Tomis Kapitan

Philosophers commonly speak of a person’s being justified in believing a proposition by one or more reasons he or she has for it. This phenomenon, often called inferential or indirect justification, seems so pervasive that some are tempted to count all epistemic justification as such, though even dessenters from this view can acknowledge that justification through reasons is central to wide domains of cognitive appraisal, e.g., in science and in law. A basic task for the epistemologist is to explain how an indirectly justified belief is related to the evidential belief by which it is justified. Here, I will address one aspect of this issue, namely, if S is indirectly justified in believing p by his belief that q must S also be justified in believing that q is a reason for p, or, in other words, that q confirms or supports p? An affirmative response imposes what can be called a requirement of a justified connecting belief or, as I shall speak, of a warranted connecting proposition upon indirect justification. Opinion is divided as to its necessity, with many reliabilists anxious to avoid it altogether. I propose to remove certain obstacles to its acceptance, even within a reliability framework, while attempting a more precise determination of what the requirement comes to.

Everyday reasoning is replete with arguments which, though not logically valid, nonetheless harbor a measure of credibility in their own right. Here the claim that such arguments force us to acknowledge material validity, in addition to logical validity, is advanced, and criteria that attempt to unpack this concept are examined in detail. Of special concern is the effort to model these criteria on explications of logical validity that rely on notions of substitutivity and logical form. It is argued, however, that such a parallel is not easily located and that it is uncertain that a construal of material validity can be fashioned after traditional accounts of logical validity. Attention is also given to the topics of enthymemes and to the proper domain of logic

Two claims have been prominent in recent discussion of self-consciousness. One is that first-person reference or first-person thinking is irreducible {Irreducibility Thesis), and the other is that awareness of self accompanies at least all those conscious states through which one refers to something. The latter {Ubiquity Thesis) has long been associated with philosophers like Fichte, Brentano and Sartre, but recently variants have been defended by D. Henrich and M. Frank. Facing criticism from three arguments which nevertheless cannot decisively refute the Self-Ascription theory it turns out that Frank is correct to seek the grounds for the Ubiquity Thesis in indexical thinking and that his insights can be exploited in an alternative argument for the Ubiquity Thesis

In "Omniprescient Agency" (Religious Studies 28, 1992) David P. Hunt challenges an argument against the possibility of an omniscient agent. The argument—my own in "Agency and Omniscience" (Religious Studies 27, 1991)—assumes that an agent is a being capable of intentional action, where, minimally, an action is intentional only if it is caused, in part, by the agent's intending. The latter, I claimed, is governed by a psychological principle of "least effort," viz., that no one intends without antecedently feeling that (i) deliberate effort is needed to achieve desired goals, (ii) such effort has a chance of success, and (iii) it is yet contingent whether the effort will be expended and the goals realized. The goals can be anything from immediate intentional doings, tryings or basic actions, to remote and perhaps unlikely consequences of actions, e.g., global justice. The thrust of the principle is that it would be impossible for a wholly rational self-aware agent to intend without a background presumption of an open future as concerns the desired state and the means to it. But this presumption embodies a sense of contingency which, in turn, requires an acknowledged ignorance about what the future holds, otherwise the future would appear closed relative to present knowledge with the desired state presented as either guaranteed (necessary) or ruled out (impossible). Regardless whether this self-directed attitude is accurate, it follows that intentional action precludes complete knowledge of one's present and future. Consequently, no omniscient or omniprescient being can be an agent.

Towards the end of the first world war, a “principle of self-determination” was proposed as a foundation for international order. In the words of its chief advocate, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, it specified that the “settlement of every question, whether of territory, of sovereignty, of economic arrangement, or of political relationship” is to be made “upon the basis of the free acceptance of that settlement by the people immediately concerned and not upon the basis of the material interest or advantage of any other nation or people which may desire a different settlement for sake of its own exterior influence or mastery” (Wilson 1927, 233). The principle played a significant role in deliberations about lands newly liberated by the first world war, and, in the aftermath of the second, it was enshrined within Article 1 of the United Nations Charter which called upon member nations “to develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.” Its status within international law was further heightened by the 1966 Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and on Economic Social and Cultural Rights, whose first articles specify the following: “All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social, and cultural development.” In 1970, General Assembly Resolution 2625 added that, “every state has the duty to respect this right in accordance with the provision of the Charter.”.

I have argued that since (i) intentional agency requires intention-acquisition, (ii) intentionacquisition implies a sense of an open future, and (iii) a sense of an open future is incompatible with complete foreknowledge, then (iv) no agent can be omniscient. Alternatively, an omniscient being is omniimpotent.i David Hunt continues to oppose this reasoning, most recently, in Religious Studies 32 (March 1996). It is increasingly clear that the debate turns on larger issues concerning necessity and knowledge, but let me here offer a few comments in defense of my position.

