The anti-metaphysical argument against scientific realism is the following: Knowledge of unobservable entities implies metaphysical knowledge; There is no metaphysical knowledge. Therefore, there is no knowledge of unobservable entities. This argument has strangely received little attention in the profuse literature on scientific realism. This paper claims that the AMA is logically more fundamental than both the pessimistic meta-induction and the underdetermination argument. The second and main claim of this paper is that the instrumentalists’ use of AMA is incoherent. The gist (...) of my argument is that experimental knowledge requires minimally metaphysical knowledge, and that minimally metaphysical knowledge—when associated with empirical knowledge—suffices to yield a minimal knowledge of the unobservable. I then examine and reject two possible responses: minimally metaphysical instrumentalism and algebraic instrumentalism. (shrink)

In his comments, Daniel Nicholls succeeds in saying more than a few things that I had scarcely realized about the ways in which I write and, therefore, of what I tend to take for granted. He sees in what I write a capacity ‘to utilize the “obvious” whilst at the same time saying something about it.’ Not every philosopher would take that as a compliment. Many philosophers and philosophies have quite other pretensions – to transcend the illusions of common thought (...) and perception towards a higher plane of metaphysical philosophy – or of physics and mathematics. I find that Nicholls’s remark both compliments and complements my work, however. The use of everyday language and example to disturb that everyday world to ‘bring it into high relief’ as Nicholls puts it – is a significant part of philosophical method. To juxtapose the esoteric language of metaphysics (being-in-itself, being-for-itself, being-for-others) with the everyday (what there is, living for oneself, living for others) is to haunt the everyday with a metaphysical imagination even as it reveals what metaphysics had erased from the coinage of common words. (I am thinking, of course, of Derrida’s remarks about Anatole France’s satirical view of philosophical language as coinage from which all marking has been erased). (shrink)

The author starts from the thesis that there is no such thing as a "natural" or "apolitical" economy. The economy is always already political, as it is the economy’s material core of power, control, and its main mechanisms, i.e. exploitation and oppression. It is no less so in the era of neoliberalism, a time in which we witness the divorce between capitalism and democracy. In order to lay the foundations of a different economy, one that is not based on wage (...) labor and the exploitation of human life and nature based on their auto-alienation, but rather on action in accordance with their resources, we need – according the author – to rethink the concept of the state in a non-philosophical and post-capitalist fashion, structurally different from the modern bourgeois state. If the structure originating in the bourgeois state, as conceived by modern humanism, is preserved, it will mean that the determination in the last instance is still the same. In order to arrive at a determination in the last instance of a non-exploitative, non-wage-labor-based social order where the determination is affected by the real, we must first arrive at the generic core of the notion of the modern state. As soon as we determine the generic term of "the state," we can radicalize it by letting it be determined by the effects of the real. The generic notion, isolated from the chôra of the transcendental material that is offered by modern philosophies originating in the Enlightenment, should be used as the minimal transcendental description for the determining effect of the real. (shrink)

The concept of group moral responsibility is apparently problematic, in that it is unobvious in what sense a group, which is evidently not a conscious rational subject like an individual person, can be held morally accountable. It is unclear how a group can be said to have the ability to form beliefs and intentions needed for genuine group actions of moral assessment. Broadly speaking, there are two separate platforms from which one can investigate this problem: individualism and collectivism. Subscribing to (...) the doctrinal position of methodological individualism, individualists suggest that individual members are the only capable entities, who can meaningfully bear the burden of moral responsibility, either individually or in a shared way. Collectivists, on the other hand look for an alternative position wherein they advocate the genuine possibility of attributing moral responsibility to groups qua groups. The collectivist approach has received substantial philosophical attention in recent years. However, most supporters of collectivism search for such possibility without strongly invoking the idea of group moral agency. In this article, I argue for an irreducible moral agential status of groups in terms of the intentional actions of their constituent individual members and their special conglomeration. I suggest that certain collective or group entities are capable of being identified as proper agents of moral assessment analogous to that of individual agents of similar assessment. (shrink)

