The Explanatory Priority View of the Realism/Anti-Realism Issue

1997 ◽  
pp. 98-124
Author(s):  
John Wright
Keyword(s):  
Explanatory Priority ◽  
Priority View

Because Without Cause

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Lange
Keyword(s):  
Natural Kinds ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Scientific Explanations ◽  
Physical Necessity ◽  
Explanatory Priority ◽  
Causal Laws

This chapter investigates non-causal scientific explanations that work by describing how the explanandum involves stronger-than-physical necessity by virtue of certain facts (“constraints”) that possess some variety of necessity stronger than ordinary causal laws possess. In particular, the chapter offers an account of the order of explanatory priority in explanations by constraint. It examines several important examples of explanations by constraint, distinguishing their natural kinds. It gives an account of the sense in which constraints are modally stronger than ordinary causal laws and an account of why certain deductions of constraints exclusively from other constraints possess explanatory power whereas others lack explanatory power.

The Priority View Bites the Dust?

Utilitas ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDREW WILLIAMS
Keyword(s):  
Interpersonal Conflicts ◽  
Priority View

This article distinguishes between a telic and a deontic version of Derek Parfit's influential Priority View. Employing the distinction, it shows that the existence of variations in how intrapersonal and interpersonal conflicts should be resolved fails to provide a compelling case in favour of relational egalitarianism and against all pure versions of the Priority View. In addition, the article argues that those variations are better understood as providing counterevidence to certain distribution-sensitive versions of consequentialism.

Naturalizing Christians: A Response to Joel Marcus, John the Baptist in History and Theology

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-46
Author(s):  
Erin Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
John The Baptist ◽  
Theory Of Religion ◽  
Truth Claim ◽  
Explanatory Priority ◽  
Social Type

Abstract This essay examines the conceptual framework that informs Marcus’s distinction between history and theology, and considers what stands to be gained by this manner of classification. The essay observes that Marcus’s classification hinges upon a theory of religion that views gospels as artifacts expressive of sincere belief and, further, suggests this approach serves to mystify the origins of the Christian theological metanarrative by replicating the explanation asserted within the gospels themselves. By reversing the conceptual framework and the explanatory priority, one could deploy a theory of religion that sees gospels as artifacts of persuasion and thereby argue that they aim to naturalize the initially unnatural truth claim that Jesus was the christ by connecting him to a known social type: John. From this approach, it would not be belief in Jesus as the christ that explains the modified constructions of John the Baptist; rather, modifications of John the Baptist would be precisely what construct belief in Jesus as the christ.

Reasons First

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Schroeder
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Action Theory ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Justify Belief ◽  
Moral Worth ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
Common Currency ◽  
Normative Concepts ◽  
The World ◽  
Explanatory Priority

The last fifty years or more of ethical theory have been preoccupied by a turn to reasons. The vocabulary of reasons has become a common currency not only in ethics, but in epistemology, action theory, and many related areas. It is now common, for example, to see central theses such as evidentialism in epistemology and egalitarianism in political philosophy formulated in terms of reasons. And some have even claimed that the vocabulary of reasons is so useful precisely because reasons have analytical and explanatory priority over other normative concepts—that reasons in that sense come first. Reasons First systematically explores both the benefits and burdens of the hypothesis that reasons do indeed come first in normative theory, against the conjecture that theorizing in both ethics and epistemology can only be hampered by neglect of the other. Bringing two decades of work on reasons in both ethics and epistemology to bear, Mark Schroeder argues that some of the most important challenges to the idea that reasons could come first are themselves the source of some of the most obstinate puzzles in epistemology—about how perceptual experience could provide evidence about the world, and about what can make evidence sufficient to justify belief. And he shows that along with moral worth, one of the very best cases for the fundamental explanatory power of reasons in normative theory actually comes from knowledge.

The freedom of Christ and explanatory priority

2013 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
TIMOTHY PAWL
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Tradition ◽  
The People ◽  
Explanatory Priority ◽  
Human Intellect ◽  
In Virtue Of

AbstractCall the claim, common to many in the Christian intellectual tradition, that Christ, in virtue of his created human intellect, had certain, infallible, exhaustive foreknowledgethe Foreknowledge Thesis. Now consider what I will callthe Conditional:if the Foreknowledge Thesis is true, then Christ's created human will was not free. In so far as many, perhaps all, of the people who affirm the Foreknowledge Thesis also wish to affirm the freedom of Christ's human will, the truth of the Conditional would be most unwelcome to them. I consider an argument in support of the Conditional; I argue that it is not successful.

