bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Logic of Principia Mathematica
Authors: Hylton Peter
Published: October 2003

Here the concern is with the logic underlying Whitehead and Russell's Principia Mathematica and with the relation of that logic to Russell's underlying metaphysics. The author emphasizes the fact that work is, strictly speaking, a theory of propositional functions, not of classes; sentences containing symbols for classes are defined by means of propositional functions. It is terms of the latter sort of entity that Russell's Paradox must be solved; the theory of types is, strictly speaking, a theory of the stratification of propositional functions.
The Natural Numbers and Analysis
Authors: Hellman Geoffrey
Published: October 2003

Motivation and details of a systematic translation of number‐theoretic sentences into a suitable modal‐logical language are provided, eliminating reference to numbers as objects and expressing the structuralist viewpoint. Modal existence postulates, although minimal, distinguish the present approach from ‘“if‐then”ism’ or ‘deductivism’. The translation scheme is then justified as accurate and adequate. Extension of the methods to more powerful systems, e.g. real analysis, is sketched. Finally, it is shown how the methods so far can be adapted to the concerns of nominalism, avoiding functions and relations as objects.
Set Theory
Authors: Hellman Geoffrey
Published: October 2003

The modal‐structural approach is extended to set theory, as an alternative to reifying sets as actual abstract objects, thinking instead of ‘possible results of selection’. Drawing inspiration from Zermelo's important paper of 1930 and suggestions of Putnam, it is shown how to incorporate modality into second‐order Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory, avoiding proper classes and a fixed universe of sets, instead sustaining extendability principles (‘any set‐domain can be part of a larger one’, and strengthenings of this). It is then shown how this naturally leads to important kinds of ‘large cardinals’ (inaccessibles, Mahlo cardinals), motivated ‘from below’ rather than ‘from above’.
Plural and Conflicting Values
Authors: Stocker Michael
Published: October 2003

The central concern of this book is whether plural and incommensurable values necessarily result in unsolvable conflict and whether this conflict poses special problems for ethical theories. The view defended here is that plurality is no impediment to sound choice, and that a practicable ethics accounts for the fact that plurality and choice are ordinary and pervasive phenomena of moral life. Ethical theories, broadly divided into monistic and pluralistic, are pitted against each other in an attempt to show that the traditional understanding of the connection between value and conflict is flawed––a rationally grounded ethics does not require an evaluative monism purged of conflict, nor an algorithm to compare and choose between plural values. The book combines criticism of contemporary ethical theories with specific chapters on Aristotle's ethics. The first part focuses on the nature of moral conflict. Drawing on Aristotle's moral psychology, the author looks at dirty hands, moral immorality, and the nature of moral conflict in general. The second part focuses on whether plural values preclude sound moral judgement. The third part discusses whether conflict requires plural values, looking first at irrational conflict (akrasia or weakness of will) and next at rational conflict. The last part discusses maximization and plurality, and argues that maximization is mistaken, irrelevant, and parasitic. A central theme of the book is that ethics extends far beyond the guiding of action––‘our moral concern with acts goes beyond, primarily, what is to be done, and secondarily, what is better or best’.
Dirty Hands and Ordinary Life
Authors: Stocker Michael
Published: October 2003

A dirty hands case is (1) justified, (2) obligatory or permissible, and (3) morally wrong. It is argued that dirty hands are conceptually unproblematic and that they are instances of ordinary evaluative phenomena. Some ordinary cases of moral conflict are like dirty hands in that they are entirely justified, yet regrettable. The analysis shows that such cases involve double counting––the disvalue is counted once and overridden in the act‐guiding evaluation, and counted again later as the object of the moral emotions (guilt, shame, regret) and as being a disvalue. In addition, dirty hands are cases in which what is morally required is also immoral, and therefore regrettable. Shows that ethical theories can and should account for the existence of moral choices involving acts that are justified, even obligatory, yet nevertheless wrong, shameful, and regrettable.
Dirty Hands and Conflicts of Values and of Desires in Aristotle's Ethics
Authors: Stocker Michael
Published: October 2003

Takes up particular issues of conflict and plurality in Aristotle's ethics and moral psychology. Argues that Aristotle explicitly allows for dirty hands as well as conflicts of values and of desires. This involves discussing issues in Aristotle's treatment of voluntariness, mixed acts, eudaimonia, and pleasure. It is argued that for Aristotle, being a good person does not mean that choices among values can be executed lightly, nor does it ensure that the good never experience lack of eudaimonia, since even they have to deal with dirty hands and conflict of values.
Moral Conflicts: What They Are and What They Show
Authors: Stocker Michael
Published: October 2003

