This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Multiplicity How Are Instances of Comics Created? Autographic and Allographic Conclusion Notes References.

Many familiar forms of property realism identify properties with sui generis ontological categories like universals or tropes and posit a fundamental instantiation relation that unifies objects with their properties. In this paper, I develop and defend locationism, which identifies properties with locations and holds that the occupation relation that unifies objects with their locations also unifies objects with their properties. Along with the theoretical parsimony that locationism enjoys, I argue that locationism resolves a puzzle for actualists regarding the ontological status (...) of uninstantiated properties. I also note some promising applications of the locationist framework to the metaphysics of quantities and possible worlds. (shrink)

During the past two decades Metaphysics of Natural Complexes has exerted a strong a growing influence on the continuing development of contemporary philosophy. This new and expanded edition acknowledges this influence and brings together much material. Included are the previously published articles “On the Concept of ‘the World,’” and “Probing the Idea of Nature,” which Buchler wrote subsequent to Metaphysics of Natural Complexes as extensions and completions of the system. Previously unpublished work on the key concept of contour has also (...) been added. In addition there are excerpts from Buchler’s replies to his critics, a set of editors’ notes to facilitate cross-referencing, and an updated index. This work presents a bold and forceful metaphysics and general ontology. It provides a systematic framework for understanding the broadest features of the world and nature, and for locating our understanding of human nature, selfhood, and society as complexes in and of nature. Buchler’s detailed analysis of identity, ordinality, nature, world, and validation advance our understanding of the basic categories to be used in defining and exploring whatever is. Unlike other contemporary philosophers that confine themselves to narrowly defined problems in hermeneutics or theory of knowledge, Buchler is unrelenting in his drive toward a more encompassing perspective, simultaneously combining interpretive precision with sheer breadth of vision. (shrink)

It is a standard assumption in contemporary metaphysics that concrete objects come with a location in space and time. This applies not only to material objects and events, but also modes (such as the roundness of the apple, the softness of the pillow, Socrates' wisdom) and entities that have been called 'disturbances' (e.g. holes, folds, faults, and scratches). Taking the approach of descriptive metaphysics, I will show that modes and disturbances fail to have a bearer-independent spatial location. This allows for (...) a metaphysical explanation of the Chomskyan contrast between 'There is a fly believed to be in the bottle' and the unacceptable 'There is a flaw believed to be in the argument'. A subsidiary point this paper makes is that in their lack of a direct spatial location, modes need to be sharply distinguished from tropes as a category of foundationalist metaphysics that has been at the center of a pursuit of a one-category ontology since Williams (1953). (shrink)

This chapter explores the possibility of identifying core moral claims with the states of mind which are called bodily imperatives—e.g. the ‘make it stop’ state of mind which is plausibly an aspect of, if not identical with, severe pain states and states such as severe thirst, hunger, sleeplessness, humiliation, terror, and torment. The chapter combines this idea with another, that the desire-like, conative, or ‘world-guiding’ states of mind which make normative claims on agents need not belong to the agent on (...) whom the claim is made, on a broadly Humean or desire-based view in metaethics. On the view defended, any subject’s bodily imperatives can make moral claims on any moral agent. The case is made that bodily imperatives are a good candidate for constituting the core moral claims or basic imperatives of morality, which all others are either built from, or at least constrained by. (shrink)

In this talk, I propose a new account of ontological form, formal ontological relations, modes of being and hence of specifying the subject matter of metaphysics.

In this dissertation, I develop a metaphysics of powers to ground Dispositionalism, the theory of the source of modality according to which all alethic modal truths are grounded in dispositional properties instantiated in the actual world. I consider a number of key theses that powers metaphysics display, and investigate which can be incorporated in the metaphysical base of Dispositionalism, and how. In the first part I examine the interaction of two core principles of powers ontologies: Directedness, the thesis that (...) powers ‘point at’ their manifestations, and Independence, the thesis that powers can fail to manifest. These two principles are in tension: there is an argument, known as Too Much Possibility, to the effect that they are inconsistent. I examine various strategies to resist the argument. These involve Physical Intentionality, numerical identity between power and manifestation, process ontologies, and platonic universals. I conclude that they are all unsatisfactory. In the second part, I develop a ‘minimal metaphysics of powers’ that is immune from the threat of Too Much Possibility. This involves considering unmanifested manifestations to be akin to Mere Logical Existents. I argue that the best way to avoid the tension at the heart of powers ontologies is to conceive of unmanifested manifestations as non-essentially non-spatiotemporally located entities. I then consider some consequences of minimal metaphysics: I examine which ontological category the manifestations of power can belong to, and what are the prospects of grounding metaphysical, as opposed to natural, modality. Finally, in the third part, I investigate whether further key theses of powers ontologies can be incorporated into the minimal metaphysics. This leads to discuss the relationship of the minimal metaphysics with grounding and dependency relations, the metaphysics of time, the truthmaking principle, and tendential theories of powers. (shrink)

