Existence

According to what has long been the dominant school of thought in analytic meta-ontology––defended not only by W. V. O. Quine, but also by Bertrand Russell, Alvin Plantinga, Peter van Inwagen, and many others––the meaning of ‘there is’ is identical to the meaning of ‘there exists.’ The most (in)famous aberration from this view is advanced by Alexius Meinong, whose ontological picture has endured extensive criticism (and borderline abuse) from several subscribers to the majority view. Meinong denies the identity of being (...) and existence. That is, he denies that ‘there is’ and ‘there exists’ are semantically equivalent, and espouses a theory according to which there are things that do not exist. Here I defend a revised version of this view, which I call “Noncontradictory Neo-Meinongianism.” Focusing primarily on van Inwagen’s arguments in “Meta-Ontology” (1998), I argue that Noncontradictory Neo-Meinongianism is, on commonsensical grounds, preferable to the meta-ontological theories of van Inwagen and Meinong. (shrink)

It is sometimes supposed that, in principle, we cannot offer an explanation for why there is something rather than nothing. I argue that this supposition is a mistake, and stems from a needlessly myopic conception of the form explanations can legitimately take. After making this more general point, I proceed to offer a speculative suggestion regarding one sort of explanation which can in principle serve as an answer to the question “why is there something rather than nothing?” The suggestion is (...) that there may be something rather than nothing in virtue of the truth of certain sorts of subjunctive conditionals. (shrink)

De Mul’s central thesis is that Dilthey’s Critique of Historical Reason can be understood as a radicalization of Kant’s recognition of the contingency and finitude of human reason.

Personalism has brought new important elements concerning the way human person is seen, but the vocational dimension has not received as much interest as other elements. By understanding vocation as the call received by every human being to exist and give his/her own existence a meaning, we propose this element as one of the fundamentals of personalist bioethics. This vocational dimension analysis of the person allows a better understanding of the primacy of responsibility, the untransferable value of identity, the attention (...) to others and the role of health professionals as transmitters of such call. -/- El personalismo ha presentado novedades importantes sobre la mirada a la persona humana, pero no se le ha dado tanto interés a su dimensión vocacional como a otros elementos. Entendida la vocación como la llamada que recibe todo ser humano a existir y a dar sentido a su propia existencia, proponemos este elemento como uno de los fundamentos de la bioética personalista. Este análisis de la dimensión vocacional de la persona nos permite comprender mejor la primacía de la responsabilidad, el valor intransferible de la identidad, la atención por el otro y el papel del profesional de la salud como transmisor de esa llamada. (shrink)

This paper aspires to meet a philosophical challenge posed to the author to give treatment to what was seen as a particularly nice Meinongian case1; namely the case of Galician Meigas. However, through the playful footpaths of enchanted Galician Meigas, I rehabilitate some relevant discussion on the justification of belief formation and come to some poignant philosophical insights regarding the understanding of possibilities. I hope both the leading promoter of the challenge and, of course, other philosophical readers are satisfied with (...) the outcome. (shrink)

I argue that a slight shift in our understanding of the notion of existence is needed in order to cope with the problem of external world and the problem of mind and body. As a consequence of it being taught by "givenness" of the subjective mind, and despite its applicability in objective contexts, it should be considered a "tool" akin to qualia, rather than pertaining to a "true", objective reality. In plain language, one's supposed relation with their surroundings is known (...) to them only in terms of their private ontology. This conclusion is supported both by intuition and - perhaps most importantly - by ontological issues in quantum physics. (shrink)

According to the Ontological Innocence Thesis (OIT), grounded entities are ontologically innocent relative to their full grounds. I argue that OIT entails a contradiction, and therefore must be discarded. My argument turns on the notion of “groundmates,” two or more numerically distinct entities that share at least one of their full grounds. I argue that, if OIT is true, then it is both the case that there are groundmates and that there are no groundmates. Therefore, so I conclude, OIT is (...) false. Moreover, once we have seen why OIT is false, only three heterodox views about reality's structure remain. So this paper’s second conclusion is that, even after we have discarded OIT, we are in for an additional surprise. (shrink)

