The paper presents a novel version of universalism—the thesis according to which there are only universals, no individuals—which is cashed out in terms of an adverbial analysis of predication. According to the theory, every spatiotemporal occurrence of a universal U can be expressed by a sentence which asserts the existence of U adverbially modified by the spatiotemporal region at which it exists. After some preliminary remarks on the interpretation of natural language, a formal semantics for the theory is first provided, (...) along with an intended interpretation of its key metaphysical imports. Follow some commentaries on the spatiotemporal manifold and determinable properties. (shrink)

This article introduces a dilemma regarding conceptual schemes and suggests a solution. The dilemma is about whether there are conceptual schemes or not. There are good reasons for maintaining either position. There must be conceptual schemes because theory is underdetermined by evidence. And there cannot be conceptual schemes because Davidson has given an almost unassailable argument against it. I resolve the dilemma by arguing that Davidson’s argument is based on a false dilemma generated by too strong a principle of charity. (...) This makes space for conceptual schemes without sacrificing the intelligibility of any. (shrink)

In an earlier article on this journal I argued that the problem of empirical underdetermination can for the largest part be solved by theoretical virtues, and for the remaining part it can be tolerated. Here I confront two further challenges to scientific realism based on underdetermination. First, there are four classes of theories which may seem to be underdetermined even by theoretical virtues. Concerning them I argue that (i) theories produced by trivial permutations and (ii) “equivalent descriptions” are compatible with (...) the truth of standard theories; instead (iii) “as if” versions of standard theories are much worse from the point of view of theoretical virtues; finally (iv) mathematically intertranslatable theories either may become empirically decidable in the future, or can be discriminated by theoretical virtues, or realists may simply plead ignorance about their claims. Secondly, I consider Stanford’s underdetermination with respect unconceived alternatives, arguing that it essentially relies on the pessimistic meta-induction from the falsity of all past theories. Therefore, it can be resisted by (a) considering the radical advancement of present with respect to past science, and (b) arguing with selective realism that past successful theories, even if false, always included some true components. (shrink)

A critical survey of the main metaphysical theories concerning the nature of material objects (substratum theories, bundle theories, substance theories, stuff theories) and their identity conditions, both synchronic (monist vs. pluralist theories) and diachronic (three-dimensionalism, four-dimensionalism, sequentialism).

The first collection of essays devoted to Heidegger’s contribution to understanding modern science.

The main goal of this paper is to work out Quine's account of explication. Quine does not provide a general account, but considers a paradigmatic example which does not fit other examples he claims to be explications. Besides working out Quine's account of explication and explaining this tension, I show how it connects to other notions such as paraphrase and ontological commitment. Furthermore, I relate Quinean explication to Carnap's conception and argue that Quinean explication is much narrower because its main (...) purpose is to be a criterion of theory choice. (shrink)

Recently, I’ve championed the doctrine that fundamentally different sorts of things exist in fundamentally different ways.1 On this view, what it is for an entity to be can differ across ontological categories.2 Although historically this doctrine was very popular, and several important challenges to this doctrine have been dealt with, I suspect that contemporary metaphysicians will continue to treat this view with suspicion until it is made clearer when one is warranted in positing different modes of existence.3 I address this (...) concern here. The question of when to posit ways of being is closely related to a more general question: when should one think that some philosophically interesting expression is analogous? Accordingly, my strategy here is as follows. First, I briefly explain my interpretation of ontological pluralism, the doctrine that there are ways of being.4 Second, I introduce the notion of an analogous term, and show how, on most ways of implementing ontological pluralism, “existence” is analogous. Third, I discuss two sufficient conditions for when one is warranted in claiming that a philosophically interesting term is analogous. Fourth, I present a series of ontological schemes, each of which satisfies at least one of the sufficient conditions. The upshot is this: if you are attracted to one of these ontologies, you have reason to believe in ways of being. The careful reader will have noted the apparent modesty of my conclusion. Unfortunately, I do not believe that one could ever be rationally required to believe in ways of being. Still, in general a metaphysic is a live option to the extent that it is shown to be rationally permissible to believe. Since the apparent consensus among contemporary analytic metaphysicians is that believing that things can exist in different ways is silly or confused, establishing the rational permissibility of belief in ways of being is a non-trivial task. Let us begin. (shrink)

