Brian Medlin has excluded the possibility of something being self-explanatory in anything but a logical sense. Hence any non-logical necessity has always to be in terms of something other than the explicand. In this context, the principle of sufficient reason cannot escape contraction to a form so patently useless that no proponent of the contingency argument would want to employ it. Many of the objections in Section 4 have point, however, only against an argument which uses such (...) an unacceptable form of the principle.The objections in Section 5 are directed against an argument framed in the only other way allowable under Medlin’s dichotomy, but which is of no use to the theist, for the simple-reason that its conclusion is not existential in the required (present actuality) sense. Objections against such an argument would concern the theist only if their validity were so wide as to embrace a truly existential argument as well. As we have-seen it is in just that case that they break down.In neither Section 4 nor 5, therefore, does the article come to grips with the contingency argument. The objections leave it untouched, because neither of Medlin’s notions of contingency and necessity corresponds to that which is operative in the argument. (shrink)

The Heythrop Journal, Volume 63, Issue 2, Page 223-231, March 2022.

If the 1960’s did not see a resurgence of belief in God, they at least witnessed a renewed interest in him, stimulated by die writings of Harvey Cox, John Robinson and the so-called death-of-God theologians. These were concerned with the phenomenon of the ‘absence of God’, so called because, for all the difference he seemed to make in the day-to-day business of nations and cultures, God might just as well not exist. Whatever knowledge gaps may previously have existed have already (...) been plugged either in fact or in principle, and this without any explanation involving a God. The universe no longer seems to point beyond itself, but seems, on the contrary, pretty clearly self-sufficient. In such circumstances the ground has been cut from under anyone wanting to say that God exists. And if the claim continues to be made, it is from a philosophical viewpoint quite gratuitous. (shrink)

According to classical theism, God is simple. However, contemporary objections to divine simplicity abound. One of those objections has received a lot of attention recently: the contingency objection. The objection is taken to pose a threat to God's freedom. Tomaszewski argues that the argument that supports the contingency objection, however, is invalid. Herein, I supply two valid versions of the argument; thus, the classical theist is required to defuse the argument.

Cosmological arguments from contingency attempt to show that there is a necessarily existing god‐like being on the basis of the fact that any concrete things exist at all. Such arguments are built out of the following components: (i) a causal principle that applies to non‐necessary entities of a certain category; (ii) a reason to think that if the causal principle is true, then there would have to be a necessarily existing concrete thing; (iii) a reason to think that the (...) necessarily existing thing would be god‐like. In this essay, I discuss various ways of developing each of these components to produce an argument from contingency, and I point out classic objections and replies along the way. I also make note of some of the most recent developments in arguments from contingency and point out avenues for future research. (shrink)

‘Gouldian arguments’ appeal to the contingency of a scientific domain to establish that domain’s autonomy from some body of theory. For instance, pointing to evolutionary contingency, Stephen Jay Gould suggested that natural selection alone is insufficient to explain life on the macroevolutionary scale. In analysing contingency, philosophers have provided source-independent accounts, understanding how events and processes structure history without attending to the nature of those events and processes. But Gouldian Arguments require source-dependent notions of contingency. An (...) account of contingency is source-dependent when it is indexed to some pattern and some process. Positions like Gould’s do not turn on the mere fact of life’s contingency—that life’s shape could have been different due to its sensitivity to initial conditions, path-dependence or stochasticity. Rather, Gouldian arguments require that the contingency is due to particular kinds of processes: in this case, those which microevolutionary theory cannot account for. This source-dependent perspective clarifies both debates about the nature and importance of contingency, and empirical routes for testing Gould’s thesis. (shrink)

A brief synopsis of the "contingency" version of the cosmological argument for theism, as developed by Samuel Clarke and explained/examined by William Rowe.

