Presenting the first comprehensive, in-depth study of hyperintensionality, this book equips readers with the basic tools needed to appreciate some of current and future debates in the philosophy of language, semantics, and metaphysics. After introducing and explaining the major approaches to hyperintensionality found in the literature, the book tackles its systematic connections to normativity and offers some contributions to the current debates. The book offers undergraduate and graduate students an essential introduction to the topic, while also helping professionals in related (...) fields get up to speed on open research-level problems. (shrink)

Self-consciousness in non-human animals is a complex phenomenon which raises both conceptual and methodological problems. First, what do we mean by the concept of ‘self-consciousness’? Secondly, what is the best experimental approach to self-consciousness? This paper gives a short overview of the concept of self-consciousness in section 1. We can understand the concept of self-consciousness as capturing the ability of subjects to consciously think about themselves as themselves. If this is accurate, then it is prudent to look at a broad (...) bundle of abilities which are related to this ability. The paper then focuses on advantages and problems of the multipronged approach, a kind of empirical approach which uses several different test criteria to determine whether a subject is self-conscious or not. Section 2 briefly contrasts this kind of approach with other possibilities. The main disparity is to singlepronged approaches, which have been discussed and dismissed in greater detail elsewhere. Section 3 discusses the advantages of a multipronged approach, whereas section 4 is dedicated to the discussion of some of its problems. (shrink)

Many scholars claimed that, according to Immanuel Kant, some judgements lack a truth-value: analytic judgements, judgements about items of which humans cannot have experience, judgements of perception, and non-assertoric judgements. However, no one has undertaken an extensive examination of the textual evidence for those claims. Based on an analysis of Kant's texts, I argue that: (1) according to Kant, only judgements of perception are not truth-apt. All other judgements are truth-apt, including analytic judgements and judgements about items of which humans (...) cannot have experience. (2) Kant sometimes states that truth-apt judgements are actual bearers of truth or falsity only when they are taken to state what is actually the case. Kant calls these judgements assertoric. Other texts ascribe truth and falsity to judgements, regardless of whether they are assertoric. Kant's views on truth-aptness raise challenges for correspondentist and coherentist interpretations of Kant's theory of truth; they rule out the identification of Kant's crucial notion of objective validity with truth-aptness; and they imply that Kant was not a verificationist about truth or meaning. (shrink)

Meinong’s thought has been rediscovered in recent times by analytic philosophy: his object theory has significant consequences in formal ontology, and especially his account of impossible objects has proved itself to be decisive in a wide range of fields, from logic up to ontology of fiction. Rejecting the traditional ‘prejudice in favour of the real’, Meinong investigates what there is not: a peculiar non-existing object is precisely the fictional object, which exemplifies a number of properties without existing in the same (...) way as flesh-and-blood detectives do. Fictional objects are in some sense incomplete objects, whose core of constituent properties is not completely determined. Now, what does it imply to hold that a fictional object may also occur in true statements? We shall deal with the objections raised by Russell and Quine against Meinong’s view, pointing out limits and advantages of both perspectives. (shrink)

Ostrich presentists maintain that we can use all the expressive resources of the tensed language to provide an explanation of why true claims about the past are true, without thereby paying any price in terms of ontology or basic ideology. I clarify the position by making a distinction between three kinds of explanation, which has general interest and applicability. I then criticize the ostrich position because it requires an unconstrained version of the third form of explanation, which is out of (...) place in metaphysics. (shrink)

Fictional truth, or truth in fiction/pretense, has been the object of extended scrutiny among philosophers and logicians in recent decades. Comparatively little attention, however, has been paid to its inferential relationships with time and with certain deliberate and contingent human activities, namely, the creation of fictional works. The aim of the paper is to contribute to filling the gap. Toward this goal, a formal framework is outlined that is consistent with a variety of conceptions of fictional truth and based upon (...) a specific formal treatment of time and agency, that of so-called stit logics. Moreover, a complete axiomatic theory of fiction-making TFM is defined, where fiction-making is understood as the exercise of agency and choice in time over what is fictionally true. The language \ of TFM is an extension of the language of propositional logic, with the addition of temporal and modal operators. A distinctive feature of \ with respect to other modal languages is a variety of operators having to do with fictional truth, including a ‘fictionality’ operator \ . Some applications of TFM are outlined, and some interesting linguistic and inferential phenomena, which are not so easily dealt with in other frameworks, are accounted for. (shrink)

