Although Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali lived a relatively short life, he established himself as one of the most important thinkers in the history of Islam. _The Incoherence of the Philosophers_, written after more than a decade of travel and ascetic contemplation, contends that while such Muslim philosophers as Avicenna boasted of unassailable arguments on matters of theology and metaphysics, they could not deliver on their claims; moreover, many of their assertions represented disguised heresy and unbelief. Despite its attempted (...) refutation by the twelfth-century philosopher Ibn Rushd, al-Ghazali's work remains widely read and influential. (shrink)

In the Incoherence of the Philosophers, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali raised objections against the doctrine of the ‘philosophers’ on 20 specific points. In the first, and longest discussion, he examines and rebuts four of their proofs of the pre-eternity of the world—that is, that the universe as a whole had no beginning but extends perpetually into the past. Al-Ghazali rejects that doctrine. But his own position on the issue does not become clear until he discusses the philosophers’ (...) ‘second proof.’ In this paper, I will examine the relevant text of the Incoherence of the Philosophers, in order to clarify the nature of Al-Ghazali’s position in relation to the second proof. I will explain why Al-Ghazali cannot adopt what I refer to as the ‘naïve’ theological position, according to which God temporally preceded the world. Instead, Al-Ghazali concurs with the philosophers that time is the measure of motion, but he asserts that time was created with the world, both having a beginning before which there was no time. God, on the other hand, is not temporally prior to the world, but neither is he simultaneous, as the second proof supposes. As timelessly eternal, God bears no temporal relation to the world at all. In conclusion, I describe what I refer to as a naïve philosophical position, which is entailed by the second proof, but distinct from both Al-Ghazali’s position and that adopted by Ibn Rushd in his critique of Al-Ghazali in the Incoherence of the Incoherence. I argue that this naïve philosophical position is incoherent. (shrink)

Many scholars of modern philosophy link the discussion of the necessary nature of causality inexorably with the name of the David Hume. Yet, long before Hume, the issue of necessary causality had been taken up by the Medieval Islamic philosopher Al-Ghazali. The purpose of this paper will be to examine Al-Ghazali’s views concerning the necessary nature of causality in his work ’The Incoherence of the Philosophers’ with particular reference to the issue of whether there is a complete rejection (...) of causality, and whether Ghazali’s rejection of necessary causality entails that he holds to some sort of occasionalism. (shrink)

"The debate recorded in al-Ghazālī's Incoherence of the Philosophers, and Ibn Rushd's response in Incoherence of the Incoherence, is one of the most philosophically interesting events in the history of classical Islamic thought. Here, the cutting edge of Ghazālī's searching critique meets the depth of Ibn Rushd's philosophical insight in a clash over the innovative synthesis of Aristotelian and Neo-Platonic thought represented chiefly by Ibn Sīnā. This critical commentary closely analyses and evaluates the arguments deployed by (...) all three parties in the debate, wherein are raised questions about the origin of the universe and the reality of time, possibility, causality, and nature. Where opportunities arise, it actively engages in the discussion by suggesting alternative arguments and philosophical directions. It goes beyond the cliché construal of the Incoherence debate as simply a conflict between faith and reason, exposing it as a genuinely philosophical enterprise and a potential source of fresh perspectives on contemporary discussions in metaphysics and analytic theology"--. (shrink)

According to Kantian moral religion, because there is a duty to promote the highest good, we are warranted in believing in God and immortality. However, this article shows that the duty to promote the highest good is incoherent, and that popular conceptualizations of the highest good cannot avoid this incoherence. After arguing, additionally, against attempts to ground Kantian moral religion on the highest good in some role other than the object of duty, it is shown that Kant seems to (...) have been aware of the original problem, suggesting an explanation for why he abandoned the highest good around 1800. (shrink)

InThe God of the Philosophers Anthony Kenny argues that the concept of God which has dominated Christian philosophical theology is incoherent. I don’t think he shows that it is incoherent, but he certainly raises a question worthy of our curiosity: is it in fact possible to demonstrate that this concept involves a contradiction?

Many philosophers hold that the probability axioms constitute norms of rationality governing degrees of belief. This view, known as subjective Bayesianism, has been widely criticized for being too idealized. It is claimed that the norms on degrees of belief postulated by subjective Bayesianism cannot be followed by human agents, and hence have no normative force for beings like us. This problem is especially pressing since the standard framework of subjective Bayesianism only allows us to distinguish between two kinds of (...) credence functions—coherent ones that obey the probability axioms perfectly, and incoherent ones that don’t. An attractive response to this problem is to extend the framework of subjective Bayesianism in such a way that we can measure differences between incoherent credence functions. This lets us explain how the Bayesian ideals can be approximated by humans. I argue that we should look for a measure that captures what I call the ‘overall degree of incoherence’ of a credence function. I then examine various incoherence measures that have been proposed in the literature, and evaluate whether they are suitable for measuring overall incoherence. The competitors are a qualitative measure that relies on finding coherent subsets of incoherent credence functions, a class of quantitative measures that measure incoherence in terms of normalized Dutch book loss, and a class of distance measures that determine the distance to the closest coherent credence function. I argue that one particular Dutch book measure and a corresponding distance measure are particularly well suited for capturing the overall degree of incoherence of a credence function. (shrink)

