This paper addresses a pair of issues about moral responsibility. One is whether "externalists" should claim that agents must have agential histories of a certain kind in order to be morally responsible for actions they perform or should instead, in light of certain stories about imaginary full-blown agents who have no agential history - that is, have never performed an action (because they just now came to exist) - stop short of that and contend that agents must lack an agential history of a certain kind in order to be morally responsible for something they do. (Such imaginary beings have come to be called "instant agents" .) The other issue concerns the earliest actions for which ordinary human agents are morally responsible. How does an ordinary child's moral responsibility get off the ground, as it were? Connections between these two issues are explored, as is the bearing of some kinds of manipulation on moral responsibility. It is assumed that only beings who are capable of acting freely are capable of being morally responsible for actions they perform.
Whether the work and thought of Charles Darwin can be more accurately described as reductionist or holist remains a strangely unresolved question to this day. Darwin is a legitimate heir to two distinct intellectual traditions: romantic natural philosophy of Von Humboldt and Goethe (with a significant inspiration drawn from Kant) and Victorian natural science of Herschel and Lyell. While Darwin's focus on uncovering evolutionary mechanisms (and, crucially, demonstration that a single type of mechanism - natural selection - explains much of the incredible diversity of living forms) induces many scholars to consider him an epitome of scientific reductionism, there appear to be equal grounds to regard this titan of science as thorougly holistic in his approach to life's history on our planet. Was Darwin, then, a reductionist or a holist? Perhaps there is another way to answer this question (or even better, another way to ask it): is it possible one can be reductionist and holist? Namely, contrary to eminently reductionist early and classical Modern Syntheses in evolutionary biology, both Darwin's original body of work and many today's developments in evolutionary biology, subsumed unter the label of Extended Synthesis - centered on shifting tempo and mode of evolution, punctuated equilibria, hierarchical multilevel selection, ecological-evolutionary-developmental (eco-evo-devo) feedback integration, phenotypic plasticity, and, last but not least, recent works by W. Ford Doolittle and others attempting to unify the Gaia hypothesis of James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis with evolution by natural selection and evolutionary worldview in general - seem to offer us a glimpse of complex multidimensional landscapes underlying biology as we know it (and, through continuing astrobiological reasearch, potentially also biology as we do not know it). All of this could be but a foretaste of a promising direction in our scientific and philosophical endeavor to understand life - one transcending the classical dichotomy of reductionism vs. holism, not without resonance with great philosophical traditions seeking the Union of Opposites.
C. Lloyd Morgan's Canon says that a higher mental faculty should not be postulated to explain an organism's behavior if the behavior can be explained by the hypothesis that it has a lower faculty. This epistemological principle strongly influenced and continues to influence cognitive science. The focus of this paper is on Morgan's own argument for the Canon, which philosophers have generally held to be fatally flawed. We disagree. Morgan's good argument for his canon is grounded in Morgan's assumption that an organism that has a higher mental faculty must also have a lower one, together with his belief that a new mental faculty evolves only if it provides a new adaptive advantage. Our main goal here is not to defend Morgan's canon or his argument for it, but to identify the argument's logical location in Morgan's larger framework.
This essay begins with a discussion of free will, and finally offers a more robust theory of ultimate freedom. My basic claim is that ultimate freedom is compatible with complete scientific explanation of human choice in terms of preference. Ultimate freedom is explained in terms of a special form of preference that I have called a power preference. Freedom is a consequence of a power preference that is the primary explanation of the choice. Preference is a fundamental concept in a scientific theory of choice in economics. My fundamental argument for the consistency of ultimate freedom and scientific explanation is based on a power preference being an adequate explanation, one that is self-sufficient. The power preference may be explained by remote events, but explanation is not transitive. So a power preference may be an adequate explanation that explains a choice that is not explained by the remote events that explain the power preference. That is my basic argument for the compatibility of ultimate freedom and scientific explanation.
The principle of plenitude, which states that "no genuine potentiality of being can remain unfulfilled," was influential from antiquity to the early modern period. A limited influence may remain even in contemporary settings, as some scholars have proposed. But all agree that the principle of plenitude waned considerably during and after the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Here I show that plenitude thinking, in a reductio form that first emerged in the early eighteenth century, has not waned but rather has increased in influence and importance in both cosmological and biological evolution. Darwin appealed to reductio plenitude as evidence for his theory of evolution, and reductio plenitude has strongly influenced natural science since Darwin. Today it plays a crucial role in theory justification as it provides, by far, the most powerful evidence for evolution by common descent.
