Les disciplines historiques, littéraires et philosophiques font un emploi abondant des catégories historiographiques. Parmi celles-ci, les termes en ismes sont très fréquents pour référer à une doctrine, un courant artistique, une idéologie ou des événements spécifiques. On fait cependant remarquer que ces désignations posent de nombreux problèmes d’interprétation. En particulier, que l’origine exacte d’une catégorie est souvent méconnue et que sa signification est plus équivoque qu’on ne le croit habituellement. La formation d’un terme en isme s’explique souvent dans un (...) contexte polémique et sert à condamner ou critiquer plutôt qu’à comprendre une pensée, un mouvement ou des faits historiques. Les catégories d’athéisme, de classicisme ou de féminisme en sont de bons exemples. Le présent volume vise à contribuer à l’étude critique des catégories historiographiques et des notions en isme en s’attardant à l’époque moderne (XVI e XVIII e siècles). Il s’agit d’un moment clef de l’histoire européenne pendant laquelle nombre de ces notions apparaissent ou pour laquelle l’historiographie en a fait un emploi abondant. Les chapitres en examinent la valeur théorique par rapport à une origine ou des usages, et déterminent de quelles manières elles contribuent à l’interprétation de l’histoire, de la littérature ou de la philosophie, de la Renaissance jusqu’à la Révolution française. (shrink)

Philosophers have argued about the nature and the very existence of free will for centuries. Today, many scientists and scientifically minded commentators are skeptical that it exists, especially when it is understood to require the ability to choose between alternative possibilities. If the laws of physics govern everything that happens, they argue, then how can our choices be free? Believers in free will must be misled by habit, sentiment, or religious doctrine. Why Free Will Is Real defies scientific orthodoxy (...) and presents a bold new defense of free will in the same naturalistic terms that are usually deployed against it. -/- Unlike those who defend free will by giving up the idea that it requires alternative possibilities to choose from, Christian List retains this idea as central, resisting the tendency to defend free will by watering it down. He concedes that free will and its prerequisites—intentional agency, alternative possibilities, and causal control over our actions—cannot be found among the fundamental physical features of the natural world. But, he argues, that’s not where we should be looking. Free will is a “higher-level” phenomenon found at the level of psychology. It is like other phenomena that emerge from physical processes but are autonomous from them and not best understood in fundamental physical terms—like an ecosystem or the economy. When we discover it in its proper context, acknowledging that free will is real is not just scientifically respectable; it is indispensable for explaining our world. (shrink)

Suppose that the members of a group each hold a rational set of judgments on some interconnected questions, and imagine that the group itself has to form a collective, rational set of judgments on those questions. How should it go about dealing with this task? We argue that the question raised is subject to a difficulty that has recently been noticed in discussion of the doctrinal paradox in jurisprudence. And we show that there is a general impossibility theorem that that (...) difficulty illustrates. Our paper describes this impossibility result and provides an exploration of its significance. The result naturally invites comparison with Kenneth Arrow's famous theorem (Arrow, 1963 and 1984; Sen, 1970) and we elaborate that comparison in a companion paper (List and Pettit, 2002). The paper is in four sections. The first section documents the need for various groups to aggregate its members' judgments; the second presents the discursive paradox; the third gives an informal statement of the more general impossibility result; the formal proof is presented in an appendix. The fourth section, finally, discusses some escape routes from that impossibility. (shrink)

My object is to suggest some ways of amplifying and applying Bochenski's account, 1 in order to bring out its value for philosophical investigation of the doctrines of particular religious communities.

