bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Four Conclusions about Violence of the Left
Authors: Honderich Ted
Published: June 2016

It is a terrible fact of this time, not much lessened by there having been similar facts in the past, or by the likelihood of there being more in the future, that men make uses of destructive force against persons and things, force condemned by ordinary law but directed to changing societies in certain ways. Certain of these changes in societies, although typically they are sought for themselves, may be taken to make for progress toward a certain goal, well-being for all persons without exception, all persons in whatever societies. The uses of force related in this way to the goal of well-being are of a general course political violence of the Left. My purpose in this essay is to say some things in advocacy of a certain response, in good part a sceptical one, to the general moral question of what is to be said against such violence, and what for it.
Must a Cause Be Contingently Related to Its Effects?
Authors: Lee Jig-chuen
Published: June 2016

Most writers on causation have distinguished causal relations or natural necessities from mere correlations or accidental generalizations. I shall assume that this is a valid distinction. However, a "Dogma" of empiricism has been that natural necessity does not amount to logical necessity and that causes are contingently related to effects. In this paper I shall argue that this Dogma is mistaken.
Do You Know Everything That You Know?
Authors: Levy Steven R.
Published: June 2016

In the ongoing attempt to provide a satisfactory analysis of knowledge numerous conditions have been proposed as necessary and sufficient — the most noteworthy being justification, truth, and belief. In addition, various epistemic principles are frequently employed. In this paper I intend to show how the seemingly innocuous justification condition, along with two relatively uncontroversial epistemic principles, can give rise to a paradoxical situation.
Bradley's Theory of Judgement
Authors: Cresswell M. J.
Published: June 2016

This paper is a study of the theory of judgement and truth found in the works of F. H. Bradley. Although Bradley's thought underwent some changes during the forty years he wrote on these topics there seems to be only one change, viz. his abandonment of the so-called 'floating ideas' which is of any significance.
Liberty and Harm to Others1
Authors: Lyons David
Published: June 2016

This paper is part of an extended program of research with two aims: to understand Mill's moral and political philosophy, and to develop a utilitarian doctrine in its most plausible or least vulnerable form, in order to identify what, if anything, may reasonably be said for or against utilitarianism as a general type of doctrine. These aims fit together because I have found when trying to interpret Mill that he suggests lines of development somewhat different and in some ways more promising than the usual versions of utilitarianism.

The Principle of liberty is not a simple corollary of utilitarianism, and Mill argues for it. I am not concerned with his arguments for it, however, so much as I am with his applications of it, since they tell us how it is to be understood.
The Good and the Right
Authors: Sumner L. W.
Published: June 2016

A sure route to philosophic immortality is to produce a work both too important to ignore and too enigmatic to understand. Whether J.S. Mill consciously elected this strategy or not, his Utilitarianism is destined to enjoy a very long life indeed. Utilitarian theories still define one of our principal options in moral philosophy and Mill remains a major figure in the utilitarian tradition. Although the principle of utility was the centrepiece of Mill's normative system of ethics and politics, he devoted only this slender volume to the nature and implications of that principle. And we are still not sure Just what he said.
Self and Others: the Inadequacy of Utilitarianism
Authors: Norman Richard
Published: June 2016

The dominance of the utilitarian tradition has given a particular prominence to the problem of egoism and altruism in Anglo-American moral philosophy. For, if actions are to be justified by their capacity to satisfy desires and interests, we are bound to confront the question: whose interests? Many philosophers would say that morality is, almost by definition, tied to altruism, to the idea that any moral agent's pursuit of his own interests ought to be qualified by a recognition of the interests of others. It has, however, appeared notoriously difficult to provide any rational argument as to why someone not already committed to a recognition of others’ interests should take any account of them.
Marxian Morality
Authors: Aronovitch Hilliard
Published: June 2016

“Marxists,” Eugene Kamenka has written, “have failed to develop an original or comparatively coherent view of ethics that can be ranked as a type of ethical theory finding its natural place beside utilitarian ethics, ethical intuitionism, existentialist ethics, or even Greek ethics.” This judgment, that Marxism has no theory of ethics or no coherent one or that if it does have a coherent theory that theory is just a version of some type of ethical theory that is independent of Marxism, seems supported by various recent philosophical discussions of Marx or Marxism and morality. Thus, Marx himself has been taken to be everything from a moral skeptic or relativist to an ethical intuitionist to a utilitarian to a proponent of a quasi-Aristotelian morality based on a notion of the function of man.
Confirmation and the Nomological
Authors: Jackson Frank , Pargetter Robert
Published: June 2016

We all suppose that it is sometimes reasonable to project common properties, to argue from the premise that each member of a sample possesses a certain property to the conclusion that members of a population from which the sample is drawn also have that property. Even the most ardent anti-inductivist in the philosophy classroom can be found arguing in just this way when he buys a bottle of wine, takes an aspirin or is deciding whether to wear a raincoat.

