We take ourselves to be able to omit to perform certain actions and to be at times responsible for these omissions. Moreover, omissions seem to have effects and to be manifestations of our agency. So, it is natural to think that omissions must be events. However, very few people writing on this topic have been willing to argue that omissions are events. Such a view is taken to face three significant challenges: (i) omissions are thought to be somehow problematically negative, (...) (ii) it is unclear where the event of an omission would be located, and (iii) if we accept any omissions as events, it seems like there would be far too much causation involving them. In this paper, I develop a novel view of omissions as events and as actions that provides answers to these challenges. (shrink)

I shall argue in this article that, if we need to admit of negative facts in our ontology as falsemakers of false propositions, then it is plausible to accept that there are also negative properties conceived of as modes. After having briefly recalled the falsemaker argument, I shall explore five different alternative interpretations of negative facts and I shall demonstrate that each alternative – except for the one involving negative properties – is affected by some problems. Later on, I shall (...) deal with a number of objections against negative properties and I shall demonstrate that they can be overcome without much difficulty. Eventually, I shall tackle Nick Zangwill's argument against the thesis that negative properties are as real as positive ones. Among other things, I shall argue that Zangwill's argument is at least limited in its scope, since it only works with negative and positive determinates within some common determinable. (shrink)

Omissions are metaphysically puzzling: Are they something or are they nothing? This paper develops and defends the constitution view of omissions, according to which a correct analysis of a person’s omission has the form “S omitted to X by Y-ing,” where her Y-ing is what constitutes her not-X-ing. The paper explains why the constitution view should be preferred to other views of omissions and defends the view against objections.

Few philosophers believe in the existence of so-called negative properties. Indeed, many find it mind-boggling just to imagine such entities. By contrast, I believe not only that negative properties are quite conceivable, but also that there are good reasons for thinking that some such properties actually exist. In this paper, I would like to explicate a concept of negative properties which I think avoids the logical absurdities commonly believed to frustrate theories of negative existences. To do this, I shall deploy (...) a conceptual approach to ontology: I first evaluate the ontological commitments of ordinary negative statements, before I argue that, from the perspective of conceptual analysis, negative properties are no more suspicious than positive properties. In the second part of this paper, I probe the extent to which one can explain the distinction between positive and negative properties in terms of facts about logico-semantical entailment. (shrink)

According to one popular criterion of property identity, where X and Y are properties, X is identical with Y if and only if X and Y bestow the same conditional powers on their bearers. In this paper, I argue that this causal criterion of property identity is unsatisfactory, because it fails to provide a sufficient condition for the identification of properties. My argument for this claim is based on the observation that the summing of properties does not entail the summing (...) of the conditional powers that they bestow on an object, but, rather, in some cases their subtraction. If so, the following causal structure seems possible: There are two properties, A and B. Each bestows a different set of conditional powers on its bearer, but the conjunctive property A-and-B bestows exactly the same set of conditional powers as either A or B. If this causal structure is possible, then it creates a serious problem for the causal criterion of property identity. (shrink)

Musical works change. Bruckner revised his Eighth Symphony. Ella Fitzgerald and many other artists have made it acceptable to sing the jazz standard “All the Things You Are” without its original verse. If we accept that musical works genuinely change in these ways, a puzzle arises: why can’t I change Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony? More generally, why are some individuals in a privileged position when it comes to changing musical works and other artifacts, such as novels, films, and games? I give (...) a view of musical works that helps to answer these questions. Musical works, on this view, are created abstract objects with no parts. The paradigmatic changes that musical works undergo are socially determined normative changes in how they should be performed. Due to contingent social practices, Bruckner, but not I, can change how his symphony should be performed. Were social practices radically different, I would be able to change his symphony. This view extends to abstract artifacts beyond music, including novels, films, words, games, and corporations. (shrink)

Theories of causation grounded in counterfactual dependence face the problem of profligate omissions: numerous irrelevant omissions count as causes of an outcome. A recent purported solution to this problem is proportionality, which selects one omission among many candidates as the cause of an outcome. This paper argues that proportionality cannot solve the problem of profligate omissions for two reasons. First: the determinate/determinable relationship that holds between properties like aqua and blue does not hold between negative properties like not aqua and (...) not blue. Negative properties are those at stake in omissive causation. Second: proportionality misconstrues the nature of the problem to be solved. (shrink)

Omissions – any events, actions, or things that do not occur – are central to numerous debates in causation and ethics. This article surveys views on what omissions are, whether they are causally efficacious, and how they ground moral responsibility.

