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In Pacifism and Nonviolence in Contemporary Islamic Philosophy, Tom Woerner-Powell combines historical analysis and contemporary interviews with Muslim peace advocates in an effort to develop an empirically-grounded survey of Islamic philosophies of nonviolence and a general analysis of the phenomenon. The first monograph on Islamic nonviolence to engage substantively with contemporary debates in the field of moral philosophy, his study is critical and descriptive rather than apologetic and polemical. His approach is both multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary. Drawing on methods from the fields of Peace Studies, Islamic Studies, and Moral Philosophy, he identifies, critiques, and addresses the shortcomings within the dominant approaches in these fields regarding the question of pacifism and nonviolence in contemporary Islam. Woerner-Powell's book sheds new light not only on Islamic cases of nonviolence, but also on the manner in which Islamic thought might play a larger role in secular and inter-religious debates. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.
This volume introduces the legal philosopher Adolf Reinach and his contributions to speech act theory, as well as his analysis of basic legal concepts and their relationship to positive law. Reinach's thorough analysis has recently garnered growing interest in private law theory, yet his 'phenomenological realist' philosophical approach is not in line with contemporary mainstream approaches. The essays in this volume resuscitate and interrogate Reinach's unique account of the foundations of private law, situating him in contemporary private law theory and broader philosophical currents. The work also makes Reinach's methods more accessible to those unfamiliar with early phenomenology. Together these contributions prove that while Reinach's perspective on private law shares similarities and points of departure with trends in today's legal theory, many of his insights remain singular and illuminating in their own right. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Rhetorical Traditions and Contemporary Law is a collection of twelve case studies that explore the often-overlooked intersections of law and rhetoric. Drawing from rhetorical traditions of the past and present, the multidisciplinary roster of contributors analyzes contemporary legal theory and practice, from judicial opinions to legal scholarship, using significant texts or concepts in a rhetorical tradition. Their essays demonstrate how legal texts function and to what end, while also considering how they might have worked differently. The volume sheds light on the usefulness of rhetoric in addressing some of today's most pressing legal and social challenges. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
In this book Robert Roreitner offers a fresh interpretation of Aristotle's philosophically intriguing answers to what the nature of perception is, how it can be explained, and how perception is distinguished from mere appearance. He argues that for Aristotle, perception is a complete passive activity, and explains why this notion merely appears self-contradictory to us. He shows how Aristotle succeeds in integrating causal, qualitative, and relational aspects of perception, and explains why he is neither a 'spiritualist' nor a 'materialist'. He presses and resolves an unappreciated dilemma for Aristotle's hylomorphic account of perception and the role of the soul therein. This rich study shows that although Aristotle's understanding of perception may be in many respects outmoded, its core insights remain philosophically engaging. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
This Element presents the main attempts to account for causation as a metaphysical concept, in terms of 1) regularities and laws of nature, 2) conditional probabilities and Bayes nets, 3) necessitation between universals and causal powers, 4) counterfactual dependence, 5) interventions and causal models, and 6) processes and mechanisms. None of these accounts can provide a complete reductive analysis. However, some provide the means to distinguish several useful concepts of causation, such as total cause, contributing cause, direct and indirect cause, and actual cause. Moreover, some of these accounts can be construed so as to complement each other. The last part presents some contemporary debates: on the relation between grounding and causation, eliminativism with respect to causation in physics, the challenge against 'downward' causation from the Closure and Exclusion principles, robust and proportional causation, and degrees of causation. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
This Element examines philosophical accounts of scientific explanation, particularly those that apply to biology and the life sciences. Two main categories of scientific explanation are examined in detail –causal explanations and non-causal explanations. The first section of this Element provides a brief history and some basics on philosophical accounts of scientific explanation. Section 2 covers causal explanation, first by discussing foundational topics in the area, such as defining causation, causal selection, and reductive explanation. This is followed by an examination of distinct types of causal explanation, including those that appeal to mechanisms pathways, and cascades. The third section covers non-causal, mathematical explanations, which have received significant attention in philosophy of biology and the life sciences. Three main types of non-causal, mathematical explanation are discussed: topological and constraint-based explanation, optimality and efficiency explanations, and minimal model explanations. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