The category of metaphysical evil introduced by Leibniz appears to cast a sinister shadow over the goodness of creation. It seems to imply that creatures, simply in virtue of not being gods, are to some degree intrinsically and inescapably evil. After briefly unpacking this difficulty and outlining a recent attempt to deal with it, this paper returns to the texts to propose a novel and multilayered understanding of Leibniz’s category of metaphysical evil by reading it against (...) the backdrop of the traditional typologies of evil with which he was unquestionably familiar. It comes to the conclusion that metaphysical evil plays two key roles for Leibniz. First, it captures what Aquinas and especially Suarez meant by ‘natural evil’. Contrary to the common assumption that it is Leibniz’s category of physical evil that holds the place of natural evil, the paper shows that Leibniz’s physical evil corresponds to Augustine’s category of evil of punishment for sin whereas natural evil – intended as a kind of evil which is not related to moral responsibility -- is subsumed under metaphysical evil. Secondly, the category of metaphysical evil covers also the notion of original creaturely imperfection. In classifying creaturely limitation as a kind of evil Leibniz breaks from the Augustinian-Thomist-Scholastic tradition and its distinction between negatio and privatio. On the other hand, notwithstanding this important break, Leibniz’s notion of metaphysical evil is intended to account for something which is firmly within the broadly Augustinian-Scholastic tradition, namely the ascription to all creatures of a limitation that stems from their being created ex nihilo. Finally, the paper returns a verdict of non-guilty to the charge that Leibniz’s metaphysical evil implies that creatures qua creatures are to some extent necessarily intrinsically evil. More generally, in typical Leibnizian fashion, the notion of metaphysical evil will appear to be a complex mix of indebtedness to tradition and bending of received doctrines into something significantly different. (shrink)

This edited volume is a comprehensive presentation of views on the relations between metaphysics and logic from Aristotle through twentieth century philosophers who contributed to the return of metaphysics in the analytic tradition. The collection combines interest in logic and its history with interest in analytical metaphysics and the history of metaphysical thought. By so doing, it adds both to the historical understanding of metaphysical problems and to contemporary research in the field. Throughout the volume, essays focus on (...) metaphysica generalis, or the systematic study of the most general categories of being. Beginning with Aristotle and his Categories , the volume goes on to trace metaphyscis and logic through the late ancient and Arabic traditions, examining the views of Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and William Ockham. Moving into the early modern period, contributors engage with Leibniz's metaphysics, Kant's critique of metaphysics, the relation between logic and ontology in Hegel, and Bolzano's views. Subsequent chapters address: Charles S. Peirce's logic and metaphysics; the relevance of set-theory to metaphysics; Meinong's theory of objects; Husserl's formal ontology; early analytic philosophy; C.I. Lewis and his relation to Russell; and the relations between Frege, Carnap, and Heidegger. Surveying metaphysics through to the contemporary age, essays explore W.V. Quine's attitude towards metaphysics; Wilfrid Sellars's relation to antidescriptivism as it connects to Kripke's; the views of Putnam and Kaplan; Peter F. Strawson's and David M. Armstrong's metaphysics; Trope theory; and its relation to Popper's conception of three worlds. The volume ends with a chapter on transcendental philosophy as ontology. In each chapter, contributors approach their topics not merely in an historical and exegetical fashion, but also engage critically with the thought of the philosophers whose work they discuss, offering synthesis and original philosophical thought in the volume, in addition to very extensive and well-informed analysis and interpretation of important philosophical texts. The volume will serve as an essential reference for scholars of metaphysics and logic. (shrink)

An adequate account of the nature of genre and of the criteria for genre membership is essential to understanding the nature of the various categories into which comics can be classified. Because they fail adequately to distinguish genre categories from other ways of categorizing works, including categorizations according to medium or according to style, previous accounts of genre fail to illuminate the nature of comics categories. I argue that genres are sets of conventions that have developed as means (...) of addressing particular interpretative and/or evaluative concerns, and have a history of co‐instantiation within a community, such that a work’s belonging to some genre generates interpretative and evaluative expectations among the members of that community. Genres are distinct from styles in consisting of conventions, and are distinct from media both in consisting of conventions and in generating interpretative and evaluative expectations. (shrink)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. ;A form of metaphysical inquiry is in this thesis both illustrated in detail and defended against the charge of issuing in statements which lack cognitive content. 'Categorial description' concerns the fundamental features of our conceptual scheme: the categories described are those of substance, accident, cause, space and time. ;Following Aristotle's distinction between primary and secondary substances, these two notions are addressed as equivalent to those individual or particular things and their (...) kinds. A particular thing is characterised as not being capable of occuring in the predicate position in a proposition; and as having criteria or principles of individuation and reidentification. Accidents or properties can appear in the predicate position and do not have criteria of identity. ;Secondary substances, or natural kinds, being a species of property, also fail to have criteria for individuation and reidentification. It follows that the recently revived Aristotelian essentialism, as exhibited in particular in the work of Kripke, fails to correctly characterise the category of natural kinds: in that theory, natural kinds have essential properties which enable individuation and reidentification across possible worlds. ;Efficient causation is described, against the background of the Locke-Hume dispute, as involving the concept of necessary connection between cause and effect. Rejecting the theory of Harre and Madden on causal powers, an approach by Mackie is defended whereby this connection is a reflection of our counterfactual thinking. The possible worlds essentialist approach of Lewis to counterfactuals is rejected too, as inadequate. ;Space and time, spatial and temporal relations, and places and moments in time are approached in terms of the other categories of particular and property. The obscurity of fit between these categories is identified as responsible for many philosophical puzzles concerning space and time: for example, McTaggart's 'proof' of the unreality of time; and the recent debate on the possibility of multiple times and multiple spaces. ;In the final chapter, the logical commitments of categorial description concerning conceptual relativism and the nature of reality in itself are explored. It is argued that, since categories are in large part responsible for the kinds of acts there are, a description of our categories is a description of reality itself. Since our categories do not involve the machinery of possible worlds offered by contemporary essentialist theories, those theories fail to describe reality. (shrink)

