This paper defends a 'punctivist' conception of consciousness from recent attacks by Ian Phillips and Matthew Soteriou. As we intend it, 'punctivism' is the view that a subject's experience over some interval is determined by their experiential states at each instant during it. Phillips and Soteriou both offer ingenious arguments purporting to show that the punctivist is unable to make sense of motion perception; and that only by adopting an 'holistic' conception -- whereby a subject's instantaneous experiences are determined by (...) their experience over the interval -- can we make sense of the puzzles such phenomena pose. We contend that both arguments invoke dubious claims, their proffered solutions come with highly controversial commitments, and, if we take punctivism seriously, it is difficult to see why the so-called puzzles should be puzzling in the first place. A punctivist model of motion perception is proposed in response, and objections anticipated. (shrink)

This paper discusses a challenge for Comparativists about belief, who hold that numerical degree of belief (in particular, subjective probability) is a useful fiction, unlike comparative belief, which they regard as real. The challenge is to make sense of claims like ‘I am twice as confident in A as in B’ in terms of comparative belief only. After showing that at least some Comparativists can meet this challenge, I discuss implications for Zynda’s [2000] and Stefánsson’s [2017] defences of Comparativism.

Prichard's concern here is whether a person's obligation depends either on features of his or her situation or on features of his or her thoughts about that situation. Related to this contrast between the objective view and the subjective view is the issue of whether an obligation is an obligation to do some action. To the latter issue, Prichard responds that an obligation is not an obligation to do something, but an obligation to set ourselves to do something; as a (...) consequence, it is necessary to modify the terms of Prichard's primary concern. This modification diminishes the force of the objective view and does nothing to eliminate the central difficulty in the subjective view, namely, that the obligation to do some action is said to depend not on the character that the action would have, but on our belief that it would have that character. The belief that some general character picks out obligations derives from the mistaken habit of regarding the terms ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ as equivalent to ‘ought’ and ‘ought not’. Having highlighted this mistake, Prichard holds that in instances where we have considered the circumstances fully, our thoughts about the situation decide whether we ought to perform a given activity. (shrink)

Maintaining that the existence of Moral Philosophy, as it is usually understood, rests on a mistake, Prichard undertakes to formulate our true attitude towards moral obligations. The right action does not depend upon either our own good or what is good. Obligations are underivative, immediate, and self‐evident, and therefore, we do not come to appreciate them through argument or a process of non‐moral thinking. The mistake on which Moral Philosophy rests, which links obligation to virtue or desire, parallels the mistake (...) underpinning the Theory of Knowledge. Like moral obligation, knowledge is immediate; it need not be vindicated or improved by additional knowledge. (shrink)

The act of exchanging one thing for another seems to involve a promise. The confidence needed to relinquish something one has on the understanding that one will receive what another has in exchange can be expressed in terms of resolve. In binding oneself, one thinks that if the other binds himself or herself to perform a given action, then he or she will do that action. In cases in which one person's action does not precede the other's, one's promise involves (...) thinking that if the other binds himself or herself, then he or she will carry out the promised action. (shrink)

In his own De anima, Alexander of Aphrodisias famously identifies the “active” (poietikon) intellect with the prime mover in Metaphysics Λ. However, Alexander’s claim raises an issue: why would this divine intellect come in the middle of a study of soul in general and of human intellection in particular? As Paul Moraux asks in his pioneering work on Alexander’s conception of the intellect, is the active intellect a “useless addition”? In this paper, I try to answer this question by challenging (...) a solution according to which the active intellect would intervene directly with the material intellect to trigger its ordinary working. I argue that the active intellect acts as a final cause, both for human intellect and for its ordinary objects of thought. The active intellect is twice “cause of the intellection”, i.e. cause of the actualization of human thought: once (i) when it offers thought occasions for thinking through objects, and again (ii) when it actualizes mediately the human intellect itself in its development. This reading agrees with Alexander’s usual position about the prime mover’s causality. It accounts for the multiplicity of expressions with which Alexander describes the causality of the active intellect in his De anima. It also explains why the development of human intellect has been described without direct reference to active intellect, since substances do not aim directly at the First cause, but their aiming at it is mediated by their desire for their own good. (shrink)

A. H. Louie's More Than Life Itself is an exploratory journey in relational biology, a study of life in terms of the organization of entailment relations in living systems. This book represents a synergy of the mathematical theories of categories, lattices, and modelling, and the result is a synthetic biology that provides a characterization of life. Biology extends physics. Life is not a specialization of mechanism, but an expansive generalization of it. Organisms and machines share some common features, but organisms (...) are not machines. Life is defined by a relational closure that places it beyond the reach of physicochemical and mechanistic dogma, outside the reductionistic universe, and into the realm of impredicativity. Function dictates structure. Complexity brings forth living beings. (shrink)

Knyha 1. Teoretyko-metodolohichni osnovy -- Knyha 2. Sot︠s︡iokulʹturni pidstavy i︠e︡vropeĭsʹkoho konstytut︠s︡ionalizmu.

