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Reasons First
by Mark SchroederIn the last five decades, ethical theory has been preoccupied by a turn to reasons. The vocabulary of reasons has become a common currency not only in ethics, but in epistemology, action theory, and many related areas. It is now common, for example, to see central theses such as evidentialism in epistemology and egalitarianism in political philosophy formulated in terms of reasons. And some have even claimed that the vocabulary of reasons is so useful precisely because reasons have analytical and explanatory priority over other normative concepts-that reasons in that sense come first. Reasons First systematically explores both the benefits and burdens of the hypothesis that reasons do indeed come first in normative theory, against the conjecture that theorizing in both ethics and epistemology can only be hampered by neglect of the other. Bringing two decades of work on reasons in both ethics and epistemology to bear, Mark Schroeder argues that some of the most important challenges to the idea that reasons could come first are themselves the source of some of the most obstinate puzzles in epistemology: about how perceptual experience could provide evidence about the world, and about what can make evidence sufficient to justify belief. Schroeder shows that, along with moral worth, one of the very best cases for the fundamental explanatory power of reasons in normative theory actually comes from knowledge.
Metaphysics, Sophistry, and Illusion: Toward a Widespread Non-Factualism
by Mark BalaguerMetaphysics, Sophistry, and Illusion does two things. First, it introduces a novel kind of non-factualist view, and argues that we should endorse views of this kind in connection with a wide class of metaphysical questions, most notably, the abstract-object question and the composite-object question. (More specifically, Mark Balaguer argues that there's no fact of the matter whether there are any such things as abstract objects or composite objects—or material objects of any other kind.) Second, Metaphysics, Sophistry, and Illusion explains how these non-factualist views fit into a general anti-metaphysical view called neo-positivism, and explains how we could argue that neo-positivism is true. Neo-positivism is the view that every metaphysical question decomposes into some subquestions—call them Q1, Q2, Q3, etc.—such that, for each of these subquestions, one of the following three anti-metaphysical views is true of it: non-factualism, or scientism, or metaphysically innocent modal-truth-ism. These three views can be defined (very roughly) as follows: non-factualism about a question Q is the view that there's no fact of the matter about the answer to Q. Scientism about Q is the view that Q is an ordinary empirical-scientific question about some contingent aspect of physical reality, and Q can't be settled with an a priori philosophical argument. And metaphysically innocent modal-truth-ism about Q is the view that Q asks about the truth value of a modal sentence that's metaphysically innocent in the sense that it doesn't say anything about reality and, if it's true, isn't made true by reality
Metaphysics, Sophistry, and Illusion: Toward a Widespread Non-Factualism
by Mark BalaguerMetaphysics, Sophistry, and Illusion does two things. First, it introduces a novel kind of non-factualist view, and argues that we should endorse views of this kind in connection with a wide class of metaphysical questions, most notably, the abstract-object question and the composite-object question. (More specifically, Mark Balaguer argues that there's no fact of the matter whether there are any such things as abstract objects or composite objects—or material objects of any other kind.) Second, Metaphysics, Sophistry, and Illusion explains how these non-factualist views fit into a general anti-metaphysical view called neo-positivism, and explains how we could argue that neo-positivism is true. Neo-positivism is the view that every metaphysical question decomposes into some subquestions—call them Q1, Q2, Q3, etc.—such that, for each of these subquestions, one of the following three anti-metaphysical views is true of it: non-factualism, or scientism, or metaphysically innocent modal-truth-ism. These three views can be defined (very roughly) as follows: non-factualism about a question Q is the view that there's no fact of the matter about the answer to Q. Scientism about Q is the view that Q is an ordinary empirical-scientific question about some contingent aspect of physical reality, and Q can't be settled with an a priori philosophical argument. And metaphysically innocent modal-truth-ism about Q is the view that Q asks about the truth value of a modal sentence that's metaphysically innocent in the sense that it doesn't say anything about reality and, if it's true, isn't made true by reality
From Aristotle to Cicero: Essays in Ancient Philosophy
by Gisela StrikerFrom Aristotle to Cicero: Essays in Ancient Philosophy draws together a selection of Gisela Striker's essays from the last forty years in the areas of research for which she is best known. The first two essays are translated from German: they address specific questions in Aristotle's logic and also complement her commentary on Prior Analytics I. Following on from these, there are three papers on Aristotle's ethics and moral psychology, and the second part of the volume presents five recent studies on Hellenistic epistemology and ethics. Three of the essays have not been published previously.
