Results for 'Overdetermination'

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  1. Overdetermination Underdetermined.Sara Bernstein - 2016 - Erkenntnis 81 (1):17-40.
    Widespread causal overdetermination is often levied as an objection to nonreductive theories of minds and objects. In response, nonreductive metaphysicians have argued that the type of overdetermination generated by their theories is different from the sorts of coincidental cases involving multiple rock-throwers, and thus not problematic. This paper pushes back. I argue that attention to differences between types of overdetermination discharges very few explanatory burdens, and that overdetermination is a bigger problem for the nonreductive metaphysician than (...)
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  2. Omissive Overdetermination: Why the Act-Omission Distinction Makes a Difference for Causal Analysis.Yuval Abrams - 2022 - University of Western Australia Law Review 1 (49):57-86.
    Analyses of factual causation face perennial problems, including preemption, overdetermination, and omissions. Arguably, the thorniest, are cases of omissive overdetermination, involving two independent omissions, each sufficient for the harm, and neither, independently, making a difference. A famous example is Saunders, where pedestrian was hit by a driver of a rental car who never pressed on the (unbeknownst to the driver) defective (and, negligently, never inspected) brakes. Causal intuitions in such cases are messy, reflected in disagreement about which omission (...)
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  3. Causal Overdetermination and Kim’s Exclusion Argument.Michael Roche - 2014 - Philosophia 42 (3):809-826.
    Jaegwon Kim’s influential exclusion argument attempts to demonstrate the inconsistency of nonreductive materialism in the philosophy of mind. Kim’s argument begins by showing that the three main theses of nonreductive materialism, plus two additional considerations, lead to a specific and familiar picture of mental causation. The exclusion argument can succeed only if, as Kim claims, this picture is not one of genuine causal overdetermination. Accordingly, one can resist Kim’s conclusion by denying this claim, maintaining instead that the effects of (...)
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  4. Counterfactuals, Overdetermination and Mental Causation.Simona Aimar - 2011 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 111 (3pt3):469-477.
    The Exclusion Problem for mental causation suggests that there is a tension between the claim that the mental causes physical effects, and the claim that the mental does not overdetermine its physical effects. In response, Karen Bennett puts forward an extra necessary condition for overdetermination : if one candidate cause were to occur but the other were not to occur, the effect would still occur. She thus denies one of the assumptions of EP, the assumption that if an effect (...)
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  5. Overdetermined problems in science.Andrew Lugg - 1978 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 9 (1):1-18.
    The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to a pattern of development, the significance of which has not been generally recognized. This pattern is characterized by an initial occurrence of what I shall call an overdetermined problem - i.e. a problem with no solution compatible with accepted belief and practice - followed by a resolution of the problem which relies on and exploits a change in what was previously taken as given.
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  6. Overdetermination in Intuitive Causal Decision Theory.Esteban Céspedes - 2013 - In Miguel Hoeltje, Thomas Spitzley & Wolfgang Spohn (eds.), Was dürfen wir glauben? Was sollen wir tun? Sektionsbeiträge des achten internationalen Kongresses der Gesellschaft für Analytische Philosophie e.V. DuEPublico.
    Causal decision theory defines a rational action as the one that tends to cause the best outcomes. If we adopt counterfactual or probabilistic theories of causation, then we may face problems in overdetermination cases. Do such problems affect Causal decision theory? The aim of this work is to show that the concept of causation that has been fundamental in all versions of causal decision theory is not the most intuitive one. Since overdetermination poses problems for a counterfactual theory (...)
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  7. Overdetermination, Complication, Beatitude: Althusser's Physics of Social Modes.Morejon Gil - 2016 - Décalages 2 (2).
    In this paper I consider Althusser's concept of 'overdetermination' as a variation on the theme of a Spinozist physics of modes that attempts to incorporate the Marxist problematic of social antagonism.
