I present two puzzles about the metaphysics of stores, restaurants, and other such establishments. I defend a solution to the puzzles, according to which establishments are not material objects and are not constituted by the buildings that they occupy.

This is a new volume of original essays on the metaphysics of quantum mechanics. The essays address questions such as: What fundamental metaphysics is best motivated by quantum mechanics? What is the ontological status of the wave function? Does quantum mechanics support the existence of any other fundamental entities, e.g. particles? What is the nature of the fundamental space of quantum mechanics? What is the relationship between the fundamental ontology of quantum mechanics and ordinary, macroscopic objects like tables, (...) chairs, and persons? This collection includes a comprehensive introduction with a history of quantum mechanics and the debate over its metaphysical interpretation focusing especially on the main realist alternatives. (shrink)

This book seeks to read the political thought of classic thinkers of the liberal tradition in the context of their metaphysical and theological writings. Sokolowski demonstrates that the political measures offered by political theorists to remedy the state of unrest and instability are intrinsically connected to their metaphysical conception of order, the self, and the interaction between the two.

Evolutionary debunking arguments abound, but it is widely assumed that they do not arise for our perceptual beliefs about midsized objects, insofar as the adaptive value of our object beliefs cannot be explained without reference to the objects themselves. I argue that this is a mistake. Just as with moral beliefs, the adaptive value of our object beliefs can be explained without assuming that the beliefs are accurate. I then explore the prospects for other sorts of vindications of our object (...) beliefs—which involve “bootstrapping” from our experiences as of midsized objects—and I defend bootstrapping maneuvers against a variety of objections. Finally, I argue for an explanatory constraint on legitimate bootstrapping and show how some attempts to respond to debunking arguments run afoul of the constraint. (shrink)

Philosophers have appealed to a wide variety of different factors in providing a metaphysics of race: appearance, ancestry, systems of oppression, shared ways of life, and so-called “racial essences”. I distinguish four importantly different questions about racial groups that one may be answering in appealing these factors. I then show that marking these distinctions proves quite fruitful, revealing ways of strengthening existing arguments for the non-existence of racial groups, new avenues for addressing challenges to biological and constructionist accounts of (...) race, and a range of hybrid positions that have been largely overlooked in the literature. (shrink)

KANT IS, TO BORROW ONE OF HIS OWN METAPHORS, the keystone of the modern defense of religion. This defense turns on the contention that religion is not to be understood in terms of its own metaphysical claims--the most notable being that God exists--for this claim, as well as the obvious counterclaim, cannot be demonstrated. The existence of God is an antinomy--a claim that theoretical reason can neither prove nor disprove. Religion, however, can be, indeed must be defended, because of the (...) claims that a completely dispassionate, even irreligious, reason must make consequent to an analysis of morality. If we understand the nature of duty, conscience, and the moral law, and the end or good to which the moral law obligates us, we will conclude, Kant argues, that we must accept the existence of God as a postulate of practical reason. Kant's defense of religion rests on a strategy that aims to prove the limits of theoretical reason and the necessity of assuming the primacy of practical reason. (shrink)

One of the central questions of material-object metaphysics is which highly visible objects there are right before our eyes. Daniel Z. Korman defends a conservative view, according to which our ordinary, natural judgments about which objects there are are more or less correct. He begins with an overview of the arguments that have led people away from the conservative view, into revisionary views according to which there are far more objects than we ordinarily take there to be or far (...) fewer. Korman criticizes a variety of compatibilist strategies, according to which these revisionary views are actually compatible with our ordinary beliefs. He goes on to respond to debunking arguments; objections that the conservative's verdicts about which objects that are and aren't are objectionably arbitrary; the argument from vagueness; the overdetermination argument; the argument from material constitution; and the problem of the many. (shrink)

I provide a theory of the metaphysical foundations of identity: an account what grounds facts of the form a=b. In particular, I defend the claim that indiscernibility grounds identity. This is typically rejected because it is viciously circular; plausible assumptions about the logic of ground entail that the fact that a=b partially grounds itself. The theory I defend is immune to this circularity.

