In his book Ethics J. L. Mackie says that moral facts would have to be queer facts. I argue that an act’s hurting somebody is necessarily a reason, though not necessarily a conclusive reason, not to do that act; and that such hurting is a natural fact, not a queer fact. I try to defend this externalist position about this particular reason against internalists such as Mackie, and in particular against the position of Stephen Darwall in Impartial (...) Reason. (shrink)

Mary Midgley asserts that my argument concerning the problem of child-abuse was inappropriately framed in the language of rights, and neglected certain pertinent natural facts. I defend the view that the use of rights-talk was both apposite and did not misrepresent the moral problem in question. I assess the status and character of the natural facts Midgley adduces in criticism of my case, concluding that they do not obviously establish the conclusions she believes they do. Finally (...) I briefly respond to the charge that my suggestions were illiberal. (shrink)

in American Philosophical Quarterly 44 (3), July 2007, pp. 259-72. Argues that epistemically normative claims are made true by the same facts as, but do not mean the same as, certain natural-sounding claims.

The mass extinction visited upon us by capitalism involves many kinds of devastation. Here I clarify the grounds for assessing the most obvious of these harms, i.e., decimation of species diversity. The thesis that variety among species has intrinsic value motivates, and in turn follows from, the “variable value view” (VVV) of abundance within any given species. In contrast, standard axiologies have no place for the intrinsic value of species diversity. I show that the VVV provides a better justification than (...) the latter do, of the way in which a widely-used empirical indicator summarizes the overall state of life on Earth. These considerations favor ecocentric value theory – which ascribes intrinsic value to properties of ecological wholes, like species diversity, that do not supervene on the well-being of their constituent organisms – over its main competitors. I conclude by widening the focus from wild nature alone to the biosphere comprising both wilderness and the domesticated realm. This broadened perspective helps to link the science and ethics of biodiversity with the political struggle to extract ourselves from the moral abyss of mass extinction. (shrink)

Because there are governments, societies, and laws we have various obligations we otherwise would not have. This is at best trivial. But what is not trivial is how it is that we have these obligations. In this paper, I shall sketch an answer to this question.

The author criticizes pear's use of the notion of material implication in his explanation of contrary-To-Fact conditionals. The author attempts to show that universal material implications "have no relevance to contrary-To-Fact conditionals." (staff).

The problem that confronts us when we try to compare the structure of discourse and explanation in different domains of knowledge is that no one is an insider in more than one field, and insider information is essential. An observer who is not immersed in the practice of a particular scholarship and who wants to understand it is at the mercy of the practitioners. Yet those practitioners are themselves mystified by a largely unexamined communal myth of how scholarship is carried (...) on. R. G. Collingwood, although primarily a philosopher, was immersed in the community of historians and understood how history is done, so that he has had an immense influence on our ideas about historiography. Every historian knows The Idea of History.1 He was also a metaphysician, yet his influence on scientists’ understanding of nature, and of science, has been nil, and it is a rare scientist indeed who has ever heard of Collingwood or read The Idea of Nature.2 Collingwood’s views of the structure of science had to be constructed in large part from the elaborate fictions created by scientists and by an earlier generation of philosophers and historians of science who participated in the Baconian myth of the hypothetical-deductive scheme. 1. See R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History .2. See Collingwood, The Idea of Nature . R. C. Lewontin is Alexander Agassiz Professor at Harvard University. He is an experimental and theoretical evolutionary geneticist who has also worked extensively on epistemological issues in biology. He is the author of The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change and, with Richard Levins, of The Dialectical Biologist . His current research concerns the nature of genetic variation among individuals within species. (shrink)

