bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Empiricism and Scientific Methodology
Authors: Fraassen Bas C. van
Published: October 2003

Scientific theories do much more than answer empirical questions. This can be understood along empiricist lines only if those other aspects are instrumental for the pursuit of empirical strength and adequacy, or serving other aims subordinate to these. This chapter accordingly addresses four main questions: (1) Does the rejection of realism lead to a self‐defeating scepticism? (2) Are scientific methodology and experimental design intelligible on any but a realist interpretation of science? (3) Is the ideal of the unity of science, or even the practice of using distinct theories in conjunction, intelligent on an empiricist view? (4) What sense can an empiricist position accord to those theoretical virtues––such as simplicity, coherence, explanatory power––that are not reducible to empirical strength or adequacy? The answers to these questions rely strongly on the pragmatics of scientific inquiry, and advocate a ‘Clausewitz doctrine’ of experimentation as a continuation of theorizing by other means.
The Pragmatics of Explanation1
Authors: Fraassen Bas C. van
Published: October 2003

Explanatory power is a complex theoretical virtue, not reducible to empirical strength or adequacy, which includes other virtues as its own preconditions. Since this virtue provides one of the main criteria by which theories are evaluated, it presents thus a challenge to any empiricist account of science. After a critical account of attempted explications of the concept of scientific explanation, this chapter offers a pragmatic account that identifies explanations with answers to why‐questions. Since such questions are set by the questioner, and have their family of relevant direct answers determined by the presuppositions, values, and interests involved in the questioning, that makes explanation relative to contextual factors. On this understanding, evaluations of scientific explanation cannot play the role required for their use in support of scientific realism––and, incidentally, the large array of standard puzzles in the literature on this subject are solved.
Probability: The New Modality of Science
Authors: Fraassen Bas C. van
Published: October 2003

The Aristotelian tradition in science, dominant before the advent of modern science, saw real modalities in nature: necessity, possibility, contingency, potentiality, and essence. Throughout the modern period and the early twentieth century, empiricists struggled to maintain that there was nothing to be found between matters of actual fact on the one hand and relations between ideas or words on the other. Probability has the logical form of a modality, but until the twentieth century, it could be construed as a measure of ignorance, or of actual proportions and frequencies, not a basic parameter in nature itself. That changed with the advent of quantum mechanics and the admission of indeterminism as a theoretical possibility. The legitimacy of irreducible probabilities was admitted in the modelling of natural processes. The challenge to the empiricist now is to interpret probability as it appears there, and this includes the larger challenge of displaying an empiricistically acceptable role for modalities in general in the scientific image. This chapter provides a systematic critique of frequentist and propensity interpretations of physical probability, but also characterizes the models of probability theory as constructible from families of sequences constrained by limiting frequencies. This formal agreement with a certain kind of ’ideal frequency’ account is embedded in a philosophical view of modalities in general that turns on an account of the language of science on the level of pragmatics.
The False Prison Volume Two
Authors: Pears David
Published: October 2003

This is the second of David Pears's acclaimed two‐volume work on the development of Wittgenstein's philosophy, covering the Philosophical Investigations and other writings from 1929 onwards. Though more selective in its coverage than the first volume (it deals mainly with Wittgenstein's philosophy of psychology and the ego, the possibility of a private language and rule‐following), the book reveals with great clarity the style, method, and content of Wittgenstein's later thought. While this volume is independently comprehensible, Pears remains largely within the structural framework of the first volume and uncovers thereby the general overall configuration and internal organization of Wittgenstein's thought.
Transition
Authors: Pears David
Published: October 2003

Examines the main methodological and stylistic differences between Wittgenstein's earlier and later philosophies, and introduces the reader to the idiosyncratic philosophical method of the later work. Pears emphasizes the anti‐theoretical, anti‐explanatory attitude of Wittgenstein's later way of thinking and the different type of conclusion that is sought.
The Exemplary Treatment of the Ego
Authors: Pears David
Published: October 2003

Takes as a starting point Wittgenstein's treatment of solipsism and the ego, a discussion that picks up on the concluding chapters of Volume 1. Pears identifies two main lines of thought in the Philosophical Investigations, regarding Wittgenstein's treatment of sensations and ‘meaning and doing’, and argues that these run structurally parallel to the discussion of solipsism and the ego. He thereby determines the framework on the basis of which the internal structure of Wittgenstein's philosophy as a whole is to be revealed.
The First Attempt to Extend the Treatment of the Ego to Sensations and Their Types: Reactions to Phenomenalism
Authors: Pears David
Published: October 2003

