bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Scientific Socialism and The Question of Socialist Values
Authors: Collier Andrew
Published: June 2016

The dominant view among academic political philosophers in the English speaking world is that radical political differences, such as those between socialists and non-socialists, are in the last analysis differences of value-judgment, or ‘ideals,’ or ‘principles.’ Few perhaps would now endorse the view of Weldon that the Marxist's espousal of common ownership and the liberal's of private enterprise are ultimate, unarguable principles — as if the entire economic work of Karl Marx or W.S. Jevons could be reduced to sets of changes rung on the themes ‘private enterprise, boo!’ or ‘private enterprise, hurrah!.’ But it is generally assumed that at some point in the argument, value-judgments will be reached, and that it is these that explain the disagreement.
Doing Marx Justice
Authors: Young Gary
Published: June 2016

The circumstance that on the one hand the daily sustenance of labour power costs only half a day's labor, while on the other hand the very same labor power can work during a whole day, that consequently the value which its use during one day creates is double what he [the capitalist] pays for that use, this circumstance is without a doubt a piece of good luck for the buyer but by no means an injustice [Unrecht] to the seller [the worker].

[T]he surplus product [is] the tribute annually exacted from the working class by the capitalist class. Though the latter with a portion of that tribute purchases the additional labor power even at its full price, so that equivalent is exchanged for equivalent, yet the transaction is for all that only the old dodge of every conqueror who buys commodities from the conquered with the money he has robbed them of.
The Marxian Critique of Justice and Rights
Authors: Buchanan Allen E.
Published: June 2016

Among analytic philosophers in the past few years there has been a growing commitment to taking Marx seriously. Since the publication in 1971 of John Rawls’ bookA Theory of Justicethere has been a growing commitment to taking problems of Justice and rights seriously. These two developments intersect in mutual criticism: Marx's radical critique challenges the resources of recent theories of rights and Justice, while the sophistication of recent theories raises the possibility that they escape Marx's most basic criticism.
The Possibility of a Marxian Theory of Justice
Authors: Reiman Jeffrey H.
Published: June 2016

I have argued elsewhere1 that Rawl's method (i.e., the original position and so forth, as distinct from the principles that Rawls derives by using the method) provides us with the proper way to determine whether the structure of any society is exploitative. The argument trimmed to the bare bones is this. Since exploitation is the suppression of some peoples’ interests for the benefit of others, an argument that a set of social relations would be unanimously agreed to by rational individuals concerned to secure maximum opportunity to control their lives and possessed of correct knowledge of the nature of social reality and free of interests or attitudes deriving from the society they occupy or the position they occupy in it, is an argument that those social relations are not exploitative. If we take ideology to be false beliefs or interests or attitudes arising from society which lead people to think that their society is rational for all to accept when it would not be rational in the absence of such beliefs or interests or attitudes, then we can see that Rawls has constructed a method for arguing around ideology.
Identity Conditions and Events
Authors: Wierenga Edward , Feldman Richard
Published: June 2016

According to Myles Brand, ‘[t]he key to advocating a particularist account of events -or any account of events - is to provide adequate identity conditions’ . He thinks that the function of an identity condition is ‘to specify the nature of’ events.

To state an identity condition for events is to provide a way to complete the formula:

(IC) (e) (f) (if e and fare events, then e=f iff----)

The mere fact that a proposed completion of (IC) is true does not imply that it is an informative identity condition for events or that it plays any role in specifying the nature of events.
An Argument for Utilitarianism
Authors: Ng Yew-Kwang , Singer Peter
Published: June 2016

Many utilitarians accept Bentham's view that to argue for the principle of utility is as ‘impossible as it is needless'. They take utilitarianism as a first principle which one either accepts or does not. They do, of course, defend utilitarianism against objections, and make objections to other ethical positions; but the principle of utility itself, they hold, must stand on its own merits. In this article we use a different approach. We introduce a principle, which we call ‘Weak Majority Preference', which we believe likely to be accepted by many who do not consider themselves utilitarians. We then show that from this principle it is possible to derive the general principle of utility.
Ethics and Social Policy
Authors: Rapaport Elizabeth
Published: June 2016

During the past ten years moral philosophers in the English-speaking world have executed an astonishing volte face on the question of whether philosophers qua philosophers have a role as advocates in public policy debates. The standard answer to this question a decade ago was that philosophers were peculiarly qualified to analyze the logic and meaning of moral discourse but were in no way privileged in their ability to make correct moral judgments. This doctrine was a straightforward application of the then equally standard (but of course not universal) trichotomous fact/ value/ analysis distinction. Moral discourse was divided from scientific discourse and philosophy from both. Today philosophers are more than willing to take a stand on public issues — abortion, euthanasia, violence as instrument of social change, any element of foreign policy, preferential treatment of previously discriminated against social groups, and so on. This reversal is easy enough to account for historically.
Marx, Atheism and Revolutionary Action
Authors: Myers David
Published: June 2016

Prima facie there is confusion in that part of Marx's theory which deals with religion and revolution. On the basis of Marx's scattered statements on religion one can construct two views of the relationship between revolutionary action and the abolition of the religious mentality. One view is that the exploited class can come to atheism prior to the creation of communist society, and, indeed, must attain a secular consciousness if it is to be the agency of revolution. The other view is that the power of religion cannot be broken until after the communist revolution because only a new economic order can remove the material conditions which sustain religion as a mass phenomenon.