This paper is a defense of the thesis, One is morally responsible for what one has done only if there has been some occasion on which one was able to have acted otherwise than one did. The defense is based on two premises, the apparently trivial proposition, If one is deciding between doing X and doing Y, and one ought to do X, then if one asks, 'Which ought I to do, X or Y?' the right answer to one's question is, 'You ought to do X'. and the extremely plausible proposition, If one asks, 'Which ought I to do, X or Y?', 'You ought to do X' is the right answer to one's question only if one is able to do X.
Compatibility dualism (henceforth CD) is the idea that, on the compatibility question of the free will problem, a complex position which to some extent encompasses opposing positions is plausible. Under the assumption that there is no libertarian free will, which we shall make, then we should be to some extent both compatibilists and denialists - namely, hold a view which incorporates both compatibilist and denialist elements. I first presented such a pluralist position more than 30 years ago, and have defended it in different ways a number of times since. My CD has been often misunderstood and looked upon as misleading, incoherent or even slightly deceitful. For example, many writers on free will seem to assume that I am "really" a denialist or hard determinist who adds a compatibilist element only pragmatically. The current paper discusses CD in order to better explain it and the motivation behind it. I will try to make CD more plausible and uncover the biases which make people hesitant to accept it (thus providing an "error" theory as to why CD has not been more widely accepted). We shall try to see why one should be a dualist on the compatibility question, and examine why most philosophers have resisted the reasons for beings so.
Darwin's theory has been one of the most influential narratives in both scientific literature and public discourse since publishing his foundational work. His name consistently appears in the list of ten most well-known scientists worldwide. But how has the popularity of his name been changing through the years? Has this change in his name's popularity occurred alongside the similar changes in popularity of major concepts introduced or studied by Charles Darwin? Text mining enables visual tracking of word usage trends in published texts. In this study, we applied frequency analysis to detect changes in the number of Charles Darwin's name mentions in several language corpora over a period of 150 years. By comparing the popularity peaks of Darwin's name and the most important concepts associated with it, such as Darwinism, evolution, natural selection, and variability, in different languages, we explore and visualize similarities and differences in their frequency across literature published in several languages. Based on the results of our analysis, we formulate several hypotheses regarding the potential reasons for the rise and fall of Darwin's popularity in textual sources, drawing on comparisons across linguistic and temporal contexts by comparing different language corpora in specific time periods.
For over a century, Darwin's theory of natural selection has provided the foundational core of evolutionary biology. This framework, however, is rooted in a reductionist and substance-oriented ontology that focuses on the selection of discrete traits. The integrative, holistic methodologies of systems biology now challenge this view, shifting the focus towards the dynamic processes and relations that constitute living systems, arguing that selection primarily acts on the adaptive potential and regulatory logic of entire developmental systems. This review argues that systems biology does not overturn but fundamentally expands the Darwinian paradigm, catalyzing the development of an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. By examining concepts such as gene regulatory networks, phenotypic plasticity, and dynamic organism-environment interactions (illustrated through examples like plant photomorphogenesis and the adaptive responses of Gasterosteus aculeatus), we demonstrate that evolution operates as a multi-level process governed by reciprocal causation and feedback loops. Crucially, this scientific shift necessitates a parallel philosophical transition: from a static, substance-based ontology to a processual one. It challenges the primacy of reductionism, linear causality, and the nature-nurture dichotomy, advocating instead for a relational ontology where emergence, agency, and becoming are fundamental. We conclude that systems biology fulfills Darwin's vision by providing a process-oriented framework adequate to the breathtaking complexity of the living world, one where evolution is understood as a dynamic interplay of recursive interactions between organisms and their environments. In the following, we explore four interrelated dimensions of contemporary evolutionary biology: the limitations of reductionism, the nature of dynamic interactions, the regulatory logic encoded in gene networks, and the evolutionary role of phenotypic plasticity.
