The aim of this editorial introduction is twofold. First, Sects. 1–8 offer a critical introduction to the metaphysical character of physicalism. In those sections, I present and evaluate different ways in which proponents of physicalism have made explicit the metaphysical dependence that is said to hold between the non-physical and the physical. Some of these accounts are found to be problematic; others are shown to be somewhat more promising. In the end, some important lessons are drawn and different options for (...) physicalists are presented. Second, in Sect.9, the six papers that comprise the special issue are introduced and summarized. (shrink)

According to the preference-centric approach to understanding partial belief, the connection between partial beliefs and preferences is key to understanding what partial beliefs are and how they’re measured. As Ramsey put it, the ‘degree of a belief is a causal property of it, which we can express vaguely as the extent to which we are prepared to act on it’ The Foundations of Mathematics and Other Logical Essays, Routledge, Oxon, pp 156–198, 1931). But this idea is not as popular as (...) it once was. Nowadays, the preference-centric approach is frequently dismissed out-of-hand as behaviouristic, unpalatably anti-realist, and/or prone to devastating counterexamples. Cases like Eriksson and Hájek’s :183–213, 2007) preferenceless Zen monk and Christensen’s :356–376, 2001) other roles argument have suggested to many that any account of partial belief that ties them too closely to preferences is irretrievably flawed. In this paper I provide a defence of preference-centric accounts of partial belief. (shrink)

I argue that constructive nominalism is preferable to scientific realism. Rather than reflecting without distortion the way the mind-independent world is, theories refract. They provide an understanding of the world as modulated by a particular theory. Truth is defined within a theoretical framework rather than outside of it. This does not undermine objectivity, for an assertion contains a reference to the framework in terms of which its truth is claimed.

In his Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics, Thomas Hofweber among other things presents a radical perspective on ontology and metaphysics. In this note, I critically discuss some of the points Hofweber makes.

The article is centered on the question of how best to understand the logical pluralism/logical monism debate. A number of suggestions are brought up and rejected on the ground that they re...

In his important book The Construction of Logical Space, Agustín Rayo lays out a distinctive metametaphysical view and applies it fruitfully to disputes concerning ontology and concerning modality. In this article, I present a number of criticisms of the view developed, mostly focusing on the underlying metametaphysics and Rayo’s claims on its behalf.

The problem, or cluster of problems, of the unity of the proposition, along with the cluster of problems that tend to go under the name of Bradley’s regress, has recently again become a going concern for philosophers, after having for some time been regarded as primarily of historical interest. In this paper, I distinguish between the different problems that tend to be brought up under the heading of the unity of the proposition, and between different related regress arguments. I present (...) my favored solutions to these problems. (shrink)

One of the many ways that ‘deflationary’ and ‘inflationary’ theories of truth are said to differ is in their attitude towards truth qua property. This difference used to be very easy to delineate, with deflationists denying, and inflationists asserting, that truth is a property, but more recently the debate has become a lot more complicated, owing primarily to the fact that many contemporary deflationists often do allow for truth to be considered a property. Anxious to avoid inflation, however, these deflationists (...) are at pains to point out that the truth property, on their view, is not a property of any significant interest. Correspondingly, inflationists have seen this as an opportunity to refine what kind of property they think truth is, which—according to them—moves their views beyond deflationism. The upshot of this is that there are number of different accounts in the literature of what distinguishes an inflationary truth property from a deflationary one, or—as it is sometimes put—what distinguishes a ‘substantive’ property from an ‘insubstantive’ one. This has made it hard to pin down exactly what is at issue at the metaphysical level between deflationists and inflationists, which makes it increasingly hard to see how debates between them are properly phrased. Given that these positions represent the two central attitudes towards truth in contemporary debates, this makes for a serious obstacle for the project of discerning the correct theory of truth. The aim of this paper is to discern the best way to distinguish between substantive and insubstantive properties, and thus to restore some focus to these debates. I argue that the three central distinctions in the literature fail, and offer what I take to be a more promising distinction in terms of a graded distinction between abundant and sparse properties. (shrink)

Is part of a perfectly natural, or fundamental, relation? Philosophers have been hesitant to take a stand on this issue. One reason for this hesitancy is the worry that, if parthood is perfectly natural, then the perfectly natural properties and relations are not suitably “independent” of one another. In this paper, I argue that parthood is a perfectly natural relation. In so doing, I argue that this “independence” worry is unfounded. I conclude by noting some consequences of the naturalness of (...) parthood. (shrink)