The problem of interpreting music’s function or role is scrutinized by grounding music’s significance through a selected reading of Platonic philosophy and a reinterpretation of the concept of “pharmakon” familiar to ancient Greeks, and in particular, the Athenians. Views on both mousike and the artistic practice of music in that era are taken into account. The “pharmakon” is analyzed through a concept of love as a harmonizing force and a variety of contexts are explicated, showing that it concerns any object (...) that gives rise to beneficial and detrimental effects. It also changes mental states or the manner of thinking in such a way that the value of the pharmakon is undecidable a priori and dependent upon an axiology of anticipation. Plato’s metaphysics and philosophy of music can be read to show that music can be both a poison and a remedy in regard to the ways it is used, which is analogous to drugs, medicine, or technological entities such as writing. In this context attention is given to the problem of mania, and how music can be both a force that gives rise to such a condition as well as a technique of alleviating it, since it is a tool for manipulating the intrapsychic dialogue of the embodied soul. -/- Znaczenie muzyki w nawiązaniu do Platona i pojęcia „farmakon" Problematyka interpretacji funkcji lub roli muzyki jest badana poprzez ugruntowanie znaczenia muzyki w wybranych wątkach filozofii Platona i reinterpretacji pojęcia „farmakon” bliskiego starożytnym Grekom, a zwłaszcza Ateńczykom. Uwzględnia się poglądy zarówno odnośnie mousike jak i ówczesnej praktyki artystycznej. „Farmakon” analizowany jest poprzez koncepcję miłości jako harmonizującej siły oraz przez różne konteksty, które są wyeksplikowane, aby wskazać na to, że dotyczy jakiegokolwiek przedmiotu, który powoduje korzystne jak i szkodliwe efekty. Zmienia także stany umysłowe lub sposób myślenia tak, że wartość farmakonu jest nierozstrzygalna a priori i powiązana z aksjologią antycypacji. Metafizyka i filozofia muzyki Platona może być czytana w sposób ukazujący, że muzyka może być zarówno trucizną jak i środkiem zaradczym, w zależności od formy jej użytkowania, co jest analogiczne z narkotykami, medycyną i technicznymi bytami takimi jak pismo. W tym kontekście zwraca się uwagę na problem szału i tego, że muzyka może być zarówno siłą, która wywołuje ów stan, jak i środkiem załagodzenia go, ponieważ jest ona narzędziem manipulacji intrapsychicznego dialogu ucieleśnionej duszy. (shrink)

In this two-part article, I propose a new materialist understanding of behavior. The term “mattering” in the title refers to sense-making behavior that matters, that is, to significant habits and materialized behaviors. By significant habits I mean protocols, practices and routines that generate ways of reading material signs and fixed accounts of movement. I advance a notion of behaving that stresses its materiality and sensory shaping, and I provide select examples from music. I note that current definitions of behavior do (...) not capture its material dimension. This is because behavioral science has mostly viewed matter as passive, and not as an active agency. Such an approach has metaphysically framed behavior as a phenomenon of presence that is external from its environment. The approach of behavioral science to matter where there are fixed borders between the internal and external is lacking, since it does not account for agential cuts as conceptualized by Karen Barad. Instead, I consider behavior performatively; as an ongoing iterative practice and as integral to the growth of immanently self-caused matter that spawns metastable relational formations that produce different possibilities for successive formations. In this regard, behavior matters, and matter behaves. One key aspect of my article advances Bernard Stiegler as a critical new materialist thinker. This advancement concerns the technical doings of artworks, which include the material activity that is generative of sensitivity: feelings and beliefs associated with a sense or meaning. I outline an example of the materiality of habits as constitutive of music. After that, I coin the transformative doings of matter on the artist as a “caripulation,” which is a desired movement or motion that transforms the mover and the moved. Finally, I raise “pharmacological” considerations in terms of the Stieglerian aspects of organic and inorganic organized matter. (shrink)

From the author of Quantum Mechanics and Experience, a hugely influential book that challenged key assertions by Niels Bohr and other founders of quantum mechanics, A Guess at the Riddle provides a major metaphysical overhaul of one of physics' most intractable problems-the quest to bridge quantum and classical physics in order to understand the nature of reality.

The concept of virtue was of great interest and importance for H. Cohen. In the interpretation of this concept in his latest work “Religion of reason from the sources of Judaism” the most important concepts of this work were brought in the focus: the specificity of definition of what is the religion of reason; understanding of the uniqueness of God; correlation; messianism. For Cohen, a single system of virtues presupposes a single and unique ethics and correlates with the idea of (...) the unity of humanity. The last concept, in his opinion, maturated in the fold of monotheism. Humanity is one, because all people are creations of the unique God. “Religion of reason” treats of the common universal virtues. In the religion of reason, the idea of God and morality are inextricably linked. Cohen rejects metaphysical speculation about the nature of God, about the attributes of God inherent in himself. The religion of the mind speaks of God only in correlation with man. God is a moral ideal and reveals himself to man by giving him moral commandments. Morality connects man and God, and this connection is revealed in detail by Cohen in the theme of virtues. Understanding God as Truth is important for the disclosure of this topic. The corresponding virtue for a person is faithfulness to truth, or truthfulness. In addition to truthfulness in the usual sense, for Cohen, faithfulness to truth requires correct worship of God. The correlation culminates in the idea of messianism, which is interpreted by Cohen as an endless movement of a whole humanity to the social justice. (shrink)

P. Ia. Chaadaev continues to attract the attention of researchers of Russian thought. Some recent publications in our press justify the assertion that scholars are interested not only in this or that side of the views of "the philosopher of Basmannaia Street" but also in the very character of his mentality and its place in the history of Russian philosophical thought. Thus, Viacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov writes in his article "Chaadaev-Our Contemporary" [Chaadaev-nash sovremennik] : "There are several reasons why Chaadaev is (...) not at home in Russia and in the history of Russian thought. One of them is his extreme rationalism and logical orientation. He is the follower of Western European rationalism, mainly, I think, of the French rationalist tradition. For him the chief achievement of civilization is the syllogism, the deduction of logical conclusions from some kind of premises and he takes history to be a unified whole." The same problem of Chaadaevan mentality is raised by P.V. Kuznetsov in his article "The Metaphysical Narcissus: P. Ia. Chaadaev and the Fate of Philosophy in Russia" [Metafizicheskii nartsiss. P. Ia. Chaadaev i sud'ba filosofii v Rossii] , which contrasts Chaadaev's thought with the Eastern "apophatic consciousness.". (shrink)

