12 found
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  1. Wisdom and Beatitude in Spinoza and Qoheleth.Stephen Harrop - 2024 - Res Philosophica 101 (3):603-610.
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  2. On Some Leibnizian Arguments for the Principle of Sufficient Reason.Stephen Harrop - 2020 - History of Philosophy Quarterly 37 (2):143-162.
    Leibniz often refers to the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) as something like a first principle. In some texts, however, he attempts to give positive arguments in its favor. I examine two such arguments, and find them wanting. The first argument has two defects. First, it is question-begging; and second, when the question-begging step is excised, the principle one can in fact derive is highly counter-intuitive. The second argument is valid, but has the defect of only reaching a nearly trivial (...)
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  3. Essence, Experiment, and Underdetermination in the Spinoza-Boyle Correspondence.Stephen Harrop - 2022 - Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 12 (2):447-484.
    I examine the (mediated) correspondence between Spinoza and Robert Boyle concerning the latter’s account of fluidity and his experiments on reconstitution of niter in the light of the epistemology and doctrine of method contained in the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect. I argue that both the Treatise and the correspondence reveal that for Spinoza, the proper method of science is not experimental, and that he accepted a powerful under-determination thesis. I argue that, in contrast to modern versions, Spinoza’s (...)
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  4. Spinoza on Space and Motion.Stephen Harrop - forthcoming - Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science.
    In this paper, I argue for two main theses. The first is that Spinoza held that space was not an independently existing thing such as absolute space This creates a problem for his account of individuation. The second thesis is that he can solve this problem by appealing to another doctrine he accepted, that there is absolute motion. I conclude that Spinoza was among the first early modern figures to reject absolute space but accept absolute motion.
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  5. LeMans and Proslogion 15.Stephen Harrop - 2023 - Analysis 83 (1):50-54.
    Kearns (2021) argues that there is a parody version of Anselm's ontological argument (a "gontological argument") which shows that God does not exist. I show that Anselm considers one of the key premises in Kearns' gontological argument, and explicitly gives an argument which entails its falsity, and hence the unsoundness of the supposed parody argument. -/- .
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  6. Henry Oldenburg.Stephen Harrop - 2025 - In Karolina Hübner & Justin Steinberg (eds.), The Cambridge Spinoza lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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  7. Georg Hermann Schuller.Stephen Harrop - 2025 - In Karolina Hübner & Justin Steinberg (eds.), The Cambridge Spinoza lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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  8. Robert Boyle.Stephen Harrop - 2025 - In Karolina Hübner & Justin Steinberg (eds.), The Cambridge Spinoza lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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  9. Du Chatelet's First Cosmological Argument.Stephen Harrop - forthcoming - In The Bloomsbury Companion to Du Châtelet. Bloomsbury.
    In the second chapter of her <i>Institutions de Physique</i> Emilie Du Chatelet gives two cosmological arguments for the existence of God. In this chapter I focus on the first of these arguments. I argue that, while it bears some significant similarities to arguments given by John Locke and Christian Wolff, it improves on these arguments in at least two ways. First, it avoids a potential equivocation in Locke's argument; and second, it avoids Wolff's mere stipulation that whoever claims that there (...)
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  10. On the Necessity of Priority Monism.Stephen Harrop - 2024 - Erkenntnis 89 (2):685-703.
    Priority monism is the doctrine that there is only one basic object: the entire cosmos. Priority monists often take this to be a metaphysically necessary thesis. I explore the consequences of modalizing the priority monist thesis. I argue that, modulo some assumptions, the modalized thesis entails the necessary existence of the actual cosmos. I further argue that, if the modalized thesis is true, and the actual cosmos necessarily exists, then the only possible concrete objects are the actually existing ones.
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  11. Thomas Reid on Induction and Natural Kinds.Stephen Harrop - 2022 - Journal of Scottish Philosophy 20 (1):1-18.
    I examine the views of Thomas Reid with respect to a certain version of the problem of induction: Why are inductions using natural kinds successful, and what justifies them? I argue that while both Reid holds a kind of conventionalist view about natural kinds, this conventionalism has a realistic component which allows him to answer both questions.
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  12. Spinoza, Explained.Stephen Harrop - 2022 - Dissertation, Yale University
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