This paper examines the Confucian concept of tian, conventionally translated into English as “Heaven.‘ The secondary literature on tian has primarily focused on the question of what tian is: e.g., whether tian is an anthropomorphic deity or a naturalistic force, or whether tian is transcendent or immanent. Instead, this paper locates tian with respect to the ethical life of human beings, and argues that the two conflicting concepts of “moral economy‘ and “contingency‘ are main characteristics of tian. This paper (...) further investigates these characteristics in Kongzi’s and Mengzi’s ethical thought: how they conceptualized moral economy and contingency, and how their different conceptualizations shaped their respective ethical programs: Kongzi’s ethics of faith and Mengzi’s ethics of confidence. (shrink)

Contingency is the presence of non-actualized possibility in the world. Fatalism is a view of reality on which there is no contingency. Since it is contingency that permits agency, there has traditionally been much interest in contingency. This interest has long been embarrassed by the contention that simple and plausible assumptions about the world lead to fatalism. I begin with an Aristotelian argument as presented by Richard Taylor. Appreciation of this argument has been stultified by a (...) question pertaining to the source of necessity and possibility and a closely related one regarding the nature of metaphysics itself. Answering these questions reveals the crucial issue here, to wit, necessity and possibility in a temporal world. This issue is investigated through an important later criticism of Taylor by David Foster Wallace. Wallace’s critique is significant because it brings to the fore the pivotal notion for understanding contingency in a temporal world, that of synchronic possibility, the idea that incompatible states of affairs are possible at a single moment. This notion provides the basis of distinguishing two systematic accounts of truth, modality and time: two metaphysics of contingency. On one account, Taylor’s Aristotelian argument is straightforwardly valid and compelling; on the other, it is fallacious. In closing, I present reasons why the former account, supporting the Aristotelian views of time and truth, is correct and make some comments to ameliorate this conclusion. (shrink)

This paper argues that the problem of how to act in the face of radical contingency is of central importance in Musil’s novel and intimately connected to what Musil calls the sense of possibility. There is a variety of different strategies by which individuals, and the state of Kakania as a whole, deal with contingency, and they all involve a claim to a kind of grounding or necessity; for example, the Parallel Campaign is one big attempt to ground (...) Kakania in what can be perceived as a form of metaphysical necessity. With the figure of Ulrich, Musil radicalizes the problem by showing the consequences of viewing even the relationship one has to one’s own self as contingent – the ultimate outcome of which is self-alienation. (shrink)

What is special about the philosophy of history when the history is about science? I shall focus on an impasse between two perspectives — one seeking an ideal of rationality to guide scientific practices, and one stressing the contingency of the practices. They disagree on what this contingency means for scientific norms. Their impasse underlies some fractious relations within History and Philosophy of Science. Since the late 1960s, this interdisciplinary field has been described, variously, as an “intimate relationship (...) or marriage of convenience”, a “marriage for the sake of reason”, a “troubling interaction ”, a “precarious relationship”, or one at risk of “ epistemological derangement”. -/- My paper has three aims. First, I characterise two idealised perspectives in this impasse: the sublimers and subversives. Then I describe a curious dynamic in which each perspective accuses the other of, simultaneously, claiming too little and too much. Subliming is dismissed for being scholastic, and condemned for being imperialist. Subverting is disparaged for being merely sociological, then criticised for being irrational or relativist. Here I draw on and extend the analyses of science studies in Kitcher, Zammito and others. Second, I argue that sublimers and subversives often talk past each other. Their mutual dismissals and condemnations arise partly because each perspective misconstrues the other’s claims. Each fails to see that the other is interested in different problems and interprets concepts differently. Third, I suggest that my analysis clarifies some current disagreements and old debates about contingency in science. It may also apply to debates on the contingency of norms in non- scientific realms. (shrink)

Leibniz' first problem with contingency stems from his doctrine of divine creation (not his later doctrine of truth) and is solved via his concepts of necessity per se, etc. (not via his later concept of infinite analysis). I scrutinize some of the earliest texts in which the first problem and its solution occur. I compare his "per se modal concepts" with his concept of analysis and with the traditional concept of metaphysical necessity. I then identify and remove the main (...) obstacle to Leibniz' employment of these concepts by reflecting on his concept of a world and comparing and contrasting it with contemporary conceptions. Finally I sketch the place that this early problem and its solution had in the context of his mature philosophy. A disagreement between Sleigh and Adams which hinges on the assumption that there is just one problem with competing solutions is seen to dissolve in this light. (shrink)

This is the second of a series of papers inspired by a paper I wrote around 1989. In this paper, I consider the notion of material contingency and relate it to the traditional, metaphysically loaded Principle of Sufficient Reason.