The usual compatibility debates concerning moral responsibility, determinism and indeterminism tend to be all-or-nothing ("Determinism rules out responsibility!", "Undetermined actions are too lucky to be free!"). The suggestion in this paper is that the debate may benefit from being reconfigured around the question of whether determinism or indeterminism increase or decrease responsibility. The positions we shall explore in this paper are Mitigating Soft Compatibilism (the view that determinism mitigates responsibility), Enhancing Soft Compatibilism (the view that determinism enhances responsibility), Swings and Roundabouts Soft Compatibilism (the view that both determinism and indeterminism enhance and mitigate responsibility equally), and Different Strokes Soft Compatibilism (the view that determinism variously mitigates and enhances responsibility in different contexts). We shall also explore the related idea that our concept of responsibility has an impossible ideal-if both determinism and indeterminism detract from responsibility in different ways, then what is necessary for full responsibility may be impossible.
Philosophical discourse on 'the' problem of free will has been shaped by three basic options: Libertarianism (accept free will and incompatibility, but deny determinism), hard determinism (accept determinism and incompatibility, but deny free will), and compatibilism (accept determinism and free will, but deny incompatibility). While much sophistication has gone into developing variants of these core options, the resulting increase in complexity has been surprisingly one-dimensional, with a large compatibilist region in logical space being ignored. This paper carves out a region in the theoretical landscape that has hitherto remained surprisingly underexplored and provides some reasons for thinking that it might be worthwhile to venture deeper into these yet uncharted waters in our quest for a both philosophically reasonable and empirically warranted stance on free will, determinism, and incompatibilism. Section 1 recaps the standard taxonomy and some of its modifications. Section 2 draws attention to the fact that the resulting picture is extremely differentiated in one regard, but strikingly undercomplex in another. Section 3 attempts to understand why some perfectly coherent options have remained in the blind spot, arguing that there is no reason why alternatives to the well-trodden paths should continue to remain unexplored. Section 4 outlines the main motivation behind one of those unheeded positions that come into view when we take off the blinkers of the traditional taxonomy and look at the full breadth of options-a moderately skeptical indeterminist compatibilism-suggesting that it is both philosophically reasonable and empirically warranted.
In this paper, I appeal to a quantified counterfactual logic in order to argue that van Inwagen's new version of the Consequence Argument, unlike the original version of his argument, is logically valid. To this end, I build on an argument that has been developed by Alexander Pruss. Pruss has argued, on the basis of Lewis's semantics for counterfactual conditionals, that, given a suitable interpretation, David Widerker's version of the Consequence Argument is logically valid. In my paper, I extend Pruss' proposal and I argue, on the basis of a quantified counterfactual logic, that, given a suitable interpretation, not only Widerker's but also van Inwagen's version of the Consequence Argument is logically valid.
One powerful objection to libertarian accounts of free will is that, if actions involve any element of indeterminism, those actions are random. Such actions are thought to be random because the only factors that can aid in explanation are reasons, and reasons seem grounded in determined factors of actions. I challenge this objection through two lines of inquiry. First, I question whether indeterminism entails randomness, and I conclude that it does not. Second, I analyze how reasons are supposedly associated with determinism. The insistence that reasons explain only if determinism is true begs the question against libertarian views. I call the most entrenched version of this thinking "the reason-reason fallacy of anti-libertarianism" (or the r-r fallacy). Examples of the r-r fallacy typically commit a category mistake concerning how and what reasons explain. Others simply mistake our practices of providing explanations with the nature of the objects of those explanations.
Willusionists claim that science has proven free will to be an illusion. We propose a thought experiment that demonstrates how this view leads to an absurd conclusion: the term "free will" can no longer be applied differently to cases where agents control their bodily movements and cases where they do not. The experiment involves a fictional character, Dr. Strangelove, who suffers from alien hand syndrome in his right hand. He asks another fictional character, Mary, to return his free will. Mary, a world-renowned neuroscientist, believes there is no free will, only the illusion of it; therefore, she can only return the latter to him. To do so, she performs brain surgery that leaves intact the causal roots of the alien hand movements but nevertheless creates the illusion of control. However, it is evident that Strangelove still lacks control over this hand. We argue that the willusionist account fails to explain the disparity in control between Strangelove's left and right hands. This suggests that the willusionist perspective on free will may be fundamentally incomplete.
This paper is a defense of the principle: All the worlds that are might-worlds in the world x are worlds that share some of their momentary states with x (A (possible) world y is a might-world in the world x if it is true in x that if someone were to do something that person is able to do, y might be actual.) This principle is (given some reasonable definitions) a consequence of "Ginet's Principle": Our freedom is the freedom to add to the given past.