The Argument from Temporary Intrinsics is one of the canonical arguments against endurantism. I show that the two standard ways of presenting the argument have limited force. I then present a new version of the argument, which provides a more promising articulation of the underlying objection to endurantism. However, the premises of this argument conflict with the gauge theories of particle physics, and so this version of the argument is no more successful than its predecessors. I conclude that no version (...) of the Argument from Temporary Intrinsics gives us a compelling reason to favor one theory of persistence over another. (shrink)

The standard counterexamples to David Lewis’s account of intrinsicality involve two sorts of properties: identity properties and necessary properties. Proponents of the account have attempted to deflect these counterexamples in a number of ways. This paper argues that none of these moves are legitimate. Furthermore, this paper argues that no account along the lines of Lewis’s can succeed, for an adequate account of intrinsicality must be sensitive to hyperintensional distinctions among properties.

In Science Without Numbers (1980), Hartry Field defends a theory of quantity that, he claims, is able to provide both i) an intrinsic explanation of the structure of space, spacetime, and other quantitative properties, and ii) an intrinsic explanation of why certain numerical representations of quantities (distances, lengths, mass, temperature, etc.) are appropriate or acceptable while others are not. But several philosophers have argued otherwise. In this paper I focus on arguments from Ellis and Milne to the effect that one (...) cannot provide an account of quantity in ''purely intrinsic'' terms. I show, first, that these arguments are confused. Second, I show that Field's treatment of quantity can provide an intrinsic explanation of the structure of quantitative properties; what it cannot do is provide an intrinsic explanation of why certain numerical representations are more appropriate than others. Third, I show that one could provide an intrinsic explanation of this sort if one modified Field's account in certain ways. (shrink)

It is often claimed that realism about normativity entails that it is difficult for us to know anything about it. I refine this thought by characterizing realism as a thesis which is committed to explaining a semantic thesis about possible uses of normative language: that normative terms like ‘ought’ are semantically stable, in the sense that the term refers to the same property even if it is used differently. There are independent arguments which show that a realist view, if it (...) is plausible, should entail semantic stability for ‘ought’. In this paper I argue that, if the realist succeeds in explaining semantic stability, the realist view implies that normative beliefs will be at risk of being false, and hence not knowledge. Central to this argument is a phenomenon I call meta-semantic risk. I argue that the phenomenon of meta-semantic risk gives rise to a significant dose of normative skepticism for the realist, but it does not entail wholesale skepticism, since the epistemic threats are only contingent, and threatens only precise normative beliefs. I close by sketching two arguments that may show that even this limited form of skepticism counts significantly against the realist view. (shrink)

Symmetry principles are a central part of contemporary physics, yet there has been surprisingly little metaphysical work done on them. This article develops the Wignerian treatment of symmetries as higher-order laws—metalaws—within a Humean framework of lawhood. Lange has raised two obstacles to Humean metalaws, and the article shows that the account has the resources available to respond to both. It is argued that this framework for Humean metalaws stands as an example of naturalistic metaphysics, able to bring Humeanism into contact (...) with the practice of actual science without giving up on the central denial of necessary connections. (shrink)

A long-standing charge of circularity against regularity accounts of laws has recently seen a surge of renewed interest. The difficulty is that we appeal to laws to explain their worldly instances, but if these laws are descriptions of regularities in the instances then they are explained by those very instances. By the transitivity of explanation, we reach an absurd conclusion: instances of the laws explain themselves. While drawing a distinction between metaphysical and scientific explanations merely modifies the challenge rather than (...) resolving it, I argue that it does point us towards an attractive solution. According to Humeanism, the most prominent form of the regularity view, laws capture information about important patterns in the phenomena. By invoking laws in scientific explanations, Humeans are showing how a given explanandum is subsumed into a more general pattern. Doing so both undermines a principle of transitivity that plays a crucial role in the circularity argument and draws out a central feature of the Humean approach to scientific explanation. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss a specific approach to measuring and comparing the simplicity of theories that is based on Lewis’s notion of fundamental properties. In particular, I discuss the criterion of simplicity as stated by Williams. According to Williams, the best candidate for a theory is the one which has the shortest definition in terms of fundamental properties. The aim of this paper is to show that the criterion thus specified has two constraints. First, the criterion is not applicable (...) to cases in which candidates for theories that specify fundamental properties are compared. Secondly, the applicability of the criterion in social sciences seems to be unwarranted. (shrink)