Peut-on écrire une histoire de la philosophie au XXe siècle? N'est-ce pas trop tôt pour le faire? Les raisons ne manquent pas de reculer devant un tel projet. La philosophie du XXe siècle est si riche qu'il est difficile de l'embrasser dans sa dimension internationale. Et ce siècle est lui-même difficile à isoler de ceux qui le précèdent.Il valait pourtant la peine de relever le défi, et de tenter cette expérience inédite, tout au moins sous une forme aussi ambitieuse. En (...) regard de la confusion régnante, il devient d'autant plus urgent de mettre en perspective les débats contemporains. Les philosophes eux-mêmes en ont besoin, le grand public aussi, ainsi que les étudiants. Ce livre n'a pas d'autre ambition que de les y aider, en leur fournissant sous une forme accessible un maximum d'informations.Bien entendu, il ne s'agit pas d'un simple répertoire, d'une collection de dates, d'auteurs et de doctrines (même si, en fait, on y trouve toutes celles qui ont compté). Quelques grands débats ont dominé le siècle : il importe à la fois d'en préciser les thèmes et d'en ressaisir les enjeux. L'auteur a donc pris ses responsabilités. Il a fait des choix. Il les soumet à la discussion, tout en s'efforçant de les justifier par les arguments les plus objectifs possibles. (shrink)

The ``doctrinal paradox'' or ``discursive dilemma'' shows that propositionwise majority voting over the judgments held by multiple individuals on some interconnected propositions can lead to inconsistent collective judgments on these propositions. List and Pettit (2002) have proved that this paradox illustrates a more general impossibility theorem showing that there exists no aggregation procedure that generally produces consistent collective judgments and satisfies certain minimal conditions. Although the paradox and the theorem concern the aggregation of judgments rather than preferences, they invite comparison (...) with two established results on the aggregation of preferences: the Condorcet paradox and Arrow's impossibility theorem. We may ask whether the new impossibility theorem is a special case of Arrow's theorem, or whether there are interesting disanalogies between the two results. In this paper, we compare the two theorems, and show that they are not straightforward corollaries of each other. We further suggest that, while the framework of preference aggregation can be mapped into the framework of judgment aggregation, there exists no obvious reverse mapping. Finally, we address one particular minimal condition that is used in both theorems – an independence condition – and suggest that this condition points towards a unifying property underlying both impossibility results. (shrink)

Political theorists have offered many accounts of collective decision-making under pluralism. I discuss a key dimension on which such accounts differ: the importance assigned not only to the choices made but also to the reasons underlying those choices. On that dimension, different accounts lie in between two extremes. The ‘minimal liberal account’ holds that collective decisions should be made only on practical actions or policies and that underlying reasons should be kept private. The ‘comprehensive deliberative account’ stresses the importance of (...) giving reasons for collective decisions, where such reasons should also be collectively decided. I compare these two accounts on the basis of a formal model developed in the growing literature on the ‘discursive dilemma’ and ‘judgment aggregation’ and address several questions: What is the trade-off between the (minimal liberal) demand for reaching agreement on outcomes and the (comprehensive deliberative) demand for reason-giving? How large should the ‘sphere of public reason’ be? When do the decision procedures suggested by the two accounts agree and when not? How good are these procedures at truthtracking on factual matters? What strategic incentives do they generate for decision-makers? My discussion identifies what is at stake in the choice between minimal liberal and comprehensive deliberative accounts of collective decisionmaking, and sheds light not only on these two ideal-typical accounts themselves, but also on many characteristics that intermediate accounts share with them. (shrink)

The doctrine of creation and the knowledge of nature have come into tension in modernity. Against this background, the article discusses the basic problems of a theology of nature starting from a systematic theology of religious communication. Dogmatic statements about the world as God’s creation are not about a description of nature and reality but about a reflexive account of Christian–religious communication. The object of the doctrine of creation is thus the world-related contents of the Christian (...) religion as well as the function these have in it. Thus, both the critique of the representational version of the doctrinal tradition’s conception of creation and its reflexive turn in 20th-century Protestant theology are taken up and carried forward in such a way that the belief in creation is not understood as a general qualification of the world but is related to the concrete contents of religious communication. Contribution: The article proposes a new formulation of the traditional doctrine of creation on the basis of a systematic theology of religious communication. This approach is intended to avoid a coexistence of religious belief in creation and scientific explanation of the world, as well as their being pushed into one another. By transferring the belief in creation to Christian–religious communication, the latter thematises how religious contents are created in the Christian religion. (shrink)

