Leibniz vollbringt ein wichtiges philosophisches Manover, wenn er behauptet, daß Wunder, wenn sie auch nicht im Einklang mit den Naturgesetzen stehen, so doch im Einklang mit den allgemeineren metaphysischen Gesetzen, die Gott den Monaden in Form von Kraft eingeprägt hat. Leider hat er jedoch nie genug abgeklärt, auf welche Weise das Auftreten von Wundern mit seiner Physik der Kraft übereinstimmen kann. In verschiedenen Passagen scheint Leibniz sogar in einen Widerspruch verwickelt zu sein: wahrend er darauf besteht, daß Wunder über den (...) Naturgesetzen und der substaniellen Kraft stehen, erkennt er doch an, daß jede Substanz "n'agit que pour sa propre force et n'en reçoit jamais d'ailleurs" und daß alles, das je innerhalb einer Substanz geschehen wird, "est deja compris virtuellement dans sa nature ou notion". Wie kann ein Wunder – das per definitionem über der substantiellen Natur und Kraft steht – überhaupt vorkommen, wenn alles was mit einer Substanz geschieht, aus substantieller Natur oder Kraft folgen oder in ihr 'eingeprägt' sein muß? Um das Problem der Vereinbarkeit der Moglichkeit von Wundern und der Struktur des Leibnizschen metaphysischen Systems zu losen – und so ganz allgemein eine Annäherung zwischen Leibniz' theologischen Ansichten und seiner Metaphysik zu bewirken – rege ich an, daß wir Leibniz' Diskussion der derivativen Kraft bereichern und den Unterschied zwischen substanieller Essenz und Natur erhellen müssen. Erst wenn wir intermonadische von intramonadischer derivativer Kraft unterscheiden und substantielle Essenz mit primitiver Kraft verbinden und substantielle Natur mit intermonadischer derivativer Kraft, können wir sehen, wie Wunder über substantieller Kraft stehen können – nämlich insoweit sie über intermonadischer Kraft/substantieller Natur stehen, ohne gleichzeitig über primitiver Kraft/substantieller Essenz zu stehen. (shrink)

Philosophical interest in intentional action has flourished in recent decades. Typically, action theorists propose necessary and sufficient conditions for a movement's being an action, conditions derived from a conceptual analysis of folk psychological action ascriptions. However, several key doctrinal and methodological features of contemporary action theory are troubling, in particular (i) the insistence that folk psychological kinds like beliefs and desires have neurophysiological correlates, (ii) the assumption that the concept of action is "classical" in structure (making it amenable to definition (...) in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions for its proper application), and (iii) the assumption that deferring to intuitions about the application of the concept of action amidst the context of fantastical thought experiments furnishes an effective method for judging the adequacy of proposed analyses. After consideration of these problems it is argued that action theory needs to be reoriented in a more naturalistic direction, the methods and aims of which are continuous with those of the empirical sciences. The paper concludes with a sketch (and defense) of the methodological foundations of a naturalistic approach to intentional action. (shrink)

Philosophical interest in intentional action has flourished in recent decades. Typically, writers in the field of action theory seek necessary and sufficient conditions for a movement's being an action, conditions derived from a conceptual analysis of everyday action ascriptions. However, only a naturalistic account of intentional action, an account whose methods and aims are continuous with those of the empirical sciences, will truly help further our understanding of action as a biological phenomenon. ;Action is naturalized as a species of movement (...) that is both purposive and self-controlled, using these terms in novel senses. Various psychological and physiological models of purposiveness have been offered, including negative feedback, motor program, and dynamical systems models. However, while such non-historical models offer valuable insights into the nature of how organisms control their movements, they fail as general models of purposiveness because consideration of a movement's selectional history is required in order to classify movements as unitary behaviors rather than merely accidental motions. Non-historical models also fail to cover instances of unsuccessful purposive movements and cases of "functionally emergent behaviors." For such reasons, purposiveness must be seen as an historical property of movements; a movement is purposive insofar as it has a Millikanian proper function. ;An agent's capacity to exert a high degree of control over its movements marks the second key underlying property of action. I highlight an aspect of behavior-control which empirical theorists have largely ignored, namely the extent to which agents "could have done otherwise" than how they have in fact acted upon particular occasions. Self-control in this "could have done otherwise" sense is naturalized in terms of "modulatory interconnectivity." Modulatory interconnectivity involves the extent to which an agent's internal behavior-control modules facilitate behavioral interruptability via the interaction of informational links of inhibition and/or suppression. The greater the extent to which an agent's behavior-control modules have the capacity to modulate one another's activities, the more the agent has the capacity for self-control in the "could have done otherwise" sense. This view is elucidated and supported with the aid of models from robotics and neurophysiology. (shrink)