Do we freely choose to do what we do? Or are we determined by what nature and history have made us? If we are so determined, then can we ever really be responsible for our actions? It is only by bad logic that metaphysics can deprive us of our freedom and our responsibility. But the contingencies of life are another matter. This paper argues that so many accidents of life create who we are and how we act that the responsibility (...) for what we do must be dispersed. There is no place where the buck stops. We are therefore called upon to moderate our resentment and to give up punitive morality in favor of a morality of love and redemption. (shrink)

This article addresses Franklin Gamwell's critique of Alasdair MacIntyre's account of the nature of rational justification. I argue that MacIntyreans have good reasons to take seriously Gamwell's critique, and thus to reformulate MacIntyre's position to make clear that that position does not rest on a denial of all a priori claims. The author outlines such a reformulation, drawing heavily on MacIntyre's account (in his 1990 Aquinas Lecture) of the place of a priori claims within the development of rational traditions of (...) inquiry. When thus rethought, MacIntyre's position grounds a twofold response to Gamwell's critique. (shrink)

In a recent issue of this journal, Kevin Corcoran has argued that the metaphysical theory one holds to about the nature of human persons is irrelevant to the sort of ethical questions that occupy bioethicists as well as the general public. Specifically, he argues that whether one holds a constitution view of human persons, an animalist view, or a substance dualist view, the real work in one’s ethical reasoning is done by certain moral principles rather than by metaphysical ones. I (...) raise objections to his analysis and propose that it is a combination of ethical principles and metaphysical principles that does the work in our judgements about the morality of abortion and other actions. (shrink)

There are few who would deny that P. F. Strawson’s “Freedom and Resentment” (1962) ranks among the most significant contributions to modern moral philosophy. Although any number of essays have been devoted to it, Pamela Hieronymi’s 'Freedom, Resentment, and the Metaphysics of Morals' is the first book-length study. The aim of Hieronymi’s study is to show that Strawson’s “central argument” has been “underestimated and misunderstood.” Hieronymi interprets this argument in terms of what she describes as Strawson’s “social naturalism”. Understood this (...) way, Hieronymi maintains, “the argument is powerful”. In what follows I argue that while Hieronymi’s discussion is stimulating and provides valuable insights into “Freedom and Resentment,” neither the interpretation advanced nor the social naturalist position that it describes is convincing. (shrink)

Introduction No philosophical problem is more deserving of the title 'the free will problem' than that concerning the assessment of the claim that a ...

This is the introduction to a volume of new essays in the metaphysics of moral responsibility by John Martin Fischer, Carl Ginet, Ishtiyaque Haji, Alfred R. Mele, Derk Pereboom, Paul Russell, and Peter van Inwagen. I provide some background for the essays, cover the main debates in the metaphysics of moral responsibility, and emphasize some of the authors' contributions to this area of philosophy.

Upshot: My principal goal in this response is to reintroduce my understanding of metaphysics, which turned out - as I have learned from almost all of the commentaries - to be problematic, to say the least. Having done this, I will be able to address some of the most topical remarks provided by commentators, thereby further clarifying and also modifying my position.

Philosophical theories of agency have focused primarily on actions and activities. But, besides acting, we often omit to do or refrain from doing certain things. How is this aspect of our agency to be conceived? This book offers a comprehensive account of omitting and refraining, addressing issues ranging from the nature of agency and moral responsibility to the metaphysics of absences and causation. Topics addressed include the role of intention in intentional omission, the connection between negligence and omission, the distinction (...) between doing and allowing, and the distinction in law between act and omission. (shrink)

