It has often been argued that Humean accounts of natural law cannot account for the role played by laws in scientific explanations. Loewer (Philosophical Studies 2012) has offered a new reply to this argument on behalf of Humean accounts—a reply that distinguishes between grounding (which Loewer portrays as underwriting a kind of metaphysical explanation) and scientific explanation. I will argue that Loewer’s reply fails because it cannot accommodate the relation between metaphysical and scientific explanation. This relation also resolves a puzzle (...) about scientific explanation that Hempel and Oppenheim (Philosophy of Science 15:135–75, 1948) encountered. (shrink)

The beauty of electricity, or of any other force, is not that the power is mysterious and unexpected, touching every sense at unawares in turn, but that it is under law... Michael Faraday, Wheatstone's Electric Telegraph's Relation to Science (being an argument in favour of the full recognition of Science as a branch of Education), 1854.

Per il dialeteismo ci sono contraddizioni vere. Questa concezione filosofica ha assunto una forma chiara e definita a partire dal lavoro del filosofo e logico Graham Priest – uno dei suoi padri fondatori, nonché uno dei suoi più strenui difensori. Questo libro intende portare il dialeteismo all’attenzione di un ampio pubblico, che non sia solo quello degli addetti ai lavori. Il volume è suddiviso in due parti. La prima include le cinque lezioni su "Dialeteismo e storia della filosofia" tenute da (...) Priest e Filippo Casati a Padova nel 2016, in occasione del Corso di Eccellenza per il dottorato in filosofia dell’Università di Padova. La seconda contiene quattro contributi sul dialeteismo di autori italiani. (shrink)

Philosophers have long been interested in a series of interrelated questions about natural kinds. What are they? What role do they play in science and metaphysics? How do they contribute to our epistemic projects? What categories count as natural kinds? And so on. Owing, perhaps, to different starting points and emphases, we now have at hand a variety of conceptions of natural kinds—some apparently better suited than others to accommodate a particular sort of inquiry. Even if coherent, this situation isn’t (...) ideal. My goal in this article is to begin to articulate a more general account of ‘natural kind phenomena’. While I do not claim that this account should satisfy everyone—it is built around a certain conception of the epistemic role of kinds and has an obvious pragmatic flavour—I believe that it has the resources to go further than extant alternatives, in particular the homeostatic property cluster view of kinds. (shrink)

In electrostatics, we can use either potential energy or field energy to ensure conservation of energy. In electrodynamics, the former option is unavailable. To ensure conservation of energy, we must attribute energy to the electromagnetic field and, in particular, to electromagnetic radiation. If we adopt the standard energy density for the electromagnetic field, then potential energy seems to disappear. However, a closer look at electrodynamics shows that this conclusion actually depends on the kind of matter being considered. Although we cannot (...) get by without attributing energy to the electromagnetic field, matter may still have electromagnetic potential energy. Indeed, if we take the matter to be represented by the Dirac field, then it will possess potential energy. Thus, potential energy reappears. Upon field quantization, the potential energy of the Dirac field becomes an interaction term in the Hamiltonian operator of quantum electrodynamics. (shrink)

This essay considers the implications for the powers metaphysic of the no-successor problem: As there are no successors in the set of real numbers, one state cannot occur just after another in continuous time without there being a gap between the two. I show how the no-successor problem sets challenges for various accounts of the manifestation of powers. For powers that give rise to a manifestation that is a new state, the challenge of no-successors is similar to that faced on (...) Bertrand Russell's analysis by causal relations. Powers whose manifestation is a processes and powers that manifest through time are challenged differently. To avoid powers appearing enigmatic, these challenges should be addressed, and I point to some possible ways this might be achieved. A prerequisite for addressing these challenges is a careful focus on the nature and timing of the manifesting and manifestation of powers. (shrink)

Aristotle’s solution to Zeno’s arrow paradox differs markedly from the so called at-at solution championed by Russell, which has become the orthodox view in contemporary philosophy. The latter supposes that motion consists in simply being at different places at different times. It can boast parsimony because it eliminates velocity from the ontology. Aristotle, by contrast, solves the paradox by denying that the flight of the arrow is composed of instants; rather, on my reading, he holds that the flight is a (...) unity which is ontologically prior to the temporal parts that may be abstracted from it. I label this position temporal holism; and an entity that is ontological prior to its temporal parts lasting. Lasting, I argue, is the key to Aristotle’s solution to the arrow paradox, but it has received insufficient attention in the relevant literature. I therefore set out here to investigate lasting and highlight its major role in Aristotle’s metaphysics more broadly, and in his solution to other problems of change. I show, too, how lasting within a contemporary context underwrites a parsimonious and intuitive solution to the arrow paradox that retains instantaneous velocity, and hence solves a problem for those who think velocity is required within the ontology to underwrite certain causal roles. (shrink)