Of the many possible, and no doubt actual, forms of incoherence covered by my title, I shall be concerned with only one, and must begin by dismissing the others. The incoherence I shall speak of is not any alleged inconsistency between deterministic and indeterministic physical theories , such as between classical particle mechanics and quantum theory. It is an inconsistency internal to determinism. Not, that is, internal to any deterministic theory ; but to the general claims put forward (...) by determinists—whether scientists, philosophers, or laymen. Still another qualification—it is ‘hard’ determinism I shall be concerned with—‘hard’ in the sense in which William James distinguished between hard and soft determinism. Soft determinism James himself ridiculed as glaringly incoherent, and in any case I shall not be specially concerned with determinism as regards human conduct—with the problem of free will and responsibility. (shrink)

In this paper I am primarily interested in establishing that a coherence theory of truth is conceptually incoherent. Although my primary concern is with the coherence theory of truth, I shall point out that the problem I raise has a striking parallel in a now well-known objection to coherence theories of justification (an objection that, ironically, was brought to the fore by a proponent of a coherence theory of justification, Laurence Bonjour).

In this paper I am primarily interested in establishing that a coherence theory of truth is conceptually incoherent. Although my primary concern is with the coherence theory of truth, I shall point out that the problem I raise has a striking parallel in a now well-known objection to coherence theories of justification (an objection that, ironically, was brought to the fore by a proponent of a coherence theory of justification, Laurence Bonjour).

Many contributions to the philosophical debate about conceptual and normative issues raised by the refugee crisis fail to take properly account of the difference between ideal and nonideal theory. This makes several otherwise interesting and apparently plausible contributions to the philosophy of the refugee crisis problematic. They are problematic in the sense that they mix up ideal and nonideal aspirations and assumptions in an incoherent way undermining the proposed views. Two examples of this problem are discussed. The first example is (...) David Miller’s contribution to the conceptual debate about how we should understand refugeehood. The second example is a common argument from the normative debate about how states should discharge their duties to help refugees, namely the claim that states should help in neighboring countries rather than by taking in more asylum seekers. Both are examples of arguments about how we should understand or respond to the refugee crisis, which appear to offer coherent principles for the moral guidance of political actors but which are actually incoherent as principles of practical reasoning for the context they aim to address. (shrink)

The aim of this book is to show how McTaggart's atemporal vision of reality is a serious attempt to describe a coherent world without time. It proposes that the answer to the puzzling nature of time is not to be found in the components of time itself, but in an atemporal reality that lies behind it. McTaggart takes an idealist view that reduces all that is real to spirit, that any expression of reality is dependent on a manifestation of consciousness. (...) McTaggart's argument that time is unreal, has been the subject of much philosophical debate since it first appeared in 1908; but much discussion has ignored McTaggart's positive account of time and concentrated on his negative proof. The author argues that the negative thesis should be separated from the positive account, he attacks the standard approaches to interpreting time and provides a full account of McTaggart's atemporal world. The conclusion is drawn that the timeless world has psychological appeal and can form the basis for an atemporal thinking which can break away from the confusing philosophical models of temporality that often bear little resemblance to our experience of it. (shrink)

Before being able to answer key practical questions dependent on a criterion of personal identity (e.g., am I justified in anticipating surviving the death of my body?), we must first determine which general approach to the issue of personal identity is more plausible, reductionism or non-reductionism. While reductionism has become the more dominant. approach amongst philosophical theorists over the past thirty years, non-reductionism remains an approach that, for all these theorists have shown, could very well still be true. My aim (...) in this paper is to show that non-reductionism is actually either irrelevant---with respect to the practical questions we want answered---or logically impossible. In arguing for this conclusion, I draw from a case Derek Parfit has employed---the CombinedSpectrum---and I provide a number of variations to it which ultimately reveal that we have no possible rational recourse other than to become reductionists. (shrink)

I argue in this paper that philosophers have not clearly introduced the concept of a body in terms of which the problem of other minds and its solutions have been traditionally stated; that one can raise fatal objections to attempts to introduce this concept; and that the particular form of the problem of other minds which is stated in terms of the concept is confused and requires no solution. The concept of a "body" which may or may not be (...) the body of a person, which is required to state the traditional problem, is, on close examination, incoherent and cannot be introduced into a reasonable philosophical discussion. Also published in The Philosophy of the Body, Rejections of Cartesian Dualism, ed. Stuart F. Spicker. (shrink)

Many people have misgivings about the strategy of nuclear deterrence. Some of those misgivings centre on issues of effectiveness: safety depends entirely upon the dissuasion of an adversary. Other misgivings centre on moral concerns: the essence of deterrence is the threat, and the conditional intention, to kill millions of noncombatants. US President Reagan's Strategic Defence Initiative promised an alternative to deterrence, a strategic posture of interception of an adversary's weapons rather than preclusion of the decision to attack. It is conceived (...) as a means of ‘defending’ the United States that does not threaten anyone. In this essay I examine various SDI proposals. I argue that only one of these could justify the transition to a strategic posture of ‘defence’, and might be a genuine alternative to deterrence—the one that is least feasible technologically. Only that one could plausibly be claimed to be morally superior to deterrence—and for strategic reasons, even its claim is dubious at best. Technologically more feasible proposals are not ‘defences’, but variants of deterrence. Since that is so, the most common and dramatic claim of their moral superiority to deterrence is incoherent. (shrink)