On the notion of responsibility employed by John Passmore in his classic Man’s Responsibility for Nature, the relationship of responsibility can only hold between persons (human beings, subjects), or groups and communities of them, and other persons. And in this relationship the persons that are responsible 'to' other persons are responsible 'for' how their actions affect these other persons, not to the direct object of these actions (in this case: nature). If this is correct, we cannot be responsible to nature (...) without conceiving of it as a ‘pseudo-person’, as Passmore calls it. However, non-anthropocentric environmental ethics requires such a moral relationship. The question is, therefore, how this can be allowed in a metaphysically acceptable way. To answer this I first provide an account of what it means to stand in the relation of being ‘responsible to’. Next, I describe two major paradigmatic examples of the metaphysics of nature that perfectly match the thesis that we can, and should, be responsible to nature (the Spinoza-inspired view and the Gaia hypothesis). Unfortunately, they have to be rejected for common sense or naturalist reasons. Finally, I therefore defend a 'fictionalist' view of nature (as person-like) that allows for this relationship. (shrink)

A companion volume to Free Will: A Philosophical Study, this new anthology collects influential essays on free will, including both well-known contemporary classics and exciting recent work. Agency and Responsibility: Essays on the Metaphysics of Freedom is divided into three parts. The essays in the first section address metaphysical issues concerning free will and causal determinism. The second section groups papers presenting a positive account of the nature of free action, including competing compatibilist and incompatibilist analyses. The third section concerns (...) free will and moral responsibility, including theories of moral responsibility and the challenge to an alternative possibilities condition posed by Frankurt-type scenarios. Distinguished by its balance and consistently high quality, the volume presents papers selected for their significance, innovation, and clarity of expression. Contributors include Harry Frankfurt, Peter van Inwagen, David Lewis, Elizabeth Anscombe, John Martin Fischer, Michael Bratman, Roderick Chisholm, Robert Kane, Peter Strawson, and Susan Wolf. The anthology serves as an up-to-date resource for scholars as well as a useful text for courses in ethics, philosophy of religion, or metaphysics. In addition, paired with Free Will: A Philosophical Study, it would form an excellent upper-level undergraduate or graduate-level course in free will, responsibility, motivation, or action theory. (shrink)

In our article, “Past Facts and The Nature of History”, we unpack a broadly realist view of the nature of history and historical narratives. Paul Roth’s The Philosophical Structure of Historical Explanation serves as our primary foil. Fons DeWulf and Roth have replied, and this is our response to their response.

The concept of causation is fundamental to ascribing moral and legal responsibility for events. Yet the precise relationship between causation and responsibility remains unclear. This book clarifies that relationship through an analysis of the best accounts of causation in metaphysics, and a critique of the confusion in legal doctrine.

The paper attempts to explicate and justify the position I call `Agency Incompatibilism'- that is to say, the view that agency itself is incompatible with determinism. The most important part of this task is the characterisation of the conception of agency on which the position depends; for unless this is understood, the rationale for the position is likely to be missed. The paper accordingly proceeds by setting out the orthodox philosophical position concerning what it takes for agency to exist, before (...) going on to explain why and how that orthodoxy should be challenged. The relations between my own views and those of others writing on the issues of free will and moral responsibility, in three crucial and inter-connected areas are then explored. These are (1) the question how animals should figure in the philosophy of action; (2) the question what the lesson is of `Frankfurt-style' examples; and (3) the distinction between so-called `leeway' incompatibilism and `source' incompatibilism. The paper moves on to consider and respond to various objections to Agency Incompatibilism, including the claim that to embrace the conception of agency that makes incompatibilism plausible is to beg the question against the compatibilist, and also the worry that determinism is an empirical thesis which ought not to be straightforwardly falsifiable by such a priori reasoning as Agency Incompatibilism appears to involve. I also try to rebut the worry that Agency Incompatibilism is committed to the existence of an unintelligible and/or naturalistically impossible variety of irreducible agent causation. (shrink)

Upshot: It is admittedly difficult, if at all possible, to establish a direct, positive logical bridge from epistemic considerations to ontological conclusions. Yet, epistemic considerations can and should inform metaphysical choices, for all we ultimately have for making these choices is our knowledge. More accurately, all we finally have is the mind - sole given of existence - upon which our knowledge resides and within which our metaphysical choices are made.