Philosophers commonly argue that conflicts of values are deeply problematic for ethical theories in so far as they force the theories into impracticality, incompleteness, or irrealism. To be complete, a theory must tell us in every case what must be done. To be practical, it must never tell us to do what is impossible. As conflict seems to involve just these features, some philosophers argue from the fact that avoiding conflict (and correlatively regret) is impossible to the conclusion that ethical theories must either be silent in some cases or that it requires us to do both of the jointly impossible acts. Others seek to explain the conflict away as merely apparent. Against these views, it is argued that mere incompossibility does not make for a conflict. All choice involves incompossibility, but not all choice involves conflict. Conflict must be understood in terms of what is conflicting. Understanding this requires seeing that many act evaluations are not action‐guiding.
Courage, the Doctrine of the Mean, and the Possibility of Evaluative and Emotional Coherence
Authors: Stocker Michael
Published: October 2003

According to Aristotle's Doctrine of the Mean, virtue and a good life involve a mean of feeling and action. This chapter focuses on David Pear's claim that the Doctrine is conceptually incoherent. It argues that there are serious difficulties in understanding what it could be for courage and its feelings to be in a mean. Courage involves plural and incommensurable values, victory and danger, and the respective emotions, confidence and fear––it is difficult to see how these can be resolved into a mean. It is argued that this problem can be solved by seeing how incommensurable value and emotions can fuse into complex wholes of disparate and incommensurable values and emotions, and can thus be assessed as lying or not lying in a mean.
Monism, Pluralism, and Conflict
Authors: Stocker Michael
Published: October 2003

Examines the proposal that value conflict generally requires plural values, and finds that it is correct, but only about a kind of rational conflict, which is rational conflict restricted to practicable options. The focus is on kinds of conflict and whether monism is apt to handle them. The discussion lays out the intricacies of conflict, and its relation to time, agency, and differential care. It is concluded that only pluralism can allow for the lack and loss involved in rational conflict over practicable options.
Maximization: Some Conceptual Problems
Authors: Stocker Michael
Published: October 2003

Examines arguments that maximization holds for conceptual reasons. Looks at maximizing theory and raises conceptual problems for evaluative maximization––difficulties in ranking mixes, problems with organic wholes, and mathematical versus internal evaluative judgments. As regards the evaluative decisions maximization is concerned with, it is argued that we are guided in our understanding of what is good by what is better. To the extent that the better is prior to the good, maximizations are parasitic on other evaluations. Concludes with a look at the discussion of false pleasures in Plato's Philebus.
The Nature of Necessity
Authors: Plantinga Alvin
Published: October 2003

This book is a study of the concept of necessity. In the first three chapters, I clarify and defend the distinction between modality de re and modality de dicto. Also, I show how to explain de re modality in terms of de dicto modality. In Ch. 4, I explicate the concept of a possible world and define what it is for an object x to have a property P essentially. I then use the concept of an essential property to give an account of essences and their relationship to proper names. In Ch. 6, I argue that the Theory of Worldbound Individuals—even when fortified with Counterpart Theory—is false. Chapters 7 and 8 address the subject of possible but non‐existent objects; I argue here for the conclusion that there is no good reason to think that there are any such objects. In Ch. 9, I apply my theory of modality to the Problem of Evil in an effort to show that the Free Will Defense defeats this particular objection to theism. In Ch. 10, I present a sound modal version of the ontological argument for the existence of God. Finally, in the appendix, I address Quinean objections to quantified modal logic.
Modality De Re: Objections
Authors: Plantinga Alvin
Published: October 2003

I discuss three objections to essentialism. The first objection is from Gilbert Harman, who claims that because numbers can be identified or reduced to sets it follows that numbers cannot have essential properties. In the second objection, William Kneale argues for the conclusion that objects have essential properties only relative to a certain way of specifying or selecting the object. Kneale's argument suffers from a de re/de dicto confusion and the disambiguated reading of his argument is unsound. The third objection, Quine's mathematical cyclist, contains a similar confusion.
Possible But Unactual Objects: The Classical Argument
Authors: Plantinga Alvin
Published: October 2003

Chapter 7 explores the question: Are there or could there be, possible but non‐existent objects? In the first half of the chapter, I critically assess the claim that an applied semantics for modal logic commits us to the claim that there are non‐existent possible objects. I conclude that it does commit us to there being some possible world distinct from the actual world that contains some object distinct from anything that exists in the actual world; but it does not, however, commit us to the claim that there really are some things that do not exist. In the second half of the chapter, I develop a historically based argument for the conclusion that there are non‐existent possible objects, which I call the Classical Argument. Importantly, the Classical Argument presupposes that singular negative existentials are possible. I end the chapter by showing that certain objections to the possibility of singular negative existentials fail, and that such existentials are indeed possible.
God and Necessity
Authors: Plantinga Alvin
Published: October 2003

