Results for 'Spinoza, mereology, composition, monism, beings of reason'

960 found
Order:
  1. Spinoza on Composition, Monism, and Beings of Reason.Róbert Mátyási - 2020 - Journal of Modern Philosophy 2 (1):1-16.
    In this paper, I argue that Spinoza holds a perspectivalist view of mereological composition, a form of anti-realism. The paper has two parts: In the first half of the paper, I introduce interpretive puzzles for the standard realist reading of Spinoza’s mereology. In the second half of the paper, I discuss Spinoza’s positive view on mereological composition and present a perspectivalist reading that avoids the interpretive puzzles.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  2. Spinoza on Composition and Priority.Ghislain Guigon - 2011 - In Philip Goff (ed.), Spinoza on Monism. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave-Macmillan.
    This article has two goals: a historical and a speculative one. The historical goal is to offer a coherent account of Spinoza’s view on mereological composition. The speculative goal is to show that Spinoza’s substance monism is distinct from versions of monism that are currently defended in metaphysics and that it deserves the attention of contemporary metaphysicians. Regarding the second goal, two versions of monism are currently defended and discussed in contemporary metaphysics: existence monism according to which there actually exists (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   13 citations  
  3. Why Spinoza is Not an Eleatic Monist (Or Why Diversity Exists).Yitzhak Y. Melamed - 2011 - In Philip Goff (ed.), Spinoza on Monism. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave-Macmillan.
    “Why did God create the World?” is one of the traditional questions of theology. In the twentieth century this question was rephrased in a secularized manner as “Why is there something rather than nothing?” While creation - at least in its traditional, temporal, sense - has little place in Spinoza’s system, a variant of the same questions puts Spinoza’s system under significant pressure. According to Spinoza, God, or the substance, has infinitely many modes. This infinity of modes follow from the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  4. Mereological Composition in Analytic and Buddhist Perspective.Nicholaos Jones - 2021 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 7 (2):173-194.
    Comparing Buddhist and contemporary analytic views about mereological composition reveals significant dissimilarities about the purposes that constrain successful answers to mereological questions, the kinds of considerations taken to be probative in justifying those answers, and the value of mereological inquiry. I develop these dissimilarities by examining three questions relevant to those who deny the existence of composite wholes. The first is a question of justification: What justifies denying the existence of composite wholes as more reasonable than affirming their existence? The (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  5. The composition of reasons.Campbell Brown - 2013 - Synthese 191 (5):779-800.
    How do reasons combine? How is it that several reasons taken together can have a combined weight which exceeds the weight of any one alone? I propose an answer in mereological terms: reasons combine by composing a further, complex reason of which they are parts. Their combined weight is the weight of their combination. I develop a mereological framework, and use this to investigate some structural views about reasons, the main two being "Atomism" and "Holism". Atomism is the view (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  6. Spinoza's Argument for Substance Monism.Jack Stetter - 2021 - Revista Seiscentos 1 (1):193-215.
    In this paper, I inspect the grounds for the mature Spinozist argument for substance monism. The argument is succinctly stated at Ethics Part 1, Proposition 14. The argument appeals to two explicit premises: (1) that there must be a substance with all attributes; (2) that substances cannot share their attributes. In conjunction with a third implicit premise, that a substance cannot not have any attribute whatsoever, Spinoza infers that there can be no more than one substance. I begin the inspection (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  7. The Sirens of Elea: Rationalism, Monism and Idealism in Spinoza.Yitzhak Melamed - 2012 - In Stewart Duncan & Antonia LoLordo (eds.), Debates in Modern Philosophy: Essential Readings and Contemporary Responses. New York: Routledge.
    The main thesis of Michael Della Rocca’s outstanding Spinoza book (Della Rocca 2008a) is that at the very center of Spinoza’s philosophy stands the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR): the stipulation that everything must be explainable or, in other words, the rejection of any brute facts. Della Rocca rightly ascribes to Spinoza a strong version of the PSR. It is not only that the actual existence and features of all things must be explicable, but even the inexistence – as (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  8. Two Mereological Arguments Against the Possibility of an Omniscient Being.Joshua T. Spencer - 2006 - Philo 9 (1):62-72.
