Invest some energy... and be amazed at how a multi-century process rose above and beyond the shoulders of Aquinas to culminate in John's teachings. This event is part of the activities of the 2022 International Open Seminar on Semiotics: a Tribute to John Deely on the Fifth Anniversary of His Passing, cooperatively organized by the Institute for Philosophical Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, the Lyceum Institute, the Deely Project, Saint Vincent College, the (...) Iranian Society for Phenomenology at the Iranian Political Science Association, the International Association for Semiotics of Space and Time, the Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Semiotic Society of America, the American Maritain Association, the International Association for Semiotic Studies, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies, the International Center for Semiotics and Intercultural Dialogue, Moscow State Academic University for the Humanities and the Mansarda Acesa with the support of the FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Government of Portugal under the UID/FIL/00010/2020 project. *** A Ruthenian Catholic, husband, and father, Matthew K. Minerd is a professor of philosophy and moral theology at Ss. Cyril and Methodius Byzantine Catholic Seminary in Pittsburgh, PA. His academic work has appeared in the journals Nova et Vetera, The American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, Saint Anselm Journal, Lex Naturalis, Downside Review, The Review of Metaphysics, and Maritain Studies, as well in volumes published by the American Maritain Association through the Catholic University of America Press. He has served as author, translator, and/or editor for volumes published by The Catholic University of America Press, Emmaus Academic, Cluny Media, and Ascension Press. *** Homepage: https://www.uc.pt/fluc/uidief/io2s Auditorium: https://www.uc.pt/fluc/uidief/io2s/auditorium *** The cover image for the video was designed by Zahra Soltani. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Metaphysics as Mediating Dialogue by Oliva BlanchetteMatthew MinerdBLANCHETTE, Oliva. Metaphysics as Mediating Dialogue. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2023. xi + 133 pp. Cloth, $75.00In this text, the author presents a personal synthesis of metaphysics using a lexicon of scholastic and Blondelian-Hegelian thought. The first chapter, "From Questions of Being to the Question of Being as Being," presents a quasi-phenomenological account of the emergence of (...) the analogical conception of order of various degrees of perfection of being as such, concretized in various domains that are physical/natural and human/cultural. In this first chapter, an important theme that emerges and becomes a golden thread throughout the text is the claim that the primary analogate of being is, within our experience, the human person and the human mode of activity in culture and religion. [End Page 538]The second chapter, "Metaphysics as Mediating Dialogue of the Crossroads of Intersubjective, Intercultural, and Interreligious Communication," is perhaps the densest, covering a number of points handled in the remainder of the book. In this chapter, Blanchette is concerned with showing how intercommunication takes place within discourse concerning both the shared principles of intelligent agents and ultimately in view of an orientation toward what he later will call the vertical transcendence of culture in relation to God. Both of these tasks are of critical importance for constituting the necessary background for a philosophy of culture and a philosophy of religion that can mediate among the various actualities of human existence amid the objective and subjective aspects of art, science, and moral mutual recognition of intelligent agents in community.The third chapter, "The Necessity of Metaphysics in the Struggle for World Peace and Justice," opens with an arguably theological observation that the rational agent has two ends, one of which is not attainable in this life involving some kind of "more direct relation with God" in the hereafter, and the other pertaining to the struggle toward the establishment of a "historical communal peace." The framework for this terminology is a scholastically aware engagement with Blondelian (and partly Hegelian) thought. This chapter is concerned with articulating the way that rational agents engage in the historical task of establishing a kind of universal spirit of intersubjective recognition, at least as an asymptotic goal within history, even if contention ultimately prevents the formation of such a single, unified, intrahistorical community. Blanchette argues that this project is possible only within the dual transcendence of the human person, namely, as cultural and as religious, the latter being the condition for the former. Metaphysics has the role of articulating such transcendence.The fourth chapter, "Metaphysics as the Way from Phenomenology to Theology," engages with some of the questions related to the "theological turn" in Continental phenomenology. Phenomenological inquiry, Blanchette argues, must acknowledge that it investigates only one order of being in the universe, the human-intentional (or "historico-social"), and therefore stands in need of metaphysics to mediate its subject material with other kinds of being (as is true, similarly, of other disciplines). However, he also contends that phenomenology offers a very important preamble for a "first-person ontology" that is sensitive to the specific cultural and historical being of spiritual beings, but ultimately, Blanchette argues, it does so as "part of the way up from the bottom" and as opening up to metaphysical speculation, which itself prevents theology from degenerating into a kind of superstition.In chapters 5 through 7, Blanchette traces out the kind of mediation that occurs between metaphysics and theology. In chapter 5, he briefly develops his stated conviction regarding the human person's role as primary analogate in metaphysics and connects to a more Aristotelian [End Page 539] language of a transcendent cause that is pure act, though also immanent creatively and, upon theological supposition, through divine incarnation.The reviewer found chapter 6, "Metaphysics and the Transcendence of Cultures in Religion," to be the most interesting. In it, Blanchette develops earlier themes concerning the metaphysics of culture and its relationship to nature, as well as the constitution of subjectivity precisely as intersubjectivity among rational selves in the order of culture. Developing themes from chapter 3, he... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Patricia Kelly, Ressourcement Theology:A Review EssayMatthew K. MinerdIntroductionAlthough now over seventy years in the past, the theological and ecclesiastical events of the 1940s, most often styled under some banner akin to "the crisis over the nouvelle théologie," leading up to the promulgation of the encyclical Humani Generis, retain a currency and interest to this very day. No doubt, the later influence of many of the so-called nouveaux théologiens leading (...) up to, during, and following the Second Vatican Council has contributed to the continued currency of their thought and the debates connected to it. Numerous monographs continue to be written concerning themes of "ressourcement," theological reform, and engagement with the world, all of which were dear to many of those who were embroiled in the philosophical and theological controversies of the 1930s and 1940s. Moreover, increased interest in certain long-buried conservative Thomist thinkers from this same era has led to renewed consideration regarding the concerns that they expressed at the time. In fact, it would seem that today, in 2022, the evaluation expressed in Nineteenth Century Scholasticism: The Search for a Unitary Method by Fr. Gerald McCool (from a perspective rather different from my own) remains true, as the Church continues to live in the midst of an ongoing crisis of modernity that places us in tight continuity with so much of the past several centuries of European Christian intellectual history:In contemporary Catholic theology, the relationship between apologetics, or fundamental theology, and speculative theology is as much [End Page 353] an issue as it was in the nineteenth century.... And in contemporary Catholic theology, the relation between positive theology and speculative theology still remains a problem whose solution demands the use of a coherent system of epistemology and metaphysics.... The contemporary debate over theological method is simply another phase in the dialectical movement of Catholic theology's response to post-Enlightenment thought from the beginning of the nineteenth century through Vatican I, Aeterni Patris, the modernist crisis, between-the-wars Thomism, the New Theology controversy, and Vatican II up to the present.1The great crisis of the 1940s—whether we name it nouvelle théologie, after the reform-advocates of the era, or dialogue theologique, in honor of the Toulouse Dominicans' attempt to present a Scholastic position between, on the one hand, Fr. Chenu's and Congar's view of what the Saulchoir should be, and, on the other hand, the more-conservative Thomism of Frs. Garrigou-Lagrange, Gagnebet, and Gillon in Rome2—was and remains, in the words of Etienne Fouilloux, "the only theological debate of real [quelque] importance, at least in France, from the condemnation of Modernism to the time of the Second Vatican Council."3 And like any truly great event or crisis in intellectual-spiritual culture, it remains with us today in its fruits, both resolved and unresolved.Thus, when a new work is published dedicated to these events and the figures involved therein, the Catholic intellectual world should take heed, for our own self-understanding—whatever sui iuris Church in which we are ascribed—is at stake. Hence, the arrival of the collection of translations by Dr. Patricia Kelly of the University of St. Andrews is an event to be welcomed, even if elements of its publication also give rise to concern. This volume, Ressourcement Theology: A Sourcebook,4 gathering together essays by various parties involved on both sides of the specifically Francophone debates over theological method and truth that came to a head in the 1940s, provides the reading public with a dual "service": it presents in English a [End Page 354] number of texts not heretofore available, while also, unfortunately, bearing witness to the academic prejudices lingering against the authors writing from Rome and Toulouse concerning certain veins of thought in theological methodology during the inter-war and immediate post-war era. Although my review will be somewhat negative on certain points—both for technical textual reasons and because of the slanted narrative presented by Dr. Kelly—I wish only the best to her and her work, hoping that the concerns that I voice can serve as a springboard to dialogue, not retrenchment... (shrink)