The criterion of naturalness represents David Lewis’s attempt to answer some of the sceptical arguments in semantics by comparing the naturalness of meaning candidates. Recently, the criterion has been challenged by a new sceptical argument. Williams argues that the criterion cannot rule out the candidates which are not permuted versions of an intended interpretation. He presents such a candidate – the arithmetical interpretation semantics by comparing the naturalness of meaning candidates. Recently, the criterion has been challenged by a new sceptical (...) argument. Williams argues that the criterion cannot rule out the candidates which are not permuted versions of an intended interpretation. He presents such a candidate – the arithmetical interpretation, and he argues that it opens up the possibility of Pythagorean worlds, i.e. the worlds similar to ours in which the arithmetical interpretation is the best candidate for a semantic theory. The aim of this paper is a) to reconsider the general conditions for the applicability of Lewis’s criterion of naturalness and b) to show that Williams’s new sceptical challenge is based on a problematic assumption that the arithmetical interpretation is independent of fundamental properties and relations. As I show, if the criterion of naturalness is applied properly, it can respond even to the new sceptical challenge. (shrink)

Drawing on Earman’s definition of determinism and Lewis’ best systems account of laws, in What Makes Time Special? Craig Callender develops an account of time as ‘the strongest thing’. The characterisation of this account apparently assumes no action at a temporal distance, an assumption that also underlies Earman’s account of determinism. In this paper I show that there is a way to define determinism that allows worlds with action at a temporal distance to count as deterministic, that action at a (...) temporal distance is possible on a best systems account of laws, and hence that Callender need not make this assumption. (shrink)

Conceptual spaces have become an increasingly popular modeling tool in cognitive psychology. The core idea of the conceptual spaces approach is that concepts can be represented as regions in similarity spaces. While it is generally acknowledged that not every region in such a space represents a natural concept, it is still an open question what distinguishes those regions that represent natural concepts from those that do not. The central claim of this paper is that natural concepts are represented by the (...) cells of an optimally designed similarity space. (shrink)

This article argues for a revised best system account of laws of nature. David Lewis’s original BSA has two main elements. On the one hand, there is the Humean base, which is the totality of particular matters of fact that obtain in the history of the universe. On the other hand, there is what I call the ‘nomic formula’, which is a particular operation that gets applied to the Humean base in order to output the laws of nature. My revised (...) account focuses on this latter element of the view. Lewis conceives of the nomic formula as a balance of simplicity and strength, but I argue that this is a mistake. Instead, I motivate and develop a different proposal for the standards that figure into the nomic formula, and I suggest a rationale for why these should be the correct standards. Specifically, I argue that the nomic formula should be conceived as a collection of desiderata designed to generate principles that are predictively useful to creatures like us. The resulting view—which I call the ‘best predictive system’ account of laws—is thus able to explain why scientists are interested in discovering the laws, and it also gives rise to laws with the sorts of features that we find in actual scientific practice 1Introduction2The LOPP3A Problem with Lewis's Formula4A Pragmatic Account of the Nomic Formula 4.1Informative dynamics4.2Wide applicability4.3Spatial locality4.4Temporal locality4.5Spatial, temporal, and rotational symmetries4.6Predictively useful properties4.7Simplicity4.8Recap5 Conclusion. (shrink)

Is physicalism compatible with either panpsychism or so-called fundamental mentality ? Minimal physicalism, I contend, is compatible with both. We should therefore jettison the No Fundamental Mentality constraint, a proposed constraint on the definition of the physical, not to mention the false limits it places on physicalist theories of mind.