    In this paper I present two new arguments against the possibility of an omniscient being. My new arguments invoke considerations of cardinality and resemble several arguments originally presented by Patrick Grim. Like Grim, I give reasons to believe that there must be more objects in the universe than there are beliefs. However, my arguments will rely on certain mereological claims, namely that Classical Extensional Mereology is necessarily true of the part-whole relation. My first argument is an instance of a problem (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  9. Clarke Against Spinoza on the Manifest Diversity of the World.Timothy Yenter - 2014 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 22 (2):260-280.
    Samuel Clarke was one of Spinoza's earliest and fiercest opponents in England. I uncover three related Clarkean arguments against Spinoza's metaphysic that deserve more attention from readers today. Collectively, these arguments draw out a tension at the very heart of Spinoza's rationalist system. From the conjunction of a necessary being who acts necessarily and the principle of sufficient reason, Clarke reasons that there could be none of the diversity we find in the universe. In doing so, Clarke potentially reveals (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  10. “Spinoza’s Metaphysics of Substance”.Y. Melamed Yitzhak - 2021 - In Garrett Don (ed.), Don Garrett (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming. Cambridge UP. pp. 61-112.
    ‘Substance’ (substantia, zelfstandigheid) is a key term of Spinoza’s philosophy. Like almost all of Spinoza’s philosophical vocabulary, Spinoza did not invent this term, which has a long history that can be traced back at least to Aristotle. Yet, Spinoza radicalized the traditional notion of substance and made a very powerful use of it by demonstrating – or at least attempting to demonstrate -- that there is only one, unique substance -- God (or Nature) -- and that all other things are (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  11. Priority Monism Beyond Spacetime.Baptiste Le Bihan - 2017 - Metaphysica 19 (1):95-111.
    I will defend two claims. First, Schaffer's priority monism is in tension with many research programs in quantum gravity. Second, priority monism can be modified into a view more amenable to this physics. The first claim is grounded in the fact that promising approaches to quantum gravity such as loop quantum gravity or string theory deny the fundamental reality of spacetime. Since fundamental spacetime plays an important role in Schaffer's priority monism by being identified with the fundamental structure, namely the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   32 citations  
  12. Quine's Monism and Modal Eliminativism in the Realm of Supervenience.Atilla Akalın - 2019 - International Journal of Social Humanities Sciences Research (JSHRS) 6 (34):795-800.
    This study asserts that W.V.O. Quine’s eliminative philosophical gaze into mereological composition affects inevitably his interpretations of composition theories of ontology. To investigate Quine’s property monism from the account of modal eliminativism, I applied to his solution for the paradoxes of de re modalities’ . Because of its vital role to figure out how dispositions are encountered by Quine, it was significantly noted that the realm of de re modalities doesn’t include contingent and impossible inferences about things. Therefore, for him, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  13. (1 other version)Spinoza on Essences, Universals, and Beings of Reason.Karolina Hübner - 2015 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 96 (2):58-88.
    The article proposes a new solution to the long-standing problem of the universality of essences in Spinoza's ontology. It argues that, according to Spinoza, particular things in nature possess unique essences, but that these essences coexist with more general, mind-dependent species-essences, constructed by finite minds on the basis of similarities that obtain among the properties of formally-real particulars. This account provides the best fit both with the textual evidence and with Spinoza's other metaphysical and epistemological commitments. The article offers new (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   24 citations  
  14. (3 other versions)“Spinoza’s Metaphysics of Substance” in Don Garrett (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.Yitzhak Melamed - forthcoming - In Garrett Don (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza. 2nd edition. Cambriddge University Press.
    ‘Substance’ (substantia, zelfstandigheid) is a key term of Spinoza’s philosophy. Like almost all of Spinoza’s philosophical vocabulary, Spinoza did not invent this term, which has a long history that can be traced back at least to Aristotle. Yet, Spinoza radicalized the traditional notion of substance and made a very powerful use of it by demonstrating – or at least attempting to demonstrate -- that there is only one, unique substance -- God (or Nature) -- and that all other things are (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  15. (2 other versions)Spinoza's Metaphysics: Substance and Thought.Yitzhak Y. Melamed - 2013 - Oxford: Oxford University Press USA.
