The article explains how the primordial singularity can be understood as a cause having brought the Universe into empirical existence. It also addresses the nonempirical nature of such a cause.

ABSTRACT: A systematic reconstruction of Chrysippus’ theory of causes, grounded on the Stoic tenets that causes are bodies, that they are relative, and that all causation can ultimately be traced back to the one ‘active principle’ which pervades all things. I argue that Chrysippus neither developed a finished taxonomy of causes, nor intended to do so, and that he did not have a set of technical terms for mutually exclusive classes of causes. Rather, the various adjectives which he used for (...) causes had the function of describing or explaining particular features of certain causes in particular philosophical contexts. I challenge the sometimes assumed close connection of Chrysippus’ notion of causation with explanation. I show that the standard view that the distinction between proximate and auxiliary causes and perfect and principal causes corresponds to the distinction between internal and external determining factors is not born out by the evidence, and argue that causes of the two types were not thought to co-operate, but rather conceived of as alternatives. (shrink)

Is the Smartphone (SP) an extension of consciousness or just an (other) externalization of the mind and an extension of the social? The concept of externalizing the mind more appropriately describes a series of processes that tend to be considered extensions of the mind. The human mind has evolved concurrently with various externalizations, such as utensils and language, as contributions to the development of the common environment of humanity: culture and civilization. Externalizations indicate the appearance of the human mind while (...) the extensions take into account the possibility of passing to another level (the singularity of consciousness). SP is a handy tool that mediates the personal relationship with the world, benefiting from a level of integration into the global workspace of the mind. Externalization called the SP could be a bridge from the externalization of the mind to its extensions, making the ontological leap from the utensil status to that of "part of the mind". SP is a mediator of an environment: it mediates between the mind and a special social environment called the Internet (mediates access to cognitive support provided by society through the virtual world), which is gradually becoming another reality. SP is part of the extension of human society by introducing tools into the network of personal relationships. Not the mind is expanded, but the social network, increasing the number of entities with which the human can create and maintain relationships. SP may be an extension of the social rather than an extension of the mind because it mediates an increase in the complexity of social relations that can lead to the emergence of "collective minds" (causing a change in the ontological status of society). Changing cognitive demands is a feature of the world's progress. Progress brings along with it cognitive costs of integration, technical solutions like SP, aimed at reducing these costs, generating an evolutionary advantage in the new social context. From an evolutionist perspective, the world means precisely this kind of modification of cognitive demands necessary for survival, SP joining the set of tools that mediate the cognitive progress of the world in which the human is inserted. We propose the use of an evolutionary cognitive economy principle, based on avoiding unnecessary costs, reducing losses and optimizing cognitive gains. (shrink)

Bertrand Russell’s philosophy around 1914 is often interpreted as phenomenalism, the view that sensations are not caused by but rather constitute ordinary objects. Indeed, prima facie, his 1914 Our Knowledge of the External World reduces objects to sense-data. However, Russell did not think his view was phenomenalist, and he said that he never gave up either the causal theory of perception or a realist understanding of objects. In this paper I offer an explanation of why Russell might have undertaken (...) the constructionist project of his 1914 work while not considering the resulting position that objects can be constructed out of sense-data to be phenomenalist. (shrink)

To the question whether Hume believed in mind-independent physical objects (or as he would put it, bodies), the answer is Yes and No. It is Yes when Hume writes “We may well ask, What causes induce us to believe in the existence of body? but ’tis in vain to ask, Whether there be body or not? That is a point, which we must take for granted in all our reasonings.” However the answer is No after inquiring into the causes of (...) that belief, when he writes, “What then can we look for from this confusion of groundless and extraordinary opinions but error and falsehood? And how can we justify to ourselves any belief we repose in them?” My view is that Hume’s Yes and No answers can best be accounted for by seeing him as a Pyrrhonian skeptic in the tradition of Sextus Empiricus. This interpretation, while finding considerable truth in the various positions canvassed, is closest to those of Norton, Fogelin, and especially Popkin. (shrink)

How to account for metaphor has long been a contentious issue within pragmatics. Revisiting this debate, Wilson & Carston (2019) analyse Grice’s oft-discussed exclusion of metaphor as an empirically unjustified use of cut-off points on the empirical continuum of language and link it a tension between his underlying focus on formalisation contrary to their aim of maximising pragmatics’ empirical scope. In spite of the latter, Relevance Theory’s various own models fail to account for essential characteristics of metaphor caused by certain (...) non-propositional effects eluding its grasp and subsequently excluded. Rather than solving this with new tools, as Wilson & Carston propose, this paper seeks to examine the aforementioned tension and its link to the use of cut-off points they criticised. I will argue that Relevance Theory, too, uses cut-off points, highlighting their nature as the effect of a shared approach vis-à-vis formalisation rather than an individual flaw of Grice’s: Both exclude certain empirical effects of language in pursuance of a unified theory of communication organised around the notion of intention and grounded in teleological assumptions external to language. Drawing on Derrida’s analogous critique of Austin’s pragmatics, I will illustrate the paradoxical nature of such cut-off points and possible ways forward. (shrink)

The paper advances the hypothesis that George Berkeley's philosophy does not overcome solipsism. In order to do this, it presents four difficulties on his arguments for other existences: (I) the argument about the existence of an external cause for sensitive ideas faces the difficulty of not eliminating the possibility that the mind itself is the cause of these ideas; (II) the argument present in the Dialogues to prove the existence of God is circular: it presupposes the existence (...) of objects distinct from the mind, however, the argument for the existence of these objects presupposes the existence of God; (III) the argument in favor of the existence of those objects, besides being related to the mentioned circularity, is developed without Berkeley presenting a clear notion of what these objects are; (IV) the argument for the existence of other minds, in what appears to be their most plausible interpretation – which states that it is possible to infer the existence of other minds from the observation of irregular, inconstant, and vicious actions in subjects –, faces the difficulty that, in a scenario where such actions do not exist, Berkeley loses the evidence for the existence of other minds. (shrink)

This paper is a revised version of the essay that won the Zapffe Prize in 2017. -/- In «The Last Messiah» and On the tragic, Peter Wessel Zapffe suggests that humankind should cease to reproduce, as the meaning of life cannot be found and human life at its best is tragic. The theory has been criticized for assuming that the meaning of life must be explained by an external cause and implicitly asks for an infinite causal chain. In (...) this paper, I argue that it is possible to escape this critique by adding a new element to the definition of the tragic: namely, the insight that the tragic cannot come into existence if the subject does not demonstrate its greatness. Precisely because a human, on Zapffe’s understanding, must prove its brilliance if tragedy is to arise, I argue that the tragic cannot be devoid of meaning. In contrast, the individual seems to be provided with a tragic meaning of life, rather than being deprived of it. Furthermore, the new definition of the tragic affects Zapffe’s antinatalism, because a tragic meaning of life does not necessitate that humankind should cease to reproduce. Yet, the definition does not suggest that humans should reproduce either. Instead, it confronts us with the following question: Should one bring new life into the world, when the meaning of life only can be found in the tragic? (shrink)

