Introducción de Michael Ruse: “La teoría darwiniana de la evolución".

Las explicaciones teleológicas en biología evolutiva, desde Cuvier hasta el presente (y hacia el futuro), dependen de la metáfora del ‘diseño’ para conservar su poder heurístico y su fertilidad predictiva.

La ética evolutiva tiene (merecidamente) mala reputación. Sin embargo, no deberíamos permanecer prisioneros de nuestro pasado. Los avances recientes en biología evolutiva darwiniana allanan el camino para un vínculo entre ciencia y moral que es más modesto pero, al mismo tiempo, más profundo que las excursiones anteriores en esta dirección. Al mismo tiempo, no hay necesidad de repudiar las ideas de los grandes filósofos del pasado, particularmente de David Hume. De ahí que los orígenes simiescos de los seres humanos realmente (...) importan. La pregunta no es si acaso la evolución debería relacionarse con la ética, sino cómo. Nosotros los seres humanos somos monos modificados, no la creación favorecida de un Dios benévolo, en el sexto día. Por lo tanto, ha llegado el momento de hacernos cargo de nuestra naturaleza animal, particularmente en relación con nuestra interacción con los demás. Es cierto que la llamada ética evolutiva tiene mala reputación. Sin embargo, la pregunta no es si la evolución está conectada con la ética, sino cómo. Afortunadamente, gracias a los avances recientes en las ciencias biológicas, el camino se está volviendo más claro. Comienzo esta discusión con una breve introducción histórica al tema. Luego voy al núcleo de mi caso científico y filosófico. Concluyo retomando algunas objeciones centrales. (shrink)

In this paper I consider the problem of man's evolution - in particular the evolutionary problems raised when we consider man as a cultural animal as well as a biological one. I argue that any adequate cultural evolutionary theory must have the notion of ‘adaptation’ as a central concept, where this must be construed in a fairly literal (biological) sense, that is as something which aids its possessors (i.e. men) to survive and reproduce. I argue against theories which treat adaptation (...) in a metaphorical sense, particularly those speaking of the ‘adaptation’ of cultures without reference to men. Iron tools per se are not better adapted than bronze tools - it is the men with iron tools who are better adapted than men with bronze tools. I show that by taking the approach that I do, one can apply at once in a fruitful manner some conclusions of biological evolutionary theory directly to men and their cultures. I conclude with a brief discussion of methodological issues raised by cultural evolutionary theories, particularly those of confirmation and falsification. (shrink)

La teoría de la evolución por selección natural de Charles Darwin, que explica las distribuciones geográficas y el registro fósil, se considera, con razón, una de las teorías científicas más importantes de todos los tiempos, y ocupa su lugar junto con la teoría de la atracción gravitacional de Isaac Newton, que explica la imagen heliocéntrica del mundo de Copérnico. Sin embargo, existe una tendencia a pensar que el trabajo de Darwin está acabado. Que pertenece más a la historia victoriana que (...) a algo que tenga una relevancia social crucial en la actualidad. Este ensayo evidencia cuán equivocada es esa suposición. A través de una serie de casos históricos (extranjeros, clase social, orientación sexual y mujeres), se demuestra que el darwinismo es tan vibrante e importante hoy como lo era cuando Darwin era joven. Es una herramienta esencial para analizar y resolver algunos de los problemas sociales más importantes y apremiantes que enfrentamos en el siglo XXI. (shrink)