Pears examines Wittgenstein's views on sensations and their types in the light of classical phenomenalism. He argues that Wittgenstein never subscribed to phenomenalism with an empirically fixed baseline and outlines the relation between Wittgenstein's critique of ego‐based solipsism and such a phenomenalism.
The First Attempt to Extend the Treatment of the Ego to Sensations and Their Types: Other Minds
Authors: Pears David
Published: October 2003

Argues that the problem Wittgenstein was concerned with in the transition period around 1929 did not regard the external world but other minds. Pears delineates this problem as it struck Wittgenstein and reveals how it caused the change in philosophical outlook and influenced his later philosophy of psychology.
The Private Language Argument of Philosophical Investigations
Authors: Pears David
Published: October 2003

Shifts the discussion from Wittgenstein's treatment of sensations to his views on the method of re‐identifying them by means of a private language. Pears outlines Wittgenstein's private language argument and argues that it is a reductio ad absurdum that applies to a language for sensations whose connections with the physical world have been severed.
The Disabling Defect of a Private Language
Authors: Pears David
Published: October 2003

Pears examines the question of what exactly the cause for the disabling effect, the consequence that we cannot distinguish between seeming right and being right, of a private language is. He introduces and evaluates two influential answers to this question and critically examines the importance of the possibility of a solitary language user to the notion of a logically private language.
Rule‐Following: Meaning and Doing
Authors: Pears David
Published: October 2003

Departs from Wittgenstein's philosophy of psychology and picks up the notions of meaning and doing, in the light of his early theory of meaning. Pears introduces Wittgenstein's rule‐following considerations and puts forward a differentiated non‐critical interpretation of Wittgenstein's thoughts on how to follow a rule.
Rule‐Following: The Rejection of the Platonic Theory in Philosophical Investigations
Authors: Pears David
Published: October 2003

Chapter 17 deepens the rule‐following discussion and critically examines Saul Kripke's influential sceptical interpretation of Wittgenstein. Pears discusses Wittgenstein's rejection of Platonism and connects the rule‐following considerations to a number of strands of Wittgenstein's thought introduced in the previous chapters.
The Next Problem
Authors: Pears David
Published: October 2003

Connects the two main strands of Wittgenstein's later philosophy discussed in Volume 2 in a number of ways and culminates in an abstract and general overview of the later works. Pears extracts the similarities and differences between Wittgenstein's later thought and the philosophies of his predecessors and contemporaries, and thereby determines his place in the past and his value for present philosophical endeavours.
How the Laws of Physics Lie
Authors: Cartwright Nancy
Published: October 2003

Nancy Cartwright argues for a novel conception of the role of fundamental scientific laws in modern natural science. If we attend closely to the manner in which theoretical laws figure in the practice of science, we see that despite their great explanatory power these laws do not describe reality. Instead, fundamental laws describe highly idealized objects in models. Thus, the correct account of explanation in science is not the traditional covering law view, but the ‘simulacrum’ account. On this view, explanation is a matter of constructing a model that may employ, but need not be consistent with, a theoretical framework, in which phenomenological laws that are true of the empirical case in question can be derived. Anti‐realism about theoretical laws does not, however, commit one to anti‐realism about theoretical entities. Belief in theoretical entities can be grounded in well‐tested localized causal claims about concrete physical processes, sometimes now called ‘entity realism’. Such causal claims provide the basis for partial realism and they are ineliminable from the practice of explanation and intervention in nature.
Causal Laws and Effective Strategies
Authors: Cartwright Nancy
Published: October 2003

Argues for the irreducibility of causal laws to laws of association, probabilistic or deterministic. Statistical or probabilistic analyses of causality, which typically require that the cause increase or alter the probability of the effect, cannot succeed because causes increase the probability of their effects only in situations that exhibit causal homogeneity with respect to that effect (Simpson's paradox). This condition must enter the definition of an effective strategy, which is why causal laws are ineliminable for scientifically grounded interventions in nature.
The Truth Doesn't Explain Much
Authors: Cartwright Nancy
Published: October 2003

The standard view of explanation in science—the covering law model—assumes that knowledge of laws lies at the basis of our ability to explain phenomena. But in fact most of the high‐level claims in science are ceteris paribus generalizations, which are false unless certain precise conditions obtain. Given the explanatory force of ceteris paribus generalizations but the paucity of true laws, the covering law model of explanation must be false. There is, it is argued, a trade‐off between truth and explanatory power.
The Reality of Causes in a World of Instrumental Laws
Authors: Cartwright Nancy
Published: October 2003

Argues in favour of a distinction between causal and theoretical explanation and claims that scientific realism can be defended for the former, but the latter can only defensibly be interpreted via instrumentalism. The truth of fundamental laws is typically defended by appeal to the argument from coincidence, or inference to the best explanation. However, if we analyse the way theoretical and causal explanations function in physics, we discover that the two have a very different status. As an illustration, Perrin's experiments, which sought to confirm Avogadro's number are properly viewed as inference to the most probable cause, not as inference to the best explanation.
When Explanation Leads to Inference
Authors: Cartwright Nancy
Published: October 2003