This fact constitutes a major challenge, for (as everyone knows) instantial confirmation, simple induction, the straight rule - call it what you will - faces serious philosophical difficulties. This paper is concerned with two of these difficulties, namely, the one which arises from the fact that any finite sample exemplifies indefinitely many common properties and the one which arises from terms like ‘grue’ and ‘emerose’.
Imitation-Man and the 'New' Epiphenomenalism
Authors: Kraemer Eric Russert
Published: June 2016

A number of philosophers have recently held that the phenomenal aspect of experience cannot be adequately dealt with within a materialist account of the mind-body relation. A natural response for those who take both this objection and scientific considerations seriously is to adopt either a double-aspect theory of mind or a version of epiphenomenalism. In this paper I will examine such a view recently defended by Keith Campbell. Campbell calls his view a ‘new’ epiphenomenalism. I shall begin by considering Campbell's conception of an imitation-man, a notion which has been elsewhere employed in arguments against materialism. I shall demonstrate that Campbell is thereby committed to entertaining seriously a suspect form of causation which I have labeled "sometime-causation". I shall then proceed to argue that for this and other reasons, Campbell's ‘new’ epiphenomenalism is not clearly superior to its traditional predecessor.
Cans and Counterfactuals
Authors: Walton Douglas N.
Published: June 2016

In a critical study of some recent action theory Professor James Tomberlin [7] makes some insightful and suggestive remarks concerning the by now well known problem of "Smith and the airplane" formulated by Keith Lehrer and Richard Taylor [3]. While these remarks do significantly advance our knowledge of the nature of the problem, I would like to try to show why the strategy they indicate does not lead to a solution that represents any improvement on the one developed in [1], [8] and [2].

The problem of Smith and the airplane is posed by the following apparent inconsistency. Suppose it is now shortly before 3:30 and Smith is at a country airport. The 3:30 plane is the only possible means whereby Smith can arrive at the city at 4:00. There is nothing to prevent Smith from leaving on the 3:30 plane, but he in fact does not do so: Then each of the following statements are true.
Humean Causation and Kim's Theory of Events
Authors: Horgan Terence
Published: June 2016

In recent years Jaegwon Kim has propounded and elaborated an influential theory of events. He takes an event to be the exemplification of an empirical property (or n-adic attribute) by a concrete object (or several concrete objects) at a time. He also has proposed and endorsed a version of the “Humean” tradition concerning causation: the view that causal relations between concrete events depend upon general "covering laws." But although his explication of the covering-law conception of causation seems quite natural within the framework of his theory, it gives rise to a serious problem: in numerous garden-variety instances of causation, the Humean conditions (as Kim specifies them) are not satisfied. In this paper I shall suggest a way to modify Kim's theory of events in order to reconcile it with his treatment of causality.
Prudential Reasons
Authors: Hubin D. Clayton
Published: June 2016

So much of importance hinges on judgments about someone's rationality that it is nearly disgraceful how unclear we are about this concept. Judgments of irrationality are used to justify paternalistic intervention into people's lives and, as a result, mental institutions are replete with people who are in cages because their actions are ‘contrary to reason'. Furthermore, when someone engages in extremely dangerous or bizarre behaviour simply because he enjoys it, this is seen by many as proof of at least some degree of irrationality. The idea appears to be that imprudent acts are irrational.
Self-interest and the Concept of Self-sacrifice
Authors: Overvold Mark Carl
Published: June 2016

Owing to a genral dissatisfaction with hedonistic theories of value, a number of recent discussions have sought to identify an agent's selfinterest, individual utility, or personal welfare with what the agent most wants to do, all things considered. Two features of these accounts merit special attention for the argument in this paper. First, on such accounts any desire or aversion which persists in the face of complete information is logically relevant to the determination of an agent's self interest. This includes apparently altruistic desires like a desire for another's happiness as well as more narrow and self-regarding desires like a desire to eat a good meal. Second, when the agent finds himself in a situation where he must choose between incompatible desires, his informed preference determines the act which is most in his self-interest.
Marx and Engels On The Distributive Justice of Capitalism
Authors: Allen Derek P.H.
Published: June 2016

A difference of opinion exists among some philosophers who have recently inquired whether Marx thinks that capitalism is distributively unjust. What has to be determined is whether in Marx's view the wage worker suffers an injustice in not receiving most or all of the surplus value he creates. Allen Wood argues that this is not Marx's view, and George Brenkert agrees, for quite similar reasons; but Ziyad Husami and Gary Young, on the other hand, argue in reply to Wood, and on overlapping grounds, for the opposite interpretation; Wood, in turn, has defended himself against Husami.
Marx and Aristotle: A Kind of Consequentialism
Authors: Miller Richard W.
Published: June 2016