Like many of their counterparts in the West, Buddhist philosophers realized a long time ago that our linguistic and conceptual practices are rooted in pre-predicative modes of apprehension that provide implicit access to whatever is immediately present to awareness. This paper examines Dignāga’s and Dharmakīrti’s contributions to what has come to be known as “Buddhist epistemology” (sometimes referred in the specialist literature by the Sanskrit neologism pramāṇavāda, lit. “doctrine of epistemic warrants”), focusing on the phenomenological and epistemic role of (...) perception and self-awareness. The central argument is that reliance on accurate observations and on an understanding of the contextual and dispositional factors that constrain, condition, and direct our perceptual and intentional states gives this tradition of epistemic inquiry a pragmatic focus unique in premodern Indian philosophy. (shrink)

Perhaps no other classical philosophical tradition, East or West, offers a more complex and counter-intuitive account of mind and mental phenomena than Buddhism. While Buddhists share with other Indian philosophers the view that the domain of the mental encompasses a set of interrelated faculties and processes, they do not associate mental phenomena with the activity of a substantial, independent, and enduring self or agent. Rather, Buddhist theories of mind center on the doctrine of no-self (Pāli anatta, Skt.[1] anātma), which (...) postulates that human beings are reducible to the physical and psychological constituents and processes which comprise them. (shrink)

This paper provides an introductory review of the theory of judgment aggregation. It introduces the paradoxes of majority voting that originally motivated the field, explains several key results on the impossibility of propositionwise judgment aggregation, presents a pedagogical proof of one of those results, discusses escape routes from the impossibility and relates judgment aggregation to some other salient aggregation problems, such as preference aggregation, abstract aggregation and probability aggregation. The present illustrative rather than exhaustive review is intended to give readers (...) new to the field of judgment aggregation a sense of this rapidly growing research area. (shrink)

Practical reasoning is a process of reasoning that concludes in an intention. One example is reasoning from intending an end to intending what you believe is a necessary means: 'I will leave the next buoy to port; in order to do that I must tack; so I'll tack', where the first and third sentences express intentions and the second sentence a belief. This sort of practical reasoning is supported by a valid logical derivation, and therefore seems uncontrovertible. A more contentious (...) example is normative practical reasoning of the form 'I ought to φ, so I'll φ', where 'I ought to φ' expresses a normative belief and 'I'll φ' an intention. This has at least some characteristics of reasoning, but there are also grounds for doubting that it is genuine reasoning. One objection is that it seems inappropriate to derive an intention to φ from a belief that you ought to φ, rather than a belief that you ought to intend to φ. Another is that you may not be able to go through this putative process of reasoning, and this inability might disqualify it from being reasoning. A third objection is that it violates the Humean doctrine that reason alone cannot motivate any action of the will. This paper investigates these objections. (shrink)

There appears to be a widespread belief that the social sciences during the 1950s and 1960s can be characterized by an almost unquestioned faith in a positivist philosophy of science. In contrast, the article shows that even within the narrower segment of Cold War social science, positivism was not an unquestioned doctrine blindly followed by everybody, but that quite divergent views coexisted. The article analyses two ‘techniques of prospection’, the Delphi technique and political gaming, from the perspective of a (...) comprehensive set of ideas attributed to ‘positivism’. Both techniques were developed in the early 1950s by researchers at the RAND Corporation, a Californian think tank with tight relations to the US Air Force. Despite the closeness of origin, the two techniques show considerable differences in their basic epistemologies. The article thus concludes that more important than positivism in uniting US Cold War social science was the shared sense of urgency and of the potential of social science to put decision-making in foreign policy on a rational basis. In this sense, as far as the Cold War social sciences were of a piece, they were made so by the sense of danger and urgency of action evoked by the image of the Iron Curtain. (shrink)

