bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Aristotle's Horror Vacui 1
Authors: Thorp John
Published: June 2016

At Physics IV,8, 216a26-7, Aristotle cracks a joke. It is one of the relatively few deliberate jokes in the corpus, and its occurrence here is not without significance. Aristotle in these chapters is arguing against those who believe in the existence of the void, or vacuum, or empty space; he says, ‘even if we consider it on its own merits the so-called vacuum will be found to be really vacuous.'

To be sure, this is not a very funny joke; what is interesting about it, though, is that it underlines the general attitude of dismissive flippancy that seems to run through Aristotle's consideration of the void. He seems to refuse to take the hypothesis of the void at all seriously. He never argues directly that the void does not or cannot exist, but contents himself with criticizing the arguments that other thinkers had advanced in its favour.
Neutrality and Utility
Authors: Arneson Richard J.
Published: June 2016

According to the ideal of tolerance, the state is supposed to be neutral or evenhanded in its dealings with religious sects and doctrines. The tolerant state does not pursue policies aimed at favoring one sect over another.
Philosophy and Machine Learning
Authors: Thagard Paul
Published: June 2016

Philosophers since the ancient Greeks have investigated the nature of different kinds of inference. Although deductive inference in the form of Aristotelian syllogisms and Fregean formal logic has predominated, much attention has also been paid toinduction,inference where the conclusion does not follow necessarily from the premises.
Is Neuroscience Relevant to Philosophy?
Authors: Churchland Patricia Smith
Published: June 2016

Many questions concerning the nature of the mind have remained intractable since their first systematic discussion by the ancient Greeks. What is the nature of knowledge, and how is it possible to represent the world? What are consciousness and free will? What is the self and how is it that some organisms are more intelligent than others? Since it is now overwhelmingly evident that these are phenomena of the physical brain, it is not surprising that an established empirical and theoretical foundation in this domain has eluded us for so long. For in order to understand what we are and how we work, we must understand the brain and how it works. Yet the brain is exceedingly difficult to study, and research on any significant scale is critically dependent on advanced technology.
Meaning, Understanding and Translation
Authors: Stroud Barry
Published: June 2016

When I hear someone speaking and understand what is said, do I translate the words I hear into words of my own? I think the answer in general is ‘No.’ Of course, I might sometimes have to translate what I hear if I am not very good in the language the other person is speaking. But if I speak that language well, and the other person is speaking clearly and intelligbly enough, I simply understand. There is no question of translating what I hear into words of my own. If I speak the language, the words I hear are words of my own. I don’t need any others.
Natural Law Theory: The Link Between Its Descriptive Strength and Its Prescriptive Strength
Authors: Braybrooke David
Published: June 2016

To cut a convincing figure again in jurisprudence — which is my present field of concern— natural law theory, by which I mean and shall mean throughout, traditional natural law theory, basically the theory of St.Thomas, must be made convincing again in ethics.
Two Dogmas in Retrospect
Authors: Quine W. V.
Published: June 2016

In retrospecting ‘Two Dogmas’ I find myself overshooting the mark by twenty years. I think back to college days, 61 years ago. I majored in mathematics and was doing my honors reading in mathematical logic, a subject that had not yet penetrated the Oberlin curriculum. My new love, in the platonic sense, was Whitehead and Russell’s Principia Mathematica.

I was taken with the clear, clean incisiveness of its formulas. But this was not true of its long introduction to volume 1, nor of some of the explanatory patches of prose that were interspersed through the three volumes. In those pages and passages the distinction between sign and object, or use and mention, was badly blurred. Partly in consequence, there was vague recourse to intensional properties, or ideas, under the disarmingly technical name of propositional functions. These ill-conceived mentalistic notions paraded as the philosophical foundation for the clean-cut classes, truth functions, and quantification that would have been a far better starting point in their own right.
Works, Texts, and Contexts: Goodman on the Literary Artwork
Authors: Davies David
Published: June 2016

We have seen that a musical score is in a notation and defines a work; that a sketch or picture is not in a notation but is itself a work; and that a literary script is both in a notation and is itself a work. Thus in the individual arts a work is differently localized. In painting, the work is an individual object; and in etching, a class of objects. In music, the work is the class of performances compliant with a character. In literature, the work is the character itself. And in calligraphy, we may add, the work is an individual inscription.
Individualism at an Impasse
Authors: Black Samuel
Published: June 2016

In the world of practical affairs the rights of individuals and the prerogatives of communities often lie in tension. Collectives pursue cultural aims at the expense of the minorities in their midst. Individuals assert their freedoms and deploy their wealth in ways that are inimical to the public interest. There is not one country in the world where some variation of this theme is not being played out. Recognizable communities clash with individuals, just as surely as other individuals do.
Pro Buridano; Contra Hazenum
Authors: Hinckfuss Ian
Published: June 2016

Alan Hazen has claimed that Buridan’s theory of truth does not escape semantic paradox.

