Libertarian Volition and the Problem of Luck

2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 87-106
Author(s):  
Maria A. Sekatskaya ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Causal Role ◽  
Alternative Possibilities ◽  
The Past ◽  
Per Se ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Determinism And Indeterminism ◽  
Do So

The most important difference between contemporary compatibilist and libertarian theories is not the difference in their positions regarding the truth of the thesis of physical determinism, but their different approaches to the causal role of agents. According to libertarians, volitional acts performed by agents constitute a specific type of causes, which are not themselves caused by other causes. In this respect, event-causal libertarianism is similar to the agent-causal libertarianism, because it insists that in performing a volitional act an agent can choose one of the alternative outcomes without being caused to do so by anything else, where ‘anything else’ includes all the facts about the past and the present. Since event-causal libertarians maintain that volitional acts and the causal role of agents can be explained naturalistically, they must solve the problem of luck, i.e., they must explain how an agent is able to control her choices, given that she can choose one way or another without there being any difference in her state immediately preceding the moment of choice. This problem arises not from the indeterminism per se, but from the way it is coupled with the causal role of agents.In section one, I consider the historical development of compatibilist views on physical determinism and indeterminism. In section two, I present an overview of conditional analyses of alternative possibilities. In section three, I analyze the reasons why libertarians reject any type of conditional analysis, and show that intuitive objections against physical determinism, which portrait it as an obstacle to freedom, are untenable. In section four, I consider the consequence argument and show how it is related to the libertarian condition of sourcehood. In the final section, I analyze the problem of luck and show that it inevitably arises for any version of libertarianism. I demonstrate that indeterminism is a problem for libertarians, although they need it. And it is not a problem for compatibilists, who, while they do not need it, can incorporate it in their theories without facing the problem of luck.

Episode structures in literary narratives

2004 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
David S. Miall
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Reading Experience ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Do So

AbstractThis article is concerned with the moment-by-moment unfolding of the text as we might suppose the reader to experience it; in addressing one aspect of this reading experience, I propose a definition of the episode, and of episode structure, in literary narratives. To do so, I draw on insights from Ingarden, Iser, Barthes, Eco, Jim Rosenberg, and Ed Tan, but have found most useful the discussion of narrative structure in a 1922 essay by the Russian Formalist A. A. Reformatsky, which includes an analysis of Maupassant's story “Un Coq Chanta”. Reformatsky's essay is analyzed in detail. In a final section, I review responses to a short story (Kate Chopin's “The Story of an Hour”) and consider the evidence for episodes in readers' responses. To the number of convergent criteria used for characterizing episodes I add the role of the narrative twist occurring at or near the end of an episode, serving to intensify or redirect the issues raised, and itself characterized by a distinct development in readers' feeling. Episodes provide the phases during which issues of concern to readers are managed and developed, and the analysis of the episodes of a story may thus provide a valuable framework for identifying the key developments in the responses of readers.

scholarly journals Symposium: ‘The BRICS, Global Governance, and Challenges for South–South Cooperation in a Post-Western World’

2021 ◽  
pp. 019251212110522
Author(s):  
Niall Duggan ◽  
Bas Hooijmaaijers ◽  
Marek Rewizorski ◽  
Ekaterina Arapova
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Emerging Markets ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Western World ◽  
The Past ◽  
Power Shift ◽  
Global Power ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Political Economic

Over the past decades, the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) countries have experienced significant economic growth. However, their political voices in global governance have not grown on par with their economic surge. The contributions to the symposium ‘The BRICS, Global Governance, and Challenges for South–South Cooperation in a Post-Western World’ argue there is a quest for emerging markets and developing countries to play a more significant role in global governance. There is a widening gap between the actual role of emerging markets and developing countries in the global system and their ability to participate in that system. However, for the moment, various domestic and international political-economic challenges limit this quest. To understand why this is the case, one should understand the BRICS phenomenon in the broader context of the global power shift towards the Global South.

Memory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxwell Deutscher
Keyword(s):  
Memory Trace ◽  
Computer Models ◽  
Structural Analogue ◽  
Past Event ◽  
The Past ◽  
General Power ◽  
Ancillary Information ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Theoretical Question