Benjamin Libet’s work paved the way for the neuroscientific study of free will. Other scientists have praised this research as groundbreaking. In philosophy, the reception has been more negative, often even dismissive. First, I will propose a diagnosis of this striking discrepancy. I will suggest that the experiments seem irrelevant, from the perspective of philosophy, due to the way in which they operationalize free will. In particular, I will argue that this operational definition does not capture free will properly and (...) that it is based on a false dichotomy between internal and external causes. However, I will also suggest that this problem could be overcome, as there are no obvious obstacles to an operationalization of free will that is in accord with the philosophical conception of free will. (shrink)

Modernity seemed to be the autumn of eternity. The secularization of European culture provided little sustenance to the concept of eternity with its heavy theological baggage. Yet, our hero would not leave the stage without an outstanding performance of its power and temptation. Indeed, in the first three centuries of the modern period – the subject of the third chapter by Yitzhak Melamed - the concept of eternity will play a crucial role in the great philosophical systems of the period. (...) The first part of this chapter concentrates on the debate about the temporality of God. While most of the great metaphysicians of the seventeenth century – Suarez, Spinoza, Malebranche, and Leibniz – ascribed to God eternal, non-temporal, existence, a growing number of philosophers conceived God as existing in time. For Newton, God’s eternity was simply the fact that “He was, he is, and is to come.” A similar view of God as being essentially in time was endorsed by Pierre Gassendi, Henry More, Samuel Clarke, Isaac Barrow, John Locke, and most probably Descartes as well. In the second part of the chapter we study the concept of eternal truth, and its relation to the emerging notion of Laws of Nature. The third part of the chapter explicates Spinoza’s original understanding of eternity as a modal concept. For Spinoza, eternity is a unique kind of necessary existence: it is existence that is self-necessitated (unlike the existence of other things whose necessity derives from external causes). Eternity is the existence of God or the one substance. Yet, Spinoza claims that if we conceive finite things adequately - “sub specie aeternitatis” – as nothing but modes flowing from the essence of God, even finite things (like our minds) can take part in God’s eternity. The fourth and final part of the chapter is mostly focused on the reception of Spinoza’s original conception of eternity by Leibniz and other eighteenth century philosophers. (shrink)

In the Ethics, Spinoza famously rejects freedom of the will. He also offers an error theory for why many believe, falsely, that the will is free. Standard accounts of his arguments for these claims focus on their efficacy against incompatibilist views of free will. For Spinoza, the will cannot be free since it is determined by an infinite chain of external causes. And the pervasive belief in free will arises from a structural limitation of our self-knowledge: because we are (...) aware of our actions but unaware of their causes, we suppose that we alone must be responsible for them. Yet I argue that the standard accounts miss a further element of Spinoza’s arguments that also targets compatibilist views on which free will is consistent with a specific kind of determination—namely, self-determination in accordance with our value judgments. For Spinoza, we are misled not only in supposing that our actions lack external determination but also in thinking that they are determined by our representations of value. In fact, our actions are determined by our appetites, which are blind to our value judgments. And the pervasive belief that our actions are determined by such judgments arises from the projection of value onto the objects we seek. As he denies us free will, then, Spinoza also denies us a capacity central to agency—the capacity to determine our actions in accordance with our ideas of the good. This makes his arguments against free will more consequential, and more radical, than commonly assumed. (shrink)

In this chapter, I attempt to show that evil exists only if what I call Agent Causal Theism (ACT) is true. According to ACT, human beings are immaterial, conscious agents endued (by God) with a power of self-motion: the power to think, decide, and act for ends in light of reasons, but without being externally caused to do so (even by God himself). By contrast, I argue that there is no space for evil in the worldviews of naturalistic Darwinism or (...) theistic Calvinism. (shrink)

To provide metaphysical grounds for the physics of her time, Du Châtelet argued for the notion of an active force. This was different from the impressed force in Newton’s second law. The former force was a property of a body, whereas the latter was an external cause. I shall study this discrepancy and argue that the interactive concept of force in Newton’s third law is consistent with Du Châtelet’s standards for an intelligible physics. Consequently, the interaction entailed by (...) the law of universal gravitation complies with Du Châtelet’s principles of human knowledge. (shrink)

Spinoza’s celebrated doctrine of the conatus asserts that “each thing, as far as it can by its own power, strives to persevere in its being” (E3p6). Shortly thereafter Spinoza makes the further claim that the (human) mind strives to increase its power of acting (E3p12). This latter claim is commonly interpreted as asserting that human beings (and their associations) not only strive to persevere in their existence, but also always strive to increase their power. Spinoza’s justification for E3p12 relies (among (...) others) on E3p6. For this reason, it seems reasonable that we strive to increase our power because having more power is likely to help us persevere in our being. The more power we have, the less likely we are to be out-powered by external causes that may conflict with our striving for persevering in our existence. The logic here is quite sound. Insofar as human beings are mere finite modes, i.e., entities whose existence is not guaranteed by their mere essence, and are distinct from other finite modes with whom we interact in various manners, it would seem that our striving for power should be insatiable. No finite degree of power can ever guarantee the continuation of our existence. On one occasion, Spinoza even defines good and evil as “what increases or diminishes, aids or restrains, our power of acting” (E4p8d). Having this sound logic in mind, we should be taken aback by a brief claim Spinoza makes in passing in the seventh chapter of Political Treatise. In this passage, Spinoza seems to assert that the stability of a state – which is one of the chief political virtues for Spinoza – is a function of having just the right degree of power, not less, but also, not more. The passage seems to imply that having too much power might be detrimental to the state. But how can such a view be consistent with Spinoza’s assertion and approval of our constant “will to power” in the Ethics? In the current paper, I will explain the tension between these two strands in Spinoza’s thought, and attempt to reconcile them. I will begin with a close examination of the passage from the seventh chapter of the TP, and its apparent contrast with Spinoza’s claim in the Ethics about our striving to increase our power of acting. I will then turn, in the second part, to consider whether Spinoza’s claims in TP Ch. 7 – a chapter dedicated to the exploration of the nature of non-tyrannical monarchy – are valid only with regard to a monarchic state, or whether we may generalize the claim that having too much power might be harmful to other forms of the state or even other kinds of individuals. In the third and final part I will attempt to solve the tension between Spinoza’s apparently conflicting claims by looking more closely at Spinoza’s understanding of human power, and its political dimensions. (shrink)

What are the freedom-relevant conditions necessary for someone to be a morally responsible person? I examine several key authors beginning with Harry Frankfurt that have contributed to this debate in recent years, and then look back to the writings or Søren Kierkegaard to provide a solution to the debate. In this project I investigate the claims of semi-compatibilism and argue that while its proponents have identified a fundamental question concerning free will and moral responsibility—namely, that the agential properties necessary for (...) moral responsibility ascriptions are found in scenarios where the agent acts on her own as opposed to her action resulting from freedom undermining external causes such as manipulation, phobias, etc.—they have failed to show that the freedom-relevant agential properties identified in those actual-sequence scenarios are compatible with causal determinism. My argument is that only a voluntarist-libertarian theory can adequately account for the kinds of cases that the semicompatibilist identify. I argue that there are three freedom-relevant conditions necessary for someone to be a morally responsible person: a hierarchical understanding of human desires [specifically and mental states generally], an incompatibilist (non-deterministic) understanding of human action, and a historical understanding of character development. The ability to reflect critically about one’s own desires and emotions, and thus to have a kind of self-knowledge and understanding with regard to the springs of one’s own actions, is required to make it possible for the agent to be the “source” of her own actions and character. The non-deterministic understanding of human action is needed for a similar reason: if determinism is true, then every action a person performs can be ultimately traced to and exhaustively explained in terms of factors outside the agent’s control, thus making the agent’s responsibility for his actions an illusion. And finally,human nature must be such that, over time, one’s choices leave a dispositional residue self-understanding and motivation in the person’s self, out of which, in mature understanding and motivation, the person acts as a fully responsible agent. (shrink)