In this paper, I claim that Buridan's theory is untouched by Hazen's case.My solution to Hazen's paradox requires the recognition of the exceptionability of what I shall call T-Elimination, namely, the principle (to be clarified later) that from a statement that such and such is true, we may deduce such and such. The exceptions are explained by reference to the role of what I shall call the meta-content of a locution, that is, that information conveyed by any locution that tells us what sort of a locution it is intended to be. The exceptionability of T-Elimination turns out to be shared by other well-accepted principles of deduction also—and for the same reasons.
Abortion and the Morality of Nurturance
Authors: Gomberg Paul
Published: June 2016

The moral problem of abortion seemed simple to describe, if not resolve. There was consensus that at least some methods of birth control—avoiding or preventing the development of a conceptus—were not wrong. There was consensus that it was wrong to kill another person like ourselves. The problem seemed to be this: when in the development toward adult life does it become wrong to prevent or terminate that development? The conservatives said, ‘from conception.’ Liberals said that it became wrong after viability, or after birth, or after early infancy. Some moderate liberals have argued that there is an intermediate stage where stopping the development of a fetus is wrong—but not the same as killing a person—because of the fetus’s similarity to or potential to become a person. While all agree on the moral principle that it is wrong to kill another person, there has been little progress toward agreement on how this principle applies to the fetus.
The Metaphysics Of Freedom
Authors: Dretske Fred
Published: June 2016

I offer Jimmy a dollar to wiggle his ears. He wiggles them because he wants the dollar and, as a result of my offer, thinks he will earn it by wiggling his ears. So I cause him to believe something that explains, or helps to explain, why he wiggles his ears. If I push a button, and a bell, wired to the button, rings because the button is depressed, I cause the bell to ring. I make it ring. Indeed, I ring it. So why don’t I, by offering him a dollar, make Jimmy wiggle his ears? Why, indeed, don’t I wiggle them? If I ring a bell by pushing a button, why don’t I wiggle Jimmy’s ears by offering him a dollar?

That is a question that has always vexed a compatibilist’s vision of human freedom. If an intentional act–say, wiggling one’s ears in order to earn a dollar–is caused by one’s beliefs and desires (the reasons one has for wiggling one’s ears), then, by the transitivity of the causal relation, it appears to follow that it is (also) caused by whatever causes one to have those beliefs and desires. But the causes of belief and desire are often (in fact, if we trace the causal chain far enough backward, always) factors over which one has no control. So intentional behavior is often (or always) something one is made (caused) to do by factors over which one has no control. This, however, robs intentional behaviorand, presumably, also voluntary action–of its autonomy. Deliberate acts–Jimmy wiggling his ears to earn a dollar–have the same causal structure as does a bell that rings because a button is pushed. The only difference is the switch.
Thought Experiments And The Epistemology Of Laws
Authors: Sorensen Roy A.
Published: June 2016

The aim of this paper is to show how thought experiments help us learn about laws. After providing examples of this kind of nomic illumination in the first section, I canvass explanations of our modal knowledge and opt for an evolutionary account. The basic application is that the laws of nature have led us to develop rough and ready intuitions of physical possibility which are then exploited by thought experimenters to reveal some of the very laws responsible for those intuitions. The good news is that natural selection ensures a degree of reliability for the intuitions. The bad news is that the evolutionary account seems to limit the range of reliable thought experiment to highly practical and concrete contexts. In the fifth section, I provide reasons for thinking that we are not as slavishly limited as a pessimistic construal of natural selection suggests. Nevertheless, I promote the idea that biology is a promising source of predictions and diagnoses of thought experiment failures.
Pride, Virtue, and Self-Hood: A Reconstruction of Hume1
Authors: Chazan Pauline
Published: June 2016

Hume’s account of how the self enters the moral domain and comes to a consciousness of itself as a moral being is one which he superimposes upon his Treatise account of the constitution of the non-metaphysical self. This primordial self is for Hume constructed out of the passions of pride and humility which are themselves in tum constructed out of certain feelings of pain and pleasure, these feelings being worked on by memory and imagination, and converted back and forth into series of ideas and impressions. In presenting this account of the way in which we achieve a coherent self-awareness and self-knowledge such that we ‘know our own force’ (T 597), Hurne in fact employs a radical psychology which he must discard once the moral self comes into view. The use Hume makes of this psychology has gone unnoticed in the literature, but once we understand its implications we will be able to dispel the confusion that some have found in his story.
Two Types of Autonomy Accounts
Authors: Double Richard
Published: June 2016