When is it justified to infer from the fact that a theory provides a good explanation of phenomena to the truth of the theory used in explanation (i.e. inference to the best explanation)? Bas van Fraassen and Pierre Duhem's instrumentalism, which demands only that good theories should ‘save the phenomena’, precludes such inferences altogether. However, in cases of inference to the most probable cause, the instrumentalist position excludes too much. In fact, although explanation via well‐tested causal claims does not justify belief in theoretical laws, it does justify belief in the theoretical entities that figure in those claims (i.e. in ‘entity realism’).
For Phenomenological Laws
Authors: Cartwright Nancy
Published: October 2003

Conventional accounts like the deductive‐nomological model suppose that high‐level theories couched in abstract language encompass or imply more low‐level laws expressed in more concrete language (here called phenomenological laws). The truth of phenomenological laws is then supposed to provide evidence for the truth of the theory. This chapter argues that, to the contrary, approximations are required to arrive at phenomenological laws and generally these approximations improve on theory and are not dictated by the facts. Examples include an amplifier model, exponential decay and the Lamb shift (Based on work with Jon Nordby).
Fitting Facts to Equations
Authors: Cartwright Nancy
Published: October 2003

Are things in the real world governed by the mathematical equations of fundamental theories in physics? If we take seriously the practice of fitting facts into equations, the answer should be no. To give a mathematical description of a real phenomenon requires bridge principles. However, given the constraints of theory, even these employ highly idealized fictional objects and processes, more akin to artful theatrical distortions than to true descriptions of things in the world.
How the Measurement Problem Is an Artefact of the Mathematics
Authors: Cartwright Nancy
Published: October 2003

Precursing now popular ‘spontaneous reduction’ views, this chapter argues that the measurement problem in quantum mechanics is not a problem of measurement at all. Reductions happen in a variety of circumstances and are particularly important in the preparation of quantum states. But there is no reason to think there is any simple physical characterization of situations in which reduction of the wave packet occurs from when it does not. There is a difference in the mathematical characteristics of the evolution operator between the two (unitary operators versus non‐unitary), but this mathematical difference need mark no interesting physical difference distinguishing the situations to which operators apply.
Faith and Reason
Authors: Swinburne Richard
Published: October 2003

Different theologians give different accounts of the kind of faith that is necessary for the practice of a religion such as Christianity. For some, it is simply belief that there is a God (and that he has done various actions); for others, it is trust in God. This book analyses the nature of belief and of trust, and considers when belief and trust are rational. It concludes that the practice of a religion requires a faith that involves both trust and belief, but a fairly weak kind of belief. The book reaches this conclusion by analysing the purposes for practising a religion: the attainment of salvation for oneself and others, and the rendering of due worship and obedience to God. Someone's religious practice is rational insofar as she has reason for believing that practising her religion is the best way to achieve these purposes, and that these purposes are greatly worthwhile.
The Nature of Belief
Authors: Swinburne Richard
Published: October 2003

Propositional belief is belief that some proposition is more probable than some alternative proposition (normally, its negation). Beliefs are involuntary responses to experience of one world or apparent truths of reason, or to evidence in the form of other propositions that seem to make the belief probable. The strengths of different beliefs and purposes determine which actions we perform in order to achieve our purposes.
The Value of Rational Religious Belief
Authors: Swinburne Richard
Published: October 2003

There is an obligation to seek true beliefs on religious matters, both in order to discover whether we have other obligations (e.g. to worship and serve God), and in order to teach the truth about religion to those whom we have an obligation to educate. It is also good (though not obligatory) to seek such true belief both for its own sake, and in order to discover how to attain deep and lasting well‐being. However, we should seek to acquire only those beliefs about religion that adequate investigation shows to be probable, and (barring special circumstances) not attempt to induce religious beliefs by irrational means.
The Nature of Faith
Authors: Swinburne Richard
Published: October 2003

Analyses three different accounts of faith. On Aquinas’ account, faith is simply belief, though for Aquinas, the religious virtue is not faith in itself, but ‘faith formed by charity’. For Luther, faith is trust, and for a pragmatist (e.g. William James), it is acting on an assumption. On all these accounts, faith involves a belief and a readiness to pursue religious goals in the light of that belief; but they differ according to the kind of belief required. For the pragmatist, all that is required is the belief that we are more likely to achieve the goals of religion if the creed of our religion is true than if some creed of another religion or no religion is true.
The Purpose of Religion
Authors: Swinburne Richard
Published: October 2003