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 (...) that a quantifier expression carves out and reflects. But if quantificational pluralism is true, then a quantifier should be more natural than its corresponding domain; and since it does not appear to be the case that a quantifier is more natural than its corresponding domain, quantificational pluralism does not appear to be true. Thus, I claim, an ontological pluralist should not be a quantificational pluralist. (shrink)

We want to say both that Sherlock Holmes does not exist, and that he is a fictional character. But how can we say these things without committing ourselves to the existence of Sherlock Holmes? Here I develop and defend a non-commital paraphrase of quantification over fictional characters, modeled on the non-commital paraphrase Kit Fine provides for quantification over possibilia. I also develop and defend the view that names for fictional characters are weakly non-referring, in Nathan Salmon’s sense, and so provide (...) us with a non-commital means to express singular propositions. The resulting position allows us to reap the benefits of Fictional Realism without paying the associated ontological cost. (shrink)

In this paper I show that one version of motivational internalism follows from the so-called ideal observer theory. Let us call the version of the ideal observer theory used in this essay (IOT). According to (IOT), it is necessarily the case that it ought to be that A if and only if every ideal observer wants it to be the case that A. We shall call the version of motivational internalism that follows from (IOT) (moral) conditional belief motivational internalism (CBMI). (...) According to (CBMI), it is necessarily the case that, for every x: if x were an ideal observer, it would be the case that x believes that it ought to be that A only if x wants it to be the case that A. Given that it is necessarily true that no ideal observer has any false beliefs, (IOT) entails (CBMI). Or, so I shall argue. (shrink)

En este artículo delineamos una propuesta para elaborar una lógica de las ficciones desde el enfoque lúdico del pragmatismo dialógico. En efecto, centrados en una de las críticas mayores al enfoque clásico de la lógica: la esquizofrenia estructural de su semántica, recorremos los compromisos ontológicos de las dos tradiciones mayores de la lógica para establecer sus posibilidades y límites en el análisis del discurso ficcional, y la superación desde una perspectiva lúdico pragmática.

How hard is it to answer an ontological question? Ontological trivialism,, inspired by Carnap’s internal-external distinction among “questions of existence”, replies “very easy.” According to, almost every ontologically disputed entity trivially exists. has been defended by many, including Schiffer and Schaffer. In this paper, I will take issue with. After introducing the view in the context of Carnap-Quine dispute and presenting two arguments for it, I will discuss Hofweber’s argument against and explain why it fails. Next, I will introduce a (...) modified version of ontological trivialism, i.e. negative ontological trivialism,, defended by Hofweber, according to which some ontologically disputed entities, e.g. properties, trivially do not exist. I will show that fails too. Then I will outline a Meinongian answer to the original question, namely, ‘How hard is it to answer an ontological question?’ The Carnapian intuition of the triviality of internal questions can be saved by the Meinongian proposal that quantification and reference are not ontologically committing and the Quinean intuition of the legitimacy of interesting ontological questions can be respected by the Meinongian distinction between being and so-being. (shrink)

The problem of intentional inexistence arises because the following (alleged) intuitions are mutually conflicting: it seems that sometimes we think about things that do not exist; it seems that intentionality is a relation between a thinker and what such a thinker thinks about; it seems that relations entail the existence of what they relate. In this paper, I argue for what I call a radical relationist solution. First, I contend that the extant arguments for the view that relations entail the (...) existence of their relata are wanting. In this regard, I defend a kind of pluralism about relations according to which more than one kind of relation involves non-existents. Second, I contend that there are reasons to maintain that all thoughts are relations between thinkers and the things they are about. More accurately, I contend that the radical relationist solution is to be preferred to both the intentional content solution (as developed by Crane) and the adverbial property solution (as developed by Kriegel). Finally, I argue that once the distinction between thinking “X” and thinking about X has been drawn, the radical relationist solution can handle issues like ontological commitment, substitutivity failure, scrutability, and non-specificity. (shrink)

In, the author proposes a survey of Zalta’s Object Theory and, more specifically, of the Modal Axiom of Encoding. MAE claims that if something x possibly encodes a property F, then x necessarily encodes F. According to Bourgeois-Gironde, MAE fails to account for intentional phenomena which occur in conceivability-contexts. His solution is based on the notion of quasi-encoding: x quasi-encodes F iff x possibly encodes F. In this paper, I show that Bourgeois-Gironde’s concern is misguided and that Zalta’s framework captures (...) the conceivability-phenomena at issue by modeling Husserl’s notion of Noemata. I then argue that his solution is superior to Bourgeois-Gironde’s. The philosophical significance of such a discussion nonetheless goes well beyond the debate between these two authors. Indeed, Zalta’s theory of Noemata is only sketched and needs to be further explored to see, on the one hand, whether and how Object Theory successfully describes the behavior of objects in conceivability-contexts, and, on the other hand, to test the efficacy of its primitive notions that are – as the contemporary debate on Neomeinongianism largely shows – anything but uncontroversial. (shrink)