Since 1949, the year that Kurt Gödel presented his solutions to Einstein’s field equations, there has been much discussion of time travel within the philosophical literature. Whereas theorizing about time travel had theretofore been relegated to the realm of science fiction, the imprimatur of Gödel’s work elevated the legitimacy of such discussion. It finally appeared that travel into the past might be a physical—if not yet technological—possibility. For the past few decades, philosophical inquiry into backward time travel and the closely (...) related topic of backward causation has centered on the logical possibility and conceptual coherence of these phenomena. In this paper, various conceptual problems associated with time travel concerning the nature of agency and nomological structure will be explored. However, the existence of such conceptual difficulties does not threaten the logical or physical possibility of time travel. Ultimately, the most rational stance to take regarding time travel may ultimately be one of epistemic humility, by which is meant a stance involving the admission that conceptual analysis may not constitute a very fruitful methodology for understanding the physical nature of our world. (shrink)

UK-based research conducted within a healthcare setting generally requires approval from the National Research Ethics Service. Research ethics committees are required to assess a vast range of proposals, differing in both their topic and methodology. We argue the methodological benchmarks with which research ethics committees are generally familiar and which form the basis of assessments of quality do not fit with the aims and objectives of many forms of qualitative inquiry and their more iterative goals of describing social processes/mechanisms and (...) making visible the complexities of social practices. We review current debates in the literature related to ethical review and social research, and illustrate the importance of re-visiting the notion of ethics in healthcare research. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis study aimed to investigate the association of locus of control with reading and mathematics achievement of high school students with disabilities using data from the Special Educ...

The authors' aim is to provide a more complete picture of a non-anthropocentric relational ethics by addressing the failure to account for environmental justice. They argue that environmental ethics is always more than how discourses are layered over place, by situating moral agency through the body's affective repertoire of being-in-the-world. Empirical evidence for their argument is drawn from self-reflexive accounts of young Americans travelling to Ulu r u-Kata Tju t a National Park, Northern Territory, Australia as part of a (...) study-group. These reflexive travel narratives illustrate the dilemmas that even well-prepared visitors have in negotiating moral pathways invoked by the policy of reconciliation. (shrink)

Recent decades have brought environmental justice studies to a much broader analysis and new areas of concern. We take this increased depth and breadth of environmental justice further by considering restorative justice, with a particular emphasis on reconciliation efforts between indigenous and non-indigenous citizens. Our focus is on the reconciliation efforts taken by the indigenous/non-indigenous jointmanagement structure of Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park. Usinga framework of restorative justice within a bivalent environmental justice approach, we consider the current management policies at (...) the Park, particularly as it pertains to the controversial climb of the rock, Uluṟu. Our exploration of restorative environmental justice depends upon narrative analysis of embodied ecotourism affects in order to determine the capacity and obstacles of reconciliation efforts in the current management policy. Interviews with tourists from the Greater Sydney Metropolitan Area supply us with cases that provide affective experiences and a postcolonial narrative analysis of touring practices that we argue are imbued with nationalism and colonial naturalism that must be transformed in order to meet the requests of the Park’s traditional indigenous owners. We argue that restorative justice, within a bivalent environmental justice framework that already emphasizes other distributive and recognition measures, is vital for overcoming these obstacles for Australian environmental heritage. (shrink)

