Metaontology

The aim of this dissertation is to develop an account of Gilles Deleuze’s philosophical project as a departure from ontology and ontological thinking. Ontology can be broadly understood as the study of being or the study of the meaning of being. Traditional ontology examines the nature of being while more contemporary philosophy often understands being itself as becoming or a process. In this respect, Deleuze has often been interpreted as a process or differential ontologist. This project departs from that interpretation (...) by arguing for a non-ontological Deleuze. The dissertation is broken into three papers where each presents a different account of what I call the non-ontological Deleuze through his work on the major pre-Kantian modern philosophers: David Hume, Benedict Spinoza, and Gottfried Leibniz. Each paper then uses the non-ontological Deleuze to engage with a related movement in post-Deleuzian Continental Philosophy. The first paper focuses on Deleuze’s early work on Hume to argue for a re-reading of the history of modern philosophy with a basis in transcendental empiricism rather than Kantian transcendental idealism. This paper uses Deleuze’s reading of Hume to respond to and critique the Speculative Realist movement’s charge that post-Kantian philosophy suffers from what they call correlationism. The second paper uses Deleuze’s work on Spinoza to argue for what the former calls ethology as a replacement for ontology. The claim here is that we should think of things in terms of what they do rather than what they are: in terms of their motion and affects rather than their being. There I contrast my reading of Deleuze’s Spinoza with those thinkers who have recently used that work to develop what is often referred to as New Materialism. The final paper argues that understanding things in terms of what they can do requires a nomadology, which is Deleuze’s play on Leibniz’s monadology. This paper uses Deleuze’s nomadology to create a dialogue with the emerging literature on Critical Posthumanism and subjectivity that has been influenced by Deleuze to suggest that posthumanist subjectivity should be understood in non-ontological terms. (shrink)

This paper introduces and evaluates a possible truthmaking argument for a robust conception of aboutness commitment. According to the argument, the pure aboutness-based account of truthmaking and the thesis of Truthmaker Commitment entails that a truthbearer is ontologically committed to what it is about in an appropriate sense of “aboutness”. However, this argument encounters challenges, notably an inherent explanatory circularity within the robust conception of aboutness commitment, and a radical inconsistency between its two premises in terms of their underlying motivations. (...) To address these issues, this paper proposes a more moderate conception of aboutness commitment, drawing inspiration from B. Smith’s mixed aboutness-based account of truthmaking. According to this moderate proposal, the representationalist notion of intended aboutness, or the anti-representationalist notion of general aboutness, constrains, but does not determine, the notion of ontological commitment, which in turn contributes to a stronger notion of genuine or satisfied aboutness. This modified moderate conception not only sidesteps the explanatory circularity, but also aligns more closely with the objective of providing a fundamental ontology. Therefore, it is recommended as a fitting approach to engaging in the relation between aboutness and ontological commitment. (shrink)

M.P.::W.i.P. Jacob Roman Parr has found a robust homomorphism between a collection of works and Deleuze and Guatarri's What is Philosophy[?] ; by asserting and defending the Minor Prophet books as being within their own ( idaontical ) genre Remonstration(s) and that W.i.P. is also an idaontical Remonstration for W.i.P.'s specific contexts ; thus through numerous shared functoral relations , or comports , does Jacob Roman Parr " discover " or ellucidate where 1970s-1980s Philosophy-at-large was ( projected ) vectorally .... (...) More than 50% complete : file made available is a pretty-much-finished work-in-progress version accurate as of 08-01-2024 , which is today , the day i Jacob Roman Parr am typing this part to this abstract ; in all efficiency , i will leave the rest to be finished , but will say wip pg 207-210 seal the DG duo's book as donedeal as being a (meta-)philosophical Remonstration . Jacob Roman Parr . (shrink)

The recent so-called crisis of replication continues to dominate psychology’s methodological landscape. It is argued here that the apparent renaissance of Popperian thinking that characterises some of the key responses to the crisis of replication is fundamentally flawed. In essence, there is a serious lack of any sustained and rigorous treatment of ontology that underpins much of the current debate about replication and Popper’s falsificationist approach. The overriding problem is that the replication debate reflects the methodologist tendency for mainstream psychologists (...) to avoid or gloss over crucial ontological questions. In contradistinction, this article (a) underscores the primacy of ontology; (b) delineates and applies a critical realist stratified ontology to psychology; (c) utilises the latter as a springboard from which to argue for Popper’s methodological “retirement”; and (d) revindicates the indispensability of context and the subtlety of psychological phenomena in arguing for the intrinsic limits of replication and experimentalism in general. (shrink)

