible is not a viable option. The myths of Hermes and Metis, however, might be integral to the lineages of speaking and knowing that are more suited to (...) speaking of silence than the lineages that arise out of biblical exegesis and modern/contemporary philosophy and theology. In the process of shifting to the value of those myths, the bonding of truth and goodness with stability and moral decency is displaced by the value of uncertainty and indirection. Throughout, the essay accepts the distinction between silences and silence and prioritizes awareness of silence in the silence accompanying awareness. (shrink)

Cette communication examine les problèmes associés à l'usage de l'anglais comme un néoespéranto contemporain. Toutefois, l'anglais ne présente aucune des caractéristiques d'une langue internationale planifiée et son usage fait automatiquement retomber les organisations internationales qui l'utilisent comme langue de travail sous la houlette d'anglophones natifs. D'autre part, pour les natifs des autres langues, la perte des outils de définition et de représentation des connaissances stérilise leur créativité et les entraîne dans un conformisme réducteur, qui accélère leur déclin. La prise de (...) conscience de ces conséquences est essentielle avant que des mesures puissent être prises pour combattre efficacement la langue unique et aller plus loin que l'actuel multilinguisme et multiculturalisme de façade.This paper focuses on the problems caused by the use of English as if it were a new kind of Esperanto. However, English does not have any of the features of a language specifically designed for international communication. Moreover, the belief that English is neutral as a communication tool is just wishful thinking. Any international organization that uses English as its working language unavoidably falls back into the control of native English speakers. Furthermore, by spreading the use of English more and more into their own national settings, non-English natives lose their tools for definition and representation. This process turns them into trend followers, sterilizes their creativity and accelerates their decline. It is essential that people become conscious of the seriousness of the present situation for a mass reaction to crystallize that will eventually restore basic language rights which current national constitutions no longer guarantee beyond the paper on which they are written. (shrink)

Cet article résume plusieurs projets concernant l'usage par des étudiants de ressources informatiques universitaires. Dans chaque cas, nous observons une discordance entre les attentes affichées par les décideurs des politiques éducatives et celles des architectes de la technologie. L'ensemble des cas discutés suggère que bien plus de recherches est nécessaire pour comprendre les cultures établies de l'apprentissage si les nouvelles technologies doivent y être introduites de façon productive dans un milieu réactif.This paper summarises a number of projects all concerned with (...) university students' use of institutional ICT facilities. In each case I note a discrepancy between the stated expectations of educational policy makers and technology architects. Together the cases discussed suggest that much more research is needed to understand established cultures of learning if new technologies are to be interfaced productively with a resilient status quo. (shrink)

The English translation of the winner of the Victor Barbeau Prizeand finalist of the Governor General's Literary Award.

Publication de graffites éphébiques gravés sur des bancs et sur un hermès de la Palestre du lac à Délos. L'ensemble date des dernières décennies du IIe s. av. J.-C. La plupart des noms déchiffrés sont par ailleurs connus dans l'épigraphie délienne de l'époque athénienne. Cinq sont pour la première fois attestés dans l'île.

L'herméneutique n'est pas le nom d'une philosophie, mais d'un souci de la compréhension. En montrant, à travers plusieurs positions contemporaines, comment ce souci peut être articulé différemment, ce livre entend contribuer à complexifier l'herméneutique. L'herméneutique est essentielle aux sciences humaines, à la constitution de leur objet comme à leur réflexion. Elle s'attache aux traces, aux signes, à la lecture du monde : avec Carlo Ginzburg par la méthode de l'indice ; pour Josef Simon, en déployant une philosophie du signe ; (...) suivant Hans Blumenberg, en lisant le monde. La compréhension du monde est une subjectivité. Elle se constitue dans le sentiment de soi pour Paul - Ricoeur. Elle part en quête des "sources du moi" avec Charles Taylor. Elle est saisie dans le rapport à soi ténu de l'humour par Dieter Henrich. Pour finir, le livre revient, à propos des "Cahiers noirs" de Martin Heidegger, sur l'héritage politique d'une certaine herméneutique et la nécessité d'opérer des distinctions critiques"--Back cover. (shrink)

Through criticism and analysis of ancient traditions, Kahn reconstructs the pattern of Anaximander’s thought using historical methods akin to the reconstructive techniques of comparative linguists.