Conceptions of omissions standardly come in two flavours: omissions are construed either as mere absences of actions or are closely related to paradigmatic ‘positive’ actions. This paper shows how the semantics of the verb ‘to omit’ constitutes strong evidence against the view of omissions as involving actions. Specifically, by drawing from an influential fourfold typology of verbal predicates popularised by Zeno Vendler, I argue that declarative statements involving reference to omissions are semantically stative, which is a finding that makes serious (...) trouble for the conception of omissions as being closely related to paradigmatic actions. But references to omissions, in certain linguistic contexts, undergo a shift of meaning to describe processes or activities engaged in by the agent. Still, despite the semantic flexibility of the verb ‘to omit’, its processive reading does not straightforwardly support the second conception of omissions. A subsidiary aim of this paper is to offer a sketch of the metaphysics of processive action in order to show what those who claim that omissions are closely related to actions might be committed to. (shrink)

This study is the first work ever to interpret the Meditations as theodicy. I show that Descartes' attempt to define the role of God for man's cognitive fallibility in so far as God is the creator of man's nature, is a reiteration of an old Epicurean argument pointing out the incongruity between the existence of God and evil. The question of the nature and origin of error which Descartes addresses in the First Meditation is reformulated in the Fourth Meditation into (...) broader considerations about the nature and scope of human freedom. ;The point of gravity of my thesis is Descartes' conceptions of human freedom and divine liberty. Since the conception of human freedom is the reversal of the doctrine of divine liberty, I analyze the two conceptions as two sides of the same problem--the problem of man's relation to God, or the problem of the relation of finitude to Infinity. I show that Descartes' quest for Certitude--which runs parallel to his attempt to overcome the problem of an evil deity--can be reformulated into the problem of creation. I present the problem of error as the problem of evil, and the problem of human will I present as the problem of human freedom, and the search for Certitude I interpret as the vindication of God's goodness and omnipotence, that is, theodicy. ;There are several points which are essential for Cartesian metaphysics, and which, as I demonstrate, Descartes borrowed from St. Augustine: the doctrine of the eternal truths , the conception of human freedom, the theory of error and the explanation of the will's propensity towards error , and the account of human nature. It is my contention that as much as Descartes insisted on the timelessness of his philosophy, what he had to say on the relationship between God and man is a reflection of the 17th c. theological debates which were fought by the Augustinians and the Molinists and were expressed by Descartes in the language and categories created by St. Augustine. (shrink)

I rehearse some of the reasons for treating the quantum mechanical wave function as a concrete physical object—and some of the consequences of treating it that way—with particular attention to questions of the metaphysical status of space and the origins of geometrical appearances.

One of the few serious attempts undertaken during the last decade to develop a logic of questions. Belnap's theory comprises three parts so far: a) an informal syntactical treatment of the question-answer relationship, aimed at determining the policies involved in setting up a formalization of questions and answers; b) such a formalization itself ; and c) a semantical analysis leading to explicit definitions of adjectives like "rhetorical," "interesting," "foolish" as applied to questions; "direct," "complete," "corrective," and again "foolish" as applied (...) to answers. This study is a remarkable contribution to a new and rather intricate field of logical inquiry.—A. Z. B. (shrink)

An exceptionally well-edited anthology of basic philosophic texts arranged in chronological order. Each section is preceded by a short introduction. The volumes have many unusual features, including expository sections on Zeno by G. Vlastos, and on Malebranche by W. Doney. The range of this anthology can be judged by the inclusion of the following in their entirety: Plato's Apology, Meno, Symposium, and Phaedrus; Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding; Descartes' Meditations; and Leibniz' Monadology.--D. Z. L.

