Results for 'Metaphysical indeterminacy'

956 found
Order:
  1. Metaphysical indeterminacy in Everettian quantum mechanics.David Glick & Baptiste Le Bihan - 2024 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 14 (3):1-22.
    The question of whether Everettian quantum mechanics (EQM) justifies the existence of metaphysical indeterminacy has recently come to the fore. Metaphysical indeterminacy has been argued to emerge from three sources: coherent superpositions, the indefinite number of branches in the quantum multiverse and the nature of these branches. This paper reviews the evidence and concludes that those arguments don’t rely on EQM alone and rest on metaphysical auxiliary assumptions that transcend the physics of EQM. We show (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  2. Metaphysical indeterminacy in the multiverse.Claudio Calosi & Jessica Wilson - 2022 - In Valia Allori (ed.), Quantum Mechanics and Fundamentality: Naturalizing Quantum Theory between Scientific Realism and Ontological Indeterminacy. Cham: Springer. pp. 375-395.
    One might suppose that Everettian quantum mechanics (EQM) is inhospitable to metaphysial indeterminacy (MI), given that, as A. Wilson (2020) puts it, "the central idea of EQM is to replace indeterminacy with multiplicity" (77). But as Wilson goes on to suggest, the popular decoherence-based understanding of EQM (henceforth: DEQM) appears to admit of indeterminacy in both world number and world nature, where the latter indeterminacy---our focus here---is plausibly metaphysical. After a brief presentation of DEQM (S1), (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  3. Metaphysical Vagueness and Metaphysical Indeterminacy.Matti Eklund - 2013 - Metaphysica 14 (2):165-179.
    The topic of this paper is whether there is metaphysical vagueness. It is shown that it is important to distinguish between the general phenomenon of indeterminacy and the more narrow phenomenon of vagueness (the phenomenon that paradigmatically rears its head in sorites reasoning). Relatedly, it is important to distinguish between metaphysical indeterminacy and metaphysical vagueness. One can wish to allow metaphysical indeterminacy but rule out metaphysical vagueness. As is discussed in the paper, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  4. Derivative Metaphysical Indeterminacy and Quantum Physics.Alessandro Torza - 2022 - In Valia Allori (ed.), Quantum Mechanics and Fundamentality: Naturalizing Quantum Theory between Scientific Realism and Ontological Indeterminacy. Cham: Springer. pp. 337-350.
    This chapter argues that quantum indeterminacy can be construed as a merely derivative phenomenon. The possibility of merely derivative quantum indeterminacy undermines both a recent argument against quantum indeterminacy due to David Glick, and an argument against the possibility of merely derivative indeterminacy due to Elizabeth Barnes.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  5. A Theory of Metaphysical Indeterminacy.Elizabeth Barnes & J. Robert G. Williams - 2011 - In Karen Bennett & Dean W. Zimmerman (eds.), Oxford Studies in Metaphysics Volume 6. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press. pp. 103-148.
    If the world itself is metaphysically indeterminate in a specified respect, what follows? In this paper, we develop a theory of metaphysical indeterminacy answering this question.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   141 citations  
  6. (2 other versions)Being Metaphysically Unsettled: Barnes and Williams on Metaphysical Indeterminacy and Vagueness.Matti Eklund - 2008 - Oxford Studies in Metaphysics 6:6.
    This chapter discusses the defence of metaphysical indeterminacy by Elizabeth Barnes and Robert Williams and discusses a classical and bivalent theory of such indeterminacy. Even if metaphysical indeterminacy arguably is intelligible, Barnes and Williams argue in favour of it being so and this faces important problems. As for classical logic and bivalence, the chapter problematizes what exactly is at issue in this debate. Can reality not be adequately described using different languages, some classical and some (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   14 citations  
  7. Ontic vagueness and metaphysical indeterminacy.J. Robert G. Williams - 2008 - Philosophy Compass 3 (4):763-788.
    Might it be that world itself, independently of what we know about it or how we represent it, is metaphysically indeterminate? This article tackles in turn a series of questions: In what sorts of cases might we posit metaphysical indeterminacy? What is it for a given case of indefiniteness to be 'metaphysical'? How does the phenomenon relate to 'ontic vagueness', the existence of 'vague objects', 'de re indeterminacy' and the like? How might the logic work? Are (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   84 citations  
  8. Metaphysical indeterminacy, supervenience, and emergence.Robert Williams - manuscript
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  9. Modelling Deep Indeterminacy.George Darby & Martin Pickup - 2021 - Synthese 198:1685–1710.