Quantum Mechanics is arguably the most controversial theory ever constructed: its overwhelming empirical success contrasts with the perplexity about its basic meaning. Darwin's evolutionary theory, on the other side, is hailed as the only conceptual framework that allows us to make sense of biological phenomena, at the same time its theoretical efficiency has been overly debated. Although both quantum physics and evolutionary theory constitute a scientific bedrock in contemporary thinking, a deeper analysis of their relationship is still missing. In the following paper I will address the connection between Darwinism and a specific interpretation of quantum mechanics proposed by Carlo Rovelli, namely, Relational Quantum Mechanics. I will aim to show that Darwinism (understood in a broad sense) has constituted a central source of inspiration for Rovelli's own proposal, in three different ways: first, Darwinism provides a model of a philosophically satisfactory scientific theory; second, it introduces a way of thinking at odds with traditional substantialism; and third, it stresses the central and unifying role of information.
Hume argues that Christianity would be a superstitious delusion if it were based on the testimonial evidence that Christ performed miracles. Wittgenstein argues that those who base religious belief on evidence are 'ridiculous' and that evidence turns religion into 'superstition'. Despite appearing to undermine Christianity, I argue that Hume and Wittgenstein defend Christianity from being undermined when contextualised in their philosophical project. Their philosophical project aims to show what Christianity is like, and they show that it would be a superstitious delusion if it were based on evidential reasoning. Therefore, if we think Christianity is not a superstitious delusion then we should think it is based on something else. Hume calls this something else 'faith' but doesn't tell us much about it nor what miracles do for it. Wittgenstein, however, does, and his views not only map Hume's but offer insight into Christian life. Read in this way, both philosophers remind us that Christ came to save souls through faith, not minds through reason.
Kant's arithmetical judgements do not meet his standard for mathematical construction. In his view, mathematics is synthetic a priori because it constructs mathematical objects a priori. The method of constructing is not one that philosophy can mimic but the resulting intuitive objects are an indication of how ampliative judgments can have a secure ground and do serve as guide to philosophy. While it can be separately argued that arithmetic is synthetic a priori, construction requires the exhibition of an object in intuition and mathematical construction in particular produces a continuous magnitude. In geometry, geometrical concepts have non-conceptual content via elementary constructions that correspond to a priori intuitive activities. A priori intuition conditions the successive nature of considering arithmetical judgements but it does not provide arithmetic with non-conceptual content. Absent arithmetical intuitive objects, we cannot characterize arithmetic as constructive, something Kant views as endemic to the mathematical method. To deny the in concreto constructive method of arithmetic is to deny its status as an organon of mathematics. While J. Michael Young's tracing of the arithmetical process closely aligns with the framework of construction it falls short of mathematical construction in subtle but significant ways. Arithmetic remains synthetic a priori but achieves syntheticity because arithmetical concepts cannot be exhaustively and exclusively contained within one another.
Our aim in this paper is to investigate the novelties that Descartes' theory of passions brings to contemporary emotion theories by contrasting it with a medieval understanding of passions. We review how Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine of Hippo, John of Damascus and Thomas Aquinas apprehend passions and compare their view to Descartes' as well as the other three most prominent contemporary theories of emotions: Jesse Prinz's theory, enactive theory. According to medieval perspectives, passions are seen through a value-laden lens and are deeply intertwined with religious beliefs. Descartes' theory of passions started their process of naturalization and secularization. On the other hand, we claim that the difference between the contemporary understanding of emotions and the medieval understanding of passions is not as significant as it is usually portrayed. In both cases bodily and active aspects of passions (emotions) are present. So, while Descartes truly influenced a new outlook and productive scientific discussion about passions and emotions, we do not think that the value-laden perspective was erased. We will try to demonstrate our thesis by analyzing the medieval perspective on the passion of sorrow and comparing it to contemporary views on sadness and depression.
Margaret Cavendish and Joseph Glanvill disagreed over the reality of witchcraft. In her assessment of the exchange between the two, Jacqueline Broad finds that Cavendish was the "voice of scientific reason", not only because of her disbelief in witchcraft but also because her arguments show that Glanvill violated scientific principles to which he subscribed. This paper reassesses the disagreement and comes up with two conclusions. First, Glanvill's position is not as internally unstable as Broad's analysis suggests. Second, Cavendish can indeed be viewed as a voice of scientific reason, but in a different sense: she expresses the spirit of the seventeenthcentury natural philosophy insofar as she accepts precisely those elements of magical and occult traditions that did end up incorporated into science, and rejects those that were cast aside, witchcraft included.
