ABSTRACT Hannah Arendt’s conception of “the social” offers a novel perspective on contemporary debates over social media. Both critics and defenders of social media giants such as Facebook construe the problem with social media as a proliferation of untruths that is either the cost of liberalism or a danger requiring regulations. Arendt would have us be dubious of both conclusions while also rejecting both sets of premises. Rather, Arendt’s framework allows a diagnosis of the problem with social media as a (...) deeper problem with the form of society itself, a problem that would remain untouched by increased regulatory measures against social media giants. (shrink)

To students and practitioners of anamorphic art, the name of Jean-François Niceron is more than preeminent; it has become iconic. La Perspective Curieuse was first published in 1638. An augmented version was then translated into Latin by Mersenne in 1646. A newly amended and augmented version was retranslated into French by Roberval in 1652. This book is an English translation of the 1652 text, with reference to the 1638 and 1646 versions. Considering the continued high reputation of the book, the (...) mathematics have been checked for correctness and consistency, and the authors have provided a full commentary, pointing out the most difficult turns of the 17th-century French, the respective contributions of Niceron, Mersenne and Roberval, and explaining Niceron's greatest insights and weaknesses. (shrink)

In this paper, we study the relationship between the cofinalityc(Sym(ω)) of the infinite symmetric group and the minimal cardinality $$\underset{\raise0.3em\hbox{$\smash{\scriptscriptstyle\thicksim}$}}{b} $$ of an unbounded familyF of ω ω.

Assuming Martin's Axiom, we compute the value of the cofinality of the symmetric group on the natural numbers. We also show that Martin's Axiom does not decide the value of the covering number of a related Mycielski ideal.

Zygon®, Volume 56, Issue 4, Page 1045-1057, December 2021.

Studies in philosophy: I. Tufts, J.H. On moral evolution. II. Willcos, W.F. The expansion of Europe in its influence upon population. III. Woods, R.A. Democracy a new unfolding of human power. IV. Sharp, F.C. An analysis of the moral judgment. V. Woodbridge, F.J.E. The problem of consciousness. VI. Norton, E.L. The intellectual element in music. VII. Raub, W.L. Pragmatism and Kantianism. VIII. Lyman, E.W. The influence of pragmatism upon the status of theology.--Studies in psychology: IX. Delabarre, E.B. Influence of surrounding (...) objects on the apparent direction of a line. X. Swift, E.J. Beginning a language; a contribution to the psychology of learning. XI. Pierce, A.H. An appeal from the prevailing doctrine of a detached subconsciousness. XII. Woodworth, R.S. The cause of a voluntary movement. XIII. Burnett, C.T. An experimental test of the classical theory of volition. (shrink)

Formalised knowledge systems, including universities and research institutes, are important for contemporary societies. They are, however, also arguably failing humanity when their impact is measured against the level of progress being made in stimulating the societal changes needed to address challenges like climate change. In this research we used a novel futures-oriented and participatory approach that asked what future envisioned knowledge systems might need to look like and how we might get there. Findings suggest that envisioned future systems will need (...) to be much more collaborative, open, diverse, egalitarian, and able to work with values and systemic issues. They will also need to go beyond producing knowledge about our world to generating wisdom about how to act within it. To get to envisioned systems we will need to rapidly scale methodological innovations, connect innovators, and creatively accelerate learning about working with intractable challenges. We will also need to create new funding schemes, a global knowledge commons, and challenge deeply held assumptions. To genuinely be a creative force in supporting longevity of human and non-human life on our planet, the shift in knowledge systems will probably need to be at the scale of the enlightenment and speed of the scientific and technological revolution accompanying the second World War. This will require bold and strategic action from governments, scientists, civic society and sustained transformational intent. (shrink)

This book brings together scholars from a variety of epistemological perspectives to explore the multiple ways in which sexuality does indeed matter in the arena of public education.