According to the high-dimensional approach to quantum mechanics (a.k.a. wavefunction realism), the fundamental space of our world has an unfathomably large number of dimensions. This account is empirically adequate only if the three-dimensional manifest image can somehow be recovered from high-dimensional reality. A proper understanding of inter-level metaphysics (a.k.a. metaphysical explanation, grounding, etc.) shows that the manifest image can indeed be recovered, and answers the most concerning objections to high-dimensionalism. But it also shows that high-dimensionalism has disturbing consequences about the (...) objectivity of the manifest image. (shrink)

Krzysztof Poslajko offers a novel version of an anti-realist view about beliefs, rejecting the extreme proposal of eliminativism that claims beliefs do not exist. He argues we should rather say that beliefs exist, but they are not real. By arguing for the antirealist view as a revision of our common-sense view about the nature of mind, Poslajko makes the case for adopting a pragmatic metaphilosophy when we deal with philosophical questions about belief.

Throughout the history, whenever humans encounter a phenomenon for which there was no explanation, a theory was proposed for it. Of course, not necessarily all the theories were purely scientific and many of them were non-scientific, pseudo- scientific, or at best were only slightly influenced by science. But one thing was in common among them: they all were trying to provide as deeper as possible explanations about how the universe works. Although today and in the modern era the exact meaning (...) of theory has changed comparatively, still they must be such that can be tested through scientific procedures in order to confirm or reject. Nevertheless, still sometimes in a common belief, the meaning of "theory" is unprovable or at least unproven conjecture, and surprisingly sometimes confused with hypothesis. Scientific laws are descriptive reports - or theories - that express and predict a range of natural phenomena and explain how they work. Any scientific discourse is carried out in three levels: hypothesis, theory, and law. A hypothesis, is a testable logical conjecture to explain the phenomena we observe in the universe. A hypothesis usually comes with no practical support, or at least not been proven yet. The hypothesis can only be tested through trial and error and tries to offer explanation that provides a reasonable platform for further studies and usually it is the first step in solving a problem or describing a phenomenon. A theory however, is a logical statement about a phenomenon that is derived from rational thinking and is often associated with processes such as observation, study or research and provides standards in such a way that scientific tests can confirm - or reject. A theory used in describing what is usually to happen with the implication that it doesn’t still a fact. Yet a scientific law is a descriptive reports - or theory - that previses a range of natural phenomena and explains how they function. Scientific laws are descriptive summaries of a large set of facts that are tested by scientific evidences and after fact-checking based on their potential ability for measuring future experiences. So it can be said that every theory was first a hypothesis and has the potential to become a law to come. It can also be said that any theory is valid as long as it is not violated by a more conclusive one. (shrink)

Marcello Vitali-Rosati, in the essay “The Writer is the Architect” complimented by other works, provides a two-part thesis. The first argues that space is a chiasmic structure (as inside-outside); and the second argues that this structure reveals the productive role of the subject in constructing digital space (as architect). The essay here seeks to elucidate this logic and to expose it to a Lacanian critique: that it is a hysterical discourse unable in principle to emancipate digital spaces because it entails (...) a purely immanent subject—in short, a subject which is solely product, not producer, of digital space. (shrink)

Книга представляет собой первый на русском языке систематический обзор метаонтологиии – дисциплины, которая пытается ответить на наиболее важные и глубокие вопросы относительно бытия и существования. Что мы подразумеваем под онтологическим вопросом «Что есть»? Что такое бытие и существование? Есть ли между ними разница? Как их лучше всего выразить: с помощью квантора, предиката? Имеются ли разные способы бытия? Есть ли несуществующие объекты? Являются ли онтологические споры чисто словесными? Легко ли их разрешить? В книге дается подробный обзор наиболее известных метаонтологических теорий: онтологического (...) реализма, кванторной изменчивости, легкой онтологии, фикционализма, онтологического плюрализма, неомейнонгианства, неоаристотелизма. Книга предполагает некоторое первоначальное знакомство с философией и может быть использована в качестве учебного пособия для студентов философских факультетов высших учебных заведений. (shrink)

