Like much in this book, the title and dust jacket illustration are clever. The first evokes Hume's remark in the Treatise that ‘Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.’ The second, which represents a cross between a dance-step and a clinch, links up with the title and anticipates an example used throughout the book to support its central claims: that Ronnie, unlike Bradley, has a reason to go to a party – namely, that there will (...) be dancing at the party – because Ronnie, unlike Bradley, loves dancing. So, the explanation of why Ronnie's and Bradley's reasons differ lies in their respective psychologies.Schroeder argues for a version of the Humean Theory of Reasons he calls Hypotheticalism, which says that every reason is explained by a desire in the same way as Ronnie's is. Schroeder argues that on almost every count, Hypotheticalism is as good as, or preferable to, the Humean and non-Humean alternatives; and he defends it against an array of objections. For example, he explains that while Hypotheticalism claims that ‘desires have to serve in the explanation of every reason because desires are part of the correct analysis of reasons’, it does not claim that a desire that explains a reason is part of that reason: rather it is a background condition for it. This, Schroeder argues, allows him to rebut a variety of objections that depend on conflating reasons with their background conditions. Other …. (shrink)

I formulate a theory of groups based on pluralities and counterparts: roughly put, a group is a plurality of entities at a time. This theory comes with counterpart-theoretic semantics for modal and temporal sentences about groups. So this theory of groups is akin to the stage theory of material objects: both take the items they analyze to exist at a single time, and both use counterparts to satisfy certain conditions relating to the modal properties, temporal properties, and coincidence properties of (...) those items. (shrink)

In this paper, I give an argument for the view that non-fact entities – such as physical objects, abstract objects, events and so on – can ground other entities. Roughly put, the argument is as follows: those who accept this view can provide a more plausible account of the grounds of identity facts than those who deny this view.

I show that centered propositions—also called de se propositions, and usually modeled as sets of centered worlds—pose a serious problem for various versions of Lewis's Principal Principle. The problem, put roughly, is that in scenarios like Elga's `Sleeping Beauty' case, those principles imply that rational agents ought to have obviously irrational credences. To solve the problem, I propose a centered version of the Principal Principle. My version allows centered propositions to be objectively chancy.

The Ebola epidemic that broke out inWest Africa West AfricaAfrica towards the end of 2013 had been brought under reasonable control by 2015. The epidemic had severely affected three countries. This case study is about a phase I/II clinical trial Phase I/II clinical trial of a candidate Ebola virus vaccine in 2015 in a sub-Saharan AfricanSub-Saharan Africa country which had not registered any cases of the Ebola virus disease. The study was designed as a randomized double-blinded trialRandomized double blinded trial. (...) It was sponsored and funded by one of the biggest Northern multinational pharmaceutical companiesPharmaceutical companies. The protocol received ethics clearance from the relevantNational Ethics Committee national ethics committeeEthics committee. The study was coordinated and managed at the local branch of a big Northern diagnostic laboratoryDiagnostic laboratory and a laboratory of a local regional hospital. The overall study was a multi-countryMulti-country, multi-siteMulti-site trial aimed at recruiting a total of 3,000 research participantsResearch participants across four or five sub-Saharan African countries. For this country, the recruitmentRecruitment sites were two big cities, each aiming to recruit 200 participants: adults at the first site and childrenChildren at the second. The target sampleSample size was almost achieved at the first site but, before the study commenced at the second site, some members of raised the alarm that the governmentGovernment was carelessly risking the health, safetySafety and lives of citizens in the cause of an unproven vaccine that could precipitate a public health disaster. The trial was immediately suspended. A commentary on this case, and on the importance of trustTrust, is provided by Katharine Browne and Doris Schroeder at the end of this chapter. It highlights differences between this case and a phase I Ebola vaccine trial in CanadaCanada in 2014. (shrink)

I propose a `stage theory’ of groups: a group is a fusion of group-stages, where a group-stage is a plurality of individuals at a world and a time. The stage theory consists of existence conditions, identity conditions, and parthood conditions for groups.

Explanations are backed by many different relations: causation, grounding, and arguably others too. But why are these different relations capable of backing explanations? In virtue of what are they explanatory? In this paper, I propose and defend a monistic account of explanation-backing relations. On my account, there is a single relation which backs all cases of explanation, and which explains why those other relations are explanation-backing.

I propose a metaphysical theory of mechanisms based on the notion of causation. In particular, I use causation to formulate existence, identity, and parthood conditions for mechanisms. These conditions provide a sound metaphysical basis for accounts of mechanistic explanation, mechanistic organization, and for more restrictive theories of mechanisms.

Long claimed to be the dominant conception of practical reason, the Humean theory that reasons for action are instrumental, or explained by desires, is the basis for a range of worries about the objective prescriptivity of morality. As a result, it has come under intense attack in recent decades. A wide variety of arguments have been advanced which purport to show that it is false, or surprisingly, even that it is incoherent. Slaves of the Passions aims to set the record (...) straight, by advancing a version of the Humean theory of reasons which withstands this sophisticated array of objections. Schroeder defends a radical new view which, if correct, means that the commitments of the Humean theory have been widely misunderstood. Along the way, he raises and addresses questions about the fundamental structure of reasons, the nature of normative explanations, the aims of and challenges facing reductive views in metaethics, the weight of reasons, the nature of desire, moral epistemology, and most importantly, the relationship between agent-relational and agent-neutral reasons for action. (shrink)

Bd. I. Von der Renaissance bis Kant -- Bd. II. Die Blütezeit der deutschen Philosophie.

Reasons First explores the hypothesis that reasons have a basic explanatory role in ethics and epistemology. While widely accepted concerning moral worth, Schroeder argues that this idea also illuminates some long-standing puzzles to do with knowledge.