Philosophers’ intuitions about what constitutes autonomy are largely driven by the exemplars or paradigms that we recognize. There are indefinitely many exemplars, inasmuch as there are relatively private personae that serve as autonomy exemplars such as our parents, third grade teacher, or, for the megalomaniac, oneself. But among Western philosophers there are doubtless some exemplars that are widely shared and broadly influential. Philosophical exemplars include Socrates, Aristotle’s magnanimous man, Kant’s noumenal self that is perfectly attuned to the moral law, Mill’s anti-authoritarian non-conformist, Marx’s manin-society (after the higher form of communism is achieved), Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, and Sartre’s authentic youth who must decide whether to join the French resistance or stay at home for the sake of his mother. Exemplars from outside of philosophy include Antigone, Christ, Faust, Ibsen’s Enemy of the People, Winston Churchill, and even figures from popular culture such as the baseball player Ted Williams, the free spirited flower children of the 1960s, and practically any character that John Wayne ever played.
Efficiency vs. Equality and the Demise of Socialism
Authors: Hardin Russell
Published: June 2016

One of my fellow graduate students at MIT had access to the Pentagon Papers at a time when they were still classified, and he was writing a dissertation on aspects of the American involvement in Vietnam. One morning over breakfast he discovered that he had been preempted by theNew York Times. Every scholar recently working on the Soviet Union, China, and Eastern Europe must understand that student’s sensation that morning. By now, they must face newspapers with a mixture of hope and foreboding. Events outrun the most radical predictions. Not only has the Wall crumbled, with pieces of it being sold as souvenirs, but Albania has established telephone connections to the world not long after westerners came to believe Albania had been the only nation in modem times to succeed in disappearing.
Realism and the Principle of the Common Cause
Authors: Stone Mark A.
Published: June 2016

Contemporary arguments for scientific realism are typically based on some form of inference to the best explanation. Sometimes such arguments concern the methods of science: given the success of scientific methodology, realism offers the best explanation of this success. Sometimes such arguments concern the content of scientific theories: given observed regularities in nature, explanations must be given of those regularities; the best such explanations will be realist. One forceful explanationist argument about the content of science can be based on Hans Reichenbach’s Principle of the Common Cause (CC). Roughly, CC says that whenever an enduring correlation between two events is observed, there must be some preceding event which is the common cause of the two, and is the explanation for the correlation. Rigid adherence to this demand for a common cause, however, supposedly goes beyond the instrumentalist explanatory resources available to the antirealist, and hence CC is taken to be a sufficient condition for realism. Further, one might claim that any argument that realism has greater explanatory power than antirealism depends either explicitly or implicitly on CC, and hence CC is also a necessary condition for realism.
Analyticity, Undeniability, and Truth
Authors: Van Cleve James
Published: June 2016

In his 1970 book Philosophy of Logic, Quine propounds what he calls ‘the deviant logician’s predicament’: when a reformist logician tries to deny a law of classical logic, he succeeds only in changing the subject. This position, summed up in the aphorisms’ deny the doctrine and change the subject’ and’ an illogical culture is a mistranslated one,’ has struck many of Quine’s readers as backsliding. The old Quine denied that any statements whatever are analytic in the sense of being true solely in virtue of what they mean; the new Quine holds that certain laws of logic cannot be denied without changing the meanings of the logical connectives. Does not the position of the new Quine invest logical laws precisely with the status ‘true solely in virtue of what they mean’?
Some Remarks on Indiscernibility
Authors: Kazmi Ali
Published: June 2016

If α and α’ are distinct variables and ϕ and ϕ’ are open sentences of some language, where ϕ’ is the result of replacing one or more free occurrences of a in α with free occurrences of α’ in ϕ’, then a universal closure of ⌜(α=α’ → (ϕ → ϕ’))⌝, is an indiscernibility principle of that language. For instance, (1) is an indiscernibility principle.

The existence of opaque constructions falsifies the familiar unrestricted principle of substitution which affirms that co-referential expressions are intersubstitutable in all contexts without change of truth-value. But indiscernibility principles are another matter. Not every counter-example to the unrestricted principle of substitution is a counter-example to some indiscernibility principle. Indeed, it is likely to be thought that there is no counter-example to any indiscernibility principle, and that the semantics of variables and objectual quantification ensures that all indiscernibility principles are true.
A Dilemma For Causal Reliabilist Theories of Knowledge
Authors: Lipson Morris , Savitt Steven
Published: June 2016

In a ‘Letter from Washington’ in The New Yorker, Elizabeth Drew reported some speculation regarding the mental processes of Ronald Reagan. In Drew’s words:

The curious process Drew describes is clearly important in many ways -historically, politically, and perhaps legally. We contend that there is even some epistemological significance to Reagan’s method for the fixation of belief. We shall argue, in particular, that some of those curiously insulated beliefs which (if we are to believe Drew) Reagan possesses qualify as knowledge under at least one leading causal reliabilist theory of knowledge- that presented by F. Dretske in Knowledge and the Flow of Information (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press 1981). But, as we detail the structure of such beliefs, what is probably evident already will emerge quite clearly, viz., that these beliefs do not amount to knowledge.
Knowledge, Society, and History1
Authors: Kitcher Philip
Published: June 2016

Here is a traditional way of thinking about human knowledge.

