This book, first published in 1968, examines the complicated issues which surround the problem of freewill. Although it reaches a libertarian conclusion, its focus is largely on other questions. What ultimately is at stake in this debate? What difference would it make whether we had freewill or not? Why must disagreement persist, and why do philosophes each opposed conclusions with such confidence? The answers to these questions open new perspectives.

Has moral relativism run its course? The threat of 9/11, terrorism, reproductive technology, and globalization has forced us to ask anew whether there are universal moral truths upon which to base ethical and political judgments. In this timely edited collection, distinguished scholars present and test the best answers to this question. These insightful responses temper the strong antithesis between universalism and relativism and retain sensitivity to how language and history shape the context of our moral decisions. This important and relevant (...) work of contemporary political and social thought is ideal for use in the classroom across many disciplines, including political science, philosophy, ethics, law, and theology. (shrink)

We study arithmetic and hyperarithmetic degrees of categoricity. We extend a result of E. Fokina, I. Kalimullin, and R. Miller to show that for every computable ordinal $\alpha$, $\mathbf{0}^{}$ is the degree of categoricity of some computable structure $\mathcal{A}$. We show additionally that for $\alpha$ a computable successor ordinal, every degree $2$-c.e. in and above $\mathbf{0}^{}$ is a degree of categoricity. We further prove that every degree of categoricity is hyperarithmetic and show that the index set of structures with degrees (...) of categoricity is $\Pi_{1}^{1}$-complete. (shrink)

Seeing, Doing, and Knowing: A Philosophical Theory of Sense Perception MOHAN MATTHEN New York, Oxford University Press, 2007384 pages, ISBN: 0199204284 (pbk); $35.00Mohan Matthen's Seeing, Doing an...

A collection of articles on the the principles of social justice from an Australian Catholic perspective. Contents: Forward (Archbishop Philip Wilson), Introduction (James Franklin), The right to life (James Franklin), The right to serve and worship God in public and private (John Sharpe), The right to religious formation (Richard Rymarz), The right to personal liberty under just law (Michael Casey), The right to equal protection of just law regardless of sex, nationality, colour or creed (Sam Gregg), The (...) right to freedom of expression (Damian Grace), The right to choose and freely maintain a state of life, married or single, lay or religious (Marita Winters), The right to education (Anthony Cleary), The right to petition government for the redress of grievances (Paul Russell), The right to a nationality (Andrew Hamilton), The right to have access to the means of livelihood, by migration when necessary (Brenda Hubber), The right of association and peaceful assembly (Michael Hogan), The right to work and choose one's occupation (Ian Blandthorn), The right to personal ownership, use and disposal of property subject to the right of others (Brian Coman), The right to a living wage (Garrick Small), The right to collective bargaining (Keith Harvey), The right to associate by industries and professions to obtain economic justice (Henrik Jurisevic), The right to assistance from society, if necessary from the State, in distress of persons and family (Catherine Althaus), Afterword (James Franklin). (shrink)

A challenge of performing research in the paediatric emergency and acute care setting is obtaining valid prospective informed consent from parents. The ethical issues are complex, and it is important to consider the perspective of participants, health care workers and researchers on research without prospective informed consent while planning this type of research. We performed a systematic review according to PRISMA guidelines, of empirical evidence relating to the process, experiences and acceptability of alternatives to prospective informed consent, in the paediatric (...) emergency or acute care setting. Major medical databases and grey sources were searched and results were screened and assessed against eligibility criteria by 2 authors, and full text articles of relevant studies obtained. Data were extracted onto data collection forms and imported into data management software for analysis. Thirteen studies were included in the review consisting of nine full text articles and four abstracts. Given the heterogeneity of the methods, results could not be quantitatively combined for meta-analysis, and qualitative results are presented in narrative form, according to themes identified from the data. Major themes include capacity of parents to provide informed consent, feasibility of informed consent, support for alternatives to informed consent, process issues, modified consent process, child death, and community consultation. Our review demonstrated that children, their families, and health care staff recognise the requirement for research without prior consent, and are generally supportive of enrolling children in such research with the provisions of limiting risk, and informing parents as soon as possible. Australian data and perspectives of children are lacking and represent important knowledge gaps. (shrink)

