Michael Rosen; IX*—Kant's Anti-Determinism, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 89, Issue 1, 1 June 1989, Pages 125–142, https://doi.org/10.1093/ari.

The general moral decline widely perceived to be in process in both the UK and the USA is no doubt the effect of many causes. The present paper attends to only one, the de-moralization more or less unintentionally encouraged by the working of the machinery of the welfare state, and then further encouraged by a deliberate and systematic de-moralization of that machinery. It attempts to undermine a main assumption supporting that de-moralization, and thus contribute to the campaign for re-moralization waged (...) in recent years by, among others, the Social Affairs Unit in London and like-minded think-tanks in the USA. (shrink)

This paper examines Honderich's attempt to make sense of the widespread view that acceptance of determinism undermines reason and knowledge. Since I am largely in sympathy with Honderich's approach to these issues, the paper develops a theme suggested by his discussion and disagrees with some details of the focus of his argument rather than challenging the general principles he employs. After introducing the issue and sketching Honderich's version of the argument from determinism to scepticism, I present an alternative (...) which is closer to traditional patterns of sceptical argument. The concluding sections compare the two arguments and the anti?determinist assumptions about agency and the self which each employs: scepticism results from determinism against the background of a conception of rationality and justification which supports a Cartesian approach to epistemology and an internalist theory of justification. (shrink)

The present paper has two main aims. The first one is philosophical and is related to the general topic of this volume (Logical Empiricism and Pragmatism): I would like to draw attention to the fact that the issue of classical scientific determinism, despite being ‘metaphysical’ and thereby ‘nonsensical’ according to the Vienna Circle's ‘scientific world conception’, bothered philosophers, like William James and Charles Peirce, who were deeply involved in scientific practice. At the end of the paper I shall raise (...) the question of why it was so and what this fact may suggest about the relationship between science and metaphysics. The second main aim of this paper is historico-philosophical: in the time span between the late 1870s and by the turn of 1900 James (1842–1910) and Peirce (1839–1914) contributed repeatedly to the ongoing discussions about scientific determinism. In this paper I give a general overview of their positions based mainly on primary sources and I embed them into the broader context of the history of the concept of scientific determinism, dedicating special attention to their relationship with a particular French anti-deterministic tradition (Renouvier, Poincaré, Boutroux and Bergson). (shrink)

In this paper I discuss Siger of Brabant’s anti-deterministic argument as developed in De necessitate et contingentia causarum. First, I offer an in-depth reconstruction of how Siger justifi es the contingency of effects in nature: the contingent status of an effect depends only on (the contingent status of) its proximate cause, and not on the First Cause. According to Siger, the First Cause, which is understood as a necessary cause, only determines the necessity of its immediate effect. I, then (...) show that such an account runs into an impasse: it is, in fact, impossible to justify how there can be contingent (i.e., impedible) secondary causes in the chain of causes, once it has been assumed that the First Cause is a necessary (i.e., nonimpedible) cause which immediately produces a necessary effect. (shrink)

In their modern classic ``What Price Substantivalism? The Hole Story'' Earman and Norton argued that substantivalism about spacetime points implies that general relativity is indeterministic and, for that reason, must be rejected as a candidate ontology for the theory. More recently, Earman has cottoned on to a related argument (in fact, related to a \emph{response} to the hole argument) that arises in the context of canonical general relativity, according to which the enforcing of determinism along standard lines---using the machinery (...) of gauge theory---leads to a `frozen universe' picture (grounded in an absence of changes in values of general relativity's observables). \emph{Prima facie} this would seem to land the anti-substantivalist in waters at least as deep as those that Earman and Norton argued troubled substantivalism. In this paper I introduce the argument in what I think are clearer terms than Earman's, and assess his treatment of the problem. For the most part I agree with Earman about the nature of the problem, but I find aspects of his discussion wanting, especially as regards his proposed ontology. I argue that ontological sense can be made of the changelessness if a structuralist stance is adopted with respect to a natural class of observables. (shrink)

In focusing on the problem of evil from the viewpoint of theodicy, I argue that new conceptual regions are to be explored in order to get out of the permanent impasse. These possibilities respectively are: to reject the tenet that this world, if created by God, must be the best possible world; either to reject the tenet that human beings have had no previous existences to their present ones; or finally to reject causal determinism in the framework of the (...) creation of the world and accept the idea that God proceeds with a margin of randomness in a non-deterministic universe. Since these three tenets are all embedded in the philosophical tradition, and explicitly in Leibniz's Theodicy , my prospects are in this sense anti-leibnizian. (shrink)

This essay reads Hobbes’ account of human action against Aristotle’s accounts of animal motion and human action, thus offering a new perspective for understanding Hobbes’ account and illuminating a neglected aspect of Hobbes’ relationship to Aristotle. I argue that the basic structure of Hobbes’ account is indebted to Aristotle’s account of animal motion, except that Hobbes purges the teleological elements from his predecessor and presents a picture that is mechanistic and explicitly deterministic. Moreover, while Aristotle introduces ‘deliberation’ as a way (...) of explaining the diversity of human actions as their varied attempts at realizing the distinctly human end of the good life, Hobbes’ radically anti-Aristotelian notion of ‘deliberation’ explains that diversity in terms of the fundamental uncertainty of the passions. I conclude with some reflections on two related tensions in Hobbes: between Hobbes’ determinism and his account of human action, and between his ethical project of reducing human life to mere life and his separate ethical project of justifying diverse ways of life. This essay contributes to our understanding of the significance of Hobbes’ account of human action in both the history of the debate on determinism and the history of ethics. (shrink)

A key source of support for the view that challenging people’s beliefs about free will may undermine moral behavior is two classic studies by Vohs and Schooler (2008). These authors reported that exposure to certain prompts suggesting that free will is an illusion increased cheating behavior. In the present paper, we report several attempts to replicate this influential and widely cited work. Over a series of five studies (sample sizes of N = 162, N = 283, N = 268, N (...) = 804, N = 982) (four preregistered) we tested the relationship between (1) anti-free-will prompts and free will beliefs and (2) free will beliefs and immoral behavior. Our primary task was to closely replicate the findings from Vohs and Schooler (2008) using the same or highly similar manipulations and measurements as the ones used in their original studies. Our efforts were largely unsuccessful. We suggest that manipulating free will beliefs in a robust way is more difficult than has been implied by prior work, and that the proposed link with immoral behavior may not be as consistent as previous work suggests. (shrink)