In Ch.10, I apply the previous chapters’ account of modality to the Ontological Argument for the existence of God. I begin the chapter by attempting to develop a sound version of the Ontological Argument based on the work of St. Anselm. I conclude that this argument fails, as does a more recent attempt by Charles Hartshorne and Norman Malcolm. I then give a modal version of the Ontological Argument that is sound and is based on the claim that the property of unsurpassable greatness is possibly exemplified. I grant that this premise is not likely to be accepted by those who do not already hold that the property is actually exemplified, but I argue that it is still rational to accept the premise.
Ignorance
Authors: Unger Peter
Published: October 2003

Argues for the thesis of universal ignorance, i.e., for the claim that nobody can ever know anything. To this effect, puts forward versions of the classical Cartesian argument for skepticism as well as novel arguments involving normative premises and the concept of certainty. Universal ignorance gives rise to further skeptical results: in order to be justified or reasonable in believing something, the subject must know something to be so. Likewise, many attitudes (e.g., being happy about or regretting something) and “illocutionary acts” (e.g., commanding, apologizing) require that the subject knows something. Since nobody can ever know anything, it follows that nobody can ever be justified or reasonable in believing anything, that nobody can ever be happy about or regret anything, and that nobody can ever command or apologize for anything. Finally, the book argues that not only is knowledge impossible, but so is truth. The remedy it suggests is a radical change in our language.
A Language With Absolute Terms
Authors: Unger Peter
Published: October 2003

The notion of an absolute term (such as “flat”) is defined as one that denotes a limit, and contrasted with the notion of a relative term (such as “bumpy”). Since absolute terms denote limits – if something is flat, then there could be nothing that is flatter – they are hardly ever, if at all, instantiated. The existence of absolute terms is defended against objections to the effect that owing to their sparse or missing instantiation, we could not learn their meaning. “Certain” is identified as an absolute term, on the grounds that certainty entails the complete absence of doubt; it follows that there is at best very little of which we are certain. Arguing that knowledge requires certainty, the chapter concludes that there it at best very little that we know.
Where Ignorance Enjoins Silence
Authors: Unger Peter
Published: October 2003

Argues that if someone asserts that something is so, this entails that he or she represents himself or herself as knowing that it is so. This hypothesis is supported by consideration of a modified version of Moore's Paradox, and by observation of conversational situations. A prima facie case is made for the claim that the hypothesis can be generalized for what J. L. Austin has called “illocutionary acts” (for instance, apologizing, commanding, questioning, etc.): whenever a subject performs such an act, it represents itself as knowing something.
The Impossibility of Truth
Authors: Unger Peter
Published: October 2003

In an analysis of truth, this chapter identifies the central entity as the whole truth about the world: this entity is, or parts of it are, the object of knowledge, and the adjective ‘true’ means agreement with this entity. However, there cannot be such a thing as the whole truth about the world. This result gives rise to paradoxes, and implies, among other things, that nothing can ever be true and that we can never believe or think anything. The moral to be drawn is that our language needs to be changed since it embodies a radically false theory.
The Concept of Causation—Conditional Analyses
Authors: Mackie J. L.
Published: October 2003

This chapter discusses conditional analyses of causal statements, focusing on singular causal statements, which Mackie argues are conceptually and epistemologically prior to generalizations. He also attempts to elucidate the notion of a causal field, the background context within which singular causal statements are made. After an examination of the various ways in which necessity and sufficiency can be related to an account of causation, Mackie proposes an analysis that involves the employment of counterfactual conditionals. He also claims that a notion of causal priority is required for an analysis of causation. Mackie concludes that both necessity and sufficiency are required for his counterfactual analysis, though the requirement of sufficiency is less firm than that of necessity.
Common Sense and the Law
Authors: Mackie J. L.
Published: October 2003

This chapter concerns the employment of causal notions within a legal context, especially focusing on the account given by Hart and Honore. The examination is made in the light of Mackie's conclusions regarding causal regularities and conditional analyses offered in the previous chapters. Mackie argues that despite the variety of employment of causal notions put forward by Hart and Honore, there may be one broad account of causation that can account for all of those cases. Mackie also critically examines Ducasse's account of causation. Having made several criticisms of this account, Mackie concludes that a counterfactual component is still required for any successful account of causation.
Extensionality—Two Kinds of Cause
Authors: Mackie J. L.
Published: October 2003

Mackie here considers the nature of the entities that are thought to stand in causal relations. The discussion focuses on the notion of the extensionality of these terms. Mackie distinguishes two types of cause—producing causes, which are related to events, and explanatory causes, which are related to facts. He then examines the question of the conditions under which it can be thought that equivalent descriptions of causal terms can be substituted, salva veritate. Mackie concludes that there is a difference regarding the extensionality of explanatory cause statements in that they are not interchangeable in the way that they might be in a regularity theory of causation.
Moral Thinking
Authors: Hare R. M.
Published: October 2003