In the face of these conflicting views we are left with two alternatives. Either we can take one of the constructions as the authentic one, or, we can conclude that Marx's position is incoherent. Seeking the best in both worlds, my approach involves showing why the charge of incoherence appears plausible while arguing for a resolution in the direction of the first construction.
The Objective Confirmation of Hypotheses
Authors: Stemmer Nathan
Published: June 2016

According to Nicod's criterion of confirmation ([7]), a hypothesis of the form ‘All P are Q’ is confirmed by its positive instances, i.e. by entities that are P and Q. It is well known, however, that the criterion gives origin to counterintuitive results. For example, it sanctions the confirmation of ‘All nonblacks are nonravens’ by a nonblack nonraven. Since this hypothesis is logically equivalent to ‘All ravens are black,’ it follows that the criterion indirectly sanctions the counterintuitive confirmation of ‘All ravens are black’ by a non black nonraven, e.g. by a white shoe.
Can Hume Answer Cromwell?
Authors: Pence Gregory E.
Published: June 2016

In the first written volume of David Hume's History of England, Hume describes Oliver Cromwell in this uncomplimentary way:

The strokes of his character are as open and strongly marked, as the schemes of his conduct were, during the time, dark and unpenetrable. His extensive capacity enabled him to form the most enlarged projects: His enterprising genius was not dismayed with the boldest and most dangerous. Carried, by his natural temper, to magnanimity, to grandeur, and to an imperious and domineering policy: he knew, when necessary, to employ the most profound dissimulation, the most oblique and refined artiface, the semblance of the greatest moderation and simplicity. A friend to justice, tho’ his public conduct was one continued violation of it; devoted to religion, tho’ he perpetually employed it as the instrument of his ambition; his crimes derived from the prospect of sovereign power, a temptation, which is, in general, irresistible to human nature.
Escape from Boredom: Edification According to Rorty
Authors: Levi Isaac
Published: June 2016

Richard Rorty sings in the antifoundationalist chorus. His song equates the rise of foundationalist epistemology with the professionalization of philosophy. The discordant notes he finds in the foundationalist score become, as a consequence, subversive of philosophy as an autonomous discipline.

Nonetheless, the most salient feature of Rorty's recent book, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, is that it is by a professional philosopher, for professional philosophers and about the future of philosophy as a profession. The early chapters of the book are polished pieces of professional philosophical prose addressed to issues which have provoked interest in recent years among members of academic philosophy departments. They represent efforts to undermine foundationalist epistemology even in some of its currently fashionable guises as philosophy of language.
An Objection to the Revision of The Logical Connection Argument
Authors: Lee Jig-Chen
Published: June 2016

In a paper entitled ‘Reviving the Logical Connection Argument,’ James Otten attempts to revive the Logical Connection Argument (LCA), which is intended to refute the causal thesis. Otten distinguishes two versions of the causal thesis. The general causal thesis:

(G) W1 … Wn are certain of S's wants, and W1 … Wn cause A,

and the restricted causal thesis:

(R): W is S's want to perform A, and W causes A.
The Lockean Proviso
Authors: Sarkar Husain
Published: June 2016

Within Robert Nozick's theory of Justice as presented in his Anarchy, State and Utopia, does the Lockean proviso dovetail with the theory of entitlement? The main burden of this paper is to establish that far from dovetailing, there is a serious conflict between the two.

Nozick's theory of Justice consists of at least three principles, namely, the principle of Justice in acquisition, the principle of Justice in transfer, and the principle of rectification of injustice. These principles treat the topics of how unheld things came to be held, how they came to be transferred, and how injustice in respect to them came to be corrected or rectified. Although Nozick does not provide a detailed philosophical picture of these principles of Justice, he says enough about each of them by way of examples and explanations to constitute a powerful, criticizable doctrine.
The Historian's Presupposition on Feminism: A Case Study
Authors: Marcil-Lacoste Louise
Published: June 2016

More and more frequently, the general question whether there is an identifiable feminist methodology for investigating historical and philosophical writings about ‘the problem of women’ is raised. As of yet, there is no general, let alone systematic answer to this question, and many would claim it to be unanswerable. Ultimately, indeed, nothing short of the creation of an entirely new form of rationality would seem to be required, if the issue is to replace the so-called phallocentric grammar of our culture.