    Yitzhak Melamed here offers a new and systematic interpretation of the core of Spinoza's metaphysics. In the first part of the book, he proposes a new reading of the metaphysics of substance in Spinoza: he argues that for Spinoza modes both inhere in and are predicated of God. Using extensive textual evidence, he shows that Spinoza considered modes to be God's propria. He goes on to clarify Spinoza's understanding of infinity, mereological relations, infinite modes, and the flow of finite things (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   45 citations  
  16. Sufficient Reason and the Causal Argument for Monism.Landon Frim - 2011 - Society and Politics 5 (2):137-158.
    What is the role of the principle of sufficient reason in Baruch Spinoza’s ontological proof for God’s existence? Is this role identical within Spinoza’s early work on method, the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, and his magnum opus, the Ethics? This paper argues affirmatively that the methodology employed within the Ethics is consonant with that method found within the Treatise, and this claim is substantiated through an engagement with the influential works of Don Garrett and Aaron Garrett. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  17. Spinoza and the problem of other substances.Galen Barry - 2019 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 49 (4):481-507.
    ABSTRACTMost of Spinoza’s arguments for God’s existence do not rely on any special feature of God, but instead on merely general features of substance. This raises the following worry: those arguments prove the existence of non-divine substances just as much as they prove God’s existence, and yet there is not enough room in Spinoza’s system for all these substances. I argue that Spinoza attempts to solve this problem by using a principle of plenitude to rule out the existence of other (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  18. ““Deus sive Vernunft: Schelling’s Transformation of Spinoza’s God”.Yitzhak Melamed - 2020 - In G. Anthony Bruno (ed.), Schelling’s Philosophy: Freedom, Nature, and Systematicity. Oxford University Press. pp. 93-115.
    On 6 January 1795, the twenty-year-old Schelling—still a student at the Tübinger Stift—wrote to his friend and former roommate, Hegel: “Now I am working on an Ethics à la Spinoza. It is designed to establish the highest principles of all philosophy, in which theoretical and practical reason are united”. A month later, he announced in another letter to Hegel: “I have become a Spinozist! Don’t be astonished. You will soon hear how”. At this period in his philosophical development, Schelling (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  19. Francisco Suárez on Beings of Reason and Non-Strict Ontological Pluralism.Brian Embry - 2019 - Philosophers' Imprint 19.
    For Francisco Suárez, beings of reason are non-existent objects that we can think about, objects like goat-stags and round squares. The first section of the fifty-fourth of Suárez’s Metaphysical Disputations is about the ontological status of beings of reason. Suárez’s view has been the subject of disagreement in the literature because he sometimes says that there are beings of reason, and he sometimes says there are not. In this paper, I argue for and explain (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  20. Spinoza’s Actualist Model of Power.Valtteri Viljanen - 2009 - In Juhani Pietarinen & Valtteri Viljanen (eds.), The World as Active Power: Studies in the History of European Reason. Leiden: Brill. pp. 213–228.
    In addition to the notion of power (potentia), Spinoza employs the notion of power of acting (agendi potentia), especially in the Ethics. This raises the question, if Spinoza uses both ‘power’ and ‘power of acting’, what is the difference between the two? What else could power be, for Spinoza, but power of acting? What is the relationship between power and activity in his system? This essays aims at giving answers to these questions; thereby emerges what may be called an actualist (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  21. The polysemy of ‘part’.Meg Wallace - 2019 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 18):4331-4354.
    Some philosophers assume that our ordinary parts-whole concepts are intuitive and univocal. Moreover, some assume that mereology—the formal theory of parts-whole relations—adequately captures these intuitive and univocal notions. Lewis, for example, maintains that mereology is “perfectly understood, unproblematic, and certain.” Following his lead, many assume that expressions such as ‘is part of’ are univocal, topic-neutral, and that compositional monism is true. This paper explores the rejection of –. I argue that our ordinary parts-whole expressions are polysemous; they have multiple distinct, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  22. Natural Properties, Supervenience, and Mereology.Andrea Borghini & Giorgio Lando - 2011 - Humana Mente 4 (19):79-104.
