bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Kantian Subjects
Authors: Janaway Christopher
Published: October 2003

Looks at the legacy Kant left for theorizing about the subject, taken in two senses: the subject of will and action, and the subject of experience and knowledge. Kant argues for transcendental freedom, producing a conception of the self as subject of free will, while claiming that the agent's actions, as part of the empirical world, are causally determined. He argues also that the ‘I’ is not a substance, but must be conceived as existing over and above its experiences as their unitary subject. Both discussions of the subject are extremely influential on Schopenhauer.
Subject and Object in Schopenhauer
Authors: Janaway Christopher
Published: October 2003

Shows how Schopenhauer uses the concepts of subject and object to describe experience and knowledge and to argue for idealism. The world of things in space and time is the world as representation, comprised of objects for the subject. There can be no subject without object and no object without subject. Schopenhauer's argument that this supports idealism is assessed critically on the grounds that ‘no subject without object’ is ambiguous.
Knowing the Thing in Itself
Authors: Janaway Christopher
Published: October 2003

The central claim of Schopenhauer's metaphysics is that the thing in itself is will. He arrives at this by way of an observation about self‐knowledge: I can know myself only as willing or active, not as subject of knowledge. He claims that this unique knowledge gives access to my essence, and moves from this to the claim that the world in itself is will, of which the plurality of empirical things is an objectification. The chapter examines the problem of knowing the thing in itself at all. It is argued that Schopenhauer's conception of the thing in itself as will is a response to questions familiar in post‐Kantian philosophy, and there is a brief comparison with Schelling's conceptions of will and nature.
Determinism and Responsibility
Authors: Janaway Christopher
Published: October 2003

Gives an account principally of Schopenhauer's essay On the Freedom of the Human Will. He argues that human willing is determined by the combination of motives (representations that cause actions) and the character of the agent. Self‐consciousness is not capable of deciding whether or not the agent could have willed otherwise, but an objective view dictates that all actions are necessitated by their cause. Despite this, Schopenhauer argues that our sense of being responsible for our actions remains, and he attempts to account for it in terms of a responsibility for our intelligible (non‐empirical) characters.
The Primacy of Will
Authors: Janaway Christopher
Published: October 2003

Schopenhauer conceives the will as metaphysically primary, as the thing in itself that underlies all phenomena, but also as having primacy over the intellect in human psychology. Experience is a function of the brain, which receives a teleological explanation as furthering the life of the organism. This is one example of Schopenhauer's conception of will to life, a blindly striving principle that manifests itself throughout individuals in the empirical world. The chapter examines the coherence of Schopenhauer's philosophy of the self as will with his notion of the pure subject or ‘I’.
Mind and Nature
Authors: O'Hear Anthony
Published: October 2003

Despite being material beings, humans are unlike most material objects—we are conscious and able to express our thoughts in language. This book examines the possibility of giving a naturalistic explanation of these latter aspects of human activity. The last discourse of Socrates in Plato's Phaedo suggests that it is possible that some of our motivations are non‐Darwinian, i.e. not directly concerned with survival and reproduction and that our nature as conscious agents can make our goals and projects puzzling or inexplicable in physical or biological terms. If we are programmed for survival and reproduction, why, e.g. did Socrates choose that fate that he did? Kant and Wittgenstein represent modern philosophers who also circumscribe the role of naturalistic explanation and leave room for a philosophical account of our behaviour as rational, moral agents concerned with thinking and acting for the best.
Self‐Conscious Belief
Authors: O'Hear Anthony
Published: October 2003

What does it mean to be self‐conscious? Mere consciousness involves no conception of the self. Self‐consciousness requires a conceptual scheme or symbolic system and this in itself—drawing on Wittgensteinian points about the essentially public and social nature of language—presupposes that, contrary to sceptical doubts, we are already part of a language using community. Pierce made the point that self‐consciousness only arises if one sees oneself as a fallible member of a community of speakers—that self‐consciousness requires the possibility of error. While this role for fallibility in the arising of self‐consciousness carries with it some sceptical risks, it casts doubt on any extreme form of scepticism.
Morality and Politics
Authors: O'Hear Anthony
Published: October 2003

In morality, self‐consciousness and evolution can pull in different ways. While, as Humphrey has shown, evolution can explain the existence of self‐consciousness and empathy and socio‐biologists have shown how self‐interest can lead to the existence of reciprocal altruism and kin selection, this falls short of genuine morality, which seems to require the possibility of true altruism and self‐sacrifice. Following Sartre we must understand the importance of the reciprocal ’gaze’ of other members of our linguistic community in forming our identity as selves. Hayek has argued that a social evolutionary account, in which those traditional societal practices that are successful persist and flourish, ought to motivate us to favour a form of irrationalism over immediate individual rational reflection. Similarly, Orwell has argued for the powerful motivational effects of traditional and less transparently rational virtues such as patriotism and fidelity. Despite this, however, we ought not to adopt an unquestioning obedience to tradition or to the demands of immediate rationality, but rather, following Edmund Burke, remain both wary of extreme rationalism and aware of the benefits of tradition and of powerful allegiances to our particular countries and communities while continuing to employ rational reflection on our moral standards and practices where appropriate.
Conclusion
Authors: O'Hear Anthony
Published: October 2003

