One of the more perplexing problems in American historiography is the search for group identity. Writing about a group, the historian is unable frequently to describe precisely what it is. The American patriciate is no exception to the general problem of defining group identity.The historian approaches group definition, or an approximation of it, through interaction between historical evidence bearing upon group membership and analytic constructs imposed upon the data. Some of these are borrowed from the social sciences and seem to (...) su$er as a consequence of the seemingly unnatural transplant. Others rise more naturally from the data. One strives for the correct synthesis of data and theory that, somehow, is never as satisfactory as the historian and his critics would like it to be. (shrink)

The prospect of a science of history that would chart the past and enable the future to be projected has invariably intrigued the historian. Technically, this would leave history unencumbered by its mass and the historian concerned only with lines of development delineated by historical science. With the road map of the future before him, the status of the historian would grow as indispensable counselor of politicians and statesmen, bringing the science of human development to bear upon their deliberations. Henry (...) Adams imagined a situation in which state and church, capital and labor, and all other important social groupings and institutions would ask anxiously of the historian: Am I justified in history and will I live on? (shrink)

The arguments of the dialetheists for the rejection of the traditional law of noncontradiction are not yet conclusive. The reason is that the arguments that they have developed against this law uniformly fail to consider the logic of encoding as an analytic method that can resolve apparent contradictions. In this paper, we use Priest [1995] and [1987] as sample texts to illustrate this claim. In [1995], Priest examines certain crucial problems in the history of philosophy from the point of view (...) of someone without a prejudice in favor of classical logic. For each of these problems, the logic of encoding offers an alternative explanation of the phenomena---this alternative is not considered when Priest describes what options there are in classical logic for analyzing the problem at hand. -/- The argument at heart of the case that Priest develops against the law of noncontradiction (i.e., the argument based on the paradoxes of self-reference) is then reanalyzed in light of encoding logic. After showing why the argument is inconclusive, the paper concludes both with a more general discussion of logic and predication and with the suggestion that there is no need to tamper with the logic of the traditional mode of predication if there is alternative mode of predication which is well-suited to the analysis of cases involving contradictory objects. (shrink)

The author resolves a conflict between Frege's view that the cognitive significance of coreferential names may be distinct and Kaplan's view that since coreferential names have the same "character", they have the same cognitive significance. A distinction is drawn between an expression's "character" and its "cognitive character". The former yields the denotation of an expression relative to a context (and individual); the latter yields the abstract sense of an expression relative to a context (and individual). Though coreferential names have the (...) same character, they may have distinct cognitive characters. Propositions involving these abstract senses play an important role in explaining de dicto belief contexts. (shrink)

Eski çağlardan beri siyasal şiddetin temel nedeninin gelir eşitsizliği olduğu ileri sürülmüştür. Bazı çalışmalar gelir eşitsizliği ve siyasal şiddet arasında hiçbir ilişkinin olmadığını belirtirken, bazıları ekonomik gelişme seviyesinin siyasal şiddetin daha güçlü bir belirleyicisi olduğunu savunmuşlardır. Göreceli yoksunluk tartışmaları ise yoksunluğun, uyarılmış hoşnutsuzluğun ve kolektif siyasal şiddetin çeşitli türleri arasında direk bir ilişki olduğunu savunurken kaynak seferberliği akımı; hoşnutsuzluk ve siyasal şiddet arasındaki direk bir ilişki varsayımını reddetmiştir. Rejim baskıcılığı ve siyasal şiddet arasındaki ilişkiyi saptamaya çalışan araştırmalarda ise; siyasal şiddetin (...) orta baskıcı bir rejim yapısı altında ortaya çıktığı görüşü savunulmuştur. Kısacası bu çalışma gelir eşitsizliği ve rejim baskıcılığındaki çeşitliliğin siyasal şiddet seviyesi üzerindeki etkisini inceleyerek kaynak seferberliğine karşı göreceli yoksunluk tartışmasıyla alakalı ulusa karşı bir veri analizi bildirmektedir. (shrink)

