Results for 'Nature'

968 found
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  1. Governing Without A Fundamental Direction of Time: Minimal Primitivism about Laws of Nature.Eddy Keming Chen & Sheldon Goldstein - 2022 - In Yemima Ben-Menahem (ed.), Rethinking Laws of Nature. Springer. pp. 21-64.
    The Great Divide in metaphysical debates about laws of nature is between Humeans, who think that laws merely describe the distribution of matter, and non-Humeans, who think that laws govern it. The metaphysics can place demands on the proper formulations of physical theories. It is sometimes assumed that the governing view requires a fundamental / intrinsic direction of time: to govern, laws must be dynamical, producing later states of the world from earlier ones, in accord with the fundamental direction (...)
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  2. The Past Hypothesis and the Nature of Physical Laws.Eddy Keming Chen - 2023 - In Barry Loewer, Brad Weslake & Eric B. Winsberg (eds.), The Probability Map of the Universe: Essays on David Albert’s _Time and Chance_. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. pp. 204-248.
    If the Past Hypothesis underlies the arrows of time, what is the status of the Past Hypothesis? In this paper, I examine the role of the Past Hypothesis in the Boltzmannian account and defend the view that the Past Hypothesis is a candidate fundamental law of nature. Such a view is known to be compatible with Humeanism about laws, but as I argue it is also supported by a minimal non-Humean "governing'' view. Some worries arise from the non-dynamical and (...)
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  3. A New Theory of Serendipity: Nature, Emergence and Mechanism.Quan-Hoang Vuong (ed.) - 2022 - Berlin, Germany: De Gruyter.
    When you type the word “serendipity” in a word-processor application such as Microsoft Word, the autocorrection engine suggests you choose other words like “luck” or “fate”. This correcting act turns out to be incorrect. However, it points to the reality that serendipity is not a familiar English word and can be misunderstood easily. Serendipity is a very much scientific concept as it has been found useful in numerous scientific discoveries, pharmaceutical innovations, and numerous humankind’s technical and technological advances. Therefore, there (...)
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  4. Putting down the revolt: Enactivism as a philosophy of nature.Russell Meyer & Nick Brancazio - 2022 - Frontiers in Psychology 13:948733.
    Enactivists frequently argue their account heralds a revolution in cognitive science: enactivism will unseat cognitivism as the dominant paradigm. We examine the lines of reasoning enactivists employ in stirring revolt, but show that none of these prove compelling reasons for cognitivism to be replaced by enactivism. First, we examine the hard sell of enactivism: enactivism reveals a critical explanatory gap at the heart of cognitivism. We show that enactivism does not meet the requirements to incite a paradigm shift in the (...)
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  5. A Tale of Two (and More) Models of Rights of Nature.Matthias Kramm - forthcoming - Environmental Ethics.
    In our contemporary world, the rights of nature have become an important legal device for environmental protection. Some of the most influential rights of nature frameworks can be found in non-Western contexts and have been strongly influenced by ecocentric accounts of nature. This article addresses the question of whether rights of nature can be implemented in Western contexts as well, focusing in particular on Europe. It first examines ecocentric justifications of the rights of nature and (...)
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  6. Hermann von Helmholtz’s Mechanism: The Loss of Certainty: A Study on the Transition From Classical to Modern Philosophy of Nature.Gregor Schiemann - 2009 - Springer.
    Two seemingly contradictory tendencies have accompanied the development of the natural sciences in the past 150 years. On the one hand, the natural sciences have been instrumental in effecting a thoroughgoing transformation of social structures and have made a permanent impact on the conceptual world of human beings. This historical period has, on the other hand, also brought to light the merely hypothetical validity of scientific knowledge. As late as the middle of the 19th century the truth-pathos in the natural (...)
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  7. How Does Recognition Emerge from Nature? The Genesis of Consciousness in Hegel’s Jena Writings.Italo Testa - 2012 - Critical Horizons 13 (2):176-196.