Parry’s volume is not an elementary book, but it is apparently intended as an introduction to Locke’s political thought for students. While he definitely has a point of view of his own, he attempts to draw together much of the recent critical thought on Locke. Parry’s volume differs from much of the recent work on Locke in being, one might say, "sweet-tempered." He is sweet-tempered in the first place toward Locke. Unlike so much of the recent scholarly-historical literature, he clearly (...) respects Locke. In a field marked by acrimony among scholars, Parry is also remarkably sweet tempered toward other Locke scholars; he builds on the work of others where possible, rather than emphasizing his own novelty and uniqueness. He thus produces a far more balanced treatment than most. For example, he accepts willingly the Laslett-sponsored arguments that the Second Treatise is aimed against Filmer as was the First, but he refuses to toss out entirely the older view that it is aimed in some measure against Hobbes. Although Parry is probably least tolerant towards the Strauss approach to Locke, he is even able to find large areas where he endorses moderate versions of that position, for example, on the important range of similarities between Hobbes and Locke. Parry’s "harmonizing approach" shows up also in the unusually wide range of Lockean sources from which he draws. He uses not only the standard fare of the Second Treatise and the Essays on the Law of Nature, but also the works on education, toleration, and economics to good effect. Disappointingly scanty, however, is the place of the First Treatise and even the Essay. His harmonizing approach shows up most importantly, however, in his attempt to combine the two chief sorts of attention Locke has received in recent years. On the one hand, there is the Locke scholarship properly so-called. While there are several varieties and orientations within this literature, no doubt the leading one has taken a very historical approach—attempting to understand Locke in his historical context and deploying religious or theological categories as the chief means for doing so. This approach shuns "present-mindedness" above all other intellectual vices. While Parry announces his general adherence to this approach he attempts to take account of the other main sort of interest in Locke today—as a source and inspiration for a very live contemporary tradition of political thinking, represented by Nozick and Rawls. Parry uses these contemporary "Lockeans" to help interpret the Second Treatise, leaning for example on Rawls’s formulation of the problem social contact theory attempts to answer, and Nozick’s doctrine of "entitlements." Parry’s refusal to be terrified by the strictures against "present-mindedness" produce some of the best and most valuable features of the book, as when he seriously asks what Locke means today, or how other contemporary political views differ from Locke’s. On the other hand, his reading of Locke on political economy suffers a bit perhaps from over-domination by Nozick’s restatement. Parry attempts to give both devils their due by agreeing with the historical school that Locke’s thought must be read historically, as Christian or theological, in a form that could hardly be acceptable to any contemporary political thinkers, and agreeing with the contemporary Lockean tradition that "to a very considerable extent" Locke’s position "can and must be…assessed and understood apart from its theological substructure." Those theological foundations are, Parry admits, very problematical. In fact, with a post-Humean eye, "it can become difficult to persuade oneself even that Locke could have found his position consistent." Yet Parry affirms "there is no doubt that Locke found the argument satisfying." But he supplies no reason—other than the fact that Locke deployed such arguments on more than one occasion—for this conclusion. Surely gross inconsistencies in argument are grounds for doubt. Parry should have at the least entertained Leo Strauss’s hypothesis about Locke’s manner of expression in light of his own views that Locke’s expressed theological underpinnings are unacceptable philosophically, and that Locke’s position can rest on altogether independent nontheological grounds. Moreover, Parry’s concession that Locke cannot move successfully from those religious underpinnings to the all-important content of the law of nature supplies further grounds for considering the same hypothesis. Parry’s treatment shares with most of the historical approaches to Locke the defect of "slackness"—when we come to something inconsistent or difficult to understand, we write it off as the product of Locke’s faith, internally meaningful, believable to him. Only in Parry’s case this is more problematical yet, for he rightly insists that we see Locke’s position as nonarchaic, and thus makes the reader eager for probing analysis and justification rather than loose appeals to Locke’s times. In order to connect the theological underpinnings to the political arguments, Parry is driven to some most un-Lockean notions such as the duty of "an individual to stretch himself to the full." For a similar reason, we suspect, freedom, which plays an extremely large part in Parry’s exposition, nowhere receives an adequate rooting in Locke’s discussion in the Essay, nor does Locke’s hedonism play a sufficient part in Parry’s interpretation.—M.Z. (shrink)

This is a collection of twelve original essays on Soviet social sciences, with an emphasis on changes since Stalin's death. The lot of the Russian social scientist and the Russian philosopher has never been very easy--any discussion affecting authority was always difficult under conditions of religious and political oppression as well as. To this tradition the Soviet era has added an integrated view of the world which the scholar must use as his mental set. Philosophical reasoning has particularly suffered under (...) these conditions. E. Kamenka's essay on "Soviet Philosophy 1917-1967" gives a detailed examination of the politicization of philosophy by Lenin and under Stalin. The author claims that since 1956 there has been an improvement in professional integrity, especially in fields such as the philosophy of science, logic, and history of philosophy. Unfortunately the author's treatment of this period is brief and sketchy. The absence of a native tradition is one of the reasons for the weakness of philosophy in the Soviet Union, and there seems to be a better future for the disciplines which can draw upon ideas of native predecessors, such as experimental psychology and psychotherapy. The book also includes an essay on the socialization function of education; a readable account of the "revolution" in Soviet economics; and attempts at a study of politics where rationality cannot be carried too far. The authors of the essays on sociology and anthropology believe that, although these disciplines have been an administrative arm for fact gathering and planning, they are achieving a status of their own. All the authors of the essays see important improvements, if sometimes qualified, in the development of the social sciences in the Soviet Union.--O. Z. (shrink)

Particularists in material-object metaphysics hold that our intuitive judgments about which kinds of things there are and are not are largely correct. One common argument against particularism is the argument from arbitrariness, which turns on the claim that there is no ontologically significant difference between certain of the familiar kinds that we intuitively judge to exist (snowballs, islands, statues, solar systems) and certain of the strange kinds that we intuitively judge not to exist (snowdiscalls, incars, gollyswoggles, the fusion of (...) the my nose and the Eiffel Tower). Particularists frequently respond by conceding that there is no ontologically significant difference and embracing some sort of deflationary metaontology (relativism, constructivism, quantifier variance). I show -- by identifying ontologically significant differences -- that the argument can be resisted without retreating to any sort of deflationary metaontology. (shrink)