in a late note, dated 1797, Kant refers to the schematism of the pure understanding as one of the most difficult as well as one of the most important issues treated in the Critique of Pure Reason.1 His treatment of this theme is indeed notorious for its obscurity.2 As I see it, part of the problem is caused by the fact that Kant frames his discussion in terms that he could expect his readers to be familiar with, while he gradually (...) develops ideas that breach any traditional account of cognition. This holds for his references to the power of judgment and the related view that cognition is a matter of subsuming intuitions under concepts3 as well as for the suggestion that there is an initial gap between categories... (shrink)

The experience of a reward appears to enhance memory for recent prior events, adaptively making that information more available to guide future decision-making. Here, we tested whether reward enhances memory for associative item-location information and also whether the effect of reward spreads to other categorically-related but unrewarded items. Participants earned either points (Experiment 1) or money (Experiment 2) through a time-estimation reward task, during which stimuli-location pairings around a 2D-ring were shown followed by either high-value or low-value rewards. All stimuli (...) were then tested for location memory or recognition (yes/no), immediately and after a 24-hour delay. Across both experiments (combined analysis), there was a robust improvement in location memory following high-value rewards, even though evidence supporting this effect was reliable in Experiment 2 but not in Experiment 1. The memory-enhancing effect of reward was observed on both the immediate and delayed location-memory tests. Reward-enhanced memory for both directly rewarded stimuli and categorically related stimuli that were not directly rewarded. No reliable effect of reward value on yes/no recognition-memory performance was observed in either experiment. We hypothesise that reward enhances the consolidation of recent experience and conceptually related memories to make these more available for future decisions. (shrink)

This article aims to study the articulation of Oswald Külpe’s critical realism, with particular stress on the subject of categories doctrine and on the role that it takes on in opposing to objective idealism and, more broadly, to the overcoming of Kantian transcendentalism and the phenomenalism strictly related to it. Starting from an exploration concerning the Aristotelian conception of categories and the comparison that Heidegger makes with Külpe’s thought, an analysis of the whole Külpean Kategorienlehre has been done by taking (...) into consideration the principle of category differentiation, the criterion of their application and their fundamentally gnoseological function. The essay points out too as the Külpean layout is not able to provide a suitable solution to the problems it deals with, as the distance from a genuine notion of ontology shows the metaphysical naivety remaining in the philosophical and categorical project of Külpe. (shrink)

Recently, Cody Gilmore has deployed an ingenious case involving backwards time travel to highlight an apparent conflict between the theory that objects persist by perduring, and the thesis that wholly coincident objects are impossible. However, careful attention to the concepts of location and parthood that Gilmore’s cases involve shows that the perdurantist faces no genuine objection from these cases, and that the perdurantist has a number of plausible and dialectically appropriate ways to avoid the supposed conflict.

Authentic existentialism turns out to be Thomism interpreted in the tradition of Maritain. The primacy of existence over essence is affirmed, but in such a way as to preserve essences and intelligibility. Philosophical positions outside the Thomist family are brought in only where they support the author's argument, never as serious alternative analyses of existence. Plato is distilled down to the idea that there are some relatively permanent aspects of reality after all, and Sartre appears simply as a modern Heraclitean (...) who sees that change permeates reality. The presentation and elaboration of the basic Thomist categories is clear; and the frequent summarization of the argument is helpful, making the book a good introduction to Thomist thinking if not to metaphysics or existentialism more broadly conceived.—P. M. (shrink)

Cognitive developmental evidence is sometimes conscripted to support ''naturalized epistemology'' arguments to the effect that a general epistemic stance leads children to build theory-like accounts of underlying properties of kinds. A review of the evidence suggests that what prompts conceptual acquisition is not a general epistemic stance but a series of category-specific intuitive principles that constitute an evolved ''natural metaphysics''. This consists in a system of categories and category-specific inferential processes founded on definite biases in prototype formation. Evidence (...) for this system provides a better understanding of the limited ''plasticity'' of ontological commitments as well as a computationally plausible account of their initial state, avoiding ambiguities about innateness. This may provide a starting point for a ''naturalized epistemology'' that takes into account evolved properties of human conceptual structures. (shrink)

