THE EMOTIONS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

In this paper I argue that Kierkegaard's theory of change is motivated by a robust notion of contingency. His view of contingency is sharply juxtaposed with a strong notion of absolute necessity. I show that how he understands these notions explains certain ambiguous claims he makes about causation. I attempt to provide a coherent interpretation of his view of causality that is consistent with both human choice and the causal sequence of change. I end by suggesting a compatibilist interpretation of Kierkegaard's philosophy.     

What Can Causal Claims Mean?

How can Hume account for the meaning of causal claims? The causal realist, I argue, is, on Hume's view, saying something nonsensical. I argue that both realist and agnostic interpretations of Hume are inconsistent with his view of language and intentionality. But what then accounts for this illusion of meaning? And even when we use causal terms in accordance with Hume’s definitions, we seem merely to be making disguised self-reports. I argue that Hume’s view is not as implausible as it sounds by exploring his conception of language.     

Interventionism and Higher-level Causation

Several authors have recently claimed that the notorious causal exclusion problem, according to which higher-level causes are threatened with causal pre-emption by lower-level causes, can be avoided if causal relevance is understood in terms of Woodward's interventionist account of causation. They argue that if causal relevance is defined in interventionist terms, there are cases where only higher-level properties, but not the lower-level properties underlying them, qualify as causes of a certain effect. In this article, I show that the line of reasoning supposed to establish this claim does not succeed and that interventionism is not better capable of dealing with higher-level causal claims than other accounts of causation. According to Woodward, higher-level causal claims are nonetheless more adequate than lower-level ones if they describe a realization-independent dependency relationship and, hence, meet the requirement that causes should be proportional to their effects. I argue, however, that combining interventionism with proportionality considerations raises difficulties and that, therefore, Woodward's account does not vindicate higher-level causation.     

Can ‘Downward Causation’ Save Free Will?

Recently, Trenton Merricks has defended a libertarian view of human freedom. He claims that human persons have downward causal control of their constituent parts, and that downward causal control of this sort is sufficient for free will. In this paper I examine Merricks’s defense of free will, and argue that it is unsuccessful. I show that having downward causal control is not sufficient for for free will. In an Appendix I also argue that Merricks’s defense of free will, together with assumptions implicit in his broader ontology, commit him to the implausible conclusion that determinism is incompatible with the existence of human persons.     

Michel Henry's Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience and Husserlian Intentionality

In his essay 'The Pit and the Pyramid: Introduction to Hegel's Semiology', Jacques Derrida claims that there is a privilege of speech over writing inherent in Hegel's theory of signs. In this paper, I examine Derrida's criticism. While it is to Derrida's credit that he focusses on an area of Hegel's philosophy that has hardly been analysed, his reading is problematic in several regards. After presenting Derrida's main arguments, I pose three questions, the first of which belongs to the realm of subjective spirit, the second to objective spirit, and the third to absolute spirit. I shall then show that Hegel makes several statements in favour of a privilege of writing over speech - statements that are not merely parenthetic or marginal. Moreover, those claims that Hegel makes toward any privilege of speech are in the wrong place, namely, subjective spirit, for them to represent his final point of view.     

Moving Beyond Causes: Optimality Models and Scientific Explanation

A prominent approach to scientific explanation and modeling claims that for a model to provide an explanation it must accurately represent at least some of the actual causes in the event's causal history. In this paper, I argue that many optimality explanations present a serious challenge to this causal approach. I contend that many optimality models provide highly idealized equilibrium explanations that do not accurately represent the causes of their target system(s). Furthermore, in many contexts, it is in virtue of their independence of causes that optimality models are able to provide a better explanation than competing causal models. Consequently, our account of explanation and modeling must expand beyond the causal approach.     

Rights to the Oceans: Foundational Arguments Reconsidered

This article examines theories of ocean rights based on the works of Hugo Grotius and Samuel von Pufendorf. Grotius's object‐centred view uses features of the natural world to justify claims to external objects. I show that Grotius's view is inadequate, because it relies on an outdated claim that oceanic resources are sufficiently abundant for anybody to use. Further, adaptations of his view are wanting, because they either rely on arbitrary distinctions or disregard the values of cultural minorities. Pufendorf's relational view constructs rights through the exercise of human will. While Pufendorf believes that agreements create rights, he also argues that property rights can be unilaterally acquired from the commons without express consent from others. The relational view is a viable alternative to the object‐centred view, because it both delimits territorial claims over the ocean to a ‘modest’ size and also respects cultural variability. A major aim of this article is to present Pufendorf's theory of territorial rights extended over oceans and to demonstrate how it is useful for assessing contemporary disputes. In the final sections, I apply the relational view to Canadian claims to the Northwest Passage, and I also sketch implications for assessing expanding claims to the seabed.     

