The contribution of Jacques Maritain to twentieth century political philosophy has been widely noted. This paper explores the implications of Maritain’s work and life for contemporary spirituality, in particular, for a spirituality that might nourish and shape democratic participation. It finds the roots of such a spirituality in Maritain’s integral vision of the person, and his view of saints as those persons who alone have fully resolved the human condition. Maritain argues that while sanctity so defined is universal, it must (...) be adapted to the changing conditions of history. Contemporary democracy, in particular, has expanded the possibilities of the human being’s temporal task, and so calls for new styles of sanctity to embrace the new range of human activity. This paper explores the characteristics of sanctity in a democracy, according to Maritain. It finds that the defining features of such sanctity are solidarity, embodied in suffering and fraternal love, and contemplation diversely expressed through both prayer and action. Finally it explores the implications of Maritain’s spirituality for contemporary Catholic citizens. (shrink)

When Gilles Deleuze, in his book on Michel Foucault, asks, ‘who would think of looking for life among the archives?’, he uncovers something particular to Foucault's philosophy, but also to his own: a commitment to the question of what it means to think, and think politically. Although Foucault and Deleuze, who first met in 1952, immediately felt fondness for each other, a growing animosity had settled into the friendship by the end of the 1970s – a rift deepened by theoretical (...) differences. Notwithstanding these difficulties, Foucault and Deleuze shared a love for Nietzsche, as well as a curious fascination with Kant. Kant's influence, which was met with more opposition, is precisely the tension I tease out in this article, showing how Foucault critiques Kant's a priori through his own concept of the historical a priori, along with regularity and resistance, while Deleuze and Guattari, if more obliquely, critique Kant's a priori by further developing Foucault's notion of the historical a priori through their own method of pragmatics, particularly in three chapters of A Thousand Plateaus, namely ‘The Geology of Morals’, ‘Postulates of Linguistics’ and ‘On Several Regimes of Signs’. What I am interested in, then, is Deleuze and Guattari's treatment of redundancy, a concept mentioned seventy times in A Thousand Plateaus. Although not one of their main or most developed concepts, redundancy is a thread that can be traced back to Deleuze's first book, Empiricism and Subjectivity. Moreover, their more developed concepts, for example the diagram, the abstract machine, becoming, micro-politics and the ritornello, as well as their political philosophy, are grounded in their understanding of redundancy, which moves their philosophy beyond mapping out the conditions of possibility and demonstrating that the historical a priori emerges as a contingent function of its own expression to the genesis of thought. (shrink)

Rationalization, in our intended sense of the term, occurs when a person favors a particular conclusion as a result of some factor (such as self-interest) that is of little justificatory epistemic relevance, if that factor then biases the person’s subsequent search for, and assessment of, potential justifications for the conclusion. Empirical evidence suggests that rationalization is common in people’s moral and philosophical thought. We argue that it is likely that the moral and philosophical thought of philosophers and moral psychologists is (...) also pervaded by rationalization. Moreover, although rationalization has some benefits, overall it would be epistemically better if the moral and philosophical reasoning of people, including professional academics, were not as heavily influenced by rationalization as it likely is. We discuss the significance of our arguments for cognitive management and epistemic responsibility. (shrink)

In Davidson's philosophy, one finds a wide variety of rich, provocative, and influential arguments concerning the nature of the mind—that mental states emerge only in the context of interpretation, that belief is "in its nature" veridical, that mental events are physical events, and so on. Most, if not all, of Davidson's conclusions about the mind have their source in discussions about the project of "radical interpretation." They rely upon arguments concerning the conditions on the successful interpretation of a speaker by (...) an interpreter who knows nothing initially about the speaker's language or mental states. But what is the relevance of this activity of radical interpretation? Why should the conditions on succeeding at it illuminate anything about the nature of the mind in general? In this paper, I explore these issues. In particular, I will argue that Davidson's confidence in the relevance of radical interpretation for understanding the mind ultimately depends upon a prior and quite substantive view of the mind. Moreover, it is a view of the mind for which Davidson provides little support. Indeed, the little support Davidson does provide appears to depend itself on the very relevance of radical interpretation. (shrink)

