The hypothesis that we may be living in a digital simulation is utilized as a ‘thought experiment’ to help clarify important questions in theology and philosophy, including the nature of God, the significance and importance of an afterlife, and the ultimate nature of reality. It is argued that a consideration of the simulation hypothesis renders problematic traditional conceptions of a personal, creator, omnipotent deity, makes the theological significance of a purported afterlife far less significant, and paradoxically undermines the very materialistic (...) view of reality that underlies the simulation hypothesis in the first place. It is concluded that the simulation hypothesis renders ‘science’ virtually irrelevant to ultimate questions in philosophy and theology and elevates ethics and axiology to fundamental status for our understanding of reality and any defensible conception of the divine. (shrink)

Most people have a sense of obligation to family members that is more powerful than the law in compelling compliance with its demands. When families dissolve, however, the power of such nonlegal norms often dissolves as well. The question then becomes what the law should require in their stead. This Article is part of a larger series of studies that have examined this question by asking what citizens believe the law should demand, using surveys of persons called to jury service (...) in Tucson, Arizona. Respondents are asked to imagine they are the judge charged with deciding a series of cases in which the facts are systematically varied so as to reveal the implicit principles that survey respondents employ in deciding them. Previously reported results in this project have examined studies of the amount of child support that people believe appropriate, and how they believe child custody disputes should be resolved. This study examines lay views about alimony. It finds considerable divergence between American law in practice and the views of American citizens as to what the law should be. Survey respondents were willing to award alimony considerably more often than the law now does. More clearly, in deciding whether to allow an alimony award, they care most of all about the claimant’s responsibility as primary caretaker of the couple’s minor children, to some extent about the partners’ marital status and their relational duration, and very little at all about the claimant’s history of having cared for the couple’s now-grown children. Moreover, the way these factors affect our respondents’ judgments about alimony are not very dependent on who they are. Our respondents did vary among themselves, of course, in the frequency with which they allowed alimony, but they varied relatively little in how factors such as marriage, relational duration, the presence of minor children or the history of care for now-grown children affected their judgments. The citizen consensus reflected by these patterns differs, however, from the prevailing legal rules, the views of many scholars, and the recommendations of the American Law Institute. This striking discrepancy is interesting although not always surprising. Our respondents’ willingness to award alimony to non-marital partners, for example, is consistent with the law of some other Western countries, even if not with American law, suggesting perhaps that it is American law, not our respondents, that is peculiar. Perhaps it is also understandable that our respondents seem more concerned with the welfare of the couple’s current minor children than with addressing perceived inequities in the current economic circumstances of the adult partners. In any event, the views of our respondents pose a challenge to policymakers. Given the dearth of theoretical justification for current American practice, its rejection by American citizens seems all the more telling. (shrink)

We applaud the effort to draw attention to generalizability concerns in twenty-first-century psychological research. Yet we do not feel that a pessimistic perspective is warranted. We outline a continuum of available methodological tools and perspectives, including incremental steps and meta-analytic approaches that can be readily and easily deployed by researchers to advance generalizability claims in a forward-looking manner.

I criticize and emend J L Mackie's account of causal priority by replacing ‘fixity’ in its central clause by 'x is a causal condition of y, but y is not a causal condition of x'. This replacement works only if 'is a causal condition of' is not a symmetric relation. Even apart from our desire to account for causal priority, it is desirable to have an account of nonsymmetric conditionship. Truth, for example, is a condition of knowledge, but knowledge is (...) not a condition of truth. My definitions of 'sufficient condition for' and 'necessary condition for' do not imply that p is a sufficient condition of q if and only if q is a necessary condition of p. (shrink)

This volume addresses the intriguing issue of indirect reports from an interdisciplinary perspective. The contributors include philosophers, theoretical linguists, socio-pragmaticians, and cognitive scientists. The book is divided into four sections following the provenance of the authors. Combining the voices from leading and emerging authors in the field, it offers a detailed picture of indirect reports in the world’s languages and their significance for theoretical linguistics. Building on the previous book on indirect reports in this series, this volume adds an empirical (...) and cross-linguistic approach that covers an impressive range of languages, such as Cantonese, Japanese, Hebrew, Persian, Dutch, Spanish, Catalan, Armenian, Italian, English, Hungarian, German, Rumanian, and Basque. (shrink)