This article is about the ways in which representations of users’ bodies mediate in the designers’ configuration of anti-fertility vaccines and their future users. Anti-fertility vaccines are a novel and not yet available method to regulate fertility. The researchers involved claim that anti-fertility vaccines can be developed for both men and women. But in the material and political specificities of the research contexts, representations of male bodies as users have disappeared, and most research involves the development of (...) a method to be used by women. Anti-fertility vaccines therefore provide an opportunity to study when the sex of future users is deemed relevant by the researchers. This article explores how the fact that most anti-fertility vaccines are developed for female users can be explained without resorting to biological or cultural determinism. How much room for maneuver did the researchers have in defining the vaccines and their users? (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to identify the upholders of the thesis reported by Plutarch, De Stoicorum repugnantiis 23, aimed to reject Stoic determinism. A brief introduction will be devoted to the relationship between this text and the more general context of the Stoic philosophy. Then, I will take into account the objection against Stoic determinism raised by some anonymous philosophers: according to it, causal determinism would be inconsistent with the choice among indistinguishables. Chrysippus replied that (...) if that choice were not determined, it would occur without causes; and this would be absurd. Then I will summarize the most likely hypotheses about the identification of Chrysippus’ opponents, and I will opt for Academics. Finally, I will try to conjecture the link between Plutarch’s passage and the debate among Stoics and Academics about indistinguishables, as we know it from other sources. (shrink)

The paper argues that it is possible for an incompatibilist to accept John Martin Fischer's plausible insistence that the question whether we are morally responsible agents ought not to depend on whether the laws of physics turn out to be deterministic or merely probabilistic. The incompatibilist should do so by rejecting the fundamentalism which entails that the question whether determinism is true is a question merely about the nature of the basic physical laws. It is argued that this is (...) a better option for ensuring the irrelevance of physics than the embrace of semi-compatibilism, since there are reasons for supposing that alternate possibilities are necessary for moral responsibility, despite Fischer's claims to the contrary. There are two distinct reasons for supposing that alternate possibilities might be necessary for moral responsibility—one of which is to do with fairness, the other to do with agency itself. It is suggested that if one focuses on the second of these reasons, Fischer's arguments for supposing that alternate possibilities are unnecessary for moral responsibility can be met by the incompatibilist. Some possible reasons for denying that alternate possibilities are necessary for the existence of agency are then raised and rejected. (shrink)

Discussion of Alexander Bogdanov as a Marxist revisionist has largely centred on his philosophy of being and cognition and on Plekhanov’s and Lenin’s accusation that Bogdanov was an idealist renegade from Marxism. However, the real issue of revisionism at the time was not materialism but determinism: the question of whether socialism would appear by the working of the objective laws of nature or the subjective will of human beings. Bogdanov did indeed revise Marxism, but he did so in order (...) to defend it as a natural science. He conceived of society as a form of life subject to biological laws of nature: the need to assimilate energy from the environment and the need to adapt to the environment in the struggle to survive. He reinterpreted the key elements of scientific socialism – the idea that existence determines consciousness and the labour theory of value – in terms of this worldview. (shrink)

The existence of common points between Alexander of Aphrodise and Bardaisan the Syrian has been pointed out on various occasions. However, this question has not been explored in depth. The article proposes to analyse the cosmological ideas of Alexander and Bardaisan. Because both authors are known for their anti-determinist and anti-astrological polemics, it is preferable to place this comparison in the context of the astrological interpretation of Aristotle’s natural philosophy. The article discusses the Aristotelianism of Bardaisan, who may (...) be the first representative of the reception of this doctrine in Syriac. (shrink)

This paper argues that if 'reforms' of education designed to raise standards leave unquestioned the notion of fixed differential ability, then they are likely to be self-defeating. It considers alternative ways of formulating knowledge about individual differences reflected both in the literature and in classroom practice, and concludes by making a case for further research to be undertaken to establish frameworks for teaching consistent with an anti-determinist view of individual potential.

It is agreed by most scholars that the Stoics were compatibilists regarding the relation between responsibility and determinism. On this view, the Stoics depart from two other positions. Unlike some eliminative determinists — labelled in modern discussions “hard-determinists”, but already active in Antiquity — they assert that, despite determinism, there are things that “depend on us”, or are : things for which we are genuinely responsible and for which, therefore, we may justifiably be praised or blamed. But the (...) Stoics also depart from the libertarian or “anti-determinist” 2 a position championed by the Epicureans in the early Hellenistic period and by Alexander of Aphrodisias on behalf of the Peripatetics, towards the end of the second century AD. Unlike the libertarian, who agrees on the incompatibility alleged by the hard-determinist, but preserves responsibility by rejectin necessitation, the Stoics preserve both responsibility and necessitation. (shrink)

Le principe de causalité empêche-t-il de penser la responsabilité? Rend-il vain la distinction entre les agents responsables et ceux qui bénéficient d’excuses? Parce que les arguments anti-déterministes posent plus de problèmes qu’ils n’en résolvent, nous soutiendrons que l’effort pour penser à la fois le déterminisme et le libre arbitre est notre meilleure option pour justifier la responsabilité légale comme morale. Nous verrons que les explications mécanistes ne menacent pas nécessairement les pratiques qui nous conduisent à considérer autrui comme responsable (...) de ses actes. En dernier lieu, l’irréductibilité à la fois des termes moraux à des descriptions, et des jugements pratiques aux jugements théoriques, permettra de montrer qu’aucune connaissance déterministe ne peut se substituer à nos délibérations, et qu’il est donc rationnel de se considérer soi-même comme un agent moralement responsable. (shrink)