(1) Knowledge is a species of true belief. The crucial difference between knowledge and other kinds of true belief is that propositions that are known have a special property (they are justified, or warranted).

(2a) Justified (warranted) propositions either have intrinsic justification (they are self-warranting for the knower) or else they are obtainable by means of a justification-conferring argument from other justified propositions that the knower believes.

(3a) The only propositions with intrinsic justification are those that fall into one of two classes: the set of a priori truths (logic, mathematics, etc.) and the set of propositions recording the sensory experiences of the knower.
Swampman of La Mancha1
Authors: Brown Deborah J.
Published: June 2016

I was dreaming about Delores when the phone interrupted us. It was the Chief, or ‘Stress,’ as we liked to call him, telling me to get part of my anatomy down to Shakey’s Funeral Parlor. My head ached. I thought I must be the only sucker who gets a hangover from being drunk on life. I got up, put two eggs, a spoonful of wheatgerm, the remains of the scotch, and the phonebill into the blender and fed the whole lot to the cat. It helped, but not as much as Delores would have. I should have married her even if she was a Hubot. At least she could play chess. I was still Rumanating over Delores as I hit the curb outside Shakey’s.

I had the notion that Shakey’s was once a pizza joint but I could have been wrong. I found Stress, disheveled as usual, in the lobby.

‘You’re late,’ he said. I wasn’t, but he’s thatkinda guy. He says ‘Jump!’ and you say ‘With or without my legs?’ We got our free Cokes from Shakey himself, who led us down the hall.
Computational Tractability and Conceptual Coherence: Why Do Computer Scientists Believe thatP≠NP?
Authors: Thagard Paul
Published: June 2016

According to Church’s thesis, we can identify the intuitive concept of effective computability with such well-defined mathematical concepts as Turing computability and partial recursiveness. The almost universal acceptance of Church’s thesis among logicians and computer scientists is puzzling from some epistemological perspectives, since no formal proof is possible of a thesis that involves an informal concept such as effectiveness. Elliott Mendelson has recently argued, however, that equivalencies between intuitive notions and precise notions need not always be considered unprovable theses, and that Church’s thesis should be accepted as true.

I want to discuss a thesis that is nearly as important in current research in computer science as Church’s thesis. I call the newer thesis the tractabilitythesis, since it identifies the intuitive class of computationally tractable problems with a precise class of problems whose solutions can be computed in polynomial time. After briefly reviewing the theory of intractability, I compare the grounds for accepting the tractability thesis with the grounds for accepting Church's thesis. Intimately connected with the tractability thesis is the mathematical conjecture, whose meaning I shall shortly explain, that P≠NP. Unlike Church's thesis, this conjecture is precise enough to be capable of mathematical proof, but most computer scientists believe it even though no proof has been found. As we shall see below, understanding the grounds for acceptance of the conjecture that P≠NP has implications for general questions in the philosophy of mathematics and science, especially concerning the epistemological importance of explanatory and conceptual coherence.
Semantics for Natural Kind Terms1
Authors: Deutsch Harry
Published: June 2016

According to the well-known Kripke-Putnam view developed inNaming and Necessityand ‘The Meaning of Meaning’, proper names and ‘natural kind terms’ - words for natural substances, species, and phenomena (‘water’, ‘rose’, ‘light’) - are non-descriptional and rigid. A singular term isrigidif it has the same referent in every possible world (and with respect to other extension-determining parameters, such as the passage of time), and isnon-descriptionalif, roughly speaking, its referent (at a possible world or other parameter) is not secured by purely descriptive conditions analytically tied to the term. Thus, ‘the inventor of bifocals’ is nonrigid and descriptional, while ‘the unique even and prime integer’ is rigid and descriptional, and ‘Noam Chomsky’ is rigid and non-descriptional.
Cartesian Actualism in the Leibniz-Arnauld Correspondence
Authors: Nelson Alan
Published: June 2016

The correspondence between Leibniz and Arnauld was judged by Leibniz himself to be very useful for understanding his philosophy. Historians have concurred in this judgment. Leibniz did not find any philosophy of independent interest in the letters Arnauld sent him. Historians have, for the most part, also concurred in this finding. I shall argue that on one set of issues at least — modal metaphysics and free will — Arnauld accomplished more than facilitating Leibnizian elucidations. He held his own in this dispute. Indeed, were it not for the general sophistication and superior handling of such issues as identity, unity, and the nature of body enjoyed by the Leibnizian system, the Cartesian position on modal metaphysics and free will espoused by Arnauld might have won the day in the eyes of later philosophers. A proper appreciation of the Cartesian framework should also make it of considerable interest to philosophers presently at work on the metaphysics of modality. I shall argue that Descartes and some Cartesians like Arnauld espoused a strongly actualist doctrine. This means they thought that all philosophically interesting uses of possibles were analyzable into facts about actually existing things.
A quoi sert la philosophie?
Authors: Granger Gilles-Gaston
Published: June 2016