From the standpoint of modern economics, the “marvel” of the price system is the way in which contextual knowledge is discovered and utilized without requiring individuals to articulate and transmit any great part of it to a central planner. While extremely valuable, this insight has tended to draw attention away from the actual contextual knowledge possessed by agents in a particular time and place that can over time promote the utilization of the market and its related institutions, including the price (...) system, private property, and the rule of law. Examining forms of contextual knowledge such as social capital and trust can deepen our understanding of some of the conditions that promote the entrepreneurial discovery of profit opportunities in complex market processes, in which in the vast majority of trades very few of the actors involved ever know one another or meet face-to-face.Du point de vue de la science économique moderne, le “miracle” du système de prix est la manière à travers laquelle la connaissance contextuelle est découverte et utilisée sans que les individus aient à en articuler et en transmettre une grande partie à un planificateur central. Bien qu’extrêmement utile, cette idée a eu tendance à détourner l’attention de la connaissance contextuelle actuelle possédée par les agents à un moment donné et dans un lieu donné qui peut, à travers le temps, promouvoir l’utilisation du marché et de ses institutions telles que le système des prix, le droit de propriété et la règle de droit. L’examen des formes que peut revêtir la connaissance contextuelle à l’instar du capital social et de la confiance, peut améliorer notre compréhension de certaines conditions qui promeuvent la découverte des opportunités de profit par l’entrepreneur dans des processus marchands complexes, une des caractéristiques de ces derniers étant que peu d’échanges ont lieu entre des agents qui se connaissent ou lors de rencontre en face à face. (shrink)

Compiled by an archaeologist and philosopher of science, Science at the Frontiers: Perspectives on the History and Philosophy of Science supplements current literature in the history and philosophy of science with essays approaching the traditional problems of the field from new perspectives and highlighting disciplines usually overlooked by the canon. William H. Krieger brings together scientists from a number of disciplines to answer these questions and more in a volume appropriate for both students and academics in the field.

I revise J L Mackie's first account of casual direction by replacing his notion of "fixity" by a newly defined notion of "sufficing" that is designed to accommodate indeterminism. Keeping Mackie's distinction between casual order and casual direction, I then consider another revision that replaces "fixity" with "one-way conditionship". In response to the charge that all such accounts of casual priority beg the question by making an unjustified appeal to temporal priority, i maintain that one-way conditionship explains rather that assumes (...) objective temporal dependence as well as objective casual dependence. (shrink)

The most puzzling and intriguing aspect of intuitionism as a philosophy of mathematics is its claim that classical deductive reasoning in mathematics is illegitimate. The two most well-known proponents of this position are L. E. J. Brouwer and Michael Dummett. Both of their criticisms of the use of classical logic in mathematics have, by and large, been taken to depend on the thesis that the principle of bivalence does not apply to mathematical statements; and the difference between these criticisms is (...) taken to consist in their grounds for this thesis. Brouwer bases this thesis on an account of the nature of mathematics: it is an activity of mental construction essentially independent of language. Dummett, in contrast, bases the thesis on his anti-realist view of the nature of meaning. ;My first principal argument in this essay shows that the conception of anti-realism just outlined is problematic as a reading of Dummett. To begin with, Dummett explicitly rejects, not only the evidentiary restrictions of this conception, but also, more seriously, the use of specific epistemological theses in a philosophical account of meaning. Moreover, I give an alternative account of anti-realism, consisting of alternative interpretations of the manifestation requirement and of the rejection of realist truth conditions, that do not rely on an epistemology of meaning, and hence, a fortiori, not on evidential restrictions. ;My second principal argument in this essay consists of drawing a consequence of this conception of anti-realism, namely, that the failure of bivalence cannot, by itself, support a cogent criticism of classical logic. The basic reason is that, given my view of anti-realism, the claim that the legitimacy of applying classical reasoning to a class of statements depends on whether bivalence applies to that class already implies that the system of deductive reasoning applying to these statements is non-classical. Hence an argument against classical logic based on this claim is question-begging. ;Finally, I conclude by showing that Dummett's criticism of classical reasoning, as reconstructed by my third argument, fails. (shrink)

