John W. Carroll

John Carroll undertakes a careful philosophical examination of laws of nature, causation, and other related topics. He argues that laws of nature are not susceptible to the sort of philosophical treatment preferred by empiricists. Indeed he shows that emperically pure matters of fact need not even determine what the laws are. Similar, even stronger, conclusions are drawn about causation. Replacing the traditional view of laws and causation requiring some kind of foundational legitimacy, the author argues that these phenomena are inextricably intertwined with everything else. This distinctively clear and detailed discussion of what it is to be a law will be valuable to a broad swathe of philosophers in metaphysics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of science.

Some scientists try to discover and report laws of nature. And, they do so with success. There are many principles that were for a long time thought to be laws that turned out to be useful approximations, like Newton’s gravitational principle. There are others that were thought to be laws and still are considered laws, like Einstein’s principle that no signals travel faster than light. Laws of nature are not just important to scientists. They are also of great interest to us philosophers, though primarily in an ancillary way. Qua philosophers, we do not try to discover what the laws are. We care about what it is to be a law, about lawhood, the essential difference between something’s being a law and something’s not being a law. It is one of our jobs to understand lawhood and convey our understanding to others.

This book is an accessible introduction to the central themes of contemporary metaphysics. It carefully considers accounts of causation, freedom and determinism, laws of nature, personal identity, mental states, time, material objects, and properties, while inviting students to reflect on metaphysical problems. The philosophical questions discussed include: What makes it the case that one event causes another event? What are material objects? Given that material objects exist, do such things as properties exist? What makes it the case that a person may exist at two different times? An Introduction to Metaphysics makes these tough questions tractable by presenting the features and flaws of current attempts to answer them. Intended primarily for students taking a first class in metaphysics, this lucid and well-written text would also provide an excellent introduction for anyone interested in knowing more about this important area of philosophy.

An argument for realism (i.E., The ontological thesis that there exist universals) has emerged in the writings of david armstrong, Fred dretske, And michael tooley. These authors have persuasively argued against traditional reductive accounts of laws and nature. The failure of traditional reductive accounts leads all three authors to opt for a non-Traditional reductive account of laws which requires the existence of universals. In other words, These authors have opted for accounts of laws which (together with the fact that there are laws) entail that realism is true. This argument for realism which emerges from the work of armstrong, Dretske, And tooley is discussed and criticized. Conclusions from the discussion question the tenability of all reductive accounts of laws

Ted Sider aptly and concisely states the self-visitation paradox thus: 'Suppose I travel back in time and stand in a room with my sitting 10-year-old self. I seem to be both sitting and standing, but how can that be?' (2001, 101). I will explore a relativist resolution of this paradox offered by, or on behalf of, endurantists.1 It maintains that the sitting and the standing are relative to the personal time or proper time of the time traveler and is intended to yield the result that Ted is sitting at a certain initial personal/proper time but is not standing relative to that time. Similarly, it is also supposed to yield that Ted is standing relative to a later personal/proper time, but not sitting relative to that ..

The unanimity theory is an account of property-level causation requiring that causes raise the probability of their effects in specified test situations. Richard Otte (1981) and others have presented counterexamples in which one property is probabilistically sufficient for at least one other property. Given the continuing discussion (e.g., Cartwright 1989; Cartwright and Dupre 1988; Eells 1988a,b), many apparently think that these problems are minor. By considering the impact of Otte's cases on recent versions of the theory, by raising several new examples, and by criticizing natural replies, I argue that the problems for the unanimity theory are severe

Counterfactuals all the way down? Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9437-9 Authors Jim Woodward, History and Philosophy of Science, 1017 Cathedral of Learning, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA Barry Loewer, Department of Philosophy, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA John W. Carroll, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695-8103, USA Marc Lange, Department of Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, CB#3125—Caldwell Hall, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3125, USA Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796 Journal Volume Volume 20 Journal Issue Volume 20, Number 1

This chapter illustrates a theory that describes how certain modal statements, including counterfactual sentences, are dependent on context. Building on the work of Robert Stalnaker and David Lewis, its application to a familiar argument for fatalism and a recent exchange about time-traveler freedom between Kadri Vihvelin and Ted Sider is considered. This chapter presents a new perspective on the flaws and the seductiveness of both the fatalist argument and the freedom paradox. This new perspective may be applied to arguments for incompatibilism advanced by Carl Ginet and Peter van Inwagen. The issue of the compatibility of free will and determinism is generally regarded as one of the most serious metaphysical issues about human freedom. Consequence arguments of the sort made famous by Inwagen and Ginet are the leading arguments in favor of incompatibilism.

There is a longstanding definition of instantaneous velocity. It saysthat the velocity at t 0 of an object moving along a coordinate line is r if and only if the value of the first derivative of the object's position function at t 0 is r. The goal of this paper is to determine to what extent this definition successfully underpins a standard account of motion at an instant. Counterexamples proposed by Michael Tooley (1988) and also by John Bigelow and Robert Pargetter (1990) are reinforced and illuminated by considering the presence or absence of changes to the object's motion.

The backward induction argument purports to show that rational and suitably informed players will defect throughout a finite sequence of prisoner's dilemmas. It is supposed to be a useful argument for predicting how rational players will behave in a variety of interesting decision situations. Here, I lay out a set of assumptions defining a class of finite sequences of prisoner's dilemmas. Given these assumptions, I suggest how it might appear that backward induction succeeds and why it is actually fallacious. Then, I go on to consider the consequences of adopting a stronger set of assumptions. Focusing my attention on stronger sets that, like the original, obey the informedness condition, I show that any supplementation of the original set that preserves informedness does so at the expense of forcing rational participants in prisoner's dilemma situations to have unexpected beliefs, ones that threaten the usefulness of backward induction.

The possibility of continuous backwards time travel—time travel for which the traveler follows a continuous path through space between departure and arrival—gives rise to the double-occupancy problem. The trouble is that the time traveler seems bound to have to travel through his or her younger self as the trip begins. Dowe and Le Poidevin agree that this problem is solved by putting the traveler in motion for a gradual trip to the past. Le Poidevin goes on to argue, however, that the gradual trip gives rise to the Cheshire cat problem, a concern about whether the traveler survives the gradual trip. We address the Cheshire cat problem by proposing and considering new continuity constraints on identity over time. Along the way, we come upon an endurantist conception of temporal parts.

From an Ontological Point of View is a highly original and accessible exploration of fundamental questions about what there is. John Heil discusses such issues as whether the world includes levels of reality; the nature of objects and properties; the demands of realism; what makes things true; qualities, powers, and the relation these bear to one another. He advances an account of the fundamental constituents of the world around us, and applies this account to problems that have plagued recent work in the philosophy of mind and metaphysics (color, intentionality, and the nature of consciousness)

Our topic is the ontology and persistence conditions of material objects. One widely held doctrine is that identity-over-time has causal commitments. Another is that identity-over-time is just identity as it relates one object that exists at two times. We believe that a tension exists between these two apparently sensible positions: very roughly, if identity is the primary conceptual component of identity-over-time and—as is plausible—identity is noncausal, then the conceptual origins of the causal commitments of identity-over-time become a mystery. We will begin by formulating the two widely held doctrines and our puzzle more fully and more carefully. Then, the remainder of the paper will be devoted to analyzing views one might adopt that could minimize the tension.