This essay discusses Paul Tillich’s concept of anxiety. In his book The Courage to Be, Tillich speaks of a correlation between an ontology of anxiety and an ontology of courage. The essay explains this relation against the background of the development of Tillich’s works. The roots of the correlation between anxiety and courage can be found in Tillich’s concept of religion on the basis of the doctrine of justification, which he continually worked out back to his early writings. He (...) uses this understanding of religion for his description of modern culture. Anxiety and courage are the two aspects in which God is disclosed in human consciousness. (shrink)

In the late 19th century, a comprehensive semantics of crowds emerged in European social theory, dominated in particular by Gustave Le Bon and Gabriel Tarde. This article extracts two essential, but widely neglected, sociological arguments from this semantics. First, the idea that irrationality is intrinsic to society and, second, the claim that individuality is plastic rather than constitutive. By following the destiny of this semantics in its American reception, the article demonstrates how American scholars soon transformed the conception of crowds. (...) Most importantly, the theoretical cornerstone of the European semantics, the notion of suggestion, was severely challenged in the USA. It is argued that this rejection of the suggestion doctrine paved the way for a distinctive American approach to crowds and collective behaviour in which the early European emphasis on irrationality was ignored and crowds were analysed as rational entities. This may have relieved the discomfort of irrationality but it is also entirely disposed of what were in fact crucial sociological insights. The article recalls the semantics of crowds in order to evoke an early branch of social theory that still contains a provocative gesture. (shrink)

On 31 August 2001 in Lima, Peru, Christian Pardo Reyes started a campaign – operating through events and publications – to introduce a quota system to reflect the need to involve youth at all levels of government power. His organisation became the Internacional Juvenil. To achieve its goals, it established strong relationships with other youth organisations, state agencies and influential political leaders. Here Christian Pardo Reyes tells the story.

Drawing on the so-called “doctrinal paradox”, List and Pettit (2002) have shown that, given an unrestricted domain condition, there exists no procedure for aggregating individual sets of judgments over multiple interconnected propositions into corresponding collective ones, where the procedure satisfies some minimal conditions similar to the conditions of Arrow’s theorem. I prove that we can avoid the paradox and the associated impossibility result by introducing an appropriate domain restriction: a structure condition, called unidimensional alignment, is shown to open up a (...) possibility result, similar in spirit to Black’s median voter theorem. Specifically, I prove that, given unidimensional alignment, propositionwise majority voting is the unique procedure for aggregating individual sets of judgments into collective ones in accordance with the above mentioned minimal conditions. (shrink)

Many groups make decisions over multiple interconnected propositions. The “doctrinal paradox” or “discursive dilemma” shows that propositionwise majority voting can generate inconsistent collective sets of judgments, even when individual sets of judgments are all consistent. I develop a simple model for determining the probability of the paradox, given various assumptions about the probability distribution of individual sets of judgments, including impartial culture and impartial anonymous culture assumptions. I prove several convergence results, identifying when the probability of the paradox converges to (...) 1, and when it converges to 0, as the number of individuals increases. Drawing on the Condorcet jury theorem and work by Bovens and Rabinowicz , I use the model to assess the “truth-tracking” performance of two decision procedures, the premise- and conclusion-based procedures. I compare the present results with existing results on the probability of Condorcet’s paradox. I suggest that the doctrinal paradox is likely to occur under plausible conditions. (shrink)

The doctrine of the moral equality of combatants holds that combatants on either side of a war have equal moral status, even if one side is fighting a just war while the other is not. This chapter examines arguments that have been offered for and against this doctrine, including the collectivist position famously articulated by Walzer and McMahan’s influential individualist critique. We also explore collectivist positions that have rejected the moral equality doctrine and arguments that some individualists (...) have offered in its favor. We defend a non-categorical version of the moral equality doctrine, according to which combatants on either side of a just war sometimes (but not always) have equal moral status. On our view, some degree of culpability is necessary for liability, and non-culpable combatants may therefore sometimes remain non-liable even when they fight for an unjust cause. (shrink)