I show that intuitive and logical considerations do not justify introducing Leibniz’s Law of the Indiscernibility of Identicals in more than a limited form, as applying to atomic formulas. Once this is accepted, it follows that Leibniz’s Law generalises to all formulas of the first-order Predicate Calculus but not to modal formulas. Among other things, identity turns out to be logically contingent.

Grounding contingentism is the doctrine according to which grounds are not guaranteed to necessitate what they ground. In this paper I will argue that the most plausible version of contingentism is incompatible with the idea that the grounding relation is transitive, unless either ‘priority monism’ or ‘contrastivism’ are assumed.

Excerpt: In this essay I explore the nature of the necessity of historical development in Nietzsche’s genealogy of Judeo-Christian moral values. I argue that the progression of moral stages in Nietzsche’s study is ordered in such a way that the failure of each stage is logically and structurally necessary, that each failure structures the resultant system or paradigm, but that the historical manifestation of moral paradigms coinciding with predicted or projected theoretical structures is contingent upon a multitude of other historical (...) factors. Therefore, the systematic internal failures of moral stages allow for, but do not cause, successive events. (shrink)

This paper defends the traditional view that the laws of nature are contingent, or, if some of them are necessary, this is due to analytic principles for the individuation of the law-governed properties. Fundamentally, I argue that the supposed explanatory purposes served by taking the laws to be necessary --showing how laws support counterfactuals, how properties are individuated, or how we have knowledge of properties--are in fact undermined by the continued possibility of the imagined scenarios--this time, described neutrally--which seemed to (...) disprove the claim to necessity in the first place. I speculate that this will be true for any proposed necessary a posteriori truths, and is a basis for rejecting their supposed metaphysical significance. (shrink)

Perhaps all concrete phenomena obtain solely in virtue of physical phenomena. Even so, it seems that the world could have been otherwise. It seems that physicalism, if true, is contingently true. In fact, many believe that the actual truth of physicalism allows metaphysically possible worlds duplicating the actual world in all physical respects while containing immaterial extras, e.g. ghosts, spirits, or Cartesian souls, that no physicalist would believe actually exist. Here I focus on physicalism regarding mentality and argue that the (...) doctrine does not allow possible worlds that physically duplicate the actual world while differing mentally. By revealing what physicalism (regarding the mind) does not allow, this essay helps us get clear on what the view really amounts to and why it is contingent. (shrink)

A chapter exploring the relations between humility and the sciences.

This paper focuses on Leibniz’s conception of modality and its application to the issue of natural laws. The core of Leibniz’s investigation of the modality of natural laws lays in the distinction between necessary, geometrical laws on the one hand, and contingent, physical laws of nature on the other. For Leibniz, the contingency of physical laws entailed the assumption of the existence of an additional form of causality beyond mechanical or efficient ones. While geometrical truths, being necessary, do not (...) require the use of the principle of sufficient reason, physical laws are not strictly determined by geometry and therefore are logically distinct from geometrical laws. As a consequence, the set of laws that regulate the physical laws could have been created otherwise by God. However, in addition to this, the contingency of natural laws does not consist only in the fact that God has chosen them over other possible ones. On the contrary, Leibniz understood the status of natural laws as arising from the action internal to physical substances. Hence the actuality of physical laws results from a causal power that is inherent to substances rather than being the mere consequence of the way God arranged the relations between physical objects. Focusing on three instances of Leibniz’s treatment of contingency in physics, this paper argues that, in order to account for the contingency of physical laws, Leibniz maintained that final causes, in addition to efficient and mechanical ones, must operate in physical processes and operations. (shrink)

This article makes three claims concerning the concept of contingency. First, we argue that the word contingency is used in far too many ways to be useful. Its many meanings are detrimental to clarity of discussion and thought in history and the social sciences. We show how there are eight distinct uses of the word and illustrate this with numerous examples from the social sciences and history, highlighting the scope for confusion caused by the many, often contradictory uses (...) of the term. Second, we impose some order on these uses through developing a threefold classification of contingency based on assumptions about possible worlds and determinism. Finally, we discuss why we believe that one of the classes is a special use of the word without relevance to the social sciences, while the two remaining classes are nothing more than a variety of the “no hidden factors” argument in the debate on indeterminism and determinism. (shrink)

A Dialogue on Determinism, Contingency and Free Will.