Dans la tradition gréco-latine, le philosophe a souvent été unpersonnage du jeu social, et quelquefois, comme on sait, au péril de sa vie. Il peut done jouer un rôle, assumer des charges, avoir une fonction, comme par exemple, dans nos sociétés contemporaines, une fonction d'enseignant. Mais est-ce bien alors de la pensée proprement philosophique qu'il est pour ainsi dire le bras séculier? Est-ce bien l'exercice de cette pensée même qu'il rendrait ainsi efficace, lui conférant un usage social, une utilité ou une nocivité qu'il faudrait alors attribuer à la philosophie en tant que telle? Je voudrais, à cette question, proposer une réponse négative.
Rationality, Prediction, and Autonomous Choice
Authors: Levi Isaac
Published: June 2016

Principles of rationality are invoked for several purposes: they are often deployed in explanation and prediction; they are also used to set standards for rational health for deliberating agents or to furnish blueprints for rational automata; and they are intended as guides to perplexed decision makers seeking to regulate their own attitudes and conduct. These purposes are quite different. It is far from obvious that what serves well in one capacity will do so in another. Indeed, I shall argue later on in this essay that when principles of rationality are intended for use as norms for self-criticism, they cannot also serve as laws in explanation and prediction or as blueprints for rational automata.
S’entendre pour ne pas s’entendre (The Normative Turn)
Authors: Couture Jocelyne , Nielsen Kai
Published: June 2016

En dépit d'une croyance fermement établie en philosophie et ailleurs, selon laquelle les philosophes non seulement ne s’ entendent pas mais traitent de questions indécidables, les auteurs qui ont contribué au présent ouvrage semblent s'entendre sur deux points au moins. Le premier est qu'il est possible de dire ce qu'est la philosophie et le deuxième est qu'il est possible de la montrer du doigt.
Breaking Up: An Essay on Secession
Authors: Gauthier David
Published: June 2016

Current discussion of the normative issues surrounding secession is both helped and hindered by the existence of but one philosophic treatment of these issues sufficiently systematic and comprehensive to qualify as a theory of secession - Allen Buchanan’s. He provides the unique focal point, and so simplifies the task of those who seek to begin from the present state of the art. But in providing the unique focal point, Buchanan complicates the task of those who view, or think they view, secession rather differently than he does. He defends ’a moral right to secede’ but a very qualified right, focusing on state-perpetrated injustice, the preservation of group culture and, in extreme cases, the literal survival of group members (152-3). And Buchanan further insists that where preservation of group culture is at stake, ’Neither the state nor any third party has a valid claim to the seceding territory’ -or such a claim is waived so that ’secession in order to preserve a culture is permissible if both parties consent to it’- a condition that he thinks may come to apply to the situation of Quebec.
Paternalism and Rights1
Authors: Brennan Samantha
Published: June 2016

When, if ever, are we justified in infringing a rights claim on the basis of benefit to the right bearer? If we assume that the rights of individuals can be overridden on the basis of what is at stake for others- that is, that rights have thresholds - we can ask how these thresholds are affected when the person who will benefit from the right being overridden is the right bearer herself.
Autonomy and Blameworthiness
Authors: Haji Ishtiyaque
Published: June 2016

Certain cases emphatically motivate the view that personal autonomy — autonomy as self-government — is a necessary condition of moral blameworthiness. The cases, that is, suggest that one cannot be morally blameworthy for performing an action unless one is autonomous with respect to that action, or one is autonomous with respect to the motivational underpinnings (the desires perhaps) that figure in the etiology of the action. Here is a typical, fanciful example. Unbeknownst to Bond, a minute electronic device has been implanted in his brain. Maxine can use the device to induce desires or intentions in Bond without her electronic manipulations being ‘felt’ or detected by Bond. Suppose Maxine implants in Bond a powerful desire to kill Oskar, a distant associate of Bond, together with the belief that the desire is irresistible. Though the electronically induced desire is not in fact irresistible, Bond could resist it only with a great deal of difficulty and only at the expense of suffering considerable psychological damage; Bond, to his astonishment, acts on this desire and does away with Oskar. This case (call it ‘Secret Agent’) is one in which Bond, it appears, is not morally blameworthy for killing Oskar. According to one strand of thought, the judgment that Bond is not blameworthy rests squarely on the view that Bond acts on a desire that is not truly his own;1 Bond is not his own master with respect to the implanted desire that causes him to kill Oskar.
Trying, Desire, And Desiring to Try
Authors: Adams Frederick
Published: June 2016