This intra-view explores a number of productive junctions between contemporary Deleuzoguattarian and new materialist praxes via a series of questions and provocations. Productive tensions are explored via questions of epistemological, ontological, ethical, and political intra-sections as well as notions of difference, transversal contamination, ecosophical practices, diffraction, and, lastly, schizoanalysis. Various irruptions around biophilosophy, transduction, becomology, cartography, power relations, hyperobjects as events, individuation, as well as dyschronia and disorientation, take the discussion further into the wild pedagogical spaces that both praxes have (...) in common. -/- . (shrink)

In recent years, feminist scholarship on emotional labor has proliferated. I identify a related but distinct form of care labor, hermeneutic labor. Hermeneutic labor is the burdensome activity of: understanding and coherently expressing one’s own feelings, desires, intentions, and movitations; discerning those of others; and inventing solutions for relational issues arising from interpersonal tensions. I argue that hermeneutic labor disproportionately falls on women’s shoulders in heteropatriachal societies, especially in intimate relationships between women and men. I also suggest that some of (...) the gendered burdens of emotional labor that feminist scholars point out would better be described as hermeneutic labor. Drawing on feminist philosophy as well as findings from social psychology and sociology, I argue that the exploitation of women’s hermeneutic labor is a pervasive element of what Sandra Bartky calls the ‘micropolitics’ of intimate relationships. The widespread expectation that women are relationship maintenance experts, as well as the prevalence of a gendered demand-withdraw pattern of communication, leads an exploitative situation to appear natural or even desirable, even as it leads to women’s dissatisfaction. This situation may be considered misogynistic in Kate Manne’s sense, where misogyny is a property of social environments rather than a worldview. (shrink)

Discussions of sexual ethics often focus on the wrong of treating another as a mere object instead of as a person worthy of respect. On this view, the task of sexual ethics becomes putting the other’s subjectivity above their status as erotic object so as to avoid the harms of objectification. Ward and Anderson argue that such a view disregards the crucial, moral role that erotic objecthood plays in sexual encounters. Important moral features of intimacy are disclosed through the experience (...) of being an erotic object for another, as well as in perceiving another as an erotic object. Drawing on phenomenology, especially the insights of Simone de Beauvoir, Ward and Anderson argue that erotic encounters are shaped by the human condition of ambiguity, where being an object for others is intertwined with bodily agency. Because sexual agency is complex in this way, theories of sexual ethics and responsibility must widen their focus beyond transparent communication and authoritative expressions of will. (shrink)

A World of Muscle, Bone & Organs: Research and Scholarship in Dance is an e-book exploring contemporary ideas and themes in the research and practice of dance. It contains 23 chapters written by researchers at the Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE), Coventry University, and is divided into six sections: Spaces of Practice, Philosophy, Communities, Politics, Data and Thinking, and Epistemology.

An entry on the meaning and history of emergence as well as the current debate on emergentism in philosophy and the sciences.

On the background of explaining their different notions of analyticity, their different views on definitions, and some aspects of Frege’s notion of sense, three important Kantian strands that interweave into Frege’s view are exposed. First, Frege’s remarkable view that arithmetic, though analytic, contains truths that “extend our knowledge”, and by Kant’s use of the term, should be regarded synthetic. Secondly, that our arithmetical (and logical) knowledge depends on a sort of a capacity to recognize and identify objects, which are given (...) us in particular ways, constituting their senses (Sinne). Third, that there is a sense in which Frege’s view of definitions and explications gives new substance to Kant’s leading idea of analyticity, namely, the containment of a truth or a concept in another. In all these, Frege’s view does not endorse the Kantian strands as they are, but gives them special and sometimes quite sophisticated twists. (shrink)

In this paper we describe a few interrelated issues for validating theories that posit levels of consciousness. First, validating levels of consciousness requires consensus about the ordering of conscious states, which cannot be easily achieved. This problem is particularly severe if we believe conscious states can be irreducibly smeared over time. Second, the relationship between conscious states is probably sometimes intransitive, which means levels of consciousness will not be amenable to a single continuous measure. Finally, even if a multidimensional approach (...) to levels of consciousness is adopted, we argue that there are further problems for its validation. (shrink)

In this essay, we describe practices developed by the philosophy department at the University of Oklahoma to promote fair and inclusive recruitment, application review, and hiring for faculty positions.

