It is a philosophical truism that we must think of others as moral agents, not merely as causal or statistical objects. But why? I argue that this follows from the best resolution of an antinomy between our experience of morality as necessarily binding on the will and our knowledge that all moral beliefs originate in contingent histories. We can address this antinomy only by understanding moral deliberation via interpersonal relationships, which simultaneously vindicate and constrains morality’s bind on the will. (...) This means that moral agency is fundamentally social. I model an attitude toward our causal nature on sociologist Erving Goffman’s concept of ‘civil inattention’; our social practice of agency requires that we give minimal attention to the contingent origins of moral judgments in ourselves and others. Understood this way, seeing ourselves as moral agents requires avoiding appeal to causal aetiology to settle substantive moral disagreement. (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 well-known argument against the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) due to George Gaylord Simpson is re-analyzed almost half a century later, in the light of our improved understanding of preconditions for the emergence of life and intelligence brought about by the ongoing “astrobiological revolution”. Simpson’s argument has been enormously influential, in particular in biological circles, and it arguably fueled the most serious opposition to SETI programmes and their funding. I argue that both proponents and opponents of Simpson’s argument have (...) occasionally mispresented its core content. Proponents often oversimplify it as just another consequence of biological contingency, thus leaving their position open to general arguments limiting the scope of contingency in evolution (such as the recent argument of Geerat Vermeij based on selection effects in the fossil record). They also tend to neglect that the argument has been presented as essentially atemporal, while referring to entities and processes that are likely to change over time; this has become even less justifiable as our astrobiological knowledge increased in recent years. Opponents have failed to see that the weaknesses in Simpson’s position could be removed by restructuring of the argument; I suggest one way of such restructuring, envisioned long ago in the fictional context by Stanislaw Lem. While no firm consensus has emerged on the validity of Simpson’s argument so far, I suggest that, contrary to the original motivation, today it is less an anti-SETI argument, and more an astrobiological research programme. In this research programme, SETI could be generalized into a platform for testing some of the deepest assumptions about evolutionary continuity and the relative role of contingency versus convergence on unprecedented spatial and temporal scales. (shrink)

Evan's influential argument against vague objects (_Analysis<D>, 1978) has a parallel directed against contingent identity. I argue that Noonan failed in his attempt to accept Evans's argument but save contingent identity by establishing a disanalogy between the two arguments (in The Philosophical Quarterly 1991). Instead, I suggest an alternative way to block the argument against contingent identity and argue that its analogue provides a satisfactory response to Evans's original argument.

In Walter Chatton on Future Contingents, Jon Bornholdt presents the first full-length translation, commentary, and analysis of the various attempts by Chatton (14th century C.E.) to solve the ancient problem of the status and significance of statements about the future. At issue is the danger of so-called logical determinism: if it is true now that a human will perform a given action tomorrow, is that human truly free to perform or refrain from performing that action? Bornholdt shows that Chatton constructed (...) an original (though problematic) formal analysis that enabled him to canvass various approaches to the problem at different stages of his career, at all times showing an unusual sensitivity to the tension between formalist and metaphysical types of solution. (shrink)

In his Reportatio super Sententias (ca. 1321–1323), Walter Chatton proposes a solution to the problem of future contingents based on propositional analysis. Future-tense statements must be disambiguated with the help of a scope distinction between temporal and truth operators, such that a statement like “Socrates will sit” comes out either as (1) “it is true now that Socrates will sit,” or (2) “it will be true that Socrates sits.” On the first analysis, Socrates’s action is necessitated, whereas on the second (...) it remains contingent. In his later Quodlibet (ca. 1330), Chatton maintains his original analysis but augments it with an ingenious use of the traditional distinction between actus exercitus and actus significatus. His use of the distinction enables him both to give some speech-act-theoretical content to the scope analysis, which had been open to the charge of mere formalism, and to defend it cogently against an apparently strong counterargument. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant's first way of answering the main question of the First Piece in Religion‐whether human beings are good or evil by nature‐has been to examine the necessary conditions for being human, insofar as these relate “to our capacity for desire”, the rational faculty that governed Kant's considerations in CPrR. As creatures of desire who are “condemned to be free” in the way we use our volition, we are animals who must choose a rational principle to govern our desires. Our (...) original predisposition to good is not a “contingent” possibility; rather, it is necessary for the very possibility of our nature that we desire to remain alive, to compare ourselves with others, and to respect the moral law. This predisposition therefore functions as the first aspect of what (in the three Critiques) Kant would have called the transcendental boundary defining his topic. (shrink)