Social constructionists believe that experimental evidence plays a minimal role in the production of scientific knowledge, while rationalists such as myself believe that experimental evidence is crucial in it. As one historical example in support of the rationalist position, I trace in some detail the theoretical and experimental research that led to our understanding of beta decay, from Enrico Fermi’s pioneering theory of 1934 to George Sudarshan and Robert Marshak’s and Richard Feynman and Murray Gell-Mann’s suggestion in 1957 and (...) 1958, respectively, of the V–A theory of weak interactions. This is not a history of an unbroken string of successes, but one that includes incorrect experimental results, incorrect experiment-theory comparisons, and faulty theoretical analyses. Nevertheless, we shall see that the constraints that Nature imposed made the V–A theory an almost inevitable outcome of this theoretical and experimental research. (shrink)

This article investigates how mid-thirteenth-century theologians grappled with questions of angelic embodiment and corporeal life-functioning. Regent masters such as Alexander of Hales, Richard Fishacre, Richard Rufus of Cornwall, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventure variously employed scriptural and patristic sources in conjunction with Aristotelian philosophy to develop a basic metaphysics of angels according to which these inherently incorporeal spiritual creatures assume bodies not on account of any necessity on their part, but rather simply so that we humans might (...) understand their divinely-ordained ministries. Because the relationship between angels and their bodies is strictly occasional and extrinsic, aiming at human instruction, embodied life-functions that are natural to humans are not natural to angels. Rather, angels merely act in anthropomorphic ways in order to fittingly reveal the divine will to human comprehension. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Joseph Priestley's Criticisms of David Hume's Philosophy RICHARD H. POPKIN ONE OF HUME'S MOST FAMOUS CRITICS, the great scientist Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), is scarcely mentioned or studied in the Hume literature.' Perhaps because of the course philosophy followed after Hume, the Scottish Common Sense critics and the German ones connected with Kant are given almost all of the attention. In this paper 1 shall try to correct this (...) oversight, and examine the background of Priestley's critique of Hume, both in terms of Priestley's scientific and religious views and in terms of Hume's influence at the time. I shall then evaluate the merits of Priestley's critique and attempt to determine whether it deserves further study or should be returned to the obscurity it has been in for almost two centuries. 2 Joseph Priestley was a nonconforming minister whose progressively radical views caused him to lose various posts. Eventually he became a millenarian, convinced that crucial signs of the end of the world were at hand: the events of the French Revolution; the purported discovery of the Lost Tribes in Afghanistan by Sir William Jones; plans or hopes for the Jews to return to Palestine and join forces with the Christians. After years of religious wanderings Priestley ended up a millenarian Unitarian, much in the tradition of Sir Isaac Newton, whose religious writing he used extensively, and of Newton's successor, William Whiston? Priestley taught science in various schools and was immensely influenced by David Hartley's Observations on Man. He found in Hartley's theory of association of ideas a naturalistic way of explaining human mental life. And in Hartley's millenarian views he located the sort of theology he was seeking. Priestly later reedited Hartley, including introductory essays about some of the more difficult aspects of his mechanistic psychology.' (Coleridge, who was deeply impressed by ' T. E. Jessop, A Bibliography of David Hume and of the Scottish Philosophy from l-)'ancis Hutcheson to Lord Balfour (New York, 1966), lists the titles of Priestley's works relevant to Hume. However, there appear to be no discussions of Priestley on Hume listed in this work or in Roland Hill, A Bibliography of David Hume from 1930 (York, 1971). E. C. Mossner, The Life of David Hume (Edinburgh, 1954), mentions Priestley's criticisms of Hume, but only as these were made in connection with criticisms of Beattie. Joseph Priestley, Memoirs of Dr. Joseph Priestley to the Year 1795, written by Himself, with a Continuation to the time of his decease by his son, Joseph Priestley, ed. T. Cooper (London, 1806). It is also of some interest that Priestley attacked Reid, Beattie, and Oswald a few years before challenging Hume. He seemed to think that he had disposed of the Scottish Philosophy for all time. Thus Priestley was certainly no part of the mainstream of Hume's opponents in Britain. See Memoirs, pp. 78-79n, and n. 16 below. ' On Priestley's career, see his Memoirs. Modern biographies deal principally with his scientific achievements and ignore or play down his theological concerns. For an extended discussion of Priestley's millenarian views, see Clarke Garrett, Respectable Folly (Baltimore, 1975), pp. 126-143. " Priestley, Hartley's Theory of the Human Mind, on the Principle of the Association of Ideas... (London, 1775). [437] 438 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Hartley, probably read Priestley's edition of his works.) For the most part, Priestley wrote long and controversial works on theology. His scientific achievements stem from his friendship with Benjamin Franklin and Richard Price, who encouraged him to write a history of discoveries in electricity. Franklin provided the resources for making the equipment. On the basis of the new material in his work, Priestley was nominated to the Royal Society by Franklin and Price. s Priestley's most famous scientific works came thereafter--his discovery of oxygen and his work on how the human body used oxygen. Later still, he became entangled in a controversy with Lavoisier over the phlogiston theory, Priestley upholding it, the French chemist opposing it. 6 Priestley was also active in politics, supporting radical causes. He supported John Wilkes, of whom Hume thoroughly disapproved, and was an early... (shrink)