By distinguishing between two different levels of moral thinking, we see how utilitarian reasoning at the critical level—enlisting the impartial sympathy for others’ predicaments, which we must have if we fully understand them and universalize our preferences as morality requires—generates moral principles for use at the intuitive level, which square with common intuitions, e.g. about justice and rights. The reasoning itself depends on the logic of concepts, which all who ask moral questions are already using.
Introduction
Authors: Hare R. M.
Published: October 2003

The task of moral philosophy is to help us think better about what we ought to do. This can be primarily accomplished by improvements in rationality and our capability to understand the proper structure of moral reasoning. Hare's project is shaped by three methodological points. Firstly, the best prospect for dealing with moral questions is to study the meaning and logical properties of moral terms. Secondly, the prescriptivist utilitarian account advanced in this book deals with both normative‐ethical and metaethical considerations. Thirdly, Hare attempts to show why intuitionism as a moral theory ought to be rejected.
Moral Conflicts
Authors: Hare R. M.
Published: October 2003

Hare introduces a distinction between two levels of moral thinking; the first being the intuitive and the second being the critical. These levels of moral thinking are concerned with moral questions of substance, but they handled them differently, each appropriate to the different circumstances in which, and purposes for which, the thinking is done. The intuitive level of thinking is concerned with the ordinary, day‐to‐day evaluation of the moral status of different acts. The critical level of thinking consists of making a choice under the constraints imposed by the logical properties of the moral concept under question. The explanation of these two moral levels is done by discussing the problem of moral conflicts. It is argued that moral conflicts are possible at the intuitive level, but not at the critical level.
The Archangel and the Prole
Authors: Hare R. M.
Published: October 2003

The relation between the two levels of moral thinking, and how we know when to think at one level and when to think at the other is best explained in terms of our use of critical thinking to select the best set of prima facie principles for use in intuitive thinking. Critical thinking has epistemological priority over, and governs, the intuitive level. In moral reasoning, we need to select moral principles before we can establish substantial criteria of relevance for the principles—it is the principle that determines what is relevant. Hare argues that in addition to the properties of universalizability and prescriptivity for moral judgements, an additional distinguishing property of overridingness is required to differentiate evaluative judgements from moral judgements.
Another's Sorrow
Authors: Hare R. M.
Published: October 2003

Details how the logical properties of moral concepts help us to construct moral arguments. In ordinary moral thinking, we have our intuitive or prima facie principles to start from, and shall normally treat as prima facie relevant the features that figure in them; but because we cannot take our prima facie principles for granted in critical thinking, we must be prepared to consider other features besides these as candidates for relevancy. In discussing a way of thinking about moral questions critically and rationally, the question of our knowledge of what it is like to be somebody else who is suffering is examined. When we come to universalize our prescriptions, we have to consider only those prescriptions and preferences of others, which they would retain if they were always prudent.
Universalization
Authors: Hare R. M.
Published: October 2003

By referring to prescriptions that are expressions of motivational states or preferences in language, we are better able to display the logical relations between them. All prescriptions, universal and singular, have to be made in cognizance of the facts if they are to be rational. Moral judgements are universalizable only in the sense that they entail identical judgements about all cases identical in their universal properties. Universalizability can be demonstrated in the sense that it is possible to make the progression from prescriptions that I accept for my own experiences to prescriptions that I must accept for experiences I should have, were I to be in someone else's position with his preferences.
Loyalty and Evil Desires
Authors: Hare R. M.
Published: October 2003

Deals with objections that are commonly levelled against utilitarianism concerning its potential counterintuitive conclusions. Hare provides instructions on how to manufacture objections of this sort and then on how to demolish them. This is done because such objections, and the answer to such objections, all take the same form. It is argued that this strategy can be used to dismount the objections that utilitarianism does not allow individuals to give any weight to personal duties or loyalties, and that utilitarianism cannot provide a principled distinction between good and evil desires.
Rights and Justice
Authors: Hare R. M.
Published: October 2003

The chapter deals with two pressing objections to Hare's prescriptivist utilitarian moral theory: that it can give no room to the place of rights and that it can give substantial considerations to the place of justice. The objections are avoided when the employment of Hare's method at the critical level is used to select principles for general use that can be properly entrenched without too facile appeals to immediate utility. What we should be trying to find are moral principles that are acceptable for general use in the world as it actually is.
Fanaticism and Amoralism
Authors: Hare R. M.
Published: October 2003

There are fanatics and amoralists whose inability or refusal to face facts, or think clearly, or for other reasons present a problem for moral theory. The amoralist refrains from making moral judgements at all or makes only judgements of moral indifference. The fanatic makes moral judgements, but clings to them in a peculiarly obdurate way, which resists critical thinking. Hare goes on to formulate the amoralist position and shows why only one version of the position is tenable. Amoralism is an option left open by our system of moral reasoning. All that can be done to prevent agents from choosing to be amoralists is to provide reasons of a non‐moral sort.
Objectivity and Rationality
Authors: Hare R. M.
Published: October 2003

