Browsing by Subject "Metaphysics"

Now showing 1 - 19 of 19

Being someone
(2021-09-08) Gilani, Syed Sikander; Phillips, Stephen H., 1950-; Strawson, Galen; Montague, Michelle; Proops, Ian; Ganeri, Jonardon
Our psychological lives have a personal character. The subject is the subject of experience, but also of agency and ownership. Why is this, and what does it mean for the existence and nature of the self? Being Someone attempts to answer this question. I offer an original analysis of the personal subject, supported in part by the observations and insights of philosophers such as William James and Mary Calkins. I then engage with Nyāya arguments in favour of and Buddhist arguments against the existence of substance selves, as part of my own case for the former view. My argument is that personalness is unique and irreducible, so that nothing but the existence of a self that is concrete, property-bearing, enduring, and unified can adequately explain its existence and nature.
Building nothing out of something
(2011-05) Wright, Briggs Marvin; Sainsbury, R. M. (Richard Mark); Koons, Robert C.; Pautz, Adam; Tye, Michael; Varzi, Achille; Zimmerman, Dean
The notion of absence is pervasive throughout and central to human language and thought. Such thought and talk is often taken quite seriously. Much has been done to motivate treating absences as genuine entities, things as real as the tables and chairs we encounter in everyday life. Unfortunately, not nearly as much attention has been paid to the question of what kinds of things absences could be if indeed there were such things. In this dissertation, I take up the metaphysical question involving the nature of absences, and I also carefully consider the ontological question of whether any kind of case can be made for reifying absences. Along the way, I develop a novel metaphysical account of absences, and examine various considerations from the realms of causation, perception, and truthmaking that putatively support treating absences as bona fide entities.
Departing From Frankfurt: moral responsibility and alternative possibilities
(2009-12) Palmer, David William; Deigh, John; Kane, Robert, 1938-; Fischer, John; Ginet, Carl; White, Stephen; Woodruff, Paul
One of the most significant questions in ethics is this: under what conditions are people morally responsible for what they do? Assuming that people can only be praised or blamed for actions they perform of their own free will, the particular question that interests me is how we should understand the nature of this freedom – with what kind of freedom must people act, if they are to be morally responsible for what they do? A natural answer to this question – and the one I think is correct – is to point to the freedom to do otherwise. This is encapsulated in the principle of alternative possibilities (PAP), the principle that a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise. PAP has led many to believe that the freedom required for moral responsibility must be incompatible with determinism or the existence of God because it is plausible to argue that if determinism is true or if God exists, then people would lack genuine freedom of choice and hence could not be morally responsible for their behavior. In the light of two important articles by Harry Frankfurt almost four decades ago, which challenged the claim that moral responsibility requires the freedom to do otherwise, compatibilism – the opposing view that the freedom for moral responsibility is compatible with determinism – has experienced a resurgence. Inspired by Frankfurt’s work, those wanting to reject PAP – typically compatibilists – attack the principle on two main grounds: directly and indirectly. First, they have argued directly that PAP is false by developing alleged counterexamples to it. Second, they have challenged PAP indirectly by arguing that there are alternative conceptions of freedom from freedom of choice that, it is claimed, are not reliant on alternative possibilities but are sufficient to capture the freedom required for moral responsibility. My dissertation evaluates these two lines of attack on PAP. In particular, I attempt to defend the truth of PAP against both kinds of challenge.