In Natural Ethical Facts William Casebeer argues that we can articulate a fully naturalized ethical theory using concepts from evolutionary biology and cognitive science, and that we can study moral cognition just as we study other forms of cognition. His goal is to show that we have "softly fixed" human natures, that these natures are evolved, and that our lives go well or badly depending on how we satisfy the functional demands of these natures. Natural Ethical (...) class='Hi'>Facts is a comprehensive examination of what a plausible moral science would look like.Casebeer begins by discussing the nature of ethics and the possible relationship between science and ethics. He then addresses David Hume's naturalistic fallacy and G. E. Moore's open-question argument, drawing on the work of John Dewey and W. V. O. Quine. He then proposes a functional account of ethics, offering corresponding biological and moral descriptions. Discussing in detail the neural correlates of moral cognition, he argues that neural networks can be used to model ethical function. He then discusses the impact his views of moral epistemology and ontology will have on traditional ethical theory and moral education, concluding that there is room for other moral theories as long as they take into consideration the functional aspect of ethics; the pragmatic neo-Aristotelian virtue theory he proposes thus serves as a moral "big tent." Finally, he addresses objections to ethical naturalism that may arise, and calls for a reconciliation of the sciences and the humanities. "Living well," Casebeer writes, "depends upon reweaving our ethical theories into the warp and woof of our scientific heritage, attending to the myriad consequences such a project will have for the way we live our lives and the manner in which we structure our collective moral institutions.". (shrink)

This article explores urban dwellers’ perceptions of climate change and their propensity to act ecologically. It argues that a better understanding of people's moral and psychological functioning toward ecology could guide the creation of more suitable environmental management strategies. The study is based on semi-structured interviews investigating the environmental values of urban inhabitants; the interviews were conducted in 2018, in a coastal French area affected by recurring floods. Our results showed no significant relationships among the three studied factors of experiencing (...) natural hazards, becoming aware of sustainable issues and developing intentions to ‘act green’. In fact, these last two aspects depended mainly on informal education and socio-economic conditions. Using a ‘heuristic of fear’ (Jonas 1984) to develop sustainability practices is therefore inefficient, at best. Instead, practical efforts should be centred on upbringing, education, self-efficacy and socio-economic and political regulations, especially in a country like France where people are historically used to welcoming collective regulations by the Welfare State. (shrink)

There is a common distinction between two aspects of history: history as the object dealt with and history as the way of dealing with the object. Within the “objective” aspect of history one may distinguish between the attempt to define the object as man and the attempt to define it as process. Within the “subjective” aspect there is the prevailing tendency to put forward the nature of the onceptual method as one employing individual concepts.

The paper places the trendy notion of virtuality and virtual reality in a conceptual and historical context that makes it useful in a semiotic perspective. Virtuality is connected with the classical notion of fictionality, in its meaning of both invention and deception. Historically an active, a passive, and a neutral version of the concept can be distinguished. The notion is reinterpreted as a variant of the semiotic processes of deixis. In relation to nature - scenarios, prognoses, hypotheses, etc. - virtuality (...) is seen as a means of anchoring the human subject in nature instead of constructing a nonreal universe separated from it. (shrink)

i. Introduction: Naturaiizing Semantics It seems as though everyone these days is in the business of ‘naituraIizing': apistamologists, philosophers of mind and language, even moral phi- `lcscpheers and philosophers of mathematics. Quine is cften cited as the one who started Et, but expressions of the naturalizing urge can no doubt be found much earlier in the history of phiioscphy. Lccsaly speaking, the- naturalizing urge is the desire to fashion human epistemic achievements in particular arcs after the achievements of the (...) class='Hi'>natural sciences. Naturalists believe that.. (shrink)

The article provides an example of the application of the techniques and results of historical linguistics to traditional problems in the philosophy of language. It takes as its starting point the dispute about the nature of facts that arose from the 1950 Aristotelian Society debate between J. L. Austin and P. F. Strawson. It is shown that, in some cases, expressions containing the noun fact refer to actions and events; while in other cases, such expressions do not have a (...) referring function at all. Thus, nothing corresponding to Strawson's 'pseudomaterial correlate' need be postulated in order to account for the reference of the noun fact. It is suggested that many philosophically problematic expressions may be better understood by tracing their historical evolution in natural language. (shrink)

