bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Living High and Letting Die Reconsidered: On the Costs of a Morally Decent Life
Authors: Unger Peter 
Published: October 2003

AbstractIt is very costly, far more than is usually supposed, for well‐off people to lead a morally decent life in a world in which suffering may easily be prevented. The amount a person must contribute is determined not only by moral truths but also by nonmoral truths about her particular circumstances, financial situation and prospects, and number of dependants as well as truths about the things that a person easily can do in modern society efficiently to lessen serious suffering. These considerations complement a certain kind of reasoning that endorses highly demanding moral dictates. According to one principle of ethical integrity that grounds this reasoning, other things being nearly equal, if it is acceptable to impose some losses on others with the result that it will significantly lessen the serious losses suffered by others overall, then one cannot fail either to impose upon oneself or to accept lesser or equal losses when they have this result. For this reason, from a Liberationist perspective, the conduct of most well‐off Westerners falls far short of what morality requires.
Determinism and Indeterminism in Modern Science
Authors: Salmon Wesley C. 
Published: October 2003

AbstractClarifies these two concepts that figure so prominently not only in discussions of free will but also in theories of scientific explanation. The question of the status of scientific explanation in an indeterministic world arises repeatedly in subsequent chapters of this book. Even if we do not yet have the final word on the truth or falsity of indeterminism, we need to take account of its possibility in framing philosophical theories of scientific explanations. This essay presents the “received philosophical opinion” on determinism, criticized by John Earman as confused and mistaken, and suggests ways to correct the most egregious errors of the received view.
A Third Dogma of Empiricism
Authors: Salmon Wesley C. 
Published: October 2003

AbstractChallenges the widely held thesis that scientific explanations are arguments (the “third dogma”) by posing three questions that seem to raise difficulties for it: (1) Why are irrelevancies harmless to arguments but fatal to explanations? (2) Can events whose probabilities are low be explained? Or, to reformulate essentially the same question, is genuine scientific explanation possible if indeterminism is true? (3) Why should requirements of temporal asymmetry be imposed upon explanations but not upon arguments?In addition to showing the untenability of the “third dogma,” this chapter signals the development of a causal theory of explanation that will supplement the simple statistical‐relevance (S‐R) model of explanation advocated in earlier works by the author.
Deductivism Visited and Revisited
Authors: Salmon Wesley C. 
Published: October 2003

AbstractAttacks explanatory deductivism, the view that all genuine explanations have the form of a correct deductive argument. The view has strong intuitive appeal to many philosophers. The author offers a defense against the claim that there are no statistical explanations of particular facts. In other words, he shows that statistical explanations of statistical generalizations – in the form that Hempel designated as the deductive–statistical (D‐S) variety – are not the only correct forms of statistical explanation. He exposes a glaring conflict between the deductive–nomological (D‐N) model of explanation and basic causal considerations relevant to explanation.
Causal Propensities
Authors: Salmon Wesley C. 
Published: October 2003

AbstractArgues that indeterministic causality cannot be explicated adequately by means of statistical‐relevance relations alone. Physical considerations are also required. The same point applies to deterministic causality. This essay sets the author's view of causality apart from standard treatments in terms of abstract relations such as necessary condition, sufficient condition, and statistical relevance. These relationships, in and of themselves, do not provide physical – or causal – connections.
Intuitions—Good and Not‐So‐Good
Authors: Salmon Wesley C. 
Published: October 2003

AbstractConfronts conflicting intuitions about the character of probabilistic causality. These intuitions were exposed with the publication of the preceding essay, and the critics’ responses to it. Using several important additional examples, this essay addresses the responses of I.J. Good to the criticisms raised in the preceding chapter. It exhibits complexities that arise when we try to accommodate sophisticated intuitions about probabilistic causality in an explicitly articulated theory.
Causality
Authors: Salmon Wesley C. 
Published: October 2003

AbstractThe original version of this chapter was published long before the author's conversion to a conserved or invariant theory of causality as presented in “Causality and Counterfactuals” (Chapter 16); nevertheless, its fundamental approach is still sound. The basic facts about causal processes and causal forks, about their interrelationships, and about the various types of forks are presented here in some detail. The only difference is that a new criterion for causal processes and interactive forks has subsequently been adopted. The same processes and intersections will be classified as causal under either criterion. This chapter presents a concise but comprehensive picture of the causal structure of the world along the same lines as the author's account in his Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World (1984).
Scientific Explanation
Authors: Salmon Wesley C. 
Published: October 2003

