Unity in government -- The family in English history -- Medieval English sovereignty -- The old jury -- Becket and the law.

Challenging the myth that mathematical objects can be defined into existence, Bigelow here employs Armstrong's metaphysical materialism to cast new light on mathematics. He identifies natural, real, and imaginary numbers and sets with specified physical properties and relations and, by so doing, draws mathematics back from its sterile, abstract exile into the midst of the physical world.

This book espouses a theory of scientific realism in which due weight is given to mathematics and logic. The authors argue that mathematics can be understood realistically if it is seen to be the study of universals, of properties and relations, of patterns and structures, the kinds of things which can be in several places at once. Taking this kind of scientific platonism as their point of departure, they show how the theory of universals can account for probability, laws of (...) nature, causation and explanation, and explore the consequences in all these fields. This will be an important book for all philosophers of science, logicians and metaphysicians, and their graduate students. The readership will also include those outside philosophy interested in the interrelationship of philosophy and science. (shrink)

Traditionally, forces are causes of a special sort. Forces have been conceived to be the direct or immediate causes of things. Other sorts of causes act indirectly by producing forces which are transmitted in various ways to produce various effects. However, forces are supposed to act directly without the mediation of anything else. But forces, so conceived, appear to be occult. They are mysterious, because we have no clear conception of what they are, as opposed to what they are postulated (...) to do; and they seem to be hidden from direct observations. There is, therefore, strong initial motivation for trying to eliminate forces from physics. Furthermore, as we shall explain, powerful arguments can be mounted to show that theories with forces can always be recast as theories without them. Hence it seems that forces should be eliminated, in the interests of simplicity. We argue, however, that forces should not be eliminated--just differently construed. For the effect of elimination is to leave us without any adequate account of the causal relationships forces were postulated to explain. And this would remain the case, even if forces could be identified with some merely dispositional properties of physical systems. In our view, forces are species of the causal relation itself, and as such have a different ontological status from the sorts of entities normally considered to be related as causes to effects. (shrink)

Given Quine's views on philosophical methodology, he should not have taken the axioms of classical mereology to be "self-evident", or "analytic"; but rather, he should have set out to justify them by what might be broadly called an "inference to the best explanation". He does very little to this end. In particular, he does little to examine alternative theories, to see if there might be anything they could explain better than classical mereology can. I argue that there is something important (...) that needs to be explained, namely, the way that properties "travel around in clusters" (eg. we often know that "when and where there is something with such-and-such property, there is also something with so-and-so other property", and so on). I argue that these clusterings of properties can be given various subtle (broadly "commonsense") explanations using a version of mereology that denies the classical axiom of "extensionality" (that is, denying that two distinct things must have distinct parts). I offer a challenge to the Quinean metaphysics: to show that these "non-extensional" explanations can be replaced by better explanations that use only classical, extensional mereology and set theory. (shrink)

In this paper I consider a recent argument of Timothy Williamson’s that epistemic internalism and content externalism are indeed incompatible, and since he takes content externalism to be above reproach, so much the worse for epistemic internalism. However, I argue that epistemic internalism, properly understood, remains substantially unaffected no matter which view of content turns out to be correct. What is key to the New Evil Genius thought experiment is that, given everything of which the inhabitants are consciously aware, the (...) two worlds are subjectively indistinguishable for them, which is what matters on internalist accounts of epistemic justification. I argue that even if a standard moral of the New Evil Genius intuition is untenable due to considerations arising from content externalism, the case can be understood as supporting epistemic internalism in a way that is wholly compatible with content externalism. In short, epistemic internalism is committed to sameness of justificatory status between subjectively indistinguishable counterparts, not sameness of content of their justifiers. (shrink)

The world contains not only causes and effects, but also causal relations holding between causes and effects. Because causal relations enter into the structure of the world, their presence has various modal and probabilistic consequences. Causation and “necessary and sufficient conditions” do often go hand in hand. Causation, however, is a robust ingredient within the world itself, whereas modalities and probabilities supervene on the nature of the world as a whole, and on the resulting relations between one possible world and (...) others. Some modalities, therefore, are essentially causal; but causation is not essentially modal.19. (shrink)