Essence and metaphysical explanation
(2022-05-05) Miller, Taylor-Grey; Litland, Jon Erling; Dever, Josh; Koons, Robert; deRosset, Louis
This thesis explores the role that essence plays in metaphysical explanation. In the first chapter of my dissertation, “Essentialist Non-Reductivism” I develop the idea that essences function as links between what is explained and what does the explaining. I then put this to work to solve a vexing problem. Metaphysical explanations, when true, are general. For example, I might offer a utilitarian explanation for why and action was right by appealing to the fact that the action maximized utility. If this explanation were correct, then it should be so for any such action: were any action to maximize utility, it too should be morally right. This suggests that true metaphysical explanations entail true universal generalizations. These generalizations are important because we use them as a way to gauge the truth of the explanations that entail them. If I can produce a counter-instance to the above generalization—an action that maximizes utility but is wrong—then I know the utilitarian explanation was false. For a certain range of metaphysical explanations, what I call non-reductive explanations, they are similarly general yet nevertheless it is difficult to articulate universal generalizations associated with them which could be true. This is because in such explanations the explainers are disconnected in certain respects from what they explain. By treating the essences of the entities involved in the explanations as links, we can ensure their connection in a way that allows us to identify generalizations that would be true if the explanation were. In order for essences to resolve the problem addressed in my first paper, they need to take on a distinctive explanatory status. They must be explainers of a certain sort without requiring explanations themselves. In my second chapter “Nothing Explains Essence,” I develop a theory of this distinctive explanatory status. I argue that we should understand this status in terms of being detached from worldly circumstances, and that essences have this status in virtue of serving as modal constraints of a certain sort. In my third paper, “On the Reduction of Constitutive Essence to Consequential Essence,” I turn to the question of how to determine what the essence of an object it, and I establish a negative result. One prominent account treats the essence of an object as the result of filtering out apparent result of a restricted closure condition. I argue against this account by presenting a range of cases where it is clear that certain truths ought to count as essential for certain objects but where the account rules them out.
Grounding, physicalism, and the explanatory gap
(2017-05) Blaesi, Zachary Alan; Litland, Jon Erling
Contemporary metaphysics is marked by a revived interest in the notion of ground. Some philosophers have even suggested that this is the notion needed to best formulate physicalism---the view that the mental is “nothing over and above” the physical. For there are reasons to think that physicalism understood as a grounding thesis (Grounding Physicalism) has advantages over the traditional options. In short, the appeal of Grounding Physicalism is that it promises to occupy a middle position between reductive and non-reductive versions of physicalism. Despite its initial appeal, I argue that a new spin on a common objection to physicalism---that it leaves an “explanatory gap”---undermines the enthusiasm for Grounding Physicalism. The explanatory gap problem has been heavily discussed, but usually with the assumption that physicalism is an identity thesis. By contrast, I focus on Grounding Physicalism and argue that it leaves an explanatory gap---moreover, one that cannot be addressed in the usual way. I then argue that this creates a dilemma for the Grounding Physicalist.
Groups : a semantic and metaphysical examination
(2013-05) Ritchie, Katherine Claire; Dever, Josh; Sainsbury, R. M. (Richard Mark)
Since the linguistic turn, many have taken semantics to guide metaphysics. By examining semantic theories proposed by philosophers and linguists, I argue that the semantics of a true theory in a natural language can serve as only a partial guide to metaphysics. Semantics will not always lead to determinate answers to questions of the form 'Does theory T carry an ontological commitment to Fs?' Further, semantics will never deliver answers to questions regarding the nature of Fs. If semantics is to be our guide, we must look to our best semantic theories to determine whether a theory carries ontological commitments to Fs. I develop criteria to determine when a semantic treatment is semantically adequate and should be counted amongst our best theories. Given these criteria, there can be more than one empirically adequate semantic treatment of a natural language theory. To determine ontological commitments I appeal to Quine's Criterion, which states that a theory has Fs in its ontology just in case it says or entails that there are Fs. To determine what a theory says and entails, we must appeal to semantic treatments. Since different equally adequate semantic treatments can yield different contents and entailments, Quine's Criterion delivers ontological commitments only relative to a semantic treatment. I then argue for a supervaluationist principle that delivers unrelativized, but possibly indeterminate, ontological commitments of a theory. Next, I apply my methodology to two case studies which exemplify two kinds of answers the supervalutationist principle might deliver concerning ontological commitments. I argue through an examination of data and formal treatments that plural expressions carry indeterminate ontological commitments to summed entities, while collective nouns carry determinate ontological commitments to group-like entities. Finally, I undertake an examination of what groups, things like teams, committees and courts, might be that accords with the minimal verdict delivered by the semantics of collective noun -- that they exist -- but which goes beyond this to examine their nature. I assess and reject the views of groups currently on offer and propose and defend a novel view of groups as realizations of structures.
