On a Molinist account of creation and providence, not only is there is a complete set of truths about what every possible person would freely do in any possible set of circumstances, but these conditional truths are part of the very explanation of our existence. Robert Adams has recently argued that the explanatory priority of these conditionals undermines libertarian freedom. In the present essay, I take at close look at Adams’ argument and at the Molinist response of Thomas Flint. After (...) showing that Flint’s response is inadequate, I develop what I believe to be a more successful Molinist response to Adams’ argument. Along the way, I seek to provide some insight into the nature of libertarian freedom and the proper interpretation of the much discussed “principle of alternate possibilities.”. (shrink)

It is clear that beliefs can be assessed both as to their justification and their rationality. What is not as clear, however, is how the rationality and justification of belief relate to one another. Stewart Cohen has stumped for the popular proposal that rationality and justification come to the same thing, that rational beliefs just are justified beliefs, supporting his view by arguing that ‘justified belief’ and ‘rational belief’ are synonymous. In this paper, I will give reason to think that (...) Cohen’s argument is spurious. I will show that ‘rational’ and ‘justified’ occupy two distinct semantic categories – ‘rational’ is an absolute gradable adjective and ‘justified’ is a relative gradable adjective – telling against the thought that ‘rational belief’ and ‘justified belief’ are synonymous. I will then argue that the burden of proof is on those who would equate rationality and justification, making the case that those who hold this prominent position face the difficulty of explaining how rationality and justification come to the same thing even though ‘rational’ and ‘justified’ are not synonymous. (shrink)

Weber argues that causal modelers face a dilemma when they attempt to model systems in which the underlying mechanism operates according to some set of differential equations. The first horn is that causal models of these systems leave out certain causal effects. The second horn is that causal models of these systems leave out time-dependent derivatives, and doing so distorts reality. Either way causal models of these systems leave something important out. I argue that Weber’s reasons for thinking causal modeling (...) is limited in this domain are lacking. (shrink)

A strength of liberal political institutions is their ability to accommodate pluralism, both allowing divergent comprehensive doctrines as well as constructing the common ground necessary for diverse people to live together. A pressing question is how far such pluralism extends. Which comprehensive doctrines are simply beyond the pale and need not be accommodated by a political consensus? Rawls attempted to keep the boundaries of reasonable disagreement quite broad by infamously denying that political liberalism need make reference to the concept of (...) truth, a claim that has been criticized by Joseph Raz, Joshua Cohen, and David Estlund. In this paper, we argue that these criticisms fail due to the fact that political liberalism can remain non-committal on the nature of truth, leaving the concept of truth in the domain of comprehensive doctrines while still avoiding the issues raised by Raz, Cohen, and Estlund. Further substantiating this point is the fact that Rawls would, and should, include parties in the overlapping consensus whose views on truth may be incoherent. Once it is seen that political liberalism allows such incoherence to reasonable parties, it is clear that the inclusion of truth and the requirement of coherence urged by Raz, Cohen, and Estlund requires more of reasonable people than is necessary for a political consensus. (shrink)

If God commanded something that was obviously evil, would we have a moral obligation to do it? I critically examine three radically different approaches divine-command theorists may take to the problem posed by this question: (1) reject the possibility of such a command by appealing to God's essential goodness; (2) avoid the implication that we should obey such a command by modifying the divine-command theory; and (3) accept the implication that we should obey such a command by appealing to divine (...) transcendence and mystery. I show that each approach faces significant challenges, and that none is completely satisfying. (shrink)

Logicians and theoretical physicists will also benefit from this book.

The Doomsday Argument is alive and kicking, and since its formulation in the beginning of the Eighties by the astrophysicist Brandon Carter it has gained wide attention, been strongly criticized and has been described in many different, and sometimes non-interchangeable analogies. I will briefly present the argument here, and departing from Nick Bostrom's interpretation, I will defend that doom may be sooner than we think if we start building conscious machines soon in the future.

