Metaphysical Questions Research Articles

The failures of functionalism (for memory)

In Memory: A Self-Referential Account, Fernández offers a functionalist account of the metaphysics of memory, which is portrayed as presenting significant advantages over causal and narrative theories of memory. In this paper, I present a series of challenges for Fernández’s functionalism. There are issues with both the particulars of the account and the use of functionalism more generally. First, in characterizing the mnemonic role of episodic remembering, Fernández fails to make clear how the mental image type that plays this role should be identified. Second, I argue that a functionalist approach, which appeals to the overall structure of the memory system and tendencies of mental state types, is ill-suited to the metaphysical question about episodic remembering that is of interest to the causal and narrative theorists with which Fernandez engages. Fernández’s self-referential account of memory has many other virtues, but functionalism is a poor fit for episodic remembering.

An apology for conflicts between metaphysics and science in naturalized metaphysics

According to naturalized metaphysics, metaphysics should be informed by our current best science and not rely on a priori reasoning. Consequently, naturalized metaphysics tends to dismiss metaphysicians’ attempts to quarrel with science. This paper argues that naturalized metaphysics should instead welcome such conflicts between metaphysics and science. Naturalized metaphysics is not (and should not be) eliminative of metaphysics. So, if such conflicts are driven by the immediate absence in science of an answer to a metaphysical question, then the conflict should not be dismissed, but instead be received as an occasion to do (more) naturalized metaphysics. That conflicts between metaphysics and science might be beneficial for naturalized metaphysics is exemplified by the case of non-spatial theories of quantum gravity. These theories are criticized by metaphysicians who, often following David Lewis, argue that spatial distance is an indispensable fundamental element in any coherent metaphysics due to its role as the world-making relation. The resulting conflict, however, is found to be well-motivated since the non-spatial theories of quantum gravity offer no alternative world-making relation to spatial distance. Rather than dismissing this conflict, naturalized metaphysics should therefore receive the Lewisians’ resistance as a call to search for one. How this plays out as a negotiation between the scientific theory and the metaphysical question is exemplified in the last part of the paper where entanglement is proposed as an alternative world-making relation in loop quantum gravity.

Bodily Rights in Personal Ventilators?

ABSTRACTThis article asks whether personal ventilators should be redistributed to maximize lives saved in emergency condition, like the COVID‐19 pandemic. It begins by examining extant claims that items like ventilators are literally parts of their user's bodies. Arguments in favor of incorporation for ventilators fail to show that they meet valid sufficient conditions to be body parts, but arguments against incorporation also fail to show that they fail to meet clearly valid necessary conditions. Further progress on this issue awaits clarification of difficult normative, conceptual, and metaphysical questions about the possible boundaries of a person's body. Rather than relying solely on incorporation arguments, we propose an argument against reallocation from widely accepted anti‐discrimination principles. Possession of a personal ventilator is an obvious marker of disability identity; thus, reallocating ventilators from those that already possess them discriminates on the basis of a stigmatized trait – a paradigm case of presumptively wrongful discrimination. This discrimination claim, taken together with uncertainty about the bodily status of ventilators, yields a strong presumption against personal ventilator reallocation.

Mind and the Cosmic Order: How the Mind Creates the Features & Structure of All Things, and Why this Insight Transforms Physics

Mind and the Cosmic Order: How the Mind Creates the Features & Structure of All Things, and Why this Insight Transforms Physics

Subtle Insights Concerning Knowledge and Practice

Subtle Insights Concerning Knowledge and Practice

What Do Easy Inferences Get Us?

AbstractIn Ontology Made Easy (2015), I defend the idea that there are ‘easy’ inferences that begin from uncontroversial premises and end with answers to disputed ontological questions. But what do easy inferences really get us? Bueno and Cumpa (this journal, 2020) argue that easy inferences don’t tell us about the natures of properties—they don’t tell us what properties are. Moreover, they argue, by accepting an ontologically neutral quantifier we can also resist the conclusion that properties or numbers exist. Here I address these two issues in turn—in ways that help clarify both the scope and results of easy ontology.First, it is important to see that easy inferences were never intended to address modal questions. Modal questions are addressed by a different part of the total deflationary view—modal normativism. So understood, metaphysical modal questions nonetheless do not provide a remaining area for serious metaphysical inquiry. Second, I argue that we have reason to resist adopting an ontologically neutral quantifier, if we aim to answer ontological questions (without begging the question). Addressing these issues helps to clarify both what does (and does not) follow from easy inferences, and how they form part of a larger deflationary metametaphysical view.

