An analysis of the Third Man Argument, especially in light of Constance Meinwald's book Plato's Parmenides. I argue that her solution to the TMA fails. Then I present my own theory as to what Plato's solution was.

In this article I argue that "Timaeus" 48e-52d, the passage in which Plato introduces the receptacle into his ontology, Contains the material for a satisfactory response to the third man argument. Plato's use of "this" and "such" to distinguish the receptacle, Becoming, And the forms clarifies the nature of his ontology and indicates that the forms are not, In general, self-predicative. This result removes one argument against regarding the "Timaeus" as a late dialogue.

Few arguments from the past have stirred up as much interest as Aristotle’s “Third man” and not so many texts have received as much attention as its account in chapter 22 of the Sophistici elenchi. And yet, several issues about both remain highly controversial, starting from the very nature of the argument at stake and the exact signification of some of its features. The essay provides a close commentary of the text, dealing with its main difficulties and suggesting (...) an overall interpretation of Aristotle’s discussion of the “Third Man” argument. (shrink)

Latin commentators came across the « Third Man » in Aristotle’s Sophistici elenchi. The way they dealt with the argument is a fair illustration of how they were both faithful to the text and innovative in their understanding of its most challenging issues. Besides providing a detailed survey of all manuscript sources, the introductory essay shows that Latin interpretation originates from a mistake in Boethius’ translation which radically transformed the argument. The edition makes available for the first (...) time a considerable amount of new documentary evidence which made it possible to solve the riddle of the Latin « Third Man ». (shrink)

The paper explores possible resources available to Plotinus for responding to Plato's famous "Third Man Argument" in the _Parmenides_.

The purpose of the following text is to give readers a general introduction to Gordon Pask’s conversation theory, which is considered here to be a cybernetic and epistemological account of concept-forming and concept-sharing through conversational discourse and practice. While Pask devoted three lengthy tomes to articulate the theory and its applications, I believe it is necessary to give readers who are interested in conversation theory a general introduction to what I believe are the key features of his work in this (...) area. I argue that conversation theory should be considered an inferential account of the theory of concepts rather than a representational account, by virtue of Pask’s argument that a concept must be a process that involves many other concepts. (shrink)

The Thesis of Kant’s Third Antinomy asserts that, because it is “necessary to assume another causality through freedom” in order to derive all the appearances of the world, “causality in accordance with the laws of nature is not the only one” (A444/B472). The argument Kant supplies in support of this, however, has been the subject of interpretative disagreement since at least Schopenhauer, with the most plausible reconstructions being dismissed as question-begging, resting on a conflation relating to the principle (...) of sufficient reason, or attacking a straw-man of the Antithesis position. In this paper, I attempt to provide a novel interpretation of the argument for the Thesis position, one that offers a more compelling case against a charitably interpreted Antithesis position. (shrink)

Recent research in science indicates that we are living in a fine-tuned universe. Only a very small parameter space of universal fundamental constants in Physics is congenial for the existence of life. Moreover, recent studies in Biological evolution also reveal that fine-tuning did exist in the evolution. It seems that we are so lucky to exist as all universal fundamental constants and life-permitting factors really fall into such a very small life-allowing region. This problem is known as the fine-tuning problem. (...) Does this phenomenon need an explanation? Can the fine-tuning problem point to the existence of God? Modern Science invokes the idea of multiverse to address the fine-tuning problem. Some scientists suggest that each universe in a set of infinitely many universes contains a typical set of fundamental constants. We should not be surprised why our universe is fine-tuned because we would not exist if the constants are not the life-allowed values. Some suggest that the existence of God can explain this fine-tuning problem. The naturalistic multiverse theory and the existence of God are the two most robust proposals to address the fine-tuning problem. Moreover, some argue that the fine-tuning problem is not real because we are just subject to observational selection effect. In this thesis, I will provide a comprehensive discussion on the fine-tuning phenomena in our universe. In particular, I will use the confirmation principle and the inference to the best explanation simultaneously to evaluate different hypotheses in a more systematic way and give some of the new and updated scientific and philosophical arguments to respond to the recent criticisms of the fine-tuning arguments. I conclude that the theistic hypothesis is the best among all to address the fine-tuning problem. (shrink)

Les commentateurs latins ont rencontré pour la première fois le « Troisième homme » d’Aristote dans le chapitre vingt-deux des Sophistici elenchi. Cette rencontre illustre bien à la fois leur respect de la lettre et la radicalité de certaines de leurs innovations. Influencée par la traduction de Boèce, leur exégèse de l’argument a tenu compte de l’ensemble des indications du texte tout en lui conférant une tournure inédite.

In this paper I argue against the view of G.E.L. Owen that the second version of the Third Man Argument is a sound objection to Plato's conception of Forms as paradigms and that Plato knew it. The argument can be formulated so as to be valid, but Plato need not be committed to one of its premises. Forms are self-predicative, but the ground of self-predication is not the same as that of ordinary predication.

