Determinates and Determinables

Edited by Jessica M. Wilson (University of Toronto at Scarborough, University of Toronto, St. George Campus)
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  1. Comparativist Theories or Conspiracy Theories: the No Miracles Argument Against Comparativism.Caspar Jacobs - forthcoming - Journal of Philosophy.
    Although physical theories routinely posit absolute quantities, such as absolute position or intrinsic mass, it seems that only comparative quantities such as distance and mass ratio are observable. But even if there are in fact only distances and mass ratios, the success of absolutist theories means that the world looks just as if there are absolute positions and intrinsic masses. If comparativism is nevertheless true, there is a sense in which it is a cosmic conspiracy that the world looks just (...)
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  2. In Defence of Dimensions.Caspar Jacobs - forthcoming - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
    The distinction between dimensions and units in physics is commonplace. But are dimensions a feature of reality? The most widely-held view is that they are no more than a tool for keeping track of the values of quantities under a change of units. This anti-realist position is supported by an argument from underdetermination: one can assign dimensions to quantities in many different ways, all of which are empirically equivalent. In contrast, I defend a form of dimensional realism, on which some (...)
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  3. Disjunctive Parts.Mark Jago - forthcoming - In Federico L. G. Faroldi & Frederik Van De Putte (eds.), Outstanding Contributions to Logic: Kit Fine. Springer.
    Fine (2017a) sets out a theory of content based on truthmaker semantics which distinguishes two kinds of consequence between contents. There is entailment, corresponding to the relationship between disjunct and disjunction, and there is containment, corresponding to the relationship between conjunctions and their conjuncts. Fine associates these with two notions of parthood: disjunctive and conjunctive. Conjunctive parthood is a very useful notion, allowing us to analyse partial content and partial truth. In this chapter, I extend the notion of disjunctive parthood (...)
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  4. Worship and Veneration.Brandon Warmke & Craig Warmke - forthcoming - In Aaron Segal & Samuel Lebens (eds.), The Philosophy of Worship: Divine and Human Aspects. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    Various strands of religious thought distinguish veneration from worship. According to these traditions, believers ought to worship God alone. To worship anything else, they say, is idolatry. And yet many of these same believers also claim to venerate—but not worship—saints, angels, images, relics, tombs, and even each other. But what's the difference? Tim Bayne and Yujin Nagasawa (2006: 302) are correct that “it seems to be extremely difficult to distinguish veneration from worship.” Many have argued throughout history that veneration collapses (...)
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  5. Dispositions, Mereology and Panpsychism: The Case for Phenomenal Properties.Simone Gozzano - 2024 - In Christopher J. Austin, Anna Marmodoro & Andrea Roselli (eds.), Powers, Parts, and Wholes. New York: Routledge. pp. 227 - 242.
    My interest in this chapter is to investigate this crossroad as applied to mental properties, considered powers. In particular, I scrutinize the possibility of taking the phenomenal property of feeling pain as a complex power or disposition. This possibility comes in handy in discussing panpsychism, the view that the ultimate elements of reality are phenomenal properties, which would ground physical properties as well.
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  6. Metaphysical indeterminacy in the multiverse.Claudio Calosi & Jessica Wilson - 2022 - In Valia Allori (ed.), Quantum Mechanics and Fundamentality. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. pp. 375-395.
    One might suppose that Everettian quantum mechanics (EQM) is inhospitable to metaphysial indeterminacy (MI), given that, as A. Wilson (2020) puts it, "the central idea of EQM is to replace indeterminacy with multiplicity" (77). But as Wilson goes on to suggest, the popular decoherence-based understanding of EQM (henceforth: DEQM) appears to admit of indeterminacy in both world number and world nature, where the latter indeterminacy---our focus here---is plausibly metaphysical. After a brief presentation of DEQM (S1), we bolster the case for (...)
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  7. Ontological Collectivism.Raul Saucedo - 2022 - Philosophical Perspectives 36 (1):233-269.
