Alfred j freddoso ("journal of philosophy", 1983) proposed a model for william of ockham's attempt to allow that every true statement about the past is necessary while avoiding fatalism. i argue that freddoso's model cannot be ockham's for reasons that bring out ockham's opposition to metaphysical density and show that ockhamist entities rely on their temporal spread for features which other philosophers would explain by appeal to properties (or dispositions) existing in the entity. i suggest that ockham's own response (...) to the conflict between necessity of the past and fatalism was a verbal maneuver unsupported by any clear semantical model. (shrink)

Early twelfth-century logicians invoked past-tensed statements with future-oriented contents to undermine the assumption that every proposition ‘about the past’ is determinate. In the second half of the century, the notion of future-dependence was used to restrict the scope of necessity per accidens. At some point, this idea began to be applied in theology to solve puzzles surrounding predestination, prescience, prophecy, and faith. In the mid-1160s, Magister Udo quotes some thinkers who insisted that the principle of the (...) class='Hi'>necessity of the past should exclude dicta that ‘relate to the future’, such as that he has been predestined. Peter of Poitiers adopted this ‘Ockhamist’ strategy around 1170. We find similar accounts in Simon of Tournai and Alan of Lille, who invoked it in other contexts as well. By the time of Praepositinus of Cremona, Hubert of Pirovano, and Stephen Langton, the restricted principle became something of a common view at Paris. (shrink)

In “Divine Foreknowledge and Facts” Paul Helm defends a traditional argument to the incompatibility of foreknowledge and free will “against the attempts of Kenny and some other recent writers to provide a reconciliation.” I shall here set out a reconciliationist position similar to those he attacks, but innocent of the charges he makes against them.The argument, discussed by St. Thomas in the Summa Theologiae, employs the doctrine of the necessity of the past to show that literally prior knowledge (...) of a free action is impossible. Since prior knowledge of an action is past relative to the ·action, the fact of that knowledge is necessary. It is a past fact, and so cannot be undone. From this it follows that the action itself must be necessary; for necessity is transitive, and knowledge of p implies p. But only contingent actions can be free, and so no free action can be foreknown. (shrink)

One of the strongest arguments for the incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and human free action appeals to the apparent fixity or necessity of the past. Two leading responses to the argument—Ockhamism, which denies a premiss of the argument, and the so-called “eternity solution”, which holds that strictly speaking God does not have foreknowledge—have both come under attack on similar grounds. Neither response, it is alleged, is adequate to the case of divine prophecy. In this paper I shall first (...) state the argument in question and the two responses to it. I shall then consider objections to these responses, focusing primarily on how they deal with prophecy. (shrink)

This article analyzes the “Interlude” in Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments. In particular, it examines Johannes Climacus’s response to Hegel’s view that a past actuality is necessary. I provide an in-depth analysis of Hegel’s view of modality and of what he means when he says that a past actuality is necessary. In contrast to the standard scholarly interpretation, I argue that Climacus need not reject Hegel’s view because Hegel’s view of the necessity of the past is not so (...) controversial or difficult to accept. Finally, I show that Climacus’s main critique is that we cannot know the past as necessary in any meaningful way. He worries that we might get so preoccupied with the futile task of trying to know the Hegelian necessity of the past that we forget to personally appropriate the past in a way that can help us live in the present. (shrink)

Joseph Keim Campbell has recently criticized Peter van Inwagen's Third Argument against compatibilism for its reliance on the existence of a remote past. In response, Anthony Brueckner has offered a new version of the Third Argument showing that determinism and free will are incompatible for all times t relative to which there is a past . In this paper I argue that although Brueckner's retooled argument fails to prove anything in favour of incompatibilism, its conclusion can be exploited (...) to provide another version of van Inwagen's original argument that doesn't rely on the existence of past times, thus withstanding Campbell's criticism. (shrink)

It is a widely held principle that no one is able to do something that would require the past to have been different from how it actually is. This principle of the fixity of the past has been presented in numerous ways, playing a crucial role in arguments for logical and theological fatalism, and for the incompatibility of causal determinism and the ability to do otherwise. I will argue that, assuming bivalence, this principle is in conflict with standard (...) views about knowledge and the semantics for ‘actually’. I also consider many possible responses to the argument. (shrink)

In the intriguing article The puzzle of the changing past, Barlassina and Del Prete argue that, if one grants a platitude about truth and accepts a simple story that they tell, one is forced to conclude that the past has changed. I will suggest that there is a coherent way to resist that conclusion. The platitude about truth is in fact a platitude, but the story is not exactly as they tell it.

The paper develops an account of minimal traces devoid of representational content and exploits an analogy to a predictive processing framework of perception. As perception can be regarded as a prediction of the present on the basis of sparse sensory inputs without any representational content, episodic memory can be conceived of as a “prediction of the past” on the basis of a minimal trace, i.e., an informationally sparse, merely causal link to a previous experience. The resulting notion of episodic (...) memory will be validated as a natural kind distinct from imagination. This trace minimalist view contrasts with two theory camps dominating the philosophical debate on memory. On one side, we face versions of the Causal Theory that hold on to the idea that episodic remembering requires a memory trace that causally links the event of remembering to the event of experience and carries over representational content from the content of experience to the content of remembering. The Causal Theory, however, fails to account for the epistemic generativity of episodic memory and is psychologically and information-theoretically implausible. On the other side, a new camp of simulationists is currently forming up. Motivated by empirical and conceptual deficits of the Causal Theory, they reject not only the necessity of preserving representational content, but also the necessity of a causal link between experience and memory. They argue that remembering is nothing but a peculiar form of imagination, peculiar only in that it has been reliably produced and is directed towards an episode of one’s personal past. Albeit sharing their criticism of the Causal Theory and, in particular, rejecting its demand for an intermediary carrier of representational content, the paper argues that a causal connection to experience is still necessary to fulfill even the minimal requirements of past-directedness and reliability. (shrink)

The article reviews some analyses of temporal language in logical approaches to natural language semantics. It considers some asymmetries between past and future, manifested in language, which motivate the “standard view” of the non-reversibility of time and the persistence of the past. It concludes with a puzzle about the changing past which challenges the standard view.

