In this new lexical survey of Kant's works, Howard Caygill presents Kantian concepts and terminology in terms that will introduce and clarify his ideas for students and general readers alike.

Oxford Scholarly Classics is a new series that makes available again great academic works from the archives of Oxford University Press. Reissued in uniform series design, the reissues will enable libraries, scholars, and students to gain fresh access to some of the finest scholarship of the last century.

Published in 1982 by CUP (pb. 2009) it discusses the forms of materialism then current, including Davidson, early Rorty, but concentrating on Smart and Armstrong, and arguing that central state materialism fails to give a better 'occurrent' account of conscious states than does behaviourism/functionalism, as Armstrong claims. The book starts with a version of the 'knowledge argument' and ends with a chapter claiming that our conception of matter/the physical is more problematic than our conception of mind.

This entry concerns dualism in the philosophy of mind. The term ‘dualism’ has a variety of uses in the history of thought. In general, the idea is that, for some particular domain, there are two fundamental kinds or categories of things or principles. In theology, for example a ‘dualist’ is someone who believes that Good and Evil — or God and the Devil — are independent and more or less equal forces in the world. Dualism contrasts with monism, which is (...) the theory that there is only one fundamental kind, category of thing or principle; and, rather less commonly, with pluralism, which is the view that there are many kinds or categories. In the philosophy of mind, dualism is the theory that the mental and the physical — or mind and body or mind and brain — are, in some sense, radically different kinds of thing. Because common sense tells us that there are physical bodies, and because there is intellectual pressure towards producing a unified view of the world, one could say that materialist monism is the ‘default option’. Discussion about dualism, therefore, tends to start from the assumption of the reality of the physical world, and then to consider arguments for why the mind cannot be treated as simply part of that world. (shrink)

This paper explores the financial reporting scandals of the past decade and the resulting U.S. legislative attempts to impose ethical behavior and control the incidence of new reporting problems via the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation. We begin with a brief historical perspective followed by assertions of ethical consequences of legislation with discussions of key recent corporate scandals, the motives for the frauds, and the consequences. Ethics related provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act are discussed with the potential impact of the legislation on the (...) likelihood of similar future frauds and accompanying prognosis for future corporate ethical behavior. (shrink)

It is a standard feature of modern philosophy, at least from Locke, to tie together the questions of how we perceive the world and what we have reason to think the world is like in itself. This is a natural connection, because the questions of how we perceive it, and what kind of conception of it we can best form on the basis of that mode of perception, are obviously intimately linked. Part I of this volume defends the sense-datum theory (...) of perception against its opponents, and argues that the sense-datum theory is much closer to a form of direct realism than is normally thought: we directly perceive the world in the form that it naturally manifests itself to creatures like us. This leaves open the question of what it is like in itself, and Part II tries to show that a Berkeleian interpretation—that the world is a nomological structure in the mind of God—is the most plausible option. Arguments with roots in Berkeley, in modern philosophers such as John Foster, and in modern science, are drawn on to support this conclusion. (shrink)

In ‘Induction and Natural Kinds’, I proposed a solution to the problem of induction according to which our use of inductive inference is reliable because it is grounded in the natural kind structure of the world. When we infer that unobserved members of a kind will have the same properties as observed members of the kind, we are right because all members of the kind possess the same essential properties. The claim that the existence of natural kinds is what grounds (...) reliable use of induction is based on an inference to the best explanation of the success of our inductive practices. As such, the argument for the existence of natural kinds employs a form of ampliative inference. But induction is likewise a form of ampliative inference. Given both of these facts, my account of the reliability of induction is subject to the objection that it provides a circular justification of induction, since it employs an ampliative inference to justify an ampliative inference. In this paper, I respond to the objection of circularity by arguing that what justifies induction is not the inference to the best explanation of its reliability. The ground of induction is the natural kinds themselves. (shrink)