The sociology of art as synthesized by Arnold Hauser is based on a theory of knowledge and articulates the cognitive role of art. In a brief analysis, this paper elaborates on the sources of this epistemological enterprise. The pedigree of Hauser’s main thoughts was oriented towards a Kantian and Marxist framework, respectively. As a Kantian, he tried to take into account the philosophical consequences of two (or even more) different sources of cognition that are equal in value, correlative and necessarily (...) cooperating. Giving exclusive priority to only one of these leads to classical philosophical errors such as psychologism and intellectualism. As a Marxist, Hauser was anti-dogmatic and anti-deterministic, because he adopted an interpretive-hermeneutical meaning of Marxism and considered it an aid against distorting tendencies in our thinking. His basic insight that the different sources of value-equal and cooperating cognitive layers are in an everyday-life perspective intertwined, so that a kind of reservatio mentalis is needed to methodically separate them for the sake of better understanding, makes him a distant relative of classical phenomenology. This web of epistemological investigations is what I call the multilayer theory of knowledge. (shrink)

Lex necessitatis vel contingentiae Cet article se propose de reconsidérer de manière critique deux présupposés spécifiques à l’interprétation gilsonienne de Thomas d’Aquin : (i) le fait que, dans l’univers thomasien, tous les étants différents de Dieu soient marqués par une « contingence radicale » ; (ii) l’idée qu’en dernière analyse cette contingence est fondée sur la distinction entre être et essence – et, plus généralement, (iii) la conviction que la conception thomiste de la providence se présente comme une alternative radicale (...) au déterminisme et au nécessitarisme de la tradition gréco-arabe. À cette fin, nous examinerons successivement les points suivants : les significations les plus communes que Thomas confère aux notions de nécessité et de contingence ; le rapport entre fortune, sort et providence ; la réfutation conditionnée du déterminisme astral ; le mode sur lequel la providence dispose les événements nécessaires aussi bien que les événements contingents ; les réactions opposées de Siger de Brabant et de Jean Duns Scot au modèle par lequel Thomas tente de sauver la contingence au sein de l’ordre providentiel ; l’affirmation par Thomas de l’existence de créatures formellement nécessaires. En conclusion, on suggère que Thomas affaiblit certains présupposés fondamentaux de la stratégie anti-déterministe mise en œuvre par Aristote dans le livre VI de la Métaphysique, que l’alternative entre nécessité et contingence ne représente pas chez Thomas le véritable départ entre le créateur et la créature, et que, pour cette raison, la distinction entre être et essence n’a pas pour premier et principal objectif de rendre compte de la contingence de tous les étants créés. (shrink)

Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s post-Marxist analysis pushed Gramsci’s anti-determinism to its limits, embracing a post-structuralist, discourse-centred politics. Mouffe’s subsequent programme for radical democracy has sought a renewed democratic left project. While radical democracy’s post-structuralism enables important insights into political subjectivity and antagonism in contemporary democracies, it also weakens its own critical and strategic capacity. By recuperating its Gramscian heritage, radical democracy could be more theoretically and politically effective. In contrast to discourses operating in an entirely open and (...) contingent political field, Gramscian theory offers a more realist – but non-determinist – account of the structural, enabling and constraining properties of ideologies. It also allows for a distinctive institutional space for society. Society is the site upon which political identities are articulated, and from which existing power relations are challenged. But a conception of society also points to the institutional limits to politics, notable by their absence in post-structuralism and radical democracy. (shrink)

Moral Internalism is the claim that it is a priori that moral beliefs are reasons for action. At least three conceptions of 'reason' may be disambiguated: psychological, epistemological, and purely ethical. The first two conceptions of Internalism are false on conceptual, and indeed empirical, grounds. On a purely ethical conception of 'reasons', the claim is true but is an Externalist claim. Positive arguments for Internalism — from phenomenology, connection and oddness — are found wanting. Three possible responses to the stock (...) Externalist objections are uncovered and overturned. In so doing a close relation between Internalism and Behaviourism is revealed, and some stock anti-behaviouristic arguments are co-opted for Externalism. The likely dependence of Internalism on an Atomistic Associationism is uncovered and criticised. Internalism is seen as being ultimately a type of Ethical Determinism. Finally, a sketch of an Anti-Associative Externalism is given whereby the notion of self determination of action is put forward as an account of moral motivation fit to resist both the internalist and the belief-desire psychology premises of the stock non-cognitivist argument. (shrink)

Introduction: A Not So Secular Age? -- An Idealist Theory of History -- Kant's Anti-Determinism -- Freedom without Arbitrariness -- Kantian Ethics and the Ethics of Kant -- From Heaven to History -- Autonomy and Alienation -- Philosophy in History -- After Immortality.

A philosopher considers whether the scientific and philosophical arguments against free will are reason enough to give up our belief in it. In our daily life, it really seems as though we have free will, that what we do from moment to moment is determined by conscious decisions that we freely make. You get up from the couch, you go for a walk, you eat chocolate ice cream. It seems that we're in control of actions like these; if we are, (...) then we have free will. But in recent years, some have argued that free will is an illusion. The neuroscientist (and best-selling author) Sam Harris and the late Harvard psychologist Daniel Wegner, for example, claim that certain scientific findings disprove free will. In this engaging and accessible volume in the Essential Knowledge series, the philosopher Mark Balaguer examines the various arguments and experiments that have been cited to support the claim that human beings don't have free will. He finds them to be overstated and misguided. Balaguer discusses determinism, the view that every physical event is predetermined, or completely caused by prior events. He describes several philosophical and scientific arguments against free will, including one based on Benjamin Libet's famous neuroscientific experiments, which allegedly show that our conscious decisions are caused by neural events that occur before we choose. He considers various religious and philosophical views, including the philosophical pro-free-will view known as compatibilism. Balaguer concludes that the anti-free-will arguments put forward by philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists simply don't work. They don't provide any good reason to doubt the existence of free will. But, he cautions, this doesn't necessarily mean that we have free will. The question of whether we have free will remains an open one; we simply don't know enough about the brain to answer it definitively. (shrink)

This paper is an exposition as well as a critical examination of M. Frank's response to the Derrida/Searle debate. It argues that Frank's critique of Derrida and Searle is partly justified but suffers from a number of shortcomings. The author agrees with Frank's argument that Derrida fails to explain how linguistic meaning is possible on the basis of purely differential relations between signs (différance) and supports his view that the human subject, in spite of its lack of complete self-transparency, is (...) endowed with more autonomy and semantic creativity than Derrida is willing to grant it. The paper tries to show, however, that much of Frank's critique of linguistic theory as represented by the work of Searle is unjustified because it is informed by a questionable notion of linguistic determinism rooted in Schleiermacher and Saussurean structuralism, a notion of ineffable or non-conceptual individual meaning that remains insufficiently explicated, and a generally anti-naturalist attitude towards language which leads to a misunderstanding of the role linguistics and related cognitive sciences can (and cannot) play in the hermeneutic sciences. (shrink)

