I respond to a dilemma for Causal Decision Theory (CDT) under determinism, posed in Adam Elga's paper “Confessions of a Causal Decision Theorist”. The treatment I present highlights (i) the status of laws as predictors, and (ii) the consequences of decision dependence, which arises natively out of Jeffrey Conditioning and CDT's characteristic equation. My argument leverages decision dependence to work around a key assumption of Elga's proof: to wit, that in the two problems he presents, the CDTer must employ subjunctive‐suppositional (...) (rather than evidential) transformations of a shared prior. (shrink)

This paper offers a limited defence of two seemingly disparate interpretive approaches to free thought in Hegel’s JenaPhenomenology of Spirit. On the one hand, I defend the view of so-called post-Kantian Hegelians, that Kant’s synthetic unity of apperception is central to Hegel’s account of free thinking in thePhenomenology. On the other hand, I argue that the notions ofdas Offenein Heidegger’sVom Wesen der WahrheitandAb-Lösungin his 1930/31 lectures on Hegel’sPhenomenologyare no less crucial to an understanding of free thought in Hegel’s work. I (...) show that absolution is a condition for the possibility ofdas Offene, which is a condition for the possibility of apperception in its reflexive capacity. (shrink)

During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in South Africa, one Prophetic Pentecostal Church, Rabboni Centre Ministries, brought about a marked change in their practice and theology of confession and absolution. Before COVID-19, the Prophet would exorcise the evil spirits that caused sinful behaviour in people and in this way restore them as good Christians acceptable to the congregation. During the COVID-19 lockdown, people could not meet in church and therefore the Prophet changed the practice and theology of confession (...) and absolution. People had to personally identify their own sins and write these down in an email that they sent to the church. Their confessions were then read out, and they were given absolution by the Prophet. During COVID-19, sins were understood as the wrong actions and thoughts of believers, who were personally responsible for their sins. Sins were no longer blamed on Satan. No exorcism followed confessions, rather people were absolved by the Prophet just as people are absolved by priests in mainline churches. In this article, I show that through the act of self-reflection and confession, people are able to take control of their lives and determine their future selves. It also enables people to re-connect to the faith community, the Prophet and God. Contribution: Unlike the thesis of Weber and Foucault, this does not lead to heightened individualism but rather to a self-reflective individual who is aware both of their individual agency and their self as a ‘dividual’ being who is connected to other people and spirits. (shrink)

Volume 25, Issue 3, March 2025, Page 1-3.

Several studies have thrown light over Plato’s rejection of poetry in the Republic. At the same time, several scholars remarked the dramatic versatility the dialogues manifest. Along these lines, a source of perplexity became the inconsistency that arises from Plato’s attack to poets and the involvement of poetry in his works. Two of the most important reasons for Plato’s critique are the morally degraded value that poetry instills in audience’s soul and the pleasure the drama affords. However, Plato acknowledges that (...) in order to enact the right values and to develop the best moral attitudes in the city poetry is really effective.After an accurate reform of dramatic style, Plato is forced to recognize the inescapable charme of poetry and admit that the pleasures of poetry cannot be simply dispensed. (shrink)

In their article “Just War and Unjust Soldiers: American Public Opinion on the Moral Equality of Combatants,” Scott Sagan and Benjamin Valentino argue that the American public evaluates soldiers’ wartime actions more according to whether the war they are fighting was initiated justly, than on their actions during warfare. In this respect, their views are more similar to those of revisionist philosophers than to those of traditional just war theorists. Before leaping to broad conclusions from their survey, it should be (...) replicated. If the findings hold in the replication, intriguing questions could be asked about comparative cross-national attitudes and about the relationship between democracy and war. (shrink)

