Enric F. Gel has recently argued that classical theism enjoys a significant advantage over Graham Oppy's naturalism. According to Gel, classical theism – unlike Oppy's naturalism – satisfactorily answers two questions: first, how many first causes are there, and second, why is it that number rather than another? In this article, I reply to Gel's argument for classical theism's advantage over Oppy's naturalism. I also draw out wider implications of my investigation for the gap problem and Christian doctrine (...) along the way. (shrink)

The paper analyzes the concept of a first cause, both for event causation and for agent causation. It turns out that one is rather ready to believe in the existence of first causes that are events, but not in the existence of first causes that are agents. The paper, however, develops and defends a complex argument to the conclusion that there is a first agent-cause. one version of that argument proves -- not necessarily the (...) existence of God -- but still the existence of a godlike agent. Finally, the notion of a first agent-cause is employed for an analysis of freely willed human action. (shrink)

can natural human reason establish the existence of a first cause of all things? Hobbes tells us quite plainly that it can. Yet on other occasions he also tells us that our natural reason cannot rule out an eternal chain of causes with no beginning at all. The plot thickens when we consider his ambidextrous treatment of the only proof to which he gives any serious attention. On the one hand, Hobbes seems to endorse a fairly conventional version (...) of the cosmological argument in The Elements of Law and Leviathan, reasoning without apparent irony from the inadmissibility of an infinite regress of causes to the existence of a first cause of all. On the other hand, he systematically attacks this sort of cosmological.. (shrink)

This paper provides a new first cause argument by showing that atomism, i.e. the thesis that each composite object is composed of simple objects, together with causalism, understood in this paper as the thesis that every object is a cause or has a cause, logically imply the existence of a first cause if some additional general premises regarding the interplay between parthood, composition and causation are accepted. Thus it is shown that a commitment to (...) atomism, causalism and the additional premises result in a commitment to there being a first cause. (shrink)

The causes of asymmetries for handedness and cerebral speech are of scientific interest, but is it sensible to try to determine which of these came first? I argue that (1) first causes belong to mythology, not science; (2) much of the cited evidence is weak; and (3) the treatment of individual differences is inadequate in comparison with the right shift theory.

This chapter contains sections titled: Notes Bibliography.

This paper provides a new first cause argument by showing that atomism, i.e. the thesis that each composite object is composed of simple objects, together with causalism, understood in this paper as the thesis that every object is a cause or has a cause, logically imply the existence of a first cause if some additional general premises regarding the interplay between parthood, composition and causation are accepted. Thus it is shown that a commitment to (...) atomism, causalism and the additional premises result in a commitment to there being a first cause. (shrink)

Causal finitismimplies that every causal sequence has at its root at least one uncaused cause. Together with a defensible (and defended) Causal Principle, this implies that there is a necessarily existing first cause. The argument is similar to the Kalām cosmological argument. The most prevalent theory as to what a necessarily existing first cause would be like is theism, and the rest of the chapter is spent discussing the coherence between causal finitism and theism, especially (...) of a classical sort. For there is _prima facie_ reason for the theist to be worried. It seems that God is moved by infinitely many reasons, knows infinitely many things, and seemingly can make use of this knowledge to produce effects in the world. Resolutions to the difficulties are offered, at times drawing upon classical theism’s doctrine of divine simplicity. (shrink)

Although the treatise presented here is most interesting, it was never widely disseminated. As far as we know, it is preserved only in Latin, in one manuscript. The text poses many questions. Who produced a copy of the text? Who is the translator? Is the treatise a genuine work of Averroes? And if so, what was his intention in writing this monograph on the First Cause?

In this article, the author notes that Thomas Aquinas, in his brief work entitled De Ente et Essentia, proved that at the base of understanding the world, the human being, and God in particular, there is our understanding of being and its essence. When we make a small mistake at the beginning in our understanding of being and its essence, it will turn to be a big one in the end. And what is “at the end” of our knowledge is (...) the discovery of the First and Ultimate Cause of all things, known as: Ipsum Esse, God, the Absolute, The Most Perfect Substance, on whom everything depends, and who depends not on anything else. These present inquiries about the proper understanding of being and its essence are aimed at formulating proof of the necessity of existence of a Being that is the First Cause, and which, existing as Ipsum Esse, is the source and reason of existence of all beings. Without these inquiries, the proof itself would be incomprehensible, and more importantly it would be a purely a priori one. Furthermore, without the existential conception of being, which Thomas first formulated, one could not discover the First Cause which, as Ipsum Esse, is the source of the existence of every being. This issue seems to have escaped the attention of the author of the book Aquinas’s Way to God. The Proof in “De Ente et Essentia.”. (shrink)

This paper contains a critique of the 'Kalam' Cosmological Argument for a first cause of the universe as a whole. I argue that one of its major premises (that the universe began to exist) cannot be justified a priori from the paradoxes of the actual infinite, nor by appeal to current cosmological theories. But those who wish to infer from cosmology to the non-existence of a first cause also fail to make their case. I conclude with (...) some morals for the project of natural theology. (shrink)

What is the origin of the universe? This paper provides a purely mathematical answer. -/- We prove that the generative origin of any non-trivial, self-contained totality must be paradoxical self-reference (PR) — the logical structure exemplified by "This sentence is false," formalized as f(O) = ¬O. -/- The entire proof is a six-step mathematical deduction from exactly two premises: -/- The universe contains arithmetic — a minimal empirical postulate: countable objects exist. -/- Gödel's First Incompleteness Theorem (1931) — a (...) rigorously proven mathematical theorem. -/- No philosophical assumption is required. No metaphysics. -/- The Six Steps Step -/- Claim -/- Basis -/- A -/- The universe contains arithmetic -/- Empirical postulate -/- B -/- Any description of the universe necessarily contains PR -/- Gödel's theorem -/- C -/- PR is unavoidable under every logical framework -/- Consistency–inconsistency dilemma -/- D -/- Systems containing arithmetic cannot be static — they must have generative structure -/- Gödelian generativity: F₀ ⊂ F₁ ⊂ F₂ ⊂ ⋯ -/- E -/- The generative origin must be self-referential -/- Elimination of external causes -/- F -/- Only PR can generate; tautological self-reference is sterile -/- TR orbit = {O}, but the universe has ≥ 2 states -/- Main Theorem. The generative origin of the universe is necessarily paradoxical self-reference (PR). -/- Why the Universe Cannot Be Static Gödel's theorem proves that any formal system containing arithmetic necessarily generates true propositions beyond its own axioms. This process is non-terminable: F₀ ⊂ F₁ ⊂ F₂ ⊂ ⋯ — an infinite ascending chain of systems, each transcending the last. A "purely static" universe — one where everything is settled within a finite foundation — is logically impossible. -/- The Consistency–Inconsistency Dilemma The proof eliminates even the assumption of consistency: -/- Consistent → Gödel applies → PR exists -/- Classically inconsistent → Explosion (trivialism) → Cannot describe a non-trivial universe → Eliminated -/- Paraconsistently inconsistent → True contradictions (dialetheiae) are direct realizations of PR -/- Under every possible logical framework, PR is unavoidable. -/- Premises Premise -/- Status -/- Cost of Denial -/- Universe contains arithmetic -/- Weak empirical postulate -/- Abandoning all arithmetic and physics -/- Gödel's theorem -/- Proven (1931) -/- Unchallengeable -/- Universe is self-contained -/- By definition -/- Redefining "universe" -/- Universe is non-trivial -/- Empirical fact -/- Denying all distinctions -/- Consistency is not a premise — it has been eliminated. -/- Document The PDF contains the complete paper in two languages: -/- English version (first half) -/- Chinese version (second half) -/- Both versions are identical in content and structure. -/- Keywords paradoxical self-reference, PR, Gödel's incompleteness theorem, ontogenesis, generativity, first cause, origin of the universe, self-contained totality, paraconsistent logic, foundations of mathematics, mathematical ontology, cosmogony -/- Author Baolong Jia (贾宝龙) Independent Researcher. (shrink)

This article argues that Aristotle depicts the soul as a detectable aspect of one’s being, is in the form of properties, and is discernable by cognition. Thus, he proposed that it is possible to discern the complementary connection between one’s being and the first cause of creation. Aristotle, like Kant, recognised that the age-old problem of scepticism posed a challenge to epistemological, ontological, and ethical claims. However, Kant did not develop his ideas regarding bridging the gap between what (...) is demonstrable and the first cause of creation – which resulted in perpetuating problems with scepticism and dualism. Consequently, in the effort to resolve the problems of scepticism and dualism, to promote self-actualisation, holistic well-being and, to help individuals realise their full potential there is a resurgence of Aristotle’s explanation of the relationship between self-knowledge and knowledge of the first cause of creation. This article contributes to the philosophy of science, the philosophy of the social sciences, the philosophy of religion, to contemporary literature on social psychology, and to literature addressing the interface between the sciences and perennial philosophy by demonstrating that Aristotle’s perennial wisdom and his epistemic approach – based on logical positivism – resolve problems related to scepticism, materialism, and dualism. (shrink)

Medieval Modal Logic & Science uses modal reasoning in a new way to fortify the relationships between science, ethics, and politics. Robert C. Trundle accomplishes this by analyzing the role of modal logic in the work of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, then applying these themes to contemporary issues. He incorporates Augustine's ideas involving thought and consciousness, and Aquinas's reasoning to a First Cause. The author also deals with Augustine's ties to Aristotelian modalities of thought regarding science (...) and logic, reassessing the commonly held belief in Augustine's Platonism to not be a mistake as much as a simplistic view of his philosophy. Trundle links contemporary issues in epistemology, morality, theology, and logic, making several useful connections between ancient and medieval studies in modal logic and modern concerns. These applications of modal theory illuminate many puzzles in the works of Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Whitehead, and Kuhn. (shrink)

In this paper, I draw attention to various doctrines common to different Vedāntic traditions. In particular, I pay close attention to the doctrine of beginningless _karman_. I also note that this doctrine seems to stand in tension with Leibnizian Cosmological Arguments (LCAs) and Kalām Cosmological Arguments (KCAs). This tension arises because defenders of these arguments argue that an infinite causal regress or an actual infinite cannot be physically instantiated and because the doctrine of beginningless _karman_ seems to imply that such (...) a regress or actual infinite can be physically instantiated. I address this tension by showing that not all interpretations of beginningless _karman_ involve an infinite causal regress or an actual infinite. I close this paper by highlighting a few features that Vedāntic traditions have that make them more resistant to some objections to LCAs and KCAs. (shrink)

While it is unproblematic that someone evil causes further evil, it is difficult to explain how a good person can cause his or her first evil act. Augustine, denying that something good can be the cause of evil, concludes that the first moral evil has only a ‘deficient cause’, not an efficient cause, which is to say that it has no explanation. By contrast, Aquinas and Scotus hold that the first moral evil has (...) a cause, that the cause is something good, and that it is an efficient cause: the will. For Aquinas, the will can cause its first evil act only if it is momentarily non-culpably deficient, in that it does not make the intellect actually consider the moral rule relevant to the choice. For Scotus, no such occurrent deficiency is presupposed in the will causing its first evil act; the will’s freedom suffices. Yet there is surprising agreement: at bottom, Aquinas and Scotus both trace the first moral evil to the will’s ability for alternatives and no further. Thus their view converges with Augustine’s claim that evil ultimately has no efficient cause. (shrink)

The paper presents a new version of the "Cosmological Argument" – considered to be an ontological argument, since it exclusively uses ontological concepts and principles. It employs famous results of modern physics, and distinguishes between event-causation and agent-causation. Due to these features, the argument manages to avoid the objection of infinite regress. It remains true, however, that the conclusion of the argument is too unspecific to be unambiguously considered an argument for the existence of God.

In this paper, I examine some main threads of the identification stage of Scotus's project in the fourth chapter of De Primo, where he tries to show that a first efficient cause must have the attributes of simplicity, intellect, will, and infinity. Many philosophers are favorably disposed towards one or another argument such as Scotus's (e.g., the cosmological argument from contingency) purporting to show that there is an absolutely first efficient cause. How far can Scotus take (...) us from this starting point towards the ultimate aim of establishing the existence of a being more recognizably identifiable as God? (shrink)

This is an expanded edition of Sydney Shoemaker's seminal collection of his work on interrelated issues in the philosophy of mind and metaphysics. It reproduces all of the original papers, many of which are now regarded as classics, and includes four papers published since the first edition appeared in 1984. Themes include the nature of self-knowledge and self-reference, personal identity, persistence over time, properties, mental states, and perceptual experience.A number of the papers, including 'Self-Reference and Self-Awareness', 'Persons and Their (...) Pasts', 'Causality and Properties', and 'The Inverted Spectrum', have remained at the centre of discussion of their topics. Several of the essays in the original collection discuss the ways in which causal considerations enter into the individuation of properties, and three of the added essays - 'Causal and Metaphysical Necessity', 'Realization and Mental Causation', and 'On What There Are' - deal with related themes. The neo-Lockean view of personal identity presented in 'Persons and Their Pasts' is developed with a different emphasis in the added paper 'Self and Substance'.Identity, Cause, and Mind's reappearance will be warmly welcomed by scholars and students alike. (shrink)

Introduction: We live in a society that encourages self-medication and one reason is the availability of drugs that do not require a prescription and are easily accessible, the abuse of these have important implications for the health of the general population; being the most commonly used drugs: analgesics, antibiotics, antihistamines and others. Objective: Determine the causes that induce self-medication in freshmen and fifth year of the Faculty of Medicine of the Universidad Mayor, Real y Pontificia de San Francisco Xavier de (...) Chuquisaca - Bolivia, 2012. Methodology: Quantitative and descriptive cross-sectional approach. A sample of 284 students which they apply structural survey was obtained. Results.A high percentage of students who are self-medicating themselves without.medical.supervision. Conclusions: We can say that self-medication on freshmen and fifth year of medical school at the University Of San Francisco Xavier De Chuquisaca is induced by influence of social circle (friends and parents), advertising of certain medications, access to internet and lack of time. (shrink)

Is the common cause principle merely one of a set of useful heuristics for discovering causal relations, or is it rather a piece of heavy duty metaphysics, capable of grounding the direction of causation itself? Since the principle was introduced in Reichenbach’s groundbreaking work The Direction of Time (1956), there have been a series of attempts to pursue the latter program—to take the probabilistic relationships constitutive of the principle of the common cause and use them to ground the (...) direction of causation. These attempts have not all explicitly appealed to the principle as originally formulated; it has also appeared in the guise of independence conditions, counterfactual overdetermination, and, in the causal modelling literature, as the causal markov condition. In this paper, I identify a set of difficulties for grounding the asymmetry of causation on the principle and its descendents. The first difficulty, concerning what I call the vertical placement of causation, consists of a tension between considerations that drive towards the macroscopic scale, and considerations that drive towards the microscopic scale—the worry is that these considerations cannot both be comfortably accommodated. The second difficulty consists of a novel potential counterexample to the principle based on the familiar Einstein Podolsky Rosen (EPR) correlations in quantum mechanics. (shrink)

The view that to act is to cause change and that to be an agent is to be the causer of an action’s result has gained traction in the past twenty years or so. This view seems to have two significant corollaries. First, there is no distinction between doing an action and causing its result. Second, any two actions that have the same result will turn out to be identical. Ruben (2018) has recently used the first corollary (...) to challenge the view, and the second corollary raises further problems for the view. This article aims to refine this view and defend it against the challenges that arise out of its two corollaries. It is argued that being the cause of an action’s result is not the same as being its causer and that doing an action is not just causing its result but causing it in a specific way. (shrink)

This paper is about the history of a question in ancient Greek philosophy and medicine: what holds the parts of a whole together? The idea that there is a single cause responsible for cohesion is usually associated with the Stoics. They refer to it as the synectic cause (αἴτιον συνεκτικόν), a term variously translated as ‘cohesive cause,’ ‘containing cause’ or ‘sustaining cause.’ The Stoics, however, are neither the first nor the only thinkers to raise (...) this question or to propose a single answer. Many earlier thinkers offer their own candidates for what actively binds parts together, with differing implications not only for why we are wholes rather than heaps, but also why our bodies inevitably become diseased and fall apart. This paper assembles, up to the time of the Stoics, one part of the history of such a cause: what is called ‘the synechon’ (τὸ συνέχον) – that which holds things together. Starting with our earliest evidence from Anaximenes (sixth century BCE), the paper looks at different candidates and especially the models and metaphors for thinking about causes of cohesion which were proposed by different philosophers and doctors including Empedocles, early Greek doctors, Diogenes of Apollonia, Plato and Aristotle. My goal is to explore why these candidates and models were proposed and how later philosophical objections to them led to changes in how causes of cohesion were understood. (shrink)

Since the 1970s progressively more translators, in several European languages, have abandoned the traditional translation of ὁ βουλϵύσας at Physics 194b30 as ‘the adviser’ for a different one: ‘the deliberator’. The latter translation has never been defended, and is, as this article will argue, indefensible—the active of βουλϵύω is never used in classical prose in this sense. Furthermore, this translation obscures what may be a philosophically significant feature of the passage: the fact that all of the other examples of efficient (...) causes Aristotle gives here, in what is his canonical account of the four causes, are cases where what causes something to move is distinct from the thing it causes to move (the father causes the child’s gestation, the builder causes the lumber’s turning into a house). An Aristotelian deliberator, on the other hand, while arguably an efficient cause, is the cause of their very own action. At least one ancient commentator, Simplicius, thought that Aristotle had good reasons to restrict his examples to causes distinct from what they set in motion. Both the traditional translation and the variant of it for which I shall argue, ‘the one who made the proposal’, fit this model. (shrink)

This book provides the first comprehensive account of Hume’s conception of objects in Book I of the Treatise. What, according to Hume, are objects? Ideas? Impressions? Mind-independent objects? All three? None of the above? Through a close textual analysis, I show that Hume thought that objects are imagined ideas. However, I argue that he struggled with two accounts of how and when we imagine such ideas. On the one hand, Hume believed that we always and universally imagine that objects (...) are the causes of our perceptions. On the other hand, he thought that we only imagine such causes when we reach a “philosophical” level of thought. This tension manifests itself in Hume’s account of personal identity; a tension that, I argue, Hume acknowledges in the Appendix to the Treatise. As a result of presenting a detailed account of Hume’s conception of objects, we are forced to accommodate new interpretations of, at least, Hume’s notions of belief, personal identity, justification and causality. (shrink)

In this paper I start by briefly presenting an analysis of token cause and of token causal relevance that I developed elsewhere, and then apply it to the famous thirsty traveler riddle. One general outcome of the analysis of causal relevance employed here is that in preemption cases (early or late) the preempted cause is not a cause since it is causally irrelevant to the effect. I consider several variations of the thirsty traveler riddle. In the (...) class='Hi'>first variation the first enemy emptied the canteen and the second enemy threw it away. On this variation, the act of neither enemy comes out, on the analysis employed here, as causally relevant to, and thus not as a cause of, the fact that the traveler died, but the conjunction of the two acts is a cause of it. This version is a case of mutual preemption. I argue that it has the same structure as the voting paradox, which thus has an analogous solution. In the standard version, in which the first enemy added poison to the water in the traveler's canteen, the act of the second enemy (who threw the canteen away) comes out, on the analysis used here, as causally relevant to and as a cause of the fact that the traveler died, but the act of the first enemy comes out as neither. I also make a comparison with Lewis' accounts, and discuss alternative treatments of the puzzle such as those of Hart and Honore and of Gavison, Margalit, and Ullmann-Margalit. (shrink)

Many philosophers are persuaded by familiar arguments that free will is incompatible with causal determinism. Yet, notoriously, past attempts to articulate how the right type of indeterminism might secure the capacity for autonomous action have generally been regarded as either demonstrably inadequate or irremediably obscure. This volume gathers together the most significant recent discussions concerning the prospects for devising a satisfactory indeterministic account of freedom of action. These essays give greater precision to traditional formulations of the problems associated with indeterministic (...) accounts and to the range of theoretical avenues for pursuing resolutions. The first four essays set out different challenges (from both compatibilists and those skeptical of the possibility of free will) to the adequacy of standard indeterministic theories. The next seven essays meet one or more of these challenges. Each of the fundamental types of approach--simple indeterminism, causal indeterminism, and agent causation--is represented in these novel and sophisticated proposals. The collection finishes with two essays that debate whether compatibilism entails that freedom of choice is a comparatively rare phenomenon within an individual's life. Eloquently presenting some of the most compelling and accessible arguments surrounding this central philosophical issue, Agents, Causes, and Events makes a valuable contribution to courses in free will/action theory and metaphysics. (shrink)

La deserción universitaria será entendida como “El abandono de un programa de estudios antes de obtener el título o grado correspondiente, considerando un tiempo lo suficientemente largo como para descartar la posibilidad de reincorporación” (Himmel, 2002, p. 94). En Chile es una problemática de la realidad nacional y que, en general afecta a las distintas Instituciones de Educación Superior.Los objetivos planteados para la investigación radican en conocer y analizar las causas de la deserción de los y las estudiantes de cohorte (...) 2020, de las carreras de pregrado de una Universidad privada de Antofagasta, Chile.Las conclusiones estarán orientadas a dar respuesta desde los objetivos investigativos, así como también poder desglosar cada una de las variables, identificando y describiendo cada uno de estos factores. (shrink)

Causation is everywhere in the world: it features in every science and technology. But how much do we understand it? Mumford and Anjum develop a new theory of causation based on an ontology of real powers or dispositions. They provide the first detailed outline of a thoroughly dispositional approach, and explore its surprising features.

The leading accounts of the nature of causation divide into probability-raising and process-linkage views. On the probability-raising view, causation is rooted in the comparative probability of the effect with the cause versus without. On the process-linkage view, causation is rooted in the existence of a connecting line from cause to effect. I propose a third alternative which synthesizes these views while solving their problem cases. On this alternative, causation is rooted in the comparative probability of the connecting line (...) to the effect with the cause versus without: causes as probability raisers of processes. In the first two sections, I (briefly) outline the probability-raising and process-linkage views and identify a space of problems, and then I focus on developing the alternative probability-raisers-of-processes solution. I identify problems for this view as well, though I conclude that it is at least in important respects a step forward. (shrink)

Since 1900, debates about the justification of punishment have also been debates about the cause of crime. In the early twentieth century, the rehabilitative ideal of punishment viewed mental illness and dysfunction in individuals as the cause of crime. Starting in the 1970s, retributivism identified the immorality of human agents as the source of crime, which dovetailed well with the “tough-on-crime” political milieu of the 1980s and 1990s that produced mass incarceration. After surveying these historical trends, Wirts argues (...) for a social critical view that crime is best understood as a product of an unjust society, not faulty human beings. This view should take the lessons learned by the critiques of rehabilitation, however, and resist the tendency to reduce human beings to recipients of social services. (shrink)

According to qualia-epiphenomenalism, phenomenal properties are causally inefficacious, they are metaphysically distinct from, and nomologically connected with certain physical properties. The present paper argues that the claim of causal inefficacy undermines any effort to establish the alleged nomological connection. Epiphenomenalists concede that variations of phenomenal properties in the absence of any variation of physical/functional properties are logically possible, however they deny that these variations are nomologically possible. But if such variations have neither causal nor functional consequences, there is no way (...) to detect themanot only in scientific experiments, but also from the first-person perspective. Since neither third- nor first- person evidence can rule out the actual occurrence of such dissociations, the alleged nomological connection between phenomenal and physical properties cannot be established, in principle. As a consequence, the distinction between logical and nomological possibility breaks down and it cannot be ruled out that such dissociations occur in an unlimited number of cases. (shrink)

The first two thirds or so of this book is a thorough, severe, and at times somewhat difficult, philosophical analysis and critique of atheistic naturalistic answers to “What caused the Big Bang?” Most contemporary astrophysicists accept one of the following non-theistic accounts of the origin of the Big Bang: Steady State, Plasma, Oscillationist, Big Fizz, Big Divide, Quantum Observership, Big Accident, Atheistic Anthropic, and Plenitude cosmologies. The last third or so of the book develops a highly plausible theistic process (...) cosmology which includes creation ex nihilo. This book critically explores answers to the big question, What produced our universe around fifteen billion years ago in a Big Bang? It defends and revises Process Theology and develops contemporary arguments for God's existence based on the universe's life-supporting order and contingent existence. (shrink)

There is an initial presumption against disjunctive causes. First of all, for some people causation is a relation between events. But, arguably, there are no disjunctive events, since events are particulars and thus they have spatiotemporal locations, while it is unclear what the spatiotemporal location of a disjunctive event could be.1 More importantly, even if one believes that entities like facts can enter in causal relations, and even if there are disjunctive facts, it is still hard to see how (...) disjunctive facts could be causes. Imagine, for instance, the following scenario. I have a gun filled with red paint and another gun filled with blue paint, and I fire both guns at my neighbor’s white wall. A moment later, there is a graffiti on the wall and my neighbor notifies the police. He would have done so regardless of the graffiti’s color, since all he cares about is the existence of a graffiti on his wall. Is it plausible to claim that a disjunctive fact is a cause of his notifying the police? In particular, is it plausible to claim that he notified the police because I fired the red-paint gun or the blue-paint gun (the thought being that my firing paint of either color would have sufficed)? It seems not. The police was notified because of the actual graffiti on the wall, and the actual graffiti on the wall is made of a certain pattern of colored patches. Imagine, that, as it turns out, there are patches of both colors on the wall. Then it seems that both my firing the red-paint gun and my firing the blue-paint gun were causes of my neighbor’s notifying the police. In other words, my firing the red-paint gun and my firing the blue-paint gun jointly caused the outcome: each of them was a contributory cause of the outcome’s occurrence. On the other hand, imagine that there are only patches of one color on the wall. Then it seems that my firing only one of the guns was a cause. Either way, the disjunction fails to be a cause: either my firing the red-paint gun was a cause, or my firing the blue-paint gun was a cause, or they were both causes, but their disjunction was not.. (shrink)

What one is ultimately interested in with regard to ‘just cause’ is whether a specific war, actual or potential, is justified. I call this ‘the applied question’. Answering this question requires knowing the empirical facts on the ground. However, an answer to the applied question regarding a specific war requires a prior answer to some more general questions, both descriptive and normative. These questions are: What kind of thing is a ‘just cause’ for war (an aim, an injury (...) or wrong suffered, or something different altogether)? I call this ‘the formal question’. Then there is what I call the ‘the general substantive question’. Depending on the previous answer to the formal question, the general substantive question can be formulated as: ‘Which causes are just?’ or as ‘Under what conditions is there a just cause?’ A final question, which has recently elicited increased interest, is what I call ‘the question of timing’: does the ‘just cause’ criterion only apply to the initiation of a war or also to the continuation of a war, that is, can a war that had a just cause at the beginning lose it at some point in its course (and vice versa)? I argue that a just cause is a state of affairs. Moreover, the criterion of just cause is not independent of proportionality and other valid jus ad bellum criteria. One cannot know whether there is a just cause without knowing whether the other (valid) criteria (apart from ‘right intention’) are satisfied; and this account has certain theoretical and practical advantages. As regards the general substantive question, I argue that all kinds of aims can, in principle, be legitimately pursued by means of war, even aims that might sound dubious at first, like vengeance or the search for glory. Thus, the pursuit of such aims does not make the war disproportionate or deprive it of just cause. As regards the question of timing, I argue that the criteria of jus ad bellum apply throughout the war, not only at the point of its initiation. While starting a war at t1 might be justified, continuing it at time t2 might be unjustified (and vice versa), and this insight does not require an addition to jus ad bellum but is already contained in it. (shrink)

This chapter presents a series of experiments that elicit causal judgments using statements that do not include the verb "to cause". In particular, our interest is in exploring the extent to which previously observed effects of normative considerations on agreement with what we call "cause"-statements, i.e. those of the form "X caused ..." extend as well to those of the form "X V-ed Y", where V is a lexical causative. Our principal finding is that in many cases the (...) effects do not extend in this way, and moreover that the cases where we do find the same pattern are those where the causal verb used has a negative valence of its own. We draw two main conclusions from this finding. First, it reveals how the almost exclusive focus on "cause"-statements in the experimental study of causal judgment has led to findings that are unrepresentative of the full range of ordinary causal thinking, and provides a proof of concept as to how this thinking can be studied in its full variety. Second, the results of our experiments provide significant indirect support for the contention that the effect of moral considerations on agreement with "cause"-statements reflect the fact that these statements are most often used to assign responsibility for an event, and not just to describe the causal structure of what happened. It is not causal judgments in general that result from a process in which normative considerations play a role, but perhaps only those judgments that express a determination of moral responsibility. (shrink)

It is part of the phenomenology of perceptual experiences that objects seem to be presented to us. The first guide to objects is their perceptual presence. Further reflection shows that we take the objects of our perceptual experiences to be among the causes of our experiences. However, not all causes of the experience are also objects of the experience. This raises the question indicated in the title of this paper. We argue that taking phenomenal presence as the guide to (...) the objects of perception, we can see that at least in two sensory modalities, smell and touch, there is no uniform answer to this question. The objects of olfactory and tactile experiences can move along the causal chain. Accordingly, the content of olfactory and tactile experience may vary. (shrink)

1. The texts and inscriptions dating from the early period – roughly the first 500 years after the Buddha’s passing away – do not support the conclusion that fully-fledged sects existed at that time. Rather, we should think in terms of ‘sectarian tendencies’ that emerged as actual sects towards the end of the early period. The available sources that speak of the First Schism are best read as sectarian accounts depicting the situation in the Buddhism of their own (...) time – roughly 100-500 CE – rather than as historical records of the pre-A?okan era. 2. All of the Sthavira sources mention the so-called ‘five theses’ of the Mah?sa?ghika as either the cause of the First Schism or as important doctrinal issues. And a review of relevant Vinaya sources demonstrates that the ‘five theses’ were probably accepted within the Mah?sa?ghika, which confirms that this was likely the principal cause of the First Schism. (shrink)

Many recent gene knockout experiments cause anatomical changes to the jaw region of mice that several investigators claim are evolutionary reversals. Here we evaluate these mutant phenotypes and the assertions of atavism. We argue that following the knockout of Hoxa-2, Dlx-2, MHox, Otx2, and RAR genes, ectopic cartilages arise as secondary consequences of disruptions in normal processes of cell specification, migration, or differentiation. These disruptions cause an excess of mesenchyme to accumulate in a region through which skeletal progenitor (...) cells usually migrate, and at a site of condensation that is normally present in mammals but that is too small to chondrify. We find little evidence that these genes, when disrupted, cause a reversion to any primitive condition and although changes in their expression may have played a role in the evolution of the mammalian jaw, their function during morphogenesis is not sufficiently understood to confirm such hypotheses. BioEssays 20:245–255, 1998.© 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)