Although it is very often taken for granted that there is something fundamental, the literature appears to have developed with little to no careful consideration of what exactly it is that the fundamentalia are supposed to do. If we are to have a good reason to believe that there is something fundamental, we need not only to know what exactly it is that the fundamentalia are invoked for, but why it is that nothing else is available for the task to (...) hand. A good argument in defense of fundamentality, then, will contain an assumption that stipulates an explanatory target; along with a second, crucial, assumption that tells us that no dependent entity is available to do the work that needs to be done. In this paper, I explore both of these assumptions. (shrink)

In this paper we present a new metaphysical theory of material objects. On our theory, objects are bundles of property instances, where those properties give the nature or essence of that object. We call the theory essential bundle theory. Property possession is not analysed as bundle-membership, as in traditional bundle theories, since accidental properties are not included in the object’s bundle. We have a different story to tell about accidental property possession. This move reaps many benefits. Essential bundle theory delivers (...) a simple theory of the essential properties of material objects; an explanation of how object coincidence can arise; an actual-world ground for modal differences between coincident objects; a simple story about intrinsic properties; and a plausible account of certain ubiquitous cases of causal overdetermination. (shrink)

Many people believe that for someone to now be responsible for some past action, the agent of that action and the responsible agent now must be one and the same person. In other words, many people that moral responsibility presupposes numerical personal identity. In this paper, I show why this platitude is false. I then suggest an account of what actual metaphysical relationship moral responsibility presupposes instead.

I argue that an individual has aspects numerically identical with it and each other that nonetheless qualitatively differ from it and each other. This discernibility of identicals does not violate Leibniz's Law, however, which concerns only individuals and is silent about their aspects. They are not in its domain of quantification. To argue that there are aspects I will appeal to the internal conflicts of conscious beings. I do not mean to imply that aspects are confined to such cases, but (...) the best way to start is to recognize them experientially. We can feel the conflicts within ourselves. In doing so we can feel some of our aspects. I will try to enhance our understanding of the concept of aspect by listing and formalizing some principles for its use. After that I will argue that all sorts of individual things have aspects, not just people who are conflicted. (shrink)

Derek Parfit’s argument against the platitude that identity is what matters in survival does not work given his intended reading of the platitude, namely, that what matters in survival to some future time is being identical with someone who is alive at that time. I develop Parfit’s argument so that it works against the platitude on this intended reading.

Interpretations of Aristotle's account of the relation between body and soul have been widely divergent. At one extreme, Thomas Slakey has said that in theDe Anima‘Aristotle tries to explain perception simply as an event in the sense-organs’. Wallace Matson has generalized the point. Of the Greeks in general he says, ‘Mind–body identity was taken for granted.… Indeed, in the whole classical corpus there exists no denial of the view that sensing is a bodily process throughout’. At the opposite extreme, Friedrich (...) Solmsen has said of Aristotle's theory, ‘it is doubtful whether the movement or the actualization occurring when the eye sees or the ear hears has any physical or physiological aspect.’ Similarly, Jonathan Barnes has described Aristotle as leaning hesitantly towards the view that desire and thought are wholly non-physical. But on the emotions and sense-perception, Barnes takes an intermediate position. Aristotle treats these, he says, as including physical and non-physical components. Other writers too have sought a position somewhere in the middle. Thus G. R. T. Ross concedes that we find in Aristotle ‘what looks like the crudest materialism’. It appears that objects produce changes in an organism, ‘and the reception of these changes in the sense organisperception’. But, he maintains, this gives us only half the picture. The complete theory ‘may in a way be designated as a doctrine of psychophysical parallelism’. W. D. Ross also seeks a middle position. He thinks that Aristotle sometimes brings out ‘the distinctively mental, non-corporeal nature of the act [of sensation].… But Aristotle cannot be said to hold successfully to the notion of sensation as a purely mental activity having nothing in common with anything physical. He is still under the influence of earlier materialism’. (shrink)

I try to lay bare some of the conceptual space in which one may be a Social Trinitarian. I organize the paper around answers to five questions. These are: (1) How do the three Persons of the Trinity relate to the Godhead? (2) How many divine beings or gods are there? (3) How many distinct centers of consciousness are there in the Godhead? (4) How many omnicompetent beings are there? (5) How are the Persons of the Trinity individuated? I try (...) to make clear costs and benefits of various answers to these questions. (shrink)