To the many moral theorists who have sought to establish a necessary connection between duty and interest, Prichard replies that their project ought not to be undertaken as it commits us to the view that our only duty is to do what is to our advantage. In discussing the attempts of Plato, Butler, and Green to link duty and interest, Prichard, like Kant, maintains that the rightness of action does not depend either upon our own good or upon our belief (...) that it depends upon our own good. Similarly, Prichard dismisses the view that our desire for our own good is our only motive. (shrink)

Analyses Green's rather obscure treatment of two important questions: ‘Why does a subject have the duty to obey the ruler or sovereign?’; and ‘Why is the receipt of an order backed by a threat sufficient to establish this duty when the order comes from a ruler?’ Prichard considers Green's position regarding the grounds and justification for obedience to law to be part of a larger theory of moral obligation that is inconsistent with our ordinary moral ideas. To Green's seeming denial (...) of the existence of any natural rights or duties, Prichard responds that Green in fact has failed to state a sense in which there really are natural rights and obligations. Moreover, Green's denial that we can answer the question ‘Why ought we to obey the government?’ can be formulated only by maintaining the existence of an obligation independent of our government's commands. The core of truth in Green's position, according to Prichard, lies in his recognition that a factor necessary to secure obedience is the subject's unselfish interest in the welfare of other members of her community. (shrink)

Endeavours to specify what Aristotle means by αγαθον. In some contexts, this term seems to mean simply ‘that being desired’ or a person's ultimate or non‐ultimate end or aim. In other contexts, αγαθον takes on a normative quality. For his statements to have content, argues Prichard, Aristotle must hold that when we pursue something of a certain kind, such as an honour, we pursue it as a good. Prichard argues that by αγαθον Aristotle actually means ‘conducive to happiness’, and holds (...) that when a man acts deliberately, he does it from a desire to be happy. Prichard attributes this position to Plato as well, despite the fact that both thinkers make statements inconsistent with this view of our ultimate aim. (shrink)

Concerning the nature of desires that pertain to actions, considers the view that we cannot desire something unless we know or think, first, that it does not exist, and second, that it does not exist now. Finds a core of truth in this, but modifies the formula to claim that ‘we can only desire the existence of that of the existence of which in the past, present, or future, as the case may be, we are uncertain.’ Put more simply, a (...) desire is not a desire for the existence of something, but rather a desire for something to be. It follows from this view that we cannot desire something to be the case when we think that, without a doubt, it will be the case. (shrink)

Often an action causes both evil and benefit for the agent. No general account can be given for what happens when one considers in light of this evil and benefit whether to undertake the action in question. Prichard maintains that in willing a movement, there are two acts of will. First, there is the willing to think more of what one shall gain in willing x, which results from the desire to will x. Second, there is the willing of the (...) change x. (shrink)

In discussing the fact that it takes time to perform an action, distinguishes statements such as ‘I shall do x’ from statements such as ‘I shall be under an obligation to do x’ and ‘I was doing x’ from ‘I was under an obligation to do x’. The truth of the ‘ought’ statements is independent of whether the action is done, as it is not necessary that one not do the action at the time required in order to be under (...) an obligation to do it at that time. For some contrasts between ‘ought’ and ‘is’ statements, the obligation, such as the obligation to go to bed, refers to the future. The statement ‘I am under an obligation to go to bed’ is equivalent to ‘from now on I shall be under an obligation to go to bed’, and does not require either that I shall not do the action or that I have not done the action for it to be true. (shrink)

I develop an account of ecological role functions—the functions of species within ecosystems—which is informed by alternative regime phenomena in ecology. My account is a causal-role theory which includes a counterfactual sensitivity condition. The account tracks and explains a distinction ecologists make between functions and various activities which are not functions. My counterfactual sensitivity condition resolves the liberality problem often attributed to causal-role theories of function, while also illuminating the explanatory centrality of role functions within ecology.

Orthodox expected utility theory imposes too stringent restrictions on what attitudes to risk one can rationally hold. Focusing on a life-and-death gamble, I identify as the main culprit the theory’s Linearity property, according to which the utility of a particular change in the risk of a bad outcome is independent of the original level of risk. Finally, I argue that a recent non-standard Bayesian decision theory, that does not have this property, handles risky gambles better than the orthodox theory.

al-Kindī. - al-Fārābī. - Ibn Sīnā. - Ibn Khaldūn.

On the propagation and preaching in Islam against evil deeds and on the process of accountability in Islam.

Study and teaching of Islam with refererence to Qurʼan and Hadith.

Islamic sects; Islam; doctrines; Islamic philosophy.

This essay provides evidence to support a promising conceptual and potentially practical set of ideas at once both principled and effective found in the work of Max Weber and Alfred Schutz addressed to the issue of ‘adequacy’ as a goal in social research. Efforts to achieve adequacy beyond the epistemological conditions required by Weber’s demand that evidence meet both causal adequacy and adequacy on the level of meaning were significantly refocused by Schutz’s later concern, responding specifically to Weber, that the (...) social sciences also address themselves to his postulate of adequacy. It states that “Each term used in a scientific system referring to human action must be so constructed that a human act performed within the life-world by an individual actor in the way indicated by the typical construction would be reasonable and understandable for the actor himself, as well as for his fellow men”. A serious attempt to implement a more expansive notion of adequacy by practically activating this postulate in the ways suggested can be beneficial not only for the social research situation but in everyday life as well. (shrink)

This paper addresses the stalemate on the question whether biodiversity has intrinsic value. I distinguish between a “weak” conception and two “strong” conceptions of intrinsic value in the environmental ethics literature. The strong conceptions of intrinsic value are connected, respectively, to moral standing and to a strongly objectivist account of value. Neither of these forms of value likely applies to biodiversity. However, the weak conception of intrinsic value is neutral about both moral standing and the nature of value and plausibly (...) applies to biodiversity. In addition, weak intrinsic value avoids common objections to the claim that biodiversity is intrinsically valuable. I develop a cumulative argument showing that environmentalists should presume that biodiversity has intrinsic value in the weak sense. (shrink)