The paper examines John Horton’s realist political theory, in particular his critique of John Rawls’s “high” or “liberal moralism”, and seeks to determine the extent to which, together with Horton, we would have reasons to leave Rawls’s and other Rawlsian accounts behind. The paper argues that some of the insights of Horton’s realism are mistaken, whereas many of those which are not mistaken are compatible with liberal moralism correctly understood. The argument is also formulated in terms of contingency, in (...) particular in terms of a contrast between the realist emphasis on the contingency of human existence and the liberal moralism’s neglect or inability to properly account for it, due to a strong focus on necessity. (shrink)

The article examines the concept of contingency of nature and scientific laws, put for­ward and set forth in a number of works by the French spiritualist philosopher Emile Boutroux (1845–1921). The principle of contingency became for him an important tool in solving complex interrelated problems: 1) to substantiate spiritualism, including its key idea of ​​freedom, based on the scientific knowledge of the era in which issues of phi­losophical epistemology were becoming increasingly important; 2) thereby contribute to the revival (...) of metaphysics, which was threatened with marginalization due to the pro­motion of the ideas of positivism and scientism. Considering the hierarchy of genera, or levels of being, as well as the laws corresponding to them, Boutroux sought to prove that the world is not dominated by rigid necessity, but by contingency. Accordingly, in scientific laws there is a certain amount of convention, which increases as one moves from the lower stages of being, those closest to matter, where determinism manifests it­self most strongly, to the highest levels, where the main role is played by the spiritual principle with its inherent freedom. It is this freedom, which cannot be comprehended in experience, that is expressed in contingency, which is a characteristic feature of being. Thus, the principle of contingency appears in Boutroux’s concept as the main principle of knowledge and explanation in philosophy, which allows metaphysics to return its meaning, denied by positivism, and to substantiate human freedom. (shrink)

Contemporary metaphilosophical debates on the future of philosophy invariably include references to the natural sciences. This is wholly understandable given the cognitive and cultural authority of the sciences and their contributions to philosophical thought and practice. However such appeals to the sciences should be moderated by reflections on contingency of sciences. Using the work of contemporary historians and philosophers of science, I argue that an awareness of the radical contingency of science supports the claim that philosophy’s (...) future should not be construed as either dependent or necessarily related to that of the sciences. Therefore contemporary debates – about the possibility of philosophy’s status as a science, say – should be tempered by an appreciation of the fact that science may cease to be a significant feature of future metaphilosophical debates. I conclude by considering the implications of this claim for assessments of the progressiveness of philosophy. (shrink)

Offers the first comprehensive survey of Mexican existentialism to appear in English. This book examines the emergence of existentialism in Mexico in the 1940s and the quest for a genuine Mexican philosophy that followed it. It focuses on the pivotal moments and key figures of the Hyperion group, including Emilio Uranga, Luis Villoro, Leopoldo Zea, and Jorge Portilla, who explored questions of interpretation, marginality, identity, and the role of philosophy. Carlos Alberto Sánchez was the first to introduce and (...) emphasize the philosophical significance of the Hyperion group to readers of English in The Suspension of Seriousness, and in the present volume he examines its legacy and relevancy for the twenty-first century. Sánchez argues that there are lessons to be learned from Hyperion’s project not only for Latino/a life in the United States but also for the lives of those on the fringes of contemporary, postmodern or postcolonial, economic, political, and cultural power. (shrink)

In this study John Bowlin argues that Aquinas's moral theology receives much of its character and content from an assumption about our common lot: the good we desire is difficult to know and to will, in particular because of contingencies of various kinds - within ourselves, in the ends and objects we pursue, and in the circumstances of choice. Since contingencies are fortune's effects, Aquinas insists that it is fortune that makes good choice difficult. Bowlin then explicates Aquinas's treatment of (...) a number of topics in light of this difficulty: the moral and theological virtues, the first precepts of the natural law, the voluntariness of virtuous action, and the happiness available to us in this life. By noting that Aquinas proceeds with an eye on fortune's threats to virtue, agency, and happiness, Bowlin places him more precisely in the history of ethics, among Aristotle, Augustine, and the Stoics. (shrink)

