This book recounts a few ingenious attempts to derive physical theories by reason only, beginning with Descartes' geometric construction of the world, and finishing with recent derivations of quantum mechanics from natural axioms.

Leibniz states that 'metaphysics is natural theology', and this is especially true of his metaphysics of modality. In this book, Michael V. Griffin examines the deep connection between the two and the philosophical consequences which follow from it. Grounding many of Leibniz's modal conceptions in his theology, Griffin develops a new interpretation of the ontological argument in Leibniz and Descartes. This interpretation demonstrates that their understanding God's necessary existence cannot be construed in contemporary modal logical terms. He goes on to (...) develop a necessitarian interpretation of Leibniz, arguing that Leibniz, like Spinoza, is committed to the thesis that everything actual is metaphysically necessary, but that Leibniz rejects Spinoza's denial of God's moral perfection. His book will appeal to scholars of early modern philosophy and philosophers interested in modal metaphysics and the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

A primera vista, parecería que la teoría metafísica de Aquino permite un pequeño espacio para la eventualidad; pero la contingencia y la accidentalidad tienen un lugar y alcance importantes en la ontología de santo Tomás, e implica consecuencias influyentes en su teoría de la acción.

On pourrait définir la nécessité absolue comme la vérité dans absolument tous les mondes possibles sans restriction. Mais nous devrions être capables de l’expliquer sans invoquer les mondes possibles. J’envisage trois definitions alternatives de : « Il est absolument nécessaire que p » et défends une définition contrefactuelle généralisée : ∀q(q□→p).Je montre que la nécessité absolue satisfait le principe S5 et soutiens que la nécessité logique est absolue. Je discute ensuite des relations entre la nécessité logique et la nécessité métaphysique, (...) en expliquant comment il peut y avoir des nécessités absolues non logiques. J’esquisse également une théorie essentialiste selon laquelle la nécessité a son fondement dans la nature des choses. Je discute certaines de ses conséquences, y compris concernant l’existence nécessaire de certaines propriétés et celle de certains objets. (shrink)

As I understand him, Veatch claims that there is a kind of proposition in which essential predicates figure, such propositions having the following characteristics.

Howe et al. fail to provide evidence that practice is sufficient and ignore evidence of high ability before instruction. They unsuccessfully discount savants; provide weak evidence against heritability of music, criticize retrospective evidence selectively, using it when it supports their position; and ultimately both accept and deny talent. Finally, they conflate a scientific question with one of policy.

This paper states and examines a modal argument for universal necessity, that is: for the necessary truth of every true proposition. Deep issues in the metaphysics of modality are bound up with the argument, as is revealed in the attempt to defend, or refute, it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson's appropriation of the Stoic tradition occupied a central and enduring place in his worldview, as is abundantly clear from his essays, poems, and journals. Just as clearly, like other modern thinkers and writers influenced by Stoicism as "perennial philosophy," Emerson interpreted what he learned within a historical framework shaped by Christianity, liberalism, and democracy as well as by influences particular to his own thought and his personal experience. In my paper I will briefly review the main ideas (...) of ancient Stoicism, consider the changes introduced by modern versions of the Stoic tradition, and then indicate what ideas Emerson specifically appropriated and what role they played in his .. (shrink)

