Metaphysical Picture Research Articles

On Explaining Everything

This work explores foundational issues related to many-worlds theories in Cosmology. It is argued that the metaphysical picture drawn by these theories arise from metaphysical assumptions made during their formulation—most of which are problematic. I elucidate the nature of these assumptions and examine their legitimacy. I conclude the metaphysical presuppositions responsible for the apparent reliability of many-worlds theories in Cosmology are unmotivated and unwarranted by evidence. On this basis, the questions many-worlds models in Cosmology attempt to solve turn out to be a non-starter because their presupposed metaphysical grounding is ill-founded.

Intrinsic Dispositional Properties and Immanent Realism

Tugby (2013a) and Yates (2016) have recently argued that immanent realism is incompatible with the existence of intrinsic but (at least partially) relationally constituted genuine dispositional properties. The success of Tugby’s and Yates’ arguments depends either on a strong or on a weak assumption about the interworld identity of dispositional properties. In this paper, the author evaluates the strength of the arguments in question under those two assumptions. He also offers an alternative metaphysical picture for the fundamental dispositional properties which rejects these assumptions and, consequently, undermines the arguments themselves.

The sense of temporal flow: a higher-order account

We seem to experience time as flowing. Yet according to the leading metaphysical picture of time, the block-universe theory, time in fact does not flow. Block-lovers typically react to this apparent tension by unhitching the sense of flow in our temporal experience from temporal reality, holding that temporal experience is systematically illusory. I shall develop a new block-friendly account of the sense of flow, which preserves a match of temporal experience and temporal reality. According to this account, the sense of flow arises from higher-order temporal experience.

Ignorance Lost: A Reply to Yaffe on the Culpability of Willful Ignorance

In a recent paper in this journal, Gideon Yaffe provides an expected utility model of culpability in order to explain why willfully ignorant misconduct sometimes is just as culpable as knowing misconduct. Although promising, I argue here that challenges remain for Yaffe’s view. First, I argue that Yaffe’s proof of the equal culpability of willful ignorance and knowledge is not watertight in certain realistic cases. Next, I argue that Yaffe’s view of culpability is motive-sensitive in a way that sits uncomfortably with criminal law doctrine, and I show that his view has difficulty with unjustified actions that are nonetheless privileged. Perhaps these problems can be solved by modifying Yaffe’s account using the notion of legally recognized reasons. However, I argue that difficulties remain when it comes to implementing this solution into Yaffe’s mathematical model. Finally, I raise concerns about Yaffe’s account of willful ignorance in particular. While his view initially seems to have a major advantage over the additive picture of willful ignorance I’ve defended, this advantage does not stand up under scrutiny. In fact, Yaffe likely relies (albeit covertly) on an additive metaphysical picture of willful ignorance as well.

Generics and ways of being normal

This paper is concerned with the semantics of bare plural I-generics such as ‘Tigers are striped’, ‘Chickens lay eggs’, and ‘Kangaroos live in Australia’. In a series of recent papers, Bernhard Nickel has developed a comprehensive view of a certain class of bare plural I-generics, which he calls characterizing sentences (Nickel in Linguist Philos 31(6):629–648, 2009. doi:10.1007/s10988-008-9049-7; Linguist Philos 33(6):479–512, 2010a. doi:10.1007/s10988-011-9087-4; Philos Impr 10(6):1–25, 2010b). Nickel’s ambitious proposal includes a detailed account of their truth-conditions, an account of certain pragmatic phenomena that they give rise to, a metaphysical picture of their truth-makers in terms of mechanisms, and an epistemological story connecting characterizing sentences to such concepts as induction and explanation. This paper offers an extended critique of the central truth-conditional component of Nickel’s proposal. In a nutshell, his account has it that ‘Tigers are striped’ is true iff, for tigers, there is a way of being normal with respect to fur-pattern such that all tigers that are normal that way are striped. I begin by explaining what characterizing sentences are and distinguish several readings that are available for sentences with bare plurals in subject position. I then introduce Nickel’s account and discuss some of its predictions which, in my view, seem highly problematic. Moreover, I argue that Nickel’s principle of Homogeneity does not go together well with his proposed truth-conditions, and that his truth-conditional account violates a plausible principle about the logic of generics, a principle I call generic non-contradiction.

