scholarly journals Molinism, Creature-Types, and the Nature of Counterfactual Implication

2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-86
Author(s):  
Daniel Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Subjunctive Conditionals ◽  
Libertarian Freedom ◽  
In Virtue Of

Granting that there could be true subjunctive conditionals of libertarian freedom (SCls), I argue (roughly) that there could be such conditionals only in connection with individual "possible creatures" (in contrast to types). This implies that Molinism depends on the view that, prior to creation, God grasps possible creatures in their individuality. In making my case, I explore the notions of counterfactual implication (that relationship between antecedent and consequent of an SCl which consists in its truth) and counterfactual relevance (that feature of an antecedent in virtue of which it counterfactually implies something or other).

What Is an Institution?

2007 ◽  
pp. 5-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Searle
Keyword(s):  
Physical Structure ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Collective Intentionality ◽  
Institutional Facts ◽  
Institutional Fact ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Creation ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Typical Point

The author claims that an institution is any collectively accepted system of rules (procedures, practices) that enable us to create institutional facts. These rules typically have the form of X counts as Y in C, where an object, person, or state of affairs X is assigned a special status, the Y status, such that the new status enables the person or object to perform functions that it could not perform solely in virtue of its physical structure, but requires as a necessary condition the assignment of the status. The creation of an institutional fact is, thus, the collective assignment of a status function. The typical point of the creation of institutional facts by assigning status functions is to create deontic powers. So typically when we assign a status function Y to some object or person X we have created a situation in which we accept that a person S who stands in the appropriate relation to X is such that (S has power (S does A)). The whole analysis then gives us a systematic set of relationships between collective intentionality, the assignment of function, the assignment of status functions, constitutive rules, institutional facts, and deontic powers.

Acerca del supuesto fundamentalismo de Wittgenstein en Sobre la certez

2007 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
Author(s):  
José M. Ariso Salgado
Keyword(s):  
Ludwig Wittgenstein ◽  
On Certainty ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Basic Beliefs

RESUMENAl analizar si Ludwig Wittgenstein mantiene una posición fundamentalista en Sobre la certeza, suele discutirse si la citada obra se adapta al modelo de fundamentalismo propuesto por Avrum Stroll. Tras exponer las líneas básicas de dicho modelo, en esta nota se mantiene que Sobre la certeza no se adapta al modelo de Stroll debido al importante papel que Wittgenstein concede al contextualismo. Además, se añade que Wittgenstein no puede ser calificado de fundamentalista porque no reconoce ninguna propiedad que, sin tener en cuenta la diversidad de casos particulares, permita justificar de forma conjunta todas nuestras creencias básicas.PALABRAS CLAVEWITTGENSTEIN, FUNDAMENTALISMO, CONTEXTUALISMO, CERTEZAABSTRACTDid Wittgenstein hold a foundationalist position in On Certainty? When this question is tackled, it is often discussed, whether On Certainty fits in the foundationalist model devised by Avrum Stroll. After expounding the main lines of this model, I hold that On Certainty does not fit in Stroll’s model, because of the important role Wittgenstein attaches to contextualism. Furthermore, I add that Wittgenstein cannot be seen as a foundationalist –or a coherentist–, because he does not admit any feature in virtue of which the whole of our basic beliefs are justified without considering circumstances at all.KEYWORDSWITTGENSTEIN, CERTAINTY, FOUNDATIONALISM, CONTEXTUALISM

The Uniqueness of God in Anselm’s Monologion

2014 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Tapp
Keyword(s):  
Successful Attempt ◽  
Central Case ◽  
In Virtue Of

In this paper, Anselm’s argument for the uniqueness of God or, more precisely, something through which everything that exists has its being (Monologion 3) is reconstructed. A first reading of the argument leads to a preliminary reconstruens with one major weakness, namely the incompleteness of a central case distinction. In the successful attempt to construct a more tenable reconstruens some additional premises which are deeply rooted in an Anselmian metaphysics are identified. Anselm’s argument seems to depend on premises such as that if two things have the same nature, then there is one common thing from which they have this nature and in virtue of which they exist. Furthermore it appears that infinite regresses are excluded by the premise that if everything that exists is through something, then there is something through which it is “most truly”.

The Green New Deal

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert C. Hockett
Keyword(s):  
New Deal ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Public Investment ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
White Paper ◽  
Good News ◽  
Carbon Neutrality ◽  
The One ◽  
In Virtue Of

This white paper lays out the guiding vision behind the Green New Deal Resolution proposed to the U.S. Congress by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bill Markey in February of 2019. It explains the senses in which the Green New Deal is 'green' on the one hand, and a new 'New Deal' on the other hand. It also 'makes the case' for a shamelessly ambitious, not a low-ball or slow-walked, Green New Deal agenda. At the core of the paper's argument lies the observation that only a true national mobilization on the scale of those associated with the original New Deal and the Second World War will be up to the task of comprehensively revitalizing the nation's economy, justly growing our middle class, and expeditiously achieving carbon-neutrality within the twelve-year time-frame that climate science tells us we have before reaching an environmental 'tipping point.' But this is actually good news, the paper argues. For, paradoxically, an ambitious Green New Deal also will be the most 'affordable' Green New Deal, in virtue of the enormous productivity, widespread prosperity, and attendant public revenue benefits that large-scale public investment will bring. In effect, the Green New Deal will amount to that very transformative stimulus which the nation has awaited since the crash of 2008 and its debt-deflationary sequel.