In this paper, I hope to solve a problem that’s as old as the hills: the problem of contingency for religious belief. Paradigmatic examples of this argument begin with a counterfactual premise: had we been born at a different time or in a difference place, we easily could have held different beliefs on religious topics. Ultimately, and perhaps by additional steps, we’re meant to reach the skeptical conclusion that very many of our religious beliefs do not amount to knowledge. (...) I survey some historical examples of this argument, and I try to fill the gap between the counterfactual premise and the skeptical conclusion as forcefully as possible. I consider the following possibilities: there are no additional steps in the argument; or there are and they concern the alleged safety condition on knowledge, or the alleged non-accidentality condition on knowledge, or the unclarity produced by disagreement. On every possibility, the argument from the counterfactual premise to the conclusion of widespread skepticism is invalid. It seems, then, that there is no serious problem of contingency for religious belief. (shrink)

I argue that Kant acknowledges two models of spontaneous self-determination that rational beings are capable of. The first model involves absolute unconditional necessity and excludes any form of contingency. The second model involves (albeit not as a matter of definition) a form of contingency which entails alternative possibilities for determining oneself. The first model would be exhibited by a divine being; the second model is exhibited by human beings. Human beings do, however, partake in the divine model up (...) to an extent, namely, as far as the legislative spontaneity of their law-giving faculties are concerned. I conclude by suggesting that for Kant, the mechanistic principle that we are exclusively determined by natural causes poses a twofold threat for human agency. In one respect (in relation to the second model), it threatens us with the obliteration of contingency, or with the universality of hypothetical necessity. But in another respect (in relation to the first model), it threatens us (and our putative "laws") with the obliteration of absolute necessity, or with the universality of contingency. (shrink)

This paper introduces Richard Rorty’s notion of the liberal ironist and his vision of a liberal utopia and explores the implications of these for philosophical questions concerning morality, as well as morality in general. Rorty’s assertions of the contingency of language, society and self are explored. Under the contingency of language, the figure of the ironist is defined, and Rorty’s conception of vocabularies is discussed. Under the contingency of society, Rorty’s definition of liberalism, his opposition of literary (...) culture to materialist and metaphysical culture, and his notions concerning utopian politics are discussed. Under the contingency of self, Rorty’s critique of Kantian and his appropriations of Deweyan and Freudian conceptions of morality are presented. Other key factors discussed are Rorty’s theory of the separation of the private and public spheres of life and his ideas concerning cruelty and human solidarity. In this way, a critical analysis of Rorty’s proposed balance between private, ironic doubt and public, liberal social hope is presented and assessed in terms of its merit as a system of thought suited to the needs of post-metaphysical, liberal societies. (shrink)

Schelling’s middle period works have always been a source of fascination: they mark a break with the idealism (in both senses of the word) of his early works and the Fichtean and then Hegelian tradition; while they are not weighed down by the reactionary burden of his late lectures on theology and mythology. But they have been equally a source of perplexity. The central work of this period, the Essay on Human Freedom (1809) takes as its topic the moral problem (...) of freedom, but spends much of its time telling a mystical-metaphysical story about the creation of the world that attempts to paint a picture of a kind of irreducible metaphysical contingency in nature. What is the relation between the moral and the metaphysical elements of the Freedom essay? It has never been obvious. But some recent Anglophone scholarship suggests an answer. In her Freedom and Reason in Kant, Schelling and Kierkegaard (2006) Michelle Kosch presents a strong case for the view that Schelling’s Freedom essay is motivated by a critique of Kant’s conception of autonomy in ethics. The idea is that Kant’s problems start not if he fails to show that it is rational to be moral, but if he succeeds. For if he does, then it is irrational to be immoral, and hence it is impossible for a rational agent to act immorally: an act not in conformity with duty is evidence of irrationality (perhaps one’s rational agency has been thwarted by pathological inclinations). This is broadly the Socratic position: evil, as a knowing immoral act, is not possible. Officially Kant rejects the classical view, most explicitly in his 1793 Religion with the Bounds of Mere Reason, for a Christian position in which freedom is understood as the freedom to choose between good and evil without thereby abandoning one’s agency. But he has no obvious means for doing so. Kosch attempts to show that Schelling comes, by 1809, to identify his early work with something like this Kantian dilemma: we are as badly off when it comes to our freedom if we are pushed around by reasons as if we are pushed around by causes: the Hegelian ruse of reason is as inimical to our agency as phenomenal determinism. The Freedom essay is the result of Schelling’s attempt to defend a muscular, Christian conception of the possibility of evil. Nevertheless, for Kosch, Schelling’s move to the metaphysical level is still problematic: just where one would expect an account of norms that does not infer them from our rational autonomy, we get, puzzlingly, a cosmology. I will argue that Kosch’s matrix for interpreting Schelling in fact does give us a way of understanding Schelling’s metaphysics of contingency. In broad outline, Schelling’s argument is that our choice of metaphysical schema is constrained by a correct understanding of agency: the world cannot be causally determined because that is inconsistent with our understanding of ourselves as agents; but equally the world cannot be rationally determined, and for the same reason. Schelling’s metaphysics of contingency is an unpacking of the consequences of this inference, and not a botched attempt to ground values outside of rational autonomy. (shrink)

