Switch to: References

Citations of:

Composition as a fiction

In Richard Gale (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Metaphysics. Blackwell. pp. 151--174 (2002)

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. Science and the special composition question.Andrew Brenner - 2018 - Synthese 195 (2):657-678.
    Mereological nihilism is the thesis that composition never occurs. Some philosophers have thought that science gives us compelling evidence against nihilism. In this article I respond to this concern. An initial challenge for nihilism stems from the fact that composition is such a ubiquitous feature of scientific theories. In response I motivate a restricted form of scientific anti-realism with respect to those components of scientific theories which make reference to composition. A second scientifically based worry for nihilism is that certain (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  • Emergence for Nihilists.Richard L. J. Caves - 2018 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 99 (1):2-28.
    I defend mereological nihilism, the view that there are no composite objects, against a challenge from ontological emergence, the view that some things have properties that are ‘something over and above’ the properties of their parts. As the nihilist does not believe in composite wholes, there is nothing in the nihilist's ontology to instantiate emergent properties – or so the challenge goes. However, I argue that some simples can collectively instantiate an emergent property, so the nihilist's ontology can in fact (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • Fictionalism.Fiora Salis - 2015 - Online Companion to Problems in Analytic Philosophy.
    In this entry I will offer a survey of the contemporary debate on fic- tionalism, which is a distinctive anti-realist view about certain regions of discourse that are valued for their usefulness rather than their truth.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Restricted Diachronic Composition and Special Relativity.Stephan Torre - 2015 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 66 (2):235-255.
    When do objects at different times compose a further object? This is the question of diachronic composition. The universalist answers, ‘under any conditions whatsoever’. Others argue for restrictions on diachronic composition: composition occurs only when certain conditions are met. Recently, some philosophers have argued that restrictions on diachronic compositions are motivated by our best physical theories. In Persistence and Spacetime and elsewhere, Yuri Balashov argues that diachronic compositions are restricted in terms of causal connections between object stages. In a recent (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • (1 other version)Causally Redundant Social Objects: Rejoinder to Elder-Vass.Tobias Hansson Wahlberg - 2014 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 44 (6):798-809.
    In Elder-Vass’s response to my it is maintained: that a social object is not identical with but is merely composed of its suitably interrelated parts; that a social object is necessarily indistinguishable in terms of its causal capacities from its interrelated parts; and that ontological individualism lacks an adequate ontological justification. In this reply, I argue that in view of the so-called redescription principle defended by Elder-Vass ought to be reformulated and renamed; that the conjunction of and renders social objects (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • Saving Mental Fictionalism from Cognitive Collapse.Meg Wallace - 2016 - Res Philosophica 93 (2):405-424.
    Mental fictionalism maintains that: (1) folk psychology is a false theory, but (2) we should nonetheless keep using it, because it is useful, convenient, or otherwise beneficial to do so. We should (or do) treat folk psychology as a useful fiction—false, but valuable. Yet some argue that mental fictionalism is incoherent: if a mental fictionalist rejects folk psychology then she cannot appeal to fictions in an effort to keep folk psychological discourse around, because fictions presuppose the legitimacy of folk psychology. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • Fictionalism and the incompleteness problem.Lukas Skiba - 2017 - Synthese 194 (4):1349-1362.
    Modal fictionalists face a problem that arises due to their possible-world story being incomplete in the sense that certain relevant claims are neither true nor false according to it. It has recently been suggested that this incompleteness problem generalises to other brands of fictionalism, such as fictionalism about composite or mathematical objects. In this paper, I argue that these fictionalist positions are particularly threatened by a generalised incompleteness problem since they cannot emulate the modal fictionalists’ most attractive response. I then (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Hierarchical Propositions.Bruno Whittle - 2017 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 46 (2):215-231.
    The notion of a proposition is central to philosophy. But it is subject to paradoxes. A natural response is a hierarchical account and, ever since Russell proposed his theory of types in 1908, this has been the strategy of choice. But in this paper I raise a problem for such accounts. While this does not seem to have been recognized before, it would seem to render existing such accounts inadequate. The main purpose of the paper, however, is to provide a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • Truth, Hierarchy and Incoherence.Bruno Whittle - 2017 - In Bradley P. Armour-Garb (ed.), Reflections on the Liar. Oxford, England: Oxford University.