This thesis inquires what it means to interpret non-relativistic quantum mechanics (QM), and the philosophical limits of this interpretation. In pursuit of a scientific-realist stance, a metametaphysical method is expanded and applied to evaluate rival interpretations of QM, based on the conceptual distinction between ontology and metaphysics, for objective theory choice in metaphysical discussions relating to QM. Three cases are examined, in which this metametaphysical method succeeds in indicating what are the wrong alternatives to interpret QM in metaphysical terms. The (...) first two cases failed in doing so due to different kinds of underdetermination. In the third case, unlike underdetermination, where there are many choices to be made, a “null-determination” is proposed where there may be no metaphysical choices in the available metaphysical literature. Considering what has been discussed, an agnostic philosophic position is adopted concerning the possibility of interpreting QM from a scientific-realistic point of view. (shrink)

Observations on qualia, death, free will, why there is something rather than nothing, and the Star Trek vs. the Star Wars debate.

Some metaphysicians believe that existence debates are easily resolved by trivial inferences from Moorean premises. This paper considers how the introduction of negative Moorean facts—negative existentials that command Moorean certainty—complicates this picture. In particular, it shows how such facts, when combined with certain plausible metaontological principles, generate a puzzle that commits the proponents of this method to a contradiction.

Exploration of a hypothetical model of the structure of the Emergent Event. -/- Key Words: Emergent Event, Foundational Mathematical Categories, Emergent Meta-system, Orthogonal Centering Dialectic, Hegel, Sartre, Badiou, Derrida, Deleuze, Philosophy of Science.

We will begin with seemingly simple interactions in our daily lives, examine how they originate on a deeper level, come to understand the essentials of consciousness, and finally recognize that we create our reality in its entirety. In the course of this quest, we will uncover little-heeded paths to accessing our subconscious, other individuals, and that which can be understood by the term "God". And the solution to the classical problem of free will constitutes the gist of the concepts is (...) thus revealed. The present text is a very abridged version of a book I wrote out of the desire to examine the structure of our reality from a standpoint unbiased by established teachings, be they academic- scientific, popular- esoteric, or religious in nature. (shrink)

Relativitatea generală permite singularități. Trebuie să înțelegem ontologia singularităților gravitaționale dacă vrem să înțelegem natura spațiului și a timpului în universul actual. Deșii unii fizicieni consideră că singularitățile indică un eșec al relativității generale, alții cred că singularitățile deschid în fapt un orizont nou în cosmologie, cu fenomene fizice reale care pot ajuta la un progres profund în înțelegerea noastră a lumii. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.31766.50242.

This book investigates what change is, according to Aristotle, and how it affects his conception of being. Mark Sentesy argues that change leads Aristotle to develop first-order metaphysical concepts such as matter, potency, actuality, sources of being, and the teleology of emerging things. He shows that Aristotle’s distinctive ontological claim—that being is inescapably diverse in kind—is anchored in his argument for the existence of change. -/- Aristotle may be the only thinker to have given a noncircular definition of change. When (...) he gave this definition, arguing that change is real was a losing proposition. To show that it exists, he had to rework the way philosophers understood reality. His groundbreaking analysis of change has long been interpreted through a Platonist lens, however, in which being is conceived as unchanging. Offering a comprehensive reexamination of the relationship between change and being in Aristotle, Sentesy makes an important contribution to scholarship on Aristotle, ancient philosophy, the history and philosophy of science, and metaphysics. (shrink)

Postscripts to McTaggart meets Schrodinger's Cat.

En este escrito de ontología-trascendental reflexiono en términos heideggerianos sobre la voz ontológica, es decir, sobre el lenguaje interior que habla al oyente-escucha y que, desde ese decir ontológico, le revela lo que es. Dicha voz, al ser correctamente escuchada, dará paso a un auténtico apalabrar y decir, lo que develará una palabra-concepto ontológico transformador. Éste, al ser fruto de una auténtica ontología-trascendental, devendrá en un nuevo paradigma de la acción humana.