This article examines the confessional booth as an architected space that, by serving as a geo-epistemological enclosure, prefigures digital forms of data capture and production. In conversation with critical scholarship about ‘confessional culture,’ it analyzes how confessionals and digital enclosures embody different historical iterations of a cultural technique that promises absolution – understood as a cleansing process of transparent exposure. It argues that, with digital enclosures, the renunciative self-mortification that lies at the heart of classic Christian confession is reprogrammed (...) into what Byung-Chul Han calls a ‘pornographic self-presentation.’ The self-death dealt by the confessional thus becomes an apparently voluntary self-exploitation for the social media subject. In both cases, however, absolution governs via rituals of cathartic transparency, submitting interiority to processes of legible exteriorization and articulating the subject via an exhibitive logic that blurs the boundaries between communicative freedom and compulsory self-exposure. (shrink)

The absolute pessimistic induction states that earlier theories, although successful, were abandoned, so current theories, although successful, will also be abandoned. By contrast, the relative pessimistic induction states that earlier theories, although superior to their predecessors, were discarded, so current theories, although superior to earlier theories, will also be discarded. Some pessimists would have us believe that the relative pessimistic induction avoids empirical progressivism. I argue, however, that it has the same problem as the absolute pessimistic induction, viz., either its (...) premise is implausible or its conclusion does not probably follow from its premise. (shrink)

Absolute needs (as against instrumental needs) are independent of the ends, goals and purposes of personal agents. Against the view that the only needs are instrumental needs, David Wiggins and Garrett Thomson have defended absolute needs on the grounds that the verb ‘need’ has instrumental and absolute senses. While remaining neutral about it, this article does not adopt that approach. Instead, it suggests that there are absolute biological needs. The absolute nature of these needs is defended by appeal to: their (...) objectivity (as against mind-dependence); the universality of the phenomenon of needing across the plant and animal kingdoms; the impossibility that biological needs depend wholly upon the exercise of the abilities characteristic of personal agency; the contention that the possession of biological needs is prior to the possession of the abilities characteristic of personal agency. Finally, three philosophical usages of ‘normative’ are distinguished. On two of these, to describe a phenomenon or claim as ‘normative’ is to describe it as value-dependent. A description of a phenomenon or claim as ‘normative’ in the third sense does not entail such value-dependency, though it leaves open the possibility that value depends upon the phenomenon or upon the truth of the claim. It is argued that while survival needs (or claims about them) may well be normative in this third sense, they are normative in neither of the first two. Thus, the idea of absolute need is not inherently normative in either of the first two senses. (shrink)

This paper is about two topics: metaepistemological absolutism and the epistemic principles governing perceptual warrant. Our aim is to highlight—by taking the debate between dogmatists and conservativists about perceptual warrant as a case study—a surprising and hitherto unnoticed problem with metaepistemological absolutism, at least as it has been influentially defended by Paul Boghossian (Fear of knowledge: against relativism and constructivism, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006a) as the principal metaepistemological contrast point to relativism. What we find is that the metaepistemological commitments (...) at play on both sides of this dogmatism/conservativism debate do not line up with epistemic relativism nor do they line up with absolutism, at least as Boghossian articulates this position. What this case study reveals is the need in metaepistemological option space for the recognition of a weaker and less tendentious form of absolutism, what we call “environment relativism”. On this view, epistemic principles are knowable, objective, and they can serve as the basis of particular epistemic evaluations, but their validity is relative to the wider global environment in which they are applied. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this journal, Middleton and Murgueitio Ramírez argue that absolute velocity is measurable, contrary to the received wisdom. Specifically, they claim that ‘there exists at least one reasonable analysis of measurement according to which the speedometer in [a world called “the Basic World”] measures the absolute velocity of the car.’ In this note, I critically respond to that claim: the analysis of measurement that Middleton and Murgueitio Ramírez propose is not reasonable; nor does it entail that absolute velocities are (...) measurable. (shrink)

