In early 1864, disappointed by the response to his previous work, the young Manchester academic W. Stanley Jevons announced that he was undertaking a study of the so-called coal question: ‘A good publication on the subject would draw a good deal of attention … it is necessary for the present at any rate to write on popular subjects’. When Jevons's The Coal Question was published in April 1865, however, it received comparatively little attention and sales were slow. Jevons and his (...) publisher, Alexander Macmillan, then began sending complimentary copies to luminaries such as Sir John Herschel and Alfred Tennyson. In February 1866 the marketing campaign produced its first substantial return. Macmillan had sent CQ to William Gladstone who responded with letters to both Macmillan and Jevons, noting that the book had strengthened his ‘conviction’ on the necessity for reducing the National Debt. In April, John Stuart Mill praised CQ in the House of Commons, calling for action on the Debt and, three weeks later, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gladstone introduced the budget using half his speech to examine the Debt situation and referring to CQ in support for a proposed measure of Debt reduction. With the extensive publicity given to CQ following Mill's speech and the budget, Jevons had achieved his objective in writing the text which went into a second edition in 1866. On the face of it, CQ 's success was due to its effect of introducing a change in budget policy and this is the impression given by some accounts of the episode. (shrink)

Leibniz states that 'metaphysics is natural theology', and this is especially true of his metaphysics of modality. In this book, Michael V. Griffin examines the deep connection between the two and the philosophical consequences which follow from it. Grounding many of Leibniz's modal conceptions in his theology, Griffin develops a new interpretation of the ontological argument in Leibniz and Descartes. This interpretation demonstrates that their understanding God's necessary existence cannot be construed in contemporary modal logical terms. He goes on (...) to develop a necessitarian interpretation of Leibniz, arguing that Leibniz, like Spinoza, is committed to the thesis that everything actual is metaphysically necessary, but that Leibniz rejects Spinoza's denial of God's moral perfection. His book will appeal to scholars of early modern philosophy and philosophers interested in modal metaphysics and the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

The paper contains an argument against functionalist theories of consciousness. The argument exploits an intuition to the effect that parts of an individual's brain that are not in use at a time t, can have no bearing on whether that individual is conscious at t. After presenting the argument, I defend it against two possible objections, and then distinguish it from two arguments to which it appears, on the surface to be similar.

Intuitively it has seemed to many that our concepts conscious state and conscious creature are sharp rather than vague, that they can have no borderline cases. On the other hand, many who take conscious states to be identical to, or realized by, complex physical states are committed to the vagueness of those concepts. In the paper I argue that conscious state and conscious creature are sharp by presenting four necessary conditions for conceiving borderline cases in general, and showing that some (...) of those conditions cannot be met with conscious state. I conclude that conscious state is sharp, and the conclusion is then extended to conscious creature. The paper ends with a brief discussion of some implications. (shrink)

For decades, technologies that ease information sharing (e.g., the wireless telegraph; Mckernon, 1925) have inspired concerns about the proliferation of misinformation. Today, these worries often c...

That consciousness is composed of simple or basic elements that combine to form complex experiences is an idea with a long history. This idea is approached through an examination of our “picture” or conception of consciousness . It is argued that CC commits us to a certain abstract notion of simple experiential events, or simples, and that traditional critiques of simple elements of experience do not threaten simples. To the extent that CC is taken to conform to how consciousness really (...) is, therefore, the concept of simples must be treated in kind. (shrink)

Two criticisms of Davidson's argument for monism are presented. The first is that there is no obvious way for the anomalism of the mental to do any work in his argument. Certain implicit premises, on the other hand, entail monism independently of the anomalism of the mental, but they are question-begging. The second criticism is that even if Davidson's argument is sound, the variety of monism that emerges is extremely weak at best. I show that by constructing ontologically ``hybrid'' events (...) that are consistent with the premises and assumptions of Davidson's argument, but entail ontological dualism. (shrink)

Papineau’s argument in "Thinking About Consciousness" for the vagueness or indeterminacy of phenomenal concepts is discussed. Several problems with his argument are brought out, and it is concluded that his argument fails to establish his desired conclusion.

