bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Can God Be the Cause of His Own Nature?
Authors: Rowe William L 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
On the assumption that God (the supremely perfect being) exists and that there is a best, creatable world, we’ve reached the conclusion that God is neither free not to create a world nor free to create a world less than the best creatable world. Indeed, God would of necessity create the best of the creatable worlds, leaving us with no basis for thanking him, or praising him for creating the world he does. For given that God exists and that there is a best creatable world, God’s nature as an omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good being would require him to create that best world. Doing less than the best he can do—create the best world— would be inconsistent with his being the perfect being he is. But what if, strange as it may seem, God is causally responsible for having the perfect nature that he has? What if God creates his nature, and, by virtue of having created it, is thereby causally responsible for his own nature? Such a view, if it were correct, might provide a way out of our problem. For we have been assuming all along that no being is, or can be, responsible for having the nature it has. And, given that this assumption is correct, what logically follows from God’s possessing the nature (being supremely perfect) he does—i.e, his creating the best possible world— can no more be up to God, something he is responsible for, than is his nature as a supremely perfect being something that is up to him, something he is responsible for. But against our assumption, Thomas Morris has argued that God does create his nature and, therefore, is causally responsible for his nature.
Does Conceivability Entail Possibility?
Authors: Chalmers David J 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
There is a long tradition in philosophy of using a priori methods to draw conclusions about what is possible and what is necessary, and often in turn to draw conclusions about matters of substantive metaphysics. Arguments like this typically have three steps: first an epistemic claim (about what can be known or conceived), from there to a modal claim (about what is possible or necessary), and from there to a metaphysical claim (about the nature of things in the world).
Essentialism versus Essentialism
Authors: Rocca Michael Della 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
A great deal seems to be at stake in the debate over whether conceivability is a guide to possibility. Depending on the connection that obtains between the two, one may be in a position to deploy certain arguments for robust and startling claims of nonidentity. Perhaps most prominently, such arguments have been advanced in the philosophy of mind in order to establish various dualist, anti-physicalist views. But such conceivability arguments abound elsewhere as well, in order to reach conclusions about the individuation of events and of material objects, and so on.
A Study in Modal Deviance
Authors: Rosen Gideon 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
These notes are prompted by a report in a recent number of the Journalof Metaphysical Anthropology (von Feld et al., ‘Modal Deviance among the Q’ ,J Met. Ant. (Brest Litovsk), IT 1253). The observation concerns a small population concentrated in the gloomy forests of our northern district. The Q, as they are called, are remarkably sophisticated in many ways.
On the Metaphysical Contingency of Laws of Nature
Authors: Sidelle Alan 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
In the old days—good or bad, depending on your views—it would have been very hard to propose that the laws of nature are necessary’in the strongest sense’ and be taken seriously.1 After all, what the laws of nature are is a matter for empirical investigation, and however they turn out, we can imagine them having been otherwise. When scientists look for laws, there are various hypotheses as to what the laws might be, and so long as there is no hidden contradiction, any of these is conceivable, and so represents what the laws are in some (set of) possible world(s). Certainly, the laws of nature may represent, or underlie, weaker sorts of necessity-physical, biological, psychological, or economic necessity-but such necessity would be understood as being compatible with contingency in a wider sense. Maybe, as things are, this unsupported cup has to fall-but surely the laws could have differed so that under the very same conditions, it would not fall. We can surely imagine it, and in the old days, this would have been enough.
Reliability and the A Priori
Authors: Sosa Ernest 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Numbers, properties, and propositions are said by Platonists to constitute a realm of abstracta beyond space-time. How, then, could denizens of space time ever discern the lay of that land? According to Hartry Field, ‘we should view with suspicion any claim to know facts about a certain domain if we believe it impossible to explain the reliability of our beliefs about that domain’ (1989: 232-3).
Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda
Authors: Ablo Stephen Y 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
A main theme of Saul Kripke’s Naming and Necessity (1980) is that metaphysical necessity is one thing; apriority, analyticity, and epistemic/semantic/ conceptual necessity are another. Or rather, they are others, for although the relations among these latter notions are not fully analyzed, it does emerge that they are not the same notion. ‘Apriority’ and ‘analyticity’ are for Kripke nontechnical terms. They stand in the usual rough way for knowability without appeal to experience, and truth in virtue of meaning. Examples of apriority are given that it is hoped the reader will find plausible.