My suggestion here is that a significant way to provide elements of answers to this general question is to analyze works already done in this field with the view of delineating some of the conditions under which an adequate treatment of the women issue can be made. One such condition will be discussed here. It will be claimed that unless one is clear about the issue of equality, one cannot address the central issue raised by most writings on women.
Points of View and Practical Reasoning
Authors: Brandom Robert
Published: June 2016

Problems of practical reasoning often arise as the result of a clash between two different points of view. What do we mean when we say that while from the point of view of prudence there is no reason to rescue one's drowning enemy, from the point of view of morality there is reason to do so? In this essay we examine how the idiom of points of view arises in practical discourse, and offer a clarification of it. We will be particularly concerned with a common argument for assigning a privileged status to the moral point of view, an argument which can be seen to be fallacious once certain features of Judgments made from a point of view are clearly discerned.
Autonomy and Paternalism
Authors: Young Robert
Published: June 2016

Paternalism has generally been thought of as forcible or coercive interference with a person's liberty of action which is (believed to be) justified because it will prevent harm to that person's welfare interests or the like. Opposition to paternalistic interference with adults, whether it involves the intervention of the state (legal paternalism) or another adult individual, has usually been based on a concern to preserve human autonomy or self-determination. More strictly it is opposition to so-called ‘strong’ paternalism - interventions to protect or benefit a person despite the person's informed voluntary consent to the contrary- which has been grounded on such a commitment to self-determination. ‘Weak’ paternalism involves interference where there is (or is believed to be) a defect in the decision-making capacities of the person interfered with (or to ascertain whether the person's behaviour is fully reflective). It is claimed to be justifiable insofar asconsentto the interference would be forthcoming were these capacities restored.
The Right To Know In The Workplace
Authors: Faden Ruth R. , Beauchamp Tom L.
Published: June 2016

In recent years, the right of employees to know about health hazards in the workplace has emerged as a major issue in occupational health policy. A general consensus has gradually evolved that there is a right to know, and correlatively that there is a moral obligation to disclose relevant information to workers. For example, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), and several other U.S. federal agencies, informed the U.S. Senate as early as July 1977 that ‘workers have the right to know whether or not they are exposed to hazardous chemical and physical agents regulated by the Federal Government.’ In 1980, the Occupational Safety and Health Adminstration (OSHA) promulgated regulations guaranteeing workers access to medical and exposure records.
Unger's Defense of Skepticism: New Wine In Old Bottles
Authors: Andre Shane
Published: June 2016

Peter Unger has recently attempted to defend skepticism by means of a novel and ingenious theory about certain general features of our language. According to his theory, skepticism is a logical consequence of the fact that certain epistemic terms, including ‘certain’ and ‘know,’ belong to a much wider class of absolute terms whose strict meaning is such that they have little or no positive application to things in the world. The purpose of this paper is to enquire whether Unger's theory of absolute terms provides a stronger basis for skepticism than do other, more familiar, approaches. I shall argue that the theory cannot be regarded as an explication of the ordinary meaning of the terms in question; that the ordinary meaning of these terms can be understood by means of an alternative, if less exciting, model; and that the logic of our language does not commit us to skepticism.
The Speech Act Fallacy Fallacy
Authors: Hurka Thomas
Published: June 2016

John Searle has charged R.M. Hare's prescriptivist analysis of the meaning of ‘good,’ ‘ought’ and the other evaluative words with committing what he calls the ‘speech act fallacy.’ This is a fallacy which Searle thinks is committed not only by Hare's analysis, but by any analysis which attributes to a word the function of indicating that a particular speech act is being performed, or that an utterance has a particular illocutionary force. ‘There is a condition of adequacy which any analysis of the meaning of a word must meet,’ Searle writes, ‘and which the speech act analysis fails to meet. Any analysis of the meaning of a word must be consistent with the fact that the same word (or morpheme) can mean the same thing in all the different kinds of sentences in which it can occur.' Hare maintains that the word ‘good’ is used to indicate the speech act of prescribing. He maintains that one of the principal functions of this word is to indicate that utterances of sentences containing it have prescriptive illocutionary force, and that an analysis of its meaning must make explicit and ineliminable reference to this force-indicating function. But ‘good’ regularly occurs in sentences utterances of which appear to have no prescriptive illocutionary force.
A Plea for a New Nominalism
Authors: Zemach E.M.
Published: June 2016

I believe that the world is a totality of things: there are no properties, or relations, or sets, or states of affairs, or facts, or events; there are only particular things. I also believe that all true statements can be expressed in a canonical language which includes names of things and logical terms only: there will be no predicates in this language. For what is a predicate? Some say that predicates are names of universals which individual things exemplify, or names of sets of which individual things are members. If this is so, it is obvious that a nominalist's canonical language cannot have any predicates. Others say that predicates name nothing, but are satisfied by particular things. What, however, is satisfaction, and how is it different from naming? Semantic relations such as satisfaction, we are told, are not ‘in’ the world. But then a nominalist has no use for them.
Egalitarianism
Authors: Landesman Bruce M.
Published: June 2016

