Theodore Sider has argued that while there are some philosophical debates about which there is no fact of the matter, debates in normative ethics are likely not among them. This essay investigates a possible counterexample: the debate about so-called dirty hands. The essay first surveys several cases where No-Fact-of-the-Matter (NFM) claims have been made. Taking its cue from these cases, it then outlines two strategies that factualists about some domain can take, as well as two non-factualist counter strategies. Next, it (...) shows how an NFM claim can be defended for the debate about dirty hands. Finally, it argues that this NFM claim is at least as, if not more, plausible for normative ethics as it is for the other instances where NFM claims have been made. (shrink)

An extensive exploration of the special properties of ‘exist’ is here undertaken. Two of several results are: Denying that `exist’ has associated with it a set of necessary and sufficient conditions has seemed to a number of philosophers to imply metaphysical nihilism . This is because it has seemed that without such conditions the target domain of `existence’ is arbitrarily open. I show this is wrong. Second, my analysis sheds light on the puzzling question of what we are asking when (...) we ask of something, `Does it exist?’ and mean that question in an ontically relevant way. (shrink)

Philosophers are very fond of making non-factualist claims—claims to the effect that there is no fact of the matter as to whether something is the case. But can these claims be coherently stated in the context of classical logic? Some care is needed here, we argue, otherwise one ends up denying a tautology or embracing a contradiction. In the end, we think there are only two strategies available to someone who wants to be a non-factualist about something, and remain within (...) the province of classical logic. But one of these strategies is rather controversial, and the other requires substantially more work than is often supposed. Being a non-factualist is no easy business, and it may not be the most philosophically perspicuous way to go. (shrink)

I dub a certain central tradition in philosophy of language (and mind) the de re tradition. Compelling thought experiments show that in certain common cases the truth conditions for thoughts and public-language expressions categorically turn on external objects referred to, rather than on linguistic meanings and/or belief assumptions. However, de re phenomena in language and thought occur even when the objects in question don't exist. Call these empty de re phenomena. Empty de re thought with respect to numeration is explored (...) in this paper, and such thought with respect to hallucinations is touched on. (shrink)

We consider the claim by Dorato and Morganti 591–610) that primitive individuality should be attributed to the entities dealt with by non-relativistic quantum mechanics. There are two central ingredients in the proposal: in the case of non-relativistic quantum mechanics, individuality should be taken as a primitive notion and primitive individuality is naturalistically acceptable. We argue that, strictly understood, naturalism faces difficulties in helping to provide a theory with a unique principle of individuation. We also hold that even when taken in (...) a loose sense, naturalism does not provide any sense in which one could hold that quantum mechanics endorses primitive individuality over non-individuality. Rather, we argue that non-individuality should be preferred based on the grounds that such a view fits better the claims of the theory. (shrink)

Jody Azzouni argues that whilst it is indeterminate what the criteria for existence are, there is a criterion that has been collectively adopted to use ‘exist’ that we can employ to argue for positions in ontology. I raise and defend a novel objection to Azzouni: his view has the counterintuitive consequence that the facts regarding what exists can and will change when users of the word ‘exist’ change what criteria they associate with its usage. Considering three responses, I argue Azzouni (...) has best reason to take one that ultimately renders unsuccessful his arguments against mathematical abstracta. (shrink)

The indispensability argument for abstract mathematical entities has been an important issue in the philosophy of mathematics. The argument relies on several assumptions. Some objections have been made against these assumptions, but there are several serious defects in these objections. Ameliorating these defects leads to a new anti-realistic philosophy of mathematics, mainly: first, in mathematical applications, what really exist and can be used as tools are not abstract mathematical entities, but our inner representations that we create in imagining abstract mathematical (...) entities; second, the thoughts that we create in imagining infinite mathematical entities are bounded by external conditions. (shrink)

