EMERGENCE, DOWNWARDS CAUSATION AND THE COMPLETENESS OF PHYSICS

The 'completeness of physics' is the key premise in the causal argument for physicalism. Standard formulations of it fail to rule out emergent downwards causation. I argue that it must do this if it is to feature in a valid causal argument for physicalism. Drawing on the notion of conferring causal power, I formulate a suitable principle, 'strong completeness'. I investigate the metaphysical implications of distinguishing this principle from emergent downwards causation, and I argue that categoricalist accounts of properties are better equipped to sustain the distinction than dispositional essentialist accounts. Finally, I argue that the additional evidence needed for strong completeness renders the causal argument otiose for any properties amenable to scientific reduction.     

THE BLURRED LINE BETWEEN THEISTIC EVOLUTION AND INTELLIGENT DESIGN

It is often assumed that there is a hard line between theistic evolution (TE) and intelligent design (ID). Many theistic evolutionists subscribe to the idea that God only acts through natural processes, as opposed to the ID assertion that God, at certain points in natural history, has acted in a direct manner; directly causing particular features of the world. In this article, I argue that theistic evolutionists subscribe to what might be called Natural Divine Causation (NDC). NDC does not merely provide a nonsupernaturalist and noninterventionist model of divine action, it provides a line of demarcation between TE and ID. I make the critique that NDC is philosophically untenable and argue, consequently, that the line between TE and ID is blurred.     

AGAINST LEWIS's NEW THEORY OF CAUSATION: A STORY WITH THREE MORALS

Abstract: A recent paper by David Lewis, “Causation as Influence”, provides a new theory of causation. This paper presents an argument against the theory, using a series of counterexamples that are, I think, of independent interest to philosophers of causation. I argue that (a) the relation asserted by a claim of the form “C was a cause of E” is distinct from the relation of causal influence, (b) the former relation depends very much, contra Lewis, on the individuation conditions for the event E, and (c) Lewis's account is unsatisfactory as an analysis of either kind of relation. The counterexamples presented in this paper provide, I suggest, some insight into the reasons for the failure of counterfactual accounts of causal relations.     

CAUSATION AND THE CANBERRA PLAN

David Lewis has a general recipe for analysis: the Canberra Plan. His analyses of mind, color, and value all proceed according to the plan. What is curious is that his analysis of causation – one of his seminal analyses – doesn't. It doesn't and according to Lewis it can't. Lewis has two objections against using the Canberra Plan to analyze causation. After presenting Lewis' objections I argue that they both fail. I then draw some lessons from their failure.     

A RECONSIDERATION OF KIERKEGAARD'S UNDERSTANDING OF THE HUMAN OTHER: The Hidden Ethics of Soteriology

In this article, I embark on an analysis of Søren Kierkegaard's view of human otherness in strict correlation to his Christian philosophy. More specifically, my aim is to show that Kierkegaard's thought is essentially informed by a decisive appropriation of the soteriological category of sin which has momentous implications for Kierkegaard's views of selfhood and intersubjectivity. The main argument is that both Kierkegaard's negative evaluation of human otherness and his acerbic indictments of any collectivist interference in salvific matters cohere with his appropriation of the doctrine of the Fall. At the same time, I show in what sense Kierkegaard deems human alterity to be indispensable to one's spiritual self‐becoming expressed through the Christian imperative of loving the other as neighbor. Seen thus, agape, while supplementing Kierkegaard's creationistic psychology, actually becomes the necessary restorative opposite of sinfulness in the self's encounters with the distinct uniqueness of the human other.     

Cinematic Philosophy: Experiential Affirmation in Memento

This article demonstrates that Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000) meets both conditions of Paisley Livingston's bold thesis of cinema as philosophy. I delineate my argument in terms of Aaron Smuts's clarifications of Livingston's conditions. The results condition, which is concerned with the nature of the philosophical content, is developed in relation to Berys Gaut's conception of narrational confirmation, which I designate ‘experiential affirmation.’ Because experiential affirmation is a function of cinematic depiction, it meets Livingston's means condition, which is concerned with the capacities of the medium or art form. I address two objections to my argument and conclude with a brief commentary on the implications for the broader relationship between film and philosophy.     

Causes,Counterfactuals, and Non-Locality

In order to motivate the thesis that there is no single concept of causation that can do justice to all of our core intuitions concerning that concept, Ned Hall has argued that there is a conflict between a counterfactual criterion of causation and the condition of causal locality. In this paper I critically examine Hall's argument within the context of a more general discussion of the role of locality constraints in a causal conception of the world. I present two strategies that defenders of counterfactual accounts of causation can pursue to respond to Hall's challenge—including the adoption of a counterfactual condition that is sufficient for causal action-at-a-distance in place of Hall's ‘process’ condition—and conclude that Hall's argument against counterfactual accounts of causation is unsuccessful.     