This thesis explores the possibility of composite consciousness: phenomenally conscious states belonging to a composite being in virtue of the consciousness of, and relations among, its parts. We have no trouble accepting that a composite being has physical properties entirely in virtue of the physical properties of, and relations among, its parts. But a long­standing intuition holds that consciousness is different: my consciousness cannot be understood as a complex of interacting component consciousnesses belonging to parts of me. I ask why: (...) what is it about consciousness that makes us think it so different from matter? And should we accept this apparent difference? (shrink)

In recent years, neuroscience has been a particularly prolific discipline stimulating many innovative treatment approaches in medicine. However, when it comes to the brain, new techniques of intervention do not always meet with a positive public response, in spite of promising therapeutic benefits. The reason for this caution clearly is the brain’s special importance as “organ of the mind”. As such it is widely held to be the origin of mankind’s unique position among living beings. Likewise, on the level of (...) the individual human being, the brain is considered the material substrate of those traits that in combination render each person unique. In view of this preeminent significance of the brain, it is understandable that, in general, interventions into the brain are considered a delicate issue and that new techniques of intervention are scrutinised with particular care. However, in doing so it is important not to go to the opposite extreme and shy away from promising new therapeutic approaches for debilitating disorders of the brain. With respect to the new techniques of brain intervention a broad interdisciplinary perspective is required to discern irrational fear from justified concern. Hence, the Europäische Akademie established a project group consisting, on the one hand, of experts from different fields of medicine who have got first-hand experience of applying the techniques at issue and, on the other hand, of philosophers and a legal expert. The task of this team was to review the state of the art with respect to each single technique of intervening in the brain, to indicate future developments, and to address the ethical and legal issues common to all of them. The project’s outcome is the book at hand. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the transformation from the human zygote to the implanted embryo under the prism of substantial change. After a brief introduction, it vindicates the Aristotelian ideas of substance and accident, and those of substantial and accidental change. It then claims that the transformation from the multicelled zygote to the implanted embryo amounts to a substantial change. Pushing further, it contends that this substantial change cannot be explained following patterns of genetic reductionism, emergence, and self-organization, and proposes Gustavo Bueno’s (...) idea of anamorphosis as a means to encapsulate criticism against such positions. (shrink)

Critics of luck egalitarianism have claimed that, far from providing a justification for the public insurance functions of a welfare state as its proponents claim, the view objectionably abandons those who are deemed responsible for their dire straits. This article considers seven arguments that can be made in response to this ‘abandonment objection’. Four of these arguments are found wanting, with a recurrent problem being their reliance on a dubious sufficientarian or quasi-sufficientarian commitment to provide a threshold of goods unconditionally. (...) Three arguments succeed, showing that luck egalitarians have good reasons for assisting ‘negligent victims’ on account of changes that may occur in an individual between the time of their choice and their subsequent disadvantage, bad option luck, and doubts about free will and responsibility. Luck egalitarianism is therefore shown to offer strong support for public insurance. (shrink)

Some wag reported the following story: Scholars have recently established that the Iliad and the Odyssey were not, after all, written by Homer. They were actually written by another author, of the same name.The majority of current theories of naming and reference, including ones as divergent in other respects as those of Russell and Searle, would rule this story impossible. They would do so on roughly these grounds: the sense and reference of the name ‘Homer’ is determined, given the absence (...) of other reliable testimony, by the sole description: ‘Author of the Iliad and the Odyssey’. ‘Homer is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey’ is therefore known a priori, hence necessarily true. There could not be another author of that name and claim to fame.In lectures delivered at Princeton in the Winter of 1970, Saul Kripke offered a lucid alternative to such theories. (shrink)