The special theory of relativity holds significant interest for scientific perspectivists. In this paper, I distinguish between two related meanings of “perspectival,” and argue that reference frames are perspectives, provided that perspectival means “being conditional” rather than “being partial.” Frame-dependent properties such as length, time duration, and simultaneity, are not partially measured in a reference frame, but their measurements are conditional on the choice of frame. I also discuss whether the constancy of the speed of light depends on perspectival factors (...) such as the idealized definition of the speed of light in a perfect vacuum and the Einstein synchronization convention. Furthermore, I argue for the view that the constancy of its speed is a robust property of light according to the conditions of currently acceptable experimental setups pertaining to special relativity, and conclude that this view supports perspectivism. (shrink)

This paper starts with the presentation of an Aristotelian theory of negative properties. Against this backdrop, it then asks whether there could be objects that have solely negative properties, i.e., completely negative objects. This possibility is entertained by Wittgenstein in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The notion of a completely negative object is compared to the concepts of a nonexistent object, a nonconcrete object, and a nonactual object. Ultimately, it is argued that there can be no completely negative objects, because all negative (...) properties entail some positive properties. (shrink)

The question of fiction is omnipresent within the work of Paul Ricoeur throughout his prolific career. However, Ricoeur raises the questions of fiction in relation to other issues such the symbol, metaphor and narrative. This article sets out to foreground a traditional problem of fiction and logic, which is termed the existence of non-existent objects, in relation to the Paul Ricoeur’s work on narrative. Ricoeur’s understanding of fiction takes place within his overall philosophical anthropology where the fictions and histories make (...) up the very nature of identity both personal and collective. The existence of non-existent objects demonstrates a dichotomy between fiction and history, non-existent objects can exist as fictional objects. The very possibility of the existence of fictional objects entails ontological status considerations. What ontological status do fictional objects have? Ricoeur develops a concept of narrative configuration which is akin to the Kantian productive imagination and configuration frames the question historical narrative and fictional narrative. It is demonstrated that the ontological status of fictional objects can be best understood in a model of possible worlds. (shrink)

Recently, some philosophers have attempted to escape familiar challenges to orthodox nonnaturalist normative realism by abandoning the robust metaphysical commitments of the orthodox view. One such view is the ‘Non-Metaphysical Non-Naturalism’ or ‘Non-Realist Cognitivism’ proposed by Derek Parfit and a few others. The trouble is that, as it stands, Non-Realist Cognitivism seems unable to provide a substantive non-trivial account of the meaning and truth conditions of moral claims. The paper considers various strategies one might use to address the challenge. There (...) is a rich field of views that are cognitivist and non-realist. But the paper is skeptical of the prospects of Non-Realist Cognitivism. (shrink)

Referential opacity is the failure of substitutivity of identity (SI, for short) and in Quine’s view of existential generalization (EG, for short) as well. Quine thinks that its “solution” in epistemic and doxastic contexts, which relies on the notion of exportation, leads to undesirable results. But epistemic logicians such as Jaakko Hintikka and Wolfgang Lenzen provide another solution based on a different diagnosis: opacity is not, as in Quine’s view, due to the absence of reference, it is rather due to (...) the plurality of references; therefore, one must stabilize the reference to restore SI and EG. However, Hintikka’s semantics remains classical in its treatment of existence, which makes EG non-applicable to possible objects, while in Lenzen’s system, EG is applicable by means of a particular quantifier. But this requires adding the predicate of existence to account for real objects. In this paper, I will show the advantages and disadvantages of both solutions and will end by providing an alternative approach to the problem of non-existent objects, which stays into the frame of possible worlds semantics, but introduces some more restrictions, eliminates the problematic predicate of existence, and applies a neutral quantifier to possible non-existent objects. (shrink)