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  8. Overdetermination and Causal Closure: A Defense of the Causal Argument for Physicalism.Alyssa Ney - 2022 - ProtoSociology 39:35-50.
    Among the arguments that have been proposed for physicalism, the “causal argument” is widely taken to be the most compelling. Justin Tiehen (2015) has raised an interesting objection to this argument that takes the form of a dilemma. Tiehen’s ultimate conclusion is that at best, the causal argument is circular and so its premises cannot provide support for its conclusion, physicalism. The aim of the present paper is to respond to Tiehen’s objection in order to provide a defense of the (...)
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  9. Kim on overdetermination, exclusion, and nonreductive physicalism.Paul Raymont - 2003 - In Sven Walter & Heinz-Dieter Heckmann (eds.), Physicalism and Mental Causation: The Metaphysics of Mind and Action. Imprint Academic.
    An analysis and rebuttal of Jaegwon Kim's reasons for taking nonreductive physicalism to entail the causal irrelevance of mental features to physical phenomena, particularly the behaviour of human bodies.
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  10. Overdetermination of theories by empirical models: A realist interpretation of empirical choices.Emma Ruttkamp - 2005 - Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 84 (1):409-436.
    A model-theoretic realist account of science places linguistic systems and their corresponding non-linguistic structures at different stages or different levels of abstraction of the scientific process. Apart from the obvious problem of underdetermination of theories by data, philosophers of science are also faced with the inverse (and very real) problem of overdetermination of theories by their empirical models, which is what this article will focus on. I acknowledge the contingency of the factors determining the nature – and choice – (...)
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  11. What Causally Insensitive Events Tell us About Overdetermination.Sara Bernstein - 2014 - Philosophia 42 (4):1-18.
    Suppose that Billy and Suzy each throw a rock at window, and either rock is sufficient to shatter the window. While some consider this a paradigmatic case of causal overdetermination, in which multiple cases are sufficient for an outcome, others consider it a case of joint causation, in which multiple causes are necessary to bring about an effect. Some hold that every case of overdetermination is a case of joint causation underdescribed: at a maximal level of description, every (...)
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  12.  39
    Ordinary Objects and the Overdetermination Argument.Martin Orensanz - 2022 - Cosmos and History 18 (2):445-456.
    If an ordinary object causes an event, and if its atoms acting in concert cause the same event, then the event in question is overdetermined by two independent causes. The overdetermination argument aims to show that effects are never overdetermined in this way, and that we should only admit that the atoms acting in concert are the cause of the event in question. This means that the object constituted by those atoms does not cause anything, and if this is (...)
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  13. Causal exclusion and overdetermination.Markus E. Schlosser - 2006 - In Ezio Di Nucci & Conor McHugh (eds.), Content, Consciousness, and Perception: Essays in Contemporary Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge Scholars Press.
    This paper is about the causal exclusion argument against non-reductive physicalism. Many philosophers think that this argument poses a serious problem for non-reductive theories of the mind — some think that it is decisive against them. In the first part I will outline non-reductive physicalism and the exclusion argument. Then I will distinguish between three versions of the argument that address three different versions of non-reductive physicalism. According to the first, the relation between mental and physical events is token-identity. According (...)
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  14. Individual responsibility for carbon emissions: Is there anything wrong with overdetermining harm?Christian Barry & Gerhard Øverland - 2015 - In Jeremy Moss (ed.), Climate Change and Justice. Cambridge University Press.
    Climate change and other harmful large-scale processes challenge our understandings of individual responsibility. People throughout the world suffer harms—severe shortfalls in health, civic status, or standard of living relative to the vital needs of human beings—as a result of physical processes to which many people appear to contribute. Climate change, polluted air and water, and the erosion of grasslands, for example, occur because a great many people emit carbon and pollutants, build excessively, enable their flocks to overgraze, or otherwise stress (...)
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  15. British social anthropology, wider processes, and causal overdetermination.Terence Rajivan Edward - manuscript
    British structural-functionalist anthropology famously faces an objection that it is incapable of dealing with the influence of wider processes. An analytical response to this objection, which at least needs to be registered, is that some wider processes can be ignored when there is causal overdetermination.