Spinoza’s recognition of the unpredictable fortunes of individuals, explicable through the interplay between their intrinsic natures and their susceptibility to external causes, informs his account of political success and – what for him is the same thing – political virtue. Thus, a state may thrive because it has a good constitution (an internal feature), or because it was fortunate not to be surrounded by powerful enemies. Normally, however, it is the combination of both luck and internal qualities that determines (...) the fate of things. What is true about the fate of states holds equally of the fate of other types of individual, both human and non-human. In a sense, even the fate of a theory is determined by the interplay between its intrinsic virtues, and mere historical luck. A quarter century ago, shortly after I began my graduate studies in philosophy at Yale, I started thinking about writing a dissertation on Spinoza’s philosophy. A good and caring friend in my graduate cohort advised me against the idea, which he believed was tantamount to “professional suicide” given the oddity of Spinoza’s thought. Indeed, the environment of analytic philosophy in the mid- and even late-1990s was not particularly auspicious for the academic study of Spinoza. Spinoza was – rightly – considered as having little commitment to commonsense, and commitment to commonsense – the most stubborn of prejudices – was (and still is) considered by many a minimal requirement for entry into the club of “decent” philosophers. Yet, things have changed over the past twenty-five years. So much so, that recently a (non-Spinozist) early modernist colleague of mine complained to me about the futility of changing the description of an event he planned from a ‘Spinoza workshop’ into an ‘early modern philosophy workshop,’ since “one way or another, most of the submitted abstracts are going to deal with Spinoza.” Indeed, in many ways, the interest and intensity of the study of Spinoza’s philosophy in the Anglo-American world has eclipsed that of almost all other early modern philosophers, and we seem to be facing a circumstance in which Spinoza is gradually competing with, if not replacing, Kant as the compass of modern philosophy. One can list many reasons for these dramatic developments: from Spinoza’s radical naturalism, to his dismissal of the fairytales of anthropomorphic and anthropocentric religion – while Kant on these issues could at best be said to kick the ghosts from the front door while inviting them back as ‘ideas’ or ‘postulates of practical reason’ through the back door –- to his unequivocal rejection of the illusions of humanism. Still, we lack a full explanation of the recent Spinozist upheaval in North American philosophy. (shrink)

Credit risk, also known as default risk, is the likelihood of a corporation losing money if a business partner defaults. If the liabilities are not met under the terms of the contract, the firm may default, resulting in the loss of the company. There is no clear way to distinguish between organizations that will default and those that will not prior to default. We can only make probabilistic estimations of the risk of default at best. There are two types of (...) credit risk default models in this regard: structural and reduced form models. Structural models are used to calculate the likelihood of a company defaulting based on its assets and liabilities. If the market worth of a company's assets is less than the debt it owes, it will default. Reduced form models often assume an external cause of default, such as a Poisson jump process, which is driven by a stochastic process. They model default as a random event with no regard for the balance sheet of the company. This paper provides a Review of credit risk default models. (shrink)

This work aims to understand the affective dimension that permeates human relationships and the variation that characterizes their forms. The concepts presented here aim to situate man in relation to these two poles of his existence, servitude and freedom, which are urgent for us to reflect on the subject of ethics today. Considering instability as a constitutive mark of the affective field through which man relates, we will resort to concepts which will support and illustrate the idea which we intend (...) to present, namely the economic nature of the bodily forces which motivate and intervene in such relations which pass, as they are established, to a configuration of power. From the philosophical concepts of affection, servitude and freedom, according to Spinoza, it is possible to understand the existential and ethical dimension that runs through human life. The Freudian concepts of herd instinct, identification and love can be understood as affections belonging to the soul of the herd which, in its psychic process, leads man to his state of servitude. From these foundations, one can think about human freedom and how man can, through sublimatory processes, become the cause of himself, and thus show new possibilities, outlets that man has under his own power to make his life more joyful and, in this way, not to live at the mercy of external causes that result in shocks, condemning him to the bondage of his own passions. This research brings these questions to reflection to show how the traditional way of thinking directly impacts man in his way of relating, freely or not, to the world and, finally, how another perspective of understanding this which constitutes its nature allows a new posture in the face of desire itself. -/- . (shrink)

This article aims to show the emergence of Pre-Socratic Natural Philosophy using the cosmological Big-Bang analogy, where from a certain moment in time and space a universe appears, first in its "inflationary" moment and, soon, in constant expansion. In the case of natural philosophy, it arose with Thales at a certain moment in space and time. It also had its “inflationary” period marked by a large number of philoso-phers and a profound change in the understanding of nature. This period lasted (...) for about 5 generations until philosophy entered its paradigmatic period with Plato and Aristotle. How was the Natural Philosophy Big Bang (NPBB) possible? What were the main factors that made this possible? The text discusses these aspects, and for the author, the main factor must be sought in the internal dynamics of Greek thought and not in external causes, such as the exchange with Babylonians and Egyptians or the economic dynamics. -/- To explain the NPBB, I use the hypothesis of linguistic relativism, meaning that “lan-guage shapes the mind”, in the same line that Bruno Snell used in his 1956 book. That is, the development of the Greek language would be the preponderant factor to explain the dynamics that led to the NPBB. We believe that this hypothesis (currently criti-cized for being excessively deterministic) is justified when applied to the aforemen-tioned situation and can be summarized as follows: “An extraordinary situation re-quires an equally extraordinary explanation”. A set of historical occurrences justifies the application of the strong version of the concept of linguistic relativism, something that today would be difficult to occur. -/- The text synthesizes the main milestones of linguistic relativism, goes through the description of the turn of the oralist society to a society based on writing, which rad-ically changes the way knowledge is stored, in addition to enabling its critical evalua-tion, one of the foundations of philosophy and science. Several authors who are al-ready classics follow a similar line without, however, clearly adopting the author's position. These are the cases of Burnet, Havelock, and Ong. The text also shows some details of the linguistic evolution of Greek and its origins in the oralist mythical tradi-tion. -/- The main conclusion is that linguistic relativism in its strong version is an adequate method to deal with NPBB situation. -/- . (shrink)

Credit risk, also known as default risk, is the likelihood of a corporation losing money if a business partner defaults. If the liabilities are not met under the terms of the contract, the firm may default, resulting in the loss of the company. There is no clear way to distinguish between organizations that will default and those that will not prior to default. We can only make probabilistic estimations of the risk of default at best. There are two types of (...) credit risk default models in this regard: structural and reduced-form models. Structural models are used to calculate the likelihood of a company defaulting based on its assets and liabilities. If the market worth of a company's assets is less than the debt it owes, it will default. Reduced form models often assume an external cause of default, such as a Poisson jump process, which is driven by a stochastic process. They model default as a random event with no regard for the balance sheet of the company. This paper provides a Review of credit risk default models. (shrink)