    The paper proposes a reconstruction of some fragments of Hegel’s Jena manuscripts concerning the natural genesis of recognitive spiritual consciousness. On this basis it will be argued that recognition has a foothold in nature. As a consequence, recognition should not be understood as a bootstrapping process, that is, as a self-positing and self-justifying normative social phenomenon, intelligible within itself and independently of anything external to it.
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  8. Being-in-the-World as Being-in-Nature: An Ecological Perspective on Being and Time.Vincent Blok - 2014 - Studia Phaenomenologica 14:215-235.
    Because the status of nature is ambiguous in Being and Time, we explore an ecological perspective on Heidegger’s early main work in this article. Our hypothesis is that the affordance theory of James Gibson enables us to a) to understand being-in-the-world as being-in-nature, b) reconnect man and nature and c) understand the twofold sense of nature in Being and Time. After exploring Heidegger’s concept of being-in-the-world and Gibson’s concept of being-in-nature, we confront Heidegger’s and Gibson’s (...)
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  9. The strong arm of the law: a unified account of necessary and contingent laws of nature.Salim Hirèche, Niels Linnemann, Robert Michels & Lisa Vogt - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4):10211-10252.
    A common feature of all standard theories of the laws of nature is that they are "absolutist": They take laws to be either all metaphysically necessary or all contingent. Science, however, gives us reason to think that there are laws of both kinds, suggesting that standard theories should make way for "non-absolutist" alternatives: theories which accommodate laws of both modal statuses. In this paper, we set out three explanatory challenges for any candidate non-absolutist theory and discuss the prospects of (...)
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  10. Different Kinds of Perfect: The Pursuit of Excellence in Nature-Based Sports.Leslie A. Howe - 2012 - Sport, Ethics and Philosophy 6 (3):353-368.
    Excellence in sport performance is normally taken to be a matter of superior performance of physical movements or quantitative outcomes of movements. This paper considers whether a wider conception can be afforded by certain kinds of nature based sport. The interplay between technical skill and aesthetic experience in nature based sports is explored, and the extent to which it contributes to a distinction between different sport-based approaches to natural environments. The potential for aesthetic appreciation of environmental engagement is (...)
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  11. Hermann Cohen on Kant, Sensations, and Nature in Science.Charlotte Baumann - 2019 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 57 (4):647-674.
    The neo-Kantian Hermann Cohen is famously anti-empiricist in that he denies that sensations can make a definable contribution to knowledge. However, in the second edition of Kant’s Theory of Experience (1885), Cohen considers a proposition that contrasts with both his other work and that of his followers: a Kantian who studies scientific claims to truth—and the grounds on which they are made—cannot limit himself to studying mathematics and logical principles, but needs to also investigate underlying presuppositions about the empirical element (...)
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  12.  44
    Kingdom within a Kingdom: A solution to the end of nature problem.Sam Zahn - forthcoming - Environmental Values.
    The end of nature problem can be framed as a dilemma: either all human intentional actions are natural or they are all unnatural and destroy nature as an effect. Given the scope of human influence, the latter entails that there is no nature left on Earth. Therefore, the environmentalist project of protecting nature is either unnecessary or futile. Prevailing attempts to forge a middle path – by, for example, distinguishing natural from unnatural human activities – struggle (...)
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  13. The "No Interest" Argument Against the Rights of Nature.Neil W. Williams - forthcoming - Philosophers' Imprint.
    Awarding rights to rivers, forests, and other environmental entities (EEs) is a new and increasingly popular approach to environmental protection. The distinctive feature of such rights of nature (RoN) legislation is that direct duties are owed to the EEs. This paper presents a novel rebuttal of the strongest argument against RoN: the no interest argument. The crux of this argument is that because EEs are not sentient, they cannot possess the kinds of interests necessary to ground direct duties. Therefore, (...)
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  14. Defending the Traditional Interpretations of Kant’s Formula of a Law of Nature.Samuel J. M. Kahn - 2019 - Theoria 66 (158):76-102.
