Online research in philosophy

I argue that Dilworth has not shown the type / token theory of film identity to be non-viable, since there is not reason to think that a single object cannot be a token of two types. Even if we assume a single inheritance view of types, Dilworth's argument runs into other problems. Dilworth does not provide any convincing argument as to why intentions are necessary for identifying film and why production history alone will not suffice for identifying hardly conceivable forgeries. Intention is not necessary for distinguishing between fakes and the real thing, nor is it necessary to differentiate between two artworks with the same token. Moreover, taking the notion of intentions into consideration leads to a splintering problem. I propose that production history, presentation, and non-numerical template identity suffice to identify a film on a multiple inheritance type / token theory.

Two issues are raised with regard to Ted Honderich's A Theory of Determinism. First, regarding the relation between a token identity theory of mental and physical events and Honderich's ?psychoneural union theory?, it is suggested that a token identity theory would serve Honderich's purposes while securing a simpler ontology. Second, it is argued that there is a substantive philosophical issue dividing compatibilists and incompatibilists on the question of whether persons possess free will, contrary to Honderich's contention that the compatibilist and incompatibilist differ only in responsive attitude.

This study has two goals. The first is to identify three desiderata required for a successful defense of a version of nonreductive physicalism: semantic externalism, token-identity between mental andphysical events, and nonrelational type-individuation of physical states. In this context, the paper also presents a refutation of recent challenges to content-externalism by those who attempt to resuscitate internalism by focusing on narrow content associated with the fundamental phenomenology, rather than the intentionality, of mental states. The second goal is to defend the token-identity thesis from Tyler Burge’s argument to the effect that token-identity is incompatible with semantic externalism. An account is also offered as to why Burge’s argument, albeit fallacious, might seem persuasive under a certain interpretation of possible worlds.

This paper disputes a common definition of token identity theory. It also observes that within the philosophical literature there are two significantly different definitions of token identity theory that are commonly used.