I consider the field of aesthetics to be at its most productive and engaging when adopting a broadly philosophically informative approach to its core issues (e.g., shaping and testing putative art theoretic commitments against the relevant standard models employed in philosophy of language, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind) and to be at its most impotent and bewildering when cultivating a philosophically insular character (e.g., selecting interpretative, ontological, or conceptual models solely for fit with pre-fixed art theoretic commitments). For example, when (...) philosophical aesthetics tends toward insularity, we shouldn’t be surprised to find standard art-ontological categories incongruous with those standardly employed in contemporary metaphysics. Of course, when contemporary metaphysics tends to ignore aesthetic and art theoretic concerns, perhaps we likewise shouldn’t be surprised to find the climate of contemporary metaphysics inhospitable for a theory of art. While this may seem to suggest at least a prima facie tension between our basic art theoretic commitments considered from within philosophical aesthetics and our standard ontological commitments considered from without, I think any perceived tension or antagonism largely due to metaphysicians and aestheticians (at least implicitly) assuming there to be but two available methodological positions with respect to the relationship between contemporary metaphysics and philosophical aesthetics (in the relevant overlap areas). I call these two opposing views the Deference View and the Independence View. I argue that either view looks to lead to what I call the Paradox of Standards. (shrink)

Artworks have authors. According to Christy Mag Uidhir, this simple assumption has significant consequences for the ontology of artworks. One such consequence is that artworks cannot be identified with abstract entities: if there are works of art, they are concrete entities. Therefore, one cannot create an abstract work of art. Mag Uidhir presents a novel challenge against abstract creationism, the view that certain kinds of art objects are abstract artifacts. This article has two aims. First, it provides a defense of (...) abstract creationism against Mag Uidhir’s arguments. Second, it argues that creation, even in the case of concrete artifacts, is never purely causal: to create an artifact is to bring about the conditions on which the created object ontologically depends. I conclude that a properly developed account of creation provides a better understanding of the question of how one comes to create an artifact, be it abstract or concrete. (shrink)

Abstract artifacts such as musical works and fictional entities are human creations; they are intentional products of our actions and activities. One line of argument against abstract artifacts is that abstract objects are not the kind of objects that can be created. This is so, it is argued, because abstract objects are causally inert. Since creation requires being caused to exist, abstract objects cannot be created. One common way to refute this argument is to reject the causal inefficacy of abstracta. (...) I argue that creationists should rather reject the principle that creation requires causation. Creation, in my view, is a non-causal relation that can be explained using an appropriate notion of ontological dependence. The existence and the creation of abstract artifacts depend on certain individuals with appropriate intentions, along with events of a certain kind that include but are not limited to creations of certain concrete objects. (shrink)

The structuralist approach represents the relation between a model and physical system as a relation between two mathematical structures. However, since a physical system is _prima facie_ _not_ a mathematical structure, the structuralist approach seemingly fails to represent the fact that science is about concrete, physical reality. In this paper, I take up this _problem of lost reality_ and suggest how it may be solved in a purely structuralist fashion. I start by briefly introducing both the structuralist approach and the (...) problem of lost reality and discussing the various (non-structuralist) solutions that have been proposed in the literature. Following this, I decompose the problem into the _ontological mismatch_ and _specification_ problems. In response to the former, I present a _metascientific dissolution argument_, according to which the difference in kind between mathematical structures and physical systems poses no deep obstacle to the structuralist approach, and consider some upshots of this argument for our views on representation. By way of conclusion, I argue that the metascientific dissolution argument paves the way for a solution to the specification problem as well. (shrink)

Words are indispensable linguistic tools for beings like us. However, there is not much philosophical work done about what words really are. In this paper, I develop a new ontology for words. I argue that words are abstract artifacts that are created to fulfill various kinds of purposes, and words are abstract in the sense that they are not located in space but they have a beginning and may have an end in time given that certain conditions are met. What (...) follows from this two-fold argument is that words, from an ontological point of view, are more like musical works, fictional characters or computer programs, than numbers or sets. (shrink)

Scientific results are often presented as ‘surprising’ as if that is a good thing. Is it? And if so, why? What is the value of surprise in science? Discussions of surprise in science have been limited, but surprise has been used as a way of defending the epistemic privilege of experiments over simulations. The argument is that while experiments can ‘confound’, simulations can merely surprise (Morgan, 2005). Our aim in this paper is to show that the discussion of surprise can (...) be usefully extended to thought experiments and theoretical derivations. We argue that in focusing on these features of scientific practice, we can see that the surprise-confoundment distinction does not fully capture surprise in science. We set out how thought experiments and theoretical derivations can bring about surprises that can be disruptive in a productive way, and we end by exploring how this links with their future fertility. (shrink)

In this essay I shall focus on the adoption of the Semantic Approach by structural realists, including myself, who have done so on the grounds that it wears its structuralist sympathies on its sleeve. Despite this, the SA has been identified as standing in tension with the ontological commitments of the so-called ’ontic’ form of this view and so I shall explore that tension before discussing the usefulness of the SA in framing scientific representation and concluding with a discussion of (...) the implications of the ontological status of theories and models themselves. (shrink)

What is the role of the imagination in scientific practice? Here I focus on the nature and role of invitations to imagine in certain scientific texts as represented by the example of Einstein’s Special Relativity paper from 1905. Drawing on related discussions in aesthetics, I argue, on the one hand, that this role cannot be simply subsumed under ‘supposition’ but that, on the other, concerns about the impact of genre and symbolism can be dealt with, and hence present no obstacle (...) to regarding imagination as appropriately belief-like. By applying the framework of ‘semi- propositional representations’ and ‘quasi-truth’ to this case I thereby offer a new unitary framework for understanding the epistemology of scientific imagination. (shrink)

In this paper I begin with a recent challenge to the Semantic Approach and identify an underlying assumption, namely that identity conditions for theories should be provided. Drawing on previous work, I suggest that this demand should be resisted and that the Semantic Approach should be seen as a philosophical device that we may use to represent certain features of scientific practice. Focussing on the partial structures variant of that approach, I then consider a further challenge that arises from a (...) concern with the role of idealisations in that practice. I argue that the partial structures approach is capable of meeting this challenge and I conclude with some broader observations about the role of such formal accounts within the philosophy of science. (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)