The scientific status of logic is ambiguous within a broadly Aristotelian framework. As is well known, the Stoic position is frequently contrasted with that of the the classic Peripatetic outlook on these matters. For the former, logic is a unique division of philosophy, whereas for the latter, logic plays a merely instrumental role. This article explores how several Dominican thinkers articulated an outlook concerning logic that granted it a robust scientific status while maintatining a generally Peripatietic philosophical outlook. Clarity in (...) these matters required the passing of several centuries. This article presents a set of historical vignettes showing the development of an increasingly clearer definition of the nature of the subject of logic, tracing the topic in Aristotle, Avicenna, Aquinas, Hervaeus Natalis, and Antoine Goudin. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ius Gentium as Publicly Articulated Moral ScienceMatthew K. MinerdAmong the various types of law discussed in St. Thomas's theological "treatise on law"—questions 90–108 of Summa theologia [ST] I-II—the classification known as the "law of nations" (ius gentium) holds an ambiguous epistemological position. Marking a kind of halfway point between the natural law and civil law, it seems to straddle both domains. In fact, in a particularly important text dedicated (...) to this topic in the ST (I-II, q. 95, a. 4), Aquinas classes the ius gentium as being closely connected to the natural law, though in a way that is somewhat derivative, not as immediately flowing from human nature (especially in its animality) as does the natural law, but also not as marked by human contingency as is human civil law.As was recently discussed in a well-documented and insightful article by Barrett H. Turner in The Thomist, there have historically been two main lines of Thomist interpretation concerning the exact character of the "law of nations." Very broadly stated, what he refers to as the "Salamancan" line, indebted to Francisco de Vitoria, "interprets Thomas's doctrine of the ius gentium as a body of universal positive institutions (that is, specifications, determinationes) added to the natural law by agreement of the human race."1 [End Page 1043] This position, which would be common for several centuries among members of the Thomist school, would locate the law of nations essentially in the domain of nearly universally adopted customs and institutions, not strictly deduced from the natural law, but rather grounded on "the quasi-political authority of the entire human race, which promulgates the ius gentium by customs whose utility for attaining the ends of the natural law under a certain set of social conditions is easily recognized by rational creatures."2Turner calls the other line of thought "Maritain's Neo-Thomist Line,"3 an outlook that would be shared with various nuances by thinkers like Jean-Marie Aubert, Yves Simon, Marie-Michel Labourdette, John Finnis, and others. Setting aside my qualms about his appellation "neo-Thomist," which does more to obscure than to illumine (for it covers a host of Thomistic figures who have significantly different views on what constitutes "Thomism"), Turner does fairly lay out the major lines of Jacques Maritain's position, which is most directly articulated in Man and the State and La loi naturelle ou loi non-écrite.4 Basing himself on his particular view of knowledge of the natural law through connaturality,5 Maritain contrasted this sort of moral cognition with that which develops in the line of conceptual articulation, thus having a different "gnoseological" character from our knowledge of the natural law, while nonetheless still sharing the same "ontological" foundation. Such conceptually articulated law would be the ius gentium.Rather than add my voice to the dialectic of the various thinkers arrayed by Turner into the two aforementioned camps, I would like to propose a slightly different approach to the "moral epistemology of the law of nations," though one that I believe lies in line with the best aspects of Maritain's approach. Continuing a series of reflections that I have undertaken [End Page 1044] concerning moral epistemology during the past few years,6 I propose that it is most helpful to consider the "law of nations" as being a form of reasoning pertaining to what Scholastic vocabulary would refer to as "moral science,"7 namely discursive philosophical reasoning concerning the essences, properties, effects, and various other essential relationships that belong to a human acts, morally considered (the principal subject of moral philosophy), along with other subjects that are studied in relation to this principal subject (e.g., the principles of human acts, most particularly, the structure of human acts and the moral virtues). Moral science is the activity of reasoning that can be undertaken by knowing agents living together in community, seeking to discursively articulate and explain the moral truth that forms the essential basis for the contingent determinations that will then be codified in particular civil laws, the latter of which are not concerned with questions like "what are the ultimate foundations for property... (shrink)