Al-Ghazālı̄ famously claims in the Incoherence of the Philosophers that al-Fārābī and Avicenna are unbelievers because they hold philosophical positions that conflict with Islam. What is less well-known, however, is that Averroës claims in the Decisive Treatise that al-Fārābī and Avicenna are not unbelievers; rather, al-Ghazālı̄ is the true unbeliever for writing the Incoherence of the Philosophers. In this paper, my aim is to present a sustained reconstruction of Averroës’ legal and philosophical argument for why al-Ghazālı̄ (...) is an unbeliever. The crux of Averroës’ argument is that al-Ghazālı̄ has expressed false allegorical interpretations of scripture to unqualified persons, which has led them into unbelief. By being causally responsible for other people’s unbelief, al-Ghazālı̄ is an unbeliever as well. (shrink)

Ghazālī’s The Incoherence of the Philosophers is an unusual philosophical work for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the author’s explicit disavowalof any of the conclusions contained within it. The present essay examines some of the hermeneutical challenges that face readers of the work and offers anexegetical account of the much-neglected Third Discussion, which examines a key point of Neoplatonic metaphysics. The paper argues that Ghazālī’s maintaining of the incompatibility of metaphysical creationism and Neoplatonic (...) emanationism should not be viewed as simply a rhetorical or dialectical argument, but rather is best understood, to use Ghazālī’s words, as a philosophical “proof.” Essential to this proof in the solution to the argument of the Third Discussion is an implicit theory of metaphorical predication that can be pieced together from several of Ghazālī’s remarks as well as a reductio ad absurdum argument about the very possibility of ethical discourse. (shrink)

Chapter three shows that MacIntyre's misunderstanding of what psychoanalysis means by the unconscious leads him to treat it as unobservable. In any intelligible sense, the unconscious is not absolutely unobservable, or else being unobservable is no stigma unique to it; conscious ideas, wishes, e.g., will have to be classed as unobservable, too. MacIntyre's central error is his failing to see that free-association makes the unconscious observable. The chapter concludes with an examination of the concepts of absolute unobservability and observability in (...) contemporary philosophy of science. The idea of an entity or property whose essence it is to be unobservable --that is, of an entity or property that is unobservable in all possible worlds--is absurd. ;Chapter two exposes the fallaciousness of James's claim that on a priori grounds alone the very idea of unconscious mental activity is incoherent. Then, against his claim that brain-processes and/or conscious mental processes that are "quickly gone, unattended to, or forgotten" can explain any phenomenon supposed to need unconsicous mental processes to explain, I argue that the case of resistance to one's own ideas and wishes cannot be accounted for in any of the ten ways James considers; indeed, there are reasons why no explanation of the sorts he considers can be adequate to explain resistance. ;This difference in logical form is missed by Wittgenstein when he confuses the logcial form of an interpretation with the logical form of that of which it is an interpretation--e.g., a dream or symptom. Freud does treat dreams, symptoms, as having meaning, saying things; the condensations and displacements in dreams say "This is really this," "This is all a repetition of that." For Freud, the form of the interpretation is "This dream says 'This is really this,'" Wittgenstein is able to make it plausible to treat interpretations as mythological only by assuming that interpretations are of the same logical form as the dreams they are about. ;They fail, I argue, because each distorts or fails to take account of the same crucial features of unconscious mental processes as psychoanalysis attributes them; these critics assume that the phenomenon the unconscious is needed in order to explain is that of inadvertent, unwitting behavior. Even Freud sometimes slipped in this way--the argument from post-hypnotic suggestion examined in Chapter two also assumes that unwitting behavior of a certain sort requires unconscious mental activity for its explanation. In reality, it is resistance and transference phenomena which justify introduction of the concept of the unconscious. Besides, Freud's method of attributing unconscious mental activity is based on free-association, a wholly novel technique, which produces statements--interpretations--of a different logical form from non-psychoanalytic formulations attributing unconscious mental activity in order to explain inadvertent action. ;Chapter one deals with Wittgenstein's view of psychoanalytic interpretations as a mythology imposted upon subjects. Chapter two examines one of Freud's main proofs for the existence of unconsious mental activity, the argument from post-hypnotic suggestion, and then considers William James's arguments to show that the concept of unconscious mental activity is incoherent, i.e., self-contradictory, and that the concept is unnecessary in that any phenomenon supposed to require the concept to be explained can be explained instead by reference merely to conscious mental processes and/or brain-processes. Chapter three deals with A. MacIntyre's argument to show that the unconscious is unobservable in a way that distinguishes it from legitimate unobservables in science; unlike them, the unconsicous is dispensable in principle. These three criticisms exhaust the main attacks that have been made on the scientific status of the unconscious. (shrink)

I reconstruct and analyze al-Ghazali’s arguments defending a plurality of real divine attributes in The Incoherence of the Philosophers. I show that one of these arguments can be made to engage with and defend Jeffrey E. Brower and Michael C. Rea’s “Numerical Sameness Without Identity” model of the Trinity. To that end, I provide some background on the metaphysical commitments at play in al-Ghazali’s arguments.