From the introductory chapter. The distinctions taken between the necessary and the contingent, in philosophical discussion no less than in common life, are ordinarily supposed to be so definitive and are permitted so deeply to influence our conceptions that it seems well worth one's while to examine them in their origin. And the Aristotelian system will best serve our purpose as a corpus vile for very obvious reasons. In the first place, Aristotle is the earliest systematic philosopher who (...) essayed to treat consistently of all the greater problems of life and thought, and whose works remain to be studied. His method, too, was such that, standing as he did just on the verge of formalism, the definitions which he attempted still bear definite traces of the purely functional meaning of those terms, while his formulation of their significance has led naturally to their solidification as objective facts in the world. For Aristotle was wont to preface his own conclusions by inquiring, rather superficially to be sure, into the psychology of the conceptions in question ; yet, while the inadequacy of his psychology is now admitted on all hands, the inferences as to fact which he deduced therefrom are even now in part accepted as conclusive. When one reflects upon it this state of the question strikes one as absurd. For this reason there appears to be the greater justification for an analysis of the presuppositions on which these conceptions rest. If one grants their validity, the conclusions and the resultant contradictions of the system must be accepted as ultimate. But I am convinced that Aristotle's presuppositions and his real problems were wholly unreconcilable with each other, and so his contradictions serve all the better to point out the direction in which their solution lay. Plato made the acute observation that surprise is the beginning of philosophy, and Aristotle appropriated and further applied the thought.' The full sweep of the truth contained in these words is vastly greater, however, than they knew. The feeling of wonder is indeed the point of departure for philosophy ; but what precisely does it mean? It indicates first of all that an old habit has been broken up. Old conceptions, like the proverbial old bottles, have become so surcharged with the new wine of meaning that they have burst. But to say this is to describe the phenomenon merely as A brute fact without according it any symbolic value. This state of surprise must acquire an ideal worth, an indicative function, if it is really to become the parent of philosophy. Briefly, then, we may say : surprise indicates the need of reconstructing our supposed facts. And this statement is to be taken at its full value, with all its implications, if philosophy is to be achieved.... (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Problems pertaining to origins and beginnings are integral to Hannah Arendt's reflections on politics and history. From The Origins of Totalitarianism to The Life of the Mind, Arendt sought to understand the nature of beginnings and the novelty of historical phenomena. This paper explores the relationship between Arendt's approach to history and her understanding of origins, which it juxtaposes with conceptions of the origin in the thought of Charles Darwin, Martin Heidegger, and Karl Jaspers. It also examines her ideas (...) on freedom and contingency, and draws out the challenges of reconciling her political philosophy with the writing of history. (shrink)

In a few key texts Leibniz points to his dynamics project as the origin of contingency in his system. He did not, however, leave us with an explicit account of how the distinction between necessary and contingent truths either arises from, or is explained by his dynamics. This has left an explanatory gap in our understanding of the connection between Leibniz’s physics and his modal metaphysics that scholars have sought to close by arguing that the laws of nature (...) obtain their contingent status by virtue of being derived from the principle of the equality of cause and effect (‘Equality Principle’); a principle that is itself contingent. I call this view the ‘Transference of Contingency Thesis’ (TC). In this paper I show that TC is wrong by advancing the claim that the equality principle is, in fact, a ‘contingent necessity.’. (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)

My primary goal in this paper is to defend the plausibility of Kripke’s thesis that there are contingent a priori truths, and to fill out some gaps in Kripke’s own account of these truths. But the strategy here adopted is, to the best of my knowledge, still unexplored and different from the one adopted both by Kripke himself and by his critics. I first argue that Kripke’s examples of such truths can only be legitimate if seen as introduced by (...) performative utterances sense). And, if this is so, we can apply the machinery of illocutionary act theory to these utterances to explain how one can have a priori knowledge of some contingent facts generated by the utterances themselves. I shall argue that the overall strategy can fill out two gaps in Kripke’s original account: first, we can explain the nature of the truth-makers of contingent a priori truths sense, broadly conceived) and, second, we can explain how contingent a priori knowledge can be transmitted from one speaker to another. (shrink)

This article proposes the axiomatizations of contingency logics of various natural classes of neighborhood frames. In particular, by defining a suitable canonical neighborhood function, we give sound and complete axiomatizations of monotone contingency logic and regular contingency logic, thereby answering two open questions raised by Bakhtiari, van Ditmarsch, and Hansen. The canonical function is inspired by a function proposed by Kuhn in 1995. We show that Kuhn’s function is actually equal to a related function originally given by Humberstone.