Memory is central to every way in which we deal with things. One might subsume memory under the category of intellect, since it is our capacity to retain what we sense, enjoy and suffer, and thus to become knowing in our perception and other activities. As intelligent retention, memory cannot be distinguished from our acquisition of skills, habits and customs – our capabilities both for prudence and for deliberate risk. As retention, memory is a vital condition of the formation of language. Amnesia illustrates dramatically the difference between memory as retention of language and skills, and memory as the power to recollect and to recognize specific events and situations. In amnesia we lose, not our general power of retention, but rather our recall of facts – the prior events of our life, and our power to recognize people and places. Amnesiacs recognize kinds of things. They may know it is a wristwatch they are wearing, while unable to recognize it as their own. This recall of events and facts that enables us to recognize things as our own, is more than just the ability to give correctly an account of them. One might accurately describe some part of one’s past inadvertently, or after hypnosis, or by relying on incidental information. Thus, present research on memory both as retention and as recall of specific episodes, attempts to describe the connection which persists between experience and recall. Neurological or computer models of such a connection owe something to traditional notions of a memory trace, but emphasize also the re-tracing of original memories by later experience and episodes of recall. Historically, recollection has often been thought of as a mode of perceiving the past. Such an idea lends an exaggerated status to the role of imagery, which is but one member of a family of recollective activities that includes reliving, remembering, reminiscing and mulling over what has happened. It may be not in having imagery but in miming someone’s behaviour that one relives an event. Also, like imagery, what we feel about the past may seem integral to recollection. A sense of being brought close to the past arises particularly when events that involve our feelings are concerned. Yet we may also recollect an event, vividly and accurately, while feeling clinically detached from it, devoid of imagery. How a past event or situation remains connected with subsequent recollection has become a principal theoretical question about memory. It is argued that it is because of what we did or experienced that we recollect it. Otherwise, we are only imagining it or relying upon ancillary information. Neurological or computer models of such a connection owe something to traditional notions of a memory trace, but emphasize also the re-tracing of original memories by later experience and episodes of recall. Some argue that our very idea of memory is that of the retention of a structural analogue of what we do recall of them. Such an idea is not of some perfect harmony between what we remember and our recollection of it. Rather, it is suggested, only to the extent that we retain a structural analogue of some aspect of an event or situation do we remember, rather than imagine or infer it.

scholarly journals Social Criticism and the Exclusion of Ethics

2008 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell Keat
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Communicative Action ◽  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
Social Criticism ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
The Past ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Action Taking

AbstractAs Axel Honneth has recently noted, the critical concerns of social philosophers during the past three decades have been focused primarily on questions of justice, with ethical issues about the human good being largely excluded. In the first section I briefly explore this exclusion in both ‘Anglo-American’ political philosophy and ‘German’ critical theory. I then argue, in the main sections, that despite this commitment to their exclusion, distinctively ethical concepts and ideals can be identified both in Rawls’s Theory of Justice and in Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action, taking these as exemplary, representative texts for each theoretical school. These ethical elements, and their implications for the critical evaluation of economic institutions, have gone largely unnoticed. In the final section I indicate the kinds of debates that might be generated, were these to be given the attention they arguably deserve. I focus especially on the significance of empirical issues, and hence on the role of social science in social criticism.

scholarly journals Collimated Bipolar Outflow and the Formation of Nuclear Spirals; Possible Role of Magnetic Fields

1990 ◽  
Vol 140 ◽  
pp. 447-448
Author(s):  
P. Pismis ◽  
E. Moreno ◽  
A. Garcia-Barreto
Keyword(s):  
Magnetic Fields ◽  
Active Galactic Nuclei ◽  
Galactic Nuclei ◽  
Radio Galaxies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Bipolar Outflow ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Observational Techniques ◽  
Quasars And Radio Galaxies

The existence of non–steady phenomena, namely activity in the form of radial motions (outflow) of matter from the nuclei of galaxies is well established at present. Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) constitute a topic of great interest and are intensively studied by all existing observational techniques. Conventionally objects classified as AGN span a range from quasars, radio galaxies to Seyferts 1 and 2. It appears, however, that there exist galaxies which exhibit somewhat milder activity which does not qualify their inclusion in the AGN group. The designation of MAGN (M for mildly) was suggested in the past (Pismis, 1986) to cover the less energetic nuclei. It may be reasonable to consider that active nuclei form a sequence, the difference along it being due to the energetics of the nuclei, from the most active quasars and radio galaxies down to the mildest ones like M31 or our Galaxy. The phenomenon underlying the activity may thus be universal, subject to the intrinsic energetics of the nuclei (Pismis, 1987).

The End of Art and the Non-End of Religion: Hegel on Aesthetics and Religion

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
David Lê
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Modern Life ◽  
The Past ◽  
Per Se ◽  
End Of Art ◽  
Role Of Religion

Abstract While Hegel’s infamous “end of art” thesis states that art is “for us, a thing of the past” he insists that philosophy and, to a degree that is often underestimated by contemporary readers, religion endure within the structure of modern life. In this paper I aim to demonstrate how by focusing on Hegel’s claim that religion meets no end, we can come to a better understanding of how and why he thinks art does end. This will lead us away from common, but false, picture of Hegel as being indifferent (or even hostile) to art’s sensuous mode of intelligibility. Inasmuch as religion remains both necessarily sensuous and a component of social life that realizes freedom and divinity within modernity, the “problem” with art cannot be its sensuousness per se. What art ultimately finds itself unable to do, and what religion can do, is find a way to reconcile the destabilizing force of individual, subjective freedom with a jointly-held representation of who and what we are and what we value most, what Hegel calls “divinity” (das Göttliche). By countenancing the vital role of religion in Hegel’s thought, we can therefore better understand one of his most famous, and least understood philosophical claims.