This volume explores the relationship between rationality and happiness from ancient Greek philosophy to early Latin medieval philosophy. What connection is there between human rationality and happiness? This issue was uppermost in the minds of the Ancient Greek philosophers and continued to be of importance during the entire early medieval period. Starting with theSocrates of Plato's early dialogues, who is regarded as having initiated the eudaimonistic ethical tradition, the present volume looks at Plato, Aristotle, the Skeptics, Seneca [Stoicism], Epicurus, Plotinus (...) [neo-Platonism], Augustine, Boethius, Anselm, and ends with Abelard, the final major figure in early medieval philosophy. Special efforts are made to reveal and trace the continuity and development of the views on rationality and happiness among these major thinkers within this period. The book's approach is historical, but the topics it treats are relevant to many discussions pursued in contemporary philosophical circles. Specifically, the book aims to make two major contributions to the ongoing development of virtue ethics. First, contemporary virtue ethics often draws distinctions between ancient Greek ethics and modern moral philosophy [mainly utilitarianism and Kantianism], and seeks to model ethics on ancient ethics. In doing so, however, contemporary virtue ethics often ignores the transition from Greek ethics to the early Latin medieval tradition. Second, contemporary virtue-based ethics, in its efforts to seek insights from ancient ethics, centers on virtue. In contrast, in ancient and medieval ethics, virtue is pursued for the sake of happiness [eudaimonia], and virtue is conceived as excellence of rationality. Hence, the relationship between rationality and happiness provides the framework for ethical inquiry within which the discussion of virtue takes place. Contributors: JULIA ANNAS, RICHARD BETT, JORGE J.E. GRACIA, BRAD INWOOD, WILLIAM MANN, JOHN MARENBON, GARETH B. MATTHEWS, MARK L. McPHERRAN, DONALD MORRISON, C.C.W. TAYLOR, JONATHAN SANFORD, JIYUAN YU. Jiyuan Yu is Assistant Professor of Ancient Philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Jorge J. E. Gracia is Samuel P. Capen Chair and SUNY Distinguised Professor in the Departments of Philosophy and Comparative Literature at the State University of New York at Buffalo. (shrink)

In this article, I propose a conjecture concerning the transmission of Spinoza’s Korte Verhandeling (KV) in the 1670s involving Leibniz. On the basis of a report about Spinoza’s philosophy written down by Leibniz after some conversations with Tschirnhaus in early 1676, I suggest that Tschirnhaus may have had in his possession a manuscript copy of KV and that his account of Spinoza’s doctrine to Leibniz was colored by this text. I support the hypothesis partly by means of external evidence, but (...) mainly through a comparative analysis of Leibniz’s report and the doctrine contained in KV, showing that the report in important respects corresponds better to this text than to Ethics. I finally point to the importance that this hypothesis, if true, would have for our knowledge of Tschirnhaus’ role in the first diffusion of Spinoza’s philosophy outside Holland and for our understanding Leibniz’s reception of Spinoza in the mid-1670s. (shrink)

School choice has lately risen to the top of the list of potential solutions to America's educational problems, particularly for the poor and the most disadvantaged members of society. Indeed, in the last few years several states have held referendums on the use of vouchers in private and parochial schools, and more recently, the Supreme Court reviewed the constitutionality of a scholarship program that uses vouchers issued to parents. While there has been much debate over the empirical and methodological aspects (...) of school choice policies, discussions related to the effects such policies may have on the nation's moral economy and civil society have been few and far between. School Choice, a collection of essays by leading philosophers, historians, legal scholars, and theologians, redresses this situation by addressing the moral and normative side of school choice.The twelve essays, commissioned for a conference on school choice that took place at Boston College in 2001, are organized into four sections that consider the relationship of school choice to equality, moral pluralism, institutional ecology, and constitutionality. Each section consists of three essays followed by a critical response. The contributors are Patrick McKinley Brennan, Charles L. Glenn, Amy Gutmann, David Hollenbach, S. J., Meira Levinson, Sanford Levinson, Stephen Macedo, John T. McGreevy, Martha Minow, Richard J. Mouw, Joseph O'Keefe, S. J., Michael J. Perry, Nancy L. Rosenblum, Rosemary C. Salomone, Joseph P. Viteritti, Paul J. Weithman, and Alan Wolfe. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Using Stanley CavellMichael FischerContending with Stanley Cavell, edited by Russell B. Goodman, 205 pp. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, $45.00Reading Cavell, edited by Alice Crary and Sanford Shieh, 262 pp. London: Routledge, 2006, $120.00Stanley Cavell, edited by Richard Eldridge, 260 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, $24.99.Stanley Cavell often speaks of inheriting and carrying on the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and other (...) writers. These writers help him move on in his own thinking, turning him around when he feels lost, provoking him when he gets discouraged or stuck. His indebtedness to J. L. Austin in the acknowledgements to Must We Mean What We Say? (1969) captures one way he benefits from all the writers who have influenced him: "To the late J. L. Austin I owe, beyond what I hope is plain in my work, whatever is owed the teacher who shows one a way to do relevantly and fruitfully the thing one had almost given up hope of doing."1 By taking up the work of the writers he values, Cavell hopes to undo what he sees as their neglect and misappropriation by the culture at large and by the academic profession. He makes his case for these writers not so much by exhortation as by his own use of them.The impact of Cavell's own writing on his readers continues to unfold, as these three books attest. Each is a helpful collection of essays by scholars in various fields discussing his work. Reading Cavell includes [End Page 198] an essay by Cavell ("The Wittgensteinian Event"), as does Contending with Stanley Cavell ("Passionate and Performative Utterance: Morals of Encounter"), which also features a response by Cavell to the other essays in the volume.The contributors in these three volumes all begin from the assumption that Cavell, like the writers who have influenced him, remains marginalized even though interest in his work has grown. But his isolation can be overstated. In an otherwise insightful essay on Cavell's literary criticism ("The Avoidance of Stanley Cavell" in Contending with Stanley Cavell ), Garrett Stewart laments "the regrettable undercirculation of Cavell's ideas" (p. 140) in literary studies and predicts that "mainstream literary scholars will increasingly have a hard time" with his writing—Stewart calls it "literary prose"—because it calls on reading skills that in the "epoch of cultural studies, discourse analysis, and the semiotics of social energy" have "atrophied" (p. 153). In the introduction to this same volume, Russell Goodman offers a more measured, less pessimistic assessment that gets Cavell's peculiar professional status exactly right: "Cavell occupies a curious position in all the fields in which he works: he is at the same time a major figure and one whose work people do not quite know how to use" (p. 3).In figuring out how to use Cavell, several contributors to these volumes begin by explicating his key ideas and texts. The writers in Stanley Cavell assess his contributions to several broad areas, including ethics, theory of action, philosophy of mind and language, aesthetics, and Shakespeare criticism. Reading Cavell and Contending with Stanley Cavell include essays on such central topics as his view of skepticism and his understanding of the ordinary. Of special note is Stephen Mulhall's close reading of the opening of The Claim of Reason, "On Refusing to Begin," in Contending with Stanley Cavell. One barrier to using Cavell remains his style, which readers either love or hate. Mulhall shows that the very features of Cavell's writing that some readers find most annoying—for example, his penchant for complicating and qualifying even the apparently most obvious point—in fact instruct us in how to read him. Mulhall astutely describes The Claim of Reason and Philosophical Investigations as modernist texts written in the absence of philosophical conventions that the writers can take for granted. Such writing must resemble "a half-built edifice whose form acknowledges both its origin in ruins and the completion it foreshadows" (p. 32)—but never attains.In addition to explicating Cavell, other contributors to these volumes extend his work to texts and issues he does not address. These... (shrink)

