If libertarianism is true, then there is a sense in which agents have it within their power to bring it about that some world is actual. Against recent arguments for the incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and human freedom, I offer an account of power over the past which takes this implication of libertarianism into consideration. I argue that the resulting account is available to Ockhamists and that it is immune to recent criticisms of the notion of counterfactual power over (...) the past. But I contend that it is not an option for Molinists and that this fact leaves that position vulnerable to incompatibilist arguments. (shrink)

In his recent study, Concepts, Fodor identifies five nonnegotiable constraints on any theory of concepts. These theses were all shared by the standard medieval theories of concepts. However, those theories were cognitivist, in contrast with Fodor’s: concepts are definitions, a form of natural knowledge. The medieval theories were formed under two influences, from Aristotle by way of Boethius, and from Augustine. The tension between them resulted in the Ockhamist notion of a natural language, concepts as signs. Thus conventional signs, (...) spoken and written, signify things in the world by the mediation of concepts which themselves form a language of thought, signifying those things naturally by their similarity. Indeed, later thinkers realised that everything signifies itself and what is like it naturally in a broad sense by means of the concept of its natural likeness. (shrink)

In Ockhamist branching-time logic [Prior 67], formulas are meant to be evaluated on a specified branch, or history, passing through the moment at hand. The linguistic counterpart of the manifoldness of future is a possibility operator which is read as `at some branch, or history (passing through the moment at hand)'. Both the bundled-trees semantics [Burgess 79] and the $\langle moment, history\rangle$ semantics [Thomason 84] for the possibility operator involve a quantification over sets of moments. The Ockhamist frames are (3-modal) (...) Kripke structures in which this second-order quantification is represented by a first-order quantification. The aim of the present paper is to investigate the notions of modal definability, validity, and axiomatizability concerning 3-modal frames which can be viewed as generalizations of Ockhamist frames. (shrink)

The basic notions in Prior's Ockhamist and Peircean logics of branching-time are the notion of moment and that of history. In the tree semantics, histories are defined as maximal linearly ordered sets of moments. In the geometrical approach, both moments and histories are primitive entities and there is no set theoretical dependency of the latter on the former. In the topological approach, moments can be defined as the elements of a rank 1 base of a non-Archimedean topology on the (...) set of histories. In this paper, it will be shown that the topological approach, and hence the other approaches, can be reconstructed in a framework in which the basic notions are those of history and of relative closeness relation among histories. (shrink)

The basic notions in Prior’s Ockhamist and Peircean logics of branching-time are the notion of moment and that of history (or course of events). In the tree semantics, histories are defined as maximal linearly ordered sets of moments. In the geometrical approach, both moments and histories are primitive entities and there is no set theoretical (and ontological) dependency of the latter on the former. In the topological approach, moments can be defined as the elements of a rank 1 base (...) of a non-Archimedean topology on the set of histories. In this paper, it will be shown that the topological approach, and hence the other approaches, can be reconstructed in a framework in which the basic notions are those of history and of relative closeness relation among histories. (shrink)

Early twelfth-century logicians invoked past-tensed statements with future-oriented contents to undermine the assumption that every proposition ‘about the past’ is determinate. In the second half of the century, the notion of future-dependence was used to restrict the scope of necessity per accidens. At some point, this idea began to be applied in theology to solve puzzles surrounding predestination, prescience, prophecy, and faith. In the mid-1160s, Magister Udo quotes some thinkers who insisted that the principle of the necessity of the (...) past should exclude dicta that ‘relate to the future’, such as that he has been predestined. Peter of Poitiers adopted this ‘Ockhamist’ strategy around 1170. We find similar accounts in Simon of Tournai and Alan of Lille, who invoked it in other contexts as well. By the time of Praepositinus of Cremona, Hubert of Pirovano, and Stephen Langton, the restricted principle became something of a common view at Paris. (shrink)

This paper presents two general results of decidability concerning logics based on an indeterministic metric tense logic, which can be applied to, among others, logics combining knowledge, time and agency. We provide a general Kripke semantics based on a variation of the notion of synchronized Ockhamist frames. Our proof of the decidability is by way of the finite frame property, applying subframe transformations and a variant of the filtration technique.

On Friday God knew everything, including f, a proposition about what Jones would do on Monday; we can write the time-indexed proposition that on Friday God believed f as Bgf. If Jones does not do the thing that makes f true, then the resulting state of affairs will be ∼f. So on Monday, before a certain time – ‘ t time’ – Jones has it in his power to bring it about that ∼f. It seems to follow that on Monday (...) Jones has it in his power to bring it about that on Friday God believed something false. Yet this is impossible, as Bgp ⊃ p . But if f is false – if Jones makes it so on Monday – then so is Bgf, and God is not infallible. So either Jones cannot not do the thing that makes f true, and he has no freewill, or God is not infallible. The traditional responses to this dilemma are subtle, time-honoured and, as I see it, almost completely unconvincing. According to Linda Zagzebski , there are five of them: the Ockhamist response that God’s Friday belief is a so-called ‘soft’ fact, itself a problematic notion; the confused Molinist claim that on Friday God has something called ‘middle knowledge’ , so that God knows what Jones would do, but does not will it or know what Jones would do if … ); and the more sensible but still perplexing solution of Boethius’s that God’s knowing is not in time, so that the time-indexed proposition Bgf is not true. (How does it help to move the knowing that is said to determine our actions from the past to the timeless? It seems to …. (shrink)

