Metaphysical Picture Research Articles

Creation as divine absence: A metaphysical reframing of the problem of evil

Abstract The philosophical ‘problem of evil’ goes back at least as far as Epicurus and has remained a powerful argument against the existence of God in contemporary philosophy. The argument is rooted in apparent contradictions between God’s divine attributes and various conditions of human existence. But these contradictions arise only given certain assumptions of what we should expect both God and the world to be like given God’s existence. In this article, I argue that we can utilise the work of the twentieth-century French philosopher Simone Weil to craft a coherent metaphysical picture of God, creation, and suffering that rejects these common assumptions. Further, I contend that this picture very plausibly follows from commonly accepted tenets of traditional monotheism. Given this, I argue that this Weil-inspired framework provides serious reasons for reframing the problem of evil and its corresponding theodicies by presenting a radically different view of how God must relate to creation. Yet, this picture does not necessarily vindicate the theist. I argue that this picture may leave us with a new question about creation in the face of evil. Namely, is it possible to understand God’s initial creative act as Weil describes it – as an act of love?

Sacred Naturalism and Cosmic Unity: Seeking Harmony in the Midst of Chaos

Abstract This article argues for a version of sacred naturalism within the framework of a processual metaphysics that characterizes the cosmos as an interplay between Chaos (disunity) and Logos (unity). I argue that although creativity is highly valuable from the perspective of life and humanity, at a cosmic scale it is overshadowed by the universal tendencies toward conservation and destruction. Within this metaphysical picture I develop a naturalist notion of the sacred as a phenomenological object inspiring particularly intense feelings of inner harmony but functioning eudaemonically to strengthen mind, body, and soul against forms of Chaos, whether anomie, stress, or personal conflict. After developing some criteria for a sacred but immanent meta-unity in contrast to the transcendental unities of traditional religion, I describe how the unity of the cosmos might be experienced as a sacred object by emphasizing its heterarchical, aesthetic and life-affirming dimensions.

The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World

The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World

Davidsonian Metasemantics and Radical Interpretation

In the current debate on the metaphysical grounding of semantic properties Donald Davidson is usually taken to represent interpretationism, a stance according to which the meaning of expressions is metaphysically grounded by the process of assigning them semantic values which maximize certain parameters such as truth or rationality of the speaker. This stance is often contrasted with productivism, which takes circumstances of expression’s production, not interpretation, to ground its meaning. In this article, I argue that this widespread understanding of Davidson’s thought is false and that given such demarcation Davidson should be regarded as a productivist. To support my claim, I begin by briefly outlining the state of debate on metasemantics and main theses of Davidson’s program, and then I present three exegetical arguments against interpretationist reading of Davidson’s work. I conclude by reconstructing what I take to be the actual metaphysical picture of semantic properties emerging from Davidson’s work.

Standpoints: A Study of a Metaphysical Picture

There is a type of metaphysical picture that surfaces in a range of philosophical discussions, is of intrinsic interest, and yet remains ill-understood. According to this picture, the world contains a range of standpoints relative to which different facts obtain. Any true representation of the world cannot but adopt a particular standpoint. The aim of this paper is to propose a regimentation of a metaphysics that underwrites this picture. Key components are a factive notion of metaphysical relativity, a deflationary notion of adopting standpoints, and two kinds of valid inference, one that allows one to abandon standpoints and one that does not. To better understand how theories formulated in terms of this framework are situated in dialectical space, I sketch a theory in the philosophy of time that admits both temporal and atemporal standpoints.

The metaphysics of fibre bundles

Recently, Dewar (2019) has suggested that one can apply the strategy of ‘sophistication’—as exemplified by sophisticated substantivalism as a response to the diffeomorphism invariance of General Relativity—to gauge theories such as electrodynamics. This requires a shift to the formalism of fibre bundles. In this paper, I develop and defend this suggestion. Where my approach differs from previous discussions is that I focus on the metaphysical picture underlying the fibre bundle formalism. In particular, I aim to affirm the physical reality of gauge properties. I argue that this allows for a local and separable explanation of the Aharonov-Bohm effect. Its puzzling features are explained by a form of holism inherent to fibre bundles.

Does donor conception violate human dignity?