Mysticism,Reality, Illusion,and the Freudian Critique of Religion

Freud's critique of religion cannot be fully understood if his ontogenetic perspective is explored outside of his phylogenetic perspective. The former allows for illusionistic thought processes that are orthogonal to reality claims. The latter requires consideration of empirical claims to truth within a social psychological perspective. It is only the phylogenetic perspective that allows Freud to maintain that religion is delusional, whether or not it is also illusional. Freud's rejection of "as if" philosophies as exemplified by Vaihinger is based upon his refusal to allow religious truth claims to escape their empirical, social foundations. Recent efforts to revive psychological theories of religion rooted only in illusionistic thought, as exemplified in the use of Winnicott's conceptualization, must confront social psychological issues similar to those articulated within Freud's phylogenetic view. A mystical reading of Freud is suggested in which claims to truth within psychoanalysis, science, and religion can be confronted in an empirical and inherently social manner.     

Memory and identity

Among the many topics covered in Sven Bernecker’s impressive study of memory is the relation between memory and personal identity. Bernecker uses his grammatical taxonomy of memory and causal account to defend the claim that memory does not logically presuppose personal identity and hence that circularity objections to memory-based accounts of personal identity are misplaced. In my comment I investigate these claims, suggesting that the relation between personal identity and memory is more complicated than Bernecker’s analysis suggests. In particular, I argue (1) that while he shows that some memories do not presuppose personal identity he fails to show that those that are appealed to in memory-based accounts of personal identity do not, and (2) that the features of his view that allow him to define memory without reference to personal identity also obscure important features of memory that must be part of a complete account.     

Causal Projectivism,Agency, and Objectivity

This article examines how specific realist and projectivist versions of manipulability theories of causation deal with the problem of objectivity. Does an agent-dependent concept of manipulability (i.e. the agency theory version of causal projectivism) imply that conflicting causal claims made by agents with different capacities can come out as true? In defence of the projectivist stance taken by the agency view, I argue that if the agent’s perspective is shown to be uniform across different agents, then the truth-values of causal claims do not vary arbitrarily and, thus, reach a satisfactory level of objectivity. My argument connects Price’s considerations on the situation of deliberation, whose structure, common to all agents, is the same with respect to both decision making and causal claims on a concept inspired by Douglas’s classification of objectivity of thought processes: the perspective of the detached agent. I further argue that, despite his agent-independent concept of intervention, Woodward’s claim of a stronger objectivity standard (i.e. agent independence) cannot be achieved, as the relativity of causal concepts to a variable set brings about the issue of the agent’s choice of variables. Consequently, a more permissive objectivity standard (admitting of the agent’s perspective) applies to both views.     

Aristotle's De Anima: On Why the Soul is Not a Set of Capacities

Although it is common for interpreters of Aristotle's De Anima to treat the soul as a specially related set of powers of capacities, I argue against this view on the grounds that the plausible options for reconciling the claim that the soul is a set of powers with Aristotle's repeated claim that the soul is an actuality cannot be unsuccessful. Moreover, I argue that there are good reasons to be wary of attributing to Aristotle the view that the soul is a set of powers because this claim conflicts with several of his metaphysical commitments, most importantly his claims about form and substance. I argue that although there are passages in the De Anima in which Aristotle discusses the soul in terms of its powers or capacities, these discussions do not establish that the soul is a set of capacities.     

Color and Similarity1

Similarity claims about the colors, for instance that blue is more similar to purple than to yellow, are Sometimes held to pose a serious problem for physicalism about color: the view that colors are physical properties of some kind. I examine various responses to this problem, find them wanting, and give my own solution, which appeals to the way colors are visually represented. Finally, I argue that the proposed account removes the principal motivation for Lewis's and Walker's response to Kripke's Wittgenstein, in terms of “natural” properties.     

Dissolving an epistemological puzzle of time perception

Robin Le Poidevin (2007) claims that we do form perceptual beliefs regarding order and duration based on our perception of events, but neither order nor duration are by themselves objects of perception. Temporal properties are discernible only when one first perceives their bearers, and temporal relations are discernible only when one first perceives their relata. The epistemic issue remains as to whether or not our perceptual beliefs about order and duration are formed on the causal basis of an event’s objective order and duration. Le Poidevin raises this issue in the form of an epistemological puzzle of time perception, from which he derives the claim that the order and duration of events do not causally contribute to our perceptual beliefs about them. Since his view is motivated by a causal truthmaker principle for grounding knowledge, it also holds that perceptual beliefs about temporal features must be caused by the features themselves in order to count as knowledge. Given these theoretical commitments, there is a puzzle concerning how such perceptual beliefs could constitute knowledge of temporal properties. In response to Le Poidevin, I argue for an account according to which order and duration are objects of perception, causally contribute to our perceptual beliefs about them, and such beliefs are capable of counting as knowledge. I conclude by showing that, on my alternative account, the epistemological puzzle dissolves and his own solution to it fails.     