Hegel's absolute idealism has proven to be one of the most controversial philosophical positions to characterize. The most abstract categories of essence are what Hegel calls the determinations of reflection, i.e. identity, difference and ground. Continuing his analysis of the determinations of essence, Hegel then discusses the notions of subsistence, relation and the whole and its parts and arrives at essence's determinations of “inner” and outer: the “inner” functions as ground of appearance and opposes the externality of reflection‐into‐other. In actuality, (...) there is no difference between ground and existence, between existence and essence: actuality is what it is, its existence is its essence, its essence its existence. Hegel sets out to show that the ultimate description of truth ‐ i.e. the concept ‐ creates, undermines, incorporates, and improves on any other relevant definition of truth. To achieve this, Hegel divides the Logic's description of metaphysical truth into three parts: Being, Essence, and the Concept. (shrink)

Debates about the semantics and pragmatics of predicates of personal taste have largely centered on contextualist and relativist proposals. In this paper, I argue in favor of an alternative, absolutist analysis of PPT. Theorists such as Max Kölbel and Peter Lasersohn have argued that we should dismiss absolutism due to its inability to accommodate the possibility of faultless disagreement involving PPT. My aim in the paper is to show how the absolutist can in fact accommodate this possibility by drawing on (...) an account of faultless disagreement that improves upon a recent proposal due to Karl Schafer. In amending Schafer’s proposal, I put forward an empirically informed view of our beliefs regarding matters of personal taste, as well as an account of our assertions concerning such matters. I also argue that absolutists should take disagreement about these matters to be conative, rather than doxastic, in nature. The anticipated result is an independently compelling account of faultless disagreement about matters of personal taste that fits naturally with absolutism. (shrink)

ABSTRACT We argue that Roberts’s argument for the thesis that absolute velocity is not measurable in a Newtonian world is unsound, because it depends on an analysis of measurement that is not extensionally adequate. We propose an alternative analysis of measurement, one that is extensionally adequate and entails that absolute velocity is measured in at least one Newtonian world. If our analysis is correct, then this Newtonian world is a counterexample to the widely endorsed thesis that if a property varies (...) under the symmetries of a theory then, according to that theory, the property could not be measured. Thus, our paper shows that the debate over the measurability of symmetry-variant properties is more unsettled than previously supposed. (shrink)

According to David Lewis, a realist about possible worlds must hold that actuality is relative: the worlds are ontologically all on a par; the actual and the merely possible differ, not absolutely, but in how they relate to us. Call this 'Lewisian realism'. The alternative, 'Leibnizian realism', holds that actuality is an absolute property that marks a distinction in ontological status. Lewis presents two arguments against Leibnizian realism. First, he argues that the Leibnizian realist cannot account for the contingency of (...) actuality. Second, he argues that the Leibnizian realist cannot explain why skepticism about one's own actuality is absurd. In this paper, I mount a defense of Leibnizian realism. (shrink)

Which is more fundamental: monadic value properties (“degrees of value”) possessed by individual valuable entities, or dyadic value relations (betterness, equality, etc) between valuable entities? This question parallels a hotly contested question about the metaphysics of physical quantities like mass, between “absolutists” (who prioritize monadic properties) and “comparativists” (who prioritize comparative relations). This paper does two things. First, I make a case for absolutism with respect to value, centered on the argument that only absolutism can make sense of cross-world value (...) comparisons, and that such comparisons are essential to the action-guiding role of value. Second, I argue that the metaphysical question of value absolutism vs comparativism has substantive implications for axiology: in particular, absolutism weakens the connection between “individualism” (the idea that individual welfare subjects are the fundamental bearers of value) and principles like Pareto that tie value comparisons between worlds directly to individual-by-individual comparisons. (shrink)

Absolutism, as I will understand it here, is the thesis that there is sense to be made of absolutely general quantification: quantification over absolutely everything there is. The aim of this chapter is to clarify the metaphysical debate between absolutists and some of their detractors.

