Con el objeto de dar cuenta de la dinámica del derecho, Alchourrón y Bulygin distinguen los conceptos de sistema jurídico y de orden jurídico. El primero hace referencia a un conjunto de enunciados que contiene todas sus consecuencias deductivas, entre las cuales hay normas cuyo contenido son actos coactivos. Se trata de una entidad estática. El orden jurídico, por su parte, es concebido como una secuencia de sistemas jurídicos enlazados por algún criterio de legalidad o validez, y conserva su identidad (...) a través de los cambios producidos por la sanción o derogación de normas. Es mi propósito presentar argumentos tendientes a sostener que la noción de orden jurídico no es adecuada para los fines que se propone y, además, su postulación, con el sentido que le atribuyen los autores, resulta innecesaria. Aiming to account for the dynamic nature of law, the Argentinian philosophers Carlos Alchourrón and Eugenio Bulygin discriminate the concepts of legal system and legal order. The first makes reference to a set of statements that includes all their deductive consequences, among which there are norms that prescribe coercive acts. It is a static entity. legal order, on the other hand, is conceived as a sequence of legal systems connected by some criterion of legal validity and keeps its identity through the changes produced by the passing or abrogation of laws. The aim of this paper is to present arguments leading to support that the notion of legal order is inadequate for its declared purpose and, furthermore, its conception, with the meaning the authors assign to it, is unnecessary. (shrink)

This paper is the first part of an exploration into the logical properties of relative identity. After providing the semantic grounds for various monadic logics of relative identity, I define the minimal system and its nine extensions. It is suggested that despite their purely formal origin at least some of them may contain nontrivial philosophical insights. All logics are axiomatized by means of sound and complete sequent calculi. I show their affinities with existing formalizations.

I discuss E. J. Lowe's conception of criteria of identity and sketch a different and, I think, more adequate conception. On my view, criteria of identity are some of the things we can do. They are what we do when distinguishing between single entities of the kind in question and pairs of entities of the relevant domain. And they enable us to make such distinctions because they are applicable to all single and to all pairs of entities of the relevant (...) domain but fulfilled only by all single entities of the kind in question. This feature of criteria of identity allows us to define these criteria, to explain how to identify a particular criterion of identity and to determine the logical form in which to express such identifications. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that adherents of Patrick Toner’s hylemorphic animalism who also assent to orthodox Christology and a thesis about the necessity of identity must reject a prima facie plausible theological possibility held by Ockham, entertained in one form by St. Thomas Aquinas, and recently held by Richard Cross, Thomas Flint,, and, and Timothy Pawl and concerning which individual concrete human natures an omnipotent God could assume.

An intensional semantic system for languages containing, in their logical syntax, sortal quantifiers, sortal identities, (second-order) quantifiers over sortals and the necessity operator is constructed. This semantics provides non-standard assignments to predicate expressions, which diverge in kind from the entities assigned to sortal terms by the same semantic system. The nature of the entities assigned to predicate expressions shows, at the same time, that there is an internal semantic connection between those expressions and sortal terms. A formal logical system is (...) formulated that is proved to be absolutely consistent, sound and complete with respect to the intensional semantic system. (shrink)

We propose a new intensional semantics for modal-tense second-order languages with sortal predicates. The semantics provides a variable-domain interpretation of the second-order quantifiers. A formal logical system is characterized and proved to be sound and complete with respect to the semantics. A contemporary variant of conceptualism as a theory of universals is the philosophical background of the semantics. Justification for the variable-domain interpretation of the second-order quantifiers presupposes such a conceptualist framework.

In the context of nonstandard analysis, the somewhat vague equality relation of near-equality allows us to relate objects that are indistinguishable but not necessarily equal. This relation appears to enable us to better understand certain paradoxes, such as the paradox of Theseus’s ship, by identifying identity at a time with identity over a short period of time. With this view in mind, I propose and discuss two mathematical models for this paradox.

