Editorial
All Straussians Now?
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- 06 July 2004, pp. 161-162
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Of course, we are not all Straussians, even now, and not just because Leo Strauss is virtually unknown outside the small circle of his followers. (Leo Strauss's name does not even appear in the first five works of philosophical reference we consulted.) Ignorance aside, many readers of Philosophy, along with many other intellectuals, academics, teachers and students, would in any case be appalled to learn that they have any beliefs in common with what is known to-day as neo-Conservatism. But neo-Conservatism is undoubtedly influential in contemporary American foreign policy, and its philosophical roots are Straussian in the very direct sense that many of those driving that policy would regard themselves as having been influenced by Strauss. And only the other day we heard an eminent member of the Conservative Shadow Cabinet in Britain declare that modern conservatism had just two options: to go backwards with Michael Oakeshott's inimitable brand of clubbable nostalgia or brightly forward into the twenty-first century with the neo-Conservatism of Leo Strauss.
To describe Leo Strauss as a neo-Conservative is itself an irony Strauss may have been appreciated. For Strauss was neither neo nor a conservative. He was not neo because he believed that the only way to understand our situation was to go back to the ancients, and to understand them on their own terms. We had to read Plato and Aristotle, and to understand them we had to read the Greek historians, Xenophon above all; to understand modernity we had to read Machiavelli, the first modern, and to understand him we had to read Livy, and so on and so on. And he was not conservative, if by conservative one means having an over-weening commitment to some local history or tradition or being nostalgic for an imaginary past. Strauss believed, as did the ancients, in a universal human nature, and he believed that from this nature followed certain things about the conditions necessary for human flourishing, now and in the future.
Strauss was born in Germany in 1899, into orthodox Jewry. His studies in Germany included a year in Freibourg as a colleague of both Husserl and Heidegger. He left Germany in 1932, and for most of the rest of his life he was a teacher in American universities, notably in Chicago and St John's College Annapolis.
What the ancients and his own experience further taught Strauss was this: ‘Liberal democracy is the only decent and just alternative available to modern man. But he also knew that liberal democracy is exposed to, not to say beleagured by threats, both practical and theoretical. Among those threats is the aspect of modern philosophy that makes it impossible to give rational credence to the principles of the American regime, thereby eroding conviction of the justice of its cause.’ The words are those of Allan Bloom, Strauss's pupil, taken from his obituary of Strauss in 1974, and in Strauss's view as well as in Bloom's the sources of that erosion included as well as Heidegger, Rousseau and Nietzsche.
Strauss himself had a horror of anything except thought. In Bloom's words he ‘was active in no organization, served in no position of authority, and had no ambitions other than to understand and help others who might also be able to do so.’
Nevertheless, despite Strauss's own reticence and his almost complete neglect in the academic world, some of those he helped, and some of their pupils are now influential in the highest political circles in the USA. They too believe in a universal human nature and that it is to be found in Africa and Asia and everywhere else in the world, as much as in the West. They believe that if you have the power to afford the benefits of liberal democracy in places where people have for decades suffered under tyranny or are locked into cycles of ethnic strife and slaughter, you should not turn your head away and pass on the other side of the road, as in different ways old Conservatives and modern cultural relativists might be inclined to do. You should actually intervene, even at cost to yourself.
These beliefs may be wrong, but they could well seem attractive to those seeking a better future for the world as a whole. They are not self-evidently absurd or wicked. They, and their best sources, deserve thought and study. It is time for the writings of Leo Strauss to appear on syllabuses of political philosophy.
Buttresses & Pillars
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- 08 October 2004, p. 503
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Winston Churchill was once described as a pillar of the Church. ‘No, no,’ he replied, ‘not a pillar of the Church, but a buttress, supporting it from the outside.’
Presumably being a buttress in the Churchillian sense did not mean being physically or institutionally on the outside; it seems more like a less totalitarian state of the internal exile lived by the dissident in the eastern bloc. It is a happier state? Not necessarily, one surmises, if one is surrounded by fundamentalist pillars, hectoring in their certainty and demanding in their professions of loyalty.
We are told that the world is full of fundamentalists, from Teheran and Peshawar, from Bagdad and Bradford to Houston and Colorado Springs, not forgetting the fundamentalists of science and its ‘public understanding’. Can this really be so? Are the pillars of faith really so sure of their facts, really so confident in their improbable dogmas? Are there really the million upon million of them claimed? Or, in les hommes moyen sensuels at least, in those whose character demands a degree of philosophical reflection, are there occasional seeds of doubt beneath the public displays?
