The central claim of a Consummation Anyway model is that God could bring about eschatological consummation sans the fall—the intended telos of created humanity—apart from the incarnation of Christ. As such, the CA model is an alternative to an Incarnation Anyway model, according to which Christ’s incarnation is a necessary means by which a state of eschatological glory would be achieved sans the fall. This essay seeks to propose an argument for the CA model by drawing from the covenant theology (...) of the Reformed tradition, and it moves in four steps. Firstly, I shall summarize Marc Cortez’s recent arguments for IA, homing in on the major moves that are most relevant for sketching a CA model. Secondly, I will highlight the challenges Cortez has offered against those interested in defending a CA model. Thirdly, I shall sketch a Reformed account of the CA model that seeks to address Cortez’s objections. Fourthly, then, I’ll consider two potential objections against the sketch I have offered for CA, inspired by a recent argument offered by James T. Turner. Finally, I close with a brief conclusion that summarizes some salient features of the proposed thesis. This paper thus proposes at least one way in which the CA thesis could remain a real and live option within this debate. (shrink)

Not all scientific explanations work by describing causal connections between events or the world's overall causal structure. In addition, mathematicians regard some proofs as explaining why the theorems being proved do in fact hold. This book proposes new philosophical accounts of many kinds of non-causal explanations in science and mathematics.

Machine generated contents note: Part I -- Doctors -- Dr. Joseph Messer -- Dr. Sharon Sandell -- ER -- Dr. John Barrett -- Marc and Noreen Levison, a paramedic and a nurse -- Lloyd (Pete) Haywood, a former gangbanger -- Claire Hellstern, a nurse -- Ed Reardon, a paramedic -- Law and Order -- Robert Soreghan, a homicide detective -- Delbert Lee Tibbs, a former death-row inmate -- War -- Dr. Frank Raila -- Haskell Wexler, a cinematographer -- Tammy (...) Snider, a Hiroshima survivor (hibakusha) -- Mothers and Sons -- V.I.M. (Victor Israel Marquez), a Vietnam vet -- Angelina Rossi, his mother -- Guadalupe Reyes, a mother -- God's Shepherds -- Rev. Willie T. Barrow -- Father Leonard Dubi -- Rabbi Robert Marx -- Pastor Tom Kok -- Rev. Ed Townley -- The Stranger -- Rick Rundle, a city sanitation worker -- Part II -- Seeing Things -- Randy Buescher, an associate architect -- Chaz Ebert, a lawyer -- Antoinette Korotko-Hatch, a church worker -- Karen Thompson, a student -- Dimitri Mihalas, an astronomer and physicist -- A View from the Bridge -- Hank Oettinger, a retired printer -- Ira Glass, a radio journalist -- Kid Pharaoh, a retired "collector" -- Quinn Brisben, a retired teacher -- Kurt Vonnegut, a writer -- The Boomer -- Bruce Bendinger, an advertising executive and writer -- Part III -- Fathers and Sons -- Doc Watson, a folksinger -- Vernon Jarrett, a journalist -- Country Women -- Peggy Terry, a retired mountain woman -- Bessie Jones, a Georgia Sea Island Singer (1972) -- Rosalie Sorrels, a traveling folksinger -- The Plague I -- Tico Valle, a young man -- Lori Cannon, "curator" of the Open Hand Society -- Brian Matthews, an ex-bartender, writer for a gay weekly -- Jewell Jenkins, a hospital aide -- Justin Hayford, a journalist, musician -- Matta Kelly, a case manager -- The Old Guy -- Jim Hapgood -- The Plague II -- Nancy Lanoue -- Out There -- Dr. Gary Slutkin -- Day of the Dead -- Carlos Cortez, a painter and poet -- Vine Deloria, a writer and teacher -- Helen Sclair, a cemetery familiar -- The Other Son -- Steve Young, a father -- Maurine Young, a mother -- The Job -- William Herdegen, an undertaker -- Rory Moina, a hospice nurse -- The End and the Beginning -- Mamie Mobley, a mother -- Dr. Marvin Jackson, a son -- Epilogue -- Kathy Fagan and Linda Gagnon, mothers. (shrink)

