A growing literature testifies to the persistence of place as an incorrigible aspect of human experience, identity, and morality. Place is a common ground for thought and action, a community of experienced particulars that avoids solipsism and universalism. It draws us into the philosophy of the ordinary, into familiarity as a form of knowledge, into the wisdom of proximity. Each of these essays offers a philosophy of place, and reminds us that such philosophies ultimately decide how we make, use, and (...) understand places, whether as accidents, instruments, or fields of care. (shrink)

The differentiation of mammalian neurons during development is a highly complex process involving regulation and coordination of gene expression at multiple steps. The P19 mouse embryonal carcinoma cell line is a suitable model system with which to analyze regulation of neuronal differentiation. These multipotential cells can be maintained and propagated in tissue culture in an undifferentiated state. Exposure of aggregated P19 cells to retinoic acid results in the differentiation of cells with many fundamental phenotypes of mammalian neurons. Undifferentiated P19 cells (...) are amenable to genetic manipulations such as transfection and establishment of stable clonal cell lines expressing introduced genes. Proteins that play a key role in the neuronal differentiation of P19 cells are beginning to be identified. These include retinoic acid receptors, the epidermal growth factor receptor and the transcription factors Oct‐3 and Brn‐2. The biological and technical advantages of this system should facilitate deeper analysis of the activities of proteins that play a role in neuronal differentiation. (shrink)

This book is a completely rewritten version of the author's earlier Capitalism or Worker Control?. Its central thesis is that, despite the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the break-up of the Soviet Union, capitalism cannot be justified on either economic or ethical grounds. There is in fact an alternative to capitalism that promises greater efficiency, and equality, and more rational growth, democracy and meaningful work. This alternative, Economic Democracy, is market socialism with decentralised investment planning and workplace democracy. (...) Professor Schweickart compares this model with other models – laissez-faire conservatism, the Keynesian welfare state, and 'neo-liberalism' – and argues that it is really superior on every count. He also sketches out a possible transition from advanced capitalism, from what is left of the centrally planned economies, and from Third World underdevelopment, to Economic Democracy. The author concludes with some reflections on Marx's communism, as historical materialism, and on the future of Marxism. (shrink)

This is an in-depth study of J.G. Fichte’s philosophy of mathematics and theory of geometry. It investigates both the external formal and internal cognitive parallels between the axioms, intuitions and constructions of geometry and the scientific methodology of the Fichtean system of philosophy. In contrast to “ordinary” Euclidean geometry, in his Erlanger Logik of 1805 Fichte posits a model of an “ursprüngliche” or original geometry – that is to say, a synthetic and constructivistic conception grounded in ideal archetypal elements that (...) are grasped through geometrical or intelligible intuition. -/- Accordingly, this study classifies Fichte’s philosophy of mathematics as a whole as a species of mathematical Platonism or neo-Platonism, and concludes that the Wissenschaftslehre itself may be read as an attempt at a new philosophical mathesis, or “mathesis of the mind.” -/- “This work testifies to the author's exact and extensive knowledge of the Fichtean texts, as well as of the philosophical, scientific and historical contexts. Wood has opened up completely new paths for Fichte research, and examines with clarity and precision a domain that up to now has hardly been researched.” Professor Dr. Marco Ivaldo -/- “This study, written in a language distinguished by its limpidity and precision, and constantly supported by a close reading of the Fichtean texts and secondary literature, furnishes highly detailed and convincing demonstrations. In directly confronting the difficult historical relationship between the Wissenschaftslehre and mathematics, the author has broken new ground that is at once stimulating, decidedly innovative, and elegantly audacious.” Professor Dr. Emmanuel Cattin. (shrink)