In the early twentieth century, Uchiyama Gudō, Seno’o Girō, Lin Qiuwu, and others advocated a Buddhism that was radical in two respects. Firstly, they adopted a more or less naturalist stance with respect to Buddhist doctrine and related matters, rejecting karma or other supernatural beliefs. And secondly, they held political and economic views that were radically anti-hegemonic, anti-capitalist, and revolutionary. Taking the idea of such a “radical Buddhism” seriously, A Buddha Land in This World: Philosophy, Utopia, and Radical Buddhism asks (...) whether it is possible to develop a philosophy that is simultaneously naturalist, anti-capitalist, Buddhist, and consistent. Rather than a study of radical Buddhism, then, this book is an attempt to radicalize it. The foundations of this “radicalized radical Buddhism” are provided by a realist interpretation of Yogācāra, elucidated and elaborated with some help from thinkers in the broader Tiantai/Tendai tradition and American philosophers Donald Davidson and W.V.O. Quine. A key implication of this foundation is that only this world and only this life are real, from which it follows that if Buddhism aims to alleviate suffering, it has to do so in this world and in this life. Twentieth-century radical Buddhists (as well as some engaged Buddhists) came to a similar conclusion, often expressed in their aim to realize “a Buddha land in this world.” Building on this foundation, but also on Mahāyāna moral philosophy, this book argues for an ethics and social philosophy based on a definition of evil as that what is or should be expected to cause death or suffering. On that ground, capitalism should be rejected indeed, but utopianism must be treated with caution as well, which raises questions about what it means – from a radicalized radical Buddhist perspective – to aim for a Buddha land in this world. (shrink)

What is the source of logical and mathematical truth? This book revitalizes conventionalism as an answer to this question. Conventionalism takes logical and mathematical truth to have their source in linguistic conventions. This was an extremely popular view in the early 20th century, but it was never worked out in detail and is now almost universally rejected in mainstream philosophical circles. Shadows of Syntax is the first book-length treatment and defense of a combined conventionalist theory of logic and mathematics. It (...) argues that our conventions, in the form of syntactic rules of language use, are perfectly suited to explain the truth, necessity, and a priority of logical and mathematical claims, as well as our logical and mathematical knowledge. (shrink)

Communication and content presents a comprehensive and foundational account of meaning based on new versions of situation theory and game theory. The literal and implied meanings of an utterance are derived from first principles assuming little more than the partial rationality of interacting agents. New analyses of a number of diverse phenomena – a wide notion of ambiguity and content encompassing phonetics, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and beyond, vagueness, convention and conventional meaning, indeterminacy, universality, the role of truth in communication, semantic (...) change, translation, Frege’s puzzle of informative identities – are developed. Communication, speaker meaning, and reference are defined. Frege’s context and compositional principles are generalized and reconciled in a fixed-point principle, and a detailed critique of Grice, several aspects of Lewis, and some aspects of the Romantic conception of meaning are offered. Connections with other branches of linguistics, especially psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, and natural language processing, are explored. -/- The book will be of interest to scholars in philosophy, linguistics, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science. It should also interest readers in related fields like literary and cultural theory and the social sciences. (shrink)