This book is born out of two contradictions: first, it explores the making of meaning in a musical form that was made to lose its meaning at the turn of the nineteenth century; secondly, it is a history of a music that claims to have no history - absolute music. The book therefore writes against that notion of absolute music which tends to be the paradigm for most musicological and analytical studies. It is concerned not so much with what music (...) is, but with why and how meaning is constructed in instrumental music and what structures of knowledge need to be in place for such meaning to exist. From the thought of Vincenzo Galilei to that of Theodore Adorno, Daniel Chua suggests that instrumental music has always been a critical and negative force in modernity, even with its nineteenth-century apotheosis as 'absolute music'. (shrink)

Although contemporary powers metaphysics largely understands itself as a metaphysical realist undertaking, recently powers have come to the surface also within an idealist context. This paper aims to characterize and motivate an absolute idealist conception of powers. I compare realist and idealist powers metaphysics in their respective responses to Humean scepticism concerning powers, thereby motivating the claim that the very idea of a power is actually best understood as an idealist idea. I continue to characterize the absolute idealist’s understanding of (...) power, for which it is necessary to see that the content of her power notion is inseparable from the way in which she arrives at that notion. I close with a brief reflection on the absolute idealist’s understanding of the power of thought, which is where idealist and realist powers metaphysics diverge most radically. (shrink)

The problem of absolute generality has attracted much attention in recent philosophy. Agustin Rayo and Gabriel Uzquiano have assembled a distinguished team of contributors to write new essays on the topic. They investigate the question of whether it is possible to attain absolute generality in thought and language and the ramifications of this question in the philosophy of logic and mathematics.

Absolute motion—motion relative to space itself—is detectable in the classical non-Euclidean geometries. Although this claim can be conveyed with a simple thought experiment, I argue that it was out of sight to the people who were best placed to take note of it in the nineteenth century, when non-Euclidean geometry was a central object of study. This is a perplexing state of affairs, and in the first part of this paper I offer an explanation for it. A central component of (...) this explanation involves the shift from spatial to spatiotemporal thinking that had to wait for Einstein’s development of the theories of relativity in the early twentieth century. In the second part of this paper, I discuss how significant this lacuna was. If the possibility of detecting absolute motion had been recognized, it would have impacted all of the major positions in the philosophy of geometry. Indeed, some figures would have responded to it by claiming that space must be necessarily Euclidean after all. (shrink)

The significance of absolute space and absolute motion in the Critical philosophy is clarified by analysis of relevant passages in Kant's Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. Newton's absolute space is rejected in favor of absolute space conceived of as an idea of reason serving to unify the infinity of possible relative kinematic spaces. On the other hand, something like newton's concept of absolute motion (e.g., in the case of rotation) is accepted by Kant under the heading of real - as (...) opposed to illusory - motion. (shrink)

Ist es möglich, das Absolute zu begreifen? Hegel behauptet Ja und irritiert seit gut 200 Jahren mit der Radikalität und Komplexität seines Ansatzes. Ermylos Plevrakis zeigt, inwiefern Hegels Wissenschaft der Logik als die rein logische Grundlagenforschung zum begrifflichen Fundament aller Metaphysik zu lesen ist.

Moral Absolutes sets forth a vigorous but careful critique of much recent work in moral theology. It is illustrated with examples from the most controversial aspects of Christian moral doctrine, and a frank account is given of the roots of the upheaval in Roman Catholic moral theology in and after the 1960s.

Weighted lottery proposals give guidance in rescue dilemma situations by balancing the demands of comparative and absolute fairness. While they do not advocate for saving the greater number outright, they are responsive to absolute fairness insofar as they show a certain sensitivity to the numbers involved. In this paper we investigate what criterion of absolute fairness we should demand weighted lotteries to fulfill. We do so by way of critically examining what is probably the most sophisticated weighted lottery on the (...) market: Gerard Vong's Exclusive Composition-Sensitive (EXCS) lottery. We find that both the standard that seems most common in the debate, and a different standard Vong uses to criticize Jens Timmermann's Individualist Lottery are in contradiction to basic demands placed upon weighted lotteries and are therefore unsuitable as necessary conditions for absolute fairness. We instead propose a purely gradual understanding of absolute fairness. (shrink)

