This book explores a range of traditional and contemporary metaphysical themes that figure in the writings of E. J. Lowe, whose powerful and influential work was still developing at the time of his death in 2015. Leading philosophers present new essays on topics to do with ontology, necessity, existence, and mental causation.

In his defence of the identity theory, Professor Smart has attempted to show that reports of mental states are strictly topic-neutral. If this were the case then it would follow that there is nothing logically wrong with the claim that the mind is the brain or that mental states are really nothing but brain states. Some phillosophers have argued that a fundamental objection to any form of materialism is that the latter makes an obvious logical blunder in identifying the mental (...) with the physical. This is the view that dualism is enshrined in our language. If this is true then of course statements such as ‘the mind is actually nothing but the brain’ and ‘mental states are really nothing but physical processes’ would be quite unacceptable on strictly logical grounds. Smart's claim that talk about mental states is topic-neutral, however, appears to exempt materialism from such objections. The question is, does it? That is to say, are sensation reports and the like topic-neutral in the required sense? Are they analogous in principle to statements of the form ‘someone is in the room’? Smart's point is that expressions such as ‘someone phoned: it was the doctor’ are logically similar to those of the form ‘I am having a red after-image: it is a brain process.’ ‘Someone’ is not logically equivalent to ‘the doctor’ , but it may, of course, be true that the doctor is the someone who phoned. Does this analogy hold and is it correct to say that sensation reports and mentalistic expressions in general are topic-neutral, that they refer only to experienced ‘somethings’? Smart's claim runs as follows: When a person says, ‘I see a yellowish-orange after-image’, he is saying something like this: ‘ There is something going on which is like what is going on when I have my eyes open, am awake, and there is an orange illuminated in good light in front of me, that is, when I really see an orange’. Notice that the italicised words, namely ‘there is something going on which is like what is going on when’, are all quasi logical or topic neutral words. This explains why the ancient Greek peasant's reports about his sensations can be neutral between dualistic metaphysics and my materialistic metaphysics. It explains how sensations can be brain processes and yet how a man who reports them need know nothing about brain processes. For he reports them only very abstractly as ‘something going on which is like what is going on when…’ Similarly, a person may say ‘someone is in the room’, thus reporting truly that the doctor is in the room, even though he has never heard of doctors. (shrink)

Einheit der Kirche und Einheit der Menschheit, by W. Pannenberg.--Die Menschheit, Israel und die Nationen in hebräischer Überlieferung, by M. Greenberg.--Die Einheit der Menschheit in biblischer Sicht, by C. Maurer.--Einheit und Entfremdung im Islam, by H. Askari.--Die Entdeckung Amerikas und das europäische Menschenbild, by L. González Rodríguez.--Der Einfluss des Kolonialismus auf das asiatische Verständnis vom Menschen, by J. G. Arapura.--Religiöser Pluralismus und die Suche nach menschlicher Gemeinschaft, by S. J. Samartha.--Vom konfuzianischen Edelmann zum neuen chinesischen "politischen Menschen", by D. A. (...) Robinson.--Die Revolution der Wissenschaft und die Einheit der Menschheit, by B. Towers.--Sprache und Kommunikation, by E. A. Nida.--Die Theologie der Tradition als Grundlage der Einheit, by N. A. Nissiotis. (shrink)

John Heil's new book (Heil 2003) is remarkable in many ways. In a concise, lucid and accessible manner, it develops a complete system of ontology with many strikingly original features and then applies that ontology to fundamental issues in the philosophy of mind, with illuminating results. Although Heil acknowledges his intellectual debts to C. B. Martin (p. viii), he is unduly modest about his own contribution to the development and application of this novel metaphysical system. A full (...) examination of the position that Heil defends would require a book in itself, so I shall limit myself to discussing some of its central themes and to explaining a few doubts that I have concerning some aspects of it. (shrink)

Introduction , Sophie Gibb 1. Mental Causation , John Heil 2. Physical Realization without Preemption , Sydney Shoemaker 3. Mental Causation in the Physical World , Peter Menzies 4. Mental Causation: Ontology and Patterns of Variation , Paul Noordhof 5. Causation is Macroscopic but not Irreducible , David Papineau 6. Substance Causation, Powers, and Human Agency , E. J. Lowe 7. Agent Causation in a Neo-Aristotelian Metaphysics , Jonathan D. Jacobs and Timothy O’Connor 8. Mental Causation and Double Prevention (...) , Sophie Gibb 9. The Identity Theory as a Solution to the Exclusion Problem , David Robb 10. Continuant Causation, Fundamentality, and Freedom , Peter Simons 11. There is no Exclusion Problem , Steinvor Tholl Arnadottir and Tim Crane. (shrink)

Heidegger was rector of Freiburg University from April 21, 1933, until sometime in March 1934. Soon after becoming rector, he joined the Nazi Party and devoted much energy and personal initiative to the implementation of Nazi programs in his university. A documentary record of this year is collected in Guido Schneeberger's Nachlese zu Heidegger. Of Schneeberger's 217 documents, 41 contain actual texts by Heidegger or reports of things he said. Thus there is room for useful editing. In the present "translation," (...) Runes unsuccessfully undertakes this task. He retains just 17 of the Schneeberger documents; eight of these contain words by Heidegger. Or perhaps one should say words by Runes, for the mutilated translation does even less credit to Heidegger than the brown clichés that pervade the original. No page is free from such mistranslations as "outdated" for "vollendet," "the State" for "die Stätte," "adherence to tradition" for "Wille zum Wesen," "kiss good-bye" for "einbüßen," "old people's home" for "Elternhaus." In eight different places the word "Hitler" has been inserted. On page 22, e.g., Runes has added his own "Heil Hitler" to Heidegger's signature. Thus, though many of the general facts can be gleaned from this book, it is not reliable as far as detail is concerned. And of course it shares with the original Schneeberger documentation the limitation of giving no hint as to Heidegger's Nazi activities, if any, after early 1934.—J. B. B. (shrink)