Dynamic events such as a rolling ball moving from one place to another involve change and time intervals and thus presumably successions of static events occurring one after the other, e.g., the ball’s being at a certain place and then at another place during the interval in question. When dynamic events are experienced they should count as present and thus as existent from a presentist point of view. But this seems to imply the existence of the static events involved in (...) them. This in turn seems to imply that there exist past and perhaps even future static events. Therefore, there is a problem for presentism. A possible way out for the presentist is proposed, based on allowing for time-indexed past-oriented and future-oriented properties. One may raise objections regarding the ontological status of these properties and the commitment to past and future objects and times that they seem to bring with them, but these objections can be put to rest. (shrink)

This essay proposes a new interpretation of a central, and yet overlooked, argument Leibniz offers against Descartes’s power-free ontology of the corporeal world. Appealing to considerations about the successiveness of motion, Leibniz attempts to show that the reality of motion requires force. It is often assumed that the argument is driven by concerns inspired by Zeno. Against such a reading, this essay contends that Leibniz’s argument is instead best understood against the background of an Aristotelian view of the priority of (...) real being over time. The essay also shows how this alternative interpretation can help to shed new light on the difference between Leibnizian forces and Aristotelian powers, as well as on Leibniz’s famous claim that accounting for force leads us beyond the mechanistic corporeal realm. (shrink)

When two bodies collide with each other, they change their motion. Many physics textbooks explain that the change in motion is caused by the force or impulse exerted on the body during the collision. This is not the whole story, I argue, in case the bodies are rigid. In this case, the change in motion cannot be causally explained solely by how the bodies are configured before and during the collision but instead should be explained partly by what happens after (...) the collision. That is, the collision between rigid bodies should better be interpreted as a case of retrocausation where the future causally affects the past or present. This retrocausal interpretation of the collision does not suffer a general problem raised against retrocausation, known as the bilking argument. And how the influence of the cause propagates backward in time to the effect in the collision is no more mysterious than how a body moves continuously in classical mechanics or how the future affects the past in proposed retrocausal models for the EPR thought experiment in quantum mechanics. (shrink)

In Lange 2004a, I argued that 'scientific essentialism' [Ellis 2001 cannot account for the characteristic relation between laws and counterfactuals without undergoing considerable ad hoc tinkering. In recent papers, Brian Ellis 2005 and Toby Handfield 2005 have defended essentialism against my charge. Here I argue that Ellis's and Handfield's replies fail. Even in ordinary counterfactual reasoning, the 'closest possible world' where the electron's electric charge is 5% greater may have less overlap with the actual world in its fundamental natural kinds (...) than a 'more distant possible world' where the electron's charge is 5% greater. But more importantly, essentialism's flexibility in being able to accommodate virtually any relation between laws and counterfactuals is a symptom of essentialism's explanatory impotence as far as that relation is concerned. (shrink)

Do the laws of nature supervene on ordinary, non-nomic matters of fact? Lange's criticism of Humean supervenience (HS) plays a key role in his account of natural laws. Though we are sympathetic to his account, we remain unconvinced by his criticism. We focus on his thought experiment involving a world containing nothing but a lone proton and argue that it does not cast sufficient doubt on HS. In addition, we express some concern about locating the lawmakers in an ontology of (...) primitive subjunctive facts and suggest that a 'mixed' metaphysics to the lawmaker question might be attractive. (shrink)

I defend a causal reductionist account of the nature of rates of change like velocity and acceleration. This account identifies velocity with the past derivative of position and acceleration with the future derivative of velocity. Unlike most reductionist accounts, it can preserve the role of velocity as a cause of future positions and acceleration as the effect of current forces. I show that this is possible only if all the fundamental laws are expressed by differential equations of the same order. (...) Consideration of the continuity of time explains why the differential equations are all second order. This explanation is not available on non-causal or non-reductionist accounts of rates of change. Finally, I argue that alleged counterexamples to the reductionist account involving physically impossible worlds are irrelevant to an analysis of the properties that play a causal role in the actual world. 1 Background2 Grounding3 Causation4 The Proposal5 Why No Third Derivatives?6 Why Any Derivatives?7 Counterexamples? (shrink)