The use of expressions like ‘concepts of consciousness’, ‘kinds of consciousness’, and ‘meanings of ‘consciousness’’ interchangeably is ubiquitous within the consciousness literature. It is argued that this practice can be made sense of in only two ways. The first involves interpreting ‘concepts of consciousness’ and ‘kinds of consciousness’ metalinguistically to mean concepts expressed by ‘consciousness’ and kinds expressed by ‘consciousness’; and the second involves certain literal, though semantically deviant, interpretations of those expressions. The trouble is that researchers typically use the (...) above expressions interchangeably without satisfying either way of doing so coherently. The result is much error and confusion, which is demonstrated in the works of philosophers currently writing on consciousness. (shrink)

An argument is offered for this conditional: If our current concept conscious state is sharp rather than vague, and also correct , then common versions of familiar metaphysical theories of consciousness are false--?namely versions of the identity theory, functionalism, and dualism that appeal to complex physical or functional properties in identification, realization, or correlation. Reasons are also given for taking seriously the claim that our current concept conscious state is sharp. The paper ends by surveying the theoretical options left open (...) by the concept's sharpness and the truth of the conditional argued for in the paper. (shrink)

An argument is offered against three naturalistic theories of intentional content: causal-covariation theories, teleological theories, and certain versions of conceptual role semantics. The strategy involves focusing on a normative problem regarding the practice of associating content expressions (e.g., that-clauses) with internal entities (states, symbol structures, etc.). The problem can be expressed thus: Which content expressions are the right ones to associate with internal entities? I argue, first, that an empirical solution to this problem—what I call the Normative Problem—will follow naturally (...) from a descriptive-explanatory account of the practice of associating content expressions with internal entities; and second, that the empirical solution will be accepted and adopted within cognitive science. Naturalistic theories of content also entail solutions to the Normative Problem, and such theories are shown to be false by showing that their solutions to the Normative Problem are inconsistent with the empirical solution coming out of cognitive science. (shrink)

This remarkable collection of period photographs details day-to-day life and changing times in the Deep South. Draffus Lamar Hightower, 1899-1993, spent most of his life in Barbour County, Alabama. For many years he was the owner of a Chevrolet dealership, but he had another occupation as well. From his youth, he was fascinated with photography, and for fifty years he experimented with the craft both technically and artistically. Hightower, while participating fully in the 20th century, was also acutely aware of (...) the passing of the heritage of the last one. From the early 1920s to the late 1960s, he made thousands of negatives of people, events, landscapes, objects, and buildings in Barbour County. His photographs are reminiscent of the documentary work of Walker Evans, Berenice Abbott, and other great 20th-century American photographers. Hightower created an incredibly complete and vivid record of the life of a rural Alabama county during a period of profound change-documenting everything from birthday parties and political rallies to farm scenes and the demolition of historic buildings so that future generations would not forget the world of their forebears. In 1990, Michael Thomason, historian and photographic archivist, began the long process of reviewing Hightower's collection of photographs, interviewing family and friends, and salvaging and printing the negatives, which by that time had begun to deteriorate. Thomason restored and printed 195 photographs and prepared accompanying essays that not only reveal the technical details of Hightower's labor of love but also tell the story of the human and economic changes in Barbour County during this period. (shrink)

In the eleventh chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says to the inhabitants of Bethsaida and Corozain: “If the miracles worked in you had taken place in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes”. Passages like this support a scriptural argument for God’s knowledge of counterfactuals about created individuals. In the sixteenth century, Jesuits and Dominicans vigorously debated about how to explain this knowledge. The Jesuits, notably Luis de Molina and Francisco Suarez, argued that the (...) basis for this knowledge lies primarily in the divine intellect: counterfactuals about free creatures are primitive truths known to God by virtue of the immensity of his intellectual power. Their Dominican opponents, notably Domingo Bañez and Diego Alvarez, held that this knowledge is simply God’s knowledge of his own decrees, by which he determines the truth value of all contingent propositions, including counterfactuals. (shrink)

Aristotle claims in Metaphysics Z.17 that form is both a cause and principle of c‐substances. In this chapter, Wedin argues that the explanatory, or causal, role of form is in the background of the entire discussion, and indeed directs much of the argumentation of Metaphysics Zeta. Form is the cause of some matter being a unity and not a heap, because form alone explains how the material parts of a thing are united in a single whole. Wedin draws together the (...) main results of the preceding investigation of Zeta—that form is essence, that form must not contain matter or actual parts, and that form must not be a certain kind of universal—and he argues that these constraints on form are designed to serve the explanatory role that Aristotle explicitly gives to form in Z.17. Wedin emphasizes that the notions isolated in the examination of the earlier chapters, such as the purity of form, weak proscription, and dual complexity, each contribute to the account of form as the explanatory principle of c‐substance. (shrink)