Despite the popularity of equality as a political value, egalitarianism as a political theory has never, I think, been fully or successfully defended. I aim in this paper to begin the defense of such a view. The egalitarianism I have in mind has as its ideal a condition ofequal wellbeing for all persons at the highest possible level of well-being,i.e.maximum equal well-being.Egalitarianism holds that society should be arranged so as to promote and maintain this state. Defending such a view involves, as I see it, three tasks. First, the ideal I have Just mentioned must be made clearer and more specific and its implications for the distribution of particular goods such as material possessions and liberty must be revealed. Second, positive arguments must be given in support of an equal distribution of well-being as a requirement of morality and Justice. And, thirdly, arguments to the effect that there are Just or Justified inequalities which seriously outweigh the claims of equality must be rebutted.
The Defence of Necessity
Authors: Rickenbach Jerome E.
Published: June 2016

The defence of necessity has had a long, though confused, legal career. Like self-defence, consent, duress, insanity and mistake of law, necessity is rooted in moral intuitions about when conduct which causes harm to another's person or property is not wrong, or should be tolerated, permitted or praised. If a man is literally starving to death and steals a loaf of bread, we are reluctant to say that his extreme circumstances should make no difference at all to the way we treat him at trial. And if two men, adrift at sea, are clinging to a log which can only support the weight of one, we are once again reluctant to say that if one pushes the other off the log, it is just a case of murder. These intuitions are deepseated; but it is extremely difficult to articulate the defence they seem to support, or to isolate the circumstances which mark the difference between a situation where the defence ought to apply and where it ought not.
Basic Knowledge and Jusificaton
Authors: Almeder Robert F.
Published: June 2016

As an introduction to explicating the concept of basic knowledge, I shall examine Aristotle's argument for the existence of basic knowledge and urge two basic points. The first point is that Aristotle's argument, properly viewed, establishes the existence of a kind of knowledge, basic or non-demonstrative knowledge, the definition of which does not require the specification of, and hence the satisfaction of,anyevidence condition. This point has been urged by philosophers like Peirce and Austin but it needs further argumentation because most analytic epistemologists still insist (for reasons that we shall see) thatallknowledge, whether basic or non-basic, requires the satisfaction of some evidence condition. Secondly, to urge (as Wittgenstein and Dewey have done) that the basic propositions whose existence is established by Aristotle's argument could be privileged but not known, for the reason that there is no evidence condition for them, would be to adopt a position that either entails wholesale skepticism or undermines the basic distinction between knowledge and belief.
Individuating Actions: The Fine—Grained Approach
Authors: McCann Hugh J.
Published: June 2016

When Booth moved his finger, thereby firing a gun, thereby killing Lincoln, did he perform three discrete actions, or were there relations of identity or inclusion among them? Most treatments of this problem have tended to assume there is but one sort of entity properly to be called an action, and hence that one answer to this question must be established to the exclusion of all others. And the favored answer has been that Booth's actions are not discrete, or indeed even overlapping, but identical. It is possible, however, to adopt a more conciliatory spirit, in which a place is sought for talk of discrete or fine-grained actions in cases like this, as well as for entities of the coarser sort most have favored.
Kantian Conceptions of Moral Goodness
Authors: Campbell John
Published: June 2016

There are two general views associated with Kant about the nature of morally good persons and their actions. One view is that one's actions have moral worth only if one is motivated by a sense of duty and not by inclination. The other view is that morally good persons are motivated by reason and not by desire. These two views are not always distinguished. But taken at face value, they do seem distinct. They seem distinct at least in that one might suppose that one of the desires one has is a desire to do one's duty. And so being motivated by a sense of duty would not necessarily imply that one is motivated by something other than one of one's desires.
Justice and the Market
Authors: MacLeod A.M.
Published: June 2016

Direct comparison of the ostensibly competing principles embedded in rival theories of Justice is often complicated by differences of view as to the nature and scope of the concrete Judgments a theory of Justice must attempt to illumine. Aristotle's official view, for example, is that Justice is a disposition or character trait. This commits him to scrutiny of Judgments about the Justice of particular actions since it is actions which serve to reveal, and to help form, the disposition in question. But it also stands in the way of any proper recognition of the fact that the competing principles of Justice he examines apply in the first instance neither to actions nor to dispositions but to states of affairs or situations: actions are Just for Aristotle when they help to bring about a Just distribution.
Hayek on Justice and the Market: A Rejoinder to Cragg and Mack
Authors: MacLeod A.M.
Published: June 2016