Few arguments from the past have stirred up as much interest as Aristotle’s “Third man” and not so many texts have received as much attention as its account in chapter 22 of the Sophistici elenchi. And yet, several issues about both remain highly controversial, starting from the very nature of the argument at stake and the exact signification of some of its features. The essay provides a close commentary of the text, dealing with its main difficulties and suggesting (...) an overall interpretation of Aristotle’s discussion of the “Third Man” argument. (shrink)

In 2003, biophysicist and Nobel Laureate Maurice Wilkins published his autobiography entitled The Third Man. In the preface, he diffidently points out that the title was chosen by his publisher, as a reference to the famous 1949 movie no doubt, featuring Orson Welles in his classical role as penicillin racketeer Harry Lime. In this paper I intend to show that there is much more to this title than merely its familiar ring. If subjected to a comparative analysis, multiple correspondences (...) between movie and memoirs can be brought to the fore. Taken together, these documents shed an intriguing light on the vicissitudes of budding life sciences research during the post-war era. I will focus my comparative analysis on issues still relevant today, such as dual use, the handling of sensitive scientific information and, finally, on the interwovenness of science and warfare. Thus, I will explain how science autobiographies on the one hand and genres of the imagination on the other may deepen our comprehension of tensions and dilemmas of life sciences research then and now. For that reason, science autobiographies can provide valuable input for teaching philosophy and history of science to science students. (shrink)

This paper examines Aristotle’s two famous claims that man is by nature a political animal, and that he is the only animal who possesses speech and reason (logos). Aristotle’s thesis that man is by nature a political animal is inextricably linked with his thesis that the polis exists by nature. This paper examines the argument that Aristotle develops in Pol. I. 2 to support these two theses. It argues a) that the definition of man as an animal who possesses (...) logos is part of this argument, b) that in the chapter Aristotle understands the term “political animal” not in a broad biological sense but in a narrow sense, c) that Aristotle’s thesis that the polis is “by nature prior to the household and to the individual” is not an independent third theorem – as David Keyt and Fred D. Miller claim – but is part of this argument. (shrink)

This book shows how research in linguistic pragmatics, philosophy of language, and rhetoric can be connected through argumentation to analyze a recognizably common strategy used in political and everyday conversation, namely the distortion of another’s words in an argumentative exchange. Straw man argumentation refers to the modification of a position by misquoting, misreporting or wrenching the original speaker’s statements from their context in order to attack them more easily or more effectively. Through 63 examples taken from different contexts (including political (...) and forensic discourses and dialogs) and 20 legal cases, the book analyzes the explicit and implicit types of straw man, shows how to assess the correctness of a quote or a report, and illustrates the arguments that can be used for supporting an interpretation and defending against a distortion. The tools of argumentation theory, a discipline aimed at investigating the uses of arguments by combining insights from pragmatics, logic, and communication, are applied to provide an original account of interpretation and reporting, and to describe and illustrate tactics and procedures that can be used and implemented for practical purposes.. This book will appeal to scholars in the fields of political communication, communication in general, argumentation theory, rhetoric and pragmatics, as well as to people working in public speech, speech writing, and discourse analysis. (shrink)

This paper provides an original approach to research on the logical processes that determine how certain forms participate in others. By introducing the concept of relational participation, the problems of self-referentiality of the Platonic forms can be dealt with more effectively. Applying this to the forms of likeness and unlikeness in Parmenides 132d-133a reveals a possible way to resolve different versions of the Third Man Argument. The method of generating numbers from oddness and evenness may also be of (...) interest; relational participation in these forms clarifies the interpretation of Parmenides 143e-144a. (shrink)

I aim to show how the enigmatic phrase 'Unánime noche' in the famous first sentence of “The Circular Ruins” is inextricably linked to the story’s last words. Toward this purpose, I argue—against plausible foundational interpretations of the story—for a nonfoundational reading of the text and, moreover, that Borges’s use of ‘unánime’ (one soul) can be understood as one character or one form; namely, as an archetype of “Dreamanity” that leads to a vertiginous Third Man regress.