    I give shape to a neglected debate in metaphysics, the debate over the ontological priority between individuality and collectivity. I distinguish the debate from more familiar ones in the recent literature and articulate what I call ontological collectivism, the view that collectivity is prior to individuality. I defend the in-principle intelligibility of the view from forceful general objections and argue that not only is it coherent but also of significant interest to the literature: it allows for overlooked alternatives on a (...)
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  8. Intrinsicality and determinacy.Erica Shumener - 2022 - Philosophical Studies 179 (11):3349-3364.
    Comparativism maintains that physical quantities are ultimately relational in character. For example, an object’s having 1 kg rest mass depends on the relations it stands in to other objects in the universe. Comparativism, its advocates allege, reveals that quantities are not metaphysically mysterious: Quantities are reducible to familiar relations holding among physical objects. Modal accounts of intrinsicality—such as Lewis’s duplication account or Langton and Lewis’s combinatorial account—are popular accounts preserving many of our core intuitions regarding which properties are intrinsic. I (...)
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  9. Immoralism is Obviously True: Towards Progress on the Ethical Question.Nils-Hennes Stear - 2022 - British Journal of Aesthetics 62 (4):615-632.
    The Ethical Question asks whether ethical values in artworks determine their aesthetic value and, if so, how. I argue that the question is ambiguous between a direct and an indirect reading. I show how the indirect reading is philosophically uninteresting because it has an obvious answer: a view called ‘immoralism’. I also show how most of the significant figures in the relevant literature address the indirect form of the question anyway—needlessly, if I am right. Finally, I consider whether some version (...)
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  10. Quantum indeterminacy and the double-slit experiment.Claudio Calosi & Jessica Wilson - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 178 (10):3291-3317.
    In Calosi and Wilson (Phil Studies 2019/2018), we argue that on many interpretations of quantum mechanics (QM), there is quantum mechanical indeterminacy (QMI), and that a determinable-based account of metaphysical indeterminacy (MI), as per Wilson 2013 and 2016, properly accommodates the full range of cases of QMI. Here we argue that this approach is superior to other treatments of QMI on offer, both realistic and deflationary, in providing the basis for an intelligible explanation of the interference patterns in the double-slit (...)
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  11. How Judgments of Visual Resemblance are Induced by Visual Experience.Alon Chasid & Alik Pelman - 2021 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 28 (11-12):54-76.
    Judgments of visual resemblance (‘A looks like B’), unlike other judgments of resemblance, are often induced directly by visual experience. What is the nature of this experience? We argue that the visual experience that prompts a subject looking at A to judge that A looks like B is a visual experience of B. After elucidating this thesis, we defend it, using the ‘phenomenal contrast’ method. Comparing our account to competing accounts, we show that the phenomenal contrast between a visual experience (...)
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  12. Ditching Dependence and Determination: Or, How to Wear the Crazy Trousers.Michael Duncan, Kristie Miller & James Norton - 2021 - Synthese 198 (1):395–418.
    This paper defends Flatland—the view that there exist neither determination nor dependence relations, and that everything is therefore fundamental—from the objection from explanatory inefficacy. According to that objection, Flatland is unattractive because it is unable to explain either the appearance as of there being determination relations, or the appearance as of there being dependence relations. We show how the Flatlander can meet the first challenge by offering four strategies—reducing, eliminating, untangling and omnizing—which, jointly, explain the appearance as of there being (...)
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  13. Mellor’s Question: Are Determinables Properties of Properties or of Particulars?Bo R. Meinertsen - 2021 - American Philosophical Quarterly 58 (3):291-305.
    What I call Mellor’s Question is the problem of whether determinables are properties of their determinates or properties of the particulars that possess these determinates. One can distinguish two basic competing theories of determinables that address the issue, implicitly if not explicitly. On the second-order theory, determinables are second-order properties of determinate properties; on the second-level theory, determinables are first-order properties of the particulars with these determinate properties. Higher-order properties are prima facie ontologically uneconomical, and in line with my general (...)
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  14. Maimon’s ‘Law of Determinability’ and the Impossibility of Shared Attributes.Yitzhak Melamed - 2021 - Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 109 (1):49-62.