Noneism a is form of Meinongianism, proposed by Richard Routley and developed and improved by Graham Priest in his widely discussed book Towards Non-Being. Priest's noneism is based upon the double move of building a worlds semantics including impossible worlds, besides possible ones, and admitting a new comprehension principle for objects, differerent from the ones proposed in other kinds of neo-Meinongian theories, such as Parsons' and Zalta's. The new principle has no restrictions on the sets of properties that can deliver (...) objects, but parameterizes the having of properties by objects to worlds. Modality is therefore explicitly built in - so the approach can be conveniently labeled as "modal noneism". In this paper, I put modal noneism to work by testing it against classical issues in modal logic and semantics. It turns out that - perhaps surprisingly - the theory performs well in problems of transworld identity, which are frequently considered to be the difficult ones in the literature; faces a limitation, albeit not a severe one, when one comes to transworld individuation, which is often taken as an easy issue, if not a pseudo-problem; and may stumble upon a real trouble when dealing with what I shall call 'extensionally indiscernible entities' - particular nonexistent objects modal noneism is committed to. (shrink)

Both through his own work and that of his students, Franz Clemens Brentano had an often underappreciated influence on the course of 20 th - and 21 st -century philosophy. _The Routledge Handbook of Franz Brentano and the Brentano School_ offers full coverage of Brentano’s philosophy and his influence. It contains 38 brand-new essays from an international team of experts that offer a comprehensive view of Brentano’s central research areas—philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and value theory—as well as of the principal (...) figures shaped by Brentano’s school of thought. A General Introduction serves as an overview of Brentano and the contents of the volume and three separate bibliographies point students and researchers on to further avenues of inquiry. Systematic and detailed, _The Routledge Handbook of Franz Brentano and the Brentano School_ provides readers with a valuable reference to Brentano’s work, and to his lasting importance in the history of philosophy and in contemporary debates. (shrink)

This book is both an introduction to and a research work on Meinongianism. “Meinongianism” is taken here, in accordance with the common philosophical jargon, as a general label for a set of theories of existence – probably the most basic notion of ontology. As an introduction, the book provides the first comprehensive survey and guide to Meinongianism and non-standard theories of existence in all their main forms. As a research work, the book exposes and develops the most up-to-date Meinongian theory (...) (called modal Meinongianism), applies it to specific fields, and discusses its open problems. Part I of the book provides a historical introduction to, and critical discussion of, the dominant philosophical view of existence: the “Kantian-Fregean-Quinean” perspective. Part II is the full-fledged introduction to the Meinongian theories of existence as a real property of individuals: after starting with the so-called naïve Meinongian conception and its problems, it provides a self-contained presentation of the main neo-Meinongian proposals, and a detailed discussion of their strengths and weaknesses. Part III develops a specific neo-Meinongian theory of existence employing a model-theoretic semantic framework. It discusses its application to the ontology and semantics of fictional objects, and its open problems. The methodology of the book follows the most recent trends in analytic ontology. In particular, the meta-ontological point of view is largely privileged. (shrink)

In this dissertation I suggest an answer to the famous question ‘why is there something rather than nothing?’ I argue that there is something because there could not have been nothing. The focus of my discussion is the empty possible world of metaphysical nihilism, and the first chapter is a rejection of the only prominent argument for that position; the subtraction argument. In the second part of my discussion I construct a positive argument against metaphysical nihilism, I assume, as is (...) common in the literature, that inconceivability provides evidence of impossibility. I establish the inconceivability of nothingness taking propositional imagining to be the core of conceivability, claiming that we have no experience of nothingness in the relevant sense and are unable to imagine it. Finally, I suggest that a distinction should be made between everyday use of the term ‘nothing’, and the sense under discussion here. The inconceivability of nothingness applies only in the latter case. Given that nothingness is inconceivable, we have prima facie reason to suppose that the empty world is impossible. I conclude that given the failure of the subtraction argument and in light of my argument against metaphysical nihilism, that position should be rejected. (shrink)

I’ve often noticed how debates within the SSE community sometimes parallel debates in the political arena, perhaps especially with respect to the passion they elicit and the intolerance and condescension sometimes lavished on members of the “opposition.” Occasionally, of course, the debates in the SSE are nearly indistinguishable from those in the political arena—say, over the evidence for human-caused climate change. But what I find most striking is how the passion, intolerance, etc.—perhaps most often displayed by those defending whatever the (...) “received” view happens to be—betrays either a surprising ignorance or else a seemingly convenient lapse of memory, one that probably wouldn’t appear in less emotionally charged contexts. What impassioned partisans tend to ignore or forget concerns (a) the tentative nature of both scientific pronouncements and knowledge claims generally (including matters ostensibly much more secure than those under debate), as well as (b) the extensive network of assumptions on which every knowledge claim rests. So I’d like to offer what I hope will be a perspective-enhancer, concerning how even our allegedly most secure and fundamental pieces of a priori knowledge are themselves open to reasonable debate. A widespread, but naïve, view of logic is that no rational person could doubt its elementary laws. But that bit of popular “wisdom” is demonstrably false. And if that’s the case, then so much the worse for the degree of certitude we can expect in more controversial arenas. Let me illustrate with a few examples.1. (shrink)