This book presents Robert S. Hartman's formal theory of value and critically examines many other twentieth century value theorists in its light, including A.J. Ayer, Kurt Baier, Brand Blanshard, Paul Edwards, Albert Einstein, William K. Frankena, R.M. Hare, Nicolai Hartmann, Martin Heidegger, G.E. Moore, P.H. Nowell-Smith, Jose Ortega y Gasset, Charles Stevenson, Paul W. Taylor, Stephen E. Toulmin, and J.O. Urmson. Open Access funding for this volume has been provided by the Robert S. Hartman Institute.

The article tries to show that what is often called 'Moderate Deontology' is incoherent.

The method of reflective equilibrium starts with a set of initial judgments about some subject matter and refines that set to arrive at an improved philosophical worldview. However, the method faces two, trenchant objections. The Garbage-In, Garbage-Out Objection argues that reflective equilibrium fails because it has no principled reason to rely on some inputs to the method rather than others and putting garbage-in assures you of getting garbage-out. The Circularity Objection argues that reflective equilibrium fails because it has no principled, (...) non-circular way of sorting whatever is put into the method. The moves required to avoid both objections are instructive. Reflective equilibrium requires a meta-justification, and we offer one that appeals to the epistemic goods that underwrite a view known as phenomenal conservatism. Reflective equilibrium calls on us to start with what seems most likely to be true and to alter that collection of judgments in the ways that seem most likely to get us to the truth. Proceeding in this way is epistemically defensible and unavoidable. Hence, reflective equilibrium is not just good, it’s phenomenal. (shrink)

Initial responses to questionnaires used to assess participants' understanding of informed consent for malaria vaccine trials conducted in the United States and Mali were tallied. Total scores were analyzed by age, sex, literacy (if known), and location. Ninety-two percent (92%) of answers by United States participants and 85% of answers by Malian participants were correct. Questions more likely to be answered incorrectly in Mali related to risk, and to the type of vaccine. For adult participants, independent predictors of higher scores (...) were younger age and female sex in the United States, and male sex in Mali. Scores in the United States were higher than in Mali (P = 0.005). Despite this difference participants at both sites were well informed overall. Although interpretation must be qualified because questionnaires were not intended as research tools and were not standardized among sites, these results do not support concerns about systematic low understanding among research participants in developing versus developed countries. (shrink)

Social contract thought has always contained multiple and mutually conflicting lines of argument; the minimalist contractarianism so influential today represents the weaker of two main constellations of claims. I make the case for a Kantian contract theory that emphasizes the bedrock principle of consent of the governed instead of the mere heuristic device of the exit from the state of nature. Such a shift in emphasis resolves two classic difficulties: tradi- tional contract theory’s ahistorical presumption of a pre-political settlement, and (...) its impossibly high demands on citizens seeking to practice self-rule. Kant’s solutions to these problems of property rights and citizenship are found in his political works, rather than the ethical works through which Kant’s political theory is usually interpreted. (shrink)

Kant holds that the whole “higher faculty of knowledge” (‘reason’ or ‘understanding’ in a broad sense), is a spontaneous faculty. But what could this mean? It seems that it could either be a perfectly innocent claim or a very dangerous one. The innocent thought is that reason is spontaneous because it is not wholly passive, not just a slave to what bombards the senses. If so, then the rejection of Hume’s radical empiricism would suffice for Kant’s claim. But the dangerous (...) thought is that reason, and the ‘I think’ which expresses it, is free, having the power to produce something entirely from itself. While this freedom is characteristic of practical reason, could it be characteristic of reason in general, even in its theoretical employment? Some contemporary interpreters have admirably defended the ‘dangerous’ conception by stripping it of the implication that it makes reason in general entirely self-sufficient. I attempt to add to this effort. However, what I contend is that this weightier conception of spontaneity (‘absolute’ or ‘non-relative’ spontaneity) requires abandoning a certain approach to the question that has been assumed by virtually everyone in the debate—namely, that the question can be answered by siding with either the so-called ‘metaphysical’ or the ‘epistemic’ interpreters of Kant. My goal is to suggest that the proper perspective on reason’s spontaneity resists such characterizations all together, and thereby resists any of the conditions under which it could be understood as ‘relative’ to anything. (shrink)

