The fact that names refer to individuals is a basic assumption of referentialist theories of proper names, but the notion of individual is systematically taken for granted in those theories. The present paper follows that basic assumption, but proposes to analyze the notion of individual prior to the development of any semantic theory of proper names. It will be argued that a particular perdurantist conception of individual should be adopted, which distinguishes the notions of individual occurrence, and individual simpliciter. A (...) new theory of proper names (called the cluster-occurrence theory) is presented, according to which names refer to individual occurrences, and the intension associated with a name is an individual simpliciter. The merits of the new theory are then assessed in confrontation with its standard rival accounts. (shrink)

"Blocking" refers to judgments of a moderate contingency being lowered when contrasted with a strong contingency. The Rescorla-Wagner model and causal model theory account for blocking through different mechanisms. To examine the predictions from these two models, seven experiments tested the extent to which "causal scenario" and "causal order" would influence whether blocking was observed in human contingency learning tasks. "Causal scenario" was manipulated by contrasting responses to two causes of one effect or to one cause of two effects; "causal (...) order" was defined as causes preceding effects or effects preceding causes. The four conjunctions of these two factors were investigated separately in Experiments 1 to 5. In Experiments 1 and 2, two causes preceded one effect and two effects preceded one cause, respectively. Blocking was observed regardless of whether the predictors were causes or effects. In Experiments 3, 4 and 5, participants were presented with one antecedent cue and made separate predictions about each of the trial's two outcomes. Blocking was not observed, irrespective of whether the antecedent cue was a cause or an effect. These initial results were consistent with the Rescorla-Wagner model. An alternative explanation was that blocking failed to occur in Experiments 3 to 5 because participants were asked questions between the predictor and two outcomes. Predicting the outcomes might have implicitly led participants to monitor them separately and to report on subsets of the data at the time of judgment. To address this issue, the volunteers in Experiment 6 observed the events on each trial but did not make any predictions about the outcomes. Blocking was observed, signifying that the intervening questions between the antecedent and consequent cues constitute an important variable influencing cue competition effects. In Experiment 7, all four conjunctions of causal scenario and causal order were tested simultaneously. Furthermore, participants w. (shrink)

There are many examples offered as evidence that proper names are predicates. Not all of these cases speak to a name’s semantic content, but many of them do. Some of these include attributive, quantifier, and ambiguity cases. We will explore those cases here, and we will see that none of them conclusively show that names are predicates. In fact, all of these constructions can be given alternative analyses that eliminate the predicative characteristics of names they feature. These analyses do not (...) involve having names functioning as predicates in any way at all. In attributive cases, the names within them are to be understood as occurring in a comparative construction, not an attributive construction. In the last two sorts of cases, the names that occur are analyzed as part of a more complex referring device for a specific domain, rather than functioning as predicates. Both paraphrases can be given plausible semantic treatments that have significant advantages over their competitors. For this reason, there is less motivation to focus on predicative views of proper names. (shrink)

I argue that there are at least two concepts of law of nature worthy of philosophical interest: strong law and weak law. Strong laws are the laws investigated by fundamental physics, while weak laws feature prominently in the “special sciences” and in a variety of non-scientific contexts. In the first section, I clarify my methodology, which has to do with arguing about concepts. In the next section, I offer a detailed description of strong laws, which I claim satisfy four criteria: (...) (1) If it is a strong law that L then it also true that L; (2) strong laws would continue to be true, were the world to be different in some physically possible way; (3) strong laws do not depend on context or human interest; (4) strong laws feature in scientific explanations but cannot be scientifically explained. I then spell out some philosophical consequences: (1) is incompatible with Cartwright’s contention that “laws lie” (2) with Lewis’s “best-system” account of laws, and (3) with contextualism about laws. In the final section, I argue that weak laws are distinguished by (approximately) meeting some but not all of these criteria. I provide a preliminary account of the scientific value of weak laws, and argue that they cannot plausibly be understood as ceteris paribus laws. (shrink)

Many issues at the heart of the philosophy of action and of philosophical work on free will are framed partly in terms of causation. The leading approach to understanding both the nature of action and the explanation or production of actions emphasizes causation. What may be termed standardcausalism is the conjunction of the following two theses: firstly, an event's being an action depends on how it was caused; and secondly, proper explanations of actions are causal explanations. Important questions debated in (...) the literature on free will include: is an action's being deterministically caused incompatible with its being freely performed? Are actions free only if they are indeterministically caused? Does the indeterministic causation of an action preclude its being freely performed? Does free action require agent causation? This article concentrates on issues about action and free will that centrally involve causation. (shrink)