Aesthetic and Historical Values - Their Difference and Why It Matters

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (5) ◽  
pp. 519-535
Author(s):  
Levi Tenen
Keyword(s):  
Natural Environments ◽  
Aesthetic Value ◽  
Environmental Preservation ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
In Virtue Of

Aesthetic and historical values are commonly distinguished from each other. Yet there has not been sustained discussion of what, precisely, differs between them. In fact, recent scholarship has focused on various ways in which the two are related. I argue, though, that historical value can differ in an interesting way from aesthetic value and that this difference may have significant implications for environmental preservation. In valuing something for its historical significance, it need not always be the case that there is a reason to want people to experience the entity. Valuing something for its aesthetic merit, by contrast, does imply a reason to want people to experience the entity. I suggest that in virtue of this difference, some historical values may offer better justification for preserving natural environments than do aesthetic considerations.

La otredad: ¿real o inventada? El caso de las brujas

1999 ◽  
pp. 21-33
Author(s):  
Elia Nathan Bravo
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Strict Sense ◽  
Empirical Content ◽  
Extreme Situation ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Witch ◽  
Early Modern Times ◽  
The One ◽  
In Virtue Of

The purpose of this paper is two-fold. On the one hand, it offers a general analysis of stigmas (a person has one when, in virtue of its belonging to a certain group, such as that of women, homosexuals, etc., he or she is subjugated or persecuted). On the other hand, I argue that stigmas are “invented”. More precisely, I claim that they are not descriptive of real inequalities. Rather, they are socially created, or invented in a lax sense, in so far as the real differences to which they refer are socially valued or construed as negative, and used to justify social inequalities (that is, the placing of a person in the lower positions within an economic, cultural, etc., hierarchy), or persecutions. Finally, I argue that in some cases, such as that of the witch persecution of the early modern times, we find the extreme situation in which a stigma was invented in the strict sense of the word, that is, it does not have any empirical content.

Omissions, Agency, and Control

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Zimmerman
Keyword(s):  
Subjunctive Conditionals ◽  
Control Section ◽  
And Control

This chapter focuses on two questions: How is omission related to action? Are our omissions within our control? Section 5.1 examines the question whether the control that we have over our actions and their consequences may be understood partly in terms of subjunctive conditionals. Section 5.2 examines the question whether the control that we have over our omissions and their consequences may be understood in the same way as the control that we have over our actions and their consequences is to be understood. Section 5.3 discusses the moral and legal significance of the conclusions reached in the preceding sections.

Grace and Freedom

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A. Muller
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Reformed Theology ◽  
Divine Grace ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
Ultimate Cause ◽  
The Will ◽  
Libertarian Freedom ◽  
The Church

Grace and Freedom addresses the issue of divine grace in relation to the freedom of the will in Reformed or “Calvinist” theology in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century with a focus on the work of the English Reformed theologian William Perkins, and his role as an apologist of the Church of England, defending its theology against Roman Catholic polemic, and specifically against the charge that Reformed theology denies human free choice. Perkins and his contemporaries affirmed that salvation occurs by grace alone and that God is the ultimate cause of all things, but they also insisted on the freedom of the human will and specifically the freedom of choice in a way that does not conform to modern notions of libertarian freedom or compatibilism. In developing this position, Perkins drew on the thought of various Reformers such as Peter Martyr Vermigli and Zacharias Ursinus, on the nuanced positions of medieval scholastics, and on several contemporary Roman Catholic representatives of the so-called second scholasticism. His work was a major contribution to early modern Reformed thought both in England and on the continent. His influence in England extended both to the Reformed heritage of the Church of England and to English Puritanism. On the Continent, his work contributed to the main lines of Reformed orthodoxy and to the piety of the Dutch Second Reformation.

Reference, intention, and context

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kent Bach
Keyword(s):  
Communicative Intention ◽  
In Virtue Of

This chapter takes up some recently published arguments that purport to show that a demonstrative, as used on a given occasion, refers either on account of certain features of the context or in virtue of a certain speaker intention, which is distinct from the sort of referential intention that is part of the speaker’s total communicative intention. After these arguments are disposed of, it is argued that there is no good rationale for maintaining that demonstratives refer in their own right. Rather, they have meanings that constrain their literal use. Speakers can and do use them to refer and to communicate what they use them to refer to without there being any referential role for demonstratives themselves to play. If this is right, it raises some interesting questions for standard conceptions of semantics.

Metasemantics, Metasemantic Superstructure, and Metasemantic Base

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Herman Cappelen
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Engineering ◽  
In Virtue Of

This chapter introduces the topic of metasemantics, developing a distinction between a metasemantic base and a metasemantic superstructure. Conceptual engineering is concerned with the meanings of our representational devices. Representational devices have meanings in virtue of some facts; there is some fact that makes it the case that ‘snow’ means snow, for example. The metasemantic base consists of those make-it-the-case facts: the grounding facts for meaning and reference. The metasemantic superstructure consists in our beliefs, hopes, preferences, and so on about our meanings. Most theorists have attempted to practice conceptual engineering at the superstructure level: they have attempted to get us to think differently about our meanings. This approach is mistaken. To change meanings we need to change the grounding facts: we need to change the metasemantic base.

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