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  16. A Closer Look at Trumping.Sara Bernstein - 2015 - Acta Analytica 30 (1):1-22.
    This paper argues that so-called “trumping preemption” is in fact overdetermination or early preemption, and is thus not a distinctive form of redundant causation. I draw a novel lesson from cases thought to be trumping: that the boundary between preemption and overdetermination should be reconsidered.
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  17. Closing in on Causal Closure.Robert K. Garcia - 2014 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 21 (1-2):96-109.
    I examine the meaning and merits of a premise in the Exclusion Argument, the causal closure principle that all physical effects have physical causes. I do so by addressing two questions. First, if we grant the other premises, exactly what kind of closure principle is required to make the Exclusion Argument valid? Second, what are the merits of the requisite closure principle? Concerning the first, I argue that the Exclusion Argument requires a strong, “stringently pure” version of closure. The latter (...)
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  18. Why Making No Difference Makes No Moral Difference.Christine Tiefensee - 2018 - In Karl Marker, Annette Schmitt & Jürgen Sirsch (eds.), Demokratie und Entscheidung. Beiträge zur Analytischen Politischen Theorie. Springer. pp. 231-244.
    Ascribing moral responsibility in collective action cases is notoriously difficult. After all, if my individual actions make no difference with regard to the prevention of climate change, the alleviation of poverty, or the outcome of national elections, why ought I to stop driving, donate money, or cast my vote? Neither consequentialist nor non-consequentialist moral theories have straightforward responses ready at hand. In this contribution, I present a new suggestion which, based on thoughts about causal overdetermination along the lines of (...)
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  19. Making a Contribution and Making a Difference.Neil McDonnell - 2018 - American Philosophical Quarterly 55 (3):303-312.
    There are at least two different concepts that philosophers might target when analyzing causation: a pre-selective notion and a selective notion. This paper argues that these two distinct conceptions have been conflated to date, citing the puzzles of overdetermination, extensionality, and transitivity as evidence. The primary aim of the paper is to help reset the methodological scene concerning analyses of causation.
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  20. Forces in a true and physical sense: from mathematical models to metaphysical conclusions.Corey Dethier - 2019 - Synthese 198 (2):1109-1122.
    Wilson [Dialectica 63:525–554, 2009], Moore [Int Stud Philos Sci 26:359–380, 2012], and Massin [Br J Philos Sci 68:805–846, 2017] identify an overdetermination problem arising from the principle of composition in Newtonian physics. I argue that the principle of composition is a red herring: what’s really at issue are contrasting metaphysical views about how to interpret the science. One of these views—that real forces are to be tied to physical interactions like pushes and pulls—is a superior guide to real forces (...)
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  21. On the causal completeness of physics.Agustín Vicente - 2006 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 20 (2):149 – 171.
    According to an increasing number of authors, the best, if not the only, argument in favour of physicalism is the so-called 'overdetermination argument'. This argument, if sound, establishes that all the entities that enter into causal interactions with the physical world are physical. One key premise in the overdetermination argument is the principle of the causal closure of the physical world, said to be supported by contemporary physics. In this paper, I examine various ways in which physics may (...)
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  22. Causation.Terrance A. Tomkow & Kadri Vihvelin - manuscript
    Causation is defined as a relation between facts: C causes E if and only if C and E are nomologically independent facts and C is a necessary part of a nomologically sufficient condition for E. The analysis is applied to problems of overdetermination, preemption, trumping, intransitivity, switching, and double prevention. Preventing and allowing are defined and distinguished from causing. The analysis explains the direction of causation in terms of the logical form of dynamic laws. Even in a universe that (...)
