There is currently intense interest in the question of the source of our presumed knowledge of truths concerning what is, or is not, metaphysically possible or necessary. Some philosophers locate this source in our capacities to conceive or imagine various actual or non-actual states of affairs, but this approach is open to certain familiar and seemingly powerful objections. A different and ostensibly more promising approach has been developed by Timothy Williamson, according to which our capacity for modal knowledge is just (...) an extension, or by-product, of our general capacity to acquire knowledge of true counterfactual conditionals — a capacity that we deploy ubiquitously in everyday life. Williamson’s account crucially involves a thesis to the effect that modal truths can be explained in terms of counterfactual truths. In this paper, I query Williamson’s account on a number of points, including this thesis. My positive proposal, which owes a debt to the work of Kit Fine on modality and essence, appeals instead to our capacity to grasp essences, understood in a neo-Aristotelian fashion, according to which essences are expressed by ‘real definitions’. (shrink)

In this book Jonathan Lowe offers a lucid and wide-ranging introduction to the philosophy of mind. Using a problem-centred approach designed to stimulate as well as instruct, he begins with a general examination of the mind-body problem and moves on to detailed examination of more specific philosophical issues concerning sensation, perception, thought and language, rationality, artificial intelligence, action, personal identity and self-knowledge. His discussion is notably broad in scope, and distinctive in giving equal attention to deep metaphysical questions concerning the (...) mind and to the discoveries and theories of modern scientific psychology. It will be of interest to any reader with a basic grounding in modern philosophy. (shrink)

Non-Cartesian substance dualism maintains that persons or selves are distinct from their organic physical bodies and any parts of those bodies. It regards persons as ‘substances’ in their own right, but does not maintain that persons are necessarily separable from their bodies, in the sense of being capable of disembodied existence. In this paper, it is urged that NCSD is better equipped than either Cartesian dualism or standard forms of physicalism to explain the possibility of mental causation. A model of (...) mental causation adopting the NCSD perspective is proposed which, it is argued, is consistent with all that is currently known about the operations of the human central nervous system, including the brain. Physicalism, by contrast, seems ill-equipped to explain the distinctively intentional or teleological character of mental causation, because it effectively reduces all such causation to ‘blind’ physical causation at a neurological level. (shrink)

A prominent view holds that perception and memory are distinguished at least partly by their temporal orientation: Perception functions to represent the present, while memory functions to represent the past. Call this view perceptual presentism. This chapter critically examines perceptual presentism in light of contemporary perception science. I adduce evidence for three forms of perceptual sensitivity to the past: (i) shaping perception by past stimulus exposure, (ii) recruitment of mnemonic representations in perceptual processing, and (iii) perceptual representation of present objects (...) as possessing past properties. I argue that forms (i) and (ii) are consistent with perceptual presentism, while form (iii) poses a genuine threat to the view. While the empirical case for form (iii) remains inconclusive, I suggest that the most serious challenges to perceptual presentism derive from representations that integrate mnemonic and present-tensed elements in the performance of canonical perceptual functions, such as perceiving object continuity over time. (shrink)

De Bie et al. (2023) propose an organizing framework for different stages of human gestational development from conception to the viable premature. They also identify ethical considerations and con...

Locke notoriously included number amongst the primary qualities of bodies and was roundly criticized for doing so by Berkeley. Frege echoed some of Berkeley's criticisms in attacking the idea that ‘Number is a property of external things’, while defending his own view that number is a property of concepts. In the present paper, Locke's view is defended against the objections of Berkeley and Frege, and Frege's alternative view of number is criticized. More precisely, it is argued that numbers are assignable (...) to pluralities of individuals. However, it is also argued that Locke went too far in asserting that ‘Number applies itself to ... everything that either doth exist, or can be imagined’. (shrink)

There is a widespread assumption that the classical work in philosophical semantics of Saul Kripke (1980) and Hilary Putnam (1975) has taught us that the essences of natural kinds of substances, such as water and gold, are discoverable only a posteriori by scientific investigation. It is such investigation, thus, that has supposedly revealed to us that it is an essential property of water that it is composed of H2O molecules. This is the way in which Scott Soames, in a recent (...) paper, makes the point in the case of water and H2O: [Here is] how a Kripkean explanation of the necessary a posteriority of [‘Water = H2O’] would go – or at any rate my version of it. The account holds that ‘water’ is a non-descriptive, directly-referential term designating a substance – where substances are taken to be physically constitutive kinds (instances of which share the same basic physical constitution). It is further assumed that a kind of this sort may have different instances in different world-states, and that if a and b are kinds with the same instances in all possible world-states, then a is b. These are clearly metaphysical assumptions, to which we add the natural corollary that for any substance, s, if, in some possible world-state, instances of s have a certain molecular structure, then instances of s have that structure in every world-state. In other words, we assume that it is an essential property of a substance that instances of it have the molecular structure they do. From this it follows that [‘Water = H2O’] is necessary if true, and that ‘H2O’– which I take to be equivalent to ‘the substance instances of which have a molecular structure with two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom’– is a rigid designator. Being true, [‘Water = H2O’] is, therefore, necessary. Since knowing the proposition it expresses requires knowing of a certain substance that its instances have a particular chemical structure, [‘Water = H2O’] is knowable only a posteriori. (Soames 2007: 36). (shrink)

