Metaphysics/Epistemology

Mathematics depends on proofs, and proofs have to begin somewhere, from some fundamental assumptions. Chapter I traces the historical rise of pure mathematics and the development of set theory, eventually axiomatic set theory, to play this foundational role for contemporary classical mathematics. Here the Euclidean ideal of postulates that are simply obvious or self-evident can't be the whole story, which raises two basic questions: what are the proper methods for defending set-theoretic axioms? And, why are these the proper methods? Chapter II introduces the meta-philosophical perspective, called Second Philosophy, from which the inquiry into these questions will take place, and identifies straightforward mathematical answers to the first question. Addressing the second requires engagement with the troublesome ontological and epistemological issues that have dogged the philosophy of mathematics from its beginnings. Chapters III and IV describe and explore two apparently conflicting stands on these issues—called Thin Realism and Arealism—not so much to recommend either one, but with an eye to suggesting that the question of which is correct has less bite than it might appear. In the end, the hope is to shift attention away from these elusive matters of truth and existence, and to direct it toward the distinctive type of mathematical objectivity emphasized in the opening section of Chapter V. The concluding sections of chapter V return, at last, to the question of set-theoretic method and draw some concrete morals for the project of defending the axioms.

Socrates' greatest philosophical contribution was to have initiated the search for definitions. In this book his views on definition are examined, together with those of his successors, including Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Galen, the Sceptics, and Plotinus. Although definition was a major pre-occupation for many Greek philosophers, it has rarely been treated as a separate topic in its own right in recent years. This book, which contains fourteen chapters by different scholars, aims to reawaken interest in a number of central and relatively unexplored issues concerning definition. These issues are briefly set out in the Introduction, which also seeks to point out scholarly and philosophical questions which merit further study.

This book presents new work in philosophical theology on the universe, creation, and the afterlife. Organised thematically by the endpoints of time, the volume begins by addressing eschatological matters — the doctrines of heaven and hell — and ends with an account of divine deliberation and creation. This book develops a coherent theistic outlook which reconciles a traditional, high conception of deity, with full providential control over all aspects of creation, with a conception of human beings as free and morally responsible. The resulting position and defence is labelled ‘Philosophical Arminianism’, and deserves attention in a broad range of religious traditions.

Disagreement is common. Even informed, intelligent, and generally reasonable people often come to different conclusions when confronted with what seems to be the same evidence. Can the competing conclusions be reasonable? If not, what can we reasonably think about the situation? This book examines the epistemology of disagreement, with a focus on disagreements involving epistemic peers. Philosophical questions about disagreement arise in various areas, notably politics, ethics, aesthetics, and the philosophy of religion: this book focuses on the general epistemic issues arising from informed disagreement. Ten leading philosophers offer specially written chapters which together will offer a starting-point for future work on this topic.

This book puts forward a new theory of dispositions, showing how central their role in metaphysics and philosophy of science is. Much of our understanding of the physical and psychological world is expressed in terms of dispositional properties — from the spin of a subatomic particle and the solubility of sugar to a person's belief that zebras have stripes. The book discusses what it means to say that something has a property of this kind, and how dispositions can possibly be real things in the world. They have seemed too many to reside on the fringes of actuality, waiting to manifest themselves; the book's realist account reveals them to be far less enigmatic, and shows that an understanding of dispositions is essential to an understanding of properties, causation, and scientific laws.

Doing and Being confronts the problem of how to understand two central concepts of Aristotle's philosophy: energeia and dunamis. While these terms seem ambiguous between actuality/potentiality and activity/capacity, Aristotle did not intend them to be so. Through a careful and detailed reading of Metaphysics Theta, the author argues that we can solve the problem by rejecting both ‘actuality’ and ‘activity’ as translations of energeia, and by working out an analogical conception of energeia. This approach enables the author to discern a hitherto unnoticed connection between Plato's Sophist and Aristotle's Metaphysics Theta, and to give satisfying interpretations of the major claims that Aristotle makes in Metaphysics Theta, the claim that energeia is prior in being to capacity (Theta 8), and the claim that any eternal principle must be perfectly good (Theta 9).

This book is about normativity and reasons. It works out the consequences of a currently much discussed account of normativity, according to which all normative propositions are reducible to propositions about reasons, so that the normative domain is the domain of reasons. Part I sets out the foundations of this analysis, basing it on three primitive reason relations. Part II applies the analysis to epistemic reasons, hence to aprioricity, modality and probability, Part III to evaluative and practical reasons, hence value and morality. Part III also discusses the structure of practical reason, arguing that practical reasons have three normative sources, considers the nature of moral judgement, and discusses the relationship between moral judgement and practical reasons. Finally Part IV moves to the metatheory of reason relations, arguing for an irrealist form of cognitivism. It is shown how this metaphysics of reason grounds a new form of Critical philosophy. Freedom and knowledge are possible only if we can have a priori knowledge of reason relations, and such knowledge is only possible because it is grounded in pure spontaneity. Skorupski relates his argument to the insights of two traditions in the history of philosophy: the Critical or Kantian tradition, and the tradition of moral sentimentalism.

This book has both a negative aim and a positive aim. The negative aim is to show that some recent influential scientific claims about free will, consciousness, and action‐production are not warranted by the data. These claims (by Benjamin Libet, Daniel Wegner, and others) include the following: your brain routinely decides what you will do before you become conscious of its decision; there is only a 100‐millisecond window of opportunity for free will, and all you can freely do in that window is veto conscious intentions that you were about to execute; intentions and their physical correlates play no role in producing corresponding actions; and free will is an illusion. The positive aim is to show that there is powerful empirical support for the thesis that there are effective conscious decisions and intentions to act.

This book defends the view that the Everett interpretation of quantum theory, often called the ‘many worlds theory’, is not some new physical theory or some metaphysical addition to quantum theory, but simply quantum theory itself understood in a straightforwardly literal way. As such ‐ despite its radical implications for the nature of our universe ‐ the Everett interpretation is actually the conservative way to approach quantum theory, requiring revisions neither to our best theories of physics, nor to conventional philosophy of science. The book is in three parts. Part I explains how quantum theory implies the existence of an emergent branching structure in physical reality, and explores the conceptual and technical details of decoherence theory, the theory which allows us to quantify that branching. Part II is concerned with the problem of probability, and makes the case that probability, far from being the key difficulty for the Everett interpretation, actually makes more sense from a many‐worlds viewpoint. Part III explores the implications of an Everettian perspective on a variety of topics in physics and philosophy.