Conciliatory Metaontology, Permissive Ontology, and Nature's Joints (original) (raw)

A Cardinal Worry for Permissive Metaontology

Metaphysica, 2015

Permissivist metaontology proposes answering customary existence questions in the affirmative. Many of the existence questions addressed by ontologists concern the existence of theoretical entities which admit precise formal specification. This causes trouble for the permissivist, since individually consistent formal theories can make pairwise inconsistent demands on the cardinality of the universe. We deploy a result of Gabriel Uzquiano’s to show that this possibility is realised in the case of two prominent existence debates and propose rejecting permissivism in favour of substantive ontology conducted on a cost–benefit basis.

Ontic Terms and Metaontology, or: On What There Actually Is [Philosophical Studies]

Philosophical Studies, forthcoming

Terms such as ‘exist’, ‘actual’, etc., (hereafter, “ontic terms”) are recognized as having uses that are not ontologically committing, in addition to the usual commissive uses. (Consider, e.g., the two interpretations of ‘There is an even prime.’) In this paper, I identify five different noncommissive uses for ontic terms, and along the way I attempt to define (by a kind of via negativa) the commissive use of an ontic term, using ‘actual’ as my example. The problem, however, is that the resulting definiens for the commissive ‘actual’ is itself equivocal between a commissive and a noncommissive reading, and thus I consider other proposals for defining the commissive use, including two proposals from David Lewis. However, each proposal is found to be equivocal in the same way—and eventually I argue that it is impossible to define an ontic term unequivocally. Even so, this is not meant to overshadow the fact that we can understand an ontic term as univocally commissive, in certain conversational contexts. I close by illustrating the import of these observations for meta-ontology, especially for Hirsch’s “superficialist” view.

A Cardinal Worry for Permissive Ontology

2015

Permissivist metaontology proposes answering customary existence questions in the affirmative. Many of the existence questions addressed by ontologists concern the existence of theoretical entities which admit precise formal specification. This causes trouble for the permissivist, since individually consistent formal theories can make pairwise inconsistent demands on the cardinality of the universe. We deploy a result of Gabriel Uzquiano’s to show that this possibility is realised in the case of two prominent existence debates, and propose rejecting permissivism in favour of substantive ontology conducted on a cost-benefit basis.

SIX PRINCIPLES OF ONTOLOGICAL METAPHYSICS

The so-called ontological naturalism is the thesis that ontological work-that is, the investigation of what exists-constitutes a purely scientific task. Philosophy (metaphysics, in particular) has little or nothing to contribute to this research. The authors argue that this is not viable. 1. SIX FUNDAMENTAL METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES Language is related to the origin of the systemic conception of Reality. Language may be defined as a symbolic substitute of Reality, or as a system of signs. Following a more or less classical approach to Reality, different classes of objects exist, that are characterized by different mental acts through which we distinguish them from their surroundings (Meinong, 1904). Objects of sensorial perception, in this approach, are different from objects of thought, but these latter ones are not less "objective" than the previous ones: the former are apprehended through thought but it does not constitute them. According to the terminology of Meinong, meaning subsists, whereas individual beings and qualities exist. In this sense, objects of thought can be real without existing in the technical sense defined by Meinong. Mathematical objects are of this class. The first condition is that these objects are there, and this does not happen through an act of discourse, but through the presence of these objects in the Subject's thought (Agazzi, 1992). The phenomenological situation is perhaps that an object, simply by the fact of being present, offers to the Subject an irrefutable and particular witness of itself. The referential situation is the phenomenological presence of the object. And the truth of a sentence is the coincidence between the situation and its phenomenological presence. It is to notice that meanings or understandings are only partially faithful with respect to any particular phenomenological presence or referential situation that they could denote. Some form of modalization (alethical, Deontical or doxical) necessarily accompanies the communication. There is a clear epistemological separation between thought and language. All organization of a language depends on a complex structure. Biunivocal correspondence between the perception of Reality and the linguistic system is unthinkable. One operates from a superior order, from a mesosystem that would include them and in which both appear as elements and not as closed and independent units. Horizontal forces of all systems are those that determine their potential of significance. This means that no language is neutral, and that any representational space is not neutral either. That is to say, the systemic conception, as any other semiotic conception, represents Reality in the same way as other systemic conceptions. By virtue of what we have just written we can propose the following principle:

Existence as a Real Property - Synthèse Library

2012

This book is both an introduction to and a research work on Meinongianism. “Meinongianism” is taken here, in accordance with the common philosophical jargon, as a general label for a set of theories of existence – probably the most basic notion of ontology. As an introduction, the book provides the first comprehensive survey and guide to Meinongianism and non-standard theories of existence in all their main forms. As a research work, the book exposes and develops the most up-to-date Meinongian theory (called modal Meinongianism), applies it to specific fields, and discusses its open problems. The unifying focus of the work is a single, basic philosophical notion: the notion of existence. Each main theory of the notion available in philosophy is introduced via a detailed, self-contained exposition, and critically evaluated, with the original research emerging in the final Chapters. Part I of the book provides a historical introduction to, and critical discussion of, the dominant philosophical view of existence: the “Kantian-Fregean-Quinean” perspective. Part II is the full-fledged introduction to the Meinongian theories of existence as a real property of individuals: after starting with the so-called naïve Meinongian conception and its problems, it provides a self-contained presentation of the main neo-Meinongian proposals, and a detailed discussion of their strengths and weaknesses. Part III develops a specific neo-Meinongian theory of existence employing a model-theoretic semantic framework. It discusses its application to the ontology and semantics of fictional objects, and its open problems. The methodology of the book follows the most recent trends in analytic ontology. In particular, the meta-ontological point of view is largely privileged

From Metaphysical to Substantive Naturalism: A Case Study

Synthese, 2004

This paper addresses two related questions. First, what is involved in giving a distinctively realist and naturalist construal of an area of discourse, that is, in so much as stating a distinctively realist and naturalist position about, for example, content or value? I defend a condition that guarantees the realism and naturalism of any position satisfying it, at least in the case of positions on content, but perhaps in other cases as well. Second, what sorts of considerations render a distinctively realist and naturalist position more plausible than its irrealist and non-naturalist rivals? The answer here focuses again on theories of content and is wholly negative. I argue that the standard array of arguments offered in support of realist and naturalist theories in fact provide equal support for a host of irrealist and non-naturalist ones. Taken together, these considerations reveal an important gap in the recent philosophical literature on content. The challenge to proponents of putatively realist and naturalist theories is to insure that those theories so much as state distinctively realist and naturalist positions and then to identify arguments that support what is distinctively realist and naturalist about them. ".. . the deepest motivation for intentional irrealism derives. .. from a certain ontological intuition: that there is no place for intentional categories in a physicalistic view of the world; that the intentional can't be naturalized." 1 "Realists about representational states. .. must. .. have some view about what it is for a state to be representational. .. . Well, what would it be like to have a serious theory of representation? Here. .. there is some consensus to work from. The worry about representation is above all that the semantic (and/or intentional) will prove permanently recalcitrant to integration in the natural order. .. " 2 Over the last century, philosophers have puzzled over how best to interpret areas of discourse whose subject matter is in some way normative. Ethicists, for example, have wondered about how best to understand judgments about a thing's goodness, whether to say of something that it is good is, for example, to attribute a property, goodness, to it or simply to recommend it. One apparent difficulty for settling this issue is that goodness, if it exists, would be the kind of thing that ought to motivate us. Realists about goodness are, roughly, those who hold that there is a real property of goodness referred to by our uses of "x is good". The challenge for realists

Laws, modality and properties in naturalistic metaphysics

This seminar focuses on core problems in naturalistic metaphysics, i.e. metaphysics informed by science and relevant to scientific investigations. Our first core topic is the nature and status of laws of nature. Two main camps in the debate on the metaphysical character of laws are usually distinguished: a Humean regularist approach and anti-Humean necessitarianism. In this seminar, we will study this debate and discuss contemporary variations of Humeanism and of anti-Humeanism (such as dispositionalism and primitivism), as well as anti-realism and the structural approach to laws of nature. Humeans usually subscribe to the thesis known as `Humean supervenience', which states, roughly, that all facts (and properties) about complex systems supervene on the individual facts (and properties) about their fundamental components. We will analyze the implications of modern science (in particular of physics) for Humean supervenience. These discussions lead directly to further metaphysical questions regarding the status of modalities and fundamental properties. Regarding the former, we will investigate whether a cogent distinction can be made among various types of necessity|suchas logical, metaphysical and nomic necessity|, and what the grounds of nomic necessity might be. Regarding properties featuring in fundamental laws, our main interest will be in the question of their essential character, i.e., whether they are essentially dispositional or categorical, intrinsic or extrinsic.

The correctness and relevance of the modal ontological argument

Synthese, 2020

This paper deals with some metaphilosophical aspects of the modal ontological argument originating from Charles Hartshorne. One of the specific premises of the argument expresses the idea that the existence of God is not contingent. Several well-known versions of the argument have been formulated that appeal to different ways of clarifying the latter. A question arises: which of the formally correct and relevant versions is proper or basic? The paper points to some criteria of formal correctness, and distinguishes two types of relevance for these versions: strong and weak. Its aim is to furnish a strictly worked out answer to the question, taking into account each of these types. As a result, a very simple, formally correct and (weakly) relevant version of the modal ontological argument is formulated. The results obtained are also used to criticize a popular belief about the relations in which the main versions of the modal ontological argument stand to one another.

A MODEST MODAL ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

Ratio, 2009

We formulate a new modal ontological argument; specifically, we show that there is a possible world in which an entity that has at least the property of omnipotence exists. Then we argue that if such an entity is possible, it is necessary as well.