Moral philosophers have been largely concerned with the question of whether moral judgements are objective or subjective. In most senses, moral judgements are neither objective nor subjective, and the belief that they have to be one or the other is the result of a fundamental error (e.g. descriptivism), which both objectivists and subjectivists make. The rationality of moral thought rests on there being a system of reasoning for deciding which of the principles of rationality to adopt called critical thinking. In preferring what we prefer, morality compels us to accommodate ourselves to the preference of others, and this has the effect that when we are thinking morally and doing it rationally we shall all prefer the same moral prescriptions about matters that affect other people.
The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism
Authors: Stroud Barry
Published: October 2003

The thesis of scepticism is a thesis about the human condition: the view that we can know nothing, or that nothing is certain, or that everything is open to doubt. This book examines the sceptical thesis that we can know nothing about the physical world around us. The author argues that the sceptical thesis is motivated by a persistent philosophical problem that calls the very possibility of knowledge about the external world into question, and that the sceptical thesis is the only acceptable answer to this problem as traditionally posed.

On the basis of a detailed analysis of the sceptical argument advanced by Descartes, Stroud discusses and criticizes responses to scepticism by a wide range of writers, including J. L. Austin, G. E. Moore, Kant, R. Carnap, and W. V. Quine. In this discussion, Stroud is concerned with the significance of philosophical scepticism in three different respects.

Firstly, he shows philosophical scepticism to be significant as opposed to insignificant or unimportant: the philosophical study of knowledge is not an idle exercise, and the comforting popular belief that we already understand quite well how and why philosophical scepticism goes wrong is simply not true.

Secondly, Stroud argues for the significance of philosophical scepticism by defending it against the charge that it is meaningless or incoherent or unintelligible, and in doing so aims to articulate as clearly as possible what exactly it does mean.

Thirdly, and most importantly, Stroud argues that philosophical scepticism is significant in virtue of what it signifies, or indicates, or shows: even if the sceptical thesis turned out to be false, meant nothing, or not what it seemed to mean, the study of scepticism about the the world around us would still reveal something deep and important about human knowledge and human nature and the urge to understand them philosophically. One aim of the book is to investigate how and why this is so. Engaging in a philosophical reflection about our knowledge of the external world in this way, Stroud argues, can also reveal something about the nature of philosophical problems generally and about philosophy itself; studying the sources of the philosophical problem of scepticism can yield some degree of philosophical understanding or illumination even if we never arrive at something we can regard as a solution to that problem.
G.E.Moore and Scepticism: ‘Internal’ and ‘External’
Authors: Stroud Barry
Published: October 2003

In this chapter, Stroud analyses the response to scepticism given by G. E. Moore in his famous ‘Proof of an External World’.

Moore seeks to prove that the proposition that there are no external things is in fact false. His proof consists of two premisses and a conclusion: ‘Here is one hand’, ‘And here is another’, therefore ‘Two human hands exist’; the conclusion follows from the premisses, and establishes conclusively that there are external things.

Contrasting his interpretation with those of N. Malcolm and A. Ambrose, Stroud argues that Moore in his proof fails to refute philosophical scepticism, but nevertheless makes a significant and legitimate use of the words ‘I know’ in formulating it and succeeds in establishing his conclusion from premisses he knows. Stroud argues that Moore, although he himself does not speak in those terms, can be understood to be giving a conclusive internal answer to the question whether he knows that there are external objects: a response from within his current knowledge to a question about knowledge that merely asks whether a piece of knowledge is already included among all the things he knows, or can be included among them by finding good reason to accept that thing on the basis of other things he already knows; but while this is a perfectly common and legitimate use of the expression ‘know’, it does nothing to answer the external question about knowledge that purports to cast doubt on all knowledge claims at once, and it is this question that must be answered if the sceptic is to be refuted.
Internal and External: ‘Empirical’ and ‘Transcendental’
Authors: Stroud Barry
Published: October 2003

Chapter 4 considers the response to scepticism found in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.

According to Kant, all theories that leave the existence of things in space doubtful or insufficiently justified – Kant’s own terms for such views are ‘problematic idealism’ and ‘sceptical idealism’ – must be avoided if there is to be an explanation of how knowledge of the world around us is possible. In particular, Kant argues that in order to avoid scepticism all accounts of our knowledge as inferential or indirect must be rejected: the external things we know about must have a reality which is not inferred, but immediately perceived.