    This paper constructs a model of metaphysical indeterminacy that can accommodate a kind of ‘deep’ worldly indeterminacy that arguably arises in quantum mechanics via the Kochen-Specker theorem, and that is incompatible with prominent theories of metaphysical indeterminacy such as that in Barnes and Williams (2011). We construct a variant of Barnes and Williams's theory that avoids this problem. Our version builds on situation semantics and uses incomplete, local situations rather than possible worlds to build a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  10. Against Quantum Indeterminacy.David Glick - 2017 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 6 (3):204-213.
    A growing literature is premised on the claim that quantum mechanics provides evidence for metaphysical indeterminacy. But does it? None of the currently fashionable realist interpretations involve fundamental indeterminacy and the ‘standard interpretation’, to the extent that it can be made out, doesn't require indeterminacy either.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   30 citations  
  11. Ontic Indeterminacy: Chinese Madhyamaka in the Contemporary Context.Chien-Hsing Ho - 2020 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 98 (3):419-433.
    A number of analytical philosophers have recently endorsed the view that the world itself is indeterminate in some respect. Intriguingly, ideas similar to the view are expressed by thinkers from Chinese Madhyamaka Buddhism, which may shed light on the current discussion of worldly indeterminacy. Using as a basis Chinese Madhyamaka thought, together with Jessica Wilson’s account of indeterminacy, I develop an ontological conception of indeterminacy, termed ontic indeterminacy, which centres on two complementary ideas—conclusive indeterminability and provisional (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  12. Deep Indeterminacy in Physics and Fiction.George Darby, Martin Pickup & Jon Robson - 2017 - In Otávio Bueno, Steven French, George Darby & Dean Rickles (eds.), Thinking About Science, Reflecting on Art: Bringing Aesthetics and Philosophy of Science Together. New York: Routledge.
    Indeterminacy in its various forms has been the focus of a great deal of philosophical attention in recent years. Much of this discussion has focused on the status of vague predicates such as ‘tall’, ‘bald’, and ‘heap’. It is determinately the case that a seven-foot person is tall and that a five-foot person is not tall. However, it seems difficult to pick out any determinate height at which someone becomes tall. How best to account for this phenomenon is, of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  13. Indeterminacy and Vagueness: Logic and Metaphysics.Peter Van Inwagen - 2009 - European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 1 (2):1 - 19.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  14. Causation and Ontic Indeterminacy.Chien-Hsing Ho - 2021 - Res Philosophica 98 (1):43-61.
    In this article, I first introduce an Indian Madhyamaka Buddhist critique of causality and discuss critically a contemporary Humean interpretation of the critique. After presenting a Chinese Madhyamaka interpretation, I resort to an ontological conception of indeterminacy, termed ontic indeterminacy, which draws on Chinese Madhyamaka thought together with Jessica Wilson’s account of metaphysical indeterminacy, to show that the conception is well equipped to unravel two puzzling issues that arise from the critique. I suggest that a world (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  15. Derivative Indeterminacy.Kevin Richardson - forthcoming - Erkenntnis:1-17.
    Indeterminacy is metaphysical (or worldly) if it has its source in the way the world is (rather than how it is represented or known). There are two questions we could ask about indeterminacy. First: does it exist? Second: is indeterminacy derivative? I focus on the second question. Specifically, I argue that (at least some) metaphysical indeterminacy can be derivative, where this roughly means that facts about indeterminacy are metaphysically grounded in facts about what (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  16. Plural metaphysical supervaluationism.Robert Michels, Cristian Mariani & Giuliano Torrengo - 2021 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy (6):2005-2042.
    It has been argued that quantum mechanics forces us to accept the existence of metaphysical, mind-independent indeterminacy. In this paper we provide an interpretation of the indeterminacy involved in the quantum phenomena in terms of a view that we call Plural Metaphysical Supervaluationism. According to it, quantum indeterminacy is captured in terms of an irreducibly plural relation between the actual world and various misrepresentations of it.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  17. The situations-based approach to deep worldly indeterminacy.George Darby & Martin Pickup - 2022 - In Valia Allori (ed.), Quantum Mechanics and Fundamentality: Naturalizing Quantum Theory between Scientific Realism and Ontological Indeterminacy. Cham: Springer.