(1) Professor Cragg objects to my contention that when judgments about the justice of actions can be paired with judgments about the justice of the states of affairs in which they eventuate it is the latter and not the former which are logically fundamental. He concedes that the justice of actions cannot, in these circumstances, be determined wholly independently of the justice of the states of affairs they help bring about — ‘ … how could an action be evaluated as Just or unjust in the absence of an evaluation of the situation which it was designed to bring about?’ — yet he takes issue with my claim that judgments about the justice of states of affairs can be made ‘without any detour’ through questions about the justice of the actions which bring them about. According to the intermediate position he prefers, judgments about the justice of actions and judgments about the justice of situations are ‘inextricably intertwined.’
Plato and Pericles on Freedom and Politics*
Authors: Moravcsik J.M.E.
Published: June 2016

The main claim of this paper is that Plato's views on social and individual good as well as his criticism of democracy can be best understood as a conscious attempt to contrast with Periclean conceptions of freedom and democracy a new point of view. It will be argued that it is a mistake to see Plato's view as either democratic or authoritarian. An adequate understanding of Plato will focus on some difficult questions concerning the relationship between freedom and knowledge; questions that are rarely if ever faced clearly today. The Platonic conception and its clash with Pericles raises also some important and still unresolved questions about human motivation.
Plato's Greatest Accusation against Poetry
Authors: Belfiore Elizabeth
Published: June 2016

InRepublicX.605c-607a, Plato makes what he says is the greatest accusation against imitative poetry: ‘We have not yet made the greatest accusation against it [sc.mimetikē]. For the fact that it is able to harm reasonable people, except for a very few, is surely most terrible’ (605c6-8). What follows is a subtle theory of audience psychology. Plato accuses the poet of creating special circumstances in which knowledge of what constitutes moral virtue is not an adequate protection against wrong-doing. The poet does not merely give us false beliefs, as a sophist does, he attacks the very order of the soul.

This new charge depends on those preceding it, in which the poet was said to make things ‘third from the truth’ and to deceive the ignorant in a way analogous to that in which the painter makes children and fools think that a painted carpenter is a real carpenter, if they see it from afar (598c). We must begin by examining this important analogy.
Belief, Knowledge, and Learning in Plato's Middle Dialogues
Authors: Morgan Michael L.
Published: June 2016

There is a problem about belief and knowledge in Plato's epistemology that has exercised serious students of Plato only to settle into a recent orthodoxy. Guthrie characterizes the problem and its current resolution this way: ‘In the Meno doxa appeared to be a dim apprehension of the same objects (Forms and the necessary truths of mathematics) of which knowledge is a clear and complete understanding … in the Republic each is directed to different objects, knowledge to the Forms and doxa to the sensible world alone … at least the opinion seems now to prevail that on the relationship between doxa and knowledge Meno and Republic are irreconcilable, and exhibit a complete change of mind on Plato's part.'
Philebus 55c-62a and Revisionism
Authors: Mohr Richard
Published: June 2016

Philebus 5Sc-62a has traditionally been viewed as one of the more likely passages in the late Platonic dialogues where the theory of Ideas may be construed to be present in the same manner as in the Republic with its sharply dualistic epistemology and ontology. There is certainly a similarity of language between the passage and the Republic: in the Philebus the pure, clear, certain/stable, true, unalloyed, eternally existing, always changlessly the same, really real objects of the philosopher's reason and knowledge sound like Platonic Ideas. Roger A. Shiner, following in the steps of G.E.L. Owen, has offered four new arguments which attempt to show that in this passage Plato in fact is not committed to the theory of Ideas in the form in which it appears in the Republic, that in this passage there is no Republic-style gulf between knowledge and opinion, reality and becoming. I wish to argue that none of these arguments succeed.
A Refutation of Utilitarianism
Authors: Regan Tom
Published: June 2016

Alleged refutations of utilitarianism are not uncommon, so it is unlikely that the title of the present essay will raise eye-brows. ‘Another paper about utility's failure to account for our duty to be just’ (thought with a yawn, as it were), is apt to be the prevailing reaction to the title's stated objective. This is understandable. For utilitarianism has been taken to task on just this score more than a score of times. And rightly so, I believe, though I shall not argue that point here. Here I intend to offer a refutation of utilitarianism which turns, not on the duty of justice, but on the value of friendship, a refutation which, so far as I am aware, has never previously been advanced in the not inconsiderable body of literature critical of that theory.
Ng and Singer on Utilitarianism
Authors: Gordon David
Published: June 2016

In an ingenious argument, Ng and Singer claim to show that it is possible to derive the general principle of utility from another principle, Weak Majority Preference (WMP), which many who are not utilitarians would be prepared to accept. WMP does indeed sound acceptable: ‘For a community of N individuals choosing between two possibilities, X and Y, if no individual prefers Y to X, and at least individuals prefer X to Y, then X increases social welfare and is preferable’ (232). But from this seemingly innocuous rule, Ng and Singer maintain, quite substantial results follow if one takes account the well-established fact of intransitive indifference owing to the existence of finite sensibility.
Aristotle's Semantics and a Puzzle Concerning Change
Authors: Matthen Mohan
Published: June 2016