The purposes of the practice of a religion are to achieve the goals of salvation for oneself and others, and (if there is a God) to render due worship and obedience to God. Different religions have different understandings of salvation and God. It is rational for someone to pursue these goals by following a religious way (the practices commended by some religion), insofar as they judge that it would be greatly worthwhile to achieve those goals and insofar as they judge that it is to some degree probable that they will attain them by following the way of that religion. They will judge that insofar as they judge the creed of that religion to be to some degree probable (not necessarily more probable than not).
The Role of Creeds
Authors: Swinburne Richard
Published: October 2003

A creed explains how the pursuit of a particular religious way will achieve the goals of that religion. It does that by explaining in what salvation consists (e.g. in what the blessedness of Heaven consists), and how pursuing a certain sort of life will enable you to achieve it (e.g. because, if you live such a life, God will then take you to Heaven). This is illustrated by showing how the different items of the Nicene Creed have consequences for how we should worship and serve God and thereby mould our characters so that we would be happy in Heaven. One trusts God (and so has faith in the crucial sense) to the extent to which one acts on the assumption that if one lives in this way, God will provide for one the goals of religion. An appendix considers Christian views of the different fates for humans in the afterlife.
The Comparison of Creeds
Authors: Swinburne Richard
Published: October 2003

Someone is rational in following a certain religious way to attain a certain goal only if he believes that it is more probable that following that way will achieve that goal than that following any other way will achieve a similar goal (one that has a similar understanding of salvation and Heaven). In view of the importance of the issue, people should devote time to investigating the claims of different religions and consider the worth of the different goals that they officer. This will include considering the relative probabilities of different claims to have a revelation, which depend both on the moral plausibility of the purported revelation and on any miraculous authentication it purports to have (e.g. the Resurrection of Jesus authenticating his teaching). Which way a person should follow depends both on his judgement of the relative probability of the creeds of rival religions and on his judgement of the worth of the goals that they offer.
Well-Being
Authors: Griffin James
Published: October 2003

This book is about ideas at the centre of our thought about our individual lives and about society—‘well‐being’, ‘welfare’, ‘utility’, and ‘quality of life’. It aims to answer three questions: What is the best way to understand well‐being? to what extent can it be measured? what role should it play in moral and political thought? The book argues that the sharp contrast between reason and desire found in our modern intellectual tradition has hampered answers to those questions. The book first tries to describe the place of both reason and desire in our thought about well‐being. It then uses the notion of well‐being, so explained, in discussions of whether values are commensurable, of what measurement of one person's well‐being is demanded by ethics and whether it can be supplied by us, and whether we can effectively compare one person's well‐being with another's. It ends with discussions of the relation of individual well‐being to morality in general, to equality, fair constitution, rights, punishment and rewards, and distribution.
Utilitarian Accounts: State of Mind or State of the World?
Authors: Griffin James
Published: October 2003

This chapter, the first of two on utilitarian accounts of well‐being, discusses mental‐state accounts, actual‐desire accounts, and informed‐desire accounts. It also discusses our attractive compromise position adopted by Henry Sidgwick. It considers whether there is a position between mental state and desire accounts, and what the problems facing the informed‐desire account are.
Objective Accounts
Authors: Griffin James
Published: October 2003

Perhaps certain objective accounts of well‐being are superior to any desire account. This chapter considers primarily need‐accounts, of which the central claim is well‐being, at least that conception of it to be used as the interpersonal measure for moral judgement, is the level to which basic needs are met. The chapter argues against need accounts, but acknowledges the obvious strengths of objective accounts—not, however, what has been called an objective‐list account, because the common distinction in ethics between ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ is too sharp.
Perfectionism and the Ends of Life
Authors: Griffin James
Published: October 2003

Concerns various forms of perfectionist accounts of well‐being: Aristotelian, pluralist, Nietzschean, and so on. It discusses the ends of life (defending a modified Aristotelian view) and the relation of prudence and morality. These discussions reinforce the conclusion of the previous chapter.
Are There Incommensurable Values?
Authors: Griffin James
Published: October 2003

Begins the discussion on the measurement of well‐being: do our powers of measurement match our reasonable demands on measurement? For instance—the question for this chapter—are there incommensurable values? There are relations between values that can be confused with incommensurability: trumping, weighting, discontinuity, and irreducible pluralism. The sort of incommensurability that is most important in ethics is incomparability: one value's being unrankable with another as greater, less, or equal. The conclusion of the chapter is that prudential values are broadly comparable (a conclusion not clearly transferable to the various weights of moral norms).
The Case of One Person
Authors: Griffin James
Published: October 2003