Chapters 10 and 11 are critical to the argument of Metaphysics Zeta: these chapters are concerned with the purification of form. Z.10 introduces the apparatus of part and whole and consists of an argument to the end that form and its parts have priority over the other internal structural components of c‐substances, i.e. matter and the compound of form and matter; while in Z.11 Aristotle argues that form and its parts cannot involve any admixture of matter. Wedin argues that the (...) causal role of form presupposes its purity: if form is to explain why a certain portion of matter constitutes a c‐substance of a given kind, then matter—whether this latter is understood as functional, or remnant matter—cannot already be contained in the form. This is the ‘purity thesis’, as Wedin calls it: matter cannot be included in the definitions of natural organisms, Wedin points out, because that would make the explanandum a part of the principle that explains it. Wedin also argues that form must be sufficiently complex to provide definitions of the natures of particular compounds, which are complex, even though form itself is a kind of universal. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that ‘ consciousness ’ is multiply ambiguous within the consciousness literature. Some alleged senses of the term are access consciousness, phenomenal consciousness, state consciousness, creature consciousness, introspective consciousness, self consciousness, to name a few. In the paper I argue for two points. First, there are few if any good reasons for thinking that such alleged senses are genuine: ‘ consciousness ’ is best viewed as univocal within the literature. The second point is that researchers would do (...) best to avoid the semantics of ‘ consciousness ’, since resorting to “semantic ascent” typically serves no clear purpose in the case of consciousness, and confuses matters more than anything else. (shrink)

This paper considers I) whether Aristotle's notion of form is 'compositionally plastic' and II) whether matter is in any way to be included in the form of natural things. It pursues (I) and (II) with respect to two texts only: De Anima I-2's socalled definition of anger and the notorious young Socrates passage from Metaphysics VII.11. Neither passage supports indusion of anything material in the form and both are consistent with compositional plasticity. To thus extent the support what I call (...) the purification of form. (shrink)

From the “deep” ecological perspective, there is a dualism between an ecocentric and an anthropocentric perspective, and this dualism is reflected in the ideal of the bureaucratic experience. The bureaucrat lives by the myth of the human ability to control nature. An eco-myth is evolving that can offer one means of transcending the dominant bureaucratic mythic experience. This eco-myth movestoward a positive and sensitive human relationship with nature—a collective experience that values nature on its own terms and not as standing (...) reserve. This position is no less mythic than the one it is replacing, but it is a better myth, because, being non-dualist, it offers the prospect of a political society in harmony with nature. (shrink)

This paper examines Foucault's history of the ancient practices of the self. It suggests that his historical reconstruction usefully distinguishes quite different models of self-cultivation in antiquity, and in doing so helps us to identify and understand the parameters and ambitions of much nineteenth-century German philosophy, especially the ethics of self-cultivation Nietzsche formulates in his middle works. However, it also shows how FoucaultÕs casual formulation of an 'aesthetic of existence' is seriously misleading as a guide to the ancient practices of (...) the self, most notably the Stoic tradition. This paper argues that Foucault does not properly take into account how Stoicism conceives the desire to flee from or break with oneself, which Foucault places at the centre of his own askesis, as a pathological agitation that requires therapy. From the Stoic perspective, in other words, Foucault's askesis of constantly losing oneself is symptomatic of a failure to care for oneself. (shrink)

I argue that the temporal boundaries of certain experiences — those I call ‘simple experiential events’ — have a different character than the temporal boundaries of the events most frequently associated with experience: neural events. In particular, I argue that the temporal boundaries of SEEs are more sharply defined than those of neural events. Indeed, they are sharper than the boundaries of all physical events at levels of complexity higher than that of elementary particle physics. If correct, it follows that (...) the most common forms of identity theory-functionalism and dualism events play key roles through identification or correlation) — are mistaken. More positively, the conclusion supports recent approaches that attempt to explain conciousness by appeal to quantum physics. (shrink)