In _The Philosophical Quarterly, 47 (1997), pp. 373-381, van Inwagen argues in a critical notice of my book _The Metaphysics of Free Will that the impression that Frankfurt-type examples show that moral responsibility need not require alternative possibilities results from insufficient analytical precision. He suggests various precise principles which imply that moral responsibility requires alternative possibilities. In reply, I seek to defend the conclusion I have drawn from Frankfurt-type examples: moral responsibility need not require alternative possibilities. I contend that van (...) Inwagen's principle the principle of possible prevention and the no-matter-what principle are invalid, and I suggest that their plausibility comes from thinking about a proper subset of the relevant cases. (shrink)

i would like to begin by heaping some well-merited laud upon Robert Cummings Neville, henceforth to be referred to simply as Bob. His architectonics, in this book and almost all his others, are perhaps only rivaled by Kant and Whitehead, and the profundity of his thinking is only surpassed by the breadth of his learning. Specifically, I am convinced that his knowledge of non-Western thought is unsurpassed by his peers. I, however, will refer to but a fraction of what he (...) has to teach us about non-Western thought, as I must admit that this is generally above my pay grade.In a recent issue of American Journal of Theology & Philosophy, Bob has a small article... (shrink)

John McDowell’s position on the metaphysics of thought combines an identity conception of truth, the view that if one thinks truly that p, then what one thinks is the fact that p, with a Tractarian conception of the world as the totality of facts. In response to the charge that it is incoherent, William Fish and Cynthia Macdonald have recently defended a novel way of developing McDowell’s position. I argue that their interesting proposal doesn't work, owing to the fact that (...) it can accommodate neither false thought nor, it seems, certain cases of true thought. (shrink)

ㅤThis is a response to Hud Hudson's book 'The Fall and Hypertime' (OUP).

While the story of Stanislav Petrov – the Soviet Lieutenant Colonel who likely saved the world from nuclear holocaust in 1983 – is often trotted out to advocate for the view that human beings ought to be kept “in the loop” of automated weapons’ responses, I argue that the episode in fact belies this reading. By attending more closely to the features of this event – to Petrov’s professional background, to his familiarity with the warning system, and to his decisions (...) to defy his protocol – it becomes clear that Petrov was not seamlessly working “in his loop,” but reassessing it entirely. I claim that this exhibits a paradox intrinsic to all automated loops: namely, that their optimum function in fact rests on unforeseen human interventions that cannot be reliably codified ex ante, that is, that good judgment cannot simply be “programmed into” their protocols. This dependence, moreover, reveals automation’s ineluctable need for virtue ethics – not in the usual sense (whereby ethics deliberates about, say, possible damages and loss of life), but in the sense that ethical judgment, rightly understood, entails the reassessment of all of the conditions surrounding a decision, including whether a protocol should be followed at all. (shrink)

Metaphysical determinism argues that God divinely predetermines everything, including human suffering. Contrary to metaphysical determinism, free will or libertarianism argues that not everything is predetermined by God. Therefore, evil does not serve any divine purpose. Libertarianism argues that metaphysical determinism is simply incoherent because it holds that God can predetermine an action and, at the same time, holds that He could stop such an action. This study seeks to find out which of these two views might be promising in responding (...) to the problem of suffering. Contrary to these two positions, this study argues that suffering must be understood contextually. The above-stated responses do not always provide viable answers to the problem of suffering because they are often generalised and conceived from the God-eye view without considering the sufferers’ perspectives.Contribution: Although there are a plethora of publications on metaphysical determinism and freewill, this study re-examined both and sheds a nuance for a further development of these two competing views. The article argues that none of these two responses offers the best response to the problem; rather, each has its strengths and weaknesses because they seem to focus on God rather than the sufferer. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophy of mind has tended to make the believer disappear. In response, Matt Boyle and Pamela Hieronymi have argued that believing is an act or activity, not a mental state. I argue that this response fails to fully critique contemporary accounts of believing. Such accounts assume that states of believing are particulars; with semantic properties; that we attend to in reflection and act on in inference; and with a rich causal life of their own. Together, these assumptions leave no (...) room for the believer in an account of believing. But these assumptions are not entailed by the idea that believing is a mental state. Careful reflection on other kinds of states helps us see how to put the believer back in the heart of our account of believing. (shrink)