Conceptualism—the view that universals are mental entities without an external, independent, or substantial reality—has enjoyed popularity at various points throughout the history of philosophy. While Plato’s Theory of Forms is not a conceptualist theory of universals, we find at Parmenides 132b–c the startling conceptualist suggestion from a young Socrates that each Form might be a noēma, or a mental entity. This suggestion and Parmenides’ cryptic objections to it have been overshadowed by their placement directly after the notoriously difficult Third (...) Man Argument, and before the Likeness Regress. However, in the background of 132b–c, we find illuminating assumptions behind Parmenides’ arguments against the Theory of Forms in the first half of the dialogue. We also find in this text a set of implied criteria for Platonic concepthood. While in the Platonic corpus, Forms are explanantia for many of the phenomena explained by concepts in contemporary philosophy, concepts do seem to have an important epistemic role in Plato’s philosophy. An account of Platonic concepthood therefore opens the door for new ways of understanding the Platonic corpus as a whole. My focus in this paper is to uncover these assumptions and criteria through a close reading of Socrates’ conceptualist suggestion and Parmenides’ truncated objections to it at Parmenides 132b–c. (shrink)

Plato’s dialogue Parmenides contains the infamous ontological bombshell, the so-called Third Man argument. This argument involves a reductio criticism of the forms, arguing that the reductio premise – roughly, ‘there cannot be any ontological interpenetration between the One and the many’ – is false. The argument intimates that the only way for thought to move beyond the forms is to accept the ‘impossible’ object, the nonsensical One-and-many. This article calls any ontology which accepts this Third (...) Man argument and attempts to answer it on its own terms, ‘material dialectic’. The high-profile debate between John Milbank and Slavoj Žižek in The Monstrosity of Christ brings the relevance of this dialectic into stark relief. Both authors accept the material dialectic and mobilise it toward competing christological theses. Yet it is important to navigate the Third Man argument in such a way as to keep a dyophysite Christology in order to satisfy orthodox theological pressures. I will therefore advance two conclusions: first, that the material dialectic is a valid analytical project; and second, that neither Milbank nor Žižek espouses an orthodox Christology: Milbank’s is monophysite while Žižek’s is patripassian. Following Milbank, I will call the final (dyophysite) corrective the ‘Catholic Žižek’ – only, contra Milbank, it will be the real Catholic Žižek. (shrink)

The phenomenon of self-reference combines self-refutation in the case of Plato’s critics of Protagoras in “Theaetetus” and self-predication in the case of a difficulty which Plato himself faces developing the theory of ideas in “Parmenides”. The author of the article asserts that self-predication does not produce a negative impact on Plato’s metaphysics and in no way destroys the integrality of Plato’s philosophy: It is logically correct as are both his criticism of Protagoras’ relativism and the theory of ideas.

En este trabajo realizo un examen crítico del reciente libro de Silvana Gabriela Di Camillo sobre la crítica de Aristóteles a la teoría platónica de las Ideas. El libro de Di Camillo es un trabajo muy serio cuya lectura recomiendo ampliamente. Sin embargo, considero que cuatro de las principales tesis que la autora defiende tienen varias dificultades y mi objetivo aquí es presentar argumentos detallados en contra de ellas: la interpretación de la distinción entre argumentos más y menos rigurosos del (...) tratado Sobre las Ideas; la tesis de que la separación es el blanco esencial de las críticas aristotélicas a las Ideas; la interpretación de las opciones que Platón tiene para responder al argumento del tercer hombre, y la tesis de que la separación de las Ideas debe entenderse como homonimia. In this paper I examine Silvana Gabriela Di Camillo's recent book on Aristotle's criticisms of Plato's theory of Ideas. Di Camillo's book is a very serious work that I highly recommend. Nevertheless, I consider that four of the main theses that the author defends face several difficulties and my aim here is to offer detailed arguments against them: the interpretation of the distinction between more and less accurate arguments of the treatise On Ideas; the thesis that separation is the essential target of Aristotle's criticisms against Plato's Ideas; the interpretation of the options available to Plato to reply to the third man argument; and the thesis that the separation of Ideas should be understood as homonymy. (shrink)

This study deals with the ontological position of predicated entities in comparison with the entities of which they are predicated of. Aristotle strongly criticizes, in some passages of his works, the interpretation that the predicated entities are entities which independently exist of the entities of which they are predicated. Aristotle opposes his interpretation of the universals as entities which does not independently exist, against Plato's ideas, which he interprets as independently existing entities. Aristotle's criticism of Plato's ideas is radical: he (...) does not accept any characteristic of ideas and want them to be expelled from a sane ontology. Aristotle's ontology of instantiation, therefore, completely refuses Plato's ontology of participation. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Kant famously claims that we have all freely chosen evil. This paper offers a novel account of the much-debated justification for this claim. I reconstruct Kant’s argument from his affirmation that we all have a price – we can all succumb to temptation. I argue that this follows a priori from a theoretical principle of the Critique of Pure Reason, namely that all empirical powers have a finite, changeable degree, an intensive magnitude. Because of this, our reason can (...) always be overpowered by sensible inclinations. Kant moreover holds that this necessary feature of our moral psychology should not have been the case: We ought to instead be like the divine human being, for whom the moral law yields a greater incentive than any possible temptation. On Kant’s view, we are thus responsible for having a price, and the synthetic a priori fact that we do proves that we each made an initial choice of evil. (shrink)