We like to rate each other. We rate restaurants on Yelp, drivers on Lyft, and movies on Rotten Tomatoes. And these ratings can help us make decisions. With all of this rating going on, wouldn’t it be helpful if we rated how ethical other people are? Knowing the moral scruples of others could help us make friends, choose who to date, and avoid getting ripped off. But even though lots of ratings are useful, I don’t think that giving each other (...) a moral score is a good idea. In fact, I think it might make us even more unethical. (shrink)

ABSTRACT According to an influential line of argument, the past must be finite because no infinite series can be formed by successive addition. The present paper pinpoints the non sequitur at the heart of this argument, disentangles the ambiguities that disguise it, and dismantles the misleading picture of ‘traversing the infinite’ that gives the argument so much of its allure. Finally, the paper critically explores the related argument that a beginningless series of past events is impossible because there could be (...) no explanation of its having been ‘completed’ at one time rather than another. (shrink)

Public and academic medical ethics debates surrounding justice and age discrimination often proceed from a problematic understanding of old age that ignores the diversity of older people. This article introduces the feminist perspective of intersectionality to medical ethical debates on aging and old age in order to analyze the structural discrimination of older people in medicine and health care. While current intersectional approaches in this field focus on race, gender, and sexuality, we thus set out to introduce aging and old (...) age as an additional category that is becoming more relevant in the context of longer life expectancies and increasing population aging. We analyze three exemplary cases on the individual, institutional, and public health level, and argue that considering the intersections of old age with other social categories helps to accommodate the diverse identities of older people and detect inequality and structural discrimination. (shrink)

Sober develops an account of adaptations on which they must have been positive causal factors for reproductive success. Glymour defends an account of a proper subset of adaptations—adaptations to particular environmental conditions—on which traits must interact in a special way with adapting conditions to cause reproductive success. These theories render conflicting judgments about which traits count as adaptations in some interesting cases. In this article I explore one such case and argue that we ought to replace the notion of adaptation (...) qua positive causal factor with a novel notion of adaptation. (shrink)

In recent years, William Lane Craig has vigorously championed a moral argument for God's existence. The backbone of Craig's argument is the claim that only God can provide a ' sound foundation in reality' for morality. The present article has three principal aims. The first is to interpret and clarify the account of the ontological foundation of morality proposed by Craig. The second is to press home an important objection to that account. The third is to expose the weakness of (...) Craig's case for saying that without God morality would be groundless and illusory. (shrink)

Brandon claims that to explain adaptation one must specify fitnesses in each selective environment and specify the distribution of individuals across selective environments. Glymour claims, using an example of the adaptive evolution of costly plasticity in a symmetric environment, that there are some predictive or explanatory tasks for which Brandon’s claim is limited. In this paper, I provide necessary conditions for carrying out Brandon’s task, produce a new version of the argument for his claim, and show that Glymour’s reasons for (...) making his claim are problematic. I provide a few interpretations of Glymour’s argument but ultimately raise worries for what I take to be the key premises. (shrink)

Despite being a collection of holistic assessment tools, the comprehensive geriatric assessment primarily focuses on the social category of age during the assessment and disregards for example gender. This article critically reviews the standardized testing process of the comprehensive geriatric assessment in regard to diversity-sensitivity. I show that the focus on age as social category during the assessment process might potentially hinder positive outcomes for people with diverse backgrounds of older patients in relation to other social categories, such as race, (...) gender or socio-economic background and their influence on the health of the patient as well as the assessment and its outcomes. I suggest that the feminist perspective of intersectionality with its multicategorical approach can enhance the diversity-sensitivity of the comprehensive geriatric assessment, and thus improve the treatment of older patients and their quality of life. By suggesting an intersectional-based approach, this article contributes to debates about justice and diversity in medical philosophy and advocates for the normative value of diversity in geriatric medicine. (shrink)

