David S. Oderberg

The distinction between the essence of an object and its properties has been obscured in contemporary discussion of essentialism. Locke held that the properties of an object are exclusively those features that ‘flow’ from its essence. Here he follows the Aristotelian theory, leaving aside Locke’s own scepticism about the knowability of essence. I defend the need to distinguish sharply between essence and properties, arguing that essence must be given by form and that properties flow from form. I give a precise definition of what the term of art ‘flow’ amounts to, and apply the distinction to various kinds of taxonomic issues.

This paper is a detailed study of what are traditionally called the cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude. I defend what I call the Cardinality Thesis, that the traditional four and no others are cardinal. I define cardinality in terms of three sub-theses, the first being that the cardinal virtues are jointly necessary for the possession of every other virtue, the second that each of the other virtues is a species of one of the four cardinals, and the third that many of the other virtues are also auxiliaries of one or more cardinals. I provide abstract arguments for each sub-thesis, followed by illustration from concrete cases. I then use these results to shed light on the two fundamental problems of the acquisition of the virtues and their unity, proving some further theses in the latter case.

1. Consider a circle. It has both a radius and a circumference. There is obviously a real distinction between the properties having a radius and having a circumference. This is not because, when confining ourselves to circles,1 having a radius can ever exist apart from having a circumference. A real distinction does not depend on that. Descartes thought that a real distinction between x and y meant that x could exist without y or vice versa, if only by the power of God. But Descartes was wrong. Separable existence is a sufficient but not necessary condition of there being a real distinction. The difference between a real and a conceptual distinction derives from medieval philosophy. Aquinas, for one, held that things can be really distinct even though not separable (the form and matter of a material substance or its essence and existence, for example).2 For a merely conceptual distinction between x and y to exist, it is necessary for the distinction to exist in thought only. There is only a conceptual distinction between an upward slope and a downward slope, or between a glass’s being half empty and half full. Not only are the members of such pairs inseparable (whether by God or in any other way), but there is no real distinction between them. There is no numerical distinctness between the entities or qualities between which there is only a conceptual distinction. To this extent alone is Galen Strawson (2008) correct.3 But when it comes to..

In this essay, I first set out the principles of change, paying particular attention to the need for a support for all changes and to the need for prime matter. I then discuss the nature of time, arguing that time is not actually composed of durationless instants but that instants can be understood as limits to an infinite process of potential division. I then give a definition of instants in terms of intervals and propose a way of modeling them. In the next section I bring together the two previous sections by explaining change as an instantaneous process that does not involve actual instants. In the final section I draw out a larger metaphysical moral that emphasizes the role of potentiality and sees the potentiality in change and the potentiality in time as but different aspects of the same radical potentiality in nature.

This article challenges the view most recently expounded by Emily Jackson that ‘decisional privacy’ ought to be respected in the realm of artificial reproduction (AR). On this view, it is considered an unjust infringement of individual liberty for the state to interfere with individual or group freedom artificially to produce a child. It is our contention that a proper evaluation of AR and of the relevance of welfare will be sensitive not only to the rights of ‘commissioning parties’ to AR but also to public policy considerations. We argue that AR has implications for the common good, by involving matters of human reproduction, kinship, race, parenthood and identity. In this paper we challenge presuppositions concerning decisional privacy. We examine the essential commodification of human life implicit in AR and the systematicity that makes this possible. We address the objection that it is an ethically neutral way of having children and consider the problem of ‘existential debt’. After examining objections to the thesis that AR is illegitimate for reasons of public policy and the common good, we return to the issue of decisional privacy in the light of considerations concerning the legitimate role of the state in matters affecting human reproduction.

Things change. If anything counts as a datum of metaphysics, that does. Change occurs in many ways: it can be accidental or substantial; essential or non-essential; intrinsic or extrinsic; subjective or objective. Changes can be physical, spatial, quantitative, qualitative, natural, artefactual, conceptual, linguistic. Events are arguably best defined as changes in an object or objects. All change is from something and into something, and hence is at least a two-term relation, involving a term from which and a term to which.