The object of this paper is to suggest how the Frege–Dummettian notions of criterion of identity and criterion of application can be put to work within Putnam’s account of reference for natural kind terms in “Meaning of ‘Meaning’ ”. By doing so, some light can be shed on Putnam’s earlier views on “necessity relative to a body of knowledge” as well as his later views on sortal identity. If the Frege–Dummettian criteria are indeed at work within Putnam’s account, then we (...) must either give up rigidity or else give up the division of linguistic labor hypothesis. I will give an example from biological nomenclature that may sway us towards giving up the former. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage est consacre a l'etude de la distinction linguistique entre noms massifs (lait, mobilier, desordre, amour...) et noms comptables (chat, equipe, combat, chose...). Les premiers sont normalement invariables, tandis que les seconds s'emploient librement au singulier et au pluriel. Apres avoir etabli qu'il s'agit bien d'une distinction morpho-syntaxique, l'ouvrage discute la possibilite de caracteriser semantiquement cette distinction. Les recherches existantes ne tiennent compte, essentiellement, que des noms s'appliquant au domaine materiel. Ce travail, au contraire, examine en detail aussi bien (...) les noms concrets qu'abstraits. Il propose de redefinir les proprietes souvent attribuees aux noms massifs (references distributive et cumulative), grace, notamment, a une nouvelle notion de partie. Concernant les noms comptables, il montre qu'aucune propriete purement semantique n'est necessaire pour qu'un nom soit de ce type. L'ouvrage se termine par l'analyse des conversions (emplois massifs des noms comptables, et vice versa), et du role qu'y jouent les facteurs pragmatiques. (shrink)

According to Zhiyi 智顗 (538–597), the founder of the Chinese Buddhist Tiantai school 天臺宗, “one object is all objects;” hence, all objects are profoundly interconnected. In this paper, I critically examine Zhiyi’s metaphysics of objects as presented in the historical Tiantai texts and subsequently develop a contemporary and accessible thesis of interconnectedness by integrating Zhiyi’s views with resources from contemporary analytic philosophy, particularly relative identity. By drawing on Zhiyi’s insights and incorporating contemporary philosophical ideas, I also illustrate how historical Chinese (...) Buddhism and contemporary analytic metaphysics can be mutually informing. (shrink)

This is a copy of my DPhil thesis, the abstract for which is as follows: The first third of this thesis argues for a B-theoretic conception of time according to which all times exist equally and the present is in no way privileged. I distinguish "ontological" A-theories from "non-ontological" ones, arguing that the latter are experientially unmotivated and barely coherent. With regard to the former, I focus mainly on presentism. After some remarks on how to formulate this (and eternalism) non-trivially, (...) I review the non-relativistic case against presentism. I then consider the impact of Special Relativity on the debate, and attempt to deepen this impact by supplying a modal variation on the standard arguments. The middle third of the thesis investigates persistence, contending that both endurance and perdurance are consonant with the eternalism already endorsed. After introducing these theories of persistence, and discussing in particular how best to formulate an eternalist endurance, I proceed to defend the coherence of this combination. The Problem of Change is addressed here. I then respond in some detail to recent allegations of relativistic threats to endurance. The final third of the thesis questions the validity of the endurantist-perdurantist dispute. I criticize two recently proposed translation schemes that aim to show this dispute to be non-substantive. However, the second scheme suggests a doctrine of "Ontological Equivalence" which I develop and consider. I then address the Rotating Discs Argument, using this to launch a discussion of identity, genidentity, and the relationship between them. (shrink)

Coincidence comes in two varieties – permanent and temporary. Moderate monism is the position that permanent coincidence, but not temporary coincidence, entails identity. Extreme monism is the position that even temporary coincidence entails identity. Pluralists are opponents of monism tout court. The intuitively obvious, commonsensical position is moderate monism. It is therefore important to see if it can be sustained.