Recent decades have brought environmental justice studies to a much broader analysis and new areas of concern. We take this increased depth and breadth of environmental justice further by considering restorative justice, with a particular emphasis on reconciliation efforts between indigenous and non-indigenous citizens. Our focus is on the reconciliation efforts taken by the indigenous/non-indigenous jointmanagement structure of Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park. Usinga framework of restorative justice within a bivalent environmental justice approach, we consider the current management policies at (...) the Park, particularly as it pertains to the controversial climb of the rock, Uluṟu. Our exploration of restorative environmental justice depends upon narrative analysis of embodied ecotourism affects in order to determine the capacity and obstacles of reconciliation efforts in the current management policy. Interviews with tourists from the Greater Sydney Metropolitan Area supply us with cases that provide affective experiences and a postcolonial narrative analysis of touring practices that we argue are imbued with nationalism and colonial naturalism that must be transformed in order to meet the requests of the Park’s traditional indigenous owners. We argue that restorative justice, within a bivalent environmental justice framework that already emphasizes other distributive and recognition measures, is vital for overcoming these obstacles for Australian environmental heritage. (shrink)

This study described the relationships between academic class and student moral sensitivity and reasoning and between curriculum design components for ethics education and student moral sensitivity and reasoning. The data were collected from freshman (n = 506) and senior students (n = 440) in eight baccalaureate nursing programs in South Korea by survey; the survey consisted of the Korean Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire and the Korean Defining Issues Test. The results showed that moral sensitivity scores in patient-oriented care and conflict were (...) higher in senior students than in freshman students. Furthermore, more hours of ethics content were associated with higher principled thinking scores of senior students. Nursing education in South Korea may have an impact on developing student moral sensitivity. Planned ethics content in nursing curricula is necessary to improve moral sensitivity and moral reasoning of students. (shrink)

The intellectual history of the last quarter of this century has been marked by the growing influence of Africana thought--an area of philosophy that focuses on issues raised by the struggle over ideas in African cultures and their hybrid forms in Europe, the Americas, and the Caribbean. Existentia Africana is an engaging and highly readable introduction to the field of Africana philosophy and will help to define this rapidly growing field. Lewis R. Gordon clearly explains Africana existential thought to (...) a general audience, covering a wide range of both classic and contemporary thinkers--from Douglass and DuBois to Fanon, Davis and Zack. (shrink)

Over three previous editions, Ten Theories of Human Nature has been a remarkably popular introduction to some of the most influential developments in Western and Eastern thought. This thoroughly revised fourth edition features substantial new chapters on Aristotle and on evolutionary theories of human nature; the latter centers on Edward O. Wilson but also outlines the ideas of Emile Durkheim, B. F. Skinner, Nikolaas Tinbergen, Konrad Lorenz, Noam Chomsky, and recent evolutionary psychology. This edition also includes a rewritten introduction that (...) invites readers (even if inclined toward fundamentalism, or to cultural relativism) to careful, critical thought about human nature; a useful new section that summarizes the history of ideas from the Stoics to the Enlightenment; and a new conclusion that suggests a way to synthesize the various theories. Lucid and accessible, Ten Theories of Human Nature, 4/e, compresses into a small space the essence of such ancient traditions as Confucianism, Hinduism, and the Old and New Testaments as well as the theories of Plato, Immanuel Kant, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Jean-Paul Sartre. The authors juxtapose the ideas of these and other thinkers and traditions in a way that helps readers understand how humanity has struggled to comprehend its nature. To encourage readers to think critically for themselves and to underscore the similarities and differences between the many theories, the book examines each one on four points--the nature of the universe, the nature of humanity, the diagnosis of the ills of humanity, and the proposed cure for these problems. Ideal for introductory courses in human nature, philosophy, religious studies, and intellectual history, Ten Theories of Human Nature, 4/e, will engage and motivate students and other readers to consider how we can understand and improve both ourselves and human society. (shrink)

A historical investigation of the exclusion of Africa and Asia from modern histories of philosophy.

