Ontological Economy Research Articles

A Common Sense Defence of Ostrich Nominalism

When the meta-philosophies of Nominalism and Realism are compared, it is often said that Nominalism is motivated by a methodology of ontological economy, while Realism would be motivated by an appeal to Common Sense. In this paper, I argue that this association is misguided. After briefly comparing the meta-philosophy of Common Sense and the meta-philosophy of economy, I show that the core motivation in favour of Realism relies in fact in a principle of economy which violates the methodology of Common Sense. I conclude that Common Sense philosophers should endorse Nominalism (and more precisely Ostrich Nominalism).

Even Better than the Real Thing

In this essay the idea of social practice as a mode of cultural philanthropy is rejected in favour of a different form of symbolic exchange between social practice and the art world predicated on proximity to the real. Crystallized by the refugee crisis, Slavoj Žižek has noted the polarization of politics in Europe. His critique of the liberal humanist appeal to our moral generosity is deployed as a point of departure for understanding this problem of the economy of attention and engagement with contemporary emergencies. The principle of generosity in philanthropy is critiqued as a whimsical corrective within the neoliberal imaginary. Art in the age of emergency is explored via an examination of the duty of art museums, from their original duty of explanation to their current imperative to function at the level of transforming subjectivity. Hito Steyerl notes a shift in the performative duties of the artist in the museum, a persistent requirement for their presence. The implications of that preoccupation with presence is explored for the field of social practice. Economies of visibility that govern the sight lines of social practice within this paradigm are analysed. An experience drawn from the collaborative practice of Vagabond Reviews is introduced, drawing attention to an ontological economy that organizes the mode of symbolic exchange between the situated art of social practice and the art academy. Social practice is complicated by the way in which it increasingly straddles an ontological corridor between sites of practice in the real on a one-to-one scale and the the gallery-based art world. Finally, it is suggested that the field of contemporary art is trying to get away from itself, enacting its own ontological self-cancellation by dissolving into the real.

Sustancia e inherencia en las Categorías de Aristóteles

<p class='p1'>Las combinaciones y los tipos de relaciones posibles entre las distintas entidades que acepta la ontología de las Categorías regulan la economía ontológica de la primera metafísica aristotélica, estableciendo vínculos de prioridad y posterioridad entre las sustancias sobre la base de ciertos criterios que Aristóteles se esfuerza por clarificar. Pero el primer esencialismo aristotélico se elabora a medida que el autor de las Categoríasfija una distinción entre propiedades esenciales y accidentales a fin de explicar qué es necesariamente una cosa y qué puede o no tener sin que por ello se vea afectada su propia identidad. Este texto pretende reconstruir la relación transversal entre sustancias y accidentes, perfilando la noción de accidente junto a otras de orden semántico. Esta relación, R2, se distingue de la predicación esencial, R1, que tiene lugar verticalmente entre sustancias segundas y primeras.</p>

Retrocausal models for EPR

This paper takes up Huw Price׳s challenge to develop a retrocausal toy model of the Bell-EPR experiment. I develop three such models which show that a consistent, local, hidden-variables interpretation of the EPR experiment is indeed possible, and which give a feel for the kind of retrocausation involved. The first of the models also makes clear a problematic feature of retrocausation: it seems that we cannot interpret the hidden elements of reality in a retrocausal model as possessing determinate dispositions to affect the outcome of experiments. This is a feature which Price has embraced, but Gordon Belot has argued that this feature renders retrocausal interpretations “unsuitable for formal development”, and the lack of such determinate dispositions threatens to undermine the motivation for hidden-variables interpretations in the first place. But Price and Belot are both too quick in their assessment. I show that determinate dispositions are indeed consistent with retrocausation. What is more, I show that the ontological economy allowed by retrocausation holds out the promise of a classical understanding of spin and polarization.

Causation, coincidence, and commensuration

What does it take to solve the exclusion problem? An ingenious strategy is Stephen Yablo’s idea that causes must be commensurate with their effects. Commensuration is a relation between events. Roughly, events are commensurate with one another when one contains all that is required for the occurrence of the other, and as little as possible that is not required. According to Yablo, one event is a cause of another only if they are commensurate. I raise three reasons to doubt that this account solves the exclusion problem successfully. First, it leaves a mystery about what determines a particular’s causal capacities. Second, because there are two ways of construing coincidence between particulars, a dilemma arises: either the solution to the exclusion problem is threatened, or the account of coincidence loses an attractive feature concerning ontological economy. Third, even if we assume the commensuration constraint, a plausible principle about overdetermination seems to regenerate the exclusion problem.