Easy Ontology (EO), defended in several recent works by Amie Thomasson, and based on Carnap’s famous deflationism about metaphysics, is the view that many ontological questions, like ‘Are there numbers?’, are at bottom easy, at least when taken in their “internal” sense. Both Carnap and Thomasson take for granted that serious metaphysicians therefore cannot plausibly be interpreted as asking internal questions. Thus, they think they are committed to finding some alternative, special interpretation of metaphysicians’ utterances. I argue that none of (...) the alternative interpretations proposed in the literature are viable. More importantly, I argue that Carnap and Thomasson are wrong about this commitment. EO should instead be coupled with the view that metaphysicians ask internal questions, yet have the false belief that they can be answered only through metaphysical speculation. This is a significant modification of EO, in which the notion of an “external question” plays no role, and which results in a simpler and more plausible theory. (shrink)

According to Thomasson’s Easy Ontology, all existential questions have straightforward answers and are solvable by conceptual and empirical work. So there is no need for traditional metaphysics to solve them. First, I give some counterexamples to this thesis from incomplete and undecidable theories. Then I discuss some possible responses, I consider a wider sense of conceptual analysis and argue that even in this sense Easy ontology is not able to resolve the problem and must sacrifice either easiness or answerability. Finally, (...) I will argue that although traditional metaphysics does not make the undecidable sentences answerable, it can still make sense of them and helps us to understand why there are unanswerable questions at all. (shrink)

In this paper, I present an interpretation of Wittgenstein's remarks on the experience of wonder at the existence of the world. According to this interpretation, Wittgenstein's feeling of wonder stems from perceiving the existence of the world as an absolute miracle, that is, as a fact that is in principle beyond explanation. Based on this analysis, I will suggest that Wittgenstein's experience is akin to what has been described by other authors such as Coleridge, Pessoa, Heidegger, Scheler, Sartre, and Hadot, (...) among many others. Through a comparison between Wittgenstein and Coleridge on the experience of existence, I shall highlight some core features of this experience, chief among them the use of the notion of nothingness in clarifying what is understood in the experience, the role of intuition, and the presence of a specific pathos. As a whole, this paper aims to provide a contribution to the project of a phenomenology of the experience of existence and intends to create a bridge for a dialogue between Wittgenstein and the phenomenological tradition on the enigma of existence. (shrink)

A ubiquitous assumption about composite material objects is that—if they exist at all—they are single things. This chapter articulates and defends manyism, which rejects that assumption. According to manyism, each composite object is simply its many parts. Since manyism accepts the existence of composite objects, it is distinct from nihilism; since manyism denies that composite objects are each one in number in addition to being many in number, it is distinct from the view known as composition as identity (CAI). What’s (...) more, manyism is both coherent and attractive. Manyism is coherent because it can be underwritten by a defensible quasi-Quinean metaontology, and because it’s not analytic that objects are each one in number. Manyism is attractive because it shares all of the benefits of CAI without having to join CAI in objectionably positing many–one identities, and without incurring other serious costs. (shrink)

It is a startling fact that, despite its long and rich history, the debate about per- sonal identity is far from settled. The present paper examines two deflationary explanations for this: a) the dispute is merely verbal (verbalism); b) there cannot be sufficient justification for preferring one theory of personal identity over the others (epistemicism). As this paper argues, there is evidence that either verba- lism or epistemicism provides a correct account of the personal identity debate.

Each many-sorted theory can be converted to an unsorted theory. But this conversion procedure is not uniquely determined, leading to a dilemma: which unsorted theory captures the content of the corresponding many-sorted theory?

