bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Fitch's Paradox and the Philosophy of Mathematics
Authors: Bueno Otávio 
Published: September 2010

AbstractThis chapter considers the impact of the Fitch paradox on particular epistemological views about mathematics. It assumes therefore, for the sake of argument, that the reasoning leading to Fitch's paradox is valid (which is indeed the case given the logical assumptions made). Having this focus provides a specific context to assess the nature and limitation of the paradox, while also showing the paradox's significance for current debates in the philosophy of mathematics. The chapter examines two versions of Platonism (standard and full-blooded Platonism) and two versions of nominalism (mathematical fictionalism and agnostic fictionalism). It argues that, given the specific assumptions about mathematical knowledge that these views make, (FP) brings trouble for some, but not for all, of them. In particular, full-blooded Platonism and — to a certain extent — mathematical fictionalism are in trouble with the paradox, but traditional Platonism and agnostic fictionalism don't seem to be. The chapter concludes with a dilemma that this situation poses for Platonism, and the prospects it offers for nominalism.
Multi-level Governance of Genetically Modified Organisms in the European Union: Ambiguity and Hierarchy
Authors: Lee Maria 
Published: September 2010

Abstract
Authority for the regulation of GMOs in the European Union is far from straightforward. Profound and long-lasting disagreement over the proper role for agricultural biotechnology led to legislation that attempts to share authority and avoid hierarchy. However, the disagreement is such that compromise and accommodation is not proving possible through the mechanisms of consultation, transparency, and deliberation provided in the legislation. In these circumstances, there is a reversion to hierarchy, and the Commission ultimately takes responsibility for moving GMOs through the regulatory process. Yet, such turn to hierarchy is not straightforward either: decisions are slow and contested, and disagreement rumbles on. These difficult circumstances force us to face squarely the proper place for authoritative decision making on GMOs. The current approach, including the Commission's misguided efforts to centralize authority, simply postpones that process.
Chrysippus on Physical Elements
Authors: Cooper John M. 
Published: September 2010

Abstract
This chapter advances a new interpretation of what is perhaps the main source for Chrysippus' theory of physical elements (fire, air, water, and earth): a passage from Stobaeus' 5th-century ad anthology, Eclogae Physicae et Ethicae, at 1. 129-30 Wachsmuth. The chapter also sheds light on (a) the nature of the corporealism of the Stoics in connection with their theory of principles — what it is for both god and matter to be bodies — and (b) Chrysippus' conception of cosmogony as distinct from that of Zeno and that of Cleanthes.
Stoic Themes in Peripatetic Sources?
Authors: Kupreeva Inna 
Published: September 2010

AbstractThis chapter presents a brief preliminary survey of several texts which might suggest a close affinity between the Peripatetic and Stoic doctrines of principles. The goal is to see to what extent these parallels may amount to a genuinely shared position on any of the issues under examination. The discussion starts with the Antiochean account of the physics of ‘Old Academy’ presented in Cicero's Acad. 1. 24-9. Section 2 deals with ‘physical’ fragments of Peripatetic Critolaus; it tries to see whether they could provide any ground for Antiochus' incorporation of Peripatetic physics. The third section deals with the ‘suspect’ cases of Stoicizing in the Peripatetic tradition: Xenarchus' arguments against the fifth body and the use of the concept ‘prime matter’ by Boethus of Sidon and Nicolaus of Damascus. Section 4 looks at some parallel discussions in Alexander of Aphrodisias.
Why Physics?
Authors: Inwood Brad 
Published: September 2010

AbstractThis chapter focuses on Seneca, and attributes to him a set of positions that is similar to the one attributed to the Stoics in general. It argues that Seneca recognizes two quite different reasons for studying physics and for attending to its doctrines, reasons which might well seem to be opposed to each other. Studying physics provides direct instrumental support to what we might call the enterprise of ethics, but it also fulfils something very important and fundamental in our natures, the built-in drive for contemplation of nature. This double motivation is most conspicuous in two texts: the Natural Questions as a whole and the later books of the Letters to Lucillius. These texts show how these apparently opposed motivations turn out to be complementary to each other.
The Self‐Consciousness Argument: Functionalism and the Corruption of Content
Authors: Bealer George 
Published: September 2010