THE TITLE OF THIS PAPER calls for clarification. Not only are there several senses in which something may be said to "be," there are also many nuances to the terms "categorial" and "intuition." Taking Aristotle as a guide, let us focus upon the primary sense of "being," that is, substance considered both as first substance and second substance. We may then take "categorial" as referring to what Aristotle calls the "figures of predication," the ways in which predicates characterize subjects, indicating (...) "what" the subject is, its quality, quantity, relation, its "where," its "when," and so forth. The term "intuition" expresses something too primitive to be defined, but Edmund Husserl's metaphorical contrast between the "emptiness" of thought and speech and the "fullness" of intuition successfully highlights its essential characteristic. A couple of examples should suffice to grasp the import of Husserl's distinction. Consider the difference, for instance, between first entertaining vague plans of visiting a foreign city and then experiencing the fulfillment of actually strolling through its streets, or the difference between first reading a manual of instructions for performing some task and then actually executing the task skillfully. Taking Husserl as a guide, let us therefore characterize intuition broadly as the presentation of something in its fullness, as opposed to thinking or talking about it in an empty way. Finally, combining Husserlian and Aristotelian terminologies, we may describe categorial intuition as the presentation of figures of predication. Rather than presenting some particular thing, say a red chair, categorial intuition presents the chair's being red, the red quality's belonging to the chair. In short, categorial intuition makes present the modes of presentation of things. (shrink)

This study discusses second generation scientific ontological categories: substance-tradition from Aristotle to Kant, Gödel, Quine, Strawson and others, Being-thinking from Aristotle to Heidegger, and system-building from Plato to Whitehead. The resulting ontology is termed Einaic Ontology for maximalist, mutually collusive, categorial reasons.

Human bodies have a totally different mode of existence from those collections of mental properties (intelligence, will power, consciousness, etc.) that we call minds. They belong to the ontological category of physical substances or entities, whereas mental properties belong to the ontological category of properties or attributes, and as such can exist only so long as their physical bearers exist. Mental properties “emerge” (in a sense that makes emergence ubiquitous throughout the natural world) when the constituent parts of (...) a biological organism—especially its brain—are configured in certain sorts of ways. A view of reality that is both conceptually coherent and scientifically comprehensive makes the very idea of surviving one’s bodily death literally absurd. -/- 1. The Cheshire Cat Fallacy: “A Grin Without a Cat” -- 2. Two Main Arguments for Substance Dualism - 2.1 An Appeal to the Logic of Identity and Difference - 2.2 An Appeal to the Noncogitative Nature of Matter -- 3. A Host of Problems for Substance Dualism - 3.1 The Inexplicability of Mind-Brain Dependence - 3.2 The Inexplicability of Mental Causation - 3.3 The Violation of Scientific Laws - 3.4 Minds as Miracle-Workers - 3.5 Problems about Our Embryological and Developmental Histories - 3.6 Problems about our Evolutionary Histories - 3.7 Which Stage of the Soul or Mind Survives? - 3.8 Where are our Disembodied Souls Supposed to Survive? -- 4. The Argument from Leibniz’s Law Presupposes a Category Misallocation - 4.1 The Fallacy of Reification - 4.2 Resisting the Reifying Lure of Language - 4.3 Dualistic Consequences of Reifying Mentalistic Terms - 4.4 Allocation to Ontological Categories - 4.5 Locke’s Partial Solution to the Category Misallocation - 4.6 Ryle on Category Mistakes and “the Ghost in the Machine” - 4.7 Ryle’s Important Insight: To Have a Mind is to have a Set of Mental Properties - 4.8 Interim Summary -- 5. The Emergence of “Minds” from Incogitative Matter - 5.1 Locke’s A Priori Argument - 5.2 Locke’s Argument Refuted by Counterexamples - 5.3 The Concept of Emergence Defined - 5.4 Rival Concepts of Emergence - 5.5 The Ubiquitousness of Emergent Properties - 5.6 The Metaphysics of Emergent Materialism - 5.6.1 Substance Monism - 5.6.2 The Doctrine of Property Dualism is Misconceived - 5.6.3 Emergent Properties of Different Kinds - 5.6.4 The “Hierarchy” of Sciences - 5.6.5 The Broad Spectrum of “Mental” Properties -- 6. The Metaphysical Impossibility of Survival - 6.1 Mind-Brain Dependence - 6.2 The Issue of Mental Causation - 6.2.1 The Bogeyman of Epiphenomenalism - 6.3 The Violation of Scientific Laws - 6.4 Minds as Miracle-Workers - 6.5 Our Embryological and Developmental Histories - 6.6 Our Evolutionary Histories -- 7. Conclusion. (shrink)

