Leibniz and the Square: A Deontic Logic for the Vir Bonus

Seventeenth century philosopher Gottfried Leibniz's contributions to metaphysics, mathematics, and logic are well known. Lesser known is his ‘invention’ of deontic logic, and that his invention derives from the alethic logic of the Aristotelian square of opposition. In this paper, I show how Leibniz developed this ‘logic of duties’, which designates actions as ‘possible, necessary, impossible, and omissible’ for a ‘vir bonus’ (good person). I show that for Leibniz, deontic logic can determine whether a given action, e.g. as permitted, is therefore obligatory or prohibited (impossible). Secondly, since the deontic modes are derived from what is possible, necessary, etc., for a good person to do, and that ‘right and obligation’ are the ‘moral qualities’ of a good person, we can see how Leibniz derives deontic logic from these moral qualities. Finally, I show how Leibniz grounds a central deontic concept, namely obligation, in the human capacity for freedom.     

Reconceiving the Boundaries of Home: The ‘Oikology’ of Ephesians

This article offers a reading of Ephesians in repair of a modern liberal inclusivism that unwittingly perpetuates an oppressive colonialist logic. It delineates the dynamic of dwelling, building and inhabitation present in Ephesians via the oik‐ root, coining the term ‘oikology’ to capture its inseparable economy and ecology. Willie James Jennings is a key dialogue partner in the articulation of the colonialist logic to be overcome. The particular species of modern inclusivism in view is that which is exhibited by New Testament scholars associated with the New Perspective on Paul, which I argue remains captive to a supersessionist logic. The article offers a non‐supersessionist reading of Ephesians, arguing that Israel, rather than being replaced, remains the wider habitat in which the gentile Ephesians find their home. In this way the article seeks a reading of the cosmic Christology of Ephesians as an instantiation not of colonial inclusivism but of true catholicity.     

Emergence for Nihilists

I defend mereological nihilism, the view that there are no composite objects, against a challenge from ontological emergence, the view that some things have properties that are ‘something over and above’ the properties of their parts. As the nihilist does not believe in composite wholes, there is nothing in the nihilist's ontology to instantiate emergent properties – or so the challenge goes. However, I argue that some simples (taken together) can collectively instantiate an emergent property, so the nihilist's ontology can in fact accommodate emergent properties. Furthermore, I show that employing plural instantiation does not bloat the nihilist's ontology or ideology.     

Why the Negation Problem Is Not a Problem for Expressivism

The Negation Problem states that expressivism has insufficient structure to account for the various ways in which a moral sentence can be negated. We argue that the Negation Problem does not arise for expressivist accounts of all normative language but arises only for the specific examples on which expressivists usually focus. In support of this claim, we argue for the following three theses: 1) a problem that is structurally identical to the Negation Problem arises in non‐normative cases, and this problem is solved once the hidden quantificational structure involved in such cases is uncovered; 2) the terms ‘required’, ‘permissible’, and ‘forbidden’ can also be analyzed in terms of hidden quantificational structure, and the Negation Problem disappears once this hidden structure is uncovered; 3) the Negation Problem does not arise for normative language that has no hidden quantificational structure. We conclude that the Negation Problem is not really a problem about expressivism at all but is rather a feature of the quantificational structure of the required, permitted, and forbidden.     

Risking Aggression: Toleration of Threat and Preventive War

Generally speaking, just war theory (JWT) holds that there are two just causes for war: self‐defence and ‘other‐defence’. The most common type of the latter is popularly known as ‘humanitarian intervention’. There is debate, however, as to whether these can serve as just causes for preventive war. Those who subscribe to JWT tend to be unified in treating so‐called preventive war with a high degree of suspicion on the grounds that it fails to satisfy conventional criteria for jus ad bello; – particularly the just cause and last resort criteria. Francisco di Vitoria held that the only just cause for war was ‘a wrong received’, which renders impossible any justification for preventive war. There are assumptions implicit in recent military practice, however – most notably, the US‐led invasion of Iraq in 2003 – that challenge this ban on preventive war. Interestingly, both supporters and critics attempt to justify their views through the broader logic of JWT; viz., through a conception of what is good for both political communities and individuals, and through a legitimate defence of these goods. Supporters point to situations where so‐called rogue states represent ‘grave and imminent risk’ of committing acts of aggression as grounds that justify preventive war; critics argue that to attack another political community on the basis of crimes not yet committed is a breach of the very rights JWT was created to defend. The advocate of preventive war does not appreciate important aspects concerning the morality of war. In the ongoing tension between Iran and The United States and her allies – if the rhetoric is to be believed – I am asked to tolerate a threat to my security and liberty, and to risk suffering aggression in defence of the rights of the antagonistic, but not yet aggressive, state. The crucial question is how such tolerance and risk fit in with the logic of just war: at what point, if any, does the risk of being attacked become great enough to justify declaring war in anticipation? In this paper I highlight some of the theoretical and practical difficulties in determining what counts as a grave and imminent threat, focusing especially on the complicated case of ‘imminence’ in the face of so‐called ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’. Secondly, I will argue that not only is the notion of preventive war inconsistent with the defence of the rights of political communities that JWT requires; it is also forbidden by the proportionality requirement of jus ad bellum. A risk of being subjected to aggression is the price for global peace. Whilst political communities can do much to prevent aggression and prepare themselves in case it occurs, the conditions for just war require that this prevention and preparation stop short of declaring war. We must live with a certain degree of risk in this area.     