AbstractThis chapter targets functionalism as the most cogent form of contemporary materialism. In particular, it takes aim at ‘ontic’ or reductive functionalism: a theory that attempts to specify the essences of mental states, in a non-circular fashion, by means of physicalistic functional definitions (i.e., by means of the Ramsification of causal theories of the mind). The chapter points out that functionalism must account for thoughts that have psychological attitudes embedded within them. It effectively sets asides worries that the intensionality of the context of thought renders the argument invalid. It also draws attention to the devastating consequences of the other strategies for avoiding the dilemma. including language-of-thought functionalism. When the language-of-thought theorists attempt to define the content-of relation, they face a dilemma concerning the content of psychological predicates in the language. The language-of-thought theorist must either accept a definitional circularity incompatible with materialism, or resort again to Ramsified definitions that misdescribe the contents of self-conscious thoughts. In addition, such language-of-thought functionalism readily leads to epiphenomenalism. Finally, attempts to avoid the definitional circularity by means of something like a Tarskian hierarchy of distinct psychological attitudes founder on the type-free nature of introspection. The chapter concludes that the only viable functionalism is a non-reductive one that accepts mental properties as ontologically primary, on a par with physical properties.
Persons and the Unity of Consciousness
Authors: Hasker William 
Published: September 2010

AbstractWe have a conception of the human person as constituted in part by a self, a unified, coherent center of consciousness which is a rational agent, capable of being responsive, and responsible, to other agents. There are, however, empirical phenomena — in particular, commissurotomy and multiple personality syndrome — that seem to threaten this unity both theoretically and practically. As a counterpoise to these phenomena, this chapter puts forward the unity of consciousness argument, deriving from Leibniz and Kant. While this argument might seem to conflict with the empirical evidence of disunity, the chapter maintains that there is no inconsistency between the evidence and the argument. The combination of the two, in fact, both places a barrier in the way of a materialist account of mind and consciousness, and at the same time points out a severe difficulty for standard (especially Cartesian) varieties of dualism. The chapter closes by sketching out my own preferred view of the metaphysics of persons, emergent dualism.
Modest Dualism
Authors: Burge Tyler 
Published: September 2010

AbstractThis chapter begins with a detailed response to the previous chapter's review of Burge's previous work on the mind-body problem, centering on empirical doubts about compositional materialism regarding psychological states. It then presents a new argument for a modest mind-body dualism. The argument centers on the point that propositional structures that support rational transactions, such as formal deductive inference, are constitutive aspects of propositional psychological states, but that since Newton, it has been a fundamental feature of physical science that the physical world is not constitutively propositional in structure. It follows from these premises, both defended briefly, that propositional psychological states and events are not physical states or events. Contrasts with traditional Cartesian dualism are sketched.
Descartes' Revenge Part II: The Supervenience Argument Strikes Back
Authors: Judisch Neal 
Published: September 2010

AbstractThe most compelling reason to accept materialism in the philosophy of mind derives from our common commitment to mental causation: inasmuch as mental phenomena are causally efficacious, and inasmuch as whatever has a cause has a physical cause, there is considerable pressure to identify mental with physical phenomena. At the hands of Jaegwon Kim, this argument has been formulated in such a way as to force the choice between eliminativism, since causally inefficacious mental properties would be in some sense unreal; and reductionism, since mental properties are causally efficacious only if they can be physically reduced. This chapter shows that if Kim's argument against antireductionist theories of mind is successful, then his own reductionist theory falls victim to the same plight: for Kim's Supervenience Argument entails that a theory of mind salvages mental causation only if, on that theory, mental properties (1) are multiply realizable; (2) are physically reducible; and (3) have instances that are causally efficacious in virtue of being mental property-instances; yet Kim's reductionist theory is unable jointly to satisfy these conditions. The result is that the argument from mental causation is either too weak to force acceptance of materialism, or too strong to allow for the consistency of mental causation with any theory of mind but classical type physicalism, a theory with well-advertised problems of its own.
Materialism, Minimal Emergentism, and the Hard Problem of Consciousness
Authors: Horgan Terry 
Published: September 2010

AbstractThis chapter formulates and motivates the current favored articulation of the metaphysical doctrine of materialism. It describes an alternative metaphysical position called minimal emergentism, which has two versions; and then contrasts it with stronger kinds of emergentism. Minimal emergentism posits certain inter-level necessitation relations — either nomically necessary connections, or metaphysically necessary connections — that are metaphysically brute. The chapter sets forth what it takes to be some very powerful challenges to materialism — challenges involving features of human consciousness. Finally, the chapter argues that in light of these challenges, minimal emergentism is a viable and theoretically appealing non-materialist metaphysic of mind.
Varieties of Naturalism
Authors: De Caro Mario 
Published: September 2010