THE VISUAL EXPERIENCE OF CAUSATION

The thesis that we can visually perceive causal relations is distinct from the thesis that visual experiences can represent causal relations. I defend the latter thesis about visual experience, and argue that although they are suggestive, the data provided by Albert Michotte's experiments on perceptual causality do not establish this thesis. Turning to the perception of causality, I defend the claim that we can perceive causation against the objection that its arcane features are unlikely to be represented in experience.     

Causal Exclusion and Causal Bayes Nets

In this paper I reconstruct and evaluate the validity of two versions of causal exclusion arguments within the theory of causal Bayes nets. I argue that supervenience relations formally behave like causal relations. If this is correct, then it turns out that both versions of the exclusion argument are valid when assuming the causal Markov condition and the causal minimality condition. I also investigate some consequences for the recent discussion of causal exclusion arguments in the light of an interventionist theory of causation such as Woodward's ( 2003 ) and discuss a possible objection to my causal Bayes net reconstruction.     

COHERENCE: THE PRICE IS RIGHT

This article is a response to Elijah Millgram's argument that my characterization of coherence as constraint satisfaction is inadequate for philosophical purposes because it provides no guarantee that the most coherent theory available will be true. I argue that the constraint satisfaction account of coherence satisfies the philosophical, computational, and psychological prerequisites for the development of epistemological and ethical theories.     

The World as Representation: Schopenhauer's Arguments for Transcendental Idealism

In this paper, I discuss Spinoza's conception of the cosmological argument for the existence of God (hereafter CA), as it can be reconstructed taking departure from Letter 12. By a CA, I understand, quite broadly, an argument which infers a posteriori the existence of a necessary being, usually identified as God, from the experience that there exists some other being, often oneself, the existence of which is contingent upon the existence of this necessary being. The difference between various versions of the CA stems from differences in the way in which the relation of existential dependence is understood. The aim of this paper is to reconstruct a version of the CA which would be valid on Spinoza's principles. I argue that such a version must be understood in the context of Spinoza's causal rationalism. By such causal rationalism, I mean a doctrine committed to the idea that everything is rational and thus explicable and that causal explanations are somehow fundamental. Moreover, I hold that, in Spinoza's causal rationalism, there is one form of causation through which all other types of causation are ultimately understood. This ‘archetype’ of causation is self-causation.     

A PEIRCEAN RESPONSE TO THE EVOLUTIONARY DEBUNKING OF MORAL KNOWLEDGE

The evolutionary debunking argument advanced by Sharon Street, Michael Ruse, and Richard Joyce employs the logic of Paul Griffiths and John Wilkins to contend that humans cannot have knowledge of moral truths, since the evolutionary process that has produced our basic moral intuitions lacks causal connections to those (putative) truths. Yet this argument is self‐defeating, because its aim is the categorical, normative claim that we should suspend our moral beliefs in light of the discoveries about their non‐truth‐tracking origins, when it is precisely this claim that relies upon the normativity under attack. This article cites Charles S. Peirce (1839–1914) to argue that such self‐defeat can be avoided by expanding upon the basic structure of the argument put forth by Griffiths and Wilkins, provided that one embraces a version of realism that corresponds with Peirce's doctrine of final causation. So construed, final causation reconciles real generals (including real moral values) with natural selection and undergirds further speculation of moral facts within values per se.     

DISPENSER OF THE MERCY OF THE GOVERNMENT: Pardons,Justice, and Felony Disenfranchisement

I argue that the aporetic character of clemency must be understood in terms of its unmerited and merited character to achieve the underlying purposes of justice within criminal justice: justice as fairness (punishment must be deserved and proportionate) and justice as restoration (repair of the harm to victims and society and the reintegration of offenders) are paramount goals. Rather than destabilizing political order, pardons can render productive potential tensions between justice as fairness and justice as restoration. Taking as my conceptual point of departure Paul Ricoeur's claims about the suprajuridical and supraethical character of pardon, I develop the argument through three central sections: an excursus into historical and contemporary practices of clemency in the United States; a critical analysis of the merited and unmerited aspects of clemency with respect to remorse and atonement theories within theological and legal discourse; and a normative engagement with pardons and felony disenfranchisement.     

The Argument for Subject Body Dualism from Transtemporal Identity Defended

In my argument for subject body dualism criticized by Ludwig I use the locution of a genuine and factual difference between two possibilities. Ludwig distinguishes three interpretations of this locution. According to his analysis the argument does not go through on any of these interpretations. In my response I agree that the argument is unsuccessful if ‘factual difference’ is understood in the first way. The second reading—according to a plausible understanding—cannot be used for the argument either. The discussion of this reading raises fundamental issues about different notions of propositional content. I disagree with Ludwig's diagnosis with respect to the third reading. Contrary to Ludwig's claim, there is no modal error involved if ‘factual difference’ is understood in the third way. Ludwig's objection to the argument according to its third reading can be answered by pointing out that every individual has its identity conditions necessarily. ¹ At this point fundamental and general metaphysical issues (concerning the link between identity conditions and the nature of ontological categories and between transworld and transtemporal identity) prove relevant. Finally, I make more explicit how ‘factual difference’ should be understood in the context of the argument (this is a fourth reading not considered by Ludwig) and explain how this reading strengthens the argument (compared to the third reading) by weakening its central premise. I conclude that Ludwig's attempt at undermining the argument from transtemporal identity for subject body dualism is unsuccessful.     