Two of the most influential evaluations of Charles Lyell's geological ideas were those of the philosophers of science, John F. W. Herschel and William Whewell. In this paper I shall argue that the great difference between these evaluations—whereas Herschel was fundamentally sympathetic to Lyell's geologizing, Whewell was fundamentally opposed—is a function of the fact that Herschel was an empiricist and Whewell a rationalist. For convenience, I shall structure the discussion around the three key elements in Lyell's approach to geology. First, (...) he was anactualist: he wanted to explain past geological phenomena in terms of causes of the kind that are operating at present. Second, he was auniformitarian: he wanted to explain only in terms of causes of the degree operating at present; that is, he wanted to avoid ‘catastrophes’. Third, as a geologist he saw the earth as being in asteady-state, in which all periods are essentially similar to one another. Because they will prove important, I draw attention also to two major features of Lyell's programme. First, there is his theory of climate, which suggests, ‘without help from a comet’, that earthly temperature fluctuations are primarily a function of the constantly changing distribution of land and sea. Clearly this theory is actualistic, for it is based on such present phenomena as the Gulf Stream; it is also uniformitarian and supports a steady-state world picture. Second, there is Lyell's denial that the fossil record is progressive, his criticism of Lamarckian evolutionism, ostensibly on the grounds that modern evidence is against it (i.e. it fails actualistically), and his rather veiled claim that the origins of species will nevertheless prove in some way natural, that is, subject to causes falling beneath lawlike regularities in principle discernible by us. (shrink)

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection, explaining geographical distributions and the fossil record, is rightly regarded as one of the greatest scientific theories of all time, taking its place alongside Isaac Newton’s theory of gravitational attraction, explaining the Copernican heliocentric world picture. There is, however, a tendency to think that Darwin’s work is finished. It belongs to Victorian history rather than as something that has crucial social relevance today. This essay shows how mistaken it is to make this (...) assumption. Through a series of case histories―foreigners, class, sexual orientation, and women―Darwinism is shown to be as vibrant and important today as it was when Darwin was young. It is an essential tool for analyzing and solving some of the biggest and most pressing social issues facing us in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Preface 9 PART I: RELIGIOUS, SCIENTIFIC, AND PHILOSOPHICAL BACKGROUND Introduction to Part I 19 1. The Bible 27 2. Natural Theology 33 William Paley 3. On the Origin of Species 38 Charles Darwin 4. Objections to Mr. Darwin’s Theory of the Origin of Species 65 Adam Sedgwick 5. The Origin of Species 73 Thomas H. Huxley 6. What Is Darwinism? 82 Charles Hodge 7. Darwinism as a Metaphysical Research Program 105 Karl Popper 8. Karl Popper’s Philosophy of Biology 116 (...) class='Hi'>Michael Ruse 9. Human Nature: One Evolutionist’s View 136 Francisco Ayala 10. Universal Darwinism 158 Richard Dawkins PART II: CREATION SCIENCE AND THE McLEAN CASE Introduction to Part II 187 11. The Creationists 192 Ronald L. Numbers 12. Creation, Evolution, and the Historical Evidence 231 Duane T. Gish 13. Witness Testimony Sheet: McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education 253 Michael Ruse 14. United States District Court Opinion: McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education 279 Judge William R. Overton 15. The Demise of the Demarcation Problem 312 Larry Laudan 16. Science at the BarùCauses for Concern 331 Larry Laudan 17. Pro Judice 337 Michael Ruse 18. More on Creationism 345 Larry Laudan 19. Commentary: Philosophers at the BarùSome Reasons for Restraint 350 Barry R. Gross PART III: INTELLIGENT DESIGN CREATIONISM AND THE KITZMILLER CASE Introduction to Part III 369 20. But Isn’t It Creationism? The Beginnings of "Intelligent Design" in the Midst of the Arkansas and Louisiana Litigation 377 Nick Matzke 21. What Is Darwinism? 414 Phillip E. Johnson 22. Is It Science Yet? Intelligent Design, Creationism, and the Constitution 426 Matthew Brauer, Barbara Forrest, and Steven G. Gey 23. Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District Expert Witness Testimony 434 Michael Behe 24. Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District Expert Report 456 Robert T. Pennock 25. A Step toward the Legalization of Science Studies 485 Steve Fuller 26. What Is Wrong with Intelligent Design? 495 Elliott Sober 27. United States District Court Memorandum Opinion: Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District, et al. 506 Judge John E. Jones II 28. Can’t Philosophers Tell the Difference between Science and Religion? Demarcation Revisited 536 Robert T. Pennock. (shrink)