I propose a fourfold categorisation of entities according to whether or not they possess determinate identity-conditions and whether or not they are determinately countable. Some entities – which I call ‘individual objects’ – have both determinate identity and determinate countability: for example, persons and animals. In the case of entities of a kind K belonging to this category, we are in principle always entitled to expect there to be determinate answers to such questions as ‘Is x the same K as (...) y?’ and ’How many Ks are there satisfying condition C?’, even if we may sometimes be unable in practice to discover what these answers are. But other entities apparently lack either determinate identity, or determinate countability, or both. In these terms I try to explain certain important ontological differences between familiar macroscopic objects and various rather more esoteric entities, such as the ‘particles’ of quantum physics, quantities of material stuff, and tropes or property instances. (shrink)

An individual, as this term will be understood here, is an entity to which the concepts of unity and identity fully and determinately apply. That is to say, an entity x is an individual just in case x determinately counts as one entity and x has a determinate identity. Many philosophers tacitly assume that all entities are individuals in the foregoing sense, and indeed that it is a necessary truth that they are. But this can certainly be disputed. It is, (...) very arguably, both logically and metaphysically possible for there to be nonindividuals. The aim of this chapter is to clarify and explore both the notion of an individual and that of a nonindividual, to propose a typology of entities based on the individual/nonindividual distinction, and to illustrate the potential of these notions for application within and across the sciences. (shrink)

In this paper, I first of all define various kinds of ontological dependence, motivating these definitions by appeal to examples. My contention is that whenever we need, in metaphysics, to appeal to some notion of existential or identity-dependence, one or other of these definitions will serve our needs adequately, which one depending on the case in hand. Then I respond to some objections to one of these proposed definitions in particular, namely, my definition of (what I call) essential identity-dependence. Finally, (...) I show how a similar approach can be applied in the theory of truthmaking, by offering an account of the truthmaking relation which defines it in terms of a type of essential dependence. I also say why I think that this approach is preferable to one which treats the truthmaking relation as primitive. More generally, my view is that accounts of dependence or ‘grounding’ which treat these notions as primitive are less satisfactory than my own position, which is that in all cases a suitable definition is forthcoming if we look hard enough. (shrink)

Molyneux’s question asks whether a person born blind who has learned to identify shapes by touch could, if suddenly granted sight, immediately identify shapes visually. This question has often been used to structure discussions of whether there is a “rational connection” between sight and touch—whether it is possible to rationally doubt whether the same shape properties are both seen and felt. I distinguish two questions under this general heading. The first concerns, roughly, whether the visual and haptic perception of shape (...) is rationally connected in normally sighted perceivers. The second concerns, roughly, whether the visual and haptic perception of shape is rationally connected in all possible perceivers. I argue that real-world implementations of Molyneux’s question are irrelevant to the first question, but potentially relevant to the second. However, I also argue that the second question does not have the philosophical significance it is sometimes claimed to have. In particular, it cannot be used to adjudicate debates about whether the phenomenal character of perceptual experience is primarily determined “externally” by the worldly properties we perceive, or “internally” by physiological or functional properties of our brains. (shrink)

Christopher Hill's Perceptual experience is a must‐read for philosophers of mind and cognitive science. Here I consider Hill's representationalist account of spatial perception. I distinguish two theses defended in the book. The first is that perceptual experience does not represent the enduring, intrinsic properties of objects, such as intrinsic shape or size. The second is that perceptual experience does represent certain viewpoint‐dependent properties of objects—namely, Thouless properties. I argue that Hill's arguments do not establish the first thesis, and then I (...) raise questions about the Thouless‐property view and its role in Hill's defense of representationalism. (shrink)