The Political Problem of Religion: Hobbes’s Reading of the Bible
Authors: Dumouchel Paul 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
In this essay, I argue that Hobbes’s reading of the Bible, contained in the second half of Leviathan, is a fundamental part of his philosophy.’fhe goal of Parts III and IV is not merely, as has sometimes been suggested, to sustain with the prestige of religion the political legitimation of the sovereign expounded in Part u; nor is it, as has also been claimed, to discredit religion while seeming to recognize its authority .To the contrary, the second half of Leviathan seeks to liberate the sovereign’s authority from the necessity of religious legitimation, which is perceived by Hobbes as a danger to the stability of the commonwealth. The way in which religion threatens civil authority is described in Part I and may be called the political problem of religion. Part II, like most modern political philosophy, simply assumes that the problem does not exist, and maintains that the power of the sovereign rests solely on the consent of the subjects.
Locke’s Theology, 1694-1704
Authors: Nuovo Victor 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
There is indeed one Science (as they are now distinguish’d) incomparably above all the rest, where it is not by Corruption narrow’d into a Trade or Faction, for mean or ill Ends, and secular Interests; I mean Theology, which containing the Knowledge of God and his Creatures, our Duty to him and our fellow Creatures, and a view of our present and future State, is the Comprehension of all other Knowledge directed to its true end; i. e. the Honour and Veneration of the Creator, and the Happiness of Mankind. This is that noble Study which is every Man’s Duty, and every one that can be call’d a rational Creature is capable of. The Works of Nature, and the Words of Revelation, display it to Manldnd in Characters so large and visible, that those who are not quite blind may in them read, and see the first Principles and most necessary Parts of it; and from thence, as they have Time and Industry, may be inabled to go on to the more abstruse parts of it, and penetrate into those infinite depths fill’d with the Treasures of Wisdom and Knowledge.
The Trinity and Human Personal Identity
Authors: Thiel Udo 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
It is generally recognized by philosophers that present-day debates about personal identity originate in Locke’s famous chapter’Of identity and diversity’, which he added to the second edition of his Essay concerning human understanding in 1694-Yet issues to do with the question of identity had been discussed long before Locke. Indeed, he himself obviously refers to earlier accounts of the issue when he notes the “great deal of that Confusion, which often occurs about this Matter, with no small seeming Difficulties; especially concerning Personal Identity”. There are few attempts, however, to relate Locke’s immensely influential theory to earlier discussions of the topic.
Stilling fleet and the Way of Ideas
Authors: Stewart M A 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
“But the first Question in a Fray is, how fell they out?”r This question, which puzzled Edward Stilling fleet in his estrangement from the Dissenters in I 679, undoubtedly puzzled Locke in his own controversy with Stilling fleet in the I 690s,:. and has not yet been adequately answered by the few commentators who have gone back to look at that debate.
The debate with Stilling fleet is the most extensive and, through the replies published in his lifetime, the most public of the controversies in which Locke became embroiled as a result of the publication of his Essay concerning human understanding in I 689-90. It is like the skirmishes with Thomas Burnet and John Norris, and the unanswered attacks of Henry Lee and others, in that Locke’s principal critics were almost all in the ranks of the established clergy. He was irritated by their criticism, and may have underestimated the extent to which he might provoke it. But he was also deeply interested in and at least privately involved with the theological debates of the day, and cannot have been wholly unaware of the signals he was sending. Independently,
Of Mixed Blood
Authors: Gow Peter 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Of Mixed Blood is an ethnography of the native people of the Bajo Urubamba river in Peruvian Amazonia. The people of this region appear very acculturated when compared to better-known indigenous Amazonian peoples. Peter Gow's analysis focuses on features of social organization which would seem to demonstrate this most clearly: the role of schools and recent land reform laws in the definition of the community, and native people's claim to be ‘of mixed blood’. By stressing that these claims are made by native people themselves, he challenges the dominant vision of them as passive victims of history. Dr Gow argues that when native people's claims are viewed from the perspective of their own values, and in the context of their creation of life through the productive transformation of the forest and the commodity economy, they can be seen to form a coherent part of kinship. Historical change is thus revealed as interior to the ongoing creation of kinship for native people, rather than alien to it. This study offers a new approach to the issue of historical and ethnographic analysis of Amazonian cultures.
Patterns of Reproduction
Authors: Hastrup Kirsten 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
THIS chapter is concerned with the reproduction of human life in Iceland within the context of the social experience of the Icelanders. ‘Social reproduction’ does not necessarily imply repetition. The reproduction of culture may contain its own transformation (Sahlins 1982; 1985), and ‘events’ are never exact replicas of previous ones, even though they may be realizations of the same structure (Ardener 1972).
Reproduction occurs at several levels, and there is a sense in which all studies of culture in time are studies of reproduction for the simple reason that things go on. We can begin our investigation of reproduction at the level of biology and study the patterns of sexuality and procreation. This will give important clues to the human condition, including an understanding of how humans perceive themselves as agents in and of life. Subsequently I shall deal with reproduction at another level, and explore how the morals of sexuality and procreation were matched by a particular pattern of literacy.
