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Being and Almost Nothingness

Noûs 44 (4):628-649 (2010)

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  1. On Perceiving Abs nces.Achille C. Varzi - 2022 - Gestalt Theory 44 (3):213-242.
    Can we really perceive absences, i.e., missing things? Sartre tells us that when he arrived late for his appointment at the café, he saw the absence of his friend Pierre. Is that really what he saw? Where was it, exactly? Why didn’t Sartre see the absence of other people who were not there? Why did other people who were there not see the absence of Pierre? The perception of absences gives rise to a host of conundrums and is constantly on (...)
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  • Argle victorious: a theory of holes as hole-linings.Leona Mollica - 2022 - Synthese 200 (6):1-16.
    In this paper I take up the task, begun by Lewis and Lewis in their seminal paper on the topic, of offering a theory of holes according to which a hole is simply its hole-lining. I begin by motivating the theory, arguing that it holds interest even absent its original animating concerns of nominalism and materialism, and present desiderata any such theory must satisfy. With this in place, I offer a definition both of a lining and of hole sameness, arguing (...)
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  • Should an Ontological Pluralist Be a Quantificational Pluralist?Byron Simmons - 2022 - Journal of Philosophy 119 (6):324-346.
    Ontological pluralism is the view that there are different fundamental ways of being. Recent defenders of this view—such as Kris McDaniel and Jason Turner—have taken these ways of being to be best captured by semantically primitive quantifier expressions ranging over different domains. They have thus endorsed, what I shall call, quantificational pluralism. I argue that this focus on quantification is a mistake. For, on this view, a quantificational structure—or a quantifier for short—will be whatever part or aspect of reality’s structure (...)
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  • Different Samenesses: Essays on Non-Standard Views of Identity.Eric de Araujo - 2021 - Dissertation, The Ohio State University
    Few views are as widely held as the Standard View of Identity. Here I am concerned with minority views that depart from the standard account. First, I attempt to illuminate such views and the debates concerning them by identifying the principles of identity at issue, articulating some of the assumptions underlying the debates, and presenting some of the evidence used against the Standard View of Identity. Second, I enter two of these debates myself. I first defend two Non-Standard Views of (...)
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  • Ontological Pluralism and the Generic Conception of Being.Byron Simmons - 2022 - Erkenntnis 87 (3):1275-1293.
    Ontological pluralism is the view that there are different fundamental ways of being. Trenton Merricks has recently raised three objections to combining pluralism with a generic way of being enjoyed by absolutely everything there is: first, that the resulting view contradicts the pluralist’s core intuition; second, that it is especially vulnerable to the charge—due to Peter van Inwagen—that it posits a difference in being where there is simply a difference in kind; and, third, that it is in tension with various (...)
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  • Neutral Realism.Markus Gabriel - 2015 - The Monist 98 (2):181-196.
    Historically, the problem of realism has often been viewed as an extension of the problem of the external world. At the same time, the assumption has often been made that realism is appropriate to some domains, while antirealism is appropriate to others. I here sketch a neutral realism that rejects both of these assumptions and thereby allows us to treat the realism debate independently of the debate over naturalism. The starting point of neutral realism is indeed neutral with respect to (...)
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  • 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 (...)
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  • The General Truthmaker View of ontological commitment.Bradley Rettler - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (5):1405-1425.
    In this paper, I articulate and argue for a new truthmaker view of ontological commitment, which I call the “General Truthmaker View”: when one affirms a sentence, one is ontologically committed to there being something that makes true the proposition expressed by the sentence. This view comes apart from Quinean orthodoxy in that we are not ontologically committed to the things over which we quantify, and it comes apart from extant truthmaker views of ontological commitment in that we are not (...)
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  • On Maxwell Suffis’s “From the Ground Up: Explaining Category Differences in Ontological Pluralism”.Klaus Ladstaetter - 2014 - Southwest Philosophy Review 30 (2):17-24.