The phenomena of terrorism and other politically motivated violence have been assessed across different disciplines from political science and economics to theology and psychology. Whereas the definitions of the concepts of “terrorism” and “terrorist” are disputed and they rather reflect the perspectives of the defining entity, there is a common consensus that terrorism can be classified in terms of its type (such as state-sponsored, dissent, religious, pathological, narco-, cyber-, and bioterrorism), the scale (i.e. domestic vs. international), motives, and objectives. By (...) the same token, the roots and causes of terrorism can be enumerated as internal sources (such as social, economic, political, and cultural indicators) and external sources (such as colonialism and neocolonialism, regional conflicts and historical enmities, failed/failing states and lawless areas, and the penetration of foreign cultures and lifestyles). Although such grounds can be considered as the collective causes, they can merely address how one becomes a potential appropriate recruit for terrorist organizations. Hence, identifying the causes of terrorism is of paramount significance in order to both combat and most importantly prevent terrorism. Given that the first generation of psychological approaches to terrorist violence, chiefly drawing from psychoanalytic theory, has basically run its course, this study takes a systematic approach to evaluate the root causes of terrorism, particularly from social and behavioral perspectives, and attempts to address some key questions such as the progress of and reasons for individuals supporting, joining and leaving terrorist organizations, the relevance of psychopathology to comprehending and preventing terrorism, and the roles of ideology, identity, and belonging in terrorist behavior. (shrink)

Many philosophers have found in Hume’s skeptical doubts concerning the operations of the understanding the materials for an argument that generalizes from induction to other domains, like our beliefs in the external world, other minds, and the past. This chapter offers a novel reconstruction of that argument and identifies the principles that are responsible for its capacity to generalize beyond induction. Next, it presents a classical reading of Hume’s skeptical solution and shows that Crispin Wright’s entitlement theory is close (...) in spirit to it. After that, it develops two objections to entitlement theory: it relies on the truth of deeply contingent propositions that are not a priori rational, and it does not manage to redefine the concept of epistemic rationality while offering an effective anti-skeptical response. The chapter concludes with a constructive suggestion: some passages that support a non-classical reading of Hume’s positive views on induction offer the materials to reject the steps of the skeptical argument that cause trouble for entitlement theory. (shrink)

The current economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has created new changes and challenges for society, which has led to a deeper identification of pressing problems and to develop strategies and models for overcoming crises in various countries, industries and businesses. The formation and improvement of modern strategies and models of crisis management is impossible without optimizing the resources of economic entities, providing assistance at various levels of government to support priority sectors of the economy, finding additional sources of (...) funding to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. To ensure the effective develop and implementation of modern strategies and models of crisis management it is necessary to have information about the state of economic entities, relevant commodity, raw materials, financial markets, explore the internal and external environment, determine the impact of risks on current activities business entities or industries. The effectiveness of crisis management strategies and models is determined by the ability of the management system to ensure the support of business activity of economic entities in the relevant market and to stimulate effective consumer demand. The purpose of writing this scientific monograph is to substantiate the theoretical and methodological foundations and to form and improve strategies and models of crisis management taking into account new changes and challenges for society related to the COVID-19 pandemic and declining business activity of economic entities. The object of the author’s research was the process of formation and improvement of crisis management strategies and models in the conditions of market imbalance and change of the external environment, reduction of activity volumes of economic entities, growth of budget expenditures to combat the COVID-19, formation of new forms of activities and penetration of information technology into various spheres of life to optimize the negative consequences of a pandemic. The subject of the study were socio-economic, organizational and institutional processes of formation and effective implementation of strategies and models of crisis management in various areas of economic activity; substantiation of mechanisms for ensuring the competitiveness of economic entities and the formation new forms of entrepreneurship; development of modern information technologies; consideration of best practices in business process management and digitalization using world experience in various sectors of the economy caused by the COVID-19. (shrink)

Spinoza distinguishes between causation that is external, as in A causing B where A is external to B, and causation that is internal, where C causes itself (causa sui), without any involvement of anything external to C. External causation is easy to understand, but self causation is not. This note explores an approach to self-causation based upon Gödelian undecidability and draws upon ideas from an earlier study of Gödel’s proof and the quantum measurement problem (Zwick, 1978).

Genetic differences can lead to phenotypic differences either directly or indirectly (via causing differences in external environments, which then affect phenotype). This possibility of genetic effects being mediated by environmental influences is often used by scientists and philosophers to argue that heritability is not a very helpful causal or explanatory notion. In this paper it is shown that these criticisms are based on serious misconceptions about methods of behavior genetics.

According to epistemic internalism, the only facts that determine the justificational status of a belief are facts about the subject’s own mental states, like beliefs and experiences. Externalists instead hold that certain external facts, such as facts about the world or the reliability of a belief-producing mechanism, affect a belief’s justificational status. Some internalists argue that considerations about evil demon victims and brains in vats provide excellent reason to reject externalism: because these subjects are placed in epistemically unfavorable settings, (...) externalism seems unable to account for the strong intuition that these subjects’ beliefs are nonetheless justified. I think these considerations do not at all help the internalist cause. I argue that by appealing to the anti-individualistic nature of perception, it can be shown that skeptical scenarios provide no reason to prefer internalism to externalism. (shrink)

This paper examines the role of reason in Shepherd's account of acquiring knowledge of the external world via first principles. Reason is important, but does not have a foundational role. Certain principles enable us to draw the required inferences for acquiring knowledge of the external world. These principles are basic, foundational and, more importantly, self‐evident and thus justified in other ways than by demonstration. Justificatory demonstrations of these principles are neither required, nor possible. By drawing on textual and (...) contextual evidence, I will show that Shepherd should have said that we know the first principles of any science, in general, and that “everything which begins to exist must have a cause”, in particular, via intuition, not via reason. Reasoning about such principles can help their self‐evidence shine through in certain cases; their justification, and our being justified in believing them, does not come from this reasoning, however. (shrink)

In this paper, we identify some key features of what makes something a disease, and consider whether these apply to pregnancy. We argue that there are some compelling grounds for regarding pregnancy as a disease. Like a disease, pregnancy affects the health of the pregnant person, causing a range of symptoms from discomfort to death. Like a disease, pregnancy can be treated medically. Like a disease, pregnancy is caused by a pathogen, an external organism invading the host’s body. Like (...) a disease, the risk of getting pregnant can be reduced by using prophylactic measures. We address the question of whether the ‘normality’ of pregnancy, its current necessity for human survival, or the value often attached to it are reasons to reject the view that pregnancy is a disease. We point out that applying theories of disease to the case of pregnancy, can in many cases illuminate inconsistencies and problems within these theories. Finally, we show that it is difficult to find one theory of disease that captures all paradigm cases of diseases, while convincingly excluding pregnancy. We conclude that there are both normative and pragmatic reasons to consider pregnancy a disease. (shrink)