These remarks preface two volumes consisting of the proceedings of the Third International Conference on the History and Philosophy of Science of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science. The conference was held under the auspices of the Union, The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Science. The meetings took place in Montreal, Canada, 25-29 August 1980, with Concordia University as host institution. The program of the conference (...) was arranged by a Joint Commission of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science consisting of Robert E. Butts (Canada), John Murdoch (U. S. A. ), Vladimir Kirsanov (U. S. S. R. ), and Paul Weingartner (Austria). The Local Arrangements Committee consisted of Stanley G. French, Chair (Concordia), Michel Paradis, treasurer (McGill), Fran~ois Duchesneau (Universite de Montreal), Robert Nadeau (Universite du Quebec it Montreal), and William Shea (McGill University). Both committees are indebted to Dr. G. R. Paterson, then President of the Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Science, who shared his expertise in many ways. Dr. French and his staff worked diligently and efficiently on behalf of all participants. The city of Montreal was, as always, the subtle mixture of extravagance, charm, warmth and excitement that retains her status as the jewel of Canadian cities. The funding of major international conferences is always a problem. (shrink)

There has been much attention devoted in recent years to the question of whether our moral principles can be related to our biological nature. This collection of new essays focuses on the connection between biology, in particular evolutionary biology, and foundational questions in ethics. The book asks such questions as whether humans are innately selfish, and whether there are particular facets of human nature that bear directly on social practices. The volume is organised historically beginning with Aristotle and covering such (...) major figures as Hume and Darwin down to the present and the work of Harvard sociobiologist, E. O. Wilson. This is the first book to offer this historical perspective on the relation of biology and ethics, and has been written by some of the leading figures in the history and philosophy of science, whose work stands very much at the cutting edge of these disciplines. (shrink)

O objetivo central do trabalho é analisar a posição evolucionista proposta por Michael Ruse a respeito da ética no âmbito de primeira e de segunda ordem. Para cumprir com este objetivo, inicialmente distinguiremos a posição evolucionista de Ruse, de fundamentação darwiniana, com a posição evolucionista clássica, de fundamentação spenceriana. Mostraremos como Ruse inicialmente reformula a ética evolucionista spenceriana, tornando o âmbito da ética substantiva descritivo, e não mais prescritivo, a partir da compreensão correta do conceito de (...) altruísmo. No âmbito da metaética, mostraremos como Ruse desenvolve uma posição evolucionista sem recair nos problemas clássicos da lei de Hume e da falácia naturalista. Por fim, mostraremos que a metaética darwiniana de Ruse pode ser considerada como um tipo de teoria do erro. Concluiremos que a proposta de ética e metaética darwiniana de Ruse trazem grandes avanços para a discussão, fortalecendo a importância da biologia na investigação tradicionalmente filosófica. (shrink)

Contemporary biologists generally agree with E. O. Wilson’s claim that “reduction is the traditional instrument of scientific analysis.” This is certainly true of Michael Ruse, who has attempted to provide a Darwinian account of human scientific knowledge in terms of epigenetic rules. Such an account depends on the characterization of natural objects as the chance concatenations of material elements, making natural form an effect rather than a cause of the object. This characterization, however, can be shown to be (...) false in that it is self-refuting in its exclusion of formal cause. The retorsive argument for formal cause dialectically shows that any attempt to explain a natural object depends on the identification of form as the cause of the intelligibility of the object. It follows that Darwinian explanations of the products of human culture, such as science, cannot consistently treat form as an effect rather than a cause. (shrink)

A partir de la crítica de Michael Ruse a la concepción etiológica de la función biológica desarrollada por Larry Wright, según la cual esta explicación resulta incompleta dado que no aborda el trasfondo cultural y valorativo que hace posible la explicación teleológica, me propongo responder a una objeción a la concepción etiológica según la cual el cambio de función constituye una anomalía para ella. Mi argumento une las ideas de Ruse acerca de la relevancia de los valores (...) en la explicación teleológica con una reinterpretación, en un contexto filogenético hipotético, de un contra-ejemplo putativo para la función como efecto seleccionado. Mi conclusión es que no hay razones para abandonar, al menos para este caso, la concepción etiológica sobre la base de objeciones acerca de su poder explicativo del cambio de función. (shrink)