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  23.  31
    Continuity: An Ontological Proposal for the Mind-Body Problem.Jae Jeong Lee - manuscript
    This paper gives significance to the concept of continuity in addressing the contemporary mind-body problem. Building upon philosophical definitions and insights from empirical brain science, the paper argues for "ontology of continuity" as a way to bridge between the mental and physical. To overcome the challenge of Kim’s causal overdetermination, the paper introduces a dual-neural process model, where subjective experiences and neural activities co-depend and influence each other in a quasi-parallel manner. This model seeks to reconcile idealism and physicalism, (...)
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  24. Counterfactual Decision Theory.Brian Hedden - 2023 - Mind 132 (527):730-761.
    I defend counterfactual decision theory, which says that you should evaluate an action in terms of which outcomes would likely obtain were you to perform it. Counterfactual decision theory has traditionally been subsumed under causal decision theory as a particular formulation of the latter. This is a mistake. Counterfactual decision theory is importantly different from, and superior to, causal decision theory, properly so called. Causation and counterfactuals come apart in three kinds of cases. In cases of overdetermination, an action (...)
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  25. Plural harm: plural problems.Erik Carlson, Jens Johansson & Olle Risberg - 2023 - Philosophical Studies 180 (2):553-565.
    The counterfactual comparative account of harm faces problems in cases that involve overdetermination and preemption. An influential strategy for dealing with these problems, drawing on a suggestion made by Derek Parfit, is to appeal to _plural harm_—several events _together_ harming someone. We argue that the most well-known version of this strategy, due to Neil Feit, as well as Magnus Jedenheim Edling’s more recent version, is fatally flawed. We also present some general reasons for doubting that the overdetermination and (...)
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  26. The Etiquette of Equality.Benjamin Eidelson - 2023 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 51 (2):97-139.
    Many of the moral and political disputes that loom large today involve claims (1) in the register of respect and offense that are (2) linked to membership in a subordinated social group and (3) occasioned by symbolic or expressive items or acts. This essay seeks to clarify the nature, stakes, and characteristic challenges of these recurring, but often disorienting, conflicts. Drawing on a body of philosophical work elaborating the moral function of etiquette, I first argue that the claims at issue (...)
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  27. Material Objects and Essential Bundle Theory.Stephen Barker & Mark Jago - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (12):2969-2986.
    In this paper we present a new metaphysical theory of material objects. On our theory, objects are bundles of property instances, where those properties give the nature or essence of that object. We call the theory essential bundle theory. Property possession is not analysed as bundle-membership, as in traditional bundle theories, since accidental properties are not included in the object’s bundle. We have a different story to tell about accidental property possession. This move reaps many benefits. Essential bundle theory delivers (...)
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  28. Counterfactuals for causal responsibility in legal contexts.Holger Andreas, Matthias Armgardt & Mario Gunther - 2023 - Artificial Intelligence and Law 31 (1):115-132.
    We define a formal semantics of conditionals based on _normatively ideal worlds_. Such worlds are described informally by Armgardt (Gabbay D, Magnani L, Park W, Pietarinen A-V (eds) Natural arguments: a tribute to john woods, College Publications, London, pp 699–708, 2018) to address well-known problems of the counterfactual approach to causation. Drawing on Armgardt’s proposal, we use iterated conditionals in order to analyse causal relations in scenarios of multi-agent interaction. This results in a refined counterfactual approach to causal responsibility in (...)
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  29. Metaphysical necessity dualism.Ben White - 2018 - Synthese 195 (4):1779-1798.
    A popular response to the Exclusion Argument for physicalism maintains that mental events depend on their physical bases in such a way that the causation of a physical effect by a mental event and its physical base needn’t generate any problematic form of causal overdetermination, even if mental events are numerically distinct from and irreducible to their physical bases. This paper presents and defends a form of dualism that implements this response by using a dispositional essentialist view of properties (...)
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  30. Reasons for action: making a difference to the security of outcomes.Mattias Gunnemyr & Caroline Torpe Touborg - 2022 - Philosophical Studies 180 (1):333-362.