In the tree-like representation of Time, two histories are undivided at a moment t whenever they share a common moment in the future of t. In the present paper, it will first be proved that Ockhamist and Peircean branching-time logics are unable to express some important sentences in which the notion of undividedness is involved. Then, a new semantics for branching-time logic will be presented. The new semantics is based on trees endowed with an indistinguishability function, a generalization of (...) the notion of undividedness. It will be shown that Ockhamist and Peircean semantics can be viewed as limit cases of the semantics developed in this paper. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present a new perspective under which branching-time semantics can be viewed. The set of histories (maximal linearly ordered sets) in a tree structure can be endowed in a natural way with a topological structure. Properties of trees and of bundled trees can be expressed in topological terms. In particular, we can consider the new notion of topological validity for Ockhamist temporal formulae. It will be proved that this notion of validity is (...) equivalent to validity with respect to bundled trees. (shrink)

In this paper we will put forward a novel semantics for future contingents. The idea behind the semantics is to be a compromise position between the ‘Ockhamist’ semantics, first put forward by Prior [1966], Thomason [1970] etc., and a version of the Thin Red Line semantics recently proposed by Malpass and Wawer [2012]. The new position is able to represent alternative possibilities in two different ways, as actual or counterfactual, which corresponds to a similar distinction in two-dimensional semantics between the (...) primary and secondary intension. We prove a theorem about the notion of validity that results from the new definition, which in the context of the literature about TRL-theories and Ockhamism has some significance. (shrink)

John Fischer has attacked the Ockhamistic solution to the freedom–foreknowledge dilemma by arguing that: (1) God's prior beliefs about the future, though being soft facts about the past, are soft facts of a special sort, what he calls ‘hard-type soft facts’, i.e. soft facts, the constitutive properties of which are ‘hard’, or ‘temporally non-relational properties’; (2) in this respect, such facts are like regular past facts which are subject to the fixity of the past. In this paper, I take (...) issue with this argument by Fischer, claiming that it does not succeed for two reasons: (i) Fischer's account of the notion of a hard property is unsatisfactory; (ii) his notion of a hard-type soft fact is incoherent. Despite this criticism, I agree with Fischer that there is a fundamental difference between God's beliefs about the future and regular soft facts with regard to their fixity-status, but I argue that the reason for this difference is that God's forebeliefs are plain hard facts about the past. (shrink)

John Martin Fischer’s charge that Molinism does not offer a unique answer to the dilemma of divine foreknowledge and human freedom can be seen as a criticism of middle knowledge for begging the question of FF -compatibilism. In this paper, I seek to answer this criticism in two ways. First, I demonstrate that most of the chief arguments against middle knowledge are guilty of begging the question of FF-incompatibilism and conclude that the simple charge of begging the question cannot be (...) as problematic as some suggest. Determinists and open theists incorporate FF-incompatibilist notions into their respective versions of the grounding objection, their conceptions of risk and libertarian freedom, and their requirements for divine foreknowledge. Thus, while I admit that Molinism does rely upon Ockhamist and Augustinian principles in its approach to the dilemma and is guilty of presupposing FF-compatibilism, I deny that this undermines its strength as a model of providence. Second, I argue that, although all models are guilty of question-begging moves, they are not all on par with one another. Molinism offers a more orthodox and robust approach to providence than open theism and process theology, and it handles empirical data better than all of its competitors. (shrink)