In the Incoherence of the Philosophers, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali leveled a critique against twenty propositions of the Muslim peripatetic philosophers, represented chiefly by al-Farabi and Ibn Sina. In the Fourth Discussion of this work, he rejects their claim to having proven the existence of God. The proof to which he objects is none other than the famous ‘argument from contingency.’ So why did the eminent theologian of Islamic orthodoxy reject an argument for God’s existence that ultimately became (...) so historically influential? I will show that the real targets of Ghazali’s objection are the philosophers’ doctrine of the pre-eternity of the world, and their denial of divine attributes. These two issues are linked in such a way that, only if the philosophers’ argument regarding the divine essence is sound, would they be able to prove that He exists while holding to the doctrine of the world’s pre-eternity. (shrink)

In _The Mind and its Place in Nature_ , C.D. Broad tries to show, as he says (p. 59), that "there is no doubt" that the Theory of Emergence is a logically possible view with a good deal in its favor. And in his history of British Emergentism, McLaughlin states that emergentism is perfectly internally coherent, although he doesn't think it has any empirical evidence in its favor at present. I am inclined to agree with the assessment that emergentism is (...) a coherent theory, but I can't see that Broad or McLaughlin has shown this, at least if this is taken to mean that it represents a metaphysical possibility (and not merely is not self-contradictory). Moreover, I suspect many people find the concept of emergent properties somehow unscientific, mysterious, and possibly incoherent; and I doubt that Broad has adequately addressed this intuition. He has indeed admirably explicated the meaning of the theory, so that now we can all understand it; but just as even to explain the idea, for example, that there are alterations without causes in such a way that it becomes absolutely, crystal clear what one means by "an uncaused change" would not be to demonstrate. (shrink)

I trace a brief history of philosophical discussion of the concept WOMAN and identify two key points at which, I argue, things went badly wrong. The first was where when it was agreed that the concept WOMAN must identify a social not biological kind. The second was where it was decided that the concept WOMAN faced a legitimate challenge of being insufficiently “inclusive”, understood in a certain way. I’ll argue that both of these moves are only intelligible, if at all, (...) in the context of an anti-naturalist picture drawn from either post-structuralism or radical feminism. They become incoherent when adopted by methodological naturalists, who – especially when concerned to track oppression and discrimination – have no good reason to deny that WOMAN refers to a pre-given, biological kind. (shrink)

This book focuses on the crucial relationship between Hegel's career and politics. It situates this relationship within the broader political and historical context of his time. More specifically, Tabak explores the unlikely story of how an ambitious, incoherent, and academically untalented person had managed to become the most famous and powerful philosopher in Germany during the last decade of his life. In this context, and contrary to the contemporary "consensus view," Tabak documents conclusively that Hegel was a servile apologist for (...) the repressive Prussian state, and that this was the main reason why he became the most famous philosopher in Germany. In this meticulously-researched book, the author skillfully combines biographical, historical, and philosophical analyses and information to offer a compelling and rich account.Mehmet Tabak teaches at New York University. He is the author of multiple books on Plato, Marx, and Hegel. (shrink)

Burned at the stake for heresy, Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) was one of the Renaissance's more controversial thinkers. Current scholarship tends to read Bruno as either a Neo-Platonist who ultimately collapses reality to an overarching unity, or as an eclectic thinker whose disparate and disjointed musings are essentially incoherent. By closely and critically examining Bruno's writings this book demonstrates that Bruno was very much in the spirit of Modernity in that he tried to explain philosophically the possibility of the coexistence of (...) unity and multiplicity (difference) through the «then-scientific» logic of the coincidence of opposites. His metaphysics, cosmology and ethical thinking are to be understood through this underlying logic of coincidence, thereby rendering Bruno neither an absolute Neo-Platonist nor unintelligible. (shrink)

The discussion of the adaptive landscape in the philosophical literature appears to be divided along the following lines. On the one hand, some claim that the adaptive landscape is either “uninterpretable” or incoherent. On the other hand, some argue that the adaptive landscape has been an important heuristic, or tool in the service of explaining, as well as proposing and testing hypotheses about evolutionary change. This paper attempts to reconcile these two views.

SOME PHILOSOPHERS RESORT TO RELATIVE IDENTITY IN ORDER TO DEFEND THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY AGAINST ACCUSATIONS OF INCOHERENCE: THEY CLAIM THAT FATHER, SON, AND HOLY SPIRIT ARE NUMERICALLY THE SAME DEITY BUT ALSO NUMERICALLY DISTINCT PERSONS. I ARGUE THAT THEIR CLAIM IS EITHER INCOHERENT OR IMPOSSIBLE TO MOTIVATE. I ALSO ARGUE THAT THE SOCIAL INTERPRETATION OF THE TRINITY, ACCORDING TO WHICH FATHER, SON, AND HOLY SPIRIT ARE DISTINCT "SIMPLICITER", IS NOT OBVIOUSLY UNORTHODOX.