There are many links between Kuki Shūzō and the French philosophy of the 1920s that treated the phenomenon of contingency. Examined are (1) the problem of time as it presented itself to French philosophers at the beginning of the twentieth century and its reception by Kuki as an Oriental philosopher and a Buddhist; (2) the problem of liberty and of existence in these French philosophers and in Buddhism; and (3) the phenomenon of the dream as a psychic and (...) aesthetic phenomenon for Kuki and for the French philosophers in question. (shrink)

Although Quentin Meillassoux’s philosophy desires to be postmetaphysical and posttheological, I argue in this paper that it remains structurally theological. Specifically, I argue that Meillassoux’s speculative thesis on the contingency of nature and its laws repeats at a formal level the medieval theological distinction between God’s absolute power and God’s ordained power. The first part of this paper discusses how this distinction allowed medieval theologians such as Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus to understand and have faith in the (...) stable contingency of the present order of things in light of divine omnipotence. The second part of this paper discusses how Meillassoux repeats this distinction, intentionally or not, between God’s absolute power and God’s ordained power in his attempt to think the absolute contingency of the laws of nature as an effect of hyper-Chaos. Although, unlike the medieval God, Meillassoux’s hyper-Chaos remains fundamentally without reason and devoid of any moral valence, I argue in the third section of this paper that Meillassoux sneaks in an existential faith in the present and future order of things with his appeal to hope in a speculative resurrection of the dead, a move that brings him further in line with the substance of the distinction between God’s absolute power and God’s ordained power. (shrink)

This book is about the influence of varying theological conceptions of contingency and necessity on two versions of the mechanical philosophy in the seventeenth century. Pierre Gassendi and René Descartes both believed that all natural phenomena could be explained in terms of matter and motion alone. They disagreed about the details of their mechanical accounts of the world, in particular about their theories of matter and their approaches to scientific method. This book traces their differences back to theological (...) presuppositions they inherited from the Middle Ages. Theological ideas were transformed into philosophical and scientific ideas which led to the emergence of different styles of science in the second half of the seventeenth century. (shrink)

In recent years, scholars studying the writing of the American pragmatist philosopher John Dewey have attempted to use his ethical ideas to construct a viable environmental ethics. This endeavor has found limited success and generated some intriguing debates, but has been found wanting in many areas important to environmental ethicists of the twenty-first century. In particular, the humanist motivations behind many of his ethical writings stand in the way of a philosophy that takes nonhumans seriously. However, there is much (...) environmental philosophers can learn from Dewey, not from his ethics, but from his ontological writings. A concept of the contingency of existence, found in Dewey, in particular in Experience and Nature, can be the foundation for a robust, if dark, ecological philosophy. (shrink)

Special Issue, n. I, ch. 1, On the Transcendental.

In this 1989 book Rorty argues that thinkers such as Nietzsche, Freud, and Wittgenstein have enabled societies to see themselves as historical contingencies, rather than as expressions of underlying, ahistorical human nature or as realizations of suprahistorical goals. This ironic perspective on the human condition is valuable on a private level, although it cannot advance the social or political goals of liberalism. In fact Rorty believes that it is literature not philosophy that can do this, by promoting a genuine (...) sense of human solidarity. A truly liberal culture, acutely aware of its own historical contingency, would fuse the private, individual freedom of the ironic, philosophical perspective with the public project of human solidarity as it is engendered through the insights and sensibilities of great writers. The book has a characteristically wide range of reference from philosophy through social theory to literary criticism. It confirms Rorty's status as a uniquely subtle theorist, whose writing will prove absorbing to academic and nonacademic readers alike. (shrink)

John Burbidge shows that, far from incorporating everything into an all-consuming necessity, Hegel's philosophy requires the novelty of unexpected contingencies to maintain its systematic pretensions. To know without fear of failure is to expect that experience will confound our confident claims to knowledge. And the universal character of all life involves acting, discovering what happens as a result, and incorporating both intention and result into a new comprehensive understanding. Burbidge explores how Hegel applied this approach when he turned from (...) his logic to chemistry, biology, psychology and history, and suggests how a Hegelian might function within the changed circumstances of contemporary science. (shrink)

Inspired by G W F Hegel's system, Johan Ludvig Heiberg authored a series of essays and monographs on different philosophical issues in both Danish and German; ...