This paper introduces and defends a new principle for when a structural equation model is apt for analyzing actual causation. Any such analysis in terms of these models has two components: a recipe for reading claims of actual causation off an apt model, and an articulation of what makes a model apt. The primary focus in the literature has been on the first component. But the problem of structural isomorphs has made the second especially pressing (Hall 2007; Hitchcock 2007a). Those (...) with realist sympathies have reason to resist the standard response to this problem, which introduces a normative parameter into the metaphysics (Hall 2007; Halpern and Hitchcock 2010, 2015; Halpern 2016a; Menzies 2017; Gallow 2021). However, the only alternative solution in the literature leaves central questions unanswered (Blanchard and Schaffer 2017). I propose an independently motivated aptness requirement, Evident Mediation, that provides the missing details and resolves the structural isomorph problem without need for a normative parameter. (shrink)

Before he reached his mature metaphysical view of being as gradual in the Republic (Allen 1961), Plato claims that neither can negative facts explain positive facts, nor vice versa (Phaedo 103b) (this is very likely a corollary of his principle of opposites according to which if A and B are of opposite ontological categories, A cannot explain B (González-Varela and Barceló 2023). Yet, it seems obvious that we explain positive facts by appealing to negative facts and vice versa, all the (...) time. We say things like "Pat must be sick, because she would not have missed the party otherwise", "The Plant died because we forgot to water it", "The suitcase was so large, it did not fit in the trunk", etc. So this seems like a strange and obviously wrong take on the limits of metaphysical explanation. Yet here I will defend that this counter-intuitive metaphysical thesis has been unjustly dismissed and will argue that, instead, it is a plausible metaphysical principle. My defense of this metaphysical principle can also be seen as part of a larger defense of an under-explored metaphysical hypothesis, Ontological Manichesim, according to which positive and negative facts, if both belong in our ontology, are separate realms of being with no interaction whatsoever. (shrink)

2020 update of the entry "Properties".

I argue that silence is replete with aesthetic character and that it can be a rewarding object of aesthetic appreciation, assessment, and appraisal. The appreciation of silence might initially seem impossible, for, it might seem, there is nothing there to behold. Taking up this challenge, I attempt to dispel the sense of paradox. I contend that, despite our never actually experiencing absolute silence, there is much to enjoy in the silences that we do experience. I go on to argue that (...) proper appreciation of silence is a two-way street, involving quiet on the outside and stillness on the inside. I conclude by offering some suggestions for how to make the aesthetic appreciation of silence part of a flourishing life. (shrink)

I give an informal presentation of the evolutionary game theoretic approach to the conventions that constitute linguistic meaning. The aim is to give a philosophical interpretation of the project, which accounts for the role of game theoretic mathematics in explaining linguistic phenomena. I articulate the main virtue of this sort of account, which is its psychological economy, and I point to the casual mechanisms that are the ground of the application of evolutionary game theory to linguistic phenomena. Lastly, I consider (...) the objection that the account cannot explain predication, logic, and compositionality. (shrink)

In “Why is There Anything at All?” Peter van Inwagen argues that even though it was never necessary that concrete beings existed, it was always maximally probable – just short of necessity – that they did . I argue that van Inwagen’s argument fails, albeit for an interesting reason which has remained so far unnoticed in the literature: there is a critical ten- sion between two of its premises, both essential to its soundness, concerning the nature of comprehensively specified possible (...) worlds. I summarize van Inwagen’s argument, develop this objection, and then describe more problems which invariably accrue when we try to ascribe probability values to possible worlds. (shrink)