The argument from contingency for the existence of God is best understood as a request for an explanation of the total sequence of causes and effects in the universe (‘History’ for short). Many puzzles about how there could be such an explanation arise from the assumption that God is being introduced as one more cause prepended to the sequence of causes that (allegedly) needed explaining. In response to this difficulty, this chapter defends three theses. First, it argues that, (...) if the argument from contingency is to succeed, the explanation of History in terms of God must not be a causal explanation; second, that a particular hypothesis about God’s relation to History—that God is what I call the foundational ground of History—is intelligible and explanatory; third and finally, that the explanatory advantages of this hypothesis cannot be had within the confines of naturalism. (shrink)

Schelling’s middle period works have always been a source of fascination: they mark a break with the idealism (in both senses of the word) of his early works and the Fichtean and then Hegelian tradition; while they are not weighed down by the reactionary burden of his late lectures on theology and mythology. But they have been equally a source of perplexity. The central work of this period, the Essay on Human Freedom (1809) takes as its topic the moral problem (...) of freedom, but spends much of its time telling a mystical-metaphysical story about the creation of the world that attempts to paint a picture of a kind of irreducible metaphysical contingency in nature. What is the relation between the moral and the metaphysical elements of the Freedom essay? It has never been obvious. But some recent Anglophone scholarship suggests an answer. In her Freedom and Reason in Kant, Schelling and Kierkegaard (2006) Michelle Kosch presents a strong case for the view that Schelling’s Freedom essay is motivated by a critique of Kant’s conception of autonomy in ethics. The idea is that Kant’s problems start not if he fails to show that it is rational to be moral, but if he succeeds. For if he does, then it is irrational to be immoral, and hence it is impossible for a rational agent to act immorally: an act not in conformity with duty is evidence of irrationality (perhaps one’s rational agency has been thwarted by pathological inclinations). This is broadly the Socratic position: evil, as a knowing immoral act, is not possible. Officially Kant rejects the classical view, most explicitly in his 1793 Religion with the Bounds of Mere Reason, for a Christian position in which freedom is understood as the freedom to choose between good and evil without thereby abandoning one’s agency. But he has no obvious means for doing so. Kosch attempts to show that Schelling comes, by 1809, to identify his early work with something like this Kantian dilemma: we are as badly off when it comes to our freedom if we are pushed around by reasons as if we are pushed around by causes: the Hegelian ruse of reason is as inimical to our agency as phenomenal determinism. The Freedom essay is the result of Schelling’s attempt to defend a muscular, Christian conception of the possibility of evil. Nevertheless, for Kosch, Schelling’s move to the metaphysical level is still problematic: just where one would expect an account of norms that does not infer them from our rational autonomy, we get, puzzlingly, a cosmology. I will argue that Kosch’s matrix for interpreting Schelling in fact does give us a way of understanding Schelling’s metaphysics of contingency. In broad outline, Schelling’s argument is that our choice of metaphysical schema is constrained by a correct understanding of agency: the world cannot be causally determined because that is inconsistent with our understanding of ourselves as agents; but equally the world cannot be rationally determined, and for the same reason. Schelling’s metaphysics of contingency is an unpacking of the consequences of this inference, and not a botched attempt to ground values outside of rational autonomy. (shrink)

I present and explain a brief version of the "contingency" cosmological argument earlier developed by Samuel Clarke and then updated by William Rowe.

The present work explores various ways in which contingent evidence can impact metaphysics, while advocating that, just as a scientific realist allows for ampliative inferences to the unobservable, ampliative inferences from possible evidence can warrant possibility claims that lie beyond the reach of sensorial imagination. In slogan form: possible evidence is a guide to possibility. Drawing on Shoemaker’s (1969) argument for the possibility of time without change, I advocate the following principle: If there is a possible world at which (...) the observable facts make it objectively reasonable to conclude that p, then we should conclude that p is possibly true. This provides a route to contingentism in metaphysics, for, if one considers that there are worlds in which the observable facts make it objectively reasonable to conclude that p, and worlds in which the observable facts make it objectively reasonable to conclude that not-p, then my principle tells us that we should conclude that possibly-p and possibly not-p, i.e. that p is contingent. This contingency in what is reasonable to conclude, I suggest, occurs most saliently in debates where evidence of phenomenal experience and empirical science are marshalled to support one theory over another. I also explore some consequences of taking possible evidence to be a guide to possibility in this way, among them being an interesting modal analogue of the lottery paradox. (shrink)