I begin with two compatibilist analyses of freedom: the conditional analysis and Lehrer's possible-worlds analysis. While certain arguments fail to undermine the conditional analysis, I present one which shows the inadequacy of the simple conditional analysis and a class of refinements of it. I find reason to reject the simple conditional analysis, refinements designed to account for "schizophrenic" objects, and Lehrer's conjunction of conditionals. ;I show how we might modify Lehrer's possible-worlds analysis to avoid compatibilist objections, by replacing the (...) class='Hi'>notion of an "advantage" with that of an "obstacle". This produces an analysis which, though acceptable to a compatibilist, will not satisfy an incompatibilist. This is because the account of an obstacle entails the debatable proposition that it need not be unreasonably difficult to violate a natural law. ;I discuss a family of arguments designed to show that any compatibilist analysis will be inadequate. I sketch a preliminary version of the "standard argument for incompatibilism about determinism and freedom", and I compare this argument with a parallel argument for the incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and human freedom. I show how we can refine the Ockhamist response in such a way as to defend compatibilism about freedom and divine foreknowledge without also defending compatibilism about freedom and causal determinism. ;The refinement of Ockhamism shows that the compatibilist about divine foreknowledge and freedom need not say either that a person can so act that a natural law which actually holds wouldn't hold or that a person can so act that a fact which is simply about the past wouldn't be a fact. ;I next examine critically a general formulation of the standard argument for the incompatibility of freedom and causal determinism and draw out its implications. ;I sketch an account of moral responsibility which doesn't require freedom to do otherwise--an actual-sequence account--contrast it with various alternate-sequence approaches to responsibility, and show how it needn't entail compatibilism about determinism and moral responsibility. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:164 BOOK REVIEWS Thomas Buckingham and the Contingency of Futures-The Possibility of Human Freedom: A Study and Edition of Thomas Buckingham, De contingentia futurorum et arbitrii libertate. By BARTHOLOMEW R. DE LA TORRE, O.P. University of Notre Dame, The Medieval Institute Publications in Medieval Studies, Vol. XXV. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987. Pp. xii +394. In this volume, Fr. Batholomew de la Torre offers the (...) text and an extended study of Thomas Buckingham's De contingentia futurorum et arbitrii libertate, which is the first of six questions of this scholastic's Quaestiones theologicae, more properly entitled Ostensio meriti liberae actionis. The six questions are found in their entirety in two English manuscripts, namely Oxford New College 134 and Oxford Merton 143. The New CoUege (late fourteenth century) manuscript is earlier and superior to Merton (early fifteenth century), and accordingly the editor adopts it except in cases where the Merton reading makes better sense. The author, Thomas Buckingham, born in the early days of the fourteenth century, was an Oxford scholar at Merton, chancellor of Exeter, and died, very likely a victim of the Black Death, in 1348. The work edited here probably formed a part of Buckingham's exercise prescribed by University statute for those incepting as Masters of Theology. In the editor's view, this inception took place sometime between 1341 and 1346, when Thomas departed Oxford to take up duties at Exeter. There is some reason to believe that Buckingham may have been a student of Thomas Bradwardine (p. 7); irt is certain, however, that the present work "is a sustained attack on Bradwardine's notion that all future contingents come about by antecedent necessity relative to the first cause, God" (p. 103) • Bradwardine presented his view regarding how we must reconcile God's universal and immutable causality with human freedom in his magnum opus De causa Dei contra Pelagium. De la Torre describes Bradwardine's position this way: "For Bradwardine, God is the universal cause of all things, including future contingents. Future contingents are determined by divine antecedent necessity, for God's will concerning them is omnipotent and unimpedible. Such futures nevertheless remain contingent because only man as a secondary cause-and no other secondary cause-is responsible for his free choice. The theory that, once God has determined what a future shall be, He can still determine otherwise, is patently untenable BOOK REVIEWS 165 for Bradwardine because it predicates mutability of God and nullifies all inspired prophecy, including that of Christ" (p. 101). Bradwardine's exposition here outlined corresponds in its essentials with what Thomas Aquinas had taught in the previous century. The freedom or contingency in man's will act is to he understood in terms of its relationship to secondary or proximate causes. Unlike those events which are determined to come about by virtue of necessitating proximate causes, will acts in this respect remain totally undetermined. Along with this, says Aquinas, we must allow that God, because of His eternal knowledge, knows all futures-determined, as well as contingent -as present. His knowing future contingents, however, does not take away the condition of contingency, since the latter condition rests solely on their mode of occurrence as they relate to secondary or proximate causes. Thomas Buckingham finds this explanation inadequate. In order to safeguard future contingents or human freedom. Buckingham insists there must be a sense in which the ultimate cause, God, is casually contingent with respect to the human will act. Though his exposition is different in many details, Buckingham's fundamental direction is in accord with what certain predecessors, especially Scotus and Ockham, had argued regarding the problem of divine foreknowledge and future contingents. Indeed, in view of the way Buckingham cites Scotus, the editor considers it reasonable to suppose that he regarded himself a disciple of the Subtle Doctor (p. 132). There is at least one instance where Buckingham exhibits a markedly Scotistic and anti-Ockhamist analysis. This occurs in connection with the explanation as to how in one and the same instant, because of the different moments of natural priority and posteriority, the divine will can both will and not will the same thing. The... (shrink)

The concept of soft facts is crucial for the Ockhamistic analysis of the divine knowledge of future contingents; moreover, this notion is important in itself because it concerns the structure of the facts that depend—in some sense—on other future facts. However, the debate on soft facts is often flawed by the unaware use of two different notions of soft facts. The facts of the first kind are supervenient on temporal facts: By bringing about a temporal fact, the agent (...) can bring about these facts. However, on the one hand, the determination of the existence of these facts does not affect the past; on the other hand, assimilating divine knowledge into this kind of facts does not help the Ockhamist. The authors will argue that, to vindicate Ockhamism, another definition of “soft fact” is necessary, which turns out to be much more demanding from a metaphysical point of view. (shrink)

This paper explores the theological and philosophical implications of artificial intelligence (AI) and Neuroscience research on the Christian’s notion of the human person. The paschal mystery of Christ is the intuitive foundation of Christian anthropology. In the intellectual history of the Christianity, Platonism and Aristotelianism have been employed to articulate the Christian philosophical anthropology. The Aristotelian systematization has endured to this era. Since the modern period of the Western intellectual history, Aristotelianism has been supplanted by the positive sciences as (...) the standard scientific and philosophical interpretative framework for many. This paper argues that there is need for a new Christian anthropology based on the interpretation of the paschal mystery of Christ that is consistent with contemporary science and philosophy, especially as informed by research in AI and neuroscience. Christian anthropology today ought to be fully aware of the theological and philosophical implications of AI and neuroscience research. This paper denotes this new Christian anthropology as neuro-theological Christian anthropology. (shrink)

