Metaphysical Arguments Research Articles

Analyzing social wrongs

Analyzing social wrongs

Supremely Simple Trinity and Contemporary “Natural Theology”: Bonaventure Beyond Jenson and Plotinus

In this article I voice and defend Bonaventure's argument from divine simplicity to the Trinity from two versions of its negation, one Christian (Robert Jenson) and one subordinationist/Platonist (Plotinus). I point out that Bonaventure's supremely simple Trinitarianism has internal purchase on the Plotinian system: he makes available arguments that should pull subordinationist Christians/Platonists in the direction of his own view. Moreover, I observe that Bonaventure's metaphysical arguments in favor of the Trinity—exactly those that have purchase on Plotinian systems—would be available, however surprisingly, within contemporary “natural theology.”

Literary and Linguistic Symbols of the Fatal Signs of Death in the Literature of Dino Buzzati

In this paper we will try to identify the literary and linguistic symbols of the fatal signs of death, focusing on the concept of "happy death" as a key concept in the literature of Dino Buzzati. The literature of this author passes from the traditional writing to the narrative forms of magical realism, and unfolds an imagination which shows how the reality of this world cannot be separated from the mystery of our daily existence. Also, we will analyse if there is a connection between Buzzati’s literary vision and the metaphysical debate on the existence of God. These research questions, aim to highlight the fact that the most obvious novelty of Dino Buzzati's literature should be summarized in the assessment that all the echoes of Death in his works are described with humor and self-irony, ranging from jokes to punitive and apocalyptic sarcasm. Death is shrouded in the allegory of the "receiving the call"; sooner or later it knocks on the door of every human being. Buzzati's literature is precisely the attainment of such a dimension, where art becomes sublime, and it is very hard to define clear lines, between the human existence and what happens after it.

Islamic philosophy and the globalization of science: Ahmed Cevdet's translation of the sixth chapter of Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah.

This article contributes to the study of the globalization of science through an analysis of Ahmed Cevdet's nineteenth-century translation of the sixth chapter of Ibn Khaldun's (d. 1406) Muqaddimah, which deals with the nature and history of science. Cevdet's translation and Ottomanization of that text demonstrate that science did not simply originate in Europe to be subsequently distributed to the rest of the world. Instead, knowledge transmitted from Europe was actively engaged with and appropriated by scholars, who sought to put that material within their own cultural context in a manner that could serve their own intellectual and practical needs. Cevdet's case is particularly interesting because it demonstrates that (1) Islamic conceptions of human nature, the soul and the nature of knowledge provided particularly fertile soil in which empiricist and positivist traditions could take root, and (2) aspects of modern science - specifically its ostensive separation from metaphysical debates - made it more attractive to Islamic theologians than was, for example, the work of Aristotelian philosophers. Through an exploration of Cevdet's career and a close analysis of his historiographical treatment of Ibn Khaldun's account of sciences, this article foregrounds the agency of non-Europeans in the late nineteenth-century circulation of scientific knowledge.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND IN GOD'S EXISTENCE: CONNECTING PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION AND COMPUTATION

AbstractThe exploration of metaphysical arguments in the symbolic AI environment provides clarification and raises unexpected questions about notions in philosophy of religion and theology. Recent attempts to apply automatic theorem prover technology to Anselm's ontological argument have led to a simplification of the argument. This computationally discovered simplification has given rise to logical observations. The article assesses one of these observations: the application of the diagonal method (in Cantor's version) to Anselm's argument. The evaluation of the applications of theorem provers to metaphysical and theological arguments contributes to the following topics in philosophy of religion: the limits of natural theology, the relationship between religion and STEM, and theology's scientificity.

Nietzsche and Contemporary Ethics

Nietzsche and Contemporary Ethics

New research tools suggest a "levels-less" image of the behaving organism and dissolution of the reduction vs. anti-reduction dispute.