What is the relationship between trying, desire, and desiring to try? Is it necessary to desire to do something in order to try to do it? Must Dave desire to quit smoking in order to try to quit? I shall defend the view that desiring to do A is necessary for trying to do A. First, Dave needs motivation to quit smoking and motivation comes in the form of desire. So it seems straightforward that when one tries to do something A, one’s desire to do that thing A is one’s motivation. Second, when Dave throws out a pack of cigarettes, this may or may not be part of an attempt to quit smoking. It may be a political protest against R.J.R. Nabisco (Dave may be changing brands, not lifestyles). Dave’s throwing out the cigarettes only counts as part of his attempt to quit smoking, if it is done for the right reason, out of the right motivation. Again, the right motivation seems to be the desire to quit smoking. Thus, the desire to do A appears to play important roles in the attempt to do A. At the very least, it helps to motivate, guide, and constitute the attemptas the attempt to doA. It is because Dave wants to quit smoking that his throwing out his cigarettes counts as part of his attempt to quit smoking, not as a political protest.
Humankind(s)
Authors: Holmstrom Nancy
Published: June 2016

Just as the differentiation of human beings from other species has traditionally been thought to be based on some common essence or nature, so has the division of humankind into certain groups, in particular, men and women and races, been thought to be based on their distinct natures. There are many similarities between the concepts of human nature, ‘women’s nature’ (what we now call gender) and race, and how these concepts have functioned ideologically: For all three, the traditional idea was that there were fixed, natural essences determining the cognitive, moral, and emotional traits and abilities of the group in question. Some, e.g., Plato, and Herrnstein in recent years, have applied the idea to different social classes as well. I will call this view essentialism, and note that it is compatible with various metaphysical analyses. One could be opposed to metaphysical essentialism, but accept essences in this sense, as, for example, Hume did.
The Ontology of Complex Systems: Levels of Organization, Perspectives, and Causal Thickets
Authors: Wimsatt William C.
Published: June 2016

Willard van Orman Quine once said that he had a preference for a desert ontology. This was in an earlier day when concerns with logical structure and ontological simplicity reigned supreme. Ontological genocide was practiced upon whole classes of upper-level or ‘derivative’ entities in the name of elegance, and we were secure in the belief that one strayed irremediably into the realm of conceptual confusion and possible error the further one got from ontic fundamentalism. In those days, one paid more attention to generic worries about possible errors (motivated by our common training in philosophical skepticism) than to actual errors derived from distancing oneself too far from the nitty-gritty details of actual theory, actual inferences from actual data, the actual conditions under which we posited and detected entities, calibrated and ‘burned in’ instruments, identified and rejected artifacts, debugged programs and procedures, explained the mechanisms behind regularities, judged correlations to be spurious, and in general, to the real complexities and richness of actual scientific practice.
Locke on Slavery and Inalienable Rights
Authors: Welchman Jennifer
Published: June 2016

Slavery is so vile and miserable an Estate of Man, and so directly opposite to the generous Temper and Courage of our Nation; that ‘tis hardly to be conceived, that anEnglishman,much less aGentleman,should plead for't.

So begins the first of Locke'sTwo Treatises of Government.But this Englishman, gentleman, and self-styled ‘lover of liberty’ was not himself above pleading for slavery when it suited him. That plea has been an embarrassment to his admirers ever since. Locke attempted to legitimize slavery by portraying it as a form of punishment for crimes committed where no central political authority or justice system exists. If a victim of an assault is entitled to take his attacker's life in self-defense, Locke reasoned, he must also be entitled to take his attacker's liberty.
Abstraction and the Real Distinction Between Mind and Body
Authors: Thomas Bruce M.
Published: June 2016

Descartes contends that he, or his mind, is really distinct from his body. Many philosophers have little patience with this claim. What could be more obvious than that the mind depends on the body? But their impatience often dissolves when they recognize that Descartes only asserts ade remodal statement. To say that one thing is really distinct from another is to say that each can exist apart from the other (AT VII 162: CSM II 114). But should we grant Descartes thisde remodal claim itself?

Descartes's argument for the real distinction is based on the assumption that clear and distinct conception provides a reliable guide to possibility.
The Revisionist Difference Principle
Authors: Williams Andrew D.
Published: June 2016

John Rawls's famous difference principle is capable of at least four distinct statements, each of which occurs inA Theory of Justice.According to what I shall term the Crude Principle it is a necessary and sufficient condition for the justice of an institutional scheme which expands social and economic inequality that, subject to the satisfaction of more weighty principles, it increases the level of advantage of the least advantaged. Expressing this principle Rawls writes that,

Assuming the framework of institutions required by equal liberty and fair equality of opportunity, the higher expectations of those better situated are just if and only if they work as part of a scheme which improves the expectations of the least advantaged members of society. The intuitive idea is that the social order is not to establish and secure the more attractive prospects of those better off unless doing so is to the advantage of those less fortunate.
Three Problems for Richard's Theory of Belief Ascription
Authors: Sider Theodore
Published: June 2016