'Marina G. Ogden offers a competitive and comprehensive outlook of the prominent Russian thinker Lev Shestov. This valuable book, based on the archive sources, provides a good historical background for Shestov's investigations which is very important for the better understanding not only Russian religious thought, but also Western philosophy of the twentieth century.'- Professor Teresa Obolevitch, The Pontifical University of John Paul II, Krakow 'The pioneering Russian existentialist Lev Shestov influenced Camus, Bataille, Celan and many others. In this absorbing (...) study, Marina G. Ogden shows how his "parable" of the many-eyed Angel of Death anticipates much recent thinking about trauma and its effect in setting a life on a unique and sometimes creative path.'- David M. Black, the author of Why Things Matter: The place of values in science, psychoanalysis and religion At the beginning of the twentieth century the Russian émigré philosopher Lev Shestov (1866-1938) challenged traditional philosophical norms and brought the individual experience of the anxiety of death to the forefront of philosophical investigation. Based on new research and translations of Shestov's unpublished manuscripts, notes and correspondence, this book analyses the thoughts of one of the most influential thinkers of the past century in an interdisciplinary context. While uncovering the roots of the philosopher's existential position, the author traces Shestov's 'wandering through souls' of the world's most significant philosophers and writers within the context of a historical and biographical narrative, offering a close reading of his thinking in its chronological progression. A new interpretation of Shestov's philosophy, this comparative and hermeneutical analysis focuses on the thinker's continual search for meaning on the question of human mortality. Bringing together up-to-date research findings in Russian, English and French, an evolutionary analysis of the key notions in Shestov's philosophy the problems of truth, revelation, faith and death - is carried out in conjunction with the ideas of such pivotal figures in Western culture as Fyodor Dostoevsky, William James, Edmund Husserl, Karl Jaspers, Martin Buber and Sigmund Freud. (shrink)

IntroductionHead and neck cancer diagnosis and treatment can be a significant life trauma. Some HNC survivors experience post-traumatic growth, which has been linked with better health-related quality-of-life. Empirical research on PTG, and theoretical models, point to the importance of being able to purposely make sense of the traumatic experience. Intrusive rumination, by contrast, is linked to poorer outcomes. This study explored HNC survivors’ experiences of rumination.MethodsTwenty HNC survivors between 9 months and 5 years post-diagnosis were recruited. They had a range (...) of HNC sub-types and cancer treatments. Participants underwent a semi-structured interview about their cancer diagnosis and treatment. Reflexive thematic analysis identified themes and sub-themes around rumination.ResultsFour themes with linked subthemes on the content and process of rumination were identified. Theme 1 was rumination and worry related to diagnosis. Here, survivors discussed how the HNC diagnosis and plans for treatment had dominated their initial thoughts. Theme 2 was processing the trauma of HNC. This theme reflected rumination on the traumatic experience of diagnosis and treatment and how the participant was reacting to it. Theme 3 was considering the impact. This theme encompassed retrospective thinking and comparisons between the participant now versus the early days after diagnosis. Theme 4 was continued rumination. This theme included ongoing intrusive and distressing rumination about the trauma and impact of cancer. Those who expressed ongoing rumination revisited fears or returned to negative experiences.ConclusionThis study uniquely describes the nature and content of rumination following HNC. Early intrusive rumination is common and may reflect perceptions of cancer as an existential threat. Over time, rumination can become more reflective and move towards deliberate meaning-making. Some HNC survivors may benefit from interventions to reduce barriers to this transition. The content of distressing and difficult to control rumination helps to identify those who may benefit from more directed psychological support. (shrink)

As the expansion of the Internet and the digital formatting of all kinds of creative works move us further into the information age, intellectual property issues have become paramount. Computer programs costing thousands of research dollars are now copied in an instant. People who would recoil at the thought of stealing cars, computers, or VCRs regularly steal software or copy their favorite music from a friend's CD. Since the Web has no national boundaries, these issues are international concerns. The contributors-philosophers, (...) legal theorists, and business scholars, among others-address questions such as: Can abstract ideas be owned? How does the violation of intellectual property rights compare to the violation of physical property rights? Can computer software and other digital information be protected? And how should legal systems accommodate the ownership of intellectual property in an information age? Intellectual Property is a lively examination of these and other issues, and an invaluable resource for librarians, lawyers, businesspeople, and scholars. (shrink)