The modal object calculus is the system of logic which houses the (proper) axiomatic theory of abstract objects. The calculus has some rather interesting features in and of itself, independent of the proper theory. The most sophisticated, type-theoretic incarnation of the calculus can be used to analyze the intensional contexts of natural language and so constitutes an intensional logic. However, the simpler second-order version of the calculus couches a theory of fine-grained properties, relations and propositions and serves as a framework (...) for defining situations, possible worlds, stories, and fictional characters, among other things. In the present paper, we focus on the second-order calculus. The second-order modal object calculus is so-called to distinguish it from the second-order modal predicate calculus. Though the differences are slight, the extra expressive power of the object calculus significantly enhances its ability to resolve logical and philosophical concepts and problems. (shrink)

In this paper, the author compares passages from two philosophically important texts and concludes that they have fundamental ideas in common. What makes this comparison and conclusion interesting is that the texts come from two different traditions in philosophy, the analytic and the phenomenological. In 1912, Ernst Mally published *Gegenstandstheoretische Grundlagen der Logik und Logistik*, an analytic work containing a combination of formal logic and metaphysics. In 1913, Edmund Husserl published *Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie*, a seminal (...) work in phenomenology in which noemata are defined and given a crucial role in directing our mental states. In the passages from these two texts reproduced below, the author shows that the abstract `determinates' postulated by Mally in 1912 are assigned much the same role that Husserl assigned to noemata in 1913. Though Mally's determinates are not as highly structured as Husserl's noemata, they have a feature that explains how they manage to play the role assigned to them. The corresponding feature is missing, or at least, not emphasized in Husserl's account of noemata. Therefore, insights from both philosophers, and thus from both the analytic and phenomenological traditions, are needed to give a more complete account of directed mental states. (shrink)

Some recently-proposed counterexamples to the traditional definition of essential property do not require a separate logic of essence. Instead, the examples can be analysed in terms of the logic and theory of abstract objects. This theory distinguishes between abstract and ordinary objects, and provides a general analysis of the essential properties of both kinds of object. The claim ‘x has F necessarily’ becomes ambiguous in the case of abstract objects, and in the case of ordinary objects there are various ways (...) to make the definition of ‘F is essential to x’ more fine-grained. Consequently, the traditional definition of essential property for abstract objects in terms of modal notions is not correct, and for ordinary objects the relationship between essential properties and modality, once properly understood, addresses the counterexample. (shrink)

The foregoing set of theorems forms an effective foundation for the theory of situations and worlds. All twenty-five theorems seem to be basic, reasonable principles that structure the domains of properties, relations, states of affairs, situations, and worlds in true and philosophically interesting ways. They resolve 15 of the 19 choice points defined in Barwise (1989) (see Notes 22, 27, 31, 32, 35, 36, 39, 43, and 45). Moreover, important axioms and principles stipulated by situation theorists are derived (see Notes (...) 33, 37, and 38). This is convincing evidence that the foregoing constitutes a theory of situations. Note that worlds are just a special kind of situation, and that the basic theorems of world theory, which were derived in previous work, can still be derived in this situation-theoretic setting. So there seems to be no fundamental incompatibility between situations and worlds — they may peacably coexist in the foundations of metaphysics. The theory may therefore reconcile two research programs that appeared to be heading off in different directions. And we must remind the reader that the general metaphysical principles underlying our theory were not designed with the application to situation theory in mind. This suggests that the general theory and the underlying distinction have explanatory power, for they seem to relate and systematize apparently unrelated phenomena. (shrink)

The arguments of the dialetheists for the rejection of the traditional law of noncontradiction are not yet conclusive. The reason is that the arguments that they have developed against this law uniformly fail to consider the logic of encoding as an analytic method that can resolve apparent contradictions. In this paper, we use Priest [1995] and [1987] as sample texts to illustrate this claim. In [1995], Priest examines certain crucial problems in the history of philosophy from the point of view (...) of someone without a prejudice in favor of classical logic. For each of these problems, the logic of encoding offers an alternative explanation of the phenomena---this alternative is not considered when Priest describes what options there are in classical logic for analyzing the problem at hand. (shrink)

This book tackles the issues that arise in connection with intensional logic -- a formal system for representing and explaining the apparent failures of certain important principles of inference such as the substitution of identicals and existential generalization -- and intentional states --mental states such as beliefs, hopes, and desires that are directed towards the world. The theory offers a unified explanation of the various kinds of inferential failures associated with intensional logic but also unifies the study of intensional contexts (...) and intentional states by grounding the explanation of both phenomena in a single theory. When an axiomatized realm of abstract entities is added to the metaphysical structure of the world, we can use them to identify and individuate the contents of directed mental states. The special abstract entities can be viewed as the objectified contents of mental files, and they play a crucial role in the analysis of truth conditions of the sentences involved in inferential failures. (shrink)