Strokes of Luck: A Study in Moral and Political Philosophy
by Gerald LangStrokes of Luck provides a detailed and wide-ranging examination of the role of luck in moral and political philosophy. The first part tackles debates in moral luck, which are concerned with the assignment of blameworthiness to individuals who are separated only by lucky differences. 'Anti-luckists' think that one who, for example, attempts and succeeds in an assassination and one who attempts and fails are equally blameworthy. This book defends an anti-anti-luckist argument, according to which the successful assassin is more blameworthy than the unsuccessful one. Moreover, the successful assassin is, all things equal, a worse person than the unsuccessful one. The worldly outcomes of our acts can make an all-important difference, not only to how bad our acts can be deemed, but to how bad we are. The second part enters into debates about distributive justice. Lang argues that the attempt to neutralize luck in the distribution of advantages among individuals does not deserve its prominence in political philosophy: the 'luck egalitarian' programme is flawed. A better way forward is to re-invest in John Rawls's 'justice as fairness', which demonstrates a superior way of taming the bad effects of luck and unchosen disadvantage.
Strokes of Luck: A Study in Moral and Political Philosophy
by Gerald LangStrokes of Luck provides a detailed and wide-ranging examination of the role of luck in moral and political philosophy. The first part tackles debates in moral luck, which are concerned with the assignment of blameworthiness to individuals who are separated only by lucky differences. 'Anti-luckists' think that one who, for example, attempts and succeeds in an assassination and one who attempts and fails are equally blameworthy. This book defends an anti-anti-luckist argument, according to which the successful assassin is more blameworthy than the unsuccessful one. Moreover, the successful assassin is, all things equal, a worse person than the unsuccessful one. The worldly outcomes of our acts can make an all-important difference, not only to how bad our acts can be deemed, but to how bad we are. The second part enters into debates about distributive justice. Lang argues that the attempt to neutralize luck in the distribution of advantages among individuals does not deserve its prominence in political philosophy: the 'luck egalitarian' programme is flawed. A better way forward is to re-invest in John Rawls's 'justice as fairness', which demonstrates a superior way of taming the bad effects of luck and unchosen disadvantage.
The Practical Origins of Ideas: Genealogy as Conceptual Reverse-Engineering
by Matthieu QuelozThis is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Why did such highly abstract ideas as truth, knowledge, or justice become so important to us? What was the point of coming to think in these terms? In The Practical Origins of Ideas Matthieu Queloz presents a philosophical method designed to answer such questions: the method of pragmatic genealogy. Pragmatic genealogies are partly fictional, partly historical narratives exploring what might have driven us to develop certain ideas in order to discover what these do for us. The book uncovers an under-appreciated tradition of pragmatic genealogy which cuts across the analytic-continental divide, running from the state-of-nature stories of David Hume and the early genealogies of Friedrich Nietzsche to recent work in analytic philosophy by Edward Craig, Bernard Williams, and Miranda Fricker. However, these genealogies combine fictionalizing and historicizing in ways that even philosophers sympathetic to the use of state-of-nature fictions or real history have found puzzling. To make sense of why both fictionalizing and historicizing are called for, this book offers a systematic account of pragmatic genealogies as dynamic models serving to reverse-engineer the points of ideas in relation not only to near-universal human needs, but also to socio-historically situated needs. This allows the method to offer us explanation without reduction and to help us understand what led our ideas to shed the traces of their practical origins. Far from being normatively inert, moreover, pragmatic genealogy can affect the space of reasons, guiding attempts to improve our conceptual repertoire by helping us determine whether and when our ideas are worth having.