Whatever we speak about enhancement as the, just, one array of the wide range of the bioethical fields, or as the kind of ideological and theoretical field, it is necessary to emphasize relevant ideological and theoretical distinctions between different approaches. Trying to give some fundamental shape to debate among them, as well within themselves, I specified three possible streams with more or less arbitrary boundaries. First one is transhumanistic stream , whose representatives openly promote the practice of genetic, prosthetic and (...) cognitive enhancement of human kind - transition from human to a post human society; bioconservative, whose representatives perceive a threat in the violation of human dignity, meddling in “God’s business” ( playing God ), and in changes to the nature of human beings; representatives of the “middle standpoint” consider that danger lies within the dialectic relation of “capitalism and medicine.” I present the tree ideological standpoints trying to building consistency through different ethical arguments. Discussing the relevant theoretical/ideological distinction between standpoints and their claims, I will argue that ideological distinction among standpoints is less relevant than contingency within their arguments. Such mutual contingence creates some similarity regarding epistemological and social issues. (shrink)

The Master Argument, recorded by Epictetus, indicates that Diodorus had deduced a contradiction from the conjoint assertion of three propositions. The Argument, which has to do with necessity and contingency and therefore with freedom, has attracted the attention of logicians above all. There have been many attempts at reconstructing it in logical terms, without excessive worry about historical plausibility and with the foregone conclusion that it was sophistic since it directly imperilled our common sense notion of freedom. (...) This text takes exception to recent tradition, translating the propositions into logical terms. The propositions figuring in The Master Argument are interpreted in terms of temporal modal logic where both the modalities and the statements they govern have chronological indices. This means that the force of the argument comes not from purely logical or modal considerations, but from our experience of time. (shrink)

Philosophy is experiencing a resurgence of property (PD) and generic substance dualism (SD). One important argument for SD that has played a role in this resurgence is some version of a modal argument. Until recently, premise (3) of the argument (Possibly, I exist, and no wholly physical objects exist.) has garnered most of the attention by critics. However, more recently, the focus has also been on (2) (Wholly physical objects are essentially, wholly, and intrinsically physical and wholly (...) spiritual substances are essentially, wholly, and intrinsically immaterial.). Andrew Bailey has provided one of the best criticisms of (2) on offer. In what follows, I present and clarify one form of the argument and defend premise (2) by responding to important defeaters proffered by Andrew Bailey and his contingent physicalism. (shrink)

The Gouldian argument for evolutionary contingency found in Wonderful Life can be dissected into three premises: palaeontological, macro-evolutionary, and developmental. Discussions of evolutionary contingency have revolved primarily around the developmental. However, a shift in methodological practice and new palaeontological evidence subsequent to the book’s publication appears to threaten the palaeontological premise that asserts high Cambrian disparity, or, roughly, that morphological differences between the Cambrian species were high. This presents a prima facie problem: Did the Cambrian consist of (...) enough anatomical variety to fuel a different outcome upon a replay of the tape of life? I investigate the role that disparity plays in the Gouldian argument for evolutionary contingency and conclude that the reduced disparity view does not undermine the argument, per se. As for the macro-evolutionary premise, Gould never offers any explicit justification for the idea that species sorting was indiscriminate or ‘lottery-like’ (though he certainly gestures at it). Putting aside the exegetical, I consider certain empirical avenues for underwriting the macro-evolutionary premise and argue that the most plausible route is to appeal to the special status of mass extinctions, a move that is not entirely unfamiliar to macro-evolutionists. That is, mass extinctions can be good sources of contingency due to their being ‘chancy’ in at least three respects. In sum, I update the palaeontological and macro-evolutionary premises as to reconstrue the Gouldian argument for evolutionary contingency in its strongest form. (shrink)