In The Origin of Species (1859) Darwin challenged many of the most deeply-held beliefs of the Western world. Arguing for a material, not divine, origin of species, he showed that new species are achieved by "natural selection." The Origin communicates the enthusiasm of original thinking in an open, descriptive style, and Darwin's emphasis on the value of diversity speaks more strongly now than ever. As well as a stimulating introduction and detailed notes, this edition offers a register of the many (...) writers referred to by Darwin in the text. (shrink)

Familiarity with Charles Darwin's treatise on evolution is essential to every well-educated individual. One of the most important books ever published--and a continuing source of controversy, a century and a half later--this classic of science is reproduced in a facsimile of the critically acclaimed first edition.

Propounded in relation to a peculiar mode in the view of an oscillating or cyclic universe, the concept of Return of Power, or of ontic recurrence as further increase in ontic Power signifies the determination of the existing entity according to its own selective recurrence as dialectically exceeding a previous status. Based thus upon the assumption that the actual ontological existence of the entity lies in its own potentiated recurrence (for it is maintained that only what is able to return (...) to itself as potentiated signifies actual ontological existence) and that an ontic eternal return can only occur in terms of further Power, this notion embodies the culminating phase within change as an ultimate overcoming of a previous ontic status or situation respecting the category Power as a primary criterion within a constantly increasing Real (as Power, precisely). An ontic selective ultimate event respecting becoming as a general increment of the Real, this concept exceeds both the ontic dispersion in nothingness of the linear time and the identical ontic repeatability of the Eternal Return of the Same, the latter insofar as asserting the perennial return of man's own status of powerlessness, and as rendering accordingly impossible any actual (dialectical) transition to a well-defined superior ontic phase. (shrink)

Should engineering ethics be taught? Despite the obvious truism that we all want our students to be moral engineers who practice virtuous professional behavior, I argue, in this article that the question itself obscures several ambiguities that prompt preliminary resolution. Upon clarification of these ambiguities, and an attempt to delineate key issues that make the question a philosophically interesting one, I conclude that engineering ethics not only should not, but cannot, be taught if we understand “teaching engineering ethics” to mean (...) training engineers to be moral individuals (as some advocates seem to have proposed). However, I also conclude that there is a justification to teaching engineering ethics, insofar as we are able to clearly identify the most desirable and efficacious pedagogical approach to the subject area, which I propose to be a case study-based format that utilizes the principle of human cognitive pattern recognition. (shrink)

David Charles presents a major new study of Aristotle's views on meaning, essence, necessity, and related topics. These interconnected views are central to Aristotle's metaphysics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science, and are also highly relevant to current philosophical debates. Charles aims to reach a clear understanding of Aristotle's claims and arguments, to assess their truth, and to evaluate their importance to ancient and modern philosophy.

"Deserves to be as widely read as were the originals when they were first published."—Biological Journal of the Linneas Society. Includes five chapters from The Origin of Speices,complete and unabridged; significant extracts from the works that precede and develop the theory of evolution: The Voyage of the Beagle, The Descent of Man, and The Variations of Animals and Plants; scientific papers, travel writings, letters, and a family memorial; plus a chronology and biography.

The essays collected in this volume all explore the problem of the relation between moral philosophy and modernity. Charles Larmore addresses this problem by attempting to define the way distinctive forms of modern experience should orientate our moral thinking. Charles Larmore wonders whether the dominant forms of modern philosophy have not become blind to important dimensions of the moral life. The book argues against recent attempts to return to the virtue-centered perspective of ancient Greek ethics. As well as (...) exploring the differences between ancient and modern ethics, the author examines such topics as the roles of reason and history in our moral understanding, the inadequacy of philsophical naturalism, and the foundations of modern liberalism. There are also extended discussions of a number of leading contemporary philosophers: Rawls, Habermas, Williams and Rorty. (shrink)

This book proposes a new paradigm for the interpretation of Plato's early and middle dialogues. Rejecting the usual assumption of a distinct 'Socratic' period in the development of Plato's thought, this view regards the earlier works as deliberate preparation for the exposition of Plato's mature philosophy. Differences between the dialogues do not represent different stages in Plato's own thinking but rather different aspects and moments in the presentation of a new and unfamiliar view of reality. Once the fictional character of (...) the Socratic genre is recognised, there is no reason to regard Plato's early dialogues as representing the philosophy of the historical Socrates. The result is a unified interpretation of all of the dialogues down to the Republic and the Phaedrus. (shrink)