    In this paper, we present a new account of teleological reasons, i.e. reasons to perform a particular action because of the outcomes it promotes. Our account gives the desired verdict in a number of difficult cases, including cases of overdetermination and non-threshold cases like Parfit’s famous _Drops of water._ The key to our account is to look more closely at the metaphysics of causation. According to Touborg (_The dual nature of causation_, 2018), it is a necessary condition for causation (...)
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  31. The Composition of Forces.Olivier Massin - 2016 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 68 (3):805-846.
    This paper defends a realist account of the composition of Newtonian forces, dubbed ‘residualism’. According to residualism, the resultant force acting on a body is identical to the component forces acting on it that do not prevent each other from bringing about its acceleration. Several reasons to favor residualism over alternative accounts of the composition of forces are advanced. (i) Residualism reconciles realism about component forces with realism about resultant forces while avoiding any threat of causal overdetermination. (ii) Residualism (...)
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  32. Conservation Laws and Interactionist Dualism.Ben White - 2017 - Philosophical Quarterly 67 (267):387–405.
    The Exclusion Argument for physicalism maintains that since (1) every physical effect has a sufficient physical cause, and (2) cases of causal overdetermination are rare, it follows that if (3) mental events cause physical events as frequently as they seem to, then (4) mental events must be physical in nature. In defence of (1), it is sometimes said that (1) is supported if not entailed by conservation laws. Against this, I argue that conservation laws do not lend sufficient support (...)
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  33. Summary of "Elements of Mind" and Replies to Critics.Tim Crane - 2004 - Croatian Journal of Philosophy 4 (11):223-240.
    Elements of Mind (EM) has two themes, one major and one minor. The major theme is intentionality, the mind’s direction upon its objects; the other is the mind–body problem. I treat these themes separately: chapters 1, and 3–5 are concerned with intentionality, while chapter 2 is about the mind–body problem. In this summary I will first describe my view of the mind–body problem, and then describe the book’s main theme. Like many philosophers, I see the mind–body problem as containing two (...)
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  34. Luckily, We Are Only Responsible for What We Could Have Avoided.Philip Swenson - 2019 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 43 (1):106-118.
    This paper has two goals: (1) to defend a particular response to the problem of resultant moral luck and (2) to defend the claim that we are only responsible for what we could have avoided. Cases of overdetermination threaten to undermine the claim that we are only responsible for what we could have avoided. To deal with this issue, I will motivate a particular way of responding to the problem of resultant moral luck. I defend the view that one's (...)
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  35. Petersson on Plural Harm.Jens Johansson - 2023 - In Andrés Garcia, Mattias Gunnemyr & Jakob Werkmäster (eds.), Value, Morality & Social Reality: Essays dedicated to Dan Egonsson, Björn Petersson & Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen. Department of Philosophy, Lund University. pp. 223–238.
    The counterfactual comparative account of harm has counterintuitive implications in cases involving overdetermination and preemption. A popular strategy for dealing with these problems appeals to plural harm—several events being jointly harmful. Björn Petersson criticizes this strategy on the grounds that it conflicts with a strong intuition that helps to motivate the counterfactual comparative account, namely, that harming someone essentially involves making a difference for the worse for her. In this paper, I argue that Petersson’s argument is unconvincing.
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  36. Emerging from the causal drain.Richard Corry - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 165 (1):29-47.
    For over 20 years, Jaegwon Kim’s Causal Exclusion Argument has stood as the major hurdle for non-reductive physicalism. If successful, Kim’s argument would show that the high-level properties posited by non-reductive physicalists must either be identical with lower-level physical properties, or else must be causally inert. The most prominent objection to the Causal Exclusion Argument—the so-called Overdetermination Objection—points out that there are some notions of causation that are left untouched by the argument. If causation is simply counterfactual dependence, for (...)
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  37. Experiments on causal exclusion.Thomas Blanchard, Dylan Murray & Tania Lombrozo - 2022 - Mind and Language 37 (5):1067-1089.