Construing miracles as \textquotedblleft{}violations,\textquotedblright I argue that a law of nature must specify some kind of possibility. But we must have here a sense of possibility for which the ancient rule of logic---ab esse ad posse valet consequentia---does not hold. We already have one example associated with the concept of statute law, a law which specifies what is legally possible but which is not destroyed by a violation. If laws of nature are construed as specifying some analogous sense of what (...) is naturally possible, then they need not be invalidated by a (rare) violation, and Humean miracles remain a genuine possibility. (shrink)

It is a matter of dispute whether we should acknowledge the existence of two distinct species of causation – event causation and agent causation – and, if we should, whether either species of causation is reducible to the other. In this paper, the prospects for such a reduction either way are considered, the conclusion being that a reduction of event causation to agent causation is the more promising option. Agent causation, in the sense understood here, is taken to include but (...) not to be restricted to the intentional causation of an event by a rational agent. But, it is argued, there are certain special features of intentional causation, understood as a sub-species of agent causation, which make the agent-causation approach to human agency a particularly promising one with which to tackle the problem of free will. (shrink)

Recently, Terry Horgan and Matjaž Potrč have defended the thesis of ‘existence monism’, according to which the whole cosmos is the only concrete object. Their arguments appeal largely to considerations concerning vagueness. Crucially, they claim that ontological vagueness is impossible, and one key assumption in their defence of this claim is that vagueness always involves ‘sorites-susceptibility’. I aim to challenge both the claim and this assumption. As a consequence, I seek to undermine their defence of existence monism and support a (...) common-sense pluralist ontology of ‘ordinary objects’ as being fully consistent with a thoroughgoing metaphysical realism. (shrink)

In this paper I attempt to show, by considering a number of sources, including Wittgenstein, Sartre, Thomas Nagel and Spinoza, but also adding something crucial of my own, that it is impossible to construe the subject of experience as an object among other objects in the world. My own added argument is the following. The subject of experience cannot move in time along with material events and processes or it could not be aware of the passage of time, hence neither (...) of change nor of motion. The subject cannot therefore be identified with any neural process, function, or location since whatever goes on in the CNS is necessarily objective and part of the temporal flux. However this does not imply any form of dualism for experiences exist only for the subject whose experiences they are and hence they have no objective reality. (shrink)

I favour an analysis of selfhood which ties it to the possession of certain kinds of first-person knowledge, in particular de re knowledge of the identity of one's own conscious thoughts and experiences. My defence of this analysis will lead me to explore the nature of demonstrative reference to one's own conscious thoughts and experiences. Such reference is typically ‘direct’, in contrast to demonstrative reference to all physical objects, apart from those that are parts of one's own body in which (...) one can localize sensations or which are directly subject to one's will. My conclusion will be that the semantic distinction between ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ demonstrative reference helps to delineate the metaphysical boundary between oneself and the rest of the world. But I do not contend that one is to be identified with one's own body: indeed, I shall try to show that one can know a priori that no such identity can obtain. (shrink)

Mathematical tradition has it that transformations characterized by a negative Jacobian determinant are referred to as improper transformations. The symmetry of a physical object corresponding to such an improper transformation becomes an improper symmetry. Improper symmetries have been successfully used for the purpose of crystal symmetry. The extension of these purely spatial symmetries to the domain of spacetime has led to a prejudicial use of light-cone properties, thus affecting adversely an unbiased symmetry classification. We pinpoint these prejudicial procedures and trace (...) their historical origin, while presenting an alternative that restores an unbiased treatment of improper spacetime symmetries. The applications discussed relate to recent developments in the symmetry classification of magnetic crystals and to the extension of Neumann's principle to the time domain. (shrink)

In the Second Meditation, Descartes famously asks at one point, ‘But what then am I?’ – to which his immediate answer is ‘A thing that thinks.’ It is this question, or rather the plural version of it, that Eric Olson examines in this excellent book. He thinks that it is – today, at least – a rather neglected question. He points out that it is wrong to confuse the question with the much more frequently examined question of what personal identity (...) consists in. In fact, he thinks that possible answers to the two questions, even if not entirely independent of one other, constrain each other only to a rather limited extent. It is important to appreciate that Olson is not inquiring into what persons in general are, but only into what we human persons are. Olson explores all the major, and some of the less well-known, answers that have been offered to this question. He begins with the answer that he himself has defended in an earlier book, The Human Animal – the answer that we are human animals, that is, biological organisms of a certain kind. Indeed, Olson is, along with Peter van Inwagen, one of the best known ‘animalists’ – although he admits to being a little more tentative in his endorsement of this position now, for reasons that we shall come to later. The other views that he considers are these: that we are entities that are ‘constituted’ by, but not identical with, human animals (the view of Lynne Rudder …. (shrink)