Abstract   The idea of disembodied communication has received widespread discussion in the context of the various kinds of online interaction. Electronic mail is probably the purest form of text-based communication where interlocutors are present in mind rather than body. I argue that this online model provides a way of understanding and defending the possibility of a certain kind of public religious experience, contra the many critics of the very coherence of genuine religious experience. I introduce the concept of ‘telic possibility’, a specific kind of modality, applying it to e-mail. I argue that we can reasonably move from the telic possibility of disembodied communication in mundane e-mail exchanges to the epistemic possibility of communication from a divine being in cases where the content of the messages is sufficiently extraordinary. Content Type Journal Article Category Special Issue Pages 1-17 DOI 10.1007/s13347-011-0051-6 Authors David S. Oderberg, Department of Philosophy, University of Reading, Reading, RG6 6AA UK Journal Philosophy & Technology Online ISSN 2210-5441 Print ISSN 2210-5433.

In "personal and impersonal identity" ("mind", 1988) timothy sprigge discusses reasons for a general suspicion of trans-temporal identity, and rejects what he says are the usual grounds given against the suspicion, providing instead his own reasons for rejecting it. he concludes that trans-temporal identity, including personal identity, is as genuine a case of identity as what he considers to be the paradigmatic case of identity. in this brief note i take issue with some of the basic elements of sprigge's argument

This is an introductory talk on why I am not a consequentialist. I am not going to go into the details of consequentialist theory, or to compare and contrast different versions of consequentialism. Nor am I going to present all the reasons I am not a consequentialist, let alone all the reasons why you should not be one. All I want to do is focus on some key problems that in my view, and the view of many others, make consequentialism a totally unacceptable moral theory – a theory about what is right, what is good, or obligatory, or forbidden, or permissible, or praiseworthy. So let me begin by giving a basic definition of consequentialism, one all supporters of the view can agree on. Consequentialism is the theory that the fundamental aim of morality is to maximize value. Now I was tempted to say ‘sole aim’, but some consequentialists will disagree with that. They might hold, for instance, that one of the aims of morality is to abide by certain rules, or to cultivate certain virtues. But for them, what gives obedience to a rule or the cultivation of a virtue its point is that, ultimately, such behaviour maximizes value. So although maximizing value might not be the sole aim of morality – the sole answer to the question ‘What should I do to be good?’ and similar questions – still it is the fundamental aim of morality, and all other kinds of decision, action, and so on, derive their justification by reference to it. For my purposes, then, the difference between ‘sole’ and ‘fundamental’ is merely terminological. Now the first thing that might occur to someone is a pair of simple questions. Why should anyone believe that the fundamental aim of morality is to maximize value? What intuitive force does the idea even have in the first place? These are good questions. I was a consequentialist once, and I don’t think I ever posed them to myself. I just took it as understood that since so many philosophers were consequentialists, and since so many of my fellow students were as well, then even if it were ultimately shown not to be true, the maximization thought (as I will call it) was at least the obvious place to start when one did ethics..

Over the course of a career that has spanned more than fifty years, philosopher Fred Sommers has taken on the monumental task of reviving the development of Aristotelian (syllogistic) logic after it was supplanted by the predicate logic of Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell. The enormousness of Sommers's undertaking can be gauged by the fact that most philosophers had come to believe - as David S. Oderberg writes in his preface - that "Aristotelian logic was good but is now as good as dead." A revival of traditional syllogistic logic would involve not only its restatement but its refashioning into a system that could rival the elegance and deductive power of predicate logic. Building on work by medieval scholastic logicians, Leibniz, and nineteenth-century algebraic logicians, Sommers accomplished this renovation and rehabilitation of syllogistic logic with his magnum opus The Logic of Natural Language, published in 1982. In The Old New Logic, essays by a diverse group of contributors show how widely influential Sommers's work has been-not only in logic, but in category theory and other areas. Scholars in psychology, linguistics, and computer science join philosophers and logicians in discussing aspects of Sommers's contributions to philosophy. Sommers himself provides an intellectual autobiography at the beginning and in the final chapter offers comments on the contributions. This collection should help bring to Sommers's work the attention it deserves from the wider philosophical and intellectual community.

Distinguished metaphysicians examine issues central to the high-profile debate between philosophers over how to classify the natural world, and discuss issues in applied ontology such as the classification of diseases. Leading metaphysicians explore fundamental questions related to the classification and structure of the natural world An essential commentary on issues at the heart of the contemporary debate between philosophy and science Interweaves discussion of overarching themes with detailed material on applied ontology