AbstractContains a brief history of the developments in the philosophy of scientific explanation in the 40 years following the publication in 1948 of Carl G. Hempel and Paul Oppenheim's seminal article, “Studies in the Logic of Explanation” (reprinted in Aspects of Scientific Explanation, (Hempel , 1965)). Their article, which presents the Deductive–Nomological Model, is the fountainhead from which almost all philosophical work on scientific explanation in the second half of the twentieth century flowed. This essay provides historical insight into philosophical controversies about scientific explanation at the end of the century. These same historical themes are treated more thoroughly in the author's Four Decades of Scientific Explanation (1990).
Scientific Explanation
Authors: Salmon Wesley C. 
Published: October 2003

AbstractThe ontic conception sees a scientific explanation as an exhibition of the ways in which what is to be explained fits into natural patterns or regularities in the world. The classic form of the epistemic conception takes scientific explanations to be arguments; and the modal conception says that a good explanation shows that what did happen had to happen. This chapter originally appeared just prior to the publication of Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World . It contains a highly condensed summary of some of the main discussions, including that of criteria of adequacy, in that book. Whereas Ch. 18 focuses on causal considerations, this chapter focuses on the concept of explanation.
Explanation in Archaeology
Authors: Salmon Wesley C. 
Published: October 2003

AbstractOriginally published 15 years after the initial publication of Ch. 21, deals with subsequent developments in the philosophical discussions of scientific explanation that have special relevance to archaeology. In particular, fruitful discussions among philosophers who embrace the unification approach to explanation and those who favor the causal approach, offer useful insights into how to handle functional explanations. Many archaeologists try to avoid functional explanations, although they seem to be crucial to archaeological theory, because of a fear that such explanations are not scientific. The author endorses archaeologists’ search for scientific explanations, and tries to show how they can better pursue that goal if they are not hampered by rigid adherence to older philosophical models of explanation.
Dreams of a Famous Physicist
Authors: Salmon Wesley C. 
Published: October 2003