Ross Cameron charges the subtraction argument for metaphysical nihilism with equivocation: each premise is plausible only under different interpretations of 'concrete'. This charge is ungrounded; the argument is both valid and supported by basic modal intuitions.

In Religion in an Age of Science, Ian Barbour concludes that the contemporary evolutionary worldview with its emphasis on the interplay of law and chance, relationality and autonomy, can be properly accounted for only by something like the process‐relational metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead. At the same time, he expresses serious reservations about certain features of Whitehead's scheme, notably, his perceived inability to account for the ongoing identity of the human self and for the fact of multilevel organization within organisms (...) and in the world of inanimate compounds. In this article, I suggest that both of these difficulties can be resolved if one adopts a revisionist understanding of the Whiteheadian category of society according to which democratically organized societies possess an ontological unity and exercise a corporate agency proper to their own level of existence and activity. Furthermore, if one applies this revisionist understanding of societies to the Whiteheadian doctrine of God, a Trinitarian understanding of God becomes possible within the overall parameters of process‐relational metaphysics. In this way, traditional belief in the doctrine of the Trinity can be reconciled with a scientifically credible worldview. (shrink)

I respond to Michał Chaberek’s and Robert A. Delfino’s criticisms of my argument that evolution is compatible with Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics. Biological species, as secondary substances, are beings of reason founded in the natures of their instances. They are traceable to God’s creative intent, but not to universal exemplars. Aquinas teaches that concepts are derived from sensible accidents. Thus, evolution’s directed variation of such accidents will eventually require new species concepts. This accords with projective realism, which allows diverse, well-founded concepts based (...) on the multiple perspectives and conceptual spaces of knowing subjects. Charges that this is nominalism, not moderate realism, are rebutted; however, it is relativism because knowledge is a subject-object relation. Other metaphysical issues are considered. Chaberek’s thesis that species cannot evolve naturally fails because he: (1) reifies the species concept, (2) misrepresents the motivation, structure and conclusions of evolution, (3) confuses Aristotle’s four causes and (4) limits God’s creative omnipotence. Finally, Chaberek is out of step with contemporary theology. (shrink)

The aim of this book is to defend compatibilism against incompatibilism by exploring the metaphysical issues that lie at the heart of the debate between them. Berofsky defines incompatibilism as the doctrine that an agent is morally responsible for an action only if that particular action is not determined. Thus, regardless of the truth of determinism, that is, regardless of whether or not all events and actions are determined, the key question is: Can an agent be morally responsible for an (...) action that is determined? Berofsky thinks the correct answer is yes, and that all arguments for incompatibilism are unsound. (shrink)

In his "On the Metaphysics of Knowledge" (this volume), Sven Bernecker introduces and defends a novel account of knowledge that he calls ‘identificationism’. In fact, Bernecker’s account is a hybrid view that combines a modal tracking condition – some variation on safety and/or sensitivity – with his original identificationist condition. The reason for including a tracking condition is that some Gettier cases, like the famous fake barn case, are best accommodated in this way. In making this more familiar claim, Bernecker (...) follows epistemologists like Nozick, Sosa, or Pritchard. But he also adds the less familiar claim that there are ‘intractable’ Gettier cases that cannot be dealt with by a tracking condition alone. These intractable cases involve necessary or modally stable propositions, such as '2+2=4' or 'there is carbon on earth', which are either true in all possible worlds, or at least true in all possible worlds that are close to the actual world. In this paper, I will not directly address the epistemological adequacy of Bernecker’s identificationism. Rather, I want to focus on the substantial metaphysical commitments that it incurs, in particular on the problematic idea that our epistemic reasons identify the truthmaker of our respective belief when we know something. My conclusion will be that being a truthmaker for p is metaphysically more demanding than being an epistemic reason for p. A truthmaker for p must necessitate the truth of p, while an epistemic reason for p must merely indicate the truth of p. Thus, we should not expect that epistemic reasons identify the truthmakers of our knowledge-constituting beliefs in the way that Bernecker suggests. (shrink)