In philosophy, the criteria for personhood (PH) at a specific point in time (synchronic), and the necessary and sufficient conditions of personal identity (PI) over time (diachronic) are traditionally separated. Hence, the transition between both timescales of a person's life remains largely unclear. Personal habits reflect a decision-making (DM) process that binds together synchronic and diachronic timescales. Despite the fact that the actualization of habits takes place synchronically, they presuppose, for the possibility of their generation, time in a diachronic sense. (...) The acquisition of habits therefore rests upon PI over time; that is, the temporal extension of personal decisions is the necessary condition for the possible development of habits. Conceptually, habits can thus be seen as a bridge between synchronic and diachronic timescales of a person's life. In order to investigate the empirical mediation of this temporal linkage, we draw upon the neuronal mechanisms underlying DM; in particular on the distinction between internally and externally guided DM. Externally guided DM relies on external criteria at a specific point in time (synchronic); on a neural level, this has been associated with lateral frontal and parietal brain regions. In contrast, internally guided DM is based on the person's own preferences that involve a more longitudinal and thus diachronic timescale, which has been associated with the brain's intrinsic activity. Habits can be considered to reflect a balance between internally and externally guided DM, which implicates a particular temporal balance between diachronic and synchronic elements, thus linking two different timescales. Based on such evidence, we suggest a habit-based neurophilosophical approach of PH and PI by focusing on the empirically-based linkage between the synchronic and diachronic elements of habits. By doing so, we propose to link together what philosophically has been described and analyzed separately as PH and PI. (shrink)

The writings of Joseph Henry Woodger (1894–1981) are often taken to exemplify everything that was wrongheaded, misguided, and just plain wrong with early twentieth-century philosophy of biology. Over the years, commentators have said of Woodger: (a) that he was a fervent logical empiricist who tried to impose the explanatory gold standards of physics onto biology, (b) that his philosophical work was completely disconnected from biological science, (c) that he possessed no scientific or philosophical credentials, and (d) that his work was (...) disparaged – if not altogether ignored – by the biologists and philosophers of his era. In this paper, we provide the first systematic examination of Woodger’s oeuvre, and use it to demonstrate that the four preceding claims are false. We argue that Woodger’s ideas have exerted an important influence on biology and philosophy, and submit that the current consensus on his legacy stems from a highly selective reading of his works. By rehabilitating Woodger, we hope to show that there is no good reason to continue to disregard the numerous contributions to the philosophy of biology produced in the decades prior to the professionalization of the discipline. (shrink)

Why is there something rather than nothing? Apparently many people regard that question as a challenge to naturalism because they think it’s too fundamental or too sweeping for natural science to answer, even in principle. I argue, on the contrary, that the question has a simple and adequate naturalistic answer: ‘Because there are penguins.’ I then diagnose various confusions underlying the suspicion that the question can’t have such an answer and, more generally, that the question, or else some variant of (...) it, can’t have a naturalistic answer at all. (shrink)

Martine Nida-Rümelin has argued recently for subject-body dualism on the basis of reflections on the possibility of survival in fission cases from the literature on personal identity. The argument focuses on the claim that there is a factual difference between the claims that one or the other of two equally good continuers of a person in a fission case is identical with her. I consider three interpretations of the notion of a factual difference that the argument employs, and I argue (...) that on each of them the argument either begs the question or is unsound. (shrink)

A collection of material on Husserl's Logical Investigations, and specifically on Husserl's formal theory of parts, wholes and dependence and its influence in ontology, logic and psychology. Includes translations of classic works by Adolf Reinach and Eugenie Ginsberg, as well as original contributions by Wolfgang Künne, Kevin Mulligan, Gilbert Null, Barry Smith, Peter M. Simons, Roger A. Simons and Dallas Willard. Documents work on Husserl's ontology arising out of early meetings of the Seminar for Austro-German Philosophy.

Some have objected to the laboratory cloning of human preembryos on the grounds that the procedure would violate the dignity of and respect owed to human preembryos. Others have argued that human cloning ought be permitted if it will predictably benefit, or at least not burden, individuals who are, unlike the human preembryo, clearly entitled to our respect and concern. Taking this latter position, the legal theorist John A. Robertson has argued that, since cloning does not harm anyone who is (...) clearly entitled to our respect and concern, it should be permitted. In particular, the offspring of cloning, he argues, cannot be genuinely harmed by cloning, since they owe their very existence to the cloning procedure. In this paper, I argue that cloning coupled with its related procedures does in fact place the flesh and blood human offspring of cloning at risk of genuine harm. I thus provide a basis for questioning the moral permissibility of cloning and its related technologies without implying that the human preembryo has dignity or is owed respect. (shrink)

This paper reviews four leading strategies for addressing the problem of material constitution, along with some of the prominent objections faced by each approach. Sections include (1) "The Orthodox View: Coincident Objects," (2) "Dominant Kinds," (3) "Nihilism," (4) "Revising the Logic of Identity," and (5) "Future Research." Also included is an annotated bibliography.