AbstractExplores in some depth the relationship between physics and philosophy of science. Here the author exposes misconceptions regarding philosophy of science that seem to pervade the attitudes of many physicists. He tries to show that philosophy of science is not the pointless enterprise that one famous physicist, Steven Weinberg, takes it to be. He discusses the anthropic principle, explanations of generalizations, explanatory asymmetry, and the possibility of a final theory. Because his argument depends crucially on explanation in physics, this essay is a fitting conclusion for the entire set of essays in this book.
Heaven and Its Inhabitants
Authors: Walls Jerry L. 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
The basic question addressed here is that of who will be in heaven; this is discussed mainly with respect to the issue of whether the adherents of other (world) religions will be saved. The three main positions that Christian theologians have formulated on the salvation of adherents of other religions are described and assessed from the standpoint of some basic theological claims that an adequate Christian account of other religions must meet; these positions are particularism (also called restrictivism and exclusivism), pluralism, and inclusivism. Before this is done, the author briefly discusses the views of J. A. DiNoia, who has proposed an ingenious way to maintain the unique claims of Christianity while eliminating the element of offence to other religions by stressing their distinct conceptions of salvation. The position is then considered of the salvation of Mohandas (called Mahatma) Gandhi, one of the best‐known saints outside the Christian tradition, who rejected Christianity and remained committed to Hinduism. The chapter ends with a discussion of the salvation of infants and others who die at an age before they have had a chance to exercise faith in Christ or develop good character, and of the salvation of subhuman creatures (animals).
Heaven, Trinity, and Personal Identity
Authors: Walls Jerry L. 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
The discussion in this chapter centers on the particular problems posed for personal identity by the concept of heaven. Particular aspects addressed are the Trinity, the doctrine of resurrection (since the orthodox Christian account of eternal life is in a resurrected body), dualism and monism, duplication (multiple replicas of a given person in the afterlife), personal uniqueness, and continuity of memory.
Truth, Existence, and Ideas
Authors: Vinci Thomas C. 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
There are two main objectives in this chapter: (1) to give a preliminary formal statement of the inference from my ideas to the existence of things outside my ideas in Descartes's epistemology, and (2) to develop the main outlines of Cartesian ontology and the theory of ideas. Key notions discussed are those of truth, possibility, existence, and related notions; representation (the objective reality) of ideas, and formally and eminently contained properties in substances; the ontological status of immutable essences and eternal truths. Among contentions made in this chapter about Cartesian ontology is that (1) essences are contained in the mind not as modes but as quasi‐platonic entities, that (2) there is in Descartes's theory of ideas, a general difference between the objects of ideas and the mode of presentation of the objects that holds even when the objects are essences; and (3) that this difference leads to an epistemic rather than a causal account of the distinction between formal and eminent containment.
Causes, Existence, and Ideas
Authors: Vinci Thomas C. 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
There are two main formulations of a key causal principle in the Cartesian a priori philosophical system: one, present in Meditation III, says that the cause of the representational content (”objective reality”) of an idea must be situated at the same or higher level in ontology than the level at which the object represented is situated (the ”levels formulation”), the other, present in the axioms section of the Second Replies, says that the cause must contain ( formally or eminently) the same property (”reality”) as is represented by the idea (the ”same‐property” formulation). This central chapter defends four main contentions. (1) The same‐property formulation is basic in Descartes's system. (2) The notion of causality in the basic causal principle does not represent a spatio temporally extended natural process but a form of intentional explanation. (3) When point (2) is combined with the interpretation of the rule of truth offered in Ch. 2, the rule of truth and the basic causal principle prove to be equivalent. Finally, (4) in light of (3), there is one main pattern of inference in Cartesian epistemology taking the rule of truth/causal principle as its major premise and underlying all of Descartes arguments from my ideas to the existence of things outside my ideas, including the proof of my own existence (the cogito), the proof of the existence of God in Meditations III and V and the proof of the existence of the external world in Meditation VI and the Principles of Philosophy II,1.
The Sense Experience of Primary Qualities
Authors: Vinci Thomas C. 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
It seems undeniable that we have both sense experience of primary qualities and sense experience of secondary qualities, and yet, based on a text in the Sixth Replies among others, many commentators have thought that Descartes denied precisely this for primary qualities. One of the main burdens of this chapter is to show that Descartes does have an account of the sense experience of primary qualities and that it is to be found in Descartes's account of the faculty of imagination. The chapter argues that a version of the proof of the external world depends on a special class of ideas of this faculty. There are two sides to Descartes's account: (1) the philosophical theory of ideas, including the taxonomy of perceptual responses developed in the Sixth Replies of the Meditations, and (2) the empirical theory in the Optics and the Treatise on Man, and they are both treated in depth here. Finally, the chapter argues that Descartes has an empirical and philosophical account of the phenomenological fusion of primary and secondary qualities, the former accomplished by means of images in the corporeal imagination and the mechanism of referred sensations in The Passions of the Soul.
The Perceptual Representation of Ordinary Objects
Authors: Vinci Thomas C. 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
How can a Cartesian idea represent ordinary physical objects? One possibility is that Descartes holds a theory of natural signs according to which ideas, including sensations (ideas of secondary qualities), represent states of the external world that are correlated with them. I deny that Descartes has a theory of natural signs in this sense, arguing, instead, that our perception of ordinary physical objects is achieved not through ideas, properly speaking, but through a special act of the mind (discussed in The Passions of the Soul I as ”referred sensations”) which projects (”refers”) its sensations onto objects in the external world, objects truly represented by ideas of primary qualities alone. This ”projection” comprises referral judgments that account for the characteristic phenomenology of experience of the physical world but in a way that misleads us (provides ”material for error”) to think that our ideas bear a resemblance to the underlying metaphysical reality of the physical world. Other issues discussed include Descartes's taxonomy of ideas (classification).
The Janus‐Faced Theory of Ideas of the Senses
Authors: Vinci Thomas C. 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