Kant describes the understanding as a faculty of spontaneity. What this means is that our capacity to judge what is true is responsible for its own exercises, which is to say that we issue our judgments for ourselves. To issue our judgments for ourselves is to be self-conscious – i.e., conscious of the grounds upon which we judge. To grasp the spontaneity of the understanding, then, we must grasp the self-consciousness of the understanding. I argue that what Kant requires for (...) explaining spontaneity is a conception of judgment as an intrinsic self-consciousness of the total unity of possible knowledge. This excludes what have been called ‘relative’ accounts of the spontaneity of the understanding, according to which our judgments are issued through a capacity fixed by external conditions. If so, then Kant conceives of understanding as entirely active. Or, to put it another way, he conceives of this capacity as absolutely spontaneous. (shrink)

Murdoch and Levinas both believe that our humanity requires us to suppress our natural egoism and to be morally responsive to others. Murdoch insists that while such a morality presupposes a ’transcendent background’, God should be kept out of the picture altogether. By contrast, Levinas argues that, in responding morally to others, we make contact with God (though not the God of traditional Christianity) and that in doing so we become more God-like. I attempt to clarify their agreements and differences, (...) and I offer some criticisms of their conception of humanity, God, and the relationship between them. (shrink)

Sebastian Rödl’s 2018 book articulates and unfolds the thought that judgment’s self-consciousness is identical with its objectivity. This view is laid forth in a Hegelian spirit, against the spirit of Kant’s merely formal or transcendental idealism. I review Rödl’s central theses and then offer a criticism of his reading of Kant. I hold that we can agree with Rödl that self-consciousness is identical with objectivity (though only in a ‘formal’ sense). We can also agree with Rödl that this identity enables (...) us to see the completeness and the incompleteness of judgment as two sides of one coin. And, it is not necessary to reject the formality or ‘emptiness’ of Kant’s ‘I think’ in order to establish these points. Indeed, the virtues of these theses flows directly from such notions in Kant. And, because Rödl need not reject the central features of Kant’s formal idealism, he also need not locate them as the source of the need for a turn to Hegel. (shrink)

I argue that, for Kant, there is a point at which the notions of self-consciousness and self-limitation become one. I proceed by spelling out a logical progression of forms of self-consciousness in Kant’s philosophy, where at each stage we locate the limits of the capacity in question and ask what it takes to know those limits. After briefly sketching a notion of self-consciousness available even to the animal, we look at whether there could be a notion of self-consciousness available to (...) the capacity of human sensibility. At this stage I argue that Kant and Heidegger (or Heidegger’s Kant) share a conception of what it is to be self-limiting through self-consciousness. I then critically examine this conception, and, specifically, the way in which it fails to account for the most essential form of self-limitation in Kant’s critical philosophy—namely, the form of self-limitation which rejects spatial and temporal articulation. The conclusion we reach is that Kant’s theory of transcendental self-consciousness is a theory of the activity of thinking as determining itself (including its limits) non-spatially and non-temporally. (shrink)

Digital computers carry out algorithms coded in high level programs. These abstract entities determine what happens at the physical level: they control whether electrons flow through specific transistors at specific times or not, entailing downward causation in both the logical and implementation hierarchies. This paper explores how this is possible in the light of the alleged causal completeness of physics at the bottom level, and highlights the mechanism that enables strong emergence (the manifest causal effectiveness of application programs) to occur. (...) Although synchronic emergence of higher levels from lower levels is manifestly true, diachronic emergence is generically not the case; indeed we give specific examples where it cannot occur because of the causal effectiveness of higher level variables. (shrink)

This essay presents a critique of what Robert Hanna has recently called the ‘sensibility first’ reading of Kant. I first spell out, in agreement with Hanna, why the contemporary debate among Kant scholars over conceptualism and non-conceptualism must be understood only from within the perspective of what I dub the ‘priority question’—that is, the question whether one or the other of our “two stems” of cognition may ground the objectivity and normativity of the other. I then spell out why the (...) priority question may be asked only from within the perspective of self-consciousness. Specifically, the central issue to be dealt with is how what Kant calls the original combination of understanding and sensibility is a synthesis internal to an act of self-consciousness. Only then can we ask what that original synthesis might tell us about the possibility of prioritizing one capacity over another in a story of cognition generally. Once we see the central issue more clearly, then I will look at the ‘sensibility first’ view in its most general form and propose that it should be criticized for its failure to account for Kant’s notion of an objective unity of self-consciousness. (shrink)