Some contemporary Russellians, defenders of the view that the semantic content of a proper name, demonstrative, or indexical is simply its referent, are prepared to accept that view's most infamous apparent consequence: that coreferential names, demonstratives, indexicals, etc. are intersubstitutable salva veritate, even in intentional contexts. Nathan Salmon and Scott Soames argue that our recalcitrant intuitions with respect to the famous apparent counterexamples are not semantic intuitions, but rather pragmatic intuitions. Strictly and literally speaking, Lois Lane believes, and even knows that Clark Kent is identical to Superman, since she believes and knows that Superman is identical to Superman. Salmon and Soames attempt to soften our reaction to this shocker by allowing that it is typically misleading to utter the sentence ‘Lois Lane knows that Clark Kent is identical to Superman,’ since it pragmatically implicates, without semantically entailing, that Lois Lane would accept the sentence ‘Clark Kent is identical to Superman.’ Our compulsive tendency to claim that ‘Lois Lane knows that Clark Kent is Superman’ is false, rather than merely misleading, is due to a confusion between semantics and pragmatics, between truth conditions and conditions of appropriateness of utterance.
Moral Obligation and Moral Motivation
Authors: Copp David
Published: June 2016

'Internalism’ in ethics is a cluster of views according to which there is an ‘internal’ connection between moral obligations and either motivations or reasons to act morally; ‘externalism’ says that such connections are contingent. So described, the dispute between internalism and externalism may seem a technical debate of minor interest. However, the issues that motivate it include deep problems about moral truth, realism, normativity, and objectivity. Indeed, I think that some philosophers view externalism as undermining the ‘dignity’ of morality. They might say that if morality needs an ‘external sanction’ - if the belief that one has an obligation is not sufficient motive or reason to do the right thing- then morality is debased in status. Even an arbitrary system of etiquette could attract an external sanction under appropriate conditions.

Although I believe that the more interesting internalist theses are false, there are important truths that internalism is attempting to capture. The most important of these is the fact that moral judgments are intrinsically ‘normative’ or ‘choice-guiding,’ that they are, very roughly, relevant to action or choice because of their content.
Postmodern Argumentation and Post-Postmodern Liberalism, with Comments on Levinas, Habermas, and Rawls
Authors: Reiman Jeffrey
Published: June 2016

The Paradox of Postmodernism

Modernism is, roughly speaking, the Enlightenment belief in a single unified rational perspective, founded on some indubitable evidence given in human experience – either innate conceptsà laDescartes and the rationalists, or sensationsà laLocke and the empiricists – and elaborated according to reliable logical rules. This view was first attacked for its ‘foundationalism.’ Philosophers, such as Nietzsche, Dewey, Heidegger and the later Wittgenstein, denied that there is any indubitable given upon which truth can be founded. There is no experience, no testimony of the senses or of reason that blazons forth the undeniable truth. Rather the ‘given’ is, so to speak, constructed - which is to say, not given to us, but made by us. Some experience or other evidence is interpreted as this or that with this or that epistemological status, on the basis of beliefs that one already has about, say, space or mathematics or sense perception or the nature of what is ultimately real. Postmodernism is an intensification of this attack, with a distinctive political spin.
A Defense of the Autonomy of Ethics: Why Value Is Not Like Water
Authors: Gampel Eric H.
Published: June 2016

There has recently been a revival of interest in ‘naturalizing’ ethics. A naturalization seeks to vindicate ethical realism — the idea that ethical judgments can be true reflections of a moral reality — without violating the naturalist constraint that science sets the limits of ontology. The recent revival has been prompted by examples of successful scientific reduction (e.g. temperature, water), and by the emergence of new, nonreductive naturalist strategies (e.g. for biological and mental properties). In this paper, I argue against such naturalist approaches to ethics. My argument builds on the traditional one offered by G.E. Moore, namely that a naturalization would fail to respect an existing difference between the meanings of moral and naturalistic terms. I defend this line of argument against the common claim that it cannot block ‘synthetic’ property identities, ones grounded not in meaning equivalences but in empirical discoveries (as in the cases of temperature and water). I then go on to show that the Moorean argument can make trouble even for recent revisionist and nonreductive naturalist approaches.
A Philosopher in his Closet: Reflexivity and Justification in Hume's Moral Theory
Authors: Gill Michael B.
Published: June 2016

When a man of business enters into life and action, he is more apt to consider the characters of men, as they have relation to his interest, than as they stand in themselves; and has his judgement warped on every occasion by the violence of his passion. When a philosopher contemplates characters and manners in his closet, the general abstract view of the objects leaves the mind so cold and unmoved, that the sentiments of nature have no room to play, and he scarce feels the difference between vice and virtue. History keeps in a just medium betwixt these extremes, and places the objects in their true point of view. The writers of history, as well as the readers, are sufficiently interested in the characters and events, to have a lively sentiment of blame or praise; and, at the same time, have no particular interest or concern to pervert their judgment.
Farewell to Binary Causation
Authors: Hitchcock Christopher Read
Published: June 2016

Causation is a topic of perennial philosophical concern. As well as being of intrinsic interest, almost all philosophical concepts — such as knowledge, beauty, and moral responsibility — involve a causal dimension. Nonetheless, attempts to provide a satisfactory account of the nature of causation have typically led to barrages of counterexamples. I hope to show that a number of the difficulties plaguing theories of causation have a common source.