Many philosophers argue that explanatoriness plays no special role in confirmation – that “inference to the best explanation” (IBE) incorrectly demands giving hypotheses extra credit for their potential explanatory qualities beyond the credit they already deserve for their predictive successes. This paper argues against one common strategy for responding to this thought – that is, for trying to fit IBE within a Bayesian framework. That strategy argues that a hypothesis’ explanatory quality (its “loveliness”) contributes either to its prior probability or (...) to its likelihood. This paper argues that this strategy fails because it must give different treatments to two hypotheses that are unlovely for the very same reason. The strategy therefore loses the insight into scientific reasoning that its reconstruction in terms of IBE is supposed to provide. The paper then provides a Bayesian account of the confirmatory role of explanatoriness that represents explanatory quality as having an impact in the same place for two hypotheses that are unlovely for the very same reason. This approach works by “putting explanation back into IBE” – that is, by invoking hypotheses that refer explicitly to scientific explanation and by invoking the agent's background opinions regarding the kind of explanation that the evidence is liable to have. On this approach, there is no list of “explanatory virtues” the possession of which always helps to make an explanation better. Rather, for different facts, there are different characteristics that our background knowledge of other explanations gives us some reason to expect the given fact's explanation to possess. (shrink)

Australia’s experience of the COVID-19 pandemic has been widely perceived to have been a successful one, based on the relatively few number of lives lost to the virus compared to the rest of the world. There remain, nonetheless, serious ethical challenges at the heart of the Australian response to COVID-19. The broadly positive outcomes of Australia’s pandemic response mask more troubling developments within its political culture, and the costs it has imposed on its society. This article examines two concerns in (...) particular: the normalisation of fear and emergency through the language and policy responses adopted by governments, and the significant diminution of individual freedoms and human rights. (shrink)

Philosophers who regard some mathematical proofs as explaining why theorems hold, and others as merely proving that they do hold, disagree sharply about the explanatory value of proofs by mathematical induction. I offer an argument that aims to resolve this conflict of intuitions without making any controversial presuppositions about what mathematical explanations would be.

:This paper questions the distinction between egalitarianism and prioritarianism, arguing that it is important to separate the reasons for particular social preferences from the contents of these preferences, that it is possible to like equality and separability simultaneously, and that some egalitarians and prioritarians may therefore share the same social preferences. The case of risky prospects, for which Broome has proposed an interesting example meant to show that egalitarians and prioritarians cannot share the same preferences, is scrutinized. The levelling down (...) objection is also examined. (shrink)

Explanation in mathematics has recently attracted increased attention from philosophers. The central issue is taken to be how to distinguish between two types of mathematical proofs: those that explain why what they prove is true and those that merely prove theorems without explaining why they are true. This way of framing the issue neglects the possibility of mathematical explanations that are not proofs at all. This paper addresses what it would take for a non-proof to explain. The paper focuses on (...) a particular example of an explanatory non-proof: an argument that mathematicians regard as explaining why a given theorem holds regarding the derivative of an infinite sum of differentiable functions. The paper contrasts this explanatory non-proof with various non-explanatory proofs of the same theorem. The paper offers an account of what makes the given non-proof explanatory. This account is motivated by investigating the difficulties that arise when we try to extend Mark Steiner’s influential account of explanatory proofs to cover this explanatory non-proof. (shrink)

What is the purpose of political theoretical endeavour and what methods should the early 21st-century political theorist employ? These questions – which touch on issues which go to the very heart of the vocation of political theory – have become increasingly contentious in recent years. The period since the late 1980s has been one in which theorists have increasingly disagreed not only about conventional matters of normative contention but also about the means by which to seek to resolve them. This (...) article examines a central tension that has characterized that general methodological disagreement, namely the place of empirical inquiry within the repertoire of the professional political theorist. Having carefully examined the contentions of an eclectic range of contributors to the debate, including G.A. Cohen, Alasdair MacIntyre and David Miller, this article argues that efforts either wholly to separate empirical investigation from normative enquiry or to bind the two ever-closer together are fraught with difficulties. It concludes by contending that political theorists ought to take aspects of the empirical political and social sciences extremely seriously while avoiding the temptation to have their normative agenda dictated to them by the contingent pressures of the here and now. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 99, Issue 3, Page 714-719, November 2019.