Most scholars of Islamic intellectual history now agree on the distortedness of the traditional Western portrayal of al-Ġazālī as the defender of Muslim orthodoxy whose Incoherence of the Philosophers was such a powerful critique that it caused the annihilation of philosophical activity in Islamic civilization. Some in fact are coming to the conclusion that al-Ġazālī's importance in the history of Islamic philosophy and theology derives as much from his assiduous incorporation of basic metaphysical ideas into central doctrines of (...) Sunnī kalām, as from his far more celebrated bashing of the falāsifa. What is less well known is that al-Ġazālī's role in the ‘‘philosophizing” of Sunnī theology was not a lonely struggle by a single genius, but part of a broader trend that seems to have begun during Avicenna’s lifetime and that picked up speed in the first and second generations after Avicenna's death in 1037, with the work of al-Ġazālī's teacher, the Aš‘arite al-Gˇuwaynī, as well as of the Māturīdite al-Bazdawī, work that was carried forward by dozens of subsequent members of those two major Sunnī theological schools. It is clear, in fact, that the dividing line between the Sunnī theologians commonly referred to in the later Islamic tradition as mutaqaddimūn, and those referred to as muta’aḫhḫirūn, lies not with al-Ġazālī but with Avicenna himself, and that the turn in Sunnī kalām was therefore Avicennian, not Ġazālian. (shrink)

The Phaedo is usually taken to be among Plato's metaphysically richest dialogues. Dilman argues that, at best, the views of Plato's Socrates are here free of the taint of metaphysics, or that worthwhile, nonmetaphysical theses are propounded alongside metaphysical ones. In these cases, Dilman attempts to separate out "Socrates' spiritual and moral perceptions" from the metaphysical claims. The latter are "a mystification of the grammar of the language in which such perceptions are expressed". Dilman's objection to such metaphysical theses is (...) Wittgensteinian. When philosophy goes beyond the attempt to articulate the role that a certain discourse plays in our form of life and, instead, attempts to provide some philosophical justification or explanation for our form of life, it degenerates into incoherence. Such language ceases to "do work" and is then "idling.". (shrink)

Background: While there have been studies exploring moral habitability and its impact on the work environments of nurses in Western countries, little is known about the moral habitability of the work environments of nurses and midwives in resource-constrained settings. Research objective: The purpose of this research was to examine the moral habitability of the work environment of nurses and midwives in Ghana and its influence on their moral agency using the philosophical works of Margaret Urban Walker. Research design and participants: (...) A critical moral ethnography was conducted through the analysis of interviews with 30 nurses and midwives, along with observation, and documentary materials. Ethical considerations: After receiving ethics approval, signed informed consent was obtained from participants before data collection. Results: Five themes were identified: (1) holding onto the values, identities, and responsibilities of being a midwife/nurse; (2) scarcity of resources as limiting capacity to meet caring responsibilities; (3) gender and socio-economic inequities shaping the moral-social context of practice; (4) working with incoherent moral understandings and damaged identities in the context of inter- and intra-professional relationships; and (5) surviving through adversity with renewed commitment and courage. Discussion: The nurses and midwives were found to work in an environment that was morally uninhabitable and dominated by the scarcity of resources, overwhelming and incoherent moral responsibilities, oppressive conditions, and workplace violence. These situations constrained their moral agency and provoked suffering and distress. The nurses and midwives negotiated their practice and navigated through morally uninhabitable work environment by holding onto their moral values and commitments to childbearing women. Conclusion: Creating morally habitable workplaces through the provision of adequate resources and instituting interprofessional practice guidelines and workplace violence prevention policies may promote safe and ethical nursing and midwifery practice. (shrink)

This book offers a clear, analytic, and innovative interpretation of Heidegger's late work. This period of Heidegger's philosophy remains largely unexplored by analytic philosophers, who consider it filled with inconsistencies and paradoxical ideas, particularly concerning the notions of Being and nothingness. This book takes seriously the claim that the late Heidegger endorses dialetheism--namely the position according to which some contradictions are true--and shows that the idea that Being is both an entity and not an entity is neither incoherent nor (...) logically trivial. The author achieves this by presenting and defending the idea that reality has an inconsistent structure. In doing so, he takes one of the most discussed topics in current analytic metaphysics, grounding theory, into a completely unexplored area. Additionally, in order to make sense of Heidegger's concept of nothingness, the author introduces an original axiomatic mereological system that, having a paraconsistent logic as a base logic, can tolerate inconsistencies without falling into logical triviality. This is the first book to set forth a complete and detailed discussion of the late Heidegger in the framework of analytic metaphysics. It will be of interest to Heidegger scholars and analytic philosophers working on theories of grounding, mereology, dialetheism, and paraconsistent logic. (shrink)

I argue that level-incoherence is epistemically valuable in a specific set of epistemic environments: those in which it is easy to acquire justified false beliefs about normative requirements of epistemic rationality. I argue that in these environments level-incoherence is the rationally dominant strategy. Nevertheless, level-incoherent combinations exhibit a distinctive tension, and this tension has been thought by many to indicate that level-incoherence is always irrational. Although this idea has proved resilient, I argue that it is incorrect. I (...) evaluate three candidate explanations for the distinctive tension exhibited by level-incoherent combinations, only one of which is the traditional view (which I call the ‘Prohibition View’) that epistemic level-incoherence is prohibited by epistemic rationality. I argue instead for the ‘Inquiry View’, according to which level-incoherence is not rationally criticisable but is a reason to undertake further inquiry. (shrink)

Introduction -- The end of history and the Kantian moment -- The progressive mind and the Islamist challenge -- The incoherence of the philosophers -- The language of progress and the closure of the European mind -- The networked global order -- All roads lead to China -- Maxims or axioms? -- The revenge of politics and the search for order -- Conclusion -- Afterword : the study of international relations and the erosion of acdemic integrity.