Enactivism has the potential to provide a sense of teleology in purpose-directed action, but without violating the principles of efficient causation. Action can be distinguished from mere reaction by virtue of the fact that some systems are self-organizing. Self-organization in the brain is reflected in neural plasticity, and also in the primacy of motivational processes that initiate the release of neurotransmitters necessary for mental and conscious functions, and which guide selective attention processes. But in order to flesh out the enactivist (...) approach in a way that is plausible and not merely an epiphenomenon, it is necessary to confront the problem of causal closure in a serious way. Atoms and molecules in the brain do not violate the normal causal principles that govern them in other contexts. The theory of self-organizing dynamical systems must be developed in a way that is compatible with causal closure rather than contradicting it. (shrink)

Remember that childhood game “Odds or Evens” you used to play in order to settle important disputes such as who gets the last slice of pizza? There was only one element of skill to that game: trying to figure out what the other person would throw. But that wasn’t easy. If your opponent was savvy, that meant trying to figure out what he thought you were going to throw. And that sometimes meant figuring out what he thought you thought he (...) was going to throw. -/- Philosophers call this “thought attribution,” and top poker players are remarkably good at it. The ability to attribute thoughts to other people is especially important in the No-Limit Texas Hold’em tournaments that have, through television and the Internet, swept the globe in recent years. What is required to succeed in this game is not merely attributing “first-order” thoughts to other players, but attributing to them thoughts about your thoughts about their thoughts. In fact, that’s the minimum. The kind of thinking done by the very best players (T. J. Cloutier, Howard Lederer, and Daniel Negreanu are especially good at it) is much more complex than that. -/- In this paper, I explore the light that recent philosophical work on thought attribution sheds on the kind of thinking that goes on at the expert poker table. The paper should be revealing to poker experts and novices alike. And it should be of interest to philosophers interested in poker or thought attribution. -/- The essay is published in Poker and Philosophy, a volume of Open Court's Popular Culture and Philosophy Series. The goal of the series is to introduce philosophical themes to non-philosophers by way of particular topics of interest (in this case poker). (shrink)

Phenomenology and physiology become commensurable through a self-organizational physiology and an "enactive" view of consciousness. Self-organizing processes appropriate and replace their own needed substrata, rather than merely being caused by interacting components. Biochemists apply this notion to the living/nonliving distinction. An enactive approach sees consciousness as actively executed by an agent rather than passively reacting to stimuli. Perception does not result from mere stimulation of brain areas by sensory impulses; unless motivated organismic purposes first anticipate and "look for" emotionally relevant.stimuli, (...) brain-sensory processing is not accompanied by perceptual consciousness. To see a soccer ball requires looking for it in the right place. The sell-organizing, emotionally motivated agent instigates this looking-for activity. (shrink)

I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The MRCT Center Post-trial Responsibilities: Continued Access to an Investigational Medicine Framework outlines a case-based, principled, stakeholder approach to evaluate and guide ethical responsibilities to provide continued access to an investigational medicine at the conclusion of a patient’s participation in a clinical trial. The Post-trial Responsibilities (PTR) Framework includes this Guidance Document as well as the accompanying Toolkit. A 41-member international multi-stakeholder Workgroup convened by the Multi-Regional Clinical Trials Center of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard University (...) (MRCT Center) developed this Guidance and Toolkit. Project Motivation A number of international organizations have discussed the responsibilities stakeholders have to provide continued access to investigational medicines. The World Medical Association, for example, addressed post-trial access to medicines in Paragraph 34 of the Declaration of Helsinki (WMA, 2013): “In advance of a clinical trial, sponsors, researchers and host country governments should make provisions for post-trial access for all participants who still need an intervention identified as beneficial in the trial. This information must also be disclosed to participants during the informed consent process.” This paragraph and other international guidance documents converge on several consensus points: • Post-trial access (hereafter referred to as “continued access” in this Framework [for terminology clarification – see definitions]) is the responsibility of sponsors, researchers, and host country governments; • The plan for continued access should be determined before the trial begins, and before any individual gives their informed consent; • The protocol should delineate continued access plans; and • The plan should be transparent to potential participants and explained during the informed consent process. -/- However, there is no guidance on how to fulfill these responsibilities (i.e., linking specific responsibilities with specific stakeholders, conditions, and duration). To fill this gap, the MRCT Center convened a working group in September of 2014 to develop a framework to guide stakeholders with identified responsibilities. This resultant Framework sets forth applicable principles, approaches, recommendations and ethical rationales for PTR regarding continued access to investigational medicines for research participants. (shrink)