The appeal to possible worlds in the semantics of modal logic and the philosophical defense of possible worlds as an essential element of ontology have led philosophers and logicians to introduce other kinds of `worlds' in order to study various philosophical and logical phenomena. The literature contains discussions of `non-normal worlds', `non-classical worlds', `non-standard worlds', and `impossible worlds'. These atypical worlds have been used in the following ways: (1) to interpret unusual modal logics, (2) to distinguish logically equivalent propositions, (3) (...) to solve the problems associated with propositional attitude contexts, intentional contexts, and counterfactuals with impossible antecedents, and (4) to interpret systems of relevant and paraconsistent logic. However, those who have attempted to develop a genuine metaphysical theory of such atypical worlds tend to move too quickly from philosophical characterizations to formal semantics. (shrink)

In this paper, the author derives the Dedekind-Peano axioms for number theory from a consistent and general metaphysical theory of abstract objects. The derivation makes no appeal to primitive mathematical notions, implicit definitions, or a principle of infinity. The theorems proved constitute an important subset of the numbered propositions found in Frege's *Grundgesetze*. The proofs of the theorems reconstruct Frege's derivations, with the exception of the claim that every number has a successor, which is derived from a modal axiom that (...) (philosophical) logicians implicitly accept. In the final section of the paper, there is a brief philosophical discussion of how the present theory relates to the work of other philosophers attempting to reconstruct Frege's conception of numbers and logical objects. (shrink)

In this book, Zalta attempts to lay the axiomatic foundations of metaphysics by developing and applying a (formal) theory of abstract objects. The cornerstones include a principle which presents precise conditions under which there are abstract objects and a principle which says when apparently distinct such objects are in fact identical. The principles are constructed out of a basic set of primitive notions, which are identified at the end of the Introduction, just before the theorizing begins. The main reason for (...) producing a theory which defines a logical space of abstract objects is that it may have a great deal of explanatory power. It is hoped that the data explained by means of the theory will be of interest to pure and applied metaphysicians, logicians and linguists, and pure and applied epistemologists. (shrink)

This book documents the growth of unproductive activity in the United States economy since World War II and its relation to the economic surplus, capital accumulation, and economic growth. Unproductive activities broadly consist of those involved in the circulation process, including wholesaling and retailing, banking and financial services, advertising, legal services, business services and many government activities. The results indicate that the level of unproductive activity in the postwar economy has been a significant factor in the slowdown in the rate (...) of capital accumulation, productivity growth and the overall growth rate. Here, the villain is shown to be the gradual but persistent shift of resources to unproductive activities. The consequence has been a reduction in new capital formation and productivity growth and an erosion in the rate of growth in per capita living standards. Moreover, the rise in unproductive activity is itself seen to be rooted in the logic of advanced capitalism. The forces of competition, which in the early stages of capitalism lead to rapid technical change and productivity growth, promote non-productive and even counterproductive activities in its more advanced stages. (shrink)

In this article, we canvass a few of the interesting topics that philosophers can pursue as part of the simultaneous study of logic and metaphysics. To keep the discussion to a manageable length, we limit our survey to deductive, as opposed to inductive, logic. Though most of this article will focus on the ways in which logic can be deployed in the study of metaphysics, we begin with a few remarks about how metaphysics might be needed to understand what logic (...) is. When we ask the question, “What is logic and what is its subject matter?”, there is no obvious answer. There have been so many di erent kinds of studies that have gone by the name ‘logic’ that it is di cult to give an answer that applies to them all. But there are some basic commonalities. Most philosophers would agree that logic presupposes (1) the existence of a language for expressing thoughts or meanings, (2) certain analytic connections between the thoughts that ground and legitimize the inferential relations among them, and (3) that the analytic connections and inferential relations can be studied systematically by investigating (often formally) the logical words and sentences used to express the thoughts so connected and related. For example, analytic connections give rise to various patterns of inferences expressed by certain logical words and phrases.. (shrink)

of my axiomatic theory of abstract objects.¹ The theory asserts the ex- istence not only of ordinary properties, relations, and propositions, but also of abstract individuals and abstract properties and relations. The.