This article argues for two related theses. First, it defends a general thesis: any kind of necessity, including metaphysical necessity, can only be known a priori. Second, however, it also argues that the sort of a priori involved in modal metaphysical knowledge is not related to imagination or any sort of so-called epistemic possibility. Imagination is neither a proof of possibility nor a limit to necessity. Rather, modal metaphysical knowledge is built on intuition of philosophical categories and (...) the structures they form. (shrink)

This study makes a case for the conversational phenomenon the authors have named the comical hypothetical. The CH becomes discursively co-created during ongoing conversation when one or more speakers depart from the normal turn-taking system and engage in the interactional creation of an imaginary world. Data stem from ethnographic observations as well as from spontaneous recordings of social situations in three different locations. Out of 20 hours of taped conversations, 10 recognizable CH segments were analyzed for the present study. The (...) authors present a macro-structure analysis of the comical hypothetical using Hymes's SPEAKING mnemonic, with an emphasis on the act sequence. A second-level micro-analysis uncovers the interactional properties of the CH using a conversation analytic approach. The examination reveals a distinct four-part act sequence of the CH made up of intricate and creative interactional turns. Lastly, the significance and functions of the CH are also discussed. (shrink)

From the perspective of a contemporary metaphysician, Metaphysical Themes 1274–1671 is a fantastic book. It is an impressively rich, detailed, and thorough examination of a multitude of important metaphysical puzzles and arguments, written in a clear, engaging, lively, funny, and even on one occasion vulgar manner. The number of topics covered is astonishing: substance, attribute, form, matter, the metaphysics of predication, parts and wholes, the metaphysics of extension across space, persistence over time, the distinction between primary–secondary qualities, and (...) many others. One of the disconcerting but exciting things about reading Pasnau’s book was both the familiarity of so many of the metaphysical topics the medieval philosophers pursued as well as well as their divergent inclinations on how best to pursue them. This book is a metaphysical thriller, and I highly recommend it.In what follows, I will engage as a metaphysician with Pasnau and through him some of the figures he discu .. (shrink)

The difference between our interpretations can be put most succinctly by saying that whereas his is based on the works preceding Science and the Modern World, principally The Concept of Nature and An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge ; mine finds the key in the works which succeed it, principally Process and Reality. Indeed it seems to me that the use of some such help from other works of Whitehead is inevitable. After a number of determined sallies, I (...) have been forced to conclude that SMW is in itself unintelligible. If we are to make any coherent sense of it we must, I believe, construe its cryptic utterances in the light of a more systematic exposition of Whitehead's basic categories. And the difficulty in this procedure lies in the fact that there are two expositions available for this purpose--that of the earlier and that of the later works--which differ in certain crucial respects. (shrink)

Peirce’s method of categorial development reveals the experimental nature of phenomenology, of metaphysics, and of the relation between their respective claims. The phenomenological categories of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness come to light as an interrelated set of meanings, abductively generated as a tool for focusing on the richness of experience in order to elicit its illusive, “intangible” but pervasive textures, “traits” “tones or tints”. The move from experiential claims to metaphysical claims is an imaginative extension via analogy. In the (...) development of his metaphysical categories, there is an exaggeration of the experimental method by which we have meaningful everyday experience. There is an exaggeration of the metaphorical, imaginative, creative features of the meanings which arise out of past experience though abductive fixations of experience, and which legislate for the analysis of future experience. Further, there is an exaggerated attentiveness to what appears in experience, to its pervasive features or textures, an attentiveness which both founds the categories and serves to verify their adequacy. The claims of his experimental phenomenology, and hence the claims of the metaphysics which it grounds, are fallibilistic and open to alternative categorial possibilities. (shrink)

Although Broad published many books in his lifetime, this volume is unique in presenting some of his most interesting unpublished writings. Divided into five clear sections, the following figures and topics are covered: Autobiography, Hegel and the nature of philosophy, Francis Bacon, Hume's philosophy of the self and belief, F. H. Bradley, The historical development of scientific thought from Pythagoras to Newton, Causation, Change and continuity, Quantitative methods, Poltergeists, Paranormal phenomena. -/- Each section is introduced and placed in context (...) by the editor, Joel Walmsley. The volume also includes an engaging and informative foreword by Simon Blackburn. It will be of great value to those studying and researching the history of twentieth-century philosophy, metaphysics, and the recent history and philosophy of science, as well as anyone interested in Broad's philosophical thought and his place in the history of philosophy. (shrink)

In his “Translator’s Introduction” to The Gay Science, Walter Kaufmann writes: “This book … mirrors all of Nietzsche’s thought and could be related in a hundred ways to his other books, his notes and his letters. And yet it is complete in itself. For it is a work of art.” Judging by their actual treatment of The Gay Science, few commentators have taken this claim to artistic completeness seriously. Instead, the usual practice has been to abstract passages from the book, (...) treating them either as initial statements of key Nietzschean doctrines or as casting light on general issues raised throughout Nietzsche’s works. Until now, no commentator of note has attempted an interpretation of The Gay Science as a unified whole. It is to this end that Higgins has written Comic Relief. (shrink)

That Whitehead's remarks on simple location entail neither an absolute theory of space-time nor a relativistic one. The evidence for this conclusion, especially in view of Whitehead's own remarks, is very good. The ghosts raised by Emmet and Das are laid.