If you utter sentence (1) ‘Obama was born in 1961’ now, you say something true about the past. Since the past will always be such that the year 1961 has the property of being a time in which Obama was born, it seems impossible that could ever be false in a future context of utterance. We shall consider the case of a sentence about the past exactly like (1), but which was true when uttered a few years (...) ago and is no longer true now. On this basis, we shall conclude that the past has changed. (shrink)

If you utter sentence ‘Obama was born in 1961’ now, you say something true about the past. Since the past will always be such that the year 1961 has the property of being a time in which Obama was born, it seems impossible that could ever be false in a future context of utterance. We shall consider the case of a sentence about the past exactly like , but which was true when uttered a few years ago (...) and is no longer true now. On this basis, we shall conclude that the past has changed. (shrink)

In this chapter I assume that we accept, perhaps reluctantly, general facts, that is states of affairs corresponding to universal generalizations. I then argue that, without any addition, this ontology provides us with physical necessities, and moreover with various grades of physical necessity, including the strongest grade, which I call absolute physical necessity. In addition there are consequences for our understanding of time. For this account, which I call the Mortmain Theory, provides a defence of No Futurism against (...) an otherwise serious objection due to David Armstrong. In addition the Mortmain theory enables me to argue against the ‘‘Parmenidean’’ or Block Universe position that future and past are both real. (shrink)

This paper is inspired by Marcin Tkaczyk’s works and discusses the problem of the necessity of the past (is the past determined?) and its role in the analysis of future contingents. The discussion centers on the statements (accepted by Tkaczyk, but slightly paraphrased)) firstly, that every past state of affairs is determined, and, secondly, that at least some some future states of affairs are contingent. The paper argues that because the first assertion is not justified, the (...) antinomy of future contingents does not arise. The argument uses modal and metalogical devices. (shrink)

A U-shaped curve in a cognitive-developmental trajectory refers to a three-step process: good performance followed by bad performance followed by good performance once again. U-shaped curves have been observed in a wide variety of cognitive-developmental and learning contexts. U-shaped learning seems to contradict the idea that learning is a monotonic, cumulative process and thus constitutes a challenge for competing theories of cognitive development and learning. U-shaped behavior in language learning (in particular in learning English past tense) has become a (...) central topic in the Cognitive Science debate about learning models. Antagonist models (e.g., connectionism versus nativism) are often judged on their ability of modeling or accounting for U-shaped behavior. The prior literature is mostly occupied with explaining how U-shaped behavior occurs. Instead, we are interested in the necessity of this kind of apparently inefficient strategy. We present and discuss a body of results in the abstract mathematical setting of (extensions of) Gold-style computational learning theory addressing a mathematically precise version of the following question: Are there learning tasks that require U-shaped behavior? All notions considered are learning in the limit from positive data. We present results about the necessity of U-shaped learning in classical models of learning as well as in models with bounds on the memory of the learner. The pattern emerges that, for parameterized, cognitively relevant learning criteria, beyond very few initial parameter values, U-shapes are necessary for full learning power! We discuss the possible relevance of the above results for the Cognitive Science debate about learning models as well as directions for future research. (shrink)

This book has many virtues. It is that unusual philosophic work which can be enjoyed and savored as it is being read. In clear and literate jargon-free prose, it presents an incisive self-examination of one's own self that yet strikes deep at philosophic issues, even if some of these remain unexplicated. Displaying the work of an intelligent imagination that is at home in history as well as in literature and mythology, it is an intensely personal book pursuing a systematic introspection. (...) The author seeks out the ground of possibility of his own self-hood--and finds it in the necessity of an appreciative appropriation of his cultural heritage that is crucially present in any moment of his experiential present. (shrink)

There is a tension between the “growing block” account of time (closed past, open future) and the possibility of backwards time travel. If Tim the time traveler can someday travel backwards through time, then he has (in a certain sense) already been. He might discover this fact before (in another sense) he goes. Hence a dilemma: it seems that either Tim’s future is determined in an odd way or cases of (temporary) ontic indeterminate identity are possible. Either Tim cannot (...) avoid heading for the past or he is only indeterminately that guy who appeared in the past with many of Tim’s memories. Determinacy in the past implies a degree of determinism in the future; indeterminism about the future seeps back to the past. (shrink)

During the past decade, a new term has entered the medical/legal lexicon : maternal-fetal conflict. Implicit in the terminology is the assumption that a pregnant woman and her fetus have separate and competing rights. This concept has stimulated extensive legal and ethical debate, primarily in the context of medical interventions forced on unwilling pregnant women, and in corporate efforts to bar fertile women from hazardous jobs. On one side of the debate are the proponents of the future child's right (...) to be born of sound mind and body, and society's interest in the delivery of healthy newborns. On the other side, are advocates of a woman's right to reproductive autonomy, bodily integrity, due process, confidential medical treatment, and freedom from gender discrimination. Neither side has challenged the formulation of the problem, or has examined its permeation into public health policy. (shrink)