In Thomistic metaphysics, the domain of ens rationis pertains to a hazy region of “non-real” being, laying outside of the proper scientific subject of metaphysics. In addition to negations and privations, a very important domain of entia rationis pertains to that of relationes rationis, especially such relationes as play a role in human reasoning. Logic, studying these “non-real” relations, thus focuses on a unique, if hazy, realm of “non-being.” While this particular type of ens rationis receives the lion’s share of (...) attention among Thomists, there is evidence that similar reflection should be given to two additional domains of experience, namely that of “moral being” and “artificial being” (i.e., the being of artifacts). This paper lays out the general metaphysical concerns pertaining to each of these domains, providing an outline of topics pertinent to a Thomistic discussion of the intentional existence involved in logic, moral realities, and artifacts. (shrink)

The scientific status of logic is ambiguous within a broadly Aristotelian framework. As is well known, the Stoic position is frequently contrasted with that of the the classic Peripatetic outlook on these matters. For the former, logic is a unique division of philosophy (i.e., rational philosophy), whereas for the latter, logic plays a merely instrumental role. This article explores how several Dominican thinkers articulated an outlook concerning logic that granted it a robust scientific status while maintatining a generally Peripatietic philosophical (...) outlook. Clarity in these matters required the passing of several centuries. This article presents a set of historical vignettes showing the development of an increasingly clearer definition of the nature of the subject of logic, tracing the topic in Aristotle, Avicenna, Aquinas, Hervaeus Natalis, and Antoine Goudin. (shrink)

What are the virtues of a well-formed conscience? Thomists consider conscience a matter of practical judgment, which leaves a malformed conscience susceptible to an inability to tell good from evil. Often, this malformed conscience is the effect of laziness, vice, or our own moral ignorance. To ensure a well-formed conscience, one needs all the moral virtues provided by Christ. This article focuses on two of those virtues—memory and docility—and extolls their importance in overcoming moral ignorance.

