Online research in philosophy

My focus here will be Rudolf Carnap’s views on ontology, as these are presented in the seminal “Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology” (1950). I will first describe how I think Carnap’s distinction between external and internal questions is best understood. Then I will turn to broader issues regarding Carnap’s views on ontology. With certain reservations, I will ascribe to Carnap an ontological pluralist position roughly similar to the positions of Eli Hirsch and the later Hilary Putnam. Then I turn to some interrelated arguments against the pluralist view. The arguments are not demonstrative. Some possible escape routes for the pluralist are outlined. But I think the arguments constitute a formidable challenge. There should be serious doubt as to whether the pluralist view, as it emerges after discussion of these arguments, will be worth defending. Moreover, there is an alternative ontological view which equally well subserves the motivations underlying ontological pluralism.

In this paper, I consider ways of responding to critiques of natural kinds monism recently suggested from the pluralist camp. Even if monism is determined to be untenable in certain domains (say, about species), it might well be tenable in others. Chemistry is suggested to be such a monist‐friendly domain. Suggestions of trouble for chemical kinds can be defused by attending to the difference between monism as a metaphysical thesis and as a claim about classification systems. Finally, I consider enantiomers as a test case for the monism/pluralism debate. The question of whether enantiomers differ in kind does not appear easily answerable. I suggest that this legislates for pluralism in chemistry.

J. Baird Callicott has thrown down the gauntlet once again in the monism?pluralism debate in environmental ethics. In a recent article he argues that his ?communitarianism? (combined with a limited intertheoretic pluralism) is sufficient to get the advantages of pluralism advocated by his critics, while at the same time retaining the framework of moral monism. Callicott's attempt to set the record straight on the monism?pluralism debate has once again derailed us from answering the most important question in this discussion: how do we achieve a compatibilism among ethical theories which will inform better environmental practices? But if Callicott got it wrong, then who is getting it right? Arne Naess, whose work has heretofore been excluded from the mainstream discussion of this issue, has all along understood the heart of the monism?pluralism question. This paper updates the current state of the monism?pluralism debate, provides an answer to Callicott's latest challenge, and advances the thesis that all involved in this argument would do well to take a look at what Naess has to say on this issue.

Despite the fact that Davidson's theory of the causal relata is crucial to his response to the problem of mental causation - that of anomalous monism - it is commonly overlooked within discussions of his position. Anomalous monism is accused of entailing property epiphenomenalism, but given Davidson's understanding of the causal relata, such accusations are wholly misguided. There are, I suggest, two different forms of property epiphenomenalism. The first understands the term 'property' in an ontological sense, the second in a linguistic sense. Anomalous monism cannot plausibly be accused of either. The first cannot legitimately be applied to anomalous monism as it is incompatible with Davidson's ontology. And accusations of predicate epiphenomenalism, although consistent with Davidson's ontology, are ungrounded regarding Davidson's anomalous monism. Philosophers of mind have mislocated the problem with Davidson's anomalous monism, which in fact lies with the implausible theory of the causal relata upon which it rests.

I describe an account of ontological categories which does justice to the facts that not all categories are ontological categories and that ontological categories can stand in containment relations. The account sorts objects into different categories in the same way in which grammar sorts expressions . It then identifies the ontological categories with those which play a certain role in the systematization of collections of categories. The paper concludes by noting that on my account what ontological categories there are is partially interest-relative, and that furthermore no object can belong essentially to its ontological category.

Ontological Pluralism is the view that there are different modes, ways, or kinds of being. In this paper, I characterize the view more fully (drawing on some recent work by Kris McDaniel) and then defend the view against a number of arguments. (All of the arguments I can think of against it, anyway.).

Dualism can be contrasted with monism, and also with physicalism. It is argued here that what is essential to physicalism is not just its denial of dualism, but the epistemological and ontological authority it gives to physical science. A physicalist view of the mind must be reductive in one or both of the following senses: it must identify mental phenomena with physical phenomena (ontological reduction) or it must give an explanation of mental phenomena in physical terms (explanatory or conceptual reduction). There is little reason to call a view which is not reductive in either of these senses “physicalism”. If reduction is rejected, then a non-physicalist form of monism is still available, which may be called “emergentism”.

A detailed analysis of Quine's paper on ontologicalreduction shows that the proxy-function requirement, in hischaracterization of the concept of ontological reduction,is superfluous for blocking Pythagoreism and inappropriate for a generalblockade of ontological monism.

This paper is a sort of postscript to Ontological Pluralism. I here consider the charge that Pluralism is a mere notational variant of Ontological Monism (which says there is only one kind of being), and argue that, given certain realist assumptions about logic, this charge can’t be right.