Analytical Results
Authors: Hastrup Kirsten 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
IN the preceding chapters I have drawn a picture of Icelandic history over four hundred years. The analysis concerned both a society and a period. Neither in theory nor in practice can time and space be separated, for it is in the course of history that a society reveals itself (Dumont 1957: 21). In that sense, I have provided only a rather straightforward analysis of an empirical reality, unfolding in both time and space. My account differs from most anthropological analyses only in its long-term perspective, a perspective which in turn allows me to draw more substantial conclusions about Icelandic culture than might otherwise have been possible. History provides us with a privileged experimental situation (cf. Evans-Pritchard 1950; 1964: 147).
My conclusions are both analytical and theoretical, and I have chosen to deal with them under the general heading of ‘implications’. The choice of term indicates that the results are implied by the empirical evidence, which remains the fundamental source of anthropological thinking.
The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology
Authors: Gell Alfred 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
The complaint is commonly heard that art is a neglected topic in present-day social anthropology, especially in Britain. The marginalization of studies of primitive art, by contrast to the immense volume of studies of politics, ritual, exchange, and so forth, is too obvious a phenomenon to miss, especially if one draws a contrast with the situation prevailing before the advent of Kalinowski and Radcliffe-Brown. But why should this be so? I believe that it is more than a matter of changing fashions in the matter of selecting topics for study; as if by some collective whim, anthropologists had decided to devote more time to cross-cousin marriage and less to mats, pots, and carvings.
Art, Architecture, and Collective Representations in a New Guinea Society
Authors: Bowden Ross 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
The assertion that art ‘communicates’ is one that is very commonly made about painting, sculpture, and other visual art-forms in both Western and tribal societies. But establishing with any degree of certainty what a particular painting or sculpture might ‘say’ about the society which produces it is no easy matter. And teasing the ‘meaning’ out of art objects is made all the more difficult by the fact that artists generally (including writers and composers) typically show little interest in, or even aptitude for, translating into ordinary discourse what their creations are ‘about’-something that has been noted since at least the time of Plato (Plato, 1984: 51; see also Blocker, 1979: 57-9, 67, 324). This lack of concern, or even ability, on the part of the artist to interpret what he has created for the benefit of an observer means that when the anthropologist sets out to enquire into the ‘meaning’ of a particular visual art-form, more often than not he or she is confronted by a seemingly in surmountable wall of silence. It is largely for this reason, I believe, that so much of the anthropological literature on art is distinguished more by what it does not say than by what it does. As Anthony Forge (1979: 280) has remarked: ‘It is a truism that art communicates, but what does it communicate? Here the philosophers and historians, and indeed all students of art, seem to become evasive, trivial or unintelligible ‘
Making Skins: Malangan and the Idiom of Kinship in Northern New Ireland
Authors: Kochler Susanne 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
This essay discusses the art objects produced as gifts for final mortuary exchanges in the northern part of New Ireland. Northern New Ireland art is known under the generic name malangan and comprises carved and painted sculptures, as well as others woven from fibre or moulded from clay, of astonishing visual and conceptual complexity and variety of design. Malangan sculptures exemplify one of the few flourishing art traditions in contemporary Papua New Guinea. Not only are sculptures still carved from wood for the society’s mortuary ceremonies, but, collected over a period of a hundred years, they also form one of the largest collections of a single art tradition held in Western ethnographic museums. From the indigenous perspective, however, it is not the sculptures as seemingly unique and identifiable objects which are of importance, but the engraved images which serve as renewable, relocatable and memorable entities in their own right.
Representing the Spirits: The Masks of the Alaskan Inuit
Authors: Oosten Jarich 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
The word ‘person’ is derived from the Latin persona, ‘mask’. In modem English the word ‘person’ usually refers to an individual being. ‘Mask’ and ‘person’ have become opposed. The mask is thought to hide a person, not to reveal him. Yet the relation between a mask and the person who wears it is usually more complex. A mask may hide someone by providing him with a new identity, but it may also represent someone’s true identity. Thus the mask can reveal what the face hides, and it can hide what the face reveals. The use of masks in play and ritual usually provides an insight into the relations between different perspectives on human identity.
Predicates of Aesthetic Judgement: Ontology and Value in Huichol Material Representations
Authors: Shelton Anthony 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
All discourse is institutionalized and historically specific. It is intimately related to particular social and economic relations at determinate phases of its existence which create and legitimate peculiar practices or techniques that reproduce both its intellectual and material conditions (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977; Foucault, 1974). These practices and relationships confer respect and authority on the fields of knowledge which they institutionalize.
‘Marvels of Everyday Vision’: The Anthropology of Aesthetics and the Cattle-Keeping Nilotes
Authors: Coote Jeremy 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
This essay is written out of a conviction that progress in the anthropological study of visual aesthetics has been hampered by an undue concentration on art and art objects. The cattle-keeping Nilotes of the Southern Sudan make no art objects and have no traditions of visual art, yet it would be absurd to claim that they have no visual aesthetic. In such a case as this, the analyst is forced to attend to areas of life to which everyday concepts of art do not apply, to attend, indeed, to ‘the marvels of everyday vision’ (Gombrich, 1977: 275) which we all, not just the artists and art critics amongst us, experience and delight in. It is my contention. that such wide-ranging analyses will produce more satisfactory accounts of the aesthetics of different societies-even of those with art traditions and art objects. With this in mind, then, I present the cattle-keeping Nilotes of the Southern Sudan as a sort of test-case for the anthropology of aesthetics.
Social Groups and Their Chiefs
Authors: Thomas Nicholas 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Marquesan perceptions of the on gms of people and things in general, and of particular social groups, were linked with genealogical traditions or mythic histories. These were structured by a binary logic of sexual procreation: certain static states or agents were brought into opposition with new conditions, leading to some novel situation or process. Traditions about the creation (te pepena), for example, indicate that initially everything was semi-darkness, over which the deity Tanaoa reigned. From him emerged Atea (daylight), who created vigorous and powerful light, which he shed over Tanaoa’s darkness and cold. From Atea emerged sound; subsequently he coupled with Atanua, and other elements and ‘children’ had their origin.
Property and Hierarchy
Authors: Thomas Nicholas 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Some European observers of Marquesan society, who perhaps knew something of other Pacific chiefdoms, assumed that in some sense chiefs owned all the land. Although chiefly titular ownership was widespread in Polynesia, it is clear from both general and specific statements in the early literature that in the Marquesas parcels of land were individually held and that there was no privileged chiefly ownership. This is not surprising, since the Tikopia evidence suggested that the chief’s generalized ownership was indissociable from his ritual situation. In the Marquesas, the absence of the former was no doubt connected with the absence of the latter. As Robarts noted, ‘No chieftain can force a tribute from anyone excepting those on his own private estate.’
Exchange In Oceania
Authors: Hage Per , Harary Frank 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
In their previous book, Structural Models in Anthropology, anthropologist Per Hage and mathematician Frank Harary used graph theory, a branch of pure mathematics, to develop a family of models for the study of social, symbolic, and cognitive relations. In this book the authors extend these models and apply them to the analysis of exchange structures in Oceania, presenting graph theory in a form accessible to the non-mathematical reader. Using ethnographic data from Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia, they demonstrate that the language, techniques, and theorems of graph theory provide the essential basis for the description, quantification, simulation, enumeration, and notation of the great variety of exchange forms actually found in Oceanic societies.
Paths, Cycles, and Partitions
Authors: Hage Per , Harary Frank 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Graphical models of exchange systems enable us to discover structural commonality beneath empirical diversity, and they provide for the coherent classification of structural forms. We begin with two analyses. First, we give a unitary definition of dual organization, a widely distributed and, it has been conjectured, archaic type of social structure in Melanesia. Rather than giving an ethnographic survey, we consider three radically different surface forms, all of which have the underlying structure of a bipartite graph. Then, using digraphs and networks, we clarify the application of models of restricted and generalized marriage exchange to the analysis of ceremonial exchange in New Guinea. We start with a set of mathematical definitions that are the foundation of all that follows.
Centres, Neighbourhoods, and Roots
Authors: Hage Per , Harary Frank 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Recent work on Oceanic exchange systems suggests that network position may outweigh environmental and demographic variables in determining the economic status and political organization of island communities. Irwin (1978), in an archaeological reconstruction of the Mailu system off the south coast of New Guinea, concludes that increasing network centrality, as defined by distance in a graph, was the major factor in the rise of Mailu Island as a pottery manufacturing centre and middleman in regional trade. Brunton (1975) in a reinterpretation of kula ring ethnography argues that limited access to the flow of valuables, as inferred from the degrees of points in a graph, rather than high economic productivity or population density, led to the rise of chieftainship in the northern Trobriand Islands. Hage, Harary, and James (1986), using a Markovian simulation of network flow, propose that either of the extreme conditions of restricted or general access to valuables could lead to political hierarchy in a kula community, depending on associated environmental conditions and local definitions of exchange practices. This is a promising area of research, of interest to economic and political anthropologists, archaeologists, and network specialists alike. It can be advanced in two ways: empirically, by expanding the range of network structures studied, in particular by including the hierarchical systems found outside of Melanesia, and theoretically, by applying suitable models for the analysis of locational advantage.