Following the lead of Duncan Pritchard’s “Wittgensteinian Pyrrhonism,” this paper takes a further, comparative and contrastive look at the problem of justification in Sextus Empiricus and in Wittgenstein’sOn Certainty. I argue both that Pritchard’s stimulating account is problematic in certain important respects and that his insights contain much interpretive potential still to be pursued. Diverging from Pritchard, I argue that it is a significant and self-conscious aspect of Sextus’ sceptical strategies to call into question large segments of our belief systemen (...) masseby exposing as apparently unjustifiable fundamental propositions which are closely related in their linchpin role to Wittgenstein’s hinge propositions. In the first instance, the result is a more complex account of both a deeper affinity between Wittgenstein’s approach to hinge propositions and Sextus’ approach to what I termarchaipropositions and a divergence between the two. In the second instance, I suggest how the comparison withOn Certaintycan be illuminating for the interpreter of Sextus. In particular, it can help us to see how the Pyrrhonist’s everyday conduct—common assumptions to the contrary notwithstanding—involves rational procedures of justification, in line with a naturalism reminiscent of Wittgenstein. Furthermore, it can help us to reflect on the Pyrrhonist’s attitude to what Wittgenstein would have called her ‘worldview’. Throughout, I suggest that the comparison with Wittgenstein is interesting, although it must be cashed out differently, not only on the interpretation—or, perhaps, strand—of ancient Pyrrhonism which has the sceptic exempt ordinary beliefs from her suspension of judgement, but also on the interpretation which has her disavow all beliefs categorically. (shrink)

I modify and generalize Carnap’s notion of frameworks as a way of unpacking Goodman’s metaphor of “making worlds with symbols”. My frameworks provide, metaphorically, a way of making worlds out of symbols in as much as all our framework-bound access to the world is through frameworks that always stand to be improved in accuracy, precision, and usually both. Such improvement is characterized in pragmatist terms.

The idea of there being “no fact of the matter” (NFM) features centrally in Quine’s indeterminacy theses. Yet there has been little discussion of how exactly Quine understands this idea. In this paper I identify, develop and then critically evaluate Quine’s conception of NFM. In Sects. 3–4 I consider a handful of intuitive semantic and ontological conceptions of NFM and argue that none is workable from within Quine’s philosophy. I conclude that the failure of each of these proposals is due (...) to the immanent status of truth and existence for Quine. In Sect. 5 I then present Quine’s official conception of NFM. Briefly, Quine’s idea is that there is NFM between two theories of translation iff those theories are physically equivalent. I develop this idea in detail. Finally, I raise two independent problems for this conception of NFM. In Sect. 6 I argue that Quine’s definition is too strong: given what he means by NFM, his arguments for indeterminacy—even granting all their premises and internal reasoning—simply cannot support his claim that there is NFM regarding translation; instead they establish a strictly weaker conclusion. In Sect. 7 I argue that Quine’s conception of NFM is in significant tension with his thesis of physicalism, and that he must give up one or the other. (shrink)

On a widespread reading, the Carnap-Quine debate about ontology concerns the objectivity and non-triviality of ontological claims. I argue that this view mischaracterizes Carnap’s aims in “Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology” : Carnap’s fundamental goal is to free up decisions about scientific language from constraints deriving from ontological doctrine. The contention, based on his internal/external distinction, that ontological claims are either meaningless or trivial was Carnap’s means to achieving this more fundamental goal. Setting the record straight on this point brings out (...) three important and often overlooked features of Carnap’s views on ontology. First, the target of Carnap’s critique in ESO is not Quine’s mature views on ontology, as laid out in “On What There Is”. Rather, Carnap is responding to arguments for nominalism that were given by Tarski, Goodman, and Quine in the 1940s. Second, a more general rejection of conservatism in theory choice is essential to Carnap’s aims and is implicit in his fundamental views on language. Third, even if it turns out to be tenable, the i/e distinction is not adequate for Carnap’s aim in ESO. Drawing on his basic conception of scientific language, I will suggest an alternative approach on his behalf. (shrink)

In the present paper I wish to regard constructivelogic as a self-contained system for the treatment ofepistemological issues; the explanations of theconstructivist logical notions are cast in anepistemological mold already from the outset. Thediscussion offered here intends to make explicit thisimplicit epistemic character of constructivism.Particular attention will be given to the intendedinterpretation laid down by Heyting. This interpretation, especially as refined in the type-theoretical work of Per Martin-Löf, puts thesystem on par with the early efforts of Frege andWhitehead-Russell. This quite (...) recent work, however,has proved valuable not only in the philosophy andfoundations of mathematics, but has also foundpractical application in computer science, where thelanguage of constructivism serves as an implementableprogramming language, and within the philosophy oflanguage.\footnote{Nordstr\"{o}m et al. give an overview of the work in computerscience, whereas Ranta provides an impressiveconstructivist alternative to Montague Grammar usingthe richer type structure of Martin-L\"{o}f in placeof the simple classical type theory of Church.} Mypresentation will be carried out through a contrastwith standard metamathematical work.\footnote{Troelstra and van Dalen give an encyclopedictreatment of the metamathematics of constructivism.}In the course of the development I have occasion tooffer some novel considerations on thenature of proof and inference. (shrink)

