Noa Latham

What values, if any, would be undermined by determinism?[i] Traditionally this question has been tackled by asking whether determinism is compatible with free will or whether it is compatible with moral responsibility. Compatibilists say that determinism would not threaten free will or moral responsibility, and hence that people’s values should not be influenced by whether or not they believe in determinism. Incompatibilists say that determinism would undermine free will or moral responsibility, and hence that a belief in determinism should have a considerable impact on one’s values, precluding many popular evaluative beliefs.

In this paper I arrive at a view of what it is for all substances to be physical by first arguing for an account of substance dualism as the view that the world is subject to psychophysical laws (or principles in the case of a Principle of Libertarian Choice) of succession PiMj --> PijMij in which some Mj are nonredundant and nonphysical and some Pi are nonredundant and nonmental. This leads to a classification of versions of substance dualism that differs from the traditional classification into epiphenomenalism, interactionism, and parallelism. I reclassify epiphenomenalism as a form of substance physicalism and reject parallelism as incoherent. The position in which there is fundamental mental to mental causation but no fundamental mental to physical causation comes into view as a version of substance dualism that falls outside the traditional classification. Substance physicalism is accordingly analysed as the view that the world is subject to laws of succession whose antecedents are purely physical properties.

This paper was written for introductory students. It sketches the notion of libertarian freedom and argues that it is most obviously threatened by a combination of two theses, materialism and the determinacy of physics. It might be saved by denying just materialism, but materialism is highly plausible if physics is deterministic. It cannot be saved by denying just the determinacy of physics. It might be saved by denying both materialism and the determinacy of physics, but materialism is not made much less plausible if physics is indeterministic. Then I consider the implications of accepting that libertarian freedom is an illusion. I argue that it would be a mistake to think that it entails fatalism, and that it would be a mistake to think that it undermines all forms of moral responsibility. But it plays an important role in undermining the view that punishments and rewards can be given purely backwards-looking justifications in terms of retribution and desert. I close by mentioning that there are compatibilist notions of freedom that have other uses.

This paper seeks to analyse an under-discussed kind of self-control, namely the control of thoughts and sensations. I distinguish first-order control from second-order control and argue that their central forms are intentional concentration and intentional mindfulness respectively. These correspond to two forms of meditation, concentration meditation and mindfulness meditation, which have been regarded as central both in the traditions in which the practices arose and in the scientific literature on meditation. I analyse them in terms of their characteristic intentions, distinguish them from concentration and mindfulness in general, and examine the relations between them. Concentration involves keeping the mind focused on a single object, while mindfulness requires noticing whatever mental states occupy the focus of one’s consciousness. In the course of the investigation I examine the role of phenomenology and volition in the activity of meditating, and how they change as meditative capacities develop.

This chapter focuses on the dispute between necessitarians and contingentists, mainly addressing the issue as to whether laws of nature are metaphysically necessary or metaphysically contingent with a weaker kind of necessity, commonly referred to as natural, nomological, or nomic necessity. It is assumed here that all fundamental properties are dispositional or role properties, making the dispute a strictly verbal one. The existence of categorical intrinsic properties as well as dispositional properties is also assumed and the relationship between them examined. Finally, the chapter concludes by returning to the debate between necessitarians and contingentists under the assumption that both dispositional and categorical fundamental properties exist. It is argued here that necessitarian positions can be recast as contingentist, but that there are unequivocally contingentist positions preferred because they are less mysterious despite being ontologically more complex.

This paper argues that it is extremely implausible that the supervenience of phenomenal properties on physical properties is contingent a posteriori with physical properties imposing no a priori constraints on the phenomenal—a position Chalmers holds to be among the most plausible. Such a position would be radically epiphenomenal, would involve widespread unexplained coincidences, would introduce a new category of fundamental fact, and would require extremely numerous and individually complex fundamental laws connecting physical and phenomenal. Then it develops two thought experiments, Chalmers’ Dancing Qualia and pleasure/pain spectrum inversion, to argue that there are some a priori constraints on the phenomenal. This suggests that there may be other a priori constraints currently hidden from us that when joined up would convince us that all supervenience laws from physical to phenomenal are necessary a priori.