이미 로봇은 우리의 일상생활과 매우 밀접하게 관계를 맺고 있으며, 우리의 삶을 윤택하게 할 수 있는 로봇을 거부할 사람은 없을 것이다. 이에 반하여, 인간과 로봇의 관계 설정에 대한 논의와 로봇의 설계, 제작, 그리고 사용에 대한 논의 또한 매우 미흡한 실정이다. 따라서 본 논문은 이에 대한 명확한 가이드라인을 제시하기 위해서 2007년에 제정되기로 했던 미완의 로봇윤리헌장에 대한 수정의 필요성과 그 의미에 대하여 살펴보는 것에 그 목적이 있다. 2007년 당시 산업자원부는 세계 최초로 로봇윤리헌장을 제정하려 했지만, 국가적 차원에서 로봇윤리헌장을 공식화하지는 않았다. 그러나 인간과 로봇의 공존을 (...) 위해 이 윤리헌장은 매우 큰 의미를 지니고 있다고 할 수 있다. 본 논문은 현재의 로봇산업 발전에 발맞춰 앞으로 개정해야하는 로봇윤리헌장의 윤리적 근거를 제시함과 동시에 그 수정방향에 대하여 제시할 것이며, 로봇윤리헌장의 초안에 대한 내용분석을 통해 인간과 로봇의 관계에 대한 명확한 설정과 로봇 설계자, 제작자, 그리고 사용자가 준수해야하는 윤리원칙에 대한 세련화와 명료화에 대하여 논의할 것이다. (shrink)

I explore in this essay an ethically grounded method for structuring a program of study. Rather than attempt to delimit a discipline or to reinforce disciplinarity, I suggest a means of creatively narrowing the scope of research, namely by focusing on inner necessity and conscience. The art of rhetoric as self-discipline is an extension of inner necessity and a framework in which scholars may come to integrate the more rational and more artistic, more public and more private elements (...) of their personalities by exploring the influence of symbols on their lives. By conceptualizing the art of rhetoric as a "self-discipline," I affirm the significance of all these elements and suggest that their harmonious blending will enhance the pleasures and utilities of discourse. (shrink)

We tend to suppose that the ancient Greeks had primitive ideas of the self, of responsibility, freedom, and shame, and that now humanity has advanced from these to a more refined moral consciousness. Bernard Williams's original and radical book questions this picture of Western history. While we are in many ways different from the Greeks, Williams claims that the differences are not to be traced to a shift in these basic conceptions of ethical life. We are more like the ancients (...) than we are prepared to acknowledge, and only when this is understood can we properly grasp our most important differences from them, such as our rejection of slavery. The author is a philosopher, but much of his book is directed to writers such as Homer and the tragedians, whom he discusses as poets and not just as materials for philosophy. At the center of his study is the question of how we can understand Greek tragedy at all, when its world is so far from ours. Williams explains how it is that when the ancients speak, they do not merely tell us about themselves, but about ourselves. In a new foreword A.A. Long explores the impact of this volume in the context of Williams's stunning career. (shrink)

One reason why we find the causal theory of reference so interesting is because it provides an account of de re necessity. Necessity is not only predicated of statements but also of objects. It is not only discovered by means of linguistic analysis but also by means of empirical investigation. And this means that truths we once described as contingent turn out to be necessary after all. We may think that this account of de re necessity is (...) due to the causal theorists' open acceptance of essentialism. Certainly essentialism provides an account of de re necessity. The problem, however, is that the causal theorists do not prove essentialism so much as presuppose it. Nevertheless, they still provide an account of de re necessity - an account of de re necessity that owes nothing to essentialism. And it is this account of necessity that I plan to discuss in this paper. (shrink)

An issue in current animal welfare ethics is the use of animals in medical education. At stake is the conflict of pain and suffering of the animals vs. the benefit to the students. The educator's role is to balance these two concepts. If the animals do suffer, this has to be justified by clearly establishing the necessity of their use. Neither this justification nor the methods for making the decision are clear. Addressed in this discussion are the arguments for (...) and against animal use, alternatives, and proposals for the resolution of the controversy. (shrink)

The relation between free will and necessity is one of the most important issues regarding the problem of “free will”. This is because of the rule which indicates that “being not necessary, an event would not be came off”. There has been an ongoing debate among theologians, philosophers and Jurists on whether this rule includes free actions. Sadrain Philosophers believe that this rule is inclusive of human free actions, while followers of the Na’eeni school endorse the opposite. In this (...) article, after reviewing the views of philosophers and jurists on the stages of a free action, I shall explore the question whether human actions, stages of which are understood deterministic, could be regarded as free, and so, whether Na’eenian criticisms against philosophers are justified. Besides, I shall put forth some innovative ideas of Allameh Ja’fari concerning the issue, whose view, while revises some philosophers’, is not compatible with that of Na’eeni. (shrink)

This paper attempts to set up a probabilistic framework for understanding the notion of causal necessity. What results is a relaxed and relativized probabilistic theory of epsilon-Causal necessity and an explicit attempt to avoid deterministic assumptions. The theory developed emphasizes the notions of partial cause, Causal contribution, And the degree of contribution. Implications for causal overdetermination, Causal preemption, And causal discourse are discussed.