In English-speaking universities, political philosophy has long been dominated by two moral outlooks, the Judgment of institutions by the utility they create and the Judgment of institutions by conformity to rights held to be binding apart from their consequences. In the history of philosophy, Marx and Aristotle are the most striking and attractive contrasts to both alternatives. As against rights-based morality, both Judge institutions by the kinds of lives they promote and Judge proposed rights by assessing the consequences, of embodying them in institutions. At the same time, their general conceptions of the kinds of lives worth promoting are highly similar, and emphatically opposed to utilitarianism. In short, as political philosophers they are non-utilitarian consequentialists.
Agony in the Schools1
Authors: Bogen James
Published: June 2016

Functionalist identity theorists (functionalists, for short) argue that if physical states of the central nervous system (CNS) have the same function (the same input and output) as pain, pains should be identified with those physical states. Many objections have been raised against this position. My aim in this paper is to defend it against opponents who argue that it leads to an absurd result: the ascription of pains to things which cannot reasonably be thought to be capable of suffering, or of having any conscious states. In doing this, I will outline a version of the functionalist position which I think is plausible. It departs in several respects from versions commonly found in the literature.
Knowledge and the Eyewitness: Plato Theaetetus 201 a-c.
Authors: Lewis Frank A.
Published: June 2016

Replying to Theaetetus’ suggestion that knowledge is true opinion at Tht. 200e, Socrates remarks that ‘a whole profession’ testifies against this definition. The orator practises the art of persuasion, not to teach people, but make them believe whatever he wants. If a robbery has taken place, for example, he cannot in a short time teach adequately the truth about what happened to people who were not on the scene.
Hume and Justified Belief
Authors: Costa Michael J.
Published: June 2016

'Some beliefs about the world are justified, others are not.’ This seems to be a plausible, even if not completely uncontroversial, claim. The controversy most likely would center on the meaning given to the term ‘justified'. If one gives extremely strong criteria for justification, one might argue that the claim is false. None of our beliefs about the world are justified. It is possible, perhaps, to interpret Hume as taking such a position.

Whether or not Hume held this, I think that there is a sense of ‘justified’ in which Hume could have argued that some of our beliefs about the world are justified. I will try to show this by developing an analysis of justified belief that is compatible with Hume's theory of the nature of beliefs and belief formation. As a minimum criterion for success such an analysis must be able to provide a plausible basis for distinguishing between justified and unjustified beliefs.
‘Possible For’ and ‘Possible That’
Authors: Westwood John
Published: June 2016

In this century, much of the discussion of the free will problem has centered around the conditional analysis of ‘can’. Following G.E. Moore, most compatibilists have based their position on the supposition that to say a person could have acted otherwise is simply to say that he would have acted otherwise, if he had chosen (or willed) to. Most incompatibilists have rejected this supposition, arguing that it must not only be true that a person would have acted otherwise if he had chosen (or willed) to, but that it must also be true that the person could have chosen (or could have willed) otherwise than he did. I think that incompatibilists are right here. The question whether determinism entails lack of free will comes down to the question whether determinism entails that no one could have chosen (or could have willed) otherwise than he did.
Koinē Aisthēsis and the Discrimination of Sensible Differences in de Anima III.2
Authors: Modrak D.K.
Published: June 2016

In thede Anima,Aristotle outlines a theory of perception. Inde AnimaII, 5-12, he considers the basic kinds of sensory perception — seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling. He uses a few basic elements, viz., the five senses and their proper, common and incidental objects, and a few explanatory principles to explain sensory perception. Inde AnimaIII, 1–2, Aristotle turns to apperception, viz. perceptual selfawareness. He considers several basic cases of apperception – the selfconscious awareness of occurrent perceptions and the awareness that the objects of different senses are different.
Reason and Emotion
Authors: Provis Chris
Published: June 2016

It has been widely held, and still is held to some extent, that emotion and reason tend to be incompatible, that if a person is influenced by emotion to hold the beliefs he does, or perform the actions he does, then they tend to that extent to be unreasonable. This opinion manifests itself in a variety of ways. For example, it is no coincidence that Sherlock Holmes, the archetypal person of reason, is emotionally cold and detached. In a recent philosophical work, Robert Trigg has written of the emotions

[They] overwhelm us; we do not choose to adopt them …. They have always been thought to be the enemy of reason rather than its adjunct. A man who acts in anger is acting as he feels he wants to because of something that has happened. He is not necessarily acting as he would think best if he reflected on the matter. His emotion may have clouded his judgment.
Disappearance and the Identity Theory
Authors: Richardson Robert C.
Published: June 2016

Among recent materialists, it has become increasingly common to waive questions of the reducibility or even the consistency of psychological and physiological domains of discourse and to argue for the eliminability of mentalistic conceptions in favor of descriptions of the physical workings of organisms.