This book explores the influential currents in the philosophy of language and linguistics of the first half of the twentieth century, from the perspective of the English scholar C. K. Ogden (1889-1957). Ogden was connected to several of the most significant figures of the modernist period, including Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Victoria Lady Welby, Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap. In investigating these connections, this book reveals links between early analytic philosophy, semiotics and linguistics in a crucial period of (...) their respective histories and in turn sheds light on the intellectual history of the early twentieth century. Readers are introduced to the important interaction between Ogden's thought and Victoria Lady Welby's 'significs', Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein's 'logical atomism' in its various forms, and the philosophy and political activism of Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap of the Vienna Circle. McElvenny also examines the background to the ideas espoused in Ogden's book The Meaning of Meaning, co-authored with I. A. Richards, along with the application of these ideas in Ogden's international language project Basic English. Provides a detailed study of the historical origin of key concepts in semantics and semiotics Reveals links between early analytic philosophy, semiotics and linguistics in a crucial period of their respective histories Makes extensive use of previously unexplored sources, including Ogden's articles in the journal Psyche and unpublished correspondence Includes a detailed examination of The Meaning of Meaning, 1923 and Basic English, 1930. (shrink)

Formalised knowledge systems, including universities and research institutes, are important for contemporary societies. They are, however, also arguably failing humanity when their impact is measured against the level of progress being made in stimulating the societal changes needed to address challenges like climate change. In this research we used a novel futures-oriented and participatory approach that asked what future envisioned knowledge systems might need to look like and how we might get there. Findings suggest that envisioned future systems will need (...) to be much more collaborative, open, diverse, egalitarian, and able to work with values and systemic issues. They will also need to go beyond producing knowledge about our world to generating wisdom about how to act within it. To get to envisioned systems we will need to rapidly scale methodological innovations, connect innovators, and creatively accelerate learning about working with intractable challenges. We will also need to create new funding schemes, a global knowledge commons, and challenge deeply held assumptions. To genuinely be a creative force in supporting longevity of human and non-human life on our planet, the shift in knowledge systems will probably need to be at the scale of the enlightenment and speed of the scientific and technological revolution accompanying the second World War. This will require bold and strategic action from governments, scientists, civic society and sustained transformational intent. (shrink)

Routledge is now re-issuing this prestigious series of 204 volumes originally published between 1910 and 1965. The titles include works by key figures such as C.G. Jung, Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Otto Rank, James Hillman, Erich Fromm, Karen Horney and Susan Isaacs. Each volume is available on its own, as part of a themed mini-set, or as part of a specially-priced 204-volume set.

Although now largely forgotten, the international language movement was, from the 1880s to the end of the Second World War, a matter of widespread public interest, as well as a concern of numerous scientists and scholars. The primary goal was to establish a language for international communication, but in the early twentieth century an increasing accent was placed on philosophical considerations: wanted was a language better suited to the needs of modern science and rational thought. In this paper, we examine (...) the example of the English scholar C.K. Ogden's international language Basic English and his efforts to win the Vienna Circle philosophers Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap over to the project. Basic is shown to be an implementation of key ideas in Ogden's philosophy of language, ideas shared to a large extent with Neurath and Carnap. This we see through an examination of their unpublished correspondence, as well as through the collaboration that emerged between Ogden and Neurath, in which Neurath's Isotype, a system for graphically representing statistical data, became closely aligned with Basic. Through the ideas and endeavours we investigate here, we gain a new perspective on this crucial period in the history of analytic philosophy. (shrink)

“William James is a towering figure in the history of American thought--without doubt the foremost psychologist this country has produced. His depiction of mental life is faithful, vital, and subtle. In verve, he has no equal.... “There is a sharp contrast between the expanding horizon of James and the constricting horizon of much contemporary psychology. The one opens doors to discovery, the other closes them. Much psychology today is written in terms of reaction, little in terms of becoming. (...) James would say that a balance is needed, but that only by assuming that man has the capacity for growth are we likely to discover the scope of this same capacity.” —from the introduction by Gordon W. Allport. (shrink)

This paper explores Spinoza’s relationship to poetry by considering two prominent allusions to classical literature in Spinoza’s political treatises. Susan James illuminates Spinoza’s worries about the dangers of poetic address. At the same time, Spinoza relies on poetic language and citation to press some central claims. References to Seneca and Tacitus, I suggest, aim to transform the popular imagination with respect to the relationship between government, violence, and domination. Poetic language reinforces his challenge to false solutions to the problems (...) of violence, rebellion, and the precarity of political authority, which preoccupied early-modern political thinkers. (shrink)