    Apart from his critique of Kant, Maimon’s significance for the history of philosophy lies in his crucial role in the rediscovery of Spinoza by the German Idealists. Specifically, Maimon initiated a change from the common eighteenth-century view of Spinoza as the great ‘atheist’ to the view of Spinoza as an ‘acosmist’, i.e., a thinker who propounded a deep, though unorthodox, religious view denying the reality of the world and taking God to be the only real being. I have discussed this (...)
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  15. Perceiving indeterminately.Bence Nanay - 2020 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 9 (3):160-166.
    It has been argued recently that perception is indeterminate. But there are more than one ways of spelling out what this means. The standard line is that perceptual states attribute different probabilities to different propositions. I provide an alternative to this view, where it is not the attitude, but the content of perceptual states that is indeterminate, inasmuch as it consists of the representation of determinable properties. This view does justice to the more general claim that perception is indeterminate without (...)
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  16. Quantum metaphysical indeterminacy.Claudio Calosi & Jessica Wilson - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (10):2599–2627.
    On many currently live interpretations, quantum mechanics violates the classical supposition of value definiteness, according to which the properties of a given particle or system have precise values at all times. Here we consider whether either metaphysical supervaluationist or determinable-based approaches to metaphysical indeterminacy can accommodate quantum metaphysical indeterminacy (QMI). We start by discussing the standard theoretical indicator of QMI, and distinguishing three seemingly different sources of QMI (S1). We then show that previous arguments for the conclusion that metaphysical supervaluationism (...)
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  17. A Defense of Hume's Dictum.Cameron Gibbs - 2019 - Dissertation, University of Massachusetts Amherst
    Is the world internally connected by a web of necessary connections or is everything loose and independent? Followers of David Hume accept the latter by upholding Hume’s Dictum, according to which there are no necessary connections between distinct existences. Roughly put, anything can coexist with anything else, and anything can fail to coexist with anything else. Hume put it like this: “There is no object which implies the existence of any other if we consider these objects in themselves.” Since Hume’s (...)
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  18. Quantity Tropes and Internal Relations.Markku Keinänen, Antti Keskinen & Jani Hakkarainen - 2019 - Erkenntnis 84 (3):519-534.
    In this article, we present a new conception of internal relations between quantity tropes falling under determinates and determinables. We begin by providing a novel characterization of the necessary relations between these tropes as basic internal relations. The core ideas here are that the existence of the relata is sufficient for their being internally related, and that their being related does not require the existence of any specific entities distinct from the relata. We argue that quantity tropes are, as determinate (...)
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  19. Review of Joshua Gert, "Primitive Colors". [REVIEW]Nicholas Danne - 2018 - Metapsychology Online Reviews 22 (31).
    Good book. See this review's final paragraph for my conspiracy theory defending reflectance physicalism.
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  20. The determinable–determinate relation can’t save adverbialism.Alex Grzankowski - 2018 - Analysis 78 (1):45-52.
    Adverbialist theories of thought such as those advanced by Hare and Sellars promise an ontologically sleek understanding of a variety of intentional states, but such theories have been largely abandoned due to the ‘many-property problem’. In an attempt to revitalize this otherwise attractive theory, in a series of papers as well as his recent book, Uriah Kriegel has offered a novel reply to the ‘many-property problem’ and on its basis he argues that ‘adverbialism about intentionality is alive and well’. If (...)
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  21. Trooppiteoriat ja relaatiossa olemisen analyysi.Markku Keinänen - 2018 - Ajatus 75 (1):121-150.
    Trope theories aim to eschew the primitive dichotomy between characterising (properties, relations) and characterized entities (objects). This article (in Finnish) presents a new trope theoretical analysis of relational inherence as the best way out of the impasse created by the alleged necessity to choose between an eliminativist and a primitivist ("relata-specific") view about relations in trope theory.
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  22. Blur and perceptual content.Bence Nanay - 2018 - Analysis 78 (2):254-260.
    Intentionalism about visual experiences is the view according to which the phenomenal character of a visual experience supervenes on the content of this experience. One of the most influential objections to this view is about blur: seeing a fuzzy contour clearly and seeing a sharp contour blurrily have different phenomenal character but the same content. I argue that this objection does not work if we understand perceptual content simply, and not particularly controversially, as partly constituted by the sum total of (...)