In the Self's Place: The Approach of Saint Augustine presents Jean-Luc Marion's rethinking of the modern notion of the self by way of an original reading of Saint Augustine through the lens of a phenomenology of givenness. Here he tests the hermeneutic validity of concepts forged in his previous works. His goal is to show that the Confessiones are inscribed within the confessio, that love is an underlying epistemic condition of truth, and that God's call and our response to God (...) are both gifts. Ultimately, Marion points us toward a conception of the self that is at once postmodern and very Augustinian. (shrink)

How should a machine intelligence perform unsupervised structure discovery over streams of sensory input? One approach to this problem is to cast it as an apperception task [1]. Here, the task is to construct an explicit interpretable theory that both explains the sensory sequence and also satisfies a set of unity conditions, designed to ensure that the constituents of the theory are connected in a relational structure. However, the original formulation of the apperception task had one fundamental limitation: it assumed (...) the raw sensory input had already been parsed using a set of discrete categories, so that all the system had to do was receive this already-digested symbolic input, and make sense of it. But what if we don't have access to pre-parsed input? What if our sensory sequence is raw unprocessed information? The central contribution of this paper is a neuro-symbolic framework for distilling interpretable theories out of streams of raw, unprocessed sensory experience. First, we extend the definition of the apperception task to include ambiguous (but still symbolic) input: sequences of sets of disjunctions. Next, we use a neural network to map raw sensory input to disjunctive input. Our binary neural network is encoded as a logic program, so the weights of the network and the rules of the theory can be solved jointly as a single SAT problem. This way, we are able to jointly learn how to perceive (mapping raw sensory information to concepts) and apperceive (combining concepts into declarative rules). (shrink)

Ellie Anderson had always known that she wanted to have children. Her mother, Louise, was aware of this wish. Ellie was designated male at birth, but according to news sources, identified as a girl from the age of three. She was hoping to undergo gender reassignment surgery at 18, but died unexpectedly at only 16, leaving Louise grappling not only with the grief of losing her daughter, but with a complex legal problem. Ellie had had her sperm frozen before starting (...) hormone treatment, specifically so that she would retain the chance of becoming a parent after her gender reassignment. Ellie had considered what might happen to the sperm if she died and was adamant that her children should be brought into the world. She made her mother promise to ensure that this would happen. But according to UK law, Ellie’s mother has no legal right to retain her sperm, or to use it to fulfil Ellie’s wishes. In this paper, we raise several key ethical questions on this case, namely: does a refusal to bring Ellie’s children into the world wrong her posthumously? Is Ellie’s mother morally entitled to use her daughter’s sperm as Ellie wished? Should the fact that Ellie was a minor at the time of her death or the fact that she was transgendered undermine her wish to have children? Can Ellie become a parent posthumously? We consider how these complex ethical questions could be approached. (shrink)

Review of Brian Ellis's Truth and Objectivity and Paul Horwich's Truth.

Some time ago, Joel Katzav and Brian Ellis debated the compatibility of dispositional essentialism with the principle of least action. Surprisingly, very little has been said on the matter since, even by the most naturalistically inclined metaphysicians. Here, we revisit the Katzav–Ellis arguments of 2004–05. We outline the two problems for the dispositionalist identified Katzav in his 2004 , and claim they are not as problematic for the dispositional essentialist at it first seems – but not for the (...) reasons espoused by Ellis. (shrink)

Uno de los principales criterios que utiliza el método científico para establecer la pertinencia de una explicación o hipótesis competidora con respecto a un evento en la realidad física, es el principio de simplicidad o parsimonia científica. Este suele implicar la prescindencia de entidades o hipótesis consideradas innecesarias para la explicación de un fenómeno. Las raíces de este principio se suelen trazar hasta el filósofo nominalista medieval Guillermo de Ockham. En el presente trabajo, se pretende determinar el posible impacto de (...) la concepción metodológica derivada de la Navaja de Ockham en torno a la hipótesis cosmológica de los multiversos, y realizar un recorrido por la visión crítica del cosmólogo, George F. R. Ellis en la discusión sobre la validez de la hipótesis multiversal en el plano de la física contemporánea. (shrink)