While humans are the embodied products of our evolutionary origins, we can transcend such origins in myriad ways including our approach to the true, the good, and the beautiful. We may stem from our particular histories, cultures, and traditions but we are not fully determined by them. We possess rationality and self‐consciousness which are neither reducible to Darwinian analyses nor explicable via Darwinian drives. Our capacities may have evolved in Darwinian ways but once acquired take off in un‐Darwinian ways.
Passion and Action
Authors: James Susan
Published: October 2003

Passion and Action explores the place of the affects or passions in seventeenth‐century understandings of the body and mind, and examines the role they were held to play in thought and action. Interest in the passions pervaded all areas of philosophical enquiry and was central to the theories of such major figures as Hobbes, Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, Pascal, and Locke, as well as to the work of authors who are nowadays less familiar. Yet, little attention has been paid to this topic in studies of early modern philosophy. This book surveys the inheritance of ancient and medieval doctrines about the passions, and shows how these were incorporated into new philosophical approaches in the course of the seventeenth century. It examines the place of the passions in body and mind, their role in the acquisition of knowledge and their relation to volition and action, offering fresh interpretations of a broad range of texts by well‐known writers, as well as by less canonical figures. It establishes that a full understanding of the philosophy of this period must take account of its discussions of our affective life.

Passion and Action also addresses current debates, particularly those concerned with the embodied character of thinking and the relation between emotion and knowledge, which have played a central part in feminist philosophy. It throws new light on the shaping of our ideas about the mind, and provides a historical context for burgeoning contemporary investigations of the emotions.
Passion and Action in Aristotle
Authors: James Susan
Published: October 2003

Early modern discussions oppose passions in action, and in doing so draw on and adapt a distinction elaborated by Aristotle. This chapter considers the senses in which Aristotle viewed the passions as passive. It maps the relations between passion and action, matter and form, and potentiality and actuality, and shows how these metaphysical categories are used to analyse the powers of the Aristotelian soul.
Post‐Aristotelian Passion and Action
Authors: James Susan
Published: October 2003

The rejection of certain Scholastic doctrines nevertheless enabled seventeenth‐century writers to reconsider the interpretations of activity and passivity that they had inherited, and to generate new conceptions of the passions. This chapter introduces the kinds of innovations they introduced, and the arguments they offered for them. It focuses on general claims about the causal role of the passions, their relation to the soul's other powers, and their connection with the body.
The Value of Persuasion
Authors: James Susan
Published: October 2003

There nevertheless remains a worry that the capacity of the passions to thwart our attempts to acquire knowledge is not so easily disposed of. A third solution to the problem challenges the idea that passion and reason are opposed by arguing that we rely on our passions to motivate us to reason, and thus to pursue scientia. One version of this view, exemplified by Hobbes, suggests that we need to appeal to various passions, such as fear, to excite our desire to reason. Another version holds that we need to use the imagination, and more generally rhetoric or the art of persuasion, to mitigate the aridity of reasoning and excite our interest in it.
Conflicting Forces: The Cartesian Theory of Action
Authors: James Susan
Published: October 2003

This chapter and the next examine the view, taken for granted in the seventeenth century, that our passions move us to act. How exactly do they do this, and what forces can change or modify them? Addressing this question, Descartes modifies an established Scholastic account of the relations between volition, passion, and action. His discussion is part of a broader attempt to provide a unified analysis of the mind, and to reconfigure the relation between mind and body.
Deliberating With the Passions
Authors: James Susan
Published: October 2003

The same problem is addressed by philosophers whose account of the antecedents of action focus on the notion of desire, and who move away from the old view that actions result from a struggle between reason and passion. Foremost among these authors are Hobbes and Spinoza, who offer novel interpretations of deliberation and psychological conflict. Their controversial view that a volition is not a distinct kind of thought is contested, e.g. by Bramhall, and in a different way by Locke. However, they mark a transition to a new understanding of the passive and active aspects of the mind and a new interpretation of desire and its relation to action.
Introduction
Authors: Resnik Michael D.
Published: October 2003

Mathematics has often been described as the ‘Queen of Sciences’, yet philosophical problems arise as soon as one tries to define its subject matter. Anti‐realism concerning mathematical objects has proven to be problematic, but, on the other hand, realism gives rise to well‐known epistemological problems. In this book, I offer a type of mathematical realism according to which mathematical objects exist independently of our constructions, and mathematical truths are obtained independently of our beliefs. Central to my account of mathematical objects is a sort of structuralism, according to which mathematical objects are featureless, abstract positions in structures. On the epistemological level, I reject the apriority of mathematical knowledge, and claim that our justification for believing in the truth of mathematics is derived from pragmatic and holistic considerations concerning science.
Recent Attempts at Blunting the Indispensability Thesis
Authors: Resnik Michael D.
Published: October 2003