In Writing the Book of the World, Ted Sider argues that David Lewis’s distinction between those predicates which are ‘perfectly natural’ and those which are not can be extended so that it applies to words of all semantic types. Just as there are perfectly natural predicates, there may be perfectly natural connectives, operators, singular terms and so on. According to Sider, one of our goals as metaphysicians should be to identify the perfectly natural words. Sider claims that there is a (...) perfectly natural first-order quantifier. I argue that this claim is not justified. Quine has shown that we can dispense with first-order quantifiers, by using a family of ‘predicate functors’ instead. I argue that we have no reason to think that it is the first-order quantifiers, rather than Quine’s predicate functors, which are perfectly natural. The discussion of quantification is used to provide some motivation for a general scepticism about Sider’s project. Shamik Dasgupta’s ‘generalism’ and Jason Turner’s critique of ‘ontological nihilism’ are also discussed. (shrink)

The epistemicist theory aims to explain ignorance due to vagueness by semantic plasticity: the shiftiness of intensions across close possible worlds resulting from shiftiness in usage. This explanation is challenged by the Omniscient Speaker Puzzle (Sennet in Philos Stud 161(2):273–285, 2012). Suppose that an omniscient speaker, Barney, who knows all the facts about usage and how these facts determine the intensions of expressions, cooks up a scheme to stabilise the intension of a normally semantically plastic term like ‘rich’. It seems (...) that ‘rich’ would display all the phenomena associated with vagueness without being semantically plastic, thus making the epistemicist explanation of ignorance due to vagueness insufficient. In this paper, I present a few choice points for epistemicism that arise as a result of the puzzle. (shrink)

Joël Dolbeault | : D’abord, nous expliquons comment Bergson caractérise la liberté, et pourquoi celle-ci s’oppose à la fois au déterminisme et au hasard. Ensuite, nous montrons que la théorie bergsonienne de la liberté repose principalement sur l’idée que les états psychiques ne sont pas les occurrences de certains types, ce qui conduit à penser que leur apparition n’est pas gouvernée par l’action de lois. L’acte libre est causé par un sujet empirique, mais cette causalité n’est pas gouvernée par des (...) lois. Puis, nous soulignons l’originalité de cette théorie, notamment le fait qu’elle rejette le principe des possibilités alternatives, défendu par la plupart des libertariens actuels. À la fin de l’article, nous examinons plusieurs objections possibles contre cette théorie, en particulier l’objection inspirée par les expériences de Libet, ainsi que les réponses possibles. | : To begin with, we explain how Bergson characterizes free will and why it is opposed to both determinism and chance. Then we show that Bergson’s theory of free will is primarily based on the idea that mental states are not occurrences of certain types, which suggests that their appearance is not governed by the action of laws. The free act is caused by an empirical subject, but this causality is not governed by laws. Next, we highlight the originality of this theory, including the fact that it rejects the principle of alternative possibilities, defended by most of libertarians today. At the end of the article, we examine several possible objections against this theory, particularly the objection inspired by Libet’s experiments, and the possible answers. (shrink)

The more science progresses, the more it is evident that the physical world presents regularities. This raises a metaphysical problem: why is the world so ordered? In the first part of the article, I attempt to clarify this problem and justify its relevance. In the following three parts, I analyze three hypotheses already formulated in philosophy in response to this problem: the hypothesis that the order of the world is explained 1) by laws of nature, 2) by dispositions of the (...) fundamental physical entities, 3) or by a memory immanent to matter (a hypothesis developed by Peirce, Bergson and James). The third hypothesis may seem surprising. However, it can be shown that the three hypotheses have a psychomorphic dimension in the sense that they give to nature properties analogous to those of mind. In addition, this third hypothesis presents several interesting arguments. (shrink)

We propose a novel interpretation of Lewis on the analysis of modality that is constructed from primary sources, comprehensive and unprecedented. Our guiding precepts are to distinguish semantics from metaphysics, while respecting the inter-relations between them, and to discern whatever may be special, semantically or metaphysically, about the modal case. Following detailed presentation, we amplify and advocate our interpretation by providing a conforming genealogy of Lewis’s theory of modality and applying it to construct a detailed and newly illuminating version of (...) the Lewisian theory of modality de re. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to present and defend an empiricist, neo-Hempelian account of scientific explanation as ampliative, specialized embedding. The proposal aims to preserve what I take to be the core of Hempel’s empiricist account, by weakening it in some respects and strengthening it in others, introducing two new conditions that solve most of Hempel’s problems without abandoning his empiricist strictures. According to this proposal, to explain a phenomenon is to make it expectable by introducing new conceptual/ontological machinery (...) and using special, and non-ad hoc, non-accidental regularities. The new conditions are elaborated making essential use of two central structuralist ideas, namely T-theoreticity and specialization. I first introduce and qualify the project, then present the new account in detail and assess it vis-à-vis its rivals, and finally discuss some possible objections, concluding that the account fares better than its monistic rivals and well enough to qualify as a promising neo-Hempelian account. Even for those unpersuaded by its monistic goals, it has the merit of calling attention to two new necessary conditions not explicitly emphasized thus far and showing how they serve to answer many of the criticisms addressed against Hempel’s account. (shrink)