AbstractIt is a commonly held view that in the last few decades a vast naturalistic turn has taken place in the philosophical world, especially in the analytic community. However, in the philosophical tradition naturalism has taken several forms. Therefore, in order to distinguish most forms of contemporary naturalism from the traditional ones, the label ‘scientific naturalism’ can be usefully employed. ‘Scientific naturalism’ is characterized by three fundamental claims: (a) philosophy should not appeal to any supernatural concept; (b) philosophy has no foundational role to play with regard to science; and (c) philosophy should be seen as continuous with science. According to some philosophers, however, scientific naturalism is nothing more than a sophisticated form of scientism. In light of these premises, it is not very surprising that contemporary metaphilosophy is mostly concerned with either analyzing marginal aspects of scientific naturalism (which do not really address its basic claims) or discussing the polarization between scientific naturalism and anti-naturalism. It need not be so, however. Significant indications of what one may call ‘liberal naturalism’ can in fact be found in the works of some important contemporary philosophers. What is still missing, though, is a clear definition of what the boundaries of liberal naturalism are with regard to both scientific naturalism, on the one hand, and antinaturalism, on the other hand. In general, it can be said that liberal naturalists tend to be partially critical of the three scientific naturalist claims given above, without refusing them altogether (as most antinaturalists would). The notion of compatibility of philosophy and science is a complex one. Some proposals for making it more precise are discussed in this chapter.
Substance Dualism: A Non‐Cartesian Approach
Authors: Lowe E. J. 
Published: September 2010

AbstractSubstance dualism in the philosophy of mind is, naturally enough, commonly thought of on a Cartesian model, according to which it is a dualism of two radically different kinds of substance, one (the ‘body’ purely material and the other (the ‘mind’ wholly immaterial in nature. This view is subject to many familiar difficulties. However, the almost universal rejection of Cartesian substance dualism has blinded many philosophers to the possibility of formulating other and more plausible versions of substance dualism. Non-Cartesian substance dualism (NCSD), as it may most perspicuously be called, is a dualism not of minds and bodies, but of persons — or, more generally, of subjects of experience — and their ‘organized’ bodies. This is an ontological distinction that is chiefly motivated not by some fanciful notion that there could be disembodied persons — although NCSD does not rule out that possibility — but by much more solid considerations which require us to distinguish between the identity-conditions of persons and their bodies. Much of the intuitive appeal of Cartesian dualism is retained and explained by NCSD, without any of the former's counterintuitive features and metaphysical difficulties. NCSD is, however, still a non-materialist position, because it is incompatible even with very weak forms of non-reductive physicalism.
Decoherence and Ontology (or: How I learned to stop worrying and love FAPP)
Authors: Wallace David 
Published: September 2010

AbstractThis chapter argues for the view that the Everett (‘many worlds’) interpretation is nothing more or less than a literal reading of the formalism of unitary quantum mechanics. The central component of this story is decoherence: the process by which the evolution of the quantum state acquires a branching structure. The chapter gives a conceptual introduction to decoherence and its conceptual role, emphasizing the significance of its effects on the dynamics of degrees of freedom which are undergoing decoherence. It then argues that, although the branching structure generated by decoherence is ‘for all practical purposes’ in the sense that it is not part of the microscopic formalism of quantum theory, nonetheless it is a perfectly real, observer-independent feature of reality — it is emergent from that microscopic formalism in a way very familiar from many other parts of science.
Decisions, Decisions, Decisions: Can Savage Salvage Everettian Probability?
Authors: Price Huw 
Published: September 2010

AbstractCritics object that the Everett view cannot make sense of quantum probabilities, in one or both of two ways: either it cannot make sense of probability at all, or it cannot explain why probability should be governed by the Born rule. David Deutsch has attempted to meet these objections by appealing to an Everettian version of Savage's rational decision theory. Deutsch argues not only that an analogue of classical decision under uncertainty makes sense in an Everett world; but also that under reasonable assumptions, the betting odds of a rational Everettian agent should be constrained by the Born rule. Deutsch's proposal has been defended and developed by David Wallace, and in a different form by Hilary Greaves. This chapter offers some objections to the Deutsch–Wallace–Greaves argument, focussing in particular on the supposed analogy with classical decision under uncertainty.
Time Symmetry and the Many‐Worlds Interpretation
Authors: Vaidman Lev 
Published: September 2010

AbstractThis chapter reviews an attempt to solve the collapse problem in the framework of a time-symmetric quantum formalism. Although the proposal does not look very attractive, its concept — a world defined by two quantum states, one evolving forwards and one evolving backwards in time — is found to be useful in modifying the many-worlds picture of Everett's theory.
Division and Definition in Plato'sSophistandStatesman
Authors: Louise Gill Mary 
Published: September 2010

AbstractThis chapter focuses on the method of division as developed by Plato in the Sophist and in the Politicus, and examines the ways in which Plato engages in these dialogues with important problems in the method itself. It notes a number of important and little-studied modifications to the method of division which Plato develops in these dialogues. The chapter contains detailed discussion of all the instances of definition by division considered in these two dialogues.
Logical Necessity
Authors: Rumfitt Ian 
Published: September 2010