Knowledge of the world is for the purpose of transforming the world; the history of humankind is created by humankind itself. However, if one has no knowledge of the world then the world cannot be transformed; "without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement."1 Our high-and-mighty dogmatists 2 are ignorant of this point. It is through the two processes of knowledge and transformation that the realm of necessity will be changed into the realm of freedom. The European philosophers (...) of the past comprehended the truth that "freedom is knowledge of necessity." Marx's contribution lay not in the rejection of this truth, but in recognizing that this truth was incomplete, and his addition of the truth that "the transformation of the world" is founded on knowledge of necessity. "Freedom is knowledge of necessity"-this is the proposition of the philosophers of the past. "Freedom is knowledge of necessity and the transformation of the world"-this is Marx's proposition. It is a poor Marxist who does not understand that knowledge of the world is premised on the transformation of the world, and that the transformation of the world is premised on knowledge of the world. Any Chinese Marxist who does not understand that knowledge of China is premised on the desire to transform China, and that the transformation of China is premised on knowledge of China, is indeed a poor Chinese Marxist. Marx said that man differs from the honeybee in that man has in his mind a design for his house prior to constructing it.3 The house that we will construct is the house of the Chinese Revolution, and we too must firstly have a design for the Chinese Revolution. Not only must we have a grand design, a general plan, we must also have many designs which are subdivisions of the grand design, which are designs on a smaller scale. And these designs can be nothing but the active reflection attained in the practice of the Chinese Revolution of objective, real situations . The reason why our high-and-mighty dogmatists are subjectivists is because their entire design for the revolution, whether on a large or small scale, general or subdivided, is not based on and nor does it conform to objective reality. They have only the subjective aspiration to transform the world, or China, or Northern China, or the cities; they have no presentable plan. Their plan is not scientific, but is subjective and arbitrary, is a complete muddle. Since they have no knowledge whatever of the world and wish to transform it in a rash way, the consequence will not only be that they suffer cracked skulls themselves, but that the masses will also meet the same fate under their leadership. Since these high-and-mighty dogmatists are blind when it comes to the realm of necessity of the Chinese revolution, their presumptuous desire to play the part of the leaders of the people would truly be a case of "a blind man riding a blind horse at the edge of a deep gorge at midnight.". (shrink)

For Sellars, the possibility of empirical knowledge presupposes the existence of "sense impressions" in the perceiver, i.e., non-conceptual states of perceptual consciousness. But this role for sense impressions does not implicate Sellars' account in the Myth of the Given: sense impressions do not stand in a justificatory relation to instances of perceptual knowledge; their existence is rather a condition for the possibility of the acquisition of empirical concepts. Sellars suggests that learning empirical concepts presupposes that we can remember certain (...) class='Hi'>past facts that we could not conceptualize at the time they obtained. And such memory presupposes, in turn, the existence of certain (past) non-conceptual sensory states that can be conceptualized. (shrink)

This article aims to show that the so-called ‘Ockhamist’ solution to the determinist challenge was a commonplace among Parisian scholastics around 1200. On the ‘Ockhamist’ view, some propositions about the past do not fall under the necessity of the past, since their truth-value depends on the future. The paper focuses on two puzzles involving Abraham’s belief in the future Incarnation. The author discusses the ‘Ockhamist’ strategies adopted by theologians of the period, including Simon of Tournai, Peter of (...) Poitiers, Praepositinus of Cremona, Stephen Langton, Geoffrey of Poitiers, and William of Auxerre. Langton draws an analogy between Abraham’s faith and Christ’s statement “Thou shalt deny me thrice” and suggests that past movements of faith are counterfactually flexible with regard to content. In order to interpret Langton’s statements, the author sketches a model of empty slots in the supernatural layer of the past, retrospectively infused with grace. (shrink)

This article revisits what has often been called the of Voltaire's historical work. It looks at the methodological and philosophical reasons for Voltaire's deliberate focus on modern history as opposed to ancient history, his refusal to in judging the past, and his extreme selectiveness in determining the relevance of past events to world history. Voltaire's historical practice is put in the context of the quarrel of the ancients and the moderns, and considered in a tradition of universal history (...) going back to Bossuet and leading up to nineteenth-century German historicism. Paradoxically, Voltaire is a major figure in the history of historiography not in spite of his presentism (as Ernst Cassirer and Peter Gay have argued), but because of it. (shrink)

Past appraisal studies have shown that single appraisals are neither sufficient nor necessary for emotions but no study has examined the same issue with appraisal configurations (combinations of different single appraisals). Undergraduate participants repeatedly indicated their negative emotions (anger, sadness, fear, and guilt) and relevant appraisals as they occurred, or immediately after, in their everyday environments. The results not only replicated past findings on single appraisals but also suggested that appraisal configurations are neither sufficient nor necessary for these (...) negative emotions. (shrink)

Preventing future crime has become an increasingly dominant function of the criminal law of many liberal democracies. This “preventive turn” has led to a profound debate on the legal and ethical boundaries of the “preventive state.” However, the concept at the core of preventive justice—the dangerousness of the offender—has attracted relatively little attention in the current debate. This is remarkable, as the legal establishment of dangerousness permits intrusive preventive measures, such as preventive detention for an indeterminate period of time. In (...) the past, various concepts of dangerousness have been developed by criminal law scholars. We discuss these concepts in a chronological order to demonstrate how the meaning of dangerousness has evolved over time, and how it has been shaped by concurrent developments in forensic psychiatry and penology. Our description of the state of the art of legal scholarship on the concept of dangerousness also shows the lack of a fully developed theory of dangerousness, and therefore the necessity of further research. We identify five “aspects” of the concept of dangerousness on which scholars have widely diverging views. These five aspects are intended to guide further research on the concept of dangerousness in preventive criminal law. (shrink)

Rankean historicism is ordinarily seen nowadays as an outdated nineteenth century fashion and that we could not possibly tolerate in our modern intellectual homes. In opposition to this common wisdom I argue that historicism - i.e. the claim that the nature of a thing is to be found in is history - is no less true for all writing of history as it was in the days of Ranke. So Ranke was right, after all. I shall argue my untimely thesis (...) by focusing on the historian's language and by insisting that all the claims made by historicists such as Ranke make eminently sense if read as claim not about objects having existed in the past itself but about the language used by historians in their attempt to account for the past. (shrink)