Contingent transcranialists claim that the physical mechanisms of mind are not exclusively intracranial and that genuine cognitive systems can extend into cognizers' physical and socio-cultural environments. They further claim that extended cognitive systems must include the deep functional integration of external environmental resources with internal neural resources. They have found it difficult, however, to explicate the precise nature of such deep functional integration and provide compelling examples of it. Contingent intracranialists deny that extracranial resources can be components of genuine extended (...) cognitive systems. They claim that transcranialists fallaciously conflate coupling with constitution and construe cognition as extending always from brains into world rather than world into brains. By using insights from recent research in developmental psychology and by explicating the nature of one form that deep functional integration can take, I argue that (i) transcranialists do not fallaciously conflate coupling wth constitution, and (ii) human emotional ontogenesis is a world-to-brain transcranial achievement. Jennifer Greenwood is a PhD Candidate in Philosophy at the School of History, Philosophy, Religion, and Classics, University of Queensland. (shrink)

우연성이 우선한다는 것은 과연 무엇을 뜻할까? 오늘날 우연성은 현대철학이 옹호하는 개념이 되었다. 좌파 정치철학과, 새로 등장한 실재론 모두 우연성의 우선성을 옹호한다. 그런데 우연성의 우선성에서 중요한 것은 우선성이 아니다. 이것은 오히려 매개라는 새로운 문제를 야기한다. 우연성과 필연성, 보편과 개별, 그리고 구조와 변화의 관계를 규정하지 않은 채 우연성의 우선성을 말할 수 없기 때문이다. 그런데 우연성의 우선성을 옹호하는 철학이 매개 문제를 푸는 방식은 이중적이다. (일관되지 않다.) 이 철학은 매개가 필요없다고 주장하면서도, 새로운 매개 개념을 제시한다. 우연성의 철학이 이렇게 동요하는 이유는 보편성의 자기 회귀적 특성을 (...) 부정하거나 회피하기 때문이다. 거꾸로 보편성의 자기 회귀적 특성을 인정하면, 매개 개념은 중요해진다. 보편성이 자기 회귀적 특성을 가지려면, 매개가 반드시 필요하기 때문이다. 이런 맥락에서 보편성의 자기 회귀적 특성은 새로운 정치철학을 암시한다. (shrink)

This book explores the significance of rhetoric from the perspective of its complex relationship with philosophy. It demonstrates how this relationship gives expression to a basic tension at the core of politics: that between the contingency of its happening and the transcendence toward which it strives. The first part of the study proposes a reassessment of the ancient quarrel between philosophy and rhetoric, as it was discussed by Plato, Aristotle, and above all Cicero and Quintilian, who ambitiously (...) attempted to bring them together creating an ideal that is at the roots of the humanist tradition. It then moves to twentieth-century political theory and shows how the questions that emerge from that quarrel still strongly resonate in the works of key thinkers such as H. Arendt, L. Strauss, and R. Rorty. The volume thus offers an original contribution that locates itself at the intersection of politics, rhetoric, and philosophy. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to address Rorty’s critique of Dewey’s notion of experience and to reaffirm a view in which the call to experience is indispensable for a genuinely contingent philosophy. In the first part, I analyze Rorty’s critique of Dewey and show its inconsistency. In the second part, I draw a comparison between their aesthetic views and argue that a true aesthetic experience must consist in the cultivation and creative transfiguration of situational resistances. In the third (...) part, using Jane Addams as an example, I illustrate how at Hull House the resistances provided by the situation were transfigured into original and meaningful aesthetic experiences that touched people’s lives and allowed for a meaningful and intelligent reconstruction. (shrink)