The paper takes off from the problem of finding a proper content for the relation of identity as it holds or fails to hold among ordinary things or substances. The necessary conditions of identity are familiar, the sufficient conditions less so. The search is for conditions at once better usable than the Leibnizian Identity of Indiscernibles (independently suspect) and strong enough to underwrite all the formal properties of the relation.It is contended that the key to this problem rests at the (...) level of metaphysics and epistemology alike with a sortalist position. Sortalism is the position which insists that, if the question is whether a and b are the same, it has to be asked what are they? Any sufficiently specific answer to that question will bring with it a principle of activity or functioning and a mode of behaviour characteristic of some particular kind of thing by reference to which questions of persistence or non-persistence through change can be adjudicated.These contentions are illustrated by reference to familiar examples such as the human zygote, the Ship of Theseus and Shoemaker's Brown-Brownson. The first example is hostage for a mass of unproblematical cases. The problems presented by the second and third sort of examples arise chiefly (it is claimed) from an incompleteness in our conceptions of the relevant sort—the what the thing in question is. That incompleteness need not prevent us from knowing perfectly well which thing we are referring to. In the concluding section, sortalism is defended against various accusations of anthropocentrism.The paper touches on the interpretation of Heraclitus, Leibniz's theory of clear indistinct ideas, the difficulties of David Lewis's ‘perdurantist’ or stroboscopic view of persistence, four-dimensionalism, and the relation of personal identity both to experiential memory and to the particular bodily physiognomy of a subject. At some points—as in connection with the so-called Only a and b rule—the paper corrects, supplements or extends certain theses or formulations proposed in the author's Sameness and Substance Renewed (2001). (shrink)

Why is there anything, rather than nothing at all? This question often serves as a debating tactic used by theists to attack naturalism. Many people apparently regard the question—couched in such stark, general terms—as too profound for natural science to answer. It is unanswerable by science, I argue, not because it’s profound or because science is superficial but because the question, as it stands, is ill-posed and hence has no answer in the first place. In any form in which it (...) is well-posed, it has an answer that naturalism can in principle provide. The question therefore gives the foes of naturalism none of the ammunition that many on both sides of the debate think it does. (shrink)

Consideration of the counting and reidentification of particulars leads naturally enough to the orthodox doctrine that, “on pain of indefiniteness,” an identity statement in some way involves or presupposes a general term or “covering concept”: i.e., that the principium individuationis or criterion of identity implied depends upon the kind of thing in question. Thus it is said that an auditor understands the question whether A is the same as B only in so far as he knows, however informally or implicitly, (...) the answer to the supplementary question, “The same what?”. (shrink)

This paper explores how the diagnosis of mental disorder may affect the diagnosed subject’s self-concept by supplying an account that emphasizes the influence of autobiographical and social narratives on self-understanding. It focuses primarily on the diagnoses made according to the criteria provided by the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), and suggests that the DSM diagnosis may function as a source of narrative that affects the subject’s self-concept. Engaging in this analysis by appealing to autobiographies and memoirs written by (...) people diagnosed with mental disorder, the paper concludes that a DSM diagnosis is a double-edged sword for self- concept. On the one hand, it sets the subject’s experience in an established classificatory system which can facilitate self-understanding by providing insight into subject’s condition and guiding her personal growth, as well as treatment and recovery. In this sense, the DSM diagnosis may have positive repercussions on self-development. On the other hand, however, given the DSM’s symptom-based approach and its adoption of the Biomedical Disease model, a diagnosis may force the subject to make sense of her condition divorced from other elements in her life that may be affecting her mental- health. It may lead her frame her experience only as an irreversible imbalance. This form of self-understanding may set limits on the subject’s hopes of recovery and may create impediments to her flourishing. (shrink)