Philosophers have offered many arguments to explain why historical injustices require reparations. This paper raises an unnoticed challenge for almost all of them. Most theories of reparations attempt to meet two intuitions: (1) Reparations are owed for a past wrong and (2) the content of reparations must reflect the historical injustice. I argue that necessarily no monistic theory can meet both intuitions. I do this by showing that any theory that can meet intuition (1) necessarily cannot also meet intuition (...) (2). This result suggests that a theory of reparations must either sacrifice one of the two intuitions or be pluralist. I argue that we ought to prefer the pluralist over the monistic theory. I sketch the pluralist theory and I defend it by considering an objection about the way it can resolve conflicts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:On the Necessity of TheaterNoël CarrollDespite the fact that theater was the first art form to be examined in depth by Western philosophers, it has not received a great deal of attention by contemporary philosophers of art. Essays on literature, music, and cinema are more likely to appear in journals such as the British Journal of Aesthetics and The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism than are articles (...) on theater. But with the publication of Paul Woodruff's The Necessity of Theater: The Art of Watching and Being Watched, James Hamilton's The Art of Theater and the recent anthology Staging Philosophy, edited by David Zucker Saltz and David Krassner, the tide seems to be turning. Philosophers are interested in theater again. Perhaps some lovers of theater may regard this as bad news, recalling what Plato, Augustine, and Rousseau attempted to do to theater. But contemporary philosophers of theater belong more to the school of Aristotle than to that of Plato.Of these recent contributions to the philosophy of theater, Paul Woodruff's book is the one that most resembles Aristotle's Poetics, especially in terms of its analyses of plotting, characterization, conflict, choice, and mimesis. This is maybe no surprise, since Paul Woodruff is not only a professor of philosophy, but also a professor of classics at the University of Texas at Austin. [End Page 435]One thing that is immediately striking about The Necessity of Theater is the elegance of its intellectual design. Woodruff begins with the hypothesis that theater is the art by which human beings make or find human action worth watching in measure time and place. That is, theater is art of being watched and watching. This distinction between being watched and watching, then, provides Woodruff with the means to, on the one hand, examine the elements that go into making theater, and, on the other hand, the elements that go into watching or appreciating theater.Creating theater involves making something worth watching—something that will hold the audience's attention. What sorts of things command our attention? Human action, notably as it is organized in terms of a plot which Woodruff, like Aristotle, emphasizes must be of a magnitude sufficient to be cognitively manageable. Since actions require choices, Woodruff follows his analysis of plot, naturally enough, with a discussion of the choices that give rise to those actions for much the same reason that Aristotle includes dialogue as one of the components of tragedy.In order to be worth watching, Woodruff recommends that these choices be free and coherent. Since choices derive—or are thought to derive—from character, theater, in order to hold our attention, needs characters. These characters must be agents and, in addition, they must be capable of engaging our emotions, not just pity and fear, but the gamut of emotions, although the most important of these, on Woodruff's view, would appear to be the elicitation of care on the part of the audience on behalf of the characters on stage. Woodruff contends that care for a character is engendered by giving the character a past as well as hopes for the future (an aim, a project, a problem) and by making that person a center of love (that is, someone who loves and/or is loved by or who cares and is cared for by other people).Theater primarily makes us interested in watching people by encouraging us to respond to characters emotionally. It is able to do this because it traffics in mimesis. Woodruff understand mimesis as a matter of a mimetic object, a theater piece, bringing to the fore certain effects of the object of which it is a representation. With respect to a theater piece, the relevant effects are emotional effects. Because mimesis is selective, it may be able to achieve those effects more intensely than its off-stage model can; the selectivity of the theater piece both places greater emphasis on the emotion-provoking features of situations while also blocking out otherwise [End Page 436] interfering detail. However, theater does require the complicity of the audience who must fill-in the model imaginatively.The introduction of the role of the audience's... (shrink)

Temporal necessity and the subjunctive conditional appear to be related by the principle of Past Predominance, according to which past similarities and differences take priority over future similarities and differences in determining the comparative similarity of alternative possible histories with respect to the present moment. R. H. Thomason and Anil Gupta have formalized Past Predominance in a semantics that combines selection functions with branching time; in this paper I show that Past Predominance can be formalized (...) and axiomatized using ordinary possible worlds semantics (without branching time). (shrink)

This special issue addresses the diverse ways the past may be used and perceived in different places for political purposes. Noting that histories of political thought have traditionally reproduced the parochial exclusions of the discipline, contributors to this special issue consider how the past matters for political thought and from a global perspective. This mandate does not entail the assumption that there exists some singular global vantage point from which historical ideas might be assessed or that Euro-American concerns (...) and experiences should be projected ever more broadly across the world’s pasts. Rather, these contributors directly engage the globally diffuse, intellectually substantive confrontations of past with present, of tradition with modernity, and of heritage with necessity that erupted as thinkers in diverse societies grapple with the specific dilemmas of their time and place. (shrink)

