In Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, R. Zachary Manis examines in detail the several facets of the problem of hell, considers the reasons why the usual responses to the problem are unsatisfying, and suggests how an adequate solution to the problem can be constructed.

One important version of the problem of divine freedom is that, if God is essentially good, and if freedom logically requires being able to do otherwise, then God is not free with respect to willing the good, and thus He is not morally praiseworthy for His goodness. I develop and defend a broadly Molinist solution to this problem, which, I argue, provides the best way out of the difficulty for orthodox theists who are unwilling to relinquish the Principle (...) of Alternate Possibilities. The solution is that the divine essence includes the property of transworld goodness: i.e., for any possible morally significant choice that God could have faced, if God had actually faced it, God would have chosen to will the good. This view makes coherent the otherwise paradoxical theological intuition that it is within God’s power to do something evil, but He would not ever do such a thing. (shrink)

According to a (once) venerable tradition, our knowledge of the external world is crucially dependent on divine favor: our ability to obtain knowledge of the world around us is made possible by God’s having so ordered things. I argue that this view, despite its unpopularity among con­temporary philosophers, is supported by a certain inference to the best explanation: namely, it provides an effective way of reconciling two widely held beliefs that, on the assumption of naturalism, appear incompatible: (1) that knowledge (...) is incompatible with the kind of luck present in Gettier sce­narios and (2) that arguments for external world skepticism can be effectively rebutted by “shifting” them in the style of G. E. Moore. (shrink)

A significant challenge faces any ethic that endorses the view that divine commands are sufficient to impose moral obligations; in this paper, I focus on Kierkegaard's ethic, in particular. The challenge to be addressed is the "modernized" problem of Abraham, popularized especially by Fear and Trembling: the dilemma that an agent faces when a being claiming to be God issues a command to the agent that, by the agent's own lights, seems not to be the kind of command that (...) a loving God would issue. Against a solution to this problem proposed by C. Stephen Evans in Kierkegaard's Ethic of Love, I argue that Kierkegaard regards this scenario as never actually resulting in a fully responsible agent's performance of some horrendous action on account of her non-culpable misinterpretation of God's will and/or failure to discern correctly whether a perceived moral imperative truly is divine in origin. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook Jahrgang: 2013 Heft: 1 Seiten: 107-130.

Though Kierkegaard's ethic in "Works of Love" frequently has been a target of harsh — and often uncharitable — criticism, a number of recent treatments have sought to defend both its viability and its relevance to the contemporary discussion. Increasingly, the literature is replete with interpretations that situate it within the traditions of virtue ethics and/or divine command theory. I evaluate these readings, focusing primarily on the issue of moral obligation in Kierkegaard's writings. I argue that both the virtue and (...) divine command interpretations are deficient, though Kierkegaard's ethic indeed shares significant points of contact with both traditions. I explicate and defend an alternative account of moral obligation that seems to me most to warrant the label, "Kierkegaardian," and attempt to expand the view, taking Kierkegaard's ethic as a foundation upon which to build a theoretically rigorous account of moral obligation. The resulting view, I argue, captures the best of both virtue ethics and divine command theory, while avoiding the most serious problems of each. (shrink)