In the literature over the Ramsey-sentence approach to structural realism, there is often debate over whether structural realists can legitimately restrict the range of the second-order quantifiers, in order to avoid the Newman problem. In this paper, I argue that even if they are allowed to, it won’t help: even if the Ramsey sentence is interpreted using such restricted quantifiers, it is still an implausible candidate to capture a theory’s structural content. To do so, I use the following observation: if (...) a Ramsey sentence did encode a theory’s structural content, then two theories would be structurally equivalent just in case they have logically equivalent Ramsey sentences. I then argue that this criterion for structural equivalence is implausible, even where frame or Henkin semantics are used. (shrink)

This paper critically assesses whether quantum entanglement can be made compatible with Humean supervenience. After reviewing the prima facie tension between entanglement and Humeanism, I outline a recently-proposed Humean response, and argue that it is subject to two problems: one concerning the determinacy of quantities, and one concerning its relationship to scientific practice.

Convincing disputes about explanatory reductionism in the philosophy of biology require a clear and precise understanding of what a reductive explanation in biology is. The central aim of this book is to provide such an account by revealing the features that determine the reductive character of a biological explanation. Chapters I-IV provide the ground, on which I can then, in Chapter V, develop my own account of explanatory reduction in biology: Chapter I reveals the meta-philosophical assumptions that underlie my analysis (...) of reduction, Chapter II introduces the previous debate about reduction in the philosophy of biology by pointing out the most crucial lessons one should learn from this debate, Chapter III critically discusses the two perspectives on explanatory reduction that have been proposed in the philosophy of biology so far, and Chapter IV clarifies in what ways the issue of reduction is entangled with the issue of explanation. In Chapter V I present my own account of explanatory reduction. My main claim is that reductive explanations in the biological sciences possess three main characteristics: they explain the behavior of a biological system S, first, exclusively in terms of factors that are located on a lower level of organization than S, second, by focusing on factors that are internal to S , and third, by describing the genuine parts of S only as “parts in isolation”. This account is ontic because it traces the reductivity of an explanation back to certain relations that exist in the world. (shrink)

In The Context of Laws of Nature Structural Humeanism vs. Classical Humeanism -/- In the context of the laws of nature, philosophers of science have developed some views in order to adopt an attitude towards recurring events in nature. In this respect, it has been discussed whether there is any driving force underlying the regular behaviours and movements we encounter in nature, and two approaches have emerged as a result of the discussion: A view that there are certain driving forces (...) or causal relations in the ground, and an opposing view that claims that there are no causal relations in the ground, but there are regularities in nature. Views such as the latter are generally described as the Humean view. Such views are also called regularity theories. Throughout this article, the statements referred to as regularity are characterised as the Humean view. Since the article will be centred on the Humean view, views such as the first view, such as dispositional essentialism or structural realism, are not the concern of this article. The article favours the Structural Humean approach over the classical Humean approach. The classical Humean approach is centred on the views of David Lewis and is concerned with distinguishing between laws of nature seen as accidental generalisations and regularities. While it tries to make such a distinction by constructing nature through a mosaic, the Structural Humean approach is an approach that develops Lewis’s claims and tries to shape nature with the concept of structure rather than mosaic. Thus, it is seen as an approach that provides more information than the Classical Humean approach in terms of creating a philosophical infrastructure for explaining nature in terms of modern physics. Through Psillos, Structural Humeanism tried to place the concept of natural pattern into the structure in order to gain metaphysical solidity and tried to bring the Structural Humean approach closer to the Structural Realism camp. Thus, the classically epistemologically important Humean approach has made a significant progress in positioning it on the realist wing. As a result of all these studies, the Structural Humean approach has been defended as a philosophical approach that offers useful arguments for modern physics compared to the Classical Humean approach. -/- Keywords: Humeanism, Regularity, Laws of Nature, Best System Account, Structural Humeanism, Natural Patterns. (shrink)