Benjamin Franklin exhorted his fellows to “either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” John Stuart Mill is among that rare breed who managed to do both. He was a public intellectual before the term was created; an advocate for a humanist, self‐reflective life, but also a man of political action. Mill's thought and life do not stand apart from each other. He was in fact an intensely autobiographical thinker. Mill's extraordinary upbringing and education, for example, fuelled (...) his journey away from utilitarianism towards liberalism. His deep relationship with Harriet Taylor also strongly influenced his thinking on gender equality, social custom and other issues. Mill's life is interesting in itself. It also casts an important light on the development of his thought. (shrink)

In the last decade there has been a pragmatic turn in the work of those doing Christian ethics, especially as represented by the work of Jeffrey Stout and Franklin Gamwell. The pragmatic turn represents a critique of the highly influential work of Stanley Hauerwas and Alasdair MacIntyre, which argues for a strongly intra-church ethics. The pragmatists are correct in arguing that Christian ethics must engage the public sphere. However, I argue that they are deeply mistaken in their claim that (...) this engagement must rest on a weak or non-existent theology. I show that the claim that robust theology adds nothing to ethics, and that we can get along without it, is unsustainable. (shrink)

This book focuses on the political thought of American statesmen. These statesmen have had consistent and comprehensive views of the good of the country and their actions have been informed by those views. The editors argue that political life in America has been punctuated by three great crises in its history-the crisis of the Founding, the crisis of the House Divided, and the crisis of the Great Depression. The Second World War was a crisis not just for America but for (...) the whole of Western Civiliation and, in the wake of that war, a new crisis arose which came to be called the "Cold War." Just when that gave the appearance of being resolved, the world reached a new juncture, a new crisis, which Samuel P. Huntington dubbed the "clash of civiliations." The statesmen having political responsibility in confronting the first three crises in America's history came as close to philosophic grasp of the problems of liberal democracy as one could demand from those embroiled in the active resolution of events. Their reflection of political philosophy in the full sense informed their actions. Since we cannot confidently explain the future, Aristotle warned us to call no man happy while he still lives. Thus the book, in its third edition, keeps to its settled pattern of dealing with settled matters. The preface to the third edition confronts the three later crises and, to the extent consistent with truth, attempts to relate them to the first three. Morton J. Frisch was professor emeritus of political science at Northern Illinois University. He was the author or editor of several books, including Selected Writings and Speeches of Alexander Hamilton; Alexander Hamilton and the Political Order; and Franklin D. Roosevelt: The Contribution of the New Deal to American Political Thought and Practice. Richard G. Stevens retired from National Defense University as professor of political science in 1994. Since then he has taught as an adjunct professor of government at American University. He is co-editor with Matthew J. Franck of Sober as a Judge: The Supreme Court and Republican Liberty, and the author of The American Constitution and Its Provenance; Reason and History in Judicial Judgment: Felix Frankfurter and Due Process; and Political Philosophy: An Introduction. (shrink)

