From a different perspective, “essential actuality” is related to logical actuality. It means plain existence in the ideal sphere of being. One is familiar with this, for example, in “mathematical existence.” This does not merge with validity, but implies ...

This essay asks what reality must be like if conscious experience can emerge within it without being present from the beginning. Building on the notions of pre-subjective openness and pre-phenomenal subjectivability, it argues that consciousness should be understood neither as an inexplicable product of closed actuality nor as a primordial feature of reality itself. Reductive physicalism fails to account for the emergence of interiority from merely external processes, while panpsychism avoids this difficulty only by assuming that consciousness is already (...) present from the beginning, at least in latent or elementary form. Against both alternatives, the essay proposes a real-imaginary conception of reality, developed since 2003 and later extended into a quaternionic framework. In this view, reality is not exhausted by present actuality, but includes an intrinsic dimension of structured possibility. The real-imaginary structure grounds pre-subjective openness, while its quaternionic differentiation provides the formal basis for pre-phenomenal subjectivability. Conscious experience emerges when structured possibility becomes sufficiently integrated, self-referential, stabilized, and centered. Reality is therefore not originally conscious, but originally structured so as to make possible the emergence of consciously experiencing subjects. (shrink)

Many philosophers, following David Lewis, believe that we should look to counterpart theory, not quantified modal logic, as a means of understanding modal discourse. We argue that this is a mistake. Significant parts of modal discourse involve either implicit or explicit reference to what is actually the case, raising the question of how talk about actuality is to be represented counterpart-theoretically. By considering possible modifications of Lewis's counterpart theory, including actual modifications due to Graeme Forbes and Murali Ramachandran, we (...) argue that no coherent version of counterpart theory can provide a plausible representation of talk about actuality, and so, we conclude, counterpart theory should be rejected. (shrink)

Most philosophers accept Necessity of Actuality: whenever ‘actually p' is true, it is true with metaphysical necessity. The logic that results from rejecting this principle has recently been studied by Glazier and Kramer (2024); the present paper develops its philosophical foundations. Although Necessity of Actuality may seem to be required by actuality's role in comparing what is with what might have been, I argue that the principle is false and that such comparisons are in good standing even (...) without the principle. The rejection of Necessity of Actuality reopens the following question: for which p is ‘actually p’ metaphysically possible? I propose an answer that appeals to the idea that actuality has an essence, and I explore some hypotheses about what this essence might be. (shrink)

One question that arises in connection with Ockhamism, and that perhaps has not yet received the attention it deserves, is how a coherent formal account of truth ascriptions can be provided by using a suitable truth predicate in the object language. We address this question and show its implications for some semantic issues that have been discussed in the literature on future contingents. Arguably, understanding how truth ascriptions work at the formal level helps to gain a deeper insight into Ockhamism (...) itself. (shrink)

Current orthodoxy in modal logic and metaphysics has it that actuality is non-contingent in the following sense: for all p, if actually, p, then necessarily, actually, p. Call this thesis (Actuality) Necessitism and its negation (Actuality) Contingentism. Thus, according to Contingentism, there is at least one proposition p which is actually true but which could have been actually false. In another paper, one of us (Glazier 2023) has recently defended Contingentism. The present paper explores the logic of (...) actuality under Contingentism. After informally introducing Contingentism and outlining what we take to be the main motivations for accepting it, we consider how contingent actuality should be taken to be. We argue that the nature, or essence, of actuality imposes certain limits on the extent to which actuality could have been different, and these then inform our view of the logic of actuality. Turning to the formal study of the logic of contingent actuality, we specify a formal language and a possible world semantics for that language and distinguish a number of natural notions of validity and consequence to which it gives rise. We present axiomatizations of the different resulting logics and examine the variety of iterated modalities in our systems. We establish soundness and completeness results. (shrink)

Brings together some of the most prominent and influential contemporary interpreters of Adorno's work in a wide-ranging collection of essays that explores Adorno's relation to themes and problems in postmodern thought.

I argue for a new account of Kant's concept of objective reality. Objective reality should be understood as nomic actuality. The notion of nomic actuality is inspired by Kant's concept of nature in the most general sense, which describes the existence of things under laws. I will argue that this nomic conception of objective reality has various advantages over rival readings, such as accounts of objective reality as actuality or in terms of real possibility.