Political liberalism has increasingly come under fire from both the right and the left, in politics as well as in philosophy. In this new study, G.B. Madison offers a systematic rebuttal to these contemporary critics, attempting to demonstrate that the basic principles of classical liberal philosophy are not only internally valid and coherent but also directly relevant to the problems faced by society in the post-industrial age. Building on the theory of Frank H. Knight and other liberal tinkers, (...) class='Hi'>Madison outlines the postmodern theory of reason that is presupposed within classical liberal theory and makes the case that as a political philosophy liberalism can be justified entirely within its own terms, without reference to arbitrary or absolute values. (shrink)

In “Neurodiversity and the Neuro-Neutral State,” de Vries (2024) argues that contemporary states “disfavor the interests of neurodivergent groups” by maintaining unjust neuro-inequalities in the st...

A growing body of literature argues that achieving radical change in the agri-food system requires a radical renegotiation of our relationship with the environment alongside a change in our thinking and approach to transformational food politics. This paper argues that relational approaches such as a more-than-human ethic of care (MTH EoC) can offer a different and constructive perspective to analyse agri-food system transformation because it emphasises social structures and relationships as the basis of environmental change. A MTH EoC has not (...) yet been applied to regenerative agriculture, yet other literature on regenerative agriculture suggests that care may be present in these spaces and calls for the need for social science analysis of the regenerative movement. This paper uses a MTH EoC lens to reveal a diverse array of ways in which power is and can be deployed for change in the regenerative agriculture movement in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Globally, regenerative agriculture tends to be analysed through positivist, scientific approaches that focus on biophysical markers of ecological improvement. Yet, a relational approach reveals how engagement in regenerative agriculture is creating significant shifts in mindset towards more holistic and relational understandings of biological and social ecosystems. A regenerative mindset framework is suggested as a method of understanding the connection between a regenerative form of thinking, being and doing for farmers. Interviews suggested that this shift in farmers’ socio-ecological relations is crucial to the transformational potential of regenerative agriculture. This paper argues that relational analyses such as the MTH EoC approach used to analyse regenerative agriculture in this research, refresh the way we analyse agri-food system change. They also are critical to guiding and supporting on-the-ground socio-ecological shifts that are necessary to see agricultural transformation. (shrink)

Subjunctives have always posed a severe threat to truth-conditional semantics and the correspondence theory of truth. If we are ever forced to fall into some sort of coherence theory of truth, then the problem of subjunctives is very likely to be the first thing which makes this plain. It is instructive to work through the details of Pollock's very thorough working-out of a kind of coherence theory for subjunctives.I find Pollock's book a kind of cautionary tale for coherence theorists. The (...) fierce technical complexities and inelegancies of Pollock's account must surely be weighed against the ontological extravagance of Lewis's much more elegant modal realism. (shrink)

Vectors, we will argue, are not just mathematical abstractions. They are also physical properties--universals. What make them distinctive are the rich and varied essences of these universals, and the complex pattern of internal relations which hold amongst them.

Such is the criticism commonly passed upon Socrates in our age, which boasts of its positivity much as if a polytheist were to speak with scorn of the negativity of a monotheist, for the polytheist has many gods, the monotheist only one. So our philosophers have many thoughts, all valid to a certain extent; Socrates had only one, which was absolute.

This paper reviews the technical and social problems concerned in donor insemination in the light of recent developments. The most important of these is the declining number of babies available for adoption by subfertile couples because modern methods and attitudes have reduced the number of unplanned births. At the same time the technique of donor insemination is being developed as public attitudes to it are changing.