This chapter is about the measurement of one person's well‐being. Indeed, can it be measured? To answer, we must specify the scale of measurement we are interested in: ordinal, cardinal, if cardinal, then interval or ratio. The chapter argues that there are pockets of cardinality in the measurement of one person's well‐being (cardinal measurement independent of probability, despite what many decision theorists say), and extensive areas of ordinal measurement, and that, in the case of one person, our capacity for measurement usually matches our decision‐making needs—i.e. as far as the measurement of well‐being goes.
The Case of Many Persons
Authors: Griffin James
Published: October 2003

Can we make interpersonal comparisons of well‐being? The nature of the problem of interpersonal comparison changes as the account of well‐being that one adopts changes, and our question is, are interpersonal comparisons of well‐being possible on the best account of well‐being, viz. the informed‐desire account with a high standard for ‘informed’. After discussing John Harsanyi's idea of an extended utility function and the idea of a deep monistic utility function, the chapter concludes that, as the informed‐desire account gives us something approaching an objective list of elements of well‐being, the terms in which we speak quantitatively about one person's well‐being are not relative to other things that this individual wants but relative to quantitative assessment of other people's well‐being. There is, therefore, no gap between assessments of different persons’ well‐being that needs bridging. The chapter concludes with discussions of intra‐personal, inter‐temporal comparisons and of comparisons on a large social scale.
From Prudence to Morality
Authors: Griffin James
Published: October 2003

Morality must be rooted in the natural sources of human action. What are they? For instance, how are morality and self‐interest related? How are morality and personal aims related (a question to which Bernard Williams has given a well‐known answer in terms of internal and external reasons)? How are morality and rationality related (a question to which Kant, R.M. Hare, Bentham, Mill, and decision theorists have given important answers)? The chapter ends with a sketch of the relation of prudence and morality.
Equal Respect
Authors: Griffin James
Published: October 2003

How can we make equal respect (the requirement at the heart of morality) compatible with a reasonable requirement of psychological realism in ethics? The chapter considers utilitarian, de‐ontological, and Rawls’ contractarian conceptions of equal respect. It also considers whether equal respect allows some partiality and whether there is a difference between personal and impersonal values.
Rights
Authors: Griffin James
Published: October 2003

The chapter starts by establishing the need for a substantive account of human rights—one with enough content to settle what rights exist and what their content is. Human rights, it proposes, have their ground in personhood (in normative agency), in certain practicalities, and in equal respect. It goes on to suggest a framework for resolving conflict between two human rights or a human right and welfare, and to identify various restrictions on such trade‐offs.
Distribution
Authors: Griffin James
Published: October 2003

Which principles of just distribution are appropriate to our setting, namely, a complex modern economy? The chapter denies that certain principles are sufficient on their own: labour‐based, appropriation‐based, human‐rights‐based, and equality‐based. It argues that the best principle of distribution for a complex modern economy would combine rights‐based and equality‐based elements, resolving along the way the level‐ambiguity (whole society? family? etc.) and object‐ambiguity (equality of what?) that principles of equality often display. It ends by looking at distribution between nations and whether there are distributive principles that apply at all levels.
Responsibility and Atonement
Authors: Swinburne Richard
Published: October 2003

When we do good or harm to each other, we acquire merit or guilt; deserve praise or blame, reward or punishment, and may need to make atonement. Others may need to forgive us, or show mercy to us. The first part of this book (Chs. 1–7) is an account of how these moral concepts apply to humans in their dealings with each other. The second part (Chs. 8–12) then applies the results of the first part to reach conclusions about which versions of traditional Christian doctrines that utilize these notions are morally plausible. It considers the doctrines of sin and original sin, redemption, sanctification, Heaven and Hell.
Moral Goodness
Authors: Swinburne Richard
Published: October 2003

This chapter distinguishes various kinds of moral goodness. Actions may be objectively good and/or subjectively good; and they may be supererogatory or obligatory. Actions may be objectively or subjectively bad, and wrong or merely infrarvetatory. There is goodness either in good actions being done naturally (i.e. spontaneously), or in their being done contrary to inclination. There are three kinds of goodness of character: agents may be naturally inclined to do actions that are in fact good, they may have correct moral beliefs, and they may be naturally inclined to do actions that they believe to be good.
Moral Responsibility and Weakness of Will
Authors: Swinburne Richard
Published: October 2003

Agents are praiseworthy for doing what they believe to be supererogatory, blameworthy for doing what they believe to be wrong. To have a belief that some action is morally good involves having some desire (inclination) to do it. But we evince weakness of will when we yield to a stronger desire to do what we believe to be not the best action.
The Relevance of Free Will
Authors: Swinburne Richard
Published: October 2003

Moral responsibility (and so praiseworthiness or blameworthiness) requires free will in the sense of agents having the power to choose independently of all the causal influences acting on them. Various forms of compatibilism, and also incoherentism (the view that free will of this kind is an incoherent notion), are rejected.
Merit and Reward
Authors: Swinburne Richard
Published: October 2003