    In this paper I defend the traditional interpretations of Kant’s Formula of a Law of Nature from recent attacks leveled by Faviola Rivera-Castro, James Furner, Ido Geiger, Pauline Kleingeld and Sven Nyholm. After a short introduction, the paper is divided into four main sections. In the first, I set out the basics of the three traditional interpretations, the Logical Contradiction Interpretation, the Practical Contradiction Interpretation and the Teleological Contradiction Interpretation. In the second, I examine the work of Geiger, Kleingeld (...)
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  15. The Consequence Argument and the Possibility of the Laws of Nature Being Violated.Pedro Merlussi - 2024 - Philosophia 52 (2):289-303.
    Brian Cutter objected to the consequence argument due to its dependence on the principle that miracle workers are metaphysically impossible. A miracle worker is someone who has the ability to act in a way such that the laws of nature would be violated. While there is something to the thought that agents like us do not have this ability, Cutter claims that there is no compelling reason to regard miracle workers as metaphysically impossible. However, the paper contends that miracle (...)
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  16. Quantum Mechanics in a Time-Asymmetric Universe: On the Nature of the Initial Quantum State.Eddy Keming Chen - 2021 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 72 (4):1155–1183.
    In a quantum universe with a strong arrow of time, we postulate a low-entropy boundary condition to account for the temporal asymmetry. In this paper, I show that the Past Hypothesis also contains enough information to simplify the quantum ontology and define a unique initial condition in such a world. First, I introduce Density Matrix Realism, the thesis that the quantum universe is described by a fundamental density matrix that represents something objective. This stands in sharp contrast to Wave Function (...)
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  17. Is There a Role for ‘Human Nature’ in Debates About Human Enhancement?Daniel Groll & Micah Lott - 2015 - Philosophy 90 (4):623-651.
    In discussions about the ethics of enhancement, it is often claimed that the concept of ‘human nature’ has no helpful role to play. There are two ideas behind this thought. The first is that nature, human nature included, is a mixed bag. Some parts of our nature are good for us and some are bad for us. The ‘mixed bag’ idea leads naturally to the second idea, namely that the fact that something is part of our (...)
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  18. (1 other version)Kant on epigenesis, monogenesis and human nature: The biological premises of anthropology.Alix A. Cohen - 2006 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 37 (4):675-693.
    The aim of this paper is to show that for Kant, a combination of epigenesis and monogenesis is the condition of possibility of anthropology as he conceives of it and that moreover, this has crucial implications for the biological dimension of his account of human nature. More precisely, I begin by arguing that Kant’s conception of mankind as a natural species is based on two premises: firstly the biological unity of the human species (monogenesis of the human races); and (...)
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  19. Soul‐Switching and the Immateriality of Human Nature: On an Argument Reported by Razi.Pirooz Fatoorchi - 2021 - Theoria 87 (5):1067-1082.
    This article deals with an argument reported by Razi (d. 1210) that attempted to undermine the immaterialist position about human nature. After some introductory remarks and explanation of the conceptual background, the article analyses the structure of the argument, with special attention to the idea of soul-switching.’ Some comparisons are made between the argument reported by Razi and a number of arguments from modern and contemporary eras of philosophy. One section is devoted to the critique of the argument and (...)
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  20. The Idea of the Systematic Unity of Nature as a Transcendental Illusion.Mark Pickering - 2011 - Kantian Review 16 (3):429-448.
    The Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic of Kant's first Critique is notorious for two reasons. First, it appears to contradict itself in saying that the idea of the systematic unity of nature is and is not transcendental. Second, in the passages in which Kant appears to espouse the former alternative, he appears to be making a significant amendment to his account of the conditions of the possibility of experience in the Transcendental Analytic. I propose a solution to both of (...)
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  21. The Human Vocation and the Question of the Earth: Karoline von Günderrode’s Philosophy of Nature.Dalia Nassar - 2022 - Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 104 (1):108-130.