Huw Price and Ken Wharton claimed recently in their paper published in The Conversation that quantum mechanics shows that the future can influence the past. According to their paper, many scientists are convinced about it. However, there is still something mystical for philosophers. The first is about the definition of retrocausality and its philosophical relation to causality. Second, it is concerned with understanding the relationship between cause and effect, not only scientifically but also logically. In this talk, I will (...) answer the two questions by analyzing the concept of temporality and by examining the counterfactual and overdetermination. I found a tension in understanding the concept of necessity in the physical and logical sense. Finally, I will argue that the time reversal asymmetry does not imply retrocausality, and the phenomenon of retrocausality does not exist in reality but only in logic. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Possibility and Necessity in the Time of Peter Abelard by Irene BininiWolfgang LenzenIrene Binini. Possibility and Necessity in the Time of Peter Abelard. Investigating Medieval Philosophy Series. Leiden: Brill, 2021. Pp. xii + 326. Hardback, $166.00.This book is an impressive work written by a young Italian scholar who received her PhD only five years ago in Pisa. It is divided into three parts. Part 1 gives (...) a survey of "Early 12th-Century Debates on Modal Propositions"; part 2 is devoted to "Abelard's Modal Logic"; [End Page 327] part 3 deals with the views of "Abelard on the Metaphysics and Epistemology of Modalities." The author displays a profound knowledge of the relevant literature. The primary sources comprise twenty manuscripts preserved in various European libraries, plus forty-eight printed works (from Abelard to William of Sherwood). The list of secondary sources contains altogether 136 items from A (Astroh) to Z (Zagzebski), but, interestingly, it does not mention a monograph that, by its very title, claims to give an exposition of Abelard's logic, namely Maria Teresa Beonio-Brocchieri Fumagalli's La Logica di Abelardo (Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1964).As far as I can judge (as a nonnative English-speaker), the linguistic quality of Binini's book is quite good. The explanations in the main text, including the translations from Latin sources, are easily comprehensible, and the many quotations (distributed over no less than 655 footnotes) are almost without any fault. Thus, the book rightly deserves inclusion in the prestigious series Investigating Medieval Philosophy. Yet, at least according to my taste, the book contains many redundancies. Again and again, the author first explains a certain issue at some length, then confirms the correctness of her interpretation by means of a longer (English) quotation, and finally reconfirms it by fully quoting the Latin text in the footnotes.As Binini explains in the book's concluding chapter, her aim is to present "an all-encompassing reflection on [Abelard's] works on modalities" and "a comparison between these works and the parallel reflections advanced by other masters and logicians in the early 12th century" (308). She undoubtedly achieves this goal. The comparison of Abelard's views on possibility and necessity with the views of other logicians is mainly carried out in chapters 1–3. Ancient and early medieval logicians such as, in particular, the Stoics and Boethius favored the basic idea that "something," p, is necessary if and only if p is always the case (or true). Accordingly, p is possible if and only if p is at least sometime the case. Abelard, however, was not willing to accept that each possibility has to become realized at some time. He instead offered a "nature-based characterization of possibility" that can "account for unrealized, past, counterfactual, and even unactualizable possibilities" (308). Abelard's idea is that something, x, is possibly a P if and only if the property of being P is compatible with the nature of x. Hence this view basically amounts to a de re conception of possibility that attributes modalities to things, while the temporal view attributes modal properties primarily to propositions (or states of affairs) and hence can be labeled de dicto (or de sensu).Let us now turn to Binini's twofold aim (as formulated on the back cover of her book) to present a "uniform and consistent" reassessment of Abelard's theory of modalities and of his modal logic. The former task is tackled in chapters 8–10. After summarizing, in chapter 8, Abelard's general views on "Nature and Modalities," chapter 9 is devoted to a detailed discussion of the "Many Senses of Possibility." In five consecutive sections, Binini investigates the conception of (1) possibility as "non-repugnancy with nature" (illustrated by the thesis that "any man can be a bishop" [235]); (2) unrealizable but "conceivable" possibilities (such as the existence of humans lacking the ability to laugh [240]); (3) determinate potencies (like that of an amputee who nevertheless "can walk" [248]); (4) past and counterfactual potencies (like that of a blind person who might be able to see); and (5) other puzzling de re possibilities (such as "irrational humans" [261]).The final... (shrink)

The ontological argument appears in a multiplicity of forms. Over the past ten or twelve years, however, the philosophical community seems to have been concerned principally with those versions of the proof which claim that God is a necessary being. In contemporary literature, Professors Malcolm and Hartshorne have been the chief advocates of this view, both men holding that God must be conceived as a necessary being and that, as a result, his existence is able to be demonstrated a (...) priori . This claim has not gone unchallenged; indeed, numerous writers have argued that neither Malcolm nor Hartshorne has exercised due care in his use of ‘necessary’. That is, critics charge that the arguments of both men have only the appearance of validity, for in their reasonings the defenders of the a priori proof have tacitly assumed that God is a logically necessary being. Whether or not a being can be logically necessary, however, is a quaestio disputata . In fact, until recently the question was not in dispute at all—virtually all ‘competent judges’ agreed that only propositions could be spoken of as logically necessary, and thus that God must be defined as a physically or factually necessary being. But is the statement, ‘a physically necessary being exists’, logically true? Critics of the ontological argument think not; and in support of this view they offer analyses of ‘physical necessity’ which, they feel, not only give meaning to the phrase, but also show that a physically necessary being's existence can be proven only by some kind of a posteriori investigation. (shrink)

In the past three decades there has been a rapid development of the formal machinery for modal logic. Quantified modal logic has developed along with a semantics and model theory that is appropriate to it. With this technical development there has been relatively little discussion of what modality is all about. There are two fundamental questions that have gone unanswered. First, to what does necessity amount? Is this a new logical notion, or is it something that can be (...) further analyzed in terms of other notions that we already have at our disposal? The second question is what makes truths involving necessity true? What is their ontological grounding in the world? This essay is directed at the first of these questions. ;There are three possible reductions of metaphysical modality. First, there is the reduction suggested by the semantics for modal logic: a reduction in terms of possible worlds. Second, there is the reduction in terms of cognition. What is possible is what is conceivable. Third, there is the reduction in terms of language. Necessities arise from the structures of language and/or language use. ;I argue that none of these is successful. All of them suffer either from presupposing some form of metaphysical necessity in the reductive base, rendering them circular and not truly reductive, or they do not do justice to the modality being reduced. ;Since necessity is not reducible to any non-modal features of the world, we need to determine whether we ought to reject it as unacceptable on this basis, or whether we ought to retain it, but treat is as a new primitive that is introduced into a philosophical or logical theory. I urge the latter course is the one that we ought to take because without it too many things will likewise be deemed unacceptable. Causal necessity and explanation, normally accepted theories or knowledge and perception, logic and logical validity, and one common manner of distinguishing sets from properties will be deemed unacceptable if de re necessity is unacceptable. All of these presuppose de re metaphysical necessity in some way. I conclude that de re metaphysical necessity ought to be retained in our theory as primitive, unanalyzable notion. (shrink)