The indispensability thesis maintains both that using mathematical terms and assertions is an indispensable part of scientific practice and that this practice commits science to mathematical objects and truths. Anti‐realists have used several methods for attacking this thesis: Hartry Field has tried to show how science can do without mathematics by showing that it is possible to replace analytic mathematical scientific theories with synthetic versions that make no reference to mathematical objects. Phillip Kitcher and Charles Chichara have tried, instead, to maintain the mathematical formalism in science without being committed to mathematical realism, by giving a non‐realist account of mathematical objects. Finally, Geoffrey Hellman devised a modal structuralism that uses modal operators to translate standard mathematical language into a ‘structuralist’ language. In this chapter I discuss these positions and claim that, on the one hand, they have failed to show that science can do without mathematical objects, and on the other, that these approaches to mathematics do not represent an ontic and epistemic gain over standard realism.
Doubts About Realism
Authors: Resnik Michael D.
Published: October 2003

One of the strongest motivations for being an anti‐realist with regard to mathematics is the difficulty in formulating a plausible realist epistemology, given that there seems to be a lack of ties between the mathematical apparatus and observation. In this chapter, I discuss a few puzzles that the mathematical realist has to solve in order to formulate an acceptable epistemology, and I hint at the direction in which one might hope to find the solution to these puzzles. One of the puzzles, that was first clearly formulated by Paul Benacerraf, is that since mathematical objects are supposed to be causally inert entities existing outside of space and time, it is hard to see how we can ever get in contact with them, i.e. how we can ever gain knowledge of them or refer to them. A second puzzle concerns the incompleteness of mathematical entities that has it, that we have no conceivable evidence and so no answers to questions of whether the objects that one mathematical theory discusses are identical to those that another theory treats. Realists can reject the presuppositions of both these puzzles. The first presupposes that there must be some sort of direct or indirect interaction between us and the objects of our knowledge. The second assumes that there is always a fact of the matter as to whether the objects of one theory are the same or distinct, as those of another. In later chapters, I will try to undermine both of these presuppositions.
The Elusive Distinction Between Mathematics and Natural Science
Authors: Resnik Michael D.
Published: October 2003

It is commonly believed that the epistemology of mathematics must be different from the epistemology of science because their objects are different in kind, i.e. metaphysically different. In this chapter, I want to suggest that some careful work must be done before we can take the distinction between physical and mathematical objects for granted. This distinction has traditionally been drawn by making reference to location, causal powers, detectability in principle, and change in properties. By analysing the ontology of theoretical physics, I wish to show that some physical objects, like quantum particles as they are described by D. Bohm, are as much mathematical as physical, for they do not seem to be located in space and time, and they are as incomplete as mathematical objects. The upshot of this discussion is to address those who are realists about physical objects and anti‐realists about mathematical objects, and, more importantly, to suggest that mathematical realists should not assume that a realist epistemology should be radically different from ordinary scientific epistemology.
The Local Conception of Mathematical Evidence: Proof, Computation, and Logic
Authors: Resnik Michael D.
Published: October 2003

The fact that mathematics is ordinarily practised as an autonomous science with its own, peculiar type of evidence constituted mainly by deductive reasoning (proofs and computations) is often taken as evidence that mathematics and science have specifically different evidential supports and specifically different subject matters. I argue against this conclusion by first analysing deductive proofs, and the type of evidence that is usually required for axioms, and claiming that most of the evidence for the most elementary and fundamental parts of mathematics is empirical. I then appeal to the role of computation to argue that non‐deductive inference from empirical premises is part of the contemporary methodology of mathematics, and so some of our proofs turn out not to be purely logical deductions. Finally, I discuss the relation between mathematics and logic and argue against logical realism by denying that statements attributing logical properties or relations are true independently of our holding them to be true, our psychology, our linguistic and inferential conventions, or other facts about human beings. In the end, both mathematics and logic turn out to be a priori only in the sense that some mathematical and logical truths are obtained through deductive proofs, and for pragmatic reasons, are insulated from experience; but neither mathematics nor logic are a priori in the sense of being immune to empirical revision.
Mathematical Objects as Positions in Patterns
Authors: Resnik Michael D.
Published: October 2003

It is usual to regard mathematical objects as entities that can be identified, characterized, and known in isolation. In this chapter, I propose a contrasting view according to which mathematical entities are structureless points or positions in structures (patterns) that are not distinguishable or identifiable outside the structure. By analysing the various relations that can hold between patterns, like congruence, equivalence, mutual occurrence, I also account for the incompleteness of mathematical objects, for mathematics turns out to be a conglomeration of theories, each dealing with its own structure and each forgoing identities leading outside its structure. My suggestion that mathematical objects are positions in structures or patterns is not intended as an ontological reduction, but rather as a way of viewing mathematical objects and theories that put the phenomena of multiple reductions and ontological and referential relativity in a clearer light.
Patterns and Mathematical Knowledge
Authors: Resnik Michael D.
Published: October 2003

