Metaphysics Of Objects Research Articles

Negotiating history: Contingency, canonicity, and case studies

Objections to the use of historical case studies for philosophical ends fall into two categories. Methodological objections claim that historical accounts and their uses by philosophers are subject to various biases. We argue that these challenges are not special; they also apply to other epistemic practices. Metaphysical objections, on the other hand, claim that historical case studies are intrinsically unsuited to serve as evidence for philosophical claims, even when carefully constructed and used, and so constitute a distinct class of challenge. We show that attention to what makes for a canonical case can address these problems. A case study is canonical with respect to a particular philosophical aim when the features relevant to that aim provide a reasonably complete causal account of the results of the historical process under investigation. We show how to establish canonicity by evaluating relevant contingencies using two prominent examples from the history of science: Eddington’s confirmation of Einstein’s theory of general relativity using his data from the 1919 eclipse and Watson and Crick’s determination of the structure of DNA.

Das metaphysische Unternehmen

Abstract In Barry Stroud’s book Engagement and Metaphysical Dissatisfaction, the eponymous dissatisfaction is said to be due to our inability to obtain certainty about the correspondence between the world and our ways of thinking it. In Stroud’s terms, this dissatisfaction is caused by the failure of the metaphysical enterprise. Beginning with Aristotle’s metaphysics, this paper discusses Stroud’s misunderstanding which stems from his particular construal of the object of metaphysics: There is no metaphysical enterprise and thus, there can be no metaphysical dissatisfaction.

The Unity of Aristotle’s Metaphysics


 
 
 This paper discusses the three ancient commentaries on Book E of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, that have been handed down to us. It aims to demonstrate the fundamental part played by their particular interpretation of Aristotle’s doctrines in the birth of the traditional interpretation of his Metaphysics, according to which all the books comprising the work were written as a function of Book Λ, containing the well-known doctrine of the unmoved mover. Among the main elements supporting this assumption there is Aristotle’s distinction between three types of science - the theoretical, the practical and the productive - and his claiming the primacy of metaphysics as a theological science. According to the ancient commentators, the remainder of Book E would belong to the unitary project of the Metaphysics, since it would indicate what is not encompassed in the object of metaphysics. This would mean that Aristotle’s treatment of accidental being, being as truth and not-being as falsity, and being potentially and actually would take on a negative function. The theological interpretation of Aristotle’s Metaphysics thus retains its ultimate foundations in premises contained in the Aristotelian text itself
 
 

The Body as Blind Spot: Towards Lived Experience and a Body-Specific Philosophy in Education

What do the philosophies of phenomenological scholars such as Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty tell us about education in South Africa? How can we use the philosophies of these scholars to develop the minds of our learners and students holistically? Drawing from Husserl’s “lifeworld theory,” Heidegger’s notion of Dasein and Merleau-Ponty’s “lived body theory,” this paper argues for a shift towards a philosophy of “lived experience” in the classroom that views the “body,” which is often dismissed in an educational setting, as an authentic, intelligible and privileged metaphysical object for learning. We argue that teaching should not promote a domain-specific epistemological ethos to open up new pathways to knowing and understanding the natural world, but instead should adopt a body-specific ethos that leads to a process of understanding our “true self,” “true nature” or “true humanity.” This means that education structured around preparing the masses for the corporate world should therefore not be our aim, but rather nurturing “body knowledge” that is already there.

On the Significance of the Copernican Revolution: Transcendental Philosophy and the Object of Metaphysics

This paper argues that the famous passage that compares Kant’s efforts to reform metaphysics with his transcendental idealism to the earlier Copernican revolution in astronomy has a more systematic significance than many recognize. By examining the totality of Kant’s references to Copernicus, one can see that Kant’s analogy points to more than just a similar reversal of perspective. By situating Kant’s comments about Copernicus in relation to his understanding of the logic implicit in the great revolutions in mathematics and natural science, this paper argues that Kant’s appeal to the Copernican revolution in astronomy as a forebear to his own transcendental project indicates that his attempt to revolutionize metaphysics by setting it on the secure path of the sciences demands a shift in how we think of the proper object of metaphysics.

The limits of Humeanism

Humeans take reality to be devoid of ‘necessary connections’: things just happen. Laws of nature are to be understood in terms of what ‘just happens’, not vice versa. Here the Humean needs some conception of what it is that ‘just happens’ – a conception of the Humean mosaic. Lewis’s Humeanism incorporates such a conception in the form of a Lewis-style metaphysics of objects, properties, and modality. Newer versions of Humeanism about laws of nature, such as the Better Best Systems approach (BBS), typically reject such a Lewisian metaphysics, but it remains unclear what they can offer in its place. By exploring different candidate conceptions, this paper sheds light on the limits of Humeanism about laws of nature: not all conceptions of the Humean mosaic form a suitable basis for a Humean theory of laws. In fact, only a metaphysics roughly in line with Lewis’s will do. The paper ends with a tentative generalization of this result, thus pointing to the ‘limit’ of Humeanism in general: taking the Humean way of thinking to its limit results in a rejection of the whole idea of such a mosaic – and hence of Humean mosaic-based accounts of anything.