Over the last few decades, there has been an increasing interest in global consequentialism. Where act-consequentialism assesses acts in terms of their consequences, global consequentialism goes much further, assessing acts, rules, motives — and everything else — in terms of the relevant consequences. Compared to act-consequentialism it offers a number of advantages: it is more expressive, it is a simpler theory, and it captures some of the benefits of ruleconsequentialism without the corresponding drawbacks. In this paper, I explore the four (...) different approaches to global consequentialism made by Parfit, Pettit and Smith, Kagan, and Feldman. I break these up into their constituent components, demonstrating the space of possible global consequentialist theories, and I present two new theories within this space. (shrink)

The present study proposes a valorization of the work of professor and philosopher Ioan Biriş. The statistics of his books and studies, their distribution by areas of interest, and especially the ideas in his work confirm the need for philosophy in the Romanian cultural life. As a whole, his philosophical endeavor is based on the concept of totality. Thus in the Hegelian spirit, Ioan Biriş successfully convinces us that the logical may exceed the limits of formal exercise and become the (...) organon of philosophy. In this capacity, the logical may operate on the real and valorize the multiple relationships between identity and difference. His books Filosofia și logica științelor sociale, Totalitate, sistem, holon, Rolul imaginarului în cunoașterea științifică, Istorie şi cultură, as well as a series of studies among which let me mention: “L’identité symbolique et la logique partitive des valeurs spirituelles”, “On the logic of religious terms”, “Le rapport identite-difference et la conjonction collective. Aspects logiques”, clearly prove the author’s capacity to integrate existential, religious, cognitive and axiological issues into a unitary vision. As Noica would say, he succeeded to enter the spirit’s life thorough the intellect’s gate. (shrink)

The thesis is a philosophical analysis of the consumption based capital asset pricing model, investigating in particular its epistemological and methodological foundations. Financial markets are integral parts of advanced and developing economies. They matter because they channel unspent household income into banks’ savings accounts and assets such as bonds and stocks. Financial economists have traditionally taken interest in the pricing mechanism that underlies this capital allocation. The consumption based capital asset pricing model is a prominent effort to describe, explain and (...) predict such prices. It tells a story of investors’ trade-off between consumption now and later and which portfolio of assets to hold. The CCAPM based narrative intuitively makes sense, and the chosen methodology involving theoretical assumption, mathematical models and empirical tests follows the professions’ standards of good scientific practise. But does CCAPM’s research programme provide knowledge for use? My thesis seeks to answer this question in a novel way. Instead of embarking on yet another asset pricing research project, I let Philosophy of Science inform my analysis. Following a “primer” introducing essential CCAPM topics and notations, I discuss, in turn, its theoretical foundation, mathematical model, and empirical test results from a philosophy of science perspective. I find that a few fundamental principles and several auxiliary assumptions combine to develop a simplified, partial and idealized theory of investors, financial markets and assets. The model reflects and represents this theory but also makes narrow claims that are distances away from the real situations they target. Unsurprisingly, ideal model assertions fail standard statistical tests of significance. I conclude that mathematical deductive modelling rooted in orthodox, a priori based fundamental principles create ideal and fictional settings that limit their scope and portability. The development of even more granular models within this orthodox paradigm that searches for “event regularities” will not render the desired knowledge for use. The real situations are possibly too complex to be captured in simplified assumptions, ideal theories and mathematical structures. Novel methodological and ontological approaches to asset pricing are in demand. Hence, claims about tendencies in the real data might replace the current focus on point-forecasts. (shrink)

The goal of this article is a general inspection of indexicals as a specific phenomenon of natural language on the one side, and a consideration of "semantization" of indexicals on the other side. The term "semantization" represents a criterion on the basis of which various approaches to relevant solutions are valuated: if, according to Frege´s view, all language expressions should express their senses, what kind of senses could be expressed in the case of indexicals? First, indexicals are explicated as a (...) specific sort of language expressions. Second, how some contemporary philosophers deal with indexical puzzles is briefly propounded. It takes for granted that a comparison of various philosophers´ approaches makes their pro et contra clear. By that way the article can acquire a parameter of basic synopsis. In certain passages of the text, summaries of the issues dealt with are included. The article is divided into three parts, dividing idexicals into temporal, individual and spatial, and demonstratives. In the first part of this article temporal indexicals, , as well as grammatical tensed sentences are put to test. Different approaches of Tichý, Quine, Russell, Reichenbach, and Wittgenstein are interpreted and evaluated from the "semantization" point of view. In the case of temporal indexicals, knowledge of possible referents plays an important part, and ontology of time is approximated in connection with McTaggart´s argument. Pavel Materna´s analysis of "now" is a special subject of brief comment. (shrink)