James Bond 007 strode into the human imagination in the novel Casino Royale in 1953 and hit the movie screens with Dr. No in 1962. He has become one of the best-known personalities, real or imagined, in global history. One out of every four people in the entire world has now seen a Bond movie, and every month thousands of new readers become addicted to Ian Fleming’s original Bond stories. In James Bond and Philosophy, seventeen scholars examine hidden (...) philosophical issues in the hazardous, deceptive, glamorous world of Double-0 Seven. Is Bond a Nietzschean hero who graduates "beyond good and evil"? Does Bond paradoxically break the law in order, ultimately, to uphold it like any "stupid policeman"? What can Bond’s razor-sharp reasoning powers tell us about the scientific pursuit of truth? Does 007’s license to kill help us understand the ethics of counterterrorism? What motivates all those despicable Bond villains—could it be a Hegelian quest for recognition? (shrink)

"One of the most profound and illuminating studies of this century to have been published in recent decades."--John Gray, New York Times Book Review Hailed as "a magisterial critique of top-down social planning" by the New York Times, this essential work analyzes disasters from Russia to Tanzania to uncover why states so often fail--sometimes catastrophically--in grand efforts to engineer their society or their environment, and uncovers the conditions common to all such planning disasters. "Beautifully written, this book calls into sharp (...) relief the nature of the world we now inhabit."--New Yorker "A tour de force."-- Charles Tilly, Columbia University. (shrink)

There has been a sharp rise in private funding of medical research, especially in relation to patentable products. Several serious problems with this are described. A solution involving the elimination of patents and public funding administered through extended national health care systems is proposed.

A recent essay by Jürgen Habermas revisits political liberalism and takes up the question of the extent to which democratic citizens and officials should rely on their religious convictions in publicly deliberating about and deciding political issues. With his institutional translation proviso, a proposed alternative to Rawls' idea of public reason, Habermas hopes to dodge familiar (and often overstated) criticisms that liberal requirements of citizenship are unfair or disproportionately burdensome to religious believers. I argue that, due in part to its (...) sharp contrast between the obligations attributed to political officials and those attributed to ordinary citizens, Habermas' position is beset by additional, quite considerable difficulties. I conclude that Habermas' account of religion in the public sphere does not present a genuine alternative to the leading liberal theory of citizenship and public reasoning. (shrink)

Philosophers are uniquely qualified to negotiate a balance between the reflective potential of globalization and the great routine powers of nations, states, tribes, and families. Here's how we can do it: we can teach the difference between playing a game and choosing a game. From time immemorial people of all tribes and cultures have marked a sharp distinction between those individuals deemed qualified by age, expertise, or status to choose or write the rules, and those other, lesser individuals who are (...) obliged merely to obey those rules. This is the traditional difference between a person, on the one hand, and a utensil, on the other: persona est sui iuris; servus non est persona ("A person chooses its own laws; a slave is not a person"). Persons, but not utensils such as shoes, have, and deserve, good will. To a person, a culture is a means of creating a sustainable humane environment. To a culture, a person is a means for the culture to replicate itself. Placing culture first is a tradition we can no longer afford to maintain, because it makes enduring peace impossible. The purposes utensils can be made to serve have become too terrible (and, with the advent of global communication, too obvious) for the human race to endure, and the capacity of the voiceless to express themselves violently is increasing without limit. Hence we must create new traditions in which we teach all our children reflective thought, with which rules are pragmatically justified rather than unquestionable. To that end I propose to distinguish random, routine, and reflective thought and action. Each of these three levels of thought and action has its costs and its benefits; together they contain the entire range of human possibility. Three familiar philosophical concepts support my claim that reflective thought and action can and must be taught to and learned by all. (shrink)