Fichte-Studien, volume 49 (Leiden: Brill/Rodopi Publishers, 8 April 2021), edited by David W. Wood, 471pp. -/- Presenting new critical perspectives on J.G. Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre, this volume of articles in English by an international group of scholars addresses the topic of first principles in Fichte’s writings. Especially discussed are the central text of his Jena period, the 1794/95 Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, as well as later versions like the Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo (1796-99) and the presentations of 1804 and 1805. Also (...) included are new studies on the first principles of the particular sub-disciplines of Fichte’s system, such as the doctrines of aesthetics, nature, right, ethics, and history. The volume also contains a number of miscellaneous essays on Fichte research, as well as several book reviews. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Ethics of Salomon Maimon (1753-1800) DAVID BAUMGARDT* SALOMON MAIMON is now generally considered the most acute mind among the earliest critics of Kant. Kant himself had praised his acumen,1 though later qualifying his regard decisively.2 Johann Gottfried Herder called * We have just learned of the death of the author. David Baumgardt, born in Germany on April 20, 1890, studied in Vienna and in Berlin and (...) taught philosophy at the University of Berlin from 1924 to 1935 as Privatdozent, Extraordinarius and Ordinarius, until he was forced by Germany's racial laws to resign, but after the end of the war the Free University of Berlin appointed him honorary professor. From 1935 to 1939 he taught at the University of Birmingham; after his arrival in the United States he first joined the staff of the Pendle Hill School and, from 1941 to 1954, he served with the Library of Congress as a consultant in the field of philosophy. In 1955-56 he was Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Columbia. After his retirement he continued to publish and at present there are five publications by him in the press. The number of books and articles written by him probably well exceeds two hundred. Just in the last months of his life he was presented with a Festschri[t (Horizons of a Philosopher), indicative of a wide range of friends, students, and fellow-scholars who wanted to express their appreciation of the man and his work. On the continent Baumgardt was perhaps best known for two books: Franz yon Baader (1927) and Der Kampf um den Lebenssinn unter den Vorliiufern der Modernen Ethik (1933). The former threw full light on an important but unduly neglected figure of the German romantic school of philosophy; the latter confronts Kant's rationalistic ethics with the irrationalism of a Herder, Hemsterhuis, and Jacobi. In the United States he published, among others, Bentham and the Ethics of Today (1952) and Great Western Mystics (1961), originally delivered as Matchette Lectures, but enriched, for publication, by voluminous notes containing a wealth of information on mystics, some of whom, especially Jewish ones, are familiar only to the expert. At the time of his death he was working on a book which would probably have become his opus magnum: an attempt to reconcile what he called the ethics of force with the ethics of love. Baumgardt described his own philosophic position as that of a Benthamian hedonist, asserting that only hedonism, when carried to its conclusions, would permit such a reconciliation. Systematic, ethical and religious problems underlay all his historic research; thus his loss will be felt keenly and widely. (PHILIP MERLAN) t See Kant's Gesammelte Schri[ten, ed. K6nig. Preuss. Akad. Wissenschaften, Vol. XI, Abt. II, Kant's Briefwechsel (1900), Vol. II, p. 49, letter to Marcus Herz, May 26, 1789: "Nicht allein" hat "niemand yon meinen Gegnern reich und die Hauptfrage so wohl verstanden, sondern nur wenige... mochten zu dergleichen tiefen Untersuchungen so viel Scharfsinn besitzen... als Hr. Maymon." 2See ibid., p. 476, letter to Carl Leonhard Reinhold, March 28, 1794: "Was aber z. B. ein Maimon mit seiner Nachbesserung der critischen Philosophie... eigentlich wolle," habe ich "nie recht fassen k6nnen." The noticeable change in Kant's judgment of Maimon's work is hardly due to the fact that his praising remarks were addressed to a Jewish friend and the disapproving ones to a gentile disciple. The reason for this shift in his evaluation of Maimon's later writings 099] 200 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Maimon's Versuch iiber die Transzendentalphilosophie "profound" and "comprehensive.''~ Even Goethe and Schiller mentioned him with esteem in their correspondence;~ and Johann Gottlieb Fichte explicitly' warned that coming centuries would ridicule us bitterly for disregarding this "immensely great talent." It may, therefore, not be out of place if, even more than 150 years after Maimon's death, some attention is paid to his generally neglected criticism of Kant's categorical imperative. Maimon's acute critical observations on Kant's ethics may claim to be of interest even to the analysis of some basic issues of contemporary moral philosophy. In an autobiography, culturally of general interest, edited by the psychologist and esthetician Karl... (shrink)