Self-awareness as conscious meta-representation

Citing the phenomenon of transparency, some philosophers argue that we cannot become aware of the intrinsic properties of our experiences. When we introspect, they argue, our experiences always seem as if they are exhausted by their intentional contents. They conclude that introspection does not reveal any properties that seem intrinsic to experience. In order to answer this argument, we must show how it could seem as if we are simultaneously aware of external objects and our experience of those objects. I explain how this is possible by introducing the notion of conscious meta-representation. Conscious meta-representation occurs when we consciously conceive of represented objects as being merely putative. This sort of conceiving sometimes involves a distinctive phenomenology, and it explains how certain features of an experience can simultaneously seem as if they belong to external objects and to our experiences of those objects. We can, I conclude, look ‘at’ our experiences even as we are looking ‘through’ them.     

Depth of intention

The paper attempts to reconstruct some notions of Naess's semantics, and at the same time to relate them to more recent developments. On Naess's view, there is no such thing as a language in the sense of a shared structure which determines clear‐cut literal meanings like Fregean Gedanken or propositions. We use words, and try to interpret each other; but there is no a priori or intuitive basis for secure and precise knowledge about language. Interpretation or understanding, as well as thinking and perception, involve discrimination at higher or lower levels. There is neither a ceiling of crystal‐clear propositions nor a floor of ‘given’ sensations or ‘objective’ stimuli independent of categorizations and discriminations, which might serve as a bridge for translation or interpretation between the conceptual‐perceptual schemes of individuals. The notions of ‘concept’, ‘conceptual framework’, ‘situation’, ‘situation type’ and ‘proposition’ are defined, with some reliance on Barwise and Perry's situation semantics. Two notions of accessibility of situation types are defined; one as constructibility of the type at a given level of discrimination, i.e. in terms of objects discerned and concepts discriminated; the other as intelligibility of the type. Intelligibility entails constructibility, but not conversely. A type of situation may be constructible at some person's level of discrimination, but not coherently intelligible to him. On this basis, a logic of senses or truth‐conditions for uses of expressions is developed, and a logic of interpretations of uses. The central notions of Naessian semantics are defined: ambiguity and direction of interpretation, level of discrimination and depth of intention.     

Intentions,Permissibility, and Choice

T. M. Scanlon has argued that the intentions with which one acts, or more specifically, one’s reasons for acting, are non-derivatively irrelevant to the moral permissibility of one’s actions. According to one of his arguments in favor of that thesis, it can be permissible to act for one reason rather than another only if one can choose to act for a reason but, since that choice is impossible since believing as will is impossible, one can be permitted to act but one cannot be permitted to act for a reason. This paper aims to show that that argument is unsound. It first argues that the assumption that choosing an action is necessary for it being an object of a moral duty or permission cannot be made consistent with Scanlon’s idea that the same does not hold for an action being an object of blame. It then argues that even if direct control over forming beliefs is impossible, it is not impossible to choose one’s reason for action and, therefore, to be permitted or forbidden to act for it.     

Aristotle's Prior Analytics and Boole's Laws of Thought

Prior Analytics by the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384?–?322 BCE) and Laws of Thought by the English mathematician George Boole (1815?–?1864) are the two most important surviving original logical works from before the advent of modern logic. This article has a single goal: to compare Aristotle's system with the system that Boole constructed over twenty-two centuries later intending to extend and perfect what Aristotle had started. This comparison merits an article itself. Accordingly, this article does not discuss many other historically and philosophically important aspects of Boole's book, e.g. his confused attempt to apply differential calculus to logic, his misguided effort to make his system of ‘class logic’ serve as a kind of ‘truth-functional logic’, his now almost forgotten foray into probability theory, or his blindness to the fact that a truth-functional combination of equations that follows from a given truth-functional combination of equations need not follow truth-functionally. One of the main conclusions is that Boole's contribution widened logic and changed its nature to such an extent that he fully deserves to share with Aristotle the status of being a founding figure in logic. By setting forth in clear and systematic fashion the basic methods for establishing validity and for establishing invalidity, Aristotle became the founder of logic as formal epistemology. By making the first unmistakable steps toward opening logic to the study of ‘laws of thought’—tautologies and laws such as excluded middle and non-contradiction—Boole became the founder of logic as formal ontology.

