It’s intuitive to think that an intentional action requires that the agent knows that she’s doing so. In light of some apparent counterexamples, Setiya suggests that this intuitive insight is better captured in terms of credence: performing an intentional action requires the agent to have a higher credence that she’s doing so than she would have otherwise. I argue that there is no such thing as an agent’s credence for what she’s doing. After distinguishing this thesis from an idea some (...) defend under the slogan “deliberation crowds out prediction”, I explore the thesis’s broader epistemological implications for the belief-credence relation. (shrink)

Recent literature on Spinoza has emphasized his commitment to universal intelligibility, understood as the claim that there are no brute facts. We draw attention to an important but overlooked element of Spinoza's commitment to intelligibility, and thereby question its most prominent interpretation, on which this commitment results in the priority of conceptual relations. We argue that such readings are both incomplete in their account of Spinozistic intelligibility and mistaken in their identification of the most fundamental relation. We argue that Spinoza (...) is one of the first moderns to address the problem of conditions of intelligibility, and show that, in his metaphysics, expressive relations are best understood as relations of dependence for intelligibility: what a thing ‘expresses’ is its condition of intelligibility, that which determines how, through what concepts, it can be conceived. (shrink)

Dispositional Essentialism and Ontic Structural Realism aim to account for modality. Dispositional Essentialism takes properties to account for laws. In particular, it takes determinate properties to account for laws of nature, which are determinable. Ontic Structural Realism does the reverse. According to Steven French, Ontic Structural Realism takes laws and symmetries to be part of the fundamental structure of the world. Determinate properties are “dependent” on laws. The core difference between Dispositional Essentialism and Ontic Structural Realism’s accounts of modality is (...) the direction of the dependence between properties and laws. As a result, French describes Ontic Structural Realism as a reverse-engineering of Dispositional Essentialism, and Chakravartty differentiates them by saying that Dispositional Essentialism gives a bottom-up account of modality whereas Ontic Structural Realism’s is top-down. Both views face significant problems. The main problems these views face stem from relational individuation. Properties are individuated by their relations to further properties. As such, it is hard to see how they can be metaphysically prior to those relations as per Dispositional Essentialism. Equally, laws are relations between properties. As such, it is hard to see how they could be metaphysically prior to the properties they relate as per Ontic Structural Realism. Both properties and laws seem dependent on each other. By requiring one to come first and explain the other, dispositional essentialists and ontic structural realists end up in a chicken-egg scenario. I propose a hybrid between Dispositional Essentialism and Ontic Structural Realism. My hybrid view does away with the dogma of ontological priority between properties and laws. Instead, properties and laws symmetrically depend. I argue that my hybrid view is the way out of the chicken-egg-property-law conundrum. It paves a new way for making sense of modality from a structuralist perspective. (shrink)

In this paper, I clarify the relation between two types of grounding: metaphysical and conceptual. Metaphysical grounding relates entities at more and less fundamental ontological levels. Conceptual grounding relates semantically primitive sentences and semantically derivative sentences. It is important to distinguish these relations given that both types of grounding can underwrite non-causal “in-virtue-of” claims. In this paper, I argue that conceptual and metaphysical grounding are exclusive: if a given in-virtue-of claim involves conceptual grounding, then it does not involve metaphysical grounding. (...) I then present two heuristics for deciding which type of grounding is relevant to a given case. These heuristics suggest that certain proposed cases of metaphysical grounding may not actually involve metaphysical grounding at all. (shrink)

The notion of fundamentality, as it is used in metaphysics, aims to capture the idea that there is something basic or primitive in the world. This metaphysical notion is related to the vernacular use of “fundamental”, but philosophers have also put forward various technical definitions of the notion. Among the most influential of these is the definition of absolute fundamentality in terms of ontological independence or ungroundedness. Accordingly, the notion of fundamentality is often associated with these two other technical notions.

I explore some of the ways that assumptions about the nature of substance shape metaphysical debates about the structure of Reality. Assumptions about the priority of substance play a role in an argument for monism, are embedded in certain pluralist metaphysical treatments of laws of nature, and are central to discussions of substantivalism and relationalism. I will then argue that we should reject such assumptions and collapse the categorical distinction between substance and property.