In this text, I consider two examples in the history of emancipation and manumission of enslaved, Black populations in the Caribbean and South America in order to theorize a colonial mode of conceiving of freedom at play in the first half of the nineteenth century. This mode is marked by the figure of the promise, enacting a notion of freedom as a constantly deferred, external compensation. Indeed, instead of an immediate decision deeming the practice of enslavement and trade of (...) human beings unacceptable, and an effective liberation of the enslaved Black populations in these different emancipation proclamations, the various histories of manumission in Latin America and the Caribbean show a long series of political and legal attempts to reduce and limit the extent of the slave trade that deferred the process of liberation for decades. Moreover, in many of these territories the practice did not end with the official proclamation of emancipation but was continued by illegal practices and mutations into legal forms of exploitation and oppression that are still operative today. After outlining this first trajectory, reconstructing the promise of manumission in the historical examples of Martinique (as read by Édouard Glissant) and La Gran Colombia and the Republic of Nueva Granada (contemporary Panamá, Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador), I analyze a second mode of investigation in examples of individual and collective strategies of liberation coming from the enslaved themselves, as reconstructed by contemporary feminist scholars in South America. These strategies appropriate liberation not as a promise, but as a negotiation and calculation that begins with the enslaved’s resistance to their oppressive conditions and that ultimately depends on the external concession by juridical authorities. In the third section of the chapter, I read these practices not as marronage, as they are sometimes approached, but as a different mode of turning back to these glimpses of freedom that more effectively challenge the narrative of emancipation and, with it, the promise of manumission in our present. -/- . (shrink)

This is an attack on the very notion of narrow content. In particular, I argue against two-factor theories of mental content, Chalmers's epistemic two-dimensional account of narrow content and Segal's truth-conditional account of narrow content.

This paper shows the ways in which Kant’s notions of the feeling of life and the feeling of the promotion of life may be influenced by Epicurus’ theory of pleasure and the Stoic notion of oikeiôsis, respectively. Accordingly, getting a clear picture of Epicurus’ theory of pleasure and the Stoic notion of oikeiôsis will help us (i) understand why Kant introduces these notions in the third Critique and (ii) why he identifies aesthetic pleasure with the feeling of the (...) promotion of life. As I will demonstrate, the feeling of life allows us to be conscious of the harmonious interaction of our faculties with each other while the feeling of the promotion of life allows us to be aware of the harmonious relationship between our faculties and nature. Hence, the feeling of the promotion of life indicates the well-being of the subject in its relation to its environment. (shrink)

In this chapter, we explain how Karl Jaspers’ concept of empathy can be expanded by drawing upon the tradition of philosophical phenomenology. In the first section, we offer an account of Jaspers' concepts of empathy and incomprehensibility as he develops them in General Psychopathology and “The Phenomenological Approach in Psychopathology.” In the second section, we survey the recent literature on overcoming Jaspers' notion of incomprehensibility and expanding his concept of empathy. In the third section, we outline the levels of (...) investigation at which phenomenological inquiries into psychopathology may proceed. These levels of human existence are, in descending order of depth, (1) phenomenal experiences, (2) interpretive frameworks, (3) modes of existence, and (4) existentials. In the fourth and final section, we argue that to fully empathically comprehend patients with schizophrenia and other mental disorders, the possibility of alterations at all four levels of existence must be acknowledged. (shrink)

This paper has two goals. The first goal is to show that the structuralists’ claims about dependence are more significant to their view than is generally recognized. I argue that these dependence claims play an essential role in the most interesting and plausible characterization of this brand of structuralism. The second goal is to defend a compromise view concerning the dependence relations that obtain between mathematical objects. Two extreme views have tended to dominate the debate, namely the view that all (...) mathematical objects depend on the structures to which they belong and the view that none do. I present counterexamples to each of these extreme views. I defend instead a compromise view according to which the structuralists are right about many kinds of mathematical objects (roughly, the algebraic ones), whereas the anti-structuralists are right about others (in particular, the sets). I end with some remarks about how to understand the crucial notion of dependence, which despite being at the heart of the debate is rarely examined in any detail. (shrink)

In the first Critique, Kant famously holds a novel practical notion of Belief (Glauben) as assent justified not by evidence but by practical considerations. This paper examines the early development of Kant’s practical notion of Belief prior to the first Critique. It aims to make clear what prompted Kant to develop this notion in the first place, and how this notion came to assume its crucial role in Kant’s critical system. This development, I argue, has two (...) main steps. The first is his introduction of a practical notion of Belief in mid-to-late 1760s. I argue that he did so because he regards this notion as a useful tool to get ordinary people to justifiably commit to the existence of God and an after-life. The second step is Kant’s abandonment of the objective validity of his logical proof of God around 1772. This step elevated Belief from a merely useful means to the only justified way to commit to the existence of God and an after-life. This second step, I argue, is closely connected to Kant’s pivot to the view that the objective validity of concepts requires sensibly given objects, and it is motivated by Kant’s concern with subject-cancelling real repugnance. (shrink)