The Controversy over the Existence of the World (henceforth Controversy) is the magnum opus of Polish philosopher Roman Ingarden. Despite the renewed interest for Ingarden’s pioneering ontological work whithin analytic philosophy, little attention has been dedicated to Controversy's main goal, clearly indicated by the very title of the book: finding a solution to the centuries-old philosophical controversy about the ontological status of the external world. -/- There are at least three reasons for this relative indifference. First, even at the time (...) when the book was published, the Controversy was no longer seen as a serious polemical topic, whether it was disqualified as an archaic metaphysical pseudo-problem, or taken to be the last remnant of an antiscientific approach to philosophy culminating in idealism and relativism. Second, Ingarden’s reasoning on the matter is highly complex, at times misleading, and even occasionally faulty. Finally, his analysis is not only incomplete – Controversy being unachieved – but also arguably aporetic. -/- One may wonder, then, why it is still worth excavating this mammoth treatise to study an issue apparently no longer relevant to contemporary philosophy. Aside from historical and exegetical purposes, which are of course very interesting in their own right, Ingarden’s treatment of the Controversy remains one of the most detailed and ambitious ontological undertakings of the twentieth century. Not only does it lay out an incredibly detailed map of possible solutions to the Controversy, but it also tries to show why the latter is a genuine and fundamental problem that owes its hasty disqualification to various oversimplifications over the course of the history of philosophy. -/- In this chapter, I first give an overview of Ingarden’s method, which relies mainly on a combinatorial analysis. Then, I summarize his examination of possible solutions to the Controversy, and determine which ones can be ruled out on ontological grounds. Finally, I explain why this ambitious project ultimately leads to a theoretical impasse, leaving Ingarden unable to come up with a definitive solution to the Controversy – regardless of the fact that the book is unachieved. I argue that his analysis of the problem yields a more modest but nonetheless valuable result. (shrink)

Quantum physicists have made many attempts to solve the quantum measurement problem, but no solution seems to have received widespread acceptance. The time has come for a new approach. In Sense Perception and Reality: A Theory of Perceptual Relativity, Quantum Mechanics and the Observer Dependent Universe I suggest the quantum measurement problem is caused by a failure to understand that each species has its own sensory world and that when we say the wave function collapses and brings a particle into (...) existence we mean the particle is brought into existence in the human sensory world by the combined operation of the human sensory apparatus, particle detectors and the experimental set up. This is similar to the Copenhagen Interpretation suggested by Niels Bohr and others, but the understanding that the collapse of the wave function brings a particle into existence in the human sensory world removes the need for a dividing line between the quantum world and the macro world. The same rules can apply to both worlds and the ideas stated in this paper considerably strengthen the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

“Being” or “being and beings” might be the meta-notion when philosophy and science were still sharing the same mind or minds in ancient Greek and Europe. To find its meaning and to become a part of the meaning are however more and more vital nowadays, not for philosophy but for science, especially for physics and biology. The author proposes in this essay that this concept may mean to us nothing more or less than the unity or unification of Parmenides’ idea (...) “being is one” and Heraclitus’ idea “all things are in flux and nothing may remain the same”. That is just as to say that a being and an entity may never be identified with the same boundary. In other words, nothing or none should ever be understood as a being. This understanding is conceptualized and linguisticalized by the author as the compound symbol “OC”. And the OC represents a synthetic and also analytical understanding of both our universe and us together. And its value and strength may be found more obvious in his concise discussion, in the last part of the essay, on the OC’s meanings to ontology, epistemology, axiology, logic, mathematics, physics, biology, cosmogony and more. (shrink)

The main purpose of the paper is to outline the formal-logical, general theory of language treated as a particular ontological being. The theory itself is called the ontology of language, because it is motivated by the fact that the language plays a special role: it reflects ontology and ontology reflects the world. Language expressions are considered to have a dual ontological status. They are understood as either concretes, that is tokens – material, physical objects, or types – classes of tokens, (...) which are abstract objects. Such a duality is taken into account in the presented logical theory of syntax, semantics and pragmatics. We point to the possibility of building it on two different levels; one which stems from concretes, language tokens of expressions, whereas the other one – from their classes, types conceived as abstract, ideal beings. The aim of this work is not only to outline this theory as taking into account the functional approach to language, with respect to the dual ontological nature of its expressions, but also to show that the logic based on it is ontologically neutral in the sense that it abstracts from accepting some existential assumptions, related with the ontological nature of these linguistic expressions and their extra-linguistic ontological counterparts (objects). (shrink)