General preface -- Preface to the second edition -- What is philosophy of religion? -- Philosophy of religion and other disciplines -- Philosophy of religion and philosophy -- Can thinking about religion be neutral? -- Fideism -- Neutralism -- Critical dialogue -- The theistic God : the project of natural theology -- Concepts of God -- The theistic concept of God -- A case study : divine foreknowledge and human freedom -- The problem of religious language -- Natural theology (...) -- Proofs of God's existence -- Classical arguments for God's existence -- Ontological arguments -- Cosmological arguments -- Teleological arguments -- Moral arguments -- Conclusions: The value of theistic argument -- Religious experience -- Types of religious experience -- Models for understanding experience -- Experience of God as direct and mediated -- Are religious experiences veridical? -- Checking experiential claims -- Special acts of God : revelation and miracles -- Special acts -- Theories of revelation -- Is the traditional view defensible? -- What is a miracle? -- Is it reasonable to believe in miracles? -- Can a revelation have special authority? -- Religion, modernity, and science -- Modernity and religious belief -- Naturalism -- Do the natural sciences undermine religious belief? -- Objections from the social sciences -- Religious uses of modern atheism -- The problem of evil -- Types of evil, versions of the problem, and types of response -- The logical form of the problem -- The evidential form of the problem -- Horrendous evils and the problem of hell -- Divine hiddenness -- Faith(s) and reason -- Faith : subjectivity in religious arguments -- The evidentialist challenge to religious belief -- Reformed epistemology -- The place of subjectivity in forming beliefs -- Interpretive judgments and the nature of a cumulative case -- Can faith be certain? -- Faith and doubt : can religious faith be tested? -- What is faith? -- Could one religion be true? (shrink)

This paper examines the problem of sameness in terms of being it the classical problem of personal identity and various philosophical positions on the existence of the self as a substantive subject. I call this subject an ethical Self, which involves different notions of ego, being, substance, and personhood. The denial of the existence of a permanent self by philosophers like Hume and Buddhists does not seem justified in regard to one's identity or sameness over time. The no-self (...) theorists do not provide any strong ground for how to explain the notion of personhood and one's actions in a moral space without accepting a substantive self as a doer that continues over time. They certainly seem to have failed in establishing a logical connection between their no-self theories on the one hand and the necessity of an ethical self in their philosophical accounts on the other. Rejecting the no-self theory in defense of the self theory of personal identity, I conclude this paper with a note that sameness of a person over time is the prerequisite of morality, law, and present and future plans and that there is no harm in considering a permanent self, as Jīva of Jainism, to solve the problem of personal identity. There is also no harm in preferring the self theory over the no-self theory since the former, unlike the latter, does give a meaning to spirituality and transcendence. (shrink)

Recent years have seen rapid progress in the development of ontologies as semantic models intended to capture and represent aspects of the real world. There is, however, great variation in the quality of ontologies. If ontologies are to become progressively better in the future, more rigorously developed, and more appropriately compared, then a systematic discipline of ontology evaluation must be created to ensure quality of content and methodology. Systematic methods for ontology evaluation will take into account representation of individual ontologies, (...) performance (in terms of accuracy, domain coverage and the efficiency and quality of automated reasoning using the ontologies) on tasks for which the ontology is designed and used, degree of alignment with other ontologies and their compatibility with automated reasoning. A sound and systematic approach to ontology evaluation is required to transform ontology engineering into a true scientific and engineering discipline. This chapter discusses issues and problems in ontology evaluation, describes some current strategies, and suggests some approaches that might be useful in the future. (shrink)

I argue that when perception plays a guiding role in intentional bodily action, it is a necessary part of that action. The argument begins with a challenge that necessarily arises for embodied agents, what I call the Many-Many Problem. The Problem is named after its most common case where agents face too many perceptual inputs and too many possible behavioral outputs. Action requires a solution to the Many-Many Problem by selection of (...) a specific linkage between input and output. In bodily action the agent perceptually selects, and in this way perceptually attends to, relevant information so as to guide the execution of specific movements. Since perceptual attention is a necessary part of solving the Many-Many Problem, it is a necessary part of bodily action. Indeed, the process of implementing a solution to the Many-Many Problem, as constrained by the agent's motivational state, just is the agent's performing an intentional bodily action in the relevant way. (shrink)

