This theory accords to volitions the status of basic mental actions, maintaining that these are spontaneous exercises of the will--a "two-way" power which ...

Causal closure arguments against interactionist dualism are currently popular amongst physicalists. Such an argument appeals to some principles of the causal closure of the physical, together with certain other premises, to conclude that at least some mental events are identical with physical events. However, it is crucial to the success of any such argument that the physical causal closure principle to which it appeals is neither too strong nor too weak by certain standards. In this paper, it is argued that (...) various forms of naturalistic dualism, of an emergentist character, are consistent with the strongest physical causal closure principles that can plausibly be advocated. (shrink)

Non-Cartesian substance dualism maintains that persons or selves are distinct from their organic physical bodies and any parts of those bodies. It regards persons as ‘substances’ in their own right, but does not maintain that persons are necessarily separable from their bodies, in the sense of being capable of disembodied existence. In this paper, it is urged that NCSD is better equipped than either Cartesian dualism or standard forms of physicalism to explain the possibility of mental causation. A model of (...) mental causation adopting the NCSD perspective is proposed which, it is argued, is consistent with all that is currently known about the operations of the human central nervous system, including the brain. Physicalism, by contrast, seems ill-equipped to explain the distinctively intentional or teleological character of mental causation, because it effectively reduces all such causation to ‘blind’ physical causation at a neurological level. (shrink)

Following the lead of Gustav Bergmann ( 1967 ), if not his precise terminology, ontologies are sometimes divided into those that are ‘relational’ and those that are ‘constituent’ (Wolterstorff 1970 ). Substance ontologies in the Aristotelian tradition are commonly thought of as being constituent ontologies, because they typically espouse the hylemorphic dualism of Aristotle ’s Metaphysics – a doctrine according to which an individual substance is always a combination of matter and form. But an alternative approach drawing more on the (...) fourfold ontological scheme of Aristotle’s Categories is not committed to this doctrine and may regard individual (or ‘primary’) substances as having no constituent structure, their only possible complexity residing in their possession, in some cases, of a multiplicity of substantial parts. However, as we shall see, this does not imply that such an ontology falls instead into the relational camp: for although it invokes, in addition to the category of individual substance, also those of substantial kind (‘secondary’ substance), attribute, and mode (or ‘individual accident’), it need not and arguably should not take there to be external relations between entities in the different categories. On this view, truths of exemplification and instantiation, such as ‘Dobbin is white’ and ‘Dobbin is a horse’, do not need relational truthmakers. Hence, it can be maintained that there are no such relations as ‘exemplification’ and ‘instantiation’, at most only certain relational truths of exemplification and instantiation – truths whose logical form is relational. Th is being so, I shall argue, such an ontology cannot fairly be classified as a ‘relational’ one. (shrink)

Why does the problem of free will seem so intractable? I surmise that in large measure it does so because the free will debate, at least in its modern form, is conducted in terms of a mistaken approach to causality in general. At the heart of this approach is the assumption that all causation is fundamentally event causation. Of course, it is well-known that some philosophers of action want to invoke in addition an irreducible notion of agent causation, applicable only (...) in the sphere of intelligent agency. But such a view is generally dismissed as incompatible with the naturalism that has now become orthodoxy amongst mainstream analytical philosophers of mind. What I want to argue is that substances, not events, are the primary relata of causal relations and that agent causation should properly be conceived of as a species of substance causation. I shall try to show that by thus reconceiving the nature of causation and of agency, the problem of free will can be made more tractable. I shall also argue for a contention that may seem even less plausible at first sight, namely, that such a view of agency is perfectly compatible with a volitionist theory of action. (shrink)

Forms of thought are involved whenever we name, describe, or identify things, and whenever we distinguish between what is, might be, or must be the case. It appears to be a distinctive feature of human thought that we can have modal thoughts, about what might be possible or necessary, and conditional thoughts, about what would or might be the case if something else were the case. Even the simplest thoughts are structured like sentences, containing referential and predicative elements, and studying (...) these structures is the main task of philosophical logic. This clear and accessible book investigates the forms of thought, drawing out and focusing on the central logical notions of reference, predication, identity, modality and conditionality. It will be useful to students and other interested readers in epistemology and metaphysics, philosophy of mind and language, and philosophical logic. (shrink)

'Object' and 'criterion of identity' are philosophical terms of art whose application lies at a considerable theoretical remove from the surface phenomena of everyday linguistic usage. This partly explains their highly controversial status, for their point of application lies precisely where the concerns of linguists and philosophers of language merge with those of metaphysicians. This chapter explains the possession of determinate identity‐conditions. It argues that the distinction between 'abstract' and 'concrete' objects is itself a highly controversial one, and although it (...) has indeed been argued that this distinction turns ultimately upon differences between the criteria of identity governing objects of these two broad categories. It examines the role which criteria of identity play in our talk about objects of the least controversial varieties. The chapter concerns the problem of identity over time and the paradoxes to which identity criteria often appear to give rise when time is brought into the picture. (shrink)

Locke notoriously included number amongst the primary qualities of bodies and was roundly criticized for doing so by Berkeley. Frege echoed some of Berkeley's criticisms in attacking the idea that ‘Number is a property of external things’, while defending his own view that number is a property of concepts. In the present paper, Locke's view is defended against the objections of Berkeley and Frege, and Frege's alternative view of number is criticized. More precisely, it is argued that numbers are assignable (...) to pluralities of individuals. However, it is also argued that Locke went too far in asserting that ‘Number applies itself to ... everything that either doth exist, or can be imagined’. (shrink)