In his book Welt und Unendlichkeit, László Tengelyi has enquired into the possibility of a phenomenological metaphysics. Among the many issues addressed in his book, he thematized a real necessity of a non-apriori kind at Aristotle and Husserl, a necessity which he called „a necessity of the fact“. His research settled the basis for the present enquiry, which will examine the relationship between the absolute and the conditional necessity of a fact as well as the contingent or accidental features (...) involved therein at Aristotle and Husserl, insofar as facticity is concerned. I intend to show that although both authors share the view that worldly beings are characterized by their contingency, they differ as to their necessity: Aristotle attributes a contingent necessity to the factual being i.e. to reality, a necessity characterized by its being temporarily conditioned by actuality and which can therefore be defined as the ,conditional necessity of a fact‘. As to Husserl, transcendental phenomenology must, upon the basis of the eidetic method, determine the possibilities out of which the ego constitutes the factual world. He states the necessity of the fact as an eidetic necessity, which has to be grounded on eidetic laws. Later on, enquiries into a „metaphysics in new sense“ lead to a revision of the meaning of „fact“ and to an inversion of the order of foundation as well: the original givenness of the world, the primal I, intersubjectivity and historicity as primal and absolute facts carry the eidetic necessities. Accidental causes, on the other hand, account not only for the contingency of the real but, at Husserl, for the ego‘s ,essential openness‘ and its core of primal contingency. In this context, I shall argue that facticity paired with the accidental allows for the irruption of something new that overwhelms us – an event as Ereignis. (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)

Recently, Bourne constructed a system of three-valued logic that he supposed to replace Łukasiewicz’s three-valued logic in view of the problems of future contingents. In this paper, I will show first that Bourne’s system makes no improvement to Łukasiewicz’s system. However, finding some good motivations and lessons in his attempt, next I will suggest a better way of achieving his original goal in some sense. The crucial part of my way lies in reconsidering the significance of the intermediate truth-value so (...) as to reconstruct Łukasiewicz’s three-valued logic as a kind of extensional modal logic based on partial logic. (shrink)

Although Maimonides' discussion of creation is one of his greatest contributions - he himself claims that belief in creation is second in importance only to belief in God - there is still considerable debate on what that contribution was. Kenneth Seeskin takes a close look at the problems Maimonides faced and the sources from which he drew. He argues that Maimonides meant exactly what he said: the world was created by a free act of God so that the existence of (...) everything other than God is contingent. In religious terms, existence is a gift. In order to reach this conclusion, Seeskin examines Maimonides' view of God, miracles, the limits of human knowledge, and the claims of astronomy to be a science. Clearly written and closely argued, Maimonides on the Origin of the World takes up questions of perennial interest. (shrink)

Rawls famously argued against meritocratic conceptions of distributive justice on the grounds that the accumulation of merit is an unavoidably lucky process, both because of differences in early environment, and innate talents. Thomas Mulligan (2018a) has recently provided a novel defense of meritocracy against the “luck objection”, arguing that both sources of luck would be mostly eliminated in a meritocracy. While a system of fair equality of opportunity ensures that differences in social class or early environment do not lead to (...) differences in the accumulation of merit, Kripke’s essentiality of origin thesis means that our genetic endowments, and thus our innate talents, could not have been any other way. But if we could not fail to have our innate talents, Mulligan argues, then it is not a matter of luck that we have them, and so the merits we accumulate on their basis are not so luck-dependent. This paper argues that Mulligan’s appeal to the essentiality of origin thesis fails to rescue meritocratic conceptions of distributive justice from the luck objection for two reasons. First, even granting essentiality of origin and fair equality of opportunity, the contingencies of the market and the social environment mean that having some innate talents is far luckier than having others. And second, the appeal to essentiality of origin misses the underlying motivation for the luck objection, and ignores the intimate connection between desert and responsibility. (shrink)

Are these claims compatible: the future is contingent, and yet prophecies reveal the future? William of Ockham argues that they are in _Tractatus de praedestinatione_ (q.1, d.8) and in the _Fourth Quodlibet_ (q.4). But his two solutions to the puzzle of how prophecy and future contingency can be reconciled face significant objections that seem to undermine Ockham’s theory of future contingents. In this paper, I argue that the relevant objections lose their force once Ockham’s views on prophecy are properly (...) understood. In the first part of the paper, I closely examine the puzzle as well as Ockham’s solutions and the objections raised against him. In the second part, I counter the objections while offering an original interpretation of Ockham’s semantics of what I call “prophecies of choice.”. (shrink)

Religion in Western culture and functional impairment have an awkward relationship. This awkwardness stems from theological and cultural prejudice, theological prejudice as far as functional impairment is considered a consequence of original sin, which will be taken away in future life, cultural prejudice as far as functional impairment is looked upon as a relict of a lower stage of evolution. The author of this article analyses the views of theologians who have a functional impairment themselves, and derives from this analysis (...) three starting points for theological reflection on functional impairment are derived: the deconstruction of the concept of disability, functional impairment as a world generating state, and contingent human persons as an image of God. He formulates a viewpoint in which the image of God is not only understood on the level of individual persons, but rather as the ideal inclusive communities of people aspire to achieve when they answer to the calling that stems from God's covenant with humankind. (shrink)