John Heil's new book (Heil 2003) is remarkable in many ways. In a concise, lucid and accessible manner, it develops a complete system of ontology with many strikingly original features and then applies that ontology to fundamental issues in the philosophy of mind, with illuminating results. Although Heil acknowledges his intellectual debts to C. B. Martin (p. viii), he is unduly modest about his own contribution to the development and application of this novel metaphysical system. A full (...) examination of the position that Heil defends would require a book in itself, so I shall limit myself to discussing some of its central themes and to explaining a few doubts that I have concerning some aspects of it. (shrink)

John Heil’s new book is remarkable in many ways. In a concise, lucid and accessible manner, it develops a complete system of ontology with many strikingly original features and then applies that ontology to fundamental issues in the philosophy of mind, with illuminating results. Although Heil acknowledges his intellectual debts to C. B. Martin, he is unduly modest about his own contribution to the development and application of this novel metaphysical system. A full examination of the position that (...) Heil defends would require a book in itself, so I shall limit myself to discussing some of its central themes and to explaining a few doubts that I have concerning some aspects of it. (shrink)

(1975). The History of Salvation in Dr. A. A. van Ruler's Theology An Introduction to his Theology on the Occasion of the Publication of his “Theological Works”. Bijdragen: Vol. 36, No. 4, pp. 391-419.

Metaphysics is definitely back on the agenda of contemporary philosophy. It is a metaphysics in the full traditional sense, seeking to provide the means to gain knowledge that covers being as a whole, not just parts of it (such as the metaphysics of mind, the metaphysics of values, etc.). Oxford University Press published three books in 2011 and 2012 each of which spells out that ambition. The present review sums up the main topics covered in these books and offers some (...) comments. (shrink)

The first thing to note about the present work is that it is divided into twenty short chapters, all of which contain numbered sections averaging two to three pages in length. This organization adds to the concision and clarity of the book and works well with Heil’s attempt to present ideas in an unpretentious manner. The dust jacket tells us that the book is written in an accessible, nontechnical style that is intended for nonspecialists as well as seasoned metaphysicians. (...) But despite the organization and flow of bite-sized nuggets, I doubt anyone with less than graduate training in analytical philosophy will understand the problems and issues. A brief survey of the contemporary philosophers who get the most discussion should confirm the point. This includes: C. B. Martin, D. M. Armstrong, Frank Jackson, David Chalmers, Sidney Shoemaker, E. J. Lowe, Donald Davidson, Saul Kripke, and Hilary Putnam. (shrink)

From an Ontological Point of View is a highly original and accessible exploration of fundamental questions about what there is. John Heil discusses such issues as whether the world includes levels of reality; the nature of objects and properties; the demands of realism; what makes things true; qualities, powers, and the relation these bear to one another. He advances an account of the fundamental constituents of the world around us, and applies this account to problems that have plagued recent (...) work in the philosophy of mind and metaphysics (color, intentionality, and the nature of consciousness). (shrink)

What does reality encompass? Is it exclusively physical, or does it include mental and 'abstract' aspects? What are the elements of being, reality's raw materials? John Heil offers stimulating answers to these questions framed in terms of a comprehensive metaphysics of substances and properties inspired by Descartes, Locke, and their successors.

Recent studies indicate that mammalian chromosomes contain discretecis‐acting loci that control replication timing, mitotic condensation, and stability of entire chromosomes. Disruption of the large non‐coding RNA gene ASAR6 results in late replication, an under‐condensed appearance during mitosis, and structural instability of human chromosome 6. Similarly, disruption of the mouse Xist gene in adult somatic cells results in a late replication and instability phenotype on the X chromosome. ASAR6 shares many characteristics with Xist, including random mono‐allelic expression and asynchronous replication timing. (...) Additional “chromosome engineering” studies indicate that certain chromosome rearrangements affecting many different chromosomes display this abnormal replication and instability phenotype. These observations suggest that all mammalian chromosomes contain “inactivation/stability centers” that control proper replication, condensation, and stability of individual chromosomes. Therefore, mammalian chromosomes contain four types ofcis‐acting elements, origins, telomeres, centromeres, and “inactivation/stability centers”, all functioning to ensure proper replication, condensation, segregation, and stability of individual chromosomes. (shrink)

Worries about mental causation are prominent in contemporary discussions of the mind and human agency. Originally, the problem of mental causation was that of understanding how a mental substance (thought to be immaterial) could interact with a material substance, a body. Most philosophers nowadays repudiate immaterial minds, but the problem of mental causation has not gone away. Instead, focus has shifted to mental properties. How could mental properties be causally relevant to bodily behavior? How could something mental qua mental cause (...) what it does? After looking at the traditional Problem of Interaction, we survey various versions of the property-based problem and look at proposed solutions to them. (shrink)

Appearing in English for the first time, Schelling’s 1842 lectures develop the idea that many philosophical concepts are born of religious-mythological notions.

Vaesen infers unique properties of mind from the appearance of specific cultural innovation – a correlation without causal direction. Shifts in habitat, population density, and group dynamics are the only independently verifiable incentives for changes in cultural practices. The transition from Acheulean to Late Stone Age technologies requires that we consider how population and social dynamics affect cultural innovation and mental function.