I am now typing on a computer I bought two years ago. The computer I bought is identical to the computer on which I type. My computer persists over time. Let us divide our subject matter in two. There is first the question of criteria of identity, the conditions governing when an object of a certain kind, a computer for instance, persists until some later time. There are secondly very general questions about the nature of persistence itself. Here I include (...) the question of temporal parts, as well as certain familiar paradoxes (e.g., the statue and the lump). Following John Perry (1975, Introduction), let us characterize a criterion of identity over time for F s as a way of filling in φ in the following schema: Stages S1 and S2 belong to some continuing F iff φ Defenders of temporal parts (see below) regard S1 and S2 as being temporal parts of the continuing F ; others regard S1 and S2 as different stages in the life history of the continuing F . Thus each camp can make use of Perry’s formula. It is traditional to divide such criteria into those governing persons and those governing anything else. It is further traditional to say that the criterion of identity over time for non-persons involves spatiotemporal continuity. An excellent discussion is Eli Hirsch’s The Concept of Identity1, which utilizes the notion of continuity under a sortal. Kind-terms, or sortals, are terms that specify what kind of or sort of thing an object is. Examples include ‘tree’, ‘car’, and ‘mountain’. Where F is a sortal, Hirsch’s analysis is roughly that stages belong to the same F iff they are connected by a spatiotemporally and qualitatively continuous sequence of F -stages. Unmodified, this analysis prohibits temporally discontinuous entities, such as a watch that is taken apart and then reassembled. Hirsch discusses the necessary modifications. Spatiotemporal continuity analyses face a problem when applied to the persistence of matter. The literature here has been dominated by discussion of examples provided by David Armstrong (1980) and Saul Kripke (unpublished.... (shrink)

This paper focuses on the semantics of statements of the form ‘x is P at t’ vis-à-vis its metaphysical underpinnings. I begin by considering four main readings, corresponding to the four basic parsings of the temporal modifier ‘at t’: (1) at-t x is P, (2) x-at-t is P, (3) x is-at-t P, and (4) x is P-at-t. Each of these readings—which correspond to different metaphysical conceptions of the nature of temporal change—is found inadequate or otherwise problematic. In the second part (...) of the paper I therefore consider a fifth account whose advantages over (1)–(4), I argue, exceed its revisionary costs. This fifth account is based on a conception of objects as entia successiva held together by a nexus of temporal counterparthood and reads ‘x is P at t’ as ‘the t-counterpart of x is P’. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that standard psychological continuity theory does not account for an important feature of what is important in survival – having the property of personhood. I offer a theory that can account for this, and I explain how it avoids the implausible consequences of standard psychological continuity theory, as well as having certain other advantages over that theory.

Whether morality has rational authority is an open question insofar as we can seriously entertain conceptions of morality and practical reason according to which it need not be contrary to reason to fail to conform to moral requirements. Doubts about the authority of morality are especially likely to arise for those who hold a broadly prudential view of rationality. It is common to think of morality as including various other-regarding duties of cooperation, forbearance, and aid. Most of us also regard (...) moral obligations as authoritative practical considerations. But heeding these obligations appears sometimes to constrain the agent's pursuit of his own interests or aims. If we think of rationality in prudential terms–as what would promote the agent's own interests–we may wonder whether moral conduct is always rationally justifiable. Indeed, we do not need to think of rationality in exclusively prudential terms to raise this worry. The worry can arise even if there are impartial reasons–that is, nonderivative reasons to promote the welfare of others. (shrink)

Complex systems are dynamic and may show high levels of variability in both space and time. It is often difficult to decide on what constitutes a given complex system, i.e., where system boundaries should be set, and what amounts to substantial change within the system. We discuss two central themes: the nature of system definitions and their ability to cope with change, and the importance of system definitions for the mental metamodels that we use to describe and order ideas about (...) system change. Systems can only be considered as single study units if they retain their identity. Previous system definitions have largely ignored the need for both spatial and temporal continuity as essential attributes of identity. After considering the philosophical issues surrounding identity and system definitions, we examine their application to modeling studies. We outline a set of five alternative metamodels that capture a range of the basic dynamics of complex systems. Although Holling’s adaptive cycle is a compelling and widely applicable metamodel that fits many complex systems, there are systems that do not necessarily follow the adaptive cycle. We propose that more careful consideration of system definitions and alternative metamodels for complex systems will lead to greater conceptual clarity in the field and, ultimately, to more rigorous research. (shrink)