Einstein claimed that the fundamental dynamical insight of special relativity was the equivalence of mass and energy. I disagree. Not only are mass and energy not equivalent but talk of such equivalence obscures the real dynamical insight of special relativity, which concerns the nature of 4-forces and interactions more generally. In this paper I present and defend a new ontology of special relativistic particle dynamics that makes this insight perspicuous and I explain how alleged cases of mass–energy conversion can be (...) accommodated within that ontology. (shrink)

The arrow paradox is an argument purported to show that objects do not really move. The two main metaphysics of motion, the At–At theory of motion and velocity primitivism, solve the paradox differently. It is argued that neither solution is completely satisfactory. In particular it is contended that there are no decisive arguments in favor of the claim that velocity as it is constructed in the At–At theory is a truly instantaneous property, which is a crucial assumption to solve the (...) paradox. If so the At–At theory faces the threat that most of our physical theories turn out to be non-Markovian. Finally it is considered whether all those threats and paradoxes are dispelled if only a new metaphysics of persistence is taken into account, namely four-dimensionalism. (shrink)

This paper forms part of a wider campaign: to deny pointillisme, the doctrine that a physical theory's fundamental quantities are defined at points of space or of spacetime, and represent intrinsic properties of such points or point-sized objects located there; so that properties of spatial or spatiotemporal regions and their material contents are determined by the point-by-point facts. More specifically, this paper argues against pointillisme about the concept of velocity in classical mechanics; especially against proposals by Tooley, Robinson and Lewis. (...) A companion paper argues against pointillisme about -geometry, as proposed by Bricker. To avoid technicalities, I conduct the argument almost entirely in the context of "Newtonian" ideas about space and time, and the classical mechanics of point-particles, i.e. extensionless particles moving in a void. But both the debate and my arguments carry over to relativistic physics. Introduction The wider campaign 2.1 Connecting physics and metaphysics 2.1.1 Avoiding controversy about the intrinsic–extrinsic distinction 2.1.2 Distinction from three mathematical distinctions 2.2 Classical mechanics is not pointilliste, and can be perdurantist 2.2.1 Two versions of pointillisme 2.2.2 Two common claims 2.2.3 My contrary claims 2.3 In more detail... 2.3.1 Four violations of pointillisme 2.3.2 For perdurantism Velocity as intrinsic? 3.1 Can properties represented by vectors be intrinsic to a point? 3.2 Orthodox velocity is extrinsic but local 3.2.1 A question and a debate 3.2.2 The verdict 3.3 Against intrinsic velocity 3.3.1 A common view—and a common problem 3.3.2 Tooley's proposal and his arguments 3.3.3 Tooley's further discussion "Shadow velocities": Lewis and Robinson 4.1 The proposal 4.2 Criticism: the vector field remains unspecified 4.3 Avoiding the presupposition of persistence, using Hilbert's symbol 4.4 Comparison with Robinson and Lewis. (shrink)

The central aim of this paper is to use a particular view about how the laws of nature govern the evolution of our universe in order to develop and evaluate the two main competing options in the metaphysics of persistence, namely endurantism and perdurantism. We begin by motivating the view that our laws of nature dictate not only qualitative facts about the future, but also which objects will instantiate which qualitative properties. We then show that both traditional doctrines in the (...) metaphysics of persistence must take on surprising further commitments in order to vindicate our universe being law-governed in this strong sense. For example, we argue that endurantists should adopt a particular version of monism, and that perdurantists should adopt a qualitativist doctrine that dispenses with all individuals at the fundamental level. (shrink)

Most of our best scientific descriptions of the world employ rates of change of some continuous quantity with respect to some other continuous quantity. For instance, in classical physics we arrive at a particle’s velocity by taking the time-derivative of its position, and we arrive at a particle’s acceleration by taking the time-derivative of its velocity. Because rates of change are defined in terms of other continuous quantities, most think that facts about some rate of change obtain in virtue of (...) facts about those other continuous quantities. For example, on this view facts about a particle’s velocity at a time obtain in virtue of facts about how that particle’s position is changing at that time. In this paper we raise a puzzle for this orthodox reductionist account of rate of change quantities and evaluate some possible replies. We don’t decisively come down in favour of one reply over the others, though we say some things to support taking our puzzle to cast doubt on the standard view that spacetime is continuous. (shrink)