The most famous man of his age, Benjamin Franklin was an individual of many talents and accomplishments. He invented the wood-burning stove and the lightning rod, he wrote Poor Richard's Almanac and The Way to Wealth, and he traveled the world as a diplomat. But it was in politics that Franklin made his greatest impact. Franklin's political writings are full of fascinating reflections on human nature, on the character of good leadership, and on why government is (...) such a messy and problematic business. Drawing together threads in Franklin's writings, Lorraine Smith Pangle illuminates his thoughts on citizenship, federalism, constitutional government, the role of civil associations, and religious freedom. Of the American Founders, Franklin had an unrivaled understanding of the individual human soul. At the heart of his political vision is a view of democratic citizenship, a rich understanding of the qualities of the heart and mind necessary to support liberty and sustain happiness. This concise introduction reflects Franklin's valuable insight into political issues that continue to be relevant today. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Richard Hofstadter: An Intellectual BiographyBruce KuklickDavid S. Brown, Richard Hofstadter: An Intellectual BiographyChicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. xxiv+291 pp. Notes, Bibliographic Essay, Sources, Students of Richard Hofstadter, Index. $27.50.In the mid-twentieth century Richard Hofstadter was one the finest historians of the United States. Uncommitted to work in primary sources, he was perhaps not at the level of Perry Miller, Vann Woodward, and Edmund (...) Morgan. But Hofstadter had a greater range and wider influence than these men, and the combination of intellectual and political history that he wrote was unique, as was the penetration of his intellect and his appealing sensibility.Hofstadter was born in Buffalo, New York, the son of a Lutheran mother and a father who was a secular Jew. The son went to the local University of Buffalo. While not as impoverished as this biography is inclined to make him, Dick Hofstadter "married up" after he fell in love with Felice Swados, the daughter of a Buffalo Jewish doctor who was also a student at the University. Swados introduced Hofstadter to the Marxist intellectual left of the 1930s, although he was himself a successful and intelligent student leader. In the years after their graduation, the couple had a tempestuous start to their marriage, but over the next several years they built a life in New York City. Felice became the medical columnist for Time; Dick productively completed a doctoral degree in history at Columbia University. They both continued their radical activities. In the late 1930s he was briefly a member of the American Communist Party, although Dick quickly resigned because of the authoritarian nature of the organization. Even then, however, he was more removed and skeptical than Felice, with more of an historian's impartiality and sense of the tragic. Felice's unambiguous commitments moved him, but Dick was, literally, only half-inclined to the Jewish left.Swados died of cancer in 1945, after they had moved to Washington, D.C., where Hofstadter was teaching at the University of Maryland. But a year later the devastated young man obtained a position at Columbia. At the same time he met and married Beatrice Kevitt, another capable woman with literary and editorial talent.In 1948 Hofstadter published what I still think is his masterwork, The American Political Tradition. A series of sharp portraits of leading politicians, [End Page 574] the book owed much to Hofstadter's leftist background. It was indebted to Marxist analyses, or at least to those of the sort promulgated by the great historian, Charles Beard, who saw economics as central to the study of national life. But Hofstadter did not see a clash between capitalists and their opponents in the United States. He viewed the entire tradition of American politicians as committed to a certain kind of exploitative social system, although his book did not quite have the edge suggested by this last phrase. Hofstadter became known as a "consensus" historian who had a monolithic sense of the American experience, although this monolith was not benign as was that of other practitioners of consensus.In the 1950s Hofstadter, now a prominent Columbia faculty member, moved away from some of the economic preconceptions of The American Political Tradition. Instead, in his two other important books, The Age of Reform (1955) and The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1965), he brought to bear on the American experience a group of concepts that he took from his study of the social sciences. Overall, these two books undermined his previous materialist interpretation of politics. Instead, Hofstadter found that irrational fears, psychological maladjustments, and concerns about status might motivate leaders and movements more than a rational appraisal of self-interest. In retrospect, this 1950s social science does not appear very enlightening, and so Hofstadter's absorption of it is not to be praised. On the other side, so many of his fellow historians attacked him for his interdisciplinary bent that his generous outreach looks more than daring. Hofstadter's own personal politics shifted, too. He became a staunch if critical defender of the social democratic liberalism of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and its impulses in the 1950s and 1960s.In... (shrink)