A provocative and entirely new account of ethical reasoning that reconceives the traditional understanding of ethical action negatively -/- In this radical reconsideration of ethical reasoning in contemporary European philosophy, Drew M. Dalton makes the case for an absolutely grounded account of ethical normativity developed from a scientifically informed and purely materialistic metaphysics. Expanding on speculative realist arguments, Dalton argues that the limits placed on the nature of ethical judgments by Kant’s critique can be overcome through a moral evaluation of (...) the laws of nature—specifically, the entropic principle that undergirds the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology. In order to extract a moral meaning from this simple material fact, Dalton scrutinizes the presumptions of classical accounts and traditional understandings of good and evil within the history of Western philosophy and ultimately asserts that ethical normativity can be reestablished absolutely without reverting to dogmatism. -/- By overturning our assumptions about the nature and value of reality, The Matter of Evil: From Speculative Realism to Ethical Pessimism presents a provocative new model of ethical responsibility that is both logically justifiable and scientifically sound. Dalton argues for “ethical pessimism,” a position previously marginalized in the West, as a means to cultivate an account of ethical responsibility and political activism that takes seriously the unbecoming of being and the moral horror of existence. (shrink)

A model of metaphysics associated with EJ Lowe and Tuomas Tahko sees metaphysics as involving a priori knowledge of possible essences, or at least modal facts, and delimiting the actual ‘ontological categories,’ the ultimate and essential divisions of what exists, based on the results of a posteriori scientific investigation. Their approach to metaphysics has been criticized by those who argue that such metaphysics is unsuitably a priori, disconnected with empirical research in natural science, and ends up failing to provide meaningful (...) constraints on metaphysical theorization. I present different epistemological and semantic worries about these accounts to motivate an alternative perspective on which metaphysics centers on form, rather than possibility. This scholastic perspective is shown to incorporate the skeptical insights as constitutive of its approach to existence, by way of the position that ‘being’ is not a genus. Rather, ‘being’ is a determinable. The scholastic approach can thus provide responses to the skeptics, since it denies that ontological categories – in the Lowe/Tahko sense – are what metaphysicians investigate and proposes a different view of ontological categories as classes of forms. (shrink)

The ontology of race is often seen as answering two central questions. First, do races exist? Second, if races do exist, then what are they? Consequently, determining the best methods for answering these questions falls within the metaontology of race. Within the ontology of race, it is common to select a privileged representation of race in order to draw ontological lessons. While ontological lessons are direct answers to the ontological questions raised above, privileged representations are the basis for inferring those (...) lessons. Using the Office of Management and Budget’s racial classification as an illustration, we argue that certain social-scientific methods are better than mainstream methods at ruling out just-so stories about race, and therefore outperform more mainstream philosophical methods in determining which representations of race should be privileged. In defending this position, we also argue that the widespread philosophical practice of sharply distinguishing social-scientific from ordinary-language conceptions of race is unmotivated. (shrink)

A coletânea apresenta, sob a forma de artigos, problemas e soluções associados ao conceito e substância ao longo da história da filosofia. Sem pretender exaurir esse percurso, a coletânea contém 29 artigos redigidos por diversos especialistas brasileiros em Filosofia. Sua proposta é oferecer uma visão clara, acessível, precisa e atualizada desse recorte da história do conceito de filosofia, na expectativa de contribuir para o aperfeiçoamento do ensino e debate de filosofia no país. -/- The anthology presents, through a series of (...) articles, the intricacies of problems and solutions intertwined with the concept of substance across the annals of philosophical history. While not seeking to comprehensively cover this vast terrain, the collection comprises 29 articles penned by a diverse array of Brazilian specialists in Philosophy. Its overarching aim is to furnish a lucid, accessible, precise, and contemporaneous perspective on this facet of philosophical inquiry, with the aspiration of enriching the landscape of philosophical education and discourse in Brazil. (shrink)

According to Schaffer, most of the controversial entities that ontologists debate exist. Schaffer calls this view permissivism and he defends it by appealing to easy arguments for the existence of the entities in question. Schaffer presents several easy arguments, but his easy argument for fictional characters and his easy argument for God play a crucial role in his defence of permissivism. In this paper, I argue that Schaffer doesn’t have the resources to defend his easy argument for fictional characters or (...) his easy argument for God. So, his defence of permissivism fails. (shrink)