Kit Fine has proposed a new solution to what he calls ‘a familiar puzzle’ concerning modality and existence. The puzzle concerns the argument from the alleged truths ‘It is necessary that Socrates is a man’ and ‘It is possible that Socrates does not exist’ to the apparent falsehood ‘It is possible that Socrates is a man and does not exist’. We discuss in detail Fine’s setting up of the ‘puzzle’ and his rejection, with which we concur, of two mooted solutions (...) to it. (One of these uses standard, Kripkean, notions, and the other rests on work done by Arthur Prior.) We set out, and reject, the philosophy of modality underlying Fine’s new solution, and we defend an alternative response to the alleged puzzle. Our solution follows the work of David Wiggins in distinguishing between the sentential operator ‘It is necessary that’ and the predicate modifier ‘necessarily’. We briefly provide this distinction with a possible- world semantics on which it is neither a necessary truth, in some sense, that Socrates exists nor true, in some sense, that Socrates necessarily exists. (shrink)

Aquinas’ theory of being has received a growing amount of attention from contemporary scholars, both from a historic and a philosophical point of view. An important source of this attention is Geach’s seminal Form and Existence. In it, Geach argues that Aquinas subscribes to a tensed notion of existence and a theory of time according to which past and future entities do not exist in act. Subsequent commentators, such as Kenny in his Aquinas on Being, have agreed with Geach on (...) both points. In this paper, I argue that in several passages of his corpus, most notably those in which he is concerned with God’s knowledge of future contingents, Aquinas implicitly subscribes to a theory of being and time according to which: past and future entities are attributed existence in act, there is theoretical need for introducing a tenseless notion of existence. (shrink)

While scientific inquiry crucially relies on the extraction of patterns from data, we still have a very imperfect understanding of the metaphysics of patterns—and, in particular, of what it is that makes a pattern real. In this paper we derive a criterion of real-patternhood from the notion of conditional Kolmogorov complexity. The resulting account belongs in the philosophical tradition, initiated by Dennett, that links real-patternhood to data compressibility, but is simpler and formally more perspicuous than other proposals defended heretofore in (...) the literature. It also successfully enforces a non-redundancy principle, suggested by Ladyman and Ross, that aims at excluding as real those patterns that can be ignored without loss of information about the target dataset, and which their own account fails to enforce. (shrink)

To the classic ontological question "What is the being?", the Ontology of Knowledge (OK) replies: "There is no being in reality. Reality is vacant of form. The knowing subject is Individuation, he is representation, he creates forms." The OK then tries to answer the question "How is the knowing subject led to represent a universe populated by beings in the becoming?" -/- Summary: Reality is pure logical interdependence, immanent, formless, unspeakable. Logos is a principle of order in this interdependence. Individuation (...) is the necessary asymptote of any instance of the Logos. Each knowing subject is Individuation, a mode of order among infinites of infinites of possible modes of order. Everything that appears to the subject as Existing participates in his Individuation. This convergence into Individuation defines a perspective that gives meaning. The subject is representation. It is in this representation that exist the subject, objects and laws of the world. Without subject there are no objects, no laws, no framework. The representation is not isomorphism but morphogenesis. The physical world and the Spirit have the same logical nature: they are categories of representation. The representation is animated because meaning is an Act. Representation is limited by a horizon of meaning. Below this horizon the subject represents the universe and itself. Beyond this horizon there is no prevailing space, time or form. The predicate expresses, beyond the horizon of meaning, a necessity whose source is beyond this horizon, unfathomable. The OK is neither materialism nor idealism and frees itself from any psychological preconceptions. The OK does not propose an "other reality" than that described by common sense or science, but another mode of representation. The OK is compatible with the current state of science, while offering new interpretive avenues. The OK differs from ontic structural realism (OSR) in various ways: Just like being, the relationship is representation, The knowing subject is present in any representation, the real is non-founded. (shrink)

A reality may be defined incompletely as a perpetuating pattern of relations. This definition denies the name of reality to an utter and totalistic patternlessness, like a primal patternless stuff, because a patternless all-ness would be indistinguishable from a patternless nothingness. If reality began from a chaos or patternless stuff, it became a reality only when it became patterned. If there are orders of reality with perpetuating relations between them, as in Cartesian interactive substance dualism, the definition allows us to (...) say that these orders belong to a common reality by virtue of those relations. However, the definition is silent on the question of whether reality is ultimately pluralistic. Some suggestions are made about the possibility of stuffless patterns, including those of the physical world, but the definition is not dependent on the possibility of stufflessness. (shrink)

This essay examines how, in the early twentieth century, ontological arguments were employed in the defense of metaphysical idealism. The idealists of the period tended to grant that ontological arguments defy our usual expectations in logic, and so they were less concerned with the formal properties of Anselmian arguments. They insisted, however, that ontological arguments are indispensable, and they argued that we can trust argumentation as such only if we presume that there is a valid ontological argument. In the first (...) section I outline the history of this metalogical interpretation of the ontological argument. In the subsequent sections I explain how Royce and Collingwood each developed the argument, and how this impacted their respective conceptions of both logic and metaphysics. (shrink)

Zero and one is circumference and diameter. Literally. And, figuratively.