A more paradigmatic reductionist account has the advantage of giving a clear standard by which we might judge the acceptability of physicalist views: materialism is correct if physical theory is capable of capturing psychological theory. Arguments over this, the identity theory, unfortunately enmeshed theorists in apparently endless disputes over the viability of topic neutral translations; hence, if it is possible for materialists to argue for their position without maintaining a general reduction, such a maneuver would have much to recommend it.
Virtue and Self-Love in Aristotle's Ethics
Authors: Homiak Marcia L.
Published: June 2016

We are often told that there is a striking and important difference between ancient Greek moral philosophy and modern moral philosophy. Whereas the moderns emphasize principles of right action and what a person is obligated to do, ancient moral philosophy is concerned with character and what it is to be a good, that is, a virtuous human being. For the Greeks, virtue was not a matter of making our actions conform to a specific code of conduct or to the moral law. Instead, it was a matter of being in the right psychological state. This idea is explicit in Socrates’ famous claim that knowledge is sufficient for virtue: once we know that virtue is an indispensable means to the final good ofeudaimonia,we will choose virtue.
Aristotle on Leisure
Authors: Owens Joseph
Published: June 2016

At a conference on ‘Leisure in Canada,’ held more than a decade ago at Montmorency in Quebec, a participant observed that ‘practically all writers on the subject take Aristotle as the point of departure in discussing leisure but seldom seem to move from that point.’ At first sight this statement may seem surprising. How is it to be understood? Certainly recent writers on leisure do in fact list Aristotle's conception as one of the significant positions on it.
A Rejoinder on Actions and De Re Belief
Authors: Sosa Ernest , Pastin Mark
Published: June 2016

Richard Feldman in ‘Actions and De Re Beliefs’ attacks ‘latitudinarian’ accounts of de re belief in terms of de dicta belief, including those defended in print by one or the other of us. Feldman's case against latitudinarian views rests on the claim that such accounts do not allow de re attitudes an explanatory role they obviously can fulfil.
On the Non-Necessity of Origin
Authors: Price M.S.
Published: June 2016

In ‘Naming and Necessity,’ Saul Kripke defends a number of essentialist claims. One of them is that having a certain origin is a necessary property of a material thing. Used in connection with a human being or, presumably, a living thing of another kind whose members sexually reproduce, ‘necessity of origin’ means that the organism must have been born of those individuals who are its parents, i.e., whose body tissues are sources of the sperm and egg from which it issued, in the actual world. To say that the origin of an inanimate material thing is necessary is to say that having its origin in the hunk of matter from which it came is essential to it.
Vindication, Hume, and Induction
Authors: Jones Gary E.
Published: June 2016

The proponents of the ‘vindication’ or ‘pragmatic justification’ of induction have attempted to show that induction will work if any method does. This in turn serves as grounds for their claim that we have everything to gain by using induction and nothing to lose. Hence, they conclude that it is rational to use induction. Their claim that induction will work if any mehtod does is based upon the following argument:

If nature is uniform, induction will work. If nature is not uniform and some other method works, the success of that method will then constitute a regularity to which induction can be successfully applied. In that case, induction will sanction the continued use of the successful method and hence will be successful as well.
Causing Yesterday's Effects
Authors: Spellman Lynne
Published: June 2016

In this paper I wish to examine the claim that it would be possible for us now to do something which would be the posterior efficient cause of some past event. I am not prepared to discuss the physics of elementary particles, and I will not consider what is sometimes called time reversal. Rather my analysis will be limited to cases in which it is alleged that we, in a world of middle-sized physical objects where most causes precede or are simultaneous with their effects, could conceivably do something so that something else should have happened. I will argue that some of the cases which meet this description are indeed backwards causation if one is prepared to make certain (not uncommon) assumptions about time. I will not evaluate these assumptions; rather I will try to clarify them and to make plain their implications for causality. For the argument about backwards causation is most fundamentally, or so I will try to show, an argument about the nature of time.
Ethics, Personal Identity, and Ideals of the Person
Authors: Scheffler Samuel
Published: June 2016

It is not uncommon for contemporary moral philosophers to appeal, in support or in criticism of one moral theory or another, to supposed features of or facts about persons. Rawls, for example, maintains that ‘utilitarianism does not take seriously the distinction between persons,’ and that since ‘the correct regulative principle for anything depends on the nature of that thing,’ we should not expect utilitarianism to be the correct regulative scheme for human beings. Nozick, in a similar spirit, suggests that the deontological restrictions he calls ‘side constraints’ are desirable components of a moral conception because, without them, a moral scheme is unable to ‘sufficiently respect and take account of the fact that … [each individual] is a separate person,’ unable to take account of the fact that, with respect to each individual, ‘his is the only life he has.’ And Williams, to cite still another example, suggests that utilitarianism is a defective moral theory because ‘it cannot coherently describe the relations between a man's projects and his actions.'
What's Wrong with Slippery Slope Arguments?
Authors: Govier Trudy
Published: June 2016

Slippery slope arguments are commonly thought to be fallacious. But is there a single fallacy which they all commit? A study of applied logic texts reveals competing diagnoses of the supposed error, and several recent authors take slippery slope arguments seriously. Clearly, there is room for comment. I shall give evidence of divergence on the question of what sort of argument constitutes a slippery slope, distinguish four different types of argument which have all been deemed to be slippery slopes, and contend that two of these types need involve no logical error.