Although Avicenna does not explicitly develop a ‘theory of intentionality', one can reconstruct his account of intentionality through an analysis of his thoughts on the relation between mind, meaning, and thing. We take up this task in this paper through an analysis of Avicenna's theory of the considerations of quiddity. First, we clarify Avicenna's idea of ‘quiddity', and show how it functions as a core of ‘meaning' which remains identical in its different modes of realization. Second, through an examination of (...) the very notion of ‘consideration' (i‘tibār), we distinguish between two aspects of the mind, i.e. mental act and mental existence. This helps us clarify what Avicenna means by the existence of a quiddity in mind and in what sense, if any, it is essential to intentionality. Third, addressing the problem of the relation between ‘mental existence' and ‘external existence’, we show how the mode of existence of a quiddity, including its concrete existence, is posited in and through intentionality. This implies that both being and quiddity are moments of the intentional object, and thus, intentionality, for Avicenna, is a dyadic relation between the intentional act and the intentional object. We conclude by reconstructing the structure of intentionality in Avicenna. (shrink)

Ned Block argues that the higher-order (HO) approach to explaining consciousness is ‘defunct’ because a prominent objection (the ‘misrepresentation objection’) exposes the view as ‘incoherent’. What’s more, a response to this objection that I’ve offered elsewhere (Weisberg 2010) fails because it ‘amounts to abusing the notion of what-it’s-like-ness’ (xxx).1 In this response, I wish to plead guilty as charged. Indeed, I will continue herein to abuse Block’s notion of what-it’s-like-ness. After doing so, I will argue that the HO (...) approach accounts for the sense of what-it’s-like-ness that matters in a theory of consciousness. I will also argue that the only incoherence present in the HO theory is that generated by embracing Block’s controversial notion of what-it’s-like-ness, something no theorist of any stripe ought to do. Block is famous for (among other things) having introduced the notion of ‘phenomenal consciousness’ into contemporary philosophy of mind (Block 1995). This term is widely employed in the philosophical literature and it even appears in the empirical literature. But wide-speared usage has brought about divergent interpretations of the term. We can distinguish a ‘moderate’ and a ‘zealous’ reading of ‘phenomenal consciousness’. On the moderate reading, ‘phenomenal consciousness’ just means ‘experience’. Many people have embraced this sense of the term and use it to roughly pick out conscious experience involving sensory quality (states like conscious visual experiences or conscious pains, for example).2 On the zealous reading, however, phenomenal consciousness is held to be ‘distinct from any cognitive, intentional, or functional property’ (Block 1995: 234). That is, any explanation of phenomenal consciousness in exclusively cognitive, intentional, or functional terms will fail to capture, without remainder, what is really distinctive about phenomenal consciousness. Block, of course, is fully clear about embracing the zealous reading; indeed, his initial introduction of the notion is in those terms. The same ambiguity occurs with the much-used (and abused) idea of ‘what-it’s-like-ness’.. (shrink)

Symmetries in physics are a guide to reality. That much is well known. But what is less well known is why symmetry is a guide to reality. What justifies inferences that draw conclusions about reality from premises about symmetries? I argue that answering this question reveals that symmetry is an epistemic notion twice over. First, these inferences must proceed via epistemic lemmas: premises about symmetries in the first instance justify epistemic lemmas about our powers of detection, and only from (...) those epistemic lemmas can we draw conclusions about reality. Second, in order to justify those epistemic lemmas, the notion of symmetry must be defined partly in epistemic terms. 1 Symmetry-to-Reality Reasoning1.1 A rough introduction to symmetry1.2 The symmetry-to-reality inference1.3 Two questions1.4 Two answers1.5 Preliminary clarifications2 Against Redundancy2.1 Redundancy2.2 Is absolute velocity redundant?2.3 Some redundancies3 Against Objectivity4 From Symmetry to Detection4.1 The epistemic approach4.2 The Occamist norm4.3 From symmetry to detection5 The Meaning of ‘Symmetry’5.1 A framework5.2 Formal definitions5.3 Ontic definitions6 Epistemic Definitions6.1 Taking observation seriously6.2 How things look6.3 Observation sentences6.4 Observational equivalence7 Symmetry as an Epistemic Notion 7.1 Observational equivalence and metaphysics7.2 The Occamist norm revisted7.3 Consequences8 Conclusion. (shrink)

This article discusses the meaning of the notion of virtuality in modern physics. To this end, it develops considerations on the introduction and establishment in nuclear physics of two independent concepts at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s: that of the virtual state, used in the context of neutron scattering studies, and that of the virtual transition, useful for the theoretical understanding of strong nuclear forces, which forms the basis of what are now called virtual particles. Their comparative (...) analysis highlights the theoretical nature of virtual entities and processes in modern physics. It also shows how the virtual has been associated with various purely physical attributes, leading to a form of polysemy of the term, from the beginning of the application of these concepts. (shrink)