I present a hypothetical account of how the ancients might have come to introduce mathematical objects in order to describe patterns, and I explain how working with patterns can generate information about the mathematical realm. The ancients might have started using what I call templates, i.e. concrete devices, like blueprints or drawings, to represent how things are shaped or structured, and this could have evolved into representing the abstract patterns that concrete things might fit. In this way, they might have come to believe that written constructions and computations could provide information about the mathematical realm, for by their very nature, patterns should be structurally analogous to their templates and in positing that they are, one simply projects onto structures and features already attributed to templates. By reflecting on systems of dots representing cardinalities, the ancients could generate a body of results that then evolved into a systematic theory of numbers, but the approach fails when there is no direct connection between the computations and the patterns they are supposed to concern, e.g. those concerning trigonometric functions or transfinite ordinal numbers. In these cases, we forge a connection between proofs and patterns by positing that the premises of the proofs state uncontroversial features of the patterns, i.e. the premises constitute implicit definitions of the patterns. I explain how this position does not entail that mathematics is analytic or a priori.
Entity and Identity
Authors: Strawson P. F.
Published: October 2003

Gathered in this volume are selected essays by P. F. Strawson from the 1970s to the 1990s in two areas of philosophy to which he has most notably contributed. The first 12 pieces concern the philosophy of language, a broad heading under which many controversial philosophical issues can be fruitfully approached. Questions such as the following are discussed: Do general properties exist as well as the particular things that have them? What is involved in reference to particular things? What exactly is formal logic as we now understand it? What do we mean when we say that something may happen or might have happened? What do we mean when we speak of the meaning of what we say? The volume is completed by four studies of Kantian metaphysics: these develop and strengthen Strawson's influential view of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and bring out the implications of this view for current metaphysical debates.
Positions for Quantifiers
Authors: Strawson P. F.
Published: October 2003

Quantification into predicate‐position is defended. While it is denied that such quantification is either substitutional or disguised referential‐ objectual, it is admitted that the predicates non‐referentially introduce (abstract) objects. Quantification into sentence‐position is rejected in favour of quantification over propositions; but non‐objectual quantification into adverbial position is defended.
Belief, Reference, and Quantification
Authors: Strawson P. F.
Published: October 2003

Many propositions ascribing a belief to a person can simply be understood as expressing a two‐termed relation between person and proposition. This simple account becomes untenable when the ascription contains a direct reference to one or more individuals the belief is about and thus allows for quantification into the belief‐context from outside it. Some suggestions are rejected, a tentative solution proposed, and the solution of resulting complications provided.
‘If’ and ‘⊃ ’
Authors: Strawson P. F.
Published: October 2003

The view that the ordinary conditional ‘if p then q’ has the same meaning as the material conditional of standard truth‐functional logic confronts the more intuitive view that it imports, as part of its meaning, some ground‐consequent relation between antecedent and consequent clauses. Grice's powerful defence of the former position demonstrates that the operation of certain effective general principles of assertive discourse would normally ensure that the truth‐functional conditional carried a non‐conventional consequentialist implication. A defence of the contrary view rests on the fact that ‘p, so q’, which incontestably carries a consequentialist implication as part of its meaning, differs from ‘if p then q’ only in that the former conjoins asserted, the latter unasserted, propositions. There is plenty of occasion for the use of both ‘so’ and ‘if’. The balance of argument favours the consequentialist position.
The Problem of Realism and the A Priori
Authors: Strawson P. F.
Published: October 2003

Kant's ‘empirical realism’ about the objects of science and commonsense is quite consistent with the recognition of the special (a priori) status of the categories and the forms of sensible intuition (space and time) as necessary conditions of human experience; but it is questionably compatible with the doctrine of the unknowable real nature of things as they are in themselves, conceived as non‐spatial and non‐temporal. One or the other realism has to go.
Kant's Paralogisms: Self‐Consciousness and the ‘Outside Observer’
Authors: Strawson P. F.
Published: October 2003

Kant distinguishes between himself as object of outer sense (man), himself as object of inner sense alone (empirical consciousness), and himself as he is in himself (the transcendental subject that underlies all thoughts). He also speaks of the ‘transcendental unity of apperception’ or ‘unity of consciousness’ (the ‘I’ of ‘I think’, which belongs to all thought or experience). Each of us, aiming to study the self in abstraction from empirical consciousness, is liable systematically to confuse the unity and simplicity of his or her consciousness with a consciousness of unity and simplicity and mistakenly conclude that his or her ‘I’ denotes a simple, identical, immaterial substance, the self as it is in itself; but no outside observer is liable to make that mistake about anyone else.
Kant on Substance
Authors: Strawson P. F.
Published: October 2003

