This chapter argues that the general philosophy of science should learn metaphilosophical lessons from the case of metaphysical underdetermination, as it occurs in non-relativistic quantum mechanics. Section presents the traditional discussion of metaphysical underdetermination regarding the individuality and non-individuality of quantum particles. Section discusses three reactions to it found in the literature: eliminativism about individuality; conservatism about individuality; eliminativism about objects. Section wraps it all up with metametaphysical considerations regarding the epistemology of metaphysics of science.

One of the key questions in the contemporary analytic ontology concerns the relation between the Principle of Identity of Indiscernibles (PII) and the Bundle Theory (BT). The majority of authors believe that BT implies PII. Therefore, it is widely believed that the world violating PII presented by Max Black (1952. “The Identity of Indiscernibles.” Mind 61 (242): 153–64) is also devastating for BT. However, this has been questioned by Rodriguez-Pereyra (2004. “The Bundle Theory is Compatible with Distinct but Indiscernible Particulars.” (...) Analysis 64 (1): 72–81), who formulated an interpretation of BT with instances. Recently Robert (2019. “Can the Realist Bundle Theory Account for the Numerical Difference between Qualitavely Non-discernible Concrete Particulars?” Theorema 38 (1): 25–39) argued that this version of BT is not a constituent ontology and, therefore, Rodriguez-Pereyra’s solution comes at a price of excluding bundle theory from the domain of constituent ontologies, and, in this sense, it fails. I question Robert’s point by claiming that his account of constituent ontologies is too demanding. In particular, I show that the instance version of BT is compatible with the constrains defining constituent ontologies in general, and therefore Rodriguez-Pereyra’s argument is correct. (shrink)

In this paper, I first introduce one of the most prominent objections against the Growing Block Theory of time (GBT), the so-called ‘epistemic objection’, according to which GBT provides no way of knowing that our time is the objective present and, therefore, leads at best to absolute skepticism about our temporal location, at worst to the quasi-certainty that we are located in the objective past. Secondly, I express my dissatisfaction regarding the various traditional attempts to address this objection, especially Merricks (...) (2006), Forrest (2004) and Correia and Rosenkranz (2018). Thirdly, I show that the passage of time leads to an anti-essentialist picture of natural kinds. Finally, I develop my own solution to the epistemic objection, based on the continued existence of bare particulars. (shrink)

According to the broadly Aristotelian distinction between universals and particulars, all and only the former are capable of whole multiple location. The present essay defends this distinction against four putative counterexamples. The first two, extended simple material objects and enduring time-traveling self-meeters, putatively are wholly multiply locatable, but not universals. The second two, unique properties of point-sized entities and Platonic (i.e., not spatiotemporally located) universals, putatively are universals, but not wholly multiply locatable. The defensive strategy is to resist certain presuppositions (...) underlying the examples. (shrink)

An age-old proposal that to be is to be a unity, or what I call a grouping, is updated and applied to the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” (WSRTN). I propose the straight-forward idea that a thing exists if it is a grouping which ties zero or more things together into a new unit whole and existent entity. A grouping is visually manifested as the surface, or boundary, of the thing. In regard to WSRTN, when we subtract (...) away all existent entities, including the mind of the thinker, the resulting situation that we usually call “nothing would, by its very nature, be the whole amount, or entirety, of the situation. It completely defines the situation. The inherent nature of “nothing” is that it’s everything. Is there anything else besides that “nothing”? No. It is “nothing”, and this “nothing” is it, the all. A whole amount/entirety/all is a grouping, meaning that “nothing” is itself an existent entity. One objection might be that being a grouping is a property so how can it be there in “nothing”? The answer is that it is only once all known existent entities, including all properties and the mind visualizing this, are removed does this “nothing” gain the entirety/all grouping property. Therefore, the very lack of all existent entities is itself what allows this new property to be present and thereby to allow “nothing” to be an existent entity. This entirety/all grouping property is inherent, or intrinsic, to “nothing” and cannot be removed to get a more pure “nothing”. While the idea that “nothing” is a “something” that exists necessarily isn’t new, the grouping, or any, mechanism for how this can be so is. (shrink)

Repeatable artworks like musical works have presented theorists in the ontology of art with a puzzle. They seem in some respects like eternal, immutable objects and in others like created, historical objects. Creationists have embraced the latter appearances and attempted to compel Platonists to follow them. I examine in detail each argument in a cumulative case for Creationism, showing how the Platonist can respond. The conclusion is that the debate between Platonists and Creationists is a stalemate. In order for progress (...) to be made in the first-order debate, second-order progress on the metaontology of art needs to come first. (shrink)

Repeatable artworks like musical works have presented theorists in the ontology of art with a puzzle. They seem in some respects like eternal, immutable objects and in others like created, historical objects. Creationists have embraced the latter appearances and attempted to compel Platonists to follow them. I examine in detail each argument in a cumulative case for Creationism, showing how the Platonist can respond. The conclusion is that the debate between Platonists and Creationists is a stalemate. In order for progress (...) to be made in the first-order debate, second-order progress on the metaontology of art needs to come first. (shrink)