Extended simples are physical objects that, while spatially extended, possess no actual proper parts. The theory that physical reality bottoms out at extended simples is one of the principal competing views concerning the fundamental composition of matter, the others being atomism and the theory of gunk. Among advocates of extended simples, Markosian’s ‘MaxCon’ version of the theory has justly achieved particular prominence. On the assumption of causal realism, I argue here that the reality of MaxCon simples would entail the reality (...) of irreducible, intrinsic dispositional properties. The existence of dispositional properties in turn has important implications for another central debate in metaphysics, namely that between two major competing views concerning the ontology of laws: dispositionalism versus nomological necessitarianism. (shrink)

The status of genes as bearers of semantic content remains very much in dispute among philosophers of biology. In a series of papers, Nicholas Shea has argued that his ‘infotel’ theory of semantics vindicates the claim that genes carry semantic content. On Shea’s account, each organism is associated with a ‘developmental system’ that takes genetic representations as inputs and produces whole-organism traits as outputs. Moreover, at least in his most recent work on the topic, Shea is explicit in claiming that (...) these genetic representations are ‘read in ontogenetic time, in the course of individual development’. Here I argue that a close examination of the process of reading, in Shea’s sense, reveals that acts of reading do not actually occur over the course of developmental time at all. To make this vivid, I contrast the process of reading for Shea with another type of developmental process that is widely seen as a form of reading directed on inherited genes, and which certainly does occur over the course of developmental time, namely, gene expression. I suggest that this error in Shea’s thinking can be traced back to an equivocation on Shea’s part in the meaning of ‘reads’, and also to a reliance on an invalid principle regarding the transference of representational content from one token gene to another. The issues at play are bound up with questions about causation and in particular about causation over time. Thus, having first presented my arguments in a way that doesn’t depend on any particular theory of causation, I then make use of Kenneth Waters’ framework of difference-making causation to conceptually sharpen and shed further light on matters. I conclude by discussing a consequence of the fact that acts of reading do not occur in development. 1 Introduction2 Reading for Shea3 Gene Expression as Reading4 Are Genetic Representations Read in Development? Part 15 The Manipulability Theory of Causation and Difference-Making Causation6 Are Genetic Representations Read in Development? Part 27 Conclusion. (shrink)

Emergence is a notorious philosophical term of art. A variety of theorists have appropriated it for their purposes ever since George Henry Lewes gave it a philosophical sense in his 1875 Problems of Life and Mind. We might roughly characterize the shared meaning thus: emergent entities (properties or substances) ‘arise’ out of more fundamental entities and yet are ‘novel’ or ‘irreducible’ with respect to them. (For example, it is sometimes said that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain.) Each (...) of the quoted terms is slippery in its own right, and their specifications yield the varied notions of emergence that we discuss below. There has been renewed interest in emergence within discussions of the behavior of complex systems and debates over the reconcilability of mental causation, intentionality, or consciousness with physicalism. (shrink)

Remember how Kim Mental causation, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1993b) used to argue against non-reductive physicalism to the effect that it cannot accommodate the causal efficacy of the mental? The argument was that if physicalists accept the causal closure of the physical, they are faced with an exclusion problem. In the original version of the argument, the dependence holding between the mental and the physical was cashed out in terms of supervenience. Due to the work or Fine and others, we have (...) since come to realize that modal notions are not well-suited to perform the work of properly characterizing dependence. As a consequence of this, an increasingly larger community of contemporary metaphysicians prefer to spell out mental-physical dependence in terms of a non-causal and non-reductive notion called grounding, which is intended to target a particular sort of metaphysical relation that takes us from ontologically less fundamental features of the world to that which is more fundamental. In this paper I join forces with those who think that this shift in focus is on the right track. More specifically, I will argue that the grounding physicalist can solve the exclusion problem in a way that is preferable to the supervenience-based nonreductive physicalist solution, as well as in a way that is compatible with the externalist picture of the mental. (shrink)

The question of how properties are individuated is extremely important. Consider the following proposals. To be in pain is to be in a certain neurological state. To be red is to appear red to normal observers in standard conditions. To be obligatory is to maximize the good. Each makes a claim of property identity. Each is a substantive metaphysical thesis of wide interest. None can be studied with due scrutiny in the absence of a general account of property identity. Here, (...) I will survey existing accounts and suggest a new account in terms of grounding that has some advantages over the other candidates. (shrink)

This paper argues that two principles held by many metaphysicians and philosophers of mind are inconsistent: there is no systematic overdetermination, and some causal effects are also determined by their metaphysical grounds. Call this “The Problem of Secondary Effects.” After introducing the problem and noting philosophical theories that face it, the paper offers further clarification by considering three potential strategies for solving it. All fail. An approach that sacrifices ‘secondary effects’ is briefly sketched as a solution.