Supererogatory actions include both favours to others, and creative acts benefiting directly only the agent. A favour creates an obligation on the recipient, minimally to express gratitude. Creative acts create an obligation on the community that has nurtured the agent, minimally to respect him. Supererogatory actions give their agent merit, objective or subjective.
Guilt, Atonement, and Forgiveness
Authors: Swinburne Richard
Published: October 2003

In doing a wrong action, an agent acquires guilt, subjective, or objective; guilt is to be distinguished from shame (as merit is to be distinguished from pride). A wrongdoer must deal with his guilt by making atonement—i.e. by repentance and apology to the victim, and (often also) by making reparation and penance. It is good (though not obligatory) for the victim to forgive a wrongdoer who has made some atonement, and that removes his guilt; but if the victim refuses to forgive despite substantial atonement, the wrongdoer's guilt disappears anyway. We have some responsibility to help others of our community to deal with their guilt—by encouraging them to apologize, and by helping them to make reparation—but we are not guilty for the wrong acts of anyone else.
Punishment
Authors: Swinburne Richard
Published: October 2003

If a wrongdoer does not make reparation, a victim has the right to take reparation from him (of more value than the original loss), which will constitute punishment. Explicitly or implicitly, however, people may hand over their right to punish to the state. Neither the victim nor the state has any obligation to punish, but there are normally good utilitarian reasons for punishing— prevention, deterrence, and reform.
Man's Moral Condition
Authors: Swinburne Richard
Published: October 2003

The desires of humans often conflict with their beliefs about what they ought to do. Hence temptation, a propensity to wrong doing, subjective (involving acting one's conscience) and objective, which is transmitted by genetic and social mechanisms.
Morality Under God
Authors: Swinburne Richard
Published: October 2003

The second part of this book (Chs. 8–12) applies the results of its first part about moral responsibility to traditional Christian doctrines. I assume that there is a God of the traditional kind who became incarnate in Jesus Christ, was crucified and rose from the dead; and then ask what follows about our moral responsibility to God, and his to us. This chapter argues that the command or commendation of God can change the moral status of some but not all actions, making them good or obligatory, bad or wrong, when they would not otherwise be so. (Hence it takes a compromise position on the Euthyphro dilemma.) God does not issue commands that cover the whole of our lives, although he does make it supererogatorily good for us to use our lives in certain ways; and only those who do so use their lives will attain salvation. It is good to hope for one's own salvation.
Sin and Original Sin
Authors: Swinburne Richard
Published: October 2003

All adult humans commit actual sin. Humans also have a proneness to sin, original sinfulness, inherited from a first sinner whom we may call Adam. Adam's responsibility for our sinfulness is confined to his beginning the social transmission of a morality that conflicts with our desires, and a sinful example that encouraged us to act against that morality. We are not guilty for Adam's original sin (as Augustine claimed), but we owe it to Adam and all our fellow humans to help them to make atonement for their sins.
Sanctification and Corruption
Authors: Swinburne Richard
Published: October 2003

Sanctification is achieved by pleading the Atonement made by Christ, and by gradually coming to form true moral beliefs and making oneself naturally inclined to conform to them. It is the function of the Church to facilitate this process. Total corruption occurs when a human yields so constantly to bad desires that he becomes their prisoner and loses the moral beliefs that incline him to resist them.
Heaven and Hell
Authors: Swinburne Richard
Published: October 2003

This chapter is concerned with the fates in the afterlife (traditionally called Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, and Limbo) that a good God would allocate to different humans. The totally corrupt have freely chosen to become so, and it would be an unwarranted imposition for God to give them any other character; hence, if God keeps them alive, their happiness can consist only in low‐level enjoyment. God will give to the sanctified (in company with each other) the (un‐merited) Beatific Vision of himself; and good pagans are to be included in this group. God may award (temporarily or permanently) intermediate fates to those with characters not fully formed.
Reasons and Persons
Authors: Parfit Derek
Published: October 2003

This book has four loosely connected parts. Part One discusses some ways in which theories about morality and rationality can be self‐defeating. Such theories give us certain aims, but also tell us to act in ways that frustrate these aims. If these theories are revised, these objections can be partly met.

Part Two discusses the relations between what a single person can rationally want or do at different times, and what different people can rationally want or do. I also discuss the rationality of four attitudes to time: temporal neutrality, and the three kinds of bias towards the present, the near, and the future.

Part Three discusses personal identity, or what is involved in our continuing to exist throughout our lives. Most of us, I argue, have certain beliefs about this subject that are false, but hard to give up. If we accept these claims, they may change some of our emotions or attitudes, and we should revise some of our beliefs about both rationality and morality.