Discussions of free will have frequently centered on principles concerning ability, control, unavoidability and other practical modalities. Some assert the closure of the latter over various propositional operations and relations, for example, that the consequences of what is beyond one's control are themselves beyond one's control.1 This principle has been featured in the unavoidability argument for incompatibilism: if everything we do is determined by factors which are not under our control, then, by the principle, we are unable to act and choose other than we actually did. A second family of principles concerns the fixity of the past and the laws of nature. If no one is able to alter the past or violate the laws it seems but a small step to conclude that no one can do anything such that if they did it then the past would be altered or the laws violated. Accordingly, if an agent's performing an act is necessitated by the past and laws, then the agent is unable to refrain from that act at that time. Generalizing, determinism precludes anyone from doing anything other than what he or she did.2

: Frege’s remarks about the first-person pronoun in Der Gedanke have elicited numerous commentaries, but his insight has not been fully appreciated or developed. Commentators have overlooked Frege’s reasons for claiming that there are two distinct first-person senses, and failed to realize that his remarks easily generalize to all indexicals. I present a perspectival theory of indexicals inspired by Frege’s claim that all indexical types have a dual meaning which, in turn, leads to a duality of senses expressed by indexical tokens. Keywords : Indexicals; First Person; Perspective; Senses La doppia natura degli indessicali: una posizione fregeana Riassunto : Le osservazioni di Frege sul pronome di prima persona contenute in Der Gedanke hanno sollevato numerosi commenti, ma le sue intuizioni non sono state pienamente comprese o sviluppate. I commentatori di Frege hanno trascurato le ragioni per le quali egli sosteneva che ci sono due distinti sensi della prima persona e non hanno colto come queste sue osservazioni possono essere facilmente estese a tutti gli indessicali. Intendo presentare qui una posizione prospettivista sugli indessicali, ispirata dall’affermazione di Frege per cui tutti i tipi di indessicali hanno un doppio significato che, a sua volta, porta a una doppia natura dei sensi espressi dalle occorrenze indessicali. Parole chiave : Indessicali; Prima persona; Prospettiva; Sensi

John Searle describes our sense of freedom as an experience of a “gap” between an intentional action and its psychological antecedents, specifically, our reasons.. Since the gap is itself understood as a lack of causation, then no agent can accept the antecedent determination of voluntary action except at the price of “practical inconsistency.” I argue that despite Searle’s insightful discussion, the sense of freedom is not an experience of a gap as he describes it but, instead, is a higher-order attitude concerning one’s limited grasp of causes. As a result, a determinist can engage in voluntary action without falling into inconsistency

Terrorism, as a form of politically motivated violence, is as ancient as organized warfare itself, emerging as soon as one society, pitted against another in the quest for land, resources, or domination, was moved by a desire for vengeance or found advantages in military operations against noncombatants or other ‘soft’ targets. It is sanctioned and glorified in holy scriptures and has been part of the genesis of states and the expansion of empires from the inception of recorded history. The United States itself emerged through the systematic ethnic cleansing of native Americans, a nearly 300-year campaign that featured the destruction of homes and crops, the theft of land, forced expulsions, massacres, and tears.1 While terrorist violence has been employed by both sides in the conflict over Palestine for over 80 years, the prevalence of the rhetoric of ‘terror’ to describe Arab violence against Israeli and Western targets is a more recent phenomenon. For more than three decades, this rhetoric has fostered the popular perception that Arab terrorism is the central problem in the Middle East crisis, and that once solved, progress can be made on other issues. Nothing could be more illusory. The Western obsession with Arab terrorism not only overlooks the fact that terrorist activity between Arabs and Jews has been reciprocal, but, more generally, that attempts to remove an effect without touching its causes are utterly futile. Terrorism between Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews is the product of deep divisions, entrenched strategies, and fundamental grievances and will not disappear so long as both sides cling to their present political ambitions and convictions. No informed discussion of its normative status can ignore its historical and political context. At..

By deliberation we understand practical reasoning with an end in view of choosing some course of action. Integral to it is the agent's sense of alternative possibilities, that is, of two or more courses of action he presumes are open for him to undertake or not. Such acts may not actually be open in the sense that the deliberator would do them were he to so intend, but it is evident that he assumes each to be so. One deliberates only by taking it for granted that both performing and refraining from any of the acts under consideration are possible for one, and that which is to be selected is something entirely up to oneself. What is it for a course of action to be presumed as open, or for several courses of action to present themselves as a range of open alternatives? Answering these questions is essential for an understanding of deliberation and choice and, indeed, for the entire issue of free will and responsibility. According to one common view, a deliberator takes the considered options to be open only by assuming he is free to undertake any of them and, consequently, that whichever he does undertake is, as yet, a wholly undetermined matter. Built into the structure of deliberation, on this theory, is an indeterministic bias relative to which any deliberator with deterministic beliefs is either inconsistent or condemned to a fatalistic limbo. An unmistakable challenge is thereby posed: is there an alternative conception of the presuppositions underlying deliberation more congenial to a deterministic perspective yet adequate to the data? Convinced that there is, I develop a partial account of deliberation that, though highly similar to the aforementioned view, diverges at a critical juncture