The aim of this paper is to offer a classification of particulars in terms of their relations to spatiotemporal and spatial regions. It begins with an examination of spatiotemporal particulars, and then explores the extent to which a parallel account can be offered of continuants, or spatial particulars that can endure and change over time, assuming such particulars exist. For every spatial particular there are spatiotemporal particulars that can be described as its life and parts thereof. But not every time-slice of a spatiotemporal particular yields a spatial region suitable for hosting a corresponding spatial particular. Events are spatiotemporal particulars though not all spatiotemporal particulars are events. Objects and states are spatial particulars though not all spatial particulars are objects or states. Spatial and spatiotemporal particulars can be either bare regions, or the contents or material contents of such regions, or property instantiations. It is left open whether events are contents of regions, property instantiations, or both. But it is argued that objects are material contents of spatial regions while states of objects are property instantiations. Spatiotemporal particulars can be changes or nonchanges. Events and states can be instantaneous while objects cannot.

When performing an action of a certain kind, an agent typically has se- veral reasons for doing so. I shall borrow Davidson’s term and call these rationalising reasons (Davidson 1963, 3). These are reasons that allow us to understand what the agent regarded as favourable features of such an action. (There will also be reasons against acting, expressing unfavour- able features of such an action, from the agent’s point of view.) I shall say that R is a rationalising reason of agent X’s for K-ing iff R consists of (i) a desire of X’s to L and (ii) a belief of X’s that K-ing promotes L-ing (to be discussed shortly). It is frequently said that when an agent X is K-ing and has several rationalising reasons for K-ing, not all of those reasons are reasons for which X is K-ing, that motivate X’s K-ing, or that explain X’s K-ing. In this paper I challenge this view.

The distinction between token and type physicalism is a familiar feature of discussion of psychophysical relations. Token physicalism, or ontological physicalism, is the view that every token, or particular, in the spatiotemporal world is a physical particular. It is contrasted with type physicalism, or property physicalism -- the view that every first-order type, or property, instantiated in the spatiotemporal world is a physical property. Token physicalism is commonly viewed as a clear thesis, strictly weaker than property physicalism, strictly stronger than substance physicalism, and as a good statement on its own or in conjunction with other theses of minimal physicalism.[i] It is also generally simply assumed to be true, though Davidson has offered a famous argument for its truth, and some have argued against it. Many of those arguing against it are substance physicalists, indicating that they believe token physicalism to be a strictly stronger view.[ii].

Nearly 30 years have passed since Donald Davidson first presented his ar- gument against the possibility of psychophysical laws in “Mental Events”. The argument applies to intentional rather than phenomenal properties, so whenever I refer to mental properties and to psychophysical laws it should be understood that I mean intentional properties and laws relating them to physical properties. No consensus has emerged over what the argument actually is, and the subsequent versions of it presented by Davidson show significant differences. But many have been inclined to agree with the spirit of the argument and with its conclusion.

This paper argues that fundamental deterministic dynamical laws cannot be used to select from among the events falling within the backwards light cone of an event any narrower class that might be regarded as causes of the event. It applies this in a critique of Donald Davidson’s Principle of the Nomological Character of Causality and the use he makes of it in his argument for anomalous monism. In this paper I do not assume that dynamical laws incorporate a primitive notion of causality that entails an intrinsic direction of time—as Davidson does in his formulation of dynamical laws as causal laws.

This paper looks at a number of proposals for understanding the notion of a causally irrelevant reason for an action one performs and argues that none of them are satisfactory. It then addressed a specific use of the notion that Barbara Herman makes in her interpretation of Kant’s doctrine that an action has moral worth only if it is performed solely from the motive of duty. According to Herman, Kant is not claiming that the agent must not have any inclination or self-interested reasons for acting when performing a morally worthy action; he is claiming just that those other reasons must play no causal role. In response to Herman, I argue that Kant’s doctrine cannot be made to seem more palatable in this way because the notion of a causally irrelevant reason makes no sense. I argue that Kant’s doctrine is best interpreted at face value, and that he is likely using the phrase ‘morally worthy act’ in a narrow technical sense to stand for an exceptional act that is exemplary for educational purposes and not in the broad sense that might call for apologetics. The broader notion Kant uses instead to get at the most important features of moral character is that of a good will, which one may have without ever performing a morally worthy act.