Aaron Segal

What follows is a dialogue about “Rowe’s fawn”–a case of suffering that is supposed to be one of the thorniest difficulties for a theist. The thorniness derives from the fact that the fawn and its suffering are unknown to us. This precludes any justification of God’s permitting her suffering that appeals to its impact on us. The theistic character, Nahum, provides a novel, powerful and simple reply: there have been no suffering fawns who were unknown to us. Rowe’s fawn never was. What’s unique about Nahum’s development of this reply is twofold: (a) it holds true whatever one’s antecedent commitments vis-a-vis theism/atheism, and (b) it requires no skepticism about ordinary appearances.

It was a commonplace among nineteenth-century idealists that philosophy in general—and metaphysics in particular—is intrinsically systematic, to the extent that you can‘t sensibly take a position on any philosophical issue in isolation from a larger system. This meta-philosophical claim was widely repudiated by analytic philosophers throughout much of the twentieth century. I argue that the idealist contention has at long last been a vindicated, this vindication coming from the heart of analytic philosophy itself. Along the way I attempt to rigorously characterize systematicity in general and intrinsic systematicity in particular, explore the consequences of David Lewis‘s meta-philosophical claims, and ruminate on where we might go from here.

This chapter begins by outlining four theses that are elaborations of Hume’s claim that the contents of the world ‘are entirely loose and separate’. The first, core thesis is a ‘patchwork’ theory of possibilities. The others concern laws of nature, causal relations, and global supervenience. Any position which accepts the first thesis but denies at least one of the others is referred to as a ‘Half-Hearted Humean’ position. The chapter argues that, contrary to appearances, any Half-Hearted Humean position is inconsistent. The only viable options are Wholehearted Humeanism or a denial of the core Humean thesis.

Despite the affinity of monism and monotheism—and despite monism’s recent philosophical renaissance—few have defended the conjunction of the two claims, of what we might call ‘theistic monism’. I argue, first, that monism and monotheism are consistent, and second, that each one provides good reasons to accept the other one. Monotheists, qua monotheists, have good reason to be monists; and monists, qua monists, have good reason to be monotheists. There should be much greater overlap between the monist camp and the monotheist camp than there is at present.

The Mental Problem of the Many suggests that Materialism implies Mental Manyism: if human beings are material objects, then there are millions of conscious human subjects wherever we thought there was just one. Previous discussions of this problem focus on Mental Manyism, and whether it is substantially harder to live with than ordinary Manyism (about clouds, chairs, trees, etc.). But even if it is, that’ll count against materialism only if none of the other solutions to the Problem of the Many solves the Mental Problem of the Many. If some other solution works, then Materialism won’t imply Mental Manyism after all. I contend that Materialism does in fact imply Mental Manyism. Here I argue that two of the leading solutions to the Problem of the Many — supervaluationism and vague objecthood — fail to address the Mental Problem of the Many, even if they succeed in addressing the ordinary Problem of the Many. It turns out that we (and consciousness) are a special case in more ways relevant to this problem than just one.

All adherents of hard determinism face a number of steep challenges; those with traditional religious commitments face still further challenges. In this paper I treat one such further challenge. The challenge, in brief, is that given hard determinism, it’s very difficult to say why God couldn’t, and why God wouldn’t, just immediately and directly realize the final end of creation. I  develop the challenge, and a number of solutions, through the work of the medieval Jewish philosopher, Hasdai Crescas. After arguing that Crescas is indeed a hard determinist, and showing that he forecloses all the easy solutions to our challenge, I piece together from his work two solutions. They both start from the assumption that the purpose of creation is creaturely love of God. Each then lays down a constraint on proper love of God, which can be satisfied only if God demands of us to realize some state of affairs other than loving Him.