The paper discusses a prominent one of Kratzer's (1986, 1991, 2012) arguments against material implication analyses of the denotation of (indicative) conditional sentences. This is the argument based on the sentence _Most of the time, if a man buys a horse, he pays cash for it_. It is shown that material implication makes a prediction that does conform to speakers' intuitions, contrary to Kratzer's claim. The paper also argues that Lewis's (1975) attack on material implication analyses of conditional sentences (...) based on examples where the conditional is embedded under the adverbials _sometimes_ and _never_ does not have much force given that the interpretation of such sentences is subject to inferential pragmatic operations in addition to the recovery of their denotation. (shrink)

The Operator Argument against eternalism holds that having non-vacuous tense operators in the language is incompatible with the claim that every proposition has its truth-value eternally. Assuming that (1) there are non-vacuous tense operators, (2) tense operators operate on propositions and (3) tense operators which operate on eternal entities are vacuous, it may be argued that eternalism is false. In this paper, I examine the Operator Argument. The goal is threefold. First, I want to present some aspects of (...) the debate in a more elaborate way, especially those concerning formal matters. Secondly, I will argue that eternalism can escape the Operator Argument. There are two main strategies for handling the Operator Argument. The first one is based on replacing temporal operators with object-language quantifiers. The second rejects the identification of compositional semantic value with assertoric content. My third goal is to show that none of them is as good as the strategy that adopts Timestamp Semantics (Fritz in Philosl Stud 176:2933–2959, 2019). I am going to argue that the quantificational treatment of tenses is compatible with temporalism and that the arguments for rejecting the identification of compositional semantic value with assertoric content provide, in fact, a motivation for the temporalist position. At the end, I will develop Timestamp Semantics by providing a novel formalization of it, and defend it against three potential counter-arguments. (shrink)

The central thesis of this paper is that the scope and structure of Hume's Treatise of Human Nature is modelled, or planned, after that of Hobbes's The Elements of Law and that in this respect there exists an important and unique relationship between these works. This relationship is of some importance for at least two reasons. First, it is indicative of the fundamental similarity between Hobbes's and Hume's project of the study of man. Second, and what is more important, by (...) recognizing this relationship between Hume's and Hobbes's works we can come to appreciate the unity of the project of the Treatise itself. My discussion will proceed in three stages. In section I present the evidence for my central thesis. In the second section I shall consider why Hume does not, as one might expect, acknowledge this important debt to Hobbes in the Introduction to the Treatise or in the Abstract. Finally, in the third section I shall note a few points of some importance to the understanding of Hume's philosophy which this relationship between Hobbes's and Hume's work touches upon. (shrink)

Desmond and Moore point out that the key to understanding Darwin’s The Descent of Man is his abolitionist motivation and his advocacy that races constitute subspecies. Roberta Millstein raises some doubts about the importance of this motivation. She points out that the inclusion of the extensive section devoted to non-human animals is not justified by Darwin’s treatment of humans per se, because his explanation of the origin of races is peculiar. In this sense, she argues that Darwin’s specific explanation of (...) the origin of races does not confirm the central importance that Desmond and Moore give to Darwin’s abolitionism. In this paper I have two different aims. On the one hand, to show that the human case actually is based on the treatment of nonhuman animals, and consequently, Darwin’s argument is not as poor as Millstein believes. My second goal, taking Millstein’s challenge seriously, is to show that Darwin’s explanation of the origin of races does confirm the Desmond and Moore thesis in a deeper sense than the one they propose themselves. For the anti-slavery motivation could not only explain the fact that Darwin sees all humans as forming the same species, but the specific explanation he gives for the origin of races. (shrink)

In this paper, I advance a new interpretation of the argumentative structure of the third Critique, which in turn clarifies the connection between its two apparently unrelated parts. I propose to read the third Critique as a response to Kant’s question of hope, which concerns the satisfaction of reason’s practical and theoretical interests. On this proposal, while the first part on aesthetics describes what we—as possessors of theoretical reason – may hope for, the second part, on teleology, describes (...) what we – as possessors of practical reason – may hope for. The main question of the third Critique is, ‘What may we hope if we act as we should, i.e. act rationally?’ Kant’s implicit answer is, ‘to attain the ideals of reason, which leads to happiness as a consequence of it.’ This novel reconstruction of the argumentative structure of the third Critique contributes to the literature by (i) explaining how the two parts of the third Critique on aesthetics and teleology are connected, (ii) clarifying how the ideals of reason are connected to hope and happiness, and (iii) showing how the spheres of nature and freedom can be synthetically unified through the faculty of judgment. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that our ordinary English words man and woman are “gender terms,” and gender is distinct from biological sex. That is, they believe womanhood and manhood are not defined even partly by biological sex. This sex/gender distinction is one of the most influential ideas of the twentieth century on the broader culture, both popular and academic. Less well known are the reasons to think it’s true. My interest in this paper is to show that, upon investigation, the arguments (...) for the sex/gender distinction have feet of clay. In fact, they all fail. We will survey the literature and tour arguments in favor of the sex/gender distinction, and then we’ll critically evaluate those arguments. We’ll consider the argument from resisting biological determinism, the argument from biologically intersex people and vagueness, the argument from the normativity of gender, and some arguments from thought experiments. We’ll see that these arguments are not up to the task of supporting the sex/gender distinction; they simply don’t work. So, philosophers should either develop stronger arguments for the sex/gender distinction, or cultivate a variety of feminism that’s consistent with the traditional, biologically-based definitions of woman and man. (shrink)