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  23. Blur and perceptual content.Bence Nanay - 2018 - Analysis 78 (2):285-285.
    Intentionalism about visual experiences is the view according to which the phenomenal character of a visual experience supervenes on the content of this experience. One of the most influential objections to this view is about blur: seeing a fuzzy contour clearly and seeing a sharp contour blurrily have different phenomenal character but the same content. I argue that this objection does not work if we understand perceptual content simply, and not particularly controversially, as partly constituted by the sum total of (...)
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  24. The Visual Presence of Determinable Properties.James Stazicker - 2018 - In Fabian Dorsch & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Phenomenal Presence. Oxford University Press.
    Several essays in this volume exploit the idea that in visual experience, and in other forms of consciousness, something is present to consciousness, or phenomenally present to the experiencing subject. This is a venerable idea. Hume, for example, understood conscious experience in terms of the various items ‘present to the mind’. However, it is not obvious how the idea should be understood and there are grounds for worrying that there is no good way of making it precise. Here I explore (...)
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  25. Is There a Humean Account of Quantities?Phillip Bricker - 2017 - Philosophical Issues 27 (1):26-51.
    Humeans have a problem with quantities. A core principle of any Humean account of modality is that fundamental entities can freely recombine. But determinate quantities, if fundamental, seem to violate this core principle: determinate quantities belonging to the same determinable necessarily exclude one another. Call this the problem of exclusion. Prominent Humeans have responded in various ways. Wittgenstein, when he resurfaced to philosophy, gave the problem of exclusion as a reason to abandon the logical atomism of the Tractatus with its (...)
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  26. Against Quantum Indeterminacy.David Glick - 2017 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 6 (3):204-213.
    A growing literature is premised on the claim that quantum mechanics provides evidence for metaphysical indeterminacy. But does it? None of the currently fashionable realist interpretations involve fundamental indeterminacy and the ‘standard interpretation’, to the extent that it can be made out, doesn't require indeterminacy either.
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  27. Determinables and Determinates.Wilson M. Jessica - 2017 - The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    This is a comprehensive discussion of determinables, determinates, and their relation ('determination', for short), covering the historical development of these notions, the theoretical options for understanding them, and certain of their contemporary applications.
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  28. Are There Indeterminate States of Affairs? Yes.Jessica M. Wilson - 2017 - In Elizabeth Barnes (ed.), Current Controversies in Metaphysics. Taylor & Francis. pp. 105-119.
    Here I compare two accounts of metaphysical indeterminacy (MI): first, the 'meta-level' approach described by Elizabeth Barnes and Ross Cameron in the companion to this paper, on which every state of affairs (SOA) is itself precise/determinate, and MI is a matter of its being indeterminate which determinate SOA obtains; second, my preferred 'object-level' determinable-based approach, on which MI is a matter of its being determinate---or just plain true---that an indeterminate SOA obtains, where an indeterminate SOA is one whose constitutive object (...)
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  29. What Are Quantities?Joongol Kim - 2016 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 94 (4):792-807.
    ABSTRACTThis paper presents a view of quantities as ‘adverbial’ entities of a certain kind—more specifically, determinate ways, or modes, of having length, mass, speed, and the like. In doing so, it will be argued that quantities as such should be distinguished from quantitative properties or relations, and are not universals but are particulars, although they are not objects, either. A main advantage of the adverbial view over its rivals will be found in its superior explanatory power with respect to both (...)
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  30. The unity and priority arguments for Grounding.Jessica M. Wilson - 2016 - In Ken Aizawa & Carl Gillett (eds.), Scientific Composition and Metaphysical Ground. Basinstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. pp. 171-204.
    Grounding, understood as a primitive posit operative in contexts where metaphysical dependence is at issue, is not able on its own to do any substantive work in characterizing or illuminating metaphysical dependence---or so I argue in 'No Work for a Theory of Grounding' (Inquiry, 2014). Such illumination rather requires appeal to specific metaphysical relations---type or token identity, functional realization, the determinable-determinate relation, the mereological part-whole relation, and so on---of the sort typically at issue in these contexts. In that case, why (...)