According to strong pluralism, objects distinct by virtue of their modal properties can coincide. The most common objection towards such view invokes the so-called Grounding Problem according to which the strong pluralist needs to explain what the grounds are for supposed modal differences between the coincidents. As recognized in the literature, the failure to provide an answer to the Grounding Problem critically undermines the plausibility of strong pluralism. Moreover, there are strong reasons to believe that strong pluralists cannot provide an (...) explanation of the Grounding Problem. In this paper, we argue that strong pluralism can be motivated independently of the successful answer to the Grounding Problem. In order to achieve that aim, we provide a haecceitistic interpretation of strong pluralism according to which strong pluralism should be read as a position committed to the existence of primitive individuals, i.e., the individuals that have their criteria of individuation independently of their qualitative profiles. That said, we do not aim at defending haecceitism. Instead, our aim is rather modest: we want to provide a new way for the strong pluralist to supplement his view to make it more watertight. (shrink)

I first ask what it is to make up a story. In order to answer that question, I give existence and identity conditions for stories. I argue that a story exists whenever there is some narrative content that has intentionally been made accessible. I argue that stories are abstract types, individuated by the conditions that must be met by something in order to be a properly formed token of the type. However, I also argue that the truth of our story (...) identity attributions---sentences like, "Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings is the same story as JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings''---are relative to their context of use, so that the same attribution of identity might be true in one context or false in another because of a change in what's being said about the works in the differing contexts. From those existence and identity conditions, I draw the conclusions that story is best understood to be a phase sortal of some abstract types, and that what it is to make up a story is to identify a type of narrative representation and its content, such that the content is neither based on actual events nor on the content of other stories to an objectionable degree. In chapter 2, I ask what it is for a story to be complete. I argue for the general meta-thesis I call "Completion Pluralism", viz. that there are many kinds of artwork completeness, many corresponding senses of 'complete', and no kind of artwork completeness is objectively more important than any other. I give a pair of arguments against those who would deny Completion Pluralism, endorsing Completion Monism instead. First, I show how Monistic analyses of the one (or one most important) kind of artwork completeness fail. I also show that each Monistic theory's failure is contingent on the assumption of Completion Monism: the denial of Completion Monism dissolves each argument against the extensional adequacy of extant theories of artwork completeness. I argue that this is all best explained by the idea that Completion Pluralism is true. Second, I argue that Completion Pluralism fits best with the variety of interests that we bring to questions about artwork completeness: there is no single or overriding concern we have when we want to know whether an artwork is complete. We shouldn't expect completeness to be a single sort of thing, then. I show how to put Completion Pluralism to work by identifying different kinds of artwork completeness in artworks. Finally, I introduce a new kind of completeness particular to stories, what I call "narrative completion", and show how it's distinct from other kinds of completeness discussed. In chapter 3, I argue that the distinction between fictional and non-fictional stories is the degree to which stories are made-up. In short, a fictional story is a made-up story. I first provide a couple desiderata for thinking about theories of fiction, then show how the two most popular extant theories of fiction---the prop theory and the genre theory---fall short in meeting one or more of those desiderata to some extent. I then show how the theory that fictions are made-up stories better meets the desiderata, using my account of what it is to make up a story from chapter 1. I turn to explicitly ontological matters in chapter 4. Addressing the question of what stories are, I show that both the theses that they are eternal and immutable and that they are created and historical seem plausible for independent reasons. I discuss a schema of an argument some philosophers who hold to the latter view (those I call "Creationists") attempt to give for their view. However, I show how those who hold to the view that stories are eternal and immutable ("Platonists") can account for all the same appearances as the Creationists, usually at least as well and sometimes with a better accounting. Similar, deductive arguments for Platonism will give rise to similar responses from the Creationist, however. In the end, then, the style of argument in particular is unlikely to advance the discussion much. Finally, I attempt to advance the discussion by building an abductive case for Platonism. First, I vindicate a particular metaontological methodology for the debate at hand, a methodology that allows for "revisionary" outcomes in our ontologies of art objects. Second, I build a case for Platonism by arguing that it best explains a number of features of stories discussed in the previous chapters. Moreover, I argue that Creationism is committed to an implausible account of how some abstract objects come into existence. Given the combination of those facts, I argue that we should prefer Platonism to Creationism. (shrink)

It is fundamental that, in philosophy, we make sure that we are not mistaking merely verbal disputes, or “conceptual” disputes, for substantive ones. This essay presents a tripartite framework that is useful for clarifying cases where it is difficult to tell whether we are engaged in substantive or non-substantive disputes. For this purpose, the essay offers some combinatorial possibilities between the following levels: verbal, conceptual, and objectual. We need to distinguish whether we are arguing about the world, concepts, or words (...) to avoid talking at cross-purposes and to recognize when our disputes are not worth the time. Distinguishing between these three levels can also throw light and guide research on conceptual engineering, metalinguistic negotiations, metaontology, and so on. (shrink)

Materialists about human persons think that we are material through and through—wholly material beings. Those who endorse materialism more widely think that everything is material through and through. But what is it to be wholly material? In this article, I answer that question. I identify and defend a definition or analysis of ‘wholly material’.

Within cognitive and developmental psychology, it is commonly argued that perception is the basis for object concepts. According to this view, sensory experiences would translate into concepts thanks to the recognition, correlation and integration of physical attributes. Once attributes are integrated into general patterns, subjects would become able to parse objects into categories. In this article, we critically review the three epistemological perspectives according to which it can be claimed that object concepts depend on perception: state non-conceptualism, content non-conceptualism, and (...) content conceptualism. We show that the three perspectives have problems that make perception inadequate as a conceptual basis. We suggest that the inquiry about the origin and development of object concepts can benefit from a pragmatic perspective that considers objects’ cultural functions as a conceptual foundation. We address this possibility from the theoretical framework of the pragmatics of the object, considering the importance of objects’ functional permanence. (shrink)