In his famous paper John Rawls outlines a version of utilitarianism that takes into account the existing criticism of the utilitarian approach. Author shows that the traditional objections expressed in relation to two test cases of utilitarianism — punishment and promise-keeping — are based on the misunderstanding of utilitarian position, because they don’t make a distinction between justifying a practice and justifying a particular action falling under it. In the case of punishment, there two justifications of it: the retributive view (...) that presupposes that punishment is justified on the grounds that wrongdoing merits punishment, and the utilitarian view that holds that punishment is justifiable only by reference to the probable consequences of maintaining it as one of the devices of the social order. According to the author, utilitarian arguments are appropriate with regard to questions about practices, while retributive arguments fit the application of particular rules to particular cases. In the case of promising, truly utilitarian approach presupposes that promisor must weigh not only the effects of breaking his/her promise on the particular case, but also the effect which his/her breaking promise will have on the practice itself. Author thinks that the distinction between justifying a practice and justifying a particular action falling under it was neglected not only by the critics, but by the utilitarians themselves, due to the prevalence of the summary view of the rules. Rawls suggests his own, practical conception of the rules, that presupposes that practices are prior to particular cases of their application. (shrink)

Since the Enlightenment critique has played an overarching role in how western society understands itself and its basic institutions. However, opinions differ widely concerning the understanding and evaluation of critique. To understand such differences and clarify a viable understanding of critique, the article turns to Kant’s critical philosophy, inaugurating the “age of criticism”. While generalizing and making critique unavoidable, Kant coins an unambiguously positive understanding of critique as an affirmative, immanent activity. Not only does this positive conception prevail in the (...) critique of pure and practical reason and the critique of judgment; these modalities of critique set the agenda for three major strands of critique in contemporary thought, culminating in among others Husserl, Popper Habermas, Honneth, and Foucault. Critique affirms and challenges cognition and its rationality, formulates ethical ideals that regulate social interaction, and further articulates normative guidelines underway in the on-going experimentations of a post-natural history of human nature. In contradistinction to esoteric Platonic theory, philosophy at the threshold of modernity becomes closely linked to an outward-looking critique that examines and pictures what human forms of life are in the process of making of themselves and challenges them, by reflecting upon what they can and what they should make of themselves. As a very widely diffused practice, however, critique may also become a self-affirming overarching end in itself. (shrink)

In “Why is There Anything at All?” Peter van Inwagen argues that even though it was never necessary that concrete beings existed, it was always maximally probable – just short of necessity – that they did . I argue that van Inwagen’s argument fails, albeit for an interesting reason which has remained so far unnoticed in the literature: there is a critical ten- sion between two of its premises, both essential to its soundness, concerning the nature of comprehensively specified possible (...) worlds. I summarize van Inwagen’s argument, develop this objection, and then describe more problems which invariably accrue when we try to ascribe probability values to possible worlds. (shrink)

The paper considers whether psychiatric kinds can be natural kinds and concludes that they can. This depends, however, on a particular conception of ‘natural kind’. We briefly describe and reject two standard accounts – what we call the ‘stipulative account’ (according to which apparently a priori criteria, such as the possession of intrinsic essences, are laid down for natural kindhood) and the ‘Kripkean account’ (according to which the natural kinds are just those kinds that obey Kripkean semantics). We then rehearse (...) a more permissive account: Richard Boyd’s ‘homeostatic property cluster’ (HPC) account. We argue that psychiatric kinds can in principle count as natural kinds on the HPC account. Moreover, specific psychiatric kinds (Tourette’s, schizophrenia, etc.) can be natural kinds even if the category psychiatric disorder is not itself a natural kind. (shrink)

Whether there exist causal relations between guns firing and people dying, between pedals pressed and cars accelerating, or between carbon dioxide emissions and global warming, is typically taken to be a mind-independent, objective, matter of fact. However, recent contributions to the literature on causation, in particular theories of contrastive causation and causal modelling, have undermined this central causal platitude by relativising causal facts to models or to interests. This thesis flies against the prevailing wind by arguing that we must pay (...) greater attention to which elements of our causal talk vary with context and which elements track genuine features of the world around us. I will argue that once these elements are teased apart we will be in a position to better understand some of the most persistent problems in the philosophy of causation: pre-emption cases, absence causation, failures of transitivity and overdetermination. The result is a naturalist account of causation, concordant with the contextual variability we find in our ordinary causal talk, and parsimonious with respect to the theoretical entities posited. (shrink)