    The interpretation of Lewis‘s doctrine of natural properties is difficult and controversial, especially when it comes to the bearers of natural properties. According to the prevailing reading – the minimalist view – perfectly natural properties pertain to the micro-physical realm and are instantiated by entities without proper parts or point-like. This paper argues that there are reasons internal to a broadly Lewisian kind of metaphysics to think that the minimalist view is fundamentally flawed and that a liberal view, according to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  23. The Young Spinoza: A Metaphysician in the Making.Yitzhak Y. Melamed (ed.) - 2015 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Ex nihilo nihil fit. Philosophy, especially great philosophy, does not appear out of the blue. In the current volume, a team of top scholars-both up-and-coming and established-attempts to trace the philosophical development of one of the greatest philosophers of all time. Featuring twenty new essays and an introduction, it is the first attempt of its kind in English and its appearance coincides with the recent surge of interest in Spinoza in Anglo-American philosophy.Spinoza's fame-or notoriety-is due primarily to his posthumously published (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  24. Review of Martin Lin, Being and Reason: An Essay on Spinoza’s Metaphysics (Oxford University Press, 2019. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. April 1st, 2021.Yitzhak Y. Melamed - 2021 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  25. When do parts form wholes? Integrated information as the restriction on mereological composition.Kelvin J. McQueen & Naotsugu Tsuchiya - forthcoming - Neuroscience of Consciousness.
    Under what conditions are material objects, such as particles, parts of a whole object? This is the composition question and is a longstanding open question in philosophy. Existing attempts to specify a non-trivial restriction on composition tend to be vague and face serious counterexamples. Consequently, two extreme answers have become mainstream: composition (the forming of a whole by its parts) happens under no or all conditions. In this paper, we provide a self-contained introduction to the integrated information theory of consciousness (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  26. Spinoza on negation, mind-dependence and the reality of the finite.Karolina Hübner - 2015 - In Yitzhak Y. Melamed (ed.), The Young Spinoza: A Metaphysician in the Making. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 221-37.
    The article explores the idea that according to Spinoza finite thought and substantial thought represent reality in different ways. It challenges “acosmic” readings of Spinoza's metaphysics, put forth by readers like Hegel, according to which only an infinite, undifferentiated substance genuinely exists, and all representations of finite things are illusory. Such representations essentially involve negation with respect to a more general kind. The article shows that several common responses to the charge of acosmism fail. It then argues that we must (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  27. "It is of the nature of reason to regard things as necessary, not as contingent": A Defense of Spinoza's Necessitarianism.Brandon Rdzak - 2021 - Dissertation, Purdue University
    There is longstanding interpretive dispute between commentators over Spinoza’s commitment to necessitarianism, the doctrine that all things are metaphysically necessary and none are contingent. Those who affirm Spinoza’s commitment to the doctrine adhere to the necessitarian interpretation whereas those who deny it adhere to what I call the semi-necessitarian interpretation. As things stand, the disagreement between commentators appears to have reached an impasse. Notwithstanding, there seems to be no disagreement among commentators on the question of necessitarianism’s philosophical plausibility as a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  28. On the Common Sense Argument for Monism.Tuomas E. Tahko & Donnchadh O'Conaill - 2011 - In Philip Goff (ed.), Spinoza on Monism. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave-Macmillan. pp. 149-166.
    The priority monist holds that the cosmos is the only fundamental object, of which every other concrete object is a dependent part. One major argument against monism goes back to Russell, who claimed that pluralism is favoured by common sense. However, Jonathan Schaffer turns this argument on its head and uses it to defend priority monism. He suggests that common sense holds that the cosmos is a whole, of which ordinary physical objects are arbitrary portions, and that arbitrary portions depend (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  29.  91
    Spinoza's Social Sage: Emotion and the Power of Reason in Spinoza’s Social Theory.Ericka Tucker - 2015 - Revista Conatus 9 (17):23-41.