Диалектика творения и проективная структура пространства

The article considers creationism as a historically relevant principle in the scientific and philosophic aspects denoting the ontological structure of the world. Outside of the religious interpretation, the author speaks of the dialectics of creation, which is revealed as an implicative connection of the one and nothing. Logical inversion (logical turn), acting from within this implicative connection, is postulated as the principle of a fundamental negation, which, according to the author, forms the true and dramatic essence of the world as a creation. The author distances himself from the widespread discussion between evolutionism and scientific creationism, stating that it does not correspond to the very subject of creationism, understood as the implication of a real from nothing. The author focuses on considering ‘nothing’ as a purely dialectical / metaphysical principle and relies partly on the Hegel’s dialectic of ‘being’ and ‘nothing’, and partly on the neoplatonic concept of the one. Rejecting the medieval interpretation of the temporal beginning and the Hegel’s identity, he deduces a scheme of the logical connection between the one and the difference, which postulates the inversion (turnover) forming the creation - the one and the difference disjunctively change places, the one becomes the real, and the difference out of the one becomes nothing. It is argued that this postulate, in particular, refutes the thesis about the ‘fall into sin’. In the second part of the article, a spatial-phenomenological hypothesis is presented: the author provides a description of the space as a geometrical-semantic plane (projective structure). This hypothesis follows from the phenomenological problem of the duality of a geometric object, which results in the problem of ontological transition between a point and a line (in the aporia of the Eleats) and the related problem of spatial congruence / parallelism. According to the author, the potential for solving these not essentially mathematical, but metaphysical questions is the projective geometry, in which parallel lines intersect at ‘point at infinity’, and space is complemented by the ‘plane at infinity’. The essence of the solution consists, firstly, in the assumption of the single plane, which underlies the transition, and secondly, in the description of the perceived world as a result of a specific turn over and closure of this plane, forming the projective structure. The key in this part is the demonstration of the surface of a three-dimensional object as a phenomenon of perceptual-semantic unfolding, which can be imagined as an action of consciousness, consistently reducing the usual scheme. An important aspect of considering the projective structure is the correlation with ‘the Plane’ by G. Deleuze. The general idea of the article is that the dialectical scheme of creation and the projective structure of the space coincide: the logical inversion (logical turn), acting in connection of the one and nothing, and projective structural turnover – are the same things.

Сomparative analysis of female images in F.M. Dostoevsky’s and J. Fowles’s novels (based on the novels of Dostoevsky “Crime and Punishment”, “The Brothers Karamazov” and Fowles “The Collector”, “The Mistress of a French Lieutenant”, “The Magus”)

The purpose of the article is the comparative analysis of female images in F.M. Dostoevsky’s and J. Fowles’s novels. The basic method applied in given research is the method of the comparative analysis F.M. Dostoevsky’s and J. Fowles’s novels. Dostoevsky and Fowles are in searches of root of all evil. Both of them are assured that in human spirit are indissolubly merged kindly and angrily, God and Satan. In a shower of hero Dostoevsky indissolubly merge “an ideal of the Madonna” with “an ideal Sodom”. The woman is present at a life of the man as elements. The woman is only temptation and passion of men. In female images of the writer, unlike man’s characters, there is no change at soul level. Unlike Dostoevsky, products of Fowles testify to constant interest of the writer to a problematic “eternal feminist”. In novels of Fowles of the woman have the personal space. Dostoevsky’s heroes submit to life laws; they through great suffering come to humility. But heroes of Fowles to themselves create laws and submit only to the rules. The article contains important conceptual conclusions on the problems of the realistic novel of the 19th century and the postmodern novel of the 20th centuries, defines the peculiarities of the traditions of F.M. Dostoevsky and J. Fowles. The presented work provides an opportunity to take a fresh look at the cult works written in the 19th–20th centuries. F.M. Dostoevsky as the “founder” of neo-mythological consciousness — the cultural paradigm of the 20th century — gave J. Fowles valuable “tips” against the background of modern literary thought and his comparison with the mythopoetic thought of the English writer was especially embodied in mythological premises associated with the sphere of deepest questions of ethics and religious metaphysics.