The decades following the Second Vatican Council witnessed Catholic theology's break from classicism. Deductive, classical theology was replaced by an empirical, historically minded theology. The result was moral confusion and intellectual controversy whose effects are still felt by the Church. Benedict Ashely agreed that some revision in moral theology was necessary after Vatican II to formulate and integrate the mysteries of the Catholic faith. The question was how such teachings could be reformulated while preserving their substantive content. Ashley presents a (...) method of theological reflection that challenges the subjectivity, relationality, and language of historical mindedness with a tradition focusing on Scripture, the Magisterium, sound natural science, and a considered relationship between subjectivity and objectivity. This volume also contains commentary by four distinguished scholars: Matthew McWhorter provides an intellectual biography of Ashley, examining the development of this thought before and after Vatican II. Rev. Cajetan Cuddy, OP, reviews Ashley's philosophical theology in its principles, especially as grounded in natural law philosophy. Matthew Minerd assesses Ashley's approach to the authority of the Catholic Magisterium, the papacy, and the formation of conscience. Rev. Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, OP, evaluates Ashley's application of his moral theology to beginning- and end-of-life decision-making. (shrink)

In the final year of his long life, eminent Thomist philosopher Jacques Maritain prepared a final book for publication: a collection of previously unpublished writings entitled Approaches san entraves, later translated into English as Untrammeled Approaches. That collection, both in its conversational yet reverent tone and in its weighty topics - faith, love, truth, beauty - gives the reader the sense that she is receiving from a great teacher and friend the most important nuggets of wisdom for the next generation. (...) Throughout the book, Maritain shares with his readers, from his heart as well as his intellect, regarding the things that really matter; that book - and those things - are the primary inspiration for the present volume. This volume, comprised of original essays by twenty English-speaking Thomists on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of Untrammeled Approaches' first English appearance, explores several of Maritain's still-untrammeled (or at least less-trammeled) themes. While following his unbeaten paths, the contributing authors find and refine hidden treasures at every turn. They develop some of his more speculative ideas regarding the spiritual world - including the last things, the fate of the fallen angels, and a possible angelic role in evolution. They reflect deeply on a few of Maritain's recurring themes: for example, the nature of beauty and intuition. They analyze the implications - positive and negative - of Maritain's philosophy of love, marriage, and sexuality. And they consider and apply his arguments regarding appropriate roles and interactions of Church and state. The volume concludes with big-picture reflections on Maritain, his thought, and his enduring relevance. The contributors to this volume are: Michael Breidenbach, Romanus Cessario, OP, John Conley, SJ, Mario O. D'Souza, CSB, Travis Dumsday, Heather Erb, Lawrence Feingold, Megan Furman, Marie George, James Hanink, Gregory Kerr, William McCormick, SJ, Matthew Minerd, Mark Moes, Michael Novak, Michael Pakuluk, Alice Ramos, Walter Schultz, Michael Torre, Nikolaj Zunic. (shrink)

Experiences of Depression is a philosophical exploration of what it is like to be depressed. In this important new book, Matthew Ratcliffe develops a detailed account of depression experiences by drawing on work in phenomenology, philosophy of mind and psychology, and several other disciplines.

This chapter describes the attributionist approach to moral responsibility. Works by Pamela Hieronymi, T.M. Scanlon, Angela Smith, and Matthew Talbert are taken to representative of this approach. On the interpretation given here, attributionism is committed to the following: assessments of moral responsibility are, and ought to be, centrally concerned with the morally significant features of an agent’s orientation toward others that are attributable to her, and an agent is eligible for moral praise or blame solely on the basis of (...) these attributions. Attributionism is presented as rejecting the claim that agents are morally responsible only for what is under their voluntary control, as well as the claim that agents are responsible for wrongdoing only if they could have responded to the moral considerations that spoke against your behavior. These supposed conditions on moral responsibility are rejected for the same reason: agents may reveal features of their selves, in a way that is sufficient for moral responsibility, even in cases in which these conditions are not met. (shrink)