Kant holds that matter alone, by being permanent, satisfies, in the field of appearance, the formal criterion of substance (being thinkable only as subject, never as predicate) and manifests itself empirically as substance through action. While it is shown that none of Kant's major arguments or contentions is defensible as it stands, it is conceded that it is plausible to hold, if not for Kant's reasons, that everything in nature depends ultimately on some modification of matter.
Philosophy of Language in Ethics
Authors: Hare R. M.
Published: October 2003

Philosophy of language, according to Hare, contributes significantly to ethics, because it provides a logical structure for moral thinking. Referring to J. L. Austin's theory of speech acts, Hare distinguishes two kinds or genera of speech acts, the descriptive and the prescriptive; and he also discusses Austin's distinction between illocutionary and perlocutionary acts. Moral judgements, e.g. those judgements expressed by ‘ought’, are prescriptive speech acts, but they also have a descriptive meaning. This is because moral judgements share with normative judgements the logical feature Hare calls universalizability. Alongside prescriptivity and universalizability, a third element of Hare's account of moral judgement is the identification of one's will with that of another moral agent's will in hypothetical situations.
Defence of the Enterprise
Authors: Hare R. M.
Published: October 2003

In this chapter, conceived originally as the introduction to chapters 3 to 7, Hare shows how philosophical questions arise from the consideration of practical moral problems, such as war and euthanasia. The main task of moral philosophy, Hare argues, is to study the logical form of moral arguments and, in particular, the logical properties of moral words, such as ‘ought’, ‘right’, and ‘good’. All argument, including moral argument, depends on logic, and logical validity depends on the meaning of words. The investigation of the meaning of the words and concepts, and thus the logic, employed in moral and other value judgements is, according to Hare, the distinctive contribution of the moral philosopher to the discussion of substantive moral questions.
Emotivism
Authors: Hare R. M.
Published: October 2003

The thesis of Emotivism, a species of non‐descriptivism, is that there is more to the meaning of moral statements than syntax and truth conditions; in particular, moral statements have an expressive, and a causative aspect. Drawing upon J. L. Austin's distinction between illocutionary and perlocutionary acts, Hare argues that emotivists try to explain the meaning of moral statements, which they assimilate to imperatives, in terms of their perlocutionary effect. The difficulty with this is that, firstly, the emotivists hold a false theory of imperatives, and secondly, perlocutionary effect cannot explain meaning. Furthermore, emotivists deny the possibility of rational moral argument, and therefore embrace irrationalism. Towards the end of this chapter, Hare identifies six essential features of moral language, and its logic, that must be recognized and accounted for by an adequate moral theory: (1) Neutrality, (2) Practicality, (3) Incompatibility, (4) Logicality, (5) Arguability, and (6) Conciliation.
Rationalism
Authors: Hare R. M.
Published: October 2003

Hare presents his own position, a theory that incorporates all the truths of the other theories that have been discussed, together with ‘prescriptive logic’, which is what makes rationality in moral thinking possible. Hare calls this position ‘universal prescriptivism’, and he identifies it as an adaptation of Kant's Categorical Imperative. Universal Prescriptivism gives a completely formal account of the meanings of moral words such as ‘ought’; i.e. it defines them purely on the basis of their logical properties. Of the theories considered, this is the only one that satisfies all six of the requirements for an adequate ethical theory, and it also guarantees universalizability. Prescriptivity and, in particular, universal prescriptivity, enables us to examine moral intuitions objectively; furthermore, because the prescriptivity of moral statements is culturally invariant, it allows us to avoid relativism.
‘A New Species of Logic’
Authors: Howson Colin
Published: October 2003

This is the central chapter of the book. It contains an extended argument to show that in formal probability theory we have an authentic logic of uncertain inference, of the same species as deductive logic. A soundness and completeness theorem is given for this logic, akin to the soundness and completeness theorems of deductive logic. The logical view of probability was propounded by Leibniz in the seventeenth century, and revived in the twentieth century by Keynes, Carnap, and Ramsey. It is Ramsey's view, that the rules of probability are consistency constraints, that is upheld.
Deliberative Conflict: Some Recent Philosophical Concepts
Authors: White Nicholas
Published: October 2003

Kantian and Hegelian responses to Greek ethics have been carried on—against the backdrop of Joseph Butler, J. S. Mill, Henry Sidgwick, T. H. Green, and others—right through the Twentieth Century. Although other philosophical notions have also been important in the historiography of Greek ethics—‘morality’, ‘ethics of virtue’, ‘contingency’—an overriding theme has been the notion that in Greek ethics a way was found to eliminate deliberative conflict, and to show that in the end all rational human aims are reconcilable within a single notion of happiness of eudaimonia. Various harmonizing strategies have been attempted, and ascribed to the Greeks.
Individual Good and Deliberative Conflict through the Time of Plato
Authors: White Nicholas
Published: October 2003