This thesis argues that the concept of contingency plays a central role in Althusser's recasting of Marxist philosophy and in his attempt to free the Marxist conception of history from concepts such as teleology, necessity and origin. It is critically placed both against those readings that see the emergence of the problematic of contingency only in the late Althusserm and to the most recent attempts to establish a straightforward continuity in Althusser's work. Drawing on published and unplublished (...) material and covering the entirety of Althusser's philosophical itinerary, the thesis seeks both to unearth the latent presence of this problematic, and its various implications, at each stage in the development of his work. It seeks to clarify, in a systematic way, the conceptual consequences of Althusser's commitment to contingency to the received understanding of his conceptions of structural change, ideology and political action. In particular, it argues that the standpoint of contingency allows us to locate in Althusser's 'Structural Marxism' the emergence of a 'logic of irruption' and structurally under-determined development of becoming. By emphasising this logic of contingency, it then seeks to produce a more nuanced assessment of his theory of ideology through the introduction of the concept of 'overinterpellation'. It finally attempts to distinguish two moments in the emergence of a materialism of contingency, first political and then philosophical; the problematic coexistence of these two aspects helps to account for the unstable charactoer of Althusser's late philosophical project. (shrink)

Argues that that all necessity is consequent, and that reason and God are contingent, albeit eternal, necessitiesFocusing on the central striking claim that there is something rather than nothing - that all necessity is consequent - Tritten engages with a wide range of ancient as well as contemporary philosophers including Quentin Meillassoux, Richard Kearney, Friedrich Schelling, Émile Boutroux and Markus Gabriel. He examines the ramifications of this truth arguing that even reason and God, while necessary according to essence, are utterly (...) contingent with respect to existence.Key FeaturesShows how all necessary truths are products of an epistemic framework that is itself historically contingentExplains the nature of contingency as something that stems from the facticity of being itself Explains the emergence and ontological status of reason, particularly the principle of sufficient reasonArgues for the contingency of God's existence while maintaining the necessity of his essenceProvides an alternative to Quentin Meillassoux's thesis for the necessity of contingency". (shrink)

In this paper I will offer a survey of Quentin Meillassoux’s thought, focusing on what I identify as the central node of his thought, the link between mathematics and contingency. I will then proceed to question the compatibility of his principle of radical contingency with the philosophy—and the practice—of science, and I will propose a possible solution to this problem by pushing Meillassoux along the Pythagorean path. Finally, I will argue that 1) his project of evacuating metaphysical (...) necessity via a mathematization of reality can be read on a continuum with the critiques of metaphysics of presence (and with the special status assigned to mathematical formalism) operated by Jacques Derrida and Alain Badiou; and 2) his philosophy can be understood as a philosophy of science only if we allow speculations aimed at subverting core metaphysical conceptual structures to have a bearing upon empirically-based scientific practice. (shrink)

This book discusses fundamental topics on contemporary Ockhamism. The collected essays show how contemporary Ockhamism can impact areas of research such as semantics, metaphysics and also the philosophy of science. In addition, the volume hosts one historian of Medieval philosophy who investigates the way in which William of Ockham “in flesh and bone” construed time and, more generally, future contingency. The essays explore the different meanings of this theory. They cover three main topics, in particular. The first (...) examines the thesis that sentences and propositions about the future have a definite truth value, without any ensuing commitment to determinism or fatalism. The second topic looks at the problem whether the branching-time model needs to countenance a privileged branch (the so-called Thin Red Line). Finally, the third topic considers the idea that there are so-called soft facts. These would be the subject matter of sentences and propositions verbally about the present or the past, but metaphysically about a later time, and which might change in the future. Overall, the book provides an updated and rigorous idea of the debate about Ockhamism. It gives readers a deeper understanding into this philosophical approach influenced by William of Ockham, characterized by the rejection of the Aristotelian idea that, in order to preserve the contingency of the future, future contingents must be deemed neither true nor false. (shrink)