This article examines Cohen’s “transcendental method”, Windelband’s “critical method”, the neo-Kantian distinctions between natural science and the humanities (i. e., human or cultural sciences), and Weber’s account of ideal-typical explanations. The Marburg and the Southwest Schools of neo-Kantianism have in common that their respective philosophies of science focused on method, but they substantially differ in their approaches. Cohen advanced the “transcendental method”, which was taken up and transformed by Natorp and Cassirer; later, it became influential in neo-Kantian approaches to (...) 20th century physics. Windelband distinguished between facts and values, linking the former to the “genetic” method of history and the latter to the “critical” method of philosophy; and between the “nomothetic” and “idiographic” methods of the empirical sciences, a distinction further elaborated by Rickert. The distinction does not give rise to a sharp discrimination but is rather what Weber would later call an ideal type. All these approaches contribute in different ways to understanding the structure of scientific knowledge, focusing on different aspects of the general path of the empirical sciences between rationalism and empiricism. (shrink)

In this bold work of broad scope and rich erudition, Richard W. Miller sets out to reorient the philosophy of science.

The research analyzes the social ontology of the American philosopher B. Epstein. Social ontology studies the nature of the social world: what are its main elements and how they come together. There are different theories in modern social ontology: the theory of structuration, the theory of communicative action, social constructivism, critical realism. B. Epstein opposes psychological theories of social ontology and ontological individualism in explaining the social world. B. Epstein distinguishes between ontological questions about the social world and causal relationships (...) between events. The initial category of social ontology for American philosopher is a social fact. To establish a social fact, two actions are necessary: to give an ontological explanation of the existing social fact and to find facts that determine the conditions necessary for a social fact. Accordingly, B. Epstein distinguishes between two projects: the project of the foundation of a social fact and the project of fixing a social fact. The project of the foundation of a social fact provides an ontological explanation of a social fact, studies the conditions for the presence of social facts. The fixation project explores what gives rise to the conditions of the basis for social facts. The ground relation and the fixation relation are not causal relationships. A social fact must have diachronic constituent elements, which is, in particular, a test of social theory for truth. The article also discusses the theory of social facts by J. Serle. The theory of J. Serle B. Epstein refers to a psychological concept based on the collective acceptance of certain rules by the community. This position does not seem to be entirely correct, since J. Searle, in understanding the nature of a social fact, relies on social institutions, and the fact itself refers to institutional facts. (shrink)

We defend a realist account of history: past facts are discoveries not creations. We show how ‘moderate’ realists, who admit the critical role of perspective, while insisting on history’s metaphysical independence from historians, can accommodate Paul Roth’s arguments in favor of irrealism. Moreover, our position is consistent with a dynamic past: as history unfurls past events gain new properties. Realism is necessary, we argue, to capture substantive disputes within history. It also grounds history’s reflexivity: the point of the continual (...) re-examination of history turns in part on there being mind-independent past facts to be had. (shrink)

Drawing on a rich pragmatist tradition, this book offers an account of the different kinds of ‘oughts’, or varieties of normativity, that we are subject to contends that there is no conflict between normativity and the world as science describes it. The authors argue that normative claims aim to evaluate, to urge us to do or not do something, and to tell us how a state of affairs ought to be. These claims articulate forms of action-guidance that are different in (...) kind from descriptive claims, with a wholly distinct practical and expressive character. This account suggests that there are no normative facts, and so nothing that needs any troublesome shoehorning into a scientific account of the world. This work explains that nevertheless, normative claims are constrained by the world, and answerable to reason and argumentation, in a way that makes them truth-apt and objective. (shrink)