Before Plato there are ample cases in which Greek poets, philosophers, and politicians recognize the possibility that individual and social good can conflict. Nor does Plato think that a full understanding of the notion of one's good must demonstrate that it cannot conflict with standards of justice. On the contrary, Plato holds that such conflicts can occur even in the case of the rulers of his ideal city‐state. This idea is not contradicted by evidence of other works, such as the Meno, the Symposium, and the Philebus. Nevertheless, although Plato's view admits what is normally thought to be a characteristically Kantian conflict of ethical standards with one's good, it still possesses some distinctly eudaimonistic elements that are at variance with the Kantian view.
Towards an Understanding of the History of Greek Ethics
Authors: White Nicholas
Published: October 2003

Thus far it has been shown that Greek ethics is not as different from modern ethics as is commonly held, and that we cannot oppose a harmonizing Greek ethical outlook with a modern view that involves a conflict between happiness and adherence to ethical standards. Greek ethics has universalistic features—though they are different from the egalitarian characteristics of modern positions and do not focus on the notion of benevolence in the way that modern ethics does—and it mostly distinguishes self‐referential and non‐self‐referential aims. Moreover, there is not in any case such a thing as a monolithic ethical view of ‘the Greeks’, and the idea of a straightforward contrast between ‘ancient’ and ‘modern’ ethics is best avoided.
Tensed Accounts of the Nature of Time
Authors: Tooley Michael
Published: October 2003

Examines the relation between certain tensed and certain tenseless concepts. It argues that the relation of temporal priority, i.e. the relation of one event being earlier than another, cannot be analysed in terms of tensed, temporal concepts. Neither can an analysis of tenseless quantifiers be given in such terms. On the contrary, the tensed concepts of past and future can be analysed in tenseless terms.
Past, Present, and Future
Authors: Tooley Michael
Published: October 2003

Completes the defence of the claim that tenseless concepts are more basic than tensed ones. It argues for three theses. First, not all tensed statements involve indexicals, and those that do not are analytically more basic. Second, these non‐indexical tensed statements can be used to give truth conditions for indexical tensed statements. Third, non‐indexical tensed statements can be analysed in terms of tenseless statements together with the concept of what is actual as of, or true at, a given time. In particular, the tensed concept of lying in the present can be analysed following this strategy.
Past, Present, and Future: Alternative Accounts
Authors: Tooley Michael
Published: October 2003

Contrasts the view defended in the book with alternative accounts, and rejects the latter. It argues that, while ordinary tensed statements involve indexicals, this does not constitute a reason for accepting a static conception of the world. Further, it rejects views according to which there are irreducible tensed properties, and the claim that only the present is real.
Causation and Temporal Relations
Authors: Tooley Michael
Published: October 2003

Provides an analysis of temporal relations in causal terms. Qualitative temporal relations, that is, the relations of simultaneity and temporal priority, are analysed in terms of actual causal relations and spatial relations. A reduction of quantitative temporal relations, such as the relation of temporal distance, in causal terms is feasible as well, but, the chapter argues, a realist view should be preferred. The causal theory of time put forward is defended against charges of circularity and against putative counterexamples.
The Special Theory of Relativity and the Unreality of the Future
Authors: Tooley Michael
Published: October 2003

According to the Special Theory of Relativity, there is no such thing as absolute simultaneity, contrary to the view defended in the book. However, this chapter demonstrates that the Special Theory of Relativity can be modified so as to allow absolute simultaneity. This modification involves reference to absolute space and the causal relations between space‐time points, and drops the assumption that the one‐way speed of light is constant through all frames of reference. Contrary to the orthodox theory, the modified version has the additional advantage of avoiding a clash with quantum mechanics, such as brought out by the Einstein‐Podolsky‐Rosen thought experiment and Bell's Theorem.
Naturalism in Mathematics
Authors: Maddy Penelope
Published: October 2003

It is well known that certain natural statements of set theory, like Cantor's continuum hypothesis (CH), cannot be proved or disproved on the basis of the standard axioms (Zermelo–Fraenkel with Choice or ZFC). Some philosophers take this to be the end of the story on these questions, but set theorists continue to look for answers by investigating candidates for new axioms. One way to understand this work, an approach pioneered by Gödel, is to embrace some brand of realism (sometimes called ‘Platonism’) about sets: there is an objective world of sets in which the CH is either true or false; ZFC does not completely describe this world; our job is to find new true axioms that will give a fuller description detailed enough to decide the CH. Recent versions of realism in the philosophy of mathematics have rested on Quine's indispensability arguments: the world posited by our best scientific theories includes mathematical entities. In this book, I argue that attention to the actual details of scientific methodology substantially undermines Quine's argument, leaving realism without its best support. As an alternative, I develop a naturalistic approach (drawing on other themes from Quine, Gödel, and Wittgenstein) that finds the justification for mathematical methods in mathematics rather than extra‐mathematical philosophy, and I apply this naturalism to the test case of a particular new axiom candidate (Gödel's Axiom of Constructibility).
Learning from Six Philosophers Volume 1
Authors: Bennett Jonathan
Published: October 2003