A significant factor undermining real racial reconciliation in post-1994 South Africa is widespread resistance to shared historical responsibility amongst South Africans racialised as white. In response to the need for localised ‘white work’, this article aims to contribute to the uprooting of white denialism, specifically amongst Afrikaans-speaking Christians from Reformed backgrounds. The point of entry is two underexplored, challenging, contextualised crucifixion paintings, namely, Black Christ and Cross-Roads Jesus. Drawing on critical whiteness studies, extensive local and international experience as a ‘participatory’ (...) facilitator of conflict transformation and his particular embodiment, the author explores the creative unsettling potential of these two prophetic ‘icons’. Through this incarnational, phenomenological, diagnostic engagement with Black Christ, attention is drawn to the dynamics of family betrayal, ‘moral injury’ and idolisation underlying ‘white fragility’. ‘White fatigue’ is challenged by stressing the Biblical nature of Cross-Roads Jesus’ confrontational, ‘ugly’ portrayal of the systemic violence of apartheid and colonialism. It is also argued that a combination of Louw’s shocking portrayal of an enraged, emaciated township Jesus with the explicit depiction of white historical responsibility in Black Christ increases the counter-cultural potential of these icons to disrupt denial amongst white South African Christians. However, the realisation of this potential will require the cultivation of more capacity to work creatively with the intense emotional, moral, spiritual discomfort brought to the surface by this type of religious icon.Contribution: The article argues for a contextualised, South African engagement with the crucifixion of Christ, through an embodied interpretation of two anti-apartheid religious paintings. It makes a contribution to critical whiteness studies and practical theology and thus fits into the interdisciplinary, hermeneutical scope of HTS. (shrink)

The author wishes to add the following correction to his paper published in Philosophies [1]:The repeated fragment from lines 13–18 and part of 19 on page 69 should be deleted [...].

RESUMENEn la obra de Schelling se exhibe el esfuerzo de éste por aclarar el ideal trascendental kantiano, mediante los conceptos platónicos de peras y apeiron. En el presente artículo lo que se expone es dicho esfuerzo: tanto en el texto temprano de Schelling del Timeo, 1794; como en sus últimos textos, de la filosofía racional pura. Schelling diferencia, siguiendo a Kant en el ideal trascendental, la omnitudo realitatis respecto de aquello que ésta es. La omnituto realitatis la aclara a través (...) de los conceptos platónicos de peras y apeiron. En esta explicación consigue mantener libre respecto de la omnitudo realitatis eso que el ente –en un sentido eminente– es. O dicho de otro modo: pensar mundo y Dios de modo que éste sea pensado como independiente y libre frente al proceso del mundo.Palabras clavesIdeal trascendental kantiano, peras, apeiron, ser universal, ser individual absolutoABSTRACTSchelling’s work shows his effort to clarify the transcendental Kantian ideal through the platonic concepts of peras and apeiron. The article below describes this effort, in his early text Timaeus, 1794 as well as in his later texts, about rational pure philosophy. Schelling distinguishes, following Kant in the transcendental ideal, the omnitudo realitatis from what it actually is. The omnitudo realitatis is explained through the concepts of peras and apeiron. In this explanation what the entity is –in an eminent sense– remains free from the omnitudo realitatis. In other words: the thought of the world and God in a sense that you can think about God independently and apart from the world process.KeywordsThe transcendental kantian ideal, peras, apeiron, the universal being, the absolute individual being. (shrink)

1. Bd. Wesen, Aufstieg, und Verfall der philosophischen Theologie -- 2. Bd. Abgrenzung und Grundlegung.

“The ethical is no fact of the matter.” On Wittgenstein’s ethical paradox discusses Wittgenstein’s “Lecture on Ethics” of 1929. In this lecture to the Heretics Society at Cambridge he proposes an ethical paradox based on two incompatible types of facts, the natural facts offered by science and the supernatural facts, which he claims to be the core of ethics. The paradox is partly due to his Tractarian belief that ethics has no descriptive content. Yet, although it has no descriptive content (...) the ethical is represented by a feeling which has a metaphysical and an undeniable factual character too, as Wittgenstein claims. This kind of fact is his personal, private if not solipsistic feeling. The paper tries to clarify this highly controversial type of feeling. It seems probable that the change from the Tractatus to the Philosophical Investigations resolves the ethical paradox along the new therapeutical lines of PU. It is argued that this is not the case. The content of the ethical paradox remains unchanged. (shrink)

In this study I would like to make an exposition of religious symbolism, as it is seen by the Romanian scholar, underlining the anthropological aspects of the problem, to the extent that his autobiographical writings allow us. Hermeneutics, as the science of norms that allow us to discover and interpret the authentic meaning, and the symbol, with its double “existential and cognitive” function which is present in every area of life or thought, justifies in a certain way the Eliadian homo (...) symbolicus. Man as a symbol is the title of a book designed by Mircea Eliade, but he never managed to write and publish it; even the book entitled Anthropocosmos, in which he wanted to present “the profound meaning and structural solidarity of all those symbols, rites, beliefs, in relation to the labyrinth, the mandala, the foundation of the city, etc.,” was not published. (shrink)

Toute évaluation du réel, toute loi de la pensée ou de la connaissance doit justifier sa valeur devant le moi qui décide et qui évalue. La connaissance est liée à des déterminations a priori relatives aux objets à connaître, déterr minations qui justifient leur validité par la valeur et le sens de l’acte de connaître en général, ou bien comme seul organe de cet acte. Par la connaissance, à laquelle le moi se lie strictement et librement dans son propre intérêt, (...) est déterminée l’inclusion complète du moi lui-même et son origine dans la réalité avec tout ce qui est sens et a priori. (shrink)