How do human children come up to carve up and think of the world around them in its most general and abstract structure? And to which degree are these general forms of viewing the world shared by other animals, notably by non-human primates? In response to these questions of what could be called comparative metaphysics, this paper discusses new evidence from developmental and comparative research to argue for the following picture: human children and non-human primates share a basic framework of (...) natural ontology: they think about their natural surroundings in essentialist ways in terms of natural kind objects constituted by their essential properties, and in generic terms as governed by general descriptive regularities. In contrast, there is a great divide when it comes to how human children and non-human primates carve up their social environment: only human children then go on to use their essentialist and generic thinking for developing a distinctively social ontology, to conceive of their surrounding in terms of socially constituted objects governed by general prescriptive norms. (shrink)

Quine’s thesis of the indeterminacy of translation has puzzled the philosophical community for several decades. It is unquestionably among the best known and most disputed theses in contemporary philosophy. Quine’s classical argument for the indeterminacy thesis, in his seminal work Word and Object, has even been described by Putnam as “what may well be the most fascinating and the most discussed philosophical argument since Kant’s Transcendental Deduction of the Categories” (Putnam, 1975a: p. 159).

In this introduction to Part 1 of the Common Knowledge symposium, “Fuzzy Studies,” the journal's editor discusses four essays from the 1980s by Richard Rorty, in which Rorty chose to associate himself with various neopragmatists, Continental thinkers, and “left-wing Kuhnians” under the rubric of the “new fuzziness.” The term had been introduced as an insult by a philosopher of science with positivist leanings, but Rorty took it up as an “endearing” compliment, arguing that “to be less fuzzy” was also to (...) be “less genial, tolerant, open-minded, and fallibilist.” He defined the “new fuzziness” as “an attempt to blur just those distinctions between the objective and subjective and between fact and value which the critical conception of rationality has developed.” This introduction also examines W. V. Quine's essay “Speaking of Objects” (1957), which describes objects as fuzzy “half-entities”; Clifford Geertz's essay “Blurred Genres” (1980), which advises social scientists that being “taxonomically upstanding” is futile; and Lofti Zadeh's article “The Concept of a Linguistic Variable and Its Application to Approximate Reasoning” (1975), which abandons “Aristotelian, bivalent logic” in favor of a “fuzzy logic” based on Zadeh's “fuzzy set theory.” This introductory piece relates these theoretical works of the past half-century to the sorites paradox and to classical issues of vagueness raised and still unresolved in Western philosophy. Returning then to Rorty, the author questions how Rorty expected his endorsement of the “new fuzziness” to be applied, as proposed, to theology and politics. Suggesting that such applications are the natural work of historians, the author, having asked the historian Natalie Zemon Davis for comment, then quotes her response—which associates fuzzy studies, “common knowledge,” and peacemaking—at length. (shrink)

The indispensability argument is sometimes seen as weakened by its reliance on a controversial premise of confirmation holism. Recently, some philosophers working on the indispensability argument have developed versions of the argument which, they claim, do not rely on holism. Some of these writers even claim to have strengthened the argument by eliminating the controversial premise. I argue that the apparent removal of holism leaves a lacuna in the argument. Without the holistic premise, or some other premise which facilitates the (...) transfer of evidence to mathematical portions of scientific theories, the argument is implausible. (shrink)