Computational philosophy is the use of mechanized computational techniques to unearth philosophical insights that are either difficult or impossible to find using traditional philosophical methods. Computational metaphysics is computational philosophy with a focus on metaphysics. In this paper, we (a) develop results in modal metaphysics whose discovery was computer assisted, and (b) conclude that these results work not only to the obvious benefit of philosophy but also, less obviously, to the benefit of computer science, since the new computational techniques that (...) led to these results may be more broadly applicable within computer science. The paper includes a description of our background methodology and how it evolved, and a discussion of our new results. (shrink)

This is a letter written in reply to some criticisms of object theory's analysis of mathematics. The criticisms were offered by Philip Ebert and Marcus Rossberg, in connection with my talk at the 31st International Wittgenstein Symposium, in Kirchberg, 2008. The exchange was published in the volume of proceedings.

We revisit the question of price elasticity of employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) take-up by directly examining changes in the take-up of ESI at a large firm in response to exogenous changes in employee premium contributions. We find that, on average, a 10% increase in the employee's out-of-pocket premium increases the probability of dropping coverage by approximately 1%. More importantly, we find heterogeneous impacts: married workers are much more price-sensitive than single employees, and lower-paid workers are disproportionately more likely to drop coverage (...) than higher-paid workers. Elasticity estimates for employees below the 25th percentile of salary distribution in our sample are nearly twice the average. (shrink)

In this paper, the author develops a theory of concepts and shows that it captures many of the ideas about concepts that Leibniz expressed in his work. Concepts are first analyzed in terms of a precise background theory of abstract objects, and once concept summation and concept containment are defined, the axioms and theorems of Leibniz's calculus of concepts (in his logical papers) are derived. This analysis of concepts is then seamlessly connected with Leibniz's modal metaphysics of complete individual concepts. (...) The fundamental theorem of Leibniz's modal metaphysics of concepts is proved, namely, whenever an object x has F contingently, then (i) the individual concept of x contains the concept F and (ii) there is a (counterpart) complete individual concept y which doesn't contain the concept F and which `appears' at some other possible world. Finally, the author shows how the concept containment theory of truth can be made precise and made consistent with a modern conception of truth. (shrink)

In the debate about the nature and identity of possible worlds, philosophers have neglected the parallel questions about the nature and identity of moments of time. These are not questions about the structure of time in general, but rather about the internal structure of each individual time. Times and worlds share the following structural similarities: both are maximal with respect to propositions (at every world and time, either p or p is true, for every p); both are consistent; both are (...) closed (every modal consequence of a proposition true at a world is also true at that world, and every tense-theoretic consequence of a proposition true at a time is also true at that time); just as there is a unique actual world, there is a unique present moment; and just as a proposition is necessarily true iff true at all worlds, a proposition is eternally true iff true at all times. In this paper, I show that a simple extension of my theory of worlds yields a theory of times in which the above structural similarities between the two are consequences. (shrink)

In this paper, we describe "metaphysical reductions", in which the well-defined terms and predicates of arbitrary mathematical theories are uniquely interpreted within an axiomatic, metaphysical theory of abstract objects. Once certain (constitutive) facts about a mathematical theory T have been added to the metaphysical theory of objects, theorems of the metaphysical theory yield both an analysis of the reference of the terms and predicates of T and an analysis of the truth of the sentences of T. The well-defined terms and (...) predicates of T are analyzed as denoting abstract objects and abstract relations, respectively, in the background metaphysics, and the sentences of T have a reading on which they are true. After the technical details are sketched, the paper concludes with some observations about the approach. One important observation concerns the fact that the proper axioms of the background theory abstract objects can be reformulated in a way that makes them sound more like logical axioms. Some philosophers have argued that we should accept (something like) them as being logical. (shrink)

This paper introduces a new typology and associated measure of social and environmental mission integration by conceptually framing a feature of hybrid organizations—the degree of integration of their revenue model and social–environmental mission. The SEMI measure is illustrated using a hand-collected sample of 256 North American Certified B Corporations. We explore the heterogeneity of SEMI scores by identifying external-facing correlates and demonstrate non-congruence with Certified B Corporation’s audit results. Overall, our findings advance existing knowledge of these hybrid organizations and how (...) they balance their social–environmental missions with their economic objectives. (shrink)

This paper has two main aims: first, to set forth an analysis of Timaeus 48E-52D and then to explore the significance of those pages for our understanding of Plato’s metaphysics. Students of the “Receptacle” in Plato’s Timaeus have given close attention to the many metaphors he offers in his explanation of its nature. Less attention has been given to the overall structure of the passage in which he presents it. In this paper, I attempt to show that Plato’s exposition there (...) exhibits a coherent and very careful design. But once that design is grasped, it can be seen that his extended account of the Receptacle must properly be understood to treat a rather different subject: the nature of an image, rather than the nature of the Receptacle, is the focal concern uniting the whole of 48E-52D. (shrink)

In this note, I plan to describe some of the procedures I followed in creating the World Wide Web site for the Metaphysics Research Lab at CSLI. Its URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is.