In this paper, I assess the ontological commitments of frame-based methods of knowledge representation. Frames decompose concepts into recursive attribute-value structures. Attributes are the general aspects by which a category or individual is described; their values are more or less specific properties that are assigned to the referential object. The question is: are these properties to be interpreted as universals or as tropes? Some trope theorists allege that an interpretation in terms of universals is incompatible with frames for individuals in (...) which the values of quality attributes are recursively specified by further attributes. I shall argue, however, that recursive extension poses a challenge, not specifically to the universals realist, but rather to realists about determinables as opposed to determinables nominalists. Moreover, it is suggested that even determinables realists are able to cope with recursively extended frames once they relativize relations between determinables and determinates to particular objects. It is indicated how these findings might bear on adjacent debates in the metaphysics of natural language. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

Humeans have a problem with quantities. A core principle of any Humean account of modality is that fundamental entities can freely recombine. But determinate quantities, if fundamental, seem to violate this core principle: determinate quantities belonging to the same determinable necessarily exclude one another. Call this the problem of exclusion. Prominent Humeans have responded in various ways. Wittgenstein, when he resurfaced to philosophy, gave the problem of exclusion as a reason to abandon the logical atomism of the Tractatus with its (...) free recombination of elementary propositions. Armstrong promoted a mereological solution to the problem of exclusion; but his account fails in manifold ways to provide a general solution to the problem. Lewis studiously avoided committing to any one solution, trusting simply that, since Humeanism was true, there had to be some solution. Abandonment; failure; avoidance: we Humeans need to do better. -/- In this paper, I present what I take to be the best account of quantities, tailoring it where needed to meet Humean demands as well as my own prior commitment to quidditism, and my own comparativist inclinations. In short: determinables, not determinates, are the fundamental properties, and freely recombine; determinates arise from the instantiation of determinables in an enhanced world structure; determinate quantities may be local (in a sense to be explained), but they are not intrinsic. Is the account I end up with Humean? Not, unfortunately, as it stands: the problem of exclusion still rears its ugly head. After dismissing a failed attempt at a solution, I consider in the final section the two viable Humean options. One attributes the source of the necessary exclusions to conventional definition, the other attributes it to logic. The first is safe and familiar, but not a response I can accept given my other commitments. The second is more radical and less familiar; but I am convinced it is on the right track. I don’t have space to develop it much here, but I put it out for future research. (shrink)

In this paper I aim to answer two questions: Can spin be treated as a determinable? Can a treatment of spin as a determinable be used to understand quantum indeterminacy? In response to the first question I show that the relations among spin number, spin components and spin values cannot be captured by a single determination relation; instead we need to look at spin number and spin value separately. In response to the second question I discuss three ways in which (...) the determinables model might be modified to account for indeterminacy, and argue that none of them is fully successful in helping us to understand quantum indeterminacy. (shrink)

One of the most poorly understood features of consciousness is the relation between an experience and the subject of the experience. In this paper, I develop an ontology of consciousness on which experiences are events constituted by substances having properties at times. I use this to explain the relation between a subject and her experience.