I argue that from a very weak recombination principle and plausible assumptions about the nature of parthood and location it follows that it's possible that the mereological structure of the material world and that of spacetime fail to correspond to one another in very radical ways. I defend, moreover, that rejecting the possibility of such failures of correspondence leaves us with a choice of equally radical alternatives. I also discuss a few ways in which their possibility is relevant to various (...) debates in metaphysics. (shrink)

Discussions about determinables and determinates, on the one hand, and discussions about (formal) theories of location, on the other, have thus far proceeded without any visible interaction, in substantive mutual neglect. This paper aims to remedy this situation of neglect. It explicitly relates (theories of) determinables and (theories of) location. First, I argue that some well known principles of location turn out to be instances of principles relating determinables and determinates. Building on this I then argue that theories of location (...) present formidable counterexamples to those principles about determinables and determinates. One such counterexample in particular is used as an argument against disjunctivism. Finally, I relate the entire discussion to yet another crucial debate in metaphysics, that of metaphysical indeterminacy. (shrink)

Beauty is put to sleep and woken up either once or twice, depending on the flip of a coin; after each waking, she will fall asleep and forget having woken. Upon waking, what should be her credence that the coin came up heads? Some say 1/2; others say 1/3. I propose that evidence supports a theory for you when your having that qualitative evidence would be more likely if the theory were true than if it were false. This view supports (...) the “1/3” answer to the Sleeping Beauty problem. It also has applications to other arguments concerning self-locating beliefs: the Doomsday Argument fails, and the Fine Tuning Argument supports the Multiverse theory, if and only if it would be metaphysically possible for you to exist in a different universe. (shrink)

Intersemiotic projection is one of the most common configurations in the knowledge construction process of academic comics. Although previous studies address some general features of intersemiotic projection, further research on interdependency relations of intersemiotic projection is needed in order to map out the whole system. This study, based on the social-semiotic approach to multimodal studies, proposes a systemic framework of image-text paratactic and hypotactic projection in academic comics. This framework identifies three sub-categories of paratactic projection and hypotactic projection, (...) respectively: Emergent, Adjoined, Sequential, Compound, Subsumed, and Fused. The use of these projection configurations contributes to the realization of the communicative purposes of academic comics to evidence, exemplify, emphasize, explain, elaborate, and visualize the discussed knowledge. This research attempts not only to contribute to the theoretical development of multimodality from the social-semiotic perspective by refining and enlarging the multimodal hypotactic projection framework but also to provide an effective and applicable tool for comics analysis. (shrink)

The total longitudinal form view of human beings is a metaphysical view which aims to locate our moral judgements about human embryos in a broader set of attitudes and characterisations. On this basis it has explanatory power and a real function in that it grounds our ethical discussion of embryos in other discourses. Contra Leavitt, this grounding suggests a broader criterion of relevance for metaphysical discussion than asking 'what comes out of' such a discussion for a particular ethical (...) dilemma. (shrink)

After Kant, the school which further developed Kant's philosophy is the neo-kantianism. This neo-kantianism scholarship is characterized by the simultaneous development of Kant's epistemological and ontological problems. The ontological problem developed around Hartmann, and the epistemological problem developed around Cohen. Here we can see Cohen's achievements. Cohen completes epistemology in Logic of pure awareness(Logik der reinen Erkenntnis). In order to establish his own epistemology, Cohen first completes the problem of aspect category. And Cohen brings the problem of this aspect (...) category in the form of Plato and Aristotle. He connects these aspect categories and Kant's aspect categories. Like this, Cohen completes his perception logic in this aspect category. Plato, Aristotle, and Kant have different categories. Cohen first deals with the problem of the aspect based on the epistemology based on Plato's a priori. Next, he accepts metaphysical aspects of Aristotle's ten categories. Kant's aspect category is different from the other two philosophers. It is, soon, the basis of judgment. Cohen accepts Kant's aspect category of the very basis of his judgment for his epistemology. In this article, we first look at how Cohen embraced Plato, Aristotle, and Kant's view categories for his cognitive logic, and then see how he completed his aspect category. Whether epistemological or ontological, the construction of aspect category is for category theory, which is ultimately related to the laws of nature. Cohen also completes his categorization system in 12 categories, like Kant, centering on three aspect categories. Aristotle's ten categories, Kant's twelve categories, and Cohen's twelve categories eventually start with judgment. And so far, the number of these categories has been limited to twelve. Cohen argues that the number of these categories is likely to increase sufficiently. As science develops and societies become more complex, the number of categories is not as limited as Aristotle and Kant's view, but has the idea that there can be as many. Cohen explains his thoughts as Judgment of Methodology(Ureile der Methodik). We find here the merits of Cohen's cognitive logic. However, Cohen did not leave his view of the increasing number of categories or numbers. This is his disadvantage. The conclusion of this paper is to point out a problem with Cohen's aspect category by discussing the possibility of expanding or increasing the number of categories claimed by Cohen. (shrink)