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  31. Uninstantiated Properties and Semi-Platonist Aristotelianism.James Franklin - 2015 - Review of Metaphysics 69 (1):25-45.
    A problem for Aristotelian realist accounts of universals (neither Platonist nor nominalist) is the status of those universals that happen not to be realised in the physical (or any other) world. They perhaps include uninstantiated shades of blue and huge infinite cardinals. Should they be altogether excluded (as in D.M. Armstrong's theory of universals) or accorded some sort of reality? Surely truths about ratios are true even of ratios that are too big to be instantiated - what is the truthmaker (...)
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  32. Spin as a Determinable.Johanna Wolff - 2015 - Topoi 34 (2):379-386.
    In this paper I aim to answer two questions: Can spin be treated as a determinable? Can a treatment of spin as a determinable be used to understand quantum indeterminacy? In response to the first question I show that the relations among spin number, spin components and spin values cannot be captured by a single determination relation; instead we need to look at spin number and spin value separately. In response to the second question I discuss three ways in which (...)
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  33. Two Problems for Proportionality about Omissions.Sara Bernstein - 2014 - Dialectica 68 (3):429-441.
    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 (...)
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  34. Determinable Properties and Overdetermination of Causal Powers.Jonas Christensen - 2014 - Philosophia 42 (3):695-711.
    Do determinable properties such as colour, mass, and height exist in addition to their corresponding determinates, being red, having a mass of 1 kilogram, and having a height of 2 metres? Optimists say yes, pessimists say no. Among the latter are Carl Gillett and Bradley Rives who argue that optimism leads to systematic overdetermination of causal powers and hence should be rejected on the grounds that the position is ontologically unparsimonious. In this paper I defend optimism against this charge by (...)
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  35. Natural Properties and Bottomless Determination.Bence Nanay - 2014 - Americal Philosophical Quarterly 51:215-226.
    It is widely held that some properties are more natural than others and that, as David Lewis put it, “an adequate theory of properties is one that recognises an objective difference between natural and unnatural properties” (Lewis 1983, p. 347). The general line of thought is that such ‘elitism’ about properties is justified as it can give simple and elegant solutions to a number of old metaphysical and philosophical problems. My aim is to analyze what these natural properties are: super-determinates (...)
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  36. Mental Causation and the New Compatibilism.Jens Harbecke - 2013 - Abstracta 7 (1).
    Twenty years ago Stephen Yablo developed his original theory of mental causation, which has drawn much attention ever since. By providing a detailed reconstruction of Yablo’s approach, this paper first demonstrates that a certain line of critique that has repeatedly been brought forward against Yablo over the last two decades misconstrues the core idea of the model. At the same time, the reconstruction reveals that Yablo’s approach is probably the first explicit version of the “new compatibilism” within the philosophy of (...)
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  37. Determinables and Brute Similarities.Olivier Massin - 2013 - In Christer Svennerlind, Jan Almäng & Rögnvaldur Ingthorsson (eds.), Johanssonian Investigations. Essays in Honour of Ingvar Johansson on His Seventieth Birthday. Ontos Verlag.
    Ingvar Johansson has argued that there are not only determinate universals, but also determinable ones. I here argue that this view is misguided by reviving a line of argument to the following effect: what makes determinates falling under a same determinable similar cannot be distinct from what makes them different. If true, some similarities — imperfect similarities between simple determinate properties — are not grounded in any kind of property-sharing. I suggest that determinables are better understood as maximal disjunctions of (...)
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  38. A determinable-based account of metaphysical indeterminacy.Jessica M. Wilson - 2013 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 56 (4):359-385.
    ABSTRACT Many phenomena appear to be indeterminate, including material macro-object boundaries and certain open future claims. Here I provide an account of indeterminacy in metaphysical, rather than semantic or epistemic, terms. Previous accounts of metaphysical indeterminacy have typically taken this to involve its being indeterminate which of various determinate states of affairs obtain. On my alternative account, MI involves its being determinate that an indeterminate state of affairs obtains. I more specifically suggest that MI involves an object's having a determinable (...)
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  39. Bayes or determinables? What does the bidirectional hierarchical model of brain functions tell us about the nature of perceptual representation?Bence Nanay - 2012 - Frontiers in Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology 3.