In Anti-Oedipus, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari maintain that nature is a process in which there is neither nature nor human being, except as a single reality produced in the processes of production, distribution and consumption, where distributions are immediately consumed and the consumptions immediately reproduced. In its historical realization, this is the process of capitalism, which must be an effect of such processes, processes of nature and human nature. This gives rise to this question: given the rules governing (...) nature, including human nature, how much contingency is there and how much determinism? And ultimately, is capitalism inevitable? (shrink)

In daily life we take it for granted that our minds have conscious control of our actions, at least for most of the time. But many scientists and philosophers deny that this is really the case, because there is no generally accepted theory of how the mind interacts with the body. Max Velmans presents a non-reductive solution to the problem, in which ‘conscious mental control’ includes ‘voluntary’ operations of the preconscious mind. On this account, biological determinism is compatible with (...) experienced free will. Velmans’ theory is put to the test by nine critics: Ron Chrisley, Todd Feinberg, Jeffrey Gray, John Kihlstrom, Sam Rakover, Ramakrishna Rao, Aaron Sloman, Steve Torrance andRobert Van Gulick, followed by Velmans' reply. (shrink)

As a contribution to a wider discussion on moral discernment in theological anthropology, this paper seeks to answer the question “What is the impact of mental illness on an individual’s ability to make moral decisions?” Written from a clinical psychiatric perspective, it considers recent contributions from psychology, neuropsychology and imaging technology. It notes that the popular conception that mental illness necessarily robs an individual of moral responsibility is largely unfounded. Most people who suffer from mental health problems do not lose (...) the capacity to make moral decisions, and mental illness on its own rarely explains anti-social or criminal behaviour. Moreover, the assumptions of some scientists, that recent developments in neuropsychology and brain imaging suggest biological determinism, must be treated with caution. (shrink)

In recent years, and especially after the outbreak of the global financial crisis, right-wing and left-wing populist parties and movements have enjoyed significant political success in Europe. One of these parties is SYRIZA in Greece. In this paper, we explore some of the particular characteristics of the political discourse articulated by SYRIZA in power. The core argument of the paper is that the Greek radical left party continues to express an inclusionary populist discourse after its rise to power. We examine (...) this issue by utilising the methodology of the Essex School of Discourse Analysis. Moreover, we attempt to substantiate the view that populism does not always have a negative connotation and is not deterministically associated with nationalism or racism. Furthermore, we try to establish whether the concept of "crypto-colonialism” is an important key to understanding the rise of inclusionary populism to power in Greece. Finally, we analyse various manifestations of Greek anti-populism in order to highlight the danger that derives from this kind of stereotypical discourse. (shrink)

Is genre film comparable to a thought experiment?Revising concepts of determinism and agency in three film noirs The philosophical approach of film genres, first popularized by authors like Stanley Cavell, allows to consider genre films as narrative variations as pertinent to philosophical discourse as can be a traditional thought experiment, since every question on the essence of a genre and every discussion related to its inner functions, its mechanisms and its themes, generate naturally a philosophical discourse on the way (...) a director uses filmic and narrative tools to transform his intentions into a specific system of meaning. This study adopts formalist and philosophical approaches to connect the narratives of the movies to the discourses it is prone to generate. The corpus draws on the ‘primitive scene' in three films noirs, Out of the Past, The Lady from Shanghai et Criss Cross : the tragic meeting of an anti-hero with the woman who will be responsible of his fall. Indeed, the sequence showing this first meeting becomes an exercise in style where forerunning signs of the two protagonists' fall organize the writing and the mise-en-scene, and explicitly shows how questions of agency and determinism are intimately articulated to the narrative and formal frame of the movies. (shrink)

Given certain anti-Pelagian assumptions he endorses, Aquinas faces an “arbitrariness problem” explaining why God predestines and reprobates the particular individuals he does. One response to the problem that Aquinas offers—biting the bullet and conceding God’s arbitrariness—has a high theoretical cost. Eleonore Stump proposes a less costly alternative solution on Thomas’s behalf, drawing on his notion that our wills may rest in a state of “quiescence.” Her proposal additionally purports to answer the general question why God reprobates anyone at all. (...) I argue that Aquinas’s understanding of the relationship between divine causation and human freedom prevents him from accepting Stump’s proposal as she herself puts it forward; he couldn’t accept it as an answer to the general question. Nevertheless, I claim, granted one controversial but widely accepted assumption—that he isn’t a divine determinist—Aquinas could accept a slightly modified version of her quiescence solution to the arbitrariness problem. Indeed, there is evidence that he did accept some of its key components. (shrink)

Every scientific or intellectual movement is founded upon basic assumptions and hypotheses that shape its specifically formulated philosophy. This study seeks to explore and explicate the basic philosophical underpinnings of grey systems theory, as well as the paradigm governing its postulates. The study, more specifically, scrutinizes the underlying principles of GST from the perspective of postmodern philosophy. To accomplish this, the epistemology, ontology, human nature, and methodology of GST are substantially investigated in the light of postmodern philosophy. The study draws (...) on Burrell and Morgan’s framework to reveal the paradigm underlying the philosophy of GST. Results demonstrate that GST is an anti-realistic, anti-positivistic, and non-deterministic theory which is inherently pluralistic and ideographic. Based on the principles of GST, change is an indispensable dimension of human speculation about the world and systems, and knowledge is ceaselessly reproduced as new information is collected. As a result, knowledge, narratives, theories and scientific laws are dynamically changed. GST, then, is remarkably compatible with the foundations of postmodern thought and it could be regarded as a postmodern theory governed by a humanistic paradigm. (shrink)