The medieval Islamic philosophers held a certain conception of the divine unity that assumes the necessary existent to be both one and simple. The oneness of the necessary existent meant that it is the only necessary existent and its simplicity meant that it admits no composition whatsoever – it is pure essence and its essence is necessary existence. In The Incoherence of the Philosophers al-Ġazālī presents, with elaboration, an exposition of the philosophers' conception of the divine (...) unity, several arguments for its two components, and his critique of these arguments. In this paper I focus on six of the arguments attributed to the philosophers. Following the textual evidence, I reconstruct these arguments and offer two possible interpretations of them. The first interpretation, which I call the many-argument interpretation, sees one of the arguments as employing the simplicity of the necessary existent to establish its oneness and the other five arguments as invoking oneness to establish simplicity. The second interpretation, which I call the one-argument interpretation, doesn't offer a new reading for the first argument but sees the other five arguments as defending the simplicity of the necessary existent based on its basic concept. I argue for the superiority of the one-argument interpretation. Résumé Les philosophes de l'Islam classique ont une doctrine de l'unité divine selon laquelle l'existant nécessaire est à la fois unique et simple. Son unicité signifie qu'il est le seul existant nécessaire, sa simplicité qu'il n'admet aucune sorte de composition; il est pure essence et son essence est existence nécessaire. Dans la Destruction des Philosophes, al-Ġazālī présente avec force détails un exposé de la doctrine de l'unité divine des philosophes, plusieurs arguments en faveur de ses deux composantes, ainsi que sa critique de ces arguments. Je me concentre ici sur six des arguments qu'il attribue aux philosophes. En suivant les données textuelles, je reconstruis ces arguments et en propose deux interprétations possibles. La première, que j'appelle l'interprétation “à arguments multiples”, identifie l'un des arguments comme s'appuyant sur la simplicité de l'existant nécessaire pour établir son unicité, et les cinq autres comme s'appuyant sur son unicité pour établir sa simplicité. La seconde, que j'appelle l'interprétation “à argument unique”, conserve la première lecture du premier argument mais voit dans les cinq autres une défense de la simplicité de l'existant nécessaire fondée sur sa notion fondamentale. J'argumente en faveur de la supériorité de l'interprétation “à argument unique”. (shrink)

It is argued that in the exchange that took place between Chomsky and Rey [2003], Chomsky’s answers to Rey might be interpreted more coherently if we interpret Chomsky as an instrumentalist about content. If the instrumentalist position is tenable, then Chomsky is justified in accusing Rey of misreading and applying philosophers’ interpretation on his naturalistic approach to language. Within linguistic theory, for example, syntax does not speak of people as agents who use language: it deals only with the automatically (...) functioning computational systems in people’s heads under the rubric UG, natural language, and I-language.The upshot is that there is no prospect of revealing a conceptual incoherence within linguistic theory by bringing to bear considerations about ordinary or philosophical usage of terms such as ‘knowledge’, ‘tacit’ or ‘innate’, ‘content’ or ‘intentionality’. (shrink)

The advent of distinctively Modern European philosophy at the turn of the seventeenth century was occasioned by two major developments: the painful recognition after thirty years of religious war that principles of public conduct must be justified independently of sectarian religious dogma; and the growth of natural science, especially discoveries in astronomy that linked terrestrial and celestial physics in a newly mathematicized, explanatory mechanics founded by Galileo and dramatically extended by Newton. The roles of reason and empirical evidence in inquiry, (...) and their superiority to custom and tradition for knowledge of nature were undeniable, though their respective roles and proper epistemological accounting were far from obvious. I review briefly some key points in the advent of natural science in order show that some fundamental philosophical predilections have obscured the proper roles of reason and evidence in the philosophical accounting of scientific knowledge. These predilections are found both among rationalists and among empiricists. Though they may be more readily apparent among seventeenth and eighteenth century philosophers, they are no less prevalent in mainstream analytical philosophy of science. Their diagnosis augurs a fundamental philosophical reorientation, a reorientation inaugurated, indeed, by Hegel. (shrink)

Is there any such thing as the Cusan view of the relationship between faith and reason? That is, does Nicholas present us with clear concepts of fides and ratio and with a unique and consistent doctrine regarding their interconnection? If he does not, then the task before us is surely an impossible one: viz., the task of finding, describing, and setting in perspective a doctrine that never at all existed. For even with spectacles made of beryl stone or through the (...) looking glass of Lewis Carroll, we could not descry the totally nonexistent. Four lines of argument purport to show that the task before us is fundamentally impossible. 1. First of all, it may be argued that Nicholas of Cusa can have a coherent doctrine of faith and reason only if he has a generally coherent theory of knowledge and that since his theory of knowledge is generally incoherent, so too must be the aforesaid doctrine, which is an intrinsic part of the theory of knowledge. Let us grant—for the sake of the argument—the disputable logic of this reasoning, and let us focus on the question of whether Nicholas does or does not have a viable general theory of knowledge. Many philosophers judge the theory to be unviable. For example, the philosopher Hans Blumenberg writes: “I will not make what I believe would have to be a futile attempt at a unitary interpretation of the Cusan theory of knowledge. Here in particular the inner consistency of his philosophical accomplishment is doubtful. The reason for this can be specified: it lies, again, in the inability to deal with or successfully to evade the consequences of nominalism.” 2 Other philosophers are quick to agree that Cusa’s epistemology consists of a host of glaring contradictions: Cusa’s theory of representative perception is said to be incompatible with his doctrine of homo mensura—i.e., with his doctrine that man is the measure of the reality that is perceived and conceived by him. Cusa’s notion that empirical concepts are abstracted from perceptual and imaginative images is asserted to be contradicted by his further claim that all concepts are derived a pri- ori from the mind itself. (shrink)