Novel developments in neuroscience, psychology, and anthropology have spawned a thriving empirical literature on religious experience. Previous literature in the cognitive science of religion has largely ignored empirical results from these fields, focusing narrowly on results from evolutionary psychology. Additionally, it has ignored the epistemological relevance of non-paradigmatic cases of religious experience discussed in the literature from these subspecialties. In this article I submit that philosophical research on religious experience should take empirical work outside of evolutionary psychology as its primary (...) foci towards uncovering fresh perspectives. I focus on three different literatures from neuroscience, psychology, and anthropology as case studies for generating novel philosophical research. I show that empirically-discovered factors related to non-paradigmatic religious experiences raise crucial and unique epistemological questions. (shrink)

One of the principal lines of argument deployed by the friends of the kalām cosmological argument against the possibility of a beginningless series of events is a quite general argument against the possibility of an actual infinite. The principal thesis of the present paper is that if this argument worked as advertised, parallel considerations would force us to conclude, not merely that a series of discrete, successive events must have a first member, but also that such a series must have (...) a final member. Anyone who thinks that an endless series of events is possible must therefore reject this popular line of argument against the possibility of an actual infinite. (shrink)

Part of Allen et al.’s criticism of Hamilton’s rule makes sense only if we are interested in social adaptation rather than merely social selection. Under the assumption that we are interested in casually modeling social adaptation, I illustrate how graphical causal models of social adaptation can be useful for predicting evolution by adaptation. I then argue for two consequences of this approach given some of the recent philosophical literature. I argue Birch’s claim that the proper way to understand Hamilton’s rule (...) is as providing an organizational framework for causal models is incorrect. I provide an account of a causally adequate decomposition of evolutionary change due to social adaptation and show that my account is superior to Okasha’s. (shrink)

In his recent book, Knowing and Checking, Guido Melchior argues that, when we attempt to check whether p, we tend to think that we do not know p. Melchior then uses this assumption to explain a number of puzzles about knowledge. One outstanding question for Melchior's account, however, is why this tendency exists. After all, Melchior himself argues that checking is not necessary for knowing, so why would we think that we fail to know that p when we are in (...) the midst of checking that p? I will explore one such suggestion for why this occurs, arguing that the connection between checking and inquiry can shed light on the impact that checking has on knowing. (shrink)

Philosophy of mathematics is moving in a new direction: away from a foundationalism in terms of formal logic and traditional ontology, and towards a broader range of approaches that are united by a focus on mathematical practice. The scientific research network PhiMSAMP (Philosophy of Mathematics: Sociological Aspects and Mathematical Practice) consisted of researchers from a variety of backgrounds and fields, brought together by their common interest in the shift of philosophy of mathematics towards mathematical practice. Hosted by the Rheinische Friedrich- (...) Wilhelms-Universitat Bonn and funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) from 2006-2010, the network organized and contributed to a number of workshops and conferences on the topic of mathematical practice. The refereed contributions in this volume represent the research results of the network and consists of contributions of the network members as well as selected paper versions of presentations at the network's mid-term conference, "Is mathematics special?" (PhiMSAMP-3) held in Vienna 2008. (shrink)

Political polarization is on the rise, undermining the shared space of public reason necessary for a thriving democracy and making voters more willing than ever to dismiss the perspectives of their political opponents. This destructive tendency is especially problematic when it comes to issues of race and gender, as informed views on these topics necessarily require engaging with those whose experiences may differ from our own. In order to help our students combat further polarization, we created a course on "The (...) Philosophy of Race, Class, and Gender" that incorporated intergroup dialogues - small, diverse, semester-long discussion groups-that focused on building the civic virtues of toleration, egalitarianism, and solidarity. In this article, we describe our approach, including the evidence that intergroup dialogue can act as a catalyst for democratic dialogue. We hope that the practice of intergroup dialogue can help other instructors cultivate the civic virtues in their philosophy classrooms as well. (shrink)