Fundamental properties and the laws of nature go hand in hand: mass and gravitation, charge and electromagnetism, spin and quantum mechanics. So, it is unsurprising that one's account of fundamental properties affects one's view of the laws of nature and vice versa. In this essay, I will survey a variety of recent attempts to provide a joint account of the fundamental properties and the laws of nature. Many of these accounts are new and unexplored. Some of them posit surprising entities, (...) such as counterfacts. Other accounts posit surprising laws of nature, such as instantaneous laws that constrain the initial configuration of particles. These exciting developments challenge our assumptions about our basic ontology and provide fertile ground for further exploration. (shrink)

In this article, we address the problem of predication, or the problem of connecting conceptual predicates to the sets of properties and attributes that correspond to these predicates. We take as our starting point Mark Wilson’s work, especially “Predicate meets Property,” and add to it a metaphysics of problems that one finds in the work of Gilles Deleuze. This enables us to understand the relationship between a predicate and the set of properties in terms of the relationship between a solution (...) to a problem. The advantage of this approach is that it helps to illuminate the key issues involved in contemporary work on human reasoning. We sketch some of these advantages by looking to recent work on literacy and how literacy affects the capacity to engage in formal reasoning. (shrink)

The idea that there is some fundamental “level” or “ground” where our description of the world bottoms out has acquired the status of ‘the received view’ in metaphysics ; for a more recent critical defense, see Cameron, 2008). Typically this view is cashed out in terms of some set of ‘basic building blocks’ populating this level, which sits at the bottom of a hierarchy ordered according to some set of compositional principles. These fundamental building blocks are thus taken to have (...) some form of “ultimate” ontological priority with regard to everything else in the hierarchy. In this chapter I shall consider two kinds of threats to this view: the first comes from arguments against the idea of such a level in general, whereas the second concerns the nature of these occupants. As we’ll see, both these threats become entwined in the context of modern physics but I’ll conclude with a suggestion as to how this “received view” may be maintained in this context. (shrink)

I provide and defend two natural accounts of fundamentality for facts that do justice to the idea that the “degree of fundamentality” enjoyed by a fact is a matter of how far, from a ground-theoretic perspective, the fact is from the ungrounded facts.

According to the substantialist, substances should be regarded as the fundamental ontological category. It is substances that are the bearer of properties, that are causally efficacious and that compose the things we see and touch around us. Cumpa has argued that this metaphysics fits poorly with classical physics and Buonomo has extended this argument into the quantum realm. After reviewing their claims, I shall argue that simple reflection on the form of the Standard Model also undermines substantialism. I will then (...) explore Dasgupta’s qualitative factualism in this context before suggesting that modern physics does not compel us to adopt such a stance. The alternative is to adopt a form of structuralism which, although it may be rendered compatible with factualism, can also stand as a ‘third way’ between these stances. (shrink)

A new set of metaphysical arguments in favour of fundamental reality is proposed in the article. For this purpose the notion of the state of the world is introduced. The standard concept of grounding underlying metaphysical foundationalism is taken into account. The correspondence of the new notion and the initial principles of metaphysical fundamentalism are confirmed. The proof of fundamental reality existence is represented based on formulated principles and empirical data.

Say that metaphysical indeterminacy occurs just when there is a fact such that neither it nor its negation obtains. The aim of this work is to shed light on the issue of whether orthodox quantum mechanics provides any evidence of metaphysical indeterminacy by discussing the logical, semantic, and broadly methodological presuppositions of the debate. I argue that the dispute amounts to a verbal disagreement between classical and quantum logicians, given Eli Hirsch’s account of substantivity; but that it need not be (...) so if Ted Sider’s naturalness-based account of substantivity is adopted instead. Given the latter approach, can anything be said in order to tip the balance of the dispute either way? Some prima facie reasonable constraints on naturalness entail that the classicist is right, and the quantum world is therefore determinate. Nevertheless, there are reasons for weakening those constraints, to the effect that the dispute remains very much open. Finally, I discuss alternative accounts of metaphysical indeterminacy, and argue that they are unsuitable for framing the quantum indeterminacy debate. (shrink)

This paper proposes that the relation between property instances and token causal powers is akin to the relation between primary substances and property instances on the Aristotelian account of property instantiation. This view permits an individual to have two tokens of the same type of causal power. Paul Audi has argued that this cannot be: two tokens of the same power type are discernible, he claims, only if they are borne by discernible individuals. In the context of this criticism, he (...) proposes that power tokens are individuated in part by the individuals bearing them. This paper responds to Audi’s criticism and argues against his preferred view. This paper thus establishes a theory of token causal powers where previously the literature contained only a presumed view and Audi’s objections. (shrink)