Hierarchies of Brain and Being: Abraham Maslow and the Origins of The Hierarchy of Needs in German Brain Science
(2016-05) Coonan, Daniel J
I tell the history of how a theory–that humans have a hierarchy of needs–emerged in 1943 from larger conflicts over the study of the brain and the human being. A stoic, yet passionate neurologist Kurt Goldstein who fled Nazi Germany inspired a young psychologist, Abraham Maslow, with a forceful critique of materialist science; in doing so, hierarchies of brain became hierarchies of mind and self. The theory is widely used in business schools today and by more than few everyday American’s looking for greater success, deeper experiences of spirituality, and, in some cases, release from the sufferings of contemporary American life. This story is about how we make sense of our lives by the “real” established by science and how very much belief in something, whether formula or faith, helps us make sense of the reality of the “real” and thereby create the communities in which we live and strive.
The intellectual given
(2010-05) Bengson, John Thomas Steele; Sosa, David, 1966-; Bealer, George; Dancy, Jonathan; Pautz, Adam; Sainsbury, Mark; Tye, Michael
Some things we know just by thinking about them: for example, that identity is transitive, that three are more than two, that wantonly torturing innocents is wrong, and other propositions which simply strike us as true when we consider them. But how? This essay articulates and defends a rationalist answer which critically develops a significant analogy between intuition and perception. The central thesis is that intuition and perception, though different, are at a certain level of abstraction the same kind of state, and states of this kind are, by their very nature, poised to play a distinctive epistemic role. Specifically, in the case of intuition, we encounter an intellectual state that is so structured as to provide justified and even knowledgeable belief without requiring justification in turn—something which may, thus, be thought of as given. The essay proceeds in three stages. Stage one advances a fully general and psychologically realistic account of the nature of intuition, namely, as an intellectual presentation of an apparent truth. Stage two provides a modest treatment of the epistemic status of intuition, in particular, how intuition serves as a source of immediate prima facie justification. Stage three outlines a response to Benacerraf-style worries about intuitive knowledge regarding abstract objects (e.g., numbers, sets, and values); the proposal is a constitutive, rather than causal, explanation of the means by which a given intuition connects a thinker to the fact intuited.
The intimate pulse of reality : sciences of description in fiction and philosophy, 1870-1920
(2014-08) Brilmyer, Sarah Pearl; Cvetkovich, Ann, 1957-; Matysik, Tracie; Mackay, Carol H; Baker, Samuel; Wojciehowski, Hannah; Hoad, Neville
This dissertation tracks a series of literary interventions into scientific debates of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, showing how the realist novel generated new techniques of description in response to pressing philosophical problems about agency, materiality, and embodiment. In close conversation with developments in the sciences, writers such as George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and Olive Schreiner portrayed human agency as contiguous with rather than opposed to the pulsations of the physical world. The human, for these authors, was not a privileged or even an autonomous entity but a node in a web of interactive and co-constitutive materialities. Focused on works of English fiction published between 1870-1920, I argue that the historical convergence of a British materialist science and a vitalistic Continental natural philosophy led to the rise of a dynamic realism attentive to material forces productive of “character.” Through the literary figure of character and the novelistic practice of description, I show, turn-of-the-century realists explored what it meant to be an embodied subject, how qualities in organisms emerge and develop, and the relationship between nature and culture more broadly.