The Practical Origins of Ideas: Genealogy as Conceptual Reverse-Engineering
by Matthieu QuelozThis is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Why did such highly abstract ideas as truth, knowledge, or justice become so important to us? What was the point of coming to think in these terms? In The Practical Origins of Ideas Matthieu Queloz presents a philosophical method designed to answer such questions: the method of pragmatic genealogy. Pragmatic genealogies are partly fictional, partly historical narratives exploring what might have driven us to develop certain ideas in order to discover what these do for us. The book uncovers an under-appreciated tradition of pragmatic genealogy which cuts across the analytic-continental divide, running from the state-of-nature stories of David Hume and the early genealogies of Friedrich Nietzsche to recent work in analytic philosophy by Edward Craig, Bernard Williams, and Miranda Fricker. However, these genealogies combine fictionalizing and historicizing in ways that even philosophers sympathetic to the use of state-of-nature fictions or real history have found puzzling. To make sense of why both fictionalizing and historicizing are called for, this book offers a systematic account of pragmatic genealogies as dynamic models serving to reverse-engineer the points of ideas in relation not only to near-universal human needs, but also to socio-historically situated needs. This allows the method to offer us explanation without reduction and to help us understand what led our ideas to shed the traces of their practical origins. Far from being normatively inert, moreover, pragmatic genealogy can affect the space of reasons, guiding attempts to improve our conceptual repertoire by helping us determine whether and when our ideas are worth having.
The Fiery Test of Critique: A Reading of Kant's Dialectic
by Ian ProopsKant conceived of 'critique' as a kind of winnowing exercise, with the aim of separating the wheat of good metaphysics from the chaff of bad. He used a less familiar metaphor to make this point, namely, that of 'the fiery test of critique'-not a medieval ordeal of trial by fire, but rather a metallurgical assay, or cupellation, a procedure in which ore samples are tested for their precious-metal content. When seen in this light, critique has a positive, investigatory side: it seeks not merely to eliminate bad, 'dogmatic' metaphysics but also to uncover what of philosophical value might be contained in traditional speculative metaphysics. In this comprehensive study of the Transcendental Dialectic in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Proops argues that Kant uncovered two nuggets of value: the indirect proof of Transcendental Idealism afforded by the resolution of the Antinomies, and a defence of theoretically grounded 'doctrinal beliefs' in a wise and great originator, on the one hand, and in an afterlife, on the other. This examination of critique engages with Kant's views on a number of central problems in philosophy and meta-philosophy: the explanation of the enduring human impulse towards metaphysics, the correct philosophical method, the limits of self-knowledge, the possibility of human freedom, the resolution of metaphysical paradox ('Antinomy'), the justification of faith, the nature of scepticism, and the role of 'as if' reasoning in natural science.
The Fiery Test of Critique: A Reading of Kant's Dialectic
by Ian ProopsKant conceived of 'critique' as a kind of winnowing exercise, with the aim of separating the wheat of good metaphysics from the chaff of bad. He used a less familiar metaphor to make this point, namely, that of 'the fiery test of critique'-not a medieval ordeal of trial by fire, but rather a metallurgical assay, or cupellation, a procedure in which ore samples are tested for their precious-metal content. When seen in this light, critique has a positive, investigatory side: it seeks not merely to eliminate bad, 'dogmatic' metaphysics but also to uncover what of philosophical value might be contained in traditional speculative metaphysics. In this comprehensive study of the Transcendental Dialectic in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Proops argues that Kant uncovered two nuggets of value: the indirect proof of Transcendental Idealism afforded by the resolution of the Antinomies, and a defence of theoretically grounded 'doctrinal beliefs' in a wise and great originator, on the one hand, and in an afterlife, on the other. This examination of critique engages with Kant's views on a number of central problems in philosophy and meta-philosophy: the explanation of the enduring human impulse towards metaphysics, the correct philosophical method, the limits of self-knowledge, the possibility of human freedom, the resolution of metaphysical paradox ('Antinomy'), the justification of faith, the nature of scepticism, and the role of 'as if' reasoning in natural science.