This thesis examines the function of art in Nietzsche's philosophy. Its primary concern is with Nietzsche's turn to art as the means to counter what he terms metaphysics. Metaphysics is a metonym for the system of beliefs sustaining our culture whereby human judgements about the world are perceived as uncovering an objective truth antecedent to those judgements, with an implicit faith in the possibility of exhausting the totality of these antecedent truths. This thesis consequently has two principal strands. The (...) first is to analyse Nietzsche's criticism of metaphysics. The second is to explore the way in which, using a specific understanding of art, Nietzsche attempts to reconcile extreme scepticism towards all forms of human knowledge with a continued belief in their necessity. The thesis argues that Nietzsche lays an importance on art as providing an aesthetic education to replace the misguided theoretical orientation of metaphysics. Nietzsche criticises metaphysics for its inability to recognise that its interpretations are mere interpretations, that logic and the rational serve as means to make the world meaningful from the human perspective. My thesis explores how he sees art, and in particular the tragic, as constituting a mode of world interpretation which declares its status as such. I argue that for Nietzsche this is crucial inasmuch as a failure to recognise the contingency of our interpretations results in a refusal to give value in any interpretations. For Nietzsche the advent of the Modern age heralds the danger of such refusal, and hence I argue that his turn to art is a response to the specifically Modern temptation to descend into mere cynical Nihilism. (shrink)

This book defends a radical new theory of contingency as a physical phenomenon. Drawing on the many-worlds approach to quantum theory and cutting-edge metaphysics and philosophy of science, it argues that quantum theories are best understood as telling us about the space of genuine possibilities, rather than as telling us solely about actuality. When quantum physics is taken seriously in the way first proposed by Hugh Everett III, it provides the resources for a new systematic metaphysical framework encompassing (...) possibility, necessity, actuality, chance, counterfactuals, and a host of related modal notions. -/- Rationalist metaphysicians argue that the metaphysics of modality is strictly prior to any scientific investigation; metaphysics establishes which worlds are possible, and physics merely checks which of these worlds is actual. Naturalistic metaphysicians respond that science may discover new possibilities and new impossibilities. This book's quantum theory of contingency takes naturalistic metaphysics one step further, allowing that science may discover what it is to be possible. As electromagnetism revealed the nature of light, as acoustics revealed the nature of sound, as statistical mechanics revealed the nature of heat, so quantum physics reveals the nature of contingency. (shrink)

The author analyzes the methodology of working with contingent events and how the concept of contingent and other related concepts is conceptualized in post-Tridentine scholastic philosophy. In particular, the article examines the theory of moral modalities that emerged in the XVI–XVII centuries, describing knowledge about contingent and patterns of human behavior; the separation of physical and moral in the context of contingent reality produced by human will; as well as the concepts of probabilistic knowledge and the methodology of the (...) sciences about contingent facts. Based on the analysis of the data of scholastic ideas and concepts, the author identifies the key characteristics of knowledge about the contingent and identifies the common core of approaches to the theorization of contingent events in post-Trident scholasticism. (shrink)

Illness -- Loneliness -- Violation -- Love.

