While it is a point of agreement in contemporary republican political theory that property ownership is closely connected to freedom as non-domination, surprisingly little work has been done to elucidate the nature of this connection or the constraints on property regimes that might be required as a result. In this paper, I provide a systematic model of the boundaries within which republican property systems must sit and explore some of the wider implications that thinking of property in these terms may (...) have for republicans. The boundaries I focus on relate to the distribution of property and the application of types of property claims over particular kinds of goods. I develop this model from those elements of non-domination most directly related to the operation of a property regime: (a) economic independence, (b) limiting material inequalities, and (c) the promotion of common goods. The limits that emerge from this analysis support intuitive judgments that animate much republican discussion of property distribution. My account diverges from much orthodox republican theory, though, in challenging the primacy of private property rights in the realization of economic independence. The value of property on republican terms can be realized without private ownership of the means of production. (shrink)

There is an ongoing debate in the philosophical literature whether the conditionals that are central to deliberation are subjunctive or indicative conditionals and, if the latter, what semantics of the indicative conditional is compatible with the role that conditionals play in deliberation. We propose a possible-world semantics where conditionals of the form “if I take action _a_ the outcome will be _x_” are interpreted as material conditionals. The proposed framework is illustrated with familiar examples and both qualitative and (...) probabilistic beliefs are considered. Issues such as common-cause cases and ‘Egan-style’ cases are discussed. (shrink)

While it is a point of agreement in contemporary republican political theory that property ownership is closely connected to freedom as non-domination, surprisingly little work has been done to elucidate the nature of this connection or the constraints on property regimes that might be required as a result. In this paper, I provide a systematic model of the boundaries within which republican property systems must sit and explore some of the wider implications that thinking of property in these terms may (...) have for republicans. The boundaries I focus on relate to the distribution of property and the application of types of property claims over particular kinds of goods. I develop this model from those elements of non-domination most directly related to the operation of a property regime: (a) economic independence, (b) limiting material inequalities, and (c) the promotion of common goods. The limits that emerge from this analysis support intuitive judgments that animate much republican discussion of property distribution. My account diverges from much orthodox republican theory, though, in challenging the primacy of private property rights in the realization of economic independence. The value of property on republican terms can be realized without private ownership of the means of production. (shrink)

The recovery after the unprecedented pandemic crisis that Europe has currently been facing is strengthening the strong dependence between social, economic, and environmental fields, maintaining green investments and innovation at the core of the European strategies. Shifting to clean industries is a challenging mission that a complex network of stakeholders and their different interests must take into account. Within this network, the interplay between environmental and financial performance of a company represents a common point with a growing emphasis on the (...) transparency and the materiality capacity of the disclosed information. This paper uses the Structural Equation Modeling and the Gaussian Graphical Models as graphical analysis approaches and offers a first insight about the interaction between environmental materiality measures and financial performance. A preliminary step of the scientific research consisted of a hand-mapping investigation about materiality conditions. Starting from the Materiality Map developed by the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, this paper extends the main concept about materiality and investigates it on three different content ranges, which focus on the general environmental policy of the company, the targets set, and its concrete footprint. The methodology approaches were grounded on a newly compiled dataset provided by the Thomson Reuters database for 194 Economic European Area oil and gas companies. The results provide significant evidences for the manifestation of materiality and emphasize the informational content of the individual environmental measures as an important condition for its financial impact. Adding to the environmental-financial performance relationship, our findings have both practical and academic relevance for the economic field and sustainable growth goals. (shrink)

Some beginning logic students find it hard to understand why a material conditional is true when its antecedent is false. I draw an analogy between conditional statements and conditional promises (especially between true conditional statements and unbroken conditional promises) that makes this point of logic less counter-intuitive.

In the Postulates of Empirical Thinking, a section of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant presents an account of the content and role of our concept of real possibility in terms of formal conditions of experience. However, much later in the Critique he introduces the idea of a material condition of possibility. What is this material condition of possibility, and how does it fit with the conception of possibility in terms of formal conditions? This essay argues that the (...) key to answering these questions—as well as to understanding Kant’s criticism of rational theology, in which the discussion of the material condition of possibility appears—is Kant’s account of how we can individuate objects. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 7, Page 53-55, July 2011.