John Ellis McTaggart defended an idealistic view of time in the tradition of Hegel and Bradley. His famous paper makes two independent claims (McTaggart1908): First, time is a complex conception with two different logical roots. Second, time is unreal. To reject the second claim seems to commit to the first one, i.e., to a pluralistic account of time. We compare McTaggarts views to the most important concepts of time investigated in physics, neurobiology, and philosophical phenomenology. They indicate that a (...) unique, reductionist account of time is far from being plausible, even though too many conceptions of time may seem unsatisfactory from an ontological point of view. (shrink)

Nowadays, protecting trust in social sciences also means engaging in open community dialogue, which helps to safeguard robustness and improve efficiency of research methods. The combination of open data, open review and open dialogue may sound simple but implementation in the real world will not be straightforward. However, in view of Begley and Ellis’s (2012) statement that, “the scientific process demands the highest standards of quality, ethics and rigour,” they are worth implementing. More importantly, they are feasible to work (...) on and likely will help to restore plausibility to social sciences research. Therefore, I feel it likely that the triplet of open data, open review and open dialogue will gradually emerge to become policy requirements regardless of the research funding source. (shrink)

This article presents a trope bundle theory of simple substances, the Strong Nuclear Theory[SNT] building on the schematic basis offered by Simons's (1994) Nuclear Theory[NT]. The SNT adopts Ellis's (2001) dispositional essentialist conception of simple substances as powerful particulars: all of their monadic properties are dispositional. Moreover, simple substances necessarily belong to some natural kind with a real essence formed by monadic properties. The SNT develops further the construction of substances the NT proposes to obtain an adequate trope bundle (...) theory of powerful particulars. The SNT allows for co-located powerful particulars. However, every powerful particular is necessarily co-located with its constituent tropes, which determine its causal powers. Every constituent trope of substance i is part of a trope aggregate (the n-bundle or c-bundle) that forms an individual figuring in the basic spatio-temporal relations. The location of these individuals determines the location of individual tropes. Since they are necessarily co-located with substance i when they exist, every trope t of i is necessarily co-located with i when it exits. Every simple substance has nuclear tropes necessary to it. It belongs to certain primary natural kind K because its nuclear tropes belong to certain distinct determinate kinds. (shrink)

