Metaphysical Determinism Research Articles

Heidegger’s contribution to overcoming the metaphysical determination of Freedom, taken as an unconditioned foundation, and its opening of a new access to the investigation of the truth of Being. Part II

Abordaremos aqui a problemática da Liberdade no contexto histórico de sua discussão no âmbito do Pensamento metafísico do Ser –âmbito formalizado pela primeira vez pela Filosofia de Platão e de Aristóteles. O nosso intuito é mostrar em linhas gerais como a partir do pressuposto da incondicionalidade, tomada enquanto a determinação fundamental da Liberdade, o Pensamento moderno angaria a configuração do Ser na forma da Subjetividade. Tomamos a questão da Liberdade como fio condutor desta investigação porque compreendemos que tal questão põe o ponto de partida o mais genuíno para a investigação do estabelecimento das formas da Subjetividade pretendidas pelo Pensamento moderno. Encaminharemos nossa explanação indicando as perspectivas através das quais o Pensamento grego, medieval e moderno contemplou a incondicionalidade no âmbito da problemática do Ser. Aberto o contexto problemático sobre o qual se desdobra a questão da incondicionalidade, passaremos a abordar o papel atribuído à Liberdade pela Filosofia de Kant e de Schelling na determinação do Ser de todo.

An Explanatory Framework for Legal Grounding

The objective of this article is to provide an explanatory framework for legal grounding. Grounding, understood in recent years as a metaphysical determination, has proved to be a fruitful object of inquiry for legal theorists trying to explain the thesis about the relationship between social facts and legal facts in metaphysical terms. However, the debate on the use of the notion of grounding in the philosophy of law lacks a concise and precise differentiation of the various assumptions behind grounding that philosophers have recently discussed. This article offers a prospect for analysis of a debate about grounding of legal facts and an interpretation of focal terms in light of recent metaphysical debates.

Heidegger’s contribution to overcoming the metaphysical determination of Freedom, taken as an unconditioned foundation, and its opening of a new access to the investigation of the truth of Being. Part I

Abordaremos aqui a problemática da Liberdade no contexto histórico de sua discussão no âmbito do Pensamento metafísico do Ser –âmbito formalizado pela primeira vez pela Filosofia de Platão e de Aristóteles. O nosso intuito é mostrar em linhas gerais como a partir do pressuposto da incondicionalidade, tomada enquanto a determinação fundamental da Liberdade, o Pensamento moderno angaria a configuração do Ser na forma da Subjetividade. Tomamos a questão da Liberdade como fio condutor desta investigação porque compreendemos que tal questão põe o ponto de partida o mais genuíno para a investigação do estabelecimento das formas da Subjetividade pretendidas pelo Pensamento moderno. Encaminharemos nossa explanação indicando as perspectivas através das quais o Pensamento grego, medieval e moderno contemplou a incondicionalidade no âmbito da problemática do Ser. Aberto o contexto problemático sobre o qual se desdobra a questão da incondicionalidade, passaremos a abordar o papel atribuído à Liberdade pela Filosofia de Kant e de Schelling na determinação do Ser de todo.

A Defense on the Usefulness of ‘Big-G’ Grounding

AbstractContemporary metaphysics has undergone a change of perspective due to the irruption of Grounding in discussions of metaphysical dependence. Proponents argue that Grounding is the primitive relationship of determination underlying many of the traditionally posited idioms of metaphysical dependence. In a recent line of scepticism Jessica Wilson has argued that the inability of the notion to be informatively effective regarding substantial matters of metaphysical determination renders it useless in the face of theoretical work. To supply this lack of informativeness proponents must resort to the already available set of specific ‘small-g’ relations, which renders the formulation of ‘big-G’ Grounding pre-theoretically unmotivated. In response two motivations are said to remain: The priority and unity arguments. Wilson insists that neither of these motivations succeeds in establishing ‘big-G’ Grounding as theoretically useful. I argue that none of Wilson’s critiques succeeds in establishing eliminative scepticism.