Three different concepts of matter are identified: matter as what a thing is immediately made of, matter as stuff of a certain kind, and matter in the (dubious) sense of material ‘substratum’. The doctrine of hylomorphism, which regards every individual concrete thing as being ‘combination’ of matter and form, is challenged. Instead it is urged that we do well to identify an individual concrete thing with its own particular ‘substantial form’. The notions of form and matter, far from being correlative, (...) are relatively independent. There is nothing absurd in the notion of form without matter. Matter provides neither a principle of individuation nor a criterion of identity for individual concrete things: their form alone provides both. Finally, a substance ontology which admits also the existence of particular qualities, or tropes, is to be preferred both to a substance ontology which denies the existence of tropes and to a pure trope ontology. (shrink)

‘Water is H2O’ is one of the most frequently cited sentences in analytic philosophy, thanks to the seminal work of Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam in the 1970s on the semantics of natural kind terms. Both of these philosophers owe an intellectual debt to the empiricist metaphysics of John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, while disagreeing profoundly with Locke about the reality of natural kinds. Locke employs an intriguing example involving water to support his view that kinds (or ‘species’), such (...) as water and gold, are the workmanship of the human mind. This is the point of his story about a winter visitor to England from Jamaica, who is astonished to find that the water in his basin has turned solid overnight, and proceeds to call it ‘hardened water’. Locke criticizes this judgement, maintaining that it is more consonant with common sense to regard water and ice as different kinds of substance. Putnam, by implication, disagrees. Deploying his imaginary example of Twin Earth—a distant planet where a watery-looking substance, XYZ, rather than H2O, fills the oceans and rivers—he maintains that common sense supports the judgement that XYZ and H2O, despite their superficial similarity, are not the same kind of substance, precisely because their molecular compositions are different. Here it will be argued that both views are mistaken, but that, in this dispute, Locke has more right on his side than his modern opponents do. (shrink)

I propose a fourfold categorisation of entities according to whether or not they possess determinate identity-conditions and whether or not they are determinately countable. Some entities – which I call ‘individual objects’ – have both determinate identity and determinate countability: for example, persons and animals. In the case of entities of a kind K belonging to this category, we are in principle always entitled to expect there to be determinate answers to such questions as ‘Is x the same K as (...) y?’ and ’How many Ks are there satisfying condition C?’, even if we may sometimes be unable in practice to discover what these answers are. But other entities apparently lack either determinate identity, or determinate countability, or both. In these terms I try to explain certain important ontological differences between familiar macroscopic objects and various rather more esoteric entities, such as the ‘particles’ of quantum physics, quantities of material stuff, and tropes or property instances. (shrink)

For the good that I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. Romans 7.19-20.

Locke's main semantic thesis is that words stand for, or signify, ideas. He says this over and over again, though the phraseology he employs varies. In Book III chapter 2 alone we find the following statements of the thesis: ‘ … Words … come to be made use of by Men, as the Signs of their Ideas’ [III.2.1; 405:10-11); The use then of Words, is to be sensible Marks of Ideas; and the Ideas they stand for, are their proper and (...) immediate Signification’ [III.2.1; 405:15-17]; ‘Words in their primary or immediate Signification, stand for nothing, but the Ideas in the Mind of him that uses them’ [III.2.2; 405:21-2]; That then which Words are the Marks of, are the Ideas of the Speaker’ [III.2.2; 405:27-8]; ‘ …. (shrink)

This is the first full-length translation of a work by the influential medieval logician Walter Burley. As such, it is an important addition to our knowledge of medieval logic, and will undoubtedly spur further research.

Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum have recently attacked causal necessitarianism – the doctrine that causes necessitate their effects – on the grounds that causation does not survive what they describe as the test of antecedent strengthening. This article shows that there are credible conditional logics which do not sanction this test, thereby providing an escape route for proponents of causal necessitarianism from Mumford and Anjum's argument.

One currently popular methodology of metaphysics has it that ‘intuitions’ play an evidential role with respect to metaphysical claims. This chapter defends a realist methodology of metaphysics that implies that any rational being, simply in virtue of being rational, is necessarily capable of grasping the essences of at least some mind-independent entities. The notion of essence in play here is Aristotelian, whereby an entity’s essence is captured by an account of what that entity is, or what it is to be (...) that entity. Concepts are just ways of thinking of things and, as such, may or may not be adequate to the real natures — the essences — of the things being thought of. Our ‘intuitions’, particularly as revealed by aptly constructed thought experiments, may cast interesting light on some of our concepts, but they are not and cannot be reliable guides to mind-independent truths of essence. (shrink)

Construing miracles as \textquotedblleft{}violations,\textquotedblright I argue that a law of nature must specify some kind of possibility. But we must have here a sense of possibility for which the ancient rule of logic---ab esse ad posse valet consequentia---does not hold. We already have one example associated with the concept of statute law, a law which specifies what is legally possible but which is not destroyed by a violation. If laws of nature are construed as specifying some analogous sense of what (...) is naturally possible, then they need not be invalidated by a (rare) violation, and Humean miracles remain a genuine possibility. (shrink)

It is a matter of dispute whether we should acknowledge the existence of two distinct species of causation – event causation and agent causation – and, if we should, whether either species of causation is reducible to the other. In this paper, the prospects for such a reduction either way are considered, the conclusion being that a reduction of event causation to agent causation is the more promising option. Agent causation, in the sense understood here, is taken to include but (...) not to be restricted to the intentional causation of an event by a rational agent. But, it is argued, there are certain special features of intentional causation, understood as a sub-species of agent causation, which make the agent-causation approach to human agency a particularly promising one with which to tackle the problem of free will. (shrink)