In this two-part article, I propose a new materialist understanding of behavior. The term “mattering” in the title refers to sense-making behavior that matters, that is, to significant habits and materialized behaviors. By significant habits I mean protocols, practices and routines that generate ways of reading material signs and fixed accounts of movement. I advance a notion of behaving that stresses its materiality and sensory shaping, and I provide select examples from music. I note that current definitions of behavior do (...) not capture its material dimension. This is because behavioral science has mostly viewed matter as passive, and not as an active agency. Such an approach has metaphysically framed behavior as a phenomenon of presence that is external from its environment. The approach of behavioral science to matter where there are fixed borders between the internal and external is lacking, since it does not account for agential cuts as conceptualized by Karen Barad. Instead, I consider behavior performatively; as an ongoing iterative practice and as integral to the growth of immanently self-caused matter that spawns metastable relational formations that produce different possibilities for successive formations. In this regard, behavior matters, and matter behaves. One key aspect of my article advances Bernard Stiegler as a critical new materialist thinker. This advancement concerns the technical doings of artworks, which include the material activity that is generative of sensitivity: feelings and beliefs associated with a sense or meaning. I outline an example of the materiality of habits as constitutive of music. After that, I coin the transformative doings of matter on the artist as a “caripulation,” which is a desired movement or motion that transforms the mover and the moved. Finally, I raise “pharmacological” considerations in terms of the Stieglerian aspects of organic and inorganic organized matter. (shrink)

A large part of Richard Rorty’s works focus on criticizing the received view about philosophy. He argues, in his historical reconstruction of philosophical activity, that there has always been a misconception about philosophy in the history of philosophy. This misconception assumes that philosophy aims to grasp the ultimate knowledge, so it desperately engages in an attempt to achieve “truth”. In this view, which he calls representationalism and points to it by the metaphor of the mirror of nature, knowledge aims to (...) represent something out of mind, and the duty of philosophy is to put forward a theory about the representation. According to Rorty, based on this popular view philosophy is a foundational discipline that aims to evaluate epistemological claims of other disciplines. Rorty attempts to criticize and reject this Cartesian epistemological agenda for philosophy. Rorty’s approach to philosophy is therapeutic; that is, he tries to resolve philosophical problems rather than solve them. By adopting a historical method, Rorty seeks to show that “philosophy as epistemology” is a result of the dominance of what he calls the metaphor of the mirror of nature. From a critical rationalist perspective, the present article intends to critique Rorty’s views on epistemology. In this paper, Rorty’s historiographical approach is criticized in several ways. First, Rorty offers a one-sided and biased reconstruction of the history of philosophy to fit the abovementioned metaphor. Secondly, he treats history as rigid data from which it is possible to draw doctrinal conclusions. Whereas, as critical rationalists have said time and again, history by itself has no meaning. Moreover, Rorty’s justificationism is criticized. Rorty maintains that knowledge needs to be justified, and since it cannot be justified through representation, it must be justified by the consent of society. In other words, agreement in a group of people can provide an epistemic authority. Thus, both Rorty’s view and foundationalism, despite their differences, share justificationism in epistemology. That is, they both believe that knowledge needs to be justified. On the other hand, as critical rationalists have shown, justification in any shape and form, whether internal or external, is neither possible nor necessary. We also attempt to illustrate how Rorty’s epistemological approach results in confusion between epistemology and psychology; moreover, his epistemological behaviorism still suffers from some sort of justifications. In conclusion, Rorty expresses his criticism of epistemology with the metaphor of the mirror of nature. According to him, foundationalism is the result of the conflation of the Platonic conception of knowledge as something unchangeable, with the Cartesian mind that seeks certainty. However, his ignorance of the main crux of the matter in epistemology causes his own suggestion of epistemological behaviorism to suffer from the same problem, that is justificationism, which now appears in another form, i.e., social consensus. While, as critical rationalists repeated time and again, justification is neither possible nor necessary and not even desirable. They have shown that a non-justificationist approach to knowledge aimed at truth as a regulative idea could be a better approach. (shrink)

Adequate and inadequate ideas play a central role in Spinoza’s system. A number of recent commentators have suggested that the internality or externality of an idea’s immediate cause is a necessary and sufficient condition of the idea’s adequacy or inadequacy, respectively. I show that this thesis is subject to counterexample and briefly explore the significance of this critique for recent interpretations. I offer an alternative interpretation on which adequate and inadequate ideas are characterized by the manner in which they (...) grasp their objects. Adequate ideas conceive of their objects as following from God. Inadequate ideas conceive of their objects as affecting the body at a time and place. (shrink)

Metaphysics relies on the presupposition of the non-being of the world: since the world has once not existed it is necessary to postulate a cause for its existence, i.e. an extrinsic principle to explain the absolute beginning of the causal series of all things that constitute the world. After the critique of theologizing metaphysics by authors like Kant, Hegel and Nietzsche, the notion of an absolute beginning still persists though in a field in which it often goes as such (...) unnoticed, while it factually enjoys wide acceptance, namely in epistemology. It sounds as a truism that knowledge begins: personal inexistence (birth-death cycle) and the phenomenon of unconsciousness (sleep-wake cycle) seem to endorse the obviousness of that statement. Now, to link the beginning of the phenomenal series of subjective acts of knowledge with the existence of an external world that causes the specific content of our temporary cognitive acts relies, however, on two presuppositions, namely on the thesis of a complete non-being or nothingness of knowledge and, intrinsically related to this first presupposition, on the thesis of an absolute beginning of cognitive activity. If knowledge begins from its own nothingness, there must be a cause that is external to the totality of acts of knowledge, a cause that it doesn´t belong to the series of cognitive acts and, therefore, that it is not caused by any of them: this uncaused cause of contentful knowledge is supposed to be the real world external to the knowing subject. In my paper I make explicit the relation between realist-empiricist approachs to epistemology and the double presupposition of the nothingness and absolute beginning of knowledge, I explain the difficulties implied by these two presuppositions and, finally, I propose as a plausible solution to those difficulties some key theoretical claims of absolute idealism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Spinoza and the Theory of Organism HANS JONAS I CARTESIANDUALISMlanded speculation on the nature of life in an impasse: intelligible as, on principles of mechanics, the correlation of structure and function became within the res extensa, that of structure-plus-function with feeling or experience (modes of the res cogitans) was lost in the bifurcation, and thereby the fact of life itself became unintelligible at the same time that the explanation (...) of its bodily performance seemed to be assured. The impasse became manifest in Occasionalism : its tour de force of an extraneous, divine "synchronization" of the outer and the inner world (the latter denied to animals) not only suffered from its extreme artificiality, the common failing of such ad hoc constructions, but even at so high a cost failed to accomplish its theoretical purpose by its own terms. For the animal machine, like any machine, raises beyond the question of the "how" that of the "what for" of its functioning---of the purpose for which it had thus been constructed by its maker.1 Its performance, however devoid of immanent teleology, must serve an end, and that end must be someone's end. This end may (directly) be itself, as indeed Descartes had implied when declaring self-preservation to be the effect of the functioning of the organic automaton. In that case the existence as such of the machine would be its end--either terminally, or in turn to benefit something else. In the former case, the machine would have to be more than a machine, for a mere machine cannot enioy its existence. But since, by the rigorous conception of the res extensa, it cannot be more than a machine, its function and/or existence must serve something other than itself. Automata in Descartes ' time were mainly for entertainment (rather than work). But the raison d'etre of the living kingdom could not well be seen in God's indulging his mechanical abilities or in the amusement of celestial spectators--especially since mere complexity of arrangement does not create new quality and thus add something to the unrelieved sameness of the simple substratum that might enrich the spectrum of being. For quality, beyond the primitive determinations of the extended per se, is the subjective creature of sensation, the confused representation of quantity in a mind; and thus organisms cannot harbor it because as mere machines they lack mentality, and pure spirits cannot because they lack sensuality, or the privilege of confusion and thereby of illusion with its possible enjoyment. And as to their intellectual enjoyment, even that, deprived of the thrill of discovery by the same token, would pale in the contemplation of what to sufficiently large The concept of "machine," adopted for its strict confinementto efficientcause, is still a finalisticconcept,even thoughthe final cause is no longer internal to the entity, as a mode of its own operation,but external to it as antecedent design. [43] 44 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY intellects is nothing but the ever-repeated exemplification of the same few, elementary (and ultimately trivial) truths. There remained, then, the time-honored--Stoic as well as Christian--idea that plants and animals are for the benefit of Man. Indeed, since the existence of a living world is the necessary condition for the existence of any of its members, the self-justifying nature of at least one such member (= species) would justify the existence of the whole. In Stoicism, Man provided this end by his possession of reason, which makes him the culmination of a terrestrial scale of being that is also self-justifying throughout all its grades (the end as the best of many that are good in degrees) ; in Christianity, by his possession of an immortal soul, which makes him the sole imago Dei in creation (the end as the sole issue at stake) ; and Cartesian dualism radicalized this latter position by making man even the sole possessor of inwardness or "soul" of any kind, thus the only one of whom "end" can meaningfully be predicated as he alone can entertain ends. All other life then, the product of physical necessity, can be considered his means. However, this traditional idea, in its anthropocentric vanity never a... (shrink)