    Intuitions play an important role in the debate on the causal status of high‐level properties. For instance, Kim has claimed that his “exclusion argument” relies on “a perfectly intuitive … understanding of the causal relation.” We report the results of three experiments examining whether laypeople really have the relevant intuitions. We find little support for Kim's view and the principles on which it relies. Instead, we find that laypeople are willing to count both a multiply realized property and its realizers (...)
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  38. Types of tropes : modifier and module.Robert K. Garcia - 2024 - In A. R. J. Fisher & Anna-Sofia Maurin (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Properties. London: Routledge. pp. 229-38.
    The general concept of a trope – that of a non-shareable character-grounder – admits of a distinction between modifier tropes and module tropes. Roughly, a module trope is self-exemplifying whereas a modifier trope is not. This distinction has wide-ranging implications. Modifier tropes are uniquely eligible to be powers and fundamental determinables, whereas module tropes are uniquely eligible to play a direct role in perception and causation. Moreover, each type of trope theory faces unique challenges concerning character- grounding. Modifier trope theory (...)
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  39. Resisting Phenomenalism, From Bodily Experience to Mind-Independence.Massin Olivier - 2022 - In Adrian J. T. Alsmith & Andrea Serino (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Bodily Awareness. Routledge.
    Can one refute Berkeleyan phenomenalism by arguing that sensory objects seem mind-independent, and that, according to Berkeley, experience is to be taken at face value? Relying on Mackie’s recent discussion of the issue, I argue, first, that phenomenalism cannot be straightforwardly refuted by relying on perceptual or bodily experience of mind-independence together with the truthfulness of experience. However, I maintain, second that phenomenalism can be indirectly refuted by appealing to the bodily experience of resistance. Such experience presents us with the (...)
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  40. Functionalism and the Metaphysics of Causal Exclusion.David Yates - 2012 - Philosophers' Imprint 12:1-25.
    Given their physical realization, what causal work is left for functional properties to do? Humean solutions to the exclusion problem (e.g. overdetermination and difference-making) typically appeal to counterfactual and/or nomic relations between functional property-instances and behavioural effects, tacitly assuming that such relations suffice for causal work. Clarification of the notion of causal work, I argue, shows not only that such solutions don't work, but also reveals a novel solution to the exclusion problem based on the relations between dispositional properties (...)
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  41. The Metaphysics of Free Will: A Critique of Free Won’t as Double Prevention.Matteo Grasso - 2015 - Rivista Internazionale di Filosofia e Psicologia 6 (1):120-129.
    The problem of free will is deeply linked with the causal relevance of mental events. The causal exclusion argument claims that, in order to be causally relevant, mental events must be identical to physical events. However, Gibb has recently criticized it, suggesting that mental events are causally relevant as double preventers. For Gibb, mental events enable physical effects to take place by preventing other mental events from preventing a behaviour to take place. The role of mental double preventers is hence (...)
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  42. A mechanism that realizes strong emergence.J. H. van Hateren - 2021 - Synthese 199:12463-12483.
    The causal efficacy of a material system is usually thought to be produced by the law-like actions and interactions of its constituents. Here, a specific system is constructed and explained that produces a cause that cannot be understood in this way, but instead has novel and autonomous efficacy. The construction establishes a proof-of-feasibility of strong emergence. The system works by utilizing randomness in a targeted and cyclical way, and by relying on sustained evolution by natural selection. It is not vulnerable (...)
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  43. The semantics and ontology of dispositions.D. H. Mellor - 2000 - Mind 109 (436):757--780.
    The paper looks at the semantics and ontology of dispositions in the light of recent work on the subject. Objections to the simple conditionals apparently entailed by disposition statements are met by replacing them with so-called 'reduction sentences' and some implications of this are explored. The usual distinction between categorical and dispositional properties is criticised and the relation between dispositions and their bases examined. Applying this discussion to two typical cases leads to the conclusion that fragility is not a real (...)