The Pyrrhonist’s argumentative practice is characterized by at least four features. First, he makes a therapeutic use of arguments: he employs arguments that differ in their persuasiveness in order to cure his dogmatic patients of the distinct degrees of conceit and rashness that afflict them. Secondly, his arguments are for the most part dialectical: when offering an argument to oppose it to another argument advanced by a given dogmatist, he accepts in propria persona neither the truth of its (...) premises and conclusion nor the validity of its logical form. Thirdly, he avails himself of arguments in his own open-minded inquiry into the truth about a wide range of topics. Fourthly, Pyrrhonian argumentation is oppositional inasmuch as it typically works by producing oppositions among arguments that appear to the Pyrrhonist to be equipollent. In this article, I focus on the first three features with the aim of both shedding some light on them and determining whether they are in tension or coherently relate to each other. (shrink)

In recent literature, panpsychism has been defended by appeal to two main arguments: first, an argument from philosophy of mind, according to which panpsychism is the only view which successfully integrates consciousness into the physical world (Strawson 2006; Chalmers 2013); second, an argument from categorical properties, according to which panpsychism offers the only positive account of the categorical or intrinsic nature of physical reality (Seager 2006; Adams 2007; Alter and Nagasawa 2012). Historically, however, panpsychism has also been defended (...) by appeal to a third argument based on considerations about the nature and observability of causation. This argument has not been much discussed in recent times. Here is a concise version from William James: "… the concrete perceptual flux, taken just as it comes, offers in our own activity-situations perfectly comprehensible instances of causal agency … If we took these experiences as the type of what actual causation is, we should have to ascribe to cases of causation outside of our life, to physical cases also, an inwardly experiential nature. In other words, we should have to espouse a so-called “pan-psychic” philosophy" (James 1911: 218). James here suggests that we have direct experience of causation in our own agency. He thereby directly contradicts David Hume, who famously denied that we have any experience of causation. James goes on to claim that if this experience is representative of causation in general, it follows that all causation is mental, and that panpsychism is true. This kind of argument for panpsychism can be called the argument from (experience of) causation. This chapter offers, first, a history of this argument and arguments closely related to it, and second, an analysis of the argument – is it valid, are its premises in any way defensible, and how does it relate to the other, more popular arguments for panpsychism from philosophy of mind and categorical properties? (shrink)

The ecofeminist argument for veganism is powerful. Meat consumption is a deeply gendered act that is closely tied to the systematic objectification of women and nonhuman animals. I worry, however, that presenting veganism as "the" moral ideal might reinforce rather than alleviate the disordered status quo in gendered eating, further disadvantaging women in patriarchal power structures. In this chapter, I advocate a feminist account of ethical eating that treats dietary choices as moral choices insofar as they constitute an integral (...) part of our relationships to ourselves and to others. I believe that we should think of dietary choices in Aristotelian moral terms as a mean relative to us, falling on a continuum between the vice of doing injustice to ourselves, on the one hand, and the vice of doing injustice to others, on the other. On this view, what it is moral to eat for individuals is not a fixed ideal, but rather depends on particulars of our physiological, psychological, economic, cultural, and relational situations. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the reception of Avicenna’s well-known “flying man” thought experiment in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Latin philosophy. The central claim is that the argumentative role of the thought experiment changed radically in the latter half of the thirteenth century. The earlier authors—Dominicus Gundissalinus, William of Auvergne, Peter of Spain, and John of la Rochelle—understood it as an ontological proof for the existence and/or the nature of the soul. By contrast, Matthew of Aquasparta and Vital du Four used the flying (...) man as an argument for the soul’s ability to be directly aware of itself. A detailed analysis of the views of these authors shows interesting philosophical differences between them and reveals how one of the crucial premises of the original thought experiment—namely that the flying man is unaware of his body—loses its importance due to the changes in the argumentative role that is assigned to it. The most radical example of a new way of understanding bodily self-awareness is Peter Olivi’s so-called ‘man before the creation.’. (shrink)