This is a book about Kant's views on causality as understood in their proper historical context. Specifically, Eric Watkins argues that a grasp of Leibnizian and anti-Leibnizian thought in eighteenth-century Germany helps one to see how the critical Kant argued for causal principles that have both metaphysical and epistemological elements. On this reading Kant's model of causality does not consist of events, but rather of substances endowed with causal powers that are exercised according to their natures and circumstances. This (...) innovative conception of Kant's view of causality casts a light on Kant's philosophical beliefs in general, such as his account of temporality, his explanation of the reconciliation of freedom and determinism, and his response to the skeptical arguments of Hume. (shrink)

Whereas many constructivist and feminist approaches to the social study of technology share an antipathy to technological tietenninism, they offer an insufficiently radical critique of technolagy. Three main problems in "anti-essentialist" critiques of techno logical determinism are identified, all of which mean that such critiques remain committed to a form of essentialism. These characteristics recur in many recent feminist arguments about technology, illustrated by the example of reproductive technologies. To overcome weaknesses in political radicalism based on anti-essentialism, (...) it is necessary to move to a "past-essentialist" approach. The unwillingness to do so is shown to be based on unfounded objections to "excessive" relativism. (shrink)

We think we have lots of substantial knowledge about the future. But contemporary wisdom has it that indeterminism prevails in such a way that just about any proposition about the future has a non-zero objective chance of being false.2, 3 What should one do about this? One, pessimistic, reaction is scepticism about knowledge of the future. We think this should be something of a last resort, especially since this scepticism is likely to infect alleged knowledge of the present and past. (...) One anti-sceptical strategy is to pin our hopes on determinism, conceding that knowledge of the future is unavailable in an indeterministic world. This is not satisfying either: we would rather not be hostage to empirical fortune in the way that this strategy recommends. A final strategy, one that we shall explore in this paper, is one of reconciliation: knowledge of a proposition is compatible with a subject’s belief having a non-zero objective chance of error.4 Following Williamson, we are interested in tying knowledge to the presence or absence of error in close cases, and so we shall explore the connections between knowledge and objective chance within such a framework. We don’t want to get tangled up here in complications involved in attempting to formulate a necessary and sufficient condition for knowledge in terms of safety. Instead, we will assume the following rough and ready necessary condition: a subject knows P only if she could not easily have falsely believed P.5 Assuming that easiness is to be spelt.. (shrink)

Two EPR arguments are reviewed, for their own sake, and for the purpose of clarifying the status of "stochastic" hidden variables. The first is a streamlined version of the EPR argument for the incompleteness of quantum mechanics. The role of an anti-instrumentalist ("realist") interpretation of certain probability statements is emphasized. The second traces out one horn of a central foundational dilemma, the collapse dilemma; complex modal reasoning, similar to the original EPR, is used to derive determinateness (of all spin (...) components of two spin- 1 / 2 particles in the singlet state) from just (a form of) weak locality, result definiteness, and an assumption on propensities based on conservation. Theories meeting these conditions are therefore constrained by the Bell inequalities. Neither controversial assumptions of "strong locality" ("factorability") nor of determinism are employed in the derivation. The categories of "stochastic hidden variables" are then analyzed; one can focus on "quasi-definite" theories, without loss of generality. A means of excluding these is proposed, based on a demand that certain ideal cases be accurately treated. Theorems from quantum measurement theory, sometimes cited as showing that such cases are not physically possible, are found inapplicable. (shrink)

The ontological model framework provides a rigorous approach to address the question of whether the quantum state is ontic or epistemic. When considering only conventional projective measurements, auxiliary assumptions are always needed to prove the reality of the quantum state in the framework. For example, the Pusey-Barrett-Rudolph theorem is based on an additional preparation independence assumption. In this paper, we give a new proof of psi-ontology in terms of protective measurements in the ontological model framework. It is argued that the (...) proof needs not rely on auxiliary assumptions, and also applies to deterministic theories such as the de Broglie-Bohm theory. In addition, we give a simpler argument for psi-ontology beyond the framework, which is only based on protective measurements and a weaker criterion of reality. The argument may be also appealing for those people who favor an anti-realist view of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend the claim that a philosophical anthropology inspired by the Classical Pragmatists, while being explicitly naturalistic, can avoid biological reductionism and environmental determinism, as well as dogmatic forms of anthropocentrism and human exceptionalism, insofar as it offers a picture of human nature as historical and contingent, dynamically constituted through interactions with a natural, naturally social, and enculturated environment. Cultural naturalism, I suggest, provides the theoretical framework for a pragmatist anthropology that includes at least two pivotal (...) claims. The first is the idea that continuity is not linear but circular: it implies a kind of feedback action of new organizations of resources and energies on pre-existing forms of organic-environmental interaction. A second claim regards an anti-transcendental stance, emphasizing that the transformation of animal environments into a highly social, habitualized, and enlanguaged environment is entirely contingent, albeit irreversible, and makes a capital difference within the continuity of animal life. (shrink)

Alexander Bogdanov’s first work of philosophy, Basic Elements of the Historical View of Nature, was fundamentally influenced by Friedrich Engels. As a Marxist philosopher seeking to elaborate a comprehensive, systematic, and scientific worldview appropriate for worker–students, Bogdanov found inspiration in Engels’s Anti-Dühring, which provided him with his monist conception of being and his ‘historical view of nature’ and pointed him toward three critical elements of his work: the monism of motion, Spinoza’s naturalist and determinist system, and Charles Darwin’s conception (...) of natural selection. Bogdanov’s overall goal was to demonstrate that in nature, life, the psyche, and society there is no such thing as self-generated motion; all change occurs because of external action. For the individual and for society this means that existence determines consciousness, and societies evolve as a result of their struggle for existence, which is manifested first and foremost in labor. (shrink)

This article signals at a dearth of critical engagement with Thomas Carlyle's Presbyterian heritage resulting from the received whiggish narrative of his Calvinism as unenlightened, anachronistic, and backward-looking. It proceeds to challenge this view by examining closely Carlyle's creative use of key Calvinist concepts in his cosmopolitan and enlightened dialogue with the contemporary periodical press over British and European cultures. Carlyle is shown to be an adept purveyor both of the Edinburgh Magazine's enlightened idiom and of Blackwood's morally conservative and (...) artistically cosmopolitan agendas, while also making creative capital of the Anti-Jacobin's powerful Gothic imagery and of the critical verve of the Westminster Review. The main addressees of Carlyle's reading of the signs of the times, I argue, are contemporary Whigs. Carlyle's depiction of Macaulay as a ‘spiritual hippopotamus’ spells Carlyle's broader critique of the modern lack of imagination of the spiritual which sponsors deterministic religious and secular readings of reality. Carlyle displays his enlightened Calvinist perspective in discussing the French Revolution through such key Scottish Enlightenment concepts as free will, conscience, civilisational and moral progress, and divine providence. Insightful and creative use of his inherited Scottish Calvinist heritage characterises Carlyle's open, cosmopolitan reading of the signs of the times. (shrink)