Recently four different papers have suggested that the supervaluational solution to the Problem of the Many is flawed. Stephen Schiffer (1998, 2000a, 2000b) has argued that the theory cannot account for reports of speech involving vague singular terms. Vann McGee and Brian McLaughlin (2000) say that theory cannot, yet, account for vague singular beliefs. Neil McKinnon (2002) has argued that we cannot provide a plausible theory of when precisifications are acceptable, which the supervaluational theory needs. And Roy Sorensen (...) (2000) argues that supervaluationism is inconsistent with a directly referential theory of names. McGee and McLaughlin see the problem they raise as a cause for further research, but the other authors all take the problems they raise to provide sufficient reasons to jettison supervaluationism. I will argue that none of these problems provide such a reason, though the arguments are valuable critiques. In many cases, we must make some adjustments to the supervaluational theory to meet the posed challenges. The goal of this paper is to make those adjustments, and meet the challenges. (shrink)

This article states that research in skill acquisitionand executionhas underestimated the relevance of some features of attention. We present and theoretically discuss two essential features of attention that have been systematically overlooked in the research of skill acquisitionandexecution. First, attention alters the appearance of the perceived stimuli in an essential way; and second, attention plays a fundamental role in action, being crucial for solving the so called ’many-many problem’, that is to say, the problem of generating (...) a coherent behavior byselecting between many inputs and many potential outputs. We discuss the importance of these features for skill acquisition in sport. We also suggest empirical ways to assess the precise impact of taking them into consideration and at the same time we propose important implications for training derived from the ideas discussed in the paper. (shrink)

The many-property problem has traditionally been taken to show that the adverbial theory of perception is untenable. This paper first shows that several widely accepted views concerning the nature of perception---including both representational and non-representational views---likewise face the many-property problem. It then presents a solution to the many-property problem for these views, but goes on to show how this solution can be adapted to provide a novel, fully compositional solution to the many-property (...) class='Hi'>problem for adverbialism. Thus, with respect to the many-property problem, adverbialism and several widely accepted views in the philosophy of perception are on a par, and the problem is solved. (shrink)

The chapter unfolds in the following sections. The first section exam- ines the reasons for claiming that olfactory perception is spatially unstruc- tured and our experience of smells has an abstract structure. The second section elucidates the further arguments that olfaction cannot generate figure-ground segregation. The third section assesses the conclusion that olfactory perception and experience cannot solve the MPP. Following the overview of the many problems inherent to distal olfactory percep- tion, MST will be introduced as an alternative (...) perspective that allows for figure-ground segregation and perceiving multiple olfactory objects within an array. The chapter then concludes by replying to the shared argument that olfactory distal perception does not have the requisite res- olution to resolve the many properties problem. (shrink)

This paper poses a problem of promiscuity for views that endorse material constitution as a metaphysic relation.

Adverbialists propose to analyse sentences of the form ‘Jane has a blue afterimage’ as ‘Jane afterimages blue-ly’. One commonly raised objection to adverbialism is the many-property problem, the problem of accounting for sentences that seem to ascribe more than one property to an afterimage . Plausible responses to this objection may be on offer. In this note, however, I will argue that the many-property problem resurfaces at the level of relations and that, at this level, (...) no solution for the problem is in sight. (shrink)

This paper has two principal goals. The first is to set out a bit of conceptual cartography, mapping out a number of distinct conceptual issues that are frequently conflated in the vast literature on multiple realization. The second is to review very briefly how work by Carl Gillett and myself attempts to address a few of the many problems of multiple realization. One of these is explaining what Jerry Fodor apparently took to be mysterious, namely, how multiple realization of (...) properties is possible. (shrink)