The metaphysics of goodness in the ethics of Aristotle

Kraut (Against absolute goodness. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011) and other neo-Aristotelians have argued that there is no such thing as absolute goodness. They admit only good in a kind, e.g. a good sculptor, and good for something, e.g. good for fish. What is the view of Aristotle? Mostly limiting myself to the Nicomachean Ethics (NE), I argue that Aristotle is committed to things being absolutely good and also to a metaphysics of absolute goodness where there is a maximally best good that is the cause of the goodness of all other things in virtue of being their end. I begin (in Sect. 2) by suggesting that the notion of good as an end, which is present in the first lines of the NE, is not obviously accounted for by good in a kind or good for something. I then give evidence that good in a kind (in Sect. 3) and good for something (in Sect. 4) can explain neither certain distinctions drawn between virtues nor the determinacy ascribed to what is good “in itself.” I argue (in Sect. 5) contra Gotthelf (2012) that because several important arguments in the Nicomachean Ethics rely on comparative judgments of absolute value—e.g. “Man is the best of all animals”—Aristotle is committed to the existence of both absolute goodness and an absolutely best being. I focus (in Sect. 6) on one passage, Aristotle’s division of goods in NE I 12, which presupposes this metaphysical picture.

Towards a teleo-semiotic theory of individuation

Abstract This article attempts to develop a sketch or working model of a semiotic theory of individuation from a formalization of basic teleological structures. After caveats and provisional definitions, a formal apparatus is introduced that schematizes teleological structures by way of mathematical category theory. This is then combined with a commutation test for formal systems. Once the formal construction is sufficient, the extent to which the model can account for the operation by which objects, modes, kinds, and attributes become individuated from the “pure multiplicity” of indeterminate being is analyzed. Subsequently, the model is applied to a series of well-known problems in metaphysics and ontology – persistence, change, vagueness, coincidence, mereology, and universals – in order to demonstrate its effectiveness. The metaphysical picture that results from this application is positioned between the conventional extremes of realism and anti-realism: a semiotic anti-/realism. Empirical evidence is then also marshalled in support of the model by way of invocation and analysis of recent research into the development of the perceptual capacities of infants.

The Relation between God and the World in the Pre-Critical Kant: Was Kant a Spinozist?

AbstractAndrew Chignell and Omri Boehm have recently argued that Kant’s pre-Critical proof for the existence of God entails a Spinozistic conception of God and hence substance monism. The basis for this reading is the assumption common in the literature that God grounds possibilities by exemplifying them. In this article I take issue with this assumption and argue for an alternative Leibnizian reading, according to which possibilities are grounded in essences united in God’s mind (later also described as Platonic ideas intuited by God). I show that this view about the distinction between God’s cognition of essences as the ground of possibility and the actual world is not only explicitly stated by Kant, but is also consistent with his metaphysical picture of teleology in nature and causality during the pre-Critical period. Finally, I suggest that the distinction between the conceptual order of essences embodied in the idea of God and the order of the objects of experience plays a role in the transition into the Critical system, where it is transformed into the distinction between the intelligible and the sensible worlds.

An elegant universe

David Lewis famously endorsed Unrestricted Composition. His defense of such a controversial principle builds on the alleged innocence of mereology. This innocence defense has come under different attacks in the last decades. In this paper I pursue another line of defense, that stems from some early remarks by van Inwagen. I argue that Unrestricted Composition leads to a better metaphysics. In particular I provide new arguments for the following claims: Unrestricted Composition entails extensionality of composition, functionality of location and four-dimensionalism in the metaphysics of persistence. Its endorsement yields an impressively coherent and powerful metaphysical picture. This picture shows a universe that might not be innocent but it is certainly elegant.

Indefinite Divisibility

Some hold that the lesson of Russell’s paradox and its relatives is that mathematical reality does not form a ‘definite totality’ but rather is ‘indefinitely extensible’. There can always be more sets than there ever are. I argue that certain contact puzzles are analogous to Russell’s paradox this way: they similarly motivate a vision of physical reality as iteratively generated. In this picture, the divisions of the continuum into smaller parts are ‘potential’ rather than ‘actual’. Besides the intrinsic interest of this metaphysical picture, it has important consequences for the debate over absolute generality. It is often thought that ‘indefinite extensibility’ arguments at best make trouble for mathematical platonists; but the contact arguments show that nominalists face the same kind of difficulty, if they recognize even the metaphysical possibility of the picture I sketch.