This book presents and analyses the most important parts of the philosophical works of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Volume 1: the shift from Aristotelian to Cartesian physics; Descartes on matter and space, on causation, and on certainty; Descartes and Spinoza on matter and mind, and on desire; Leibniz's metaphysics (monads) and physics, his theory of animals. Volume 2: Locke on ideas, on necessity, on essences, on substance, on secondary qualities, on personal identity; Descartes on modality; Berkeley's epistemology and metaphysics; Hume on ideas, on belief, on causation, on bodies, on reason; Hume and Leibniz on personal identity.
Cartesian and Aristotelian Physics
Authors: Bennett Jonathan
Published: October 2003

Descartes's physics is set against the mainly Aristotelian ideas that preceded it, emphasizing six differences, three of which are the following. Aristotle's physics has many basic kinds of things, while Descartes's has only one—matter—with all variety coming from differences of movement and structure of that one. They also differ in how they view many basic laws they entertain. Teleology is central to Aristotelian physics and banished from Descartes's. Descartes's physics is compared with Democritean atomism.
Matter and Space
Authors: Bennett Jonathan
Published: October 2003

Discusses what Descartes wanted and how he defended his thesis that materiality equals extension. It tells us why he thought there is no vacuum and how Locke opposed him on this. It discusses the concept of solidity and gives four views of space: vacuum as a bulky nothing, space as a container, a system of relations, a separator. He concludes the chapter with Descartes's account of motion.
Descartes's Physics
Authors: Bennett Jonathan
Published: October 2003

Reveals why Descartes must regard matter as infinitely divisible and describes the failure of his attempt to get qualitative variety out of structure or movement, when applied to an absolutely homogeneous mass of matter. Explains the loop theory (according to which all movement is of synchronously moving loops of matter) and the difficulty of relating it clearly to Descartes's theory of collisions. Rejects ‘traction’, Descartes's poor theory of weight, and Leibniz's charge that Descartes was a ‘new stoic’.
Descartes's Dualisms
Authors: Bennett Jonathan
Published: October 2003

Descartes's property‐dualism is too deep in his thought to be defended. He defends his substance‐dualism twice, once from the premiss that minds are indivisible while matter is not (discussed in Kant's second paralogism), and once from the conceivability of there being mind and no matter. Different possible routes from conceivability to actuality are discussed, and Kripke's defence of one of them is criticized. The chapter discusses Voss's work on Descartes's concept of man.
Preparing to Approach Spinoza
Authors: Bennett Jonathan
Published: October 2003

Describes in what way Spinoza was a dualist and in what way a monist; his pantheism and its relation to atheism; his very special version of the so‐called ontological argument for the existence of God; his mind–body parallelism and rejection of mind–body interaction. His resolute naturalism: Wittgenstein's mockery about the mind as ‘a queer sort of medium’ hits Descartes but not Spinoza.
One Extended Substance
Authors: Bennett Jonathan
Published: October 2003

The sensible thing that Spinoza meant when he said that there is only one substance, and that sticks and stones are ‘modes’ of it: his case for this monism grew out of his seeing a problem that Descartes overlooked, which is his reply to Curley's challenge to this interpretation.
Explaining the Parallelism
Authors: Bennett Jonathan
Published: October 2003

Spinoza's bad arguments for his thesis of mind–body parallelism are discussed. Then a close analysis of the great scholium to IIp7 leads to a much better argument. This brings in Spinoza's definition of ‘attribute’, a much‐controverted item, which can be seen to be plain and simple and the right thing for him to say, as soon as one attends carefully to its actual wording. The chapter also discuses and explains Spinoza's use of ‘express’: attributes that express God's essence, and so do modes.
Explanatory Rationalism
Authors: Bennett Jonathan
Published: October 2003

Like Leibniz and unlike Descartes, Spinoza was an explanatory rationalist: he held that there is a non‐trivial answer for every legitimate ‘Why?’‐question. This led him to causal rationalism, the view that causal necessity is logical necessity. He connects the concepts of necessity and of eternity; his way of doing so is explained. Spinoza was committed to thinking that this is the only possible world, but it is not clear whether he did. Leibniz was equally committed, and struggled hard to avoid the commitment, which he hated. His struggles are analysed.
Spinoza on Belief and Error
Authors: Bennett Jonathan
Published: October 2003