ONE ASSUMPTION ABOUT METAPHYSICS is often shared by those who renounce it. Metaphysical theories are not true, they say, because of being neither true nor false. Opponents of one sort excoriate the theories as meaningless. Others say that truth and falsity are irrelevant to metaphysics, as they are to literature. Like novelists and playwrights, we metaphysicians are said to formulate the stories used for thinking about possible worlds, such as the imaginary ones of fiction and this actual world. Metaphysics, (...) this implies, differs from literature only because its stories have a wider scope. Where novelists devote themselves to incidents and personalities, we metaphysicians tell stories that emphasize the categorial features of a world. Either way, these activities are motivated by a single objective: we formulate interpretations in order to use them for creating thinkable worlds. All of the intelligibility credited to any possible world--all its differentiations and relations--originate within these interpretations. But no one should suppose that interpretations are true or false; for these conceptualizations are not the representations of preexisting states of affairs. They are, instead, the very condition for the existence of possible worlds. Why? Because these worlds exist only as they are prefigured within, and created by, the interpretations used for thinking them. (shrink)

As a metaphysical theory, radical ontic structural realism is characterised mainly in terms of the ontological primacy it places on relations and structures, as opposed to the individual relata and objects that inhabit these relations/structures. The most popular criticism of ROSR is that its central thesis is incoherent. Bain attempts to address this criticism by arguing that the mathematical language of category theory allows for a coherent articulation of ROSR’s key thesis. Subsequently, Wüthrich and Lam and Lal and (...) Teh have criticised Bain’s arguments and claimed that category theory fares no better than set theory in coherently articulating the main ideas of ROSR. In this paper, we defend Bain’s main arguments against these critiques, and attempt to elaborate on the sense in which category theory can be seen as providing a coherent articulation of ROSR. We also consider the relationship between ROSR and Categorical Quantum Mechanics. (shrink)

The concept of an ontological category is central to metaphysics. Metaphysicians argue about which category of existence an object should be assigned to, whether one category can be reduced to another one, or whether there might be different equally adequate systems of categorization. Answers to these questions presuppose a clear understanding of what precisely an ontological category is, and Jan Westerhoff now provides the first in-depth analysis. After examining a variety of attempted definitions, he proceeds to (...) argue for a new understanding of ontological categories, according to which they are systematizations of our knowledge of the world rather than essential characteristics of the world itself. Metaphysicians will find his work highly stimulating. (shrink)

What makes comics comics? The question is difficult. Many answers have been proposed but the debate appears to stagnate, in part because scholars cannot seem to agree about the exact content of the category of comics. In this article, I propose to move the discussion away from the category of comics and instead approach the debate through the category of works that read like comics. After arguing that this change of perspective is (...) relevant and likely to generate more homogeneous views among scholars, I present a series of intriguing works that read like comics, despite not having the characteristics one would probably judge necessary according to the current literature. Doing so, I show that works do not need to have pictures or look like comics to read like comics, that some works read like comics precisely because of the way they look, that a single image can be modified to read like a comic, and that we can create a truly single image that reads like a comic. I discuss how the presented works challenge some common assumptions about the defining features of comics. Finally, I conclude that the category of works that read like comics is useful to further our understanding of comics and to explore what might be the most interesting aspects of the medium. (shrink)

Most event-referring expressions are vague; it is utterly difficult, if not impossible, to specify the exact spatiotemporal location of an event from the words that we use to refer to it. We argue that in spite of certain prima facie obstacles, such vagueness can be given a purely semantic (broadly supervaluational) account.

“Ambivalence” is the key word in much of this book; “comic” [is the book’s] most obscure and I think absolutely without use value. I don’t know what B[urke] means by “comic,” as a matter of fact. I wonder if he does, and could define it briefly. Readers of Kenneth Burke are well aware of the importance of comedy and its associated cluster of concepts in his work: comic, comic frame, comic attitude, comic corrective. This cluster of terms figures prominently in (...) his 1937 book Attitudes Toward History, most notably in two key passages that scholars turn to time and again. In the first, from the “Poetic Categories” section of the book, Burke explains how different genres serve as guides for how to act in the... (shrink)

Provides a systematic framework for understanding the broad features of the world and nature, and for locating the understanding of self and society within nature. Includes Buchler's reply to his critics. No bibliography.