Several authors have detected profound analogies between Kant and Wittgenstein. Their claims have been contradicted by scholars, such being the agreed penalty for attributions to authorities. Many of the alleged similarities have either been left unsubstantiated at a detailed exegetical level, or have been confined to highly general points. At the same time, the ‘scholarly’ backlash has tended to ignore the importance of some of these general points, or has focused on very specific issues or purely terminological matters. To advance (...) the debate, I distinguish four different topics: questions of actual influence; parallels at the methodological level; substantial similarities in philosophical logic; substantial similarities in the philosophy of mind. The article concentrates on the second and third topic. Section I argues that the critical conception of philosophy shared by Kant and Wittgenstein is itself due to the fact that they explain the a priori status of necessary propositions by reference to the way we experience or represent reality. Section II shows how the Tractatiis linguistically transforms this ‘reflective turn’, replacing Kant's preconditions of experience by preconditions of symbolic representation. Section III suggests that this explanation of the a priori involves the idea of an isomorphism between thought and reality, and that both Kant's transcendental idealism and Wittgenstein's early metaphysics of symbolism distort this isomorphism. Wittgenstein later rejected this metaphysics of symbolism, on the grounds that language is autonomous, and section IV detects parallels between that idea and Kant's ‘diallelus’ argument against the correspondence theory of truth. Finally, I claim that while Wittgenstein is right to insist that all a priori propositions are conceptual, Kant, in calling them synthetic a priori, is right to deny that they simply unpack the concepts involved in the propositions themselves. (shrink)

Weak ontic necessity is the ontic necessity expressed by “should” or “ought to”. An example of it is “I should be dead by now”. A feature of this necessity is that whether it holds is irrelevant to whether its underlying proposition holds. This necessity essentially involves time. This paper presents a logic for conditional weak ontic necessity in branching time. The logic’s language includes the next instant operator, the last instant operator, and the operator for (...) conditional weak ontic necessity. Formulas are evaluated at tuples consisting of a tree-based model, a context, a timeline, and an instant. A context is a set of ordered ontic laws determining expected timelines. When evaluating conditional weak ontic necessity, we first update the context with the antecedent, then check whether the consequent holds with respect to the updated context. We discuss some consequences of the formalization and compare it to some related work. We study the logic’s expressivity and axiomatize a special validity of it. (shrink)

『논어』에는 공자와 제자들 사이에서 진행된 교육에 관한 다양한 이론들이 있다. 기존의 사회질서가 무너져가던 혼란한 춘추시대를 살면서, 그들은 그에 대한 해결책을 교육에서 찾았고, 그 중에서도 도덕교육을 강조하였다. 지금 우리도 기존의 가치체계는 해체되어가고 있고 새로운 가치체계는 아직 형성되지 않은 과도기를 살면서, 그로 인해 나타나는 각종 부조리한 사회현상들에 대한 해결책의 하나로 도덕과 그 교육을 강조하고 있다. 이에 본 논문은 지금의 사회상황이 춘추시대와 일정 부분 유사하다고 간주하여, 당시의 공자와 제자들 사이에서 진행되었던 도덕교육의 필요성을 고찰함으로써, 현재의 도덕교육을 실시하는데 참고가 될 만한 요소를 탐구하고자 하였다. 공자는 (...) 사람의 선천적 본성은 서로 비슷하지만 후천적 습관으로 인하여 각자의 도덕적 인격과 사회적 지위에 차이가 있게 된다고 보았는데, 이를 바탕으로 그와 그의 제자들은 도덕교육을 통하여 품격 있는 정치인재를 양성함으로써 질서 있는 도덕사회를 건설하고자 하였을 뿐더러, 스스로 도덕수양을 실행함으로써 이상적인 인격체를 완성하고자 하였다. 그들은 고대유가문헌에 나타난 인(仁), 의(義), 예(禮), 지(智), 효(孝), 제(悌), 충(忠), 신(信), 서(恕) 등의 간단한 도덕개념에 대하여 다양한 의미를 부여함으로써 도덕이론을 풍부하게 하였을 뿐더러, 그것을 바탕으로 도덕교육을 실시하였다. 이러한 『논어』의 도덕교육론 중에서 과거와 미래, 학습과 사고, 이론과 실천의 조화로운 교육 태도와 솔선수범하는 교육 자세는 오늘날에도 여전히 참고할 만한 가치가 있다고 인식하였는데, 이것이 다름 아닌 『논어』의 도덕교육론이 갖는 당위적이면서도 보편적인 의의라고 할 수 있다. (shrink)