Despite holding that all concepts are strictly speaking innate, Leibniz attempts to accommodate the common belief that at least some concepts are adventitious by appealing to his theory of ideal action. The essential idea is that an innate concept can be considered adventitious, in a sense, just in case its ideal cause is to be found outside the mind of the one who possesses the concept. I explore this attempt at accommodation and argue that it fails. [See external (...) link for English draft.]. (shrink)

August Weismann is famous for having argued against the inheritance of acquired characters. However, an analysis of his work indicates that Weismann always held that changes in external conditions, acting during development, were the necessary causes of variation in the hereditary material. For much of his career he held that acquired germ-plasm variation was inherited. An irony, which is in tension with much of the standard twentieth-century history of biology, thus exists – Weismann was not a Weismannian. I distinguish (...) three claims regarding the germ-plasm: (1) its continuity, (2) its morphological sequestration, and (3) its variational sequestration. With respect to changes in Weismann’s views on the cause of variation, I divide his career into four stages. For each stage I analyze his beliefs on the relative importance of changes in external conditions and sexual reproduction as causes of variation in the hereditary material. Weismann believed, and Weismannism denies, that variation, heredity, and development were deeply intertwined processes. This article is part of a larger project comparing commitments regarding variation during the latter half of the nineteenth century. (shrink)

It seems natural to ask why the universe exists at all. Modern physics suggests that the universe can exist all by itself as a self-contained system, without anything external to create or sustain it. But there might not be an absolute answer to why it exists. I argue that any attempt to account for the existence of something rather than nothing must ultimately bottom out in a set of brute facts; the universe simply is, without ultimate cause or (...) explanation. (shrink)

I defend two main theses. First, I argue that Aristotle’s account of voluntary action focuses on the conditions under which one is the cause of one’s actions in virtue of being (qua) the individual one is. Aristotle contrasts voluntary action not only with involuntary action but also with cases in which one acts (or does something) due to one’s nature (for example, in virtue of being a member of a certain species) rather than due to one’s own desires (i.e. (...) qua individual). An action can be attributed to one qua individual in two distinct ways depending on whether one is a rational or a non-rational animal. One is responsible for one’s action in both cases, but only in the former case is one also responsible for being the sort of individual that performs it. Aristotle also distinguishes two ways in which an action can be compelled while still being an action of the agent. In the first case, one is compelled by (physically) external forces or circumstances to act against one’s internal impulse. In the second case, one is compelled to act on (internal) impulses that are fixed by one’s nature against one’s own individual impulse. This latter kind of compelled action is only possible in the case of rational agents. Secondly, I argue that Aristotle’s conception of what it is to be a cause of an action inevitably brings in certain normative features which support evaluative judgments and the practice of praise and blame. On Aristotle’s view, any goal-directed behavior that is properly attributable to an individual is (normally) subject to standards that pertain to behavior of that sort. At the most basic level, these standards establish what counts as a successful realization of the goal that one aims at. Thus even in the case of non-rational animals (or children), one can judge the success of what they are doing and encourage (or discourage) similar behavior by praise or blame. These standards are applicable to one’s conduct simply insofar as one is the controlling origin (or efficient cause) of one’s action qua individual. In the case of rational agents the practice of praise and blame can involve a further normative layer since they can be praised or blamed not only for acting in a certain way so as to encourage or discourage them with a view to the future, but also for being – and having become – individuals of a certain sort. Nevertheless, the applicability of such evaluative judgments and of praise and blame is still warranted by one’s being the controlling origin of one’s actions qua the individual one is (in this case, qua rational individual). (shrink)

Is vision merely a state of the beholder’s sensory organ which can be explained as an immediate effect caused by external sensible objects? Or is it rather a successive process in which the observer actively scanning the surrounding environment plays a major part? These two general attitudes towards visual perception were both developed already by ancient thinkers. The former is embraced by natural philosophers (e.g., atomists and Aristotelians) and is often labelled “intromissionist”, based on their assumption that vision is (...) an outcome of the causal influence exerted by an external object upon a sensory organ receiving an entity from the object. The latter attitude to vision as a successive process is rather linked to the “extramissionist” theories of the proponents of geometrical optics (such as Euclid or Ptolemy) who suggest that an entity – a visual ray – is sent forth from the eyes to the object. The present paper focuses on the contributions to this ancient controversy proposed by some 13th-century Latin thinkers. [...]. (shrink)

Modern global economic challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and various changes in the structure of the world market of goods and services require the developing of new models of economic systems management based on appropriate strategic management methodology, implementation innovation, use of prospects for various risks caused by the pandemic, implementation mechanisms for ensuring the security of economic systems. Ensuring effective management of economic systems in the current global challenges is impossible without the introduction of a new concept of (...) functioning and sustainable development of economic entities. To ensure effective management of economic systems in the context of modern global challenges it is necessary to determine the state of the economic process of entities and explore the impact of risks on current activities, justify and developing a system to overcome negative effects on economic activity and obtain a positive economic result. The effectiveness of developed conceptual provisions to ensure effective management of economic systems is determined by the ability of the management system to withstand the destructive effects of the external environment and due to the strengths to direct the resources of economic entities to maintain the economic process, able ensure to save resources and cover current costs economic entities, etc. (shrink)