We find in textbook accounts three quite differently oriented treatments of slippery slope: conceptual — relating to vagueness and the ancient sorites paradox; precedential — relating to the need to treat similar cases consistently; and causal — relating to the avoidance of actions which will, or would be likely to, set off a series of undersirable events.
Paternalism, Liberal Theory, and Suicide
Authors: Soble Alan
Published: June 2016

A principle of paternalism must be able to answer three questions. Who are the persons who are the proper object of paternalism? Which actions should we prevent persons from doing or induce them to perform? What should our goals be when acting paternalistically toward these persons? A satisfactory principle will also be reasonably precise in distinguishing appropriate from inappropriate instances of paternalism, and it will be comprehensive, speaking to most (if not all) potential cases, including suicide. My purpose is not to reach a conclusion about the acceptability of paternalistic restrictions on suicide. Rather, because such a conclusion will follow from the way in which a principle of paternalism is formulated, I want to examine several liberal attempts at formulation and the theoretical background underlying these attempts.
Absolute Space: Did Newton Take Leave of His (Classical) Empirical Senses?
Authors: Whitt L.A.
Published: June 2016

It is in the scholium of thePrincipiaon time, space, place and motion that Newton delivers what is — arguably — a reluctant kiss of betrayal to empiricism. Right there, ‘in the main body of his chief work,’ as E.A. Burtt observes, the deed is done: ‘When we come to Newton's remarks on space and time … he takes personal leave of his empiricism.’ Reichenbach registers the event less charitably, dismissing the ‘crude reification of space that Newton shares with the epistemologically unschooled mind in its naive craving for realism.’ Injury is then added to insult as Reichenbach holds Newtonian mechanics to task for arresting the analysis of the problems of space and time for more than two centuries.
The Moral Equivalence of Action and Omission
Authors: Lichtenberg Judith
Published: June 2016

Is doing nothing sometimes as bad as doing something bad? In this or some less naive form the question I address in this paper is an old one that has been asked not only by philosophers and religious thinkers but also by ordinary people in their more reflective moments. We have recently seen its relevance to such issues as abortion, euthanasia, and the legitimate conduct of war. Active euthanasia is distinguished from passive, aiming to kill from killing as an unintended effect of one's aims, bringing about harm from letting it happen. The Catholic doctrine of the double effect endorses the moral distinction between what one positively does and what one allows to occur.
Acts, Omissions, and Common Sense Morality
Authors: Thomas Laurence
Published: June 2016

Common Sense Morality condemns us for being indifferent to the suffering of others. Even so, it sharply distinguishes between this and our knowingly and needlessly contributing to the suffering of others. (That we are talking about voluntary behavior throughout is to be understood.) And it holds that the latter constitutes the greater moral wrong. It would seem that common sense morality is not without a point. From the premise that a person knowingly and needlessly takes steps to cause others to suffer, it would certainly be correct for us to conclude that he desires to see others suffer and is sufficiently motivated by this desire that he brings about the suffering of others.
Paternalism and Justification
Authors: Woodward James
Published: June 2016

Much recent discussion in moral philosophy has focused on the contrast between those moral theories which are consequentialist in structure and those moral theories which admit independent side constraints on the means which can be used to achieve various ends. In this essay I shall attempt to show that this contrast provides an illuminating framework against which to understand two conflicting strategies for justifying paternalistic interference. The first, consequentialist strategy takes paternalistic interference to be justified when it will protect or perhaps enhance some valued goal or end state, such as an agent's welfare or future ability to choose. Gerald Dworkin's essay “Paternalism” contains what is perhaps the most compelling recent development of this sort of rationale for paternalistic interference and accordingly much of my subsequent discussion will focus on this essay.
Justification or Excuse: Saving Soldiers at the Expense of Civilians
Authors: Woodruff Paul
Published: June 2016

When soldiers find it morally comfortable to kill civilians and the public accepts such actions easily, philosophers are inclined to ask whether their comfort and acceptance rests on a misunderstanding. If it does, then philosophy could save lives by clearing up the problem. But most recent discussion has been about the wrong issue — whether killing non-combatants is wrong, and if so, why. That is all beside the point. Soldiers who kill civilians, in my experience, believe already that it is a bad thing to do. That they consider their actions at least prima facie wrong is evident from their readiness with excuses and justifications. Indeed, many of them take care to silence their consciences in advance with arguments of self-exoneration for the wrongs they are about to commit. We may reasonably hope that these soldiers would find it harder to kill civilians without those arguments to relieve their anticipated guilt.
Commerce and Selfishness
Authors: Arneson Richard J.
Published: June 2016

