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  1. Monism: The Priority of the Whole.Jonathan Schaffer - 2010 - Philosophical Review 119 (1):31-76.
    Consider a circle and a pair of its semicircles. Which is prior, the whole or its parts? Are the semicircles dependent abstractions from their whole, or is the circle a derivative construction from its parts? Now in place of the circle consider the entire cosmos (the ultimate concrete whole), and in place of the pair of semicircles consider the myriad particles (the ultimate concrete parts). Which if either is ultimately prior, the one ultimate whole or its many ultimate parts?
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  • Essence and modality.Kit Fine - 1994 - Philosophical Perspectives 8 (Logic and Language):1-16.
    It is my aim in this paper to show that the contemporary assimilation of essence to modality is fundamentally misguided and that, as a consequence, the corresponding conception of metaphysics should be given up. It is not my view that the modal account fails to capture anything which might reasonably be called a concept of essence. My point, rather, is that the notion of essence which is of central importance to the metaphysics of identity is not to be understood in (...)
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  • The Internal Relatedness of All Things.J. Schaffer - 2010 - Mind 119 (474):341-376.
    The argument from internal relatedness was one of the major nineteenth century neo-Hegelian arguments for monism. This argument has been misunderstood, and may even be sound. The argument, as I reconstruct it, proceeds in two stages: first, it is argued that all things are internally related in ways that render them interdependent; second, the substantial unity of the whole universe is inferred from the interdependence of all of its parts. The guiding idea behind the argument is that failure of free (...)
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  • Turtles all the way down: Regress, priority and fundamentality.Ross P. Cameron - 2008 - Philosophical Quarterly 58 (230):1-14.
    I address an intuition commonly endorsed by metaphysicians, that there must be a fundamental layer of reality, i.e., that chains of ontological dependence must terminate: there cannot be turtles all the way down. I discuss applications of this intuition with reference to Bradley’s regress, composition, realism about the mental and the cosmological argument. I discuss some arguments for the intui- tion, but argue that they are unconvincing. I conclude by making some suggestions for how the intuition should be argued for, (...)
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  • The Non-Existence of the Real World.Jan Westerhoff - 2020 - Oxford University Press.
    Does the real world, defined as a world of objects that exist independent of human interests, concerns, and cognitive activities, really exist? Jan Westerhoff argues that we have good reason to believe it does not. His discussion considers four main facets of the idea of the real world, ranging from the existence of a separate external and internal world, to the existence of an ontological foundation that grounds the existence of all the entities in the world, and the existence of (...)
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  • Viciousness and Circles of Ground.Ricki Bliss - 2014 - Metaphilosophy 45 (2):245-256.
    Metaphysicians of a certain stripe are almost unanimously of the view that grounding is necessarily irreflexive, asymmetric, transitive, and well-founded. They deny the possibility of circles of ground and, therewith, the possibility of species of metaphysical coherentism. But what's so bad about circles of ground? One problem for coherentism might be that it ushers in anti-foundationalism: grounding loops give rise to infinite regresses. And this is bad because infinite grounding regresses are vicious. This article argues that circles of ground do (...)
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  • Priority monism.Kelly Trogdon - 2017 - Philosophy Compass 12 (11):1-10.
    Argument that priority monism is best understood as being a contingent thesis.
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  • Boring Infinite Descent.Tuomas E. Tahko - 2014 - Metaphilosophy 45 (2):257-269.
    In formal ontology, infinite regresses are generally considered a bad sign. One debate where such regresses come into play is the debate about fundamentality. Arguments in favour of some type of fundamentalism are many, but they generally share the idea that infinite chains of ontological dependence must be ruled out. Some motivations for this view are assessed in this article, with the conclusion that such infinite chains may not always be vicious. Indeed, there may even be room for a type (...)
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  • Priority monism, dependence and fundamentality.Claudio Calosi - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (1):1-20.
    Priority monism is roughly the view that the universe is the only fundamental object, that is, a concrete object that does not depend on any other concrete object. Schaffer, the main advocate of PM, claims that PM is compatible with dependence having two different directions: from parts to wholes for subcosmic wholes, and from whole to parts for the cosmic whole. Recently it has been argued that this position is untenable. Given plausible assumptions about dependence, PM entails that dependence has (...)