In Real Hallucinations, Matthew Ratcliffe offers a philosophical examination of the structure of human experience, its vulnerability to disruption, and how it is shaped by relations with other people. He focuses on the seemingly simple question of how we manage to distinguish among our experiences of perceiving, remembering, imagining, and thinking. To answer this question, he first develops a detailed analysis of auditory verbal hallucinations (usually defined as hearing a voice in the absence of a speaker) and thought insertion (...) (somehow experiencing one's own thoughts as someone else's). He shows how thought insertion and many of those experiences labeled as "hallucinations" consist of disturbances in a person's senseof being in one type of intentional state rather than another. Ratcliffe goes on to argue that such experiences occur against a backdrop of less pronounced but wider-ranging alterations in the structure of intentionality. In so doing, he considers forms of experience associated with trauma, schizophrenia, and profound grief. The overall position arrived at is that experience has an essentially temporal structure, involving patterns of anticipation and fulfillment that are specific to types of intentional states and serve to distinguish them phenomenologically. Disturbances of this structure can lead to various kinds of anomalous experience. Importantly, anticipation-fulfillment patterns are sustained, regulated, and disrupted by interpersonal experience and interaction. It follows that the integrity of human experience, including the most basic sense of self, is inseparable from how we relate to other people and to the social world as a whole. (shrink)

The view that it is better for life to be created free of disability is pervasive in both common sense and philosophy. We cast doubt on this view by focusing on an influential line of thinking that manifests it. That thinking begins with a widely-discussed principle, Procreative Beneficence, and draws conclusions about parental choice and disability. After reconstructing two versions of this argument, we critique the first by exploring the relationship between different understandings of well-being and disability, and the second (...) by more briefly focusing on the idea of a significant reason. By placing these results against the broader historical and ongoing contexts in which the lives of those with disabilities have been deemed of inferior quality, we conclude with a call for greater humility about disability and well-being in thought and practice. (shrink)

Spinoza was one of the most influential figures of the Enlightenment, but his often obscure metaphysics makes it difficult to understand the ultimate message of his philosophy. Although he regarded freedom as the fundamental goal of his ethics and politics, his theory of freedom has not received sustained, comprehensive treatment. Spinoza holds that we attain freedom by governing ourselves according to practical principles, which express many of our deepest moral commitments. Matthew J. Kisner focuses on this theory and presents (...) an alternative picture of the ethical project driving Spinoza's philosophical system. His study of the neglected practical philosophy provides an accessible and concrete picture of what it means to live as Spinoza's ethics envisioned. (shrink)

Aims: The experience of a compromised sense of ‘self’, termed ego-dissolution, is a key feature of the psychedelic experience and acute psychosis. This study aimed to validate the Ego-Dissolution Inventory (EDI), a new 8-item self-report scale designed to measure ego-dissolution. Additionally, we aimed to investigate the specificity of the relationship between psychedelics and ego-dissolution. Method: Sixteen items relating to altered ego-consciousness were included in an internet questionnaire; 8 relating to the experience of ego-dissolution (comprising the EDI), and 8 relating to (...) the antithetical experience of increased self-assuredness. Items were rated using a visual analogue scale. Participants answered the questionnaire for experiences with classical psychedelic drugs, cocaine or alcohol. They also answered the 7 questions from the Mystical Experiences Questionnaire (MEQ) relating to the experience of unity with one’s surroundings. Results: 691 participants completed the questionnaire, providing data for 1828 drug experiences (1043 psychedelics. 377 cocaine. 408 alcohol). Exploratory factor analysis demonstrated that the 8 EDI items loaded exclusively onto a single common factor, which was orthogonal to a second factor comprised of the items relating to increased self-assuredness (rho= -.110), demonstrating discriminant validity. The EDI correlated strongly with our measure of unitive experience (rho =.735), demonstrating convergent validity. EDI internal consistency was excellent (Cronbach’s alpha 0.93). Three analyses confirmed the specificity of ego-dissolution for experiences occasioned by psychedelic drugs. Firstly, EDI score correlated with drug-dose for psychedelic drugs (rho=.371), but not for cocaine (rho=.115) or alcohol (rho=-0.055). Secondly, the linear regression line relating the subjective intensity of the experience to EDI was significantly steeper for psychedelics (unstandardized B coefficient= 0.701) compared with cocaine (0.135) or alcohol (0.144). Finally, a binary support vector machine classifier identified experiences occasioned by psychedelic drugs vs. cocaine or alcohol with over 85% accuracy using ratings of ego-dissolution and ego-inflation alone. Conclusions: Our results demonstrate the psychometric structure, internal consistency and construct validity of the EDI. Moreover, we demonstrate the close relationship between ego-dissolution and the psychedelic experience. The EDI will facilitate the study of the neuronal correlates of ego-dissolution, which is relevant for psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy and our understanding of psychosis. (shrink)

Why do war crimes occur? Are perpetrators of war crimes always blameworthy? In an original and challenging thesis, this book argues that war crimes are often explained by perpetrators' beliefs, goals, and values, and in these cases perpetrators may be blameworthy even if they sincerely believed that they were doing the right thing.