This book analyses Eriugena’s Christian Platonic ideas on theology, cosmology, anthropology, epistemology, and ethics, and their sources in Patristic philosophical theology and ancient philosophy. The first part is devoted to Eriugena’s theology: thus, it focusses on God from a variety of perspectives, some of them also comparative in their nature. The second part consists in research into Eriugena's cosmology, anthropology, and ethics, including virtue ethics. The two large sections are interrelated by an exploration of Eriugena's concepts of apokatastasis and epistrophé, (...) in his great theory of the movement of all "from God to God". (shrink)

In order to get out of present day discussions between determinism and free will, creationism and evolution, bios and zoē, human existence and biological life – those dead end binaries of our present day thinking into which we have manoeuvred ourselves – we need to revisit the Ancient discussions relating to the care of the soul and human existence. I will draw together these two themes from Jan Patočka’s writings by anchor-ing them in his account of Socrates who was the (...) first to emphasise the idea of human re-sponsibility not only for thinking but also for human acting in the world. I will argue that the significant common feature – the care for our own being, our existence – brings Patočka’s reflections on the care for the soul and care for our human existence together. While, according to Patočka, the notion of the care for the soul was displaced from the philosophical reflection by the modern scientific venture, the idea of human existence is, although problematic from the scientific point of view, still a part of our experience.Para librarnos de discusiones contemporáneas entre determinismo y libre albedrío, creacionismo y evolución, bios y zoē, existencia humana y vida biológica, estos binomios, callejones de salida del pensamiento de hoy en los que nos hemos metido, tenemos que volver a escuchar las discusiones de la Antigüedad sobre el cuidado del alma y la existencia humana. Voy a recuperar estos dos temas de escritos de Jan Patočka, anclándolos en su interpretación de Sócrates, el primero en poner énfasis en la idea de responsabilidad humana no solo de su pensamiento sino también de su actuar en el mundo. Argumentaré que el significativo rasgo común, esto es, el cuidado por nuestro propio ser, nuestra existencia, es lo que une las reflexiones de Patočka sobre el cuidado del alma y el cuidado de la exitencia humana. Mientras que, según Patočka, la noción del cuidado del alma ha sido desplazada de la reflexión filosófica por la empresa científica moderna, la idea de la existencia humana, a pesar de lo problemático que puede resultar desde un punto de vista científi-co, todavía forma parte de nuestra experiencia. (shrink)