In recent work, Adlam (2022b), Chen & Goldstein (2022), and Meacham (2023) have defended accounts of laws that take laws to be primitive global constraints. A major advantage of these accounts is that they’re able to accommodate the many different kinds of laws that appear in physical theories. In this paper I’ll present these three accounts, highlight their distinguishing features, and note some key differences that might lead one to favor one of these accounts over the others. I’ll conclude by (...) briefly discussing a version of a “constraint” account that I think is especially attractive. (shrink)

The theory of universals faces two opposing demands. On the one hand, it must be explanatory. That is, certain kinds of statements found in our everyday discourse and the theories used to explain them seem to require the existence of universals for their understanding or acceptance. On the other hand, it must be ontologically appropriate. This means that theories that intervene ontologically without sufficient reasons for the existence of implausible entities or theories that result in an excessive proliferation of new (...) entities should not be embraced as theories of universals. The problem is that a theoretically sound theory of universals appears to inevitably involve a tension between explanatory and ontological appropriateness. This dilemma arises from the two aforementioned demands, and it is a genuine dilemma in that it is difficult to give up either demand. Philosophy, or metaphysics, fundamentally aims to explain the facts of the experiential world. If a philosophical theory fails to adequately satisfy our explanatory demands regarding the experiential world, it is not suitable as a philosophical theory. Conversely, it is also undesirable for a philosophical theory to impose excessive ontological burdens. The justification of a philosophical theory is a priori, and any a priori claims about the existence of entities should not be arbitrarily adopted. This article resolves this dilemma as follows: If the explanatory demand requires reduction from an ontological standpoint, it can be adequately addressed through unproblematic means. On the other hand, the apparent conflict between the explanatory demand and appropriate ontology only arises when it is understood as a demand for explanatory priority. However, such a demand does not necessarily require the introduction of any ontological priority. Therefore, there was no need for the dilemma to arise. Finally, I attempt to respond to the demands from natural kind predicates. (shrink)

At the start of his discussion of causation, Hume claims to demonstrate that simultaneous causation is absolutely impossible; all causes must precede their effects in time. I argue that considering Hume’s modal theory can reveal two important and previously unaddressed features of this argument. First, his modal metaphysics resolves one of the most pressing extant interpretive issues: how Hume is able to infer from the claim that it is possible for some object to be simultaneously caused to the claim that (...) it is possible for all objects to be simultaneously caused. This step, I argue, is justified by Hume’s theory of relations. Based on an analysis of the representational capacities of the imagination in the Treatise, I develop a modal theory for relations that supports inferences of this kind. Second, his distinction between absolute and natural modality raises a problem that has not yet been identified in the literature. Hume is trying to conclude that something is metaphysically impossible, but one of his premises relies on a mere natural impossibility (that no object can begin to exist uncaused). I argue that this is an intractable problem: Hume cannot get the conclusion he wants because it depends on an equivocation between two strengths of modality. (shrink)

This paper offers an analysis of the authoritatively normative concept PRACTICAL OUGHT that appeals to the constitutive norms for the activity of non-arbitrary selection. I argue that this analysis permits an attractive and substantive explanation of what the distinctive normative authority of this concept amounts to. I contrast my account with more familiar constitutivist theories, and briefly show how it answers ‘schmagency’-style objections to constitutivist explanations of normativity. Finally, I explain how the account offered here can be used to help (...) realists, error theorist, and fictionalists address central challenges to their views. (shrink)

Phenomenal intentionality is supposed to be a kind of directedness of the mind onto the world that is grounded in the conscious feel of mental life. This book of new essays explores a number of issues raised by the notion of phenomenal intentionality.

Showcasing original arguments for well-defined positions, as well as clear and concise statements of sophisticated philosophical views, this volume is an ...

Aesthetic non-naturalism is the view that there are objective aesthetic truths that hold in virtue of sui generis facts. This view is seldom explicitly endorsed in philosophical aesthetics. I argue that many aestheticians should treat it as the view to beat, since (a) their commitments favour aesthetic realism, (b) non-naturalistic forms of aesthetic realism are particularly promising and (c) non-naturalists have reasonable answers to four important objections.

Dispositional compatibilists argue that a proper understanding of our abilities vindicates both compatibilism and the principle of Alternate Possibilities (the claim that the ability to do otherwise is required for freedom and moral responsibility). In this paper, I argue that this is mistaken. Both analyses of dispositions and abilities should distinguish between local and global dispositions or abilities. Once this distinction is in place, we see that neither thesis is established by an analysis of abilities.