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  • Appearance in Reality.John Heil - 2021 - New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
    How does the way things appear to us relate to the way things really are? Science tells us that the world is very different from the way we experience it. John Heil offers an explanation of why the scientific image of the world that we get from physics is our best guide to the nature of reality--to what the appearances are appearances of.
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  • Could extended objects be made out of simple parts? An argument for "atomless gunk".Dean W. Zimmerman - 1996 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 56 (1):1-29.
    Let us say that an extended object is “composed wholly of simples” just in case it is an aggregate of absolutely unextended parts spread throughout an extended region—that is, just in case there is a set S such that: every member is a point-sized part of the object, and for every x, x is part of the object if and only if it has a part in common with some member of S. Could a truly extended substance be composed entirely (...)
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  • Priority monism and part/whole dependence.Alex Steinberg - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (8):2025-2031.
    Priority monism is the view that the cosmos is the only independent concrete object. The paper argues that, pace its proponents, Priority monism is in conflict with the dependence of any whole on any of its parts: if the cosmos does not depend on its parts, neither does any smaller composite.
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  • Fundamentality in metaphysics and the philosophy of physics. Part I: Metaphysics.Matteo Morganti - 2020 - Philosophy Compass 15 (7):e12690.
    This is the first part of a two-tier overview article on fundamentality in metaphysics and the philosophy of physics. It provides an introduction to the notion of fundamentality in metaphysics, as well as to several related concepts. The key issues in the contemporary debate on the topic are summarised, making systematic reference to the most relevant literature. In particular, various ways in which the fundamental entities and the fundamental structure of reality may be conceived are illustrated and discussed. A final (...)
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  • A new cosmological argument.Richard M. Gale & Alexander R. Pruss - 1999 - Religious Studies 35 (4):461-476.
    We will give a new cosmological argument for the existence of a being who, although not proved to be the absolutely perfect God of the great Medieval theists, also is capable of playing the role in the lives of working theists of a being that is a suitable object of worship, adoration, love, respect, and obedience. Unlike the absolutely perfect God, the God whose necessary existence is established by our argument will not be shown to essentially have the divine perfections (...)
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  • Monism and statespace structure.Theodore Sider - 2008 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 62:129-150.
    Exotic ontologies are all the rage. Distant from common sense and often science as well, views like mereological essentialism, nihilism, and fourdimensionalism appeal to our desire to avoid arbitrariness, anthropocentrism, and metaphysical conundrums.1 Such views are defensible only if they are materially adequate, only if they can “reconstruct” the world of common sense and science. (No disrespect to the heroic metaphysicians of antiquity, but this world is not just an illusion.) In the world of common sense and science, bicycles survive (...)
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  • Against ontological fundamentalism.Ned Markosian - 2005 - Facta Philosophica 7 (1):69-83.
    Suppose you are asked to be the substitute teacher for a high school physics class. Suppose part of your assignment is to explain to the students all about the subatomic structure of a typical macroscopic object, such as a wooden table. Here is a speech that you are likely to find yourself making at some point during your lesson.
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  • Relations, monism, and the vindication of Bradley's regress.William F. Vallicella - 2002 - Dialectica 56 (1):3–35.
    This article articulates and defends F. H. Bradley's regress argument against external relations using contemporary analytic techniques and conceptuality. Bradley's argument is usually quickly dismissed as if it were beneath serious consideration. But I shall maintain that Bradley's argument, suitably reconstructed, is a powerful argument, plausibly premised, and free of such obvious fallacies as petitio principii. Thus it does not rest on the question‐begging assumption that all relations are internal, as Russell, and more recently van Inwagen, maintain. Bradley does not (...)
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  • From potency to act: hyloenergeism.Jeremy W. Skrzypek - 2019 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 11):2691-2716.