The access problem for mathematics arises from the supposition that the referents of mathematical terms inhabit a realm separate from us. Quine’s approach in the philosophy of mathematics dissolves the access problem, though his solution sometimes goes unrecognized, even by those who rely on his framework. This paper highlights both Quine’s position and its neglect. I argue that Michael Resnik’s structuralist, for example, has no access problem for the so-called mathematical objects he posits, despite recent criticism, since he relies on (...) an indispensability argument. Still, Resnik’s structuralist does not provide an account of our access to traditional mathematical objects, and this may be seen as a problem. (shrink)

Philosophy of mathematics for the last half-century has been dominated in one way or another by Quine’s indispensability argument. The argument alleges that our best scientific theory quantifies over, and thus commits us to, mathematical objects. In this paper, I present new considerations which undermine the most serious challenge to Quine’s argument, Hartry Field’s reformulation of Newtonian Gravitational Theory.

The new explanatory or enhanced indispensability argument alleges that our mathematical beliefs are justified by their indispensable appearances in scientific explanations. This argument differs from the standard indispensability argument which focuses on the uses of mathematics in scientific theories. I argue that the new argument depends for its plausibility on an equivocation between two senses of explanation. On one sense the new argument is an oblique restatement of the standard argument. On the other sense, it is vulnerable to an instrumentalist (...) response. Either way, the explanatory indispensability argument is no improvement on the standard one. (shrink)

This essay contrasts Richard Rorty’s the low-key, naturalistic handling of ontological concerns with the metaphysical approach that has recently become predominant within philosophy. It identifies some features of the latter approach that will surprise many outsiders who sympathise with the anti-metaphysical turn taken since Hume. The essay suggests that while Rorty does not provide a theoretical antidote to metaphysically-laden ontology, he does offer pragmatic advice that its advocates would do well to heed.

The article offers formal and doctrinal reasons that prove the existence of the “Harvard Philosophical School” as a real historico-philosophical phenomenon. The author includes Willard Van Orman Quine, Nelson Goodman, and Hilary Putnam in this school. The aim of this article is to compare the conceptualism, relativism and anti-realism of Quine, Goodman and Pantem, on the basis of pragmatic tendencies in their philosophical studies. Formal reasons: all these philosophers were professors at Harvard University; in addition, Quine was a teacher of (...) Goodman and Putnam, Goodman was a teacher of Putnam. Doctrinal reasons: Quine, Goodman, and Putnam, each in his own specific pragmatic way, stood on the positions of relativism, anti-realism, conceptualism, and tried to separate themselves from “cultural relativism”; common touchstone concepts and tendencies in particular in their philosophical investigations are: conceptual scheme, indeterminacy of translation, internal criteria, ontological relativity and others; the obvious analogy between Quine's standards of similarity, Goodman's standards of correctness, and standards for Putnam's conceptual schemes. Thus, we have strong reasons to consider Quine, Goodman and Putnam as representatives of a common philosophical school. The role played in their doctrines by the ideas of William James, who also taught at Harvard, at least hypothetically allows us to expand the boundaries of this school. (shrink)

Up to the introduction of the term and concept of incommensurability by T. S. Kuhn and P. K. Feyerabend in the early 1960s, scientific texts were supposed to pose no problem as regards their translation, unlike literature, which was thought very difficult to translate. After the introduction of the term, translation of scientific language became equally problematic because, due to conceptual and perceptual incommensurability, there was no common observation basis to ground linguistic equivalences between languages of incommensurable paradigms. This article (...) highlights the presuppositions that link incommensurability to dramatic consequences (impossibility of communication, translation, and comparative evaluation of paradigms) and tries to sketch an alternative way of understanding incommensurability and translation drawing on Kuhn’s work. From this perspective, translation is not an all-or-nothing affair for either science or literature and becomes a problem to be solved for each particular set of circumstances. (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)

Fodor has argued that, because concept acquisition relies on the use of concepts already possessed by the learner, all concepts that cannot be definitionally reduced are innate. Since very few reductive definitions are available, it appears that most concepts are innate. After noting the reasons why we find such radical concept nativism implausible, I explicate Fodor's argument, showing that anyone who is committed to mentalistic explanation should take it seriously. Three attempts at avoiding the conclusion are examined and found to (...) be unsuccessful. I then present an alternative way around Fodor's nativism; I maintain that concepts at a given level of explanation can be semantically primitive, yet at least partially acquired if some of the conditions at a lower level of explanation that are responsible for the concept's presence are themselves acquired. (shrink)