Il libro Epsilon dellaMetafisicadi Aristotele nell’Epitomedi Averroè (1126-1198)

This article deals with Averroes’s interpretation of Metaph. Ε 1, where Aristotle discusses the nature and object of metaphysics, as well as its place in the hierarchy of sciences. Among Averroes’s predecessors, al-Kindī seems to see a coincidence between metaphysics and theology, since God can be described as the “first cause of everything”. However, al-Fārābī and Avicenna discovered that “first philosophy” could be conceived as an ontology distinct from theology; moreover, they considered theology to be only a part of metaphysics, not even the most important one. In the Great Commentary on Metaphysics - where the Arabic translation of the work by the Jacobite monk Usṭāth is quoted, Averroes often just paraphrases the original passages. One may infer that theology in the strict sense is merely mentioned by way of example. In the Epitome of Metaphysics, the objects of metaphysics are “general” ones; metaphysics studies the “absolute being” and cannot be identified with theology as “pertaining to God”.

Common Real Being and the Scope of Metaphysics according to Fray Juan de Fuica O.F.M. (17th-18th Centuries, Chile)

In this essay, I introduce the reader to some major themes of the metaphysical thought of Juan de Fuica (ca. 1660-17??), a Chilean Franciscan Friar, who, in his activities as professor of philosophy, explained and developed, with many traces of originality, the philosophy of John Duns Scotus. In his cursus on metaphysics, Fuica presents the object of metaphysics, that is, the objective concept of the real being in common. Above all, he shows that being can receive a relative essential definition, in which one can find the aspect of “non-repugnance” or “non-contradictoriness”, which is effectively common to the real being and the being of reason. Fuica, thus, makes an original contribution to the understanding of the scope of metaphysics and its connection to mental objects and the human mind broadly speaking.

Esencjalizacja przedmiotu metafizyki w ujęciu Franciszka Suáreza SJ

Disputationes metaphysicae by Francis Suárez in its assumptions returns to the classical division into real being (ens reale) and mind­‑dependent being (ens rationis). To put it in the theoretical structure, Suárez’ theory of being is directly linked to the noetic concept of “objective being” (ens objectivum). Suárez definitely broke with a classical approach to the object of metaphysics and headed an existential reflection on being toward the essentialization. So his metaphysics is not focused on the concept of being in the aspect of existence, but is the study of abstract being as the “essence”. It is an interesting theory in historical terms, but it also suggests that it can provide in­‑depth study of previous scholastic theories. Suárez’ approach meets with the theory that clearly influenced the modern epistemology and post­‑Cartesian philosophy as a cognitive shift towards a new subjective prospect (e.g. in se conversa), in which reflection on real being was shifted toward the subject­‑consciousness representation, that is, toward the noetic reflection and mentalism).

Dignitas et nobilitas metaphysicae: objeto y articulación de la metafísica en el prólogo del comentario de Duns Escoto a la metafísica de Aristóteles / Dignitas et nobilitas metaphysicae: Metaphysics’s Object and Articulation in Duns Scotus’s Prologue to His Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics

This paper studies two aspects of John Duns Scotus’s Prologue to his Questions on the Metaphysics of Aristotle. The a priori argument to prove the nobility and dignity of metaphysics and the treatment of the question about the scientific object of metaphysics and its articulation with the other realities treated in this science. The paper also shows how Scotus’s prologue follows an interpretative tradition whose principal interlocutors are Thomas Aquinas and Avicenna

It’s a kind of magic: Lewis, magic and properties

David Lewis’s arguments against magical ersatzism are notoriously puzzling. Untangling different strands in those arguments is useful for bringing out what he thought was wrong with not just one style of theory about possible worlds, but with much of the contemporary metaphysics of abstract objects. After setting out what I take Lewis’s arguments to be and how best to resist them, I consider the application of those arguments to general theories of properties and relations. The constraints Lewis motivates turn out to yield an argument for concretism about possible individuals that is quite different from the better-known Lewisian arguments for that position. The discussion also touches on the puzzling question of whether things are the way they are because of the properties they have, or are the properties and relations the way they are because of the things that have them.