    Contra widespread readings of Karoline von Günderrode’s 1805 “Idea of the Earth ” as a creative adaptation of Schelling’s philosophy of nature, this article proposes that “Idea of the Earth” furnishes a moral account of the human relation to the natural world, one which does not map onto any of the more well-known romantic or idealist accounts of the human-nature relation. Specifically, I argue that “Idea of the Earth” responds to the great Enlightenment question concerning the human vocation, (...)
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  22. Excusing Corporate Wrongdoing and the State of Nature.Kenneth Silver & Paul Garofalo - forthcoming - Academy of Management Review.
    Most business ethicists maintain that corporate actors are subject to a variety of moral obligations. However, there is a persistent and underappreciated concern that the competitive pressures of the market somehow provide corporate actors with a far-reaching excuse from meeting these obligations. Here, we assess this concern. Blending resources from the history of philosophy and strategic management, we demonstrate the assumptions required for and limits of this excuse. Applying the idea of ‘the state of nature’ from Thomas Hobbes, we (...)
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  23. Decisions under Ignorance and the Individuation of States of Nature.Johan E. Gustafsson - 2022 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 11 (2):86-92.
    How do you make decisions under ignorance? That is, how do you decide when you lack subjective probabilities for some of your options’ possible outcomes? One answer is that you follow the Laplace Rule: you assign an equal probability to each state of nature for which you lack a subjective probability (that is, you use the Principle of Indifference) and then you maximize expected utility. The most influential objection to the Laplace Rule is that it is sensitive to the (...)
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  24. Kant’s Regulative Metaphysics of God and the Systematic Lawfulness of Nature.Noam Hoffer - 2019 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 57 (2):217-239.
    In the ‘Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic’ of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant contends that the idea of God has a positive regulative role in the systematization of empirical knowledge. But why is this regulative role assigned to this specific idea? Kant’s account is rather opaque and this question has also not received much attention in the literature. In this paper I argue that an adequate understanding of the regulative role of the idea of God depends on the specific (...)
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  25. How to situate cognition: Letting nature take its course.Robert A. Wilson & Andy Clark - 2008 - In Murat Aydede & P. Robbins (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 55--77.
    1. The Situation in Cognition 2. Situated Cognition: A Potted Recent History 3. Extensions in Biology, Computation, and Cognition 4. Articulating the Idea of Cognitive Extension 5. Are Some Resources Intrinsically Non-Cognitive? 6. Is Cognition Extended or Only Embedded? 7. Letting Nature Take Its Course.
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  26. (1 other version)Faultless responsibility: on the nature and allocation of moral responsibility for distributed moral actions.Luciano Floridi - 2016 - Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 374:20160112.
    The concept of distributed moral responsibility (DMR) has a long history. When it is understood as being entirely reducible to the sum of (some) human, individual and already morally loaded actions, then the allocation of DMR, and hence of praise and reward or blame and punishment, may be pragmatically difficult, but not conceptually problematic. However, in distributed environments, it is increasingly possible that a network of agents, some human, some artificial (e.g. a program) and some hybrid (e.g. a group of (...)
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  27. Lockean Provisos and State of Nature Theories.J. H. Bogart - 1985 - Ethics 95 (4):828-836.
    State of nature theories have a long history and play a lively role in contemporary work. Theories of this kind share certain nontrivial commitments. Among these are commitments to inclusion of a Lockean proviso among the principles of justice and to an assumption of invariance of political principles across changes of circumstances. In this article I want to look at those two commitments and bring to light what I believe are some important difficulties they engender. For nonpattern state of (...)
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  28. Bioconservatism, Partiality, and the Human-Nature Objection to Enhancement.Pugh Jonathan, Guy Kahane & Julian Savulescu - 2016 - The Monist 99 (4):406-422.
    “Bioconservatives” in the human enhancement debate endorse the conservative claim that we should reject the use of biotechnologies that enhance natural human capacities. However, they often ground their objections to enhancement with contestable claims about human nature that are also in tension with other common tenets of conservatism. We argue that bioconservatives could raise a more plausible objection to enhancement by invoking a strain of conservative thought developed by G.A. Cohen. Although Cohen’s conservatism is not sufficient to fully revive (...)