From Euclid to the second half of the 17th century, mathematicians as well as philosophers continued to raise the question of the angle of contact and, generally, of the concept of angle. This article is the first essay devoted to this subject in Arabic mathematics. It deals with Greek writings translated into Arabic on the one hand, and contributions of Arabic mathematicians on the other hand: al-Nayrīzī, Ibn al-Haytham, al-Samawʾal, al-Shīrāzī, al-Fārisī, al-Qūshjī, among others. Most of these contributions are hitherto (...) unknown.Depuis Euclide jusque tard dans le xviie siècle, mathématiciens et philosophes n'ont cessé de s'interroger sur l'angle de contingence et, plus généralement, sur la notion d'angle. Cet article est le premier essai où sont examinés les écrits grecs portant sur ce thème et transmis en arabe, ainsi que les nombreux travaux, pour la plupart jusqu'ici inconnus, des mathématiciens arabes eux-mêmes: al-Nayrīzī, Ibn al-Haytham, al-Samawʾal, al-Shīrāzī, al-Fārisī, al-Qūshjī, entre autres.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.L'ANGLE DE CONTINGENCE: UN PROBLÈME DE PHILOSOPHIE DES MATHÉMATIQUESVolume 22, Issue 1Roshdi Rashed DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0957423911000087Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. L'ANGLE DE CONTINGENCE: UN PROBLÈME DE PHILOSOPHIE DES MATHÉMATIQUESVolume 22, Issue 1Roshdi Rashed DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0957423911000087Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. L'ANGLE DE CONTINGENCE: UN PROBLÈME DE PHILOSOPHIE DES MATHÉMATIQUESVolume 22, Issue 1Roshdi Rashed DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0957423911000087Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

In this article I investigate the Confucian sense of responsibility from the framework of “moral economy,” understood as a causal relationship between one’s virtue and non-moral goods including political position/success, and “contingency,” the failure of moral economy, and argue that early Confucians’ astute understanding of the contingent nature of the political world enabled them to subscribe to the non-causal sense of responsibility. Contrary to the common argument that Heaven was invoked by the Confucians in order to shield themselves from (...) responsibility for their political failures, I argue that they imposed a more expanded sense of responsibility both on them and on the rulers, largely preoccupied with realpolitik. In their effort to restore moral economy between the ruler’s virtue and his political position in particular, I show Confucians engaged in what I call reverse moral economy, at the heart of which was to constrain the ruler’s arbitrary use of political power. (shrink)

Quel est le statut des lois de la nature ? Telle est la question posée dans ce livre d’André Charrak. L’auteur montre que la philosophie des Lumières envisage le problème de la connaissance sous l’angle de « l’application des principes aux phénomènes et des sciences les unes aux autres » (p. 199) et qu’il existe un lien direct entre la possibilité de l’application de la mathématique à la physique dans les savoirs positifs et les partis pris explicites sur le statut (...) modal des lois du mouvement.. (shrink)

In Contingent Computation, M. Beatrice Fazi offers a new theoretical perspective through which we can engage philosophically with computing. The book proves that aesthetics is a viable mode of investigating contemporary computational systems. It does so by advancing an original conception of computational aesthetics that does not just concern art made by or with computers, but rather the modes of being and becoming of computational processes. Contingent Computation mobilises the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze and Alfred North Whitehead in order to (...) address aesthetics as an ontological study of the generative potential of reality. Through a novel philosophical reading of Gödel’s incompleteness theorems and of Turing’s notion of incomputability, Fazi finds this potential at the formal heart of computational systems, and argues that computation is a process of determining indeterminacy. This indeterminacy, which is central to computational systems, does not contradict their functionality. Instead, it drives their very operation, albeit in a manner that might not always fit with the instrumental, representational and cognitivist purposes that we have assigned to computing. (shrink)

The relationship between religion and contingency is investigated historically and systematically. Its historical part comprises analyses of important philosophers’ interpretation of this relationship, viz. that of Leibniz, Kant, Lessing, Jaspers, and Heidegger. Its systematic part analyses how this relationship should be currently interpreted.

