Philosophy Research Archives

This paper offers a detailed account of arguments in De Caelo I by which Aristotle tried to demonstrate the necessity of the perpetual existence and the perpetual rotation of the cosmos. On our interpretation, Aristotle’s arguments are naturalistic. Instead of being based (as many have thought) on rules of logic and language, they depend, we argue, on natural science theories about abilities (δυνάμεις), e.g., to move and to change, which things have by nature and about the conditions under which these abilities can be exercised. Our interpretation locates the De Caelo arguments in the context of some central doctrines of the Organon, the Metaphysics, the Physics, and other texts. The De Caelo arguments fit a number of views developed in these texts. Aristotle’s treatments of local motion, of natural motion and change, of necessity and possibility, and of abilities and their exercises are examples. But, as we interpret them, the De Caelo arguments raise serious questions about the role of (and the need for) Metaphysics A’s soulful Unmoved Mover in Aristotle’s overall natural-scientific picture.

Several epistemologists (Levi, Harman, Pollock) have recently urged the adoption of what I call a “no-fault” approach to the justification of beliefs. I argue that these views fall prey to objections raised by Alvin Goldman against internalism, specifically: they assume an initial set of regulative principles. It is also suggested that the way to avoid Goldman’s objections is through a psychologistic account of initial warrant.

A necessary refinement of the concept of circular reasoning is applied to the self-and-universally-referential inductive justification of induction. It is noted that the assumption necessary for the circular proof of a principle of induction is that one inference is valid, not that the entire principle or rule of induction governing that inference is true. The circularity in an ideal case is demonstrated to have a value of lin where n represents the number of inferences asserted valid by the conclusion of the justifying argument, and the ‘I’ represents the inference necessarily assumed valid.An induction antinomy modeled after Russell’s antinomy of the set of all and only non-self-containing sets is derived. Isomorphic antinomies are noted to be derivable for other arguments of philosophical interest, including those purported to undermine theories of determinism, relativism, and skepticism, and including the one that Descartes reduced and converted to ‘Cogito, ergo sum’.

This paper inquires into the very possibility of the units of selection debate’s origin in the problem of altruism, function in articulating the evolutionary synthesis, and philosophical status as a problem in clarifying what makes something a level or unit of selection. What makes the debate possible? In terms of origins, there are a number of logically possible ways to deviate from the model of Darwinian individual selection to explain evolved traits. In terms of function, adherence to the evolutionary synthesis yields norms which restrict these possibilities to a manageable few. In terms of philosophical status, the abstract structure of selection mechanisms permits a causal construal, on which the unit of selection is identified with the “unit of possession”, that which possesses the causally efficacious trait selected for. It also allows a teleological interpretation, on which the unit of selection is identified with the “unit of benefit”, that for the sake of which the causally efficacious trait is selected. It is proposed that a unit of selection is really a pair of units, consisting of both a unit of possession and a unit of benefit.

This essay distinguishes personal from generic fame and accurate from inaccurate fame, and claims that only accurate personal fame could possess intrinsic value. Nevertheless, three common arguments why accurate personal fame might possess intrinsic value are shown to be unsound. After rejecting two Aristotelian arguments to the effect that no sort of fame possesses value, the author suggests that fame is valueless if one assumes a modern axiology in which the good life consists of self-regulation and self-expression.

In ‘Davis on Enjoyment: A Reply’, Richard Warner replies to three objections against his ‘Enjoyment’ that I raised in my ‘A Causal Theory of Enjoyment’, and concludes that one of my examples in fact demonstrates a serious deficiency of my own account. I argue that Warner’s replies to my objections are unsatisfactory, and that his objection to my account had a ready solution.

I argue that stigmatization and inferiorization constitute the most destructive form of everyday poverty, the meaning of which is shown through a phenomenological interpretation of skid row. There are three parts to the paper. First, there is a brief discussion of poverty as a philosophical problem. Second, and ancillary to the analysis of skid row, there are discussions of the character of human dignity, everyday meaningful action and the psycho-social dynamics of stigmatization. Third, there is an analysis of skid row which, drawing on Heidegger’s death-analysis in Being and Time, concludes by characterizing skid row poverty as a kind of living death.