A kind of “ruthless reductionism” characterized the experimental practices of the first two decades of molecular and cellular cognition (MCC). More recently, new research tools have expanded experimental practices in this field, enabling researchers to image and manipulate individual molecular mechanisms in behaving organisms with an unprecedented temporal, sub-cellular, cellular, and even circuit-wide specificity. These tools dramatically expand the range and reach of experiments in MCC, and in doing so they may help us transcend the worn-out and counterproductive debates about “reductionism” and “emergence” that divide neuroscientists and philosophers alike. We describe examples of these new tools and illustrate their practical power by presenting an exemplary recent case of MCC research using them. From these tools and results, we provide an initial sketch of a new image of the behaving organism in its full causal-interactive complexity, with its molecules, cells, and circuits combined within the single system that it is. This new image stands in opposition to the traditional “levels” image of the behaving organism, and even the initial sketch we provide of it here offers hope for avoiding the dreary metaphysical debates about “emergence” and “downward causation,” and even the reduction vs. anti-reduction dispute, all dependent upon the familiar “levels” image.

No Grounds for Fictionalism

I argue that fictionalism about grounding is unmotivated, focusing on Naomi Thompson’s (2022) recent proposal on which the utility of the grounding fiction lies in its facilitating communication about what metaphysically explains what. I show that, despite its apparent dialectical kinship with other metaphysical debates in which fictionalism has a healthy tradition, the grounding debate is different in two key respects. Firstly, grounding talk is not indispensable, nor even particularly convenient as a means of communicating about metaphysical explanation. This undermines the revolutionary proposal. Secondly, talk of grounding primarily occurs within metaphysics, which means the usual options for motivating a non-literal interpretation are ineffective. This undermines the hermeneutic proposal.

Understanding Organizational Boundaries in an Interorganizational Context

Grand challenges and wicked problems call for interorganizational collaboration strategies to understand problem complexity and identify potential solutions. Such strategies push forward beliefs that multiple stakeholders and societal organizations collectively can create better and more desired futures. This conceptual paper advances our understanding of organizational boundary in the context of interorganizational interaction by asking and answering: What organizational boundaries are in an interorganizational context and what happens to organizational boundaries when two organizations interact? Crossfertilizing boundary literature with a metaphysical debate in philosophy about the relation of contact when a boundary demarcates two entities, we identify three scenarios that could happen to their organizational boundaries when two organizations interact: 1) one of the organizational boundaries dissolve into context, 2) organizational boundaries remain separate, and 3) organizational boundaries merge into one. In addition, we propose clarifying, separating, and assembling as three main processes to transmute different individual and subjective categorization of “us” and “them” from different organizations into a collective and objective demarcation of responsibilities and patterned behaviors across organizations. We discuss how our conceptual propositions contribute to understanding and facilitating interorganizational collaborations.

Mooreanism in metaphysics from Mooreanism in physics

ABSTRACT I argue that the way the world appears to be plays an important role in standard scientific practice, and that therefore the way the world appears to be ought to play a similar role in metaphysics as well. I then show how the argument bears on a specific first-order debate in metaphysics – the debate over whether there are composite objects. This debate is often thought to be a paradigm case of a metaphysical debate that is largely insulated from scientific considerations, and is often disparaged or avoided by naturalistically inclined metaphysicians as a result. My argument below shows that this attitude is a mistake. The way in which metaphysical debates can be informed by our best science is more complex and far-reaching than is often acknowledged in the literature.

Disagreement in metametaphysical dispute

Recent years have seen several studies of metaphysical disputes as disagreement phenomena employing the resources from the research on disagreement in social epistemology. This paper undertakes an analogous study of the metametaphysical disagreement over the substantiveness of metaphysical disputes between inflationists and deflationists. The paper first considers and questions the skeptical argument that the mere existence of the disagreement mandates the suspension of judgement about the substantiveness of metaphysical disputes. Rather, the paper argues that steadfastness in the face of this disagreement is rational, at least for inflationists. Since inflationists are often metaphysicians who were called to this disagreement due to its apparent threat to their first order debates in metaphysics, they can therefore return to these debates in good faith. In contrast, deflationists have no such alternative occupation and the verdict of steadfastness will not alter their engagement in the inflationist/deflationist disagreement: they will continue their attempt to resolve the disagreement to their advantage. Thus, though the verdict of steadfastness is epistemically symmetric between inflationism and deflationism, it induces an asymmetry in the motivation to pursue the inflationist/deflationist disagreement which places the burden of advancing the dialectic of this disagreement with the deflationists while metaphysicians can continue their work as before.