It is generally assumed that rigidity plays a key role in explaining the necessary a posteriori status of identity statements, both between proper names and between natural kind terms. However, while the notion of rigid designation is well defined for singular terms, there is no generally accepted definition of what it is for a general term to be rigid. In this paper I argue that the most common view, according to which rigid general terms are the ones which designate the (...) same kind in all possible worlds, fails to deliver a posteriori necessities. I also present an alternative view, on which the work of explaining a posteriori necessities is not done by rigidity, but by a related metasemantic notion, which I call actuality - dependence. (shrink)

The question of energy is among the most vital for the future of humanity and the flourishing of life on this planet. Yet, only very rarely (if at all) do we ask what energy is, what it means, what ends it serves, and how it is related to actuality, meaning-making, and instrumentality. Energy Dreams interrogates the ontology of energy from the first coinage of the word energeia by Aristotle to the current practice of fracking and the popularity of "energy (...) drinks." Its sustained, multi-disciplinary investigation builds a theoretical infrastructure for an alternative energy paradigm. This study unhinges stubbornly held assumptions about energy, conceived in terms of a resource to be violently extracted from the depths of the earth and from certain living beings (such as plants, converted into biofuels), a thing that, teetering on the verge of depletion, sparks off movement and is incompatible with the inertia of rest. Consulting the insights of philosophers, theologians, psychologists and psychoanalysts, economic and political theorists, and physicists, Michael Marder argues that energy is not only a coveted object of appropriation but also the subject who dreams of amassing it; that it not only resides in the dimension of depth but also circulates on the surface; that it activates rest as much as movement, potentiality as much as actuality; and that it is both the means and the end of our pursuits. Ultimately, Marder shows that, instead of being grounded in utopian naïveté, the dreams of another energy—to be procured without devastating everything in existence—derive from the suppressed concept of energy itself. (shrink)

I argue that ‘actually’ does not have a reading according to which it is synonymous with the actuality operator of modal logic, and propose an alternative account of ‘actually’. The cases that have been thought to show that ‘actually’ is synonymous with the actuality operator are modal and counterfactual sentences in which an embedded clause's evaluation is held fixed at the world of the context. In these cases, though, this embedded clause's evaluation is not due to the presence (...) of ‘actually’. As an alternative, I propose that ‘actually’ is a presupposition trigger along the lines of ‘even’ or ‘too’, and it signals that presupposed information states in the discourse are evolving in a non-standard way. (shrink)

In this article we will show the process that allowed Ricœur to apply the Aristotelian ontology of actuality and potentiality to his hermeneutics, and how this development ended up providing him with a speculative solution to the aporetics of time. We will distinguish two alternative solutions: the poetic solution, given in Time and Narrative and the speculative one, developed in Memory, History, Forgetting. Despite the importance of the existential analytic, we believe that the introduction of the Spinozian conatus was (...) decisive for Ricoeur’s change of perspective. (shrink)

Many traditional theists have said that God is propositionally omniscient, i.e. knows all truths. Many traditional theists also hold that God is timeless. That is, these theists hold that though God exists, there is no time at which He exists, and He does not exist earlier or later than anything. Some recent philosophers, among them Arthor Prior, Robert Coburn, Norman Kretz mann, Nicholas Wolterstorfl Richard Gale and Patrick Grim, have argued that There are truths to whose expression ‘now’ is essential, (...) and that – compose an inconsistent set of propositions. These writers argue that due to the semantics of ‘now’, a timeless God cannot know truths to whose expression ‘now’ is essential. To know a truth, it is claimed, one must be able to mentally token a proposition expressing what one knows. To token a truth to whose expression ‘now’ is essential, one must token ‘now’. ‘Now’ and relevantly similar terms inter alia locate those who use them in time: if one says truly that it is now 3 p.m., it follows that one exists at 3 p.m. So a timeless being cannot use ‘now’ and relevantly similar terms, and so cannot know truths for whose expression ‘now’ and its ilk are required. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with a propositional modal logic with operators for necessity, actuality and apriority. The logic is characterized by a class of relational structures defined according to ideas of epistemic two-dimensional semantics, and can therefore be seen as formalizing the relations between necessity, actuality and apriority according to epistemic two-dimensional semantics. We can ask whether this logic is correct, in the sense that its theorems are all and only the informally valid formulas. This paper gives outlines (...) of two arguments that jointly show that this is the case. The first is intended to show that the logic is informally sound, in the sense that all of its theorems are informally valid. The second is intended to show that it is informally complete, in the sense that all informal validities are among its theorems. In order to give these arguments, a number of independently interesting results concerning the logic are proven. In particular, the soundness and completeness of two proof systems with respect to the semantics is proven (Theorems 2.11 and 2.15), as well as a normal form theorem (Theorem 3.2), an elimination theorem for the actuality operator (Corollary 3.6), and the decidability of the logic (Corollary 3.7). It turns out that the logic invalidates a plausible principle concerning the interaction of apriority and necessity; consequently, a variant semantics is briefly explored on which this principle is valid. The paper concludes by assessing the implications of these results for epistemic two-dimensional semantics. (shrink)