It would be strange if this were not so, because even with those most certain of themselves thought has a tiresome habit of occasionally breaking in. Moreover, what the fundamentalists of to-day believe bears scant relation to what the believers of the early eras of their faiths believed. Fundamentalism, despite its appearance of permanence, is a changing and, arguably, a modern phenomenon, a response to the threats of scientific enlightenment and Western empire. Over the ages religions have survived as much because of the buttresses, holding the structures up while the pillars and interiors are changed, as because of the pillars which have only the appearance of immutability, and only over the short term.
For those in our day who believe that there may be much to be gained by fostering the spirit and practice which underlay the works of two great civilisations in very different circumstances, being a Churchillian buttress may be an honourable position.
Editorial: Virtual Philosophy
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- 17 February 2004, pp. 1-2
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We hear a lot these days about distance learning, about tutorials by e-mail and about universities on the internet. The idea in each case is that the student works at his or her computer and does not have to travel to a university or actually meet real tutors and professors in the flesh. There may be tutors and professors involved, but they will be transmitted in electronic form, through lectures beamed up and downloaded, and through tutorials wafting back and forth in cyber-space.
To some extent these ideas may be a response to problems arising from the over-expansion of existing (physical) universities. There are too many students and too few good staff. So sharing staff around via the internet would give more students access to good lectures and tutorials, while at the same time (possibly) giving dons more time for their own scholarship.
An initial reaction to such a prospect might be that internet contact between philosophers and students is better than no contact at all. But there would still be a feeling among many that it would be at best a substitute for the real thing. Is this feeling right, though?
After all, it might be said, philosophy is above all discussion of abstract ideas in the abstract. Might philosophy not lend itself particularly to discussion which is not just abstract, but disembodies too? In philosophy at least, virtual tutorials need not be just a substitute for real tutorials. They might actually be better. For they would be conducted without any of the distractions of physical reality and appearance and sheer contingency which in the real world interfere with the unhindered development of pure thought.
This, though, overlooks the importance in any genuine education of encounters between real teachers and real students. We have all had the experience of reading something in a book, and being initially convince by it, only to dissuade from its truth when we have actually had to expound or defend it in person. Part of what is involved in what Leavis used to call the ‘collaborative-creative process’ of university level discussion, a process at once critical and constructive, is personal identification with what one is saying or thinking, and the testing of this identification against other people equally personally involved in the dialogue. It is I who am identifying myself with this view, and staking myself on it, I, the whole person, and not some disembodied phantasm involved in an irresponsible simulacrum of communication and with some other equally disembodied phantasm, we know not where. We do not need to reflect on the conundra of the Chinese room here; the all too well-known inconveniences and fantasizing of chat rooms should be enough to warn us off the idea of a purely ‘virtual’ tutorial. We forget, at our peril that a thinker, at least the sort of thinker we might hope emerges from a philosophical education, is and has to be a person, with all that that involves in terms of integrity, consistency and development of character.
Postal and e-mail tutorials may be better than none at all, but they are at best substitutes for real meetings between real students and real tutors. Some may find it moot whether it might not be better to have an internet lecture or e-mail tutorial from some charismatic and telegenic star of the screen than to meet dull old Dr Smith of The University of the Balls Pond Road, but assuming that Smith has any knowledge or life in him at all, once the initial excitement is over, there is really no comparison at all. Even if a student receives as detailed a set of comments on an essay as could be imagined (a big if, one imagines, in most cases), written comments are only the start of a real tutorial. The student needs to be able to discuss these comments in the light of his or her actual understanding, and the tutor needs to be able to expand and qualify what he or she has written in the light of the student's living reactions. Nor, for similar reasons is there any substitute for a student building up a real relation with a real tutor, which is all but impossible without real and frequent contact.
And apart from formal encounters with one's teachers, a crucial part of a university education is one's informal encounters with one's peers. In such encounters young people discuss with each other all manner of questions, philosophical, cultural, scientific, political, moral and personal, related and unrelated to their formal studies. Those who talk of virtual universities forget that education, if it is real education, is education of the whole person, in which the whole person is engaged both inside and outside formal sessions. It is vital to remember this above all in the case of philosophical education, where the abstractness of the subject can too easily lead us to forget its ultimate point.
Jumping Ship
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- 07 July 2004, p. 359
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Following the revelations about what had been going on in Iraqi prisons, run by American and British troops, there has been universal and justified condemnation. Moral philosophers will hardly need in the future to invent arguments against the utilitarian justification of torture or to look for examples of inuria in bello.
Amid all the furore, one small but possibly significant phenomenon has been a steady procession of erstwhile supporters of the war, now seeking to distance themselves from the whole operation. Some are now saying that they had been wrong to support it in the first place.