    This paper concerns metaphysical indeterminacy and, in particular, the issue of whether quantum mechanics gives motivation for thinking the world contains it. In a previous paper (Darby G, Pickup M. Synthese 198:1685–1710, 2021), we have offered one way to think about metaphysical indeterminacy which we take to avoid some issues arising from certain features of quantum mechanics (such as the Kochen-Specker theorem). This approach has recently been criticised by Corti (Synthese, forthcoming), and we take this opportunity (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  18. Worldly Indeterminacy and the Provisionality of Language.Chien-Hsing Ho - 2024 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy.
    Theorists who advocate worldly (metaphysical or ontological) indeterminacy—the idea that the world itself is indeterminate in one or more respects—should address how we understand the signifying nature and function of language in light of worldly indeterminacy. I first attend to Sengzhao and Jizang, two leading thinkers in Chinese Sanlun Buddhism, to reconstruct a Chinese Madhyamaka notion of ontic indeterminacy. Then, I draw on the thinkers’ views to propose a provisional (non-definitive) understanding of the nature and use (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  19. The Self and Its World: Husserlian Contributions to a Metaphysics of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and Heisenberg’s Indeterminacy Principle in Quantum Physics.Maria Eliza Cruz - manuscript
    This paper centers on the implicit metaphysics beyond the Theory of Relativity and the Principle of Indeterminacy – two revolutionary theories that have changed 20th Century Physics – using the perspective of Husserlian Transcedental Phenomenology. Albert Einstein (1879-1955) and Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) abolished the theoretical framework of Classical (Galilean- Newtonian) physics that has been complemented, strengthened by Cartesian metaphysics. Rene Descartes (1596- 1850) introduced a separation between subject and object (as two different and self- enclosed substances) while Galileo and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  20. Causal and Moral Indeterminacy.Sara Bernstein - 2016 - Ratio 29 (4):434-447.
    This paper argues that several sorts of metaphysical and semantic indeterminacy afflict the causal relation. If, as it is plausible to hold, there is a relationship between causation and moral responsibility, then indeterminacy in the causal relation results in indeterminacy of moral responsibility more generally.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   20 citations  
  21. From indeterminacy in a fundamental theory to fundamental indeterminacy?Chanwoo Lee - forthcoming - Analytic Philosophy.
    In this paper, I examine a case for fundamental indeterminacy (FI) by Elizabeth Barnes and offer my counterarguments. Barnes' account of FI includes both the characterization of FI and why we need to accept it. I argue that her reasons for accepting FI can be challenged even when we accept her characterization of FI. Her main claim is that finding a fundamental proposition that our fundamental theory is indeterminate about (FPF) gives us a reason to accept FI in metaphysics. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  22. The Metaphysics of gender is (Relatively) substantial.Kevin Richardson - 2022 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 107 (1):192-207.
    According to Sider, a question is metaphysically substantive just in case it has a single most natural answer. Recently, Barnes and Mikkola have argued that, given this notion of substantivity, many of the central questions in the metaphysics of gender are nonsubstantive. Specifically, it is plausible that gender pluralism—the view that there are multiple, equally natural gender kinds—is true, but this view seems incompatible with the substantivity of gender. The goal of this paper is to argue that the notion of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  23. Social construction and indeterminacy.Kevin Richardson - 2024 - Analytic Philosophy 65 (1):37-52.
    An increasing number of philosophers argue that indeterminacy is metaphysical (or worldly) in the sense that indeterminacy has its source in the world itself (rather than how the world is represented or known). The standard arguments for metaphysical indeterminacy are centered around the sorites paradox. In this essay, I present a novel argument for metaphysical indeterminacy. I argue that metaphysical indeterminacy follows from the existence of constitutive social construction; there is (...) in the social world because there is indeterminacy in how the social world is constructed. (shrink)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  24. Aristotelian indeterminacy and the open future.Robert Williams - manuscript
    I explore the thesis that the future is open, in the sense that future contingents are neither true nor false. The paper is divided into three sections. In the first, I survey how the thesis arises on a variety of contemporary views on the metaphysics of time. In the second, I explore the consequences for rational belief of the ‘Aristotelian’ view that indeterminacy is characterized by truth-value gaps. In the third, I outline one line of defence for the Aristotelian (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  25. On the Embodiment of Space and Time: Triadic logic, quantum indeterminacy and the metaphysics of relativity.Timothy M. Rogers - manuscript
    Triadic (systemical) logic can provide an interpretive paradigm for understanding how quantum indeterminacy is a consequence of the formal nature of light in relativity theory. This interpretive paradigm is coherent and constitutionally open to ethical and theological interests. -/- In this statement: -/- (1) Triadic logic refers to a formal pattern that describes systemic (collaborative) processes involving signs that mediate between interiority (individuation) and exteriority (generalized worldview or Umwelt). It is also called systemical logic or the logic of relatives. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  26. The Metaphysics of Puns.James Miller - 2024 - Synthese (5):1-17.