A number of areas of biology raise questions about what is of value in the natural environment and how we ought to behave towards it: conservation biology, environmental science, and ecology, to name a few. Based on my experience teaching students from these and similar majors, I argue that the field of environmental ethics has much to teach these students. They come to me with pent-up questions and a feeling that more is needed to fully engage in their subjects, and (...) I believe some exposure to environmental ethics can help focus their interests and goals. I identify three primary areas in which environmental ethics can con- tribute to their education. The first is an examination of who (or what) should be considered to be part of our moral community (i.e., the community to whom we owe direct duties). Is it humans only? Or does it include all sentient life? Or all life? Or ecosystems considered holistically? Often, readings implicitly assume one or more of these answers; the goal is to make the student more sensitive to these implicit claims and to get them to think about the different reasons that support them. The second area, related to the first, is the application of the different answers concerning the extent of the ethical community to real environmental issues and problems. Students need to be aware of how the different answers concerning the moral community can imply conflicting answers for how we should act in certain cases and to think about ways to move toward conflict resolution. The third area in which environmental ethics can contribute is a more conceptual one, focusing on central concepts such as biodiversity, sustainability, species, and ecosystems. Exploring and evaluating various meanings of these terms will make students more reflective and thoughtful citizens and biologists, sensitive to the implications that different conceptual choices make. (shrink)

Some argue for materialism claiming that a physical event cannot have a non-physical cause, or by claiming the 'Principle of Causal Closure' to be true. This I call a 'Sweeping Naturalistic Argument'. This article argues against this. It describes what it would be for a material event to have an immaterial cause.

A theory of causation with ‘tendencies’ as causal con- nections is proposed. Not, however, as ‘necessary connec- tions’: causes are not sufficient, they do not necessitate their effects. The theory is not an analysis of the concept of causation, but a description of what is the case in typical cases of causation. Therefore it does not strictly contradict any analysis of the concept of causation, not even reduct- ive ones. It would even be supported by a counterfactual or a probabilistic (...) analysis. (shrink)

Richard Boyd has long campaigned for a view of natural kinds he calls the Homeostatic Property Cluster account. This account has been particularly exciting for philosophers of biology unhappy with traditional essentialism about natural kinds and the views that biological kinds are, in one way or another, “historical entities”. Though defenders of HPC kinds have done much to further articulate the view, many questions about the account remain. One pressing question concerns the way in which HPC kinds are supposed to (...) accommodate our inductive and explanatory practices via causal, homeostatic mechanisms. In addressing the question, I am led to an alternative conception of what a property cluster kind might be. I call my alternative, in deference to its Boydian origins, the Stable Property Cluster account of natural kinds. Rather than emphasizing homeostasis or causal mechanism, the SPC account emphasizes the stability of a property cluster over the various ways stability may be maintained. In virtue of this modest change of emphasis, the SPC account does not advertise itself as an account of a kind of natural kind — it is, I think, an attractive candidate for a general natural kind concept, able to accommodate the diversity of natural kinds we find in the world. (shrink)

In his treatise Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik, Gottlob Frege tries to find a definition of number. First he rejects the idea that number could be a property of external objects. Then he comes with a suggestion that a numerical statement expresses a property of a concept, namely it indicates how many objects fall under the concept. Subsequently Frege rejects, or at least essentially modifies, also this definition, because in his view that a number cannot be a property – it should (...) be an object. In this article, I try to show that Frege’s first definition of number seems to be, despite his own opinion, much more promising than he supposed. I also argue that Frege’s argumentation against the empirical character of number is by no means convincing. (shrink)

From the apparently trivial problem of homonyms, I argue that proper names as they occur in natural languages cannot be characterised as strings of sounds or characters. This entails, first, that the proper names philosophers talk about are not physical entities, like strings, but abstractions that, second, may be better characterised as triples (s, m, C), where s is the string that conveys the meaning m in a set of contexts C. Third, the generality principle of compositionality may be put (...) into question, for apparently its converse holds in some cases. Finally, the prominence of context for determining the meaning expressed by a sign suggests a strong connection between proper names and indexicals. This connection has been largely overlooked by the analytic tradition, in spite that both proper names and indexicals have been among their hottest topics. This may be because the analytic literature about proper names has been decisively influenced by Frege’s work, which was better suited for formal languages. Izydora Dąmbska and Jerzy Pelc, with their semiotic background, were able to have a finer understanding of this quasi-indexical character of proper names. (shrink)

Logic and philosophy of science share a long history, though contacts have gone through ups and downs. This paper is a brief survey of some major themes in logical studies of empirical theories, including links to computer science and current studies of rational agency. The survey has no new results: we just try to make some things into common knowledge.