Stroud argues that this condition, which he refers to as the ‘conditional correctness of scepticism’, is indeed a condition of knowledge. Kant’s own attempt to meet the sceptical challenge, however, must be counted a failure: it is doubtful whether the doctrine of ‘transcendental idealism’, which is meant to establish ‘empirical realism’ and requires us to accept the ideality of all appearances, is even fully intelligible; more importantly, it is difficult to distinguish transcendental idealism, in its explanatory power, from the kind of scepticism that seemed inevitable to Descartes at the end of the First Meditation : it would not enable us to see any of the assertions or beliefs in science or everyday life as instances of knowledge of a mind-independent domain.
The False Prison Volume One
Authors: Pears David
Published: October 2003

This is the first of David Pears's acclaimed two‐volume work on the development of Wittgenstein's philosophy, covering the pre‐1929 writings. Part I of the first volume consists in a brief but eloquent overview of Wittgenstein's philosophy as a whole; Part II critically examines the earlier system, delineating and evaluating the central ideas (logical atomism, picture theory of meaning, and solipsism) with intellectual rigour and clarity. Pears succeeds in both offering an original realist interpretation of Wittgenstein's earlier thought, one that has found many followers, and in demarcating a structural framework that makes the internal organization of Wittgenstein's philosophy as a whole more accessible.
Close‐Up: The Early System
Authors: Pears David
Published: October 2003

Delineates Wittgenstein's earlier philosophy by relating its central ideas to the philosophies of his predecessors and contemporaries, most notably Russell. Concentrating mainly on Tractatus Logico‐Philosophicus and the Notebooks, Pears sets the stage for his influential realist interpretation of Wittgenstein's early philosophy.
The Morality of Freedom
Authors: Raz Joseph
Published: October 2003

This book explores, within a liberal framework, the nature, significance, and justification of political freedom or liberty. Against recent liberal positions, it is argued that political morality is neither rights‐based, nor equality‐based. What underlies rights, and the value of freedom, is a concern with autonomy. Autonomy requires, among other things, that individuals have an array of valuable options to choose from. The realm of values is marked by pluralism, incommensurability, and a dependence on social forms. Individualism is rejected and the importance of collective goods is given due emphasis. Though it is often assumed that liberal states must be committed to neutrality about valuable options, it is contended here that a concern with autonomy is perfectly consistent with perfectionism. The book also contains an extensive discussion of the connection between freedom and political authority.
The Justification of Authority
Authors: Raz Joseph
Published: October 2003

Legitimate authorities provide pre‐emptive reasons for action, in that the reasons they provide are not to be added to all other relevant reasons when assessing what to do, but should exclude and replace some of those other reasons. Furthermore, legitimate authorities are dependent in the sense that they ought to issue directives that are based on reasons applying independently to the subjects of the directives. The pre‐emption thesis and the dependence thesis are closely related to the normal justification thesis, which states that the normal justification for authority involves showing that the alleged subject is likely to comply better with reasons applicable to him if he accepts the authoritative directives rather than trying to follow the reasons directly. The chapter ends with a discussion of the nature of the explanatory‐normative reasoning employed in the book.
Neutral Political Concern
Authors: Raz Joseph
Published: October 2003

The doctrine of political neutrality advocates neutrality between different conceptions of the good. Different conceptions of political neutrality are discussed and an important distinction is drawn between ‘narrow’ neutrality and a more demanding standard for ‘comprehensive’ neutrality. Rawls's argument for a version of comprehensive morality is discussed and criticized.
The Nature of Rights
Authors: Raz Joseph
Published: October 2003

Begins with a definition of rights and a discussion of the relation between rights and duties. The right to promise, and rights generated by promising are used as examples to show how rights and duties function. Rights are held to be grounded in interests, since their instrumental value derives from the intrinsic value of well‐being. Thus only those whose well‐being is intrinsically valuable have rights, and rights cannot be regarded as trumps but must be weighed against other valuable ends. The view that rights should be grounded in respect for persons is discussed and rejected.
Equality
Authors: Raz Joseph
Published: October 2003

Egalitarian principles should be distinguished from principles, which merely state relevantly complete grounds for the distribution of goods, and which thereafter enjoy a generality of application to those who meet the relevant conditions. Strict or paradigmatic egalitarian principles aim at an equal distribution of a certain good, on grounds generated by existing inequalities in the distribution of that good. Strict egalitarianism should be distinguished from rhetorical egalitarianism, in which equality is invoked simply as a way of drawing attention to the bad effects of inequality; effects that might have arisen in the absence of inequality. Strict egalitarian principles cannot be applied to diminishing principles of entitlement, which already have distributive commitments built into them. Strict egalitarian principles could be applied to non‐diminishing principles of entitlement, but these principles are of doubtful significance to political morality.
Personal Well‐Being
Authors: Raz Joseph
Published: October 2003