    Approaches to truth and the Liar paradox seem invariably to face a dilemma: either appeal to some sort of hierarchy, or declare apparently perfectly coherent concepts incoherent. But since both options lead to severe expressive restrictions, neither seems satisfactory. The aim of this paper is a new approach, which avoids the dilemma and the resulting expressive restrictions. Previous approaches tend to appeal to some new sort of semantic value for the truth predicate to take. I argue that such approaches inevitably (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Composition.Daniel Z. Korman & Chad Carmichael - 2016 - Oxford Handbooks Online.
    When some objects are the parts of another object, they compose that object and that object is composite. This article is intended as an introduction to the central questions about composition and a highly selective overview of various answers to those questions. In §1, we review some formal features of parthood that are important for understanding the nature of composition. In §2, we consider some answers to the question: which pluralities of objects together compose something? As we will see, the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • Presentism and the Triviality Objection.Takeshi Sakon - 2015 - Philosophia 43 (4):1089-1109.
    Presentism is usually understood as the thesis that only the present exists whereas the rival theory of eternalism is usually understood as the thesis that past, present, and future things are all equally real. The significance of this debate has been threatened by the so-called triviality objection, which allegedly shows that the presentist thesis is either trivially true or obviously false: Presentism is trivially true if it is read as saying that everything that exists now is present, and it is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • Desacordo.Teresa Marques - 2015 - Compêndio Em Linha de Problemas de Filosofia Analítica.
    Discordamos sobre todo o tipo de coisas: o que existe, como as coisas funcionam, o que fazer, de que gostamos, etc. Entre os vários tipos de desacordo discutidos em debates filosóficos contemporâneos encontram-se os desacordos irrepreensíveis, os desacordos meramente verbais, e os desacordos entre pares. Os diferentes tipos de desacordo dão lugar a diversos problemas filosóficos. Há filósofos defendem que se o desacordo sobre uma questão é irrepreensível, então talvez não haja verdades objectivas sobre essa questão, e que se um (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Ontology, quantification, and fundamentality.Jason Theodore Turner - unknown
    The structuralist conception of metaphysics holds that it aims to uncover the ultimate structure of reality and explain how the world's richness and variety are accounted for by that ultimate structure. On this conception, metaphysicians produce fundamental theories, the primitive, undefined expressions of which are supposed to 'carve reality at its joints', as it were. On this conception, ontological questions are understood as questions about what there is, where the existential quantifier 'there is' has a fundamental, joint-carving interpretation. Structuralist orthodoxy (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Mereological nihilism and the special arrangement question.Andrew Brenner - 2015 - Synthese 192 (5):1295-1314.
    Mereological nihilism is the thesis that composite objects—objects with proper parts—do not exist. Nihilists generally paraphrase talk of composite objects F into talk of there being “xs arranged F-wise” . Recently several philosophers have argued that nihilism is defective insofar as nihilists are either unable to say what they mean by such phrases as “there are xs arranged F-wise,” or that nihilists are unable to employ such phrases without incurring significant costs, perhaps even undermining one of the chief motivations for (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  • A grounding solution to the grounding problem.Noël B. Saenz - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (8):2193-2214.
    The statue and the lump of clay that constitutes it fail to share all of their kind and modal properties. Therefore, by Leibniz’s Law, the statue is not the lump. Question: What grounds the kind and modal differences between the statue and the lump? In virtue of what is it that the lump of clay, but not the statue, can survive being smashed? This is the grounding problem. Now a number of solutions to the grounding problem require that we substantially (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   25 citations  
  • Existence, Fundamentality, and the Scope of Ontology.Uriah Kriegel - 2015 - Argumenta 1 (1):97-109.
    A traditional conception of ontology takes existence to be its proprietary subject matter—ontology is the study of what exists (§ 1). Recently, Jonathan Schaffer has argued that ontology is better thought of rather as the study of what is basic or fundamental in reality (§ 2). My goal here is twofold. First, I want to argue that while Schaffer’s characterization is quite plausible for some ontological questions, for others it is not (§ 3). More importantly, I want to offer a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Thought and Thing: Brentano's Reism as Truthmaker Nominalism.Uriah Kriegel - 2015 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 90 (3):153-180.