The power PC theory postulates a normative procedure for making causal inferences from contingency information, and offers this as a descriptive model of human causal judgement. The inferential procedure requires a set of assumptions, which includes the assumption that the cause being judged is distributed independently of the set of other possible causes of the same outcome. It is argued that this assumption either never holds or can never be known to hold. It is also argued that conformity of judgements (...) to the prescriptions of the model requires a sophisticated appreciation of methodological factors and acquired domain-specific knowledge of causes, and that the theory is disconfirmed by a finding that an objective contingency that equally supports two causal inferences results in only one of them actually being made. An alternative proposal based on the hypothesis that causal understanding originates with experiences of forces exerted while acting on objects is briefly sketched. (shrink)

This new reading of Thomas More’s Utopia focuses on the dialogue as literary genre disclosing several aspects that illustrate the close relation between the original design of the utopian political system and the contemporary English political arrangement. The author also examines the reasons for the lasting interest of this work in the centuries. Still today political utopia results useful and even necessary to good politicians who in their practice never forget their ideal goals.

During World War II, Niels Bohr realized that the nature of war had changed irrevocably due to the introduction of the atomic bomb. This, in his opinion, meant that nation states had to be open about nuclear knowledge and negotiate toward peace. The bomb presented a threat, yet at the same time, an opportunity, as Bohr would argue in his characteristic way. It is not too difficult to point to the epistemological origin of Bohr’s argument: One easily identifies resonances (...) with his ideas on “complementarity” from quantum mechanics. According to Bohr’s doctrine of complementarity, a quantum mechanical object shows certain qualities depending on the experimental perspective from which it is studied; and these qualities may be mutually exclusive. However, they should in fact be looked upon as “complementary” properties that together make up the full picture of the object under investigation.Initially, Bohr could express his ideas to the highest circles of power. This would soon change, howe .. (shrink)

The great problem in writing a theory of everything is that it may turn out to be a theory of nothing. Here is how it works. If you develop a theory that only explains some small, simple Thing, then the theory is very strong. It is precise, understandable, and it always works. As you expand the theory to encompass another Thing, it becomes weaker. It may still be precise and understandable, but it is now more complicated, and because it involves (...) two things rather than one, it starts to become conditional. This means that in order for it to work with regard to the second Thing, we may have to take into account something about the first Thing. And so it goes. As the theory covers more and more Things, it becomes less precise, less understandable, and parts need to be added on in order cover multiple contingencies. People who go down this path inevitably come to a critical point, at which their theory has become so precisely complicated that it can barely be understood, and gargantuan efforts become necessary to make it work at all. To resolve this impasse, they have a terminological epiphany. They suddenly find a language (that is, an arcane vocabulary) which confers the appearance of simplicity to the morass they have created. Precision is replaced by undefined terms and relationships, described in forceful but impenetrable prose. Argumentation becomes not an activity of rational thought, but a magical experience in which a swirling array of undefined concepts assembles itself in just the right way to come to whatever conclusion is desired. In the mouth of its inventor the theory does indeed explain everything, but in the ears of the audience it explains nothing. (shrink)

What makes the rule of law so special that it is to conscientiously punish the â oebadâ doers and reward the â oegoodâ onesâ "such that, where there is the rule of law, peace and order are to be expected, so that â oethe rule of law is better than the rule of any individualâ? Take the case of international law, as an illustration. While different international courts have been busy going after the killers of innocent victims in Rwanda and (...) Liberia, they have turned a blind eye to the major powers which have killedâ "on a much larger and more brutal scale, by comparisonâ "innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, just to cite two current examples. Contrary to the conventional wisdom conveniently held by many in human history, the rule of law has its other side which has not yet been systematically understood, such that the rule of law is neither possible nor desirable to the extent that the defenders of legal institutions in human history would like us to believe. Lest any misunderstanding hastily occur, this is not to imply that the rule of law is absolutely useless, or that the literature in jurisprudence (and other related fields like political philosophy, ethics, law and economics, and the sociology of law) should be dismissed because of its scholarly irrelevance. Of course, neither of these two extreme views is reasonable either. Instead, this book provides an alternative (better) way to understand the nature of law, in relation to its necessity and contingency in the context of justiceâ "while learning from different approaches in the literature but without favoring any one of them (nor integrating them, since they are not necessarily compatible with each other). In the process, this book offers a new theory to transcend the existing approaches in the literature in a new directionâ "in that, in the end, there is no justice without injustice and that it will be transcended too. This seminal project, if successful, will fundamentally change the way that we think about the nature of law, from the combined perspectives of the mind, nature, society, and culture, with enormous implications for the human future and what I originally called its â oepost-humanâ fate. (shrink)