In normative ethics, a small number of moral theories, such as Kantianism or consequentialism, take centre stage. Conventional wisdom has it that these individual theories posit very different ways of looking at the world. In this book Marius Baumann develops the idea that just as scientific theories can be underdetermined by data, so can moral theories be underdetermined by our considered judgments about particular cases. Baumann goes on to ask whether moral theories from different traditions might arrive at the same verdicts while remaining explanatorily incompatible. He applies this idea to recent projects in normative ethics, such as Derek Parfit's On What Matters and so-called consequentializing and deontologizing, and outlines its important implications for our understanding of the relationship between the main moral traditions as well as the moral realism debate. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Disagreement is a common feature of a social world. For various reasons, however, we sometimes need to resolve a disagreement into a single set of opinions. This can be achieved by pooling the opinions of individuals that make up the group. In this Element, we provide an opinionated survey on some ways of pooling opinions: linear pooling, multiplicative pooling (including geometric), and pooling through imprecise probabilities. While we give significant attention to the axiomatic approach in evaluating pooling strategies, we also evaluate them in terms of the epistemic and practical goals they might meet. In doing so, we connect opinion pooling to some philosophical problems in social epistemology and the philosophy of action, illuminating different perspectives one might take when figuring out how to pool opinions for a given purpose. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) lived through an era of great political turmoil, but previous assessments of his political thought have portrayed him as a pessimistic observer with no constructive solutions to offer. By assembling and contextualizing Schopenhauer's dispersed comments on political matters, this book reveals that he developed a distinct conception of politics. In opposition to rising ideological movements such as nationalism or socialism, Schopenhauer denied that politics can ever bring about universal emancipation or fraternal unity. Instead, he viewed politics as a tool for mitigating rather than resolving the conflicts of a fundamentally imperfect world. Jakob Norberg's fascinating book reconstructs Schopenhauer's political ideas and shows how they relate to the dominant debates and trends during the period in which he lived. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
One of the most remarkable features of the current religious landscape in the West is the emergence of new Pagan religions. Here the author will use techniques from recent analytic philosophy of religion to try to clarify and understand the major themes in contemporary Paganisms. They will discuss Pagan concepts of nature, looking at nature as a network of animated agents. They will examine several Pagan theologies, and Pagan ways of relating to deities, such as theurgy. They will discuss Pagan practices like divination, visualization, and magic. And they will talk about Pagan ethics. Their discussions are based on extensive references to contemporary Pagan writings, from many different traditions. New Pagan religions, and new Pagan philosophies, have much to contribute to the religious future of the West, and to contemporary analytic philosophy of religion.
Any modern, moderately intellectually mature (MMIM) believer in God faces a variety of epistemic defeaters of their belief in God. Epistemic defeaters challenge the rationality of a belief. After explaining the notion of a defeater and discussing various ways and targets of defeat, this Element categorizes the many defeaters of belief in God into four classes: rebutting, undercutting, base defeaters, and competence defeaters. Then, several general defeaters of theistic belief are examined in some detail: the superfluity argument, the problem of unpossessed evidence, various forms of debunking arguments, and a cumulative case competence defeater. The typical MMIM believer, it is argued, has resources to resist these defeaters, although the cumulative case competence defeater has some force. The strength of its force depends on the strength of grounds for theistic belief and of various defeaters and deflectors for the competence defeater. No easy general defeater of theistic belief is found.
An overview is offered of Wittgenstein's groundbreaking discussion of knowledge and certainty, especially in his final notebooks, published as On Certainty. The main interpretative readings of On Certainty are discussed, especially a non-propositional/non-epistemic interpretation and a variety of propositional and/or epistemic interpretations. Surveys are offered of the readings of On Certainty presented by such figures as Annalisa Coliva, John Greco, Danièle Moyal-Sharrock, Duncan Pritchard, Genia Schönbaumsfeld, P. F. Strawson, MichaelWilliams, and CrispinWright. This Element demonstrates how On Certainty has been especially groundbreaking for epistemology with regard to its treatment of the problem of radical scepticism.
Kant's main work in the philosophy of law – the Doctrine of Right (1797) – is notoriously difficult for modern readers to understand. Kant clearly argues that rightful relations between human beings can only be achieved if we enter into a civil legal condition taking a defined constitutional form. In this Element, we emphasise that Kant considers this claim to be a postulate of practical reason, thus identifying the pure idea of the state as the culmination of his entire practical philosophy. The Doctrine of Right makes sense as an attempt to clarify the content of the postulate of public right and constructively interpret existing domestic and international legal arrangements in the light of the noumenal republic it postulates. Properly understood, Kant's postulate of public right is the epistemological foundation of a non-positivist legal theory that remains of central significance to modern legal philosophy and legal doctrinal method.