En este artículo se analizan los cambios en la postura del filósofo Michael Ruse en relación con el problema de la naturaleza y legitimidad de la teleología en la Biología. A tal fin, se comparan los análisis de Ruse sobre este tema en su libro Filosofía de la Biología de 1973 con aquellos posteriores a 1989. Los cambios en la perspectiva de Ruse sobre este tema se relacionan con las corrientes dominantes en Filosofía de la Ciencia (...) en las distintas épocas analizadas. Los últimos análisis se centran en entender la teleología como ligada a la metáfora del diseño, por lo que se presta especial atención al rol de dicha metáfora en la Biología. Finalmente, se discute el valor de los análisis de Ruse para Biólogos y profesores de Biología. (shrink)

In this paper I trace Michael Ruse's Booknotes from the first volumeof Biology and Philosophy in 1986 to the present. I deal withboth the style and the content of these booknotes. Ruse paid specialattention to authors outside of the traditional English axis as wellas to feminist writers. He complained that too much attention wasbeing paid to certain topics (e.g., evolutionary ethics, evolutionaryepistemology, the species problem and reduction) while other, moreimportant topics were all but ignored (e.g., natural selection,population (...) genetics, levels of selection and extraterrestrial life).He also dealt with the Darwin Industry. Creationism, his love-haterelationships with several authors and his undiluted love of CharlesDickens. (shrink)

El tema de las relaciones entre ciencia y religión es central en la obra de Ruse. No se trata de una mera curiosidad o de una cuestión tratada tangencialmente, sino que está en el corazón de sus preocupaciones intelectuales e incluso vitales (sección 1). Hay que señalar, además, que la actividad de Ruse coincide con una cierta encrucijada histórica, en la cual se enfrentan dos posiciones extremas y mutuamente hostiles, el creacionismo, por una parte, y el nuevo ateísmo, (...) por otra (sección 2). Para entender las propuestas respetuosas, matizadas y constructivas que hace Ruse, hay que situarlas en un marco teórico complejo, donde sean posibles actitudes menos burdas que el simple enfrentamiento (sección 3). Quizá la fórmula que mejor recoge las ideas de Ruse en este dominio sea la de “existencialismo darwinista”, como él mismo propone (sección 4). Por último, presentaré un resumen conclusivo de lo hallado (sección 5). (shrink)

La perspectiva evolutiva de Michael Ruse sobre la moral se caracteriza por combinar dos aspectos aparentemente contradictorios: por un lado, un escepticismo metaético y, por otro lado, una defensa de la ética normativa. Siguiendo la distinción de Daniel Dennett entre explicaciones con ‘ganchos celestiales’, que apelan a entidades sobrenaturales, y con ‘grúas’, que se adecúan a la teoría de la evolución por selección natural, la propuesta de Ruse busca llevar la comprensión de la ética y de la (...) metaética en clave de ‘grúa’ hasta sus últimas consecuencias. Ahora bien, la propuesta ruseana parece llegar a una aporía. Esto porque si bien en su propuesta se plantea una defensa de la ética normativa, Ruse le adjudica un rol destacado a las ‘disposiciones mentales innatas’ (vinculadas con piezas de psicología como las intuiciones o emociones morales), quedando todavía, aparentemente, un cabo suelto de su filosofía: cómo capturar, sin diluir, o sin reducir al mínimo, la normatividad de dicha ética (que el autor llama a veces ‘sustantiva’ en contraste con la metaética). En este artículo nos proponemos conservar la comprensión de la moral en clave de ‘grúa’ propuesta por Ruse pero, al mismo tiempo, recuperar una noción de razonamiento moral con mayor injerencia en la normatividad ética. Para ello, recurriremos al concepto de ‘metacognición’ que, una vez definido, nos permitirá poner en evidencia de qué manera el conocimiento de los procesos y productos cognitivos propios puede jugar un papel en el razonamiento moral destinado a inhibir disposiciones tendencialmente egoístas. (shrink)