1ere edition: Aubier, 1999 En assignant pour tache a la philosophie de surmonter la contingence, Hegel accomplit un geste original et difficile. Original parce qu'il s'ecarte aussi bien des rationalismes qui pensent n'en avoir fini avec le contingent que lorsqu'ils l'ont ramene au necessaire, que des penseurs qui estiment que reconnaitre la contingence, c'est y voir le tout autre de la raison. Hegel ne prone ni le regne de la necessite ni la capitulation devant l'absurde, mais une philosophie de (...) la liberte. Difficile, parce que, en decidant de penser ensemble et la consistance et la rationalite du contingent, Hegel doit a la fois reconnaitre ce qu'il appelle son droit monstrueux et au moment meme ou la raison avoue ses limites devant une contingence sans regle et sans frein ne jamais renoncer a l'exigence de dire le sens de cette limitation meme. A travers cette epreuve de la contingence, l'ouvrage tente d'offrir une interpretation d'ensemble du systeme aussi attentive a la lettre des textes qu'attachee a mettre en lumiere les apories que la philosophie hegelienne rencontre ou engendre. (shrink)

Purpose - The aim of this research was to investigate the effect of transformational leadership and transactional contingent reward as complementary, but distinct, forms of leadership on facets of organizational identification via the perception of innovation and goal organizational values. Design/methodology/approach – Three studies were carried out implementing either a measurement of mediation or experimental-causal-chain design to test for the hypothesized effects. Findings - The measurement of mediation study showed that transformational leadership had a positive direct and indirect effect, (...) via innovation value orientation, on cognitive identification, whereas transactional contingent reward was more strongly related to affective, rather than cognitive, identification, and goal orientation was a mediator of their link. The findings of the two experimental-causal-chain studies further supported the hypothesized effects. Transformational leadership was found to lead subordinates to perceive the culture as more innovative compared to transactional contingent reward, whereas transactional contingent reward led employees to perceive the culture as more goal, than innovation, oriented. Finally, innovation, compared to goal, value orientation increased cognitive identification, while goal orientation facilitated affective, rather than cognitive, identification. Implications - The practical implications involve the development of strategies organizations can apply, such as leadership training programs, to strengthen their ties with their employees, which, in turn, may have a positive impact on in-role, as well as extra-role, behaviors. Originality/Value – The originality of this research concerns the identification of distinct mechanisms explaining the effect of transformational leadership and transactional contingent reward on cognitive and affective identification applying an organizational culture perspective and a combination of measurement and causal mediation designs. (shrink)

RICHARD RORTY’S IDEAL CHARACTER, THE “IRONIST,” is simultaneously committed to two different projects. The first is the repudiation of metaphysics, implying the abandonment of all philosophical or theological efforts “to achieve universality by the transcendence of contingency.” This first project is not so remarkable anymore, the twentieth century having seen any number of attempts to bring metaphysics to a close. But the second project has been gathering speed only in the last few decades. It is described as the attempt to (...) make something “never... dreamed of before,” which is also the attempt to get free from “inherited contingencies.” Given that many of life’s contingencies are originally inherited, getting free of them is a far-reaching business, bringing a whole Nietzschean lifestyle in its train. Sometimes Rorty talks as if the two projects were simply two sides of the one project. He says for example that a person becomes an ironist “when one’s aim becomes an expanding repertoire of alternative descriptions rather than The One Right Description,” as if renouncing the latter meant embracing the former. However, surely a person can repudiate metaphysics, and yet live peacefully with his or her current contingencies? If I regard my everyday vocabulary as a useful way of talking which my society has developed as a way of coping, why should I automatically want to change it, or move beyond it? (shrink)

The author of this paper contends that Kathleen Wallace’s model of the self is a highly original contribution to contemporary thought. He, however, highlights important respects in which Wallace is adumbrating themes highlighted by Justus Buchler’s scattered insights into human selfhood. In addition, the author identifies two possible lines of inquiry rooted in Wallace’s project calling for further pursuit. Questions regarding self‐division, ones importantly bearing upon the topic of autonomy, and also questions regarding the somatic mechanisms, processes, and practices by (...) which embodied selves maintain themselves as cumulative networks are ones that, above all else, he tries to throw into sharp relief through the defining features of Wallace’s network model and to underscore the inherent power of Wallace’s nuanced approach to a highly contested and intricately complex topic. (shrink)