Opponents of abortion are often described as ‘inconsistent’ (hypocrites) in terms of their beliefs, actions and/or priorities. They are alleged to do too little to combat spontaneous abortion, they should be adopting cryopreserved embryos with greater frequency and so on. These types of arguments—which we call ‘inconsistency arguments’—conform to a common pattern. Each specifies what consistent opponents of abortion would do (or believe), asserts that they fail to act (or believe) accordingly and concludes that they are inconsistent. Here, we show (...) that inconsistency arguments fail en masse. In short, inconsistency arguments typically face four problems. First, they usually fail to account for diversity among opponents of abortion. Second, they rely on inferences about consistency based on isolated beliefs shared by some opponents of abortion (and these inferences often do not survive once we consider other beliefs opponents of abortion tend to hold). Third, inconsistency arguments usually ignore the diverse ways in which opponents of abortion might act on their beliefs. Fourth, inconsistency arguments criticise groups of people without threatening their beliefs (eg, that abortion is immoral). Setting these problems aside, even supposing inconsistency arguments are successful, they hardly matter. In fact, in the two best-case scenarios—where inconsistency arguments succeed—they either encourage millions of people to make the world a (much) worse place (from the critic’s perspective) or promote epistemically and morally irresponsible practices. We conclude that a more valuable discussion would be had by focusing on the arguments made by opponents of abortion rather than opponents themselves. (shrink)

Since the ENCODE project published its final results in a series of articles in 2012, there is no consensus on what its implications are. ENCODE’s central and most controversial claim was that there is essentially no junk DNA: most sections of the human genome believed to be «junk» are functional. This claim was met with many reservations. If researchers disagree about whether there is junk DNA, they have first to agree on a concept of function and how function, given a (...) particular definition, can be discovered. The ENCODE debate centered on a notion of function that assumes a strong dichotomy between evolutionary and non-evolutionary function and causes, prevalent in the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis. In contrast to how the debate is typically portrayed, both sides share a commitment to this distinction. This distinction is, however, much debated in alternative approaches to evolutionary theory, such as the EES. We show that because the ENCODE debate is grounded in a particular notion of function, it is unclear how it connects to broader debates about what is the correct evolutionary frame- work. Furthermore, we show how arguments brought forward in the controversy, particularly arguments from mathematical population genetics, are deeply embedded in their particular disciplinary contexts, and reflect substantive assumptions about the evolution of genomes. With this article, we aim to provide an anatomy of the ENCODE debate that offers a new perspective on the notions of function both sides employed, as well as to situate the ENCODE debate within wider debates regarding the forces operating in evolution. (shrink)

Data from medical research are typically summarized with various types of outcome measures. We present three arguments in favor of absolute over relative outcome measures. The first argument is from cognitive bias: relative measures promote the reference class fallacy and the overestimation of treatment effectiveness. The second argument is decision-theoretic: absolute measures are superior to relative measures for making a decision between interventions. The third argument is causal: interpreted as measures of causal strength, absolute measures satisfy (...) a set of desirable properties, but relative measures do not. Absolute outcome measures outperform relative measures on all counts. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss three probabilistic arguments for the existence of multiple universes. First, we provide an analysis of total evidence and use that analysis to defend Roger White's "this universe" objection to a standard fine-tuning argument for multiple universes. Second, we explain why Rodney Holder's recent cosmological argument for multiple universes is unconvincing. Third, we develop a "Cartesian argument" for multiple universes. While this argument is not open to the objections previously noted, we (...) show that, given certain highly plausible assumptions about evidence and epistemic probability, the proposition which it treats as evidence cannot coherently be regarded as evidence for anything. This raises the question of whether to reject the assumptions or accept that such a proposition cannot be evidence. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that, if transcendental arguments are to proceed from premises that are acceptable to the skeptic, the Transcendental Premise, according to which “X is a metaphysically necessary condition for the possibility of Y,” must be grounded in considerations of conceivability and possibility. More explicitly, the Transcendental Premise is based on what Szabó Gendler and Hawthorne call the “conceivability-possibility move.” This “inconceivability-impossibility” move, however, is a problematic argumentative move when advancing transcendental arguments for the following reasons. First, (...) from “S cannot conceive of P” it doesn’t necessarily follow that P is inconceivable. Second, from “P is inconceivable” it doesn’t necessarily follow that P is metaphysically impossible. Third, rather than block skeptical doubts, the conceivability-possibility move introduces skeptical doubts. For these reasons, transcendental arguments fail to deliver on their promise to overcome skeptical doubts. (shrink)