Spinoza contends for something propositional in sensory intake; it is argued that he is moving towards the view of Armstrong and others that basic sensory intake consists in inclinations to believe. The chapter explains and criticizes his view that all so‐called error is a species of ignorance. His treatment of mental representation involves, but only covertly, two notions of ‘idea of’—an idea is directly of a state of one's body, and may be indirectly of some external thing that caused that state. His notion of ‘adequate idea’ and the associated notions of mutilation and confusion are dealt with. The chapter also describes his ingenious attempt to explain why reason is infallible.
Causation and Perception in Leibniz
Authors: Bennett Jonathan
Published: October 2003

Explains why Leibniz rejected inter‐substance causation and occasionalism; and his account of how a monad develops. He is identified as a bottom‐up metaphysician—one who has a few basic concepts and seeks to construct all the rest out of those, moving upward. His accounts of perception and of appetite are explained and criticized, as are his various attempts to explain the appearance of passivity in the material world.
Leibniz's Physics
Authors: Bennett Jonathan
Published: October 2003

Leibniz's grounding principle implies that any property of a phenomenon must be grounded in truths about the underlying monads. He took this to imply that empirically supported laws in physics must mirror, somehow, truths about monads. Leibniz vigorously defends mechanism and rejects teleology in physical explanations. He tries to bring teleology into physics (and biology) in a different way, partly through the wrong thesis that Snell's Law is teleological.
Harmony
Authors: Bennett Jonathan
Published: October 2003

Deals with Leibniz's doctrine that all activities of each monad are correlated with activities of all the others, in a universal harmony. His reasons for this, and the work he makes it do, including his view that the universe is deterministic in both temporal directions is given. Monadic points of view and Leibniz's reasons for holding that some perceptions are insensible are also handled.
Leibniz and Relations
Authors: Bennett Jonathan
Published: October 2003

Leibniz held that there are no basic relational truths; his attempts to show that non‐relational truths supervene on relational ones are assessed. Criticism of the view that according to Leibniz there are basic truths in which relational properties are attributed to things is described. Leibniz's view that space is a system of relations and his concept of compossibility are explained and criticized, as is his thesis of the identity of indiscernibles.
Descartes's Theory of Modality
Authors: Bennett Jonathan
Published: October 2003

Expounds and defends the thesis that Descartes, most of the time, accepted a subjectivist theory of modality according to which a proposition's being necessary is its relating in a certain way to our thought. Several difficult and long‐standing problems, and some others that have been neglected, are solved or lessened by this thesis. One is voluntarism—the thesis that God voluntarily gives modal truths their truth‐value. It is shown that Descartes is nearly always careful to say not that God cannot lie but that he does not lie.
Berkeley's Uses of Locke's Work
Authors: Bennett Jonathan
Published: October 2003

Berkeley attacked Locke's theory of abstract ideas, partly sound though partly unfair. He held, apparently wrongly, that the issue over abstract ideas generates the other philosophical issues between himself and Locke. He used Locke's supposed view about secondary qualities against him in the debate over immaterialism, but his way of doing so depended on attributing to Locke the textually least visible and philosophically worst of his views on this topic, namely, that secondary qualities are in the mind. On the topic of substance as substratum, Berkeley utterly conflates two distinct issues: substratum that supports qualities, and matter that causes ideas.
Hume on the Existence of Bodies
Authors: Bennett Jonathan
Published: October 2003

Hume's great section on why we believe in the existence of bodies outside ourselves is a masterpiece of controlled complexity; and this chapter analyses it. Starting with the same foundationalism as Berkeley and Locke, Hume thinks he must choose between the two: either our impressions are the only things we perceive, or we conjecture the existence of other things through an inductive inference across the veil of perception. Neither option is satisfactory, he concludes, but he can see no third way. En route to this conclusion he discovers something much better, and gives a curiously weak reason for rejecting it. The section involves a treatment of identity, which is deeply flawed but also brilliantly impressive.
Limitations, Presuppositions, and Method
Authors: Williamson H. G. M.
Published: October 2003

Explains the decision to focus on the first two major parts of the Book of Isaiah (Chs. 1–55) at the expense of the third (Chs. 56–66), examines research into the question of the unity or multiple authorship of Deutero‐Isaiah (Chs. 40–55) and its theological implications, highlighting the work of H.J. Hermisson, and sets out the criteria for the discussion in the following three chapters of the extent to, and ways in which, Deutero‐Isaiah was influenced by Proto‐Isaiah (Chs. 1–39).
Further Examples of Isaianic Influence
Authors: Williamson H. G. M.
Published: October 2003

Proceeds to examine further examples (from Chs. 1–39) of the influence of the literary inheritance of Isaiah of Jerusalem on the rest of the Isaianic text in order to set out the consensus view of the development of the Book of Isaiah as a whole. It considers various themes and linguistic elements and compares their usage in Isaiah and other Old Testament texts such as Jeremiah, Psalms, and Ezekiel. It concludes that merely belonging to a single school of tradition is not in itself sufficient explanation of the influence of Proto‐Isaiah on Deutero‐Isaiah.