What place does consciousness have in the natural world? If we reject materialism, could there be a credible alternative? In one classic example, philosophers ask whether we can ever know what is it is like for bats to sense the world using sonar. It seems obvious to many that any amount of information about a bat's physical structure and information processing leaves us guessing about the central questions concerning the character of its experience. A Place for Consciousness begins with (...) reflections on the existence of this gap. Is it just a psychological shortcoming in our merely human understanding of the physical world? Is it a trivial consequence of the simple fact that we just cannot be bats? Or does it mean there really are facts about consciousness over and above the physical facts? If so, what does consciousness do? Why does it exist? Rosenberg sorts out these problems, especially those centering on the causal role of consciousness. He introduces a new paradigm called Liberal Naturalism for thinking about what causation is, about the natural world, and about how to create a detailed model to go along with the new paradigm. Arguing that experience is part of the categorical foundations of causality, he shows that within this new paradigm there is a place for something essentially like consciousness in all its traditional mysterious respects. A striking feature of Liberal Naturalism is that its central tenets are motivated independently of the mind-body problem, by analyzing causation itself. Because of this approach, when consciousness shows up in the picture it is not introduced in an ad hoc way, and its most puzzling features can be explained from first principles. Ultimately, Rosenberg's final solution gives consciousness a causally important role without supposing either that it is physical or that it interacts with the physical. (shrink)

Logical form has always been a prime concern for philosophers belonging to the analytic tradition. For at least one century, the study of logical form has been widely adopted as a method of investigation, relying on its capacity to reveal the structure of thoughts or the constitution of facts. This book focuses on the very idea of logical form, which is directly relevant to any principled reflection on that method. Its central thesis is that there is no such thing (...) as a correct answer to the question of what is logical form: two significantly different notions of logical form are needed to fulfil two major theoretical roles that pertain respectively to logic and to semantics. This thesis has a negative and a positive side. The negative side is that a deeply rooted presumption about logical form turns out to be overly optimistic: there is no unique notion of logical form that can play both roles. The positive side is that the distinction between two notions of logical form, once properly spelled out, sheds light on some fundamental issues concerning the relation between logic and language. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the particular problems raised by observations of phenomena outside the common course of nature for their validation as knowledge. It examines to what extent the content of the reports and, in particular, their lack of intrinsic plausibility affected the methods used in their authentication and the assessment of testimony at the Royal Society in the first half of the eighteenth century. I show that literary strategies were usually necessary but not sufficient for the validation of (...) these kinds of observations. Next, I discuss why visual representations were especially useful in establishing the singularity of the observations, but I point out that their high costs and other restrictions meant that they were not so widespread. In contrast I show that, for a long period of time, testimony was used in the majority of the reports as the true stamp of authenticity. I note, however, that the Royal Society accepted reports by authors of varied social status, level of education and occupation, and I discuss some of the factors responsible for the complexity of the handling of testimony at the Society. I argue against Shapin that in the case of reports of extraordinary phenomena, the competence of the reporter and witnesses was often more important than their social status. The increasing role of expertise in the assessment of observations at the Society become especially apparent by the middle of the eighteenth century.Author Keywords: Authentication; Competence; Monstrous births; Singular; Testimony; Royal Society of London. (shrink)

According to natural sciences, destructivity is related to the competitive state of the natural selection. In this sense, nature is considered like a battlefield where all creatures only seek for their own survival in an unending rivalry. However, that perception of nature was not invented by natural sciences insofar as this pseudo-reality of universal conflict was already present in philosophy as a reflection of the social structure of the 16th and 17th centuries. Scientists borrowed that vision of (...) nature as they observed the social structure in which they lived as universal and the state of war as an undeniable fact. This article aims to raise the question about the influence of political philosophy on the scientific paradigm and to understand the political and social source of destructiveness. (shrink)

In this paper, I reconstruct the development and the complex character of Zilsel’s conception of scientific laws. This concept functions as a fil rouge for understanding Zilsel’s philosophy throughout different times (here, the focus is on his Viennese writings and how they pave the way to the more renown American ones) and across his many fields of work (from physics to politics). A good decade before Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle was going to mark the outbreak of indeterminism in quantum physics, Edgar (...) Zilsel started to develop a complex logical-philosophical theory in which statistical and causal laws were given an indeterministic foundation (Zilsel 1916). However, in developing his thoughts on the emergence of regularities from disorder, Zilsel arrives at a profound ambiguity with respect to the ontological or the epistemic nature of laws and order in the world: Whether this order is to be conceived of as an empirical finding or as the product of reason – this would have to remain unclear. This tension between rationalism and empiricism, as well as a tension between a realist and an anti-realist conception of lawfulness, can be identified in both Zilsel’s Viennese and American writings: a tension which touches the core of the “application problem” that would keep haunting Zilsel until his premature death. (shrink)