In a lot of domains in metaphysics the tacit assumption has been that whichever metaphysical principles turn out to be true, these will be necessarily true. Let us call necessitarianism about some domain the thesis that the right metaphysics of that domain is necessary. Necessitarianism has flourished. In the philosophy of maths we find it held that if mathematical objects exist, then they do of necessity. Mathematical Platonists affirm the necessary existence of mathematical objects (see for instance Hale and Wright (...) 1992 and 1994; Wright 1983 and 1988; Schiffer 1996; Resnik 1997; Shapiro 1997 and Zalta 1988) while mathematical nominalists, usually in the form of fictionalists, hold that necessarily such objects fail to exist (see for instance Balaguer 1996 and 1998; Rosen 2001 and Yablo 2005). In metaphysics more generally, until recently it was more or less assumed that whatever the right account of composition—the account of under what conditions some xs compose a y—that account will be necessarily true (for a discussion of theories of composition see Simons 1987 and van Inwagen 1987 and 1990; the modal status of the composition relation is explicitly addressed in Schaffer 2007; Parsons 2006 and Cameron 2007). Similarly, it has generally been assumed that whatever the right account is of the nature of properties, whether they be universals, tropes, or whether nominalism is true, that account will be necessarily true (though see Rosen 2006 for a recent suggestion to the contrary). In considering theories of persistence it has been widely held that whether objects endure or perdure through time is a matter of necessity (Sider 2001; though see Lewis 1999 p227 who defends contingent perdurantism). And with respect to theories of time it is frequently held that whichever of the A- or B-theory is true is necessarily true. A-theorists often argue that there is time in a world only if the A-theory is true at that world (see for instance McTaggart 1903; Markosian 2004; Bigelow 1996; Craig 2001) while B-theorists often argue that the A-theory is internally inconsistent (Smart 1987; Mellor 1998; Savitt 2000 and Le Poidevin 1991). Once again, we find a few recent contingentist dissenters. Bourne (2006) suggests that it is a contingent feature of time that it is tensed, and thus that the A-theory is contingently true. Worlds in which there exist only B-theoretic properties are worlds with time, it is just that time in those worlds time is radically different to the way it is actually. Other defenders of the B-theory, though not expressly contingentists, do offer arguments against versions of the A-theory that try to show that such A-theories theories are inconsistent with the actual laws of nature (see for instance Saunders 2002 and Callender 2000); these arguments, at least, leave room for the possibility that the A-theories in question are contingently false (at least on the assumption that the laws of nature are themselves contingent, an assumption that not everyone accepts). Despite some notable exceptions, necessitarianism has flourished in many, if not most, domains in metaphysics. One such exception is Lewis’ famous defence of Humean supervenience as a contingent claim about our world. Lewis does not argue that necessarily, the supervenience base for all matters of fact in a world is nothing but a vast mosaic of local matters of particular fact. Rather, he thinks that we have reason to think that our world is one in which Humean supervenience holds (see Lewis 1986 p9-10 and 1994). Another exception to the necessitarian orthodoxy is to be found in the lively debate about the modal status of the laws of nature. Here, if anything, contingentism has been the dominating force, with it generally being held that there are possible worlds in which different laws of nature hold (this view is defended by, among others, Lewis 1986 and 2010; Schaffer 2005 and Sidelle 2002). Necessitarian dissenters hold that the laws of nature are necessary, frequently because they think it is necessary that fundamental properties have the causal or nomic profiles they do (see for instance Shoemaker 1980 and 1988; Swoyer 1982; Bird 1995; Ellis and Lierse 1994). Nevertheless, when it comes to thinking about the nature of the laws themselves, the necessitarian presumption is back on firm footing. Though there is disagreement about whether the laws are generalisations that feature in the most virtuous true axiomatisation of all the particular matters of fact (often known as the Humean view of laws and defended by Ramsey 1978; Lewis 1986 and Beebee 2000) or whether laws are relations of necessity that hold between universals (a view defended by Armstrong 1983; Dretske 1977; Tooley 1977 and Carroll 1990) no one has seriously suggested that it might be a contingent matter which of these is the right account of laws. The necessitarian orthodoxy is not surprising since metaphysics is largely an a priori process. While a priori reasoning may be used to determine whether a proposition is necessary or contingent, it is not well placed (in the absence of a posteriori evidence) to determine whether a contingent proposition is actually true or false. Since metaphysicians aim to tell us which principles are true in which worlds, on the face of it the discovery that metaphysical principles are contingent seems to make part of the task of metaphysics epistemically intractable. In what follows I consider two reasons one might end up embracing contingentism and whether this would lead one into epistemic difficulty. The following section considers a route to contingent metaphysical truths that proceeds via a combination of conceptual necessities and empirical discoveries. Section 3 considers whether there might be synthetic contingent metaphysical truths, and the final section raises the question of whether if there were such truths we would be well placed to come to know them. (shrink)

This paper examines the idea that there might be natural kinds of causal processes, with characteristic diachronic structure, in much the same way that various chemical elements form natural kinds, with characteristic synchronic structure. This claim -- if compatible with empirical science -- has the potential to shed light on a metaphysics of essentially dispositional properties, championed by writers such as Bird and Ellis.

Scientific essentialism holds that: (1) each scientific kind is associated with the same set of properties in every possible world; and (2) every individual member of a scientific kind belongs to that kind in every possible world in which it exists. Recently, Ellis (Scientific essentialism, 2001 ; The philosophy of nature 2002 ) has provided the most sustained defense of scientific essentialism, though he does not clearly distinguish these two claims. In this paper, I argue that both claims face (...) a number of formidable difficulties. The necessities of scientific essentialism are not adequately distinguished from semantic necessities, they have not been shown to be necessities in the strictest sense, they must be relativized to context, and they must either be confined to a subset of scientific properties without warrant or their connection to causal powers must be revoked. Moreover, upon closer examination (1) turns out to be a trivial thesis that can be satisfied by non-kinds, and (2) is inapplicable to some of the most fundamental kinds in the basic sciences. (shrink)