This paper argues that English present ability modal statements like “I can see Saturn” are ambiguous in the same way as past ability statements like “I was able to lift a fridge”: they can express either a general ability (‘I have the ability to see Saturn, in general’), or have an actualized (episodic) interpretation (‘I'm seeing Saturn, right now’). The challenge is to explain why in the present, actualized interpretations are only licensed when the modal's prejacent is a perception verb (...) like see, and not with other predicates: “I can watch Saturn” only has the general ability reading available, and not the actualized one. I propose that (i) similar to what has been shown for past modal statements in the literature on Actuality Entailments (AEs) (Bhatt 1999), the ambiguity depends on grammatical aspect: general ability readings are due to the imperfective, which “removes” AEs by having the event occur in worlds introduced by a generic operator (Bhatt 1999), and actualized readings are due to the perfective, which directly combines with the prejacent event across the modal (Hacquard 2009); (ii) The usual unavailability of actualized interpretations in the present comes from the Present Perfective Paradox (Malchukov 2009): perfective aspect is incompatible with present tense, because the event time, a time interval, cannot be contained within the punctual speech time. (iii) Perception verbs are special in that they, and only they, are able to combine with perfective in the present, either because the PPP does not arise at all, or because they allow a specific type of aspectual coercion. This also explains their behavior in (non-modal) simple present sentences. A second challenge is that actualized interpretations in the present appear to occur exclusively with ability modals, and not when modals express other root flavors (e.g. teleological or deontic). I propose that this restriction is due to a further temporal orientation constraint. (shrink)

Modal Meinongianism is the most recent neo-Meinongian theory. Its main innovation consists in a Comprehension Principle which, unlike other neo-Meinongian approaches, seemingly avoids limitations on the properties that can characterize objects. However, in a recent paper A. Sauchelli has raised an objection against modal Meinongianism, to the effect that properties and relations involving reference to worlds at which they are instantiated, and specifically to the actual world or parts thereof, force a limitation of its Comprehension Principle. The theory, thus, is (...) no better off than other neo-Meinongian views in this respect. This article shows that the notion part of actuality in Sauchelli’s paper is ambiguous from the modal Meinongian viewpoint. Accordingly, his objection splits into two, depending on its disambiguation. It is then explained how neither interpretation forces modal Meinongianism to limit its Comprehension Principle. A third problem connected to Sauchelli’s objection is addressed: how to account for our felicitously referring to nonexistent objects via descriptions that embed reference to properties not actually instantiated by the objects. Overall, the replies to these difficulties provide good insights into the workings of the new Meinongian theory. (shrink)

It is argued that the truth-conditional view of truth proposed is problematic, as it comes at the unacceptable price of cutting the human mind off from real being, making truth into something purely hypothetical. Arguments based on the nature of the subject-predicate relation are summoned in support of a return to the Aristotelian definition of truth as being “to say that what is is and that what is not is not.” It is demonstrated that this conception corresponds better both to (...) the structure of natural language and to the nature of truth. The treatment of the predicate in some versions of Aristotelian-inspired term logic is criticized for reducing predication to mere sorting or classifying, and the fundamentally verbal nature of the predicate is argued to anchor the predication in a particular context involving a certain time and a particular set of circumstances, thus allowing its truth to be determined. (shrink)

This article seeks to place Michel Foucault’s philosophy within the tradition initiated by Kant and continued by Hegel and Marx. Firstly, the article sets out the concept that comes from that tradition. Then, it uses this concept to examine the three stages of Foucault’s work: archeology, genealogy, and ethics. The fundamental thesis is that this philosophy constitutes a history and a critical epistemology of the basic axioms of Western metaphysics: the irreducible exteriority of objects and the continuity of thinking consciousness.