Individuals are a prominent part of the biological world. Although biologists and philosophers of biology draw freely on the concept of an individual in articulating both widely accepted and more controversial claims, there has been little explicit work devoted to the biological notion of an individual itself. How should we think about biological individuals? What are the roles that biological individuals play in processes such as natural selection (are genes and groups also units of selection?), speciation (are species individuals?), (...) and organismic development (do genomes code for organisms)? Much of our discussion here will focus on organisms as a central kind of biological individual, and that discussion will raise broader questions about the nature of the biological world, for example, about its complexity, its organization, and its relation to human thought. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to problematise the idea of Deleuze as an anarchic thinker on the ground of his metaphysics. Focusing on his early work, it investigates the notion of ‘crowned anarchy’ that Deleuze borrows from Antonin Artaud and which he uses to describe his conceptualisation of the univocity of being. While this notion has recently been used as a catchphrase in post-anarchist writings, it has received little to no critical investigation. The first section of the (...) paper investigates the relation between ontological anarchy and difference for Deleuze. The second part aims to show the problems surrounding a coronation of anarchy, and goes back to Artaud’s Heliogabalus, or The Anarchist Crowned (1934). The third section problematises the anarchist status of Deleuze’s ontology by arguing that the idea of difference serves as the principle of sufficient reason. With this, I argue that Deleuze does not leave the archic paradigm of philosophy – which should make us reconsider describing his ontology as anarchist. The final part concludes with the underlying problem, the relation between metaphysics and politics, and offers a suggestion for the useability of Deleuze’s (and Guattari’s) work for the projects of anarchism today. (shrink)

The paper presents a metaphysical characterization of spatiotemporal backgrounds from a realist perspective. The conceptual analysis is based on a heuristic sketch that encompasses the common formal traits of the major spacetime theories, such as Newtonian mechanics and general relativity. It is shown how this framework can be interpreted in a fully realist fashion, and what is the role of background structures in such a picture. In the end it is argued that, although backgrounds are a source of metaphysical discomfort, (...) still they make a spacetime theory easy to interpret. It is also suggested that this conclusion partially explains why the notion of background independence carries a lot of conceptual difficulties. (shrink)

This research provides an analysis of the role of ‘natural consciousness’ and ‘absolute knowledge’ in the process of establishing the notion of philosophy in Hegel’s The Phenomenology of Spirit. The author seeks to show that ‘natural consciousness’ does not disappear in the first approaches to The Phenomenology, but rather, it continues to act as the subject of the ‘experience of consciousness’ until the end. The material analysis directly related to the evolution of ‘natural consciousness’ in the first stages of (...) ‘experience’ particularly supports the hypothesis about the philosopher’s work on the book. The results obtained can be seen as a validation of the idea that the usual notions of overcoming ‘natural consciousness’ already in the first ‘experiences of consciousness’ do not correspond to its fundamental role in establishing the notion of philosophy in The Phenomenology of Spirit. It represents not only the starting point of the phenomenological movement but it is also involved in the ‘reversals of consciousness’ at every stage of the ‘experience,’ which is important to take into account for the correct evaluation of the specificity of The Phenomenology of Spirit and the comprehension of the nature of philosophical knowledge as the main result of this Hegelian work. (shrink)

Epistemologists often offer theories of justification without paying much attention to the variety and diversity of locutions in which the notion of justification appears. For example, consider the following claims which contain some notion of justification: B is a justified belief, S's belief that p is justified, p is justified for S, S is justified in believing that p, S justifiably believes that p, S's believing p is justified, there is justification for S to believe that p, there (...) is justification for S's believing p, and S has a justification for believing that p. In addition to these passive uses of the notion of justification, there are active uses as well: S justified his belief in p, believing e justifies believing p, etc. The syntactic variety involves semantic difference as well. For example, the proposition S has a justification for believing that p does not entail that S believes p, whereas the proposition S justifiably believes that p does entail that S believes p. Our ultimate goal is to show that this diversity is only superficial by arguing that there is a basic kind of justification. On the way, however, we shall argue that there are three central uses of a notion of justifica- tion in the above list: propositional justification (as in p is justified for S), personal justification (as in S is justified in believing that p) and doxastic justification (as in S's believing p is justified). Our preliminary argument will be that the multiplicity above can be explained in terms of these three locutions, and the substance of our argument will be to show that one of these three is the basic kind of justification. Success in this task will thereby justify, at least in part, the practice of contem- porary epistemologists. Our conclusions, however, shall not be of much comfort to contemporary epistemology, for the way in which the apparent diversity in the uses of the notion of justification is eliminated undermines much of recent epistemology. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage se propose de confronter les problématiques relatives à la falsafa et à la religion islamique dans leur approche du corps. Le corps a toujours été marginalisé au profit de la notion de l'âme. Pendant que les penseurs ont été intéressés par l'étude de l'âme, le corps a toujours été leur point de départ. Son statut éthique et ontologique doit être réexaminé en refusant de se limiter aux dualismes classiques corps/âme ou matérialisme/spiritualisme qui masquent par leur dimension formelle (...) ou réductrice l'enjeu politique et existentiel de la question ainsi que ses implications théoriques et pratiques. Deux grandes perspectives apparaissent dans le développement de la falsafa lorsqu'elle problématise la question du corps. La première porte sur le fondement psychologique du lien existant entre l'âme et le corps et ses conséquences quant à la détermination de leur valeur réciproque. La deuxième est métaphysique et s'inscrit dans une visée eschatologique impliquant une conception de l'au-delà et du jugement dernier. Comment penser le corps d'un point de vue philosophique pour qu'il ne soit pas incompatible avec l'islam? Pour répondre à cette question, nous étudions les textes fondateurs de la falsafa spécialement ceux de Al-F r b, Ibn S n, Al-Ghaz l et Mull Sadr tout en les comparant aux textes coraniques. Georgio Rahal enseigne l'islamologie, l'histoire médiévale de l'islam, l'arabe littéraire et la philosophie arabe à l'Institut Catholique de Toulouse. (shrink)