This book challenges the dominant approach to problems of justice in global normative theory and offers a radical alternative designed to transform our thinking about what kind of problem injustice is and how political theorists might do better in understanding and addressing it. It argues that the dominant approach, ideal moral theory (IMT), takes a fundamentally wrong-headed approach to the problem of justice. IMT seeks to work out what an ideally just society would look like, and only then outlines our (...) moral obligations in realizing that ideal. In other words, it ignores the realities of everyday politics. As Michael Goodhart asserts, IMT postpones engagement with actually existing injustices and distorts our understanding of them, and it normalizes many problematic features of our world. On the other hand, the leading alternatives to IMT struggle to make sense of the role values play in politics. This book sees justice as an ideology and develops an innovative bifocal theoretical framework for making sense of it. This framework provides two complementary perspectives on justice: a theoretical perspective that situates competing ideological claims about justice in a broader political context and a partisan perspective that evaluates the structure and coherence of particular conceptions of justice. As opposed to IMT, it focuses on barriers to justice and advocates an activist political theory that takes sides in political struggles against injustice. Goodhart argues that theorists can help to generate the countervailing power necessary for social transformation through the work of articulation, translation, and mapping, work which contributes to a more comprehensive social science of injustice. (shrink)

You can sometimes have and be moved by desires which you in some sense disown. The problem is whether we can make sense of these ideas of---as I will say---ownership and rejection of a desire, without appeal to a little person in the head who is looking on at the workings of her desires and giving the nod to some but not to others. Frankfurt's proposed solution to this problem, sketched in his 1971 article, has come to be called the (...) hierarchical model. Indeed, it seems that, normally, if an agent's relevant higher-order attitudes are not to some extent shaped by her evaluative reflections and judgments her agency will be flawed. But this suggests a Platonic challenge to the hierarchical account of ownership. The challenge is to explain why we should not see such evaluative judgments---rather than broadly Frankfurtian higher-order attitudes---as the fundamental basis of ownership or rejection of desire. I do think that a systematic absence of connection between higher-order Frankfurtian attitude and evaluative judgment would be a breakdown in proper functioning. But I want to explain how we can grant this point and still block the Platonic challenge. (shrink)

I argue that 'c' occurs extensionally in 'c caused e' and 'D' occurs extensionally in 'c caused e because c is D'. I claim that this has been insufficiently appreciated because the two contexts are often run together and because it has not been clear that the description D of c is among the referents of an explanatory argument. I argue as well that Hume's analysis of causation is consistent with taking causation to be a relation between single events, and (...) that even if events are eliminated as virtual entities, extensionality holds for all terms in the resulting context. (shrink)

Radical ecology typically brings to mind media images of ecological activists standing before loggers' saws, staging anti-nuclear marches, and confronting polluters on the high seas. Yet for more than twenty years, the activities of organizations such as the Greens and Earth First! have been influenced by a diverse, less-publicized group of radical ecological philosophers. It is their work—the philosophical underpinnings of the radical ecological movement—that is the subject of _Contesting Earth's Future_. The book offers a much-needed, balanced appraisal of radical (...) ecology's principles, goals, and limitations. Michael Zimmerman critically examines the movement's three major branches—deep ecology, social ecology, and ecofeminism. He also situates radical ecology within the complex cultural and political terrain of the late twentieth century, showing its relation to Martin Heidegger's anti-technological thought, 1960s counterculturalism, and contemporary theories of poststructuralism and postmodernity. An early and influential ecological thinker, Zimmerman is uniquely qualified to provide a broad overview of radical environmentalism and delineate its various schools of thought. He clearly describes their defining arguments and internecine disputes, among them the charge that deep ecology is an anti-modern, proto-fascist ideology. Reflecting both the movement's promise and its dangers, this book is essential reading for all those concerned with the worldwide ecological crisis. (shrink)

Our primary aim in this paper is to sketch the account of virtue that we think most amenable to virtue measurement. Our account integrates Whole Trait Theory from psychology with a broadly neo-Aristotelian approach to virtue. Our account is ‘ecumenical’ in that it has appeal for a wide range of virtue ethicists. According to WTT, a personality trait is composed of a set of situation-specific trait-appropriate responses, which are produced when certain “social-cognitive” mechanisms are triggered by the perception of trait-relevant (...) stimuli in a person’s external and/or internal environment. Moving from this starting point, we discuss our conception of a virtue and respects in which it both aligns with and diverges from Aristotle’s conception. We discuss roles for practical wisdom and motivation in our conception of virtue, and highlight respects in which WTT provides an amenable empirical framework into which key Aristotelian elements can be integrated. We conclude with brief remarks about our conception as an empirically adequate and measurable account. (shrink)