Jonathan Lowe argues that metaphysics should be restored to a central position in philosophy, as the most fundamental form of rational inquiry, whose findings underpin those of all other disciplines. He portrays metaphysics as charting the possibilities of existence, by idetifying the categories of being and the relations of ontological dependency between entities of different categories. He proceeds to set out a unified and original metaphysical system: he defends a substance ontology, according to which the existence of the world (...) s one world in time depends upon the existence of persisting things which retain their identity over time and through processes of qualitative change. And he contends that even necessary beings, such as the abstract objects of mathematics, depend ultimately for their existence upon there being a concrete world of enduring substances. Within his system of metaphysics Lowe seeks to answer many of the deepest and most challenging questions in philosophy. (shrink)

It is commonly supposed that metaphysical modal claims are to be evaluated with respect to a single domain of possible worlds: a claim is metaphysically necessary just in case it is true in every possible world, and metaphysically possible just in case it is true in some possible world. We argue that the standard understanding is incorrect; rather, whether a given claim is metaphysically necessary or possible is relative to which world is indicatively actual. We motivate our view by (...) attention to discussions in Salmon 1989 and Fine 2005, in which various data are taken to support rejecting the transitivity of accessibility and modal monism ; we argue that relativized metaphysical modality can accommodate these data compatible with both standard modal logic and modal monism. Noting an analogy with two-dimensional semantics, we argue that metaphysical modality has a complex structure, reflecting what is counterfactually possible, relative to each indicatively actual world. In arguing for the need for relativization, we are broadly on the same side as Crossley and Humberstone and Davies and Humberstone ; our contribution here is, first, to offer distinctively metaphysical reasons for relativization, and second, to show that relativization can be incorporated in ways minimally departing from standard modal logic. (shrink)

In his Ted Sider takes care to define the notion of a temporal part and his doctrine of perdurantism using only the temporally indexed notion of parthood – ‘ x is part of y at t’ – rather than the atemporal notion of classical mereology – ‘ x is a part of y’ – in order to forestall accusations of unintelligibility from his opponents. However, as he notes, endurantists do not necessarily reject the classical mereological notion as unintelligible. They allow (...) that it makes sense and applies to atemporal subject matters and to temporal subject matters when the entities under discussion are not continuants. Thus, they allow that it makes sense to say that metaphysics is a part of philosophy, or that football is a game of two halves. What endurantists deny is only that the classical mereological notion is applicable to continuants: continuants , they say, have no proper parts simpliciter , either because it is false to say that they have or because it is unintelligible.Thus perdurantists do not have to embrace Sider's excessive caution in defining their position. 1 They can safely allow themselves classical mereological notions as long as it is a consequence of their definitions that continuants are perdurers/have temporal proper parts only if they have atemporal proper parts. 2In his Josh Parsons illuminatingly takes on the task he describes as ‘get[tting] the allegedly technical concepts of temporal part, perdurance and so on by ratcheting up from mereological relations, subregion relations among times and the concept of exact temporal location ’. He continues, ‘My definitions provide a good answer to those endurantists who claim …. (shrink)

Recently, many philosophers have been interested in using locative relations to clarify and pursue debates in the metaphysics of material objects. Most begin with the relation of exact location. But what if we begin instead with the relation known as weak location – the relation an object x bears to any region not completely bereft of x? I explore some of the consequences of pursuing this route for issues including coincidence, extended simples, and endurance, with an eye to evaluating the (...) prospects for taking weak location as our fundamental locative relation. (shrink)

A value statement such as “she is a good teacher” is categoryspecified, i.e., the criteria of evaluation are specified as those that are applicable to a given category, in this case the category of teachers. In this study of categoryspecified value statements, certain categories are identified that cannot be used to specify value aspects. Special attention is paid to categories that are constituted by functional characteristics. The logical properties of value statements that refer to such categories are shown (...) to differ significantly from the corresponding properties in social choice theory. (shrink)

Is Anscombean practical knowledge independent of what the agent actually does on an occasion? Failure to understand Anscombe’s answer to this question is a major obstacle to appreciating the subtlety and plausibility of her view. I argue that Anscombe’s answer is negative, and turns on the nature of mistakes in performance, and reveals a distinctive implicit metaphysics of mind and knowledge, structured by related capacities and exercises of capacities. If my interpretation is correct, then practical knowledge shares features with knowledge-how (...) and knowledge-that, but deserves its own epistemic category. (shrink)

The concept of an ontological category is central to metaphysics. Metaphysicians argue about which category an object should be assigned to, whether one category can be reduced to another one, or whether there might be different equally adequate systems of categorization. Answers to these questions presuppose a clear understanding of what precisely an ontological category is, an issue which is rarely addressed; Jan Westerhoff presents the first in-depth analysis both of the use made of ontological categories (...) in the metaphysical literature, and of various attempts at defining them. He also develops a new theory of ontological categories which implies that there will be no unique system, and that the ontological category an object belongs to is not an essential property of that object. Systems of ontological categories are structures imposed on the world, rather than reflections of a deep metaphysical reality already present. All metaphysicians should find Westerhoff's book highly stimulating. (shrink)