Is physicalism "really" true?: an empirical argument against the universal construal of physicalism
(2009-12) Smith, Paul H., 1952-; Bonevac, Daniel A., 1955-; Juhl, Cory; Kane, Robert; Puthoff, Harold E.; Sosa, David; Utts, Jessica
Physicalism as universally construed is the thesis that everything in the world is either physical or a consequence of physical facts. Certain consequences of physicalism for free will, religion, and so on make it unpalatable to some. Physicalism should not be dismissed merely on its unpalatability. Nonetheless, we should be very sure it is true before accepting it uncritically (as much of science and philosophy now do). Physicalism is a contingent thesis, taken as true on the basis of strong inductive evidence and an inference-to-the-best-explanation that specifies it as the best theory over any of its competitors to provide an ontological account of the universe. So long as there is no contrary evidence to the claims of physicalism, then it stands relatively uncontested. I argue that there is a body of well-attested empirical evidence that falsifies universally-construed physicalism by violating an essential assumption of the theory – causal closure of the physical domain. I present a detailed account of this closure-violating evidence. So that those who are unfamiliar with the body of evidence on offer may judge its validity, I include brief summations of experimental designs, findings, and analyses, plus some controversies pertaining to the data and their resolutions. I then argue why this body of empirical evidence should count against universal physicalism, argue for the evidence’s scientific legitimacy, and discuss criticisms which have been lodged against it, then explain why these criticisms lack force. I conclude that the evidence I present is sufficient to falsify the universal construal of physicalism as supported by today’s and by foreseeable future understandings of the physical world. I acknowledge, though, that nothing can be guaranteed against an indefinite “wait-and-see” argument for some implausible “fully-realized” physics that may be able to reconcile the evidence I propose with such a fully-completed formulation of physicalism. I suggest that if this is the best physicalists can come up with, then their position is weak and the inference-to-the-best-explanation that until now supported universal physicalism should be turned around to tell against the theory.
Is, was, will, might
(2012-05) Baia, Alex; Dever, Josh; Sainsbury, R. M. (Richard Mark); Koons, Robert; Sosa, David; Tooley, Michael
My guiding question is this: how does what is metaphysically differ from what was, will be, or might have been? The first half of the dissertation concerns ontology: are the apparent disputes over the existence of merely past, merely future, and merely possible entities genuine and nontrivial disputes? After demarcating the various positions one might take in these disputes, I argue that the disputes are, in fact, genuine. I then offer—in the second half of the dissertation—a limited defense of presentism, the view that only present things exist. In particular, I defend presentism against one of the most significant classes of objections to it—the class of objections claiming that it cannot account for a variety of past-oriented truths. In giving this defense, I draw on insights from the dispute between modal actualists—those who hold that everything is actual— and their rivals.
Making a change : Aristotle on poiêsis, kinêsis and energeia
(2011-05) Chen, Fei-Ting, 1974-; White, Stephen A. (Stephen Augustus); Hankinson, R. J.; Woodruff, Paul; Mourelatos, Alexander P. D.; Koons, Robert
I examine the relation between the action of producing a change (kinêsis) in something else and the action of exercising one’s nature or craft (energeia). I call for the distinction between kinêsis and energeia by arguing that in Metaphysics IX.1-5 change should be construed as a transformational change that is still characterized in accordance with the categories, whereas in Met. IX.6-9 the action of exercising of one’s nature or craft should be construed as the presence of a state or an action that exhibits one’s nature or craft, which is meant to be a way of characterizing that-which-is (to on) that goes beyond the categories. Instead of the conventional patient-centered account of change, I argue that Phys. III.3 and V.4 suggest a non-patient-centered account of change and that the agent’s acting-upon (poiêsis) should also be construed as a non-self-contained change, just as the patient’s being-acted-upon (pathêsis), and therefore cannot be conflated with exercising one’s nature or craft. I also point out that a genuine Aristotelian event cannot be composed of the agent’s acting-upon and the patient’s being-acted-upon. I argue that Phys. VII.3 suggests a two-way relation between the action of producing a change in something else and the action of exhibiting one’s own nature, based on which I outline a hylomorphic proposal that a genuine Aristotelian event is composed of the action of producing a change in something else as the material part of the event and the action of exhibiting one’s own nature as the formal part of the event. While the former provides the material necessitation force from the bottom up to the occurrence of the event, the latter provides the formal constraint force from the top down to the occurrence of the event.