LEGAL POWERS IN PRIVATE LAW

Legal Theory ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 136-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Essert
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Private Law ◽  
Careful Attention ◽  
Normative Structure ◽  
The World ◽  
Do So

ABSTRACTThis article explores the nature and role of legal powers in private law. I show how powers are special in that they allow agents to change their (and others’) legal circumstances merely by communicating an intention to do so, without having also to change the nonnormative facts of the world. This feature of powers is, I argue, particularly salient in private law, with its correlative or bipolar normative structure; understanding powers and their role in private law thus requires careful attention to this correlativity. In the final section, I argue that the correct explanation of a variety of substantive problems in private law, many having to do with the role of a party's intention, turns on correctly understanding legal powers.

Anthropology Meets History

2012 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 20-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Giordano
Keyword(s):  
Social Resource ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Past ◽  
Or Groups ◽  
The Future ◽  
Per Se

This article analyses the difficult relation between anthropology and history. The point, therefore, is to show how anthropology conceptualises the past differently from history as a discipline. Beginning with the differences between anthropology and history in terms of the concept of time, the article highlights that while for history time is concrete, objective and exogenous to human beings, for anthropology it is characterised by its being condensed, collectively subjective and endogenous. By analyzing actual examples, the article shows that the anthropologist is not interested in the past per se, but rather in the past as a dimension of the present. Accordingly, actualised, revised and manipulated history as well as the role of the past in the present need to be taken into account. Consequently, history and the past have their own specific efficiency because they are also a form of knowledge and social resource mobilised by single individuals or groups to find their bearings and act accordingly in the present and likewise to plan the future.

Gaspirali v. Il'Minskii: Two Identity Projects for the Muslims of the Russian Empire

2002 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mustafa Özgür Tuna
Keyword(s):  
Russian Empire ◽  
Russian Orthodox ◽  
Literary Language ◽  
Islamic Studies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Underlying Causes ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
The Russian Empire

In 1913, an article in a Russian missionary journal compared two “very typical representatives” of Islamic studies in Russia: İsmail Bey Gaspıralı (1851–1914) and Nikolai Ivanovich Il'minskii (1822–1891). Nothing could better symbolize the two opposing points of view about the past, present and future of the Muslims of Russia in 1913. Il'minskii was a Russian Orthodox missionary whose ideas and efforts had formed the imperial perceptions and policies about the Muslims of the Russian empire in the late Tsarist period, while Gaspıralı was a Muslim educator and publisher whose ideas and efforts had shaped the Muslim society per se in the same period. Il'minskii, beginning in the 1860s, and Gaspıralı, beginning in the 1880s, developed two formally similar but inherently contradictory programs for the Muslims of the Russian empire. Schooling and the creation of a literary language or literary languages constituted the hearts of both of their programs. Besides their own efforts, both Gaspıralı and Il'minskii had a large number of followers that diligently worked to put their programs into practice among the Muslims of Russia. As a result of the inherent contradiction of these programs, a bitter controversy developed between what we may call the Il'minskii and Gaspıralı groups, which particularly intensified after the revolution of 1905. In this article, I will discuss the underlying causes and development of this controversy by focusing on the role of language in the programs of Gaspıralı and Il'minskii. Then, I will conclude my article with an evaluation of the legacies of these two individuals in their own time and beyond.

scholarly journals Patterns of spatial methane distribution in the upper layers of permafrost in Central Yakutia

2017 ◽  
pp. 105-112
Author(s):  
M. Yu. Cherbunina ◽  
D. G. Shmelev ◽  
A. V. Brouchkov ◽  
V. S. Kazantsev ◽  
R. N. Argunov
Keyword(s):  
Field Studies ◽  
Methane Content ◽  
Central Yakutia ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Methane Distribution ◽  
The Right ◽  
Ice Complex

The article presents the results of long-term field studies of methane in the upper part of permafrost for the different geomorphological levels of Central Yakutia. Patterns of spatial distribution of methane content across different landscapes were found. The highest concentrations of methane are found in alas deposits, the major role of methane in the conservation there goes to the moment of freezing the thermokarst lake draining. The difference in methane content in the sediments of the Late Pleistocene Ice Complex on the left and the right bank of the river Lena was identified. That is likely caused by the conditions of ice complex formation.

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