The moral acceptability of anonymous gamete donation remains contested. Although the view that the value of parent-child relationships should not depend on genetic ties is "nearly axiomatic" among philosophers and bioethicists, one well-known dissenter remains: David Velleman. I argue that most rebuttals to Velleman have simply talked past him because they have failed to understand his fundamental point-that donor conception is a violation of human dignity and as such is wrong even if it does not harm individuals. I challenge Velleman on his own terms by endorsing his metaphysical picture before showing that donor conception is not necessarily a violation of human dignity. I show this by arguing that gamete donation is held to a double standard of self-knowledge. I develop an account of the self that recognizes that certain kinds ofchallenges to one's flourishing can contribute to an individual's strength and self-knowledge. I defend my view against objections that genetic knowledge is categorically different from other ways of knowing oneself and I show that donor conception can respect human dignity as long as it meets certain conditions.

Minimalism, Trivialism, Aristotelianism

AbstractMinimalism and Trivialism are two recent forms of lightweight Platonism in the philosophy of mathematics: Minimalism is the view that mathematical objects arethinin the sense that “very little is required for their existence”, whereas Trivialism is the view that mathematical statements have trivial truth‐conditions, that is, that “nothing is required of the world in order for those conditions to be satisfied”. In order to clarify the relation between the mathematical and the non‐mathematical domain that these views envisage, it has recently been proposed that both Linnebo's notion of sufficiency and Rayo's “just is”‐operator can, or even should, be interpreted in terms of metaphysicalgrounding. This interpretation makes Minimalism and Trivialism akin to Aristotelianism in the philosophy of mathematics, according to which mathematical entities depend for their existence and their properties on non‐mathematical ones. In this paper we raise a general objection to this interpretation. We highlight a tension – a “Big Picture” Problem – between the metaphysical picture underlying both Minimalism and Trivialism, on the one side, and the metaphysics of Platonism and Aristotelianism on the other. We then consider various ways in which Linnebo and Rayo could respond. We finally argue that Minimalism and Trivialism are closer to Aristotelianism than to Platonism; however, even though these positions are not forms of traditional Platonism, they are not standard forms of Aristotelianism either.

Enduring senses

The meanings of words seem to change over time. But while there is a growing body of literature in linguistics and philosophy about meaning change, there has been little discussion about the metaphysical underpinnings of meaning change. The central aim of this paper is to push this discussion forward by surveying the terrain and advocating for a particular metaphysical picture. In so doing, we hope to clarify various aspects of the nature of meaning change, as well as prompt future philosophical investigation into this topic. More specifically, this paper has two parts. The first, broadly exploratory, part surveys various metaphysical accounts of meaning change. The goal here is to lay out the terrain, thereby highlighting some key choice points. Then, in the second part, after critiquing Prosser’s (Philosophy Phenomenol Res 100(3):657–676, 2020) exdurantism about ‘mental files’, we sketch and defend the enduring senses view of meaning change.

Unsettledness in times of change

If something changes from being in one state to being in another state, when exactly does it change? And what’s going on at that time? These questions are often discussed under the heading of the ‘moment’ or ‘instant’ of change. In this paper, I will investigate a view on which there is an intrinsically distinguished, atomic time at which something changes, and at that time it is metaphysically indeterminate what is the case. The background metaphysical picture is situationalism, a theory on which reality is composed of irreducibly conflicting parts. These conflicting parts give rise to unsettledness in reality as a whole, and also (I will suggest) at the point of change. I propose this view as a competitor for existing accounts of the time of change, and spell out a few reasons in its favour.

What are empirical consequences? On dispensability and composite objects

Philosophers sometimes give arguments that presuppose the following principle: two theories can fail to be empirically equivalent on the sole basis that they present different “thick” metaphysical pictures of the world. Recently, a version of this principle has been invoked to respond to the argument that composite objects are dispensable to our best scientific theories. This response claims that our empirical evidence distinguishes between ordinary and composite-free theories, and it empirically favors the ordinary ones (Hofweber 2016, 2018). In this paper, I ask whether this response to the dispensability argument is tenable. I claim that it is not. This is because it presupposes an indefensible thesis about when two empirical consequences are distinct or the same. My argument provides some insight into what our empirical consequences are, and I conclude that empirical evidence is radically metaphysically neutral. This gives us some insight into the significant content of our scientific theories—the content that a scientific realist is committed to—and I show how this insight relates to questions about theoretical equivalence more broadly.