Quentin Meillassoux’s ‘Spectral Dilemma offers philosophy an answer to an age old problem, one that Pascal had intimated on in the wager. Is it better to believe in God for life or abstain from belief and declare atheism? The paradox of theism and atheism has separated philosophy for centuries by limiting the possibilities for real thought. For Meillassoux, there is more at stake than just the limitations of thought. Both atheism and theism have exhausted all the conditions of human life. (...) In order to answer this paradox Meillassoux must combine religious insight that the dead must be resurrected with the atheist conviction that God does not exist. (Harman, Quentin Meillassoux, Philosophy in the Making p.87). The aforementioned insight, grounds Meillassoux’s position in what he calls a Divine Ethics. The concept of the Divine carries both atheism and theism to their ultimate consequences to unveil the truth that … “God does not exist, and also that it is quite necessary to believe in God (Harman p.236). The Divine links both assertions in an absolute ethics which Meillassoux calls Divinology. This leads us to our next question what is the Spectral Dilemma? In order to answer this question, we cannot rely solely on what the dilemma is, for it is not, a sufficient account of what Meillassoux is trying to solve. We must proceed to understand the conditions of what Divine Ethics are, and how the Divinology can best represent life for both the living and the dead. What is a spectre? According to Meillassoux it is a dead person who has not been properly mourned (Meillassoux, Spectral Dilemma p.261). This person’s death haunts us. This haunting is the mere fact that we cannot mourn their loss, for as time passes by, our bond with the dead, or dearly departed, proves to be inadequate for our own lives. This haunting leads us to utter despair. The sheer horror of their death is a burden that lays heavy on our backs; and not just our own backs, or our families backs, but for all those people who have crossed their paths in history (Meillassoux p. 262). These terrible deaths are called Essential Spectres and they include all deaths, such as, odious, premature, the death of children, the death of parents; and all of those poor individuals who know that their own destiny will at some point in time, be the same as these poor individuals (Meillassoux p.262). But it is precisely all death in its inconclusive finality that haunts us all, not just natural deaths or even violent grueling death and causalities of war. These essential spectres, are the dead who refuse to Passover, even though they are gone. This concept must seem absurd to any reader to believe in them, but still, Meillassoux makes his point that these essential spectres still cry out to us all, that they still exist with us (Meillassoux p.262). Meillassoux claims that the completion of mourning must occur and Essential Mourning, which is described as an accomplishment of a living relationship with the dead, as opposed to maintaining a morbid bond with those who have survived after their deaths (Meillassoux p.263). According to Meillassoux, essential mourning grants us the possibility, of forming a bond again with the dearly departed (Meillassoux p.263). This bond actively animates their memory into our lives again, but the concept of accomplishment means, that to live again with those essential spectres … “[R]ather than relating to them with the memory of their morbid death” (Meillassoux p.263). In order to fully understand this possibility, we must ask the question does God exist. Is there a merciful spirit, which transcends all of humanity? Is this God working in the world? If so, then why do essential spectres exist? How is it possible that these terrible deaths occur in the world and are allowed by such a God? If this is so, that God allows these deaths to occur then perhaps God is not all powerful? Perhaps this so called transcendent principle is absent in the world (Meillassoux p.263).Meillassoux states that both the religious and atheist options do not allow for essential mourning to take place. Both these positions lead to disappear when confronting death. What is needed is what will follow in the rest of this paper … a Divine Inexistence. We need to assert the existence of a Virtual-God that is both inexistent and possible, but also contingent and unmasterable (Harman p.89). The Divine Inexistence is the main concept of Meillassoux’s Divinology but also the answer to the spectral dilemma, that a new ethics is both possible and needed. This Divine Ethics will both save Essential Spectres and Philosophy. My essential claim is that the actual article ‘Spectral Dilemma’ published in collapse Journal, is insufficient in fully answering the problem of essential spectres. The juxtaposition of atheism and theism is not enough to philosophically explain the significance of the Divine Inexistence. The article is not lengthy enough to explain how ontology, contingent-metaphysics and ethics relate to the fundamental problem. The Divine Inexistence must be fully articulated with the entirety of Meillassoux’s Divinology. I will attempt to fully express the entirety of Meillassoux for my reader, while at the same time, offering a comprehensive answer to the spectral dilemma. -/- . (shrink)

This article affords particular attention to the relationship between memory, the narrativization of news and its linear construction, conceived as journalism’s ‘memory- work’. In elaborating upon this ‘work’, it is proposed that the Hegelian notion of retroactive causation (as used by Slavoj Žižek) can examine how analyses of news journalists ‘retroactively’ employ the past in the temporal construction of news. In fact, such retroactive (re)ordering directs attention to the ways in which journalists contingently select ‘a past’ to confer meaning on (...) the present. With regard to current literature, it is noted that a retroactive analysis can highlight two important dialectics within the practice of news journalism: 1) the relation between contingency and necessity; and, 2) the relation between content and form. Indeed, it is argued that this theoretical account offers a novel approach to examining the significance of memory in news journalism as well as the inconsistencies which underscore journalism’s memory-work. It is in accordance with such inconsistency that broader reflections on time, temporality and our relations to the past can be made. (shrink)

This paper investigates the degree to which information theory, and the derived uses that make it work as a metaphor of our age, can be helpful in thinking about God’s immanence and transcendance. We ask when it is possible to say that a consciousness has to be behind the information we encounter. If God is to be thought about as a communicator of information, we need to ask whether a communication system has to pre-exist to the divine and impose itself (...) to God. If we want God to be Creator, and not someone who would work like a human being, ‘creating’ will mean sustaining in being as much the channel, the material system, as the message. Is information control? It seems that God’s actions are not going to be informational control of everything. To clarify the issue, we attempt to distinguish two kinds of ‘genialities’ in nature, as a way to evaluate the likelihood of God from nature. We investigate concepts and images of God, in terms of the history of ideas but also in terms of philosophical theology, metaphysics, and religious ontology. (shrink)

Gideon Rosen has recently sketched an argument which aims to establish that the notion of metaphysical modality is systematically ambiguous. His argument contains a crucial sub-argument which has been used to argue for Metaphysical Contingentism, the view that some claims of fundamental metaphysics are metaphysically contingent rather than necessary. In this paper, Rosen’s argument is explicated in detail and it is argued that the most straight-forward reconstruction fails to support its intended conclusion. Two possible ways to save the argument are (...) rebutted and it is furthermore argued that the crucial sub-argument only supports a rather particular variant of Metaphysical Contingentism. (shrink)

I reject both (a) inevitabilism about the historical development of the sciences and (b) what Ian Hacking calls the "put up or shut up" argument against those who make contingentist claims. Each position is guilty of a lack of humility about our epistemic capacities.

In this paper, I present and analyse the theological reasons given by contemporary authors such as Robert J. Russell, Thomas Tracy and John Polkinghorne, as well as thirteenth‑century scholar Thomas Aquinas, to admit that the created universe requires being intrinsically contingent in its causing, in particular referring to their doctrines of providence. Contemporary authors stress the need of having indeterminate events within the natural world to allow for God’s providential action within creation, whereas Aquinas focuses his argument on the idea (...) that a universe which includes contingent causes is a more perfect universe. I compare these two approaches, concluding that Aquinas’ seems to be better suited to account for true indetermination within the natural world, claiming that divine causality is not required to complement natural causality in its own level. (shrink)

This dissertation is a contribution to the contemporary field of phenomenological psychopathology, or the phenomenological study of psychiatric disorders. The work proceeds with two major aims. The first is to show how a phenomenological approach can clarify and illuminate the nature of psychopathology—specifically those conditions typically labeled as major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder. The second is to show how engaging with psychopathological conditions can challenge and undermine many phenomenological presuppositions, especially phenomenology’s status as a transcendental philosophy and its corresponding (...) anti-naturalistic outlook. In the opening chapter, I articulate the three layers of the subject matter of phenomenological research—what I refer to as “existentials,” “modes,” and “prejudices.” As I argue, while each layer contributes to what we might call the “structure” of human existence, they do not do so in the same way, or to the same degree. Because phenomenological psychopathology—and applied phenomenology in general—aims to characterize how the structure of human existence can change and alter, it is paramount that these layers be adequately delineated and defined before investigating these changes. In chapters two through five, I conduct hermeneutic and phenomenological investigations of psychopathological phenomena typically labeled as major depressive disorder or bipolar disorder. These investigations address the affective aspects of depression and mania, and the embodied aspects of depression. In addition to clearly articulating the nature of these phenomena, I show how certain psychopathological conditions involve changes in the deepest or most fundamental layer of human existence—what I refer to as existentials. As I argue, many of the classical phenomenologists believed that these structural features were necessary, unchanging, and universal. However, this presupposition is challenged through the examination of psychopathological and neuropathological conditions, undermining the status of phenomenology as a transcendental philosophy. While this challenge to classical phenomenology is only sketched in the early chapters, in chapters six and seven I develop it in more detail in order to achieve two distinct ends. In chapter six I argue that psychopathology and neuropathology not only challenge phenomenology’s status as a transcendental philosophy, but also supply a key to developing a phenomenological naturalism. Phenomenological naturalism, as I articulate it, is a position in which phenomenology is not subsumed by the metaphysical and methodological framework of the natural sciences, but nonetheless maintains the capacity to investigate how the natural world stands independent of human subjectivity. In the seventh chapter I argue that a phenomenology in which existentials are contingent and variable rather than necessary and unchanging allows phenomenologists to contribute to new dimensional approaches to psychiatric classification. Rather than begin from distinct categories of disorder, these approaches begin from distinct core features of human existence. These features, referred to as either dimensions or constructs, can vary in degree and are studied in both normal and pathological forms. (shrink)