Summarizing the historical background and characteristics of the present, it should be noted that they are significantly different from the characteristics of the world where past generations lived, which undoubtedly poses new challenges for the human ability to withstand the growing pressure of stress factors. The article considers the problems of psychological resilience and fragility in terms of Existential-analytical psychotherapy of V. Frankl and A. Langle, analyzes the historical context of the present-day Ukraine, external and internal characteristics of the modern (...) world, identifies the role of personality in overcoming negative stress influences, proposes a therapeutic model of optimization of psychological resilience in the context of four fundamental existential motivations. The analysis of recent research indicates that the most important resource of psychological resilience lies on the personal level. Using the Existential-Analytical concept of personality structure (Dr. A. Leangle), the article analyzes the preconditions of the emergence of a threat to loss of integrity in each of the four fundamental existential dimensions. On the other hand, stability is ensured by the full realization of being in the following existential dimensions: relations with the world, which requires space, protection, and support; a relationship with life, a deep feeling that life is good; interconnection with oneself, awareness and respect for their own authenticity and uniqueness, which requires honest and attentive attitudes, recognition of their own values; relationships with the meaning -- awareness of the value and potential of one’s own live, the search for the ways to realize its meaningful integrity. (shrink)

Emergence is much discussed by both philosophers and scientists. But, as noted by Mitchell (2012), there is a significant gulf; philosophers and scientists talk past each other. We contend that this is because philosophers and scientists typically mean different things by emergence, leading us to distinguish being emergence and pattern emergence. While related to distinctions offered by others between, for example, strong/weak emergence or epistemic/ontological emergence (Clayton, 2004, pp. 9–11), we argue that the being vs. pattern distinction better captures what (...) the two groups are addressing. In identifying pattern emergence as the central concern of scientists, however, we do not mean that pattern emergence is of no interest to philosophers. Rather, we argue that philosophers should attend to, and even contribute to, discussions of pattern emergence. But it is important that this discussion be distinguished, not conflated, with discussions of being emergence. In the following section we explicate the notion of being emergence and show how it has been the focus of many philosophical discussions, historical and contemporary. In section 3 we turn to pattern emergence, briefly presenting a few of the ways it figures in the discussions of scientists (and philosophers of science who contribute to these discussions in science). Finally, in sections 4 and 5, we consider the relevance of pattern emergence to several central topics in philosophy of biology: the emergence of complexity, of control, and of goal-directedness in biological systems. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger devotes extensive discussion to medieval philosophers, particularly to their treatment of Truth and Being. On both these topics, Heidegger accuses them of forgetting the question of Being and of being responsible for subjugating truth to the modern crusade for certainty: ‘truth is denied its own mode of being’ and is subordinated ‘to an intellect that judges correctly’. Though there are some studies that discuss Heidegger’s debt to and criticism of medieval thought, particularly that of Thomas Aquinas, there is (...) no constructive reply to his assertions. As a result, Heidegger’s critique had an unprecedented effect on the credibility of medieval philosophy, whereby great portions of the philosophical community dismiss it altogether as an illegitimate Onto‐Theology. It is the aim of this study to offer a constructive reply that will fundamentally grapple with these allegations. By constructive reply we mean not only a reply that avoids the problems Heidegger raises regarding existence, essence and truth, but more importantly, one that uses Heidegger’s criticism in order to present a more insightful account of these notions. The present study is composed of two parts where the second serves as a sort of addendum. The first part, the core of this study, is an attempt to develop an understanding of the distinction between essence and existence that, on the one hand, accords with Heidegger’s criticism while on the other hand advances our understanding of how we think and understand reality. After presenting Heidegger’s depiction of Aquinas’s distinction between essence and existence (esse) as a real distinction, the study will present several views propounded by scholars of Aquinas regarding the status of this distinction. It will be argued that it is not clear whether the distinction is real, formal or conceptual, and that different types of distinction are applied in different places, particularly in regard to the phantasm that Aquinas considers essential to the human act of thinking. The second part diverges from the first part and focuses on Heidegger’s criticism of Aquinas’s conception of truth as adequation, i.e., what it is that grounds the possibility of truth as adequation. This divergence is necessary in order to present a full metaphysical response to Heidegger’s criticism. Since the aim of the present study is to argue that Aquinas’s philosophical system can contend with Heidegger’s criticism, a partial reply would greatly diminish its effectiveness. (shrink)