A new defense of realism
(2012-08) Mantegani, Nicholas Buckley; Koons, Robert C.; Hochberg, Herbert, 1929-; Mulligan, Kevin; Proops, Ian; Sainsbury, Richard M.
In this dissertation, I defend the claim that realism – that is, a theory committed to an ontology of universals and particulars – is a more viable theory than any of the others adopted in order solve to the problem of universals. I begin in chapter 1 by setting out a method for comparing the various theories offered as solutions to this problem that is based primarily on a preference for those theories that exhibit greater ontological parsimony. In developing this method I endorse rather than reject (as is standard for realists to do) Quine’s criterion of ontological commitment. In chapter 2, I utilize the aforementioned method of theory comparison to argue for the greater comparative viability of realism over each of its primary competitors. In chapter 3, I set out and offer a solution to the “problem of instantiation”, which has traditionally been taken to be the most difficult problem for realists to solve. Finally, in chapter 4, I discuss two remaining issues that face the sort of “Quinean” realism that I prefer: (1) the ability of this version of realism to accommodate the traditional realist distinction between universals and particulars, and (2) the ability of this version of realism to account for “relational facts” while maintaining its greater comparative viability over its competitors.
On fictionalism in Aristotle's philosophy of mathematics
(2009-08) Cho, Young Kee, 1971-; Hankinson, R. J.
The aim of this dissertation is to show that Aristotle’s ontology cannot provide a model for mathematics. To show this, I argue that (i) mathematical objects must be seen as fictional entities in the light of Aristotle’s metaphysics, and (ii) Aristotle’s mathematical fictionalism is not compatible with his metaphysical realism. My interpretation differs from that of other fictionalists in denying this compatibility. For Aristotle, mathematical objects are “something resulting from abstraction ([Greek phrase]).” For example, geometry investigates a man not qua man, but qua solid or figure. Traditionally, Aristotle’s abstraction has been interpreted as an epistemic process by which a universal concept is obtained from particulars; I rather show his abstraction as a linguistic analysis or conceptual separation by which a certain group of properties are selected: e. g., if a science, X, studies a qua triangle, X studies the properties which belong to a in virtue of a’s being a triangle and ignores a’s other properties. Aristotle’s theory of abstraction implies a mathematical naïve realism, in that mathematical objects are properties of sensible objects. But the difficulty with this mathematical naïve realism is that, since most geometrical objects do not have physical instantiations in the sensible world, things abstracted from sensible objects cannot supply all the necessary objects of mathematics. This is the so-called “precision problem.” In order to solve this problem, Aristotle abandons his mathematical realism and claims that mathematical objects exist in sensibles not as actualities but ‘as matter ([Greek phrase]).’ This claim entails a mathematical fictionalism in metaphysical terms. Most fictionalist interpretations argue that the fictionality of mathematical objects does not harm the truth of mathematics for Aristotle, insofar as objects’ matter is abstracted from sensibles. None of these interpretations, however, is successful in reconciling Aristotle’s mathematical fictionalism with his realism. For Aristotle, sciences are concerned with ‘what is ([Greek phrase])’ and not with ‘what is not ([Greek phrase]).’ Aristotle’s concept of truth rests on a realist correspondence to ‘what is ([Greek phrase])’: “what is true is to say of what is that it is or of what is not that it is not.” Thus, insofar as mathematical objects are fictional, Aristotle’s metaphysics cannot account for the truth of mathematics.