Incoherence arguments are intended to demonstrate that some philosophical position should be rejected because it is fatally flawed. I review the kinds of fatal flaws targeted in incoherence arguments, and argue that such arguments are not conclusive against the position they target, but merely pose challenges that require greater imagination. Furthermore, I claim that apparently incoherent positions have an instrumental value in expanding the intellectual resources of philosophy.

This article critically examines one of the most prevalent metaphors in modern biology, namely the machine conception of the organism (MCO). Although the fundamental differences between organisms and machines make the MCO an inadequate metaphor for conceptualizing living systems, many biologists and philosophers continue to draw upon the MCO or tacitly accept it as the standard model of the organism. This paper analyses the specific difficulties that arise when the MCO is invoked in the study of development and evolution. (...) In developmental biology the MCO underlies a logically incoherent model of ontogeny, the genetic program, which serves to legitimate three problematic theses about development: genetic animism, neo-preformationism, and developmental computability. In evolutionary biology the MCO is responsible for grounding unwarranted theoretical appeals to the concept of design as well as to the interpretation of natural selection as an engineer, which promote a distorted understanding of the process and products of evolutionary change. Overall, it is argued that, despite its heuristic value, the MCO today is impeding rather than enabling further progress in our comprehension of living systems. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Theologian's Doubts:Natural Philosophy and the Skeptical Games of GhazālīLeor HaleviIn the history of skeptical thought, which normally leaps from the Pyrrhonists to the rediscovery of Sextus Empiricus in the sixteenth century, Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad al-Ghazālī (1058-1111) figures as a medieval curiosity. Skeptical enough to merit passing acknowledgment, he has proven too baffling to be treated fully alongside pagan, atheist, or materialist philosophers. As a theologian defending certain (...) Muslim dogmas, Ghazālī has not met what historians consider the mark of the true skeptic, a mind doubting the possibility of all systems of knowledge. But what is fascinating about him is that he brought into practical operation the tools of what I call "functional skepticism."1He denied the claims to truth of Aristotelian physics—whose basis he showed to rest on groundless belief—then turned and argued for the possibility of the Resurrection tooth and nail. The scholarly debate on The Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahāfut al-falāsifa) has concentrated on the extent to which Ghazālī qua Ashcarite theologian was seduced into Aristotelian philosophy despite himself.2 In my view this debate has been misguided in the attempt to distill the [End Page 19] essence of Ghazālī from the book's eclectic theology; I will argue for a different view of Ghazālī on the basis of a close reading of key passages. In the unusual sections where Ghazālī applies Aristotelian language to a world not following the ordinary laws of physics, some have found Ghazālī slipping, unconsciously perhaps, into an Aristotelian frame of mind. I will show that, as a skeptical theologian with a dialogic imagination, he was rather deconstructing Aristotelian discourse while playing a Wittgensteinian sort of language game.Natural Philosopher or Speculative Theologian?The disagreement about the extent to which philosophy infected Ghazālī is ancient. Ghazālī might have studied philosophy only in order to refute it. He himself defended his philosophizing with the claim that one cannot deconstruct a system of thought until one has understood it so deeply as to elaborate upon its fundamental principles.3 His Maqāṣid al-falāsifa was in fact received, especially in trans-Pyrenean Europe, as a philosopher's genuine summary of the object of philosophy.4 The book strikes me as suspiciously creative in its representation of philosophical discourse, but it appears in any case as an expert and surprisingly unbiased treatment.5 Arabic readers knew that Ghazālī had also written a polemical treatise against philosophy, Tahāfut al-falāsifa, but they still wondered about his engagement with the ideas he challenged. Abū Bakr Ibn al-cArabī, for example, commented that Ghazālī had been unable to extricate himself from philosophy.6 Other philosophers pondered whether or not he had been a closeted member of their charmed circle and sought in his writings traces of esoteric philosophy.7Averroës's own sober sense of distance between philosophy and theology was partially a reaction to what he perceived as Ghazālī's dangerous and carefree mixture of the two sciences.8 He attacked Ghazālī's book in The Incoherence [End Page 20] of the Incoherence to restore philosophy's sense of purity, an aim he sought to accomplish by separating religious concerns from the philosopher's field of inquiry.9 Ironically, such a separation is precisely what Ghazālī might have wished to provoke by crisscrossing and blurring the line between religion and philosophy.The modern debate on chapter 17 of Tahāfut al-falāsifa has concentrated on defining Ghazālī as either a natural philosopher or an occasionalist theologian. In his defense of the possibility of miracles Ghazālī presented two theories of causation, one denying the logical basis of Aristotelian notions of natural causality, and the other more or less adopting these notions. Jointly, the two theories have seemed incompatible, and for this reason scholars have attempted to sort Ghazālī out of the apparent confusion. In 1978 L. E. Goodman argued persuasively that Ghazālī exploited rather than denied the philosophers' ideas of causality. In two articles Michael Marmura challenged Goodman, contending... (shrink)

