Induction and Natural Necessities

Some philosophers who believe that there are necessary connections in nature take it that an advantage of their commitment is that the problem of induction is solved. This paper aims to offer a comprehensive refutation of the arguments necessitarians use to show that if natural necessities are posited, then there is no problem of induction. In section 2, two models of natural necessity are presented. The “Contingent Natural Necessity” section examines David Armstrong’s explanationist ‘solution’ to the problem of induction. The “Natural Necessity and IBE” section looks in detail into the claim that natural necessity is the best explanation of observed regularity. The “Dispositional Essentialism to the Rescue?” section moves on to Brian Ellis’s dispositional essentialist ‘solution’. The “Sankey’s Helping Hand” section examines Howard Sankey’s attempt to blend dispositional essentialism and explanationism.     

A Theory of Necessities

Journal of Philosophical Logic - We develop a theory of necessity operators within a version of higher-order logic that is neutral about how fine-grained reality is. The theory is axiomatized in...     

The Necessities of Perfect Freedom

This article is a reflection on Augustine's suggestion that Christians have significant theological reasons to accept that freedom need not be correlated with having choices. Following his lead, I explore questions about freedom and agency raised by the perfect freedom of the saints in heaven, Jesus' sinless earthly life and the freedom with which the triune God is eternally blessed. My thesis is that those who worship the triune God and praise the sinless perfection of Christ and the heavenly saints have reason to accept a ‘normative’ conception of freedom, according to which certain kinds of necessity are not merely compatible with perfect freedom but intrinsic to it.     

Physicalism, Conceivability and Strong Necessities

David Chalmers’ conceivability argument against physicalism relies on the entailment from a priori conceivability to metaphysical possibility. The a posteriori physicalist rejects this premise, but is consequently committed to psychophysical strong necessities. These don’t fit into the Kripkean model of the necessary a posteriori, and they are therefore, according to Chalmers, problematic. But given semantic assumptions that are essential to the conceivability argument, there is reason to believe in microphysical strong necessities. This means that some of Chalmers’ criticism is unwarranted, and the rest equally afflicts the dualist. Moreover, given that these assumptions are independently plausible, there’s a general case to be made for the existence of strong necessities outside the psychophysical domain.     

胡塞尔的起源观初探——从现象学还原与先验构造的关系入思

文章以现象学"相关性先天"论题为切入点,借助"纯粹现象"概念在现象学思义开端处所具歧义性的考察而导向现象学还原之本性的探讨.具体的讨论分别着力于对"相关性先天"论题和明见性概念的构造性阐释,籍此,揭示现象学还原与构造观念的内在关联,凸显出先验现象学向最终起源回溯的运思路向.     

Sweet Necessities: Food, Sex, and Saint Augustine

Central to Augustine's understanding of rightly ordered sexuality is his belief that the pleasure of the act should not be separated from its good (procreation). It is useful to observe that he reasons in a similar way about eating: that the pleasure of eating should not be separated from its good (nourishment). Inadequacies in his understanding of the purpose of food and eating may be instructive when we think about inadequacies in his understanding of sex. If there is more to food than he imagines, the same may be true of sex. Correcting for such inadequacies may also help correct for the (inadvertent) way in which his understanding of the purpose of sex may seem to legitimize technologies of assisted reproduction.     

Constitution and Similarity

Whenever an object constitutes, makes up orcomposes another object, the objects inquestion share a striking number of properties. This paper is addressed to the question of whatmight account for the intimate relation andstriking similarity between constitutionallyrelated objects. According to my account, thesimilarities between constitutionally relatedobjects are captured at least in part by meansof a principle akin to that of strongsupervenience. My paper addresses two mainissues. First, I propose independentlyplausible principles by means of which todelineate, in a non-ad-hoc, non-stipulative andnon-circular fashion, those properties whichcan be expected to be shared amongconstitutionally related objects in virtue oftheir being so related from those which ingeneral cannot be expected to be shared, orwhich are shared for other reasons. Secondly,I spell out in detail the nature of thesupervenience-principle at work in thiscontext. My account thus aims at isolating, ina methodologically responsible fashion, theparticular sort of restricted indiscernibilityprinciple which is a component of theconstitution-relation.     

Tichý on Kripke on a Posteriori Necessities

Philosophical Studies -     

在宪政与民主之间——从2000年大选透析美国宪政的二元个性

2000年大选暴露了美国宪政制度的危机.究其实质,这一危机是宪政与民主的冲突加剧的外在表现.由这一次大选提供的个案入手,本文分析了美国宪政的传统与改革的进程,并对最高法院与民主的关系做了一个审视.本文认为,宪政与民主的冲突与均衡在政治制度和政治意识等多个方面构造了美国政治文明的二元个性.     

Constitution and Kind Membership

Philosophical Studies -     

Monism and Material Constitution

Are the sculpture and the mass of gold which permanently makes it up one object or two? In this article, we argue that the monist, who answers ‘one object’, cannot accommodate the asymmetry of material constitution. To say ‘the mass of gold materially constitutes the sculpture, whereas the sculpture does not materially constitute the mass of gold’, the monist must treat ‘materially constitutes’ as an Abelardian predicate, whose denotation is sensitive to the linguistic context in which it appears. We motivate this approach in terms of modal analyses of material constitution, but argue that ultimately it fails. The monist must instead accept a deflationary, symmetrical use of ‘materially constitutes’. We argue that this is a serious cost for her approach.     

On Constitution and All-Fusions

Recently, Judith Jarvis Thomson has offered a definition of the constitution relation against the backdrop of a robust ontology of objects she calls all-fusions. Despite finding her reasons to believe in all manner of all-fusions intriguing, in this paper I note an unsatisfactory consequence of her position for constitution-theorists. I argue that an unrestricted commitmentto all-fusions should lead the constitution-theorist to reject her definitionof the constitution relation, on the grounds that by choosing our all-fusionscarefully, we can secure the unpalatable result that two different all-fusionsconstitute (or are constituted by) the same thing, even though neither one ofthem constitutes the other.     

Husserl and Haugeland on Constitution

Both Husserl and Haugeland develop an account ofconstitution to address the question of howour mental episodes can beabout physical objects and thus, through the intentionalrelation, bridge the gap betweenthe mental and the physical. The respectivetheories of the two philosophers of very differentbackground show not only how mentalepisodes can have empirical content, but also howthis content is shaped by pastexperiences or a holistic background of other mentalepisodes. In this article I first outlineand then contrast their positions in order to showhow the notion of constitution can beadopted to address major problems of contemporaryphilosophy of mind, especially thequestion of how the mind can be related to itsphysical environment.     

Incorporating geographic distance into mate preference research: Necessities and luxuries, 2.0

This study (N = 370) examined mate preferences in men and women using the budget allocation paradigm across traits typically studied and the value placed on geographic proximity or propinquity. Importantly, traditionally studied preferences (i.e., physical attractiveness and social status) were seen as priorities, whereas the novel trait of distance was a luxury, suggesting that people were willing to travel to find a partner who satisfies their more important mate preferences. Men valued a short‐term mate who was close to them more than women did. Prior work on mate preferences was replicated in their context‐specific nature as per evolutionary models of mate choice.