Many accept David Lewis's (1983) claim that, among the candidate meanings for our predicates, some are more natural than others -- they do better or worse at ``carving nature at its joints''. Call this claim predicate naturalism. Disagreement remains over whether the notion of naturalness extends ``beyond the predicate'' (à la Sider, 2011). Are the candidate meanings of logical vocabulary also more or less natural? Call this claim logical naturalism. -/- One motivation for predicate naturalism comes from its supposed ability (...) to help rebut various radical indeterminacy arguments associated with Hilary Putnam (1977, 1980, 1981). It does so in combination with a popular meta-semantic theory called reference magnetism. I argue that the same threats of Putnam-style radical indeterminacy rearise for proponents of predicate naturalism -- threats which logical naturalism helps rebuts. So, if we accept predicate naturalism because it helps fend off threats of indeterminacy, we should also accept logical naturalism. (shrink)

The phrase ‘in virtue of’ is a mainstay of metaphysical discourse. In recent years, many philosophers have argued that we should understand this phrase, as metaphysicians use it, in terms of a concept of metaphysical dependence called ‘grounding’.This dissertation explores a range of central issues in the theory of grounding. Chapter 1 introduces the intuitive concept of grounding and discusses some compulsory questions in the theory of grounding. Chapter 2 focusses on scepticism on grounding, according to which the recent philosophical (...) interest in the topic is misguided. In chapter 3 I discuss grounding’s explanatory roles. Chapter 4 focusses on the claim that if an entity is grounded then it is an ontological free lunch. Chapter 5 discusses and rejects the claim that groundingis a relation between facts. This conclusion raises a problem: if grounding is not a relation between facts it becomes difficult to specify the connections between grounding and explanation and grounding and necessity. But not only is it desirable to specify these relations, it is essential for establishing that grounding is able to play the explanatory roles that are discussed in chapter 3. Chapter 6 responds to this problem by outlining an approach to grounding based on David Lewis’s (2003) theory of truthmaking. Against this backdrop I discuss, in chapter 7, some issues in the logic of grounding. (shrink)

Erik Wielenberg [2014] and Mark Murphy [2017], [2018] have defended a series of arguments for the conclusion that creatures are not good intrinsically. In response, I take two steps. First, I introduce a conception of intrinsic value that makes created intrinsic value unproblematic. Second, I respond to their arguments in turn. The first argument is from the sovereignty-aseity intuition and an analysis of intrinsicality that makes derivative good extrinsic. I challenge the analysis. The second comes from a conception of perfection (...) where God exhausts all possibilities for goodness. I challenge this conception. The third comes from the contingency of creation and the internal logic of intrinsic value. I challenge the assumption that connects the two. I then present an argument from reference magnetism that the only conception of God, God's perfections, and religious language that makes it plausible that the sentence "God is intrinsically good and creatures are not" is true involves a strongly univocalist position. A view that is either unstatable or places strong demands on our conception of God, God's perfections and religious language thereby loses plausibility. (shrink)

This thesis explores attempts to characterise the structure of reality. Three notions stand out: Lewisian naturalness, Sider’s ‘structure’, and grounding, where the latter has become the most popular way to characterise the structure of reality in the contemporary literature. I argue that none of these notions, as they are currently understood, are suited for limning the metaphysical structure of reality. In the first part of the thesis I argue that, by the lights of the relevant theories, both naturalness and structure (...) fall short of the theoretical role carved out for those posits. In the second part of the thesis I present two challenges to the ‘orthodox’ conception of grounding. The first contests the standard assumption that grounding is asymmetric, both by citing what I take to be best described as symmetric instances of grounding, and by developing and arguing for a new theory of metaphysical structure – ‘metaphysical interdependence’ – which takes grounding to be nonsymmetric. The second challenge concerns the relationship between grounding and explanation, and leads to a dilemma for the grounding theorist. My proposed resolution to the dilemma is to adopt an antirealist approach to grounding, which I further motivate and develop in the final chapter. (shrink)