    In this paper, I aim to discuss what puns, metaphysically, are. I argue that the type-token view of words leads to an indeterminacy problem when we consider puns. I then outline an alternative account of puns, based on recent nominalist views of words, that does not suffer from this indeterminacy.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  27. Events, Truth, and Indeterminacy.Achille C. Varzi - 2002 - The Dialogue 2:241-264.
    The semantics of our event talk is a complex affair. What is it that we are talking about when we speak of Brutus’s stabbing of Caesar? Exactly where and when did it take place? Was it the same event as the killing of Caesar? Some take questions such as these to be metaphysical questions. I think they are questions of semantics—questions about the way we talk and about what we mean. And I think that this conflict between metaphysic and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  28. When Do Persons Die?: Indeterminacy, Death, and Referential Eligibility.Ben Curtis - 2018 - Journal of Value Inquiry 52 (2):153-167.
    The topic of this paper is the general thesis that the death of the human organism is what constitutes the death of a person. All admit that when the death of a human organism occurs, in some form or another, this normally does result in the death of a person. But, some maintain, organismic death is not the same thing as personal death. Why? Because, they maintain, despite the fact that persons are associated with a human organism (‘their organism’), they (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  29. Vague Naturalness as Ersatz Metaphysical Vagueness.Rohan Sud - 2018 - Oxford Studies in Metaphysics 11:243–277.
    I propose a view that I call "Ersatz Metaphysical Vagueness" according to which the term "perfectly natural" can be semantically vague. As its name suggests, the view mimics traditional metaphysical vagueness without the radical metaphysical underpinnings. In particular, the ersatzer avoids a widely accepted argument schema (advanced by JRG Williams, Ted Sider, Cian Dorr, John Hawthorne and others) according to which, if there is no metaphysical vagueness, F-ness cannot be both perfectly natural and vague.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  30. The Way of Nonacquisition: Jizang's Philosophy of Ontic Indeterminacy.Chien-Hsing Ho - 2014 - In Chen-Kuo Lin & Michael Radich (eds.), A Distant Mirror: Articulating Indic Ideas in Sixth and Seventh Century Chinese Buddhism. Hamburg University Press. pp. 397-418.
    For Jizang (549−623), a prominent philosophical exponent of Chinese Madhyamaka, all things are empty of determinate form or nature. Given anything X, no linguistic item can truly and conclusively be applied to X in the sense of positing a determinate form or nature therein. This philosophy of ontic indeterminacy is connected closely with his notion of the Way (dao), which seems to indicate a kind of ineffable principle of reality. However, Jizang also equates the Way with nonacquisition as a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  31. (1 other version)Response to Eklund.Elizabeth Barnes & J. Robert G. Williams - 2011 - Oxford Studies in Metaphysics 6.
    This chapter defends the account of metaphysical indeterminacy of Barnes and Williams against Eklund's objections.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   21 citations  
  32. Too Many Cats: The Problem of the Many and the Metaphysics of Vagueness.Nicholas K. Jones - 2010 - Dissertation, Birkbeck, University of London
    Unger’s Problem of the Many seems to show that the familiar macroscopic world is much stranger than it appears. From plausible theses about the boundaries of or- dinary objects, Unger drew the conclusion that wherever there seems to be just one cat, cloud, table, human, or thinker, really there are many millions; and likewise for any other familiar kind of individual. In Lewis’s hands, this puzzle was subtly altered by an appeal to vagueness or indeterminacy about the the boundaries (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  33. (1 other version)Between Physics and Metaphysics — on Determinism, Arrow of Time and Causality.Grzegorz P. Karwasz - 2020 - Filosofiâ I Kosmologiâ 24:15-28.