The Venezuelan-Chilean humanist Andrés Bello has been recognized as one of the most distinguished intellectuals of the 19th century—one of the last polymaths of the stature of figures such as Athanasius Kircher, Gottfried Leibniz or Benjamin Franklin. Indeed, his numerous contributions span fields such as grammar, poetry, civil law, diplomacy, education, political theory, philology and philosophy. However, despite having composed one of the most important philosophical treatises ever written in Spanish, his philosophical proposals have not been engaged with a (...) substantial way by scholars of the Anglophone world. Only a few scholars such as... (shrink)

The interventionist account of causal explanation, in the version presented by Jim Woodward, has been recently claimed capable of buttressing the widely felt—though poorly understood—hunch that high-level, relatively abstract explanations, of the sort provided by sciences like biology, psychology and economics, are in some cases explanatorily optimal. It is the aim of this paper to show that this is mistaken. Due to a lack of effective constraints on the causal variables at the heart of the interventionist causal-explanatory scheme, as presently (...) formulated it is either unable to prefer high-level explanations to low, or systematically overshoots, recommending explanations at so high of a level as to be virtually vacuous. (shrink)

Both realist and anti-realist accounts of natural kinds possess prima facie virtues: realists can straightforwardly make sense of the apparent objectivity of the natural kinds, and anti-realists, their knowability. This paper formulates a properly anti-realist account designed to capture both merits. In particular, it recommends understanding natural kinds as ‘categorical bottlenecks,’ those categories that not only best serve us, with our idiosyncratic aims and cognitive capacities, but also those of a wide range of alternative agents. By endorsing an ultimately subjective (...) categorical principle, this view sidesteps epistemological difficulties facing realist views. Yet, it nevertheless identifies natural kinds that are fairly, though not completely, stance-independent or objective. (shrink)

Recent discussions of emergence in physics have focussed on the use of limiting relations, and often particularly on singular or asymptotic limits. We discuss a putative example of emergence that does not fit into this narrative: the case of phonons. These quasi-particles have some claim to be emergent, not least because the way in which they relate to the underlying crystal is almost precisely analogous to the way in which quantum particles relate to the underlying quantum field theory. But there (...) is no need to take a limit when moving from a crystal lattice based description to the phonon description. Not only does this demonstrate that we can have emergence without limits, but also provides a way of understanding cases that do involve limits. (shrink)

Whether or not quantum physics can account for molecular structure is a matter of considerable controversy. Three of the problems raised in this regard are the problems of molecular structure. We argue that these problems are just special cases of the measurement problem of quantum mechanics: insofar as the measurement problem is solved, the problems of molecular structure are resolved as well. In addition, we explore one consequence of our argument: that claims about the reduction or emergence of molecular structure (...) cannot be settled independently of the choice of a particular resolution to the measurement problem. Specifically, we consider how three standard putative solutions to the measurement problem inform our under- standing of a molecule in isolation, as well as of chemistry’s relation to quantum physics. (shrink)

Scientific realists don’t standardly discriminate between, say, biology and fundamental physics when deciding whether the evidence and explanatory power warrant the inclusion of new entities in our ontology. As such, scientific realists are committed to a lush rainforest of special science kinds (Ross, 2000). Viruses certainly inhabit this rainforest – their explanatory power is overwhelming – but viruses’ properties can be explained from the bottom up: reductive explanations involving amino acids are generally available. However, reduction has often been taken to (...) lead to a metaphysical downgrading, so how can viruses keep their place in the rainforest? In this paper, we show how the inhabitants of the rainforest can be inoculated against the eliminative threat of reduction: by demonstrating that they are emergent. According to our account, emergence involves a screening off condition as well as novelty. We go on to demonstrate that this account of emergence, which is compatible with theoretical reducibility, satisfies common intuitions concerning what should and shouldn’t count as real: viruses are emergent, as are trout and turkeys, but philosophically gerrymandered objects like trout-turkeys do not qualify. (shrink)

This paper critiques the new mechanistic explanatory program on grounds that, even when applied to the kinds of examples that it was originally designed to treat, it does not distinguish correct explanations from those that blunder. First, I offer a systematization of the explanatory account, one according to which explanations are mechanistic models that satisfy three desiderata: they must 1) represent causal relations, 2) describe the proper parts, and 3) depict the system at the right ‘level.’ Second, I argue that (...) even the most developed attempts to fulfill these desiderata fall short by failing to appropriately constrain explanatorily apt mechanistic models. -/- *This paper used to be called "The Emperor's New Mechanisms". (shrink)