I describe an account of ontological categories which does justice to the facts that not all categories are ontological categories and that ontological categories can stand in containment relations. The account sorts objects into different categories in the same way in which grammar sorts expressions . It then identifies the ontological categories with those which play a certain role in the systematization of collections of categories. The paper concludes by noting that on my account what ontological categories there are is (...) partially interest-relative, and that furthermore no object can belong essentially to its ontological category. (shrink)

A critical analysis of Woodger's work on formal logic in biology, especially genetics, reveals that the claim for the value of such methods in genetics is misplaced.

If an object has a property essentially, it has that property in every possible world according to which it exists.2 If an object has a property accidentally, it does not have that property in every possible world according to which it exists. Claims about an object’s essential or accidental properties are de re modal claims, and essential and accidental properties are de re modal properties. Take an object’s modal profile to specify its essential properties and the range of its accidental (...) properties. Note that “world” as I am using it is a term of art: a modal realist believes that there are many concrete worlds, while the actualist believes in only one concrete world, the actual world. The ersatzist is an actualist who takes nonactual possible worlds and their contents to be abstracta. Essentialism is the view that objects have properties essentially, but one should distinguish deep essentialism from shallow essentialism. Deep essentialists take the (nontrivial) essential properties of an object to determine its nature— such properties give sense to the idea that an object has a unique and distinctive character, and make it the case that an object has to be a certain way in order for it to be at all.3 As Stephen Yablo (1987, 297) describes it, the essence of a thing is “an assortment of properties in virtue of which it is the entity in question,” as well as “a measure of what is required for it to be that thing.” Intuitively, on the deep essentialist picture, an ordinary object has essential properties, and it must have its essential properties in order for it to exist. On this view, objects’ essential properties are absolute, i.e., are not determined by contexts of describing (or thinking, etc.) about the object, and truths about such properties are absolute truths.4 Shallow essentialists oppose deep essentialists: they reject the view that objects can be said to have essential properties independently of contexts of description or evaluation, and so substitute context-dependent truths for the deep essentialist’s context-independent ones.. (shrink)

It is argued that those who accept the psychological criterion of personal identity, such as Parfit and Shoemaker, should accept what I call the 'series' view of a person, according to which a person is a unified aggregate of mental events and states. As well as defending this view against objections, I argue that it allows the psychological theorist to avoid the two lives objection which the 'animalist' theorists have raised against it, an objection which causes great difficulties for the (...) conception of a person that most psychological theorists favour, the constitution view. It is also argued that the series view allows that people can body swap and teleport, which the constitution view—which takes a person to be a physical object (but a distinct physical object from the human being)—has great trouble with. (shrink)

Olson (1997a) tries to refute the Psychological Approach to personal identity with his Fetus Argument, and Mackie (1999) aims to do the same with the Death Argument. With the help of a suggestion made by Baker (1999), the following discussion shows that these arguments fail. In the process of defending the Psychological Approach, it is made clear exactly what one is and is not committed to as a proponent of the theory.