The paper contains an overview of the most important results presented in the monograph of the author "Teorie Językow Syntaktycznie-Kategorialnych" ("Theories of Syntactically-Categorial Languages" (in Polish), PWN, Warszawa-Wrocław 1985. In the monograph four axiomatic systems of syntactically-categorial languages are presented. The first two refer to languages of expression-tokens. The others also takes into consideration languages of expression-types. Generally, syntactically-categorial languages are languages built in accordance with principles of the theory of syntactic categories introduced by S. Leśniewski [1929,1930]; they are connected (...) with- the Ajdukiewicz’s work [1935] which was a continuation of Leśniewski’s idea and further developed and popularized in the research on categorial grammars, by Y. Bar-Hillel [1950,1953,1964]. To assign a suitable syntactic category to each word of the vocabulary is the main idea of syntactically-categorial approach to language. Compound expressions are built from the words of the vocabulary and then a suitable syntactic-category is assigned to each of them. A language built in this way should be decidable, which means that there should exist an algorithm for deciding about each expression of it, whether it is well-formed or is syntactically connected . The traditional, originating from Husserl, understanding of the syntactic category confronts some difficulties. This notion is defined by abstraction using the concept of affiliation of two expressions to the same syntactic category. (shrink)

The Special Composition Question may be formulated as follows: for any xs whatsoever, what are the metaphysically necessary and jointly sufficient conditions in virtue of which there is a y such that those xs compose y? But what is the scope of the sought after explanation? Should an answer merely explain compositional facts, or should it explain certain ontological facts as well? On one natural reading, the question seeks an explanation of both the compositional facts and the ontological; the question (...) seeks to explain how composite objects exist; how there is a y such that the xs compose y. But it turns out that some answers to the Special Composition Question presuppose those ontological facts rather than explain those ontological facts. In this paper, I will indicate what I take to be the different explanatory demands met by the representative answers. I will argue that the wide scope explanatory demands can’t be satisfied. I will also show that this result has bearing on the current debate about composition. (shrink)

Aristotle’s philosophy is considered with respect to one central concept of his philosophy, viz. opposition. Far from being a mere side-effect of syllogistic, it is argued in the present paper that opposition helps to articulate ontology and logic through an account of what can be or cannot be in a systematic and structural way. The paper is divided into three main parts. In Section I, the notion of Being is scrutinized through Aristotle’s theory of categories. In Section II, the notion (...) of Non-Being is connected to Aristotle’s theory of oppositions. In Section III, the notion of essence is revisited in order to bring about a holist theory of meaning by individuating through opposite properties. In conclusion, the legacy of Aristotle is depicted as balanced between a powerful reflection around Being and a restrictive ontology of substance. (shrink)

This thesis articulates an analytic version of the ontology of idealism, according to which universal phenomenal consciousness is all there ultimately is, everything else in nature being reducible to patterns of excitation of this consciousness. The thesis’ key challenge is to explain how the seemingly distinct conscious inner lives of different subjects—such as you and me—can arise within this fundamentally unitary phenomenal field. Along the way, a variety of other challenges are addressed, such as: how we can reconcile idealism with (...) the fact that we all inhabit a common external world; why this world unfolds independently of our personal volition or imagination; why there are such tight correlations between measured patterns of brain activity and reports of experience; etc. The core idea of this thesis can be summarized thus: we, as well as all other living organisms, are dissociated alters of universal phenomenal consciousness, analogously to how a person with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) manifests multiple disjoint centers of subjectivity also called ‘alters.’ We, and all other living organisms, are surrounded by the transpersonal phenomenal activity of universal consciousness, which unfolds beyond the dissociative boundary of our respective alter. The inanimate world we perceive around us is the extrinsic appearance—i.e. the phenomenal image imprinted from across our dissociative boundary—of this activity. The living organisms we share the world with are the extrinsic appearances of other alters. (shrink)