Two main claims are defended. The first is that negative categorical statements are not to be accorded existential import insofar as they figure in the square of opposition. Against Kneale and others, it is argued that Aristotle formulates his o statements, for example, precisely to avoid existential commitment. This frees Aristotle's square from a recent charge of inconsistency. The second claim is that the logic proper provides much thinner evidence than has been supposed for what appears to be the received (...) view, that is, for the view that insofar as they occur in syllogistic negative categoricals have existential import. At most there is a single piece of evidence in favor of the view?a special case of echthesis or the setting out of a case in proof. (shrink)

Since its inception the ‘mindblindness’ theory of autism has greatly furthered our understanding of the core social-communication impairments in autism spectrum conditions . However, one of the more subtle issues within the theory that needs to be elaborated is the role of the ‘self’. In this article, we expand on mindblindness in ASC by addressing topics related to the self and its central role in the social world and then review recent research in ASC that has yielded important insights by (...) contrasting processes relating to both self and other. We suggest that new discoveries lie ahead in understanding how self and other are interrelated and/or distinct, and how understanding atypical self-referential and social-cognitive mechanisms may lead to novel ideas as to how to facilitate social-communicative abilities in ASC. (shrink)

Tyler Burge has argued that a necessary condition for individual's having many of the thoughts he has is that he bear certain relations to other language users. Burge's conclusion is based on a thought experiment in which an individual's social relations are imagined, counterfactually, to differ from how they are actually. The result is that it seems, counterfactually, the individual cannot be attributed many of the thoughts he can be actually. In the article, an alternative interpretation of Burge's thought experiment (...) is offered on which the intuitions Burge evokes can be accepted while his conclusion about the social character of thought is denied. The alternative interpretation given, it is then argued that it is preferable to Burge's. (shrink)

Wedin considers the problem of the compatibility of the Categories account of primary substance with the theory of substantial form of the Metaphysics. Wedin collects from the secondary literature the most important arguments for incompatibilism, and offers some proposals for restoring their harmony. While admitting the evident differences in the way Aristotle treats the question of substance in each treatise, Wedin is keen to argue that these differences are not sufficient to conclude that the treatises are incompatible. Wedin singles out (...) for particular attention, and criticism, Michael Frede and Gunther Patzig's account of Metaphysics Zeta, according to which the primary substance of the Metaphysics and the basic subject of predications is the form. Wedin considers two ‘philosophical’ arguments and one ‘Aristotelian’ argument for the subjecthood of forms, and argues that the textual evidence does not support the claim that form is the subject of accidents. (shrink)

Simulation constraints cannot help in explaining afterlife beliefs in general because belief in an afterlife is a precondition for running a simulation. Instead, an explanation may be found by examining more deeply our common-sense dualistic conception of the mind or soul.

Wedin's main point in this book is that the question of Metaphysics Zeta, ‘what is substance?’, should be understood as the question, ‘what is the substance of c‐substances?’. In other words, in virtue of what are the substances of the Categories the sort of things they are—in virtue of what do they have the central, salient features mentioned but not explained in the Categories? Aristotle's answer is that it is in virtue of a structural component of the c‐substance—the form: form, (...) then, is primary substance, but this primacy is explanatory and not ontological. Thus, in Zeta, c‐substances are subjected to hylomorphic analysis, i.e. in terms of form and matter, two entities that are not even mentioned in the Categories: for Wedin this shows that Aristotle in the Categories has no interest in the structure of primary substances, because it is irrelevant to the purpose of the treatise. Hence, the treatises are complementary because ontological primacy is given to c‐substances, and explanatory primacy to their forms. (shrink)

Few commentators seem willing to recognize Josephus’ indebtedness to 1 Maccabees in Jewish War 1.31–56 where he gives a succinct account of the Hasmonean revolt and its aftermath. Noting the many disagreements here with 1 Maccabees, they conclude that Josephus had been entirely dependent on other sources, usually Nicolaus of Damascus. The present article seeks to challenge this apparent consensus. The many agreements between Jewish War 1.31–56 and 1 Maccabees—especially with respect to the events which Josephus chooses to record and (...) the order in which he arranges them—constitute strong positive evidence that Josephus was using 1 Maccabees as his primary source. Most disagreements can be seen as his redactions of 1 Maccabees, even if some are a bit puzzling and others do, in fact, suggest that he used other sources in addition. His use of other sources seems minimal, in any case, being limited to the beginning and end of his narrative. His use of Nicolaus cannot be ruled out completely but seems a priori unlikely. (shrink)