    The ontological theory of the later Franz Brentano is often referred to as ‘reism.’ But what exactly is reism, and how is it related to modern-day nominalism? In this paper, I offer an interpretation of Brentano’s reism as a specific variety of nominalism. This variety, although motivated by distinctly modern concerns about truthmakers, adopts a strategy for providing such truthmakers that is completely foreign to modern nominalism. The strategy rests on proliferation of coincident concrete particulars. For example, ‘Socrates is wise’ (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  • Fundamental and Derivative Truths.J. R. G. Williams - 2010 - Mind 119 (473):103 - 141.
    This article investigates the claim that some truths are fundamentally or really true — and that other truths are not. Such a distinction can help us reconcile radically minimal metaphysical views with the verities of common sense. I develop an understanding of the distinction whereby Fundamentality is not itself a metaphysical distinction, but rather a device that must be presupposed to express metaphysical distinctions. Drawing on recent work by Rayo on anti-Quinean theories of ontological commitments, I formulate a rigourous theory (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   40 citations  
  • Against mereological nihilism.Jonathan Tallant - 2014 - Synthese 191 (7):1511-1527.
    I argue that mereological nihilism fails because it cannot answer the special arrangement question: when is it true that the xs are arranged F-wise? I suggest that the answers given in the literature fail and that the obvious responses that could be made look to undermine the motivations for adopting nihilism in the first place.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   22 citations  
  • (1 other version)How to Talk about Unobservables.F. A. Muller & B. C. van Fraassen - 2008 - Analysis 68 (3):197 - 205.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   17 citations  
  • Folk Mereology is Teleological.David Rose & Jonathan Schaffer - 2017 - Noûs 51 (2):238-270.
    When do the folk think that mereological composition occurs? Many metaphysicians have wanted a view of composition that fits with folk intuitions, and yet there has been little agreement about what the folk intuit. We aim to put the tools of experimental philosophy to constructive use. Our studies suggest that folk mereology is teleological: people tend to intuit that composition occurs when the result serves a purpose. We thus conclude that metaphysicians should dismiss folk intuitions, as tied into a benighted (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   55 citations  
  • Kantian Monism.Uriah Kriegel - 2012 - Philosophical Papers 41 (1):23-56.
    Let ‘monism’ be the view that there is only one basic object—the world. Monists face the question of whether there are also non-basic objects. This is in effect the question of whether the world decomposes into parts. Jonathan Schaffer maintains that it does, Terry Horgan and Matjaž Potrč that it does not. In this paper, I propose a compromise view, which I call ‘Kantian monism.’ According to Kantian monism, the world decomposes into parts insofar as an ideal subject under ideal (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Two Defenses of Common-Sense Ontology.Uriah Kriegel - 2011 - Dialectica 65 (2):177-204.
    In a series of publications, Eli Hirsch has presented a sustained defense of common-sense ontology. Hirsch's argument relies crucially on a meta-ontological position sometimes known as ‘superficialism’. Hirsch's argument from superficialism to common-sense ontology is typically resisted on the grounds that superficialism is implausible. In this paper, I present an alternative argument for common-sense ontology, one that relies on (what I argue is) a much more plausible meta-ontological position, which I call ‘constructivism’. Note well: I will not quite argue that (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • Against Parthood.Theodore Sider - 2013 - Oxford Studies in Metaphysics 8:237–293.
    Mereological nihilism says that there do not exist (in the fundamental sense) any objects with proper parts. A reason to accept it is that we can thereby eliminate 'part' from fundamental ideology. Many purported reasons to reject it - based on common sense, perception, and the possibility of gunk, for example - are weak. A more powerful reason is that composite objects seem needed for spacetime physics; but sets suffice instead.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   200 citations  
  • Monism: The Priority of the Whole.Jonathan Schaffer - 2010 - Philosophical Review 119 (1):31-76.
    Consider a circle and a pair of its semicircles. Which is prior, the whole or its parts? Are the semicircles dependent abstractions from their whole, or is the circle a derivative construction from its parts? Now in place of the circle consider the entire cosmos (the ultimate concrete whole), and in place of the pair of semicircles consider the myriad particles (the ultimate concrete parts). Which if either is ultimately prior, the one ultimate whole or its many ultimate parts?
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   671 citations  
  • The Puzzles of Material Constitution.L. A. Paul - 2010 - Philosophy Compass 5 (7):579-590.