Karl Marx gave us not just a critique of the political economy of capital but a way of confronting the impoverished ethical quality of life we face under capitalism. Interpreting Marx anew as an ethical thinker, Absolute Ethical Life provides crucial resources for understanding how freedom and rational agency are impacted by a social world formed by value under capitalism, with consequences for philosophy today. Michael Lazarus situates Marx within a shared tradition of ethical inquiry, placing him in close dialogue (...) with Aristotle and Hegel. Lazarus traces the ethical and political dimensions of Marx's work missed by Hannah Arendt and Alasdair MacIntyre, two of the most profound critics of modern politics and ethics. Ultimately, the book claims that Marx's value-form theory is both a continuation of Aristotelian and Hegelian themes and at the same time his most distinctive theoretical achievement. In this normative interpretation of Marx, Lazarus integrates recent moral philosophy with a historically specific analysis of capitalism as a social form of life. He challenges contemporary political and economic theory to insist that any conception of modern life needs to account for capitalism. With a robust critique of capitalism derived from the determinations of what Marx calls the "form of value," Lazarus argues for an ethical life beyond capital"-- Provided by publisher. (shrink)

This article argues for acknowledging the existence of an absolute distinction between faith and science. It is often assumed in the science and religion debate that such a distinction would be ahistorical and uncontextual. After discussing this critique, the analogy with love and facts will be used to explain how an absolute distinction between faith and science may exist nonetheless. This contrast, however, does not imply compartmentalization. It is shown that the absolute distinction between faith and science is of crucial (...) importance to understand the historical contexts that so many contributors to the science and religion debate refer to in their argument against the approaches of Independence or Contrast. The article concludes that within our messy and complex practices there is an absolute distinction between faith and science—our historical contexts cannot be understood without it. (shrink)

In this major new work the leading philosopher Slavoj Žižek argues that philosophical materialism has failed to meet the key scientific, theoretical and political challenges of the modern world, from relativity theory and quantum physics to Freudian psychoanalysis and the failure of twentieth-century Communism. To bring materialism up to date, Žižek proposes a new foundation for dialectical materialism. He argues that dialectical materialism is the only true philosophical inheritor of what Hegel designates as the speculative approach of thought - all (...) other forms of materialism fail. In Absolute Recoil, Žižek offers a startling reformulation of the ground and possibilities of contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Apparent Knowing and Its Absolute Ground Discovery and Structure of the Self Absolute Knowing as Science of the Self References.

This paper discusses an issue that arises for all quantities but is best illustrated by the case of mass. We naturally think that something’s mass is one of its intrinsic properties, and we also think that things with mass stand in various mass relationships with one another, such as x being more mass than y. But of the intrinsic masses and the mass relationships, which are the more fundamental? This paper broadly surveys some lines of argument for each answer and (...) concludes in favor of the view that the mass relationships are fundamental. (shrink)

In Absolute Music: The History of an Idea, author Mark Evan Bonds examines how writers have struggled to isolate the essence of music in ways that account for its profound effects on the human spirit. By carefully tracing the evolution of absolute music from Ancient Greece through the Middle Ages to twentieth-century America, Bonds provides the first comprehensive history of this pivotal concept, and provokes new thoughts on the essence of music and how this essence explains music's effect. A long (...) awaited book from one of the most respected senior scholars in the field. (shrink)

A common view is that relativism requires tolerance. We argue that there is no deductive relation between relativism and tolerance, but also that relativism is not incompatible with tolerance. Next we note that there is no standard inductive relation between relativism and tolerance—no inductive enumeration, argument to the best explanation, or causal argument links the two. Two inductive arguments of a different sort that link them are then exposed and criticized at length. The first considers relativism from the objective point (...) of view ‘of the universe’, the second from the subjective point of view of the relativist herself. Both arguments fail. There is similarly no deductive relation between absolutism and tolerance—neither entails the other—and no inductive connection of any sort links the two. We conclude that tolerance, whether unlimited or restricted, is independent of both relativism and absolutism. A metaethical theory that says only that there is one true or valid ethical code, or that there is a plurality of equally true or valid ethical codes, tells us nothing about whether we should be tolerant, much less how tolerant we should be. (shrink)

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Die absolute Form" verfügbar.