In our time, characterised by wars in various parts of the world, including Europe, and by the ever more evident inability of the so-called international community (especially the United Nations) to prevent the violent resolution of conflicts between states, Kant’s idea of eternal peace could be considered one of the utopias of the Enlightenment. It would be necessary to answer the question of whether the nature of these utopias is utopian or an idea with the potential of a real utopia, (...) i.e. of something that does not exist (or does not yet exist) that could become possible and real. (shrink)

The thin red line theory is a form of branching indeterminism. It entails that, among the many possible developments that reality might take, one is privileged: the actual history. The thin red line theory is naturally paired off with a semantic thesis that may be called ‘the actuality principle’: a statement is true as used at a moment if and only if it is true at that moment on the actual history. The actuality principle has been challenged, for (...) it would be wrong about several counterfactual reasonings. On the one hand, the actuality principle should entail that any statement uttered at a merely possible moment is untrue. On the other hand, the actuality principle should be at odds with the way we use subjunctive conditionals. This paper argues that both objections rely on an inadequate understanding of the notion of the history of use. As for the first objection, the paper argues that to assume the actuality principle amounts to taking the actual history as the history of use. As a consequence, one cannot consistently take the actual history as the history of use and, at the same time, a merely possible moment as the moment of use. As for the second objection, the paper shows that the actuality principle is consistent with any reasonable treatment of subjunctive conditionals. (shrink)

This study aims to account for the reception of the philosophy of Carl Stumpf since the turn of the twenty-first century and to emphasize the actuality of some of the aspects of his philosophy. The present text is subdivided into several sections, each corresponding to one of the main topics discussed in the recent literature on the work of Stumpf. In the first section, I try to show, using his classification of sciences, that Stumpf's empirical work is driven by (...) a unitary philosophical program. I then examine the ramifications of this program in several areas of philosophy that have been the subject of recent commentaries and publications. I begin with the commentaries on the recent publication of Stumpf's thesis on mathematical axioms, which stress Stumpf's contribution to the philosophy of mathematics and to theory of knowledge, and more specifically to the debate on logical psychologism that Frege and Husserl will address a few years later. I conclude this section by examining the second of two major themes in the work of Stumpf that have been the subject of several recent studies, namely, on the one hand, logic and the nature of states of affairs and, on the other hand, Stumpf's contribution to the mind-body problem and to the topic of relations. The third section is divided into two parts. In the first one, I try to briefly account for the vast literature on Stumpf's contribution to psychology understood broadly enough as to include his work on the psychology of sound, Gestalt psychology, animal psychology and the psychology of child development. I provide, in the second part of this section, a summary of his studies in the area of aesthetics and musicology in general, i.e. his contribution to the history of music and its origins, to ethnomusicology, and to acoustics. Although this study does not aim at being exhaustive, it provides an overview of the important aspects of Stumpf's contribution to philosophy. (shrink)

The position of classical studies in our time is paradoxical in several respects. When at the end of the so-called Middle Ages a great new interest in ancient Greek literature was aroused by Greek fugitives from the East, spreading from Italy to other countries of Western Europe, the study of the great Greek authors was beset with considerable difficulties. All the manuscripts which the Greek fugitives brought with them or which had been transferred to the West at an earlier time (...) and were now rediscovered, were to some extent corrupted by copyists’ mistakes and/or mechanical corruptions, and even where they were not corrupted their content was in many places not easy to understand because the historical background for the understanding was lacking. In some cases doubts arose concerning the authenticity of works ‘attributed to certain authors. To meet these needs, the methods of textual criticism were developed by the humanists of the Renaissance and later perfected and supplemented by various kinds of historical criticism after a second revival of interest in classical antiquity, which was promoted by Winckelmann in the 18th century. (shrink)