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  44. Powers, Double Prevention and Mental Causation.Kim Davies - 2016 - Metaphysica 17 (1):37-42.
    S. C. Gibb holds that some mental events enable physical events to take place by acting as ‘double preventers’ which prevent other mental events from effecting change in the physical domain. She argues that this enables a dualist account of psychophysical interaction consistent with the causal relevance of mental events, their distinctness from physical events, the causal closure of the physical and the exclusion of systematic overdetermination. While accepting the causal powers metaphysic, this paper argues that: Closure is maintained (...)
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  45. Did Marx Defend Black Slavery? On Jamaica and Labour in a Black Skin.Gregory Slack - 2023 - Historical Materialism 31 (3):135-158.
    Over the past 40 years a tradition of Marx interpretation has built up around a single passage concerning black slavery in an 1853 letter from Marx to Engels, in order to demonstrate that Marx’s support for emancipation was conditional on the level of ‘civilization’ attained by black slaves. I will argue that this interpretation, which attempts to prove Marx’s racist defense of slavery, is overdetermined by an inattention to historical context and a hypersensitivity to Marx’s nineteenth-century epithets. This is important (...)
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  46. “Man-Machines and Embodiment: From Cartesian Physiology to Claude Bernard’s ‘Living Machine’”.Charles T. Wolfe & Philippe Huneman - 2017 - In Justin E. H. Smith (ed.), Embodiment: A History. Oxford University Press.
    A common and enduring early modern intuition is that materialists reduce organisms in general and human beings in particular to automata. Wasn’t a famous book of the time entitled L’Homme-Machine? In fact, the machine is employed as an analogy, and there was a specifically materialist form of embodiment, in which the body is not reduced to an inanimate machine, but is conceived as an affective, flesh-and-blood entity. We discuss how mechanist and vitalist models of organism exist in a more complementary (...)
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  47. Marxism and Theories of Global Justice.Julien Rajaoson - 2020 - International Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences 1 ( no 05):64-78.
    We shall see that as the Master of suspicion, Marx rejects capitalism, which he considers to be a system of bourgeois oppression, absurd and decadent. The latter eludes the importance of the social question in the historical future of a society. Trampling on the lyrical illusions of practical rationality, he insists on the rigidity of economic and social determinisms, to which he confers an overdeterminent role in sub-estimating the impact of cognitive and/or psychological mechanisms on the exercise of state power. (...)
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  48. An Internal Limit of the Structural Analysis of Causation.Alessandro Giordani - 2016 - Axiomathes 26 (4):429-450.
    Structural models of systems of causal connections have become a common tool in the analysis of the concept of causation. In the present paper I offer a general argument to show that one of the most powerful definitions of the concept of actual cause, provided within the structural models framework, is not sufficient to grant a full account of our intuitive judgements about actual causation, so that we are still waiting for a comprehensive definition. This is done not simply by (...)
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  49. Mental causation without downward causation.John Gibbons - 2006 - Philosophical Review 115 (1):79-103.
    The problem of downward causation is that an intuitive response to an intuitive picture leads to counterintuitive results. Suppose a mental event, m1, causes another mental event, m2. Unless the mental and the physical are completely independent, there will be a physical event in your brain or your body or the physical world as a whole that underlies this event. The mental event occurs at least partly in virtue of the physical event’s occurring. And the same goes for m2 [2] (...)
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  50. Testimonial Insult: A Moral Reason for Belief?Finlay Malcolm - 2018 - Logos and Episteme (1):27-48.
    When you don’t believe a speaker’s testimony for reasons that call into question the speaker’s credibility, it seems that this is an insult against the speaker. There also appears to be moral reasons that count in favour of refraining from insulting someone. When taken together, these two plausible claims entail that we have a moral reason to refrain from insulting speakers with our lack of belief, and hence, sometimes, a moral reason to believe the testimony of speakers. Reasons for belief (...)
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