Part Four discusses our obligations to future generations, and some related questions about what would be better or worse futures for mankind. The most difficult question here, which I fail to answer, is about the relative importance of the number of people who will exist, and the quality of life of these people.
Theories That Are Indirectly Self‐Defeating
Authors: Parfit Derek
Published: October 2003

According to the Self‐interest Theory, or S, our own well‐being is the supremely rational aim. According to Consequentialism, or C, the ultimate moral aim is that things go as well as possible. The chapter explains how these theories can be indirectly self‐defeating, in the sense that our trying to achieve these aims may cause them to be worse; how it can be rational to cause ourselves to be irrational, and how it might be right to cause ourselves to be disposed to act wrongly; how these theories might be self‐effacing by telling us to believe other theories; and how these theories do not fail in their own terms.
Five Mistakes in Moral Mathematics
Authors: Parfit Derek
Published: October 2003

Examines how we should assess the effects of our acts, especially when we act together with other people, why we should reject the share‐of‐the‐total view and accept the marginalist view, which appeals to the difference made by each act, why we should not ignore either small chances, or effects that are trivial or imperceptible. It also presents several cases in which effects are overdetermined. Rational altruism is also discussed.
Conclusions
Authors: Parfit Derek
Published: October 2003

Seeks to reduce the distance between Common‐Sense Morality and Consequentialism. Acts, dispositions, motives are also discussed.
The Appeal to Full Relativity
Authors: Parfit Derek
Published: October 2003

Discusses Sidgwick's challenge to S; temporal and interpersonal neutrality; analogies between ‘I’ and ‘now’, or oneself and the present. It presents arguments that appeal to these analogies; how S is incompletely relative, making it vulnerable to attack from two directions. S can be challenged both by theories like CP, which are relative both to persons and to times, and by those moral theories that are both temporally and interpersonally neutral.
Why We Should Reject S
Authors: Parfit Derek
Published: October 2003

An argument against the bias towards the near; how a defence of temporal neutrality is not a defence of S; an appeal to inconsistency; why we should reject S and accept CP.
What We Believe Ourselves to Be
Authors: Parfit Derek
Published: October 2003

Discusses numerical identity, or being one and the same, qualitative identity, or being exactly similar, personal identity, or what is involved in our continued existence over time. According to the Physical Criterion, our identity over time consists in the continued existence of enough of our brain. According to the Psychological Criterion, our identity consists in overlapping chains of psychological continuity and connectedness. The chapter discusses how we are inclined to believe that, even in purely imagined cases, our identity must be determinate. When we ask – Would I still exist? Would that future person be me?, it seems that it must always have an answer.
How We Are not What We Believe
Authors: Parfit Derek
Published: October 2003

Examines how the Psychological Criterion of identity is not circular, since psychological continuity can be described in a way that does not presuppose identity. It explores the subject of experiences; souls or Cartesian egos; how a non‐reductionist, Cartesian view might have been true. It offers spectrum arguments against both the Physical and Psychological Criteria; how we think about ourselves in a way that would be justified only if a Cartesian view were true.
Why Our Identity Is not What Matters
Authors: Parfit Derek
Published: October 2003

Presents actual cases of brain bisection; how we might be able to divide and reunite our minds; what explains the unity of consciousness at any time; the imagined case of full division, in which each half of our brain would be successfully transplanted into the empty skull of another body; why neither of the resulting people would be us; why this would not matter, since our relation to each of these people contains what matters in the prudential sense, giving us reasons to care about these people, which are like our reasons to care about our own future;and how it is hard to believe that personal identity, or our own continued existence, is not what matters.
What Does Matter
Authors: Parfit Derek
Published: October 2003

Discusses how our death can seem to disappear; whether and why the continuity of the body matters; why it does not matter whether psychological continuity has its normal cause: the continued existence of enough of the same brain. The chapter examines the Branch‐Line Case, series‐persons, different tokens of a type of person, beings whose identities differ from ours because they reproduce in other ways, partial survival, and successive selves.
Personal Identity and Rationality
Authors: Parfit Derek
Published: October 2003

Examines whether, if a reductionist view is true, we have any reason for special concern about our own future and gives extreme and moderate answers. It offers an argument against the Classical Self‐interest Theory, defending a discount rate, not with respect to time itself, but with respect to the degree of psychological connectedness between ourselves now and ourselves at different future times. It also presents the immorality of imprudence.
Personal Identity and Morality
Authors: Parfit Derek
Published: October 2003