Of the many and varied applications of quantum information theory, perhaps the most fascinating is the sub-field of quantum computation. In this sub-field, computational algorithms are designed which utilise the resources available in quantum systems in order to compute solutions to computational problems with, in some cases, exponentially fewer resources than any known classical algorithm. While the fact of quantum computational speedup is almost beyond doubt, the source of quantum speedup is still a matter of debate. In this paper I (...) argue that entanglement is a necessary component for any explanation of quantum speedup and I address some purported counter-examples that some claim show that the contrary is true. In particular, I address Cleve et al.'s solution to Deutsch's problem, Biham et al.'s mixed-state version of the Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm, and Knill & Laflamme's deterministic quantum computation with one qubit model of quantum computation. I argue that these examples do not demonstrate that entanglement is unnecessary for the explanation of quantum speedup, but that they rather illuminate and clarify the role that entanglement does play. (shrink)

Against the widely affirmed dictum, “all existential statements can be denied without self-contradiction,” this essay argues for some existential statements being necessarily true semantically and thus for transcendental metaphysics in the strict sense. Having briefly reviewed how Ronald Dworkin, Karl-Otto Apel, and Thomas Nagel each affirm the dictum in question and, thereby, imply the possible truth of the statement, “nothing exists,” the essay seeks to show how the statement, “‘nothing exists’ is possibly true”, is pragmatically self-refuting. Against the implications of (...) subjectivity as such, that statement implies the impossibility of knowing any existential statement; that is, knowing what exists or, indeed, whether anything exists is forever denied to us. The dictum is, therefore, itself impossible, and the essay concludes with the assertion that transcendental metaphysics should be neoclassical. (shrink)

Although Plato writes less about war than we might expect--especially considering the fact that his dialogues are historically set during the Peloponnesian War--the right conduct of war constitutes a crucial concern for Plato. In both the Alcibiades and Laches dialogues, rightful conduct of war is linked to the practice of virtue. Neither a good statesman nor a good military man can ignore this link, which joins military pursuits not only to courage, but to the whole of virtue, including justice. In (...) the Republic , the passage from a luxurious city to a well-ordered and virtuous city is described by means of the proper education of the city's military guardians, and a teaching of ius in bello --to use a just-war term--for wars between Greeks is outlined. Finally, in the Laws , peace, not war, is presented as the true aim of good laws, and the importance of legitimate authority in war-making is duly emphasized. (shrink)

In this article, I want to focus on time and development in Kripke’s “Naming and Necessity” by considering two topics: (1) the evolution of scientific knowledge; (2) the evolution of biographies. In connection with (1) I suggest the introduction of a sentence operator for epistemic possibility and argue that some of Kripke’s strong metaphysical statements are finely counterbalanced by rather “Popperian” epistemological considerations. In connection with (2) I consider the idea of exploiting necessity of origin for a crossworld (...) identity criterion. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook Jahrgang: 2016 Heft: 1 Seiten: 39-50.