[186 pages] Just as the six branches of a snow crystal converge in regular proportions toward their common center, the six contributions to this book point toward a future philosophy of cosmic life. In this sense, this edited volume represents a multidisciplinary and transcultural polylogue of distinguished authors from three continents, which aims to establish highly innovative perspectives and open new frontiers of developing philosophical reflections and scientific foundations for the emergence of a common cosmic consciousness, for an integral ecology, (...) and for a cooperative planetary civilization of humanity. John B. Cobb, Jr. uses a process-philosophical foundation to describe life as living events expressing novelty and the cosmos as a process of self-enriching and self-evolving “Life Itself.” Chandra Wickramasinghe unfolds his scientific and philosophical perspective on cosmic life in twelve successive steps, offering a wide range of arguments and insights that support an up-to-date theory of panspermia. Attila Grandpierre presents the "Cosmic Life Principle" and the comprehensive science based upon it that is inextricably linked to the healthy and cooperative civilization, to the biological laws of nature, to the laws of logic, to the uplifting of the well-being of people and ecological communities. Chunyou Yan introduces the approach of his holographic philosophy, according to which the universe must be understood as a vast living entity, every aspect of which represents life. Bei Peng shows that the proportions of energy meridians in traditional Chinese medicine correspond to musical intervals, and on this basis she demonstrates the analogy of the human body to macrocosmic phenomena. David Bartosch offers an examination of three important systematic foundations for a poly-contextural, transcultural philosophy of cosmic life with roots in Greek, Chinese, South and West Asian, and European traditions of thought. (shrink)

For many years there has been a debate in truthmaking theory between proponents of the substantive and deflationary approaches. Substantivists about truthmaking maintain that we need entities called truthmakers, while deflationists of truthmaking argue that the asymmetric form of the T-schema is sufficient. In contrast to incompatibilists, who argue that one should adopt only one of these approaches, I propose a compatibilist theory of truthmaking in which the two approaches complement each other through the distribution of different functions of truthmaking. (...) I find that this helps to solve the problem of truthmaking of certain contentious truths, such as negative truths. (shrink)

According to Amie Thomasson, most of the existence questions that concern ontologists can be easily answered using trivial arguments from uncontroversial premises. In this paper, I examine Thomasson’s main argument for this significant and striking thesis, focusing on the crucial premise that sortal terms have application conditions. I argue that Thomasson’s defence of this premise fails to support it. I also argue that it faces a serious objection.

The unification of grounding and causation has been proposed in the literature. Also, it has encountered many objections. In this paper, I argue that there is a strategy that enables us to reply to many of the objections to the unification. That is the ‘blame the relata strategy’ which claims that all the differences between grounding and causation come from relata rather than relation. I clarify this strategy by appealing to positionalism about relations, and present three arguments for this strategy. (...) Also, I argue that the difference between causal relata and grounding relata is that the former are distinct entities, while the latter are non-distinct. I suggest the ‘essential connections criterion’ to define ‘distinct’ and ‘non-distinct’, showing that grounding is partly grounded in essence in an indirect manner. Given the above strategy and criterion, we can see that there is no real objection to the unification of grounding and causation. (shrink)

childhood and guilt, redemption and regret about a traumatic event.

Quantifier variantists accept multiple alternative ontological languages in which quantifiers obey the usual inference rules despite having different meanings. But collapse arguments seem to show that these quantifiers would be provably equivalent to one another. Cian Dorr has pushed this discussion forward by formulating the collapse argument in terms of an algebra of meanings that are common amongst the languages. I attempt to show that quantifier variantists can respond. But an important distinction between types of quantifier variance emerges, between those (...) in which quantifier meanings draw on a single objective backbone of “portions of reality,” and those (such as the type that is arguably associated with neo-Fregeanism) in which they do not. (shrink)

It is well known that Carnap, early in his philosophical career, took most of metaphysics to consist of meaningless pseudostatements. In contrast to this meaning-theoretic critique of metaphysics, we develop what we take to be Carnap’s later value-based critique. We argue that this later critique is forceful against several central contemporary metaphysical debates, its origin in the principle of tolerance notwithstanding.

Thin Objects has two overarching ambitions. The first is to clarify and defend the idea that some objects are ‘thin’, in the sense that their existence does not make a substantive demand on reality. The second is to develop a systematic and well-motivated account of permissible abstraction, thereby solving the so-called ‘bad company problem’. Here I synthesise the book by briefly commenting on what I regard as its central themes.