Two centuries after they were published, Kant's ethical writings are as much admired and imitated as they have ever been, yet serious and long-standing accusations of internal incoherence remain unresolved. Onora O'Neill traces the alleged incoherences to attempt to assimilate Kant's ethical writings to modern conceptions of rationality, action and rights. When the temptation to assimilate is resisted, a strikingly different and more cohesive account of reason and morality emerges. Kant offers a `constructivist' vindication of reason and a moral (...) vision in which obligations are prior to rights and in which justice and virtue are linked. O'Neill begins by reconsidering Kant's conceptions of philosophical method, reason, freedom, automony and action. She then moves on to the more familiar terrain of interpretation of the Categorical Imperative, while in the last section she emphasises differences between Kant's ethics and recent 'Kantian' ethics, including the work of John Rawls and other contemporary liberal political philosophers. This reassessment will add significantly to the understanding of Kantian practical philosophy. (shrink)

Louis de La Forge and the Development of Occasionalism: Continuous Creation and the Activity of the Soul STEVEN NADLER THE DOCTRINE OF DIVINE CONSERVATION is a dangerous one. It is not theologi- cally dangerous, at least not in itself. From the thirteenth century onwards, and particularly with the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas, the notion of the continuous divine sustenance of the world of created things was, if not univer- sally accepted, a nonetheless common feature of theological orthodoxy, Chris- tian (...) and otherwise. Rather, the danger is philosophical in nature . The philosophical problem I am concerned with is not some logical incoherence at the heart of the doctrine; nor does it lie in any objections that can be raised against the arguments that, historically, have been given for the thesis that God, as a causa secundum esse, must continually act in order to conserve the world in being. The question I address -- and it is a pressing one for any seventeenth-century Cartesianmis whether the doctrine of divine conservation establishes too much. I believe that, under certain circumstances, it does, and that the ultimate ramifications of the doctrine for natural causality must be unacceptable to an orthodox Cartesian such as Louis de La Forge , perhaps the most strict follower of Descartes of the.. (shrink)

Is there any such thing as the Cusan view of the relationship between faith and reason? That is, does Nicholas present us with clear concepts of fides and ratio and with a unique and consistent doctrine regarding their interconnection? If he does not, then the task before us is surely an impossible one: viz., the task of finding, describing, and setting in perspective a doctrine that never at all existed. For even with spectacles made of beryl stone or through the (...) looking glass of Lewis Carroll, we could not descry the totally nonexistent. Four lines of argument purport to show that the task before us is fundamentally impossible. 1. First of all, it may be argued (a) that Nicholas of Cusa can have a coherent doctrine of faith and reason only if he has a generally coherent theory of knowledge and (b) that since his theory of knowledge is generally incoherent, so too must be the aforesaid doctrine, which is an intrinsic part of the theory of knowledge. Let us grant—for the sake of the argument—the disputable logic of this reasoning, and let us focus on the question of whether Nicholas does or does not have a viable general theory of knowledge. Many philosophers judge the theory to be unviable. For example, the philosopher Hans Blumenberg writes: “I will not make what I believe would have to be a futile attempt at a unitary interpretation of the Cusan theory of knowledge. Here in particular the inner consistency of his philosophical accomplishment is doubtful. The reason for this can be specified: it lies, again, in the inability to deal with or successfully to evade the consequences of nominalism.”2 Other philosophers are quick to agree that Cusa’s epistemology consists of a host of glaring contradictions: Cusa’s theory of representative perception is said to be incompatible with his doctrine of homo mensura—i.e., with his doctrine that man is the measure of the reality that is perceived and conceived by him. Cusa’s notion that empirical concepts are abstracted from perceptual and imaginative images is asserted to be contradicted by his further claim that all concepts are derived a pri- ori from the mind itself.. (shrink)

McDowell’s “Avoiding the Myth of the Given” (2008, 2009) attempts to reconcile two claims: 1) what we most fundamentally experience is a fundamental level of invariable simple objects and their sensible properties; experience of these objects and properties is the ultimate ground of our knowledge of the world; 2) experience is through-and-through conceptually structured. This leads McDowell to endorsing the incoherent notion of intuitional content – necessary and thus irrevisable basic empirical conceptually structured contents or empirical categories. The notion requires (...) the necessity and irrevisability of purely formal concepts and the on-going responsiveness to experience of empirical concepts. This reveals a dilemma: If the fundamental objects of experience are invariable then they cannot have empirically conceptual form; for revisability is a mark of the empirically conceptual. But purely formal concepts cannot give us the fundamental empirical structure of the world. The dilemma forces us to choose between claiming that the fundamental objects of experience are invariable and claiming that they are conceptually formed. I conclude by briefly describing how Kant successfully faces the challenge of accounting for the most fundamental invariable level of objects of experience without yielding to the myth of the given. (shrink)