Agency in Mental Disorder: Philosophical Dimensions
Mental illness is an issue of great practical importance. Yet, despite sustained inquiry from scientists and philosophers alike, relatively little attention has been paid to the significance of mental disorder to agency and responsibility. While there is some work that touches on the topic, and a few extended treatments of particular disorders, these only scratch the surface. Agency in Mental Disorder seeks to provide a starting point for deeper and broader philosophical analyses. The 8 new essays in this book address various questions about the relationship between agency and mental disorder. What is the nature of that relationship? In what ways do mental disorders affect capacities for control? How should we understand the mitigations of blame that mental disorders seem to provide, and can we generalize from specific disorders to any interesting claims about disorders as a class? And what makes for a mental disorder in the first place?
Agency in Mental Disorder: Philosophical Dimensions
by Matt King Joshua MayMental illness is an issue of great practical importance. Yet, despite sustained inquiry from scientists and philosophers alike, relatively little attention has been paid to the significance of mental disorder to agency and responsibility. While there is some work that touches on the topic, and a few extended treatments of particular disorders, these only scratch the surface. Agency in Mental Disorder seeks to provide a starting point for deeper and broader philosophical analyses. The 8 new essays in this book address various questions about the relationship between agency and mental disorder. What is the nature of that relationship? In what ways do mental disorders affect capacities for control? How should we understand the mitigations of blame that mental disorders seem to provide, and can we generalize from specific disorders to any interesting claims about disorders as a class? And what makes for a mental disorder in the first place?
The Will to Nothingness: An Essay on Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality
by Bernard ReginsterOn the Genealogy of Morality is Nietzsche's most influential book but it continues to puzzle, not least in its central claim: the invention of Christian morality is an act of revenge, and it is as such that it should arouse critical suspicion. In The Will to Nothingness, Bernard Reginster makes a fresh attempt at understanding this claim and its significance, inspired by Nietzsche's claim that moralities are 'signs' or 'symptoms' of the affective states of moral agents. The relation between morality and affects is envisioned as functional, rather than expressive: the genealogy of Christian morality aims to reveal how it is well suited to serve certain emotional needs. One particular emotional need, manifested in the affect of ressentiment, plays a prominent role in the analysis of Christian morality. This is the need to have the world reflect one's will, which is rooted in a special drive toward power, or toward bending the world to one's will. Revenge is plausibly understood as aiming to bolster or restore power, and the invention of new values is a particular way to do so: by altering the agent's will (her values), it alters what counts as power for her. By revealing how it is well suited to play such a functional role in the emotional economy of moral agents, the genealogical inquiries arouse critical suspicion toward Christian morality. The use of this moral outlook as an instrument of revenge is problematic not because it is immoral, but because it is functionally self-undermining.
The Will to Nothingness: An Essay on Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality
by Bernard ReginsterOn the Genealogy of Morality is Nietzsche's most influential book but it continues to puzzle, not least in its central claim: the invention of Christian morality is an act of revenge, and it is as such that it should arouse critical suspicion. In The Will to Nothingness, Bernard Reginster makes a fresh attempt at understanding this claim and its significance, inspired by Nietzsche's claim that moralities are 'signs' or 'symptoms' of the affective states of moral agents. The relation between morality and affects is envisioned as functional, rather than expressive: the genealogy of Christian morality aims to reveal how it is well suited to serve certain emotional needs. One particular emotional need, manifested in the affect of ressentiment, plays a prominent role in the analysis of Christian morality. This is the need to have the world reflect one's will, which is rooted in a special drive toward power, or toward bending the world to one's will. Revenge is plausibly understood as aiming to bolster or restore power, and the invention of new values is a particular way to do so: by altering the agent's will (her values), it alters what counts as power for her. By revealing how it is well suited to play such a functional role in the emotional economy of moral agents, the genealogical inquiries arouse critical suspicion toward Christian morality. The use of this moral outlook as an instrument of revenge is problematic not because it is immoral, but because it is functionally self-undermining.