The contingency of biological regularities—and its implications for the existence of biological laws—has long puzzled biologists and philosophers. The best argument for the contingency of biological regularities is John Beatty’s evolutionary contingency thesis, which will be re-analyzed here. First, I argue that in Beatty’s thesis there are two versions of strong contingency used as arguments against biological laws that have gone unnoticed by his commentators. Second, Beatty’s two different versions of strong contingency are analyzed in (...) terms of two different stabilities of regularities. Third, I argue that Beatty and his commentators have focused on the more ineffective trajectory stability version of the argument, whereas the constancy stability version provides a more substantial and applicable argument against the existence of biological laws. Fourth, I develop a counterexample to Beatty’s thesis. Finally, I discuss the possibility of evolution producing repeatable and general non-lawlike regularities and patterns by utilizing the notion of generative entrenchment and by criticizing the thesis of multiple realizability of biological properties. (shrink)

Première partie. De la question des mondes possibles aux présuppositions de la méta-éthique -- Deuxième partie. Différenciation logique et connaissance morale -- Troisième partie. Un paradigme pour penser les droits.

According to the Principle of Sufficient Reason (‘PSR’), every fact has an explanation for why it obtains. If the PSR is true, there must be a sufficient reason for why God chose to create our world. But a sufficient reason for God’s choice plausibly necessitates that choice. It thus seems that God could not have done otherwise, and that our world exists necessarily. We therefore appear forced to pick between the PSR, and the contingency of creation and divine choice. (...) I show that a third option remains open, and thus that it is possible to preserve the contingency of creation and divine choice even while endorsing the PSR. My solution depends on the coherence of a restricted modal realism. On this modal realism, there is more than one possible morally optimal created world, and for each such world there is an existing possibility in which God creates that world. (shrink)

The concept of contingency serves to bridge the doctrine of creation and natural science in Wolfhart Pannenberg's theology. My paper first analyzes the relation of creatio ex nihilo and creatio continua. Next I suggest three categories of contingency: global, local, and nomological. Under each category I assess Pannenberg's use of physics, cosmology, and philosophy of science. Although I agree with Pannenberg's emphasis on continuous creation and on the role of science in renewing the doctrine of creation, I (...) argue for a shift in the discussion from Pannenberg's topics to others, such as the anthropic principle, quantum physics, and thermodynamics. (shrink)

This paper focuses on how revolts against caste-based oppression in India have been made invisible due to conceptual legacies in European social and political theory. Weber’s and Arendt’s conceptualization of Pariah agency is a case in point. Arendt’s main understanding of Pariah agency is individualized and inadequate to study freedom struggles among untouchable castes. This article argues that one not only needs to move away from analyzing individual to collective action, but it is also crucial to foreground how collective mobilization (...) among excluded groups has focused on contingencies that embed a system of domination. Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar’s critique of caste-based domination in India is noteworthy in this regard; he foregrounds how the distinction between “Touchables” and “Untouchables” in the caste system is both embedded and contingent. Focusing on untouchability in India, Ambedkar offers insights into hegemonic analyses of social exclusion, human rights articulations before the Universal Declaratio... (shrink)

I argue against a principle that is widely taken to govern metaphysical explanation. This is the principle that no necessary facts can, on their own, explain a contingent fact. I then show how this result makes available a response to a longstanding objection to the Principle of Sufficient Reason—the objection that the Principle of Sufficient Reason entails that the world could not have been otherwise.

Contingentism depicts normativity as one of our human effective possibilities rather than as a metaphysical bottleneck which we should necessary fulfill. The book is a critical survey of Richard McKay Rorty’s “neo-pragmatism”, in the light of various theoretical arguments as well as of his own resourceful attempts to renew philosophy from within its practice.

The argument is not, however, problem-free. First: while the meaning of s might not guarantee a verifying state of affairs, mightn’t the fact of one’s believing that s is true guarantee a verifying state of affairs? And mightn’t this fact be exploited to secure knowledge of truths that are deeply contingent? Second: the argument seems to rely on the principle that if I can conceive that not P is actually the case, then I do not know that P. But it (...) is generally agreed that a knowledge-conferring warrant for some P need not offer a watertight guarantee of P and thus need not render it inconceivable that the actual world falsifies P. Why then require such a guarantee when it comes to priori warrant? The first objection is that a guarantee of truth need not come from semantics. The second is that no such guarantee is required for a priori knowledge. I shall be exploring both of these ideas in what follows. (shrink)