Symmetries, Indexicality and the Perspectivist Stance

ABSTRACT I critically examine the assumption that the theoretical structure that varies under theoretical symmetries is redundant and should be eliminated from a metaphysical picture of the universe, following a ‘symmetry to reality’ inference. I do so by analysing the status of coordinate change symmetries taking a pragmatic approach. I argue that coordinate systems function as indexical devices, and play an important pragmatic role for representing concrete physical systems. I examine the implications of considering this pragmatic role seriously, taking what I call a perspectivist stance. My conclusion is that under a perspectivist stance, all symmetries (including local gauge symmetries) potentially have a direct empirical status: they point to dynamical aspects that are invariant under changes of operationalisation, and they constitute a guide not to reality, but to nomology and kinship.

¿Es la dinámica de Leibniz compatible con su monadología?

From the beginning of Leibniz’s dynamics, his program for a science of force, there was a metaphysics of body. When the program first emerged in the late 1670s, Leibniz argued that his science of force entailed the reestablishment of substantial form. But in the same period, Leibniz’s interest in genuine unities as the ultimate constituents of the world led him to posit a world of corporeal substances, bodies made one by virtue of a substantial form. In this way by the early 1680s, there seemed to be two convergent paths to a single metaphysics: the revival of substantial form. Over the years, both of these metaphysics evolved. By the mid 1690s, to substantial form, understood as active force, the dynamical metaphysics added materia prima, understood as passive force. Meanwhile unities that ground the world evolved from corporeal substances to monads, now considered non-extended, mindlike, and the ultimate constituents of things. When this happened, I argue, it was no longer obvious that these two metaphysical pictures were still consistent with one another: the dynamical metaphysics, grounded in force, and the metaphysics of unity, now understood in terms of monads, seemed increasingly to be in tension with one another.

Classical Logic in the Quantum Context

It is generally accepted that quantum mechanics entails a revision of the classical propositional calculus as a consequence of its physical content. However, the universal claim according to which a new quantum logic is indispensable in order to model the propositions of every quantum theory is challenged. In the present essay, we critically discuss this claim by showing that classical logic can be rehabilitated in a quantum context by taking into account Bohmian mechanics. It will be argued, indeed, that such a theoretical framework provides the necessary conceptual tools to reintroduce a classical logic of experimental propositions by virtue of its clear metaphysical picture and its theory of measurement. More precisely, it will be shown that the rehabilitation of a classical propositional calculus is a consequence of the primitive ontology of the theory, a fact that is not yet sufficiently recognized in the literature concerning Bohmian mechanics. This work aims to fill this gap.

Can the Epistemic Value of Natural Kinds Be Explained Independently of Their Metaphysics?

The account of natural kinds as stable property clusters is premised on the possibility of separating the epistemic value of natural kinds from their underlying metaphysics. On that account, (i) the co-instantiation of any sub-cluster of the properties associated with a given natural kind raises the probability of the co-instantiation of the rest, and (ii) this clustering of property instantiation is invariant under all relevant counterfactual perturbations. We argue that it is not possible to evaluate the stability of a cluster of properties without taking stock of the metaphysical picture used to account for that stability. Thus, even on the stable property cluster account, the epistemic value of natural kinds remains partly grounded in their metaphysical status.