Quine's views on ontology and naturalism are well-known but rarely considered in tandem. According to my interpretation the connection between them is vital. I read Quine as a global epistemic structuralist. Quine thought we only ever know objects qua solutions to puzzles about significant intersections in observations. Objects are always accessed descriptively, via their roles in our best theory. Quine's Kant lectures contain an early version of epistemic structuralism with uncharacteristic remarks about the mental. Here Quine embraces mitigated anomalous monism, (...) allowing introspection and the availability in principle of full physical descriptions of the perceptual states which get science off the ground. Later versions abandon these ideas. My epistemic-structural interpretation explains why. I argue first-personal introspective access to mental states is incompatible with global epistemic structuralism. (shrink)

This article maintains that Jean-Paul Sartre’s early masterwork, Being and Nothingness, is primarily concerned with developing an original approach to the being of consciousness. Sartre’s ontology resituates the Cartesian cogito in a complete system that provides a new understanding of negation and a dynamic interpretation of human existence. The article examines the role of consciousness, temporality and the relationship between self and others in the light of Sartre’s arguments against “classical” rationalism. The conclusion suggests that Sartre’s departure from modern foundationalism (...) has “postmodern” implications that emerge in the areas of ontology, existential analytics and the ethics of human freedom. (shrink)

Physicalism as a worldview and framework for a mechanistic and materialist science seems not to have integrated the tectonic shift created by the rise of quantum physics with its notion of the personal equation of the observer. Psyche had been deliberately removed from a post-Enlightenment science. This paper explores a post-materialist science within a dual-aspect monist conception of nature in which both the mental and the physical exist in a relationship of complementarity so that they mutually exclude one another and (...) yet are together necessary to explain Reality while being irreducible to one another. Both mind and matter emerge from an underlying holistic domain known as the unus mundus in the Jung-Pauli formulation or as the analogous implicate order in the framing of physicist David Bohm and his colleagues. Kuhnian anomalies such as the role of reflective consciousness in evolution, and phenomena including so-called “near death experiences” (NDEs), are considered from the perspective of dual-aspect monism in conjunction with an emerging evolutionary panentheism. (shrink)

In Objects: Nothing Out of the Ordinary, Daniel Z. Korman defends a view he calls conservatism. Conservatives hold that there are ordinary objects, but no extraordinary objects. But Korman never explicitly characterizes what would qualify an object as ordinary in the relevant sense. We have some paradigm cases of ordinary objects, including tables, dogs, and trees; and we have some paradigm cases of extraordinary objects of sorts familiar from the philosophical literature. Here I attempt to fill this gap, surveying a (...) number of attempts to characterize the commitments of conservatism. All fail. In particular, no specification of what it takes for an object to be ordinary is both plausible and consistent with the conservative verdicts on the paradigms. I argue that this is no coincidence, since it turns out to be implausible in light of the results of settled science to deny the existence of one of Korman's paradigms of an extraordinary object. The upshot is that plausibility requires being a little more liberal than conservatism seems to allow. (shrink)

Ontological pluralism is the view that there are different ways to exist. It is a position with deep roots in the history of philosophy, and in which there has been a recent resurgence of interest. In contemporary presentations, it is stated in terms of fundamental languages: as the view that such languages contain more than one quantifier. For example, one ranging over abstract objects, and another over concrete ones. A natural worry, however, is that the languages proposed by the pluralist (...) are mere notational variants of those proposed by the monist, in which case the debate between the two positions would not seem to be substantive. Jason Turner has given an ingenious response to this worry, in terms of a principle that he calls ‘logical realism’. This paper offers a counter-response on behalf of the ‘notationalist’. I argue that, properly applied, the principle of logical realism is no threat to the claim that the languages in question are notational variants. Indeed, there seems to be every reason to think that they are. (shrink)

The paper provides a review of the collection of scientific works «Williamson on Modality» and contains a brief summary of the main ideas of the articles published in the book.