This chapter discusses different perspectives and trends in social decision making, especially the actual processes used by humans when they make decisions in their everyday lives or in business situations. The chapter uses cognitive psychological techniques to break down these processes and set them in their social context. Most of our decisions are made in a social context and are therefore influenced by other people. If you are at an auction and bidding on a popular item, you will try to (...) guess how long the others will keep in the bidding race. Likewise, when you and another person have to coordinate your decision to win a card game you will also try to think about what the other person know and what s/he will do, so you can adjust your choice. In other words, you are trying to come up with a model of the person and his decision-making process. This involves the capability to think about the thoughts and intentions of others, to put yourself in another person's shoes (perspective taking), and to think recursively about your and another person's over several steps (like in a game of chess). Especially, recursive social reasoning is one of the hallmarks of social decision-making. Whereas observational, competitive and cooperative decision-making can all be seen as trying to maximize the own reward or profit, altruistic decision-making blatantly violates this axiomatic principle of behavioral economics. Yet, altruistic behavior is quite common throughout human society. -/- . (shrink)

This chapter provides an overview and critical discussion of cosmological arguments for theism, with special focus on the Kalam argument and arguments from contingency.

The main thesis of this paper is that, whereas an intention simpliciter is a commitment to a plan of action, a conditional intention is a commitment to a contingency plan, a commitment about what to do upon (learning of) a certain contingency relevant to one’s interests obtaining. In unconditional intending, our commitment to acting is not contingent on finding out that some condition obtains. In conditional intending, we intend to undertake an action on some condition, impinging on our (...) interests, which is as yet unsettled for us, but about which we can find out without undue cost. (shrink)

The Phenomenal Concept Strategy offers the physicalist perhaps the most promising means of explaining why the connection between mental facts and physical facts appears to be contingent even though it is not. In this article, we show that the large body of evidence suggesting that our concepts are often embodied and grounded in sensorimotor systems speaks against standard forms of the PCS. We argue, nevertheless, that it is possible to formulate a novel version of the PCS that is thoroughly in (...) keeping with embodied cognition, focuses on features of physical concepts, and succeeds in explaining the appearance of contingency. (shrink)

In the popular press and the halls of politics, controversies over evolution are increasingly strident these days. Hegel is relevant in this connection, even though he rejected the theories of evolution he knew about, because he wanted rational understanding but without claims to intelligent design. He is reported to have said that nature has no history, but a closer examination will show that his ideaqs are more nuanced and that there is more room for darwinian ideas than one might expect, (...) though not enough to allow the full Darwinian contingency of form. (shrink)

The chapter studies the speculative realist critique of the notion of finitude and its implications for the theme of the "end of the world" as a teleological and eschatological idea. It is first explained how Quentin Meillassoux proposes to overcome both Kantian and Heideggerian "correlationist" approaches with his speculative thesis of absolute contingency. It is then shown that Meillassoux's speculative materialism also dismantles the close link forged by Kant between the teleological ends of human existence and a teleological notion (...) of the "end of the world." Speculative materialism no longer sees the end of thought, or the end of the thinking human being, as an insurmountable limit of conceivability, but rather as one contingent and possible event among others. This allows us to conceive an "end of all things" in a positive sense with regard to which the old eschatological hope for the end of the present world of injustice and for the emergence of a new world of perfect, "divine" justice becomes meaningful and legitimate in an entirely new sense. (shrink)