    Monists about material constitution typically argue that when Statue is materially constituted by Clay, Statue is just Clay. Pluralists about material constitution deny that constitution is identity: Statue is not just Clay. When Clay materially constitutes Statue, Clay is not identical to Statue. I discuss three familiar puzzles involving grounding, overdetermination and conceptual issues, and develop three new puzzles stemming from the connection between mereological composition and material constitution: a mereological puzzle, an asymmetry puzzle, and a structural puzzle.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   25 citations  
  • Construction area (no hard hat required).Karen Bennett - 2011 - Philosophical Studies 154 (1):79-104.
    A variety of relations widely invoked by philosophers—composition, constitution, realization, micro-basing, emergence, and many others—are species of what I call ‘building relations’. I argue that they are conceptually intertwined, articulate what it takes for a relation to count as a building relation, and argue that—contra appearances—it is an open possibility that these relations are all determinates of a common determinable, or even that there is really only one building relation.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   174 citations  
  • Philosophical Renegades.Bryan Frances - 2013 - In David Phiroze Christensen & Jennifer Lackey (eds.), The Epistemology of Disagreement: New Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 121-166.
    If you retain your belief upon learning that a large number and percentage of your recognized epistemic superiors disagree with you, then what happens to the epistemic status of your belief? I investigate that theoretical question as well has the applied case of philosophical disagreement—especially disagreement regarding purely philosophical error theories, theories that do not have much empirical support and that reject large swaths of our most commonsensical beliefs. I argue that even if all those error theories are false, either (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   14 citations  
  • Introduction : a guided tour of metametaphysics.David Manley - 2009 - In Ryan Wasserman, David Manley & David Chalmers (eds.), Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
    Metaphysics is concerned with the foundations of reality. It asks questions about the nature of the world, such as: Aside from concrete objects, are there also abstract objects like numbers and properties? Does every event have a cause? What is the nature of possibility and necessity? When do several things make up a single bigger thing? Do the past and future exist? And so on. -/- Metametaphysics is concerned with the foundations of metaphysics. It asks: Do the questions of metaphysics (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   37 citations  
  • Anaxagoras, the Thoroughgoing Infinitist: The Relation between his Teachings on Multitude and on Heterogeneity.Miloš Arsenijević, Saša Popović & Miloš Vuletić - 2019 - European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 15 (1):35-70.
    In the analysis of Anaxagoras’ physics in view of the relation between his teachings on multitude and heterogeneity, two central questions emerge: 1) How can the structure of the universe considered purely mereo-topologically help us explain that at the first cosmic stage no qualitative difference is manifest in spite of the fact that the entire qualitative heterogeneity is supposedly already present there? 2) How can heterogeneity become manifest at the second stage, resulting from the noûs intervention, if according to fragment (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • (1 other version)On the Phenomenon of “Dog‐Wise Arrangement”.Crawford L. Elder - 2007 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 74 (1):132-155.
    An influential line of thought in metaphysics holds that where common sense discerns a tree or a dog or a baseball there may be just many microparticles. Provided the microparticles are arranged in the right way—are “treewise” or “dogwise” or “baseballwise” arranged—our sensory experiences will be just the same as if a tree or dog or baseball were really there. Thereforewhetherthere really are such familiar objects in the world can be decided only by determining whatmoreis needed for microparticles dogwise arranged (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Strange Kinds, Familiar Kinds, and the Charge of Arbitrariness.Daniel Z. Korman - 2010 - Oxford Studies in Metaphysics:119-144.
    Particularists in material-object metaphysics hold that our intuitive judgments about which kinds of things there are and are not are largely correct. One common argument against particularism is the argument from arbitrariness, which turns on the claim that there is no ontologically significant difference between certain of the familiar kinds that we intuitively judge to exist (snowballs, islands, statues, solar systems) and certain of the strange kinds that we intuitively judge not to exist (snowdiscalls, incars, gollyswoggles, the fusion of the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   26 citations  
  • Borderline Simple or Extremely Simple.Katherine Hawley - 2004 - The Monist 87 (3):385-404.