Asymmetry cannot solve the circularity/regress problem of property structuralism

Strong dispositional monism (SDM), the position that all fundamental physical properties consist in dispositional relations to other properties, is naturally construed as property structuralism. J. Lowe’s circularity/regress objection (CRO) constitutes a serious challenge to SDM that questions the possibility of a purely relational determination of all property essences. The supervenience thesis of A. Bird’s graph-theoretic asymmetry reply to CRO can be rigorously proved. Yet the reply fails metaphysically, because it reveals neither a metaphysical determination of identities on a purely relational basis nor a determination specifically of identities in the sense of essences. Asymmetry is thus not by itself sufficient for a solution to CRO. But it cannot even help to answer CRO when a model for the determination of essences is taken as a basis. Nor is asymmetry necessary for a reply, as property structures may well be symmetric. A metaphysics of dispositional properties as grounded in a purely relational structure faces serious obstacles, and the properties would not be fundamental. Since essence and grounding are notions of metaphysical priority, there can be no essentially dispositional metaphysically fundamental properties, and the prospects of a “coherentist” metaphysics of basic properties are dim. A modal retreat that refrains from a post-modal conception of essence and simply claims that fundamental properties play dispositional roles by metaphysical necessity is unsatisfactory.

Grounding ontic structuralism

A respectable assessment of priority-based ontic structuralism demands an elucidation of its metaphysical backbone. Here we focus on two theses that stand in need of clarification: (1) the Fundamentality Thesis states that structures are fundamental, and (2) the Priority Thesis states that these structures are prior to putative fundamental objects, if these exist. Candidate notions to illuminate (1) and (2) such as supervenience and ontological dependence failed at this task. Our purpose is to show that grounding is the best competitor to articulate (1) and (2), and regiment such theses in a desirable unified way. Our strategy is two-fold. First, we make the case that grounding does better than ontological dependence and supervenience. Second, we show that the distinction between partial and full grounds permits us to respond to an objection raised by Kerry McKenzie against the proposal of interpreting priority-based Ontic Structuralism in the idiom of metaphysical determination. Our conclusion is that priority ontic structuralists have compelling reasons for adopting a grounding-based approach.

Personal values as motivational basis of psychological essentialism: An exploration of the value profile underlying essentialist beliefs

Essentialist lay-theories can reflect a belief in genetic, social, and metaphysical determinism. These three types of essentialist beliefs are similar as they can be linked to a set of motives and each of those beliefs is related to stereotyping and prejudice. Nevertheless, the available evidence indicates that the three types of essentialist thinking are largely unrelated and it is unclear why some individuals endorse one type of essentialism and reject another. Examining the association between the endorsement of essentialist beliefs and personal values, our results based on N = 348 respondents indicate that specific value profiles build the motivational basis for specific essentialist beliefs. Specifically, conservation values are associated with belief in genetic and metaphysical determinism, while self-transcendence and self-enhancement are associated with belief in social determinism.

Normative explanation unchained

AbstractNormative theories aim to explain why things have the normative features they have. This paper argues that, contrary to some plausible existing views, one important kind of normative explanations which first‐order normative theories aim to formulate and defend can fail to transmit downward along chains of metaphysical determination of normative facts by non‐normative facts. Normative explanation is plausibly subject to a kind of a justification condition whose satisfaction may fail to transmit along the relevant kind of metaphysical hierarchy. A broader aim of the paper is to contribute to systematic theorizing about normative explanation: whereas there has been a great deal of work on scientific explanation, there has been little by way of systematic exploration of what sort of explanations normative theories aim to formulate and defend.

Max Schelers Reformation der Religionsphilosophie

Max Scheler's Reformation of Philosophy of Religion The following contribution aims to show the relevance of Max Scheler's reflections on the relation of Christianity and modernity for the present situation. It interprets Scheler's philosophy of religion in terms of a principle of reformation that can be implicitly found in Scheler's critical assessment of the historical impact of Lutheran Protestantism. Scheler's principle of reformation provides four criteria: (i) autonomy of the religious sphere, (ii) dialectics of life and spirit, (iii) community beyond religious denominations, and (iv) metaphysical determination of the divine. On that basis, we will see that Scheler's "catholic” phenomenology of religion from 1921 only partly meets his own criteria, whereas his "post-catholic” metaphysics of panentheism, developed after 1922, is more suitable to meet these criteria. Two factors are crucial: First, the divine is characterized by a fundamental metaphysical tension between spirit and vital impulsion, which leads to transferring the responsibility of balancing this tension to the history of mankind. Second, the community that corresponds to this metaphysical conception is not delimited by religious denomination but is integrated by solidarity among all human and living beings instead.