In this paper I shall examine Aristotle's treatment of a certain puzzle concerning change. In section I, I shall show that within a certain standard framework for the semantics of subject-predicate sentences a number of things that Aristotle wants to maintain do not make sense. Then, I shall outline a somewhat non-standard account of the semantics for such sentences — arguably Aristotle's — and show how the proposals concerning change fit quite naturally into this framework. The results of this exercise will enable us to say something quite precise about applications of some obscure but characteristically Aristotelian doctrines: that ‘is’ is ‘said in many ways,’ that his predecessors got the Law of Opposites wrong. They also shed some light upon Aristotle's ontology of predicables.
Aristotle and Individuation
Authors: Cohen S. Marc
Published: June 2016

One of the roles of matter in Aristotle's philosophy, according to well-established historical tradition, is to provide a principle of individuation. This tradition has been challenged from time to time. Some historians, noting that it is form rather than matter that wears the metaphysical trousers for Aristotle, have tried to give form the role of providing a principle of individuation. Others have suggested that there is no such principle at all to be found in Aristotle's works. This ongoing dispute has been frequently flawed by a failure to be sufficiently clear precisely what problem a principle of individuation is supposed to provide an answer to.
Aristotle on the Proximate Efficient Cause of Action
Authors: Mele Alfred R.
Published: June 2016

In this paper I shall attempt to locate and articulate Aristotle's answer to a foundational question in the theory of action - viz., ‘what is the proximate (efficient) cause of action?’ This task is certainly of historical importance, since one cannot hope to understand Aristotle's interesting and influential theory of action without understanding his views on the proximate efficient cause of action. But the present project is not, I should think, of historical interest alone; for it has recently been argued by a leading figure in the study of action, Myles Brand, that What [proximately] initiates action?’ is the fundamental question in action theory, and we shall see that Aristotle has the makings of a very plausible answer.
Causes as Necessary Conditions: Aristotle, Alexander of Aphrodisias, and J.L. Mackie*
Authors: White Michael J.
Published: June 2016

There is what might be called a ‘majority position’ in the history of Western philosophy according to which causes are sufficient for or ‘necessitate’ their effects. However, there is also a singificant ‘minority position’ according to which causes are necessary relative to their effects. The second/third century A.D. Peripatetic Alexander of Aphrodisias is an ancient representative of the minority position. He attributes his own view — with some justification, I shall suggest – to Aristotle. This paper has two, somewhat loosely connected purposes. The first is to explore the origin of the conception of ‘causes’ (aitia) as necessary conditions in Aristotle, particularly in On Generation and Corruption 2.11 and Posterior Analytics 2.12, and the development and use of the conception in Alexander's De fato. The second purpose of the paper is to explore and criticize a sophisticated contemporary version of the conception of causes as ‘necessary in the circumstances,’ that of J.L. Mackie.
Imagery: From Hume To Cognitive Science*
Authors: Bower Kenneth J.
Published: June 2016

Hume said that to have a memory image of some individual, x, is to perceive a ‘faint copy’ of some prior perception of x. This classical view of memory images includes three distinct claims:

(1) Images and percepts are mental entities which serve as objects for a ‘direct’ or ‘non-inferential’ perception.

(2) A memory image of some individual, x, shares numerous properties with some prior perception of x. (’ … great resemblance … in every other particular, except their degree of force and vivacity.’)
Indeterminate Descriptions
Authors: Fitch G.W.
Published: June 2016

One of the most important insights that Russell had in presenting his philosophy of language was his view of singular definite descriptions. Russell held that singular phrases of the form ‘the so-and-so’ should not be viewed as names, but rather incomplete symbols which can be said to have meaning only in a context. We should not represent the sentence

(1) The inventor of bifocals is bald.

as a simple subject-predicate sentence of the form ‘Fa.’ but rather as a complex existential sentence. According to Russell we should analyze (I) as

(2) There is a unique x such that x invented bifocals and x is bald.

Moreover, if Russell's analysis is correct then the proposition expressed by (1) will be true in a given circumstance provided that there is a unique inventor of bifocals who is bald in that circumstance.
The Defence of the Ant: Work, Life and Utopia
Authors: Rives Joel
Published: June 2016

It was the middle of winter now and the Grasshopper was long dead. Skepticus and Prudence, being not quite grasshoppers had retreated into a burrow dug by Prudence and stocked by her for the winter.

Unfortunately, Skepticus had taken the Grasshopper far too seriously and had not assisted Prudence in laying up for winter. Thus, by the time January came around, the cupboard was bare (metaphorically speaking) and the insects once again had to choose between going the way of the Grasshopper and another (seemingly appalling) alternative.