… using mathematical methods … has led to more knowledge about logic in one century than had been obtained from the death of Aristotle up to … when Boole's masterpiece was published.     

Why are good theories good? reflections on epistemic values, confirmation, and formal epistemology

Franz Huber’s (2008a) attempt to unify inductivist and hypothetico-deductivist intuitions on confirmation by means of a single measure are examined and compared with previous work on the theory of verisimilitude or truthlikeness. The idea of connecting ‘the logic of confirmation’ with ‘the logic of acceptability’ is also critically discussed, and it is argued that ‘acceptability’ takes necessarily into account some pragmatic criteria, and that at least two normative senses of ‘acceptability’ must be distinguished: ‘acceptable’ in the sense of ‘being allowed to accept’, and ‘acceptable’ in the sense of ‘being obliged to accept’. Lastly, some connections of confirmation theory with naturalism, intertheoretic reduction, and explanation vs. understanding are explored.     

Russell's Early Theory of Denoting

The ancient Greek method of analysis has a rational reconstruction in the form of the tableau method of logical proof. This reconstruction shows that the format of analysis was largely determined by the requirement that proofs could be formulated by reference to geometrical figures. In problematic analysis, it has to be assumed not only that the theorem to be proved is true, but also that it is known. This means using epistemic logic, where instantiations of variables are typically allowed only with respect to known objects. This requirement explains the preoccupation of Greek geometers with questions as to which geometrical objects are ‘given’, that is, known or ‘data’, as in the title of Euclid's eponymous book. In problematic analysis, constructions had to rely on objects that are known only hypothetically. This seems strange unless one relies on a robust idea of ‘unknown’ objects in the same sense as the unknowns of algebra. The Greeks did not have such a concept, which made their grasp of the analytic method shaky.     

Intersubjectivity and Receptive Experience

Wilfrid Sellars's iconic exposé of the ‘myth of the given’ taught us that experience must present the world to us as normatively laden, in the sense that the contents of experience must license inferences, rule out and justify various beliefs, and rationalize actions. Somehow our beliefs must be governed by the objects as they present themselves to us. Often this requirement is cashed out using language that attributes agent‐like properties to objects: we are described as ‘accountable to’ objects, while objects ‘hold us’ to standards, and so forth. But such language is either deeply anti‐naturalistic or trades on a set of metaphors in need of a literal translation. We offer an explanation of how the material features of the world, as received in experience, can rationally constrain our beliefs and practices—one that makes no recourse to this imagery. In particular, we examine the structure of ostensive practices (that is, practices of directing one another's attention to objects and features of the world) and the distinctive role they play in making us jointly beholden to how things actually are.     

Towards the logic of projective identification

This paper is devoted to the ‘logic of the unconscious’ and its application to the analysis of projective intentionality in psychoanalysis.Subjective assumptions concerning the existence and identity of intentional objects are often unconscious. They result from personal experience through its assimilation and transformation in further psychological (e.g. defensive) processes. Formal aspects of these subjective assumptions and their influence on our judgment and action have been studied by a number of psychoanalytic authors, in particular by Silvano Arieti, Ignacio Matte-Blanco and their followers who tried to develop ‘logic of the unconscious’. My project consists in the reformulation, clarification and elaboration of the logic of the unconscious using contemporary modal and relevant logics, in particular Graham Priest's logic of intentionality. An important advantage of this logic is that it allows for truth indeterminacy and paraconsistency of the propositional content of intentional states. In this article I explore the logic of projective identification, which I assume plays the central role in the logic of the unconscious.Special attention is given to the logical analysis of the notion of an internal object, and to a logical reconstruction of the fantasy of projective identification.     

Objective Being and “Ofness” in Descartes

It is generally assumed that Descartes invokes “objective being in the intellect” in order to explain or describe an idea’s status as being “of something.” I argue that this assumption is mistaken. As emerges in his discussion of “materially false ideas” in the Fourth Replies, Descartes recognizes two senses of ‘idea of’. One, a theoretical sense, is itself introduced in terms of objective being. Hence Descartes can’t be introducing objective being to explain or describe “ofness” understood in this sense. Descartes also appeals to a pretheoretical sense of ‘idea of’. I will argue that the notion of objective being can’t serve to explain or describe this “ofness” either. I conclude by proposing an alternative explanation of the role of objective being, according to which Descartes introduces this notion to explain the mind’s ability to attain clear and distinct ideas.     