Absolute space and Newton's theory of relativity

Newton's metaphysical picture of space and time provides the conceptual background for his theory of motion. Philosophical discussions of absolute space and time, however, underemphasize Newton's concern with the relativity of motion. From a modern perspective, this is usually seen as a concern that Newton himself did not take seriously enough, especially in comparison with contemporaries such as Huygens and Leibniz. In one sense, however, Newton pursued the problem of the relativity of motion further than his contemporary critics. In fact, while they defended the relativity of motion as a general principle, only Newton tried to develop what may legitimately be called a theory of relativity: a systematic theoretical account of what is objective in the description of physical interactions, and a principled distinction between the objective properties and those that depend on the choice of a frame of reference. On this basis Newton articulated, more clearly than any of his contemporaries, the conceptual revisions imposed by the relativity of motion on prevailing notions of force, inertia, and causality. We can see this from the history of his use of the Galilean relativity principle, which became Corollary V to the Laws of Motion. Moreover, while his critics demanded a mechanistic alternative to his theory of gravitation, Newton not only saw the empirical power of his theory, and its exemplary power for the theory and practice of physics in general; he also saw that the peculiar nature of gravity placed the problem of the relativity of motion in a dramatically new light. This is seen in his development and use of Corollary VI.By studying the progress of Newton's thought about these relativity principles, and the profound changes in his views between early manuscripts such as De Gravitatione and the first drafts of the Principia, we can see why Newton did not regard them as undermining his aim to determine “the true motions” in the solar system. On the contrary, he saw it as enabling him to separate the local problem of “true motion” for a given system of bodies, from the global problem of how that system might be moving with respect to absolute space. In other words, Newton, having acknowledged that absolute space is unobservable, and motion with respect to it therefore unknowable, nonetheless could solve the problem of “the system of the world.” Indeed, the history of his thinking shows that Newton introduced the theory of absolute space precisely in order to articulate his theory of relativity. Newton's use of relativity principles sheds light on the relation between mathematical principles and causal explanation in physics.

Relativism, realism, and subjective facts

Relativists make room for the possibility of “faultless disagreement” by positing the existence of subjective propositions, i.e. propositions true from some points of view and not others. We discuss whether the adoption of this position with respect to a certain domain of discourse is compatible with a realist attitude towards the matters arising in that domain. At first glance, the combination of relativism and realism leads to an unattractive metaphysical picture on which reality comprises incoherent facts. We will sketch the contours of a realist-relativist position called “subjectivism”, which avoids this result by giving up the assumption that the points of view of different subjects are all metaphysically “on a par”.

Mentaculus Laws and Metaphysics

The laws of nature are central to our understanding of the world. And while there is often broad agreement about the technical formulations of the laws, there can be sharp disagreement about the metaphysical nature of the laws. For instance, the Newtonian laws of nature can be stated and analyzed by appealing to a set of possible worlds. Yet, some philosophers argue the worlds are mere notational devices, while others take them to be robust, concrete entities in their own right. In this paper, I use a recent view of laws called the Mentaculus as a case study to illustrate the wide variety of metaphysical pictures that can accompany such a view. I conclude that the technical features of the laws -- typically (though not always) given to us by practicing scientists -- are compatible with many different metaphysical foundations.

Does the temporal asymmetry of value support a tensed metaphysics?

There are temporal asymmetries in our attitudes towards the past and future. For example, we judge that a given amount of work is worth twice as much if it is described as taking place in the future, compared to the past (Caruso et al. in Psychol Sci 19(8):796–801, 2008). Does this temporal value asymmetry support a tensed metaphysics? By getting clear on the asymmetry’s features, I’ll argue that it doesn’t. To support a tensed metaphysics, the value asymmetry would need to (a) not vary with temporal distance, (b) apply equally to events concerning oneself and others, and (c) be rational and judged to be so. But evidence suggests the value asymmetry lacks these features. There are, moreover, independent arguments against its rationality. The asymmetry’s features suggest instead that it arises as an emotion-driven generalisation from a temporal bias concerning our future actions. This explanation points towards mechanisms that can play a role in explaining other instances where we generalise about the past and future, and why we’re tempted towards metaphysical pictures of time.

Three Varieties of Growing Block Theory

Growing Block (GB) theorists are committed, roughly, to two theses: (1) that past and present events exist and that future events do not, and (2) that the present is dynamic and constantly changing. These two theses support a picture of the universe as growing, gaining in more and more things and events, as these recede into the past; but the two theses do not specify how the growth of the block is to be understood (Q1); what status the past is supposed to have compared to the present (Q2); and what should be taken to be the fundamental constituents of the spatio-temporal reality (Q3). In my paper I argue that getting clearer on these three questions—Q1, Q2, and Q3—will give us very different metaphysical pictures. I distinguish between three variants of the growing block theory: the Fourdimensional Growing Block which goes back to C.D. Broad; the Dead Past Growing Block which is currently defended by Forrest and Forbes; and the Growing Events theory, which draws on some of Whitehead’s ideas on processes. I flesh out each of these variants of the GB view, examine the most urgent challenges to their respective metaphysical pictures, and offer suggestions as to how these challenges can be positively addressed.