Some Bayesians have suggested that beliefs based on ambiguous or incomplete evidence are best represented by families of probability functions. I spend the first half of this essay outlining one version of this imprecise model of belief, and spend the second half defending the model against recent objections, raised by Roger White and others, which concern the phenomenon of probabilistic dilation. Dilation occurs when learning some definite fact forces a person’s beliefs about an event to shift from a sharp, point-valued (...) subjective probability to an imprecise spread of probabilities. Some commentators find dilation disturbing, both from an epistemic and a decision-theoretic perspective, and place the blame on the use of sets of probabilities to model opinion. These reactions are based on an overly narrow conception of imprecise belief states which assumes that we know everything there is to know about a person’s doxastic attitudes once we have identified the spreads of values for her imprecise credences. Once we recognize that the imprecise model has the resources to characterize a much richer family of doxastic attitudes than this, we will see that White’s charges of epistemological and decision theoretic incoherence are unfounded. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:110 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY analogo, e che l"'analogia entis" constituisce nello spinozismo ancora uno dei principali presupposti della metafisica, sebbene il termine "analogia" non sia quasi mai usato da Spinoza. Non costituisce obiezione il fatto che per Spinoza non c'~ altro ente reale che l'ente necessario. Si ~ veduto, e meglio si vedr~tnel seguito, chela necessit~ spettante a Dio non puo essere confusa in nessun modo con quella che (...) tocca "sub specie aeternitatis" agli enti reali, questa essendo semplicemente derivata dall'eternit~t divina, e implicando un rapporto dell'essenza con l'esistenza affatto diverso da quello che l'essenza di Dio ha con la sua esistenza. L'analogia del concetto di ente reale, a nostro giudizio, ~ tale per attribuzione e per proporzionalit ~. Ma in codesta analogia alia attribuzione spetta il senso primitivo, ealla proporzioualit~t quello derivato (p. 251). HERBERTW. SCnNEIDEg Claremont, Caliyornia Leibniz et Spinoza. By Georges Friedmann. (Paris: Gallimard, 1962. Pp. 350. 23 NF.) This is a "new edition revised and enlarged," the first edition having appeared in 1946. On its first appearance, the book was welcomed as a fresh and well-executed approach to one of the classical places for fruitful comparison in the history of philosophy: the doctrinal and personal relations between Spinoza and Leibniz. For a long while, historians relied upon the 1890 study by Ludwig Stein, who depicted Leibniz as having passed through an early phase of basic agreement with Spinoza and as having worked out his mature position largely through his tardy reaction to the Dutch philosopher's metaphysical views. But Friedmann felt that the evidence adduced by Stein did not justify the attribution of an early phase of Spinozism to Leibniz. The relationship was nmch more complex than that of a young Leibniz giving untroubled assent to Spinoza and then becoming disturbed about the pantheistic implications of the Ethics. Instead, Friedmann pointed out that the very writings of Leibniz cited by Stein show the German thinker to be in possession of his own governing ideas even as a young man and admirer of Spinoza. Moreover, a study of the standard edition of Leibniz's correspondence was sufficient to show that he gave ambivalent opinions about Spinoza even during his early years. When Leibniz.wrote to the friends of Spinoza, he was much more laudatory than when he wrote to his own friends among the Catholic and Protestant theologians. Friedmann concluded that there was a certain objective duplicity displayed by Leibniz and that this stood in sharp contrast with Spinoza's straightforward concern for truth. In his preface to this new edition (Friedmann calls it "the second edition," thus correcting the publisher's claim in my copy of a "fourth edition" issued late in 1946), the author specifies the sense in which this is a revised and enlarged edition. He has introduced nuances to make it perfectly clear that he is passing no moral judgment upon Leibniz for duplicity, which he equates with a multiplicity of attitudes and evaluations in respect to Spinoza's work taken as a whole. Furthermore, he takes account of recent work done by Belaval, Robinet, and others on the reactions in later seventeenth-century France to Spinozism. These researches show that Leibniz was not unique in looking both favorably and unfavorably upon the political and religious doctrines of Spinoza and then in concentrating fire upon a concocted phantom of Spinozistic pantheism. But the main justification for reconsidering the matter is the publication since World War II of many relevant manuscripts (in the collection made by Gaston Grua) and of a few important historical studies, notably Grua's own volumes on universal justification in Leibniz and Belaval's book on Leibniz as a critic of Descartes. In his first edition, BOOK REVIEWS 111 Friedmann had relied mainly on the same sources available in 1890 to Stein; now he adds evidence taken from these later publications. He is able to specify more closely the presence of Leibniz's own principles at least in germ in his early writings, as well as the only gradual discovery by Leibniz of the metaphysical teachings of the Ethics. But the use of the new materials is made quite firmly within the... (shrink)

Over the last two decades scholars have transformed our approaches to the religious history of the later middle ages. Setting aside older models of crisis and decline, reform and Reformation, they now engage an era shown to be sparkling with energy and variety. A religious landscape once viewed through sharp dichotomies, now challenges scholars to think in terms of paradox, tension, and unpredictability, and to balance broad generalization with regional and local complexity. Moreover, scholars now confront more fully than ever (...) the challenge of the sources - an unexplored wilderness of manuscripts... (shrink)

This chapter both explains the origins of emotivism in C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards, R. B. Braithwaite, Austin Duncan-Jones, A. J. Ayer and Charles Stevenson (along with the endorsement by Frank P. Ramsey, and the summary of C. D. Broad), and looks at MacIntyre's criticisms of emotivism as the inevitable result of Moore's attack on naturalistic ethics and his ushering in the fact/value, which was a historical product of the Enlightenment.