The fact that philosophy is systematic—that philosophical issues are thoroughly interconnected—was a commonplace among nineteenth century idealists, then neglected by analytic philosophers throughout much of the twentieth century, and has now finally started to get some renewed attention. But other than calling attention to the fact, few philosophers have tried to say what it consists in, or what its implications are. I argue that the systematicity of philosophy has disastrous epistemological implications. In particular, it implies philosophical skepticism: philosophers are rationally prohibited from believing any philosophical thesis. The argument goes by way of a new principle that connects inquiry with what is rational to believe. I conclude with a discussion of the relationship between my argument and other, more well-trodden arguments for philosophical skepticism.

According to certain views about human ontology, the way we seem is very different from the way we are. The appearances are a threat to such views. Here I take up and defuse the threat to one such view.Pure immaterialism says that each of us is wholly immaterial. The appearances suggest otherwise. I argue that despite the fact that we might sometimes appear to be at least partly material, and that we can be perceptually justified in believing something solely on the basis of having a perceptual experience as of its being the case, none of us is ever perceptually justified in believing that we are even partly material (or that we’re not). Bottom line: we might be able to know whether we’re material, but we can’t know just by looking.

Are we made entirely of matter, like sticks and stones? Or do we have a soul—a nonphysical entity—where our mental lives take place? The authors Eric T. Olson and Aaron Segal begin this accessible and wide-ranging debate by looking at the often-overlooked question of whether we appear in ordinary experience to be material things. Olson then argues that the dependence of our mental lives on the condition of our brains—the fact that general anesthesia causes complete unconsciousness, for instance—is best explained by saying that our mental lives are physical activities in our brains rather than nonphysical activities in the soul. Segal objects that this view is incompatible with two obvious and important facts about ourselves: that there is only one of you rather than trillions of almost identical beings now thinking your thoughts, and that we exist and remain conscious for more than an instant. These facts, he claims, are presupposed in our practical and moral judgments—but they require us to be immaterial things. Olson is forced to concede that there is no easy and uncontroversial answer to these objections but doubts whether taking us to be immaterial would be any help. The debate takes in large philosophical questions extending well beyond dualism and materialism. The book features clear statements of each argument, responses to counter-arguments, in-text definitions, a glossary of key terms, and section summaries. Scholars and students alike will find it easy to follow the debate and learn the key concepts from metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and other areas necessary to understand each position.

Moses Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed is the greatest and most influential text in the history of Jewish philosophy. Controversial in its day, the Guide directly influenced Aquinas, Spinoza, and Leibniz, and the history of Jewish philosophy took a decisive turn after its appearance. While there continues to be keen interest in Maimonides and his philosophy, this is the first scholarly collection in English devoted specifically to the Guide. It includes contributions from an international team of scholars addressing the most important philosophical themes that range over the three parts of this sprawling work - including topics in the philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of law, ethics, and political philosophy. There are also essays on the Guide's hermeneutic puzzles, and on its overall structure and philosophical trajectory. The volume will be of interest to philosophers, Judaists, theologians, and medievalists.

Classic inductive skepticism–the epistemological claim that we have no good reason to believe that the unobserved resembles the observed–is plausibly everyone’s lot, whether or not they embrace Hume’s metaphysical claim that distinct existents are “entirely loose and separate”. But contemporary advocates of a Humean metaphysic accept a metaphysical claim stronger than Hume’s own. I argue that their view plausibly gives rise to a radical inductive skepticism–according to which we are downright irrational in believing as we do about the unobserved–that we don’t otherwise have reason to accept. The Metaphysical Neo-Humean is in an epistemological quagmire all her own.

In this paper I argue for the incompatibility of three claims, each of them quite attractive to a theist. First, the doctrine of deep dependence: the universe depends for its existence, in a non-causal way, on God. Second, the doctrine of true transcendence: the universe is wholly distinct from God; God is separate and apart from the universe in respect of mereology, modes, and mentality. Third, the doctrine of robust creaturely freedom: some creature performs some act such that he could have done other than he in fact did. After laying out the claims, I show that their conjunction has its adherents—most clearly, the medieval Jewish philosopher, Maimonides. I then argue in detail that the claims are in fact incompatible. I conclude with a discussion of which of the claims is best jettisoned, drawing in part on the work of the Absolute Idealist, Mary Calkins.