Metaphysical Doctrines of the Anlo of Ghana and Process Philosophy

Abstract Concepts of mutual interdependence, process, creative advance, and God occupy key areas in the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. Process metaphysics lays emphasis on a naturalism of rigorous rational and empirical methodology with far-reaching implications. Process thinkers have compared Whiteheadian thought to Buddhism, Christianity, and many other religions. However, African religious beliefs have yet to be considered in this area of study. Based on the gap in the literature, this article attempts to reconcile such seemingly different spheres. First, I offer an account of Whitehead's process metaphysics regarding the concepts mentioned above. Second, I argue that nonconventional sources of African philosophy offer conceptual understandings of philosophies of African groups and their place in the metaphysical debate. Third, I discuss these key areas of process thought in Anlo traditional pragmatic philosophy. I illustrate their like-mindedness with process metaphysics through language, religious rites, and historical accounts. I conclude that, although process philosophy overlaps in prominent areas with Anlo belief systems, questions regarding the causal nature of God distinguish the Anlo conception of divinity from that of process philosophy.

The structuralist approach to underdetermination

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 of translation, can be analyzed as instances of the structuralist schema. These two applications illustrate different kinds of conclusions that can be drawn through the structuralist approach; Benacerraf’s argument shows that we can derive an ontological conclusion about the given subject matter, while Quine’s structuralist approach leads to a semantic conclusion about how to determine linguistic meanings given radical translation. Then, as a case study, I review a recent debate in metaphysics between Shamik Dasgupta, Jason Turner, and Catharine Diehl to consider the extent to which different instances of the structuralist schema are conceptually unified. Both sides of the debate can be interpreted as utilizing the structuralist approach; one side uses the structuralist approach for an ontological conclusion, while the other side relies on a semantic conclusion. I argue that this has a strong dialectical consequence, which sheds light on the conceptual unity of the structuralist approach.

Aristotle on Microstructures and Capacities

A potentially illuminating aspect of Aristotle’s study of material properties that has been explored far less systematically and comprehensively than composition is his reliance on structural characteristics that are imperceptibly small, but presumably inferable, if not with certainty, at least with a high degree of confidence. This article is meant to elucidate that aspect and to answer three main questions: (1) What is Aristotle’s general explanatory strategy when it comes to the relation between capacities and microstructures? (2) How does he refine certain elements of his explanations, e.g., with respect to specific subtypes of structures and their interaction with the environment? (3) And to what extent could Aristotle’s appeal to microstructures be relevant to debates in contemporary metaphysics and philosophy of science?

Telemental Health

Telemental Health

The Notion of Process: Hegel and Contemporary Metaphysics

This article is aimed at highlighting some possible contributions of Hegel’s philosophy to the contemporary debate around process metaphysics. In the contemporary metaphysical debate, process metaphysics represent an attempt to highlight the limits of the traditional philosophical paradigm, which is based on the notion of substance, and to work within an alternative paradigm, which is based on the notion of process. What exists, then, are not substances, substrates, fixed and stable objects characterized by certain properties, but processes, events, occurrences. The main idea of ​​process metaphysics is that being is dynamic and that this dynamic nature must be the main focus of any comprehensive philosophical explanation of reality. Looking at this revolution, it is necessary to define the very notion of process. In fact, this work of conceptual clarification of the fundamental notion of this new philosophical paradigm is still ongoing. My idea is that Hegelian philosophy can offer some relevant indications to do the job. In this sense, the article will be divided into two parts: on the basis of the analysis of some definitions of the notion of process in the contemporary debate around process metaphysics, I will show 1) the need to determine the minimal ontological structure of the notion of process; 2) the possibility of determining this structure through some conceptual tools provided by Hegel’s logic and in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy.

Resemblance, Representation and Scepticism: The Metaphysical Role of Berkeley’s Likeness Principle

Berkeley’s likeness principle states that only an idea can be like an idea. In this paper, I argue that the principle should be read as a premise only in a metaphysical argument showing that matter cannot instantiate anything like the sensory properties we perceive. It goes against those interpretations that take it to serve also, if not primarily, an epistemological purpose, featuring in Berkeley’s alleged Representation Argument to the effect that we cannot reach beyond the veil of our ideas. First, in section 1, I raise some concerns about the traditional narrative concerning the likeness principle’s role in Berkeley’s argumentation. In section 2, I delineate an alternative narrative, arguing that there is no ‘missing premise’ in his alleged Representation Argument we need to explain simply because he advances no argument like that in the first place. In section 3–4, I provide a close reading of the relevant passages—first from the <em>Principles</em>, then the <em>Dialogues</em>—and their contexts, supporting textually a purely metaphysical interpretation of the likeness principle arguments. In section 5, I address some possible objections, based on the phrasing of the likeness principle passages and some related texts.