A methodological model of origin and settlement of theory-choice situations (previously tried on the theories of Einstein and Lorentz in electrodynamics) is applied to modern Theory of Gravity. The process of origin and growth of empirically-equivalent relativistic theories of gravitation is theoretically reproduced. It is argued that all of them are proposed within the two rival research programmes – (1) metric (A. Einstein et al.) and (2) nonmetric (H. Poincare et al.). Each programme aims at elimination of the (...) cross-contradiction between the special theory of relativity and Newton’s theory of gravitation. New arguments in favor of Einstein’s programme are given. Nevertheless, this does not imply the necessity to rule out all the nonmetric theories, since Einstein’s and Poincare’s programmes are alternative only as different tools of the cross-contradiction elimination. In the other respects these programmes are complementary: description, explanation and prediction of gravitational experimental data entails the usage of the languages of nonmetric theories as well as of metric ones. The part of the present investigation elucidating the necessity of nonmetric theories is an implementation of the ideas of A.Z. Petrov, the founder of Kazan University Relativity Department. Late Alexei Zinovievich had frequently punctuated that the notion of Riemann space-time continuum common for all metric theories obfuscates all the gravitational notions considerably and hampers the analogies with other physical theories at hand. Since the ambiguity is a hallmark of all the general relativism notions, approach to their definitions “should be determined not by analogies and contingent facts, but by general considerations linked the physical measurements theory… No matter how far the events lie out of the frames of classical physical explanations, all the experimental data should be described by classical notions” (Petrov, 1965,pp. 59,66). Key words: Kip S. Thorne, A.P. Lightman, Stepin, theory of gravity . (shrink)

Richard Kilvington (ca. 1302-1361) was one of the most original and influential thinkers among the Oxford Calculators. His impact on late medieval philosophy and theology remains unquestionable. His physical, logical, and ethical solutions were extensively debated and referred to, paving the way for new approaches in philosophy and theology. This volume presents a critical edition of question 4 from Kilvington's Quaestiones super libros Sententiarum, complete with an introduction to the edition and a guide to Kilvington's theological concepts.

For Kant’s moral universalism, contingent religious law is legitimate only when it serves as a means of fulfilling the moral law. Though Kant uses traditional theological resources to account for the possibility of “statutory ecclesiastical law” in historical religions, he denies this possibility to Jewish law. Something like Kant’s logic appears in the work of some of his intellectual successors who continue to define Christianity in terms of its moral superiority to Judaism while attempting to excise remaining “Jewish” elements (...) from it. A more adequate account of the Hebrew Bible, Judaism, and the origins of Christianity exposes deficiencies in Kant’s universalizing logic which seems to deny any intrinsic value to historical religions. A possible alternative may lie in a modified account of the relationship between the moral law and religious law, perhaps nourished by Jewish thought, including the rabbinic tradition of the Noachide commandments. (shrink)

This article argues that mirror neurons originate in sensorimotor associative learning and therefore a new approach is needed to investigate their functions. Mirror neurons were discovered about 20 years ago in the monkey brain, and there is now evidence that they are also present in the human brain. The intriguing feature of many mirror neurons is that they fire not only when the animal is performing an action, such as grasping an object using a power grip, but also when the (...) animal passively observes a similar action performed by another agent. It is widely believed that mirror neurons are a genetic adaptation for action understanding; that they were designed by evolution to fulfill a specific socio-cognitive function. In contrast, we argue that mirror neurons are forged by domain-general processes of associative learning in the course of individual development, and, although they may have psychological functions, they do not necessarily have a specific evolutionary purpose or adaptive function. The evidence supporting this view shows that mirror neurons do not consistently encode action “goals”; the contingency- and context-sensitive nature of associative learning explains the full range of mirror neuron properties; human infants receive enough sensorimotor experience to support associative learning of mirror neurons ; and mirror neurons can be changed in radical ways by sensorimotor training. The associative account implies that reliable information about the function of mirror neurons can be obtained only by research based on developmental history, system-level theory, and careful experimentation. (shrink)

Essays on Aristotle's Sea-Battle, Lazy Argument, Argument Reaper, Diodorus' Master Argument -/- The book is devoted to the ancient logical theories, reconstruction of their semantic proprieties and possibilities of their interpretation by modern logical tools. The Ancient arguments are frequently misunderstood in modern interpretations since authors usually have tendency to ignore their historical proprieties and theoretical background what usually leads to a quite inappropriate picture of the argument’s original form and mission. Author’s primary intention was to draw attention to the (...) complexity of some historical arguments and to the theoretical context in which arguments were created, circulated, developed, and finally tuned. Four well-known ancient arguments – with a common central subject related to the future contingencies problem – are reconstructed from available historical sources: “The Sea Battle”, which is drawn from Aristotle’s treatise De Interpretatione; two arguments, usually ascribed to the Stoics, “The Lazy Argument” and “The Reaper”; “The Master Argument” of the Megarian philosopher Diodorus. Arguments are linguistically and semantically detaily analyzed, formally presented by reflecting some relevant corresponding hypotheses based on physical or logical theories of their ancient authors, and finally covered by appropriate logical tools familiar to a modern reader. Two appendices are added at the closing part of the book. One covering some assumptions relevant for understanding of rival streams in ancient theories of meaning related to the nature of names and naming; the other is devoted to the ancient understanding of logical proposition and attempts to find an adequate Latin translation of the Greek delicate philosophical term “ἀξίωμα”. (shrink)