We investigate the way physical laws objectively refer to the entities they are about. Laws of mathematical physics do not refer directly to the “real world” but to an ideal specific domain of objects, which we term “scope”. In order to find out which real objects physical laws deal with, reference to the scope is not sufficient. We need in addition the search for domains to which laws apply — i. e. “empirical domains”— in order to establish their reference to (...) the “real world”. It is just in such empirical domains that we are able to discover the real entities physical laws objectively refer to. “Physical reality” turns out to be not something “given” but rather something “to come out” of the very process of scientific inquiry. (shrink)

This essay offers a detailed philosophical criticism of Frege’s popular thesis that identity is a relation of names. I consider Frege’s position as articulated both in ‘On Sense and Reference’, and in the Grundgesetze, where he appears to take an objectual view of identity, arguing that in both cases Frege is clearly committed to the proposition that identity is a relation holding between names, on the grounds that two different things can never be identical. A counterexample to Frege’s thesis is (...) considered, and a positive thesis is developed according to which, in contradistinction to the Fregean position, identity is a reflexive, symmetric, and transitive relation holding only between a thing and itself which can be expressed as a relation between names. (shrink)

This paper offers a critical reconstruction of the motivations that led to the development of mereology as we know it today, along with a brief description of some problems that define current research in the field.

Although Richard Rorty has done much to renew interest in the philosophy of John Dewey, he nonetheless rejects two of the most important components of Dewey's philosophy, that is, his metaphysics and epistemology. Following George Santayana, Rorty accuses Dewey of trying to serve Locke and Hegel, an impossibility as Rorty rightly sees it. Rorty (1982) says that Dewey should have been Hegelian all the way (p. 85). By reconstructing a bit of Hegel's early philosophy of work, and comparing it to (...) Dewey's metaphysics and epistemology we can see that Dewey was indeed Hegelian all the way and that Rorty has constructed a false dilemma. We also gain some interesting insight into Dewey's philosophy by viewing it in terms of labor, tools and language. (shrink)

It has been suggested that quantum particles are genuinelyvague objects (Lowe 1994a). The present work explores thissuggestion in terms of the various metaphysical packages that areavailable for describing such particles. The formal frameworksunderpinning such packages are outlined and issues of identityand reference are considered from this overall perspective. Indoing so we hope to illuminate the diverse ways in whichvagueness can arise in the quantum context.

We shall distinguish between sortal predication and standard predication. The former kind of predication necessarily involves sortal concepts but the latter, as it is customarily viewed, does not. It is generally thought that the only essential occurrence of a concept in a standard predication is the concept being predicated. In this paper, we shall put forward an alternative view. We shall propose to understand standard predication as a cognitive act essentially requiring sortal concepts. We shall call this view conceptual predication (...) sortalism and ground it on the basis of epistemic-semantic reasons. Concepts are understood as intersubjectively realizable capacities or abilities that fulfill particular cognitive roles, such as those of classification, categorization, individuation, and referring. (shrink)

The phrase ‘The iterative conception of sets’ conjures up a picture of a particular settheoretic universe – the cumulative hierarchy – and the constant conjunction of phrasewith-picture is so reliable that people tend to think that the cumulative hierarchy is all there is to the iterative conception of sets: if you conceive sets iteratively, then the result is the cumulative hierarchy. In this paper, I shall be arguing that this is a mistake: the iterative conception of set is a good (...) one, for all the usual reasons. However, the cumulative hierarchy is merely one way among many of working out this conception, and arguments in favour of an iterative conception have been mistaken for arguments in favour of this one special instance of it. (This may be the point to get out of the way the observation that although philosophers of mathematics write of the iterative conception of set, what they really mean – in the terminology of modern computer science at least – is the recursive conception of sets. Nevertheless, having got that quibble off my chest, I shall continue to write of the iterative conception like everyone else.). (shrink)