Philosophy of race meets population genetics

In this paper, I respond to four common semantic and metaphysical objections that philosophers of race have launched at scholars who interpret recent human genetic clustering results in population genetics as evidence for biological racial realism. I call these objections ‘the discreteness objection’, ‘the visibility objection’, ‘the very important objection’, and ‘the objectively real objection.’ After motivating each objection, I show that each one stems from implausible philosophical assumptions about the relevant meaning of ‘race’ or the nature of biological racial realism. In order to be constructive, I end by offering some advice for how we can productively critique attempts to defend biological racial realism based on recent human genetic clustering results. I also offer a clarification of the relevant human-population genetic research.

Accounting is the Message: An Undermining, Overmining, and Duomining Critique

Making use of McLuhan’s (e.g., McLuhan, 1964; McLuhan & Fiore, 1967; McLuhan & McLuhan, 1992) ideas on the laws and functioning of the media, this paper calls for a new approach to accounting research that considers both the components and relations of accounting phenomena. To illustrate how previous research has tended to reduce accounting phenomena either upward to its relations or downward to its components, we have drawn upon Harman’s (2011d; 2013b; 2013d) work on the metaphysics of objects and the emergence of double-entry bookkeeping (DEB) as an exemplar. We considered three essentially reductive explanations for these accounting phenomena: DEB as a rhetorical device (Aho, 1985), DEB as a tool in the socialization of capital (Bryer, 1993) and DEB as a rhetorical device situated within an institutional matrix (Thompson, 1991). Based on this critique and exemplar, we have stipulated three criteria for a new approach to accounting research that avoids the reduction of accounting phenomena. Employing McLuhan’s tetrad of media effects, we offer a blueprint for what such an approach might entail and outline a possible research program (McLuhan & McLuhan, 1992).

Toward an Ethics of Speculative Design

In Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, And Social Dreaming, designers Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby reassure us that, purpose of speculation is to unsettle the present rather than predict the future. (1) Their work and the work of other speculative designers drive design beyond the user and problem solving orientation of commercial design practices. They challenge us to attend to the agency of material, to the process of making, to the demand of things on us, and most importantly to design as a critical practice of questioning ourselves through our things. Extending Dunne and Raby's call to projection into alternate possibilities, I argue that speculative design is a material practice of ethical creative coexistence as distinct from standardized, industrial design solutions. Simply put, speculative design makes us think beyond ourselves and fosters the ethical comportment of recognized non-identity resistant to instrumentalization. My argument stems from the 21st century need to confront wasteful and thoughtless overconsumption and related social, political and environmental abuses fueled by a need to control and master, natural and artificial goods, as well as socio-economic identity. In particular, design in the 20th century that aimed to standardize production, to universalize market appeal, to emphasize uniformity, to focus on human comfort and to market products as singular, isolated machines of modernity is no longer sustainable. Countering the modern impulse to dominate the world of natural resources, technological advancements and synthetic materials speculative practices utilize an object oriented perspective of coexistence and ask how can we design beyond our own needs? The conceptual path of my argument relies on the speculative philosophical approaches of Jane Bennett's Vibrant Matter and her attention to the agency of things, Timothy Morton's Realist Magic and his celebration of object opacity, and Ian Bogost's Alien Phenomenology and his strategies to enact an object orientation. (2) These philosophers offer alternatives to user-centric instrumental thinking in service of efficiency and commercial dominance by fundamentally challenging our relationship with things in the world. Their perspectives utilize speculation as a way to attend to the opacity, the complexity and the specificity of things able to chart a claim of object agency and in turn human responsibility. Together these efforts release us from the dominance of categorical and instrumental thinking, making and using. Correspondingly, the concrete path of my argument relies on two design two examples that represent a range of design between universal ambition and local amplification: the globally branded Starbucks coffee cup, a standardized design object speculatively received and Marti Guixe's, The Solar Kitchen Restaurant for La pin Kulta (2011) a design project that reimagines the restaurant by structurally incorporating features of speculation. The project is described as a nature-driven restaurant experience that features flexibility and immediacy in a way that challenges consumers and the chef alike. (3) In both cases, I want to emphasize the advantage of a speculative perspective for makers as well as consumers, as both are responsible regarding how things are used and abused. [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] [FIGURE 2 OMITTED] Speculative philosophy and design emerges out of the need for alternative approaches attentive to the ethical demand of coexistence. A form of speculative philosophy, Object-oriented ontology allows us to consider things beyond phenomenological things-in-themselves, before and beyond human service as worth speculating about. Graham Harman's Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects is a helpful place to begin our search into how one can understand speculation and make it productive in relation to objects or things. In the book's introduction Harman writes of Heidegger's account of things as awaiting and practical philosophy: Insofar as the vast majority of these tools remain unknown to us, and were certainly not invented by us (for example, our brains and our blood cells), it can hardly be said that we use them in strict sense of the term. …