This wide-ranging anthology of philosophical writings on the concept of God presents a systematic overview of the chief conceptions of deity as well as skeptical and atheistic critiques of theological ideas. The selections cover key philosophic developments in this subject area from ancient times to modern in both the East and West. Editors Hartshorne and Reese-two of the most highly respected scholars in the philosophy of religion-have not only selected many arresting passages from the world's great thinkers but have also (...) analyzed and evaluated the underlying ideas, showing how they fit into major, overarching systems of thought. Part One, "Classical Views," includes passages from ancient Egyptian, Indian, Chinese, and Judeo-Christian scriptures as well as philosophical writings from ancient Greece, the medieval church, and the Enlightenment. Part Two, "Modern Views," considers the ideas of more recent influential thinkers from diverse cultures and philosophical schools: Schelling, Peirce, Whitehead, Schweitzer, Buber, Radhakrishnan, and Watts, among others, are represented and discussed. Part Three, "Skeptical or Atheistic Views: Ancient and Modern," examines various kinds of skepticism and includes selections from Carneades, Buddha, Hume, Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, Nietzsche, Dennes, and Freud. Throughout their presentation the editors analyze and contrast theistic, atheistic, pantheistic, and panentheistic systems of thought. Philosophers Speak of God is a richly varied selection of high-quality writing on a perennial subject that will provide the serious student a thorough foundation in the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

The present edition provides a detailed and accessible discussion ofhis theories and adds an account of the immediate responses to the book on publication.

The propensity interpretation of fitness (PIF) is commonly taken to be subject to a set of simple counterexamples. We argue that three of the most important of these are not counterexamples to the PIF itself, but only to the traditional mathematical model of this propensity: fitness as expected number of offspring. They fail to demonstrate that a new mathematical model of the PIF could not succeed where this older model fails. We then propose a new formalization of the PIF that (...) avoids these (and other) counterexamples. By producing a counterexample-free model of the PIF, we call into question one of the primary motivations for adopting the statisticalist interpretation of fitness. In addition, this new model has the benefit of being more closely allied with contemporary mathematical biology than the traditional model of the PIF. (shrink)

Nearly everyone has wronged another. Who among us has not longed to be forgiven? Who has not struggled to forgive? Charles Griswold has written the first comprehensive philosophical book on forgiveness in both its interpersonal and political contexts, as well as its relation to reconciliation. Having examined the place of forgiveness in ancient philosophy and in modern thought, he discusses what forgiveness is, what conditions the parties to it must meet, its relation to revenge and hatred, when it is (...) permissible and whether it is obligatory, and why it is a virtue. Griswold argues that forgiveness is inappropriate in politics, and analyzes the nature and limits of political apology with reference to historical examples. The book concludes with an examination of the relation between memory, narrative, and truth. (shrink)

In Part 1, I contend (using Coriolanus as my mouthpiece) that Keeley and Clarke have failed to show that there is anything intellectually suspect about conspiracy theories per se. Conspiracy theorists need not commit the ‘fundamental attribution error’ there is no reason to suppose that all or most conspiracy theories constitute the cores of degenerating research programs, nor does situationism - a dubious doctrine in itself - lend any support to a systematic skepticism about conspiracy theories. In Part 2. I (...) argue (in propria persona) that the idea that there is something suspect about conspiracy theories is one of the most dangerous and idiotic superstitions to disgrace our political culture. (shrink)

According to the conceptualist view in the philosophy of perception, we must possess concepts for all the objects, properties and relations which feature in our perceptual experiences. In this paper, I investigate the possibility of developing an argument against the conceptualist view by appealing to the notion of attention. In Part One, I begin by setting out an apparently promising version of such an argument, a version which appeals to a link between attention and perceptual demonstrative concept possession. In Part (...) Two, however, I show how the conceptualist can challenge what appears to be the key premise of the argument, and I go on to describe, in Part Three, an important further difficulty which we face if we attempt to overcome this challenge in a particular way. My conclusion will be that the conceptualist's challenge to the argument is convincing and hence that the argument remains inconclusive. (shrink)