Most people would agree that a small child, or a cognitively impaired adult, is less responsible for their actions, good or bad, than an unimpaired adult. But how do we explain that difference, and how far can anyone be praised or blamed for what they have done? In this fascinating introduction, Matthew Talbert explores some of the key questions shaping current debates about moral responsibility, including: What is free will, and is it required for moral responsibility? Are we responsible (...) for the unforeseen consequences of our actions? Is it fair to blame people for doing what they believe is right? And are psychopaths open to blame? As Talbert argues, we are morally responsible for our actions when they are related to us in particular ways: when our actions express our true selves, for example, or when we exercise certain kinds of control over them. It is because we bear these relationships to our actions that we are open to praise and blame. _Moral Responsibility_ will be an important resource for students and researchers in ethics, moral psychology, and philosophy of agency and of great interest to all those wishing to understand an important aspect of our moral practices. (shrink)

What do mathematicians mean when they use terms such as ‘deep’, ‘elegant’, and ‘beautiful’? By applying empirical methods developed by social psychologists, we demonstrate that mathematicians' appraisals of proofs vary on four dimensions: aesthetics, intricacy, utility, and precision. We pay particular attention to mathematical beauty and show that, contrary to the classical view, beauty and simplicity are almost entirely unrelated in mathematics.

We suggest a rigorous theory of how objective single-case transition probabilities fit into our world. The theory combines indeterminism and relativity in the “branching space–times” pattern, and relies on the existing theory of causae causantes (originating causes). Its fundamental suggestion is that (at least in simple cases) the probabilities of all transitions can be computed from the basic probabilities attributed individually to their originating causes. The theory explains when and how one can reasonably infer from the probabilities of one “chance (...) set-up” to the probabilities of another such set-up that is located far away. (shrink)

This essay explores the theological and anthropological significance of birth, in order to discern what might be lost with the adoption of complete ectogestation (“artificial wombs”). Specifically, it considers both Saint Augustine and Karl Barth’s respective accounts of humanity’s whence—that is, their theological answer to the question of the nature and significance of our origins as individuals. I suggest that Augustine’s account of his origins emphasizes both his epistemic and biological dependency on his mother and nurses, while Barth’s stresses the (...) individual’s immediate derivation from God. Those disparate answers affect how they construe the relationships of parents and children and work themselves throughout their theological visions and imaginations. I conclude that careful consideration of humanity’s whence cannot answer whether we ought to pursue ectogestation; but it does help us account for how our understanding of God and ourselves might be altered if we gestate human life outside the womb. (shrink)

Discussions about the meaning of the word “ought” are pulled in two apparently competing directions. First, in ethical theory this word is used in the paradigmatic statement of ethical principles and conclusions about what some agent is obligated to do. This leads some ethical theorists to claim that the word “ought” describes a real relation, roughly, of being obligated to (realism) or expresses some non-cognitive attitude toward agents acting in certain ways (expressivism). Second, in theoretical linguistics this word is classified (...) as a modal auxiliary verb alongside words like “might,” “may,” “can,” “must,” etc. This leads some theoretical linguists to claim that the word “ought” is a weak necessity modal, which can be modeled with universal quantification over a restricted set of possible worlds. This chapter seeks some resolution of this tension by showing how versions of realism and expressivism can be modified in light of the best semantics of “ought” as a weak necessity modal. In addition, the chapter explains how this semantics might point to a third view—inferentialism—that accounts for the meaning of “ought” not in terms of what relation it describes, nor in terms of what attitude it expresses, but rather in terms of its inferential role. (shrink)

In _Camus, Philosophe: To Return to our Beginnings_ Matthew Sharpe reads Camus as a _philosophe_ in the classical and enlightenment lineages, arguing that his defense of _mesure_ singles him out amidst 20th century French thought and makes him of renewed relevance today.

Mathematical explanations are poorly understood. Although mathematicians seem to regularly suggest that some proofs are explanatory whereas others are not, none of the philosophical accounts of what such claims mean has become widely accepted. In this paper we explore Wilkenfeld’s suggestion that explanations are those sorts of things that generate understanding. By considering a basic model of human cognitive architecture, we suggest that existing accounts of mathematical explanation are all derivable consequences of Wilkenfeld’s ‘functional explanation’ proposal. We therefore argue that (...) the explanatory criteria offered by earlier accounts can all be thought of as features that make it more likely that a mathematical proof will generate understanding. On the functional account, features such as characterising properties, unification, and salience correlate with explanatoriness, but they do not define explanatoriness. (shrink)