The reticence of scholars of ethics to enter into fundamental moral reasoning is well known. William Casebeer’s ambitious new book, Natural Ethical Facts: Evolution, Connectionism, and Moral Cognition, which is the publication of his 2001 University of California, San Diego, Ph.D. dissertation, stands in stark contrast. Casebeer, who teaches philosophy at the U.S. Air Force Academy, has undertaken the project of developing a comprehensive moral theory derived from what he terms “methodological naturalism.” Methodological naturalism, he explains, is a (...) system of moral reasoning derived exclusively from the empirically verifiable claims of science. His ethic starts with the materialist premise that all reality is reducible to matter and energy; since matter and energy are sufficiently explainable in terms of facts derived from the scientific method; morality too, as real—he is undeniably a moral realist—must be sufficiently explained in terms of such facts. With particular attention given to the cognitive sciences and evolutionary biology, Casebeer’s naturalism boldly asserts that ethics is reducible to science, moral norms to empirical facts, and practical judgments to theoretical propositions. This of course implicates the author in what critics refer to as the “naturalistic fallacy,” that is, the illicit inference from facts to norms. Aware of this, Casebeer attempts to show that such an inference is not only not illicit but itself the substance of fundamental moral reasoning. Unfortunately his refutation of the naturalistic fallacy is selective. He reduces the entire complex discussion to a distinction between analytic and synthetic statements, then successfully throws into doubt the existence of such a distinction and judges himself done with the whole question. Using David Hume and G. E. Moore as his principal foils, his refutation entirely ignores the most enduring and plausible argument against deriving “ought” from “is,” proposed by the great medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas and his contemporary expositor, the Oxford philosopher John Finnis. (shrink)

Suppose that unobtanium-346 is a rare radioactive isotope. Consider: (1) Every Un346 atom, at its creation, decays within 7 microseconds (µs). (50%) Every Un346 atom, at its creation, has a 50% chance of decaying within 7µs. (1) and (50%) can be true together, but (1) and (50%) cannot together be laws of nature. Indeed, (50%)'s mere (non-vacuous) truth logically precludes (1)'s lawhood. A satisfactory analysis of chance and lawhood should nicely account for this relation. I shall argue first that David (...) Lewis's Humean picture accounts for this relation only by inserting this relation ‘by hand’. Next, I shall argue that this relation between law and chance also threatens a radically non-Humean picture of laws and chances. Finally, I shall offer an account of natural law that nicely explains the relation between chancy facts and deterministic laws. This explanation is not ad hoc because it derives the relation from the very same features of lawhood that account for the laws' special relation to counterfactuals and explain how the laws (unlike the accidents) possess a variety of necessity. The reason that a chancy fact such as (50%) keeps (1) from being a law, without keeping (1) from being true, is ultimately that a chancy fact constrains the subjunctive facts and (1)'s lawhood, unlike (1)'s truth, depends upon the subjunctive facts. (shrink)

ABSTRACTTaking some controversial claims philosopher Jason Brennan makes in his book Against Democracy as a starting point, this paper argues in favour of two theses: There is No Such Thing as Superior Political Judgement; There Is No Such Thing as Uncontroversial Social Scientific Knowledge. I conclude that social science experts need to be kept in check, not given more power.