In recent years there has been an expansion of scientific work on consciousness. However, there is an increasing necessity to integrate evolutionary and interdisciplinary perspectives and to bring affective feelings more centrally into the overall discussion. Pursuant especially to the theorizing of Endel Tulving , Panksepp and Vandekerckhove we will look at the phenomena starting with primary-process consciousness, namely the rudimentary state of autonomic awareness or unknowing consciousness, with a fundamental form of first-person ‘self-experience’ which relies on affective experiential (...) states and raw sensory and perceptual mental existences, to higher forms of knowing and self-aware consciousness. Since current scientific approaches are most concerned with the understanding of higher declarative states of consciousness, we will focus on these vastly underestimated primary forms of consciousness which may be foundational for all forms of higher ‘knowing consciousness’. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The 1998 Meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian StudiesPeggy StarkeyThe annual meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies was held at the Walt Disney World Dolphin in Orlando, Florida, on Friday, November 20, and Saturday, November 21, 1998. The theme for this year’s sessions was “Ritual and Its Connection to Ethical Activity in the World.”The Friday afternoon panel, moderated by John Berthrong (Boston University), focused on Buddhist views. John (...) Makransky (Boston College) argued from a Mahayana Buddhist perspective that ritual/contemplative activity is a more effective paradigm for contemporary Buddhist ethics than that of Buddhist doctrine, which is now regarded by many as the source of Buddhist ethics. Historically, ethics has been the outflow of ritual activity and as such is both available to many more Buddhists than doctrine and draws more fully upon the various resources of the tradition. Furthermore, rituals as communal/universal expressions of ultimate reality, when practiced within the horizon of the concerns of one’s culture, naturally take expression in forms of social engagement. Stephanie Kaza (University of Vermont) provided insight into the connection between ritual practice and ethics through her vivid explanation of specific Zen rituals. One such ceremony, adapted to address human suffering in a specific situation, took place at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site. The ceremony prepared people for the difficult decision of choosing or not choosing civil disobedience. Thus, Zen rituals not only provide the invitation for mindful awareness in daily life, but also the possibility, though not the guarantee, for transformation everywhere. Yukio Matsuda (University of Heidelberg) discussed the relation between ritual and social activities in the areas of peace, culture, and education in Nichiren Buddhism as practiced by the Soka Gakkai movement. Chanting the diamoku in front of the gohonzon, for example, enables one to directly touch one’s own enlightened life and encourages not only a responsibility for changing one’s own destiny, but also a commitment to social engagement that works toward the creation of a peaceful society. Don Mitchell (Purdue University), responding from a Roman Catholic perspective, stressed those aspects of the three papers that led him to a better understanding of his own tradition. As in Buddhism, he sees the ritual sacraments in Christianity as providing models for moral behavior, reinforcing faith, and [End Page 175] empowering ethical behavior. He also raised several issues pertaining to the reinterpretation of Buddhist rituals or even the creation of new ones by Western Buddhists.John Berthrong introduced the Saturday morning panel, which focused on Christian views. Nicholas Groves (Chicago Public Library) drew on the history of the Oxford Movement, which he traced from its inception in 1833, for his example of the influence of Christian ritual upon ethics. For this movement, ritual was both an expression of the Christian doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity and the basis of an imperative for social justice. For the discussion to follow, he asked, “What is the function of a prophetic and radical reading of a spiritual tradition, either Christian or Buddhist, within the larger community of the Sangha or the Church?” Speaking from a Protestant point of view, Jay Rock (codirector, Interfaith Relations, National Council of Churches of Christ, USA) discussed Christian ritual in terms of the reactualization of the past and of the transformation of the present. Baptism and the Eucharist commemorate past historical events that are made present in the liturgy in such a way that the participating Christians not only receive God’s gift of unlimited love, but also are sent out into the world to live out this love in ethical behavior. Christian ritual confronts the participants with the question, What is now required? Responding from a history of religions perspective, Jan Nattier (Indiana University) raised several questions for discussion: How does ritual—not the theological ideas behind it—empower social action? Would there be Christian social activists without the ritual of the Eucharist? What are the political factors, past and present, that have created a shared sense of the necessity of social action across the boundaries of such radically different traditions as Buddhism and Christianity? The session then ended with a lively discussion.President Paul Ingram presided over... (shrink)

The thesis of this paper is that an agent S has the power to bring it about that a proposition p is or will be true at a moment t only if S has at the same time the power to bring it about that it has always been the case that p would be true at t. The author first constructs a prima facie compelling argument for logical determinism and then argues that whoever accepts an Ockhamistic response to that (...) argument should also accept the above thesis. (shrink)

This paper examines some of the work of Walter Benjamin in the philosophy of history. It suggests that his work, including the famous ?Theses on the Philosophy of History? contains important insights of interest to those engaged in reflections on history. Benjamin was concerned to argue against what he saw as the distorting effect of certain views in the philosophy of history and a belief in progress which he saw as having damaging practical effects. In this he was quite right. (...) However, the importance of his work lay primarily not in philosophy of history in an analytical sense of the term, but in the substantive sense, that is, the sense in which claims are made concerning the directionality of the historical process. Benjamin sought to show that in this sense of the term, it was important to avoid belief in the necessity of progress. However, I argue that he overstated his case in his determination to avoid a philosophy of history committed to belief in progress. His implicit claim that a merely negative philosophy of history is possible proves to be an illusion because (whether negative or positive), a philosophy of history makes presuppositions about the directionality of history (or its absence) which go beyond the empirical evidence. (shrink)