The paper explores the relativistic implications of the thesis of incommensurability. A semantic form of incommensurability due to semantic variation between theories is distinguished from a methodological form due to variation in methodological standards between theories. Two responses to the thesis of semantic incommensurability are dealt with: the first challenges the idea of untranslatability to which semantic incommensurability gives rise; the second holds that relations of referential continuity eliminate semantic incommensurability. It is then argued that methodological incommensurability poses little risk (...) to the rationality or objectivity of science. For rational theory choice need neither be dictated by an algorithm nor governed by a binding set of rules. The upshot of the discussion is deflationary. There is little prospect for a relativistic conception of science based on inflated claims about the incommensurability of scientific theories. (shrink)

In recent years, a significant number of philosophers from an orthodox analytic background have begun to advocate theories of composite objects, which they say are strikingly similar to Aristotle’s hylomorphism. These theories emphasize the importance of structure, or organization—which they say is closely connected to Aristotle’s notion of form—in defining what it is for a composite to be a genuine object. The reality of these structures is closely connected with the fact that they are held to possess powers, again in (...) what is held to be a broadly Aristotelian sense, and so to be genuinely efficacious. Naturally enough, they want to do all this without espousing the discredited aspects of Aristotelian science. It is the purpose of this essay to cast a skeptical eye on whether this objective can be achieved. (shrink)

Physicalism has, over the past twenty years, become almost an orthodoxy, especially in the philosophy of mind. Many philosophers, however, feel uneasy about this development, and this volume is intended as a collective response to it. Together these papers, written by philosophers from Britain, the United States, and Australasia, show that physicalism faces enormous problems in every area in which it is discussed. The contributors not only investigate the well-known difficulties that physicalism has in accommodating sensory consciousness, but also bring (...) out its inadequacies in dealing with thought, intentionality, abstract objects, , and principles of both theoretical and practical reason; even its ability to cope with the physical world itself is called into question. Both strong "reductionist" versions and weaker "supervenience" theories are discussed and found to face different but equally formidable obstacles. Contributors include George Bealer, Peter Forrest, John Foster, Grant Gillett, Bob Hale, Michael Lockwood, George Myro, Nicholas Nathan, David Smith, Steven Wagner, Ralph Walker, and Richard Warner. (shrink)

This is a comment on Moti Mizrahi's paper ' You Can't Handle the Truth: Knowledge = Epistemic Certainty'. Mizrahi claims that the factivity of knowledge entails that knowledge requires epistemic certainty. But the argument that Mizrahi presents does not proceed from factivity to certainty. Instead, it proceeds from a premise about the relationship between grounds and knowledge to the conclusion about certainty.

This is a survey of theories of scientific method which opens the book "After Popper, Kuhn and Feyerabend: Recent Issues in Theories of Scientific Method".

This article advocates a naturalist and realist ethics of solidarity. Specifically, it argues that human needs should be met; and that they should be met in harmony with the environment. Realism should include respect for existing cultures and the morals presently being practiced – with reasonable exceptions. Dignity must come in a form understood and appreciated by the person whose dignity is being respected. It is also argued that naturalist ethics are needed to combat liberal ethics, not least because the (...) latter supports today’s inflexible and dysfunctional institutions. In arguing for these positions, reference is made to the naturalist realist ethics of Georges Canguilhem, C.H. Waddington, John Dewey and David Sloan Wilson, all of whom embed the social order in the natural order. (shrink)

This chapter starts by restating the causal-hallucinatory argument against naive realism. This argument depends on the possibility of “philosophers' hallucinations.” It draws attention to the role of what the chapter refers to as the nonarbitrariness of philosophers' hallucinations in supporting this argument. The chapter then discusses three attempts to refute the argument. Two of them, those associated with John McDowell and with Michael Martin, are explicitly forms of disjunctivism. The third, exemplified by Mark Johnston, has, the chapter claims, disjunctivist features. (...) None of these responses to the argument is plausible. (shrink)