Recently, Brian Ellis came up with a neat and novel idea about laws of nature, which at first I misunderstood. Then I participated, with Brian Ellis and Caroline Lierse, in writing a joint paper, “The World as One of a Kind: Natural Necessity and Laws of Nature” (Ellis, Bigelow and Lierse, forthcoming). In this paper, the Ellis idea was formulated in a different way from that in which I had originally interpreted it. Little weight was placed on possible worlds (...) or individual essences. Much weight rested on natural kinds. I thought Ellis to be suggesting that laws of nature attribute essential properties to one grand individual, The World. In fact, Ellis is hostile towards individual essences for any individuals at all, including The World. He is comfortable only with essential properties of kinds, rather than individuals. The Ellis conjecture was that laws of nature attribute essential properties to the natural kind of which the actual world is one (and presumably the only) member. (shrink)

Suppose that you have deeply personal information that you do not want to share. Further suppose that this information could help others, perhaps even saving their lives. Should you reveal the information or keep it secret? With the increasing prevalence of genetic testing, more and more people are finding themselves in this situation. Although a patient's genetic results are potentially relevant to all her biological family members, her first‐degree relatives—parents, children, and full siblings—are most likely to be affected. This is (...) especially true for genetic mutations—like those in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes—that are associated with a dramatically increased risk of disease. Fortunately, people are usually willing to share results with their at‐risk relatives. Occasionally, however, a patient refuses to disclose her findings to anyone outside her clinical team. Ethicists have written little on patients’ moral duties to their at‐risk relatives. Moreover, the few accounts that have been advanced are problematic. Some unnecessarily expose patients’ genetic information to relatives who are unlikely to benefit from it, and others fail to ensure that patients’ most vulnerable relatives are informed of their genetic risks. Patients’ duty to warn can be defended in a way that avoids these problems. I argue that the duty to share one's genetic results is grounded in the principle of rescue—the idea that one ought to prevent, reduce, or mitigate the risk of harm to another person when the expected harm is serious and the cost or risk to oneself is sufficiently moderate. When these two criteria are satisfied, a patient will most likely have a duty to warn. (shrink)

The four frescoes by Raphael in the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican Museum visually embody close approximations of several numerical ratios that are of deep significance in the material grounding of musical harmonies in the physics of natural harmonics. Of special significance is the Pythagorean musical frequency ratio of 9:8, the whole tone interval, which in Plato's Timaeus is called the epogdoôn.

Given an admissible indexing φ of the countable atomless Boolean algebra B, an automorphism F of B is said to be recursively presented (relative to φ) if there exists a recursive function $p \in \operatorname{Sym}(\omega)$ such that F ⚬ φ = φ ⚬ p. Our key result on recursiveness: Both the subset of $\operatorname{Aut}(\mathscr{B})$ consisting of all those automorphisms which are recursively presented relative to some indexing, and its complement, the set of all "totally nonrecursive" automorphisms, are uncountable. This arises (...) as a consequence of the following combinatorial investigations: (1) A comparison of the cycle structures of f and f̄, where f is a permutation of some free basis of B and f̄ is the automorphism of B induced by f. (2) An explicit description of the permutations of ω whose conjugacy classes in $\operatorname{Sym}(\omega)$ are (a) uncountable, (b) countably infinite, and (c) finite. (shrink)

This paper concerns the semantics of belief-sentences. I pass over ontologically lavish theories which appeal to impossible worlds, or other points of reference which contain more than possible worlds. I then refute ontologically stingy, quotational theories. My own theory employs the techniques of possible worlds semantics to elaborate a Fregean analysis of belief-sentences. In a belief-sentence, the embedded clause does not have its usual reference, but refers rather to its own semantic structure. I show how this theory can accommodate quantification (...) into belief-contexts. I close with skirmishes against the threat posed by the Liar Paradox. (shrink)

ABSTRACT We argue that in societies like our own the prevailing view that parents have both special responsibilities for and special rights over their children fails to give a proper understanding of the autonomy both of parents and of children. It is our claim that there is a logical priority of the separable interests of a child over the autonomy of its parents in the fulfilment of their special responsibilities for and the exercise of their special rights over their children. (...) However, we believe that in acknowledging the child as a distinct locus of interests appropriate weight can still be given to parental autonomy. In particular, since raising a child is a long‐term commitment which plays a central role in the life‐plans of many adults it will be a legitimate exercise of an adult's autonomy strongly to influence the future of any children involved in such a plan. Such influence will be quite separate from paternalistic concern for those children. But the logical priority of the child's interests will at the same time show why parents are not entitled to behave proprietorially toward their children, even when paternalistic concern is called for. (shrink)