Oxford's Savilian Professors of Geometry: The First 400 Years
The Savilian Professorships in Geometry and Astronomy at Oxford University were founded in 1619 by Sir Henry Savile, distinguished scholar and Warden of Merton College. The Geometry chair, in particular, is the earliest University-based mathematics professorship in England, predating the first Cambridge equivalent by about sixty years. To celebrate the 400th anniversary of the founding of the geometry chair, a meeting was held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and the talks presented at this meeting have formed the basis for this fully edited and lavishly illustrated book, which outlines the first 400 years of Oxford's Savilian Professors of Geometry. Starting with Henry Briggs, the co-inventor of logarithms, this volume proceeds via such figures as John Wallis, a founder member of the Royal Society, and Edmond Halley, via the 19th-century figures of Stephen Rigaud, Baden Powell, Henry Smith, and James Joseph Sylvester, to the 20th century and the present day. Oxford's Savilian Professors of Geometry: The First 400 Years assumes no mathematical background, and should therefore appeal to the interested general reader with an interest in mathematics and the sciences. It should also be of interest to anyone interested in the history of mathematics or of the development of Oxford and its namesake university. To all of these audiences it offers portraits of mathematicians at work and an accessible exposition of historical mathematics in the context of its times.
Rational Rules: Towards a Theory of Moral Learning
by Shaun NicholsMoral systems, like normative systems more broadly, involve complex mental representations. Rational Rules proposes that moral learning can be understood in terms of general-purpose rational learning procedures. Nichols argues that statistical learning can help answer a wide range of questions about moral thought: Why do people think that rules apply to actions rather than consequences? Why do people expect new rules to be focused on actions rather than consequences? How do people come to believe a principle of liberty, according to which whatever is not expressly prohibited is permitted? How do people decide that some normative claims hold universally while others hold only relative to some group? The resulting account has both empiricist and rationalist features: since the learning procedures are domain-general, the result is an empiricist theory of a key part of moral development, and since the learning procedures are forms of rational inference, the account entails that crucial parts of our moral system enjoy rational credentials. Moral rules can also be rational in the sense that they can be effective for achieving our ends, given our ecological settings. Rational Rules argues that at least some central components of our moral systems are indeed ecologically rational: they are good at helping us attain common goals. Nichols argues that the account might be extended to capture moral motivation as a special case of a much more general phenomenon of normative motivation. On this view, a basic form of rule representation brings motivation along automatically, and so part of the explanation for why we follow moral rules is that we are built to follow rules quite generally.
Rational Rules: Towards a Theory of Moral Learning
by Shaun NicholsMoral systems, like normative systems more broadly, involve complex mental representations. Rational Rules proposes that moral learning can be understood in terms of general-purpose rational learning procedures. Nichols argues that statistical learning can help answer a wide range of questions about moral thought: Why do people think that rules apply to actions rather than consequences? Why do people expect new rules to be focused on actions rather than consequences? How do people come to believe a principle of liberty, according to which whatever is not expressly prohibited is permitted? How do people decide that some normative claims hold universally while others hold only relative to some group? The resulting account has both empiricist and rationalist features: since the learning procedures are domain-general, the result is an empiricist theory of a key part of moral development, and since the learning procedures are forms of rational inference, the account entails that crucial parts of our moral system enjoy rational credentials. Moral rules can also be rational in the sense that they can be effective for achieving our ends, given our ecological settings. Rational Rules argues that at least some central components of our moral systems are indeed ecologically rational: they are good at helping us attain common goals. Nichols argues that the account might be extended to capture moral motivation as a special case of a much more general phenomenon of normative motivation. On this view, a basic form of rule representation brings motivation along automatically, and so part of the explanation for why we follow moral rules is that we are built to follow rules quite generally.