The late Nietzsche defended a position which he sometimes to refers as ‘sensualism’ and which consists of two main theses: senses ‘do not lie’ (T1) and sense organs are ‘causes’ (T2). Two influential interpretations of this position have been proposed by Clark and Hussain, who also address the question whether Nietzsche's late sensualism is (Hussain) or not (Clark) compatible with the epistemological view which he held in his previous work and which has been dubbed the ‘falsification thesis’ (FT). In my (...) paper I will show that both readings raise substantial difficulties and propose an alternative account of Nietzsche's sensualism. In particular, I will argue: (a) that according to Nietzsche the representational content of sensory experience ‘does not lie’ since it is physically grounded in causal exchanges with the external world which are mediated by sense organs; (b) that Nietzsche believes that the claim that senses ‘do not lie’ is also true of the phenomenal, qualitative content of sensory experience; and (c) that FT, despite its prima facie tension with (a) and (b), fit well Nietzsche's sensualism. (shrink)

The current economic and societal production system gives money a magnified importance, overlooking other essential flows necessary for human survival and existence. It focuses on monetary indicators like profits, dividends, and GDPs to evaluate organizational production, while often disregarding outputs that harm the biosphere. Money is treated as the constitutive being (ousia) and attributed undemonstrated explanatory properties. Intangible flow theory helps eliminate this metaphysical status of money by recognizing that monetary flows are just one of many necessary flows for human (...) survival and existence. Organizations deliver product-flows that require input-flows from and send output-flows back to the encompassing biosphere, whether they explicitly engage in environmentally friendly activities or not. Therefore, every organization is an ecological entity because it has a relationship with the biosphere, which participates in the manner through which humans integrate into their surrounding environment and relate to other living beings. Eliminating the metaphysical status of money integrates every organization in the biosphere, making organizations accountable for environmental harm caused by their activities. This can be achieved by deconstructing the metaphysical status of money in business models. (shrink)

Human behavior is an underlying cause for many of the ecological crises faced in the 21st century, and there is no escaping from the fact that widespread behavior change is necessary for socio-ecological systems to take a sustainable turn. Whilst making people and communities behave sustainably is a fundamental objective for environmental policy, behavior change interventions and policies are often implemented from a very limited non-systemic perspective. Environmental policy-makers and psychologists alike often reduce cognition ‘to the brain,’ focusing only (...) to a minor extent on how everyday environments systemically afford pro-environmental behavior. Symptomatic of this are the widely prevalent attitude–action, value–action or knowledge–action gaps, understood in this paper as the gulfs lying between sustainable thinking and behavior due to lack of affordances. I suggest that by adopting a theory of affordances as a guiding heuristic, environmental policy-makers are better equipped to promote policies that translate sustainable thinking into sustainable behavior, often self-reinforcingly, and have better conceptual tools to nudge our socio–ecological system toward a sustainable turn. Affordance theory, which studies the relations between abilities to perceive and act and environmental features, is shown to provide a systemic framework for analyzing environmental policies and the ecology of human behavior. This facilitates the location and activation of leverage points for systemic policy interventions, which can help socio–ecological systems to learn to adapt to more sustainable habits. Affordance theory is presented to be applicable and pertinent to technically all nested levels of socio–ecological systems from the studies of sustainable objects and households to sustainable urban environments, making it an immensely versatile conceptual policy tool. Finally, affordance theory is also discussed from a participatory perspective. Increasing the fit between local thinking and external behavior possibilities entails a deep understanding of tacit and explicit attitudes, values, knowledge as well as physical and social environments, best gained via inclusive and polycentric policy approaches. (shrink)

Sometimes subjects have sufficient internal and external resources to retrieve information stored in memory, in particular information that carries socially charged content. Yet, they fail to do so: they forget it. These cases pose an explanatory challenge to common explanations of forgetting in cognitive science. In this paper, I take this challenge and develop a new explanation of these cases. According to this explanation, these cases are best explained as cases of norm-induced forgetting: cases in which forgetting is caused (...) by social norms in a relevant sense. These cases draw attention to the normative aspects of the mechanisms of forgetting. This is an important but neglected aspect of cases of everyday forgetting, in particular of those characterized by a social dimension. By investigating some ways in which the psychology of social norms is causally relevant in the mechanisms of retrieval failure, I begin to fill this gap. (shrink)

The physiologist Johannes Müller’s doctrine of specific nerve energies had a decisive influence on neo-Kantian conceptions of the objectivity of knowledge in the 1850s - 1870s. In the first half of the nineteenth century, Müller amassed a body of experimental evidence to support his doctrine, according to which the character of our sensations is determined by the structures of our own sensory nerves, and not by the external objects that cause the sensations. Neo-Kantians such as Hermann von Helmholtz, (...) F.A. Lange, and Otto Liebmann took Müller’s doctrine to have far-reaching consequences for their epistemologies. Over the course of the 1850s - 1870s, these three neo-Kantians, each in his own way, argued that reflection on Müller’s doctrine ruled out a certain conception of the objectivity of knowledge. It ruled out the view that knowledge is objective in virtue of affording us information about objects in a mind-independent external world. -/- This paper traces how Helmholtz, Lange, and Liebmann developed their arguments for this view, and how each developed his own alternative conception of objectivity, according to which objectivity has nothing to do with a mind-independent world. Finally, the paper concludes by considering why these arguments modelled on Müller’s doctrine would have been so powerful against rival post-Hegelian conceptions of objectivity, especially those of scientific materialists like Ludwig Büchner. (shrink)

Shepherd argues that we can know that there exists a universe external to the mind because that universe is the only possible cause of our sensations. As a part of that argument, Shepherd eliminates the possibility that sensations might be caused by other sensations on the grounds that sensations are merely momentary existences and so not capable of standing in causal relations with each other. And yet she claims that sensations do stand in causal relations to other objects, (...) both as the effects of the combination of the external world, our organs of sense, and our minds, and as the partial causes of other sensations. These claims together generate a puzzle. If sensations are too fleeting to stand in causal relations with each other, how are they nonetheless capable of standing in causal relations to other objects? I suggest that because sensations exist only for a moment, to stand in synchronous causal relations with other sensations would require that the two sensations exist at precisely the same moment. But since cause and effect are identical during the moment in which they are combined, any two sensations that exist for only the moment of their combination are identical. Nothing can be its own cause, so sensations cannot be the sole cause of other sensations. Sensations can be the partial cause or effect of other objects, though, so long as those objects endure for more than a single moment. For example, external objects, organs of sense, and the mind, all exist both before and after the moments in which they combine to form a sensation. So, while their combination is identical to that sensation in that moment, all of these other objects exist outside of that moment, and that combination as well. (shrink)