The Algerian writer Malika Mokeddem embeds her novels in the geography of a desert that belongs ever more to the past of the nomadic immediate ancestors of her main characters. Object of nostalgic yearning, this desert past and the nomads peopling it also necessitate flight, especially for women, trapped there in a patriarchal culture and society whose violence has been perpetuated into that of contemporary Algeria - also often aimed against women. Besides a few strong older women able (...) to take advantage of their age and status to help their juniors, these novels principally set on stage young women or girls whose accidental or perilously self-willed access to education and - above all, writing - frees them from binding traditions even while, for most, such writing is akin to the nomadic traveling of their ancestors (as `writing' on the desert's very body). Even so, because it is a revolt against such traditions, their writing is the site and actuality of fraught struggle and pushes them into the `nomadism' of literal exile, across seas themselves often envisaged as wider deserts. (shrink)

A valid logical form is exhibited which underlies many arguments for logical, precognitive, and causal fatalism. The tools of modal and metrical tense logic are employed. And the logic of subjunctive conditionals is employed to display for the first time the valid variant of this form which underlies the most plausible causal fatalisms. Eleven arguments from ancient, medieval, and modern authors are shown to have variants of this valid form.The truth of the premises is examined, especially the premise that the (...) past is necessary. This is made precise and defended as Ockham and Montague suggest, and this defence's implicit logic of the interrelations of time, modality, and counterfactual dependence is explored, A novel argument is given to refute the ancient view that unchangeable truth of a tensed sentence is proof of its necessity. Logical fatalism is shown to be not falsifiable independently of the falsity of causal fatalism. (shrink)

Black feminisms offer lenses through which Black women can resist and re-exist under new emancipatory conditions. Part of that work is uncovering roots and routes through which Black women's lives can come to the fore as articulated centers. Such a mandate, I argue, must center love. This article's work, therefore, is to articulate the function of love, as an ethic and a discourse of love as a dialectic space, in the creation of emancipatory spaces for Black women. In particular, this (...) article aims to articulate how a love ethic, as a princple, can be used to support a citational politics for Black women toward a Black feminist reclamatory past, liberatory present, and emancipated future. (shrink)

The relationship between reason and faith is one of the most important topics in the philosophy of religion. This issue has been investigated from several aspects. One of these aspects is the relationship between action and religious belief. John Cottingham, a contemporary analytical philosopher, emphasizes the primacy of religious practice over belief, as well as the involuntary nature of belief. In his opinion, the factor that causes people to become religious is not intellectual discussions about God but the internal aspects (...) of religion itself and the transforming power of religious practices in human life and experiences. In the present work, a critique has been made of his point of view with an explanatory-critical method. Criticisms that his point of view includes: First, the belief resulting from the course of action is only psychological certainty and such certainty is beyond the logic of verification. Secondly, knowledge of God and the practical system is a condition for entering it and precedes it. The third criticism is the problem of the plurality of religions and practical systems which causes people to mistrust reasons of the heart. The fourth criticism is that entering into a practical system is a confirmation of its benefits and anyone who does not believe this would have no reason to enter such a system. Introduction John Cottingham is a contemporary English philosopher, and one of the contemporary theorists in the field of the relationship between reason and faith. The relationship between reason and religious faith can be examined from four aspects: 1) The relationship between reason and the epistemological area of faith, 2) the relationship between reason and the practical area of faith, 3) the relationship between reason and the commitment area of faith, and 4) the relationship between reason and the area of faith. Explanation of Cottingham’s view Cottingham’s view can be presented in seven steps: -/- Criticism of the current situation in analytical philosophy; Changing the topic of discussion from the religious field to the spiritual field in order to expand the topic of discussion to non-religious spiritual fields; Comparison of spiritual practice with devotional orders in the past philosophical tradition; Understanding religion is based on practical participation in it; -/- This introduction is expressed according to Pascal’s point of view. According to Pascal, faith should be acquired in the atmosphere of a living tradition of practical religious worship, not through discussion and analysis in a seminar room. The basis of this view is that issues related to the nature and existence of God are beyond the reach of reason. -/- The role of emotions in human understanding; -/- Using Nussbaum’s point of view, Cottingham says: There are types of truth that the intellectual effort to obtain is equivalent to not reaching them. Religious truth is also a part of these truths. Because religious truths are beyond the direct understanding of humans and trying to understand them through logical analysis is moving away from them. -/- Involuntary belief; -/- Human belief, whether religious or otherwise, is not optional and there is a kind of passivity in all human perceptions. According to Cottingham, this point is shared by philosophers such as Hume and Descartes. Cottingham is also influenced by Pascal in this introduction. According to Pascal, although belief in God is not optional, there are indirect ways such as participating in religious activities to realize it, which are available to humans. The role of these ways in the formation of belief is a preliminary role and creating the ability to accept. -/- The necessity of trusting the witnesses of the heart; -/- According to Cottingham, such a thing is necessary for the human condition, and this issue exists in all fields of human knowledge, as well as in human daily life. For example, to go to work, a person must believe that when he turns the switch on the car, the car will not explode, even if such a belief is not the result of checking the car’s electrical system, you still have to trust this article or you will lose your job. Cottingham’s conclusion from the seven premises is that the factor that causes people to become religious is not intellectual discussions about God but the internal aspects of religion itself and the transformative power of religious practices in human life and experiences. Accordingly, faith in God is a product of trust and participation in a living community of faith. When the truth of religion is obtained through faith, and faith depends on a practical religious tradition, then there will be no other choice but to enter into the practical system of religion. Of course, he emphasizes that entering the life of faith does not mean abandoning the critical method in content analysis, and the previous reasons resulting from religious practice must be supplemented or regularized by subsequent intellectual reflections. According to Cottingham, worship precedes rational theory in four ways: 1) temporally; 2) heuristically; 3) psychologically; 4) morally Critical Review In the following, I will do a critical review of Cottingham’s view. His view on the priority of action over religious belief and that the understanding of religion is based on practical participation faces criticisms: First, the belief resulting from participation in religious actions is only psychological certainty and such certainty is beyond the logic of confirmation. Secondly, knowing God and the practical system is a condition for entering this system and has precedence over it. The third criticism is the problem of the plurality of religions and practical systems which causes people to mistrust reasons of the heart. The fourth criticism is that entry into a practical system is a confirmation of its benefits and anyone who does not believe this would have no reason to enter such a system. Therefore, at this stage as well, it is necessary to have a rational way to confirm the usefulness of this path. His view on Doxastic voluntarism is also under the involuntary approach of indirect belief, which is Pascal’s view. This component is also present in the opinions of Allamah Tabatabai. The difference between Cottingham and Allameh’s points of view is that Cottingham and Pascal consider rational arguments to be inefficient in the realization of belief and scientific verification, and they consider a practical commitment to be necessary for the realization of such verification, but Allameh Tabatabai considers scientific premises and rational proof to be the necessary conditions for faith. Conclusion Although the theory of the precedence of action over belief is faced with numerous criticisms, it is an undeniable matter. Paying attention to different levels of religious faith makes the value of theoretical discussions as well as paying attention to practical refinement and participation in spiritual actions be considered together. (shrink)