Thomasson is a simple realist about the vast majority of entities: she thinks that they exist, and that their existence is to be accepted as a trivial consequence of the truth of various uncontroversial sentences (Thomasson, Ontology Made Easy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, p. 156). This position is to be taken in contrast to the explanatory realism familiar from dominant post-Quinean metaontology: the view that entities are posited to explain phenomena, and that (very roughly) we should believe in whatever (...) we need in order for our best scientific theories to come out as true. Recent literature further suggests an approach I’ll call ‘fundamentality realism’: the idea that we should understand realism in connection with notions of fundamentality and metaphysical priority. I introduce these notions and the relations between them before describing an objection to Thomasson-style simple realism. I argue that this objection can be overcome by combining simple realism with elements of fundamentality realism, and that such a view can nevertheless be seen to fit with Thomasson's overall metaphysical worldview. (shrink)

In his recent article "Carnapian Frameworks" (Synthese, 2021), Gabriel Broughton criticizes my discussions of Carnap on ontology and puts forward his own interpretation of what Carnap’s external/internal distinction amounts to. I here first argue that Broughton’s main claims about me are based on a misinterpretation. Then I turn to some issues of broader interest. I argue that Broughton’s own, potentially interesting interpretation of Carnap’s external/internal distinction does not work. And in light of Broughton’s discussion I present a sharpened version of (...) what I have earlier said about Carnap’s this distinction. (shrink)

Thin Objects has two overarching ambitions. The first is to clarify and defend the idea that some objects are ‘thin’, in the sense that their existence does not make a substantive demand on reality. The second is to develop a systematic and well-motivated account of permissible abstraction, thereby solving the so-called ‘bad company problem’. Here I synthesise the book by briefly commenting on what I regard as its central themes.

Research and engineering in the quantum domain involve long chains of activity involving theory development, hypothesis formation, experimentation, device prototyping, device testing, and many more. At each stage multiple paths become possible, and of the paths pursued, the majority will lead nowhere. Our quantum metascience approach provides a strategy which enables all stakeholders to gain an overview of those developments along these tracks, that are relevant to their specific concerns. It provides a controlled vocabulary, built out of terms that are (...) designed to be maximally comprehensible to all groups of stakeholders and across all the sub-fields of the quantum domain. (shrink)

In “The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Science of Addiction” Robert West highlights a pervasive challenge for more conceptual clarity and consensus within the field of addiction studies. In an attempt to address the challenge I provide the conceptual building blocks or architectonic of a metatheory of addiction, referred to as the Integrated Metatheoretical Model of Addiction (IMMA). The IMMA is not a general theory of addiction, but rather an exploratory attempt at providing the architectonic of an metaparadigmatic heuristic, that (...) may potentially provide the conceptual scaffolding needed for developing a general theory of addiction. (shrink)

Is metaphysical grounding One or Many? If you think grounding is one, you are a monist; there is one (or one fundamental) kind of grounding. If you think grounding is Many, you are a pluralist; there are multiple (or multiple equally fundamental) kinds of grounding. This essay surveys the ways in which one could be a pluralist about grounding.

This article serves as either an addendum or as an expansion of ideas and work developed in my 2024 book, The Rationality Project: Across the Millennia, issued by Palgrave Macmillan. The book explores 21 potential theories for explaining rationality in terms of why and how one among these can serve in the position of explanatory power. The book does not fully explain all of these candidate theories, assigning that complete role to this addendum or work-in-progress. The main reason for this (...) abbreviation in assessing all the theories in the book is that the complete coverage—which this addendum allows—of all 21 theories would become too detailed for some philosophical readers. This addendum; one may consider, is then for the more technically minded reader—although certainly not-too-technically minded readers are welcome to explore it. If it becomes too bogged in detail for those latter kinds of readers, they may end up skimming the material in this addendum, trying at least to get the general idea of how these addendum sections fit into the book's goals. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In my previous work I explored how Integral Theory can be applied as a meta‐theoretical and transdisciplinary framework, in an attempt to arrive at integrally informed metatheory of addiction, yet indispensable aspects were overlooked. Moreover, an overemphasis was placed on Integral Methodological Pluralism, without clarifying the ontological pluralism of addiction as a multiple object enacted by various methodologies. I believe what is needed in an attempt at a comprehensive integral metatheory of addiction is to include Sean Esbjörn‐Hargens and Michael (...) Zimmerman’s Integral Pluralism and Integral Enactment Theory. Integral Enactment Theory highlights the phenomenon of addiction as a multiple and dynamic object arising along a continuum of ontological complexity. Integral Enactment Theory adeptly points out how etiological models “co‐arise”, in relation to methodology (methodological pluralism) and enacts a particular reality of addiction (ontological pluralism), while being mediated by the world view of the subject (epistemological pluralism) applying the method. This paper briefly explores the significance of including Integral Pluralism and Integral Enactment theory in the quest of an integral metatheory of addiction . (shrink)