I raise a problem about the possibility of metaphysics originally raised by Kant: what explains the fact that the terms in our metaphysical theories (e.g. “property”) refer to entities and structures (e.g. properties) in the world? I distinguish a meta-metaphysical view that can easily answer such questions (“deflationism”) from a meta-metaphysical view for which this explanatory task is more difficult (which I call the “substantive” view of metaphysics). I then canvass responses that the substantive metaphysician can give to this Kantian (...) demand for an explanation of reference in metaphysics. I argue that these responses are either inadequate, or depend, implicitly or explicitly, on the idea of “joint carving”: carving at the joints is part of the explanation of reference-facts quite generally and our metaphysical terms in particular refer because they carve at the joints. I examine Ted Sider’s recent work on joint carving and structure and argue that it cannot fill the explanatory gap. I conclude that this is reason ceterus paribus to reject the substantive view of metaphysics. Kant’s critique, far from being obsolete, applies to the most cutting-edge of contemporary meta-metaphysical views. (shrink)

In recent years, several philosophers have argued that the a priori/a posteriori distinction is a legitimate distinction but does not carve at the epistemological joints and is theoretically unimportant. In this paper, I do two main things. First, I respond to the most prominent recent challenge to the significance of the a priori/a posteriori distinction – the central argument in Williamson (2013). Second, I discuss the question of what the theoretical significance of the a priori/a posteriori distinction is. -/- I (...) first present the a priori/a posteriori distinction as it is typically developed. I then turn to Williamson’s challenge to the significance of the distinction. Williamson points out that we often use the same cognitive mechanisms in coming to have a priori and a posteriori knowledge. So how could it be, asks Williamson, that there is a “deep epistemological difference” between the two? In response to this challenge, I argue that there is an important disanalogy between Williamson’s central example of a case of a priori knowledge and his central example of a case of a posteriori knowledge. Although the beliefs in the two cases are formed in similar ways, the ways in which their justification can be defeated are different. This suggests that there is an important epistemological difference between the two cases, one that cannot be captured in terms of the cognitive mechanisms used to form the beliefs. -/- Although Williamson’s argument is unsuccessful, there remains the question of just what the theoretical significance of the a priori/a posteriori distinction is. I argue that the point of the distinction is not to enable us to represent some joint in nature, but rather to help us to identify epistemological problem cases. We understand – more-or-less – the epistemology of simple perceptual knowledge. The epistemology of non-perceptual knowledge is far less clear. The purpose of labeling a case of knowledge as a priori is to claim that its epistemology should not be assimilated to the epistemology of perception. Instead, it is something of a puzzle case. -/- This proposal has an important implication. There are several ways in which a case of knowledge can be different from a simple case of perceptual knowledge. Two differences are perhaps the most important: (i) the justification of the belief does not involve phenomenality, and (ii) the belief does not stand in a causal relation to what the belief is about. When beliefs about some subject matter fit either (i) or (ii), an epistemological puzzle arises. So there is more than one kind of epistemological puzzle to solve. This suggests that there is an important theoretical role for (at least) two distinctions in the ballpark of the traditional a priori/a posteriori distinction. (shrink)

Let us agree that everything that there is exists, and that to be, to be real, and to exist are one and the same. Does everything that there is exist to the same degree? Or do some things exist more than others? Are there gradations of being? I argue that some entities exist more than others. Moreover, many of the notions in play in contemporary metaphysical discourse, such as fundamentality, perfect naturalness, and grounding ought to be cashed out in terms (...) of degree of existence. (shrink)

David Lewis is typically interpreted as a class nominalist. One consequence of class nominalism, which he embraced, is that the reduction of ordered pairs, triples, etc to unordered sets of sets is conventional. The reaction by his Australian counterparts D.M. Armstrong and Peter Forrest was that Lewis was not being ontologically serious. This chapter evaluates this debate over serious ontology. It is argued that in one sense Lewis is ontologically serious, but that his additional commitment to structuralism about classes should (...) push him to adopt a trope-theoretic account of naturalness, which opens up another way to respond to the charge of not doing serious ontology. This conclusion is supported by certain remarks he makes in his correspondence, thus revealing how his thinking about properties appears to have evolved from property-egalitarianism to a sparse theory of tropes. (shrink)

Moral realists often disagree about the nature of moral properties. These properties can be natural (as per naturalistic moral realism) or non-natural. But it is unclear how we should understand the notion of naturalness employed in these discussions. In this paper I propose a novel account of moral naturalness. I suggest that a property F is natural iff F falls within the scope of a natural law. In turn, a law is natural when it figures in a nomic nexus involving (...) the laws of physics. (shrink)