In the ‘ordinary business of life’, everyone makes claims about what there is. For instance, we say things like: ‘There are some beautiful chairs in my favourite furniture shop’. Within the context of philosophical debate, some philosophers also make claims about what there is. For instance, some ontologists claim that there are chairs; other ontologists claim that there are no chairs. What is the relation between ontologists’ philosophical claims about what there is and ordinary claims about what there is? According (...) to Cian Dorr, ontologists’ claims and denials of existence belong to ‘a sort of professional jargon’. Dorr claims, for example, that ‘There are prime numbers between 20 and 30’ can be used superficially or used fundamentally. Ordinary uses of are superficial: we use the sentence to assert a boring, well-known truth. But in the ontology room, is used fundamentally, to assert that numbers are ‘part of the ultimate furniture of reality’: and this is a substantial metaphysical doctrine, not a boring truth. In this paper, we will show that none of Dorr’s arguments for these claims succeeds. (shrink)

Disposition ascription has been discussed a good deal over the last few decades, as has the revisionary metaphysical view of ordinary, persisting objects known as 'fourdimensionalism'. However, philosophers have not merged these topics and asked whether four-dimensional objects can be proper subjects of dispositional predicates. This paper seeks to remedy this oversight. It argues that, by and large, four-dimensional objects are not suited to take dispositional predicates.

Response to Skiles (2009) on Trogdon (2009) on intrinsic properties and fundamentality.

The paper deals with the semantics and ontology of ordinary discourse about properties. The main focus lies on the following thesis: A simple predication of the form ‘a is F’ is synonymous with the corresponding explicit property-attribution ‘a has F-ness’. An argument against this Synonymy Thesis is put forth which is based on the thesis that simple predications and property-attributions differ in their conditions of understanding. In defending the argument, the paper accounts for the way in which we come to (...) adopt the conceptual framework of properties. (shrink)

I argue that relations between non-collocated spatial entities, between non-identical topological spaces, and between non-identical basic building blocks of space, do not exist. If any spatially located entities are not at the same spatial location, or if any topological spaces or basic building blocks of space are non-identical, I will argue that there are no relations between or among them. The arguments I present are arguments that I have not seen in the literature.

Anderson and Welty have recently advanced an argument for the claim that the laws of logic are ontologically dependent upon a necessarily existent mind, i.e. God. In this paper I argue that a key premise of Anderson and Welty’s argument—viz., a premise which asserts that \(x\) is intrinsically intentional only if \(x\) is mind-dependent—is false, for on a broadly Fregean account of propositions, propositions are intrinsically intentional but not mind-dependent.

The paradox of analysis has been a problem for analytic philosophers at least since Moore’s time, and it is especially significant for those who seek an account of analysis along classical lines. The present paper offers a new solution to the paradox, where a theory of analysis is given where (1) analysandum and analysans are distinct concepts, due to their failing to share the same conceptual form, yet (2) they are related in virtue of satisfying various semantic constraints on the (...) analysis relation. Rather than distinguish between analysandum and analysans by appeal to epistemic considerations, the paper appeals to semantic considerations in giving a candidate account of the identity conditions for concepts. The distinctness of analysandum and analysans then serves to block the paradox in a straightforward way. (shrink)

Two recurrent arguments levelled against the view that enduring objects survive change are examined within the framework of the B-theory of time: the argument from Leibniz's Law and the argument from Instantiation of Incompatible Properties. Both arguments are shown to be question-begging and hence unsuccessful.

The standard approach to the so-called paradoxes of identity has been to argue that these paradoxes do not essentially concern the notion of identity but rather betray misconceptions on our part regarding other metaphysical notions, like that of an object or a property. This paper proposes a different approach by pointing to an ambiguity in the identity predicate and arguing that the concept of identity that figures in many ordinary identity claims, including those that appear in the paradoxes, is not (...) the traditional philosophical concept but one that can be defined in terms of relevant similarity. This approach to the paradoxes will be argued to be superior to the standard one. (shrink)

In the first part ("Determination"), I consider different notions of determination, contrast and compare modal with non-modal accounts and then defend two a-modality theses concerning essence and supervenience. I argue, first, that essence is a a-modal notion, i.e. not usefully analysed in terms of metaphysical modality, and then, contra Kit Fine, that essential properties can be exemplified contingently. I argue, second, that supervenience is also an a-modal notion, and that it should be analysed in terms of constitution relations between properties. (...) In the second part ("A Theory of Truthmaking"), I first review the literature on ontological commitment, and argue that the notion of truthmaking is better suited to play its explanatory rôle. I then argue that we should take truthmaker theory seriously, and that we should provide actual truthmakers for all truths there are. In the last chapter of this part, I review Armstrong's truthmaker theories and argue that they are unsatisfactory. I generalise my criticism to an argument against truthmaker necessitarianism, the view that truthmakers necessarily make true the truths they are truthmakers of. In the third part ("Properties and their Kind(s)"), I discuss qualitative determination. I present and endorse the truthmaker argument for universals, and defend universalism against friends of tropes, states of affairs and facts. I then give a novel characterisation of the important class of intrinsic properties, building on Lewis' work. With a workable notion of intrinsicness at hand, I argue that relations are ontologically – but not "ideologically" – dispensable: qualitative determination in general is a matter of intrinsic structure. In the future, I plan to add two parts and to publish my thesis as a book: In the fourth part ("Exemplification"), I argue for the existence of an exemplification relation tying universals and particulars together. I derive theoretical benefits from this relation by providing adverbialist theories of modality and tense and identify exemplification with a type of parthood. In the fifth part ("Qua qua qua"), I investigate the curious and interesting ontological category of so-called "qua-objects" (Picasso-as-a-painter, for example) and argue that they exist, are not identical with transworld indidivuals or modal parts and that they provide (contingent) truthmakers for all true predications. (shrink)

A visible role in the theoretical discourses on education has been played in the last couple of decades by the constructivist epistemologies, which have questioned the basic assumptions of realist epistemologies. The increased popularity of interpretative approaches especially has put the realist epistemologies on the defensive. Basing itself on critical realism, this article discusses the ontological and epistemological commitments of educational research and its consequences for text interpretation. The article defends ontological realism and the semantic conception of truth against radical (...) constructivist ontology and the epistemic conceptions of truth. (shrink)