In these pages, we expose the main traits of St. Albert the Great’s doctrine of providence and fate, considered by Palazzo the keystone of his philosophical system. To describe it we examine his systematic works, primarily his Summa of Theology. His discussion follows clearly the guidelines of the Summa of Alexander of Hales, in order to delve into the set of problems faced over the centuries by theological tradition. Albert also restates the reflections of different authors like Boethius or Saint (...) John of Damascus but, in his Summa he incorporates to his reflections also the noteworthy book of Nemesius of Emesa, De natura hominis, which includes some pages on providence. Albert gives his personal solution to the complex questions of providence, destiny and contingency of the world. His conception of providence is developed in the frame of the creative power of the almighty God. God’s knowledge is necessary and inerrant and his providential purposes are infallible, but that does not mean that every event is necessary. He does not communicate His own proprieties to the creatures. In order to understand this problem, Albert recalls the notion of hypothetical necessity coined by Boethius in an Aristotelian framework and the difference between 'necessitas consequentis' and 'necessitas consequentiae' proposed by Alexander of Hales. He also develops his account of providence, closely linked to the topic of fate. However, it would be exaggerated to deem his position deterministic. (shrink)

In these pages, we expose the main traits of the doctrine of providence of Saint Albert the Great, according to his systematic works, mainly his Summa of Theology. His discussion follows clearly the guidelines of the Summa of Alexander of Hales, in order to delve into the set of problems faced by theological tradition over the centuries. Albert also restates the reflections of different authors like Boethius or Saint John of Damascus and he gives his personal solution to the complex (...) questions of providence, destiny and contingency of the world. (shrink)

The Contingency Postulate of Truth. - Is there a statement that cannot be false under any contingent conditions? Two well-known philosophical schools have given contradictory answers to this question about the existence of a necessarily true statement: Fallibilists (Albert, Keuth) have denied its existence, transcendental pragmatists (Apel, Kuhlmann) and objective idealists (Wandschneider, Hösle) have affirmed it. Dieter Wandschneider has (following Vittorio Hösle) translated the principle of fallibilism, according to which every statement is fallible, into a thesis which he calls (...) the contingency postulate of truth (CPT). It says: <For every true statement there are contingent conditions.> If this postulate were true, it would mark an insurmountable boundary of knowledge: a final epistemic justification would then not be possible. Wandschneider has therefore developed a counterargument to show that the contingency postulate of truth cannot be formulated without contradiction and implies the thesis that there is at least one necessarily true statement. This essay deals with the systematic question whether the contingency postulate of truth really cannot be presented without contradiction. To this end I will first present the contingency postulate and the associated problems (I.). Then I will analyze Wandschneider's argument against the consistency of the contingency postulate (II.) and finally reject it with the help of some considerations from the field of epistemic logic (III.). (shrink)

This chapter is a critical discussion of the third chapter of Tim O ' Connor ' s * Theism and Ultimate Explanation *. In this chapter, O ' Connor advances the & quot ; existence stage & quot ; of his cosmological argument from contingency. I argue that naturalists have good reason to think that on each of the live hypotheses -- infinite regress, brute contingency, brute necessity -- naturalism is preferable to theism.

An essay review of Léna Soler, Emiliano Trizio, and Andrew Pickering (eds.), Science As It Could Have Been: Discussing the Contingency/Inevitability Problem (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press).

The article considers the notion of contingency and chance in Thomas Aquinas.

It can be said that Rousseau is one of the most acute thinkers of the corruption of civilisation. In fact, the Second Discourse and the Essay on the Origins of Languages could be read as elaborate analyses of advancing social and cultural decline inasmuch as mankind is continually moving away from the original state of natural innocence. But Rousseau’s idea of corruption is not straightforward. I try to show that in the Essay, Rousseau emphasizes the natural causes for corruption. I (...) argue that an opposition between necessity and contingency, which more accurately represents the two modes operating in Rousseau’s doctrine, should replace the standard nature/culture divide. The contingency of natural catastrophes is found to be ultimately responsible for the corruption in the social realm, which is therefore largely driven by natural causes. (shrink)

God’s Knowledge of Future Contingents. John Duns Scotus’ Explanation The article concerns John Duns Scotus’ views on the problem of God’s knowledge of future contingents, presented by Scotus in his Lectura in librum primum Sententiarumd. 39, n. 1-93. He begins his analysis of the notion of God’s knowledge concerning the future events by criticizing two theories: first, the claim that the content of the idea of a thing, possessed by God, can include contingency of this thing; second, the claim (...) that eternity of God is simultaneous with the flowing time as a whole, and therefore His knowledge of future contingents is the knowledge of present contingents. Duns Scotus presents his own conception in the form of the following claims: (1) there is contingency in the reality, however, we are not able to prove it; (2) the proximate second causes are not the causes of contingency in things; (3) the main cause of contingency in reality is God, precisely His will. Thus, contingency is not an imperfection because it is produced immediately by God. The article also presents Scotus’ theory of synchronic contingency. This conception explains the possibility of God’s contingent knowledge of contingent reality. Keywords: John Duns Scotus, future contingents, God’s knowledge, free will, necessity, contingency. (shrink)

We live in a contingent world, a world that could have been different. A common way to deal with this contingency is by positing the existence of all possibilities. This, however, doesn’t get rid of the contingency – it merely moves it from the third-person view to the first-person view.