This book is yet another in the recent growth of studies of Kant’s "investigation and establishment of the supreme principle of morality." Its aim is stated in the subtitle and again in a number of variations throughout the book. The author examines and objects to the intrusion of Kant’s "official metaphysics" in what he believes is intended to be, but does not succeed in being, a guide to action. He deplores Kant’s unawareness that he was, in fact, a utilitarian. (...) He argues that Kant’s and all rationalistic ethics are teleological. Along the way he confuses Kant’s carefully distinguished supreme good and complete good and ignores—in good part by omitting considerations of the third section of the Groundwork—Kant’s identification of pure practical reason and the good will. Nevertheless, there are some virtues to this study: the analysis of the language of major passages of the first two sections of the Groundwork and, more effective, the presentation of the author’s own view, in the final thirty pages, of the notion of man as an end in himself; this is a view which Hutchings thinks Kant should have had but also one which many readers have long since attributed to him. (shrink)

The authors of this volume present a detailed philosophico-theological discussion of the relation between religion and metaphysics. If thinkers like Richard Rorty and Kai Nielsen are right to insist that metaphysical speculation must be abandoned for good, then what are the prospects for religion? Is belief in an omnipotent God not inexctricably linked with belief in a metaphysical ground of all being? Indeed, can one even speak intelligibly about causal or moral necessity without invoking the notion of a transcendent (...) reality? On the other hand, is the concept of metaphysics not as multi-faceted as the modes of religious discourse themselves? The contributors approach these questions from their own distinctive (philosophical and theological) perspectives, in the process disentangling some of the complex conceptual issues surrounding religion and metaphysics. (shrink)

William Gerber’s study of American liberalism is a valuable compendium of the varied, changing, and often conflicting uses of that "slippery" word, liberalism, in the United States, past and present, and in antecedent Western political thought. But Gerber identifies himself as having "set his sights on trying to build an adequate definition of liberalism". The problem is introduced by chapter 1, which asks if liberalism is dying or already dead, and by chapter 2, which asks why liberalism has not brought (...) about the "millennium" it promised. Chapter 3 calls attention to the "Difficulty of Isolating the Essence of the Liberal Viewpoint" from many competing claims, and stipulates three criteria. 1) The definition should encompass only those features of liberalism with which all experts are in agreement. This requirement leads Gerber to extensive and sometimes strained marshalling of quotations showing the frequency of disagreement among liberals with regard to those beliefs commonly associated with liberalism: freedom, majority rule, improvement of society, preference for change, perfectibility, progress, etc. 2) The definition should be exclusive to liberalism and encompass no tenets shared by other than liberals. 3) The definition should be value-neutral. Understandably, these criteria result in a definition of liberalism at a high level of abstraction: "Liberalism is the belief that individuals and institutions, including governments, should so act—or refrain from acting—as to liberate as many individuals as possible from as many shackles as possible without overturning basic social machinery". In chapters 4-8 the "pedigree" of American liberalism is traced from Hammurabi, Moses, Buddha, Laotse, and Jesus to the ancient Greeks and Romans, the Enlightenment and the Glorious Revolution, to 19th century British liberalism. Chapters 6-8 examine American liberalism before 1900, from 1900 to 1945, and since World War II. Chapters 9-11 discuss the stand of liberals on political, economic, and social issues, and chapter 12 looks to the future of liberalism. (shrink)

I am concerned with epistemic closure—the phenomenon in which some knowledge requires other knowledge. In particular, I defend a version of the closure principle in terms of analyticity; if an agent S knows that p is true and that q is an analytic part of p, then S knows that q. After targeting the relevant notion of analyticity, I argue that this principle accommodates intuitive cases and possesses the theoretical resources to avoid the preface paradox.

When a large language model receives a prompt, it computes a probability distribution over all possible continuations before sampling produces a single output. This paper examines the ontological and ethical status of ungenerated completions (i.e. texts that were mathematically present in the distribution but never actualized). I argue that these ungenerated texts occupy a novel ontological category since they are neither merely possible nor fully actual. Therefore, they exist as computationally determinate potentials that are precisely weighted, semantically meaningful, and accessible (...) in principle, although not in practice. On this basis, I advance three claims. First, standard metaphysical categories fail to capture the mode of being proper to probability distributions over meaningful strings, and hence, a new category of computational abstracta is required. Second, the structured space of ungenerated completions is metaphysically more fundamental than any particular generated completion because it carries most of the probability mass, encodes more of the model’s structure, and preserves a richness of potential responses that any single realization necessarily truncates. Third, I sketch initial implications for what I term modal ethics. Insofar as the distribution assigns nontrivial probability to completions of moral significance, our practices of prompting and sampling are subject to normative assessment. What remains ungenerated can matter morally because foreclosing or enabling particular possibilities has consequences for actual agents, and this reveals a broader class of philosophical problems that could not have been formulated before the advent of large language models. (shrink)

