Processes are occurrents that were, are, or will be happening. They endure or they perdure, i.e. they are either "fully" present at every time they happen, or they rather have temporal parts. According to Stout (2016), they endure. His argument assumes that processes may change. Then, Stout argues that, if something changes, it endures. As I show, Stout's Argument misses its target. In particular, it makes use of a notion of change that is either intuitive but illegitimate or technical but (...) question-begging. (shrink)

The story of the Ship of Theseus is one of the most venerable conundrums in philosophy. Some philosophers consider it a genuine puzzle. Others deny that it is so. It is, therefore, an open question whether there is or there is not a puzzle in the Ship of Theseus story. So, arguably, it makes sense to test empirically whether people perceive the case as a puzzle. Recently, David Rose, Edouard Machery, Stephen Stich and forty-two other researchers from different countries have (...) undertaken that task. We argue that their tests do not provide any evidence that bears on the question as to whether the Ship of Theseus case is a genuine puzzle. In our discussion we address also what should be taken into account if one wishes to test the puzzling, or not puzzling, status of the Ship of Theseus story. (shrink)

The story of the Ship of Theseus is one of the most venerable conundrums in philosophy. Some philosophers consider it a genuine puzzle. Others deny that it is so. It is, therefore, an open question whether there is or there is not a puzzle in the Ship of Theseus story. So, arguably, it makes sense to test empirically whether people perceive the case as a puzzle. Recently, David Rose, Edouard Machery, Stephen Stich and forty-two other researchers from different countries have (...) undertaken that task. We argue that their tests do not provide any evidence that bears on the question as to whether the Ship of Theseus case is a genuine puzzle. In our discussion we address also what should be taken into account if one wishes to test the puzzling, or not puzzling, status of the Ship of Theseus story. (shrink)

The proper translation of "unless" into intuitionistic formalisms is examined. After a brief examination of intuitionistic writings on "unless", and on translation in general, and a close examination of Dummett's use of "unless" in Elements of Intuitionism (1975b), I argue that the correct intuitionistic translation of "A unless B" is no stronger than "-B -> A". In particular, "unless" is demonstrably weaker than disjunction. I conclude with some observations regarding how this shows that one's choice of logic is methodologically prior (...) to translation from informal natural language to formal systems. (shrink)

This essay is about two familiar theses in the philosophy of mind: constitutivism about instrumental desires, and constitutivism about introspective beliefs, and the arguments for and against them. Constitutivism about instrumental desire is the thesis that instrumental desires are at least partly constituted by the desires and means-end beliefs which explain them, and is a thesis which has been championed most prominently by Michael Smith. Constitutivism about introspective belief is the thesis that introspective beliefs are at least partly constituted by (...) the mental states they are about, and is a thesis which has been championed most prominently by Sydney Shoemaker. Despite their similarities, the fortunes of these two theses could not be more opposed: constitutivism about instrumental desire is widely accepted, and constitutivism about introspective belief is widely rejected. Yet, the arguments for both theses are roughly analogous. This essay explores these arguments. I argue that the argument which is widely taken to be the best argument for constitutivism about instrumental desires---what I call the argument from necessitation---does not provide the support for the thesis it is widely taken to provide, and that it fails for much the same reasons that it fails to provide support for constitutivism about introspective belief. Furthermore, I argue that the best argument for constitutivism about instrumental desires---what I will call the argument from cognitive dynamics---is also a good argument, if not equally good, for constitutivism about introspective belief (at least when the thesis is suitably qualified). (shrink)

Fraser MacBride, On the Genealogy of Universals: The Metaphysical Origins of Analytic Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Reflective equilibrium, as a methodology for the "formation of logics," fails on the *fringe*, where intricate details can make or break a logical theory. On the fringe, the process of theorification cannot be methodologically governed by anything like reflective equilibrium. When logical theorising gets tricky, there is nothing on the pre-theoretical side on which our theoretical claims can reflect of---at least not in any meaningful way. Indeed, the fringe is exclusively the domain of theoretical negotiations and the methodological power of (...) reflective equilibrium is merely nominal. (shrink)

Recently John Turri (2015b) has argued, contra the orthodoxy amongst epistemologists, that reliability is not a necessary condition for knowledge. From this result, Turri (2015a, 2017, 2016a, 2019) defends a new account of knowledge - called abilism - that allows for unreliable knowledge. I argue that Turri's arguments fail to establish that unreliable knowledge is possible and argue that Turri's account of knowledge is false because reliability must be a necessary condition for knowledge.