Naive mereology studies ordinary, common-sense beliefs about part and whole. Some of the speculations in this article on naive mereology do not bear directly on Peter van Inwagen's "Material Beings". The other topics, (1) and (2), both do. (1) Here is an example of Peter Unger's "Problem of the Many". How can a table be a collection of atoms when many collections of atoms have equally strong claims to be that table? Van Inwagen invokes fuzzy sets to (...) solve this problem. I claim that an alternative treatment of vagueness, supervaluations over many-value valuations, provides a better solution. (2) The Special Composition Question asks how parts compose a whole. One who rejects van Inwagen's answer in terms of constituting a life need not provide some alternative answer. Even if all answers to the Special Question fail, there are a multitude of less general composition questions that are not so difficult. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that what is often discussed under the umbrella of `spacetime emergence' in the philosophy of quantum gravity in fact consists of a plethora of distinct and even highly different problems. We therefore advocate to cast such debates more specifically in terms of the emergent spatiotemporal aspects, as is already done in the physics literature. We first show how ambiguous the notion of spacetime is already in general relativity. We then argue against three ways to reject (...) our call for specificity: the many distinct philosophical problems relating to the emergence of the various spatiotemporal aspects do not suggest any singular, overarching, or exceptional problem of spacetime emergence. We also discuss how the objections are reflected by five conceptions of spacetime. Next, we observe that different spatiotemporal aspects are emergent in the different quantum gravity approaches, whereby investigating emergence in quantum gravity collectively is problematic. Finally, we illustrate how philosophical inquiries that employ notions of spacetime emergence are aided by conducting the investigation at the level of specific spatiotemporal aspects. (shrink)

According to noncognitivism, normative beliefs are just desire-like attitudes. While noncognitivists have devoted great effort to explaining the nature of normative belief, they have said little about all of the other attitudes we take towards normative matters. Many of us desire to do the right thing. We sometimes wonder whether our conduct is morally permissible; we hope that it is, and occasionally fear that it is not. This gives rise to what Schroeder calls the 'Many Attitudes Problem': (...) the problem of developing a plausible noncognitivist account of the full range of attitudes that we take towards normative matters. This paper explores the problem and proposes a solution. (shrink)

The structural representation (S-representation) account provides an increasingly popular way of understanding the role and value of representation in cognitive science. Yet critics remain unconvinced that the account has the resources to rescue representationalism. This paper reviews problems faced by the S-representation account. In doing so, it offers a novel taxonomy that divides objections into two broad camps that ought to be disambiguated: ‘conceptual’ and ‘empirical’. It further shows how these objections can be met, bolstering existing responses in the literature (...) with novel solutions, thus strengthening the S-representation account. Finally, this paper suggests that the types of objections identified provide a generalisable taxonomy for a better understanding of any version of anti-representationalism. Thus, this review is of value to the representation debate more broadly. (shrink)

Dion is a full-bodied man. Theon is that part of him which consists of all of him except his left foot. What becomes of Dion and Theon when Dion’s left foot is amputated? In Burke 1994, employing the doctrine of sortal essentialism, I defended a surprising position last defended by Chrysippus: that Dion survives while the seemingly unscathed Theon perishes. This paper defends that position against objections by Stone, Carter, Olson, and others. Most notably, it offers a novel, conservative solution (...) to the many-thinkers problem, a solution that enables us to accept the existence of brain-containing person-parts while denying that those person-parts are thinking, conscious beings. (shrink)

One of the most influential traditional objections to Adverbialism about perceptual experience is that posed by Frank Jackson’s ‘many property problem’. Perhaps largely because of this objection, few philosophers now defend Adverbialism. We argue, however, that the essence of the many property problem arises for all of the leading metaphysical theories of experience: all leading theories must simply take for granted certain facts about experience, and no theory looks well positioned to explain the facts in a (...) straightforward way. Because of this, the many property problem isn’t on its own a good reason for rejecting Adverbialism; and nor is it a puzzle that will decide amongst the other leading theories. (shrink)

Attitudinal embeddings, such as ‘I hope that murder is wrong’ or ‘she is glad that eating meat is not wrong’ are a less substantial problem for expressivists than is standardly thought. If expressivists are entitled to talk of normative beliefs, they can explain what it is to for an attitude to be semantically related to a normative content in terms of being functionally related to a belief with a normative content.