AN ANALYSIS OF THE CONCEPT OF ULTIMATE REALITY FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF VIVEKANANDA

Vivekananda is one of the Neo-Vedantin or contemporary Indian Philosophers who has got influenced by the Vedānta philosophy and used its philosophy in practical life for human welfare. Vivekananda considers the metaphysical question regarding the status of the Ultimate Reality as an important matter of discussion without which human life would be purposeless. Such metaphysical knowledge comes to man when he goes beyond the circle of reason or physical plane. Vivekananda’s Neo-Vedanta is a discussion of such metaphysical views. The concept of Ultimate Reality is here understood in the sense of both nirguṇa and saguṇa Brahman i.e., God without name and form and with name and form. However, in the present paper, the aim is to focus on the concept of Ultimate Reality both from the transcendental and empirical standpoint and to check whether the status of the nirguṇa Brahman and saguṇa Brahman are identical or different.

A pragmatic approach to the ontology of models

What are scientific models? Philosophers of science have been trying to answer this question during the last three decades by putting forward a number of different proposals. Some say that models are best understood as abstract Platonic objects or fictional entities akin to Sherlock Holmes, while others focus on their mathematical nature and see them as set theoretical structures. Although each account has its own strengths in offering various insights on the nature of models, several objections have been raised against these views which still remain unanswered, making the debate on the ontology of models seem unresolvable. The primary aim of this paper is to show that a large part of these difficulties stems from an inappropriate reading of the main question on the ontology of models as a purely metaphysical question. Building on Carnap, it is argued that the question of the ontology of scientific models is either (i) an internal theoretical question within an already accepted linguistic framework or (ii) an external practical question regarding the choice of the most appropriate form of language in order to describe and explain the practice of scientific modelling. The main implication of this view is that the question of the ontology of models becomes a means of probing other related questions regarding the overall practice of scientific modelling, such as questions on the capacity of models to provide knowledge and the relation of models with background theories.

The One-System View and Dworkin’s Anti-Archimedean Eliminativism

Many of Dworkin’s interlocutors saw his ‘one-system view’, according to which law is a branch of morality, as a radical shift. I argue that it is better seen as a different way of expressing his longstanding view that legal theory is an inherently normative endeavor. Dworkin emphasizes that fact and value are separate domains, and one cannot ground claims of one sort in the other domain. On this view, legal philosophy can only answer questions from within either domain. We cannot ask metaphysical questions about which domain law ‘properly’ belongs in; these would be archimedean, and Dworkin has long argued against archimedeanism. The one-system view, then, is best understood as an invitation to join Dworkin in asking moral questions from within the domain of value. Finally, I argue that Dworkin’s view can be understood as a version of ‘eliminativism’, a growing trend in legal philosophy.

Sociology of a disciplinary bifurcation: Bruno Latour and his move from philosophy/theology to sociology in the early 1970s

This article analyzes Bruno Latour’s transition from theology to sociology between the late 1960s and the mid-1970s. The study cross-analyzes the philosophical field of the 1970s with the progress of interaction rituals specific to disciplinary integration. By examining his Master’s degree in philosophy and a lecture carried out during his thesis, plus the report of his stay in Ivory Coast, it is possible to identify several stages of a disciplinary bifurcation. First anchored to the metaphysical sector of the philosophical field, Latour – like his masters André Malet, Jean Brun and Claude Bruaire – tried to dissolve the boundary between philosophy and theology. Nourished with Rudolf Bultmann’s hermeneutics – which generates a particularly powerful emotional energy –, the young philosopher drew from the new theological resources provided by Vatican II Council the instruments for a conversion to sociology. Before that, following in the Council’s focus on prayer as the very core of the practice of believers, he had tried to turn prayer into an adequate mode of litany for analyzing texts. He then drew on the post-colonial opening of Vatican II to engage in the field of sociology, the Council having exhausted classical metaphysical questions. His discovery of the effects of colonial domination also played a fundamental role in mobilizing once again some emotional energy. Latour’s disciplinary reclassification just before beginning his laboratory ethnography in California is based on a reassessment of the epistemological possibilities born from the theological innovations of Vatican II.

Why subject naturalists need pragmatic genealogy

Huw Price’s subject naturalism has emerged as a leading pragmatist position within recent debates surrounding philosophical naturalism. Unlike orthodox views which tend to be guided by metaphysical questions about the “place” of, for instance, the mind, meaning, and morality within the natural world, subject naturalism focuses philosophical attention on language-users and the functions that certain concepts play within discursive practices. This paper considers two objections to subject naturalism and argues that they can be overcome by looking to the methodological insights of philosophical genealogy. Although Price occasionally characterizes his project as a kind of genealogy, he offers little explanation of what such a methodological orientation is supposed to involve. I suggest that subject naturalists ought to remedy this theoretical lacuna by looking to the work of Bernard Williams. On the one hand, doing so can serve a diagnostic function: Williams’ conception of genealogy affords a perspective from which subject naturalism’s explanatory inadequacies are more clearly understood. On the other hand, Williams’ elaborated conception of genealogy represents a path by which the subject naturalist can overcome the shortcomings discussed in this paper.

Biological Teleology, Reductionism, and Verbal Disputes

The extensive philosophical discussions and analyses in recent decades of function-talk in biology have done much to clarify what biologists mean when they ascribe functions to traits, but the basic metaphysical question—is there genuine teleology and design in the natural world, or only the appearance of this?—has persisted, as recent work both defending, and attacking, teleology from a Darwinian perspective, attest. I argue that in the context of standard contemporary evolutionary theory, this is for the most part a verbal, rather than a substantive dispute: the disputants are talking past one another. To justify this claim I develop a general framework within which reductionist views, such as the standard ‘etiological’ account of biofunctions, occupy an intermediate position between what I call full-blooded realism and full-blooded anti-realism, and suggest that whether such views count as ‘realist’ views has no objective, theory-neutral answer.

Метафизические поиски Анджея Стасюка

The foreword to the essay by the contemporary Polish writer Andrzej Stasiuk describes the main milestones of his career, examines the special features of the poetics of his works, outlines his attitude to the Russian culture and the place of his essay on Dostoevsky in the context of the author’s metaphysical quest.

Supported Decision-making: The CRPD, Non-Discrimination, and Strategies for Recognizing Persons’ Choices About their Good

People with cognitive impairments often have difficulties formulating, understanding, or articulating decisions that others judge reasonable. The frequent response shifts decision-making authority to substitutes through advance directives of the person or guardianship orders from a court. The Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities defends supported decision-making as an alternative to such forms of supplanted decision-making. But supported decision-making raises both metaphysical questions—what is required for a decision to be the person’s own?—and epistemological questions: how do we know what persons judge to be their good, when they have difficulty conceptualizing and articulating? It raises practical questions, too, such as protection against risks of exploitation. This article uses a non-discrimination account of legal personhood drawn from the CRPD to explore how common features of decisions employed by people without cognitive disabilities are important in supported decision-making too. These features include prostheses, guardrails, relationships, and social contexts.

A Metaphysical Account of the Placenta as a Shared Organ

Although there is discussion among ethicists about the permissibility of actions on the antenatal placenta, these discussions rarely take seriously the metaphysics involved. Rather, authors resort to opinion on how the placenta comes to be and for whose good it exists. This paper takes these metaphysical questions seriously. Through discussion of the biology of the placenta, I conclude that it is a shared organ of the mother and the fetus. In an analogy to the ethics of conjoined twinning, I conclude that actions on the placenta must take the good of both the mother and the fetus into account.