The Indefinability of “One”

Logicism is one of the great reductionist projects. Numbers and the relationships in which they stand may seem to possess suspect ontological credentials - to be entia non grata - and, further, to be beyond the reach of knowledge. In seeking to reduce mathematics to a small set of principles that form the logical basis of all reasoning, logicism holds out the prospect of ontological economy and epistemological security. This paper attempts to show that a fundamental logicist project, that of defining the number one in terms drawn only from logic and set theory, is a doomed enterprise. The starting point is Russell's Theory of Descriptions, which purports to supply a quantificational analysis of definite descriptions by adjoining a uniqueness clause' to the formal rendering of indefinite descriptions. That theory fails on at least two counts. First, the senses of statements containing indefinite descriptions are typically not preserved under the Russellian translation. Second (and independently), the uniqueness clause' fails to trim 'some' to 'one'. The Russell-Whitehead account in Principia Mathematica fares no better. Other attempts to define 'one' are covertly circular. An ontologically non-embarrassing alternative account of the number words is briefly sketched.

Quantities, Magnitudes, and Numbers

Quantities are naturally viewed as functions, whose arguments may be construed as situations, events, objects, etc. We explore the question of the range of these functions: should it be construed as the real numbers (or some subset thereof)? This is Carnap's view. It has attractive features, specifically, what Carnap views as ontological economy. Or should the range of a quantity be a set of magnitudes? This may have been Helmholtz's view, and it, too, has attractive features. It reveals the close connection between measurement and natural law, it makes dimensional analysis intelligible, and explains the concern of scientists and engineers with units in equations. It leaves the philosophical problem of the relation between the structure of magnitudes and the structure of the reals. What explains it? And is it always the same? We will argue that on the whole, construing the values of quantities as magnitudes has some advantages, and that (as Helmholtz seems to suggest in “Numbering and Measuring from an Epistemological Viewpoint”) the relation between magnitudes and real numbers can be based on foundational similarities of structure.

Dion's Left Foot (and the Price of Burkean Economy)

Two recent papers by Michael Burke bearing upon the persistence of people and commonplace things illustrate the fact that the quest for synchronic ontological economy is likely to encourage a disturbing diachronic proliferation of entities. This discussion argues that Burke's promise of ontological economy is seriously compromised by the fact that his proposed metaphysic does violence to standard intuitions concerning the persistence of people and commonplace things. In effect, Burke would have us achieve synchronic economy (rejection of coincident entities) by postulating strongly counterintuitive transtemporal claims of numerical diversity. The argument is made that the price of Burkean economy is too high.

A single primitive trope relation

sense treated here. Whilst there may be systematic metaphysical reasons why a theory of tropes as "thin" properties and relations is more fruitful than a theory of tropes as states of affairs (though I doubt it), the issue is not joined here. 33. Ontological economy. The main point is now gained: trope structures can be replaced by trope cascades, themselves slight elaborations of the simplest sort of trope structure, the degenerate monadic trope structure. The latter, in turn, is nothing but a reflexive, symmetric relational structure. This result forces a revision of the metaphysical assessment of Bacon (xz28). He found modal models based on trope structures to be more baroque than other approaches, though still attractive on other grounds. Now that we have reduced the possible infinity of trope relations in trope structures to one similarity relation in a trope cascade, the corresponding models appear far more streamlined. Both from a metaphysical and a semantic point of view, trope theory now survives Ockham's razor handily. Relationes non multiplicatae sunt praeter necessitatem. 34. Ontological options. To be sure, the ontologically serious recourse to trope cascades conflicts with what I take to be one of the principal attractions of trope theory: the vision of 1-tropes as ontologically basic. As Williams puts it, ... entities like our fine parts or abstract components are the primary constituents of this or any possible world, the very alphabet of being. They nor only are actual but are the only actualities . . . (1953, p. 78) This raises the question whether our logical reduction to trope cascades and 3-tropes should be taken as an ontological reduction too. In any case, it would sorely try the tonsorial skill of an Ockhamite to shave off the tangle of 1-relations while leaving their relata unnicked. (It mightn't trouble a nominalist, I suppose; but trope theory is not inherently nomanilistic.) Whether being is aptly spelt out in 1-tropes and abbreviated in 3-tropes or vice versa, trope cascades clarify the alphabetic options. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.33 on Sat, 26 Nov 2016 04:20:32 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms PRIMITIVE TROPE RELATION 153