I show that Armstrong’s view of laws as second-order contingent relations of ‘necessitation’ among categorical properties faces a dilemma. The necessitation relation confers a relation of extensional inclusion (‘constant conjunction’) on its relata. It does so either necessarily or contingently. If necessarily, it is not a categorical relation (in the relevant sense). If contingently, then an explanation is required of how it confers extensional inclusion. That explanation will need to appeal to a third-order relation between necessitation and extensional inclusion. The (...) same dilemma reappears at this level. Either Armstrong must concede that some properties are not categorical but have essential powers – or he is faced with a regress. (shrink)

This book is an English version of a book published in 1984 in French, the aim of which was to give a reconstruction of Diodorus Cronus's Master Argument, together with a historical analysis of some of the central modal notions on which it draws. In preparing the English text, Vuillemin has made some changes to the logic of his reconstruction of Diodorus's Argument and added an epilogue. The Master Argument consisted of three premises: Every past truth is (...) necessary, The impossible does not follow from the possible, and Something is possible which neither is nor will be true. Diodorus claimed that these premises are inconsistent, and purported to derive the negation of the third premise, which is plausibly to be identified with the principle of plenitude, from the first two premises. (shrink)

Since the time of Descartes, various versions of a modal argument have been proffered for substance dualism. Until recently, the premise most frequently attacked is one that moves from conceivability to metaphysical possibility. However, more recently, a new criticism has surfaced, viz., an argument from contingent physicalism. The purpose of this article is to show that what I take to be the most sophisticated contingent physicalist criticism fails as a defeater of the modal argument. After stating and (...) clarifying my version of the modal argument, I present arguments from contingent physicalist Trenton Merricks that are intended explicitly to be defeaters of premise (2) of the modal argument. Along the way, I give reasons for thinking that these arguments fail as defeaters of (2) and that Merricks’ contingent physicalism is false. (shrink)

Evan's influential argument against vague objects (_Analysis<D>, 1978) has a parallel directed against contingent identity. I argue that Noonan failed in his attempt to accept Evans's argument but save contingent identity by establishing a disanalogy between the two arguments (in The Philosophical Quarterly 1991). Instead, I suggest an alternative way to block the argument against contingent identity and argue that its analogue provides a satisfactory response to Evans's original argument.

The power PC theory postulates a normative procedure for making causal inferences from contingency information, and offers this as a descriptive model of human causal judgement. The inferential procedure requires a set of assumptions, which includes the assumption that the cause being judged is distributed independently of the set of other possible causes of the same outcome. It is argued that this assumption either never holds or can never be known to hold. It is also argued that conformity of (...) judgements to the prescriptions of the model requires a sophisticated appreciation of methodological factors and acquired domain-specific knowledge of causes, and that the theory is disconfirmed by a finding that an objective contingency that equally supports two causal inferences results in only one of them actually being made. An alternative proposal based on the hypothesis that causal understanding originates with experiences of forces exerted while acting on objects is briefly sketched. (shrink)

Essays on Aristotle's Sea-Battle, Lazy Argument, Argument Reaper, Diodorus' Master Argument -/- The book is devoted to the ancient logical theories, reconstruction of their semantic proprieties and possibilities of their interpretation by modern logical tools. The Ancient arguments are frequently misunderstood in modern interpretations since authors usually have tendency to ignore their historical proprieties and theoretical background what usually leads to a quite inappropriate picture of the argument’s original form and mission. Author’s primary intention was to (...) draw attention to the complexity of some historical arguments and to the theoretical context in which arguments were created, circulated, developed, and finally tuned. Four well-known ancient arguments – with a common central subject related to the future contingencies problem – are reconstructed from available historical sources: “The Sea Battle”, which is drawn from Aristotle’s treatise De Interpretatione; two arguments, usually ascribed to the Stoics, “The Lazy Argument” and “The Reaper”; “The Master Argument” of the Megarian philosopher Diodorus. Arguments are linguistically and semantically detaily analyzed, formally presented by reflecting some relevant corresponding hypotheses based on physical or logical theories of their ancient authors, and finally covered by appropriate logical tools familiar to a modern reader. Two appendices are added at the closing part of the book. One covering some assumptions relevant for understanding of rival streams in ancient theories of meaning related to the nature of names and naming; the other is devoted to the ancient understanding of logical proposition and attempts to find an adequate Latin translation of the Greek delicate philosophical term “ἀξίωμα”. (shrink)