In a well-functioning democracy, must citizens regard one another as political equals, despite ongoing disagreements about normatively significant questions of public policy. A conception of civility is needed to supply citizens with a common sense of the rules of political engagement. By adhering to the norms of civility, deeply divided citizens can still assure one another of their investment in democratic politics. Noting well-established difficulties with the very idea of civility, this essay raises a more fundamental problem. Any conception of (...) civility faces the problem of semantic descent, the phenomenon by which second-order norms devolve into tools for conducting first-order disputes. The problem of incivility in politics thus is not simply that of designing a suitably inclusive view of what civility demands. It might be that political civility can be cultivated only by way of interactions that are themselves not at all political. (shrink)

I identify a set of interlocking views that became (and still are) very influential within philosophy in the wake of Newton’s success. These views use the authority of natural philosophy/mechanics to settle debates within philosophy. I label these “Newton’s Challenge.”.

This paper argues that, contrary to the views of Nancy Cartwright and Brian Ellis, explanations are factive: if a statement is taken to be an explanation, it also has to be accepted as true. Taking explanations to be true, in turn, seems to imply that all the entities posited in explanations are real. But this is precisely what some philosophers, such as Cartwright and Ellis, want to deny. What these philosophers do not want to deny, however, is that such statements (...) do explain. As a result, they see themselves forced to reject the facticity of explanation, a strategy that is unacceptable in my view. In order to avoid the further conclusion that all of the entities explanations posit exist, I propose to separate truth from ontology: explanations can be true, but the truth of these explanations alone does not commit us to the entities that these explanations posit. To determine where the ontological commitments of our statements lie, we must instead start with a criterion (a necessary and sufficient condition) for what exists. For instance, if all and only entities with causal powers are real, then this tells us that the only entities our true statements are committed to are entities with causal powers. (shrink)

Yet, he also says that it is philosophically indeterminate which criterion for what exists is correct. Nominalism is the view that certain objects ( i.e ., abstract objects) do not exist, and not the view that it is philosophically indeterminate whether or not they do. I resolve the dilemma that Azzouni's claims pose: Azzouni is a non-factualist about what exists, but he is a factualist about which criterion for what exists our community of speakers has adopted. It is in the (...) latter sense only that Azzouni can call himself a nominalist. My thanks to Jody Azzouni and to an anonymous referee for helpful suggestions. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

This paper concerns a fundamental dispute in ontology between the “Foundational Ontologist”, who believes that there is only one correct way of characterizing what there is, and the ontological “Skeptic”, who believes that there are viable alternative characterizations of what there is. I examine in detail an intriguing recent proposal in Dorr (2005), which promises to yield (i) a way of interpreting the Skeptic by means of a counterfactual semantics; and (ii) a way of converting the Skeptic to a position (...) within Foundational Ontology, viz., that of Nihilism (according to which nothing composes anything and the world consists of mereological simples); this alleged conversion crucially turns on a novel notion of “metaphysical analyticity”. I argue that both components of Dorr’s proposal are problematic in central ways: as a result, the Foundational Ontologist gains an indirect argument against the coherence of the Skeptic’s position; and the non-Nihilist Foundational Ontologist may feel confirmed in his doubts towards the Nihilist outlook. (shrink)

We articulate a distinction between ontology, understood as involving existence questions, and metaphysics, understood as either providing for metaphysical profiles of entities or else as dealing with fundamentality and/or grounding and dependence questions. The distinction, we argue, allows a better understanding of the roles of metaontology and metametaphysics when it comes to discussing the relations between ontology and science on the one hand, and metaphysics and science on the other. We argue that while ontology, as understood in this paper, may (...) have reasonable perspectives for naturalization, given its relation to science, the same cannot be said for metaphysics, given that it is typically understood as an additional theoretical layer over science, not participating in the scientific investigation. That may result either in skepticism over metaphysics, or else on accepting that metaphysics is an autonomous branch of investigation, depending on one’s concern for metaphysics. (shrink)