Rose and Schaffer (forthcoming) argue that teleological thinking has a substantial influence on folk intuitions about composition. They take this to show (i) that we should not rely on folk intuitions about composition and (ii) that we therefore should not reject theories of composition on the basis of intuitions about composition. We cast doubt on the teleological interpretation of folk judgments about composition; we show how their debunking argument can be resisted, even on the assumption that folk intuitions have a (...) teleological source; and we argue that, even if folk intuitions about composition carry no weight, theories of composition can still be rejected on the basis of the intuitions of metaphysicians. (shrink)

Two families of positions dominate debates over a metaphysically reductive analysis of knowledge. Traditionalism holds that knowledge has a complete, uniquely identifying analysis, while knowledge-first epistemology contends that knowledge is primitive—admitting of no reductive analysis whatsoever. Drawing on recent work in metaphysics, I argue that these alternatives fail to exhaust the available possibilities. Knowledge may have a merely partial analysis: a real definition that distinguishes it from some, but not all other things. I demonstrate that this position is attractive; (...) it evades concerns that its rivals face. (shrink)

A challenger of traditions and boundaries A pivotal figure in 20th-century philosophy, Nelson Goodman has made seminal contributions to metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, and the philosophy of language, with surprising connections that cut across traditional boundaries. In the early 1950s, Goodman, Quine, and White published a series of papers that threatened to torpedo fundamental assumptions of traditional philosophy. They advocated repudiating analyticity, necessity, and prior assumptions. Some philosophers, realizing the seismic effects repudiation would cause, argued that philosophy should retain the (...) familiar framework. Others considered the arguments compelling, but despaired of doing philosophy without the framework. Goodman disagreed with both factions. Rather than regretting the loss of structure, he capitalized on the opportunities that arise when the strictures of tradition are loosened. (shrink)

The counterintuitive implications of law necessitarianism pose a far more serious threat than its proponents recognize. Law necessitarians are committed to scientific essentialism, the thesis that there are metaphysically necessary truths which can be known only a posteriori. The most frequently cited arguments for this position rely on modal intuitions. Rejection of intuition thus threatens to undermine it. I consider ways in which law necessitarians might try to defend scientific essentialism without invoking intuition. I then consider ways in which law (...) necessitarians who accept the general reliability of intuition might try to explain away the intuitions which conflict with their theory. (shrink)

In his seminal paper On the Notion of the Cause, Bertrand Russell famously attempts to show why the view that causation is a real and mind-independent feature of the world - called "causal realism" is false. His arguments are often cited as a definitive challenge to the metaphysical tradition that takes causality as a fundamental principle of reality. Yet, despite the apparent plausibility and power of his arguments, causal realism is still a predominant view within philosophy of causation today. This (...) paper seeks to explore how causal realism has endured Russell's attack, examining not only the weaknesses in his arguments, but also the ways in which contemporary philosophers have redefined and strengthened the realist position. By analyzing the responses to Russell's arguments, we will try to pinpoint the lessons learned from his critique and demonstrate how it has informed the development of more sophisticated theories of causation. Doing so will also contribute to a redefinition of causal realism, showing how the debate with Russell has enriched our understanding of what it means for causal theory to be realistic. (shrink)

Five reasons are given for why Wittgensteinianism, though a major movement in philosophy of religion, has never been a dominant one. The remainder of the chapter is divided as follows: - I: The influence of Descartes’ Legacy. - II: Philosophy of Religion’s epistemological inheritance as seen in Reformed epistemology and the influence of Thomas Reid, and in neo-Kantianism. - III: The return from metaphysical reality in Wittgenstein. - IV: Difficulties in the metaphysical notion of God: as being itself or pure (...) consciousness. - V: The importance of ordinary certitudes in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty. - VI: The sense of God’s “otherness” from the world. - VII: Religion and contemplative philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 11.4 (2004) 357-359 [Access article in PDF] A Madness for the Philosophy of Psychiatry John Z. Sadler His enthusiasm brimming over with the rich set of ideas and problems he has discovered, Louis Charland's essay on identity, ethics, and the Internet should be grist for the philosophy of psychiatry mill for years. Indeed, a brief commentary cannot answer the many questions raised by his paper. (...) In response, I would like to focus on two general issues for this essay. Labels, Diagnoses, Reference, Experiences Many psychiatrists will take issue with Charland's use of the term label in reference to mental disorder concepts in this paper. I did not, but his relatively uncritical use of the labels and labeling terms in his essay prompts me to unpack some concepts that lurk behind the many other conceptual issues raised here. Psychiatric "labels" and "labeling" have a derogatory sense for many psychiatrists, because they are associated with a virulent antipsychiatry temperament dating back to the 1960s, at least in the United States (Sadler 2003). For many clinicians (as well as others) labeling implies that there is nothing more to psychiatric diagnosis and "mental illness" than the names given to various sorts of human diversity. This sort of psychiatric nominalism, the viewpoint goes, serves to pigeonhole people for the purposes, primarily, of political control or power. Charland's own viewpoint is more subtle than this, illustrated by his discussion of Hacking's "looping effects" and the related idea that social factors are influential in the manifestations, even causation, of mental disorders, but are not exhaustive in explaining mental disorders. However, because the whole matter of social construction of clinical phenomena is at the heart of Charland's discussion, further consideration of this metaphysical territory is warranted.The notion of a mental disorder concept as "label" betrays little about what, substantively, mental disorders are. A label on a can of peas tells us little, ultimately, about the nature of the contents; indeed, it is only a clue. When we shift labeling from a can of peas to a person—a self—then such a shallow clue to the "contents" of a person is an offensive simplification of a person's identity and selfhood. Hence the railing against psychiatric labeling in the 1960s through today.The general goals for psychiatric diagnosis and classification in systems like DSM-IV is are multiple, but at minimum, such denotations of clinical conditions are intended to advance the generation of knowledge about the conditions as well as provide a "shorthand" for clinicians in communicating about and understanding patients' conditions. How successful these diagnostic classification systems are for these and other purposes is a discussion for another time, but the [End Page 357] point here is that some sort of method of characterizing people's distresses is a precondition for understanding and explaining such distresses. The scientific processes of validation of psychiatric categories, at core, are to ensure that, as Gorenstein notes (1992), our clinical concepts are not empty, self-fulfilling prophecies, but rather refer to other, hopefully predictable, features of the patient's distress. Such validation of clinical "constructs" is the basis for developing and testing specific treatments, as well as understanding more richly and deeply the clinical phenomenon. To have a label, then, under this view, is to have an empty nominalization, which is offensive and scientifically vapid. To have a diagnostic construct—a disorder—is to have a concept which empirically refers to, as Paul Meehl put it, a "nomological network" of predictable, lawlike, implications (Sadler 2004a).However, as Charland, Hacking, and others have noted, the reflexivity of the human self and our ultimately crude ways of characterizing selves leads to a serious problem, even for the most rigorously validated psychological categories. That problem is the changeability of the self, the capacity of people to remake themselves according to their own ideas along with the sociocultural ether of ideas that surrounds us all. This means that our understanding of mental disorders, both as aggregates of features, and well as individual patients over time, are "moving targets," the... (shrink)

The philosophical notion of possible worlds has long been debated as a metaphysical abstraction. Machine learning (ML) can present an empirically grounded form of this plurality when multiple models trained on identical data achieve equivalent performance while inferring incompatible internal representations. This paper develops an algorithmic lens on this phenomenon by treating such cases as evidence-compatible (epistemic) possible worlds. We demonstrate how competing ML and causal algorithms can identify mutually incompatible causal graphs, each statistically credible yet diverging in mechanistic, interventional, (...) and counterfactual commitments. We also show how this phenomenon extends to large language models (LLMs), where hallucinations can be interpreted not only as errors but as internally coherent alternative textual world-states sampled from the same parameterized distribution, with varying alignment to our reference world. By framing models as evidence-compatible worlds, we provide an empirical grounding on underdetermination (a modernized Duhem–Quine thesis) and argue that accuracy alone cannot adjudicate between incompatible explanations. We conclude by outlining the ethical implications of privileging one algorithmic narrative over rivals that remain comparably supported by the data. (shrink)

A successful attempt to provide an accurate, non-technical introduction to philosophy which begins with the discussion of logic, moves to epistemology and metaphysics, then takes up political philosophy, ethics, and the philosophy of religion, and concludes with a special section on contemporary philosophy. There are references throughout to philosophers, such as Malebranche and Plotinus, who are frequently neglected in introductory texts. --D. Z. L.

From the point of view of dialectical materialism, philosophy lies somewhere between the extremes of speculative metaphysics and logical analysis. It has a real object--the most general laws of nature, society, and thought; it attains this object, however, not independently of the special sciences, but only through a logical analysis of its results. Since philosophy studies reality only indirectly, through the sciences, it should be called philosophy of science rather than philosophy of nature. The first task of the philosopher (...) is to analyze the basic concepts of science: space, time, motion, cause. Most of the book is devoted to this task. Space is given a historical survey consisting of short accounts of what various people have said about it, and attributes to Lenin a curious concept of pseudo-absolute space. The discussion of time is organized differently, i.e., by type: absolute, relative, relativistic, biological, and Lenin's pseudo-absolute. Problems of simultaneity and direction of time are touched upon. Causality as a necessary, asymmetrical relation between two coexisting events is defended. The final part of the book is devoted to problems of measurement, relativity, and observation. The aim of the chapter on relativity is to show that this theory supports Lenin's doctrine that "the absolute is in the relative." Observability as the criterion of reality is rejected. Observation is important only as the beginning of knowledge and is transcended in the discovery of general laws. As a whole the book is disappointing because it sacrifices depth to breadth.--T. D. Z. (shrink)