The origin of origins a metaphysical argument for the existence of god in the tradition of de ente et essentia

In current theology the possibility of conclusive arguments for the existence of God is largely rejected by reference to Hume or Kant. Purportedly post-metaphysical surrogates are put in place of a metaphysically founded theology, where either the existence of God may be believed in only as a rational possibility, or else a radical constructivism about the existence of God is fallen into. Nevertheless, in the following, a conclusive metaphysical argument for the existence of God in the tradition of scholastic metaphysics is formulated. It is shown that theological talk of creatio ex nihilo is only the other side of this metaphysical argument: Whoever accepts creatio ex nihilo cannot consistently deny the soundness of the argument.

Engineering existence?

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the connection between two recent trends in philosophy: higher-orderism and conceptual engineering. Higher-orderists use higher-order quantifiers (in particular quantifiers binding variables that occupy the syntactic positions of predicates) to express certain key metaphysical doctrines, such as the claim that there are properties. I argue that, on a natural construal, the higher-orderist approach involves an engineering project concerning, among others, the concept of existence. I distinguish between a modest construal of this project, on which it aims at engineering higher-order analogues of the familiar notion of first-order existence, and an ambitious construal, on which it additionally aims at engineering a broadened notion of existence that subsumes first-order and higher-order existence. After identifying a substantial problem for the ambitious project, I investigate a possible response which is based on adopting a cumulative type theory as the background higher-order logic. While effective against the problem at hand, this strategy turns out to undermine a major reason to embrace higher-orderism in the first place, namely the idea that higher-orderism dissolves a range of otherwise intractable debates in metaphysics. Higher-orderists are therefore best advised to pursue their engineering project on the modest variant and against the background of standard type theory.

In defence of constitutive rules

Although the notion of constitutive rule has played an important role in the metaphysical debate in social and legal philosophy, several authors perceive it as somewhat mysterious and ambiguous: the idea of a specific kind of rules that are supposed to be “magically” constitutive of reality seems suspicious, more a rationalistic fiction than a genuine explanation. For these reasons, reductionist approaches have been put forward to deflate the explanatory role of this notion. In this paper, I will instead try to defend constitutive rules. My thesis is that the notion of constitutive rule is explanatorily helpful because it gives a complete account of an important phenomenon in the social and legal domain, namely, that of artifactual entities endowed with statuses that can have emergent normative properties. Conceiving of these entities as rule-constituted artifacts is an important part of what H. L. A. Hart called “the internal point of view” toward law, and for this reason constitutive rules should be included in an explanation of that point of view as an integral part of the life of institutions. The structure of my argument will be as follows. First, I will provide an example of an important phenomenon in the internal point of view, namely, the fact that individuals can have normative reactions not about the specific regulation of an institution but about its underlying purpose and rationale—what in the legal domain is called the ratio of a norm. Then I will identify two reductionistic approaches on constitutive rules. The first approach is exemplified by Brian Epstein’s idea that the phenomena explained by constitutive rules are better explained in terms of metaphysical (grounding/anchoring) relations. The second kind of reductionism is instead exemplified by the idea (held by several authors, among whom Alf Ross, Riccardo Guastini, Frank Hindriks, and Francesco Guala) that the phenomena explained by constitutive rules can be accounted for in terms of regulative rules plus a certain terminology. I will try to show that neither of these approaches can explain normative reactions to the ratio of an institution from an internal point of view: While the first cannot explain the fact that the reaction is strongly normative, the second cannot explain the fact that the reaction is about the ratio of a normative entity. Constitutive rules can instead explain both things and should be preserved as an important notion for the analysis of institutional ontology. By way of constitutive rules we create something: immaterial, rule-based institutional artifacts that can have emergent normative properties.