Reciprocity theory (RT) and costly signaling theory (CST) provide different explanations for the high status of pro-community altruists: RT proposes that altruists are positively and negatively sanctioned by others, whereas CST proposes that altruists are attractive to others. Only RT, however, is beset by first- and higher-order free rider problems, which must be solved in order for RT to explain status allocations. In this paper, several solutions to RT’s free rider problems are proposed, and data about status allocations to Ecuadorian (...) Shuar pro-community altruists are analyzed in light of RT and CST. These data confirm that perceived pro-community altruists are indeed high status and suggest that (1) community residents skillfully monitor the altruism of coresidents, (2) residents who engage in opportunities to broadcast desirable qualities are high status only to the extent that they are considered altruistic, and (3) individuals who sanction coresidents based on coresidents’ contributions to the community are themselves relatively high status. To a greater extent than CST, RT straightforwardly predicts all of these results. (shrink)

This paper locates its genesis in a small town called Vitebsk in Belorussia which experienced a flowering of creativity and artistic energy that led to significant modernist experimentation in the years 1917–1921. Marc Chagall, returning from the October Revolution took up the position of art commissioner and developed an academy of art that became the laboratory for Russian modernism. Chagall’s Academy, Bakhtin’s Circle, and Malevich’s experiments, artistic group UNOVIS—all in fierce dialogue with one another—made the town of Vitebsk into an (...) artistic crucible in the early twentieth century. We argue that this creative collective transformed creative energies of Russian drama, music, theatre, art, and philosophy in a distinctive contribution to modernism, structuralism and formalism that contributed richly to the social understanding of creativity itself that is so evident across Mikhail Bakhtin’s subsequent body of work, and elsewhere across the world. This paper argues that a consideration of such interplay has much potential for twenty-first century educational philosophy. (shrink)

I argue against the currently popular view that a radical change in theory affects the meaning of theoretical terms, and hence render pre- and post-shift theories incomparable. I first show how to pose the meaning-change issue without appeal to meanings reified. I contend that arguments against theory-neutral observation languages are faulty, but that even if they were sound, there are semantic devices that allow a theory to refer to the factual basis of a competitor. This suggests a picture of science (...) as the accumulation of truths, with each successive stage being more stable. (shrink)

The doctrine of double effect has a firm, respected position within Roman Catholic medical ethics. Neil M. Gorsuch, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, believes that this doctrine also enjoys a central place within U.S. law. This essay examines and assesses Gorsuch’s thesis. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 11.1 (Spring 2011): 31–40.

From the philosopher’s perspective, the interest in quantum computation stems primarily from the way that it combines fundamental concepts from two distinct sciences: Physics, in particular Quantum Mechanics, and Computer Science, each long a subject of philosophical speculation and analysis in its own right. Quantum computing combines both of these more traditional areas of inquiry into one wholly new, if not quite independent, science. Over the course of this chapter we will be discussing some of the most important philosophical questions (...) that arise from this merger and philosophical lessons to be learned. (shrink)

Physical theories often characterize their observables with real number precision. Many non-fundamental theories do so needlessly: they are more precise than they need to be to capture the physical matters of fact about their observables. A natural expectation is that a truly fundamental theory will require its full precision in order to exhaustively capture all of the fundamental physical matters of fact. I argue against this expectation and I show that we do not have good reason to expect that the (...) standard of precision set by successful theories, or even by a truly fundamental theory, will match the granularity of the physical facts. (shrink)