    Contemporary physics, with two Einstein’s theories and with Heisenberg’s principle of indeterminacy are frequently interpreted as a removal of the causality from physics. We argue that this is wrong. There are no indications in physics, either classical or quantum, that physical laws are indeterministic, on the ontological level. On the other hand, both classical and quantum physics are, practically, indeterministic on the epistemic level: there are no means for us to predict the detailed future of the world. Additionally, essentially (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  34. Contingentism and paraphrase.Jonas Werner - 2024 - Philosophical Studies 181 (2):565-582.
    One important challenge for contingentists is that they seem to be unable to account for the meaning of some apparently meaningful modal discourse that is perfectly intelligible for necessitists. This worry is particularly pressing for higher-order contingentists, contingentists who hold that it is not only contingent which objects there are, but also contingent which semantic values there are for higher-order variables to quantify over. Objections against higher-order contingentism along these lines have been presented in Williamson (Mind 119(475):657–748, 2010; Modal logic (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  35.  66
    Test submission.Jessica Wilson - forthcoming - In Firstname Lastname (ed.), Test Book. OUP.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  36. Organismal Superposition and Death.Michael Nair-Collins - 2024 - Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 67 (1):22-30.
    ABSTRACT:Organismal superposition holds that the same individual both is and is not an organism, as a consequence of organismal pluralism. When coupled with the assumption that death is the cessation of an organism, this entails that there is no unique answer as to whether brain death is biological death. This essay argues that concerns about organismal pluralism and superposition do not undermine a theory of biological death, nor entail any metaphysical indeterminacy about the biological vital status of a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  37. Unsettledness in times of change.Martin Pickup - 2022 - Synthese 200 (2):1-20.
    If something changes from being in one state to being in another state, when exactly does it change? And what’s going on at that time? These questions are often discussed under the heading of the ‘moment’ or ‘instant’ of change. In this paper, I will investigate a view on which there is an intrinsically distinguished, atomic time at which something changes, and at that time it is metaphysically indeterminate what is the case. The background metaphysical picture is situationalism, a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  38. (1 other version)Another Model of the Open Future.Daniel Rubio - 2024 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 95 (2):217-223.
    In his work on the open future, Patrick Todd outlines three models of how to deal with future contingents. These models must answer two questions: one metaphysical, about what facts there are in the world; one semantic, about how to deal with sentences involving ‘will.’ Model 1 has a privileged timeline. Model 2 has an actual future timeline but leaves it indeterminate which timeline that is. Model 3 has no future timeline. All three give will-sentences a modal treatement, as (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  39. The Situationalist Account of Change.Martin Pickup - forthcoming - Oxford Studies in Metaphysics.
    In this paper I propose a new solution to the problem of change: situationalism. According to this view, parts of reality fundamentally disagree about what is the case and reality as a whole is unsettled (i.e. metaphysically indeterminate). When something changes, parts of the world irreconcilably disagree about what properties it has. From this irreconcilable disagreement, indeterminacy arises. I develop this picture using situations, which are parts of possible worlds; this gives it the name situationalism. It allows a B-theory (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  40. Causal nonseparability and its implications for spatiotemporal relations.Laurie Letertre - 2022 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 95 (C):64-74.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  41. Theories of vagueness and theories of law.Alex Silk - 2019 - Legal Theory 25 (2):132-152.
    It is common to think that what theory of linguistic vagueness is correct has implications for debates in philosophy of law. I disagree. I argue that the implications of particular theories of vagueness on substantive issues of legal theory and practice are less far-reaching than often thought. I focus on four putative implications discussed in the literature concerning (i) the value of vagueness in the law, (ii) the possibility and value of legal indeterminacy, (iii) the possibility of the rule (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  42. Anti-Realism, Easy Ontology, and Issues of Reference.Iñaki Xavier Larrauri Pertierra - manuscript
    In order to re-contextualize the otherwise ontologically privileged meaning of metaphysical debates into a more insubstantial form, metaphysical deflationism runs the risk of having to adopt potentially unwanted anti-realist tendencies. This tension between deflationism and anti-realism can be expressed as follows: in order to claim truthfully that something exists, how can deflationism avoid the anti-realist feature of construing such claims singularly in an analytical fashion? One may choose to adopt a Yablovian fallibilism about existential claims, but other approaches (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  43. Counting Minds and Mental States.Jonathan Vogel - 2014 - In David Bennett, David J. Bennett & Christopher Hill (eds.), Sensory Integration and the Unity of Consciousness. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. pp. 393-400.