Davidson has famously argued that conceptual relativism, which, for him, is based on the content-scheme dualism, or the “third dogma” of empiricism, is either unintelligible or philosophically uninteresting and has accused Quine of holding onto such a dogma. For Davidson, there can be found no intelligible ground for the claim that there may exist untranslatable languages: all languages, if they are languages, are in principle inter-translatable and uttered sentences, if identifiable as utterances, are interpretable. Davidson has also endorsed the (...) Quinean indeterminacy-underdetermination distinction. The early Quine, as well as the later Quine, believe that the indeterminacy of translation casts serious doubt on the existence of facts of the matter about correct translation between languages. In this paper, I will argue that Quine cannot be the target of Davidson’s argument against conceptual relativism, and that Davidson’s argument is in conflict, among others, with his endorsement of the Quinean indeterminacy-underdetermination distinction. I will show how this conflict results in a radical departure from Quine with respect to the matter of factualism about fine-grained meanings. (shrink)

This paper outlines an argument for atheism from naturalism that I have developed in more detail elsewhere (in particular, in *The Best Argument against God*). The overall shape of the argument is as follows: first, naturalism is simpler than theism; second, there is no data that naturalism does not explain at least as well as theism; and, third, naturalism entails atheism; so we have good reason to prefer atheism to theism. Note that this statement of the (...) shape of the argument is NOT a statement of the argument itself. (shrink)

Accounts of deep disagreements can generally be categorized as optimistic or pessimistic. Pessimistic interpretations insist that the depth of deep disagreements precludes the possibility of rational resolution altogether, while optimistic variations maintain the contrary. Despite both approaches’ respective positions, they nevertheless often, either explicitly or implicitly, agree on the underlying assumption that argumentation offers the only possible rational resolution to deep disagreements. This paper challenges that idea by, first, diagnosing this argument-only model of arriving at rational resolutions, second, articulating (...) a competing but undertheorized Hegelian-informed approach, and third, attending briefly to some of the challenges of such an approach. (shrink)

Gilbert Ryle’s distinction between knowledge-how and knowledge-that emerged from his criticism of the “intellectualist legend” that to do something intelligently is “to do a bit of theory and then to do a bit of practice,” and became a philosophical commonplace in the second half of the last century. In this century Jason Stanley has attacked Ryle’s distinction, arguing that “knowing-how is a species of knowing-that,” and accusing Ryle of setting up a straw man in his critique of “intellectualism.” Examining the (...) use of the terms “intellectualism” and “anti-intellectualism” in the first half of the 20th century, in a wide-ranging debate in the social sciences as well as in philosophy, I show that Ryle was not criticizing a straw man, but a live historical position. In the context of this controversy, Ryle’s position represents a third way between “intellectualism” and “anti-intellectualism,” an option that has largely gone missing in the 21st century discussion. This argument illustrates how history can inform the history of philosophy, and how the history of philosophy can inform contemporary philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to discuss a seemingly straightforward argument against physicalism which, despite being implicit in much of the philosophical debate about consciousness, has not received the attention it deserves (compared to other, better-known “epistemic”, “modal”, and “conceivability” arguments). This is the argument from the non-supervenience of the first-personal (and indexical) facts on the third-personal (and non-indexical) ones. This non-supervenience, together with the assumption that the physical facts (as conventionally understood) are third-personal, entails (...) that some facts – namely, first-personal, phenomenal ones – do not supervene on the physical facts. Unlike other arguments against physicalism, the first-personal argument, if successful, refutes not only physicalism but also other third-personal metaphysical pictures, including standard versions of dualism. (shrink)

This paper is a defense of an internalist view of the perception of shapes. A basic assumption of the paper is that perceptual experiences have certain parts which account both for the phenomenal character associated with perceiving shapes—phenomenal shapes—and for the intentional content presenting shapes—intentional shapes. Internalism about perceptions of shapes is defined as the claim that phenomenal shapes determine the intentional shapes. Externalism is defined as the claim that perceptual experiences represent whatever shape the phenomenal shape reliably tracks. The (...) argument against externalism proceeds in three steps. First, it is argued that phenomenal shapes are modality specific, such that a phenomenal shape that features in a visual perceptual experience cannot feature in a haptic perceptual experience, and vice versa. Second, it is argued that intentional shapes are amodal. Third, it is argued that externalism is incompatible with the fact that phenomenal shapes are modality specific and intentional shapes amodal. (shrink)