Retrocausality at no extra cost

One obstacle faced by proposals of retrocausal influences in quantum mechanics is the perceived high conceptual cost of making such a proposal. I assemble here a metaphysical picture consistent with the possibility of retrocausality and not precluded by the known physical structure of our reality. This picture employs two relatively well-established positions—the block universe model of time and the interventionist account of causation—and requires the dismantling of our ordinary asymmetric causal intuition and our ordinary intuition about epistemic access to the past. The picture is then built upon an existing model of agent deliberation that permits us to strike a harmony between our causal intuitions and the fixity of the block universe view. I conclude that given the right mix of these reasonable metaphysical and epistemological ingredients there is no conceptual cost to such a retrocausal picture of quantum mechanics.

The Selves of Social Animals: Comments on Gruen

AbstractIn this commentary on Lori Gruen's “Death as a Social Harm,” I first lay out the basics of Gruen's argument, then I offer some critical discussion, and finally I explore whether there might be some metaphysical structure that would support her most provocative idea—that death harms our social selves. What would it take for this idea to be more than metaphor, so that when a loved one dies a part of me has died? In constructing one possibility, I draw from the distinction between identity and what matters in identity to paint a picture of social selves whose relationships are constructed out of the tendrils of psychological connectedness and continuity that serve to unite different stages of single persons. I conclude by exploring whether this metaphysical picture is sufficient to generate the conclusions at which Gruen aims.

The Role of the Holy Will

AbstractIt is well known that Kant uses the notion of the holy will in theGroundworkso as to contrast it with the finite wills of human beings. It is less clear, however, what function this contrast is supposed to perform. I argue that one role of the holy will is to illustrate transcendental idealism’s account of the relation between moral knowledge and moral practice. The position is one intended to negotiate between ostensibly competing traditions. Kant uses the holy will as a way of endorsing the metaphysical picture of the scholastic tradition’s so-called ‘ethics of freedom’, whereby the ideal of moral perfection is conceived as the perfection of one’s power of freedom to the point where one is constitutively incapable of immoral action. This position is married however with the claim that the holy will’s inaccessibility to human cognition motivates a subject-oriented moral epistemology more usually associated with Enlightenment humanism. I conclude by claiming that the nuanced role for the holy will can be understood as part of Kant’s expansion of the value of religious faith [Glaube] to the domain of practical inquiry in general.

I—Amber D. Carpenter: Ethics of Substance

Aristotle bequeathed to us a powerful metaphysical picture, of substances in which properties inhere. The picture has turned out to be highly problematic in many ways; but it is nevertheless a picture not easy to dislodge. Less obvious are the normative tones implicit in the picture and the way these permeate our system of values, especially when thinking of ourselves and our ambitions, hopes and fears. These have proved, if anything, even harder to dislodge than the metaphysical picture which supports them. This paper first draws out the ethics suggested by a conception of being as individual substances, and finds both inner tensions among these values—expressed in divergent characteristics in the history of philosophy—and a neglect of a significant set of values. Substance metaphysics prefers freedom, independence and autonomy over relational and reciprocal values, which can even be regarded as existentially threatening. A prominent attempt to accommodate both sorts of values without eschewing substantialist metaphysics is briefly considered, before turning to examine an alternative metaphysics and the values it implies. A metaphysics which takes being as becoming, it is argued, supports an ethics centred on relational values, and their associated virtues of care.

Metaistorijska projekcija rata Miloša Crnjanskog

The Great War triggered the establishment of the Serbian literary avant-garde, which was determined against tradition, history, and conventional aesthetics. With a completely new expression, writers of the literary avant-garde articulated the change of consciousness about the world, metamorphosis of the narrative structure of the text, and the modernization of the novelistic form. In the context of the European literature, as well as the Anglo-American, the return of the soldiers from the war was the prominent topic in the works of the so-called 'Lost generation' (Gertrude Stein, E. Hemingway and S. Fitzgerald). The themes of war also occupied writers such as W. Faulkner, T. Wolfe and H. Miller. The greatest poet of the Serbian literature between the two world wars, Miloš Crnjanski, presented the suprahistorical projection of the war and considered the return of the soldiers to be the saddest event in a man's life. The first Serbian modern, lyrical novel, 'Journal of Čarnojević' (Dnevnik o Čarnojeviću), gives a metaphysical picture of history and intimately understood picture of the wartime world, nation and being. This paper follows Crnjanski's views on history and war through the main character, Petar Rajić, and his counterpart of sorts, Čarnojević. Poetics of this modernistic text rests on the fictionalization of fact, metaphorization of war and aestheticization of history. As a resigned pacifist and disappointed melancholic, Rajić perceives the war completely anti-traditionally in comparison to a hero of a classical history novel. Visualization of events and the relativization of war and chronotope in the lyrical discourse of Miloš Crnjanski allow history to disperse into poetry, into the essence of being and the ontological plane of this metahistorical novel.