    Important conceptual and metaphysical issues arise when we try to understand the mental lives of “split-brain” subjects. How many distinct streams of consciousness do they have? According to Elizabeth Schechter’s partial unity model, the answer is one. A related question is whether co-consciouness, in general, is transitive. That is, if α and β are co-conscious experiences, and β and γ are co-conscious experiences, must α and γ be co-conscious? According to Schechter, the answer is no. The partial unity model (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  44. Vagueness & Modality—An Ecumenical Approach.Jon Erling Litland & Juhani Yli-Vakkuri - 2016 - Philosophical Perspectives 30 (1):229-269.
    How does vagueness interact with metaphysical modality and with restrictions of it, such as nomological modality? In particular, how do definiteness, necessity (understood as restricted in some way or not), and actuality interact? This paper proposes a model-theoretic framework for investigating the logic and semantics of that interaction. The framework is put forward in an ecumenical spirit: it is intended to be applicable to all theories of vagueness that express vagueness using a definiteness (or: determinacy) operator. We will show (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  45. Preserving the Normative Significance of Sentience.Leonard Dung - 2024 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 31 (1):8-30.
    According to an orthodox view, the capacity for conscious experience (sentience) is relevant to the distribution of moral status and value. However, physicalism about consciousness might threaten the normative relevance of sentience. According to the indeterminacy argument, sentience is metaphysically indeterminate while indeterminacy of sentience is incompatible with its normative relevance. According to the introspective argument (by François Kammerer), the unreliability of our conscious introspection undercuts the justification for belief in the normative relevance of consciousness. I defend the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  46. (1 other version)Mathematical Modality: An Investigation in Higher-order Logic.Andrew Bacon - forthcoming - Journal of Philosophical Logic.
    An increasing amount of contemporary philosophy of mathematics posits, and theorizes in terms of special kinds of mathematical modality. The goal of this paper is to bring recent work on higher-order metaphysics to bear on the investigation of these modalities. The main focus of the paper will be views that posit mathematical contingency or indeterminacy about statements that concern the `width' of the set theoretic universe, such as Cantor's continuum hypothesis. Within a higher-order framework I show that contingency about (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  47. Can the World Be Indeterminate in All Respects?Chien-Hsing Ho - 2023 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 9: 584-602.
    Especially over the past twenty years, a number of analytic philosophers have embraced the idea that the world itself is vague or indeterminate in one or more respects. The issue then arises as to whether it can be the case that the world itself is indeterminate in all respects. Using as a basis Chinese Madhyamaka Buddhist thought, I offer two reasons for the coherence and intelligibility of the thesis that all concrete things are themselves indeterminate with respect to the ways (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  48. The structuralist approach to underdetermination.Chanwoo Lee - 2022 - Synthese 200 (2):1-25.
    This paper provides an exposition of the structuralist approach to underdetermination, which aims to resolve the underdetermination of theories by identifying their common theoretical structure. Applications of the structuralist approach can be found in many areas of philosophy. I present a schema of the structuralist approach, which conceptually unifies such applications in different subject matters. It is argued that two classic arguments in the literature, Paul Benacerraf’s argument on natural numbers and W. V. O. Quine’s argument for the indeterminacy (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  49. Actual Causation: Apt Causal Models and Causal Relativism.Jennifer McDonald - 2022 - Dissertation, The Graduate Center, Cuny
    This dissertation begins by addressing the question of when a causal model is apt for deciding questions of actual causation with respect to some target situation. I first provide relevant background about causal models, explain what makes them promising as a tool for analyzing actual causation, and motivate the need for a theory of aptness as part of such an analysis (Chapter 1). I then define what it is for a model on a given interpretation to be accurate of, that (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  50. (1 other version)Empirical constraints on the problem of free will.Peter W. Ross - 2004 - In Susan Pockett (ed.), Does consciousness cause behaviour? Mit Press. pp. 125-144.
    With the success of cognitive science's interdisciplinary approach to studying the mind, many theorists have taken up the strategy of appealing to science to address long standing disputes about metaphysics and the mind. In a recent case in point, philosophers and psychologists, including Robert Kane, Daniel C. Dennett, and Daniel M. Wegner, are exploring how science can be brought to bear on the debate about the problem of free will. I attempt to clarify the current debate by considering how empirical (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
1 — 50 / 956