The contingency of biological regularities—and its implications for the existence of biological laws—has long puzzled biologists and philosophers. The best argument for the contingency of biological regularities is John Beatty’s evolutionary contingency thesis, which will be re-analyzed here. First, I argue that in Beatty’s thesis there are two versions of strong contingency used as arguments against biological laws that have gone unnoticed by his commentators. Second, Beatty’s two different versions of strong contingency are analyzed (...) in terms of two different stabilities of regularities. Third, I argue that Beatty and his commentators have focused on the more ineffective trajectory stability version of the argument, whereas the constancy stability version provides a more substantial and applicable argument against the existence of biological laws. Fourth, I develop a counterexample to Beatty’s thesis. Finally, I discuss the possibility of evolution producing repeatable and general non-lawlike regularities and patterns by utilizing the notion of generative entrenchment and by criticizing the thesis of multiple realizability of biological properties. (shrink)

Hardly anyone denies that (nearly) all human beings have equal moral status and therefore should be considered and treated as equals. Yet, if humans possess the property that confers moral status upon them to an unequal degree, how come they should be considered and treated as equals? It has been argued that this is because the variations in the degree to which the status‐conferring property is held above a relevant threshold are contingencies that do not generate differences in degrees of (...) moral status. Call this the contingency argument for the basis of moral equality. In this paper, I reject the contingency argument. Instead, I develop an attitude‐based account of the basis of moral equality: according to this account, the basis of moral equality lies in a fitting, basic, and independent moral attitude which is owed to human beings qua moral status‐holders, and provides a coherent and plausible explanation for why the variations above the threshold for moral status do not matter. (shrink)

Is the cultural evolution of morality fairly contingent? Could cultural evolution have easily led humans to moral norms and judgments that are mostly false by our present lights? If so, does it matter philosophically? Yes, or so we argue. We empirically motivate the contingency of cultural evolution and show that it makes two major philosophical contributions. First, it shows that moral objectivists cannot explain the reliability of our moral judgments and thus strengthens moral debunking arguments. Second, it shows that (...) the reliability of our moral judgments is evidence for theism over metaphysical naturalism. (shrink)

The argument is not, however, problem-free. First: while the meaning of s might not guarantee a verifying state of affairs, mightn’t the fact of one’s believing that s is true guarantee a verifying state of affairs? And mightn’t this fact be exploited to secure knowledge of truths that are deeply contingent? Second: the argument seems to rely on the principle that if I can conceive that not P is actually the case, then I do not know that P. (...) But it is generally agreed that a knowledge-conferring warrant for some P need not offer a watertight guarantee of P and thus need not render it inconceivable that the actual world falsifies P. Why then require such a guarantee when it comes to priori warrant? The first objection is that a guarantee of truth need not come from semantics. The second is that no such guarantee is required for a priori knowledge. I shall be exploring both of these ideas in what follows. (shrink)

The argument is not, however, problem-free. First: while the meaning of s might not guarantee a verifying state of affairs, mightn’t the fact of one’s believing that s is true guarantee a verifying state of affairs? And mightn’t this fact be exploited to secure knowledge of truths that are deeply contingent? Second: the argument seems to rely on the principle that if I can conceive that not P is actually the case, then I do not know that P. (...) But it is generally agreed that a knowledge-conferring warrant for some P need not offer a watertight guarantee of P and thus need not render it inconceivable that the actual world falsifies P. Why then require such a guarantee when it comes to priori warrant? The first objection is that a guarantee of truth need not come from semantics. The second is that no such guarantee is required for a priori knowledge. I shall be exploring both of these ideas in what follows. (shrink)