In a recent paper on ‘The Many as One’, Lewis A. Kornhauser and Lawrence G. Sager look at an issue that we take to be of great importance in political theory. How far should groups in public life try to speak with one voice, and act with one mind? How far should public groups try to display what Ronald Dworkin calls integrity? We do not expect the many on the market to be integrated in this sense. But should we expect (...) integration among the many in the legislature, for example, or among the many on the courts? We agree with Kornhauser and Sager about a number of their claims but think that they miss out on important detail and do not achieve a fully general perspective on the issues raised. Our own contribution is in three sections. We address, first, the nature of the integrity challenge; second, the range of cases in which the challenge arises; and third, the question of whether public groups should be designed and required to meet that challenge. (shrink)

This essay explores doctrinal issues in the philosophical and theological debates on human nature and self-love in the early 18th century. It focuses on the arguments between the Scottish philosopher and theologian Archibald Campbell and the Committee for Purity of Doctrine concerning Campbell’s Enquiry into the Original of Moral Virtue (1733). These centre in particular on Campbell’s supposedly unorthodox account of self-love as a virtuous principle and the connected more general view of human nature as tending towards virtue. A (...) comparison with the situation in Geneva shows that similar views were held by influential theologians such as Jean-Alphonse Turrettini and Jacob Vernet. (shrink)

Are groups ever capable of bearing responsibility, over and above their individual members? This chapter discusses and defends the view that certain organized collectives – namely, those that qualify as group moral agents – can be held responsible for their actions, and that group responsibility is not reducible to individual responsibility. The view has important implications. It supports the recognition of corporate civil and even criminal liability in our legal systems, and it suggests that, by recognizing group agents as loci (...) of responsibility, we may be able to avoid “responsibility gaps” in some cases of collectively caused harms for which there is a shortfall of individual responsibility. The chapter further asks whether the view that certain groups are responsible agents commits us to the view that those groups should also be given rights of their own and gives a qualified negative answer. (shrink)

Attempts to provide a thoroughly naturalized reading of the doctrine of karma have raised important issues regarding its role in the overall economy of the Buddhist soteriological project. This paper identifies some of the most problematic aspects of a naturalized interpretation of karma: (1) the strained relationship between retributive action and personal identity, and (2) the debate concerning mental causation in modern reductionist accounts of persons. The paper explores the benefits of a phenomenological approach in which reductionist accounts of (...) karma are replaced with accounts that interpret virtuous and compassionate actions as emergent properties of consciousness that can be further enhanced through socialization. (shrink)

According to Aristotle, the way in which the parts of a whole are is different from the way in which the whole exists. Parts of an object are only potentially, whereas the whole exists actually. Although commentators agree that Aristotle held this doctrine, little effort has been made to spell out precisely what it could mean to say that the parts are only potentially. In this paper, I shall attempt to elucidate that claim and explain the philosophical motivation behind (...) it. I will argue that the motivation of mereological potentialism is to account for the unity of material substance. For a part to be potentially is, I will argue, a form of ontological dependence of the part on the whole. Potential parts have their being as a possible division of the whole. I will further explain this by specifying how the parts are grounded in the capacities of the whole and how the parts are individuated by the whole. (shrink)