    Far from his ‘rationalist’ image, Spinoza recognizes that we do not emerge from the ground as fully formed rational agents. We are born and develop in social worlds, where our affects, values and conceptions of the world are formed. For Spinoza, even the ‘free’ individual or sage is affected by the social and emotional worlds in which he argues they ought to live. Yet, Spinoza is ambivalent about the social emotions. These socially conditioned affects and values may be harmful to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  30. Spinoza’s Monism II: A Proposal.Kristin Primus - 2023 - Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 105 (3):444-469.
    An old question in Spinoza scholarship is how finite, non-eternal things transitively caused by other finite, non-eternal things (i. e., the entities described in propositions like E1p28) are caused by the infinite, eternal substance, given that what follows either directly or indirectly from the divine nature is infinite and eternal (E1p21–23). In “Spinoza’s Monism I,” “Spinoza’s Monism I,” in the previous issue of this journal. I pointed out that most commentators answer this question by invoking entities that are indefinite and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  31. How the Block Grows.Roberto Loss - 2022 - American Philosophical Quarterly 59 (4):377-389.
    I argue that the growing-block theory of time and truthmaker maximalism jointly entail that some truthmakers undergo mereological change as time passes. Central to my argument is a grounding-based account of what I call the “purely incremental” nature of the growing-block theory of time. As I will show, the argument presented in this paper suggests that growing-block theorists endorsing truthmaker maximalism have reasons to take composition to be restricted and the “block” of reality to literally grow as time goes by.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  32. Parity, moral options, and the weights of reasons.Chris Tucker - 2022 - Noûs 57 (2):454-480.
    The (moral) permissibility of an act is determined by the relative weights of reasons, or so I assume. But how many weights does a reason have? Weight Monism is the idea that reasons have a single weight value. There is just the weight of reasons. The simplest versions hold that the weight of each reason is either weightier than, less weighty than, or equal to every other reason. We’ll see that this simple view leads to paradox in (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  33. Spinoza's Theory of the Human Mind: Consciousness, Memory, and Reason.Oberto Marrama - 2019 - Dissertation, University of Groningen/Uqtr
    Spinoza attributes mentality to all things existing in nature. He claims that each thing has a mind that perceives everything that happens in the body. Against this panpsychist background, it is unclear how consciousness relates to the nature of the mind. This study focuses on Spinoza’s account of the conscious mind and its operations. It builds on the hypothesis that Spinoza’s panpsychism can be interpreted as a self-consistent philosophical position. It aims at providing answers to the following questions: what is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  34. Spinoza and Leibniz on the Principle of Sufficient Reason.Yitzhak Y. Melamed - forthcoming - In Michael Della Rocca & Fatema Amijee (eds.), The Principle of Sufficient Reason: A History. Oxford University Press.
    The early modern period was the natural historical habitat of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, i.e., the demand that everything must have a cause, or reason. It is in this period that the principle was explicitly articulated and named, and throughout the period we find numerous formulations and variants of the PSR and its closely related ‘ex nihilo nihil fit’ principle, which the early moderns inherited from medieval philosophy. Contemporary discussions of these principles were not restricted to philosophy. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  35. Debunking a mereological myth: If composition as identity is true, universalism need not be.Nikk Effingham - manuscript
    It is a common view that if composition as identity is true, then so is mereological universalism (the thesis that all objects have a mereological fusion). Various arguments have been advanced in favour of this: (i) there has been a recent argument by Merricks, (ii) some claim that Universalism is entailed by the ontological innocence of the identity relation, (or that ontological innocence undermines objections to universalism) and (iii) it is entailed by the law of selfidentity. After a preliminary introduction (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  36. Propositions and Parthood: The Universe and Anti-Symmetry.Chris Tillman & Gregory Fowler - 2012 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 90 (3):525 - 539.