Modes-of-being figure centrally in Heidegger's masterwork Being and Time. Testimony to this is Heidegger's characterisation of two of his most celebrated enquiries—the Existential analytic and the Zeug analysis—as investigations into the respective modes-of-being of the entities concerned. Yet despite the importance of this concept, commentators disagree widely about what a mode-of-being is. In this paper, I systematically outline and defend a novel and exegetically grounded interpretation of this concept. Strongly opposed to Kantian readings, such as those advocated by Taylor Carman (...) and Cristina Lafont, I interpret a mode-of-being as a universal that defines a district —that is, a natural class of entities that ought to be conceptualised in a special way. As such, every mode-of-being plays an important metaphysical and epistemic role: serving both to unify a natural class of a high degree of generality and as the interpretandum of an act yielding the basic-concepts pertaining to the entities therein. In explicating and arguing for this interpretation, I attribute a characteristically Aristotelian philosophical position to the early Heidegger, encompassing both metaphysical and epistemological realism and a conceptualist theory of universals. (shrink)

CHAPTER I POLITICAL FAITH AND UTOPIAN THOUGHT In the three and a half centuries since Bacon and the miller prayed for peace among the willows, countless men ...

This is a reply to Alex Grzankowski’s comment on my paper, ‘To Believe is to Believe True’. I argue that one may believe a proposition to be true without possessing the concept of truth. I note that to believe the proposition P to be true is not the same as to believe the proposition ‘P is true’. This avoids the regress highlighted by Grzankowski in which the concept of truth is employed an infinite number of times in a single belief.

ABSTRACTThis paper strengthens Bhaskar’s case for the possibility of naturalism. Building on Bhaskar’s A Realist Theory of Science and The Possibility of Naturalism, and on more recent contributions by Douglas Porpora, it traces the evolution of Bhaskar’s concept of 'intransitive' and follows his suggestion to treat social structure as an intransitive generative mechanism analogous to the generative mechanisms of the natural sciences. It is suggested, building on Porpora, that the constitutive rules of the market are usefully regarded as generating an (...) intransitive 'basic social structure.' That this same intransitive object is reasonably regarded as continuing to exist and act under different descriptions is illustrated by citing how different scholars have approached it with different concepts and vocabularies. It expands on Bhaskar’s first example of an intransitive object of social science, the mass unemployment that provided a ‘motor’ for Keynes, and on Porpora’s examples of the causal powers of social structures. (shrink)

The paper takes off from the suggestion of Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen that Kuhn’s account of science may be understood in coherentist terms. There are coherentist themes in Kuhn’s philosophy of science. But one crucial element is lacking. Kuhn does not deny the existence of basic beliefs which have a non-doxastic source of justification. Nor does he assert that epistemic justification only derives from inferential relationships between non-basic beliefs. Despite this, the coherentist interpretation is promising and I develop it further in this (...) paper. I raise the question of whether Kuhn’s account of science can deal with the input objection to coherentism. I argue that the role played by problems in Kuhn’s theory of science ensures that there is input from the external world into scientists’ belief-systems. I follow Hoyningen-Huene in pointing to the causal role played by the external world in determining perceptual states. I next turn to the question of whether Kuhn’s rejection of foundationalism implies coherentism. I argue that Kuhn’s rejection of the one-to-one relation between object and experience is compatible with a foundationalist account of justification. Nor does Kuhn’s rejection of the given entail the same coherentist implications as Sellars’ critique of the myth of the given. (shrink)

Vision consists of four essays: “Seeing distance,” “Size,” “Perceptual inference,” and “A Gibsonian alternative?” The continuous thread is the Berkeleian treatment of the perception of spatial properties, particularly in connection with what is and is not “immediately perceived.” The first two essays are closely connected with specific Berkeleian arguments and modern responses to them. The second two essays deal more generally with modern discussions by psychologists of whether visual perception is “direct” or “indirect.” The claims on the cover that the (...) book is “unique in its blend of philosophical and historical perspectives on contemporary issues in vision studies” and that it is “clearly written” and suitable “for an interdisciplinary readership in philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, cognitive psychology and history of science” are all entirely justified. (shrink)