Most instantiations of the inference ‘y; so if x, y’ seem intuitively odd, a phenomenon known as one of the paradoxes of the material conditional. A common explanation of the oddity, endorsed by Mental Model theory, is based on the intuition that the conclusion of the inference throws away semantic information. We build on this explanation to identify two joint conditions under which the inference becomes acceptable: (a) the truth of x has bearings on the relevance of asserting (...) y; and (b) the speaker can reasonably be expected not to be in a position to assume that x is false. We show that this dual pragmatic criterion makes accurate predictions, and contrast it with the criterion defined by the mental model theory of conditionals, which we show to be inadequate. (shrink)

The modern biomedical research laboratory is increasingly defined by dynamic social material conditions requiring researchers to traverse multiple shifting cognitive ecologies within day-to-day practice. Although the complexity of biomedical research is well known, the mechanisms by which the social and material organisation of this space is negotiated has yet to be fully considered. Integrating insights from Material Engagement Theory and Enactive Cognition with observations undertaken within a biomedical research laboratory, this paper develops an understanding of how actors (...) are able to respond to the dynamically changing world that is enacted with and around them. (shrink)

I argue that Hegel is aware of a crucial problem in Kant’s transcendental account of the conditions of human knowledge. Unless the matter of sensation is sufficiently ordered (and sufficiently varied) we could not make any cognitive judgments. In that case we could not distinguish ourselves from objects we know, and so could not be self-conscious. This is a necessary, formal and transcendental condition of possible human experience. However, it is also (as Kant acknowledged) a material – not a (...) conceptual or an intutive – condition. Consequently, Kant’s idealism cannot account for it. This provides one key to Hegel’s internal critique of Kant’s idealism. (shrink)

This essay develops a loosely understood Marxist notion of material conditions in light of the Caribbean plantation complex. The racial order endemic to the plantation and its continuation in post-emancipation contexts undermines any spurious base/superstructure distinction at work in an understanding of material conditions even in some accounts of racial capitalism. Material conditions are as ideological as they are “infrastructural” (Sylvia Wynter) in being ongoingly articulated by anti-black coordinates of sense. The ongoing actualization of the racial order (...) of slavery is understood not as required by altered material conditions, but rather as altering material conditions. The essay considers the continuity of the racial order of the plantation through the contract in a specific site, namely, post-emancipation Puerto Rico. (shrink)

InSuppose and Tell, Williamson makes a new and original attempt to defend the material conditional account of indicative conditionals. His overarching argument is that this account offers the best explanation of the data concerning how people evaluate and use such conditionals. We argue that Williamson overlooks several important alternative explanations, some of which appear to explain the relevant data at least as well as, or even better than, the material conditional account does. Along the way, we (...) also show that Williamson errs at important junctures about what exactly the relevant data are. (shrink)

A number of papers have argued in favour of the material account of indicative conditionals, but typically they either concentrate on defending the account from the charge that it has counterintuitive consequences, or else focus on some particular positive argument in favour of the theory. In this paper, I survey the various positive arguments that can be given, presenting simple versions where possible and showing the connections between them. I conclude with some methodological considerations.

This paper falls into two parts. In the first part, I argue that consideration of general indicative conditionals, e.g., sentences like If a donkey brays it is beaten, provides a powerful argument that a pure material implication analysis of indicative if p, q is correct. In the second part I argue, opposing writers like Jackson, that a Gricean style theory of pragmatics can explain the manifest assertability conditions of if p, q in terms of its conventional content – assumed (...) to be merely (p⊃q) – and the conversational implicature contents which utterance of if p, q may gain in certain contexts. I also defend the pragmatic approach against a recent objection by Edgington that appeal to pragmatics cannot explain what we are inclined to say about the believability conditions, as opposed to the assertability conditions, of indicative if p, q. (shrink)