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  29. Metaethics and the Nature of Properties.Neil Sinclair - 2024 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 98 (1):133-152.
    This paper explores connections between theories of morality and theories of properties. It argues that (1) moral realism is in tension with predicate, class and mereological nominalism; (2) moral non-naturalism is incompatible with standard versions of resemblance nominalism, immanent realism and trope theory; and (3) the standard semantic arguments for property realism do not support moral realism. I also raise doubts about trope-theoretic explanations of moral supervenience and argue against one version of the principle that we should accept theories that (...)
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  30. What Does it Mean to Mimic Nature? A Typology for Biomimetic Design.Alessio Gerola, Zoë Robaey & Vincent Blok - 2023 - Philosophy and Technology 36 (4):1-20.
    In an effort to produce new and more sustainable technologies, designers have turned to nature in search of inspiration and innovation. Biomimetic design (from the Greek bios, life, mimesis, imitation) is the conscious imitation of biological models to solve today's technical and ecological challenges. Nowadays numerous different approaches exist that take inspiration from nature as a model for design, such as biomimicry, biomimetics, bionics, permaculture, ecological engineering, etc. This variety of practices comes in turn with a wide range (...)
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  31. The Embodied and Situated Nature of Moods.Giovanna Colombetti - 2017 - Philosophia 45 (4):1437-1451.
    In this paper I argue that it is misleading to regard the brain as the physical basis or “core machinery” of moods. First, empirical evidence shows that brain activity not only influences, but is in turn influenced by, physical activity taking place in other parts of the organism. It is therefore not clear why the core machinery of moods ought to be restricted to the brain. I propose, instead, that moods should be conceived as embodied, i.e., their physical basis should (...)
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  32. De la protection de la nature au développement durable : Genèse d'un oxymore éthique et politique.Donato Bergandi & Patrick Blandin - 2012 - Revue d'Histoire des Sciences 65 (1):103-142.
    Le concept de développement durable s’enracine dans l’histoire des mouvements de préservation de la nature et de conservation des ressources naturelles et de leurs relations avec les sciences de la nature, en particulier l’écologie. En tant que paradigme sociétal, à la fois écologique, politique et économique, il se présente comme un projet politique idéal applicable à l’ensemble des sociétés, qui prétend dépasser l’opposition entre ces deux visions profondément divergentes des relations homme‑nature. L’analyse des textes internationaux pertinents permet (...)
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  33. (1 other version)Aquinas’s Shiny Happy People: Perfect Happiness and the Limits of Human Nature.Christina Van Dyke - 2014 - In Christina VanDyke (ed.), Oxford Studies in the Philosophy of Religion. pp. 269-291.
    In Aquinas's account of the beatific vision, human beings are joined to God in a never-ending act of contemplation of the divine essence: a state which utterly fulfills the human drive for knowledge and satisfies every desire of the human heart. In this paper, I argue that this state represents less a fulfillment of human nature, however, than a transcendence of that nature. Furthermore, what’s transcended is not incidental on a metaphysical, epistemological, or moral level.
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  34. The right to ignore: An epistemic defense of the nature/culture divide.Maria Kronfeldner - 2017 - In Joyce Richard (ed.), Handbook of Evolution and Philosophy. Routledge. pp. 210-224.
    This paper addresses whether the often-bemoaned loss of unity of knowledge about humans, which results from the disciplinary fragmentation of science, is something to be overcome. The fragmentation of being human rests on a couple of distinctions, such as the nature-culture divide. Since antiquity the distinction between nature (roughly, what we inherit biologically) and culture (roughly, what is acquired by social interaction) has been a commonplace in science and society. Recently, the nature/culture divide has come under attack (...)
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  35. (1 other version)Divided minds and the nature of persons.Derek A. Parfit - 1987 - In Colin Blakemore & Susan Greenfield (eds.), Mindwaves: Thoughts on Intelligence, Identity, and Consciousness. Blackwell. pp. 19-26.