Global metaphysical skepticism is the view that we have no knowledge of any substantive metaphysical thesis. Various reasons have been provided in support of global metaphysical skepticism. I provide a new one. The reason, very roughly, is this. Metaphysical theses come together as packages. Such packages are very different from each other. Because the packages are so different, we cannot know of any one of the packages that it isn't true. And because we cannot know of any one of them that it isn't true, we cannot know any substantive metaphysical thesis at all. My paper makes this argument much more precise and defends each of the premises in detail.

Let Essentialism be the view that at least some object has at least some property essentially. And let Relative Essentialism be the view that Essentialism is true, but that for any object that has any property essentially, it has it essentially only relative to the value of some parameter. Meghan Sullivan has recently put forward a promising new version of Relative Essentialism, according to which the relevant parameter is an explanatory framework. We argue that despite its promise, Sullivan's version unfortunately fails, due to the mismatch between the logic of essentiality and the logic of explanation.

Pythagoreanism, the claim that ‘all is number’, is rarely taken seriously these days as a candidate for the sober metaphysical truth. This is a mistake. I distinguish various versions of Pythagoreanism. Some such versions are unmotivated, some are subject to serious objections, and some are both. But, I argue, there is a robust version of Pythagoreanism—according to which there is a true theory whose ontology and ideology are wholly mathematical from which every truth follows—that is both well-motivated and not subject to any serious objection. Given that fact, Pythagoreanism ought to be a serious metaphysical contender.

Since the classical period, Jewish scholars have drawn on developments in philosophy to enrich our understanding of Judaism. This methodology reached its pinnacle in the medieval period with figures like Maimonides and continued into the modern period with the likes of Rosenzweig. The explosion of Anglo-American/analytic philosophy in the twentieth century means that there is now a host of material, largely unexplored by Jewish philosophy, with which to explore, analyze, and develop the Jewish tradition. Jewish Philosophy in an Analytic Age features contributions from leading scholars in the field which investigate Jewish texts, traditions, and/or thinkers, in order to showcase what Jewish philosophy can be in an analytic age. United by the new and engaging style of philosophy, the collection explores rabbinic and Talmudic philosophy; Maimonidean philosophy; philosophical theology; and ethics and value theory.

Humean Supervenience is the view that (a) there are a plurality of fundamental beings, (b) there are no inexplicable constraints on modal space, and hence the fundamental nature of each such being is independent of those of all the rest and of the fundamental relations in which it stands to the rest, (c) the fundamental beings stand in no fundamental causal or nomic relations, and hence (d) the distribution of any causal or nomic relations in which they do stand globally supervenes on their fundamental natures and the non‐nomic, non‐causal fundamental relations in which they stand. If Humean Supervenience is true, then as A.J. Ayer put it, it's just one damn thing after another. Radical Pluralism is the view that Humean Supervenience is true, and, moreover, that none of the fundamental beings stands in any fundamental relations at all. If Radical Pluralism is true, then, as William James puts it, the world's pieces are held together by nothing more than conjunction: it's just one damn thing and another. I argue that Radical Pluralism is very likely true, conditional upon Humean Supervenience. Any philosopher pluralist enough to be Humean ought to be radically pluralistic.

This chapter formulates a version of idealism and argues for it. Sections 2 and 3 explicate this version of idealism: the world is mental through-and-through. Section 2 spells this out precisely and contrasts it with rival views. Section 3 draws a consequence from this formulation of idealism: idealism is necessarily true if true at all. Sections 4 and 5 make the case for idealism. Section 4 is defensive: it draws from the conclusion of section 3 to reply to a central, perhaps the central, anti-idealist argument. Section 5 is on the offense: it develops a new argument for idealism based on the contemporary debate in philosophy of mind. The contemporary debate in philosophy of mind has been dominated by physicalism and dualism, with idealism almost totally neglected. This chapter rectifies this situation.