Easy to understand philosophy papers in all areas. Table of contents: Three Short Philosophy Papers on Human Freedom The Paradox of Religions Institutions Different Perspectives on Religious Belief: O’Reilly v. Dawkins. v. James v. Clifford Schopenhauer on Suicide Schopenhauer’s Fractal Conception of Reality Theodore Roszak’s Views on Bicameral Consciousness Philosophy Exam Questions and Answers Locke, Aristotle and Kant on Virtue Logic Lecture for Erika Kant’s Ethics Van Cleve on Epistemic Circularity Plato’s Theory of Forms Can we trust our senses? Yes (...) we can Descartes on What He Believes Himself to Be The Role of Values in Science Modern Science Kant’s Moral Philosophy Plato’s Republic as Pol Potist Bureaucracy Schopenhauer on Human Suffering Bertrand Russell on the Value of Philosophy The Philosophical Value of Uncertainty Logic Homework: Theorems and Models Searle vs. Turing on the Imitation Game Hume, Frankfurt, and Holbach on Personal Freedom Manifesto of the University of Wisconsin, Madison Secular Society Michael’s Analysis of the Limits of Civil Protections Bentham and Mill on Different Types of Pleasure Set Theory Homework Aristotle on Virtue Nagel On the Hard Problem Wittgenstein on Language and Thought Camus and Schopenhauer on the Meaning of Life Camus’ Hero as Rebel without a Cause My Little Finger: Camus’ Absurdism Illustrated Are Late-term Abortions Ethical? Does Mathematics Assume the Truth of Platonism? The Self-defeating Nature of Utilitarianism and Consequentialism Generally What is The Good Life? Bentham and Mill regarding types of pleasures Kant’s Moral Philosophy Five Short Papers on Mind-body Dualism Tracy Latimer’s Father had the Right to Kill Her: Towards a doctrine of generalized self-defense Arguments Concerning God and Morality Goldman, Rousseau and von Hayek on the Ideal State J.S Mill on Liberty and Personal Freedom A Kantian Analysis of a Borderline Date-rape Situation Living Well as Flourishing: Aristotle’s Conception of the Good Life Three Essays on Medical Ethics: Answers to Exam Questions on Elective Amputation, Vaccination, and Informed Consent Hobbes, Marx, Rousseau, Nietzsche: Their Central Themes De Tocqueville on Egoism Mill vs. Hobbes on Liberty Exam-Essays on the Moral Systems of Mill, Bentham, and Kant Kant’s Moral System Aristotle on Virtue Plato’s Cave Allegory An Ethical Quandary Superorganisms The Tuskegee Experiment A Rawlsian Analysis Why Moore’s Proof of an External World Fails A Defense of Nagel’s Argument Against Materialism A Utilitarian Analysis of a Case of Theft The Paradox of the Self-aware Wretch: An Analysis of Pascal’s Moral Philosophy Jean-Paul Sartre: Decline and Fall of a Marxist Sell-out A One Page Proof of Plato’s Theory of Forms Plato’s Republic as Pol Potist Bureaucracy The problem of the one and the many Four Short Essays on Truth and Knowledge What is ‘the Good Life?’ The Ontological Argument Different Political Philosophies: Plato, Locke, Madison, Rousseau, Hayek, and Mill on the State What do I know with certainty? Skepticism about skepticism Neuroscience and Freewill Operant Conditioning What makes us special? Are Late-term Abortions Ethical? No Two Papers on Epistemology: Gettier and Bostrom Examination Nietzsche on Punishment God’s Foreknowledge and Moral Responsibility . (shrink)

The paper aims to give an account of practical knowledge by outlining a hylomorphic and conceptualist account of intentional action in analogy to McDowell's conceptualist account of experience. On this view, practical concepts provide the ideal or formal structure that unifies a manifold of bodily movements into a single intentional action, and hence intentional actions are structured conceptually. -/- - §1 sets out the basic features of this view in contrast to a common dualistic or two-component view of practical knowledge, (...) as an "inner" mental state with propositional content that functions as the efficient cause of some bodily movement in the "external" world, and introduces the claim that practical knowledge is the constitutive form of intentional action. - §2 illustrates the hylomorphic unity of concept and movement in action, and thus (contra Dreyfus) the corporeality of practical reason, by means of an account of practical concept formation, on which both the formation and tradition of practical concepts take place in bodily movement iself. - §3 elucidates the concept of a self-conscious disposition or rational capacity for action, actualizations of which are characterized by a syllogistic structure that accounts for both the explanation and the justification of action and thereby renders intelligible in what sense practical judgment is internal to acting itself. - Skillful exercises of such capacities express a knowledge-how that manifests itself in practical representations. §4 characterizes representations of this kind as a perceptually situated recognition of a practical pattern that amounts to the imaginative anticipation of a movement form by which the agent determines their next steps; a practical perception of the agent's particular situation that is both normative and motivational for them. - §5 starts by developing an identity theory of practical truth, on which the conceptual content of a (true) practical judgment is numerically identical with the formal structure of a (good) action, and concludes with explaining the unity of four features commonly attributed to practical knowledge, viz. that it is at the same time descriptive, normative, causally productive, and non-observational (or self-conscious). (shrink)

Malebranche holds that the feeling of having a body comes in three main varieties. A perceiver sensorily experiences herself (1) as causally connected to her body, in so far as the senses represent the body as causing her sensory experiences and as uniquely responsive to her will, (2) as materially connected to her body, in so far as the senses represent the perceiver as a material being wrapped up with the body, and (3) as perspectivally connected to her body, in (...) so far as the external senses represent the world from the body’s perspective. In addition to distinguishing these varieties of embodied experience, I explain why the perceiver experiences her connection to the body in these ways. Although Malebranche often casts the experience of embodiment in a negative light, his considered view is that this experience contributes to our survival and salvation. (shrink)

This paper deals with the Stoic concept of misprinted representation (φαντασία παρατυπωτική), which has received little attention compared to other concepts of Stoic epistemology and philosophy of mind. I aim at showing that a better understanding of this concept is important for grasping some elements of the Stoic account of mental representations that have been ignored or misunderstood in modern Stoic scholarship. First, by clarifying the status of the misprinted representation as a genuine representation, we can understand what it means (...) (and does not mean) to say, from the Stoic point of view, that the intentional object of a representation is the external object that caused it. Second, by understanding this issue, we obtain some resources to deal with the ambiguity of the preposition ἀπό in the definition of cognitive representation. Thus, the concept of misprinted representation proves to be important for appropriately understanding the Stoic concepts of representation and cognitive representation. (shrink)

Critics have alleged that Democritus’ ethical prescriptions (“gnomai”) are incompatible with his physics, since his atomism seems committed to necessity or chance (or an awkward combination of both) as a universal cause of everything, leaving no room for personal responsibility. I argue that Democritus’ critics, both ancient and contemporary, have misunderstood a fundamental concept of his causality: a cause called “spontaneity”, which Democritus evidently considered a necessary (not chance) cause, compatible with human freedom, of both atomic motion (...) and human actions. Some influential contemporary compatibilists have argued that freedom and responsibility are compatible with causal determinism, but not intentional constraint where some other agent is intentionally manipulating or coercing one’s actions. In line with this, Democritus holds that humans should not blame their actions on other agents like the gods, or agent-like external forces like fate or chance, but should assume ultimate intentional control over their own choices and actions. The famous remark of his associate Leucippus that “everything happens for a reason and out of necessity” is a fitting slogan of their atomistic philosophy, for Democritus pursued what can without anachronism be recognized as a causal theory of freedom. (shrink)