Pacifist contributions to current ethics of war are often stated as alternatives to absolute pacifism. In this article, I discuss two version of this approach: “contingent pacifism” and “conditional pacifism”. I first give an account of how they might be understood, and ways in which they might be distinct from each other. My main issue, however, is with the alleged rejection of absolutism. I will argue that confusion reigns here and that this is mostly due to a conflation of, respectively, (...) the scope and the strength of moral prohibitions. I aim to provide a better understanding of what absolutism, e.g. absolute pacifism, really entails. (shrink)

St. Thomas Aquinas has always considered intelligence a potency higher than the will, absolutely speaking. That being said, and in my view, the existential primacy of the will in the act of freedom (particularly in choosing the existential end) is also indisputably Thomistic, as Cornelio Fabro has shown. This paper endeavors to explain Aquinas' doctrine on the absolute primacy of the intellect and thus show that these two primacies can be affirmed coherently, that is, the intellect’s absolute primacy and the (...) will’s existential primacy. Firstly, I will explain the reasoning St. Thomas Aquinas uses in the Summa to justify the absolute primacy of the intellect over the will. Secondly, I will explore some parallel texts, in order to shed light on my interpretation of the Summa and expand our view regarding this and related doctrinal points. Thirdly, I will offer a brief study of Fabro’s position, one in which his concerns regarding the intellect’s absolute primacy are taken into account and carefully considered. (shrink)

Newton had a fivefold argument that true motion must be motion in absolute space, not relative to matter. Like Newton, Kant holds that bodies have true motions. Unlike him, though, Kant takes all motion to be relative to matter, not to space itself. Thus, he must respond to Newton’s argument above. I reconstruct here Kant’s answer in detail. I prove that Kant addresses just one part of Newton’s case, namely, his “argument from the effects” of rotation. And, to show that (...) rotation is relative to matter, Kant changes the meaning of ‘relative motion.’ However, that change puts Kant’s doctrine in deep tension with Newton’s science. Based on my construal, I correct earlier readings of Kant by John Earman and Martin Carrier. And, I argue that we need to revise Michael Friedman’s influential view of Kant. Kant’s struggle, I conclude, illustrate the difficulties that early modern relationists faced as they turned down Newtonian absolute space ; and it typifies their selective engagement with Newton’s case for it. (shrink)

Renaissance philosopher, mathematician, and theologian Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464) said that there is no proportion between the finite mind and the infinite. He is fond of saying reason cannot fully comprehend the infinite. That our best hope for attaining a vision and understanding of infinite things is by mathematics and by the use of contemplating symbols, which help us grasp "the absolute infinite". By the late 19th century, there is a decisive intervention in mathematics and its philosophy: the philosophical mathematician (...) Georg Cantor (1845-1918) says that between the realm of the finite and the absolute infinite, there is an intermediate realm partaking in properties in a certain sense of both the finite and the infinite: the transfinite realm. Like the finite, the transfinite realm is a realm of mathematical objects, numbers, and knowledge. Like the absolute infinite, the transfinite is a form of infinity insofar as transfinite sets and numbers transcend any finite number. Echoing Cusanus and neo-Platonism, Cantor says that the transfinite sequence of all ordinals is a symbol of the absolutely infinite, that is, God. This paper considers how the doctrine of symbolism and the philosophers' different commitments to the laws of logic, especially the Law of Non-Contradiction (LNC), enables these thinkers to articulate a transcendental apophatic approach to divinity. (shrink)

‘Years ago, when I was young and reckless, I believed that there was such a thing as an all-inclusive domain. Now I have come to see the error of my ways’. The source of this mistake was a view that might be labeled ‘Tractarianism’. Tractarians believe that language is subject to a _metaphysical_ constraint. In order for an atomic sentence to be true, there needs to be a certain kind of correspondence between the semantic structure of the sentence and the (...) ‘metaphysical structure’ of reality. The purpose of this chapter is to explain why Tractarianism is mistaken, and what an anti-Tractarian should say about absolutely general quantification. (shrink)