The arena of the philosophy of time has been largely concerned with deciding whether tense distinctions reflect absolute metaphysical distinctions or not. After bringing the debate over the metaphysical status of instantaneous velocity to bear on the debate over the nature of temporal passage, I argue that we should further investigate whether aspectual distinctions reflect objective and absolute metaphysical distinctions too. I conclude that those who think that being realist about tense uniquely makes room for the idea that time passes (...) should be realist about the progressive too. (shrink)

There are two no-change objections that can be raised against the B-theory of time. One stems from the observation that in a B-theoretic scenario changes of determinations can only be represented by propositions which have eternal truth values. The other derives from the principle that nothing can vary over a period of time if it doesn’t instantiate a state of change at all the instants of time which compose it. Here I argue that both objections apply to all comparative conceptions (...) of change, regardless of whether they take tense seriously or not. It follows that, contrary to what is widely believed, A-theoretic accounts of time are not immune to no-change objections, just in virtue of being realist about tense. A-theorists must either accept the conclusion that time, according to their account, does not flow, or put forward an account of flow that is not comparative. A number of difficulties with both of these options are discussed. (shrink)

Zeno’s paradoxes of motion, allegedly denying motion, have been conceived to reinforce the Parmenidean vision of an immutable world. The aim of this article is to demonstrate that these famous logical paradoxes should be seen instead as paradoxes of immobility. From this new point of view, motion is therefore no longer logically problematic, while immobility is. This is convenient since it is easy to conceive that immobility can actually conceal motion, and thus the proposition “immobility is mere illusion of the (...) senses” is much more credible than the reverse thesis supported by Parmenides. Moreover, this proposition is also supported by modern depiction of material bodies: the existence of a ceaseless random motion of atoms—the ‘thermal agitation’—in the scope of contemporary atomic theory, can offer a rational explanation of this ‘illusion of immobility’. Our new approach to Zeno’s paradoxes therefore leads to presenting the novel concept of ‘impermobility’, which we think is a more adequate description of physical reality. (shrink)

I argue that it is metaphysically necessary that: (i) every fundamental entity is conscious, and (ii) every fundamental property is a phenomenal property.

The present PhD dissertation aims to examine the relation between modality and change in Aristotle’s metaphysics. -/- On the one hand, Aristotle supports his modal realism (i.e., worldly objects have modal properties - potentialities and essences - that ground the ascriptions of possibility and necessity) by arguing that the rejection of modal realism makes change inexplicable, or, worse, banishes it from the realm of reality. On the other hand, the Stagirite analyses processes by means of modal notions (‘change is the (...) actuality of what is virtual insofar as it is virtual’). In other words: to grasp what change is, one has to resort to the modal idiom of potentialities, while the fact that there is change is indicative of the fact that nature is full of modal properties. -/- Aristotle’s modal and kinetic realism finds a negative in the figure of the Megaric Diodorus Kronus. The polemical situation of Greek philosophy has indeed the dialectical advantage of not opposing the Aristotelian position to a sui generis straw man. Both in its reduction of modal judgements to temporal quantifications and in its dissolution of the reality of the state-of-being-in-motion in favour of a cinematographic view of processes, the philosophical figure of reductionist antirealism embodied by Diodorus constitutes an alternative that takes the opposite view of Aristotle’s realism. -/- The present study is structured as a discussion between these two positions. In the face of Diodorus’ antirealist challenges, Aristotle articulates modal and kinetic considerations: the answers he gives to Diodorus’ puzzles thus provide valuable insight into his metaphysics. Moreover, the examination of Aristotle’s and Diodorus’ metaphysics, because of their insight and originality, will not fail to interest the philosopher concerned with the metaphysical foundations of modern physics, insofar as the entanglement between modalities and processes is nowadays at the core of mechanics (phase spaces, path integrals, etc.). (shrink)

In his In Contradiction (1987), Priest levelled three powerful arguments against the received Russellian view of change and motion. He argued that his preferred paraconsistent theory of change, the Hegelian account, is immune from these objections. Here I argue that these three arguments are sound, but that the Hegelian account falls pray to them too. I conclude, however, that the Hegelian account is in a better position to tackle these challenges.