‘A Series of Generations’: Leibniz on Race

Summary In some very interesting recent work, Peter Fenves has sought to trace G. W. Leibniz's views on human diversity back to the philosopher's core philosophical concerns, in particular to his metaphysical picture of the world as consisting in causally unconnected substances, monads, that are ‘windowless’, ‘worlds apart’. In this article I argue by contrast that Leibniz's anthropological views develop quite independently of his core metaphysics, and are rooted instead in his significant work as a historian and genealogist. In this connection, he develops a conception of race as a ‘series of generations’, and of genealogy as ‘the explication of this series’, that will in turn ground much of his thought about not just human groups, but about living kinds in general. These conceptions, moreover, offer significant new insight into Leibniz's position with respect to the philosophical problem of the ontological status of species.

Actuality and the amodal perspective

In this paper, I examine our intuitive understanding of metaphysical contingency, and ask what features a metaphysical picture must possess in order to satisfy our intuitions about modal matters. After spelling out what I think are the central intuitions in this domain, I examine the debate between the two most widely held views on the nature of modality, namely, modal realism and modal actualism. I argue that while each of these views is able to accommodate some of our intuitions, it leaves others unsatisfied. I then present an alternative metaphysical picture, which I argue can accommodate our intuitions in a way that the traditional views cannot. More specifically, I argue that our intuitions about modality call for a pluralist view of the structure of reality—a view on which there is more than one ultimate ‘shape’ to the fundamental facts, each corresponding to a distinct metaphysically privileged perspective on reality.

Receptivity and Phenomenal Self-Knowledge

In this article, I argue that an epistemic question about knowledge of our own phenomenal states encourages a certain metaphysical picture of consciousness according to which phenomenal states are reflexive mental representations. Section 1 describes and motivates the thesis that phenomenal self-knowledge is ‘receptive’: that is, the view that a subject has knowledge of their phenomenal states only insofar as they are inwardly affected by those states. In Sections 2 and 3, I argue that this model of phenomenal self-knowledge is unable to accommodate knowledge of our own phenomenology or knowledge of our own awareness. In Section 4, I seek a non-receptive model of phenomenal self-knowledge. I argue that Kriegel’s (2009) Self-Representationalist theory of consciousness is uniquely equipped to show how phenomenal self-knowledge is possible.

TRUTH WITHOUT CONTRA(DI)CTION

The concept oftrutharguably plays a central role in many areas of philosophical theorizing. Yet, what seems to be one of the most fundamental principles governing that concept, i.e. the equivalence between ‘ ‘P’ is true’ and ‘P’, is inconsistent in full classical logic, as shown by thesemantic paradoxes. I propose a new solution to those paradoxes, based on a principled revision of classical logic. Technically, the key idea consists in the rejection of the unrestricted validity of the structural principle ofcontraction. I first motivate philosophically this idea with the metaphysical picture of the states-of-affairs expressed by paradoxical sentences as being distinctively “unstable”. I then proceed to demonstrate that the theory of truth resulting from this metaphysical picture is, in many philosophically interesting respects, surprisingly stronger than most other theories of truth endorsing the equivalence between ‘ ‘P’ is true’ and ‘P’ (for example, the theory vindicates the validity of the traditional laws ofexcluded middleand ofnon-contradiction, and also vindicates the traditional constraint oftruth preservationon logical consequence). I conclude by proving acuteliminationtheorem that shows the consistency of the theory.

Two Styles of Reasoning in Scientific Practices: Experimental and Mathematical Traditions

This article outlines a philosophy of science in practice that focuses on the engineering sciences. A methodological issue is that these practices seem to be divided by two different styles of scientific reasoning, namely, causal-mechanistic and mathematical reasoning. These styles are philosophically characterized by what Kuhn called ‘disciplinary matrices’. Due to distinct metaphysical background pictures and/or distinct ideas of what counts as intelligible, they entail distinct ideas of the character of phenomena and what counts as a scientific explanation. It is argued that the two styles cannot be reduced to each other. At the same time, although they are incompatible, they must not be regarded as competing. Instead, they produce different kinds of epistemic results, which serve different kinds of epistemic functions. Moreover, some scientific breakthroughs essentially result from relating them. This view of complementary styles of scientific reasoning is supported by pluralism about metaphysical background pictures.