    Many contemporary proponents of hylomorphism endorse a version of hylomorphism according to which the form of a material object is a certain kind of complex relation or structure. Structural approaches to form, however, seem not to capture form’s traditional role as the guarantor of diachronic identity, since more “dynamically complex” material objects, such as living organisms, seem to undergo, and survive, various structural changes over the course of their existence. As a result, some contemporary hylomorphists have looked to alternative, non-structural (...)
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  • Monism and statespace: a reply to Sider.David Cornell - 2013 - Analysis 73 (2):230-236.
    According to Existence Monism, there is only one concrete object in existence—the world. This view is to be contrasted with Existence Pluralism, which posits multiple concrete objects. In a recent Analysis paper, Sider (Analysis 2007; 67:1–7) presents arguments against Existence Monism claiming that there are evident features of statespace, which the monist is at a loss to explain. Given that the pluralist can give plausible and satisfying explanations of these features, we have good reason to favor pluralism over monism, or (...)
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  • The varieties of emergence: Their purposes, obligations and importance.Carl Gillett - 2002 - Grazer Philosophische Studien 65 (1):95-121.
    I outline reasons for the recent popularity, and lingering suspicion, about 'emergence' by examining three distinct concepts of property emergence, their purposes and associated obligations. In Part 1, I argue 'Strong' emergence is the grail for many emergentists (and physicalists), since it frames what is needed to block the 'Argument from Realization' (AR) which moves from the truth of physicalism to the inefficacy of special science properties. I then distinguish 'Weak' and 'Ontological' emergence, in Part 2, arguing each is a (...)
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  • The conventional status of reflexive awareness: What's at stake in a tibetan debate?Jay L. Garfield - 2006 - Philosophy East and West 56 (2):201-228.
    ‘Ju Mipham Rinpoche, (1846-1912) an important figure in the _Ris med_, or non- sectarian movement influential in Tibet in the late 19<sup>th</sup> and early 20<sup>th</sup> Centuries, was an unusual scholar in that he was a prominent _Nying ma_ scholar and _rDzog_ _chen_ practitioner with a solid dGe lugs education. He took dGe lugs scholars like Tsong khapa and his followers seriously, appreciated their arguments and positions, but also sometimes took issue with them directly. In his commentary to Candrak¥rti’s _Madhyamakåvatåra, _Mi (...)
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  • Nāgārjuna as anti-realist.Mark Siderits - 1988 - Journal of Indian Philosophy 16 (4):311-325.
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  • A Critical Examination of Nāgārjuna’s Argument on Motion.Mainak Pal - 2023 - Journal of Indian Philosophy 51 (3):283-318.
    If an object changes its spatial position over time, or moves from one place to another, we say that the object is in motion. But in Mādhyamika Buddhist philosophy reality of motion has been questioned. Nāgārjuna, the renowned philosopher in Mādhyamika school, has argued that motion is an absurd concept—it is _empty_. In the second chapter of _Mūlamadhyamakakārikā_ (_Gatāgata-parikṣā_) Nāgārjuna examined the notion of motion and showed that motion exists neither in past, nor in present, and nor in future—the notion (...)
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  • Grasping Snakes and Touching Elephants: A Rejoinder to Garfield and Siderits.Giuseppe Ferraro - 2014 - Journal of Indian Philosophy 42 (4):451-462.
    Some time ago I advanced on the pages of this journal a critique of the interpretation given by Jay L. Garfield and Mark Siderits (hereafter GS) of Nāgārjuna’s doctrine of the two truths (Ferraro, J Indian Philos 41(2):195–219, 2013.1); to my article the two authors responded with a ‘defense of the semantic interpretation’ of the Madhyamaka doctrine of emptiness (GS, J Indian Philos 41(6):655–664, 2013). Their reply, however, could not consider my personal understanding of Nāgārjuna’s notions of śūnyatā and dve (...)
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  • The notion of satkārya in sāṃkhya: Toward a philosophical reconstruction.Gerald J. Larson - 1975 - Philosophy East and West 25 (1):31-40.
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  • Is Pari $$\underset{\raise0.3em\hbox{$\smash{\scriptscriptstyle\cdot}$}}{n}$$ āmavāda a doctrine of causality?Roma Ray - 1982 - Journal of Indian Philosophy 10 (4):377-396.
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