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  36. (1 other version)Information ethics, its nature and scope.Luciano Floridi - 2006 - Acm Sigcas Computers and Society 36 (2):21-36.
    In recent years, “Information Ethics” (IE) has come to mean different things to different researchers working in a variety of disciplines, including computer ethics, business ethics, medical ethics, computer science, the philosophy of information, social epistemology and library and information science. Using an ontocentric approach, this paper seeks to define the parameters of IE and thereby increase our understanding of the moral challenges associated with Information Communication Technologies.
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  37.  30
    Against Walt Disney’s Corporate Education: Walter Breckenridge’s Nature Film as Scientific Investigation.Anaïs Nony - 2019 - The Moving Image 19 (1):302-304.
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  38. Phronesis as Ethical Expertise: Naturalism of Second Nature and the Unity of Virtue.Mario De Caro, Maria Silvia Vaccarezza & Ariele Niccoli - 2018 - Journal of Value Inquiry 52 (3):287-305.
    This paper has a twofold aim. On the one hand, we will discuss the much debated question of the source of normativity (which traditionally has nature and practical reason as the two main contenders to this role) and propose a new answer to it. Second, in answering this question, we will present a new account of practical wisdom, which conceives of the ethical virtues as ultimately unified in the chief virtue of phronesis, understood as ethical expertise. To do so, (...)
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  39. Descartes on Necessity and the Laws of Nature.Nathan Rockwood - 2022 - Journal of Analytic Theology 10:277-292.
    This paper is on Descartes’ account of modality and, in particular, his account of the necessity of the laws of nature. He famously argues that the necessity of the “eternal truths” of logic and mathematics depends on God’s will. Here I suggest he has the same view about the necessity of the laws of nature. Further, I argue, this is a plausible theory of laws. For philosophers often talk about something being nomologically or physically necessary because of the (...)
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  40. An Armstrongian defense of dispositional monist accounts of laws of nature.Mousa Mohammadian - 2022 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 12 (3):1-15.
    Bird reveals an important problem at the heart of Armstrong’s theory of laws of nature: to explain how a law necessitates its corresponding regularity, Armstrong is committed to a vicious regress. In his very brief response, Armstrong gestures towards an argument that, as he admits, is more of a “speculation.” Later, Barker and Smart argue that a very similar problem threatens Bird’s dispositional monist theory of laws of nature and he is committed to a similar vicious regress. In (...)
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  41. The top-down nature of ontological inquiry: Against pluralism about top-down and bottom-up approaches.Ragnar van der Merwe - 2025 - Metaphilosophy 56 (1):35-51.
    Some philosophical pluralists argue that both a top-down and a bottom-up approach serve as equally justified methods for engaging in ontological inquiry. In the top-down approach, we start with an analysis of theory and extrapolate from there to the world. In the bottom-up approach, we begin with an empirical investigation of the world and let our theory respond accordingly. The idea is that ontological conclusions arrived at via these two equally justified methods are then also equally justified. In this paper, (...)
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  42. Inner Speech: Nature and Functions.Agustin Vicente & Fernando Martinez Manrique - 2011 - Philosophy Compass 6 (3):209-219.
    We very often discover ourselves engaged in inner speech. It seems that this kind of silent, private, speech fulfils some role in our cognition, most probably related to conscious thinking. Yet, the study of inner speech has been neglected by philosophy and psychology alike for many years. However, things seem to have changed in the last two decades. Here we review some of the most influential accounts about the phenomenology and the functions of inner speech, as well as the methodological (...)
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  43. Recognition of intrinsic values of sentient beings explains the sense of moral duty towards global nature conservation.Tianxiang Lan, Neil Sinhababu & Luis Roman Carrasco - 2022 - PLoS ONE 10 (17):NA.