Many of the concepts analysed by philosophers have their origin in ordinary – or at least extra-philosophical – language. Perception, knowledge, causation, and mind are examples. But the concept of substance is a philosophical term of art. Its uses in ordinary language tend to derive, often in a rather distorted way, from the philosophical senses. There is an ordinary concept in play when philosophers discuss “substance”, and this, as we shall see, is the concept of object, or thing when this (...) is contrasted with properties or events. But such “individual substances” are never termed “substances” outside philosophy. -/- There exist two rather different ways of characterising the philosophical concept of substance. The first is the more generic. The philosophical term “substance” comes from an early Latin translation of the Greek ousia. Ousia is a noun derived from the verb “einai” (to be) and is naturally translated “being”. According to the generic sense, substances are those things that best merit the title “beings”. This is usually interpreted to mean those things that are the foundational or fundamental entities of a given philosophical system. Thus, for an atomist, atoms are the substances, for they are the basic things from which everything is constructed. In David Hume’s system, impressions and ideas are the substances, for the same reason. In a slightly different way, Forms are Plato’s substances, for everything derives its existence from Forms. -/- The second use of the concept is more specific. According to this usage, substances are a particular kind of entity, and some philosophical theories acknowledge them and others do not. This conception of substance derives from the intuitive notion of individual thing or object, which contrasts mainly with properties and events. According to this usage, it is a live issue whether the fundamental entities are substances or something else, such as events, or properties located at space-times. The issue is how we are to understand the notion of an object, and whether, in the light of the correct understanding, it remains a basic notion, or one that must be characterised in more fundamental terms. Whether, for example, an object can be thought of as nothing more than a bundle of properties, or a series of events. -/- The reason “substance” has acquired these two usages is that the work that introduced the term to philosophy, Aristotle’s Categories, claims that the things that most merit the title “beings” (substances in the generic sense) are individual objects as opposed to properties or events (substances in the specific sense). (shrink)

Several authors have argued that socially significant places such as countries, cities and establishments are immaterial objects, despite their being spatially located. In contrast, we aim to defend a reductive materialist view of such entities, which identifies them with their physical territories or premises. Accordingly, these are all material objects; typically, aggregates of land and infrastructure. Admittedly, our terms for these entities may also sometimes be used to denote their associated groups of people. But as long as countries, cities and (...) establishments are understood as places, we submit, they are all material objects: the physical territories or premises of their associated groups. (shrink)

The phasalist solution to the classic puzzle of the statue and the piece of clay only works for some coincidence puzzles and not others. To address this limitation of phasalism, I develop a novel approach to coincidence puzzles that permits different kinds of coincidence puzzles to be solved in different ways, provided that each solution satisfies certain constraints inspired by the phasalist solution to the statue puzzle. I apply my approach to four different kinds of coincidence puzzles, and I argue (...) that it is no less plausible than rival approaches in the literature. (shrink)

The phasalist solution to the puzzle of the statue and the piece of clay claims that being a statue is a phase sortal property of the piece of clay, just like being a child is a phase sortal property of a human being. Some philosophers reject this solution because it cannot account for cases where the statue seems to gain and lose parts that the piece of clay does not. I rebut this objection by arguing, contrary to the prevailing view, (...) that the piece of clay is not mereologically constant and might even be highly mereologically flexible. (shrink)

Based on the existence of polysemy (e.g., lunch can refer to both food and events), it is argued that central tenets of externalist semantics and Fodorian concept atomism, an externalist theory on which words lack semantic structure, are unsound. We evaluate the premise that these arguments rely on—that polysemous words have separate, finer‐grained senses. We survey the evidence across psychology and linguistics and argue that it shows that polysemy does not exist, at least not in this “sense”. The upshot is (...) that if polysemy does not exist, it cannot pose a problem for atomism or externalism. (shrink)

This article gives a holistic re-examination of the semantic content and syntactic structure of the concept of relative identity: it suggests and explains an expanded and enhanced dual-track characterization of relative identity. It is expanded in this sense: its due coverage is not narrowly restricted to the equal-status case of identity statements (the symmetric case for identity simplex) but also includes the category-assimilating case (the asymmetric case for identity complex), both of which are unified by the shared semantic core content (...) of relative identity. It is enhanced in this sense: it is intended to give a more refined characterization of relative identity for the sake of enhancing our understanding of the structure and content of real-life relative-identity statements in people’s basic employment of language in view of the relation between thought, language, and the world. (shrink)

Derek Parfit argues that fission is prudentially better for you than ordinary death. But is having more fission products with good lives prudentially better for you than having just one? In this paper, we argue that it is. We argue that, if your brain is split and the halves are transplanted into two recipients (who both have good lives), then it is prudentially better for you if both transplants succeed than if only one of them does (other things being equal). (...) This upshot rules out, among other things, that the prudential value of standing in the relation that matters in survival to multiple people is equal to their average well-being. (shrink)