    It is plausible that the universe exists: a thing such that absolutely everything is a part of it. It is also plausible that singular, structured propositions exist: propositions that literally have individuals as parts. Furthermore, it is plausible that for each thing, there is a singular, structured proposition that has it as a part. Finally, it is plausible that parthood is a partial ordering: reflexive, transitive, and anti-symmetric. These plausible claims cannot all be correct. We canvass some costs of denying (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   21 citations  
  37. The Metaphysics of Natural Right in Spinoza.John R. T. Grey - 2021 - Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy 10:37-60.
    In the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (TTP), Spinoza argues that an individual’s natural right extends as far as their power. Subsequently, in the Tractatus Politicus (TP), he offers a revised argument for the same conclusion. Here I offer an account of the reasons for the revision. In both arguments, an individual’s natural right derives from God’s natural right. However, the TTP argument hinges on the claim that each individual is part of the whole of nature (totius naturae), and for this reason (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  38. Composition as a Kind of Identity.Phillip Bricker - 2016 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 59 (3):264-294.
    Composition as identity, as I understand it, is a theory of the composite structure of reality. The theory’s underlying logic is irreducibly plural; its fundamental primitive is a generalized identity relation that takes either plural or singular arguments. Strong versions of the theory that incorporate a generalized version of the indiscernibility of identicals are incompatible with the framework of plural logic, and should be rejected. Weak versions of the theory that are based on the idea that composition is merely analogous (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   27 citations  
  39. “Spinoza on the Value of Humanity”.Yitzhak Melamed - 2023 - In Nandi Theunissen (ed.), Re-Evaluating the Value of Humanity. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 74-96.
    Spinoza is a hardcore realist about the nature of human beings and their desires, ambitions, and delusions. But he is neither a misanthrope nor in the business of glorifying the notion of a primal and innocent non-human nature. As he writes: Let the Satirists laugh as much as they like at human affairs, let the Theologians curse them, let Melancholics praise as much as they can a life that is uncultivated and wild, let them disdain men and admire the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  40. Spinoza and the Theory of Organism.Hans Jonas - 1965 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 3 (1):43-57.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Spinoza and the Theory of Organism HANS JONAS I CARTESIANDUALISMlanded speculation on the nature of life in an impasse: intelligible as, on principles of mechanics, the correlation of structure and function became within the res extensa, that of structure-plus-function with feeling or experience (modes of the res cogitans) was lost in the bifurcation, and thereby the fact of life itself became unintelligible at the same time that the explanation (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   28 citations  
  41. Knowledge Beyond Reason in Spinoza’s Epistemology: Scientia Intuitiva and Amor Dei Intellectualis in Spinoza’s Epistemology.Anne Newstead - 2020 - Australasian Philosophical Review 4 (Revisiting Spinoza's Rationalism).
    Genevieve Lloyd’s Spinoza is quite a different thinker from the arch rationalist caricature of some undergraduate philosophy courses devoted to “The Continental Rationalists”. Lloyd’s Spinoza does not see reason as a complete source of knowledge, nor is deductive rational thought productive of the highest grade of knowledge. Instead, that honour goes to a third kind of knowledge—intuitive knowledge (scientia intuitiva), which provides an immediate, non-discursive knowledge of its singular object. To the embarrassment of some hard-nosed philosophers, intellectual intuition has (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  42. The Metaphysics of Stoic Corporealism.Vanessa de Harven - 2022 - Apeiron 55 (2):219-245.
    The Stoics are famously committed to the thesis that only bodies are, and for this reason they are rightly called “corporealists.” They are also famously compared to Plato’s earthborn Giants in the Sophist, and rightly so given their steadfast commitment to body as being. But the Stoics also notoriously turn the tables on Plato and coopt his “dunamis proposal” that being is whatever can act or be acted upon to underwrite their commitment to body rather than shrink from it (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  43. The limits of classical mereology: Mixed fusions and the failures of mereological hybridism.Joshua Kelleher - 2020 - Dissertation, The University of Queensland
    In this thesis I argue against unrestricted mereological hybridism, the view that there are absolutely no constraints on wholes having parts from many different logical or ontological categories, an exemplar of which I take to be ‘mixed fusions’. These are composite entities which have parts from at least two different categories – the membered (as in classes) and the non-membered (as in individuals). As a result, mixed fusions can also be understood to represent a variety of cross-category summation such as (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  44. Monism and the Ontology of Logic.Samuel Elgin - forthcoming - Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
    Monism is the claim that only one object exists. While few contemporary philosophers endorse monism, it has an illustrious history – stretching back to Bradley, Spinoza and Parmenides. In this paper, I show that plausible assumptions about the higher-order logic of property identity entail that monism is true. Given the higher-order framework I operate in, this argument generalizes: it is also possible to establish that there is a single property, proposition, relation, etc. I then show why this form of monism (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  45. The Composition of Forces.Olivier Massin - 2016 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 68 (3):805-846.