In a series of lectures from 1804–05, Johann Gottlieb Fichte sets out a conception of enlightenment whose basic structure is, I argue, to some extent reproduced in two more famous accounts of enlightenment found in post-Kantian German philosophy: Hegel’s account of the Enlightenment’s struggle with faith in his Phenomenology of Spirit and the conception of enlightenment rationality presented in Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment. The narrative I offer serves to highlight, moreover, the critical role played by the notion (...) of an unconditional good in Fichte’s and Hegel’s critiques of enlightenment. The lack of an explicit appeal to, and account of, this notion in Horkheimer and Adorno’s critique of enlightenment will be shown to raise questions concerning how successful their critique of enlightenment can really be thought to be. (shrink)

Johann Gottlieb Fichte was the founding figure of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, a branch of thought which grew out of Kant's critical philosophy. Fichte's work formed the crucial link between eighteenth-century Enlightenment thought and philosophical, as well as literary, Romanticism. Some of his ideas also foreshadow later nineteenth- and twentieth-century developments in philosophy and in political thought, including existentialism, nationalism and socialism. This volume offers essays on all the major aspects of Fichte's philosophy, ranging from the (...) successive versions of his foundational philosophical science or Wissenschaftslehre, through his ethical and political thought, to his philosophies of history and religion. All the main stages of Fichte's philosophical career and development are charted, and his ideas are placed in their historical and intellectual context. New readers will find this the most convenient and accessible guide to Fichte currently available. Advanced students and specialists will find a conspectus of recent developments in the interpretation of Fichte. (shrink)

Editor's Preface to Fichte-Studien 49 (2021), "The Enigma of Fichte’s First Principles", (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2021): : IX-XIX. Also available on open-access. See the publisher's website.

"FICHTEANA Review of J.G. Fichte Research" is an online publication in English devoted to new scholarship on the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte. It publishes information and reviews of the latest Fichte editions, books, publications, conferences, and Calls for Papers. Originally founded by Daniel Breazeale in 1993, since issue 22 (2022), FICHTEANA has appeared in an expanded form with book reviews. It is co-edited by Daniel Breazeale and David W. Wood, with associate editor Kienhow Goh. -/- .

This issue 23 of FICHTEANA is dedicated to Daniel Breazeale, who passed away on 30 December 2023. -/- "FICHTEANA Review of J.G. Fichte Research" is an annual online publication in English devoted to new scholarship on the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte. It publishes information and reviews of the latest Fichte editions, books, publications, conferences, and Calls for Papers. Originally founded by Daniel Breazeale in 1993, since issue 22 (2022), FICHTEANA has appeared in an expanded form with book reviews. Editors: (...) Daniel Breazeale (†) and David W. Wood; with associate editors Kienhow Goh and Gesa Wellmann. -/- . (shrink)

Oxford Philosophical Texts Series Editor: John Cottingham The Oxford Philosophical Texts series consists of authoritative teaching editions of canonical texts in the history of philosophy from the ancient world down to modern times. Each volume provides a clear, well laid out text together with a comprehensive introduction by a leading specialist, giving the student detailed critical guidance on the intellectual context of the work and the structure and philosophical importance of the main arguments. Endnotes are supplied which provide further commentary (...) on the arguments and explain unfamiliar references and terminology, and a full bibliography and index are also included. The series aims to build up a definitive corpus of key texts in the Western philosophical tradition, which will form a reliable and enduring resource for students and teachers alike. David Hume's aim in writing An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding was to introduce his philosophy to a European culture in which many educated people read original works of philosophy. He gives an elegant and accessible presentation of strikingly original and challenging views about the limited powers of human understanding, the attractions of scepticism, the compatibility of free will and determinism, and weaknesses in the foundations of religion. Hume's philosophy was highly controversial in the eighteenth century and remains so today. The text printed in this edition is that of the Clarendon critical edition of Hume's works. A substantial introduction by the editor explains the intellectual background to the work and surveys its main themes. The volume also includes detailed explanatory notes on the text, a glossary of terms, a full list of references, and a section of supplementary readings. (shrink)

David Lewis (1941-2001) was Class of 1943 University Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. His contributions spanned philosophical logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, metaphysics, and epistemology. In On the Plurality of Worlds, he defended his challenging metaphysical position, "modal realism." He was also the author of the books Convention, Counterfactuals, Parts of Classes, and several volumes of collected papers.