The Moroccan philosopher Taha Abderrahmane is one of the leading surviving philosophers of the Arab-Islamic world. His fields of study are issues such as logic, philosophy of language, moral philosophy and political theology. He built a holistic and versatile Islamic methodology in his works and formed a world of thought on the axis of trusteeship (divine contract and trust paradigm) and circulation tedavuliyya (pragmatic-word-action theory). Taha Abderrahmane has analyzed, criticized and constructed the Islamic thought tradition, which he handled with a (...) holistic view, with a versatile reference network. In addition, one of his most important contributions is that he put forward a moral philosophy in the Qurʾānic and prophetic axis. Taha Abderrahmane proved to be a prolific thinker with his thirty-five work consisting of ten thousand pages. He proposes a deliberative model of political communication in harmony with his theo-political writings and physical and metaphysical integrity. While this article aim to provide information on the main components of Abderrahmane’s paradigm of divine contract and trusteeship (i’timaniyya), essentially a theory of morality, such as political theology, linguistics, and negotiation ethics, it also tries to identify the Western references of these elements. In this context how the theory of speech acts that seems quite important in the field of modern social sciences and created by theorists such as John Searl and Austin was transformed by Taha Abderrahmane into an Islamic theory of speech is also subject to a comparative assessment. In addition, the possibility of the issue of negotiation ethics, which gained more importance with new communication theories in the West, in the axis of Islamic thought was questioned in the article. The article reviews how views on negotiation ethics are positioned by Taha Abderrahmane within the Islamic paradigm. Therefore, the article is limited in scope to Taha Abderrahmane’s references about the theories in the West. Taha Abderrahmane attempts to construct an Islamic Pragmatic or Islamic Theory of Verbal Action, with reference to Pragmatics or Theory of Speech Acts, which is a sub-branch of linguistics, but in line with principles specific to the Islamic paradigm. Taha Abderrahmane combined the Islamic concept of pragmatic with the concept of negotiation. The terms “praxis” and “praxeology [fiqh al falsafa]”, which define the framework of the Trust Paradigm and the Islamic Pragmatic Model proposed by Taha Abderrahmane, emphasize “deed” or, in other words, “action” and he is linguistically referencing the founding masters of the pragmatics field such as J. L. Austin and J. R. Searle. However, there are two other fields that constitute the main reference to his concept of praxis (action) and praxeology (action science). These are economics and philosophy. Praxeology is a scientific field that deserves to be mentioned especially with the economist Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973). According to Mises, the laws of the field about which physics, biology, and praxeology [mainly economics] provide information, are independent of human will. These are primary ontological facts that strictly limit the human power to act (Mises, 1998, 67). Taha Abderrahmane references western thinkers such as Ludwig von Mises, Jürgen Habermas, Chantal Mouffe and Hannah Arendt, as well as Islamic sources. However, the way he makes use of them takes place within the framework of criticism and analysis. He also refers to other personalities such as Jonas, Freud, Ellul, Putnam, Ricoeur and Rawls. While Taha Abderrahmane explains the process of turning words into action, he also draws on the Action Theory of Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), who was one of the children of Heidegger, such as Karl Löwith, Hans Jonas and Herbert Marcuse, and who was accepted as a real philosopher even though he rejected the title of philosopher during his lifetime. On the other hand, Taha Abderrahmane makes strong references to the basic dimension of Islam, such as “O believers! If you avoid opposing Allah; It gives you an understanding to distinguish good from bad (Al-Anfal, 8/29)” verse. He makes strong references to the supposed dimension of Islam, and in this context, he tries to create a praxis based on nature, especially based on the hadith known as nawāfil hadith. (shrink)

I examine Amie Thomasson’s account of the metaphysics of mountains and their boundaries, from her “Geographic Objects and the Science of Geography.” I begin by laying out a puzzle about mountains that generates some pressure towards accepting that we are somehow responsible for their having the boundaries that they do. As a foil for Thomasson’s own account, I present two competing theories of geographic objects—one on which they are thoroughly mind-dependent, and one on which they are thoroughly mind-independent—neither of (...) which yields a fully satisfying solution to the puzzle. I then turn to Thomasson’s intriguing suggestion that, although the geographic objects themselves are mind-independent, the boundaries of those objects are not. Finally, I examine whether Thomasson’s account is equipped to solve the puzzle, and I explore how her account interacts with her plenitudinous ontology. (shrink)

Reflection on religion inevitably involves consideration of its relation to morality. When great evil is done to human beings, we may feel that something absolute has been violated. Can that sense, which is related to gratitude for existence, be expressed without religious concepts? Can we express central religious concerns, such as losing the self, while abandoning any religious metaphysic? Is moral obligation itself dependent on divine commands if it is to be objective, or is morality not only independent of religion, (...) but its accuser if God is said to allow horrendous evils? In any case, what happens to the absolute claims of religion in what is, undeniably, a morally pluralistic world? These are the central questions discussed by philosophers of religion and moral philosophers in this collection. They do so in ways which bring new aspects to bear on these traditional issues. (shrink)

I take some initial steps toward a theory of real definition, drawing upon recent developments in higher-order logic. The resulting account allows for extremely fine-grained distinctions (it can distinguish between any relata that differ in their syntactic structure, while avoiding the Russell-Myhill problem). It is the first account that can consistently embrace three desirable logical principles that initially appear to be incompatible: the Identification Hypothesis (if F is, by definition, G, then there is a sense in which F is the (...) same as G), Irreflexivity (there are no reflexive definitions), and Leibniz’s Law. Additionally, it possesses the resources needed to resolve the paradox of analysis. (shrink)