Does the existence of a capitalist market economy foster the character trait of selfishness? Does a market elicit narrowly self-interested conduct? Many great minds have advanced notably weak arguments to support affirmative answers to these questions. In section I, I canvass several unsuccessful attempts by Karl Marx to demonstrate that market economies are causally implicated in the production of undesirable character traits. Sections II and Ill venture a suggestion that partially vindicates Marx's hunch. The suggestion I develop relies on the truth of an empirical hypothesis regarding the effect on the disposition to altruism of activity by public authority that is perceived by those affected to be fair.
First Steps in Philosophical Taxonomy
Authors: Humberstone I.L.
Published: June 2016

A.N. Prior once showed that on certain apparently reasonable assumptions, a thesis sometimes associated with the name of Hume to the effect that no set of factual statements can ever entail an evaluative statement (call this principle ‘H’), is quite untenable. We assume only that there is at least one statement of each kind, and that the negation of a factual statement (evaluative statement) is factual (evaluative, respectively) — a principle we may call ‘N'. Now consider the disjunction F V E of some factual with some evaluative statement. Since the disjunction is entailed by F, a factual statement, it must, if principle H is correct, be classified as factual. But by N, ∽ F is also factual, and this together with F V E entails E, thus violating H since E was exhypothesi an evaluative statement.
Hume's Noble Lie: An Account of His Artificial Virtues
Authors: Baron Marcia
Published: June 2016

Hume scholars have been anxious to point out that when Hume calls Justice, chastity and so on artificial virtues, he is in no way denying that they are real virtues. I shall argue that they are mistaken, and that anyone who wants to understand Hume's account of Justice and his category of artificial virtues must take seriously his choice of the word ‘artifice,’ recognizing that it means not only ‘Skill in designing and employing expedients,’ but also ‘address, cunning, trickery.'

My suggestion will seem strange given Hume's own repeated plea that we not take the term ‘artifice’ too seriously. Yet while it is generally good policy to take people - at least philosophers - at their word, this is a Justified exception, Justified not only by Hume's known proclivities to irony and subtlety, but also by the implications of hearkening to his plea. To see the implications of not taking the terms ‘artificial’ and ‘artifice’ seriously, one can read either Duncan Forbes’ or Barry Stroud's criticisms of Hume's account of Justice.
Constitutional Necessity and Epistemic Possibility
Authors: Carter W.R. , Nagel Richard I.
Published: June 2016

By an incomplete sentence we shall understand a declarative sentence that can be used, without variation in its meaning, to make different statements in different contexts. Although the point deserves supporting argument, which we will not provide, sentences whose grammatical subjects are indexical expressions or demonstratives are obvious, plausible examples of incomplete sentences. Uttered in one context the sentence ‘He is ill’ may be used to make one statement, for example, that George is ill, while in another context the very same sentence may be used to make a quite different statement, for example, that Paul is ill.
Habermas's Evolutions
Authors: Ware Robert X.
Published: June 2016

Jürger Habermas has been attempting to develop a critical theory of society with a practical intent, on the basis of communication and a theory of the evolution of practical and moral social competence. He thinks that the studies of language rules (or capacities) and language learning (or acquisition) from Piaget, Searle, Chomsky and others have and continue to provide models elsewhere - from productive activity to moral activity. Moreover, the models are said to extend to social learning, which will be exhibited in the development of society.

Furthermore, speech acts, which are to be described by a theory of pragmatics, anticipate the establishment of ideal speech situations, which are the avenue to ‘truth, freedom, and Justice.'
Psychologism in Semantics
Authors: McKinsey Michael
Published: June 2016

There is an unresolved conflict in points of view that continues to fester in contemporary semantics and philosophy of mind. According to one influential outlook, an adequate theory of semantic properties and relations would provide us with a better understanding of those psychological acts and states called the propositional attitudes. A theory of such semantic concepts as that of a sentence's meaning something, or that of a term's referring to something would, according to this point of view, be capable of yielding explications of such analogous psychological concepts as that of a thought's having a certain propositional content, or of a beliefs being about something. This program is sometimes called the ‘Analogy Theory’ of thought; since Wilfrid Sellars is the most forceful and creative proponent of this point of view, I will call it ‘Sellars's Program.’
Wittgenstein on Representation, Privileged Objects, and Private Languages
Authors: Williams Meredith
Published: June 2016

In this paper, I shall investigate Wittgenstein's ‘private language argument,’ that is, the argument to be found in Philosophical Investigations 243-315. Roughly, this argument is intended to show that a language knowable to one person and only that person is impossible; in other words, a ‘language’ which another person cannot understand isn't a language. Given the prolonged debate sparked by these passages, one must have good reason to bring it up again. I have: Wittgenstein's attack on private languages has regularly been misinterpreted. Moreover, it has been misinterpreted in a way that draws attention away from the real force of his arguments and so undercuts the philosophical significance of these passages.
Nuclear Illusion and Individual Obligations
Authors: Govier Trudy
Published: June 2016