Following his successful Who's Afraid of Postmodernism? leading Christian philosopher James K. A. Smith introduces the philosophical sources behind postliberal theology. Offering a provocative analysis of relativism, Smith provides an introduction to the key voices of pragmatism: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Richard Rorty, and Robert Brandom. Many Christians view relativism as the antithesis of absolute truth and take it to be the antithesis of the gospel. Smith argues that this reaction is a symptom of a deeper theological problem: an inability to honor (...) the contingency and dependence of our creaturehood. Appreciating our created finitude as the condition under which we know (and were made to know) should compel us to appreciate the contingency of our knowledge without sliding into arbitrariness. Saying "It depends" is not the equivalent of saying "It's not true" or "I don't know." It is simply to recognize the conditions of our knowledge as finite, created, social beings. Pragmatism, says Smith, helps us recover a fundamental Christian appreciation of the contingency of creaturehood. This addition to an acclaimed series engages key thinkers in modern philosophy with a view to ministry and addresses the challenge of relativism in a creative, original way. (shrink)

An expansive, yet succinct, analysis of the Philosophy of Religion – from metaphysics through theology. Organized into two sections, the text first examines truths concerning what is possible and what is necessary. These chapters lay the foundation for the book’s second part – the search for a metaphysical framework that permits the possibility of an ultimate explanation that is correct and complete. A cutting-edge scholarly work which engages with the traditional metaphysician’s quest for a true ultimate explanation of the most (...) general features of the world we inhabit Develops an original view concerning the epistemology and metaphysics of modality, or truths concerning what is possible or necessary Applies this framework to a re-examination of the cosmological argument for theism Defends a novel version of the Leibnizian cosmological argument. (shrink)

Kripke argued for the existence of necessary a posteriori truths and offered different accounts of why certain necessary truths seem to be contingent. One of these accounts was used by Kripke in an argument against the psychophysical identity thesis. I defend the claim that the explanatory force of Kripke's standard account of the appearance of contingency relies on the explanatory force of one of the more general accounts he also offers. But the more general account cannot be used to (...) undermine the psychophysical identity thesis. Specifically, a crucial feature in Kripke's standard account, which is needed to argue for dualism, is explanatorily superfluous. Alternative accounts that are similar to Kripke's original one but lack that trait would also explain the phenomenon. Consequently, the Kripkean dualist argument is blocked. /// Kripke ha argumentado que existen verdades necesarias a posteriori, y ha ofrecido diferentes explicaciones de por qué ciertas verdades necesarias parecen contingentes. Una de esas explicaciones se usaba en un argumento con el que Kripke criticaba la tesis de la identidad psicofísica. En este trabajo sostengo que la fuerza explicativa de la explicacion kripkeana estándar de la apariencia de contingencia depende de la fuerza explicativa de una de las otras explicaciones que Kripke también propone. Pero esa otra explicación, más general, no sirve para rechazar la identidad psicofísica. Con-cretamente, un rasgo crucial de la explicación kripkeana estandar resulta explicativamente superfluo. Explicaciones alternativas, similares a la de Kripke pero que carezcan de ese rasgo, explicarían también el fenómeno. Como consecuencia, el argumento dualista kripkeano queda bloqueado. (shrink)

The modern concept of reason called one of the fundamental tenets of Christianity into question: the universal value of the salvation brought to all humanity by Jesus. From a modern point of view, it is not possible for a historic and contingent event, such as the death of Jesus, to bear universal meaning for men of all times. In this article I aim to show how René Girard’s anthropological hypothesis offers an alternative answer to the seemingly impossible universale concretum.

Moral perception, as the term is used in moral theory, is the perception of normatively contoured objects and states of affairs, where that perception enables us to engage in practical reason and judgment concerning these particulars. The idea that our capacity for moral perception is a crucial component of our capacity for moral reasoning and agency finds its most explicit origin in Aristotle, for whom virtue begins with the quality of perception. The focus on moral perception within moral theory (...) has made a comeback in the last few decades, especially in the hands of self-proclaimed neo-Aristotelians such as John McDowell, Martha Nussbaum, and Nancy Sherman. For these writers, our perceptual capacities are not static, and the laborious honing of our perceptual skills is a crucial moral task. On this picture, as Nancy Sherman puts it, “How to see becomes as much a matter of inquiry as what to do.”Moral particularists—including but not restricted to the neo-Aristotelians—have emphasized the centrality of moral perception to moral agency and judgment, as a corrective to moral theories that treat deliberation in terms of universal principles as the privileged keystone of moral agency. (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)