We investigated whether mathematicians typically agree about the qualities of mathematical proofs. Between-mathematician consensus in proof appraisals is an implicit assumption of many arguments made by philosophers of mathematics, but to our knowledge the issue has not previously been empirically investigated. We asked a group of mathematicians to assess a specific proof on four dimensions, using the framework identified by Inglis and Aberdein (2015). We found widespread disagreement between our participants about the aesthetics, intricacy, precision and utility of the proof, (...) suggesting that a priori assumptions about the consistency of mathematical proof appraisals are unreasonable. (shrink)

Stewart Cohen offers a critique of much contemporary epistemology. Epistemologies use the term ‘epistemic’ in order to specify the issues they investigate and about which they disagree. Cohen sees widespread confusion about these issues. The problem, he argues, is that ‘epistemic’ is functioning as an inadequately defined technical term. I will argue, rather, that the troubles come more from non-technical vocabulary, in particular with ‘justification’ and ‘ought’, and generally from the difficulty of explaining normativity. Overall, the message of this paper (...) is that normativity is what’s hard to understand, not the term ‘epistemic.’. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend two claims about domination. The first is that dispositional theories, which hold that domination obtains just in case one has the ability to interfere with another, are not compelling in accounting for the domination of persons with severe cognitive disabilities. This is because these accounts fall victim to, what I call, the dependency challenge. The second claim is that exercise theories of domination, which hold that domination obtains only when one has actually interfered with another, (...) more plausibly account for the domination of persons with severe cognitive disabilities. (shrink)

In this chapter, we consider the plausibility and consequences of the use of the term “honest errors” to describe the accidental killings of civilians resulting from the US military’s drone campaigns in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. We argue that the narrative of “honest errors” unjustifiably excuses those involved in these killings from moral culpability, and reinforces long-standing, pernicious assumptions about the moral superiority of the US military and the inevitability of civilian deaths in combat. Furthermore, we maintain that, given (...) the knowledge-distorting practices within the US military’s organizational structure, few if any civilian deaths from drone strikes meet the criteria of a genuinely morally excusing “honest mistake”. Instead, these accidental killings often reflect objectionable attitudes of relative disregard for the safety of civilians. These attitudes are, we argue, sufficient to warrant the attribution of blame and moral responsibility, both with respect to certain individual actions and with respect to the US military as an institution. In light of this, we propose incorporating a Principle of the Moral Equality of Non-combatants into military assessments of what counts as “acceptable risk” to civilians. This would go some way, we argue, to redressing the ongoing injustice inflicted on the victims of civilian killings by the failure of the US military and US political leadership to take moral responsibility for unjustified civilian deaths. (shrink)

Judith Jarvis Thomson famously argued that abortion is permissible even if we accept that a fetus qualifies as a person and possesses a right to life. The current paper presents two arguments that undermine Thomson’s position. First, the paper sketches a contractarian argument that explores Thomson’s violinist thought experiment from behind a veil of ignorance, which suggests that if we had an equal likelihood of being an unwanted fetus and a pregnant woman, it would be rational for us to oppose (...) abortion. Second, the paper discusses the hypothetical self-aborting fetus, a thought experiment that reverses the dependence relationship between a woman and a fetus. It is argued that in this scenario, where fetuses have agency of their own, Thomson’s position would counterintuitively prohibit a woman from temporarily curtailing the freedom of her fetus even to save her own life. (shrink)

One’s account of the meaning of ethical sentences should fit – roughly, as part to whole – with one’s account of the meaning of sentences in general. When we ask, though, where one widely discussed account of the meaning of ethical sentences fits with more general accounts of meaning, the answer is frustratingly unclear. The account I have in mind is the sort of metaethical expressivism inspired by Ayer, Stevenson, and Hare, and defended and worked out in more detail recently (...) by Blackburn, Gibbard, and others. So, my first aim (§1) in this paper is to pose this question about expressivism’s commitments in the theory of meaning and to characterize the answer I think is most natural, given the place expressivist accounts attempt to occupy metaethics. This involves appeal to an ideationalist account of meaning. Unfortunately for the expressivist, however, this answer generates a problem; it’s my second aim (§2) to articulate this problem. Then, my third aim (§3) is to argue that this problem doesn’t extend to the sort of account of the meaning of ethical claims that I favor, which is like expressivism in rejecting a representationalist order of semantic explanation but unlike expressivism in basing an alternative order of semantic explanation on inferential role rather than expressive function. (shrink)

Does artificial intelligence (AI) pose existential risks to humanity? Some critics feel this question is getting too much attention, and want to push it aside in favour of conversations about the immediate risks of AI. These critics now include the journal Nature, where a recent editorial urges us to 'stop talking about tomorrow's AI doomsday when AI poses risks today.' We argue that this is a serious failure of judgement, on Nature's part. In science, as in everyday life, we expect (...) influential actors to consider the consequences of error. As the world's leading scientific journal, Nature is certainly an influential actor, especially so in the absence of robust global regulation of AI. Yet it has manifestly failed to consider the cost of error in this case. (shrink)