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, Volume 31, Issue 2, Page 589-600, April 2022.

This paper introduces a new method of interpreting complex relation terms in a second-order quantified modal language. We develop a completely general second-order modal language with two kinds of complex terms: one kind for denoting individuals and one kind for denoting n-place relations. Several issues arise in connection with previous, algebraic methods for interpreting the relation terms. The new method of interpreting these terms described here addresses those issues while establishing an interesting connection between λ and ε calculi. The resulting (...) semantics provides a precise understanding of the theory of relations. (shrink)

In this paper, I respond to D. Jacquette's paper, "Mally's Heresy and the Logic of Meinong's Object Theory" (History and Philosophy of Logic, 10 (1989): 1-14), in which it is claimed that Ernst Mally's distinction between two modes of predication, as it is employed in the theory of abstract objects, is reducible to, and analyzable in terms of, a single mode of predication plus the distinction between nuclear and extranuclear properties. The argument against Jacquette's claims consists of counterexamples to his (...) reductions and analyses. Reasons are offered for thinking that no such reduction/analysis of the kind Jacquette proposes could be successful. (shrink)

This paper serves as a kind of field guide to certain passages in the literature which bear upon the foundational theory of abstract objects. The foundational theory assimilates ideas from key philosophers in both the analytical and phenomenological traditions. I explain how my foundational theory of objects serves as a common ground where analytic and phenomenological concerns meet. I try to establish how the theory offers a logic that systematizes a well-known phenomenological kind of entity, and I try to show (...) the various ways the theory systematizes the ideas of many analytic philosophers. The ideas of Plato, Leibniz, Frege, Russell, Goedel and even Kripke become connected through those of Brentano, Meinong, Husserl, and Mally. -/- The field guide will not only document the passages in which the distinction between two kinds of predication originates, but also document the other surprising, and often unrelated, contexts where the distinction reappears in the work of others. It will also document ways in which the theory can be used to represent precisely the ideas of the philosophers mentioned above. The resulting guide will bring together the works of many different authors, including some clearly within the analytic tradition, some clearly within the phenomenological tradition, and some who straddle the divide. (shrink)

The so-called ergodic hierarchy (EH) is a central part of ergodic theory. It is a hierarchy of properties that dynamical systems can possess. Its five levels are egrodicity, weak mixing, strong mixing, Kolomogorov, and Bernoulli. Although EH is a mathematical theory, its concepts have been widely used in the foundations of statistical physics, accounts of randomness, and discussions about the nature of chaos. We introduce EH and discuss its applications in these fields.

Mathematical pluralism can take one of three forms: (1) every consistent mathematical theory consists of truths about its own domain of individuals and relations; (2) every mathematical theory, consistent or inconsistent, consists of truths about its own (possibly uninteresting) domain of individuals and relations; and (3) the principal philosophies of mathematics are each based upon an insight or truth about the nature of mathematics that can be validated. (1) includes the multiverse approach to set theory. (2) helps us to understand (...) the significance of the distinguished non‐logical individual and relation terms of even inconsistent theories. (3) is a metaphilosophical form of mathematical pluralism and hasn't been discussed in the literature. In what follows, I show how the analysis of theoretical mathematics in object theory exhibits all three forms of mathematical pluralism. (shrink)

The author examines the differences between the general intensional logic defined in his recent book and Montague's intensional logic. Whereas Montague assigned extensions and intensions to expressions (and employed set theory to construct these values as certain sets), the author assigns denotations to terms and relies upon an axiomatic theory of intensional entities that covers properties, relations, propositions, worlds, and other abstract objects. It is then shown that the puzzles for Montague's analyses of modality and descriptions, propositional attitudes, and directedness (...) towards nonexistents can be solved using the author's logic. (shrink)