The argument is not, however, problem-free. First: while the meaning of s might not guarantee a verifying state of affairs, mightn’t the fact of one’s believing that s is true guarantee a verifying state of affairs? And mightn’t this fact be exploited to secure knowledge of truths that are deeply contingent? Second: the argument seems to rely on the principle that if I can conceive that not P is actually the case, then I do not know that P. (...) But it is generally agreed that a knowledge-conferring warrant for some P need not offer a watertight guarantee of P and thus need not render it inconceivable that the actual world falsifies P. Why then require such a guarantee when it comes to priori warrant? The first objection is that a guarantee of truth need not come from semantics. The second is that no such guarantee is required for a priori knowledge. I shall be exploring both of these ideas in what follows. (shrink)

This paper first argues that we can bring out a tension between the following three popular doctrines: (i) the canonical reduction of metaphysical modality to essence, due to Fine, (ii) contingentism, which says that possibly something could have failed to be something, and (iii) the doctrine that metaphysical modality obeys the modal logic S5. After presenting two such arguments (one from the theorems of S4 and another from the theorems of B), I turn to exploring various conclusions we might draw (...) in light of these results, and argue that none comes cost free. In the course of laying out possible responses to my arguments, we'll have a chance to evaluate various doctrines about the interplay between contingency and essence, as well as develop some alternative reductions of metaphysical modality to essence. I don't decisively come down in favor of one response over the others, though I say some things that point towards the conclusion that essence has no role to play in reducing metaphysical modality. (shrink)

This paper provides a taxonomy of cosmological arguments and givesgeneral reasons for thinking that arguments that belong to a given category do not succeed.

There is widespread disagreement as to what the facts are concerning just when a collection of objects composes some further object; but there is widespread agreement that, whatever those facts are, they are necessary. I am unhappy to simply assume this, and in this paper I ask whether there is reason to think that the facts concerning composition hold necessarily. I consider various reasons to think so, but find fault with each of them. I examine the theory of composition as (...) identity, but argue that the version of this doctrine that entails universalism is implausible. I consider the claim that the a priority of such facts leads to their necessity, but give a defence of substantial contingent a priori truths. I ask whether the contingency of such facts would lead to unwelcome possibilities, but argue that the worrying looking possibilities can be blocked if it is desired. Next, I argue against the thought that the Lewis-Sider argument against restricted composition might give us reason to accept the necessity of universalism. Lastly, I respond to two objections from the 2006 BSPC. I conclude in favour of the contingency of the facts concerning when some things compose some thing. (shrink)

Kripke maintains that one who stipulatively introduces the term ' one meter' as a rigid designator for the length of a certain stick s at time t is in a position to know a priori that if s exists at t then the length of s at t is one meter. Some (e.g., Soames 2003) have objected to this alleged instance of the contingent a priori on the grounds that the stipulator's knowledge would have to be based in part on (...) substantive metalinguistic knowledge. I examine Soames's argument for the a posteriority of the relevant metalinguistic knowledge, and I argue that its main premise is false. (shrink)

De re or singular thoughts are, intuitively, those essentially or constitutively about a particular object or objects; any thought about different objects would be a different thought. How should a philosophical articulation or thematization of their nature look like? In spite of extended discussion of the issue since it was brought to the attention of the philosophical community in the late fifties by Quine (1956), we are far from having a plausible response. Discussing the matter in connection with the status (...) of the Kripkean category of the contingent a priori, Donnellan (1979) argued that what can be properly classified as knowable a priori about utterances like those involving ‘one meter’ or ‘Neptune’ famously proposed by Kripke (1980) cannot be the very same singular content that is contingent he distinguished to that end between knowing a true proposition expressed by an utterance, and knowing that an utterance expresses a true proposition. Evans (1979) replied that, for a very specific sort of cases involving “descriptive names”, a related proto-two-dimensionalist account should be preferred, on which it is not the singular contingent content, but rather a general descriptive one which is knowable a priori. In a series of papers, Robin Jeshion (2000, 2001) has recently attacked Donnellan's proposal, arguing in favour of the most straightforward interpretation of Kripke's claim: in the relevant cases, the very same singular content can be both contingent and knowable a priori. This paper appeals to a generalized version of two-dimensional semantics to advance an account of the Kripkean cases along the lines of Evans's, and argues that Jeshion's compelling arguments against Donnellan's view do not apply to this version. (shrink)