In recent years, compatibilism has been the target of two powerful challenges. According to the consequence argument, if everything we do and think is a consequence of factors beyond our control (past events and the laws of nature), and the consequences of what is beyond our control are themselves beyond our control, then no one has control over what they do or think and no one is responsible for anything. Hence, determinism rules out responsibility. A different challenge--here called the manipulation argument--is that by allowing agents to be fully determined compatibilist accounts of practical freedom and responsibility are unable to preclude those who are subject to global manipulation from being free and responsible

A familiar means of enhancing the descriptive power of attitudinal reports is the distinction between de re and de dicto readings of ascriptions or, alternatively, between internal and external occurrences of terms and phrases used in ascribing attitudes.i While there is little agreement about the philosophical significance or viability of these contrasts, supporters of cognitive theories of content -- those which take the that-clause of an ascription to express something to which the subject bears a psychological relation, viz., what he or she believes, doubts, wishes for, etc. -- invoke the de re mode whenever the ascriber does not claim to represent the subject's exact content, though, for descriptive or explanatory purposes, finds a partial specification appropriate.ii The strategy is particularly useful for understanding ascriptions containing indexicals. For example, if I overhear Andrea praising my insights, strategies, and calculations, I might report her thoughts as follows: (1) Andrea thinks that I am clever. This ascription is misleading if taken to convey Andrea's exact content; the occurrence of 'I' expresses my thought of myself, not hers. Since she does not think of me in a first-person way, (1) cannot be understood as reporting her disposition to assent to the sentence 'I am clever,' nor to affirm the proposition that I am clever, regardless if the I in question is herself or myself. On certain views of indexical content, I might be unable to specify exactly the proposition she does accept, but I can at least allude to what she has in mind by exporting the pronoun as in, (2) I am someone whom Andrea believes to be clever. or, to retain an overt that-clause, (3) There is someone x who is identical to me and Andrea believes..

To experience is to undergo a process, to be in a state of receiving input which affords information about our environment. For highly developed beings like ourselves, the inputs determining states of conscious sensory perception are among the most important for our survival. At first glance, these states seem relational, each being a situation wherein a percipient X is passively conscious of something Y--its object, subject-matter, or content--without any apparent effort. Of course, the briefest reflection convinces us that despite a seemingly passive reception of data from without, a good deal of interpretation goes into the making of perceptual judgments, as evidenced by their wide variance in the face of like sensory stimulation. One person looking at the slope of a mountain notices a patch of whitish stones; another sees a flock of sheep grazing. They are distinguished by their different reactions to similar input, whether or not these are best construed as inferences, interpretations, or, simply, differing degrees of attentiveness

Terrorism is politically motivated violence directed against noncombatants. It is no doubt as ancient as organized warfare itself, emerging as soon as one society, pitted against another in the quest for land, resources, and dominance, was moved by a desire for vengeance, or, found advantages in operations against ‘soft’ targets. While terrorist violence has been present in the conflict between Jews and Arabs over Palestine for over eighty years, the prevalence of the rhetoric of ‘terror’ to describe Arab violence against Israeli and Western targets, is a more recent phenomenon. This rhetoric has fostered the popular perception that Arab terrorism is the central problem in the Middle East crisis, and that once solved, progress can be made on other issues. Nothing could be more illusory. The Western obsession with Arab terrorism not only overlooks the fact that terrorist activity has been reciprocal, but, more generally, that attempts to remove an effect without touching its causes are utterly futile. Terrorism between Arabs and Israelis is the product of deep divisions, entrenched strategies, and fundamental grievances, and it will not disappear so long as both sides cling to their present political ambitions and convictions. No informed discussion can ignore its historical and political context. At the same time, terrorism is the most noticeable and tragic aspect of a bitter struggle, and any serious attempt to grasp the goals, methods, and passions of either party must realize that it has been central in giving the conflict the shape it has.

My topic today is Europe’s responsibility for the creation and resolution the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one of the most bitter and explosive political struggles in the world today. In the past 60 years, it has consumed thousands of lives, billions of dollars, and endless hours of debate. It is not localized; it is at the heart of on-going tensions between the West and the Islamic world, and it is directly related to the current American aggression in southern Asia. The fate of international relations during the 21st century depends on its resolution as, arguably, it is single greatest threat to world peace. The situation is made even more serious by the fact that there are no immediate prospects of a resolution of this conflict, a fact that should cause anyone concerned about justice, peace, and international stability to give serious thought about what ought to be done. This requires an effort to understand the historical roots of the dispute. The neglect of history, an ignorance of past causes of present conflicts, grievances, passions, and trends, is dangerous for any country, especially for a democracy where citizens need reliable information if they are to make wise decisions, and most crucially, for a democracy that is, or aspires to be, a superpower.