This book recounts a few ingenious attempts to derive physical theories by reason only, beginning with Descartes' geometric construction of the world, and finishing with recent derivations of quantum mechanics from natural axioms.

ABSTRACT Nietzsche’s life project remains constant throughout his life: it is the project of transformation or transfiguration. He formulates this as the necessity of dealing with the way that one’s past shapes one’s present. The paradigm for this transformation is first to be found in The Birth of Tragedy, but it reappears in various guises in all of his work. I argue that Nietzsche’s writing is itself designed so as to make possible such a transformation in his readers.

THIS PAPER PRESENTS THE SEMANTIC THEORY FOR A TEMPORAL-MODAL LOGIC WITH RIGIDLY REFERENTIAL TEMPORAL OPERATORS ('dtomorrow' AND 'dnow') IN WHICH THE 'TRADITIONAL' INDETERMINIST INTERPRETATION OF ARISTOTLE'S _DE INTERPRETATIONE 9 CAN BE MODELED. THIS LOGIC HAS, I BELIEVE, SOME INTRINSIC PHILOSOPHICAL INTEREST AND PLAUSIBILITY. HOWEVER, THE PRESENT PAPER IS PRINCIPALLY DEVOTED TO AN INITIAL EXAMINATION OF THE RELATION BETWEEN THE LOGIC AND SUCH TOPICS IN THE ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY OF THE TIME AND OF THE MODALITIES AS THE NECESSITY OF THE (...) class='Hi'>PAST, ABSOLUTE VERSUS TEMPORALLY RELATIVE ALETHIC MODALITIES, THE 'PLENITUDE' PRINCIPLE AND UNACTUALIZED POSSIBILITIES, AND THE CYCLICAL NATURE OF TIME. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper offers an account of the early career of Martha Kneale, née Hurst, and of the five papers she published between 1934 and 1950. One on metaphysical and logical necessity, from 1938, is particularly interesting. In it she considers the metaphysics of time and offers an explanation of ‘the necessity of the past’, which has some resemblance to Kripke’s ideas about metaphysical necessities, in that it assigns an important role to experience in how we come (...) to know them. But Kneale’s view is very different from Kripke’s, depending not on doctrines about rigid designation but rather on recognition of the failure of the atomist/empiricist account of ‘simple’ and ‘complex’ concepts. That account cannot deal with such things as the relations of the determinates of a determinable like colour. A plausible corollary of this, which Kneale exploits, is that some of our experience reveals to us that there are phenomena which are intrinsically complex in having multiple distinguishable aspects, but where those aspects are inseparable. Other of the papers show Kneale to have been pursuing interesting lines of thought about McTaggart’s argument against the reality of time and on the mind-body problem. (shrink)

Big History expands the scope of historiography to study all the past, from the Big Bang to the present. Big History is decidedly non-anthropocentric, recognising that humans appeared only very recently from a much deeper past. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Big History brings together an international cast of leading and emerging scholars from a range of disciplines to provide the first comprehensive and balanced exploration of this new and increasingly significant field. -/- The handbook considers the ways in (...) which Big History broadens the scope of evidence historians use. It reveals how Big History allows for the use of information signals from the past, such as material remains, languages, ancient DNA, and fossils, using recently discovered techniques such as carbon-dating, the extraction of ancient DNA, and the analysis of background radiation from the origin of the universe. -/- Understanding Big History requires an examination of the ontology and epistemology of the past and its scientific inference and representation; chapters on the ontology of the past, historical information, historiographic experiments and predictions, the origin and the end of history, historical counterfactuals, contingency, necessity, and determination and under-determination of the past are included to facilitate this understanding. The handbook also provides a sustained analysis of the theoretical assumptions associated with synthetic historical science: the syntheses of genetics, linguistics, and archaeology to infer human prehistory, quantum physics and cosmology to infer the origin of the universe, and environmental science and biology to infer the history of life; as well as the distinct historical sciences and their methods: cosmology, evolutionary biology, geology, archaeology, historical linguistics, and human historiography. -/- This ground-breaking volume is vital reading for all historians, philosophers and historical scientists interested in becoming more scientifically self-conscious when adopting philosophical, theoretical, and methodological approaches to the past. (shrink)