Historically Judaism has been called both a nation and a religion, yet there are those Jews who eschew the religious and national definitions for a cultural one. For example, while TV’s Mrs. Maisel is ostensibly a Jew, the actor playing her is not, and Mrs. Maisel’s actions are not always Jewish. In The Fractured Jew Joel West separates Judaism into phenomenological and performative, starting with popular portrayals of Jews and Judaism, in today’s media, as a jumping-off point to understand Judaism (...) and Jewishness, not from the outside, but from the emic, internal, Jewish point of view. (shrink)

Cryptocurrency is just the tip of a never-melting iceberg…because everything in Nature is connected to everything else by an always-conserved (and uber-simple) circle. Giving us, finally, an explanation (and, technically, a use-case, and proof) for a 'self.'.

The paper deals with the notions of grounding and of existential dependence. It is shown that cases of existential dependence seem to be systematically correlated to cases of grounding and hence the question is raised what sort of tie might hold the two notions together so as to account for the observed correlation. The paper focusses on three possible ties between grounding and existential dependence: identity, definition, and grounding. A case for the definitional tie is made.

There was once a land inhabited by many tribes. For a long time, each of the tribes was isolated from all the rest. When they finally made contact, all were amazed to discover how similar they were to one another. All of them spoke languages with exactly the same syntax— that of English. Nevertheless, it soon became clear that there were systematic behavioral differences among the tribes. These differences were reflected in the tribespeoples’ reactions to..

Metaphysicians of causation have long debated the existence of primitive causal modalities (e.g., powers), with reductionists and realists taking opposing stances. However, little attention has been given to the legitimacy of the metaphysical question itself, despite our longstanding awareness of Rudolf Carnap’s critique of metaphysics. This article develops a (broadly) Carnapian-pragmatist approach to causation as an alternative to existing metaphysical approaches. Within this pragmatist approach, metaphysical questions about causation are reinterpreted as practical questions about the choice of causal frameworks. To (...) motivate and justify this new approach, I argue that, in emphasizing the priority of ontology over methodology, metaphysical approaches to causation fail to adequately capture the interplay between causal ontology and causal methodology in scientific practice. In contrast, the Carnapian approach provides a more appealing alternative that emphasizes the mutual dependence and ‘balance’ between the two in an ongoing process of scientific inquiry. I use the recent controversy over ‘What counts as a cause’ in statistical causal inference as a case study to demonstrate how the Carnapian approach can help us better understand the role of ontological issues in methodological practices. (shrink)

The article addresses key ontological issues related to the book “What is Ontology? Counter Definitions” (2023) by Dimitar Vatsov and Boyan Manchev. The analysis is divided into five parts: (1) The first part outlines the broader philosophical context and the contemporary Bulgarian intellectual milieu. (2) The second part examines the discourse on what exists, how ontology is conducted, whether it can be normative, and critically assesses whether this discipline can be considered subjective. (3) The third part is brief, highlighting the (...) limitations of using definitions and axioms in philosophy. (4) The fourth part explores specific case studies: existence as a quality, actuality as presentism, the role of contingency, the resistance and mutation of bodies, and concludes with the central theme of natural language and its relationship to existence. (5) The final section highlights several strengths of the book and calls for broader discussion within the philosophical community. (shrink)