Special divine action is an integral part of the Christian worldview. In fact, the plausibility of the Christian worldview depends on and is grounded in the putative reality, and therefore possibility, of special divine action. Without special divine action, Scripture does not make sense, and without Scripture, Christianity neither. However, the possibility of special divine action is highly contested in almost every field of human enquiry. In what follows, I briefly suggest a minimal definition of special divine action and show (...) its indispensability for the internal plausibility of Christian faith. I then argue against the very possibility of special divine action. I end by way of identifying ways in which Christian theologians can respond to the arguments in order to justify the possibility of special divine action. It turns out that special divine action neither contradicts science nor metaphysics. (shrink)

David Lewis offers two solutions to the problem of the many, one of which relies on supervaluationism and the other on the notion of “almost-identity” for the most part. In this paper, I argue that Lewis’ other metaphysical views constitute reasons to prefer his second solution to the first one. Specifically, Lewis’ theory of propositions and his counterpart theory give rise to two similar problems of the many, which I call “the problem of many propositions” (...) and “the problem of many counterparts” respectively. While both Lewis’ solutions may solve the problem of the many with respect to objects in the actual world, I argue that only his second solution can solve the problem of many propositions and the problem of many counterparts. Therefore, for anyone who accepts Lewis’ metaphysical views on propositions and counterparts, they should embrace Lewis’ second solution to the problem of the many for the reason of unification. (shrink)

The multiple levels of analysis that Quartz & Sejnowski bring to bear on the phenomenon of activity-driven dendritic growth show the tight linkage of explanations from the cellular to the cognitive level. To show how multiple control regimes can intersect at the same site, I further elaborate an example of a developmental problem solved at the axodendritic connection: that of population matching.

We discuss the one–many problem as it appears in the Philebus and find that it is not restricted to the usually understood problem about the identity of universals across particulars that instantiate them (the Hylomorphic Dispersal Problem). In fact some of the most interesting aspects of the problem occur purely with respect to the relationship between Forms. We argue that contemporary metaphysicians may draw from the Philebus at least three different one–many relationships between universals (...) themselves: instantiation, subkind and part, and thereby construct three new ‘problems of the one and the many’ (an Eidetic Dispersal Problem, a Genus–Species Problem, and an Eidetic Combination Problem), which are as problematic as the version generally discussed. We then argue that this taxonomy sheds new and interesting light on certain discussions of higher-order universals in recent Australian analytic philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper I defend the classical computational account of reasoning against a range of highly influential objections, sometimes called relevance problems. Such problems are closely associated with the frame problem in artificial intelligence and, to a first approximation, concern the issue of how humans are able to determine which of a range of representations are relevant to the performance of a given cognitive task. Though many critics maintain that the nature and existence of such problems provide grounds (...) for rejecting classical computationalism, I show that this is not so. Some of these putative problems are a cause for concern only on highly implausible assumptions about the extent of our cognitive capacities, whilst others are a cause for concern only on similarly implausible views about the commitments of classical computationalism. Finally, some versions of the relevance problem are not really objections but hard research issues that any satisfactory account of cognition needs to address. I conclude by considering the diagnostic issue of why accounts of cognition in general—and classical computational accounts, in particular—have faired so poorly in addressing such research issues.Keywords: Computationalism; Frame problem; Relevance. (shrink)

We often explain by citing an absence or an omission. Apart from the problem of assigning a causal role to such apparently negative factors as absences and omissions, there is a puzzle as to why only some absences and omissions, out of indefinitely many, should figure in explanations. In this paper we solve this ’many absences problem’ by using the contrastive model of explanation. The contrastive model of explanation is developed by adapting Peter Lipton’s account. What (...) initially appears to be only a trivial amendment to Lipton’s Difference Condition enables us both to offer a much more satisfactory solution to the ’many absences problem’ than David Lewis did, and also to explain why explanation in terms of absences and omissions should be so common. (shrink)