Frege on Truth,Assertoric Force and the Essence of Logic

In a posthumous text written in 1915, Frege makes some puzzling remarks about the essence of logic, arguing that the essence of logic is indicated, properly speaking, not by the word ‘true’, but by the assertoric force. William Taschek has recently shown that these remarks, which have received only little attention, are very important for understanding Frege's conception of logic. On Taschek's reconstruction, Frege characterizes logic in terms of assertoric force in order to stress the normative role that the logical laws play vis-à-vis judgement, assertion and inference. My aim in this paper is to develop and defend an alternative reconstruction according to which Frege stresses that logic is not only concerned with ‘how thoughts follow from other thoughts’, but also with the ‘step from thought to truth-value’. Frege considers logic as a branch of the theory of justification. To justify a conclusion by means of a logical inference, the ‘step from thought to truth-value’ must be taken, that is, the premises must be asserted as true. It is for this reason that, in the final analysis, the assertoric force indicates the essence of logic, for Frege.     

Using Syllogistics to Teach Metalogic

This article describes a specific pedagogical context for an advanced logic course and presents a strategy that might facilitate students’ transition from the object‐theoretical to the metatheoretical perspective on logic. The pedagogical context consists of philosophy students who in general have had little training in logic, except for a thorough introduction to syllogistics. The teaching strategy tries to exploit this knowledge of syllogistics, by emphasizing the analogies between ideas from metalogic and ideas from syllogistics, such as existential import, the distinction between contradictories and contraries, and the square of opposition. This strategy helps to improve students’ understanding of metalogic, because it allows the students to integrate these new ideas with their previously acquired knowledge of syllogistics.     

The capabilities approach and Catholic social teaching: an engagement

This essay brings Martha Nussbaum's politically liberal version of the Capabilities Approach (CA) to human development into critical dialogue with the Catholic Social Tradition (CST). Like CST, Nussbaum's focus on embodiment, dependence and dignity entails a social use of property which privileges marginalized people, and both theories explain the underdevelopment of central human capabilities in social rather than exclusively material terms. Whereas CST is metaphysically and theologically ‘thick', however, CA is ‘thin’: its proponents positively eschew metaphysical commitments, believing a commitment to quasi-Rawlsian ‘overlapping consensus' is more consistent with political liberalism. This creates two tensions between CA and CST. The first is that CST understands the internal virtues of essentially social practices to be inseparable from their concrete instantiation in actual communities, while CA sometimes describes these virtues as political entitlements which can be supported independently of the comprehensive doctrines of particular communities. We argue, therefore, that CA's commitment to political liberalism tends to ‘crowd out’ particular conceptions of the good, such as those found in CST. Second, because CST recognizes a plurality of spiritual purposes of property that CA does not, including promotion of what Pope Benedict XVI calls the ‘logic of gift', from the perspective of CST, CA will tend to be motivationally deficient in ways that negatively impact human development.     

TWO CHALLENGES THAT CATEGORICAL PROPERTIES POSE TO PHYSICALISM

What are physical objects like when they are considered independently of their causal interactions? Many think that the answer to this question involves categorical properties– properties that make contributions to their bearers that are independent of any causal interactions those objects may enter into. In this paper, I examine two challenges that this solution poses to Physicalism. The first challenge is that, given that they are distinct from any of the scientifically described causal powers that they happen to convey, categorical properties will not qualify as being ‘physical’ properties. Given the right definition of ‘physical’, this challenge can be overcome. I argue, however, that the only way we can have a positive grasp of the nature of categorical properties is via ‘acquaintance’– a non‐physical relation. This second challenge to Physicalism cannot be overcome. ¹ 1 I would like to thank Brendan O'Sullivan for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
     

A strange half‐absence: reflections on a faithful presence

‘Not being with it’ is a reproach levelled these days against those who do not easily assume that the most recent is the most authentic. By contrast, ‘being with it’ is a quality to be coveted in the field of ‘inter‐faith’ relations. Thus, to the recipient it seemed a possible exaggeration to entitle a Festschrift in that area A Faithful Presence. Perhaps response is permitted, adopting the more modest A Strange Half‐absence as more apt to tell how far the academic mind may be from the realities of faith; how vested interests of ‘fund and find’ may distort inter‐cultural assessments; how far religious leaderships may be from gentle cognisance of human tribulation; how dubiously we resolve the tension between assessing and possessing faith. Or is Faithful Presence an elusive dream?