Volume 5, Issue 2

R. M. Hare skriver första gången om superveniens i boken Language of Morals (LM). Han är inte den förste som understrukit att värdeomdömen handlar om så kallade supervenienta egenskaper – dvs. egenskaper som tillfaller bäraren av värdet i kraft av alla eller några av dess övriga egenskaper. Han ståtar dock i många arbeten med att ha varit den första som gav denna speciella relation ett namn. Det skulle dröja drygt trettio år innan han på ett mera genomarbetat sätt på nytt tog upp tråden, men då ägnade han också en hel artikel åt ämnet (‘Supervenience’, 1984). Diskussioner om superveniens hade dessemellan initierats långt utanför moralfilosofernas snäva krets. Kanske var det för att återta mark som han ånyo plockade upp tråden från hans tidigare arbete. Ett skäl var säkert att han nu såg tydligare än vad som var fallet i LM att superveniens inte helt sammanfaller med universaliserbarhet. Att värdeegenskaper är supervenienta egenskaper råder det stor enighet om idag bland värdeteoretiker. Konsensusen ifråga är dock ringa när denna så kallade superveniensrelation närmare skall förklaras. I detta arbete koncentrerar jag mig uteslutande på Hares arbete från 1984, som har varit tongivande för non-kognitivisters och värdeirrealisters närmande till ämnet. Om jag har rätt är Hares redogörelse för superveniens inte helt lyckad. Det återstår att se om den reva som finns i hans bild av relationen ifråga är allvarlig eller ej. Själv tror jag att den går att sy ihop, och jag avslutar därför med att åtminstone peka på vilka stygn som skall till.

One traditional criterion by which social institutions have been evaluated is a knowledge-promoting criterion. According to this criterion, an institutional arrangement is the better the more it promotes knowledge, i.e. justified true beliefs among the members of the institution in question. In this paper I would like to examine what has been said about the knowledge-promoting criterion in the context of social epistemology. In particular, I would like to ask how one of the main proponents of social epistemology, Alvin I. Goldman, understands the knowledge-promoting criterion and its relation to other criteria that can be used in the evaluation of social institutions. I shall try to show that while Goldman's approach may be otherwise well-prepared, he nonetheless leaves unclarified the issue of how the knowledge-promoting criterion can and should be compared with other criteria. My overall aim is to contribute to the discussion on whether the knowledge-promoting criterion has more general relevance in the evaluation of social institutions.

The common key intuition that freedom is to do what you want to do is very attractive to compatibilistic accounts of freedom. And as a matter of fact this key intuition has been adopted by most compatibilists from Hobbes till now. Unfortunately, it suffers from serious problems. However, thanks to the real self account of freedom – which is a recent compatibilistic theory developed by Harry G. Frankfurt and refined and extended by various philosophers, most notably (perhaps) by Gary Watson – the key intuition is revived. Or what? In this paper I argue (A) that the real self account's rescue of the key intuition does not succeed because (i) Frankfurt's and Watson's versions of the real self account of freedom are flawed and because (ii) the real self account as such is flawed as well. Furthermore I will argue (B) that the key intuition is not to be rescued by any means whatsoever.

According to Descartes's modal voluntarism, necessary truths are products of God's free will. Now, if God has freely created these truths, apparently he could have done otherwise. Hence, modal voluntarism comes close to an absurd view according to which contradictions are in some sense possible. This paper is an attempt to motivate Descartes's position by finding ways in which he reacts, or might react, against his opponents who challenge modal voluntarism.

In the article, a main theme of the Finnish philosopher Erik Stenius' book on the Presocratic philosophy, Tankens gryning ( The Dawn of Thought ) is examined. Stenius' book may be read as an attempt to show how modern science managed to solve the problem of the intelligibility of change inherent in early Western thinking. In doing so, he makes use of the conception of the strive for knowledge as a search for invariances proposed by another Finnish philosopher, Eino Kaila. Stenius argues that the problems of understanding change followed from the static nature of the substantial invariances of the Presocratic systems of thought, and only could be solved by the invention of dynamic invariances by modern science. However, in the article it is shown that there is an important difference between Stenius' and Kaila's notions of invariance. Whereas Stenius thinks about invariances as unchangeable laws, Kaila sees them as unifying patterns, which brings him close to the unificationist view of scientific explanation which later has been defended by Philip Kitcher. However, the generality of Kaila's approach suggests that what he really is discussing is the human strive for understanding. It is argued that Kaila's notion of an invariance is more useful than Stenius's for the purpose of comparing Presocratic philosophy and modern science. In consequence, the story of the evolution of Western thought told by Stenius also has to be revised.