“Men are made of the dust of the earth”: Time, Space, Matter, and Meaning in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian

Abstract While the narrative of Cormac McCarthy's novel Blood Meridian is expansive and involved, suggesting an unearthly realm of deeply resonant symbolic meaning, the lack of a reflective consciousness at the mimetic level leaves description the only form of convincing representation, opening up on an evolutionary vista beyond human valuation. But description in the novel is not wholly disembodied, outside time and space; it receives its impetus from the movement of characters through the landscape, the world of natural and cultural phenomena. Through his engagement with the exhaustive particularity of this chronotopic continuum, McCarthy is able to go beyond both metaphysical speculation and evolutionary determinism and offer a view of the individual in his proper relation to human history and the natural world, harnessing his ostensibly senseless narrative of violence to an ongoing struggle for meaning and moral articulation.

The applicability of mathematics to physical modality

This paper argues that scientific realism commits us to a metaphysical determination relation between the mathematical entities that are indispensible to scientific explanation and the modal structure of the empirical phenomena those entities explain. The argument presupposes that scientific realism commits us to the indispensability argument. The view presented here is that the indispensability of mathematics commits us not only to the existence of mathematical structures and entities but to a metaphysical determination relation between those entities and the modal structure of the physical world. The no-miracles argument is the primary motivation for scientific realism. It is a presupposition of this argument that unobservable entities are explanatory only when they determine the empirical phenomena they explain. I argue that mathematical entities should also be seen as explanatory only when they determine the empirical facts they explain, namely, the modal structure of the physical world. Thus, scientific realism commits us to a metaphysical determination relation between mathematics and physical modality that has not been previously recognized. The requirement to account for the metaphysical dependence of modal physical structure on mathematics limits the class of acceptable solutions to the applicability problem that are available to the scientific realist.

El habla habla. El Heidegger del pensar onto-histórico y la pregunta por el origen de la significación lingüística

El presente artículo aborda la concepción del lenguaje en el pensaronto-histórico de Heidegger. Para tratar esta temática, se parte de la pregunta por el origen de la significación lingüística, que en este autor se identifica con la pregunta por la esencia del lenguaje en relación con el esenciarse del ser. El análisis inicia con la consideración de la determinación metafísica de la relación entre lenguaje y ser en Aristóteles, para contraponer sus rasgos a los distintivos de la comprensión heideggeriana.

Metaphysical Grounding and Metaphysical Determinism

최근 형이상학에서 (적어도 분석적 전통의 형이상학에서) 점점 더 많은 학자들은 형이상학적 근거개념을 채택하고 있다. 근거개념을 수용하는 많은 학자들은, 근거개념의 수용과 더불어, 필자가 ‘형이상학적 결정론’이라고 명명할 가정을 추가적으로 받아들인다. 필자는 이 글에서 근거개념이 형이상학적 결정론과 함께 수용되면, 우리에게 특정 형이상학적 견해가 부과될 위험이 있다는 것을 보이고, 그러한 결과를 바탕으로 근거개념의 수용과 관련해 방법론적 교훈을 이끌어 내고자 한다.

Pursuing Natural Piety: Understanding Ontological Emergence and Distinguishing it from Physicalism

This paper focuses on two issues related to ontological emergence: whether it is a coherent notion, and its relation to the doctrine of physicalism. First, it is argued that ontological emergence is best understood as a thesis relying on three fundamental tenets claiming that emergents are basic, genuinely causal, and determined by the physical realm. The paper elucidates the roles of these tenets, and introduces an interpretation that is able to resolve any apparent contradiction between the tenets, thereby supporting the claim that the commitments of ontological emergence form a consistent view. The proposed understanding also hints that telling physicalism and emergentism apart is not a problem even if one subscribes to a supervenience-based formulation of physicalism. The difference in the modal strength of the supervenience relation physicalism and emergentism endorse readily distinguishes them – the former is committed to metaphysical determination whereas the latter to nomological determination. However, in a recent paper, Jessica Wilson has posed an objection to this way of differentiating physicalism from emergentism on the ground that the metaphysical/nomological distinction cannot be drawn in this context. The second part of this paper introduces Wilson's objection, and argues in detail that it fails to disqualify the modal strength-based distinction.