Although there is widespread agreement that our epistemic dependence on other people's knowledge is a key ingredient of our cognitive life, the role of trust in this dependence is much more open to debate. Is trust in epistemic authority—or “epistemic trust” for short—an epistemological notion in any sense, or is it simply a bridge-concept that connects our epistemological concerns to moral issues? Should we depict it in terms of the more familiar sociological notion of trust as a basis (...) for cooperation? (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to provide a definition of the the notion of complete and immediate formal grounding through the concepts of derivability and complexity. It will be shown that this definition yields a subtle and precise analysis of the concept of grounding in several paradigmatic cases.

We provide a new perspective on the relation between the space of description of an object and the appearance of novelties. One of the aims of this perspective is to facilitate the interaction between mathematics and historical sciences. The definition of novelties is paradoxical: if one can define in advance the possibles, then they are not genuinely new. By analyzing the situation in set theory, we show that defining generic (i.e., shared) and specific (i.e., individual) properties of elements of a (...) set are radically different notions. As a result, generic and specific definitions of possibilities cannot be conflated. We argue that genuinely stating possibilities requires that their meaning has to be made explicit. For example, in physics, properties playing theoretical roles are generic; then, generic reasoning is sufficient to define possibilities. By contrast, in music, we argue that specific properties matter, and generic definitions become insufficient. Then, the notion of new possibilities becomes relevant and irreducible. In biology, among other examples, the generic definition of the space of DNA sequences is insufficient to state phenotypic possibilities even if we assume complete genetic determinism. The generic properties of this space are relevant for sequencing or DNA duplication, but they are inadequate to understand phenotypes. We develop a strong concept of biological novelties which justifies the notion of new possibilities and is more robust than the notion of changing description spaces. These biological novelties are not generic outcomes from an initial situation. They are specific and this specificity is associated with biological functions, that is to say, with a specific causal structure. Thus, we think that in contrast with physics, the concept of new possibilities is necessary for biology. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the Hole Argument can be formulated without using the notion of isomorphism, and for this reason it is not threatened by the criticism of Halvorson and Manchak (Br J Philos Sci, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1086/719193). Following Earman and Norton (Br J Philos Sci 38, pp. 515–525, 1987), I divide the Hole Argument into two steps: the proof of the Gauge Theorem and the transition from the Gauge Theorem to the conclusion of radical indeterminism. In the (...) analaysis of the first step, I argue that the Gauge Theorem does not rely on the notion of isomorphism but on the notion of the diffeomorphism-invariance of the equations of local spacetime theories; however, for this approach to work, the definition of local spacetime theories needs certain amendments with respect to Earman and Norton’s formulation. In the analysis of the second step, I postulate that we should use the notion of radical indeterminism instead of indeterminism simpliciter and that we should not decide in advance what kind of maps are to be used in comparing models. Instead, we can tentatively choose some kind of maps for this purpose and check whether a given choice leads to radical indeterminism involving empirically indistinguishable models. In this way, the use of the notion of isomorphism is also avoided in the second step of the Hole Argument. A general picture is that physical equivalence can be established by means of an iterative procedure in which we examine various candidate classes of maps, and, depending on the outcomes, we need to broaden or narrow these classes. The Hole Argument can be viewed as a particular instance of this procedure. (shrink)

In 1970 Van Rensselaer Potter was the first to use the term "bioethics" in a publication to advocate the development of a new discipline to address the basic problems of human flourishing. This article analyzes Potter's notion of bioethics in order to understand its origins, sources, and substance. In early publications, Potter conceptualized bioethics as a bridge: between present and future, nature and culture, science and values, and finally between humankind and nature. In later publications, disappointed by a predominant (...) focus on individual and medical issues, and with a wish to underscore the need for a broader perspective, Potter introduced the new term "global bioethics," meant to transcend ethics specialties and integrate them into a new interdisciplinary endeavor to address global problems. A growing interest in global bioethics today means that Potter's original insights are more timely than ever. (shrink)