Ontological Economy and Grand Unified Gauge Theories

In his paper, “Grand Unified Gauge Theories and the Number of Elementary Particles,“ Robert Weingard (1984) suggests what he calls the Extended Redhead's Principle (ERP) for elementary particles: “Two particles for which there are conceivable circumstances in which one can be ‘rotated’ or reoriented into the other are the same (species of) particles” (p. 154). The philosophical soundness of such a principle is questionable.

SUBSTITUTIONAL QUANTIFICATION AND MATHEMATICS

Previous articleNext article No AccessReview ArticlesSUBSTITUTIONAL QUANTIFICATION AND MATHEMATICS*CHARLES PARSONSCHARLES PARSONSColumbia University Search for more articles by this author *Review of DALE GOTTLIEB (1980): Ontological Economy: Substitutional Qualification and Mathematics. Oxford: Clarendon Press. £10. Pp. viii+166.PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Volume 33, Number 4December 1982 Society: The British Society for the Philosophy of Science Views: 4Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Views: 4Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/33.4.409 Views: 4Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref © 1982 by The Author. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:J. M. B. MOSS THE MATHEMATICAL PHILOSOPHY OF CHARLES PARSONS, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 36, no.44 (Dec 2020): 437–457.https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/36.4.437

Set—Theoretical Representations of Ordered Pairs and Their Adequacy for the Logic of Relations

One of the most significant discoveries of early twentieth century mathematical logic was a workable definition of ‘ordered pair’ totally within set theory. Norbert Wiener, and independently Casimir Kuratowski, are usually credited with this discovery. A definition of ‘ordered pair’ held the key to the precise formulation of the notions of ‘relation’ and ‘function’ — both of which are probably indispensable for an understanding of the foundations of mathematics. The set-theoretic definition of ‘ordered pair’ thus turned out to be a key victory for logicism, providing one admits set theory is logic. The definition also was instrumental in achieving the appearance of ontological economy — since it seemed only sets were needed — although this feature was emphasized only later.

Ontological Economy: Substitutional Quantification and Mathematics by Dale Gottlieb

Ontological Economy: Substitutional Quantification and Mathematics by Dale Gottlieb

How Time Flies

From the earliest antiquity and right throughout the Middle Ages up to our own times, people of all degrees of sophistication have regarded it as one of the most central features of existence that time moves, so that events are carried from the future toward us and then recede further and further into the past. Thus we hear Job complaining 'My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle', Chaucer declaring 'Ay fleets the time it will no man abide', and Sir Walter Scott observing that 'Time rolls his ceaseless Yet the majority of analytic philosophers today hold with Russell that the transient view of time is hopelessly flawed and have characterized all attributions to time of such properties as flying, passing or rolling on, whether swiftly or relentlessly, as involving very misleading metaphors, since in actual reality all events and moments stay forever fixed in the position where they occur. There is no such entity as the moving NOW, time remains still and all temporal relations are permanent. This remarkable situation I should venture to suggest is due to a number of factors. First of all Russell's suggestion as to how we can achieve great ontological economy by eliminating all reference to any transient feature of time and still be able to say about our temporal experiences most of the things we want to say, is singularly ingenious. Secondly, the physical sciences whose prestige has been very high in this century seem to provide support to RusselPs position. In books on physics, chemistry or astronomy, we usually do not find what McTaggart called A-statements, e.g. 'E is in the future' or 'E is in the past (except perhaps in the Preface). There are of course indefinitely many natural processes that are functionally related to time, yet they can all fully be described by only using so-called B-statements, statements like <E1 is before (or after or simultaneous with) E2'. Thirdly, the Russellian view has been vigorously defended by some of the most outstanding philosophers of this century. And finally, for some reason the

Quotational theories of propositional attitudes

It is often thought that there are considerable advantages in analyzing propositional attitudes as relations between people and linguistic entities of some kind.1 Some who favour this approach are interested in ontological economy but even those without this objective are sometimes tempted by what has seemed an attractive way out of the problem of hyperintensional contexts.2