I begin by comparing the question of what constitutes continuity of Personal Identity Online (PIO), to the traditional question of whether personal identity is constituted by psychological or physical continuity, bringing out the compelling but, I aim to show, ultimately misleading reasons for thinking only psychological continuity has application to PIO. After introducing and defending J.J. Valberg’s horizonal conception of consciousness, I show how it deepens our understanding of psychological and physical continuity accounts of personal identity, while revealing their shortcomings. (...) I then argue that PIO must also be understood against the backdrop of the horizonal conception, that this undermines sharp dichotomies between online and offline identity, and that although online psychological continuity might become necessary for the preservation of our personal identities, we cannot become our PIOs. Finally, I argue that if PIO is understood solely in terms of psychological continuity, any increasing identification with our PIOs assumes the form of a paradigmatic project of bad faith: a technological reduction of our self-consciousness, rather than the enhancement it should be. (shrink)

Physicists use different theories to describe the world on different scales. In particular, they use the standard model of particle physics at very high energies, but move to various effective field theories, such as quantum electrodynamics, when modelling lower energy scattering processes. One way to explain this methodological fact is pragmatic in spirit. According to this view, physicists move to an effective field theory at lower energies in order to extract predictions and qualitative understanding which would be difficult or impossible (...) to extract directly from a more fundamental theory. By contrast, another way of accounting for the methodological data is metaphysical in spirit. On this view, the reason that physicists use different theories at different scales is that the world actually exhibits different nomic structure on different scales. These two positions have recently been thrown into sharp relief in a debate between Woodward (2016) and Batterman (2021), with Woodward taking the pragmatist line and Batterman the metaphysical line. One difficulty with the metaphysical answer is that its content is unclear: in what sense exactly could an effective field theory provide a better representation of the nomic structure of the world in its domain of applicability than our world’s fundamental theory? This talk attempts to provide an answer to this question by developing a simple metaphysical model. I start by assuming a set of possible worlds which are nomically possible according to some fundamental theory (I suggest that one is free to adopt either a Humean or Non-Humean view of these fundamental nomic necessities). I then introduce an equivalence relation between possible worlds: two worlds are scale-E equivalent if they assign the same values to physical quantities below energy scale E (up to some finite level of precision P). The key question now is whether this relation induces equivalence classes on the set of nomically possible worlds. I argue that in the case of current quantum field theories this does indeed occur, as evidenced by the possibility of “integrating out” high energy degrees of freedom in the renormalisation group framework. The formation of equivalence classes in the fundamental theory's possibility space indicates that some of its high energy features do not make a difference to its low energy dynamical behaviour. This suggests the following reading of the claim that an effective field theory provides a better representation of the nomic structure of the world in its domain of applicability: the solutions of the effective field theory stand in one-to-one correspondence with equivalence classes induced by the scale-E equivalence relation, whereas the fundamental theory overcounts the physical possibilities which are relevant at scale E. In this sense, the effective field theory provides a more natural representation of low energy physics than the fundamental theory. I conclude by explaining how this metaphysical model offers a reduction compatible understanding of multiple realisability, once again pointing to renormalisation group results in quantum field theory to support this. (shrink)

My focus in this essay is on those singular causal explanations which purport to explain the occurrence of some particular event by means of a claim of the following general sort The occurrence of event caused the occurrence of event.Examples include sentences like The short circuit caused the fire’ and The impact of the hammer caused the shattering of the glass,’ Many philosophers hold that there is a sharp distinction to be drawn between singular causal explanations and those sentences which (...) simply report causal connections. While singular causal sentences are said to typically relate events, and to be extensional, singular causal explanations are held to relate items which are sentential or fact-like in structure and to be non-extensional.1 Singular causal explanations are held on this view to always be explanations of why events or other objects belong to certain kinds or possess certain properties. (shrink)