Interpretations of the quantum mechanical formalism true to the spirit of scientific realism satisfy not only principles of scientific realism but also principles of causality that guide realist constructions. Formally, such interpretations are hidden variables theories and are commonly believed to be ruled out by the most recent no-hidden-variables argument expressed by Bell's theorem. This dissertation investigates the possibility of constructing indeterministic hidden variables theories in light of Bell's result. A pair of arguments in the literature lead to the conclusion (...) that there is no generality to be gained in moving to the stochastic case. The author uses limitations on measurements discovered by Wigner as the basis for a response to both. Proofs of the existence of the limitations are analyzed and it is shown that, contrary to claims in the literature, we cannot always assume that measurements subject to the limitations are perfectly revealing and, therefore, that the assumption of strict anti-correlations, an assumption crucial to one of those arguments, is unjustified in the Bell case. The author suggests how Bell's 1971 inequality must be modified to incorporate these limitations . This result is used against the second argument, due to Fine, which relies on Bell's 1971 inequality. A thought experiment due to Jarrett is reviewed and it is argued that the independence assumptions incorporated into hidden variables theories are not without additional and controversial assumptions about causality related to constraints imposed by the special theory of relativity. The author concludes that Bell's theorem tells us nothing about determinism or special relativity but does tell us that there can be no interpretation of quantum mechanics that does not violate either one of three principles of scientific realism or one of three traditional principles of causality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.2 (2001) 304-305 [Access article in PDF] Wildfeuer, Armin G. Praktische Vernunft und System. Entwicklungsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur ursprünglichen Kant-Rezeption Johann Gottlieb Fichtes. Stuttgart-Bad/Cannstatt : Frommann-Holzboog, 1999. Pp. 596. Cloth, DM 168. The subtitle of this book, a slightly revised dissertation from the University of Bonn (1994), reads: "Investigations into the developmental history of Johann Gottlieb Fichte's original reception of Kant." The work comes (...) to almost 600 pages. The main text is heavily overlaid with detailed footnotes, extensive quotations and supplementary material in smaller print and narrow line spacing. To the reader who is patient enough to face this scholastic mode of presentation, there emerges behind it a valuable contribution to our overall understanding of Fichte's philosophical work in general and its core discipline, the Wissenschaftslehre or first, transcendental philosophy, in particular.In the grand narrative about the development of German idealism Fichte is placed between Kant and Schelling. More precisely, he is typically portrayed as continuing but also revising Kant's work under the double influence of the leading early post-Kantian, Karl Leonhard Reinhold (1758-1823), and the skeptical anti-Kantian and anti-Reinholdian, Gottlob Ernst Schulze (1761-1833), called "Aenesidemus" after the title of his anonymous main work.Wildfeuer's investigations supplement this picture with a detailed consideration of what could be called "Fichte before Fichte": the early development of Fichte's thought, prior to his encounter with Reinhold and prior even to his encounter with Kant (1790). To be sure, Wildfeuer also deals with Fichte's continued philosophical development up through 1794, and he has many interesting things to say about the lasting presence of Fichte's earliest concerns in his more mature work. But the chief merit of the book is the sustained attention it pays to the very beginnings of Fichte's thought.Much of the prehistory of Fichtean philosophy has to be conjectured, given the scarcity of documents about Fichte's years of study (1780-84) and of his work as itinerant tutor (1785-1793). From Fichte's own testimony in his correspondence it is clear that prior to encountering Kant's three Critiques he held a determinist position regarding nature as well as human conduct. Based on some indications in Fichte's later works, Wildfeuer identifies as the chief source of Fichte's determinism the work of Karl Ferdinand Hommel (1722-1781), a professor of law at Leipzig, whom Fichte could have heard as a student and whose pseudonymous treatise Alexander von Joch... On Reward and Punishment According to Turkish Laws (1770) Fichte cites. Hommel (alias von Joch) maintains a deterministic view of human action, while justifying the social practice of punishment and reward. In particular, he maintains the dependence of the will on the intellect and of the latter on sensations or sensory impressions. Wildfeuer refers to this position, as it was temporarily adopted by Fichte, as that of the primacy of the understanding over the will.But Wildfeuer also shows that from early on Fichte's determinist leanings in speculation were counterbalanced by the conviction that feeling, especially feeling in religious matters, is an equally valid source of truth. For Wildfeuer, this early duality of speculation and feeling is the lasting basis of Fichte's life-long concern with reconciling the competing demands of head and heart. In particular this pre-Kantian key concern [End Page 304] in Fichte informs the latter's central systematic occupation with the unity of the mind amidst its differentiation into faculties or kinds of mental activity.Further texts which Wildfeuer examines in pursuit of the pre-Kantian Fichte are his Latin Valedictory Address, given upon graduating from one of Germany's finest secondary schools at the time, the Princely College of Pforta (1780), and the "Aphorisms on Religion and Deism" (1790).On the basis of this material Wildfeuer goes on to reconstruct the distinct reception that each of Kant's three Critiques received by Fichte. According to Wildfeuer, the Critique of Pure Reason originally was read by... (shrink)

The apparent implications of the latest findings of the life sciences for our freedom and autonomy are both exciting and controversial: They undermine a common view of human freedom: a fundamentally Cartesian view. A superior account of our freedom was developed by Kant and Hegel. Key features of Hegel's account show that we can expect from the life sciences further insights into the biological basis of our freedom and autonomy, but not their repudiation. I begin with basic features of Cartesian (...) self-transparency (II) and then review three findings of contemporary life sciences (III). I then detail key features of Hegel's anti-Cartesianism (IV), in order to formulate the basic question about our freedom posed by the claim that biology explains away human freedom (V). I criticize this biological determinism by drawing upon Hegel's account of human freedom as autonomy (VI), and comment briefly on biologism in moral theory (VII). (shrink)