How were reliable predictions made before Pascal and Fermat's discovery of the mathematics of probability in 1654? What methods in law, science, commerce, philosophy, and logic helped us to get at the truth in cases where certainty was not attainable? The book examines how judges, witch inquisitors, and juries evaluated evidence; how scientists weighed reasons for and against scientific theories; and how merchants counted shipwrecks to determine insurance rates. Also included are the problem of induction before Hume, design arguments for (...) the existence of God, and theories on how to evaluate scientific and historical hypotheses. It is explained how Pascal and Fermat's work on chance arose out of legal thought on aleatory contracts. The book interprets pre-Pascalian unquantified probability in a generally objective Bayesian or logical probabilist sense. (shrink)

What is it about a person's becoming an adult that makes it generally inappropriate to treat that person paternalistically any longer? The Standard View holds that a mere difference in age or stage of life cannot in itself be morally relevant, but only matters insofar as it is correlated with the development of capacities for mature practical reasoning. This paper defends the contrary view: two people can have all the same general psychological attributes and yet the mere fact that one (...) person is at the beginning of a life and another in the middle of one can justify treating the younger person more paternalistically than the older one. Recognising the moral relevance of age, moreover, is crucial if one is to accommodate both the liberal moral ideal of respect for autonomy and our demanding educational aims, given that these otherwise come into conflict with one another. (shrink)

Nearly all defences of the agent-causal theory of free will portray the theory as a distinctively libertarian one — a theory that only libertarians have reason to accept. According to what I call ‘the standard argument for the agent-causal theory of free will’, the reason to embrace agent-causal libertarianism is that libertarians can solve the problem of enhanced control only if they furnish agents with the agent-causal power. In this way it is assumed that there is only reason to accept (...) the agent-causal theory if there is reason to accept libertarianism. I aim to refute this claim. I will argue that the reasons we have for endorsing the agent-causal theory of free will are nonpartisan. The real reason for going agent-causal has nothing to do with determinism or indeterminism, but rather with avoiding reductionism about agency and the self. As we will see, if there is reason for libertarians to accept the agent-causal theory, there is just as much reason for compatibilists to accept it. It is in this sense that I contend that if anyone should be an agent-causalist, then everyone should be an agent-causalist. (shrink)

Blaming (construed broadly to include both blaming-attitudes and blaming-actions) is a puzzling phenomenon. Even when we grant that someone is blameworthy, we can still sensibly wonder whether we ought to blame him. We sometimes choose to forgive and show mercy, even when it is not asked for. We are naturally led to wonder why we shouldn’t always do this. Wouldn’t it be a better to wholly reject the punitive practices of blame, especially in light of their often undesirable effects, and (...) embrace an ethic of unrelenting forgiveness and mercy? In this paper I seek to address these questions by offering an account of blame that provides a rationale for thinking that to wholly forswear blaming blameworthy agents would be deeply mistaken. This is because, as I will argue, blaming is a way of valuing, it is “a mode of valuation.” I will argue that among the minimal standards of respect generated by valuable objects, notably persons, is the requirement to redress disvalue with blame. It is not just that blame is something additional we are required to do in properly valuing, but rather blame is part of what that it is to properly value. Blaming, given the existence of blameworthy agents, is mode of valuation required by the standards of minimal respect. To forswear blame would be to fail value what we ought to value. (shrink)

The universality of critical phenomena is best explained by appeal to the Renormalisation Group (RG). Batterman and Morrison, among others, have claimed that this explanation is irreducible. I argue that the RG account is reducible, but that the higher-level explanation ought not to be eliminated. I demonstrate that the key assumption on which the explanation relies – the scale invariance of critical systems – can be explained in lower-level terms; however, we should not replace the RG explanation with a bottom-up (...) account, rather we should acknowledge that the explanation appeals to dependencies which may be traced down to lower levels. (shrink)