The Wisdom We're Born With explores the desire to live that we carry with us from birth. While some people may believe that it's impossible to acquire perspective like Gottlieb's without a similarly catastrophic life experience, the fact is that every infant possesses a raw need to keep on going. Gottlieb's book awakens us to the idea of our natural perspective, traces the growth and diminishment of that perspective over the years, and brings us back to advanced age, (...) where it recurs once more. If we are aware of this capacity in ourselves, we can actively nurture it, enabling ourselves to embrace the desire to live and grow every day, whether we're joyful or in the grip of a powerful depression. In a time of anxiety and worry, Gottlieb's words provide comfort and strength-if we can remember the wisdom we're born with, we can possess a limitless energy to keep fighting. (shrink)

Engagements with Contemporary Literary and Critical Theory is a wide-ranging but accessible introduction that illuminates the field of theory through a variety of useful and relevant examples. Covering all key theories and theorists, this book looks at the relation of theory to form, discourses, subjectivity, media and networks, and environments. Organized thematically, Engagements with Contemporary Literary and Critical Theory illuminates the field by focusing on the concepts and methodologies of key thinkers, while also providing historical introductions that contextualize the latest (...) developments with regard to forms; discourses; subjectivities and embodiments; media, networks, and machines; and animals, affects, objects, and environments. Each chapter includes examples from a canonical novel, a contemporary text, and a new media artefact, while textboxes regularly introduce additional emerging or overlooked theorists of interest. An ideal guide for undergraduates studying literary theory, this book will give readers the background they need to continue their own fruitful explorations of this vibrant field of study. (shrink)

In both radical and mainstream environmental discourses, anthropocentrism (human centredness) is inextricably linked to modern industrial society's drive to control and dominate nature and the generation of our current environmental crisis. Such environmental discourses frequently argue for a retreat from anthropocentrism and the establishment of a harmonious relationship with nature, often invoking the supposed ecological harmony of indigenous peoples and/or other small-scale societies. In particular, the beliefs and values of these societies vis-à-vis their natural environment are taken to be instrumental (...) in their low environmental impact. Here it is argued that, aside from the empirically problematic nature of such claims, the beliefs of small-scale societies have been seen through an ethnocentric discursive framework which bifurcates belief systems into anthropocentric and ecocentric. Taking a meta-theoretical approach informed by Strong Structuration Theory, it is argued that the beliefs of small-scale societies about their relationship with nature should be recognised as lying on a continuum of anthropocentrism and understood in the context of their attempts to establish ‘environmental ontological security’ in the face of natural uncertainty. (shrink)

De l'Ethique à Nicomaque au Principe Responsabilité de Hans Jonas, les fins de l'homme - notamment la réalisation parfaite de soi, pour chaque être, l'humanité de l'homme, l'humanité raisonnable dans ses formes les plus achevées - s'instruisent universellement, selon l'espace public et politique des Etats, de ces catégories fondamentales de l'existence. La triade philosophie-démocratie-progrès débouche sur la thèse principale de Platon selon laquelle, l'Etat est injuste et il faut le réformer. Si Platon considère la vie terrestre comme une prison, sa (...) théorie de la participation, conduit au pluralisme des idées, au dialogue, à l'esprit de tolérance, à la paix perpétuelle, dit Kant, condition de la réalisation de la République et d'accomplissement de la démocratie dans un progrès allant inéluctablement à l'infini. Justice, liberté, dignité, égalité et nécessité d'un vouloir-vivre-ensemble se dégagent de cet ouvrage, mais avec le constat sévère d'une mimésis négro-africaine destructurante. Toute autocratie ne peut s'éterniser puisque la liberté est immanente à l'homme. Les textes présentés ici ont pour ambition de réinterroger le socle philosophique de l'éthique et de la politique, de tenter d'en dégager le sens, la finalité et d'en souligner l'actualité en ce début du XXIe siècle. (shrink)

Various U.S. laws, such as the Clean Air Act and the Food Quality Protection Act, require additional protections for susceptible subpopulations who face greater environmental health risks. The main ethical rationale for providing these protections is to ensure that environmental health risks are distributed fairly. In this article, we (1) consider how several influential theories of justice deal with issues related to the distribution of environmental health risks; (2) show that these theories often fail to provide specific guidance concerning policy (...) choices; and (3) argue that an approach to public decision making known as accountability for reasonableness can complement theories of justice in establishing acceptable environmental health risks for the general population and susceptible subpopulations. Since accountability for reasonableness focuses on the fairness of the decision-making process, not the outcome, it does not guarantee that susceptible subpopulations will receive a maximum level of protection, regardless of costs or other morally relevant considerations. (shrink)

Originally published: Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932.