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  • Ways of Being.Joshua Spencer - 2012 - Philosophy Compass 7 (12):910-918.
    Ontological pluralism is the view that there are ways of being. Ontological pluralism is enjoying a revival in contemporary metaphysics. We want to say that there are numbers, fictional characters, impossible things, and holes. But, we don’t think these things all exist in the same sense as cars and human beings. If they exist or have being at all, then they have different ways of being. Fictional characters exist as objects of make‐believe and holes exist as absences in objects. But, (...)
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  • Existence Predicates.Friederike Moltmann - 2020 - Synthese 197 (1):311-335.
    Natural languages generally distinguishes among different existence predicates for different types of entities, such as English 'exist', 'occur', and 'obtain'. The paper gives an in-depth discussion and analysis of a range of existence predicates in natural language within the general project of descriptive metaphysics, or more specifically ‘natural language ontology’.
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  • Ordinary objects.Daniel Z. Korman - 2011 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    An encyclopedia entry which covers various revisionary conceptions of which macroscopic objects there are, and the puzzles and arguments that motivate these conceptions: sorites arguments, the argument from vagueness, the puzzles of material constitution, arguments against indeterminate identity, arguments from arbitrariness, debunking arguments, the overdetermination argument, and the problem of the many.
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  • The semantics of existence.Friederike Moltmann - 2013 - Linguistics and Philosophy 36 (1):31-63.
    The notion of existence is a very puzzling one philosophically. Often philosophers have appealed to linguistic properties of sentences stating existence. However, the appeal to linguistic intuitions has generally not been systematic and without serious regard of relevant issues in linguistic semantics. This paper has two aims. On the one hand, it will look at statements of existence from a systematic linguistic point of view, in order to try to clarify what the actual semantics of such statements in fact is. (...)
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  • Being conventionally real: a Buddhist account of a degenerate mode of being.Laura P. Guerrero - 2023 - Asian Journal of Philosophy 2 (2):1-19.
    Buddhist philosophers draw a distinction between two kinds of entities: ultimately real entities and conventionally real entities. Among Abhidharma Buddhist philosophers, who accept the fundamental existence of ultimately real entities, there is a debate over the existential status of conventionally real entities. The most prevalent interpretation of the general Abhidharma position is an anti-realist one: conventionally real entities do not exist. Here, however, I will argue that there is at least one Abhidharma philosopher who is not an anti-realist about conventionally (...)
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  • Fictional mechanism explanations: clarifying explanatory holes in engineering science.Kristian González Barman - 2022 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 12 (2):1-19.
    This paper discusses a class of mechanistic explanations employed in engineering science where the activities and organization of nonstandard entities are cited as core factors responsible for failures. Given the use of mechanistic language by engineers and the manifestly mechanistic structure of these explanations, I consider several interpretations of these explanations within the new mechanical framework. I argue that these interpretations fail to solve several philosophical problems and propose an account of fictional mechanism explanations instead. According to this account, fictional (...)
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  • Functional Monotheism and the Tri-Theism Objection.Joshua R. Sijuwade - 2020 - Dissertation, University of York
    In this thesis, I argue that the Functional Monotheism model is not tri-theistic, but is a model of pro-Nicene Trinitarianism. In establishing this thesis, I focus on countering a specific objection prevalent in the Analytic Theology literature; the Tri-Theism Objection, which has charged the Functional Monotheism model with “tri-theism”. This objection, formulated by Kelly James Clark and Edward Feser, asserts that the Functional Monotheism model is tritheistic and thus should be rejected as a possible model of scriptural monotheism and “orthodox” (...)
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  • Existence: Essays in Ontology.Kristopher McDaniel - 2018 - Analysis 78 (1):150-159.
    © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Analysis Trust. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] wonderful collection of most of van Inwagen’s recent essays on topics in fundamental ontology is certainly to be welcomed.1 Many of the essays are focused on articulating and arguing for van Inwagen’s preferred meta-ontology, which he calls neo-Quineanism. In addition to these essays, Existence also contains essays on the eliminability of variables, the status of fictional entities, the (...)
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  • Holes Cannot Be Counted as Immaterial Objects.Phillip John Meadows - 2015 - Erkenntnis 80 (4):841-852.
    In this paper I argue that the theory that holes are immaterial objects faces an objection that has traditionally been thought to be the principal difficulty with its main rival, which construes holes as material parts of material objects. Consequently, one of the principal advantages of identifying holes with immaterial objects is illusory: its apparent ease of accounting for truths about number of holes. I argue that in spite of this we should not think of holes as material parts of (...)
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  • Ideology and its role in metaphysics.Peter Finocchiaro - 2019 - Synthese 198 (2):957-983.
    Metaphysicians now typically distinguish between a theory’s ontology and its ideology. But besides a few cursory efforts, no one has explained the role of ideology in theory choice. In this paper I develop a framework for discussing how differing approaches to ideology impact metaphysical disputes. I first provide an initial characterization of ideology and develop two contrasting types of criteria used to evaluate its quality. In using externalist criteria, we judge the quality of a theory’s ideology by its relation to (...)
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  • Fragmented Truth.Andy Demfree Yu - 2016 - Dissertation, University of Oxford
    This thesis comprises three main chapters—each comprising one relatively standalone paper. The unifying theme is fragmentalism about truth, which is the view that the predicate “true” either expresses distinct concepts or expresses distinct properties. -/- In Chapter 1, I provide a formal development of alethic pluralism. Pluralism is the view that there are distinct truth properties associated with distinct domains of subject matter, where a truth property satisfies certain truth-characterizing principles. On behalf of pluralists, I propose an account of logic (...)
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  • Time, Modality, and the Unbearable Lightness of Being.Akiko M. Frischhut & Alexander Skiles - 2013 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 2 (1):264-273.
    We develop a theory about the metaphysics of time and modality that combines the conceptual resources devised in recent sympathetic work on ontological pluralism (the thesis that there are fundamentally distinct kinds of being) with the thought that what is past, future, and merely possible is less real than what is present and actual (albeit real enough to serve as truthmakers for statements about the past, future, and merely possible). However, we also show that despite being a coherent, distinctive, and (...)
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  • Holes.Roberto Casati & Achille C. Varzi - 2019 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    A brief introduction to the main philosophical problems and theories about the nature of holes and such-like nothingnesses.
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  • La ontología del mundo material de Tomás de Aquino según Jeffrey E. Brower.Emiliano Javier Cuccia - 2020 - Logos. Anales Del Seminario de Metafísica [Universidad Complutense de Madrid, España] 53:178-184.
    El artículo analiza críticamente la propuesta contenida en el libro Aquinas’s Ontology of the Material World. Change, Hylomorphism, and Material Objects de Jeffrey E. Brower. Se sintetizan algunos de los puntos principales de la obra ero, particularmente, se evalúa el núcleo de su propuesta, consistente en poner en diálogo las ideas tomasinas acerca del mundo natural con las propuestas de la ontología contemporánea. Se evidencia que, más allá de las intenciones, el autor no consigue cumplir con lo proyectado en tanto (...)
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  • Heidegger and the ‘There Is’ of Being.Kris Mcdaniel - 2015 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 93 (2):306-320.
    Heidegger also famously says that Being depends on Dasein, even though beings in general do not. This is perplexing. “Heidegger and the “There Is” of Being” offers an interpretation of what’s going on in the passages in which this sort of assertion is made.
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  • Personal Identity, Consciousness, and Joints in Nature.Cody Gilmore - 2015 - The Journal of Ethics 19 (3-4):443-466.