The debate over whether Frankfurt-style cases are counterexamples to the principle of alternative possibilities has taken an interesting turn in recent years. Frankfurt originally envisaged his attack as an attempting to show that PAP is false—that the ability to do otherwise is not necessary for moral responsibility. To many this attack has failed. But Frankfurtians have not conceded defeat. Neo-Frankfurtians, as I will call them, argue that the upshot of Frankfurt-style cases is not that PAP is false, but that it (...) is explanatorily irrelevant. Derk Pereboom and David Hunt’s buffer cases are tailor made to establish this conclusion. In this paper I come to the aid of PAP, showing that buffer cases provide no reason for doubting either its truth or relevance with respect to explaining an agent’s moral responsibility. (shrink)

There is a wide range of realist but non-Platonist philosophies of mathematics—naturalist or Aristotelian realisms. Held by Aristotle and Mill, they played little part in twentieth century philosophy of mathematics but have been revived recently. They assimilate mathematics to the rest of science. They hold that mathematics is the science of X, where X is some observable feature of the (physical or other non-abstract) world. Choices for X include quantity, structure, pattern, complexity, relations. The article lays out and compares these (...) options, including their accounts of what X is, the examples supporting each theory, and the reasons for identifying the science of X with (most or all of) mathematics. Some comparison of the options is undertaken, but the main aim is to display the spectrum of viable alternatives to Platonism and nominalism. It is explained how these views answer Frege’s widely accepted argument that arithmetic cannot be about real features of the physical world, and arguments that such mathematical objects as large infinities and perfect geometrical figures cannot be physically realized. (shrink)

This paper sketches a causal account of scientific explanation designed to sustain the judgment that high-level, detail-sparse explanations—particularly those offered in biology—can be at least as explanatorily valuable as lower-level counterparts. The motivating idea is that complete explanations maximize causal economy: they cite those aspects of an event’s causal run-up that offer the biggest-bang-for-your-buck, by costing less (in virtue of being abstract) and delivering more (in virtue making the event stable or robust).

The objective Bayesian view of proof (or logical probability, or evidential support) is explained and defended: that the relation of evidence to hypothesis (in legal trials, science etc) is a strictly logical one, comparable to deductive logic. This view is distinguished from the thesis, which had some popularity in law in the 1980s, that legal evidence ought to be evaluated using numerical probabilities and formulas. While numbers are not always useful, a central role is played in uncertain reasoning by the (...) ‘proportional syllogism’, or argument from frequencies, such as ‘nearly all aeroplane flights arrive safely, so my flight is very likely to arrive safely’. Such arguments raise the ‘problem of the reference class’, arising from the fact that an individual case may be a member of many different classes in which frequencies differ. For example, if 15 per cent of swans are black and 60 per cent of fauna in the zoo is black, what should I think about the likelihood of a swan in the zoo being black? The nature of the problem is explained, and legal cases where it arises are given. It is explained how recent work in data mining on the relevance of features for prediction provides a solution to the reference class problem. (shrink)

Discussion about a dignified death has almost exclusively been applied to palliative care and people dying of cancer. As populations are getting older in the western world and living with chronic illnesses affecting their everyday lives, it is relevant to broaden the definition of palliative care to include other groups of people. The aim of the study was to explore the views on dignity at the end of life of 12 elderly people living in two nursing homes in Sweden. A (...) hermeneutic approach was used to interpret the material, which was gathered during semi-structured interviews. A total of 39 interviews were transcribed. The analysis revealed three themes: (1) the unrecognizable body; (2) fragility and dependency; and (3) inner strength and a sense of coherence. (shrink)

A problem for Aristotelian realist accounts of universals (neither Platonist nor nominalist) is the status of those universals that happen not to be realised in the physical (or any other) world. They perhaps include uninstantiated shades of blue and huge infinite cardinals. Should they be altogether excluded (as in D.M. Armstrong's theory of universals) or accorded some sort of reality? Surely truths about ratios are true even of ratios that are too big to be instantiated - what is the truthmaker (...) of such truths? It is argued that Aristotelianism can answer the question, but only a semi-Platonist form of it. (shrink)

The formal sciences - mathematical as opposed to natural sciences, such as operations research, statistics, theoretical computer science, systems engineering - appear to have achieved mathematically provable knowledge directly about the real world. It is argued that this appearance is correct.