From Volitionalism to the Dual Aspect Theory of Action

Volitionalism is a theory of action motivated by certain shortcomings in the standard causal theory of action. However, volitionalism is vulnerable to the objection that it distorts the phenomenology of embodied agency. Arguments for volitionalism typically proceed by attempting to establish three claims: (1) that whenever an agent acts, she tries or wills to act, (2) that it is possible for volitions to occur even in the absence of bodily movement, and (3) that in cases of successful bodily actions the relation between volition and bodily movement is causal. I defend an argument for the second of these claims from an objection by Thor Grünbaum, but I show that several volitionalist arguments for the third are not compelling. I then argue that the dual aspect theory of action provides a better account of the relationship between an agent’s volition and the bodily movements she makes when she acts, insofar as it has the same advantages over the standard story as volitionalism without being open to the phenomenological objection. I also defend the dual aspect theory from an objection by A.D. Smith. Finally, I show why the dual aspect theory of action is a better alternative to volitionalism than the theory of action recently put forward by Adrian Haddock. In order to avoid the phenomenological objection Haddock suggests a disjunctive account of bodily movements. While disjunctivism should be taken seriously in the philosophy of action, on the dual aspect theory it is the category of volition, rather than bodily movement, that should receive a disjunctive analysis.     

Divine Activity and Motive Power in Descartes's Physics

This paper is the first of a two-part reexamination of causation in Descartes's physics. Some scholars – including Gary Hatfield and Daniel Garber – take Descartes to be a `partial' Occasionalist, who thinks that God alone is the cause of all natural motion. Contra this interpretation, I agree with literature that links Descartes to the Thomistic theory of divine concurrence. This paper surveys this literature, and argues that it has failed to provide an interpretation of Descartes's view that both distinguishes his position from that of his later, Occasionalist followers and is consistent with his broader metaphysical commitments. I provide an analysis that tries to address these problems with earlier `Concurentist' readings of Descartes. On my analysis, Occasionalism entails that created substances do not have intrinsic active causal powers. As I read him, Descartes thinks that bodies have active causal powers that are partly grounded in their intrinsic natures. But I argue – pace a recent account by Tad Schmaltz – that Descartes also thinks that God immediately causes all motion in the created world. On the picture that emerges, Descartes's position is both continuous with, and a subtle departure from, the Thomisitic theory of divine concurrence.     

Mental Causation and Searle’s Impossible Conception of Unconscious Intentionality

In my article I evaluate Searle’s account of mental causation, in particular his account of the causal efficacy of unconscious intentional states. I argue that top-down causation and overdetermination are unsolved problems in Searle’s philosophy of mind, despite his assurances to the contrary. I also argue that there are conflicting claims involved in his account of mental causation and his account of the unconscious. As a result, it becomes impossible to understand how unconscious intentional states can be causally efficacious. My conclusion will be that if Searle’s conception of unconscious intentionality is to play a genuine role in the causal explanation of human action, it needs to be rethought.     

AQUINAS ON ATTACHMENT, ENVY, AND HATRED IN THE SUMMA THEOLOGICA

This essay examines Aquinas's discussions of hatred in Summa Theologica I‐II, Q. 29 and II‐II, Q. 34, in order to retrieve an account of what contemporary theorists of the emotions call its cognitive contents. In Aquinas's view, hatred is constituted as a passion by a narrative pattern that includes its intentional object, beliefs, perceptions of changes in bodily states, and motivated desires. This essay endorses Aquinas's broadly “cognitivist” account of passional hatred, in line with his way of treating passions in general. I suggest that Aquinas's account of hatred's arising out of attachment is compelling. However, I also argue that if Aquinas's treatment of hatred is to help us understand the phenomenon of hate, where classes of people are abominated for an identity they bear, and to avoid equating an oppressor's hatred with that of the oppressed for the oppressor, the cognitive pathway to hatred must be broader than through envy.     

Leibniz on Conatus, Causation, and Freedom

Abstract: In this paper, I address the topic of free will in Leibniz with particular attention to Leibniz's concept of volition, and its analogue in his physics – his concept of force. I argue against recent commentators that Leibniz was a causal determinist, and thus a compatibilist, and I suggest that logical consistency required him to adopt compatibilism given some of the concepts at work in his physics. I conclude by pointing out that the pressures to adopt causal determinism in Leibniz's system are perhaps more severe than those facing the contemporary libertarian, pressures that stem from empirical considerations about the behavior of bodies in the physical world, and the “well‐founding” of those bodies in simple substances.