English summary: This volume looks at the so far little studied connections between the philosophy of Schelling and the historiographic waves in theological, philosophical and historical discourse during the first half of the 19th century. The reception of Schelling in theology, philosophy and history relates primarily to his writings around 1800. The essays in this volume firstly analyze the considerable impact that these texts had on the structure of contemporary debate. Secondly, they analyze the interdependence of the historical theology that (...) was beginning to take root and Schelling's emerging later philosophy. Thirdly, they examine the reception of Schelling's philosophy of history from the perspective of Friedrich Schleiermacher and historical academic discourse, as well as David Friedrich Strauss, Ferdinand Christian Baur and the Landhut Romantics. German description: Der vorliegende Band thematisiert die bislang nur wenig erforschten Zusammenhange zwischen der Philosophie Schellings und den Historisierungsschuben in den theologischen, philosophischen und geschichtswissenschaftlichen Diskursen der ersten Halfte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Die Rezeption Schellings in Theologie, Philosophie und Geschichtswissenschaft bezieht sich vor allem auf dessen Schriften um 1800. Die Beitrage des Bandes untersuchen sowohl die breite Wirkung dieser Texte in den zeitgenossischen Debattenkonstellationen sowie die Wechselwirkungen zwischen der sich etablierenden historischen Theologie und der Herausbildung von Schellings Spatphilosophie als auch die Rezeption der Geschichtsphilosophie Schellings bei Friedrich Schleiermacher sowie in den geschichtswissenschaftlichen Diskursen, bei David Friedrich Strauss, Ferdinand Christian Baur sowie in der Landshuter Romantik. Mit Beitragen von: Christopher Arnold, Ulrich Barth, Christian Danz, Georg Essen, Malte Dominik Kruger, Christof Landmesser, Michael Murrmann-Kahl, Georg Neugebauer, Jan Rohls, Oliver Wintzek, Johannes Zachhuber. (shrink)

In this paper, I will present an argument against Husserl’s analysis of picture consciousness. Husserl’s analysis of picture consciousness (as it can be found primarily in the recently translated volume Husserliana 23) moves from a theory of depiction in general to a theory of perceptual imagination. Though, I think that Husserl’s thesis that picture consciousness is different from depictive and linguistic consciousness is legitimate, and that Husserl’s phenomenology avoids the errors of linguistic theories, such as Goodman’s, I submit that his (...) overall theory is unacceptable, especially when it is applied to works of art. Regarding art, the main problem of Husserl’s theory is the assumption that pictures are constituted primarily as a conflict between perception/physical picture thing and imagination/picture object. Against this mentalist claim, I maintain, from a hermeneutic point of view, that pictures are the result of perceptual formations [Bildungen]. I then claim that Husserl’s theory fails, since it does not take into account what I call “plastic perception” [Bildliches Sehen], which plays a prominent role not only within the German tradition of art education but also within German art itself. In this connection, “plastic thinking” [Bildliches Denken] was prominent especially in Klee, in Kandinsky, and in Beuys, as well as in the overall doctrine of the Bauhaus. Ultimately, I argue that Husserl’s notion of picture consciousness and general perceptive imaginary consciousness must be replaced with a more dynamic model of the perception of pictures and art work that takes into account (a) the constructive and plastic moment, (b) the social dimension and (c) the genetic dimension of what it means to see something in something (Wollheim). (shrink)

Gold & Stoljar's target article is important because it shows the limitations of neurobiological theories of the mind more powerfully than previous philosophical criticisms, especially those that focus on the subjective nature of experience and those that use considerations from philosophy of language to argue for the holism of the mental. They use less controversial assumptions and clearer arguments, the conclusions of which are applicable to the whole of neuroscience. Their conclusions can be applied to psychiatry to argue that, contrary (...) to many researchers' assumptions, the approaches to both understanding and treating mental disorders must be interdisciplinary. (shrink)

It is not asserted that an actual occasion excludes other occasions in the sense that it is completely independent of or isolated from them. This is an element in the 'traditional' doctrine of substance which Whitehead regards as fundamentally false. Nor will exclusiveness be asserted in any sense which is incompatible with what I understand to be Whitehead's doctrine of objectification, which is his theory of how one actual entity is 'present in' another. Nothing could be clearer from (...) Whitehead's writings than the fact that he means to say that actual occasions are 'present in' or included by other actual occasions. There is no intention of denying this obvious fact. (shrink)