ABSTRACTBy the Many Categories problem, I mean the prima facie violation of Ockham’s Razor by realists about universals: there is, it might seem, just too much variety. Thus, David Armstrong posits both properties and relations. He also theorises about determinates of determinables. Another influential realist, E. J. Lowe distinguishes non-substantial from substantial universals. Yet again, both Armstrong and Lowe include in their ontology abstract particulars in addition to universals. My aim in this paper is to offer a unification (...) of these categories using an operator-theory. First, I show how operators provide a theory of abstract particulars of relations and of impure relational properties. Then, using impure relational properties I derive the Fregeanion Principle. After some metaphysics of mathematics, I provide a theory of determinables. Finally, I consider kinds and substances. (shrink)

Kilimanjaro is a paradigmatic mountain, if any is. Consider atom Sparky, which is neither determinately part of Kilimanjaro nor determinately not part of it. Let Kilimanjaro(+) be the body of land constituted, in the way mountains are constituted by their constituent atoms, by the atoms that make up Kilimanjaro together with Sparky, and Kilimanjaro(–) the one constituted by those other than Sparky. On the one hand, there seems to be just one mountain in the vicinity of Kilimanjaro. On the other (...) hand, both Kilimanjaro(+) and Kilimanjaro(–)—and indeed many other similar things—seem to have an equal claim to be a mountain: all of them exhibit the grounds for something being a mountain—like being an elevation of the earth’s surface rising abruptly and to a large height from the surrounding level,1 or whathaveyou—; and there seems to be nothing in the vicinity with a better claim. Hence, the problem of the many. (shrink)

We study how to partition a set of agents in a stable way when each coalition in the partition has to share a unit of a perfectly divisible good, and each agent has symmetric single-peaked preferences on the unit interval of his potential shares. A rule on the set of preference profiles consists of a partition function and a solution. Given a preference profile, a partition is selected and as many units of the good as the number of coalitions (...) in the partition are allocated, where each unit is shared among all agents belonging to the same coalition according to the solution. A rule is stable at a preference profile if no agent strictly prefers to leave his coalition to join another coalition and all members of the receiving coalition want to admit him. We show that the proportional solution and all sequential dictator solutions admit stable partition functions. We also show that stability is a strong requirement that becomes easily incompatible with other desirable properties like efficiency, strategy-proofness, anonymity, and non-envyness. (shrink)

A serious problem for adverbialism about intentionality is the many-property problem, one major aspect of which is the claim that natural inferences between thought contents are blocked if adverbia...

Standard animalists are committed to a stringent form of restricted composition, thereby denying the existence of brains, hands, and other proper parts of an organism . One reason for positing this near-nihilistic ontology comes from various challenges to animalism such as the Thinking Parts Argument, the Unity Argument, and the Argument from the Problem of the Many. In this paper, I show that these putatively distinct arguments are all instances of a more general problem, which I call (...) the ‘Too Many Candidates Problem’ . Given my formulation of the problem, it is evident that standard animalists are mistaken in believing that restricting composition is the only solution. I show that there is another option for solving the TMC. The advantage of such a position, which I call ‘unrestricted animalism’, is that it is compatible with unrestricted composition and the existence of brains and other proper parts of an organism. I conclude by sketching several strategies one can take regarding this latter solution to the TMC. (shrink)

On a widely shared assumption, our mental states supervene on our microphysical properties – that is, microphysical supervenience is true. When this thesis is combined with the apparent truism that human persons have proper parts, a grave difficulty arises: what prevents some of these proper parts from being themselves thinkers as well? How can I know that I am a human person and not a smaller thinker enclosed in a human person? Most solutions to this puzzle make radical, if not (...) absurd, claims. Recently, however, Michael Burke and Howard Robinson proposed conservative solutions that, according to them, do not have such undesired consequences. This paper argues that the conservative solutions tacitly assume at least one of the radical ones, and therefore they provide no alternative to the extreme solutions. (shrink)