    This paper defends a realist account of the composition of Newtonian forces, dubbed ‘residualism’. According to residualism, the resultant force acting on a body is identical to the component forces acting on it that do not prevent each other from bringing about its acceleration. Several reasons to favor residualism over alternative accounts of the composition of forces are advanced. (i) Residualism reconciles realism about component forces with realism about resultant forces while avoiding any threat of causal overdetermination. (ii) Residualism provides (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  46. Heyting Mereology as a Framework for Spatial Reasoning.Thomas Mormann - 2013 - Axiomathes 23 (1):137- 164.
    In this paper it is shown that Heyting and Co-Heyting mereological systems provide a convenient conceptual framework for spatial reasoning, in which spatial concepts such as connectedness, interior parts, (exterior) contact, and boundary can be defined in a natural and intuitively appealing way. This fact refutes the wide-spread contention that mereology cannot deal with the more advanced aspects of spatial reasoning and therefore has to be enhanced by further non-mereological concepts to overcome its congenital limitations. The allegedly unmereological concept of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  47. The Lump Sum: A Theory of Modal Parts.Meg Wallace - 2019 - Philosophical Papers 48 (3):403-435.
    A lump theorist claims that ordinary objects are spread out across possible worlds, much like many of us think that tables are spread out across space. We are not wholly located in any one particular world, the lump theorist claims, just as we are not wholly spatially located where one’s hand is. We are modally spread out, a trans-world mereological sum of world-bound parts. We are lump sums of modal parts. And so are all other ordinary objects. In this paper, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  48. Mereological Nihilism and Theoretical Unification.Andrew Brenner - 2015 - Analytic Philosophy 56 (4):318-337.
    Mereological nihilism (henceforth just "nihilism") is the thesis that composition never occurs. Nihilism has often been defended on the basis of its theoretical simplicity, including its ontological simplicity and its ideological simplicity (roughly, nihilism's ability to do without primitive mereological predicates). In this paper I defend nihilism on the basis of the theoretical unification conferred by nihilism, which is, roughly, nihilism's capacity to allow us to take fewer phenomena as brute and inexplicable. This represents a respect in which nihilism enjoys (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   22 citations  
  49. A Taxonomy of Composition Operations.Jan Westerhoff - 2004 - Logique and Analyse 2004 (47):375-393.
    A set of parameters for classifying composition operations is introduced. These parameters determine whether a composition operation is 1) universal, 2) determinate, 3) whether there is a difference between possible and actual compositions, 4) whether there can be singleton compositions, 5) whether they give rise to a hierarchy, and 6) whether components of compositions can be repeated. Philosophical implications of these parameters (in particular in relation to set theory) and mereology are discussed.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  50. (1 other version)Spinoza on Relations.Zachary Gartenberg - 2021 - In Yitzhak Y. Melamed (ed.), Blackwell Companion to Spinoza. Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell. pp. 179-188.
    Relations occupy a shadowy place in Spinoza's metaphysics while they play a distinguished role in our mental lives and possess a complex epistemological status at the interface between being and its representation in the mind. This chapter attempts to disentangle Spinoza's concept of relations from his concept of universals. It suggests that there are grounds for regarding universals as a separate type of “metaphysical being." The chapter focuses on two of Spinoza's early works, the Short Treatise (KV) and the Metaphysical (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
1 — 50 / 960