PRUDENCE: There is simply no doubt about it. We must either starve like the Grasshopper or we must take refuge with the Ant. He laid up enough food to tide a dozen insects over the winter so he couldn't possibly mind if we went over to share it with him.
Actions and De Re Beliefs
Authors: McKay Thomas
Published: June 2016

I want to present some evidence that facts about de re attitudes or causal facts are important in the explanation of actions. In particular, I will argue that an attempt by Ernest Sosa and Mark Pastin [4] to give a scheme for explaining intentional actions fails. By adding either de re or causal locutions we can devise a more adequate schema for explaining action, but their analysis had been designed to eliminate de re locutions from explanations of intentional action. Showing the failure of their analysis does not, of course, show that de re or causal elements are required in these explanations, since it does not rule out the possibility of alternative explanatory schemes. But the centrality of de re or causal elements is supported by the inadequacy of their attempts to dispense with them.
Sets, Aggregates, and Numbers
Authors: Yourgrau Palle
Published: June 2016

Frege's definition of the natural number n in terms of the set of n-membered sets has been treated rudely by history. It has suffered not one but two crippling blows. The discovery of Russell's Paradox revealed a fatal flaw in the ‘naive’ conception of set. In spite of its intuitive appeal, Frege's Basic Law V (in the context of the rest of his theory) turned out to be impermissible, leaving us only with the etiolated concept of set that survives in the axiomatic treatments initiated by Zermelo. The independence results, however, of Godel and Cohen, concerning Cantor's Continuum Hypothesis, have left us adrift in choosing between Cantorian and non-Cantorian set theories, which has induced in some logicians a skepticism in regard to the very idea of set-theoretic platonism.
Searle on Programs and Intentionality
Authors: Sharvy Richard
Published: June 2016

… it is possible for a man to write a piece correctly by chance or at the prompting of another: but he will be literate only if he produces a piece of writing in a literate way, and that means doing it in accordance with the skill of literate composition which he has in himself.

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics II 4 1105a23-35
A Materialist's Misgivings About Eliminative Materialism
Authors: Foss Jeffrey
Published: June 2016

I‘m a materialist, and not too embarassed about it. It would be nice to have a knock down argument to defend materialism, but not having one, I instinctively fight off idealists, dualists, skeptics, or whatever, with the same punches and feints used by materialists from time immemorial. Like, say, the snide observation that a material like liquor gets even my idealist friends drunk, or that the senile dualists I have known don't seem at all to consist of ageless minds trapped in aging bodies. I will not resort to ad baculum, because all non-materialists I‘ve known, of whatever stripe, act as though tampering with their bodies is the same as tampering with their very selves.
Sensation, Theory and Meaning
Authors: Thurston B. , Coval S.
Published: June 2016

One way to judge whether sensations are merely part of the causal order and not part of the cognitive or epistemic order is to determine whether or not sensations control to any extent the meaning of our observation terms. Should our observation terms have their meanings even in part determined by sensations then this would seem to be evidence that sensations are of the cognitive order. In a recent and noteworthy book, Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind, Paul Churchland offers a development of the Sellarsian idea that sensations play a merely causal role in perception. Churchland also cites Paul Feyerabend, whose adaptation of the Sellarsian position he finds more to his purpose. The central argument of Churchland's book and the one which will be most particularly dealt with herein is an attempt to show that facts about sensations are totally irrelevant to the meaning of observation terms, even to the meaning of common observation terms such as 'hot,' 'cold,' 'white,' and 'black.' It is Churchland's contention, then, that facts about the intrinsic nature of sensations (as opposed to facts about their roles in causal chains) are semantically irrelevant.
On Characterizing Unary Probability Functions and Truth-Value Functions
Authors: Leblanc Hugues
Published: June 2016

Consider a languageSLhaving as its primitive signs one or more atomic statements, the two connectives ‘∼’ and ‘&,’ and the two parentheses ‘(’ and ‘)’; and presume the extra connectives ‘V’ and ‘≡’ defined in the customary manner. With the statements ofSLsubstituting for sets, and the three connectives ‘∼,’ ‘&,’and ‘V’ substituting for the complementation, intersection, and union signs, the constraints that Kolmogorov places in [1] on (unary) probability functions come to read:

K1. 0 ≤ P(A),

K2. P(∼(A & ∼A)) = 1,

K3. If ⊦ ∼(A & B), then P(A ∨ B) = P(A) + P(B),

K4. If ⊦ A ≡ B, then P(A) = P(B).2
Was Leibniz Entitled to Possible Worlds?
Authors: Baker Lynne Rudder
Published: June 2016

Leibniz has enjoyed a prominent place in the history of thought about possible worlds. I shall argue that on the leading interpretation of Leibniz's account of contingency - an ingenious interpretation with ample textual support - possible worlds may be invoked by Leibniz only on pain of inconsistency. Leibnizian contingency, as reconstructed in detail by Robert C. Sleigh, Jr., will be shown to preclude propositions with different truth-values in different possible worlds.
Humes Criterion of Significance
Authors: Williams Michael
Published: June 2016