Mathematical Knowledge and Sentential vs. Subsentential Priority

2020 ◽  
pp. 270-296
Author(s):  
Joan Weiner
Keyword(s):  
Mathematical Knowledge ◽  
Priority View

In this chapter, as in Chapter 7, an example is given that shows how Frege’s lessons can be put to work on contemporary issues. The focus here is on two papers, written by Paul Benacerraf in 1965 and 1973, that are still of concern to many philosophers today. In the first, Benacerraf argues that, although it seems obvious that numbers are objects, in fact numbers cannot be objects. In the second, Benacerraf presents an epistemological puzzle that seems to undermine our claims to have mathematical knowledge—even knowledge of elementary facts about numbers. These puzzles challenge our everyday understanding both of the nature of numbers and of our knowledge about them. In this chapter, it is argued that both puzzles depend on our presupposing the subsentential priority view. And both puzzles, it is argued, vanish once we accept Frege’s sentential priority view.

Reasons as The Unity among the Varieties of Goodness

2019 ◽  
pp. 76-100
Author(s):  
Richard Rowland
Keyword(s):  
Prudential Value ◽  
Buck Passing ◽  
Priority View

The Buck-Passing Account of Value (BPA) analyses goodness simpliciter in terms of reasons for pro-attitudes. The Value-First Account (VFA) analyses reasons for pro-attitudes in terms of value. And the No-Priority View (NPV) holds that neither reasons nor value can be analysed in terms of one another. This chapter argues that BPA should be accepted rather than VFA or NPV because if BPA is accepted, then what all the different varieties of goodness have in common can be explained: but if VFA or NPV is accepted, what the different varieties of goodness have in common cannot be explained. In making this argument this chapter motivates and defends accounts of goodness for (prudential value) and goodness of a kind (attributive goodness) in terms of reasons for pro-attitudes. It shows that the objections that have been made to buck-passing accounts of goodness for and goodness of a kind can be overcome and that there are many advantages to accepting such accounts.

The Buck-Passing Account and The No-Priority View

2019 ◽  
pp. 55-75
Author(s):  
Richard Rowland
Keyword(s):  
Jonathan Dancy ◽  
Buck Passing ◽  
Priority View

According to the No-Priority View (NPV), what it is to be a reason for a pro-attitude cannot be analysed in terms of value but neither can what it is to be good or of value be analysed in terms of reasons for pro-attitudes. NPV has been defended by Jonathan Dancy and W. D. Ross. This chapter argues that there are several reasons to accept the buck-passing account of value (BPA) over NPV. First, BPA explains striking correlations between reasons and value that NPV does not. Second, BPA explains why value does not give non-derivative reasons to have pro-attitudes; NPV cannot do this. Third, BPA is more qualitatively parsimonious than NPV, and, as explained in this chapter, there are strong reasons to prefer more to less qualitatively parsimonious theories. Fourth, BPA explains why similar theoretical debates arise about reasons and value; NPV cannot do this. Fifth, BPA is more informative than NPV.

Special Concern and Personal Identity

2021 ◽  
pp. 15-38
Author(s):  
David O. Brink
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
David Hume ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Compensation Principle ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Henry Sidgwick ◽  
Explanatory Priority ◽  
Special Concern ◽  
Joseph Butler ◽  
Equal Concern

As discussed by John Locke, Joseph Butler, and Thomas Reid, prudence involves a special concern for the agent’s own personal good that she does not have for others. This should be a concern for the agent’s overall good that is temporally neutral and involves an equal concern for all parts of her life. In this way, prudence involves a combination of agent relativity and temporal neutrality. This asymmetrical treatment of matters of interpersonal and intertemporal distribution might seem arbitrary. Henry Sidgwick raised this worry, and Thomas Nagel and Derek Parfit have endorsed it as reflecting the instability of prudence and related doctrines such as egoism and the self-interest theory. However, Sidgwick thought that the worry was unanswerable only for skeptics about personal identity, such as David Hume. Sidgwick thought that one could defend prudence by appeal to realism about personal identity and a compensation principle. This is one way in which special concern and prudence presuppose personal identity. However, as Jennifer Whiting has argued, special concern displayed in positive affective regard for one’s future and personal planning and investment is arguably partly constitutive of personal identity, at least on a plausible psychological reductionist conception of personal identity. After explaining both conceptions of the relation between special concern and personal identity, the chapter concludes by exploring what might seem to be the paradoxical character of conjoining them, suggesting that there may be no explanatory priority between the concepts of special concern and personal identity.

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