A person's well‐being consists in his successful pursuit of valuable, willingly embraced goals. Many of these goals have a nested structure, and presuppose the existence of social forms or collective goods. Self‐interest is a narrower notion than that of personal well‐being. Self‐interest is advanced by fulfilment of a person's biologically determined needs and desires, including his feelings of satisfaction or contentment that arise from his pursuit of goals, which he was not biologically determined to have. Unlike the division between morality and self‐interest, there is no deep division between morality and personal well‐being.
Incommensurability
Authors: Raz Joseph
Published: October 2003

Two options are incommensurable if it is neither true that one of them is better than the other, nor true that they are of equal value. A test of incommensurability between two options, which yields a sufficient but not necessary condition of incommensurability, is that there is, or could be, another option that is better than one but is not better than the other. Two incommensurable options may be of roughly equal value, but do not have to be. The existence of significant incommensurability is attested to in our refusal to compare the value of options, and this refusal to compare the value of options helps, in turn, to determine the nature of those values. Incommensurability also helps to illuminate the nature of moral dilemmas.
Freedom and Autonomy
Authors: Raz Joseph
Published: October 2003

The ideal of autonomy, together with pluralism, underlies the doctrine of political freedom. Autonomy underlies both positive and negative freedom. Toleration is underpinned by the competitive pluralism that is essential to autonomy. Autonomy is consistent with perfectionism, yet also underlies the ‘harm principle’, which asserts that the only purpose for which the law may use its coercive power is to prevent harm. Perfectionism and the harm principle are consistent with one another because the recommended type of perfectionism abjures coercion, focusing instead on maintaining the framework conditions that are conducive for pluralism and autonomy.
Ideal Science: David Lewis's Account of Laws1
Authors: Fraassen Bas C. van
Published: October 2003

According to Lewis's original account, the laws of nature in a given possible world are the principles of the best scientific theory of that world, where ‘best’ denotes an optimal combination of strength and simplicity. This serves to provide content to a notion of physical necessity, but needed to be qualified with a restriction of such possible descriptions to languages whose predicates have a special status (in the simplest case, that of standing for ‘natural’ classes of entities in that world). Lewis provides an anti‐nominalist metaphysics, while staying as close as possible to the nominalist preferences that had characterized e.g. Quine's philosophical work. This Chapter argues that his account is at best deceptively successful, and solves the problem of inference at the cost of an inability to address the problem of identification.
Universals: Laws Grounded in Nature
Authors: Fraassen Bas C. van
Published: October 2003

Universals accounts of laws of nature begin with a robust anti‐nominalism: there are real properties and relations that are to be distinguished from sets or arbitrary classifications. Those real entities are then drawn on to provide a concept of laws operative in nature. Accounts of this sort here critically examined include those of Fred Dretske, Michael Tooley, and David Armstrong. These accounts display most saliently the impossibility of a simultaneous metaphysical solution to the joint problems of inference and of identification. Special attention is given to the failures of David Armstrong's account of probabilistic laws and of Michael Tooley's concept of probability inspired by Rudolf Carnap's views.
What if There Are No Laws? a Manifesto
Authors: Fraassen Bas C. van
Published: October 2003

An initial introduction to the semantic approach to science, this chapter provides a view of scientific theories in terms of classes of models and their relation to the phenomena. The main tasks of philosophy of science can be carried out within the framework of this approach without drawing on any metaphysical notions or principles. A specific problem examined here (which introduces a change from the author's previous book The Scientific Image) is how to characterize acceptance of a probabilistic theory. Probabilities in certain contemporary physical theories are irreducible and thus purport to stand for physical aspects of nature. But on and empiricist view, acceptance of such a theory does not need to involve belief in the reality of such objective chances. This problem is solved in an extension of the probabilist epistemology of the previous chapter.
Introduction to the Semantic Approach
Authors: Fraassen Bas C. van
Published: October 2003

This approach, developed (under various names) in the twentieth century provides a model‐oriented view, identifying scientific theories in terms of classes of models and their relation to both nature and to the observable phenomena. Originally, it was offered in reaction to the syntactic, axiomatic view of theories that dominated logical positivist discussions of science; it has the merit of being equally hospitable to scientific realist and empiricist views. This chapter discusses specifically, theory structure, the relation between theoretical models and data models, interpretations of theories, and the many‐faceted character of experimentation.
Indifference: The Symmetries of Probability
Authors: Fraassen Bas C. van
Published: October 2003

Basic to the idea of logical probability is the principle of indifference: equal possibilities are to be assigned equal probabilities. This principle appeared on the one hand to yield surprisingly fruitful results and on the other hand to engender paradoxes—the first, for example, in eighteenth‐ century empirical examples (Buffon's needle problem) and cosmological explanations (data concerning planets and comets), and the second, richly displayed by Joseph Bertrand. It is argued here, with reference to work by Henri Poincaré, Edwin Jaynes, Roger Rosencrantz, and others, that though refinable and restrictable in various useful ways, the principle of indifference cannot be salvaged so as to yield a foundation for probability judgements.
Intuitionism and Common Sense
Authors: Schneewind J. B.
Published: October 2003