This paper has two components. The first, longer component (sec. 1-6) is a critical exposition of Armstrong's views about the metaphysics of mathematics, as they are presented in Truth and Truthmakers and Sketch for a Systematic Metaphysics. In particular, I discuss Armstrong's views about the nature of the cardinal numbers, and his account of how modal truths are made true. In the second component of the paper (sec. 7), which is shorter and more tentative, I sketch an alternative account of (...) the metaphysics of mathematics. I suggest we insist that mathematical truths have physical truthmakers, without insisting that mathematical objects themselves are part of the physical world. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for the instability of an increasingly popular position about how metaphysicians ought to regard parsimony. This instability is rooted in an unrecognized tension between two claims. First, we as metaphysicians ought to minimize the number of ontological kinds we posit. Second, it is not the case that we ought to minimize the number of ideological expressions we employ, especially when those expressions are of the same ideological kind (e.g. the compositional predicates "is a part of" (...) and "overlaps"). I argue that the two claims are in tension with one other. At the very least, minimizing the number of ontological kinds posited entails minimizing the number of expressions employed---more specifically, the "ontologically committing" predicates. But, plausibly, the tension runs deeper than that. I suggest that minimizing the number of ontological kinds just is a specific way of minimizing the number of ideological expressions employed in stating a theory. The two activities target the same aspect of reality, the world's metaphysical structure. I end by evaluating three different responses to this puzzle. Ultimately, I suggest that metaphysicians should treat the minimization of the number of ideological expressions as more important than it currently is treated. (shrink)

This paper presents three explanations of why Frege took the universal, rather than the existential, quantifier as primitive in his formalization of logic. The first two explanations provide technical reasons related to how Frege formalizes the logic of truth-functions and the logic of quantification. The third, philosophical explanation locates the reason in Frege's logicist goal of analyzing arithmetical concepts---especially the concepts of 0 and 1---in purely logical terms.

Most theories of promising are insufficiently broad, for they ground promissory obligation in some external or contingent feature of the promise. In this paper, I introduce a new kind of theory. The Mental States First (MSF) theory grounds promissory obligation in something internal and essential: the mental state expressed by promising, or the state that promisors purport to be in. My defense of MSF relies on three claims. First, promising to Φ expresses that you have resolved to Φ. Second, resolving (...) to Φ commits you to Φing, all else being equal. Third, the norms on speech acts are determined by the norms on the mental states they express, such that publicly expressing that you are in a state subjects you to whatever commitments are normally incurred by being in that state, regardless of whether you really are in it. I suggest that this general approach might also explain how the norms on other sorts of speech acts work. (shrink)

The purpose of this introduction is to give a rough overview of the discussion of the formalization of arguments, focusing on deductive arguments. The discussion is structured around four important junctions: i) the notion of support, which captures the relation between the conclusion and premises of an argument, ii) the choice of a formal language into which the argument is translated in order to make it amenable to evaluation via formal methods, iii) the question of quality criteria for such formalizations, (...) and finally iv) the choice of the underlying logic. This introductory discussion is supplemented by a brief description of the genesis of the special issue, acknowledgements, and summaries of each article. (shrink)

A sophisticated version of the zombie argument due to David Chalmers runs roughly as follows: a zombie world is ideally primarily conceivable, and whatever is ideally primarily conceivable is primarily possible. Thus, a zombie world is primarily possible, which implies, in turn, that either physicalism is false or Russellian monism is true. Appealing to some plausible mereological considerations, Daniel Giberman presents a novel argument to the effect that zombies are not ideally primarily conceivable. I shall argue, firstly, that a main (...) premise of Giberman's argument is ill-supported, as it trades on a confusion between the primary and the secondary intensions of the "actually" operator. I then consider two lines of reasoning, which might be extracted from Giberman's text, in favour of another chief premise of his argument. I shall argue that the first line of reasoning is flawed, and the second one, in effect, will transform Giberman's argument into a kind of "parity argument" in which his mereological considerations play no role. (shrink)