I

There are various ways of being a sceptic. Most obviously, perhaps, versions of scepticism can differ with respect to scope. Scepticism can be universal; it can be directed against beliefs belonging to certain broad kinds, say beliefs having to do with the external world; or it can be quite focussed, as in the case of religious scepticism. But there is also the question of force. Some philosophers treat scepticism as a purely theoretical affair, defining it as the thesis that knowledge is impossible. This kind of scepticism, theoretical scepticism, has no essential connection with any particular sceptical practice. A theoretical sceptic does not necessarily entertain doubts or suspend judgment about any particular matter of fact or theory. He may think that the problem of induction is insoluble yet not be seriously concerned that the sun will not rise tomorrow. But in other versions, the force of scepticism is taken to be practical, in which case to be a sceptic is to entertain doubts or suspend judgment, and not just to take a certain theoretical position in epistemology.
'Doing Business With The Gods'
Authors: Burns Steven A.M.
Published: June 2016

Plato's Euthyphro is a dialogue about the virtue of piety. It is also one of the aporetic dialogues, ending in apparent failure to discover what piety is. It is common to understand the dialogue as teaching lessons about other things, about definition, for instance, or about the logic of refutation. About piety, however, it is thought to teach us only negatively, showing a few of the many things which piety is not.

My thesis, on the contrary, is that there is a positive account of the nature of piety in the dialogue; it is, moreover, an account which cannot be separated from the other lessons which the dialogue teaches. I shall find it necessary to expose the structure of the logical lessons in order to develop my account of the holy.
Fictional Contexts and Referential Opacity
Authors: Whitt L.A.
Published: June 2016

Quantified modal logic and propositional attitudes have long been regarded as sites susceptible to referential opacity — that curious affliction first diagnosed by Quine. In this paper I suggest a way of alleviating the symptoms of referential opacity as they manifest themselves in fictional contexts, contexts in which we are confronted by discourse about fiction(s). Indeed, a case might be made against Quine that it is fictional, rather than quotational, contexts which are the referentially opaque contexts par excellence. For whether we take a Fregean line on the matter and consider the obliquity of fictional terms as due to shift of reference, or a Quinean line and consider their opacity as due to failure of reference, their non-standard (or as Kaplan might put it, non-vulgar) occurrence is clear and avowed. Moreover, as the non-standardness or non-vulgarity of terms in fictional contexts is by design and not due to some mere accident of orthography, they seem in many ways to be both more interesting and potentially more revealing.
‘Freedom and Desire’
Authors: Arneson Richard J.
Published: June 2016

Muddles can be instructive. The clarifying confusion to be examined in this paper is Isaiah Berlin's intelligent vacillation on the issue of whether or not the extent of a person's freedom depends on his desires. Is the amount of freedom an agent possesses determined solely by his objective circumstances or is it also partly a function of his subjective tastes and preferences? In clarifying this question I shall suggest that Berlin has trouble answering it because he almost perceives that interpersonal cardinal measurement of freedom, if possible at all, is possible only on a subjective basis. Yet as Berlin eloquently reminds us measuring freedom according to a subjective metric generates paradox. Whether commonsense ideas of freedom are consistent and reasonable is not purely an academic issue, for we do often make political judgments to the effect that one or another policy, or a movement to one or another form of society, can be expected to reduce or enlarge human freedom. If freedom is not measurable these judgments are merely hortatory.
Skeptical Rearmament
Authors: Johnsen Bredo C.
Published: June 2016

In ‘Skeptism Oisarmed,’ L.S. Carrier asserts the following:

… any reasonable person would accept premise (1) only on the ground that both p and q are propositions for which we can get the requisite evidence.

Premise (1), actually a premise schema attributed to Peter Unger, is the following:

If A both knows p and knows that p entails q, then A can come to know that q.

I suggest, contrary to Carrier's assertion, that many reasonable people, including many philosophers, would regard (1) as a necessary truth knowable a priori, and would be quite happy to accept its universal quantification, with no implied restriction to propositions for which we can get any evidence at all.

How is such a dispute about what reasonable people would do to be resolved? I suggest that, at the very least, Carrier owes us an explanation of the grounds on which he would reject particular instances of the schema, e.g.,
Self-Subverting Principles of Choice
Authors: Perkins Michael , Hubin Donald C.
Published: June 2016

The thesis that rationality consists in the straight-forward maximization of utility has not lacked critics. Typically, however, detractors reject the Humean picture of rationality upon which it seems based; they seek to emancipate reason from the tyranny of the passions. It is, then, noteworthy when an attack on this thesis comes from ‘within the ranks.’

David Gauthier's paper ‘Reason and Maximization’ (1975) is just such an attack; and for this reason, among others, it is interesting. It is not successful, though. In defense of this conclusion, we shall begin by relating the essentials of Gauthier's argument. Then we shall examine in some detail Gauthier's claim that the principle of straighforward max-imization fails to be self-supporting. We shall argue that Gauthier's defense of this claim is at best incomplete. Finally, we shall show that the fact that a normative principle is self-subverting or non-self-supporting does not entail that the principle is defective.