This paper examines some recent attempts that use counterfactuals to understand the asymmetry of non-causal scientific explanations. These attempts recognize that even when there is explanatory asymmetry, there may be symmetry in counterfactual dependence. Therefore, something more than mere counterfactual dependence is needed to account for explanatory asymmetry. Whether that further ingredient, even if applicable to causal explanation, can fit non-causal explanation is the challenge that explanatory asymmetry poses for counterfactual accounts of non-causal explanation. This paper argues that several recent (...) accounts Explanation beyond causation: philosophical perspectives on non-causal explanations, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 117–140, 2018; Jansson and Saatsi in Br J Philos Sci, forthcoming; Jansson in J Philos 112:7–599, 2015; Saatsi and Pexton in Philos Sci 80: 613–624, 2013; French and Saatsi, in: Reutlinger and Saatsi Explanation beyond causation: philosophical perspectives on non-causal explanations, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 185–205, 2018) fail to meet this challenge. The paper then sketches a more positive proposal for dealing with explanatory asymmetry in non-causal explanations. (shrink)

George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, was an Irish philosopher and divine who pursued a number of grand causes, contributing to the fields of economics, mathematics, political theory and theology. He pioneered the theory of 'immaterialism', and his work ranges over many philosophical issues that remain of interest today. This volume offers a complete and accurate edition of Berkeley's extant correspondence, including letters written both by him and to him, supplemented by extensive explanatory and critical notes. Alexander Pope famously said 'To (...) Berkeley every virtue under heaven', and a careful reading of the letters reveals a figure worthy of admiration, sheds new light on his personal and intellectual life, and provides insight into the broad historical and philosophical currents of his time. The volume will be an invaluable resource for philosophers, modern historians and those interested in Anglo-Irish culture. (shrink)

Why do physicians have financial conflicts of interest? They arise because society expects physicians to act in their patients’ interest, while simultaneously, financial incentives encourage physicians to practice medicine in ways that promote their own interests or those of third parties. Because physicians’ clinical choices, referrals, and prescriptions affect the fortune of third parties, these third parties may offer physicians financial incentives to make income-driven clinical choices. In the past, physicians and scholars typically conceived of conflicts of interest as an (...) ethical issue to be resolved according to individual judgment or professional and organizational norms. However, society can mitigate or eliminate conflicts of interest by changing financial and organizational arrangements in medicine. Conflicts of interest, therefore, are as much matters of public policy and management as individual choices or social norms. (shrink)

Humean accounts of natural law have long been charged with being unable to account for the laws’ explanatory power in science. One form of this objection is to charge Humean accounts with explanatory circularity: a fact in the Humean mosaic helps to explain why some regularity is a law (first premise), but that law, in turn, helps to explain why that mosaic fact holds (second premise). To this objection, Humeans have replied that the explanation in the first premise is metaphysical (...) whereas the explanation in the second premise is scientific, so (since these two varieties of explanation operate very differently) the two explanations cannot be chained together to yield explanatory circularity. This paper presents a new circularity argument that avoids this objection because both explanations in the premises are metaphysical. The new circularity argument also avoids the objection that the contrasts at the point where the two explanations are chained together fail to line up properly. The upshot is to leave the Humean account of law with two unattractive options: to regard scientific explanation under natural law as not constituting genuine explanation at all or to regard the Humean account as involving a vicious explanatory circularity. (shrink)

How do humans discover causal relations when the effect is not immediately observable? Previous experiments have uniformly demonstrated detrimental effects of outcome delays on causal induction. These findings seem to conflict with everyday causal cognition, where humans can apparently identify long-term causal relations with relative ease. Three experiments investigated whether the influence of delay on adult human causal judgements is mediated by experimentally induced assumptions about the timeframe of the causal relation in question, as suggested by Einhorn and Hogarth (1986). (...) Causal judgements generally decreased when a delay separated cause and effect. This decrease was less pronounced when the thematic context of the causal relation induced participants to expect a delay. Experiment 3 ruled out an alternative explanation of the effect based on variations of cue and outcome saliencies, and showed that detrimental effects of delay are reduced even more when instructions explicitly mentioned the timeframe of the causal relation in question. Knowledge thus mediates the impact of delay on human causal judgement. Implications for contemporary theories of human causal induction are discussed. (shrink)