Thomas Reid and William Whewell were the two central figures in ethical intuitionism in the 19th century. Sidgwick was likely to have studied them during the early stage of his development, since his own ethical position incorporates much of the substance of Reid’s and some of the methodology of Whewell. This chapter discusses Reid’s moral philosophy and some of the problems its raises. It also traces briefly the history of the Scottish school to its end in the work of Alexander Smith.
The Early Utilitarians
Authors: Schneewind J. B.
Published: October 2003

The understanding of the aims and limits of moral philosophy in Britain developed out of the 19th century debates between intuitionists and utilitarians. Sidgwick’s Methods of Ethics attempted to reconcile these two schools, and marked the first time all the characteristics of a modern treatment of ethics that were fully and deliberately brought together in a single work. Sidgwick is often described as the last of the classical utilitarians, and may be considered the first modern moralist.
The Reworking of Utilitarianism
Authors: Schneewind J. B.
Published: October 2003

An appeal to moral rules, which is far from being a reverence to common-sense maxims, may refute two serious criticisms of the utilitarian view — that we cannot actually use the utilitarian principle in specific cases to find out what to do, and that the principle leads to morally repugnant results. An appeal to rules to respond to the first criticism was readily acceptable even to utilitarians bent on reform. However, reference to the rules of common sense to answer the second criticism was not easily incorporated into the reformist outlook. It only became a fully acknowledged part of secular utilitarian theory in the work of John Stuart Mill.
Acts and Agents
Authors: Schneewind J. B.
Published: October 2003

James Martineau’s views strongly influenced the making of Sidgwick’s The Methods of Ethics. An account of Martineau’s position can provide a better understanding on Sidgwick’s controversy with his position. Martineau’s philosophy was shaped by his reaction against the associationistic and utilitarian views of the earlier Unitarian writers, and was firmly fixed by the times of the reviews of Whewell. He is a pre-Sidgwickian intuitionist, despite the late appearance of his major work in ethics.
The Self‐Evident Axioms
Authors: Schneewind J. B.
Published: October 2003

An appeal to self-evidence and to what is intuitively given are not very satisfactory modes of solving philosophical problems; it often shuts off inquiry instead of answering ultimate questions. Sidgwick was aware of the shortcomings of the appeal to intuition and tried to avoid them. He interprets self-evidence in terms of the basic operations of ordinary reasoning, applied to practice. He takes the problem to be that of working out what the most fundamental demands of reason are, given the conditions of human life. He develops a traditional model of approach to basic axioms, and brings out new possibilities within it.
The Transition to Utilitarianism
Authors: Schneewind J. B.
Published: October 2003

The transition from unexamined, unsystematized, positive moral opinion towards a fully examined rational morality begins with a critique of common sense morality. The second step in the transition is to determine first moral principles of a kind common sense cannot provide. As part of this step, Sidgwick obtains basic axioms for a maximizing consequentialist ethical theory. The nature of the good, which the axioms require rational agents to maximize, must be determined. This chapter examines how this part of the transition is carried out.
Utilitarianism and its Method
Authors: Schneewind J. B.
Published: October 2003

The attention given to utilitarian theory in the last decades by economists, political scientists, and philosophers has made much of Sidgwick’s account of the doctrine outmoded. This chapter focuses on how Sidgwick’s development of utilitarian theory shows the way he would complete a systematic morality. Sidgwick’s chapters provide interesting anticipations of may themes and techniques of more modern discussions.
The Dualism of the Practical Reason
Authors: Schneewind J. B.
Published: October 2003

Sidgwick believes that the most profound problem in ethics arises from the relations between the fundamental principles of utilitarianism and rational egoism — a problem he has referred to as ‘the Dualism of the Practical Reason’. This chapter examines Sidgwick’s position on rational egoism. He has argued that when we finally abandon the neutral stance and ask to a synthesis of methods, we will see that intuitionism and utilitarianism join together easily and firmly. However, there remains a ‘fundamental opposition’ between the system resulting from this synthesis and the system that can be built on the principle of rational interest.
Sidgwick and the History of Ethics
Authors: Schneewind J. B.
Published: October 2003

Sidgwick’s position is a synthesis of the major aspects of the work of the great thinkers of the past. However, his knowledge of the history of ethics does more than give an additional kind of argument in favour of his conclusions. The way the problems of ethics are viewed and treated in the Methods of Ethics is affected by his general idea of the development of moral philosophy. This chapter looks at Sidgwick’s sketch of this development.