    Whether nature is valuable on its own (intrinsic values) or because of the benefits it provides to humans (instrumental values) has been a long-standing debate. The concept of relational values has been proposed as a solution to this supposed dichotomy, but the empirical validation of its intuitiveness remains limited. We experimentally assessed whether intrinsic/relational values of sentient beings/non-sentient beings/ecosystems better explain people’s sense of moral duty towards global nature conservation for the future. Participants from a representative sample of (...)
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  44. Leibniz’s Harmony between the Kingdoms of Nature and Grace.Lloyd Strickland - 2016 - Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 98 (3):302-329.
    One of the more exotic and mysterious features of Leibniz’s later philosophical writings is the harmony between the kingdom of nature and the kingdom of grace. In this paper I show that this harmony is not a single doctrine, but rather a compilation of two doctrines, namely (1) that the order of nature makes possible the rewards and punishments of rational souls, and (2) that the rewards and punishments of rational souls are administered naturally. I argue that the (...)
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  45. Mathematical Platonism and the Nature of Infinity.Gilbert B. Côté - 2013 - Open Journal of Philosophy 3 (3):372-375.
    An analysis of the counter-intuitive properties of infinity as understood differently in mathematics, classical physics and quantum physics allows the consideration of various paradoxes under a new light (e.g. Zeno’s dichotomy, Torricelli’s trumpet, and the weirdness of quantum physics). It provides strong support for the reality of abstractness and mathematical Platonism, and a plausible reason why there is something rather than nothing in the concrete universe. The conclusions are far reaching for science and philosophy.
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  46. On the New Nature and the Impact of Synthetic Philosophy on Cosmogenic Speculation.Eric Schliesser - manuscript
    This paper, which is a homage to the life and work of Stephen Gaukroger, explores competing receptions of Spencer’s programmatic synthetic philosophy. In so doing, I show how T.H Huxley and C.S. Peirce reconfigured a familiar, long-standing debate about cosmogeny and cosmology in the early modern period.
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  47. The biased nature of philosophical beliefs in the light of peer disagreement.László Bernáth & János Tőzsér - 2021 - Metaphilosophy 52 (3-4):363-378.
    This essay presents an argument, which it calls the Bias Argument, with the dismaying conclusion that (almost) everyone should significantly reduce her confidence in (too many) philosophical beliefs. More precisely, the argument attempts to show that the most precious philosophical beliefs are biased, as the pervasive and permanent disagreement among the leading experts in philosophy cannot be explained by the differences between their evidence bases and competences. After a short introduction, the premises of the Bias Argument are spelled out in (...)
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  48. Henry More’s “Spirit of Nature” and Newton’s Aether.Jacques Joseph - 2016 - Teorie Vědy / Theory of Science 38 (3):337-358.
    The paper presents the notion of “Spirit of Nature” in Henry More and describes its position within More’s philosophical system. Through a thorough analysis, it tries to show in what respects it can be considered a scientific object and in what respects it cannot. In the second part of this paper, More’s “Spirit of Nature” is compared to Newton’s various attempts at presenting a metaphysical cause of the force of gravity, using the similarities between the two to see (...)
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  49. Aquinas on the Nature and Implications of Divine Simplicity.Christopher Hughes - 2018 - European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 10 (2):1-22.
    I discuss what Aquinas’ doctrine of divine simplicity is, and what he takes to be its implications. I also discuss the extent to which Aquinas succeeds in motivating and defending those implications.
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  50. Typicality of Dynamics and Laws of Nature.Aldo Filomeno - 2023 - In Cristián Soto (ed.), Current Debates in Philosophy of Science: In Honor of Roberto Torretti. Springer Verlag. pp. 391-418.
    Certain results, most famously in classical statistical mechanics and complex systems, but also in quantum mechanics and high-energy physics, yield a coarse-grained stable statistical pattern in the long run. The explanation of these results shares a common structure: the results hold for a ‘typical’ dynamics, that is, for most of the underlying dynamics. In this paper I argue that the structure of the explanation of these results might shed some light—a different light—on philosophical debates on the laws of nature. (...)
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