I develop ontological pluralism about non-being, the view that there are multiple ways, kinds, or modes of non-being. I suggest that the view is both more plausible and defensible than it first seems, and that it has many useful applications across a wide variety of metaphysical and explanatory problems. After drawing out the relationship between pluralism about being and pluralism about non-being, I discuss quantificational strategies for the pluralist about non-being. I examine historical precedent for the view. Finally, I suggest (...) that pluralism about non-being has explanatory power across a variety of domains, and that the view can account for differences between nonexistent past and future times, between omissions and absences, and between different kinds of fictional objects. (shrink)

This dissertation is about human knowledge of reality. In particular, it argues that scientific knowledge is bounded by historically available instruments and theories; nevertheless, the use of several independent instruments and theories can provide access to the persistent potentialities of reality. The replicability of scientific observations and experiments allows us to obtain explorable evidence of robust entities and properties. The dissertation includes seven chapters. It also studies three cases – namely, Higgs bosons and hypothetical Ϝ-particles (section 2.4), the Ptolemaic and (...) Kepler model of the planets (section 6.7), and the special theory of relativity (chapter 7). -/- Chapter 1 is the introduction of the dissertation. Chapter 2 clarifies the notion of the real on the basis of two concepts: persistence and resistance. These concepts enable me to explain my ontological belief in the real potentialities of human-independent things and the implications of this view for the perceptual and epistemological levels of discussion. On the basis of the concept of “overlapping perspectives”, chapter 3 argues that entity realism and perspectivism are complementary. That is, an entity that manifests itself through several experimental/observational methods is something real, but our knowledge of its nature is perspectival. Critically studying the recent views of entity realism, chapter 4 extends the discussion of entity realism and provides a criterion for the reality of property tokens. Chapter 5, in contrast, develops the perspectival aspects of my view on the basis of the phenomenological-hermeneutical approaches to the philosophy of science. This chapter also elaborates my view of empirical evidence, as briefly expressed in sections 2.5 and 4.5. Chapter 6 concerns diachronic theoretical perspectives. It first explains my view of progress, according to which current perspectives are broader than past ones. Second, it argues that the successful explanations and predictions of abandoned theories can be accounted for from our currently acceptable perspectives. The case study of Ptolemaic astronomy supports the argument of this chapter. Chapter 7 serves as the conclusion of the dissertation by applying the central themes of the previous chapters to the case study of special relativity theory. I interpret frame-dependent properties, such as length and time duration, and the constancy of the speed of light according to realist perspectivism. (shrink)

This thesis is an exercise in comparative metaontology. I am centrally concerned with how one might choose between competing metaontological theories. To make my project tractable, I compare two contemporary metaontological approaches dominant in the literature: neo-Quineanism and neo-Aristotelianism. Peter van Inwagen, a representative of N-Q, claims that ontological inquiry should be conducted in the quantifier-variable idiom of first-order predicate logic; to know what exists, or what a theory says exists, we read our commitments off the regimented sentences that we (...) affirm as true. E.J. Lowe, a representative of N-A objects to N-Q and claims that ontology should be done directly; that it is a mostly a priori activity which is the indispensable intellectual foundation for all rational inquiry. Both metaontological accounts are questionable and there seems to be no decisive way to choose between them. I claim, however, that considerations concerning the explanatory nature of ontology is a key and under-studied factor with respect to ontological method, pointing a way to a possible candidate for metaontological theory choice. I conclude that van Inwagen’s N-Q metaontology is wanting in many respects and further, that he does not provide adequate reasons to dispense with explanation as a feature of ontological inquiry. While explanatory considerations are central to Lowe’s N-A metaontology, I claim that the best that can be hoped for with his particular approach is a form of explanatory antirealism. (shrink)