Four experiments are reported which investigated the types of truth tables that people associate with conditional sentences and the kinds of inferences that they will draw from them. The present studies differed from most previous ones in using different types of content in the conditionals, for example promises and warnings. It was found that the type of content had a strong and consistent effect on both truth tables and inferences. It is suggested that this is because in real life (...) conditionals make probabilistic assertions, and that the strength of the probabilistic link is determined by the situation in which the conditional occurs. The implications of these findings for current theories of reasoning are considered and it is concluded that none of them is entirely satisfactory. It is suggested that more linguistically based theories may prove more successful. (shrink)

Street art is an art form that entails creating public works incorporating the street physically and in their meaning. That physical property is employed as an artistic resource in street art raises two questions. Are street artworks necessarily illegal? Does being illegal change the nature of production and aesthetic appreciation? First, I argue street artworks must be in the street. On my view, both the physical and sociocultural senses of the street can be constitutive of meaning. Second, I argue that (...) illegality is a prototypical and paradigmatic feature of street art. While illegality alone does not make works better than sanctioned street art, it affects the production process and changes what is available to appreciate. (shrink)

Barristers in England are obliged to follow the ‘cab rank rule’, according to which they must take any case offered to them, as long as they have time in their.

By and large, the conditional connective in three-valued logic has two different functions. First, by means of a deduction theorem, it can express a specific relation of logical consequence in the logical language itself. Second, it can represent natural language structures such as "if/then'' or "implies''. This chapter surveys both approaches, shows why none of them will typically end up with a three-valued material conditional, and elaborates on connections to probabilistic reasoning.

This clear and concise book investigates the relation between materiality and the subject in Marxism, (post-)structuralism, and material semiotics. It introduces the three approaches in an accessible way and serves as an introduction to different kinds of materialism and theories of the subject. For each approach, the modalities of materiality of the respective materialism are defined and the relationship between these multiple materialities and the subject are presented as specific to the theoretical approaches discussed. Beetz argues for a non-reductionist (...) materialism, which conceives of materiality as more than matter or matter in motion. In such a materialism the subject is seen as an effect of material conditions, relations, processes, and practices. He shows how the constitution and decentering of the subject is conceptualized in the approaches presented and highlights the role of material instances in these processes. (shrink)

By and large, the conditional connective in three-valued logic has two different functions. First, by means of a deduction theorem, it can express a specific relation of logical consequence in the logical language itself. Second, it can represent natural language structures such as "if/then'" or "implies''. This chapter surveys both approaches, shows why none of them will typically end up with a three-valued material conditional, and elaborates on connections to probabilistic reasoning.

This collection introduces the reader to some of the most interesting current work on conditionals. Particular attention is paid to possible world semantics for conditionals, the role of conditional probability in helping us to understand conditionals, implicature and the material conditional, and subjunctive versus indicative conditionals. Contributors include V.H. Dudman, Dorothy Edgington, Nelson Goodman, H.P. Grice, David Lewis, and Robert Stalnaker.

This paper argues that two widely accepted principles about the indicative conditional jointly presuppose the falsity of one of the most prominent arguments against epistemological iteration principles. The first principle about the indicative conditional, which has close ties both to the Ramsey test and the “or‐to‐if” inference, says that knowing a material conditional suffices for knowing the corresponding indicative. The second principle says that conditional contradictions cannot be true when their antecedents are epistemically possible. Taken (...) together, these principles entail that it is impossible to be in a certain kind of epistemic state: namely, a state of ignorance about which of two partially overlapping bodies of knowledge corresponds to one's actual one. However, some of the more popular “margin for error” style arguments against epistemological iteration principles suggest that such states are not only possible, but commonplace. I argue that the tension between these views runs deep, arising just as much for non‐factive attitudes like belief, presupposition, and certainty. I also argue that this is worse news for those who accept the principles about the indicative conditional than it is for those who reject epistemological iteration principles. (shrink)