Contemporary literature on consciousness, with some exceptions, rarely considers the olfactory system. In this article the characteristics of olfactory consciousness, viewed from the standpoint of the phenomenal /access distinction, are examined relative to the major senses. The review details several qualitative differences in both olfactory P consciousness and A consciousness . The basis for these differences is argued to arise from the functions that the olfactory system performs and from the unique neural architecture needed to instantiate them. These data suggest, (...) at a minimum, that P and A consciousness are uniquely configured in olfaction and an argument can be made that the P and A distinction may not hold for this sensory system. (shrink)

Underpinning all the other branches of science, physics affects the way we live our lives, and ultimately how life itself functions. Recent scientific advances have led to dramatic reassessment of our understanding of the world around us, and made a significant impact on our lifestyle. In this book, leading international experts, including Nobel prize winners, explore the frontiers of modern physics, from the particles inside an atom to the stars that make up a galaxy, from nano-engineering and brain research to (...) high-speed data networks. Revealing how physics plays a vital role in what we see around us, this book will fascinate scientists of all disciplines, and anyone wanting to know more about the world of physics today. (shrink)

Genocide in Rwanda, multiple murder at Denver or Dunblane, the gruesome activities of serial killers - what makes these great evils, and why do they occur? In addressing such questions this book, unusually, interconnects contemporary moral philosophy with recent work in New Testament scholarship. The conclusions to emerge are surprising. Gordon Graham argues that the inability of modernist thought to account satisfactorily for evil and its occurrence should not lead us to embrace an eclectic postmodernism, but to take seriously (...) some unfashionable pre-modern conceptions - Satan, demonic possession, spiritual powers, cosmic battles. Precisely because it strives to observe the high standards of clarity and rigour that are the hallmarks of philosophy in the analytical tradition, the book makes a powerful case for the rejection of humanism and naturalism, and for explaining the moral obligation to struggle against evil by reference to the New Testament's cosmic narrative. (shrink)

One of the most basic questions an ontology can address is: How many things, or substances, are there? A monist will say, ‘just one’. But there are different stripes of monism, and where the borders between these different views lie rests on the question, ‘To what does this “oneness” apply?’ Some monists apply ‘oneness’ to existence. Others apply ‘oneness’ to types. Determining whether a philosopher is a monist and deciphering what this is supposed to mean is no easy task, especially (...) when it comes to those writing in the early modern period because many philosophers of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries include God in their ontologies. InThe Principles,Anne Finch Conway offers an ontology that is often described as being both ‘vitalist’ and ‘monist’. I take this to mean that, for Conway, all that exists is in some way alive and that if asked ‘How many things, or substances, are there?’ Conway would say, ‘Just one’. But to what does this ‘oneness’ apply? And where does the point of disagreement between Conway and her interlocutors, Hobbes, Spinoza, More, and Descartes lie? In this paper, I argue that determining the answer to this first question turns out to be quite difficult. Nevertheless, we can still make sense of the second. (shrink)

This book provides philosophers of science with new theoretical resources for making their own contributions to the scientific realism debate. Readers will encounter old and new arguments for and against scientific realism. They will also be given useful tips for how to provide influential formulations of scientific realism and antirealism. Finally, they will see how scientific realism relates to scientific progress, scientific understanding, mathematical realism, and scientific practice.

In order to make sense of Scotus’s claim that rationality is perfected only by the will, a Scotistic doctrine of truth is developed in a speculative way. It is claimed that synthetic a priori truths are truths of the will, which are existential truths. This insight holds profound theological implications and is used on the one hand to criticize Kant's conception of existence, and on the other hand, to offer another explanation of the sense according to which the existence of (...) things is grasped. (shrink)

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, shortages of scarce healthcare resources consistently presented significant moral and practical challenges. While the importance of vaccines as a key pharmaceutical intervention to stem pandemic scarcity was widely publicized, a sizable proportion of the population chose not to vaccinate. In response, some have defended the use of vaccination status as a criterion for the allocation of scarce medical resources. In this paper, we critically interpret this burgeoning literature, and describe a framework for thinking about vaccine-sensitive resource (...) allocation using the values of responsibility, reciprocity, and justice. Although our aim here is not to defend a single view of vaccine-sensitive resource allocation, we believe that attending critically with the diversity of arguments in favor (and against) vaccine-sensitivity reveals a number of questions that a vaccine-sensitive approach to allocation should answer in future pandemics. (shrink)

