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  1. General semantics.David K. Lewis - 1970 - Synthese 22 (1-2):18--67.
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  • (1 other version)Truthmakers and Predication.Daniel Nolan - 2008 - Oxford Studies in Metaphysics 4:171-192.
    To what extent do true predications correspond to truthmakers in virtue of which those predications are true? One sort of predicate which is often thought to not be susceptible to an ontological treatment is a predicate for instantiation, or some corresponding predication (trope-similarity or set-membership, for example). This paper discusses this question, and argues that an "ontological" approach is possible here too: where this ontological approach goes beyond merely finding a truthmaker for claims about instantiation. Along the way a version (...)
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  • Parthood and identity across time.Judith Thomson - 1983 - Journal of Philosophy 80 (4):201-220.
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  • Aesthetic Concepts.Frank Sibley - 1959 - Philosophical Review 68 (4):421-450.
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  • Redundant causation.Michael McDermott - 1995 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 46 (4):523-544.
    I propose an amendment of Lewis's counterfactual analysis of causation, designed to overcome some difficulties concerning redundant causation.
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  • (1 other version)How to define theoretical terms.David Lewis - 1970 - Journal of Philosophy 67 (13):427-446.
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  • The layered model: Metaphysical considerations.Jaegwon Kim - 2002 - Philosophical Explorations 5 (1):2 – 20.
    This paper examines the idea, commonly presupposed but seldom explicitly stated in discussions of certain philosophical problems, that the objects and phenomena of the world are structured in a hierarchy of "levels", from the bottom level of microparticles to the levels of cells and biological organisms and then to the levels of creatures with mentality and social groups of such creatures. Parallel to this "layered model" of the natural world is an ordering of the sciences, with physics as our "basic" (...)
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  • Explanatory knowledge and metaphysical dependence.Jaegwon Kim - 1994 - Philosophical Issues 5:51-69.
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  • Noncausal connections.Jaegwon Kim - 1974 - Noûs 8 (1):41-52.
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  • Smith on truthmakers.Dominic Gregory - 2001 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 79 (3):422 – 427.
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  • Explanation and scientific understanding.Michael Friedman - 1974 - Journal of Philosophy 71 (1):5-19.
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  • The question of realism.Kit Fine - 2001 - Philosophers' Imprint 1:1-30.
    This paper distinguishes two kinds of realist issue -- the issue of whether the propositions of a given domain are factual and the issue of whether they are fundamental. It criticizes previous accounts of what these issues come to and suggests that they are to be understood in terms of a basic metaphysical concept of reality. This leaves open the question of how such issues are to be resolved; and it is argued that this may be done through consideration of (...)
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  • Negative truths and truthmaker principles.Julian Dodd - 2007 - Synthese 156 (2):383-401.
    This paper argues that a consideration of the problem of providing truthmakers for negative truths undermines truthmaker theory. Truthmaker theorists are presented with an uncomfortable dilemma. Either they must take up the challenge of providing truthmakers for negative truths, or else they must explain why negative truths are exceptions to the principle that every truth must have a truthmaker. The first horn is unattractive since the prospects of providing truthmakers for negative truths do not look good neither absences, nor totality (...)
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  • A genuine realist theory of advanced modalizing.John Divers - 1999 - Mind 108 (430):217-239.
    The principle of modal ubiquity - that every truth is necessary or contingent - and the validity of possibility introduction, are principles that any modal theory suffers for failing to accommodate. Advanced modal claims are modal claims about entities other than spatiotemporally unified individuals (perhaps, then, spatiotemporally disunified individuals, sets, numbers, properties, propositions and events). I show that genuine modal realism, as it has thus far been explicitly developed, and in so far as it deals with advanced modal claims, cannot (...)
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  • On moral properties.Jonathan Dancy - 1981 - Mind 90 (359):367-385.
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  • (2 other versions)Explaining supervenience: Moral and mental.Nick Zagwill - 1997 - Journal of Philosophical Research 22 (April):509-518.
    I defend the view that supervenience relations need not be explained. My view is that some supervenience relations are brute, and explanatorily ultimate. I examine an argument of Terrence Horgan and Mark Timmons. They aim to rehabilitate John Mackie’s metaphysical queerness argument. But the explanations of supervenience that Horgan and Timmons demand are semantic explanations. I criticize their attempt to explain psychophysical supervenience in this fashion. I then turn to their ‘Twin Earth’ argument against naturalist moral realism. I reconstruct their (...)
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  • (1 other version)New work for a theory of universals.David K. Lewis - 1983 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 61 (4):343-377.
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  • Naming the colours.David Lewis - 1997 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 75 (3):325-42.
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  • (1 other version)How to Define Theoretical Terms.David Lewis - 1970 - Journal of Symbolic Logic 36 (2):321-321.
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  • (1 other version)From Metaphysics to Ethics: A Defence of Conceptual Analysis.Frank Jackson - 1999 - Philosophical Quarterly 49 (197):539-542.
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  • (4 other versions)The Philosophy of Logical Atomism.Bertrand Russell - 1918 - In ¸ Iterussell1986. Open Court. pp. 193-210..
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  • A Subject with no Object.Zoltan Gendler Szabo, John P. Burgess & Gideon Rosen - 1999 - Philosophical Review 108 (1):106.
    This is the first systematic survey of modern nominalistic reconstructions of mathematics, and for this reason alone it should be read by everyone interested in the philosophy of mathematics and, more generally, in questions concerning abstract entities. In the bulk of the book, the authors sketch a common formal framework for nominalistic reconstructions, outline three major strategies such reconstructions can follow, and locate proposals in the literature with respect to these strategies. The discussion is presented with admirable precision and clarity, (...)
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  • A World of States of Affairs.D. M. Armstrong - 1996 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    In this important study D. M. Armstrong offers a comprehensive system of analytical metaphysics that synthesises but also develops his thinking over the last twenty years. Armstrong's analysis, which acknowledges the 'logical atomism' of Russell and Wittgenstein, makes facts the fundamental constituents of the world, examining properties, relations, numbers, classes, possibility and necessity, dispositions, causes and laws. All these, it is argued, find their place and can be understood inside a scheme of states of affairs. This is a comprehensive and (...)
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  • Possible Worlds.John Divers - 2002 - Routledge.
    _Possible Worlds_ presents the first up-to-date and comprehensive examination of one of the most important topics in metaphysics. John Divers considers the prevalent philosophical positions, including realism, antirealism and the work of important writers on possible worlds such as David Lewis, evaluating them in detail.
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  • (1 other version)On What There Is.Charles A. Baylis - 1954 - Journal of Symbolic Logic 19 (3):222-223.
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  • Existential Dependence and Cognate Notions.Fabrice Correia - 2005 - Philosophia Verlag.
    The purpose of the book is to clarify the notion of existential dependence and cognate notions, such as supervenience and the notion of an internal relation. I defend the view that such notions are best understood in terms of the concept of metaphysical grounding, i.e. the concept of one fact obtaining in virtue of other facts, where ‘in virtue of’ has a distinctively metaphysical meaning.
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  • Scepticism about Grounding.Chris Daly - 2012 - In Fabrice Correia & Benjamin Schnieder (eds.), Metaphysical grounding: understanding the structure of reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 81.
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  • (1 other version)Grounding and Omniscience.Dennis Whitcomb - 2008 - In Jonathan Kvanvig (ed.), Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion: Volume 1. Oxford University Press.
    I’m going to argue that omniscience is impossible and therefore that there is no God. The argument turns on the notion of grounding. After illustrating and clarifying that notion, I’ll start the argument in earnest. The first step will be to lay out five claims, one of which is the claim that there is an omniscient being, and the other four of which are claims about grounding. I’ll prove that these five claims are jointly inconsistent. Then I’ll argue for the (...)
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  • How to be a minimalist about sets.Luca Incurvati - 2012 - Philosophical Studies 159 (1):69-87.
    According to the iterative conception of set, sets can be arranged in a cumulative hierarchy divided into levels. But why should we think this to be the case? The standard answer in the philosophical literature is that sets are somehow constituted by their members. In the first part of the paper, I present a number of problems for this answer, paying special attention to the view that sets are metaphysically dependent upon their members. In the second part of the paper, (...)
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  • Some Puzzles of Ground.Kit Fine - 2010 - Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 51 (1):97-118.
    I describe some paradoxes of ground and relate them to the semantic paradoxes.
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  • (1 other version)Ontological Dependency.E. J. Lowe - 1994 - Philosophical Papers 23 (1):31-48.
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  • Truth-makers and dependence.David Liggins - 2012 - In Fabrice Correia & Benjamin Schnieder (eds.), Metaphysical grounding: understanding the structure of reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 254.
    This paper discusses the significance of non-causal dependence for truthmaker theory. After introducing truthmaker theory (section 1), I discuss a challenge to it levelled by Benjamin Schnieder. I argue that Schnieder’s challenge can be met once we acknowledge the existence of non-causal dependence and of explanations which rely on it (sections 2 to 5). I then mount my own argument against truthmaker theory, based on the notion of non-causal dependence (sections 6 and 7).
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  • Quantification, naturalness and ontology.Ross P. Cameron - 2010
    Quine said that the ontological question can be asked in three words, ‘What is there?’, and answered in one, ‘everything’. He was wrong. We need an extra word to ask the ontological question: it is ‘What is there, really?’; and it cannot be answered truthfully with ‘everything’ because there are some things that exist but which don’t really exist (and maybe even some things that really exist but which don’t exist).
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  • (1 other version)Supervenience.Karen Bennett & Brian McLaughlin - 2005 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • Truthmaking, entailment, and the conjunction thesis.Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra - 2006 - Mind 115 (460):957-982.
    In this paper I undermine the Entailment Principle according to which if an entity is a truthmaker for a certain proposition and this proposition entails another, then the entity in question is a truthmaker for the latter proposition. I argue that the two most promising versions of the principle entail the popular but false Conjunction Thesis, namely that a truthmaker for a conjunction is a truthmaker for its conjuncts. One promising version of the principle understands entailment as strict implication but (...)