Poster Presentation: Abraham Maslow and the Origins of The Hierarchy of Needs in German Brain Science
(2016-05) Coonan, Daniel J
Reason unbound : a neo-rationalist manifesto
(2017-05) Amijee, Fatema; Sainsbury, R. M. (Richard Mark); Koons, Robert C.; Litland, Jon; Dever, Josh; Wilson, Jessica; Della Rocca, Michael
The Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) holds that everything has an explanation. My dissertation defends the PSR—a principle that many take to be a prime tenet of the rationalist metaphysics of Leibniz and Spinoza—from three influential challenges: (1) that we lack reason to accept the PSR; (2) that the PSR entails that the world could not have been otherwise; (3) that the principle is inconsistent with the now widespread recognition of metaphysically fundamental facts. By answering these challenges, I resist the contemporary dismissal of this central rationalist tenet. To endorse the PSR requires rejecting any view that admits unexplained or ‘brute’ facts. But such views are pervasive in contemporary metaphysics. My dissertation therefore lays the foundation for a substantial revision of the current metaphysical landscape.
Reduction, ontology and the limits of convention
(2010-12) Pickel, Bryan William; Sainsbury, R. M. (Richard Mark); Dever, Joshua; Koons, Robert; Hochberg, Herbert; MacBride, Fraser; Bonevac, Daniel
It is widely agreed that ontological reduction is possible, that the ontology of one theory can be shown to be nothing over and above the ontology of a distinct theory. However, it is also widely agreed that one assesses a theory’s ontology by determining what it says there is. I show that there is a tension between these orthodox positions. To resolve this tension, I propose and defend the view that the ontological commitments of a statement are sensitive to the theory in which it is embedded.
Self-knowledge at the margins
(2021-07-24) Trees, Hannah; Dogramaci, Sinan; Montague, Michelle; Sosa, David; Bettcher, Talia
This dissertation is a collection of three papers – “Knowing Oneself for Others,” “Stereotype Threat and the Value of Self-Knowledge,” and “Self-Knowledge, Epistemic Work, and Injustice” – in which I address the connections between self-knowledge production and social inequality. I explain, using a variety of contemporary political and cultural examples, that marginalized individuals are more likely to be required to know certain things about themselves than socially privileged individuals, especially about those aspects of their lives and identities which are essential to their being marginalized. I argue that this should make us rethink our basic understanding of epistemic injustice, which is typically thought of as involving the prevention of marginalized individuals from producing knowledge. More specifically, in “Knowing Oneself for Others,” I introduce the notion of “compulsory self-disclosure,” a social phenomenon in which an individual is forced to reveal things about themselves, often in ways that further contribute to their oppression. “Stereotype Threat and the Value of Self-Knowledge” addresses how self-ignorance can actually be desirable for individuals facing stereotype threat, and I argue that treating stereotype threat as an epistemic injustice issue can actually harm rather than help individuals in certain cases. Finally, in “Self-Knowledge, Epistemic Work, and Injustice,” I assess the reasoning behind the assumption that marginalized people are self-ignorant; I argue that we need to appreciate the central role that epistemic work plays in self-knowledge production to understand why the standard assumption about marginalized self-ignorance is misguided. Ultimately, I would have us think of self-knowledge production as not just epistemic work but as work that is often emotionally difficult and even metaphysically transformative – coming to have self-knowledge in certain ways can quite literally change who you are. In light of this, the overarching aim of this work is to argue for there being an inextricable link between an individual’s knowledge of themselves and their social status, as well as to discourage readers from thinking of the production of self-knowledge as inherently desirable or as a wholly epistemic issue.
Why people don't matter and what to do about that
(2017-05-04) Galgon, Jake David; Strawson, Galen; Woodruff, Paul, 1943-; Schechtman, Marya S; Dogramaci, Sinan
Reductionism about personal identity is the view that facts about personal identity reduce to lower-level facts about things like psychological or physical connectedness. In this dissertation, I give arguments for reductionism and for Derek Parfit’s “Extreme Claim” that reductionism requires a radical revision of our ordinary normative thought. After detailing the extent of this revision, I introduce and describe a special sort of self-alienation that is likely to be engendered by a genuine belief in Extreme Claim Reductionism. I argue that this alienation cannot and should not be eliminated, and consider existing attempts to eliminate similar sorts of alienation and note where they seem to fall short of their aim. I then outline a practical strategy for living with Extreme Claim Reductionism and the alienation that accompanies it.