Kris McDaniel has recently proposed an interpretation of the distinction between conventional truth and ultimate truth, as that distinction is made within Abhidharma metaphysics. According to McDaniel's proposal, the distinction between conventional truth and ultimate truth is closely connected with a similar distinction between conventional existence and ultimate existence. What is more, the distinction between conventional existence and ultimate existence should be interpreted along ontological pluralist lines: the difference between things that ultimately exist and things that merely conventionally exist amounts (...) to a difference in the modes of being enjoyed by the things in question.One... (shrink)

Introduction: The metaphysics of responsibility and philosophy of education -- Moral responsibility, authenticity, and the problem of manipulation -- A novel perspective on the problem of authenticity -- Forward-looking authenticity in the internalism/externalism debate -- Authentic education, indoctrination, and moral responsibility -- Moral responsibility, hard incompatibilism, and interpersonal relationships -- On the significance of moral responsibility and love -- Love, commendability, and moral obligation -- Love, determinism, and normative education.

Certain properties of great interest to philosophers—e.g., blameworthiness, praiseworthiness, desirability, etc.—appear on the basis of their standard English forms of designation to have relation-response structure. In other words, each such property appears on the basis of its standard English forms of designation to be a relational property of a certain sort, namely, the property of standing in a given relation to a given type of response. This presents a question: When we set out to theorize any such property, how seriously (...) ought we to take the linguistic appearances? This paper defends an answer, namely: “Seriously.” In other words, we ought only to provide analyses of such properties that are faithful to their standard English forms of designation. This thesis is controversial: a number of philosophers of blameworthiness, for instance, seem to violate it outright, whereas other such philosophers—most notably, Justin D’Arms and Daniel Jacobson and David Shoemaker—have argued that its violation follows from a popular combination of views about the natures of certain such properties. In the paper, I defend faithfulness against these latter arguments, and I endeavor to clarify the role that faithfulness plays (and ought to play) in recent debates about the natures of certain value properties. (shrink)

What I want to do in this essay is examine a notorious argument put forward by Galen Strawson. He advocates what he describes as an a priori argument against the possibility of ultimate (moral) responsibility. There have been many attempts at answering Strawson, but whether they have been successful is debatable. I attempt to employ Henri Bergson's approach to the free will debate and assess whether what he says has any purchase in terms of criticism of Strawson's position. I conclude (...) that Bergson's views offer a serious alternative in debates about free will. (shrink)

The shape of contemporary ethics owes a great deal to Henry Sidgwick, through his influence on Rawls, Parfit, and others. No one who reads David Phillips’s outstanding book can be left in the slightest doubt about Sidgwick’s continuing significance for both metaethics and normative ethics. Phillips’s scholarship and his substantive arguments are powerful and insightful, and I find them largely persuasive. So in these remarks I intend merely to raise a few questions about each of his four main..

The publication of Jurgen Habermas's Nachmetaphysisches Denken (Post-Metaphysical Thinking) and the publication of a Hans-Willi Weis article about my work prompted several people in Germany to approach me with questions about my response to those pieces. What follows is a brief reply to both.

Whitehead's response to the epistemological challenges of Hume and Kant, written in a style devoid of the metaphysical intricacies of his later works, Symbolism makes accessible his theory of perception and his more general insights into the function of symbols in culture and society.