Parenthetical Meaning (Oxford Studies in Semantics and Pragmatics #14)
by Todor KoevThis book investigates the semantics and pragmatics of a representative sample of parenthetical constructions. Todor Koev argues that these constructions fall into two major classes: pure and impure. Pure parentheticals comment on some part of the descriptive content of the root sentence but are otherwise relatively independent of it. Impure parentheticals modify components of the illocutionary force and affect the felicity or the truth of the root sentence. The book studies parentheticals from three theoretical viewpoints: illocutionary effects, scopal properties, and discourse status. It establishes and explicates the notion of parenthetical meaning in a formally precise and predictive dynamic-semantic model. As a result, parentheticality is brought to bear on linguistic phenomena such as entailment and presupposition, binding and anaphora, evidentiality and modality, illocutionary force, and polarity.
The Undivided Self: Aristotle and the 'Mind-Body Problem' (Oxford Aristotle Studies Series)
by David CharlesAristotle initiated the systematic investigation of perception, the emotions, memory, desire and action, developing his own account of these phenomena and their interconnection. The aim of this book is to gain a philosophical understanding of his views and to examine how far they withstand critical scrutiny. Aristotle's account, it is argued, constitutes a philosophically live alternative to conventional post-Cartesian thinking about psychological phenomena and their place in a material world. It offers a way to dissolve, rather than solve, the mind-body problem we have inherited.
Reconsidering Causal Powers: Historical and Conceptual Perspectives
Causal powers are returning to the forefront of realist philosophy of science. Once central features of philosophical thinking about the natures of substances and causes, they were banished during the early modern era and the Scientific Revolution. In this volume, distinguished scholars revisit the fortunes of causal powers as scientific explanatory principles within the theories of substance and cause across history. Each chapter focuses on the philosophical roles causal powers were thought to play at the time, and the reasons offered in support, or against, their coherence and ability to perform these roles. By placing rigorous philosophical analyses of thinking about causal powers within their historical contexts, features of their natures which might remain hidden to contemporary practitioners can be more readily identified and more carefully analyzed. The thoughts of such prominent philosophers as Aristotle, Scotus, Ockham, and Buridan are explored, then on through Suarez, Descartes, and Malebranche, to Locke and Hume, and ultimately to contemporary figures like the logical positivists Goodman and Lewis.
Democratic Speech in Divided Times
by Maxime LepoutreIn an ideal democracy, people from all walks of life would come together to talk meaningfully and respectfully about politics. But we do not live in an ideal democracy. In contemporary democracies, which are marked by deep social divisions, different groups for the most part avoid talking to each other. And when they do talk to each other, their speech often seems to be little more than a vehicle for rage, hatred, and deception. Democratic Speech in Divided Times argues that we should nevertheless not give up on the ideal of democratic public speech. Drawing on the resources of political theory, epistemology, and philosophy of language, this book develops a sustained account of the norms that should govern public discourse in deeply divided circumstances. Should we try to find common ground when we talk to our political opponents, even though they seem unreasonable? Should we refrain from expressing anger, if we want to get things done? How can we use our speech to fight hate speech and disinformation? And is it even possible to speak to 'the other side,' in settings where different groups dislike one another, live apart from one another, and don't know much about one another? By tackling these questions, Lepoutre demonstrates that, when governed by the right set of norms, public speech can be a powerful force for good even amidst profound social divisions.
Democratic Speech in Divided Times
by Maxime LepoutreIn an ideal democracy, people from all walks of life would come together to talk meaningfully and respectfully about politics. But we do not live in an ideal democracy. In contemporary democracies, which are marked by deep social divisions, different groups for the most part avoid talking to each other. And when they do talk to each other, their speech often seems to be little more than a vehicle for rage, hatred, and deception. Democratic Speech in Divided Times argues that we should nevertheless not give up on the ideal of democratic public speech. Drawing on the resources of political theory, epistemology, and philosophy of language, this book develops a sustained account of the norms that should govern public discourse in deeply divided circumstances. Should we try to find common ground when we talk to our political opponents, even though they seem unreasonable? Should we refrain from expressing anger, if we want to get things done? How can we use our speech to fight hate speech and disinformation? And is it even possible to speak to 'the other side,' in settings where different groups dislike one another, live apart from one another, and don't know much about one another? By tackling these questions, Lepoutre demonstrates that, when governed by the right set of norms, public speech can be a powerful force for good even amidst profound social divisions.