Until very recently the topic of nuclear armaments and the prospects of global nuclear war have been relatively inconspicuous in the work of philosophers. With some exceptions, these and related themes have not figured prominently in the academic writings of philosophers; nor have they occupied space commensurate with their importance in courses and anthologies on applied ethics. Helen Caldicott's widely circulated film, ‘If You Love This Planet,’ and Jonathan Schell's moving book, The Fate of the Earth, have brought the nuclear arms race and its problems to the attention of the wider public. This paper was written in the hope of influencing moral and political philosophers to pursue nuclear morality and related subjects in their philosophical writing and teaching.
Timaeus 48e-52d and the Third Man Argument
Authors: Prior William J.
Published: June 2016

In this paper I examine a much discussed passage of the Timaeus. This passage contains one of the most important descriptions of Plato's ontology to be found in all the dialogues. The ontological scheme there described differs from that presented in the middle Platonic dialogues in that a third sort of entity, the Receptacle or space, is added to the two classes of things familiar to readers of the Phaedo and Republic: Being (i.e. the Forms) and Becoming (the phenomenal world). The introduction of the Receptacle into Plato's ontology enables Plato to clarify the relation between the orders of Being and Becoming in a way not otherwise possible. When the relation between the Forms and their phenomenal counterparts has been clarified, I shall argue, it becomes clear that the Theory of Forms as presented in the Timaeus is in fact a coherent metaphysical theory, one which is not susceptible to the Third Man Argument. This fact in turn bears (although somewhat indirectly) on the vexed question of the place of the Timaeus in the chronology of Plato's works.
Functionalism and the Absent Qualia Argument
Authors: Elugardo Reinaldo
Published: June 2016

And supposing there were a machine, so constructed as to think, feel, and have perception, it might be conceived as increased in size, while keeping the same proportions, so that one might go into it as into a mill. That being so, we should, on examining its interior, find only parts which work on one another, and never anything by which to explain a perception.

Gottlieb Leibniz, The Mondadology, Section 17

Functionalism, as it is currently understood, is the view that each type of mental state is identical with a state that is a causal consequent of certain kinds of inputs and other mental states and which, in turn, causally brings about certain kinds of outputs and other mental states.
The Aporematic Approach to Primary Being in Metaphysics Z
Authors: Code Alan
Published: June 2016

Philosophy begins in wonder, or astonishment. We start out by wondering about problems that are ‘there,’ ready at hand for us as human beings (ta procheira). The natural response is flight from ignorance. Ignorance is simply the privation of knowledge, or understanding, and we have knowledge most of all when we understand first causes and principles. Hence it is part of our nature as human beings to desire to know the causes and principles of things.

The first causes and principles are the most knowable, and the other (knowable) things are known through these causes. Our knowledge is systematic, and we are systematic understanders. Some things we understand through themselves. The rest we understand by systematically relating it to what is known through itself. Since by nature we desire to know, and since we do succeed in knowing, it follows that we are by nature systematic understanders.
Singular Statements and Essentialism in Aristotle
Authors: Wedin Michael V.
Published: June 2016

In this paper I am interested in Aristotelian essentialism only as it relates to Aristotle's notion of an ordinary object. In particular, I shall concentrate on two main kinds of interpretation that are to be distinguished here. First, there is what I call the standard version. So named because it formulates the preferred view among commentators, the standard version holds that essences are necessary (at least) for the existence of objects. Against this is a recently proposed line of interpretation which I shall call the non-standard version of Aristotelian essentialism. It holds that possessing a given essential property is only sufficient, not necessary, for the existence of a given object and so denies the standard version. While I focus mainly on arguments and evidence that bear on decision between the two versions, I also reflect some on whether Aristotle is best construed a de re or a de dicto essentialist. Part I of the paper spells out the versions in question. Part II contains considerations which show Aristotle's openness to de re essentialism.
The Infinite Commitment of Finite Minds
Authors: Williamson Timothy
Published: June 2016

Chomsky (in syntax) and Davidson (in semantics) have made much of the constraint that speakers’ competence must have a finite base. This base is often supposed to mean a finite axiomatization of beliefs. Section I shows why this is plausible. Section II shows why it is wrong. Section III shows why the semantic constraint is thereby trivialized.