    In his Material Beings, Peter van Inwagen distinguishes two questions about parthood. What are the conditions necessary and sufficient for some things jointly to compose a whole? What are the conditions necessary and sufficient for a thing to have proper parts? The first of these, the Special Composition Question (SCQ), has been widely discussed, and David Lewis has argued that an important constraint on any answer to the SCQ is that it should not permit borderline cases of composition. This is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  • The Reflective Epistemic Renegade.Bryan Frances - 2010 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 81 (2):419 - 463.
    Philosophers often find themselves in disagreement with contemporary philosophers they know full well to be their epistemic superiors on the topics relevant to the disagreement. This looks epistemically irresponsible. I offer a detailed investigation of this problem of the reflective epistemic renegade. I argue that although in some cases the renegade is not epistemically blameworthy, and the renegade situation is significantly less common than most would think, in a troublesome number of cases in which the situation arises the renegade is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   77 citations  
  • Spatial Reasoning and Ontology: Parts, Wholes, and Locations.Achille C. Varzi - 2007 - In Marco Aiello, Ian Pratt-Hartmann & Johan van Benthem (eds.), Handbook of Spatial Logics. Springer Verlag. pp. 945-1038.
    A critical survey of the fundamental philosophical issues in the logic and formal ontology of space, with special emphasis on the interplay between mereology (the theory of parthood relations), topology (broadly understood as a theory of qualitative spatial relations such as continuity and contiguity), and the theory of spatial location proper.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   32 citations  
  • Vagueness, multiplicity and parts.Daniel Nolan - 2006 - Noûs 40 (4):716–737.
    There’s an argument around from so-called “linguistic theories of vagueness”, plus some relatively uncontroversial considerations, to powerful metaphysical conclusions. David Lewis employs this argument to support the mereological principle of unrestricted composition, and Theodore Sider employs a similar argument not just for unrestricted composition but also for the doctrine of temporal parts. This sort of argument could be generalised, to produce a lot of other less palatable metaphysical conclusions. However, arguments to Lewis’s and Sider’s conclusions on the basis of considerations (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   22 citations  
  • Fiction, indifference, and ontology.Matti Eklund - 2005 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 71 (3):557–579.
    In this paper I outline an alternative to hermeneutic fictionalism, an alternative I call indifferentism, with the same advantages as hermeneutic fictionalism with respect to ontological issues but avoiding some of the problems that face fictionalism. The difference between indifferentism and fictionalism is this. The fictionalist about ordinary utterances of a sentence S holds, with more orthodox views, that the speaker in some sense commits herself to the truth of S. It is only that for the fictionalist this is truth (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   30 citations  
  • Possible-worlds semantics without possible worlds: The agnostic approach.John Divers - 2006 - Mind 115 (458):187-226.
    If a possible-worlds semantic theory for modal logics is pure, then the assertion of the theory, taken at face-value, can bring no commitment to the existence of a plurality of possible worlds (genuine or ersatz). But if we consider an applied theory (an application of the pure theory) in which the elements of the models are required to be possible worlds, then assertion of such a theory, taken at face-value, does appear to bring commitment to the existence of a plurality (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Illusions of gunk.J. Robert G. Williams - 2006 - Philosophical Perspectives 20 (1):493–513.
    Worlds where things divide forever ("gunk" worlds) are apparently conceivable. The conceivability of such scenarios has been used as an argument against "nihilist" or "near-nihilist" answers to the special composition question. I argue that the mereological nihilist has the resources to explain away the illusion that gunk is possible.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   55 citations  
  • (1 other version)Change, temporal parts, and the argument from vagueness.Achille C. Varzi - 2005 - Dialectica 59 (4):485–498.
    The so-called "argument from vagueness", the clearest formulation of which is to be found in Ted Sider’s book Four-dimensionalism, is arguably the most powerful and innovative argument recently offered in support of the view that objects are four-dimensional perdurants. The argument is defective--I submit--and in a number of ways that is worth looking into. But each "defect" corresponds to a model of change that is independently problematic and that can hardly be built into the common-sense picture of the world. So (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   28 citations  
  • Plurals.Agustín Rayo - 2007 - Philosophy Compass 2 (3):411–427.
    Forthcoming in Philosophical Compass. I explain why plural quantifiers and predicates have been thought to be philosophically significant.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  • Composition and vagueness.Trenton Merricks - 2005 - Mind 114 (455):615-637.