This may indeed be the case. They might indeed have been wrong all along, for a whole variety of reasons, moral and practical. What, though, would be unfortunate would be if the misconduct of one operation meant that the whole question of wars of humanitarian intervention were to disappear from the philosophical and political agenda. Apart from anything else it would seem to blur any distinction between ius ad bellum and ius in bello.
But more important, we still have to consider whether it might ever be morally imperative to invade another country to protect its people, and if so when. Such a consideration may never have been part of the traditional just war doctrine. But that doctrine was formulated in times very different from our own, times when neither communications nor state nor military power were anything like they are to-day.
To put the matter bluntly: should we in the West be ashamed that we did little or nothing in Rwanda in the 1990s, say, even though Western interests were hardly affected by what was going on? We knew well what was going on, and we did nothing as hundreds of thousands were butchered. Would it be right or wrong for a coalition of states (any coalition) to intervene were such a situation to happen again? Or would the high probability that at least some of those the invaders thought they were liberating would come quickly to resent their ‘liberation’ be sufficient to rule out action of the part of those not directly affected?
The sad truth is that we cannot rule out a situation like Rwanda arising again in various parts of the world. Sudan may be on the verge of such a catastrophe even at the time of writing. We need to be prepared philosophically as well as practically.
Research Article
Religious Tolerance—The Pacemaker for Cultural Rights
- Jürgen Habermas
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- 17 February 2004, pp. 5-18
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Religious toleration first became legally enshrined in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. Religious toleration led to the practice of more general inter-subjective recognition of members of democratic states which took precedence over differences of conviction and practice. After considering the extent to which a democracy may defend itself against the enemies of democracy and to which it should be prepared to tolerate civil disobedience, the article analyses the contemporary dialectic between the notion of civil inclusion and multiculturalism. Religious toleration is seen as the pacemaker for modern multiculturalism, in which the claims of minorities to civic inclusion are recognized so long as members of all groups understand themselves to be citizens of one and the same political community.
Wittgenstein on Ethics and the Riddle of Life
- David Wiggins
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- 07 July 2004, pp. 363-391
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The paper seeks to interpret and then to criticize Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus paragraph 6.4 to 7 (the end), connecting this so-called mystical section with the “Lecture on Ethics” given in Cambridge in 1929, the Notebooks, and a passage in the Big Typescript. Interpretive and critical efforts focus on the claims: (1) that if having intrinsic value, good or evil, is nothing zufällig, then its basis is nothing in the world; (2) that value can only enter through the willing subject; (3) that “how things are in the world is a matter of indifference for what is higher”. Concerning (1), it is proposed that the zufällig is here that which simply or merely happens (or is brute fact). The argument for (1) rests on Wittgenstein's misconception of the categorical. It is remarked that (1) and (3) result in a philosophy of life that is unliveable. Witness the travails of Wittgenstein's own life and his struggle to “get over a particular fact”. Finally (3) will even undermine (2), which is in any case fatally ambiguous. In conclusion, it is suggested that both the stresses and strains that are induced within the Tractatus itself by its circumscription of the sayable and the difficulties of (1) (2) (3) can be overcome within Wittgenstein's later philosophy, but in ways already prefigured in the doctrine of “showing” as that appears in both Tractatus and “Lecture on Ethics”.
Time in Human Experience
- Jonathan Bennett
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- 06 July 2004, pp. 165-183
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A set of eight mini-discourses. 1. The conceivability of the physical world's running in the opposite temporal direction. 2. Augustine's reason for thinking this is not conceivable for the world of the mind. 3. Trying to imagine being a creature that lives atemporally. 4. Memory's need for causal input. 5. Acting in the knowledge that how one acts is strictly determined. 6. The Newcomb problem. 7. The idea that all voluntary action is intended to be remedial. 8. Haunted by the strangeness of the idea of the past qua past.
What Ayer Saw When He Was Dead
- Abigail L. Rosenthal
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- 08 October 2004, pp. 507-531
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It was news verging on sensational when A. J. Ayer came back from four minutes of heart death with a report of what he saw. Especially since the philosopher, who publicized his near-death experience [NDE] in 1988, in the Telegraph and the Spectator, was known for his lifelong rejection of religion and the supernatural. But, as will be seen, Ayer's beliefs on that head were substantially unchanged, if more ambivalently expressed, and the interest of his NDE lies elsewhere— in what it reveals about his philosophy.