This essay examines the case for relativism about future contingents in light of a distinction between two ways of interpreting the ‘branching time’ framework. Focussing on MacFarlane (2014), we break the argument for relativism down into two steps. The first step is an argument for something MacFarlane calls the "Non-Determination Thesis", which is essentially the view that there is no unique actual future. The second step is an argument from the Non-Determination Thesis to relativism. I first argue that first step (...) of this argument fails. But despite that result, the second step is still of interest, since many philosophers have maintained something like the Non-Determination Thesis on alternative grounds. I then argue that whether the second step of the argument suc- ceeds depends on how the Non-Determination Thesis is motivated, and how the ‘branching time’ framework is interpreted in light of that moti- vation. If the branches in an intended branching time model are ersatz possible worlds, then the argument for relativism might go through; but if, instead, the branches are concrete parts of a ‘branching multiverse’, then the argument for relativism turns out to make implausible assumptions about the nature of personal identity over time. That argument can thus be rejected by rejecting those assumptions. One upshot of this is that the case for relativism about future contingents is much weaker than has been appreciated; a broader lesson is that philosophers who invoke the branching time framework need to pay close attention to different ways of interpreting it. (shrink)

The view that it is possible for someone to think at a time without existing at that time is not only perfectly coherent but in harmony with an attractive externalist view of the mental. Furthermore, it offers plausible solutions to various puzzles of personal identity.

The Problem of Biological Individuality is the problem of how to count organisms. Whilst counting organisms may seem easy, the biological world is full of difficult cases such as colonial siphonophores and aspen tree groves. One of the main solutions to the Problem of Biological Individuality is the Physiological Approach. Drawing on an argument made by Eric Olson in the personal identity debate, I argue that the Physiological Approach faces a metaphysical problem - the ‘Foetus Problem’. This paper illustrates how (...) metaphysics can contribute to debates about organisms in the philosophy of biology. (shrink)

For some years now, an increasing number of philosophers have been holding that what is given in perception are the physical objects of our surroundings. This is the view called, among others names, “the Relational View”. Basically, this view consists in the claim that experience is not representational, it is not a matter of the subject's taking things in the world to be this or that way; rather, it is just a matter of being presented with things, of being in (...) a certain kind of relation with them, which makes them available to us, nevertheless, to be represented in judgement or belief. The question arises, however, whether this does not imply a new fall into the Myth of the Given. In this article, I argue for an affirmative response to that question. (shrink)

Good physical experiments conform to the basic methodological standards of experimental design: they are objective, reliable, and valid. But is this also true of thought experiments? Especially problems of personal identity have engendered hypothetical scenarios that are very distant from the actual world. These imagined situations have been conspicuously ineffective at resolving conflicting intuitions and deciding between the different accounts of personal identity. Using prominent examples from the literature, I argue that this is due to many of these thought experiments (...) not adhering to the methodological standards that guide experimental design in nearly all other disciplines. I also show how empirically unwarranted background assumptions about human physiology render some of the hypothetical scenarios that are employed in the debate about personal identity highly misleading. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that the criteria of identity over time for ordinary objects entail that such objects are permanent members of certain sortal kinds. The sortal kinds in question have come to be known as substance sortal kinds. But in this article, I defend a criterion of identity that is suited to phasalism, the view that alleged substance sortals are in fact phase sortals. The criterion I defend is a sortal‐weighted version of a change‐minimizing criterion first discussed by Eli Hirsch. (...) I present this criterion and then argue that it withstands attempts to show that it is inferior to non‐phasalist rivals. (shrink)

A person is biased toward the future when she prefers, other things being equal, bad events to be in her past rather than her future or good ones to be in her future rather than her past. In this paper, I explain why both critics and defenders of future bias have failed to consider the best version of the view. I distinguish external time from personal time, and show that future bias is best construed in terms of the latter. This (...) understanding of future bias avoids several standard objections. I then consider a new justification of future bias which is consistent with that construal. My discussion points to a new position regarding the basic relation that grounds rational egoistic concern over time, according to which that relation is asymmetric between person-stages. I also explain how this way of justifying future bias would resolve the apparent tension between the future bias we display in our own case and our relative indifference toward the timing of the good and bad things that happen to other people. (shrink)