If it is not now determined whether there will be a sea battle tomorrow, can an assertion that there will be one be true? The problem has persisted because there are compelling arguments on both sides. If there are objectively possible futures which would make the prediction true and others which would make it false, symmetry considerations seem to forbid counting it either true or false. Yet if we think about how we would assess the prediction tomorrow, when a sea (...) battle is raging (or not), it seems we must assign the utterance a definite truth-value. I argue that both arguments must be given their due, and that this requires relativizing utterance-truth to a context of assessment. I show how this relativization can be handled in a rigorous formal semantics, and I argue that we can make coherent sense of assertion without assuming that utterances have their truth-values absolutely. (shrink)

Trevor Teitel (2017) has recently argued that combining the assumption that modality reduces to essence with the assumption that possibly some objects contingently exist leads to problems if one wishes to uphold that the logic of metaphysical modality is S5. In this paper I will argue that there is a way for the essentialist to evade the problem described by Teitel. The proposed solution crucially involves the assumption that some propositions possibly fail to exist. I will show how this assumption (...) affords a motivated contingentist response to Teitel’s argument. (shrink)

In this, the first major philosophical study of contingent pacifism, Larry May offers a new account of pacifism from within the Just War tradition. Written in a non-technical style, the book features real-life examples from contemporary wars and applies a variety of approaches ranging from traditional pacifism and human rights to international law and conscientious objection. May considers a variety of thinkers and theories, including Hugo Grotius, Kant, Socrates, Seneca on restraint, Tertullian on moral purity, Erasmus's arguments against just war, (...) and Hobbes's conception of public conscience. The guiding idea is that the possibility of a just war is conceded, but not at the current time or in the foreseeable future due to the nature of contemporary armed conflict and geopolitics - wars in the past are also unlikely to have been just wars. This volume will interest scholars and upper-level students of political philosophy, philosophy of law, and war studies. (shrink)

Contingency is the presence of non-actualized possibility in the world. Fatalism is a view of reality on which there is no contingency. Since it is contingency that permits agency, there has traditionally been much interest in contingency. This interest has long been embarrassed by the contention that simple and plausible assumptions about the world lead to fatalism. I begin with an Aristotelian argument as presented by Richard Taylor. Appreciation of this argument has been stultified (...) by a question pertaining to the source of necessity and possibility and a closely related one regarding the nature of metaphysics itself. Answering these questions reveals the crucial issue here, to wit, necessity and possibility in a temporal world. This issue is investigated through an important later criticism of Taylor by David Foster Wallace. Wallace’s critique is significant because it brings to the fore the pivotal notion for understanding contingency in a temporal world, that of synchronic possibility, the idea that incompatible states of affairs are possible at a single moment. This notion provides the basis of distinguishing two systematic accounts of truth, modality and time: two metaphysics of contingency. On one account, Taylor’s Aristotelian argument is straightforwardly valid and compelling; on the other, it is fallacious. In closing, I present reasons why the former account, supporting the Aristotelian views of time and truth, is correct and make some comments to ameliorate this conclusion. (shrink)

Can some contingent truths be known a priori?: when this question is raised in modern philosophy — as, following Kripke, it often has been — it generally introduces a discussion of certain examples which seem to turn on indexical or indexical-like words . Sometimes the indexicality is quite obvious, as in 'I am here now', sometimes it appears only on analysis, as in 'If anyone uniquely invented the zip, Julius did', where by stipulation 'Julius' rigidly designates the inventor of the (...) zip , for the rigidity of 'Julius' can be expressed by means of the 'actually' operator, which is at least formally analogous to an indexical . Moreover, this indexicality has been exploited in a well known argument that what is known a priori can be contingent only in a superficial way pp. 161-89; technical details are omitted, since deep and superficial contingency coincide for sentences, such as those considered below, without 'actually' or similar operators). The purpose of this note is to argue that there are deeply contingent a priori truths which in no way turn on indexicals. I do not deny that there are also contingent a priori truths which do turn on indexicals, but we are unlikely to get clear on the contingent a priori in-general if we take it to be essentially tied up with indexicals when in fact it is not. (shrink)