Several have denied that there is, specifically, a criterion of identity for persons and some deny that there are, for any kind, diachronic criteria of identity. I argue, however, that there are no criteria of identity, either synchronic or diachronic, for any kind whatsoever. I begin by elaborating the notion of a criterion of identity in order to clarify what exactly is being denied when I maintain there are none. I examine the motivation of those who qualify in some way (...) the general claim that there are synchronic and diachronic criteria of identity for every kind, then present my direct and categorical argument against such criteria. I next evaluate the objections of those who argue that rejecting criteria of identity has untenable results. These objections are ineffective, each based on the incorrect assumption that if there is no criterion of identity for a kind, the identity of an instance of that kind is independent of its qualities. I conclude by considering some of the upshots of rejecting criteria of identity and the insight doing so provides into things in general and the limits of ontological inquiry. (shrink)

Over the last three decades, non-adaptationism has developed as an alternative model to more traditional, adaptationist approaches within Evolutionary Epistemology. Despite its great explanatory strength, non-adaptationist EE finds a potential Achilles heel in its adherence to conceptual relativism, namely the idea that empirical content can be relative to many different and radically incommensurable conceptual schemes. In his seminal essay “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme”, Donald Davidson did in fact prove the unintelligibility of an analogous form of conceptual (...) relativism. Although Davidson’s original intent was to debunk a conceptual relativist position which he discerned in the works of authors such as Kuhn, Quine, and Whorf, given the apparent similarity between the conceptual relativism supported by non-adaptationist EE and the one criticised by Davidson, one might well wonder if Davidson’s objections would have the same debunking effect if applied to non-adaptationist EE. In this paper I propose to answer this question by directing Davidson’s critiques of conceptual relativism to non-adaptationist EE and by testing to what extent the latter is de facto undermined by Davidson’s attacks. I demonstrate that Davidson’s arguments do not detract from the reliability of non-adaptationist perspectives and, to some extent, they appear to substantiate the non-adaptationist evolutionary epistemological cause anew. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss Quine’s views on language sharing and linguistic communities. It is sometimes explicitly and often implicitly taken for granted that Quine believes that speakers can form communities in which they share a language. The aim of the paper is to show that this is a misinterpretation and, on the contrary, Quine is closer to linguistic individualism – the view according to which there is no guarantee that speakers within a community share a language and the notion (...) of idiolect is more fundamental than the notion of shared language. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to theorize how materials can play an active, constitutive, and causally effective role in the production and sustenance of cultural forms and meanings. It does so through an empirical exploration of the Museum of Modern Art of New York (MoMA). The article describes the museum as an “objectification machine” that endeavors to transform and to stabilize artworks as meaningful “objects” that can be exhibited, classified, and circulated. The article explains how the extent to which (...) the museum succeeds in this process of stabilization ultimately depends on the material properties of artworks and, more specially, on whether these behave as “docile” or “unruly” objects. Drawing on different empirical examples, the article explores how docile and unruly objects shape organizational dynamics within the museum and, through them, the wider processes of institutional and cultural reproduction. The article uses this empirical example to highlight the importance of developing a new “material sensibility” that restores heuristic dignity to the material within cultural sociology. (shrink)

Jonathan Lowe argues that metaphysics should be restored to a central position in philosophy, as the most fundamental form of rational inquiry, whose findings underpin those of all other disciplines. He portrays metaphysics as charting the possibilities of existence, by idetifying the categories of being and the relations of ontological dependency between entities of different categories. He proceeds to set out a unified and original metaphysical system: he defends a substance ontology, according to which the existence of the world s (...) one world in time depends upon the existence of persisting things which retain their identity over time and through processes of qualitative change. And he contends that even necessary beings, such as the abstract objects of mathematics, depend ultimately for their existence upon there being a concrete world of enduring substances. Within his system of metaphysics Lowe seeks to answer many of the deepest and most challenging questions in philosophy. (shrink)