Both Hobbes and Kant tackle the issue of natural right in a radical and controversial way. They both present systematic, secular theories of natural law in a highly religious age. Whereas Hobbes transforms natural right by placing the rational individual bent on self-preservation at the centre of political philosophy, Kant transforms natural right by putting the metaphysical presuppositions of his critical philosophy at the heart of his reasoning on politics. Neither attempts to provide an orthodox view of natural right as (...) directly or indirectly derived from God's commands, although subsequent to their philosophical deduction as natural rights or laws both do not entirely repudiate the idea that these rights or laws can be portrayed as having divine support. (shrink)

This paper explores a particularist element in the theory of method of Imre Lakatos, who appealed to the value-judgements of élite scientists in the appraisal of competing theories of method. The role played by such value-judgements is strongly reminiscent of the epistemological particularism of Roderick Chisholm. Despite the existence of a clear parallel between the particularist approaches of both authors, it is argued that Lakatos’s approach is subject to a weakness that does not affect the approach of Chisholm.

In any probabilistic theory, we say that a bipartite state ω on a composite system AB steers its marginal state ω B if, for any decomposition of ω B as a mixture ω B =∑ i p i β i of states β i on B, there exists an observable {a i } on A such that the conditional states $\omega_{B|a_{i}}$ are exactly the states β i . This is always so for pure bipartite states in quantum mechanics, a fact (...) first observed by Schrödinger in 1935. Here, we show that, for weakly self-dual state spaces (those isomorphic, but perhaps not canonically isomorphic, to their dual spaces), the assumption that every state of a system A is steered by some bipartite state of a composite AA consisting of two copies of A, amounts to the homogeneity of the state cone. If the state space is actually self-dual, and not just weakly so, this implies (via the Koecher-Vinberg Theorem) that it is the self-adjoint part of a formally real Jordan algebra, and hence, quite close to being quantum mechanical. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Argument for Predicate Dualism Why Predicate Dualism leads to Dualism Proper Is the Talk of “Perspectives” Legitimate? A Surprising Ally The Optionality of Non‐basic Levels and the Unavoidability of Psychology Why Bundle Dualism Will Not Do Two Reflections on this Conclusion An Objection Conclusion.

This paper provides an outline of Kant's ideas on international right showing how they derive from his general view of law and showing how they relate to his cosmopolitan ideal of hospitality, his views on colonialism and the vexed issue of intervention in the internal politics of other states. It can be shown – based on his ideal of hospitality and good state practice – that Kant is reluctant to recommend intervention by advanced states in the affairs of other states (...) and societies even where those societies have not attained a settled, civil status. This is not to imply that we should be indifferent to the situation of other peoples, but rather that we should encourage them to find their own way to a more advanced condition. We can best encourage them by setting and abiding by rigorous standards of law both domestically and internationally that create the possibility of a wholly legally regulated international system.War should be regarded as neither a desirable nor, ultimately, a legitimate means of pursuing foreign policy. (shrink)

Using a result of H. Hanche-Olsen, we show that (subject to fairly natural constraints on what constitutes a system, and on what constitutes a composite system), orthodox finite-dimensional complex quantum mechanics with superselection rules is the only non-signaling probabilistic theory in which (i) individual systems are Jordan algebras (equivalently, their cones of unnormalized states are homogeneous and self-dual), (ii) composites are locally tomographic (meaning that states are determined by the joint probabilities they assign to measurement outcomes on the component systems) (...) and (iii) at least one system has the structure of a qubit. Using this result, we also characterize finite dimensional quantum theory among probabilistic theories having the structure of a dagger-monoidal category. (shrink)