This article addresses the increasingly widespread view that Bourdieu's sociological analysis is flawed by excessive determinism and thus is anti-rationalist in its socio-political implications. Against this contention, it argues that works such as Distinction should be viewed as critiques of an absolutist universalism rather than of universalism as such. Moreover, Bourdieu's logic of practice, it is claimed, caters not only for a degree of autonomy at the level of the individual, but also identifies two key intellectual fields as (...) pivotal cultural accumulators of autonomous or critical thought: the artistic field and the scientific field. In this context, it is particularly important that one of his very late works, Science of Science and Reflexivity, gives such a vital role to the free `corporation' of scientists as judges of scientific reputations. His concept of artistic autonomy is further explored by illustrations from casestudies in historical sociology, by writers who have been decisively influenced by his sociology of literature. The article ends with an application of his ideas to contemporary newspaper obituaries of cultural producers. This illuminates in particular an underlying issue in his sociology: current dangers to artistic autonomy. (shrink)

This essay discusses the views of historian Gertrude Himmelfarb, who sets forth that democratic societies tend toward a determinist outlook; she fears that the weakened belief in free will and its heroes endangers a democratic society. She regards H. G. Wells as the founder in 1920 of the "new history," with its antiheroic bias. She welcomes therefore the television series The Civil War for having achieved "a history from above and history from below," with its heroes among common soldiers as (...) well as the generals and statesmen. Himmelfarb criticizes the "debunking" historians who not only belittle the significance of heroes but find in "small causes" (e.g., the origins of Hitler's obsessive anti-Semitism) a basis for large-scale events (e.g., the Holocaust). Himmelfarb finds that H. G. Wells's Outline of History was intended not only to displace military conquerors as the heroes of history but to elevate the scientific elite in their place as history's truly constructive people. Americans, however, were, earlier, first introduced to another variety of "new history" by two Columbia University professors, Charles A. Beard and James Harvey Robinson, who wrote textbooks used by perhaps millions of high school students; Beard had derived the concept in 1906 when he read the Socialist History of France, much of it written by the French socialist, Jean Jaurès. The philosophy of history still remains in a position similar to that which has long prevailed in the philosophy of physics, where determinism and indeterminism have persisted irreconcilably. (shrink)

In a crossed-out section in his Fisk University commencement address on Otto von Bismarck, W. E. B. Du Bois mentions that Hegel was one of the figures that influenced him early on in his intellectual development. I argue that although Du Bois uses Hegelian language and employs a Hegelian conception of history in his address “The Conservation of Races,” he abandons both in his essay “Sociology Hesitant.” He became critical of the teleological conception of history because it rests on (...) class='Hi'>determinism, which in his view denies the possibility for social change. With what I call his “mystical holism,” Du Bois is at odds with Hegel’s methodological holism, a distinguishing characteristic of absolute idealism. Du Bois’s dynamic idealism, which grows out of opposition to Hegelian idealism, leaves us with hope for a world without racism or at the very least in a better position to develop idealism as an anti-racist system of philosophical thought. (shrink)

The recent debate over Intelligent Design provides an opportunity to examine the pervasiveness and the meaning of Darwinian thinking in modern culture. The latest incarnation of a century-old critique of evolution, ID infuriated critics as a disease of scientific illiteracy. However, examining the debate as cultural history of science suggests that the IDers were not ignorant or stupid, but rather shrewd and disingenuous. They wielded scientific data as a rhetorical weapon, not as truth but as text, to be bent to (...) one's moral purpose—which in their case was an attack on science itself. In contrast to the scientific critics, I view ID as a symptom, a boil on the neck of a social body infected with anxiety over cultural Darwinism. Though the courts seem to have effectively lanced ID, the infection remains. In an age of Darwinian psychiatry, Darwinian business, Darwinian literature criticism, and even Darwinian anti-Darwinism, some boundary checks on cultural Darwinism would be salutary—not for advancing a conservative political agenda as the ID folks seek to do, but simply for reconciling a faith in reason with a rejection of biological determinism. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The problem that the "posthuman" must cope with is complex: how can one embrace both anti-humanistic problematization and deconstruction of the human subject by post-structuralism and, at the same time, link the capacity of techno-science for de-humanization with the possibility for inventing posthuman subjectivity? Consideration of the posthumanization of the human must expand further from the cyborgization based on the strengthening of human individuals' capacity, and there is need of a paradigm shift for us to rethink and reconceptualize (...) the posthuman within the ontological and sociopolitical relational networking beyond the opposition of technocentric determinism and humancentric instrumentalism. Human beings were produced in the disciplinary society in the form of self-disciplined "individuals" and have been produced in the control society in the form of de-individualized "dividuals," respectively. If so, then what will the form of human beings be in the posthuman society outside or after the control society, which has yet to arrive? In this paper, pointing out the limitations of discussions on cyborgization and examining Deleuze's diagnosis of the control society based on digital technology, I argue that we can find a new possibility for posthuman subjectivity in Simondon's "transindividual relationship" complemented by Guattari's "transversality." I propose that it will be possible for posthuman society to be produced when the transindividual relationships based on the transductive operation of technological invention realizing the common natural potentiality are realized, and a high degree of transversal communication that prevents the subjugation of this collectivity is maintained. RESUMO O problema com o qual o "pós-humano" deve lidar é complexo: como alguém pode abraçar tanto a problematização e a construção anti-humanística do sujeito humano pelo pós-estruturalismo e, ao mesmo tempo, conectar a capacidade de tecnociência à desumanização com a possibilidade de inventar uma subjetividade pós-humana? Considerações sobre pós-humanização do humano devem expandir para além da ciborguezação baseada no fortalecimento da capacidade de indivíduos humanos, e existe a necessidade de uma mudança de paradigma para que possamos repensar e reconceitualizar o pós-humano dentro da rede relacional ontológica e sociopolítica trabalhando além da oposição do determinismo tecnocêntrico e do instrumentalismo humanocêntrico. Seres humanos foram produzidos na sociedade disciplinar na forma de "indivíduos" autodisciplinados e têm sido produzidos na sociedade de controle na forma de "divíduos" desindividualizados, respectivamente. Nesse caso, qual será a forma dos seres humanos na sociedade pós-humanista do lado de fora ou após a sociedade de controle, que ainda está por chegar? Neste trabalho, aponto as limitações de discussões sobre ciborguezação e examino o diagnóstico de Deleuze sobre a sociedade de controle baseada na tecnologia digital, argumento que podemos encontrar uma nova possibilidade para a subjetividade pós-humana no "relacionamento transindividual" de Simondon complementado pela "transversalidade" de Guattari. Proponho que será possível que uma sociedade pós-humana seja produzida quando os relacionamentos transindividuais forem baseados na operação transdutiva das invenções tecnológicas, percebendo que a potencialidade comum natural seja atingida, e um alto grau de comunicação transversal que evite que a subjugação dessa coletividade seja mantido. (shrink)