This book is a defense of modal realism; the thesis that our world is but one of a plurality of worlds, and that the individuals that inhabit our world are only a few out of all the inhabitants of all the worlds. Lewis argues that the philosophical utility of modal realism is a good reason for believing that it is true.

Can Marxism still serve the American left? "History and Subjectivity" answers this question by synthesizing the conflict perspectives of traditional Marxism, Western and neo-Marxism, socialist-feminism, and various minority political movements into a comprehensive and original social theory. Roger Gottlieb argues convincingly that a properly transformed Marxism must understand how socialisation processes and political structures and experiences have joined the mode of production as socially primary. Drawing on resources from Marxist philosophy, political economy, feminism, Western Marxism, and from detailed historical (...) studies of racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, and the American left, Gottlieb has produced a sweeping synthesis of existing Marxist thought and an original and compelling social theory. In this edition, Roger Gottlieb has added a new introduction addressing the central questions that have emerged since the book's first publication. These include the effect on Marxist theory of the fall of communism, the theoretical challenge of postmodernism, the environmental crisis, and the rise of modern spiritual movements. The book is challenging and complex, yet clearly written and accessible to advanced undergraduate and graduate students. It will provoke a strong response from any scholar concerned with the present status and future possibilities of Marxist theory. (shrink)

This anthology brings together new essays by leading figures in contemporary philosophy, scholars whose work is well known not only to the entire community of academic philosophy, but to many in the associated fields of sociology, women's studies, literary theory, and political science. Defining for the first time the boundaries and accomplishments of a body of work deeply critical of both the philosophical and the social dimensions of domination, the collection draws on diverse traditions and social movements. These include feminism, (...) critical theory, Marxism, deconstruction, democratic socialism, theories of race and ethnicity, deep ecology, and politicized spirituality. The contributors use these resources to comprehend and indict the present social order and to help us imagine a more just, liberating, and fulfilling society. In his lucid Introduction, Roger S. Gottlieb describes the formative contexts, achievements, and dilemmas of radical philosophy. Essays in Part I, Tradition, challenge the pretensions of philosophy in epistemology, ethics, and the theory of human nature. These articles unveil the social oppression hidden behind self-proclaimed attempts at Grand and Unbiased Philosophical Reason. In Part II, Counter-Tradition, the contributors engage with today's dominant critical perspectives and show how multi-faceted, rich, and sometimes confusing these perspectives are. Their topics include issues of exploitation, democracy, and justice; the current status of Marxism; the impact of deep ecology on radical theory; and some dilemmas faced by cultural feminism. Part III, Politics, addresses questions about contemporary North American political and cultural life. The essaysexamine relations among varying types of oppression, the experience of community and communities, the possibilities of fundamental political change, and the representation of difference in popular culture. (shrink)

Is morality intuitive or deliberative? The distinction can obscure the role of folk moral theories in moral judgment; judgments may arise 'intuitively' yet result from abstract theoretical and philosophical commitments that participate in 'deliberative' reasoning.

Interpretation -- Introduction -- Interpreting Plato -- The political culture of Plato's early dialogues -- Dialogue -- Character and history -- The mouthpiece principle -- Forms of evidence -- Desire -- Socrates and eros -- The subjectivist conception of desire -- Instrumental and terminal desire -- Rational and irrational desires -- Desire in the critique of Akrasia -- Interpreting Lysis -- The deficiency conception of desire -- Inauthentic friendship -- Platonic desire -- Antiphilosophical desires -- Knowledge -- Excellence as wisdom (...) -- The epistemic unity of excellence -- Dunamis and technê -- Goodness and form -- The epistemological priority of definitional knowledge -- Ordinary ethical knowledge -- Method -- The Socratic fallacy -- Socrates' pursuit of definitions -- Hupothesis -- Two postulates -- The geometrical illustration -- Geometrical analysis -- The method of reasoning from a postulate -- Elenchus and hupothesis -- Knowledge and aitia -- F-conditions -- Cognitive security -- Aporia -- Forms of aporia -- Dramatic aporia -- The example of Charmides -- Charmides as autobiography -- The politics of Sôphrosunê -- Critias' Philotimia -- Self-knowledge and the knowledge of knowledge -- Knowledge of knowledge and knowledge of the good -- Philosophy and the polis. (shrink)

Both individually and as a collection, these essays will promote understanding and provoke further debate amongst students and established scholars alike.