Seeing Objects and Surfaces, and the ‘In Virtue Of’ Relation
- Scott Campbell
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- 07 July 2004, pp. 393-402
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Frank Jackson in Perception uses the ‘in virtue of’ relation to ground the distinction between direct and indirect perception. He argues that it follows that our perception of physical objects is mediated by perceiving their facing surfaces, and so is indirect. I argue that this is false. Seeing a part of an object is in itself a seeing of the object; there is no indirectness involved. Hence, the ‘in virtue of’ relation is an inadequate basis for the direct-indirect distinction. I also argue that claims that we don't, ‘strictly speaking’, see objects, are also false.
The Concept of Evil
- Marcus G. Singer
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- 06 July 2004, pp. 185-214
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Though ‘evil’ is often used loosely as merely the generic opposite of ‘morally good’, used precisely it is the worst possible term of opprobrium available. In this essay it is taken as applying primarily to persons, secondarily to conduct; evil deeds must flow from the volition to do something evil. An evil action is one so horrendously bad that no ordinary decent human being can conceive of doing it, and an evil person is one who knowingly wills or orders such actions. Malignant evil—doing evil because it is evil—is not just possible but real, and is one of several kinds of evil delineated. There are incidental discussions of cruelty, Rosenbaum on Explaining Hitler, Baumeister on Evil, and Benn on wickedness.
The Empire of Masks: Pluralism and Monism in Politics and Architecture
- Samir Younés
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- 08 October 2004, pp. 533-551
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This essay assesses the opposition of pluralism and monism with respect to politics and architecture, developing the argument within three general areas: the spurious association between political intentions and architectural character, the distinctions and commonalties between political freedom and artistic freedom, and the adverse effect of inappropriate associations between political content and artistic form in general and, in particular, the perceptual impairment of the processes by which buildings come to be endowed with their suitable character.
How Popper [Might Have] Solved the Problem of Induction
- Alan Musgrave
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- 17 February 2004, pp. 19-31
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Popper famously claimed that he had solved the problem of induction, but few agree. This paper explains what Popper's solution was, and defends it. The problem is posed by Hume's argument that any evidence-transcending belief is unreasonable because (1) induction is invalid and (2) it is only reasonable to believe what you can justify. Popper avoids Hume's shocking conclusion by rejecting (2), while accepting (1). The most common objection is that Popper must smuggle in induction somewhere. But this objection smuggles in precisely the justificationist assumption (2) that Popper, as here undestood, rejects.
Ethics and the Tractatus: A Resolute Failure
- Kevin Cahill
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- 17 February 2004, pp. 33-55
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The paper assumes for its starting point the basic correctness of the so-called “resolute” reading of Wittgenstein's Tractatus, a reading first developed by Cora Diamond and James Conant. The main part of the paper concerns the consequences this interpretation will have for our understanding of Wittgenstein's well-known remark in a letter to a prospective publisher that the point or aim of his book was an ethical one. I first give a sketch of what, given the committments of the resolute reading, the ethical point of the book will be, and then argue that given these committments and Wittgenstein's own philosophical biases at the time he wrote the Tractatus, the book cannot serve the ethical purpose for which it was written.
Literature and Philosophy: Emotion and Knowledge?
- Isabella Wheater
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- 06 July 2004, pp. 215-245
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Nussbaum attempts to undermine the sharp distinction between literature and philosophy by arguing that literary texts (tragic poetry particularly) distinctively appeal to emotion and imagination, that our emotional response itself is cognitive, and that Aristotle thought so too. I argue that emotional response is not cognitive but presupposes cognition. Aristotle argued that we learn from the mimesis of action delineated in the plot, not from our emotional response. The distinctions between emotional and intellectual writing, poetry and prose, literature and philosophy, the imaginative and the unimaginative do not cut along the same lines. That between literature and philosophy is not hard and fast: philosophy can be dramatic (eg Plato's dialogues) and drama can be philosophical (eg some of Shakespeare's plays), but whether either is emotional or not, or written in poetry or prose, are other questions.
Wrongful Life
- David Archard
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- 07 July 2004, pp. 403-420
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I argue that it is wrong deliberately to bring into existence an individual whose life we can reasonably expect will be of very poor quality. The individual's life would on balance be worth living but would nevertheless fall below a certain threshold. Additionally the prospective parents are unable to have any other child who would enjoy a better existence. Against the claims of John Harris and John Robertson I argue that deliberately to conceive such a child would not be to exercise the right to procreate. For this right is internally constrained by the requirement that any resultant child has the reasonable prospect of a minimally decent life.
The Standing is Slippery
- Michael J. Wreen
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- 08 October 2004, pp. 553-572
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This paper is a critical examination of the so-called slippery slope argument for the conservative position on abortion. The argument was discussed in the philosophic literature some time back, but has since fallen into disfavor.