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  • Counterparts of persons and their bodies.David Lewis - 1971 - Journal of Philosophy 68 (7):203-211.
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  • (1 other version)A World of States of Affairs.D. M. Armstrong - 1993 - Philosophical Perspectives 7:429-440.
    In this important study D. M. Armstrong offers a comprehensive system of analytical metaphysics that synthesises but also develops his thinking over the last twenty years. Armstrong's analysis, which acknowledges the 'logical atomism' of Russell and Wittgenstein, makes facts the fundamental constituents of the world, examining properties, relations, numbers, classes, possibility and necessity, dispositions, causes and laws. All these, it is argued, find their place and can be understood inside a scheme of states of affairs. This is a comprehensive and (...)
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  • Remnants of Meaning.Stephen R. Schiffer - 1987 - MIT Press.
    In this foundational work on the theory of linguistic and mental representation, Stephen Schiffer surveys all the leading theories of meaning and content in the philosophy of language and finds them lacking. He concludes that there can be no correct, positive philosophical theory or linguistic or mental representation and, accordingly advocates the deflationary "no-theory theory of meaning and content." Along the way he takes up functionalism, the nature of propositions and their suitability as contents, the language of thought and other (...)
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  • (1 other version)Grounding and Omniscience.Dennis Whitcomb - 2012 - Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion 4 (1).
    I’m going to argue that omniscience is impossible and therefore that there is no God. The argument turns on the notion of grounding. After illustrating and clarifying that notion, I’ll start the argument in earnest. The first step will be to lay out five claims, one of which is the claim that there is an omniscient being, and the other four of which are claims about grounding. I’ll prove that these five claims are jointly inconsistent. Then I’ll argue for the (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Symposium: On What there is.P. T. Geach, A. J. Ayer & W. V. Quine - 1948 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 25 (1):125-160.
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  • On the Plurality of Worlds.David Lewis - 1986 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 178 (3):388-390.
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  • Some Main Problems of Philosophy.George Edward Moore - 1956 - Philosophy 31 (119):362-366.
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  • Quinean Scepticism About De Re Modality After David Lewis.John Divers - 2007 - European Journal of Philosophy 15 (1):40-62.
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  • Armstrong on truthmaking.Marian David - 2005 - In Helen Beebee & Julian Dodd (eds.), Truthmakers: The Contemporary Debate. Oxford, GB: Clarendon Press. pp. 141.
    Truthmakers have come to play a central role in David Armstrong's metaphysics. They are the things that stand in the relation of truthmaking to truthbearers. This chapter focuses on the relation. More specifically, it discusses a thesis Armstrong holds about truthmaking that is of special importance to him; namely, the thesis that truthmaking is an internal relation. It explores what work this thesis is supposed to do for Armstrong, especially for this doctrine of the ontological free lunch, raising questions and (...)
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  • Lewis's animadversions on the truthmaker principle.Fraser MacBride - 2005 - In Helen Beebee & Julian Dodd (eds.), Truthmakers: The Contemporary Debate. Oxford, GB: Clarendon Press. pp. 117-40.
    The early David Lewis was a staunch critic of the Truthmaker Principle. To endorse the principle, he argued, is to accept that states of affairs are truthmakers for contingent predications. But states of affairs violate Hume's prohibition of necessary connections between distinct existences. So Lewis offered to replace the Truthmaker Principle with the weaker principle that ‘truth supervenes upon being’. This chapter argues that even this principle violates Hume's prohibition. Later Lewis came to ‘withdraw’ his doubts about the Truthmaker Principle, (...)
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  • A Puzzle About 'because'.Benjamin Schnieder - 2010 - Logique Et Analyse 53.
    The essay is a partial investigation into the semantics of the explanatory connective ‘because’. After three independently plausible assumptions about ‘because’ are presented in some detail, it is shown how their interaction generates a puzzle about ‘because’, once they are combined with a common view on conceptual analysis. Four possible solutions to the puzzle are considered.
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  • (1 other version)Critical Notice of David Armstrong, A Combinatorial Theory of Possibility.David Lewis - 1992 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 70 (2):211-224.
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  • Bolzano's Theory of Ground and Consequence.Armin Tatzel - 2002 - Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 43 (1):1-25.
    The aim of the paper is to present and evaluate Bolzano's theory of grounding, that is, his theory of the concept expressed and the relation brought into play by 'because'. In the first part of the paper (Sections 1-4) the concept of grounding is distinguished from and related to three other concepts: the concept of an epistemic reason}, the concept of causality, and the concept of deducibility (i.e., logical consequence). In its second part (Sections 5-7) Bolzano's positive account of grounding (...)
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  • Razor arguments.Peter Forrest - 2009 - In Robin Le Poidevin, Simons Peter, McGonigal Andrew & Ross P. Cameron (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics. New York: Routledge.
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  • Abstract.[author unknown] - 2011 - Dialogue and Universalism 21 (4):447-449.
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