Freedom and Responsibility in Neoplatonist Thought by Ursula Coope

Reviewed by: Freedom and Responsibility in Neoplatonist Thought by Ursula Coope Carl S. O'Brien Ursula Coope. Freedom and Responsibility in Neoplatonist Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. xii + 288. Cloth, $70.00. Ursula Coope's volume sets out to answer the question of why "true freedom" necessitates "freedom from bodies" according to the Neoplatonists. As a result, while the title suggests a work on ethics, the volume handles such questions within a broader metaphysical framework. Coope admirably traces the initially separate treatments of freedom and responsibility in earlier thinkers before examining how they merge into twin aspects of a related discussion. The handling of Plato's concept of freedom in the first chapter outlines a series of relevant issues, rather than evaluating their relative significance (17), since the primary focus is on the subsequent tradition. The title is somewhat misleading since much of the volume is concerned with the Neoplatonic background, rather than with Neoplatonism itself, with detailed treatment of both the Stoic Epictetus and the Peripatetic Alexander of Aphrodisias. However, this is essential for the development of Coope's thesis, which attributes a "perfectionist" concept of freedom (one linking freedom with moral progress) to Plotinus, similar to Epictetus and contrary to Alexander. This involves analyzing the extent to which actions depend upon us (45–52). Such Stoic-influenced elements are linked with those one might perhaps consider more typically Neoplatonic, such as the role of the Intellect in attaining virtue and freedom, since ignorance and emotional suffering represent obstacles to freedom (59). In its treatment of freedom and the One, chapter 5 also deals with an obviously Neoplatonic theme, reinforced by the discussion of the One's transcendent nature (73–75) and the difficulty of predicating anything of the One (77–92). Coope presents freedom then as a fundamental influence on Neoplatonic metaphysics, since everything under the One, in light of its dependence upon the One, cannot be free (94–95). The One's freedom is consequently part of the motivation for achieving mystical union with it. Viewed from this perspective, chapters 5 and 6 are essentially summaries of Plotinian metaphysics, but oriented toward the perspective of freedom and responsibility, intertwined with an explanation of why freedom should be considered valuable (96). The discussion of the soul's self-determination in the latter parts of chapter 6 (e.g. 103–6) forms a useful contribution to the focus on Plotinus and the self that is at the forefront of much recent scholarship. The relationship of the World Soul to the individual human soul is lent an interesting perspective by the combined framework of freedom and responsibility. The human soul's temporary nonbodiliness and consequent period in the intelligible world is a kind of freedom, although it also raises the question of freedom in the context of dependence upon a larger whole (146), while the degree to which our responsibility is potentially limited by Providence is also handled (151–59). These topics have been extensively and frequently treated before, but the orientation toward freedom and responsibility adds a certain freshness to the discussion here. For example, Coope considers the manner in which human souls can be regarded as a component of Providence and relates this to the whole-part discussion by representing Providence as "a kind of derivative unity" (157). Plotinus's interpretation of the myth of Er as the point at which the soul can be regarded as responsible for its current life serves as a springboard for consideration of the later tradition. In order to maintain our responsibility for our actions, Proclus presents [End Page 679] each soul's choice of life as a genuine one, even if this is placed under the control of Providence (178), but the extent to which the soul's failures are the result of its ignorance ensures that the ultimate degree of the soul's responsibility remains problematic. Chapter 10 examines why humans are held responsible for their actions while plants and animals are not; evidently, humans have the resources to become moral (due to the undescended intellectual part in Plotinus's system). This then segues into a treatment of some central questions of Neoplatonic metaphysics: the origin of evil...

Stein’s Critique of Husserl’s Transcendental Idealism

Stein claims that Husserl’s transcendental idealism makes it impossible to clarify the transcendence of the world because it posits that consciousness constitutes being. Inspired by Aquinas, Stein counters that making thinking the measure of being deprives what is of its epistemological and ontological independence from and primacy over what thinks. She contends that this approach inverts the natural relationship between the mind and the world. Given the complicated relationship between them, however, the question is whether Stein’s argument that Husserl lacked an adequate understanding of and appreciation for the phenomenon of transcendence is sound. In fact, Husserl’s treatments of “limit problems of phenomenology” in his manuscripts from 1908 to 1937, which were only recently published in Husserliana XLII (2014), show that he undertook extensive investigations of metaphysical, metaethical, and religious and theological questions. Tragically, Stein was prevented from gaining an even remotely complete picture of Husserl’s work. In this paper, therefore, I examine Stein’s critique of Husserl’s transcendental idealism in light of the fuller evidence.

Blumenberg’s presentation of the history of cosmology as an introduction to the genesis of the Copernican world

Cosmology, especially as a pre-Copernican question of metaphysics, represented one of the central questions of thought throughout the history of the Western horizon: the relationship between metaphysics and cosmology was questioned with Copernicus major work on cosmology and especially in post-Copernican literature where the position of metaphysics alone was questioned. Following this, Hans Blumenberg (?1996) in his work ?Genesis of the Copernican world? presented the history of cosmos thinking from ancient cosmology through the relationship of cosmos and tragedy to the postclassicalidealistic development of science and cosmology within the field of natural science, encyclopedically presenting the results of his research. The main hypothesis of this paper is reflected in proving how Blumenberg, by expounding the genesis of the Copernican world and presenting the thesis of the ?ambiguity of heaven?, actually sets out the preconditions for the development of modern science in the field of natural science thinking. Namely, modern science is in fact the result of a history of thought with all it?s essential principles on the path of clarity and certainty, and finally to the pinnacle of science which is theoretically manifested in exactness. The ultimate goal of the paper is to present the genesis of the ambiguity of heaven to modern cosmology and cosmological research in modern times, especially - on the example of Blumenberg?s work