The singularity hypothesis is a radical hypothesis about the future of artificial intelligence on which self-improving artificial agents will quickly become orders of magnitude more intelligent than the average human. Despite the ambitiousness of its claims, the singularity hypothesis has been defended at length by leading philosophers and artificial intelligence researchers. In this paper, I argue that the singularity hypothesis rests on scientifically implausible growth assumptions. I show how leading philosophical defenses of the singularity hypothesis (Chalmers 2010, Bostrom 2014) fail (...) to overcome the case for skepticism. I conclude by drawing out philosophical implications of this discussion for our understanding of consciousness, personal identity, digital minds, existential risk, and ethical longtermism. GPI Working Paper No . 19-2022. (shrink)

Inquires into ancient Athenian philosopher Epicurus' analysis of irrational fears and desires, arguing that such emotions played a more central and controlling role in his system than has often been supposed, in a book that also looks at how ancient Roman poet Lucretius interpreted Epicurus' ideas. Reissue.

This unique anthology brings together readings from the works of the most significant post-Leninist Marxist thinkers. The selections reflect the diversity and high intellectual accomplishment of twentieth-century Marxism and show how these theorists have transformed traditional Marxism's general philosophical orientation, interpretation of historical materialism, models of socialist political practice, and conception of human liberation. The writings reveal the evolution of a sophisticated and democratic Marxism with a theoretical emphasis on class consciousness and subjectivity, a resistance to all forms of domination--including (...) sexism--and a belief in the political power of consciousness-raising. The selections include the work of forerunners Karl Korsch, George Lukacs, and Antonio Gramsci; figures from the 1930s, including Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Wilhelm Reich; post-war and New Left thinkers Jean-Paul Sartre, Andre Gorz, Herbert Marcuse, and Jurgen Habermas; and contemporary socialist-feminists Sheila Rowbotham, Juliet Mitchell, Barbara Ehrenreich, Heidi Hartmann, and Ann Ferguson. Gottlieb places the readings in historical and theoretical context, providing a clear and insightful account of the intellectual problems and historical events that gave rise to the Western Marxism, and describing how it both anticipated and influenced contemporary radical movements. Each selection is prefaced by a biographical sketch and the book concludes with a bibliography suggesting further research. (shrink)

The philosophical literature that tackles foundational questions about normativity often appeals to normative reasons—or considerations that count in favor of or against actions—and their interaction. The interaction between normative reasons is usually made sense of by appealing to the metaphor of (normative) weight scales. This paper substitutes an argumentation-theoretic model for this metaphor. The upshot is a general and precise model that is faithful to the philosophical ideas.

An introduction to ethical reasoning -- Comparative religious perspectives on war -- Just and unjust war in Shakespeare's Henry V -- Anticipating and preventing atrocities in war -- The CIA's original "social contract" -- The KGB: CIA's traditional adversary -- Espionage -- Covert action -- Interrogation -- Concluding reflections.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This paper aims to provide two abductive considerations adducing in favor of the thesis of Necessitism in modal ontology. I demonstrate how instances of the Barcan formula can be witnessed, when the modal operators are interpreted 'naturally' -- i.e., as including geometric possibilities -- and the quantifiers in the formula range over a domain of natural, or concrete, entities and their contingently non-concrete analogues. I argue that, because there are considerations within physics and metaphysical inquiry which corroborate modal relationalist claims (...) concerning the possible geometric structures of spacetime, and dispositional properties are actual possible entities, the condition of being grounded in the concrete is consistent with the Barcan formula; and thus -- in the geometric setting -- merits adoption by the Necessitist. (shrink)