Discusses Autonomy and Paternalism; becoming and ceasing to be a person, or human being; whether reductionism about persons undermines desert. It examines personal identity and commitments; the separateness of persons and principles of distributive justice – whether we should extend the scope of these principles, and give them less weight, whether the units for distributive principles should be lives, successive selves, or people at times, and how a reductionist view gives some support to the utilitarian rejection of distributive principles.
The Absurd Conclusion
Authors: Parfit Derek
Published: October 2003

Examines cases of conceiving a happy or a wretched child; how contractualism cannot solve questions about our obligations to future generations; whether outcomes can be worse if they are worse for no one. It examines person‐affecting principles; the sum of suffering; the valueless level; and lexical views.
The Mere Addition Paradox
Authors: Parfit Derek
Published: October 2003

Argues whether an outcome could be made worse by the mere addition of extra people who have lives worth living;why we should reject the view that it is best if the average quality of life is as high as possible. It discusses a paradox involving mere addition and the attempted solutions. It also explores new versions of this paradox.
Morals by Agreement
Authors: Gauthier David
Published: October 2003

This book defends the traditional conception of morality as a rational, impartial constraint on the pursuit of individual interest or benefit. The principal obstacle faced by this conception is that the received account of rationality in economics and the social sciences identifies it with the maximization of individual interest (or more technically, utility); how then can a constraint on the pursuit of interest be rational? The key to meeting this obstacle is found in the recognition that in many situations, if each person seeks directly to maximize her utility, the outcome is sub‐optimal—i.e. at least one alternative would benefit everyone. This suggests that we think of morality in a contractarian way, i.e. as the object of a universal rational bargain in which all agree to constrain their pursuit of interest by acting on a principle that would yield optimality, i.e. an outcome such that no alternative would benefit everyone.

Such a principle is developed on the basis of the idea that rational persons seek to minimize their bargaining concessions, and establish its moral status by showing that it is an impartial constraint on everyone's behaviour. There are however two problems: (1) why would rational persons honour their agreement to act on this principle, if they could do better to violate it? and (2) what would rational persons accept as an initial position, from which they would bargain? To answer the first question, it is shown that, under plausible conditions, persons may expect to benefit from a disposition (constrained maximization) to act with others on a rationally agreed principle, rather than from a disposition (straightforward maximization) to maximize directly their individual utility. To answer the second, it is shown that the basis from which agreement proceeds must rationally be constrained by what is called the (Lockean) proviso, which prohibits bettering one's situation through interaction that worsens the situation of another. We sketch brief applications of our account of morality to questions about taxation, appropriation, relations between societies, and relations among generations. Finally, we seek to distinguish the view of human beings and fulfilment underlying our theory from the caricature of ‘economic man’, developing a conception of the liberal individual.
Overview of a Theory
Authors: Gauthier David
Published: October 2003

Presents an overview of the book, introducing the problem of showing the rationality of moral constraints, and the conception of rationality as maximization, which on the face of it seems incompatible with any form of constraint. We argue, however, that moral theory is part of the theory of rational choice, arising from the structure of interaction, in which persons recognize a role for agreed mutual constraint in bringing about fair mutual advantage. We contrast the maximizing conception of rationality with the universalistic conception accepted by many philosophers, and our appeal to rational choice with the quite different appeals proposed by John Harsanyi and John Rawls. We introduce five key conceptions central to our theory: the idea of a morally free zone, the principle of minimax relative concession as the basis of justice, constrained maximization, the proviso, and the Archimedean point from which an individual can move the moral world. Finally, we raise questions about the scope of moral relationships and their place in an ideal human life.
Choice: Reason and Value
Authors: Gauthier David
Published: October 2003

Since our theory of morals is part of rational choice, we must examine its apparatus and assumptions, beginning from the underlying idea that an agent chooses rationally in maximizing her utility, considered as a measure of her preferences. However, we reject the purely behavioural view of preference held by some economists, arguing that rational choice depends on considered preferences that have both a behavioural and an attitudinal dimension, and are based on adequate experience and reflection. We set out the formal conditions on preferences that are required to define utility as an interval measure. We then turn to the claim that utility represents value, defending a conception of value that is subjective, dependent on affective relationships, and relative to each individual.
Strategy: Reason and Equilibrium
Authors: Gauthier David
Published: October 2003

Morality is concerned with interaction among persons, and so with strategic choice, in which each adopts a strategy on the basis of what he expects others to do. We state three conditions of strategically rational choice, and show that on the maximizing conception of rationality they require the expected outcome of interaction to be in equilibrium, so that each person's choice is a maximizing response to the choices of the others. We mention Nash's proof that in any finite situation, there is at least one set of equilibrium strategies, but we then introduce the well‐known result, exemplified by the Prisoner's Dilemma, that, in many situations, no set of equilibrium strategies achieves optimality. In such situations, everyone could benefit were they to interact, not on the basis of individual utility maximization, but on a basis that would yield an optimal outcome.