According to comparativist theories of quantities, their intrinsic values are not fundamental. Instead, all the quantity facts are grounded in scale-independent relations like "twice as massive as" or "more massive than." I show that this sort of scale independence is best understood as a sort of metaphysical symmetry--a principle about which transformations of the non-fundamental ontology leave the fundamental ontology unchanged. Determinism--a core scientific concept easily formulated in absolutist terms--is more difficult for the comparativist to define. After settling on the (...) most plausible comparativist understanding of determinism, I offer some examples of physical systems that the comparativist must count as indeterministic although the relevant physical theory gives deterministic predictions. Several morals are drawn. In particular: comparativism is metaphysically contingent if true, and it is most natural for a comparativist to accept an at-at theory of motion. (shrink)

Many philosophers of physics think that physical rates of change, like velocity or acceleration in classical physics, are extrinsic. Many philosophers of mind think that phenomenal properties, which characterize what it’s like to be an agent at a time, are intrinsic. I will argue that these two views can’t both be true. Given that these two views are in tension, we face an explanatory challenge. Why should there be any interesting connection between these physical quantities and consciousness in the first (...) place? In a speculative spirit, I close by developing a panpsychist view which promises to explain this connection in a particularly satisfying way. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that continuity is the most essential characteristic of motion; the motion of macroscopic objects is apparently continuous, and classical mechanics, which describes such motion, is also based on the assumption of continuous motion. But is motion really continuous in reality? In this paper, I will try to answer this question through a new analysis of the cause of motion. It has been argued that the standard velocity in classical mechanics cannot fulfill the causal role required for (...) explaining continuous motion in a deterministic way. However, there is a hot debate over the solution to this causal explanation problem. The existing solutions, i.e. the "at-at" theory, the impetus view and the "no instants" view, have serious drawbacks. After reviewing their drawbacks and presenting my own objections, I propose a new solution to this causal explanation problem. It is argued that the relativity of motion or the equivalence between motion and rest demands that motion has no deterministic cause, and thus no causal explanation is needed for motion. Based on this result, I further argue that the uncaused motion is not deterministic and continuous but essentially random and discontinuous. Moreover, objects have a potential that determines the probabilities of their future positions. This suggests a possible connection with quantum mechanics. Lastly, I give a brief explanation for the apparent inconsistency between the suggested potential theory of motion and the appearance of continuous motion in the macroscopic world. (shrink)

In the present paper I argue that the formalism of Newtonian mechanics stems directly from the general principle to be called the principle of microlevel reducibility which physical systems obey in the realm of classical physics. This principle assumes, first, that all the properties of physical systems must be determined by their states at the current moment of time, in a slogan form it is ``only the present matters to physics.'' Second, it postulates that any physical system is nothing but (...) an ensemble of structureless particles arranged in some whose interaction obeys the superposition principle. I substantiate this statement and demonstrate directly how the formalism of differential equations, the notion of forces in Newtonian mechanics, the concept of phase space and initial conditions, the principle of least actions, etc. result from the principle of microlevel reducibility. The philosophical concept of thick presentism and the introduction of two dimensional time-physical time and meta-time that are mutually independent on infinitesimal scales-are the the pivot points in these constructions. (shrink)

The impetus theory of motion states that to be in motion is to have a non-zero velocity. The at-at theory of motion states that to be in motion is to be at different places at different times, which in classical physics is naturally understood as the reduction of velocities to position developments. I first defend the at-at theory against the criticism raised by Arntzenius that it renders determinism impossible. I then develop a novel impetus theory of motion that reduces positions (...) to velocity developments. As this impetus theory of motion is by construction a mirror image of the at-at theory of motion, I claim that the two theories of motion are in fact epistemically on par—despite the unfamiliar metaphysical picture of the world furnished by the impetus version. (shrink)

This paper will argue that the puzzles about instantaneous velocity, and rates of change more generally, are the result of a failure to recognize an ambiguity in the concept of an instant, and therefore of an instantaneous state. We will conclude that there are two distinct conceptions of a temporal instant: (i) instants conceived as fundamentally distinct zero-duration temporal atoms and (ii) instants conceived as the boundary of, or between,temporally extended durations. Since the concept of classical instantaneous velocity is well- (...) defined only on the second conception of instants, we will conclude that this distinction allows us to avoid the above dilemma. If instantaneous velocity is well-defined then the states of a system at various instants are not logically distinct and thus we cannot generate Zeno’s paradox. However, if we assume that the instants are metaphysically distinct, then instantaneous velocity is not well-defined and thus the second horn of the dilemma about the causal-explanatory role of instantaneous velocity cannot be generated. (shrink)