It is not asserted that an actual occasion excludes other occasions in the sense that it is completely independent of or isolated from them. This is an element in the 'traditional' doctrine of substance which Whitehead regards as fundamentally false. Nor will exclusiveness be asserted in any sense which is incompatible with what I understand to be Whitehead's doctrine of objectification, which is his theory of how one actual entity is 'present in' another. Nothing could be clearer from (...) Whitehead's writings than the fact that he means to say that actual occasions are 'present in' or included by other actual occasions. There is no intention of denying this obvious fact. (shrink)

Do the two rival schools of Indian Buddhist philosophy, Madhyamaka and Yogācāra, share more in common than it may appear at first blush? Interpretation of Madhyamaka that see it as a philosophical enterprise concerned with language games, conceptual holism, and the limits of philosophical discourse, it is argued, miss the point about its distinctly epistemic concern with conventions of everyday practice. Likewise, interpretations of Yogācāra that regard it as a form of pure idealism overlook its uniquely phenomenological epistemology. Offering a (...) detailed analysis of the two-truths and three natures doctrines, this paper makes the case for continuity while examine the impact of philosophical trends in modern approaches to Buddhist philosophy. (shrink)

American society has a history of turning to physicians during times of extreme need, from plagues in the past to recent outbreaks of communicable diseases. This public instinct comes from a deep seated trust in physician duty that has been earned over the centuries through dedicated and selfless care, often in the face of personal risks. As dangers facing our communities include terroristic events physicians must be adequately prepared to respond, both medically and ethically. While the ethical principles that govern (...) physician behavior—beneficence, nonmaleficence, autonomy, and social justice—are unchanging, fundamental doctrines must change with the new risks inherent to terroristic events. Responding to mass casualty disasters caused by terrorists, natural calamities, and combat continue to be challenging frontiers in medicine. Preparing physicians to deal with the consequences of a terroristic disease must include understanding the ethical challenges that can occur. (shrink)

This article discusses Archibald Campbell’s (1691-1756) early writings on religion, and the reactions they provoked from conservative orthodox Presbyterians. Purportedly against the Deist Matthew Tindal, Campbell crucially argued for two claims, namely (i) for the reality of immutable moral laws of nature, and (ii) for the incapacity of natural reason, or the light of nature, to discover the fundamental truths of religion, in particular the existence and perfections of God, and the immortality of the soul. In an episode that had (...) its peak in 1735 and 1736, a Committee for Purity of Doctrine of the Church of Scotland scrutinised Campbell’s writings. It attacked the second claim as contradicting Calvinist doctrines concerning the universal guilt of mankind after the Fall, and the first claim as contradicting doctrines concerning justification and salvation, and as supporting Deism. The study of this episode reveals new aspects of how the struggle to define orthodoxy crystallised in philosophical and theological debates in Scotland at the dawn of the Enlightenment, and before the rise of the Moderates. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to introduce the theory of judgment aggregation, a growing interdisciplinary research area. The theory addresses the following question: How can a group of individuals make consistent collective judgments on a given set of propositions on the basis of the group members' individual judgments on them? I begin by explaining the observation that initially sparked the interest in judgment aggregation, the so-called "doctinal" and "discursive paradoxes". I then introduce the basic formal model of judgment aggregation, (...) which allows me to present some illustrative variants of a generic impossibility result. I subsequently turn to the question of how this impossibility result can be avoided, going through several possible escape routes. Finally, I relate the theory of judgment aggregation to other branches of aggregation theory. Rather than offering a comprehensive survey of the theory of judgment aggregation, I hope to introduce the theory in a succinct and pedagogical way, providing an illustrative rather than exhaustive coverage of some of its key ideas and results. (shrink)

Just as different sciences deal with different facts—say, physics versus biology—so we may ask a similar question about normative theories. Is normative political theory concerned with the same normative facts as moral theory or different ones? By developing an analogy with the sciences, we argue that the normative facts of political theory belong to a higher— more coarse-grained—level than those of moral theory. The latter are multiply realizable by the former: competing facts at the moral level can underpin the same (...) facts at the political one. Consequently, some questions that moral theories answer are indeterminate at the political level. This proposal offers a novel interpretation of John Rawls’s idea that, in public reasoning, we should abstract away from comprehensive moral doctrines. We contrast our distinction between facts at different levels with the distinction between admissible and inadmissible evidence and discuss some implications for the practice of political theory. (shrink)