'Finite minds cannot have infinitely many beliefs’ has been taken for a useful truism. A theory of meaning, say, for a language may, for each of its infinitely many sentences, attribute to competent speakers knowledge, in some sense, and so in a corresponding sense belief, about the meaning (or some substitute for it) of that sentence. Our truism seems to force this paradox to immediate and constructive resolution: as finite minds we have a finite view on our language that recognizably entails an infinity of propositions about it.
The Inessentiality of Lockean Essences
Authors: Atherton Margaret
Published: June 2016

Locke, in his discussion of essences, makes extensive use of a distinction he introduces between nominal and real essences. This distinction has always been found interesting and important, and in fact, R.I. Aaron said of it that ‘there is no more important distinction in the Essay.’ Nevertheless, to say there has not been general agreement about what Locke was getting at is putting it mildly. Interpretations of Locke's point in making such a distinction have varied widely, depending upon whether the importance of the real or the nominal essence is stressed. Locke tells us we should distinguish the nominal essence, which is the abstract idea to which a general name is attached and for which it stands, from the real essence, which is the ‘real internal, but generally in Substances, unknown Constitution of Things, whereon their discoverable Qualities depend (3.3.15. See also 3.6.2).’
‘The Meaning of Life’: A Qualitative Perspective
Authors: Bennett James O.
Published: June 2016

One trend in contemporary discussions of the topic, ‘the meaning of life.’ is to emphasize what might be termed its subjective dimension. That is, it is widely recognized that ‘the meaning of life’ is not something that simply could be presented to an individual, regardless of how he/she felt about it. Thus, for example, Karl Britton has written that we could imagine ‘a featureless god who set before men some goal and somehow drove them to pursue it'; while this would constitute a purpose for human life, it would hardly be sufficient to render life meaningful. ‘The goal would seem arbitrary, senseless: and its pursuit burdensome, souldestroying.’ Similarly, R. W. Hepburn has stated that meaningfulness must indispensably involve value judgment. Any set of conditions presented to us, whether by God, nature, or our fellow humans, constitutes a fact about how the world is; what provides meaningfulness to our lives, on the other hand, must be something which we affirm - something we feel ought to be the case.
The Inward and the Outward: Fantasy, Reality and Satisfaction
Authors: Cherry Christopher
Published: June 2016

Imagination works upon desires and needs in a variety of ways. Different sensibilities will concentrate upon different of its operations and neglect - or even ignore - others. Thus Rousseau (and in some ways Plato, as we shall see) takes a very gloomy view of the uses of imagination. He sees only its dark aspect, under which it is a prime source of wretchedness:

It is imagination which enlarges the bounds of possibility for us … and therefore stimulates and feeds desires by the hope of satisfying them. But the object within our grasp flies quicker than we follow; when we think we have grasped it, it transforms itself and is again ahead of us … Thus we exhaust our strength, yet never reach our goal, and the nearer we are to pleasure, the further we are from happiness ... The world of reality has its bounds, the world of imagination is boundless; as we cannot enlarge the one, let us restrict the other; for all the sufferings which really make us miserable arise from the difference between the real and the imaginary.
Conceptual Progress and Word/World Relations: In Search of the Essence of Natural Kinds
Authors: Churchland Paul M.
Published: June 2016

The problem of natural kinds forms the busy crossroads where a number of larger problems meet: the problem of universals, the problem of induction and projectibility, the problem of natural laws and de re modalities, the problem of meaning and reference, the problem of intertheoretic reduction, the question of the aim of science, and the problem of scientific realism in general. Nor do these exhaust the list. Not surprisingly then, different writers confront a different ‘problem of natural kinds,’ depending on which background issue is for them the principal issue at stake. The issues of essentialism, meaning, and reference, for example, have tended to dominate recent discussions of natural kinds (Kripke [1972], Putnam [1975], [1981], Mellor [1977], Churchland [1979], Shapere [1982]). But evidently these are only part of the puzzle.
Believing and Willing
Authors: Pojman Louis P.
Published: June 2016

It is widely held that we can obtain beliefs and withhold believing propositions directly by performing an act of will. This thesis is sometimes identified with the view that believing is a basic act, an act which is under our direct control. Descartes holds that the will is limitless in relation to belief acquisition and that we must be directly responsible for our beliefs, especially our false beliefs, for otherwise we could draw the blasphemous conclusion that God is responsible for them. For Descartes and his followers judgment and assent are acts of the will which may be made both when they ought and when they ought not to be made. They are expressions of freedom of the will and as such we are directly responsible for the beliefs we acquire. Other philosophers who seem to espouse volitionalism include Aquinas, Locke, Kierkegaard, Newman, James, Pieper, Chisholm and Meiland.
In Defence of the Dutch Book Argument
Authors: Davidson Barbara , Pargetter Robert
Published: June 2016

A starting point for this paper is that there is at least one concept of probability, call it epistemic probability, which can be identified with belief or some sort of idealised belief (e.g., rational belief). If this identification is to be of any significance, then it needs to be shown that epistemic probability is a ‘true’ probability concept and is subject to those restrictions and requirements which relate and govern probabilities, which we call the probability calculus.

The most rehearsed argument to establish the probability calculus for epistemic probabilities is the Dutch Book Argument (DBA). There are two intuitions behind the DBA. The first is that if we can find some fine-grained behavioural measure of epistemic probability, then we may be able to show that epistemic probabilities obey the probability calculus by showing that the behaviour is of a kind which is, as a matter of necessity, subject to certain limitations and restrictions.