This paper explains three ways to develop a conceptual role view of meaning in metaethics. First, it suggests that there’s a way to combine inspiration from noncognitivism with a particular form of the conceptual role view to form a noncognitivist view with distinctive advantages over other noncognitivist views. Second, it suggests that there’s also a way to combine a strong commitment to cognitivism with a different form of the conceptual role view to form a version of cognitivism with distinctive advantages (...) over other cognitivist views. Finally, it suggests that there's another way to think of the conceptual role view in metaethics is as opening up the space for a third way, beyond cognitivism and noncognitivism. (shrink)

Patients belonging to ethnic, racial, and religious minorities have been all but excluded from the legal academy's on-going conversation about informed consent. This article repairs that egregious omission. It begins by observing the narrowing of ethical justifications that underlie our informed consent law, tracing the ethical literature from the ancients to modern formulations of autonomy-centered models. Next, this article reviews the vast body of empirical data available in social science literature, that demonstrates how distinct from the autonomy model the broad (...) range of values and priorities held by patients from racial, ethnic, and religious minority groups is. The conclusion that informed consent's focus on the western notion of autonomy affirmatively harms minority patients is inescapable. The article concludes by offering a fiduciary model of informed consent law that could improve the quality of health care for more than 100 million minority patients, potentially at risk under current law while also regulating the informed consent procedure and practice in a way that will bring balance and justice to all American patients and providers. (shrink)

This essay considers how Augustine's writings on the imago Dei might shed light on contemporary human dignity discourse and on debates about the sources, uses, and translations of these two terms. Attending to developments in Augustine's expositions of scriptural texts and metaphors related to the imago Dei, I argue that his writings exhibit three distinct conceptions of the imago Dei that correspond to three accounts of the imago Dei and human dignity offered by Pico, Luther, and Aquinas, respectively. This plurality (...) of meanings suggests that appeals to an "Augustinian" understanding of the imago Dei or human dignity threatens to confuse rather than resolve debates about the sources and uses of these terms. As long as Augustine remains an influential voice within the Christian tradition regarding the meaning of the imago Dei, the question of its translation into the secular idiom of human dignity will remain a live one because Augustine himself inaugurated quite diverse yet legitimate modes of interpreting these central tropes. (shrink)

This article attempts to show that Heidegger’s phenomenology may shed light on political phenomena. It pursues this project by arguing that Heidegger’s phenomenology is an appropriation of Aristotle’s practical philosophy and his conceptualization of phronesis. I argue that, in Being and Time, Heidegger’s ‘circumspection’, which is a capacity for making sense of practical situations, is a translation of phronesis. Heidegger argues, though, that the sight of circumspection is foreshortened by the rules and norms of ‘the one’. In division 2, ‘conscience’ (...) becomes a sharpening of the vision of phronesis, which sees through the one. I then defend Heidegger’s appropriation of phronesis and argue that Heidegger’s concept of conscience, which takes up a critical stance toward plurality, may actually be a proper vision of practical wisdom under modern conditions. I substantiate this claim by turning to an unlikely source to bolster Heidegger’s reading of phronesis and the modern public, Hannah Arendt. (shrink)

This is an advanced overview of ethical expressivism, which discuss some of the history of the research program and recent developments in the work of Michael Ridge and Mark Schroeder.

We focus on the production of efficient descriptions of objects, actions and events. We define a type of efficiency, textual economy, that exploits the hearer’s recognition of inferential links to material elsewhere within a sentence. Textual economy leads to efficient descriptions because the material that supports such inferences has been included to satisfy independent communicative goals, and is therefore overloaded in the sense of Pollack [18]. We argue that achieving textual economy imposes strong requirements on the representation and reasoning used (...) in generating sentences. The representation must support the generator’s simultaneous consideration of syntax and semantics. Reasoning must enable the generator to assess quickly and reliably at any stage how the hearer will interpret the current sentence, with its (incomplete) syntax and semantics. We show that these representational and reasoning requirements are met in the SPUD system for sentence planning and realization. (shrink)

In this article, we report a study in which 109 research-active mathematicians were asked to judge the validity of a purported proof in undergraduate calculus. Significant results from our study were as follows: (a) there was substantial disagreement among mathematicians regarding whether the argument was a valid proof, (b) applied mathematicians were more likely than pure mathematicians to judge the argument valid, (c) participants who judged the argument invalid were more confident in their judgments than those who judged it valid, (...) and (d) participants who judged the argument valid usually did not change their judgment when presented with a reason raised by other mathematicians for why the proof should be judged invalid. These findings suggest that, contrary to some claims in the literature, there is not a single standard of validity among contemporary mathematicians. (shrink)