Most philosophical theories of causation describe abinaryrelation between cause and effect, or at any rate, a relation that reduces to such a binary relation when certain background information is held fixed. Indeed, most theories provide the same general account of when this relation holds: in order to evaluate whether C causesE,we must make a comparison between two cases, which we may neutrally label as C and ∼C. Where theories of causation differ, of course, is in precisely what is being so compared. Regularity theories of causation require a comparison between what actually happens whenever C occurs, and what actually happens, elsewhere and elsewhen, when C does not occur.
Natural Law and Public Reason in Kant's Political Philosophy
Authors: Weinstock Daniel M.
Published: June 2016

My intention in this essay will be to explore the role that consent-based arguments perform in Kant's political and legal philosophy. I want to uncover the extent to which Kant considered that the legitimacy of the State and of its laws depends upon the outcome of intersubjective deliberation. Commentators have divided over the following question: Is Kant best viewed as a member of the social contract tradition, according to which the legitimacy of the state and of the laws it promulgates derives from the consent of those people over whom it claims authority, or should he be read as having put forward a secularized version of natural law theory, according to which the state and its laws are legitimate to the extent that they are attained by standards of sound reason and supported by an objective account of the human good?
Consistency Among Intentions and the ‘Simple View’
Authors: Sverdlik Steven
Published: June 2016

What is the relation between the intention to A and doing A intentionally? It is natural to suppose that the latter entails the former. That is, it is natural to accept what Michael Bratman has called the ‘Simple View’ of the relation between acting intentionally and having an intention. Bratman is one noteworthy writer who has denied that the Simple View is true. In the present paper I do not defend this view. I contend that one well-known argument that Bratman offers for thinking that the Simple View is false fails, in fact, to disprove it. If there are reasons for thinking that the Simple View is false, as I believe there are, they are not the ones that Bratman has offered. My discussion of Bratman also raises some more general questions about the principles governing the rational formation of intentions. I suggest that a special sort of example casts doubt on the tenability of a commonly accepted principle that Bratman, among others, utilizes.
The Sentimental Self
Authors: Kupfer Joseph
Published: June 2016

Sentimentality is usually thought of as a mild vice. Unlike such vices as cruelty, dishonesty, or contemptuousness, sentimentality appears to affect only the individuals who have it, and then, not very adversely. So what if we indulge our taste for prematurely dying heroines or stoic, sweet-natured children? Shedding a tear or feeling a diffuse affection does not seem to hurt anyone, not even ourselves. But because of its impact on the self, sentimentality is a more serious vice than might be suspected.

Regardless of the immediate object of our sentimental gaze, the self is also sentimentalized. The self is not only the subject engaged in sentimentalizing activity, but also its mediated object. A sentimentalized sense of self discourages activity and keeps us from dealing with the world directly. The distortion of and absorption in the self is dangerous for sentimental individuals and those with whom they interact. To see why, we must examine the structuring of perception, thought, and emotion which makes up sentimentality. Our inquiry will be sharpened by reference to literary depictions which reflect or encourage sentimental response. Versing us in the ways of sentimentality, some literature may generate our everyday patterns of sentimentalized thought and feeling.
Realists Without a Cause: Deflationary Theories of Truth and Ethical Realism
Authors: Tenenbaum Sergio
Published: June 2016

In ‘The Status of Content,’ Paul Boghossian points out an embarrassment in which A.J. Ayer finds himself in his extensive irrealism. Ayer embraces both an emotivist theory of ethics and a deflationary theory of truth. According to an emotivist theory, sentences that look like perfectly good declarative sentences, such as ‘One ought not to kill,’ should be interpreted as non-declarative sentences. According to a deflationary theory of truth, ‘truth’ is not a predicate of sentences, and sentences of the form ‘“p” is true’ are equivalent to sentences of the form ‘p.’ Boghossian argues that emotivism and deflationism turn out to be incompatible.

Boghossian's criticism should not be presented before we ask this question: What motivates Ayer's subversion of surface grammar? A typical motivation to provide an analysis of a certain region of discourse is to find a way in which patterns of inference and compositionality could be more perspicuously presented.
Internal Relations and Analyticity: Wittgenstein and Quine
Authors: Hymers Michael
Published: June 2016

Since Russell and Moore forsook idealism, it has often been assumed that only analytic truths can express internal relations — relations which, in Russell's words, are ‘grounded in the natures of the related terms.’ An object,a,is internally related to another object,b, if and only ifais related tobin virtue ofa'spossessing some property,P.So ifahas the property of being a branch, then it is internally related to some tree,b,as part to whole. In turn, ‘A branch is a part of some tree’ is (at least a plausible candidate for) an analytic truth. It is true in virtue of the meanings of its terms, or because the concept of the predicate contains the concept of the subject.

Quine's critique of analyticity has thus made the pragmatically minded wary of talk of internal relations.