When we use a directly referential expression to denote an object, do we incur an ontological commitment to that object, as Russell and Barcan Marcus held? Not according to Quine, whose regimented language has only variables as denoting expressions, but no constants to model direct reference. I make a case for a more liberal conception of ontological commitment—more wide-ranging than Quine’s—which allows for commitment to individuals, with an improved logical language of regimentation. The reason for Quine’s prohibition on commitment to (...) individuals, I argue, is that his choice of regimented language is heavily informed by his holist epistemology, in which objects are introduced via a description of their explanatory role. But non-holists can coherently attempt to commit to individuals using directly referential expressions, modelled in a formal language as constants. While holding on to the insight that a logical language is a helpful medium for ontology, I propose instead a more permissive language of regimentation, one expanded to permit the use of constants to record attempts to commit to individuals, which allows us to make sense of non-holist theories with alternative name-based or name-and-variable-based criteria of ontological commitment as well as Quinean theories. (shrink)

The indispensability argument for abstract mathematical entities has been an important issue in the philosophy of mathematics. The argument relies on several assumptions. Some objections have been made against these assumptions, but there are several serious defects in these objections. Ameliorating these defects leads to a new anti-realistic philosophy of mathematics, mainly: first, in mathematical applications, what really exist and can be used as tools are not abstract mathematical entities, but our inner representations that we create in imagining abstract mathematical (...) entities; second, the thoughts that we create in imagining infinite mathematical entities are bounded by external conditions. (shrink)

That certain paper bills have monetary value, that Vladimir Putin is the president of Russia, and that Prince Philip is the husband of Queen Elizabeth II: such facts are commonly called ‘institutional facts’. IFF are, by definition, facts that exist by virtue of collective recognition. The standard view or tacit belief is that such facts really exist. In this paper we argue, however, that they really do not—they really are just well-established illusions. We confront realism about IFF with six criteria (...) of existence, three established and three less so but highly intuitive. We argue that they all tell against the existence of IFF. An obvious objection to IFF non-realism is that since people’s behaviour clearly reflects the existence of IFF, denying their existence leaves an explanatory gap. We reject this argument by introducing a variant of the so-called ‘Thomas Theorem,’ which says that when people collectively recognize a fact as existing, they largely behave accordingly, regardless of whether that fact really exists or not. (shrink)

Quinean Ontological Naturalism addresses the question “What is there?” Advocates of the view maintain that we can answer this question by applying Quine’s criterion of ontological commitment to our best scientific theories. In this paper, I discuss two major objections that are commonly offered to this view, what I call the “Paraphrase Objection” and “First Philosophy Objection”. I argue that these objections arise from a common uncharitable characterization of the Quinean Ontological Naturalist’s project that fails to distinguish two distinct roles (...) for Quine’s Criterion, a descriptive role and a normative role. The objections target the descriptive role, but only the normative role is important to Quinean Ontological Naturalism. (shrink)

One of the most influential arguments for realism about mathematical objects is the indispensability argument. Simply put, this is the argument that insofar as we are committed to the existence of the physical objects existentially quantified over in our best scientific theories, we are also committed to the mathematical objects existentially quantified over in these theories. Following the Quine–Putnam formulation of the indispensability argument, some proponents of the indispensability argument have made the mistake of taking confirmational holism to be an (...) essential premise of the argument. In this paper, I consider the reasons philosophers have taken confirmational holism to be essential to the argument and argue that, contrary to the traditional view, confirmational holism is dispensable. (shrink)

There is growing debate about what is the correct methodology for research in the ontology of artworks. In the first part of this essay, I introduce my view: I argue that semantic descriptivism is a semantic approach that has an impact on meta-ontological views and can be linked with a hermeneutic fictionalist proposal on the meta-ontology of artworks such as works of music. In the second part, I offer a synthetic presentation of the four main positive meta-ontological views that have (...) been defended in philosophical literature about artworks and of some criticisms that can be lodged against them: Amie Thomasson’s global descriptivism, Andrew Kania’s local descriptivism, Julian Dodd’s folk-theoretic modesty, and David Davies’ rational accountability view. In the conclusion, I show the advantages of my view. (shrink)