Branching and (In)determinism

It might seem, and it has been argued, that if time is linear the threat of determinism is more severe than if time is branching, since in the latter case the future is open in a way it is not in the former one where, so to speak, there exists only one branch—one future. In this paper, I want to resist this claim. I shall first concentrate on what ‘branching’ is or could be, and I shall discuss various versions and interpretations of this view. I shall then (more quickly) turn my attention to what determinism is or could be, and I will distinguish three (well-known) kinds of it—focusing mainly on ‘metaphysical determinism’. I will then ask (and answer) the question whether branching time helps with avoiding determinism or not. As we shall see, it is incorrect to think that under the branching hypothesis the threat of determinism is any smaller.

Anthony Collins e il determinismo logico

Great attention has always been paid to determinism in the philosophy of Anthony Collins and important thinkers have been drawn to his Inquiry on Liberty: Priestley, Voltaire, D’Holbach, to name just a few. Even in modern times, determinism is one of the most investigated aspects of his thinking. However, neither today nor in the past has this attention led to a clarification of the scope of this determinism. Was it causal, moral, mechanistic or logical in kind? Such a clarification does not merely provide a nominal definition but also a better understanding of Collins’ entire philosophy. The article analyzes the relationship between Collins and those English thinkers, like Locke, Clarke and Hobbes, who have always been identified as the main sources of his philosophy. It also looks at continental thinkers who were never much considered by scholars, such as Leibniz, Bayle and finally Spinoza, who came to Collins mainly through the filter of Bayle and Leibniz. The analysis leads the Author to argue that the determinism advocated by Collins is a kind of necessitarianism very close to that of Spinoza, namely a logical determinism or, as Leibniz called it, a metaphysical determinism.

Concessionary Dualism and Physicalism

AbstractModern physicalists frequently offer the generous concession that although dualism is false, it is not a metaphysical impossibility. And it appears that the proper formulation of physicalism allows for this concessionary position. It would be expected that dualists also could accept that while physicalism is false, it too is a metaphysical possibility. I will argue that a careful analysis of physicalism and dualism shows that in fact these concessionary positions cannot be maintained. In particular, the nature of the metaphysical determination relation which holds between matter and mind on both physicalist and dualist views precludes either from allowing that the other is a metaphysical possibility.

Fitch’s paradox and ceteris paribus modalities

The paper attempts to give a solution to the Fitch’s paradox though the strategy of the reformulation of the paradox in temporal logic, and a notion of knowledge which is a kind of ceteris paribus modality. An analogous solution has been offered in a different context to solve the problem of metaphysical determinism.

Manifestacija suštine prava u institutu šefa države

The president of the state is a legal concept where the issue of competence both starts and finishes. Recognition of the other as a person, which is an ontological assumption of the recognition of one's competence in somebody else's matter, is primarily a negation of the natural determination of a human being in the act of establishment of his metaphysical determination. Spiritual recognition - which is the case here - is just the opposite of psychological recognition. Metaphysical equality is the beginning of the substantive law, while the metaphysical difference is the beginning of the procedural law. These two metaphysical components - equality and difference - constitute the law as the freedom. In this way the concept of the law is internally closed and becomes complete through the linkage between the competence and the person. In this way metaphysical equality and metaphysical difference are linked in a clear and direct form into the detailed apory of law which acquires its clearest manifestation in the president of the state. .

The Metaphysical Foundation of Logic

In the philosophy of modality there are three positions concerning the relation between the set of metaphysically necessary truths and the set of logically necessary truths. Modal Monism (MM), states that the set of metaphysically necessary truths is identical to the set of logically necessary truths. (MM) has been advocated by Chalmers (1999). Modal Pluralism (MP), states that the set of metaphysically necessary truths is a proper subset of the set of logically necessary truths. (MP) has been advocated by Salmon (1989). Metaphysical Determinism (MD), states that the set of logically necessary truths is in part determined by metaphysical truths and necessities. (MD) has recently been gestured at by Lowe (1998), and Shalkowski (2004). In what follows, I want to offer an argument and some considerations in favor of the conclusion that logically necessity is in part determined by metaphysical truths and necessities. The argument below concerns what can be appealed to in judging or choosing which formalization of logic is correct.