In his influential After Finitude. An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency (2008), Quentin Meillassoux argues that *Correlationism* (an umbrella-term encompassing most varieties of Idealism) gives rise to an irresolvable paradox, called "the Paradox of the Arche-fossil", which is essentially a clash between philosophical principles and scientific findings. This irresolvable paradox of Correlationism then paves the way for the "Speculative Turn" and the ensuing rise of burgeoning "speculative realism" in Continental Philosophy: noumenal reality, as-it-is-in-and-of-itself, "the Great Outdoors", is back on (...) the Continental stage, open for speculative thought and even metaphysical knowledge. We attempt to provide a thorough and charitable analysis of the Paradox of the Arche-fossil. Our analyses lead us to conclude that Meillassoux's argument fails, due to an ambiguity with regard to the concept of being that cannot be repaired. We end by directing attention to another ominous threat to Correlationism, ignored by Meillassoux and all "speculative realists" alike, which is still breathing. (shrink)

In a recent article, “Logical Consequence and Natural Language,” Michael Glanzberg claims that there is no relation of logical consequence in natural language (2015). The present paper counters that claim. I shall discuss Glanzberg’s arguments and show why they don’t hold. I further show how Glanzberg’s claims may be used to rather support the existence of logical consequence in natural language.

Review of Markus Willaschek, Kant on the Sources of Metaphysics: The Dialectic of Pure Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

David Kaplan's semantic theory for indexicals yields a distinct logic for indexical languages that generates contingent a priori truths. These special truths of the logic of indexicals include examples like "I am here now", an utterance of which expresses a contingent state of affairs and yet which, according to Kaplan, cannot fail to be true when it is uttered. This claim is threatened by the problem of displaced communications: answerphone messages, for example, seem to facilitate true instances of the negation (...) of this supposed logical truth as they allow the agent of the message to no longer be at the location of the message when it is encountered by an audience. Many such displaced communications can be identified in everyday natural language uses of indexicals. Recent discussion has suggested that Kaplan's error is to be overly restrictive in the possible contexts of utterance his semantic theory recognizes, as he fails to acknowledge the possibility of utterances that occur at a context distinct from that in which they are constructed. I reject this diagnosis and defend Kaplan's semantic theory. Displaced communications, I argue, are best understood as resulting from a pragmatically introduced metalinguistic context-shifting operation and hence do not demand revision of Kaplan's semantic theory. I provide an analysis of the pragmatic process underlying this operation and make the case for its merits over those of rival accounts of displaced communications. (shrink)

It is widely held that assertions are partially governed by an epistemic norm. But what is the epistemic condition set out in the norm? Is it knowledge, truth, belief, or something else? In this paper, I defend a view similar to that of Stanley (2008), according to which the relevant epistemic condition is epistemic certainty, where epistemic certainty (but not knowledge) is context-sensitive. I start by distinguishing epistemic certainty, subjective certainty, and knowledge. Then, I explain why it's much more plausible (...) to think that "certain", rather than "know", is context-sensitive. After that, I respond to an important worry raised by Pritchard, according to which the proposed view is too strong to accommodate our current practice of assertion. I then show that the main linguistic and conversational data advanced in the recent literature in favour of the knowledge condition are best explained by the certainty view. Finally, I offer two principled considerations: the certainty view is the only one compatible with three independently plausible claims and it fits very well with the common thought that knowledge does not entail certainty. (shrink)

Michael Esfeld & Dirk-André Deckert, A Minimalist Ontology of the Natural World. New York/Abingdon: Routledge, 2018.

Howard Robinson's *From the Knowledge Argument to Mental Substance* contains two quite different arguments from the vagueness of composite objects to the conclusion that I am not a physical object at all. One of them, developed over the course of several chapters, takes the following form: All composite physical objects (and only composite physical objects are candidates to be a human being) are non-fundamental; non-fundamental things are inevitably vague in various ways; this vagueness shows that we must "make a conceptual (...) interpretation of them", treating them as "artefacts of conceptualisation"; and this in turn precludes our identifying ourselves with any such things. Some interesting morals fall out of close consideration of Robinson's argument; but, in the end, materialists can reasonably resist it. (shrink)

Review of Graham Oppy (ed.), Ontological Arguments, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. I particularly engage with the contributions of Lawrence Nolan on Descartes, Lawrence Pasternack on Kant, and Graham Oddie on Tichy.