    ‘Restricted composition’ says that there are some composite objects. And it says that some objects jointly compose nothing at all. The main threat to restricted composition is the influential and widely defended Vagueness Argument. We shall see that the Vagueness Argument fails. In seeing how this argument fails, we shall discover a new focus for the debate over composition's extent.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   62 citations  
  • No objects, no problem?Matthew McGrath - 2005 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 83 (4):457 – 486.
    One familiar form of argument for rejecting entities of a certain kind is that, by rejecting them, we avoid certain difficult problems associated with them. Such problem-avoidance arguments backfire if the problems cited survive the elimination of the rejected entities. In particular, we examine one way problems can survive: a question for the realist about which of a set of inconsistent statements is false may give way to an equally difficult question for the eliminativist about which of a set of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  • Working parts: Reply to Mellor.Robert Williams - 2008 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 62:81-106.
    Two kinds of explanation might be put forward. The first goes like this: the necessary connection between the location of a whole and the location of its parts holds because the location of the whole is nothing but the collective location of its parts. The second style of explanation goes like this: the connection holds because what it is for a material whole to have something as a part, is (perhaps among other things) for the whole to contain the part.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • The contingency of composition.Ross P. Cameron - 2007 - Philosophical Studies 136 (1):99-121.
    There is widespread disagreement as to what the facts are concerning just when a collection of objects composes some further object; but there is widespread agreement that, whatever those facts are, they are necessary. I am unhappy to simply assume this, and in this paper I ask whether there is reason to think that the facts concerning composition hold necessarily. I consider various reasons to think so, but find fault with each of them. I examine the theory of composition as (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   102 citations  
  • Why I am not a dualist.Karen Bennett - 2021 - Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind 1:208-231.
    I argue that dualism does not help assuage the perceived explanatory failure of physicalism. I begin with the claim that a minimally plausible dualism should only postulate a small stock of fundamental phenomenal properties and fundamental psychophysical laws: it should systematize the teeming mess of phenomenal properties and psychophysical correlations. I then argue that it is dialectically odd to think that empirical investigation could not possibly reveal a physicalist explanation of consciousness, and yet can reveal this small stock of fundamental (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Two Physicalist Arguments for Microphysical Manyism.Simon Thunder - forthcoming - Erkenntnis:1-22.
    I here defend microphysical manyism. According to microphysical manyism, each composite or higher-level object is a mere plurality of microphysical particles. After clarifying the commitments of the view, I offer two physicalist-friendly arguments in its favour. The first argument appeals to the Canberra Plan. Here I argue that microphysical particles acting in unison play the theoretical roles associated with composite objects - that they do everything that we think of composite objects as doing - and thus that composite objects are (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • How to minimize ontological commitments: a grounding-reductive approach.Reuben Sass - 2022 - Synthese 200 (4):1-22.
    Some revisionary ontologies are highly parsimonious: they posit far fewer entities than what we quantify over in ordinary discourse. The most radical examples are minimal ontologies, on which physical simples are the only things that exist. Highly parsimonious ontologies, and especially minimal ones, face the challenge of either accounting for the truth of our ordinary quantificational discourse, or paraphrasing such discourse away. Common strategies for addressing this challenge include classical reduction, paraphrase nihilism, and a distinction between ontological and existence commitments. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Naturalism and Moral Realism.James Sias - unknown
    My aim is to challenge recent attempts at reconciling moral realism and naturalism by pushing ethical naturalists into a dilemma. According to one horn of the dilemma, ethical naturalists must either build unique facts and properties about divergent social structures into their subvenient sets of natural facts and properties, and so jeopardize the objectivity of moral truths, or insist, in the face of all possible worlds in which people have different moral beliefs than ours, that they are all mistaken—this despite (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Multi-Descriptional Physicalism, Level(s) of Being, and the Mind-Body Problem.Savvas Ioannou - 2022 - Dissertation, University of St. Andrews
    The main idea of this thesis is multi-descriptional physicalism. According to it, only physical entities are elements of our ontology, and there are different ways to describe them. Higher-level vocabularies (e.g., mental, neurological, biological) truly describe reality. Sentences about higher-level entities are made true by physical entities. Every chapter will develop multi-descriptional physicalism or defend it from objections. In chapter 1, I will propose a new conceptual reductive account that conceptually reduces higher-level entities to physical entities. This conceptual reductive account (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark