Narrative thinking -- Narrative thinking about one's past -- Grief : a case study -- Narrative thinking about one's future -- Self-forgiveness : a case study -- The narrative sense of self -- Narrative, truth, life, and fiction.

According to a causal model of explanation, we explain phenomena by giving their causes or, where the phenomena are themselves causal regularities, we explain them by giving a mechanism linking cause and effect. If we explain why smoking causes cancer, we do not give the cause of this causal connection, but we do give the causal mechanism that makes it. The claim that to explain is to give a cause is not only natural and plausible, but it also avoids many (...) of the objections to other accounts of explanation, such as the views that to explain is to give a reason to believe the phenomenon occurred, to somehow make the phenomenon familiar, or to give a Deductive-Nomological argument. Unlike the reason for belief account, a causal model makes a clear distinction between understanding why a phenomenon occurs and merely knowing that it does, and the model does so in a way that makes understanding unmysterious and objective. Understanding is not some sort of super-knowledge, but simply more knowledge: knowledge of the phenomenon and knowledge of its causal history. A causal model makes it clear how something can explain without itself being explained, and so avoids the regress of whys, since we can know a phenomenon's cause without knowing the cause of the cause. It also accounts for legitimate self-evidencing explanations, explanations where the phenomenon is an essential part of the evidence that the explanation is correct, so the explanation can not supply a non-circular reason for believing the phenomenon occurred. There is no barrier to knowing a cause through its effects and also knowing that it is their cause. The speed of recession of a star explains its observed red-shift, even though the shift is an essential part of the evidence for its speed of recession. The model also avoids the most serious objection to the familiarity view, which is that some phenomena are familiar yet not understood, since a phenomenon can be perfectly familiar, such as the blueness of the sky or the fact that the same side of the moon always faces the earth, even if we do not know its cause. Finally, a causal model avoids many of the objections to the Deductive-Nomological model. Ordinary explanations do not have to meet the requirements of the Deductive-Nomological model, because one does not need to give a law to give a cause, and one does not need to know a law to have good reason to believe that a cause is a cause. As for the notorious over-permissiveness of the Deductive-Nomological model, the reason recession explains red-shift but not conversely, is simply that causes explain effects but not conversely, and the reason a conjunction of laws does not explain its conjuncts is that conjunctions do not cause their conjuncts. (shrink)

Current epistemological orthodoxy has it that knowledge is incompatible with luck. More precisely: Knowledge is incompatible with epistemic luck . This is often treated as a truism which is not even in need of argumentative support. In this paper, I argue that there is lucky knowledge. In the first part, I use an intuitive and not very developed notion of luck to show that there are cases of knowledge which are “lucky” in that sense. In the second part, I look (...) at philosophical conceptions of luck and come to the conclusion that knowledge can be lucky in those senses, too. I also turns out that a probabilistic notion of luck can help us see in what ways a particular piece of knowledge or belief can be lucky or not lucky. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with a propositional modal logic with operators for necessity, actuality and apriority. The logic is characterized by a class of relational structures defined according to ideas of epistemic two-dimensional semantics, and can therefore be seen as formalizing the relations between necessity, actuality and apriority according to epistemic two-dimensional semantics. We can ask whether this logic is correct, in the sense that its theorems are all and only the informally valid formulas. This paper gives outlines of two (...) arguments that jointly show that this is the case. The first is intended to show that the logic is informally sound, in the sense that all of its theorems are informally valid. The second is intended to show that it is informally complete, in the sense that all informal validities are among its theorems. In order to give these arguments, a number of independently interesting results concerning the logic are proven. In particular, the soundness and completeness of two proof systems with respect to the semantics is proven (Theorems 2.11 and 2.15), as well as a normal form theorem (Theorem 3.2), an elimination theorem for the actuality operator (Corollary 3.6), and the decidability of the logic (Corollary 3.7). It turns out that the logic invalidates a plausible principle concerning the interaction of apriority and necessity; consequently, a variant semantics is briefly explored on which this principle is valid. The paper concludes by assessing the implications of these results for epistemic two-dimensional semantics. (shrink)

At the core of political liberalism is the claim that political institutions must be publicly justified or justifiable to be legitimate. What explains the significance of public justification? The main argument that defenders of political liberalism present is an argument from disagreement: the irreducible pluralism that is characteristic of democratic societies requires a mode of justification that lies in between a narrowly political solution based on actual acceptance and a traditional moral solution based on justification from the third-person perspective. But (...) why should we take disagreements seriously? This – epistemic question – has not received the attention it deserves so far. I argue that the significance of public justification can be explained through the possibility of reasonable disagreement. In a reasonable disagreement, the parties hold mutually incompatible beliefs, but each is justified to hold the belief they do. I shall use the notion of a reasonable disagreement to explain the possibility of an irreducible pluralism of moral and religious doctrines and, on that basis, why the justification of political institutions has to be public. (shrink)

Abū Bakr al-Rāzī (d. 925), a doctor known not only for his medical expertise but also for his notorious philosophical ideas, has not yet been given due credit for his ideas on the ethical treatment of animals. This paper explores the philosophical and theological background of his remarks on animal welfare, arguing that al-Rāzī did not (as has been claimed) see animals as possessing rational, intellectual souls like those of humans. It is also argued that al-Rāzī probably did not, as (...) is usually believed, endorse human-animal transmigration. His ethical stance does not in any case depend on shared characteristics of humans and animals, but rather on the need to imitate God’s providence and mercy. (shrink)

Everyone allows that human and animal minds are distinctively (indeed, massively) different in their manifest effects. Humans have been able to colonize nearly every corner of the planet, from the artic, to deserts, to rainforests (and they did so in the absence of modern technological aids); they live together in large cooperative groups of unrelated individuals; they communicate with one another using the open-ended expressive resources of natural language; they are capable of cultural learning that accumulates over generations to result (...) in science, art, and agriculture; and they are remarkably thoughtful and inventive. There is much less agreement about how these manifest differences should be explained, however. (shrink)

Moral particularism, on some interpretations, is committed to a shapeless thesis: the moral is shapeless with respect to the natural. (Call this version of moral particularism ‘shapeless moral particularism’). In more detail, the shapeless thesis is that the actions a moral concept or predicate can be correctly applied to have no natural commonality (or shape) amongst them. Jackson et al. (Ethical particularism and patterns, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000) argue, however, that the shapeless thesis violates the platitude ‘predication supervenes on (...) nature’—predicates or concepts apply because of how things are, and therefore ought to be rejected. I defend shapeless moral particularism by arguing that Jackson et al’s contention is less compelling than it firstly appears. My defense is limited in the sense that it does not prove shapeless moral particularism to be right and it leaves open the possibility that shapeless moral particularism might attract criticisms different from the ones advanced by Jackson et al. But at the very least, I hope to say enough to undermine Jackson et al’s powerful attack against it. The plan of this paper is as follows. Section 1 glosses the view of moral particularism and why it is taken to be essentially committed to the shapeless thesis. Section 2 examines a Wittgensteinian argument for the shapeless thesis. I shall argue that the Canberrans’ counter-arguments against it on grounds of disjunctive commonality and conceptual competence do not succeed. Section 3 explicates Canberrans’ predication supervenience argument against the shapeless thesis. Section 4 offers my criticisms of the Canberrans’ predication supervenience argument. In view of the above discussions, in Sect. 5, I conclude that there is no compelling argument (from the Canberrans) to believe that the shapeless thesis fails (as I have argued in Sect. 4). In fact, there is some good reason for us to believe it (as I have argued in Sect. 2). If so, I contend that moral particularism, when construed as essentially committed to the shapeless thesis, still remains as a live option. (shrink)

The word “justice” is used in several different ways. First, justice is sometimes understood as moral permissibility applied to distributions of benefits and burdens (e.g., income distributions) or social structures (e.g., legal systems). In this sense, justice is distinguished by the kind of entity to which it is applied, rather than a specific kind of moral concern.

The paper discusses the principle by which we reason to what is ‘true in fiction’. The focus is David Lewis's article ‘Truth in Fiction’ (1978) which proposes an analysis in terms of counterfactuals and possible worlds. It is argued thatLewis's account is inadequate in detail and also in principle in that it conflicts radically with basic and familiar tenets of literary criticism. Literary critical reasoning about fiction concerns not the discovery of facts in possible worlds but the recovery of meanings (...) in interpretative frameworks. The model theoretic approach fails to account for common literary or rhetorical devices like unreliable narration, connotation and point of view. And in explaining indeterminacy of content in terms of truth-value gaps it gives too simplistic an account of critical reasoning about character motivation and thematic development. A more adequate account of content-indeterminacy can be provided through a comparison of the interpretation of fiction with the interpretation of human action. A broader motif in the paper is the underlying tension between what is required for the logic of fiction and what is required for the aesthetics of fiction. (shrink)

Recently, Gitik, Kanovei and the first author proved that for a classical Prikry forcing extension the family of the intermediate models can be parametrized by $\mathscr{P}(\omega)/\mathrm{finite}$. By modifying the standard Prikry tree forcing we define a Prikry-type forcing which also singularizes a measurable cardinal but which is minimal, i.e., there are \emph{no} intermediate models properly between the ground model and the generic extension. The proof relies on combining the rigidity of the tree structure with indiscernibility arguments resulting from the normality (...) of the associated measures. (shrink)

In recent developments in political and legal philosophy, there is a tendency to endorse minimalist lists of human rights which do not include a right to political participation. Against such tendencies, I shall argue that the right to political participation, understood as distinct from a right to democracy, should have a place even on minimalist lists. In addition, I shall defend the need to extend the right to political participation to include participation not just in national, but also in international (...) and global governance processes. The argument will be based on a cosmopolitan conception of political legitimacy and on a political conception of human rights that is normatively anchored in legitimacy. The central claim of my paper is that a right to political participation is necessary – but not sufficient – for political legitimacy in the global realm. (shrink)

This paper provides a discussion of the role that emotions may play in the justification of punishment. On the expressivist account of punishment, punishment has the purpose of expressing appropriate emotional reactions to wrongdoing, such as indignation, resentment or guilt. I will argue that this expressivist approach fails as these emotions can be expressed other than through the infliction of punishment. Another argument for hard treatment put forward by expressivists states that punitive sanctions are necessary in order for the law (...) to be valid. But this justification of punishment, too, is unconvincing. There are no good reasons to assume that we have to resort to punitive measures in order to vindicate the law. I will then raise the more general worry whether there is any intelligible link at all between moral emotions such as indignation, resentment or guilt and retributive behaviour. I will finally conclude with some sceptical remarks on the moral worth of retribution. (shrink)

We argue that Isaac Newton really is best understood as being in the tradition of the Mechanical Philosophy and, further, that Newton saw himself as being in this tradition. But the tradition as Newton understands it is not that of Robert Boyle and many others, for whom the Mechanical Philosophy was defined by contact action and a corpuscularean theory of matter. Instead, as we argue in this paper, Newton interpreted and extended the Mechanical Philosophy's slogan “matter and motion” in reference (...) to the long and distinguished tradition of mixed mathematics and the study of simple machines. (shrink)

ABELARD'S ethical theory, presented above all in his Ethics, is a version of what I'll call intentionalism': the view that the agent's intention determines the moral worth of an action. Now even in Abelard's day, the common understanding of morality seemed to endorse the following principle: (P) An agent should intend to Φ only if bringing about Φ would be good -/- But Abelard replaces (P) with its obverse, a principle he identifies as the rational core imbedded in traditional Christian (...) moral teaching: (P*) An agent should bring about Φ only if intending to Φ would be good Abelard's arguments against (P) and in support of (P*) are remarkably similar to those given by the most famous exponent of intentionalism, Kant. For Kant's ethical theory, especially as he presents in the first section of the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, identifies (P*) as the philosophical conception corresponding to the "common rational knowledge of morals." Abelard and Kant locate moral worth in features of the way the agent conceptualizes her performances, and each thinks that goodness is characterizable in terms of the form such conceptualization takes. Both are deeply indebted to Stoic ethics, familiar to each largely through Seneca's letters, and they share a common project: 'christianizing' Stoic metaethics so that the classical equation of virtue with happiness is revised to leave room for God and the Afterlife. -/- I'l l proceed as follows. In §1, Abelard's arguments against (P) will be canvassed. In §2, I'l l look at his arguments in favor of (P*) and a 'mediaeval categorical imperative'. In §3, a comparison with Kant's intentionalism should make the virtues of Abelard's theory apparent. In §4, I'l l discuss Abelard's failed attempt to baptize Stoicism. Finally, by way of conclusion, I'll offer a suggestion about why intentionalism, in any of its versions, is an ethical theory to take seriously. (shrink)

In this account of his mature thinking, Peter Marshall develops a dynamic and organic philosophy for the coming millennium which he calls liberation ecology. Liberation ecology is holistic in viewing the world as a harmonious whole and all beings and things as interwoven threads in nature's web. It is intuitive in recognizing intuition as the main source of knowledge and the imagination as the great organ of morality. It is ecological in seeing human beings as fellow voyagers with other (...) species in the magnificent odyssey of evolution. Above all, it is libertarian in seeking to release humanity, society and nature from their existing burdens so that they can unfurl and realize together their full potential. Exploring our strengths and possibilities, this book presents the ideas and values needed to ride the winds of change at this crucial stage in our development and in the history of the world. It provides a new philosophy for a new era, an uplifting and inspired vision which combines ancient wisdom and modern insights, reason and feeling, science and poetry, myth and the marvellous. It offers a guide for the future on how to rive in the most fulfilling way and how to create a genuinely free and sustainable society in harmony with nature. (shrink)

In Are Equal Liberty and Equality Compatible?, Jan Narveson and James Sterba insightfully debate whether a right to maximum equal negative liberty requires, or at least is compatible with, a right to welfare. Narveson argues that the two rights are incompatible, whereas Sterba argues that the rights are compatible and indeed that the right to maximum equal negative liberty requires a right to welfare. I argue that Sterba is correct that the two rights are conceptually compatible and that Narveson is (...) right that right to negative liberty does not conceptually require a right to welfare. (shrink)

I argue in this paper that moral philosophers need to incorporate into their teaching and writing a number of empirical findings on ethical practices. Principal among these is clearer guidelines on speaking out against wrongdoing, as well as the development of codes of ethics that have been proven to work. The adoption of the critical thinking and the analytical methodology of other disciplines is also suggested. Several benefits will result. The most noticeable will be a strengthening of ethical practices and (...) behavior in the institutions and organizations with which we live and work. A second benefit will be the education and employment of a body of people—graduates in moral philosophy—with the skills and knowledge to bring about, and further strengthen, this enhanced ethical environment. A third benefit will be the matching of the claims of philosophical thought with actual reality. (shrink)

Examining a variety of texts ranging from the Ancient Near East to the nineteenth century, this book deals with the inevitable presence of both fact and fiction ...