Content disjunctivism is the view that veridical experience involves contents and objects that differ from those of corresponding hallucinations. On one formulation of this view, we are aware of ordinary material things in our surroundings when we experience veridically, and we are aware of mere appearances when we hallucinate. This paper proposes a way of developing this view and offers some considerations in support. Central to the proposed regimentation will be a distinction between different notions of appearance. We distinguish between (...) the notion of something merely appearing to have a property and the notion of mere appearances, which are types of objects that we can refer to and be aware of. Mere appearances are not sense data or Meinongian non-existent objects but existing objects that do not have the properties that they appear to have. These notions of appearance will be elucidated, in particular by characterizing how they are involved in hallucination and illusion. I argue that the resulting view is supported by how our mental life seems to us when we experience our environment. (shrink)

According to what has long been the dominant school of thought in analytic meta-ontology––defended not only by W. V. O. Quine, but also by Bertrand Russell, Alvin Plantinga, Peter van Inwagen, and many others––the meaning of ‘there is’ is identical to the meaning of ‘there exists.’ The most (in)famous aberration from this view is advanced by Alexius Meinong, whose ontological picture has endured extensive criticism (and borderline abuse) from several subscribers to the majority view. Meinong denies the identity of being (...) and existence. That is, he denies that ‘there is’ and ‘there exists’ are semantically equivalent, and espouses a theory according to which there are things that do not exist. Here I defend a revised version of this view, which I call “Noncontradictory Neo-Meinongianism.” Focusing primarily on van Inwagen’s arguments in “Meta-Ontology” (1998), I argue that Noncontradictory Neo-Meinongianism is, on commonsensical grounds, preferable to the meta-ontological theories of van Inwagen and Meinong. (shrink)

Castañeda’s guise theory is a peculiarly interesting Neo-Meinongian approach, in virtue of its bundle-theoretic and anti-representationalist features. But it also has some problematic aspects. It crucially relies on a series of sameness relations, such as consubstantiation or consociation, but this list is incomplete. Moreover, guise theory is hindered by its view of the sameness relations as forms of predication alternative to what may be called, following Plantinga, standard predication. This paper thus proposes a revised version of guise theory that acknowledges (...) two additional sameness relations and standard predication. (shrink)

Modal Meinongianism is the most recent neo-Meinongian theory. Its main innovation consists in a Comprehension Principle which, unlike other neo-Meinongian approaches, seemingly avoids limitations on the properties that can characterize objects. However, in a recent paper A. Sauchelli has raised an objection against modal Meinongianism, to the effect that properties and relations involving reference to worlds at which they are instantiated, and specifically to the actual world or parts thereof, force a limitation of its Comprehension Principle. The theory, thus, is (...) no better off than other neo-Meinongian views in this respect. This article shows that the notion part of actuality in Sauchelli’s paper is ambiguous from the modal Meinongian viewpoint. Accordingly, his objection splits into two, depending on its disambiguation. It is then explained how neither interpretation forces modal Meinongianism to limit its Comprehension Principle. A third problem connected to Sauchelli’s objection is addressed: how to account for our felicitously referring to nonexistent objects via descriptions that embed reference to properties not actually instantiated by the objects. Overall, the replies to these difficulties provide good insights into the workings of the new Meinongian theory. (shrink)

As physical entities that translate symbols into physical actions, computers offer insights into the nature of meaning and agency. • Physical symbol systems, generically known as agents, link abstractions to material actions. The meaning of a symbol is defined as the physical actions an agent takes when the symbol is encountered. • An agent has autonomy when it has the power to select actions based on internal decision processes. Autonomy offers a partial escape from constraints imposed by direct physical influences (...) such as gravity and the transfer of momentum. Swimming upstream is an example. • Symbols are names that can designate other entities. It appears difficult to explain the use of names and symbols in terms of more primitive functionality. The ability to use names and symbols, i.e., symbol grounding, may be a fundamental cognitive building block. • The standard understanding of causality—wiggling X results in Y wiggling—applies to both physical causes (e.g., one billiard ball hitting another) and symbolic causes (e.g., a traffic light changing color). Because symbols are abstract, they cannot produce direct physical effects. For a symbol to be a cause requires that the affected entity determine its own response. This is called autonomous causality. • This analysis of meaning and autonomy offers new perspectives on free will. (shrink)

Modal realists face a puzzle. For modal realism to be justified, modal realists need to be able to give a successful reduction of modality. A simple argument, however, appears to show that the reduction they propose fails. In order to defend the claim that modal realism is justified, modal realists therefore need to either show that this argument fails, or show that modal realists can give another reduction of modality that is successful. I argue that modal realists cannot do either (...) of these things and that, as a result, modal realism is unjustified and should be rejected. (shrink)