What is a physical object according to the theory of quantum mechanics? The first answer to be considered is that given by Bohr in terms of the concept of complementarity. This interpretation is illustrated by way of an example, the two slit experiment, which highlights some of the associated problems of ontology. One such problem is the so-called problem of measurement or observation. Various interpretations of measurement in Quantum Theory, including those of Heisenberg, von Neumann, Everett and Bohr, are compared (...) and contrasted. A second problem concerns whether or not QT can be considered complete and therefore satisfactory as a basis for physics. Various attempts to complete QT by means of the addition of ‘hidden variables’ to the quantum mechanical state function are considered and their aims and achievements assessed. Finally, we investigate some of the characteristic ontological problems for the orthodox interpretation of Relativistic Quantum Theory. -/- . (shrink)

Causal selection has to do with the distinction we make between background conditions and “the” true cause or causes of some outcome of interest. A longstanding consensus in philosophy views causal selection as lacking any objective rationale and as guided, instead, by arbitrary, pragmatic, and non-scientific considerations. I argue against this position in the context of causal selection for disease traits. In this domain, causes are selected on the basis of the type of causal control they exhibit over a disease (...) of interest. My analysis clarifies the principled rationale that guides this selection and how it involves both pragmatic and objective considerations, which have been overlooked in the extant literature. (shrink)

The paper mainly deals with the problem of reference of proper names. Unlike definite descriptions, proper names in themselves possess no exact necessary and sufficient conditions for making successful performance of reference. This is the consequence of the fact that proper names just name their bearers and do not describe them. It is argued that Frege’s theory violates this fact, and therefore can be taken only as a view about the meaning of proper names, not as a theory of reference. (...) Two conceptions of Strawson designed to solve the problem are mentioned – the cluster description theory and the communication chain theory. The second one is refused immediately, as unrealistic view on referential behaviour of proper names. Then Searle’s version of cluster description theory, more elaborate one than Strawson’s, is analyzed. However, it is shown that this conception is unsatisfactory as well, because either it invokes Kripke’s and Donnellan’s objections against any description theory or its explanation of reference of proper names is circular. (shrink)

Two basic answers have been given to the question whether proper names have meaning, the negative by Mill and later developed by Kripke and the affirmative by Frege and later developed by Searle. My aim is to integrate the two apparently irreconcilable theories by distinguishing the two aspects of the issue. I claim that, roughly speaking, whereas Kripke’s No Sense View provides a good answer to the question, “How are proper names linked to their referents?”, Searle’s Sense View provides a (...) good account of the issue “What do we do when we use a proper name?”. Furthermore, I claim that the speakers attend to the referent of the proper name both in virtue of Kripkean chain of communication and in virtue of Searlian occasion-relative sense. Ordinarily, the chain of communication and the Searlian sense yield the same result, i.e. lead to the same referent. In cases of conflict, which are very rare, my intuition sides with the former against the latter. It would seem, therefore, that the only necessary and sufficient condition for a successful reference with a proper name is the existence of the Kripkean chain which links it with its referent. (shrink)

Polygenic effects have more than one cause. They testify to the fact that several causal contributors are sometimes simultaneously involved in causation. The importance of polygenic causation was noticed early on by Mill (1893). It has since been shown to be a problem for causal-law approaches to causation and accounts of causation cast in terms of capacities. However, polygenic causation needs to be examined more thoroughly in the emerging literature on causal mechanisms. In this paper I examine whether an influential (...) theory of mechanisms proposed by Peter Machamer, Lindley Darden and Carl Craver can accommodate polygenic effects and other forms of causal interaction. This theory is problematic, I will argue, because it ascribes a central role to activities. In it, activities are needed not only to constitute mechanisms but also to perform the causal role of mechanisms. Any such mechanism-as-activity will be incompatible with causal situations where either no or merely another kind of activity occurs. But, as I will try to illustrate in this paper, both kinds of situation may be frequent. If I am right, the view that Machamer and colleagues suggest leads to an impoverished conception of mechanism. (shrink)

Causal selection has to do with a distinction between mere background conditions and the "true" causes of some outcome of interest. Mainstream philosophical views claim that causal selection is "groundless" in the sense that it lacks any type of principled rationale. I argue against this position in the context of biochemistry where causal factors are selected in explanations of metabolic processes. These factors are selected on the basis of a principled rationale, which is best understood in terms of the causal (...) control that they provide over an outcome of interest. (shrink)