Die von Kant vorgeschlagene Auflösung der Freiheitsantinomie gehört zu denjenigen Theoriestücken, die auch für den transzendentalen Idealismus aufgeschlossene Philosophen schwer zu verteidigen finden. Dies gilt insbesondere für die Lehre von der nichtzeitlichen Verursachung. Nach dieser Doktrin hebt die »Causalität der Vernunft im intelligibelen Charakter […] nicht zu einer gewissen Zeit an, um eine Wirkung hervorzubringen«. In diesem Beitrag wird nicht Kants Auflösung der Freiheitsantinomie im Mittelpunkt stehen, sondern die Frage, wie das Junktim zwischen Freiheitsrettung und transzendentalem Idealismus allererst motiviert ist. (...) Ich werde zunächst eine Reihe von Gründen dafür anführen, dieses Junktim zu lösen. Kant konstruiert in der dritten Antinomie ein idiosynkratisches Vereinbarkeitsproblem, das auf angreifbaren kausalitätstheoretischen und metaphysischen Vorannahmen beruht. In den Abschnitten 3.-5. versuche ich zu zeigen, dass die transzendental-idealistische Auflösung der Freiheitsantinomie nur nötig wird, weil Kant für Freiheit Erstverursachung fordert, die Gesetzesauffassung der Kausalität für einen analytischen Bestandteil des Kausalbegriffs hält, das Kausalprinzip mit dem Determinismusprinzip identifiziert und mit der Auszeichnung des Kausalprinzips als synthetischen Satz a priori zugleich den deterministischen Charakter des »Naturmechanismus« erwiesen zu haben glaubt. Danach werde ich die Frage erörtern, ob die noumenale »Kausalität aus Freiheit « im Sinne von Akteurskausalität bzw. Substanzkausalität rekonstruiert werden kann. Abschließend werde ich tentative Überlegungen dazu anstellen, ob zumindest einige transzendental-idealistische Elemente eine alternative Rolle in der Freiheits- und Handlungstheorie spielen können. (shrink)

Do we rightly expect a perfectly loving God to bring it about that, right now, we reasonably believe that He exists? It seems so. For love at its best desires the well-being of the beloved, not from a distance, but up close, explicitly participating in her life in a personal fashion, allowing her to draw from that relationship what she may need to flourish. But why suppose that we would be significantly better off were God to engage in an explicit, (...) personal relationship with us? Well, first, there would be broadly moral benefits. We would be able to draw on the resources of that relationship to overcome seemingly everpresent flaws in our character. And we would be more likely to emulate the self-giving love with which we were loved. So loved, we would be more likely to flourish as human beings. Secondly, there would be experiential benefits. We would be, for example, more likely to experience peace and joy stemming from the strong conviction that we were properly related to our Maker, security in suffering knowing that, ultimately, all shall be well, and there would be the sheer pleasure of God's loving presence. As a consequence of these moral and experiential benefits, our relationships with others would likely improve. Thirdly, to be personally related to God is intrinsically valuable, indeed, according to the Christian tradition, the greatest intrinsic good. In these ways our well-being would be enhanced if God were to relate personally to us. Moreover, the best love does not seek a personal relationship only for the sake of the beloved. As Robert Adams rightly notes, "It is an abuse of the word 'love' to say that one loves a person, or any other object, if one does not care, except instrumentally, about one's relation to that object."1 Thus, God would want a personal relationship with us not only for the benefit we would receive from it but for its own sake as well. So, if a perfectly loving God exists, He wants a personal relationship with us, or more accurately, every capable creature, those cognitively and affectively equipped to relate personally with Him.. (shrink)

I argue that a certain type of naturalist should not accept a prominent version of the no-miracles argument (NMA). First, scientists (usually) do not accept explanations whose explanans-statements neither generate novel predictions nor unify apparently disparate established claims. Second, scientific realism (as it appears in the NMA) is an explanans that makes no new predictions and fails to unify disparate established claims. Third, many proponents of the NMA explicitly adopt a naturalism that forbids philosophy of science from using (...) any methods not employed by science itself. Therefore, such naturalistic philosophers of science should not accept the version of scientific realism that appears in the NMA. (shrink)

This paper consider three families of arguments for atheism. First, there are direct arguments for atheism: arguments that theism is meaningless, or incoherent, or logically inconsistent, or impossible, or inconsistent with known fact, of improbable given known fact, or morally repugnant, or the like. Second, there are indirect arguments for atheism: direct arguments for something that entails atheism. Third, there are comparative arguments for atheism: e.g., arguments for the view that (atheistic) naturalism is more theoretically virtuous than theism.

Plato’s view on pleasure in the Republic emerges in the course of developing the third proof of his central thesis that the just man is happier than the unjust. Plato presents it as the “greatest and most decisive” proof of his central thesis, so one might expect to find an abundance of scholarly work on it. Paradoxically, however, this argument has received little attention from scholars, and what has been written on it has generally been harshly critical. I (...) believe that this treatment of the argument has been unfair and that the relevant passages deserve a more careful and charitable interpretation. In this paper, I take up two serious charges that scholars have leveled against this proof, that it is inconsistent and that it involves a “fatal ambiguity”. I show that these charges result from misinterpreting Plato’s text, and I offer an alternative interpretation of the relevant passages. In doing so, I hope to shed some light on the complexities involved in Plato’s unappreciated third proof. (shrink)