Traditional statistical model evaluation typically relies on goodness-of-fit testing and quantifying model complexity by counting parameters. Both of these practices may result in overfitting and have thereby contributed to the generalizability crisis. The information-theoretic principle of minimum description length addresses both of these concerns by filtering noise from the observed data and consequently increasing generalizability to unseen data.

severe and prolonged pain, in heartbreak and destruction, in disloyalty and betrayal, in the suffering of the innocent, in unjust punishment. He has, in short, an intense dislike for anything that you or I might approve of or enjoy. If he had his druthers we'd all be utterly miserable and come to a bad end. Now I' ve certainly never met a demonist, and I suppose we can agree that demonism would be an extraordinarily implausible view. Still, it is worth (...) asking why this is so, What is it that makes demonism so absurd?' In part 1 of this paper, I explore and critically evaluate the suggestion that we know the Demon does not exist because there are so many instances of goodness that such a being would have no apparent "reason" for allowing. Throughout, myAemonist will be helping himself to the "insights" of theists who defend classical theism against a parallel problem — the so-called evidential problem of evil — by claiming that we just don't know enough to make the argument go through. In part 2, I draw out two implications. First, that this purely defensive strategy works just as well for demonism as for theism. And second, that if this approach to the argument from evil works as well as some theists believe, then there is no.. (shrink)

In a series of much discussed articles and books, William Lane Craig defends the view that the past could not consist in a beginningless series of events. In the present paper, I cast a critical eye on just one part of Craig's case for the finitude of the past – viz. his philosophical argument against the possibility of actually infinite sets of objects in the ‘real world’. I shall try to show that this argument is unsuccessful. I shall also take (...) a close look at several considerations that are often thought to favour the possibility of an actual infinite, arguing in each case that Craig's response is inadequate. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to take a close look at some little discussed aspects of the kalam cosmological argument, with a view to deciding whether there is any reason to believe the causal principle on which it rests (“Whatever begins to exist must have a cause”), and also with a view to determining what conclusions can be drawn about the nature of the First Cause of the universe (supposing thatthere is one). I am particularly concerned with the problems (...) that arise when it is assumed (as it often is) that that the First Cause is timeless and that it timelessly creates time. I argue that this forces the defender of the kalam argument to analyze the concept of “beginning to exist” in a way that raises series doubts about its main causal principle, and that it also undercuts the main argument for saying that the cause of the universe must be a person. (shrink)

This article discusses some issues that arise from the fact of `conceptual change'. We focus on the difficulties that Ian Hacking encountered when considering whether the consequence of conceptual change is the fact that the past of individual actions is indeterminate (Hacking, 1995). We consider his use of Anscombe's thesis on actions under description and find that he misrepresents it. We further find that he neglects tenses of descriptions and redescriptions, the contrast of which is essential to concepts that entail (...) a contrast in understandings of how the matters were then, how they are now, or will be in the future. (shrink)

People who do not believe that there is a God constitute an obvious problem for divine command metaethics. They have moral obligations, and are often enough aware of having them. Yet it is not easy to think of such persons as “hearing” divine commands. This makes it hard to see how a divine command theory can offer a completely general account of the nature of moral obligation. The present paper takes a close look at this issue as it emerges in (...) the context of the most recent version of Robert Adams’ modified divine command theory. I argue that, despite a valiant attempt to do so, Adams does not succeed in giving an adequate account of the moral obligations of non-believers. More generally, I claim that if divine commands are construed as genuine speech acts, theists are well advised not to adopt a divine command theory. (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.

William Lane Craig claims that the doctrine of creation ex nihilo is strongly supported by the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe. In the present paper, I critically examine Craig’s arguments for this claim. I conclude that they are unsuccessful, and that the Big Bang theory provides no support for the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. Even if it is granted that the universe had a “first cause,” there is no reason to think that this cause created (...) the universe out of nothing. As far as the Big Bang theory is concerned, the cause of the universe might have been what Adolf Grünbaum has called a “transformative cause”---a cause that shaped something that was “already there.”. (shrink)