The thesis proposes, defends, and applies a new model of inter-theoretic reduction, called "Neo-Nagelian" reduction. There are numerous accounts of inter-theoretic reduction in the philosophy of science literature but the most well-known and widely-discussed is the Nagelian one. In the thesis I identify various kinds of problems which the Nagelian model faces. Whilst some of these can be resolved, pressing ones remain. In lieu of the Nagelian model, other models of inter-theoretic reduction have been proposed, chief amongst which are so-called (...) "New Wave" models. I show these to be no more adequate than the original Nagelian model. I propose a new model of inter-theoretic reduction, Neo-Nagelian reduction. This model is structurally similar to the Nagelian one, but differs in substantive ways. In particular I argue that it avoids the problems pertaining to both the Nagelian and New Wave models. Multiple realizability looms large in discussions about reduction: it is claimed that multiply realizable properties frustrate the reduction of one theory to another in various ways. I consider these arguments and show that they do not undermine the Neo-Nagelian of reduction of one theory to another. Finally, I apply the model to statistical mechanics. Statistical mechanics is taken to be a reductionist enterprise: one of the aims of statistical mechanics is to reduce thermodynamics. Without an adequate model of inter-theoretic reduction one cannot assess whether it succeeds; I use the Neo-Nagelian model to critically discuss whether it does. Specifically, I consider two very recent derivations of the Second Law of thermodynamics, one from Boltzmannian classical statistical mechanics and another from quantum statistical mechanics. I argue that they are partially successful, and that each makes for a promising line of future research. (shrink)

Disagreement over what exists is so fundamental that it tends to hinder or even to block dialogue among disputants. The various controversies between believers and atheists, or realists and nominalists, are only two kinds of examples. Interested in contributing to the intelligibility of the debate on ontology, in 1939 Willard van Orman Quine began a series of works which introduces the notion of ontological commitment and proposes an allegedly objective criterion to identify the exact conditions under which a theoretical discourse (...) signals an assumption of existence. I intend to present the concept of ontological commitment and the Quinean criterion, to expose and evaluate some of the many criticisms to which the criterion has subject and to situate it in the context of Quine’s philosophy. As a product of such analyses, I hope to contribute to the discussion on the application and relevance of the notion of ontological commitment. (shrink)

This dissertation is centered around a set of apparently conflicting intuitions that we may have about mathematics. On the one hand, we are inclined to believe that the theorems of mathematics are true. Since many of these theorems are existence assertions, it seems that if we accept them as true, we also commit ourselves to the existence of mathematical objects. On the other hand, mathematical objects are usually thought of as abstract objects that are non-spatiotemporal and causally inert. This makes (...) it difficult to understand how we can have knowledge of them and how they can have any relevance for our mathematical theories. I begin by characterizing a realist position in the philosophy of mathematics and discussing two of the most influential arguments for that kind of view. Next, after highlighting some of the difficulties that realism faces, I look at a few alternative approaches that attempt to account for our mathematical practice without making the assumption that there exist abstract mathematical entities. More specifically, I examine the fictionalist views developed by Hartry Field, Mark Balaguer, and Stephen Yablo, respectively. A common feature of these views is that they accept that mathematics interpreted at face value is committed to the existence of abstract objects. In order to avoid this commitment, they claim that mathematics, when taken at face value, is false. I argue that the fictionalist idea of mathematics as consisting of falsehoods is counter-intuitive and that we should aim for an account that can accommodate both the intuition that mathematics is true and the intuition that the causal inertness of abstract mathematical objects makes them irrelevant to mathematical practice and mathematical knowledge. The solution that I propose is based on Rudolf Carnap's distinction between an internal and an external perspective on existence. I argue that the most reasonable interpretation of the notions of mathematical truth and existence is that they are internal to mathematics and, hence, that mathematical truth cannot be used to draw the conclusion that mathematical objects exist in an external/ontological sense. (shrink)