Experience and Possibility
by Joseph MendolaExperience and Possibility concerns the modal ontology of experience. It investigates the detailed metaphysics of the colors, shapes, and other concrete properties present in our experience of ordinary concrete objects, and also of their spatial and temporal relations. It examines their experienced particularity, and the nature of their locations and material bits. This detailed concern with specific cases reveals many inadequacies of traditional ontology. But the central novelty of the book is an intense focus on the modal aspects of such experienced entities, and what it reveals about modality in general. The reality of such things would involve in surprising ways not merely what would hence be actual but also what would be merely possible. This supports a general conception of modality, of the possible and the necessary, according to which the actual and the possible are locally entwined and involve different types of being. The particulars, properties, and relations we experience involve distinctive forms of modal structure, characteristic of specific sorts of universals and irreducible particularities. When this experience is not veridical, when for instance the color we experience is somewhat misleading about reality, it is a puzzle how we have such experience nonetheless. Exploration of these forms of modal structure is groundwork for a new account of how our neurophysiology explains such misleading experience, how our physical structure delivers such qualia. This is sketched for the case of experienced color. Its core idea is that the apparent modal structure of things we experience is sometimes due to the actual modal structure of the neurophysiology that constitutes that experience.
Experience and Possibility
by Joseph MendolaExperience and Possibility concerns the modal ontology of experience. It investigates the detailed metaphysics of the colors, shapes, and other concrete properties present in our experience of ordinary concrete objects, and also of their spatial and temporal relations. It examines their experienced particularity, and the nature of their locations and material bits. This detailed concern with specific cases reveals many inadequacies of traditional ontology. But the central novelty of the book is an intense focus on the modal aspects of such experienced entities, and what it reveals about modality in general. The reality of such things would involve in surprising ways not merely what would hence be actual but also what would be merely possible. This supports a general conception of modality, of the possible and the necessary, according to which the actual and the possible are locally entwined and involve different types of being. The particulars, properties, and relations we experience involve distinctive forms of modal structure, characteristic of specific sorts of universals and irreducible particularities. When this experience is not veridical, when for instance the color we experience is somewhat misleading about reality, it is a puzzle how we have such experience nonetheless. Exploration of these forms of modal structure is groundwork for a new account of how our neurophysiology explains such misleading experience, how our physical structure delivers such qualia. This is sketched for the case of experienced color. Its core idea is that the apparent modal structure of things we experience is sometimes due to the actual modal structure of the neurophysiology that constitutes that experience.
Reconsidering Causal Powers: Historical and Conceptual Perspectives
by Henrik Lagerlund Benjamin Hill Stathis PsillosCausal powers are returning to the forefront of realist philosophy of science. Once central features of philosophical thinking about the natures of substances and causes, they were banished during the early modern era and the Scientific Revolution. In this volume, distinguished scholars revisit the fortunes of causal powers as scientific explanatory principles within the theories of substance and cause across history. Each chapter focuses on the philosophical roles causal powers were thought to play at the time, and the reasons offered in support, or against, their coherence and ability to perform these roles. By placing rigorous philosophical analyses of thinking about causal powers within their historical contexts, features of their natures which might remain hidden to contemporary practitioners can be more readily identified and more carefully analyzed. The thoughts of such prominent philosophers as Aristotle, Scotus, Ockham, and Buridan are explored, then on through Suarez, Descartes, and Malebranche, to Locke and Hume, and ultimately to contemporary figures like the logical positivists Goodman and Lewis.