Metaphysics is self-critical in a way and to an extent not to be found in any other field of study. This is an outcome of its extreme generality. Its subject-matter includes all subject-matters and hence all methodologies. Therefore metaphysics is also concerned with its own methodology. There is no more inclusive or more general study of methodology which might take upon itself the authority to criticize the methodology of metaphysics. Any such study would have to concern itself with all concepts (...) and subject-matters, and so would itself be simply metaphysics. Any general denial of metaphysics is itself a metaphysical theory, and therefore self-contradictory. (shrink)

Aristotelian ideas have in the past been applied with mixed fortunes to quantum mechanics. One of the most persistent criticisms is that Aristotle’s notions of potentiality and actuality are burdened with a teleological character long ago abandoned in the natural sciences. Recently this criticism has been met with a model of the actualization of quantum potentialities in light of Aristotle’s doctrine of ‘spontaneous events’. This presumably restores the nowadays acceptable idea of efficient causation in place of Aristotle’s original doctrine (...) of the ‘four causes’. In this article I challenge the model by arguing that when properly scrutinized Aristotle’s final cause poses no problems for an Aristotelian reading of quantum mechanics. Final causes in fact provide a better ontology for quantum mechanics than spontaneous causation. The idea of ‘spontaneity’ is unanalyzable and therefore of little use in quantum mechanics. In addition, it is ontologically sterile in the context of quantum measurement, as shown by a historical and conceptual review of the role of efficient causation in experimental physics. (shrink)

This paper looks at dialectical inferences as they relate to Hegel’s modal metaphysics, closely examining the Actuality section of Hegel’s Science of Logic and positing a reading of Hegel’s modal actualism that engages with two strains of secondary commentary. Responding to commentators, we make the case that Hegel’s ‘das Logische’ avoids presupposing possibility’s being prior to actuality insofar as actuality and the derivation of possibility is considered as the in-itselfness of actuality, an implicit inner moment whereby (...) actuality further determines itself. Actuality is immediate yet derived as an identity from the logic of inner and outer. If actuality as immediacy is explicit/outer, then its opposition, its implicitness/innerness, has to be possibility in the logic of modality. In order to conceive of actuality as existence, and particularly as an emerging process, we must already conceive the problem of presupposing an alien form within the logic of actuality. (shrink)

Euthanasia is not legal in Albania, yet there is strong evidence that euthanising a terminally ill patient is not an unknown concept for the Albanians. The first mentioned case of euthanasia is found in 7th century AD mythology and during the communist regime (1944–1989), allegations of euthanising political prisoners and possible rivals in the struggle for power have widely been formulated. There is a trend among relatives and laymen taking care of terminally ill patients to apply tranquilisers in an abusive (...) dosage, or even against medical advice, aiming at sedating the ailing patient. These actions, the refusal to keep on consistently applying life prolonging treatment, and other data, suggest that covert euthanasia is a practice and legal interventions are needed towards formalising it. This might well improve end-of-life care standards, since the inadequacy of structures, such as hospices and residential asylums, is becoming a major drawback in the struggle for dignity and accessible socio-medical help for third age persons and terminal patients. (shrink)

In the English-speaking world it is not clear that any of the later Schelling's critique of Hegel haseverdirectly been part of serious philosophical debate, though its indirect effects, via the work of Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche and others, are oftenunconsciouslypresent in contemporary debates. How this fact looks in terms of a Hegelian conception of the history of philosophy is a question that would require more space than I have here. What I want to suggest is that the confrontation with Hegel of (...) the later Schelling, as well as some aspects of the earlier Schelling, open up conceptual issues which are present in contemporary philosophical reflections on modernity and post-modernity. This happens, however, in ways which have hardly become common currency in these reflections. The basis of my argument is the re-interpretation of Schelling's arguments by Manfred Frank.The main philosophical impetus behind the post-modern is the idea that the attempt to establish any essential identity between being and thinking, of which Hegel is usually seen as the classic representative, must be regarded as a metaphysical dream from which we must awaken, if we are not to miss the possibilities of the new time in which we are living. In this view the illusion of identity threatens to block our access to the diversity available if we realise that this illusion must be renounced. If it is true that the history of Western metaphysics consists in the attempt to articulate the presence of the infinite within the finite, then such arguments can be seen as making a certain degree of sense: once philosophy has achieved this articulation the consequence can seem to be a closure in which the new always reveals itself as ultimately the old. (shrink)