The leading idea of this chapter is that, for Descartes, intellectual ideas make it obvious what metaphysical category the properties they disclose to the mind fall into but not whether they are actually (formally) exemplified; sensations (ideas of secondary qualities) make it obvious whether the properties they disclose to the mind are exemplified but not what their metaphysical category is. This idea is worked out through a discussion of three stages in the development of Descartes's doctrine of the material falsity of sensory ideas, the core concept of his error explanation of the senses. Material falsity is a set of three defects that sensations have in comparison with intellectual ideas, ideas that fully discharge the role, which Descartes assigns to ideas in his philosophical system. The first stage, reflected in Meditation III, identifies material falsity with two defects: nonrepresentation (a failure on the part of sensations to represent any real thing to the mind) and misrepresentation (a capacity of sensations to mislead us into thinking that they represent something real); the second stage, reflected in the Reply to Arnauld (Fourth Replies), identifies material falsity with obscure ideas (a kind of representational indeterminacy regarding metaphysical category); the third stage, reflected in the Principles of Philosophy I, sees the terminology of material falsity disappear and the terminology of clear but not distinct ideas appear. Other topics discussed include a special application of the rule of truth and skepticism.
Introduction
Authors: Weiss Roslyn 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Socrates' first allegiance is to the dictates of his own reason. The reason he refuses to escape his unjust conviction and punishment is that he believes that to do so would violate his tried and true long‐held moral principles. Socrates is no anarchist, but he will neither obey the law nor be its victim when it conflicts with the requirements and entitlements of morality as he sees them. He will suffer injustice only when the sole alternative to suffering it is to commit it. Socrates' reasons for accepting the penalty of death are reasons of justice; they are thus distinct from those presented by the personified Laws.
Remaining at the Station
Authors: Weiss Roslyn 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
To determine whether the Socrates of the Crito is consistent with the Socrates of the Apology, it is necessary to become acquainted with the Socrates of the Apology. Socrates in the Apology is a man committed first and foremost to justice; in the absence of a moral expert, he does what his reason tells him is most just; his god commands only that one live philosophically and justly; his daimonion is not a supernatural force but a voice activated by Socrates' own uneasiness concerning an impending course of action; Socrates' loyalty to Athens has little to do with any superiority he detects in Athens herself. Socrates believes himself to be just and the charges against him unjust, yet he will not for the sake of survival compromise himself in any way. His proposed counterpenalty signals that he so esteems justice that he will not subject himself to anything he does not deserve, that is, to anything bad. Death, even though unjustly imposed, and even if a bad thing, is preferable to any bad thing that Socrates might impose on himself: death imposed by the city is injustice that Socrates must suffer; any self‐proposed evil is injustice that Socrates commits—against himself.
“Especially an Orator”
Authors: Weiss Roslyn 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
The personified Laws enter the drama when Crito has failed to respond to Socrates' principles, concerns, and arguments—indeed, at the point at which Crito confesses that he does not understand. The Laws are consummate rhetoricians who champion the law that legitimates all judgments rendered by the city. The Laws' perspective on the duties of citizens to obey stands in opposition to Socrates' view: whereas the Laws regard a citizen as obligated to submit to whatever verdict the city issues (since it is to this that a citizen agrees), Socrates' limits the citizen's obligation to obey to correct verdicts (since it is to this alone that a citizen agrees). Socrates is patriotic, brave, and submissive to authority – but only up to the point at which the city demands injustice, whether as something to be committed or as something to be endured.
Restoring the Radical Socrates
Authors: Weiss Roslyn 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Once Socrates' views are dissociated from the views expressed by the Laws, his radicality is restored. The positions of both the Laws and of Socrates are radical, and they are radically opposed to one another: the Laws demand unconditional obedience; Socrates demands uncompromised justice. The only thing the Laws and Socrates share is their practical conclusion about what is to be done. Insofar as Socrates believes that in the absence of a moral expert, reasoned argument alone must be obeyed, he cannot subscribe to the Laws' insistence that citizens do “whatever we bid.” The Laws demand reverence, submission, and fawning as the proper conduct of citizen toward fatherland; Socrates, by contrast, serves his fatherland insofar as he “awakens, persuades, and reproaches” it (Ap. 30e7).
Morality, Mortality Volume I: Death and Whom to Save From It
Authors: Kamm F. M. 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Morality, Mortality as a whole deals with certain aspects of ethical theory and with moral problems that arise primarily in contexts involving life‐and‐death decisions. The importance of the theoretical issues is not limited to their relevance to these decisions; however, they are, rather, issues at the heart of basic moral and political theory. This first volume comprises three parts. Part I, Death: From Bad to Worse, has with four chapters, and an appendix, discussing death and why it is bad for the person who dies. Part II, Saving Lives: General Issues, has six chapters, and explores a cluster of moral problems that arise in saving lives. The general question raised is whether we should always, in aiding life, act so as to save the greater number of lives or to produce the greatest amount of good. Part III, Scarce Resources: Theoretical Issues, Specific Recommendations, and Organ Transplants, has five chapters, and deals with the problem of the acquisition and distribution of organs for transplantation. It allows us to apply the theoretical discussion of saving lives and relevant/irrelevant utilities presented in the previous parts. However, the discussion can be understood independently of the first two parts, and the conceptual issues and procedures on which it focuses are relevant to dealing with any scarce resource, including money and time, which are needed to use other plentiful resources. Although the book contains much theoretical and methodological argument, it is firmly grounded in practical ethical issues, and is illustrated throughout by examples.
The Asymmetry Problem: Death and Prenatal Nonexistence
Authors: Kamm F. M. 
Published: October 2003

AbstractExamines further the question of why death is bad, but also discusses whether death is worse than prenatal non‐existence: the asymmetry thesis. This is Lucretius's question: if we are not much disturbed about our non‐existence before our creation, why are we so disturbed about our non‐existence after death. The answers given to the asymmetry problem by Thomas Nagel, Bernard Williams, and Derek Parfit are discussed. Objections to Nagel's and Williams's approach are briefly mentioned, but a fuller consideration is given to Parfit's approach (that we seem to care less about what we have already suffered than what we will suffer), with discussion of both objections and defences to these. The final section of the chapter shows how Parfit's insight can be used to modify Nagel's view about why death is bad in a way that helps to explain why death at least seems worse than prenatal non‐existence; this is designated the Nagel/Parfit proposal — that death is bad because it prevents additional goods of life, and from the perspective within life, it seems worse than prenatal non‐existence because we do not care as much about past as future goods.