Unveiled from its latent status of myth, from the dawn of civilization until nowadays mass media culture as a necessary need of power in a world of intrinsic human powerlessness, an existential condition as antithetical to the latter in the very terms of power signifies the grandest possible of human perspectives to inhere within the state of affairs of a Real certainly vast enough to contain it respecting its unfathomable profundity in space and in time. By focusing accordingly on the (...) significance of this term as a leading determination of the Real, and as a most comprehensive category and ontological criterion in respect to which all other possible meanings, both immanent in character and transcendent, are formed and defined, and on its own embodiment in a personified fashion (as until now indistinctly found in Polytheism and in the overhuman myths only), it reveals itself in its dialectically required status of actual ontological human power, and under this form opposes whatever limitation of the hitherto known and considered human. It consequently also redefines the notion of overhuman, which proves to be thus far incomplete ontologically as still bound to an existential context of ontic impotence (Nietzsche). (shrink)

in recent years, the research on Schopenhauer has shown a change in the interpretation of his main work, «The World as Will and Presentation», from (1) a normative and linear instruction which guides the reader from idealism to mysticism, pessimism and nothingness to (2) value-free and independent descriptions of the world with all phenomena (like idealism, mysticism, nothingness etc.) in it. thus Schopenhauer’s main work has become an empirical or baconian approach—something like a «philosophical cosmography»—. this fundamental change of interpretation (...) radically puts into question what Schopenhauer means by characterizing his main work as an «organic system». the present paper attempts to give an answer to this question, reviewing the self-reflexive, methodological and metaphilosophical hints which Schopenhauer gives in the first volume of his «World» («as Will and presentation»). (shrink)

Kant said that existence is not a predicate and Russell agreed, arguing that a sentence such as ‘The king of France exists’, which seems to attribute existence to the king of France, really has a logical form that is not reflected in the surface structure of the sentence at all. While the surface form of the sentence consists of a subject and a predicate, the underlying logical form, according to Russell, is the formula given in. This formula obviously has no (...) subjectpredicate form and in fact has no single constituent that corresponds to the verb phrase ‘exists’ in the surface sentence. ∃x∀y The importance of Russell’s analysis becomes clear when we consider ‘The king of France does not exist’. If this sentence would attribute non-existence to the king it should entail that there is someone who does not exist, just as ‘Mary doesn’t like bananas’ entails that there is someone who doesn’t like bananas. Thus the idea that all sentences have subject-predicate form has led some philosophers to the view that there are objects that lack existence. This embarrassing position can be avoided once Russell’s analysis is accepted: if ‘The king of France does not exist’ is formalised as the negation of formula, no unwanted consequences follow. (shrink)

The Bohr Einstein debate on the meaning of quantum physics involved Einstein inventing a series of thought experiments to challenge the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum physics. Einstein disliked many aspects of the Copenhagen Interpretation especially its idea of an observer dependent universe. Bohr was able to answer all Einstein’s objections to the Copenhagen Interpretation and so is usually considered as winning the debate. However the debate has continued into the present time as many scientists have been unable to accept the (...) idea of an observer dependent universe and many alternatives to the Copenhagen Interpretation have been proposed. However none of the alternatives has won general acceptance because all have problems that make them implausible or impossible. (shrink)

Several alternatives vie today for recognition as the most plausible ontology, from physicalism to panpsychism. By and large, these ontologies entail that physical structures circumscribe consciousness by bearing phenomenal properties within their physical boundaries. The ontology of idealism, on the other hand, entails that all physical structures are circumscribed by consciousness in that they exist solely as phenomenality in the first place. Unlike the other alternatives, however, idealism is often considered implausible today, particularly by analytic philosophers. A reason for this (...) is the strong intuition that an objective world transcending phenomenality is a self-evident fact. Other arguments—such as the dependency of phenomenal experience on brain function, the evidence for the existence of the universe before the origin of conscious life, etc.—are also often cited. In this essay, I will argue that these objections against the plausibility of idealism are false. As such, this essay seeks to show that idealism is an entirely plausible ontology. (shrink)

I argue for an idealist ontology consistent with empirical observations, which seeks to explain the facts of nature more parsimoniously than physicalism and bottom-up panpsychism. This ontology also attempts to offer more explanatory power than both physicalism and bottom-up panpsychism, in that it does not fall prey to either the ‘hard problem of consciousness’ or the ‘subject combination problem’, respectively. It can be summarized as follows: spatially unbound consciousness is posited to be nature’s sole ontological primitive. We, as well as (...) all other living organisms, are dissociated alters of this unbound consciousness. The universe we see around us is the extrinsic appearance of phenomenality surrounding—but dissociated from—our alter. The living organisms we share the world with are the extrinsic appearances of other dissociated alters. As such, the challenge to artificially create individualized consciousness becomes synonymous with the challenge to artificially induce abiogenesis. (shrink)