Recent years have witnessed a burgeoning interest in the study of everyday life within the social sciences and humanities. In Critiques of Everyday Life Michael Gardiner proposes that there exists a counter-tradition within everyday life theorizing.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ghazali and Demonstrative Science MICHAEL E. MARMURA I MEDIEVALISLA_MICtheologians subjected Aristotle's theory of the essential efficient cause to severe criticism and rejected it. This criticism and rejection finds its most forceful expression in the writings of Ghazali (al-Ghaz~li) (d. 1111).1 In his Tahafut al-Falasifa (The Incoherence of the Philosophers), he argues on logical and empirical grounds that the alleged necessary connection between what is habitually regarded as the (...) natural efficient cause and its effect cannot be proven. He does not, however, take an agnostic stand on this question but proceeds to affirm two points: (1) that there is no causal agency in natural things; (2) that all natural events are the direct creation of God. Ghazali, moreover, does not confine such divine action to the realm of the inanimate and the irrational, in his al-Iqtis.~d fi-l-Ftiqad (The Golden Mean of Belief), he affirms the doctrine that the individual human act, like any other occurrence in the world, is also the direct creation of God. Causal efficacy resides in God alone. But the divine act, for Ghazali, is not an essential act. It does not proceed as the necessary consequence of divine essence. It is the arbitrary decree of the divine will, an attribute coeternal, but not identical with divine essence. Ghazali thus denies essential action altogether. In all this, he gives expression to the occasionalism of the Islamic school of dogmatic theology (kal~m) to which he belonged, the Ashcarite school. Ghazali had also a keen interest in logic. He wrote logical treatises for his fellow theologians, encouraging them to master this art as a tool to rebutt their doctrinal opponents. The~ treatises, in the main, sum up and explain the logic used by the Islamic philosophers--a logic that reflects the Stoic and Aristotelian traditions. Ghazali recognizes formal logic to be philosophically neutral, and hence in no way conflicting with his theology." He does not confine himself to formal logic in these expositions, however, but discusses Aristotelian demonstration. And it is in his statements on demonstration that we seem to be confronted with paradox. Demonstrative science, as understood by the Islamic philosophers, rests on the theory of essential causes and functions in terms of it. Indeed, in his reply to Ghazali's rejection of essential efficient causes in nature, Averroes (Ibn Rushd) (d. 1198) argues Texts frequently referred to in the notes will be abbreviated as follows: Demonstration: Ibn Sin~, Al-Shifa~; Logic V.; Demonstration, ed. A. E. Affifi,revised by I. Madkur (Cairo, 1956). Iqti~dd: A1-Ghaz~li, Al-Iqtisad Fi-l-ICtiqad(Cairo: no date). Metaphysics: Ibn Sin~, A1-Shif~: al-Ilah~yat (Metaphysics), ed. C. C. Anawati, S. Dunya, and S. Zayd, revised by I. Madkur (2 vols.; Cairo, 1960). MI: AI-Ghaz~lI,MiCyaral-CIlm,ed. S. Dunya (Cairo, 1961). TF: A1-Ghaz~ll, Tahafut al-Falasifa, ed. M. Bouyges (Beirut, 1927). TT: Ibn Rushd (Averroes), Tahafut al-Tahafut, ed. M. Bouyges, Beirut, 1930). 2 TF., pp. 15-17. [1831 184 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY that such a rejection would render demonstrative science impossible. We would have no true knowledge; at best, only opinion. 3For this staunch defender of Aristotle, the theory of natural efficient causality constitutes a necessary condition for demonstrative science. Yet Ghazali in his writings does not deny the claim that demonstration gives us certain knowledge about the natural order. On the contrary, he seems to be affirming this in both his Tahdfutand the logical treatise he appended to this work, Mi~jdral-CIlm(The Standardfor Knowledge).If Ghazali does in fact uphold this claim for demonstration, then he must either deny that the theory of essential efficient causality is a necessary condition for demonstrative science, or fall into contradiction. At first glance, Ghazali's position in the Micy~r,where he gives his most comprehensive treatment of demonstration, is highly ambiguous and suggests contradiction. He seems for the most part to be reproducing the essentials of the Aristotelian demonstrative theory. Although in one section he reaffirms his rejection of necessary causal connection in nature, he nonetheless continues to use such terms as "cause," "effect," "necessity" and "certainty" in what appear to be... (shrink)