has offered a lovely example to motivate the intuition that a successful prediction has a kind of confirmatory significance that an accommodation lacks. This paper scrutinizes Maher's example. It argues that once the example is tweaked, the intuitive difference there between prediction and accommodation disappears. This suggests that the apparent superiority of prediction to accommodation is actually a side effect of an important difference between the hypotheses that tend to arise in each case.

Recently, biologists and computer scientists who advocate the "strong thesis of artificial life" have argued that the distinction between life and nonlife is important and that certain computer software entities could be alive in the same sense as biological entities. These arguments have been challenged by Sober (1991). I address some of the questions about the rational reconstruction of biology that are suggested by these arguments: What is the relation between life and the "signs of life"? What work (if any) (...) might the concept of "life" (over and above the "signs of life") perform in biology? What turns on scientific disputes over the utility of this concept? To defend my answers to these questions, I compare "life" to certain other concepts used in science, and I examine historical episodes in which an entity's vitality was invoked to explain certain phenomena. I try to understand how these explanations could be illuminating even though they are not accompanied by any reductive definition of "life.". (shrink)

. A typical textbook explanation of a rocket’s motion when its engine is fired appeals to momentum conservation: the rocket accelerates forward because its exhaust accelerates rearward and the system’s momentum must be conserved. This paper examines how this explanation works, considering three challenges it faces. First, the explanation does not proceed by describing the forces causing the rocket’s motion. Second, the rocket’s motion has a causal-mechanical explanation involving those forces. Third, if momentum conservation and the rearward motion of the (...) rocket’s exhaust explain why the rocket accelerates forward, then presumably momentum conservation and the rocket’s forward motion likewise explain why the rocket emits exhaust rearward. Explanatory circularity threatens to follow from this pair of explanations. This paper examines how the conservation-law explanation works and how it is compatible with the causal-mechanical explanation. The paper argues that these two explanations do not explain precisely the same fact relative to the same contrast class. The paper interprets the two conservation-law explanations as non-causal and argues that they yield no explanatory circularity. (shrink)

This paper argues that Rawls’ principles of justice provide a normative foundation for stakeholder theory. The principles articulate (at an abstract level) citizens’ rights; these rights create interests across all aspects of society, including in the space of economic activity; and therefore, stakeholders – as citizens – have legitimate interests in the space of economic activity. This approach to stakeholder theory suggests a political interpretation of Boatright’s Moral Market approach, one that emphasizes the rights/place of citizens. And this approach to (...) stakeholder theory – in terms of citizens – raises a further question, what rights and obligations do economic agents have, beyond those attached to their roles as citizens? Rawls would reject additional rights and obligations of this sort for two reasons, one tied to freedom and one tied to pluralism. Rawls’ work therefore presses us to re-conceptualize the place of ethical claims in the economic context. (shrink)

Game Logic is a modal logic which extends Propositional Dynamic Logic by generalising its semantics and adding a new operator to the language. The logic can be used to reason about determined 2-player games. We present an overview of meta-theoretic results regarding this logic, also covering the algebraic version of the logic known as Game Algebra.

The heart of the matter -- The evolution of the French medicine -- Coping with physicians' conflicts of interest in France -- The rise of a protected medical market : the United States before 1950 -- The commercial transformation : the United States, 1950-1980 -- The logic of medical markets : the United States, 1980 to the present -- Coping with physicians' conflicts of interest in the United States -- The evolution of Japanese medicine -- Coping with physicians' conflicts of (...) interest in Japan -- Reforms -- Professionalism reconsidered. (shrink)