This dissertation shows how initial conditions play a special role in the explanation of contingent and irregular outcomes, including, in the form of geographic context, the special case of uneven development in the social sciences. The dissertation develops a general theory of this role, recognizes its empirical limitations in the social sciences, and considers how it might be applied to the question of uneven development. The primary purpose of the dissertation is to identify and correct theoretical problems in the study (...) of uneven development; it is not intended to be an empirical study. Chapter 1 introduces the basic problem, and discusses why it has become especially salient in debates concerning uneven development. Chapter 2 develops an argument for the importance of initial conditions in the philosophy of science, developed specifically in the context of the Bhaskar/Cartwright ‘open systems’ (and by extension, ‘exogenous factor’) emphasis on the ubiquity of contingency in the universe and rejection of explanation based on laws of nature (regularity accounts) of causation. Chapter 3 makes three claims concerning the concept of contingency, especially as related to the study of society: 1) that there are eight distinct uses of the word contingency, and its many meanings are detrimental to clarity of discussion and thought in history and the social sciences; 2) that it is possible to impose some order on these different uses through developing a classification of contingency into three types based on assumptions concerning possible worlds and determinism; 3) that one of the classes is a special use of the word without relevance to the social sciences, while the two remaining classes are nothing more than a variety of the ‘no hidden factors’ argument in the debate on indeterminism and determinism (and thus related to the concept of spacetime trajectories caused by initial conditions and the interference of these in the form of ‘exogenous factors’ with ‘open systems’). Chapter 4 The concept of explanation based on initial conditions together with laws of nature is widely associated with determinism. In the social sciences determinism has frequently been rejected due to the moral dilemmas it is perceived as presenting. Chapter 4 considers problems with this view. Chapter 5 considers attitudes among geographers, economists, and historians towards using geographic factors as initial conditions in explanation and how they might acceptably be used, in particular their role in ‘anchoring’ aspatial theories of social processes to real-world distributions. Chapter 6 considers the relationship of the statistical methods common in development studies with the trend towards integrating geographical factors into econometric development studies. It introduces the statistical argument on ‘apparent populations’ that arrives at conclusions concerning determinism consistent with Chapters 2 and 3 of the dissertation. The need for the visual interpretation of data with descriptive statistics and maps and their utility in the study of uneven development is discussed with a number of examples. Chapter 7 applies these concepts to the ‘institutions versus geography’ debate in development studies, using Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson’s 2002 ‘reversal of fortune’ argument as a primary example. Chapter 8 considers possible directions for future work, both theoretical and empirical. Chapter 9 concludes with a discussion of additional possible objections to the use of initial conditions as exogenous factors in explanation. (shrink)

To study the influence of divinity on cosmos, Alexander uses the notions of ‘fate’ and ‘providence,’ which were common in the philosophy of his time. In this way, he provides an Aristotelian interpretation of the problems related to such concepts. In the context of this discussion, he offers a description of ‘nature’ different from the one that he usually regards as the standard Aristotelian notion of nature, i.e. the intrinsic principle of motion and rest. The new coined concept is a (...) ‘cosmic’ nature that can be identified with both ‘fate’ and ‘divine power,’ which are the immediate effect of providence upon the world. In the paper it is exposed how the conception of providence defended by Alexander means a rejection of the divine care of the particulars, since the divinities are only provident for species. Several texts belonging to the Middle Platonic philosophers will convince us that such thinkers (and not directly Aristotle) are the origin of the thesis that will be understood as the conventional Aristotelian position, namely that divinity only orders species but not individuals. (shrink)

This paper develops Bernard Williams’s suggestion that for philosophy to ignore its history is for it to assume that its history is vindicatory. The paper aims to offer a fruitful line of inquiry into the question whether philosophy has a vindicatory history by providing a map of possible answers to it. It first distinguishes three types of history: the history of discovery, the history of progress, and the history of change. It then suggests that much of philosophy lacks a vindicatory (...) history, for reasons that reflect philosophy’s character as a humanistic discipline. On this basis, the paper reconstructs Williams’s conception of what it means for philosophy to engage with its own history. The paper concludes that it is a mistake to think that a vindicatory history is what we would really like to have, and that in fact, the resulting picture gives philosophy several reasons to engage with its own history. (shrink)