This article presents an edited excerpt from a hitherto unknown fragmentary treatise by Rush Rhees. In the treatise, Rhees gives his account of the problem of continuity that he had started elaborating before he became acquainted with Wittgenstein. The excerpt, which contains Rhees' original distinction between outer and inner surfaces of bodies, builds on Brentano's theory of the continuum and his doctrine of plerosis. This treatment of continuity sheds light on Rhees' early philosophical development and confirms that even though (...) he and Wittgenstein discussed the problem of continuity, Rhees' own approach remained distinct from that of Wittgenstein. (shrink)

This article presents an edited excerpt from a hitherto unknown fragmentary treatise by Rush Rhees. In the treatise, Rhees gives his account of the problem of continuity that he had started elaborating before he became acquainted with Wittgenstein. The excerpt, which contains Rhees' original distinction between outer and inner surfaces of bodies, builds on Brentano's theory of the continuum and his doctrine of plerosis. This treatment of continuity sheds light on Rhees' early philosophical development and confirms that even though (...) he and Wittgenstein discussed the problem of continuity, Rhees' own approach remained distinct from that of Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Brings together the key writings of Ferdinand Christian Baur across theology, biblical studies, early Christian history, and philosophy, showing his crucial role in the development of 19th-century thought.

The problem of free will is associated with a specific and significant kind of control over our actions, which is understood primarily in the sense that we have the freedom to do otherwise or the capacity for self‐determination. Is Buddhism compatible with such a conception of free will? The aim of this article is to address three critical issues concerning the free will problem: (1) what role should accounts of physical and neurobiological processes play in discussions of free will? (2) (...) Is a conception of mental autonomy grounded in practices of meditative cultivation compatible with the three cardinal Buddhist doctrines of momentariness, dependent arising, and no‐self? (3) Are there enough resources in Buddhism, given its antisubstantialist metaphysics, to account for personal agency, self‐control, and moral responsibility? (shrink)

To most interpreters, the case seems to be clear: Plotinus identifies matter and evil, as he bluntly states in Enn. 1.8[51] that 'last matter' is 'evil', and even 'evil itself'. In this paper, I challenge this view: how and why should Plotinus have thought of matter, the sense-making ἔσχατον of his derivational ontology from the One and Good, evil? A rational reconstruction of Plotinus's tenets should neither accept the paradox that evil comes from Good, nor shirk the arduous task of (...) interpreting Plotinus's texts on evil as a fitting part of his philosophy on the whole. Therefore, I suggest a reading of evil in Plotinus as the outcome of an incongruent interaction of matter and soul, maintaining simultaneously that neither soul nor matter are to be considered as bad or evil. When Plotinus calls matter evil, he does so metonymically denoting matter's totally passive potentiality as perceived by the toiling soul trying to act upon it as a form-bringer. As so often, Plotinus is speaking quoad nos here rather than referring to 'matter per se' (for Plotinus, somewhat of an oxymoron) which, as mere potentiality (and nothing else) is not nor can be evil. In short: matter is no more evil than the melancholy evening sky is melancholy -- not in itself (for it isn't), but as to its impression on us who contemplate it. As I buttress this view, it will also become clear that matter cannot tritely be considered to be the αὐτὸ κακόν as a prima facie-reading of Enn. 1.8[51] might powerfully suggest, but that the αὐτὸ κακόν, far from being a principle of its own, has to be interpreted within the dynamics of Plotinus's philosophical thinking as a unique, though numerously applicable flaw-pattern for all the single κακά (hence the Platonic αὐτό). To conclude, I shall offer a short outlook on the consistency of this interpretation with Plotinus's teaching on the soul and with the further Neoplatonic development of the doctrine of evil. (shrink)