This book presents engaging and informative analysis of three interrelated notions, namely: selfhood, the first person pronoun ‘I’ and the first person perspective. Philosophers have long debated about these notions on non-empirical grounds often focusing on the question of whether the first person pronoun ‘I’, beyond its role as a grammatical term, has an underlying implication for the ontology of selfhood. Philosophers continuously grapple with whether the first person pronoun ‘I’ is a referring expression and if it is, what its (...) referent is or could be. To give an adequate treatment of such questions, philosophers have begun working across the relevant disciplines. This book highlights some excellent examples of the complex nature of the first person thoughts as they figure in linguistics, autism, thought insertion in schizophrenia and the phenomenon of mental autonomy. In Selfhood, Autism and Thought Insertion, many of the leading philosophers working on this issue, as well as a few emerging scholars, have written 12 new essays addressing questions besetting the ontology of selfhood. The essays address topics as diverse as reflections on E. J. Lowe’s non-Cartesian substance dualism, physical determinism, the metaphysics and anti-metaphysics of the self, animalism, neo-Lockean persons, rationality and the first-person, whether the first person is essentially a linguistic concept, first-person and third-person perspectives and autism, consciousness, first person perspective and neuroimaging, thought insertion and mental autonomy. The contributors to this volume do not agree in all of the details associated with the notion of selfhood, yet they all have a common conviction that the central questions besetting it must be taken seriously. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Nietzsche's Immoralism: Politics as First Philosophy by Donovan Miyasaki, and: Politics after Morality: Toward a Nietzschean Left by Donovan MiyasakiJeffrey ChurchDonovan Miyasaki, Nietzsche's Immoralism: Politics as First Philosophy Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. xv + 292 pp. isbn: 978-3-031-11358-1. Cloth, $54.99.Donovan Miyasaki, Politics after Morality: Toward a Nietzschean Left Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. xv + 330 pp. isbn: 978-3-031-12227-9. Cloth, $54.99.Without a doubt, Nietzsche's political philosophy is one of (...) the most elusive and ambiguous features of his corpus. How else can we explain the dizzying, even contradictory, variety of interpretations of Nietzsche's politics? Some read him as anti-political or a liberal skeptical of state power. For others, he is an aristocratic radical, obsessed with using state power to entrench a new class of Übermenschen. For still others, his thought is most compatible with democracy, as his defenses of perspectivism and agonism are best realized within a democratic political system. Finally, some other scholars throw up their hands and say that Nietzsche's political thought is incoherent.In this two-volume work, Donovan Miyasaki enters this fray with a distinctive defense of the democratic Nietzsche. Two features distinguish his view from others. First, it provides a novel grounding of Nietzschean democracy—what Miyasaki calls Nietzsche's "metapolitics." This grounding is examined in the first volume, Nietzsche's Immoralism (hereafter NI). Second, it offers the most radical political vision of a left Nietzschean form of Nietzschean socialism. For Miyasaki, socialism follows from Nietzsche's fundamental commitments, rather than the aristocratic radicalism that Miyasaki sees Nietzsche inferring—wrongly—from his own commitments. [End Page 97] This extrapolation from Nietzsche's "metapolitics" is undertaken in the second volume, Politics after Morality (hereafter PM). I discuss each of these contributions in turn. In general, I found Miyasaki's work to be clear, perceptive, and bold in their interpretations. That said, with a book that critiques so much of the Nietzsche scholarship and offers such a radical take on Nietzsche's politics, I have some potential objections to raise.Nietzsche's MetapoliticsOther interpreters of a left Nietzsche ground their reading on what they take to be Nietzsche's radical epistemological views: either his perspectivism or his anti-essentialism. This was a popular approach for the postmodern and agonistic readings. By contrast, Miyasaki grounds Nietzschean democracy in a completely different way, on his metaphysics, particularly his determinism and "hard incompatibilism" (NI 25). On Miyasaki's view, Nietzsche denies that freedom and determinism are compatible and hence also that any kind of moral responsibility or moral agency is possible. This is the meaning of Nietzsche's "immoralism." For Miyasaki, Nietzsche's alternative ideal is to engender a particular feeling, namely, the love of this determinism or amor fati.This thesis of hard incompatibilism leads Miyasaki to some sweeping critiques of scholarship on Nietzsche's ethics. Against the many recent interpreters who develop a Nietzschean view of freedom, Miyasaki argues that freedom is impossible in a deterministic world. Against the perfectionist and constitutivist interpreters of Nietzsche's ethics, Miyasaki argues that ethics requires the freedom to improve or fail, and such freedom is impossible. At the same time, Miyasaki admits that Nietzsche at times appeals to and even defends freedom. Yet he explains that what Nietzsche is after in these passages is not freedom, but only the "feeling" of freedom (NI 49). Miyasaki is driven to some strained interpretive moves, such as when he argues that higher individuals' feeling of freedom is enhanced precisely to the degree to which they have abandoned the "illusion of freedom" (NI 49). How can I have the feeling of something I have come to see as an illusion?It is true that Nietzsche critiques the traditional metaphysical notion of the freedom of the will on the basis of his naturalism and determinism. Yet in recent years, scholars have argued that Nietzsche defends a novel conception of freedom that is compatible with determinism, akin to what we find in Spinoza. On this view, freedom is defined in terms of agency rather [End Page 98] than a power or faculty of choice. A free agent is... (shrink)