    Many philosophers have thought that the problem of personal identity over time is not metaphysically deep. Perhaps the debate between the rival theories is somehow empty or is a ‘merely verbal dispute’. Perhaps questions about personal identity are ‘nonsubstantive’ and fit more for conceptual analysis and close attention to usage than for theorizing in the style of serious metaphysics, theorizing guided by considerations of systematicity, parsimony, explanatory power, and aiming for knowledge about the objective structure of the world. I discuss (...)
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  • A Problem for Ontological Pluralism and a Half-Meinongian Solution.Michele Paolini Paoletti - 2015 - Philosophia 43 (2):463-473.
    According to K. McDaniel’s and J. Turner’s Ontological Pluralism, there are many ways of being that are more fundamental than being in general. In this paper, I shall analyze some constraints on this doctrine. Among other, ontological pluralists are committed to the idea that there are no things that have no way of being at all and that it is not legitimate to quantify over ways of being. Later on, I shall introduce a problem for ontological pluralism: if there is (...)
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  • Metaphysics, History, Phenomenology.Kris McDaniel - 2014 - Res Philosophica 91 (3):339-365.
    There are three interconnected goals of this paper. The first is to articulate and motivate a view of the methodology for doing metaphysics that is broadly phenomenological in the sense of Husserl circa the Logical Investigations. The second is to articulate an argument for the importance of studying the history of philosophy when doing metaphysics that is in accordance with this methodology. The third is to confront this methodology with a series of objections and determine how well it fares in (...)
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  • Pasnau on category realism: author Meets Critics, Robert Pasnau, Metaphysical Themes 1274–1671.Kris McDaniel - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 171 (1):17-25.
    From the perspective of a contemporary metaphysician, Metaphysical Themes 1274–1671 is a fantastic book. It is an impressively rich, detailed, and thorough examination of a multitude of important metaphysical puzzles and arguments, written in a clear, engaging, lively, funny, and even on one occasion vulgar manner. The number of topics covered is astonishing: substance, attribute, form, matter, the metaphysics of predication, parts and wholes, the metaphysics of extension across space, persistence over time, the distinction between primary–secondary qualities, and many others. (...)
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  • Do Composite Objects Have an Age in Relativistic Spacetime?Yuri Balashov - 2012 - Philosophia Naturalis 49 (1):9-23.
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  • Degrees of Being.Kris McDaniel - 2013 - Philosophers' Imprint 13.
    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 (...)
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  • Explicating Eternalism A Study in Metaontology.Thorben Petersen - 2012 - Philosophia Naturalis 49 (1):137-161.
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  • Modes d’être et temps.Guillaume Bucchioni - 2021 - In Alexandre Declos & Claudine Tiercelin (eds.), La Métaphysique du Temps: Perspectives Contemporaines. Collège de France.
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  • Dependence, Justification and Explanation: Must Reality be Well-Founded?Matteo Morganti - 2015 - Erkenntnis 80 (3):555-572.
    This paper is about metaphysical ‘infinitism’, the view that there are, or could be, infinite chains of ontological dependence. Its main aim is to show that, contrary to widespread opinion, metaphysical infinitism is a coherent position. On the basis of this, it is then additionally argued that metaphysical infinitism need not fare worse than the more canonical ‘foundationalist’ alternatives when it comes to formulating metaphysical explanations. In the course of the discussion, a rather unexplored parallel with the debate concerning infinitism (...)
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  • The Priority of the Now.Sam Baron - 2014 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly:0-0.
    This paper motivates and develops a new theory of time: priority presentism. Priority presentism is the view according to which (i) only present entities exist fundamentally and (ii) past and future entities exist, but they are grounded in the present. The articulation of priority presentism is an exercise in applied grounding: it draws on concepts from the recent literature on ontological dependence and applies those concepts in a new way, to the philosophy of time. The result, as I will argue, (...)
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  • Ontological superpluralism.Ben Caplan - 2011 - Philosophical Perspectives 25 (1):79-114.
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