bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Fitting Facts to Equations
Authors: Cartwright Nancy 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Are things in the real world governed by the mathematical equations of fundamental theories in physics? If we take seriously the practice of fitting facts into equations, the answer should be no. To give a mathematical description of a real phenomenon requires bridge principles. However, given the constraints of theory, even these employ highly idealized fictional objects and processes, more akin to artful theatrical distortions than to true descriptions of things in the world.
How the Measurement Problem Is an Artefact of the Mathematics
Authors: Cartwright Nancy 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Precursing now popular ‘spontaneous reduction’ views, this chapter argues that the measurement problem in quantum mechanics is not a problem of measurement at all. Reductions happen in a variety of circumstances and are particularly important in the preparation of quantum states. But there is no reason to think there is any simple physical characterization of situations in which reduction of the wave packet occurs from when it does not. There is a difference in the mathematical characteristics of the evolution operator between the two (unitary operators versus non‐unitary), but this mathematical difference need mark no interesting physical difference distinguishing the situations to which operators apply.
Faith and Reason
Authors: Swinburne Richard 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Different theologians give different accounts of the kind of faith that is necessary for the practice of a religion such as Christianity. For some, it is simply belief that there is a God (and that he has done various actions); for others, it is trust in God. This book analyses the nature of belief and of trust, and considers when belief and trust are rational. It concludes that the practice of a religion requires a faith that involves both trust and belief, but a fairly weak kind of belief. The book reaches this conclusion by analysing the purposes for practising a religion: the attainment of salvation for oneself and others, and the rendering of due worship and obedience to God. Someone's religious practice is rational insofar as she has reason for believing that practising her religion is the best way to achieve these purposes, and that these purposes are greatly worthwhile.
The Nature of Belief
Authors: Swinburne Richard 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Propositional belief is belief that some proposition is more probable than some alternative proposition (normally, its negation). Beliefs are involuntary responses to experience of one world or apparent truths of reason, or to evidence in the form of other propositions that seem to make the belief probable. The strengths of different beliefs and purposes determine which actions we perform in order to achieve our purposes.
The Value of Rational Religious Belief
Authors: Swinburne Richard 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
There is an obligation to seek true beliefs on religious matters, both in order to discover whether we have other obligations (e.g. to worship and serve God), and in order to teach the truth about religion to those whom we have an obligation to educate. It is also good (though not obligatory) to seek such true belief both for its own sake, and in order to discover how to attain deep and lasting well‐being. However, we should seek to acquire only those beliefs about religion that adequate investigation shows to be probable, and (barring special circumstances) not attempt to induce religious beliefs by irrational means.
The Nature of Faith
Authors: Swinburne Richard 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Analyses three different accounts of faith. On Aquinas’ account, faith is simply belief, though for Aquinas, the religious virtue is not faith in itself, but ‘faith formed by charity’. For Luther, faith is trust, and for a pragmatist (e.g. William James), it is acting on an assumption. On all these accounts, faith involves a belief and a readiness to pursue religious goals in the light of that belief; but they differ according to the kind of belief required. For the pragmatist, all that is required is the belief that we are more likely to achieve the goals of religion if the creed of our religion is true than if some creed of another religion or no religion is true.
The Purpose of Religion
Authors: Swinburne Richard 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
The purposes of the practice of a religion are to achieve the goals of salvation for oneself and others, and (if there is a God) to render due worship and obedience to God. Different religions have different understandings of salvation and God. It is rational for someone to pursue these goals by following a religious way (the practices commended by some religion), insofar as they judge that it would be greatly worthwhile to achieve those goals and insofar as they judge that it is to some degree probable that they will attain them by following the way of that religion. They will judge that insofar as they judge the creed of that religion to be to some degree probable (not necessarily more probable than not).
The Role of Creeds
Authors: Swinburne Richard 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
A creed explains how the pursuit of a particular religious way will achieve the goals of that religion. It does that by explaining in what salvation consists (e.g. in what the blessedness of Heaven consists), and how pursuing a certain sort of life will enable you to achieve it (e.g. because, if you live such a life, God will then take you to Heaven). This is illustrated by showing how the different items of the Nicene Creed have consequences for how we should worship and serve God and thereby mould our characters so that we would be happy in Heaven. One trusts God (and so has faith in the crucial sense) to the extent to which one acts on the assumption that if one lives in this way, God will provide for one the goals of religion. An appendix considers Christian views of the different fates for humans in the afterlife.
The Comparison of Creeds
Authors: Swinburne Richard 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Someone is rational in following a certain religious way to attain a certain goal only if he believes that it is more probable that following that way will achieve that goal than that following any other way will achieve a similar goal (one that has a similar understanding of salvation and Heaven). In view of the importance of the issue, people should devote time to investigating the claims of different religions and consider the worth of the different goals that they officer. This will include considering the relative probabilities of different claims to have a revelation, which depend both on the moral plausibility of the purported revelation and on any miraculous authentication it purports to have (e.g. the Resurrection of Jesus authenticating his teaching). Which way a person should follow depends both on his judgement of the relative probability of the creeds of rival religions and on his judgement of the worth of the goals that they offer.
Well-Being
Authors: Griffin James 
Published: October 2003

AbstractThis book is about ideas at the centre of our thought about our individual lives and about society—‘well‐being’, ‘welfare’, ‘utility’, and ‘quality of life’. It aims to answer three questions: What is the best way to understand well‐being? to what extent can it be measured? what role should it play in moral and political thought? The book argues that the sharp contrast between reason and desire found in our modern intellectual tradition has hampered answers to those questions. The book first tries to describe the place of both reason and desire in our thought about well‐being. It then uses the notion of well‐being, so explained, in discussions of whether values are commensurable, of what measurement of one person's well‐being is demanded by ethics and whether it can be supplied by us, and whether we can effectively compare one person's well‐being with another's. It ends with discussions of the relation of individual well‐being to morality in general, to equality, fair constitution, rights, punishment and rewards, and distribution.
Utilitarian Accounts: State of Mind or State of the World?
Authors: Griffin James 
Published: October 2003

AbstractThis chapter, the first of two on utilitarian accounts of well‐being, discusses mental‐state accounts, actual‐desire accounts, and informed‐desire accounts. It also discusses our attractive compromise position adopted by Henry Sidgwick. It considers whether there is a position between mental state and desire accounts, and what the problems facing the informed‐desire account are.
Objective Accounts
Authors: Griffin James 
Published: October 2003

AbstractPerhaps certain objective accounts of well‐being are superior to any desire account. This chapter considers primarily need‐accounts, of which the central claim is well‐being, at least that conception of it to be used as the interpersonal measure for moral judgement, is the level to which basic needs are met. The chapter argues against need accounts, but acknowledges the obvious strengths of objective accounts—not, however, what has been called an objective‐list account, because the common distinction in ethics between ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ is too sharp.
Are There Incommensurable Values?
Authors: Griffin James 
Published: October 2003

AbstractBegins the discussion on the measurement of well‐being: do our powers of measurement match our reasonable demands on measurement? For instance—the question for this chapter—are there incommensurable values? There are relations between values that can be confused with incommensurability: trumping, weighting, discontinuity, and irreducible pluralism. The sort of incommensurability that is most important in ethics is incomparability: one value's being unrankable with another as greater, less, or equal. The conclusion of the chapter is that prudential values are broadly comparable (a conclusion not clearly transferable to the various weights of moral norms).
The Case of One Person
Authors: Griffin James 
Published: October 2003

AbstractThis chapter is about the measurement of one person's well‐being. Indeed, can it be measured? To answer, we must specify the scale of measurement we are interested in: ordinal, cardinal, if cardinal, then interval or ratio. The chapter argues that there are pockets of cardinality in the measurement of one person's well‐being (cardinal measurement independent of probability, despite what many decision theorists say), and extensive areas of ordinal measurement, and that, in the case of one person, our capacity for measurement usually matches our decision‐making needs—i.e. as far as the measurement of well‐being goes.
The Case of Many Persons
Authors: Griffin James 
Published: October 2003

AbstractCan we make interpersonal comparisons of well‐being? The nature of the problem of interpersonal comparison changes as the account of well‐being that one adopts changes, and our question is, are interpersonal comparisons of well‐being possible on the best account of well‐being, viz. the informed‐desire account with a high standard for ‘informed’. After discussing John Harsanyi's idea of an extended utility function and the idea of a deep monistic utility function, the chapter concludes that, as the informed‐desire account gives us something approaching an objective list of elements of well‐being, the terms in which we speak quantitatively about one person's well‐being are not relative to other things that this individual wants but relative to quantitative assessment of other people's well‐being. There is, therefore, no gap between assessments of different persons’ well‐being that needs bridging. The chapter concludes with discussions of intra‐personal, inter‐temporal comparisons and of comparisons on a large social scale.
From Prudence to Morality
Authors: Griffin James 
Published: October 2003

AbstractMorality must be rooted in the natural sources of human action. What are they? For instance, how are morality and self‐interest related? How are morality and personal aims related (a question to which Bernard Williams has given a well‐known answer in terms of internal and external reasons)? How are morality and rationality related (a question to which Kant, R.M. Hare, Bentham, Mill, and decision theorists have given important answers)? The chapter ends with a sketch of the relation of prudence and morality.
Rights
Authors: Griffin James 
Published: October 2003

AbstractThe chapter starts by establishing the need for a substantive account of human rights—one with enough content to settle what rights exist and what their content is. Human rights, it proposes, have their ground in personhood (in normative agency), in certain practicalities, and in equal respect. It goes on to suggest a framework for resolving conflict between two human rights or a human right and welfare, and to identify various restrictions on such trade‐offs.
Distribution
Authors: Griffin James 
Published: October 2003

AbstractWhich principles of just distribution are appropriate to our setting, namely, a complex modern economy? The chapter denies that certain principles are sufficient on their own: labour‐based, appropriation‐based, human‐rights‐based, and equality‐based. It argues that the best principle of distribution for a complex modern economy would combine rights‐based and equality‐based elements, resolving along the way the level‐ambiguity (whole society? family? etc.) and object‐ambiguity (equality of what?) that principles of equality often display. It ends by looking at distribution between nations and whether there are distributive principles that apply at all levels.
Responsibility and Atonement
Authors: Swinburne Richard 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
When we do good or harm to each other, we acquire merit or guilt; deserve praise or blame, reward or punishment, and may need to make atonement. Others may need to forgive us, or show mercy to us. The first part of this book (Chs. 1–7) is an account of how these moral concepts apply to humans in their dealings with each other. The second part (Chs. 8–12) then applies the results of the first part to reach conclusions about which versions of traditional Christian doctrines that utilize these notions are morally plausible. It considers the doctrines of sin and original sin, redemption, sanctification, Heaven and Hell.
Moral Goodness
Authors: Swinburne Richard 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
This chapter distinguishes various kinds of moral goodness. Actions may be objectively good and/or subjectively good; and they may be supererogatory or obligatory. Actions may be objectively or subjectively bad, and wrong or merely infrarvetatory. There is goodness either in good actions being done naturally (i.e. spontaneously), or in their being done contrary to inclination. There are three kinds of goodness of character: agents may be naturally inclined to do actions that are in fact good, they may have correct moral beliefs, and they may be naturally inclined to do actions that they believe to be good.
Moral Responsibility and Weakness of Will
Authors: Swinburne Richard 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Agents are praiseworthy for doing what they believe to be supererogatory, blameworthy for doing what they believe to be wrong. To have a belief that some action is morally good involves having some desire (inclination) to do it. But we evince weakness of will when we yield to a stronger desire to do what we believe to be not the best action.
The Relevance of Free Will
Authors: Swinburne Richard 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Moral responsibility (and so praiseworthiness or blameworthiness) requires free will in the sense of agents having the power to choose independently of all the causal influences acting on them. Various forms of compatibilism, and also incoherentism (the view that free will of this kind is an incoherent notion), are rejected.
Merit and Reward
Authors: Swinburne Richard 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Supererogatory actions include both favours to others, and creative acts benefiting directly only the agent. A favour creates an obligation on the recipient, minimally to express gratitude. Creative acts create an obligation on the community that has nurtured the agent, minimally to respect him. Supererogatory actions give their agent merit, objective or subjective.
Guilt, Atonement, and Forgiveness
Authors: Swinburne Richard 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
In doing a wrong action, an agent acquires guilt, subjective, or objective; guilt is to be distinguished from shame (as merit is to be distinguished from pride). A wrongdoer must deal with his guilt by making atonement—i.e. by repentance and apology to the victim, and (often also) by making reparation and penance. It is good (though not obligatory) for the victim to forgive a wrongdoer who has made some atonement, and that removes his guilt; but if the victim refuses to forgive despite substantial atonement, the wrongdoer's guilt disappears anyway. We have some responsibility to help others of our community to deal with their guilt—by encouraging them to apologize, and by helping them to make reparation—but we are not guilty for the wrong acts of anyone else.
Punishment
Authors: Swinburne Richard 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
If a wrongdoer does not make reparation, a victim has the right to take reparation from him (of more value than the original loss), which will constitute punishment. Explicitly or implicitly, however, people may hand over their right to punish to the state. Neither the victim nor the state has any obligation to punish, but there are normally good utilitarian reasons for punishing— prevention, deterrence, and reform.
Morality Under God
Authors: Swinburne Richard 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
The second part of this book (Chs. 8–12) applies the results of its first part about moral responsibility to traditional Christian doctrines. I assume that there is a God of the traditional kind who became incarnate in Jesus Christ, was crucified and rose from the dead; and then ask what follows about our moral responsibility to God, and his to us. This chapter argues that the command or commendation of God can change the moral status of some but not all actions, making them good or obligatory, bad or wrong, when they would not otherwise be so. (Hence it takes a compromise position on the Euthyphro dilemma.) God does not issue commands that cover the whole of our lives, although he does make it supererogatorily good for us to use our lives in certain ways; and only those who do so use their lives will attain salvation. It is good to hope for one's own salvation.
Sin and Original Sin
Authors: Swinburne Richard 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
All adult humans commit actual sin. Humans also have a proneness to sin, original sinfulness, inherited from a first sinner whom we may call Adam. Adam's responsibility for our sinfulness is confined to his beginning the social transmission of a morality that conflicts with our desires, and a sinful example that encouraged us to act against that morality. We are not guilty for Adam's original sin (as Augustine claimed), but we owe it to Adam and all our fellow humans to help them to make atonement for their sins.
Sanctification and Corruption
Authors: Swinburne Richard 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Sanctification is achieved by pleading the Atonement made by Christ, and by gradually coming to form true moral beliefs and making oneself naturally inclined to conform to them. It is the function of the Church to facilitate this process. Total corruption occurs when a human yields so constantly to bad desires that he becomes their prisoner and loses the moral beliefs that incline him to resist them.
Heaven and Hell
Authors: Swinburne Richard 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
This chapter is concerned with the fates in the afterlife (traditionally called Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, and Limbo) that a good God would allocate to different humans. The totally corrupt have freely chosen to become so, and it would be an unwarranted imposition for God to give them any other character; hence, if God keeps them alive, their happiness can consist only in low‐level enjoyment. God will give to the sanctified (in company with each other) the (un‐merited) Beatific Vision of himself; and good pagans are to be included in this group. God may award (temporarily or permanently) intermediate fates to those with characters not fully formed.
Reasons and Persons
Authors: Parfit Derek 
Published: October 2003

AbstractThis book has four loosely connected parts. Part One discusses some ways in which theories about morality and rationality can be self‐defeating. Such theories give us certain aims, but also tell us to act in ways that frustrate these aims. If these theories are revised, these objections can be partly met.Part Two discusses the relations between what a single person can rationally want or do at different times, and what different people can rationally want or do. I also discuss the rationality of four attitudes to time: temporal neutrality, and the three kinds of bias towards the present, the near, and the future.Part Three discusses personal identity, or what is involved in our continuing to exist throughout our lives. Most of us, I argue, have certain beliefs about this subject that are false, but hard to give up. If we accept these claims, they may change some of our emotions or attitudes, and we should revise some of our beliefs about both rationality and morality.Part Four discusses our obligations to future generations, and some related questions about what would be better or worse futures for mankind. The most difficult question here, which I fail to answer, is about the relative importance of the number of people who will exist, and the quality of life of these people.
Theories That Are Indirectly Self‐Defeating
Authors: Parfit Derek 
Published: October 2003

AbstractAccording to the Self‐interest Theory, or S, our own well‐being is the supremely rational aim. According to Consequentialism, or C, the ultimate moral aim is that things go as well as possible. The chapter explains how these theories can be indirectly self‐defeating, in the sense that our trying to achieve these aims may cause them to be worse; how it can be rational to cause ourselves to be irrational, and how it might be right to cause ourselves to be disposed to act wrongly; how these theories might be self‐effacing by telling us to believe other theories; and how these theories do not fail in their own terms.
Five Mistakes in Moral Mathematics
Authors: Parfit Derek 
Published: October 2003

AbstractExamines how we should assess the effects of our acts, especially when we act together with other people, why we should reject the share‐of‐the‐total view and accept the marginalist view, which appeals to the difference made by each act, why we should not ignore either small chances, or effects that are trivial or imperceptible. It also presents several cases in which effects are overdetermined. Rational altruism is also discussed.
The Appeal to Full Relativity
Authors: Parfit Derek 
Published: October 2003

AbstractDiscusses Sidgwick's challenge to S; temporal and interpersonal neutrality; analogies between ‘I’ and ‘now’, or oneself and the present. It presents arguments that appeal to these analogies; how S is incompletely relative, making it vulnerable to attack from two directions. S can be challenged both by theories like CP, which are relative both to persons and to times, and by those moral theories that are both temporally and interpersonally neutral.