Are races real? Is race a biological or social category? What role, if any, does race play in scientific explanations? This Cambridge Element addresses these and other core questions in the metaphysics of race. It discusses prominent accounts of race such as biological racial realism, social constructivism about race, and racial anti-realism. If anti-realists are right, our societies find themselves in thrall to a concept that is scarcely more veridical than 'witch' or 'werewolf'. Social constructionism grounds race in factors ultimately controlled by human thought and action. Biological racial realists argue that race is too quickly dismissed as biologically meaningful, and that it has a role to play in contemporary life sciences. The Element explores these views and shows their virtues and shortcomings. In particular, it advances an argument against biological racial realism that draws on the metaphysics of naturalness and philosophy of biology and medicine.
This Element discusses the philosophical roles of definitions in the attainment of mathematical knowledge. It first focuses on the role of definitions in foundational programs, and then examines their major varieties, both as regards their origins, their potential epistemic roles, and their formal constraints. It examines explicit definitions, implicit definitions, and implicit definitions of primitive terms, these latter being further divided into axiomatic and abstractive. After discussing elucidations and explications, various ways in which definitions can yield mathematical knowledge are surveyed.
Control is a key ingredient of scientific experimentation; arguably, an uncontrolled intervention or manipulation is not even a genuine experiment. Experiments in the life sciences, however, are notoriously difficult to control due to the complexity and variability of living things. This Element discusses general features of controlled experimentation, epistemic and practical aspects, and historical perspectives. It argues that controlled experimentation has a material-technical and a conceptual side. It shifts the focus from control experiments, comparisons with a control, to the broader issue of controlling for background factors as the epistemologically fundamental issue in experimentation. To understand the nature of controlled experimentation, one needs to consider the making – the design phase – of controlled experiments, particularly the conceptualization and treatment of background factors. The making of controlled experiments is at the same time constitutive for the knowledge that can be gained in the experiment, contingent on a research situation, and historically shaped.
Kant defined 'Right' (Recht) as the condition that obtains among a population of physically embodied persons capable of setting their own ends who live on a finite surface and therefore cannot avoid interaction with each other if each is as free to set their own ends as is consistent with the freedom of all to do the same. He regarded this rational idea, heir to the traditional idea of 'natural Right, as the test of the legitimacy of the laws of any actual state, or 'positive Right.' He clearly considered Right to be part of morality as a whole, namely the coercively enforceable part, as contrasted to Ethics, which is the non-coercively enforceable part of morality. Some have questioned whether Right is part of morality, but this Element shows how Kant's "Universal Principle of Right" follows straightforwardly from the foundational idea of Kant's moral philosophy as a whole.
The Three Pillars (Harmonization, Replacement, and Justice) describe an ethical path forward and away from the use of nonhuman primates in harmful research and scientific use. Conducting nonhuman primate research in an ethical way that acknowledges their moral importance requires satisfying more rigorous guidelines and regulations modeled on those that apply to similarly vulnerable human subjects, especially children and incarcerated persons. This Element argues for the moral necessity of harmonizing human and nonhuman primate research ethics, regulations, and guidelines in a way that protects all primates, human and nonhuman. The authors call for the replacement of nonhuman primates in research with human-relevant methods that do not simply shift research onto other nonhuman animals, and challenge publics, governments, and scientific communities worldwide to implement justice in the selection and use of all research subjects. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
The Nature of Authority provides a comprehensive theory of the nature of authoritative guidance. It argues that the following claims exhaust the constitutive properties of authoritative tellings: authoritative tellings (1) tell subjects what to do; (2) give rise to reasons to comply; (3) are issued by personal beings and govern the behavior of personal beings; (4) are issued by rationally competent beings and govern the behavior of rationally competent beings; (5) are issued under a claim of right that counts as plausible in virtue of being grounded in a system to which subjects acquiesce as governing their behavior; (6) are issued by beings with the power to impose their will on subjects with respect to what they do; (7) create obligations to comply; and (8) are backed by a threat of detriment that is reasonably contrived to deter enough noncompliance to enable the system to minimally achieve its ends.