DIS-UNIFIED PLURALIST ACCOUNTS OF CAUSATION

One way of assessing the philosophical literature on causation is to consider views on the nature of the causal relation. Early theorists were 'monists', taking there to be one causal relation. More recent theorists, however, have turned to pluralism, which holds that the causal relation is only accurately captured by two (or more) relations. I argue that one way of being a pluralist – the way which takes there to be exactly two types of causation – is self defeating, if it promises to handle intuitions about all causal situations. I illustrate the point via neuron diagrams.     

UNIQUENESS,THE IMAGE OF GOD,AND THE PROBLEM OF METHOD: ENGAGING VAN HUYSSTEEN

Wentzel van Huyssteen's book Alone in the World? provides a thoughtful and nuanced account of human evolution from a theological perspective. Not only does his work provide what is perhaps the only sustained theological reflection specifically on human evolution, but his working through of many of the issues, particularly on the image of God literature in theology, has few parallels. Despite this, I focus on what I consider to be several weaknesses of the text, including areas of theological method, theological interpretation, and the central topic of human uniqueness. Addressing these weaknesses will, I propose, improve van Huyssteen's argument and lead in new and fruitful directions.     

A mereological argument for the non‐spatiotemporality of things in themselves

Kant's published arguments for the non‐spatiotemporality of things in themselves have not been well received. I argue that Kant has available to himself an argument for the non‐spatiotemporality of things in themselves that is premised upon a disparity between the compositional structure of the intelligible world and the structure of space and time. I argue that Kant was unwaveringly committed to the premises of this argument throughout his career and that he was aware of their idealistic implications. I also argue that this argument is consistent with Kant's restrictive mature epistemology. If my argument is successful, then even if Kant's published arguments for transcendental idealism fail, we need not regard his ambitious metaphysical project as a failure.     

APORETIC POSSIBILITIES IN CATHERINE KELLER'S CLOUD OF THE IMPOSSIBLE

In stressing the beauty of ignorance, of not knowing in the usual manner, Catherine Keller's Cloud of the Impossible evokes the death of a metaphysical (A)uthorial presence and the dissolution of closed systems of meaning. In this article, I view her text as part of a crisis of modernity that challenges dominant theological pathways, on which certain problematic views of the human have been constructed. In my reading, Keller's Cloud enriches humanistic thinking in the West and I explore the themes it shares with my own work in religious naturalism: there is no escape from the radical relationality and the irreducible materiality that structure human existence. I also emphasize that textual strategies are mere seductive, disembodied abstractions without acknowledging the force of materiality. Materiality matters; and I explore ways in which religious naturalism demonstrates how it does. In light of Keller's rich analysis, I focus on a “learned ignorance” that accompanies all of our limited interpretations emerging from the shifting, precarious positionalities as we rethink our relationality to each other and to all that it is.     

BRICOLAGE AND THE PURITY OF TRADITIONS: Engaging the Stoics for Contemporary Christian Ethics

This essay is a response to C. Kavin Rowe's critique of my 2011 argument that certain dimensions of Roman Stoic ethics are at work in Jonathan Edwards's moral thought. Rowe raises questions about the act of selectively retrieving ideas from a philosophical tradition to support constructive work in another tradition. I argue for the importance of acknowledging how Christian thought has been shaped by what Jeffrey Stout describes as moral bricolage, the selective retrieval of ideas from various traditions, and I contend that this bricolage can continue to be a fruitful means through which Christian ethics engages external traditions. Moreover, the importance of Stoicism's retrieval in early modern philosophy makes the work of eighteenth‐century theologians such as Edwards a particularly valuable resource for exploring the plausibility of Christian engagement with the Stoics.     

THE NEUTRALITY OF RIGHTNESS AND THE INDEXICALITY OF GOODNESS: BEYOND OBJECTIVITY AND BACK AGAIN

My purpose in the present paper is two‐fold: to provide a theoretical framework for understanding the difference between rightness and virtue; and to systematically account for the role of objective rightness in an individual person's decision making. I argue that a decision to do something virtuous differs from a decision to do what's right not simply, as is often supposed, in being motivated differently but, rather, in being taken from a different point of view. My argument to that effect is the following. The ‘objectively right’ course of action must be right, ‘neutrally’ speaking, that is right for each of the participants in a given situation: if it is right for you to do A, then it cannot, at the same time, be right for me to prevent you from doing A. But the latter is precisely how things work with virtuous action: for instance, it may be virtuous of you to assume responsibility for my blunder, but it isn't virtuous of me to let you do so. I maintain, on this basis, that, while objectivity does have normative force in moral decision‐making, the objective viewpoint is not, typically, the viewpoint from which decisions to act virtuously are taken. I then offer an account of objectivity's constraining power.