This paper concerns the relation between a proof’s beauty and its explanatory power – that is, its capacity to go beyond proving a given theorem to explaining why that theorem holds. Explanatory power and beauty are among the many virtues that mathematicians value and seek in various proofs, and it is important to come to a better understanding of the relations among these virtues. Mathematical practice has long recognized that certain proofs but not others have explanatory power, and this paper (...) offers an account of what makes a proof explanatory. This account is motivated by a wide range of examples drawn from mathematical practice, and the account proposed here is compared to other accounts in the literature. The concept of a proof that explains is closely intertwined with other important concepts, such as a brute force proof, a mathematical coincidence, unification in mathematics, and natural properties. Ultimately, this paper concludes that the features of a proof that would contribute to its explanatory power would also contribute to its beauty, but that these two virtues are not the same; a beautiful proof need not be explanatory. (shrink)

According to Lange,?Really Statistical explanations? constitute an important kind of non-causalscientific explanation. However, Roski has argued that all alleged RS explanations are either causalexplanations or not explanations at all. In so arguing, Roski has invoked Kahneman?s interpretation of onealleged RS explanation. I employ Roski?s arguments as an opportunity to elaborate and defend RS explanations. Iargue that?RS explanations? genuinely explain rather than deny the presuppositions of why-questions. I argue thatthe RS model is not excessively permissive in allowing some explanations to work (...) purely statistically rather than bydescribing causal relations. I argue that Roski?s view that some?RS explanations? operate by describing causalrelations fails to capture the kind of explanatory insight that RS explanations provide. I elaborate the notion of a?characteristically statistical phenomenon? that figures in the RS model and thereby explain how an RS explanationreveals that its explanandum is independent of any causal facts or specific chances, but rather depends only on ageneric sort of arrangement of chances. Finally, I argue that Roski misinterprets Kahneman, who actually holds thatthe explanation he discusses is a non-causal explanation that nicely fits the RS model. RS explanations constitutean important kind of non-causal scientific explanation. (shrink)

Serious concerns about pervasive, persistent, and unjustified social inequalities have prompted a small—but growing—number of academic commentators to raise some hard and troubling questions for those who would like to legalize physician-assisted suicide. In various ways, these commentators have asked: In light of existing social inequalities—inequalities that operate, for example, along sometimes intersecting lines of race, class, age, sex, and disability—how persuasive are autonomy-based arguments in favor of legalization of assisted suicide when those arguments depend on a conception of autonomy (...) that either presupposes social equality or does not expressly account for its absence? How compelling are arguments that we ought to legalize assisted suicide out of feelings of mercy for the sick and dying, when such affective expressions may actually be the socially acceptable manifestation of private ambivalence that includes merciless discrimination? (shrink)

It has frequently been argued recently that Jeffrey Conditionalization (JC) does not permit undermining. For JC to be inapplicable in cases where the evidence could be undermined would severely compromise JC’s range. However, this paper contends that the argument fails to show that JC cannot accommodate undermining. This response turns on using the proper partition to capture the direct impact of our evidence in redistributing our credences.

Intentions and emotions arise together, and emotions compel us to pursue goals. However, it is not clear when emotions become objects of awareness, how emotional awareness changes with goal pursuit, or how psychological and neural processes mediate such change. We first review a psychological model of emotional episodes and propose that goal obstruction extends the duration of these episodes while increasing cognitive complexity and emotional intensity. We suggest that attention is initially focused on action plans and their obstruction, and only (...) when this obstruction persists does focal attention come to include emotional states themselves. We then model the self-organization of neural activities that hypothetically underlie the evolution of an emotional episode. Phases of emotional awareness are argued to parallel phases of synchronization across neural systems. We suggest that prefrontal activities greatly extend intentional states while focal attention integrates emotional awareness and goal pursuit in a comprehensive sense of the self in the world. (shrink)

Several philosophers have argued that ‘constraints’ constrain (and thereby explain) by virtue of being modally stronger than ordinary laws of nature. In this way, a constraint applies to all possible systems, for a variety of possibility that is broader (that is, more inclusive) than the variety we employ when we say that the ordinary laws of nature apply to all physically possible systems. Explanations by constraint are thus more broadly unifying than ordinary causal explanations. Philosophical examples of good candidates for (...) constraints have heretofore been drawn almost exclusively from fundamental physics. This paper argues for the existence of such constraints (even multiple levels of them) in at least one human science (linguistics), not just in physics. (shrink)