The argument is first exposed and a general objection to it is advanced, then rebutted. Rosalind Hursthouse's more detailed and stronger objection is next aired, but also found less than convincing. In the course of discussing her objection, the correct form of the argument is identified, and it's noted that rejection of the argument requires finding fault with its inductive premise. That, in turn, requires either (a) identifying and defending a cutoff point other than conception, or (b) not identifying a cutoff point but directly attacking the argument's conclusion. As far as (a) is concerned, all except one alternative cutoff point have severe problems that have been well discussed in the literature. The one that doesn't, the appearance of the ‘primitive streak’, is examined in detailed, but ultimately rejected. As for (b), five different grounds for rejecting the conclusion are identified and discussed, but none is found plausible.
Variations on the slippery slope argument, concerning different conclusions that it may have, are then distinguished, related to each other, and critically discussed, and the paper ends with some cautionary remarks about the defense of the argument tendered.
Knowledge, Provenance and Psychological Explanation
- Robert Lockie
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- 07 July 2004, pp. 421-433
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Analytic theories of knowledge have traditionally maintained that the provenance of a true belief is critically important to deciding whether it is knowledge. However, a comparably widespread view is that it is our beliefs alone, regardless of their (potentially dubious) provenance which feature in psychological explanation, including the explanation of action: thus, that knowledge itself and as such is irrelevant in psychological explanation. The paper gives initial reasons why the ‘beliefs alone’ view of explanation should be resisted—arguments deriving ultimately from the Meno indicate that the provenance of a true belief may be relevant to the explanation of action. However, closer scrutiny of these arguments shows that they are incapable of according provenance anything like as central a role in action explanation as provenance has traditionally been given in the theory of knowledge. A consideration of the history of science suggests anyway that all knowledge has a compromised provenance if one looks back any significant distance. It is concluded that the importance of the provenance of our beliefs is something that has been seriously over-emphasised in epistemology.
Reason and History in Locke's Second Treatise
- Charles D. Tarlton
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- 06 July 2004, pp. 247-279
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The idea of an original contract is, ironically, inherently narrative in form; although tautological in essence, it nevertheless portrays events occurring in sequence. In response to Filmer's provocations that the idea of an original contract lacks historical veracity, Locke tries and repeatedly fails to establish a direct historical substantiation of his position in the early chapters of the Second Treatise. The most important of these various miscalculations concern the role of consent in his account of the origins of government, the tension between logical and historical evidence in describing the development of prerogative in the English monarchy, and the inescapable conclusion that conquest and not consent was the likely origin of most states. In these places, the Locke's deductive argument is forced to slow, hesitate, and change direction. The general concept of individual transgression, as it emerges from Locke's depiction of the state of nature, war, and slevery, later transforms itself into the basis of governmental injustice and tyranny. These, in turn, work to generate a sort of secondary and “political” state of nature in which now “historical” people, by means of concrete acts of resistance and revolution, enact the hypotheses of the consensual theory in their own actual time and place.
Property and its Enemies
- Anthony de Jasay
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- 17 February 2004, pp. 57-66
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Ownership is a relation with characteristics that force society to function more effectively and that make property a target of much hostility. Among the intellectual enemies of property, Locke is arguably the most influential. His “enough and as good left for others” condition, that he believed to be easily satisfied, was a failed attempt morally to justify property. Instead, it succeeded in undermining its legitimacy. Hume identified the existence of a convention,—in today's language, a Nash-equilibrium—which, being wholly voluntary and ageless, has attractive moral qualities besides ensuring the “stability of possession”. A recent attack against the “myth of property” by Murphy and Nagel is guided by an erroneous understanding of the nature of conventions.
Holistic Explanations of Events
- Aviezer Tucker
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- 08 October 2004, pp. 573-589
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Explanations of descriptions of events are undivided, holistic, units of analysis for the purpose of justification. Their justifications are based on the transmission of information about the past and its interpretation and analysis. Further analysis of explanations of descriptions of events is redundant. The “holistic” model of explanations fits better the actual practices of scientists, historians and ordinary people who utter explanatory propositions than competing models. I consider the “inference to the best explanation” model and argue that under one interpretation, it cannot account for all the paradigmatic cases of explanation of description of events that I present, though under another interpretation it fits comfortably with my holistic model. Finally, I argue that there is nothing intrinsic or structural to distinguish holistic explanations of descriptions of events from other hypothetical propositions because the pragmatic context of inquiry may well determine exclusively whether a proposition is considered explanatory.