In this paper we show how a realistic normative democratic theory can work within the constraints set by the most pessimistic empirical results about voting behaviour and elite capture of the policy process. After setting out the empirical evidence and discussing some extant responses by political theorists, we argue that the evidence produces a two-pronged challenge for democracy: an epistemic challenge concerning the quality and focus of decision-making and an oligarchic challenge concerning power concentration. To address the challenges we then (...) put forward three main normative claims, each of which is compatible with the evidence. We start with a critique of the epistocratic position commonly thought to be supported by the evidence. We then introduce a qualified critique of referenda and other forms of plebiscite, and an outline of a tribune-based system of popular control over oligarchic influence on the policy process. Our discussion points towards a renewal of democracy in a plebeian but not plebiscitarian direction: Attention to the relative power of social classes matters more than formal dispersal of power through voting. We close with some methodological reflections about the compatibility between our normative claims and the realist program in political philosophy. (shrink)

Van Fraassen infers the truth of the contextual theory from his observation that it has passed a crucial test. Mizrahi infers the comparative truth of our best theories from his observation that they are more successful than their competitors. Their inferences require, according to the argument from double spaces, the prior belief that it is more likely that their target theories were pulled out from the T-space than from the O-space. The T-space is the logical space of unconceived theories whose (...) appearances agree with their realities; the O-space is the logical space of unconceived theories whose appearances may agree or disagree with their realities. (shrink)

Kant's Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason was written late in his career. It presents a theory of 'radical evil' in human nature, touches on the issue of divine grace, develops a Christology, and takes a seemingly strong interest in the issue of scriptural interpretation. The essays in this Critical Guide explore the reasons why this is so, and offer careful and illuminating interpretations of the themes of the work. The relationship of Kant's Religion to his other writings is (...) discussed in ways that underscore the importance of this work for the entire critical philosophy, and provide a broad perspective on his moral thought; connections are also drawn between religion, history, and politics in Kant's later thinking. Together the essays offer a rich exploration of the work which will be of great interest to those involved in Kant studies and the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay is a critical study of Jason Brennan's Against Democracy. We make three main points. First, we argue that Brennan's proposal of a right to competent government only works if one considers the absence of government a viable proposition, something most of his opponents are not prepared to do. Second, we suggest that Brennan's account of competent decision-making is blind to forms of oligarchic power that work against the very ideals of justice and epistemic virtue that competence is (...) meant to safeguard. Third, we muster empirical evidence to argue that, in the real world, democracy is not just about making decisions and selecting policies, in which case Brennan's argument misses its mark. (shrink)

Scientific realists claim that the best of successful rival theories is (approximately) true. Relative realists object that we cannot make the absolute judgment that a theory is successful, and that we can only make the relative judgment that it is more successful than its competitor. I argue that this objection is undermined by the cases in which empirical equivalents are successful. Relative realists invoke the argument from a bad lot to undermine scientific realism and to support relative realism. In response, (...) I construct the argument from double spaces. It is similar to the argument from a bad lot, but threatens many philosophical inferences, including relative realists’ inference from comparative success to comparative truth. (shrink)

Four years after the Panama Papers scandal, tax avoidance remains an urgent moral-political problem. Moving beyond both the academic and policy mainstream, I advocate the “democratization of tax enforcement,” by which I mean systematic efforts to make tax avoiders accountable to the judgment of ordinary citizens. Both individual oligarchs and multinational corporations have access to sophisticated tax avoidance strategies that impose significant fiscal costs on democracies and exacerbate preexisting distributive and political inequalities. Yet much contemporary tax sheltering occurs within the (...) letter of the law, rendering criminal sanctions ineffective. In response, I argue for the creation of Citizen Tax Juries, deliberative minipublics empowered to scrutinize tax avoiders, demand accountability, and facilitate concrete reforms. This proposal thus responds to the wider aspiration, within contemporary democratic theory, to secure more popular control over essential economic processes. (shrink)

v. 1, pt. 1. The essays -- v. 1, pt. 2. Exigesis, 1-184.

Was Descartes a Cartesian Dualist? In this controversial study, Gordon Baker and Katherine J. Morris argue that, despite the general consensus within philosophy, Descartes was neither a proponent of dualism nor guilty of the many crimes of which he has been accused by twentieth century philosophers. In lively and engaging prose, Baker and Morris present a radical revision of the ways in which Descartes' work has been interpreted. Descartes emerges with both his historical importance assured and his philosophical importance (...) redeemed. (shrink)