There is a long tradition in formal epistemology and in the psychology of reasoning to investigate indicative conditionals. In psychology, the propositional calculus was taken for granted to be the normative standard of reference. Experimental tasks, evaluation of the participants’ responses and psychological model building, were inspired by the semantics of the material conditional. Recent empirical work on indicative conditionals focuses on uncertainty. Consequently, the normative standard of reference has changed. I argue why neither logic nor standard probability (...) theory provide appropriate rationality norms for uncertain conditionals. I advocate coherence based probability logic as an appropriate framework for investigating uncertain conditionals. Detailed proofs of the probabilistic non-informativeness of a paradox of the material conditional illustrate the approach from a formal point of view. I survey selected data on human reasoning about uncertain conditionals which additionally support the plausibility of the approach from an empirical point of view. (shrink)

This book addresses the geopolitical notion of the 'Arctic' through the everyday experiences of children. It explores the Arctic as various materializations that matter to, condition and define childhoods in Nordic countries. Presenting nine thematically very different but theoretically and methodologically coherent studies, it enables readers to gain an in-depth understanding of a selection of recent sociomaterialist, posthumanist and post-anthropocentric research on childhood in the Nordic context. The book offers new ideas and insights as to what matters in children's lives (...) - in Arctic contexts. (shrink)

While there is now considerable experimental evidence that, on the one hand, participants assign to the indicative conditional as probability the conditional probability of consequent given antecedent and, on the other, they assign to the indicative conditional the “defective truth-table” in which a conditional with false antecedent is deemed neither true nor false, these findings do not in themselves establish which multi-premise inferences involving conditionals participants endorse. A natural extension of the truth-table semantics pronounces as valid (...) numerous inference patterns that do seem to be part of ordinary usage. However, coupled with something the probability account gives us—namely that when conditional-free ϕ entails conditional-free ψ, “if ϕ then ψ” is a trivial, uninformative truth—we have enough logic to derive the paradoxes of material implication. It thus becomes a matter of some urgency to determine which inference patterns involving indicative conditionals participants do endorse. Only thus will we be able to arrive at a realistic, systematic semantics for the indicative conditional. (shrink)

In natural language, conditionals are frequently used for giving explanations. Thus the antecedent of a conditional is typically understood as being connected to, being relevant for, or providing evidential support for the conditional's consequent. This aspect has not been adequately mirrored by the logics that are usually offered for the reasoning with conditionals: neither in the logic of the material conditional or the strict conditional, nor in the plethora of logics for suppositional conditionals that have (...) been produced over the past 50 years. In this paper I survey some recent attempts to come to terms with the problem of encoding evidential support or relevance in the logic of conditionals. I present models in a qualitative-modal and in a quantitative-probabilistic setting. Focussing on some particular examples, I show that no perfect match between the two kinds of settings has been achieved yet. (shrink)

This paper reflects on the notion and structural components of two concepts: the human condition and human nature. Likewise, it is proposed that both concepts should be included in the basic themes not only in the field of Educational Philosophy, but also in all disciplines where the human being occupies a privileged place. Human condition is understood as a state of subjection to everything with which human beings interact and represents the starting point to ascend to three natures that correspond (...) to human beings. Hegel emphasizes two natures of man. The first is characterized by having a biological structure governed by instincts. The second is culture and to ascend to it requires processes of intellection that can be objectified through consciousness. The third human nature proposed in this paper is rooted in Ernst Bloch’s principle of hope. It is materialized by human actions tending to the construction of the future from the discovery of what is not-yet-conscious that, when identified, is achieved through actions. (shrink)

Common everyday materials such as textiles, foodstuffs, soil or skin can have complex, mutable and varied appearances. Under typical viewing conditions, most observers can visually recognize materials effortlessly, and determine many of their properties without touching them. Visual material perception raises many fascinating questions for vision researchers, neuroscientists and philosophers, yet has received little attention compared to the perception of color or shape. Here we discuss some of the challenges that material perception raises and argue that further philosophical (...) thought should be directed to how we see materials. (shrink)

I defend the view that the truth conditions of the ordinary indicative conditional are those of the material conditional. This is done via a discussion of assertability and by appeal to conventional implicature rather than conversational implicature.