Realismo e obbiettivismo: Alexius Meinong

Meinong has become a central reference point in the contemporary revival of realism. However, prima facie, it might seem paradoxical to call him a realist since he explicitly wanted to do away with any kind of bias in favor of reality. It is therefore worth asking in which sense the Theory of Object, as far as it resolutely goes beyond reality, can be characterized as essentially realist. As a Brentanist the Austrian philosopher endorsed a strong realism with regard to empirical reality; in his view, this is the proper object of metaphysics. However, it seems more difficult to make sense of his realism in respect of those objects that are not real - and, as a matter of fact, of every kind of object - which he calls ‘objectivism’. This paper investigates the real meaning of such ‘objectivism’ and sees in that stance, beyond its superficial (neo- )Kantian features, an anti-Copernican revolution in philosophy that proclaims the unconditional precedence of the object over thought. Reading Meinong thus helps us to understand better what realism is.

Quantum Humeanism, or: Physicalism without Properties

In the recent literature, it has become clear that quantum physics does not refute Humeanism: Lewis's thesis of Humean supervenience can be literally true even in the light of quantum entanglement. This point has so far been made with respect to Bohm's quantum theory. Against this background, this paper seeks to achieve the following four results: (1) to generalize the option of quantum Humeanism from Bohmian mechanics to primitive ontology theories in general; (2) to show that this option applies also to classical mechanics; (3) to establish that it requires a commitment to matter as primitive stuff, but no commitment to natural properties (physicalism without properties); (4) to point out that by removing the commitment to properties, the stock metaphysical objections against Humeanism from quidditism and humility no longer apply. In that way, quantum physics strengthens Humeanism instead of refuting it.

Causally Redundant Social Objects

In Elder-Vass’s response to my critical discussion of his social ontology, it is maintained (1) that a social object is not identical with but is merely composed of its suitably interrelated parts, (2) that a social object is necessarily indistinguishable in terms of its causal capacities from its interrelated parts, and (3) that ontological individualism lacks an adequate ontological justification. In this reply, I argue that in view of (1) the so-called redescription principle defended by Elder-Vass ought to be reformulated and renamed; that the conjunction of (1) and (2) renders social objects causally redundant; and that ontological individualism can be coherently formulated and theoretically justified within Elder-Vass’s own metaphysics of objects with causal powers.

Hilbert's Inferno: Time Travel for the Damned

AbstractCombining time travel with certain kinds of supertask, this paper proposes a novel model for Hell. Temporally‐closed spacetimes allow otherwise impossible opportunities for material kinds of damnation and reveal surprising limitations on metaphysical objections to Hell. Prima facie, eternal damnation requires either infinite amounts of time or time for the damned to speed‐up arbitrarily. However, spatiotemporally finite ‘time travel’ universes can host unending personal torment for infinitely many physical beings, while keeping fixed finite limits on rates of temporal passage. Such ‘Hilbert's Inferno’ spacetimes suggest neither materialism nor the finitude of time and space need forbid Hell. A material Hell can be spatiotemporally finite yet eternal for its inhabitants. Hilbert's Inferno also sheds light on Hell's location and accessibility, and shows that some spacetimes are intrinsically better suited to punishment than reward.

Prolegomena to any future non-doxastic religion

AbstractI discuss some trends in recent philosophy of religion, focusing on J. L. Schellenberg's Prolegomena to a Philosophy of Religion. I pay special attention to Schellenberg's dual emphases on ‘the Ultimate’ as metaphysical object of inquiry and various non-doxastic states (‘faith that’, ‘faith in’) as psychological objects of inquiry. This view is contrasted throughout to what might be called a ‘liturgical’ orientation in philosophy of religion.

Free Will and Necker's Cube: Reason, Language and Top-Down Control in cognitive neuroscience

AbstractThe debates about human free will are traditionally the concern of metaphysics but neuroscientists have recently entered the field arguing that acts of the will are determined by brain events themselves causal products of other events. We examine that claim through the example of free or voluntary switch of perception in relation to the Necker cube. When I am asked to see the cube in one way, I decide whether I will follow the command (or do as I am asked) using skills that reason and language give to me and change my brain states accordingly. The voluntary shift of perspective in seeing the Necker cube this way or that exemplifies the top-down control exercised by a human being on the basis of the role of language and meaning in their activity. It also indicates the lived story that is at the centre of each human consciousness. In the third part of this essay, three arguments are used to undermine metaphysical objections to the very idea of top-down self control.