This volume draws connections between Wittgenstein's philosophy and the work of Saul Kripke, especially his Naming and Necessity. Saul Kripke is regarded as one of the foremost representatives of contemporary analytic philosophy. His most important contributions include the strict distinction between metaphysical and epistemological questions, the introduction of the notions of contingent a priori truth and necessary a posteriori truth and original accounts of names, descriptions, identity, necessity and realism. The chapters in this book elucidate the relevant connections between (...) Kripke's work and Wittgenstein, specifically concerning the standard meter, contingent apriori and rule-following. The contributions shed light on how Kripke's philosophical outlook was influenced by Wittgenstein, and how mainstream analytic philosophy and Wittgensteinian philosophy can fruitfully engage with one another. Kripke and Wittgenstein will be of interest to philosophers working on Wittgenstein, Kripke, and the history of analytic philosophy. (shrink)

This paper briefly examines the relationship between chance, creativity and ethics in Peirce's development of tychism. In the early 1900s Peirce began to suggest that chance ought to be understood as a type of agency or as "psychical action" upon matter. I discuss the ethical implicaof this suggestion. Peirce remained reticent to translate the speculations concerning chance and purpose into the language of applied ethics. It is for this reason that I look to Ella Lyman Cabot to extend Peirce's metaphysical (...) speculations. Cabot was an active interlocutor with Josiah Royce between 1888 and 1916. In comparison to Peirce, Cabot's interest in chance is overtly ethical; she believed that a specific orientation to chance events can dramatically alter the course of human conduct. This point is made clear in her unpublished papers from 1902 and in her Everyday Ethics (1906). Cabot's work stands as an original contribution to the canon that deserves serious attention. (shrink)

We fear that the growing threat of violent attack has upset the balance between existential concepts of political power, which emphasize security, and traditional notions of constitutional limits meant to protect civil liberties. We worry that constitutional states cannot, during a time of war, terror, and extreme crisis, maintain legality and preserve civil rights and freedoms. David Williams Bates allays these concerns by revisiting the theoretical origins of the modern constitutional state, which, he argues, recognized and made room for tensions (...) among law, war, and the social order. We traditionally associate the Enlightenment with the taming of absolutist sovereign power through the establishment of a legal state based on the rights of individuals. In his critical rereading, Bates shows instead that Enlightenment thinkers conceived of political autonomy in a systematic, theoretical way. Focusing on the nature of foundational violence, war, and existential crises, eighteenth-century thinkers understood law and constitutional order not as constraints on political power but as the logical implication of that primordial force. Returning to the origin stories that informed the beginnings of political community, Bates reclaims the idea of law, warfare, and the social order as intertwining elements subject to complex historical development. Following an analysis of seminal works by seventeenth-century natural-law theorists, Bates reviews the major canonical thinkers of constitutional theory (Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau) from the perspective of existential security and sovereign power. Countering Carl Schmitt's influential notion of the autonomy of the political, Bates demonstrates that Enlightenment thinkers understood the autonomous political sphere as a space of law protecting individuals according to their political status, not as mere members of a historically contingent social order. (shrink)

Building on research that analyzes how social relations and networks shape the Chinese market, this article asks a less-studied question: How is the market changing guanxi? The authors trace the transformation of guanxi from communal, kin-based ties to a cultural metaphor with which diverse individuals build flexible social relationships in late-socialist China. As a “generalized particularism,” this cultural metaphor provides something analogous to the culture of civility in Western societies. The authors discuss the political potential of guanxi in terms of (...) its dual tendency toward the “publicization” and “privatization” of power. The development of guanxi civility suggests the diverse cultural origins of civility and serves as a reminder of the particularistic roots in the universalistic assumption of Western civility. (shrink)

Due to the influence of Nathan Salmon’s views, endorsement of the “flexibility of origins” thesis is often thought to carry a commitment to the denial of S4. This paper rejects the existence of this commitment and examines how Peacocke’s theory of the modal may accommodate flexibility of origins without denying S4. One of the essential features of Peacocke’s account is the identification of the Principles of Possibility, which include the Modal Extension Principle (MEP), and a set of Constitutive Principles. Regarding (...) their modal status, Peacocke argues for the necessity of MEP, but leaves open the possibility that some of the Constitutive Principles be only contingently true. Here, I show that the contingency of the Constitutive Principles is inconsistent with the recursivity of MEP, and this makes the account validate S4. It is also shown that, compatibly with the necessity of the Constitutive Principles, the account can still accommodate intuitions about flexibility of origins. However, the account we end up with once those intuitions are consistently accommodated may not be satisfactory, and this opens up the debate about whether or not artefacts allow for some variation in their origins. (shrink)

In this paper, presented at an APA colloquium in Boston on December 28, 1994, it is argued that Ruth Barcan Marcus' 1961 article on Modalities and Intensional Languages originated many of the key ideas of the New Theory of Reference that have often been attributed to Saul Kripke and others. For example, Marcus argued that names are directly referential and are not equivalent to contingent descriptions, that names are rigid designators, and that identity sentences with co-referring names are necessary (...) if true. She also first presented the modal argument that names are directly referential, the epistemic argument that names are directly referential, and the argument that there area posteriori necessities. (shrink)