AbstractThis chapter explains the notion of broadly logical necessity via the principle that ‘It is logically necessary that A’ is equivalent to ‘It is logically contradictory that not A’. The relevant notion of logical contradiction is cognate to that of absolute logical consequence: a conclusion is an absolute consequence of some premisses if it follows from them no matter what ancillary or background assumptions are made. The notion of logical necessity (so understood) is defended against sceptics (notably Russell). The relationship between logical and metaphysical necessity is explored, and Ian McFetridge's thesis that logical necessity is the strongest form of non-epistemic necessity is defended. The account of logical necessity is then deployed in elucidating Gareth Evans's distinction between deep and superficial forms of necessity, and that distinction is in turn employed to rebut Dummett's argument that the logic of metaphysical necessity cannot include the Brouwerian axiom.
Modal Logic within Counterfactual Logic
Authors: Williamson Timothy 
Published: September 2010

AbstractThis chapter argues that claims of possibility and necessity are equivalent to claims involving counterfactual conditionals, and uses the equivalences to derive basic principles of modal logic within the logic of counterfactuals. The derivations employ weaker assumptions than corresponding derivations by Lewis and Stalnaker. They still use the principle that all counterpossibles (counterfactual conditionals with impossible antecedents) are vacuously true, but this principle is defended. The account is extended to quantified modal logic; de re modalities are equivalent to de re counterfactuals, which are usually considered unproblematic. An application is suggested to the epistemology of modality: the role of conceivability and inconceivability in the evaluation of claims of possibility and impossibility, rather than being regarded as problematically sui generic, should be treated as a special case of the role of the imagination in the evaluation of counterfactual conditionals, which is commonplace even for mundane, highly contingent counterfactuals.
Metaphysical Dependence: Grounding and Reduction
Authors: Rosen Gideon 
Published: September 2010

AbstractThis chapter lays down principles for a relation of metaphysical grounding — the ‘in virtue of’ relation — understood as a relation among facts. The discussion makes it plausible that the relation is well understood and potentially useful for philosophical purposes. The chapter then explores the connections between the grounding relation and other metaphysical notions, including real definition, essential truth, and metaphysical reduction understood as a relation among facts.
On the Source of Necessity
Authors: Cameron Ross P. 
Published: September 2010

AbstractSimon Blackburn posed a dilemma for any realist attempt to identify the source of necessity. Either the facts appealed to ground modal truth are themselves necessary, or they are contingent. If necessary, we begin the process towards regress; but if contingent, we undermine the necessity whose source we wanted to explain. Bob Hale attempts to blunt both horns of this dilemma and this chapter defends Hale's conclusion that the dilemma can be resisted. The chapter ends by defending an account of the source of necessity, and showing why it does not fall victim to Blackburn's problem.
The Reality of Modality
Authors: Sherratt Anna 
Published: September 2010

AbstractThis chapter presents an objection to anti-realist theories of modality. It argues that Peter Menzies's ‘ideal conceiver’ theory of modal truth implies a strong form of anti-realism about the actual world. This reasoning is then generalised to apply to all anti-realist theories of modality. The objection can be avoided by denying that there is a biconditional, a priori connection between the modal and the actual — but there are independent reasons to find this strategy implausible.
Apriorism about Modality
Authors: Sturgeon Scott 
Published: September 2010

AbstractThis chapter argues that a priori reflection is at best a fallible guide to modality (both possibility and necessity). It also claims that the usefulness of a priori reflection, as a guide to possibility and necessity, turns on the ‘bounty’ of modality itself. If possibility turns out to be plentiful — in a sense glossed in the chapter — it is argued that a priori reflection will be a good-but-fallible guide to it. If necessity turns out to be meagre — in a dual sense of that gloss — it is argued that a priori reflection will not be a mark of possibility. In the end it is argued that our take on modal bounty itself should turn on how best to systematize thought.
Three Perspectives onQuantifying In
Authors: Salmon Nathan 
Published: September 2010

AbstractThree competing accounts of belief de re (Russellian primary occurrence, “relational” belief, quantification into a belief context) are extracted from David Kaplan's classic article “Quantifying In”: one neo‐Quinean, one neo‐Fregean, and one neo‐Russellian. A strict‐constructionist reading of “Quantifying In” yields the standard, neo‐Quinean reading. The Quinean motivation for this account, however, rests on confusion. Correcting the confusion while remaining faithful to the philosophical spirit of “Quantifying In” yields a neo‐Fregean reconstruction of the project. On this interpretation, Russellian singular propositions are merely a logical construct out of special Fregean propositions—representational thoughts. However, even if Russellian singular propositions are embraced as genuine propositions, and not merely as a logical construct, the account in “Quantifying In” insightfully yields an ingenious solution to a remaining philosophical problem: Why do we not have cognitive access to some singular propositions and not others, and how do we access those singular propositions that we are able to access?