This theoretical expose explores the complex notion of argumentative style, which has so far been largely neglected in argumentation theory. After an introduction of the problems involved, the theoretical tools for identifying the properties of the discourse in which an argumentative style manifests itself are explained from a pragma-dialectical perspective and a theoretical definition of argumentative style is provided that does full justice to its role in argumentative discourse. The article concludes with a short reflection upon the next steps (...) that need to be taken in argumentation theory in further substantiating the notion of argumentative style. (shrink)

In this essay, Weil undertakes a meditation on the idea of “reading”, which she thinks can shed new light on a diverse range of conceptual and experiential “mysteries”, especially with respect to our existential responses to the world. A central concern is how we ascribe meaning and respond to phenomena. She argues that, for the most part, our reading of the world and the things in it are immediate, not subject to “interpretation”, at least as this is regularly conceived. Further, (...) Weil says, our readings of the world are invariably tied to particular kinds of valuation, of ethical assessment and orientation, which appear to us as both obvious and immediate. This immediacy of reading, however, does not entail that our readings cannot be changed or challenged—only that such a change or challenge requires a particular kind of labor. (shrink)

The Mohists develop the concept of yi 義 to denote what is morally right in a normative sense. We argue that this concept has, as one of its necessary conditions, a requirement to not harm others. Additionally, we will show that the motivation of developing this concept is that it can be both universalized and publicly agreed upon, thus serving the Mohists’ endeavor to overcome human conflicts that make the world chaotic and unlivable. We argue therefore that the Mohist (...) class='Hi'>notion of gongyi 公義 is best captured by the requirement of “not harming.” Moreover, we shall show that the Mohists themselves committed to this requirement as the first principle of all their core doctrines. Finally, we argue that due to the justifiability and universalizability of the requirement of “not harming,” the Mohists’ commitment to it as a prerequisite normatively justifies their other values in a way that was unprecedented at the time. (shrink)

Flagging labor governance in far-flung supply networks has prompted greater scrutiny of instrumental CSR and calls for models that are tethered more closely to accountability, constraint, and oversight. Political CSR is an apt response, but this paper seeks to buttress its deliberative moorings by arguing that the agonist notion of ‘domesticated conflict’ provides a necessary foundation for substantive deliberation. Because deliberation is more viable and effective when coupled with some means of coercion, a concept of CSR solely premised on (...) reciprocal corporate-stakeholder engagement is pre-mature; efforts should first be directed toward the antecedents of reciprocity and how it is to be achieved, and only then does deliberation become a reliably substantive exercise. The resulting account of agonistic CSR is generated through agonistic principles of realism, pro-action, contestation, and countervailence, and illustrated by the Bangladesh Accord. (shrink)

For the first time in print, this article reports passages from John Rawls’s graduate papers and annotations on books and manuscripts from his personal library. The analysis of this material shows the historical inaccuracy of the widespread assumption that Rawls’s philosophy owes very little to American pragmatism. Peirce’s notion of truth, as well as the holistic critique of pragmatism thatMortonWhite began in the late 1940s, prove significant at the very beginning of Rawls’s philosophical enterprise. In the light of this (...) material, it might be argued that Rawls’s elaboration of ‘reflective equilibrium’ started at least in part as an attempt to overcome the pending problems of pragmatism. (shrink)

The critical analysis of desire is a staple of classical Buddhist thought; however, modern scholarship has focused primarily on doctrinal and scholastic texts that explain the Buddhist understanding of desire. As a result, the contribution of _kāvya_ (poetry) to the classical Buddhist philosophy of desire has not received much scholarly attention. To address this dearth, I explore in this article the notion of _kāma_ (desire or love) in Aśvaghoṣa’s epic poem, the _Saundarananda_ (_Beautiful Nanda_). I begin by framing the (...) poem’s Buddhist interpretation of desire and highlighting the didactic and transcendental role of _kāma_ in transforming Nanda, the poem’s protagonist. Then, I examine Aśvaghoṣa’s poetic depictions of Nanda, Sundarī, and the _apsaras_es, outlining the _Saundarananda_’s phenomenology of desire. Overall, this article illustrates how Aśvaghoṣa employs the genre of _kāvya_ to express a Buddhist critique of desire that focuses on the nature of the desirable object and the state of mind of the desirous subject. (shrink)

The philosophical study of trauma involves considering this concept in a circle of apparently abstract examples, commenting on it from the perspectives of ontology, metaphysics, aesthetics, and ethics. The difficulty with trauma is not simply that it stands as a subject for disciplines of a different kind and intentionality, but that it is inherently bound to resist all theoretical reasoning at all. This notion is not so much contradictory as actively negative in relation to the usual application of theoretical (...) apparatus to it and its like. But the further one deals with trauma, even if one is not a metaphysician, even if one is at its mercy, the more clearly one realizes that thought cannot deny itself for the sake of earthly pain, no matter how much it may feel the urge to accomplish this self-overcoming, that it will remain itself even in the analysis of trauma, i. e., a movement from fact to essence. And accordingly, the trauma will be abstracted and revealed from paradoxical and formal sides, in its otherness and ambiguity. (shrink)