This paper offers an original interpretation of the Daodejing 道德經 as containing a distinctive account of creation. In my reading, the Daodejing envisions the creation of the cosmos by Dao (1) as a movement from the absence of phenomenal forms to phenomenal forms and (2) as a movement from nothingness to existence. I interpret creation as a unique metaphysical operation that explains how (1) and (2) are possible. The paper is organized into two sections. First, I introduce the distinctions between (...) the lack and presence of phenomenal forms (§1.1) and between nothingness and existence (§1.2), using them to map the distinction between Dao and the created world. Then, I propose my account of the Daodejing’s metaphysics of creation (§2.1) and elaborate on its connection with the previously drawn distinctions while answering a potential objection (§2.2). I conclude with some considerations about the connections between the Daodejing’s view of creation and its soteriology. (shrink)

Metaphysics is, historically as well as systematically, mostly taken to be the inquiry into reality, insofar it is considered to be: (1) the totality of everything there is; (2) of everything that exists; or (3) what is fundamental. This paper sets out to analyze the relation between all three metaphysical core notions and sketch the landscape of metaphysical theories that emerges from it. Taking The Fundamental, The Existent, and Totality to be the domains corresponding to each metaphysical object of inquiry, (...) it is argued that they stand in the settheoretical relations of: The Fundamental ⊆ The Existent ⊆ Totality. This general structure allows for a plurality of more detailed structures when we differentiate between the ones that treat at least two notions as extensionally equal and those that take them to be proper subsets. Furthermore, reductive and inflationary strategies between equating two of the notions will be differentiated, allowing for a detailed sketch of the landscape of metaphysical theories and their views on the nature of reality. In closing, it is argued that the metaphysical structure allowing for most differentiation in metaphysical status is to be preferred as it allows to adequately capture metaphysical disputes, constituting evidence for the importance of each metaphysical notion and a short plea against their conflation. (shrink)

What follows is a dialogue between Maurice and Orensanz, in which they will discuss some key topics stemming from Bunge’s oeuvre. The objective of this dialogue is to advance the metascientific program even further. The main points that will be discussed can be presented as a series of questions: Is it possible to prove that the external world exists? What is matter? Is the part-whole relation transitive? What is the difference between systems and assortments? Do fictional objects have a function (...) in ontology? Although those are the main topics, several other points will be discussed throughout this exchange. (shrink)

This presentation introduces the third issue of Mɛtascience, a journal dedicated to metascientific research. It highlights ten contributions from authors with diverse backgrounds, exploring various aspects of Mario Bunge's thought and metascientific epistemology. The issue is divided into four categories: Studies on Bunge's System, Metascientific Contributions, Applications of Bungean Thought, and Around Metascience. Key topics include the characterization of metascientific epistemology, its distinction from philosophical epistemologies, and its focus on scientific constructs and epistemic operations. The issue explores applications of Bunge's (...) systemist philosophy, conceptual modeling in information technology, and debates surrounding linguistics as an empirical science. It also addresses the relationship between epistemology, science education, and the teaching of scientific models. (shrink)

The digitalization of human society continues at a relentless rate. However, to develop modern information technologies, the increasing complexity of the real-world must be modeled, suggesting the general need to reconsider how to carry out conceptual modeling. This research proposes that the often-overlooked notion of ‘‘system’’ should be a separate, and core, conceptual modeling construct and argues for incorporating it and related concepts, such as emergence, into existing approaches to conceptual modeling. The work conducts a synthesis of the ontology of (...) systems and general systems theory. These modeling foundations are then used to propose a CESM+ template for conducing systems-grounded conceptual modeling. Several new conceptual modeling notations are introduced. The systemist modeling is then applied to a case study on the development of a citizen science platform. The case demonstrates the potential contributions of the systemist approach and identifies specific implications of explicit modeling with systems for theory and practice. The paper provides recommendations for how to incorporate systems into existing projects and suggests fruitful opportunities for future conceptual modeling research. (shrink)

In Andreas Stokke (ed.), Festschrift for Matti Eklund, 2024. -/- Replies to Katharina Felka and Nils Franzén, Eli Hirsch, Dan Korman, David Liebesman, Øystein Linnebo, Anna-Sofia Maurin and Debbie Roberts. Topics discussed concern metaethics, metaphysics and philosophy of language. More specifically, issues discussed are thick concepts (Felka and Franzén; Roberts), ontology (Hirsch, Linnebo), indifferentism and fictionalism (Korman), alien languages and alien metaphysics (Liebesman), and Bradley's regress (Maurin).