Describing a Mundus Novus was a very singular task in the sixteenth century. It was an effort shaped by a permanent inherent tension between novelty and normality, between the immense variety of new facts and the demand of credibility. How did these inner strains affect the narrative style of the first descriptions of the natural world of ‘the Indies’? How were the first European observers of the nature of America able to simultaneously transmit the idea of immensity and (...) regularity, and that of novelty? How did they attempt to describe new worlds knowing that there was a lot – perhaps too much – to tell? This paper focuses not on the much-discussed epistemological issues related to those questions, but on their narrative and stylistic consequences. We argue that the first Europeans meeting the new realities of the Americas or India had to meet new challenges, and these translated into texts with specific characteristics. Thus, their first descriptions are essentially different from the texts about the natural world that were written before or after the ‘discovery’. We show that they adopted very specific discursive approaches, and were deeply influenced by the credibility strategies of the medical profession in which they had been trained. (shrink)

Facts such as the fact that Donald Trump is the US president or the fact that Germany won the 2014 world cup final are commonly referred to as “institutional facts” (“IFF”). I advocate the view that the nature of these facts is comparatively simple: they are facts that exist by virtue of collective recognition (CR), where CR can be direct or indirect. The leading account of IFF, that of John Searle, basically conforms with this definition. However, (...) in his writings Searle has considered or defended several other conditions as potentially necessary for the existence of IFF. In particular, he has considered whether (a) IFF necessarily involve deontic powers, (b) IFF are necessarily so-called “status functions”, (c) IFF require speech acts of Declaring for their existence, (d) IFF require language for their existence. Each of these considerations, if valid, would seem to render the nature of IFF less simple. In this paper, I argue that none of these considerations stand up to scrutiny. Being unaware of any other serious considerations of this kind, I conclude that the nature of IFF is simple as captured by my definition. There is a respect, however, in which my view is possibly less simple than Searle’s, for he suggests that CR is always direct, and never indirect. I reject this suggestion. Indeed, I think that most of the facts existing by virtue of CR exist by virtue of indirect CR. Some authors have (or at least might be construed as having) objected that CR is not even necessary for the existence of IFF. I argue that the account defended here is immune to these objections. (shrink)

This takes a closer look at the actual semantic behavior of apparent truth predicates in English and re-evaluates the way they could motivate particular philosophical views regarding the formal status of 'truth predicates' and their semantics. The paper distinguishes two types of 'truth predicates' and proposes semantic analyses that better reflect the linguistic facts. These analyses match particular independently motivated philosophical views.

ABSTRACT: David Braybrooke argues that the core of the natural law theory of Thomas Aquinas survived in the work of Hobbes, Locke, Hume, and Rousseau. Much to my surprise, Braybrooke argues as well that David Copp’s society-centered moral theory is a secular version of this same natural law theory. Braybrooke makes a good case that there is an important idea about morality that is shared by the great philosophers in his group and that this idea is also found (...) in Copp’s work. The idea is captured by the Functionalist Thesis, the thesis that moral propositions are made true by facts about what, given the nature of human beings and their circumstances, enables people to live together in thriving communities. I argue that Copp can accept Braybrooke’s suggestion and use it to improve his formulation of the basic idea of the society-centered theory. RÉSUMÉ : David Braybrooke soutient que l’idée centrale de la théorie du droit naturel de Thomas d’Aquin a survécu dans les œuvres de Hobbes, Locke, Hume et Rousseau. À mon grand étonnement, Braybrooke soutient aussi que la théorie morale société-centrique de David Copp est une version séculaire de cette même théorie du droit naturel. Braybrooke argumente de façon convaincante que les œuvres de ces grands philosophes partagent une idée centrale relative à la moralité et que cette idée se retrouve aussi chez Copp. Cette idée est la Thèse Fonctionnaliste, c’est-à-dire la thèse selon laquelle les faits moraux sont des faits concernant ce qui rend les membres de la société capables de vivre ensemble dans des communautés florissantes, étant donné la nature des êtres humains et les circonstances de leurs vies. Je soutiens que Copp peut reprendre à son compte les arguments de Braybrooke, et ainsi améliorer la formulation de l’idée centrale de sa théorie société-centrique. (shrink)