    The focus of this commentary is what Andy Clark takes to be the most groundbreaking of the philosophical import of the ‘bidirectional hierarchical model of brain functions’, namely, the claim that perceptual representations represent probabilities. This is what makes his account Bayesian and this is a philosophical or theoretical conclusion that neuroscientists and psychologists are also quick and happy to draw. My claim is that nothing in the ‘bidirectional hierarchical models of brain functions’ implies that perceptual representations are probabilistic, or (...)
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  40. Fundamental determinables.Jessica M. Wilson - 2012 - Philosophers' Imprint 12.
    Contemporary philosophers commonly suppose that any fundamental entities there may be are maximally determinate. More generally, they commonly suppose that, whether or not there are fundamental entities, any determinable entities there may be are grounded in, hence less fundamental than, more determinate entities. So, for example, Armstrong takes the physical objects constituting the presumed fundamental base to be “determinate in all respects” (1961, 59), and Lewis takes the properties characterizing things “completely and without redundancy” to be “highly specific” (1986, 60). (...)
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  41. An abstract characterization of the determinate/determinable distinction.Kit Fine - 2011 - Philosophical Perspectives 25 (1):161-187.
  42. Parthood and Location.Raul Saucedo - 2011 - Oxford Studies in Metaphysics 6.
    This chapter argues that from a particularly weak recombination principle and plausible assumptions about the nature of parthood and location, it follows that it is possible that the mereological structure of the material world and that of space-time fail to correspond to one another in very radical ways. The chapter suggests, moreover, that rejecting the possibility of such failures of correspondence leaves us with a choice of no less unappealing alternatives. It also discusses a few ways in which their possibility (...)
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  43. Can determinable properties earn their keep?Robert Schroer - 2011 - Synthese 183 (2):229-247.
    Sydney Shoemaker's "Subset Account" offers a new take on determinable properties and the realization relation as well as a defense of non-reductive physicalism from the problem of mental causation. At the heart of this account are the claims that (1) mental properties are determinable properties and (2) the causal powers that individuate a determinable property are a proper subset of the causal powers that individuate the determinates of that property. The second claim, however, has led to the accusation that the (...)
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  44. Bottomless determination: How Yablo can get proportionality from gunk.R. Sorensen - 2011 - Analysis 71 (4):627-630.
    Consider the beginningless sequence: ... being less than 0.01 grams, being less than 0.1 grams, being less than 1 gram, being less than 10 grams ... There is no super-determinate in this chain. Just as the possibility of bottomless constitution shows that there may be no fundamental layer of reality with respect to objects , the possibility of bottomless determination shows that there may be no fundamental level of reality with respect to properties . This possibility supports Stephen Yablo's proportionality (...)
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  45. Realization, determination, and mechanisms.Matthew C. Haug - 2010 - Philosophical Studies 150 (3):313-330.
    Several philosophers (e.g., Ehring (Nous (Detroit, Mich.) 30:461–480, 1996 ); Funkhouser (Nous (Detroit, Mich.) 40:548–569, 2006 ); Walter (Canadian Journal of Philosophy 37:217–244, 2007 ) have argued that there are metaphysical differences between the determinable-determinate relation and the realization relation between mental and physical properties. Others have challenged this claim (e.g., Wilson (Philosophical Studies, 2009 ). In this paper, I argue that there are indeed such differences and propose a “mechanistic” account of realization that elucidates why these differences hold. This (...)
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  46. Connection between Determination and Negation.Bhakti Madhava Puri - 2010 - The Harmonizer.
    Niels Bohr gave us the model of the atom as having a central nucleus around which electrons were circulating in stable orbits. He also gave us the complementarity principle that states that the mutually exclusive wave and corpuscular nature of light were not merely contradictory but complementary descriptions. Field theory considers light as a continuous wave phenomenon with a wavelength and frequency, while quantum theory considers its corpuscular nature as a discrete packet of energy called a photon. Thus we actually (...)
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  47. The Strength of Relationships.Said Saillant - 2010 - Stance 3:33-38.
    I endeavor to show that Descartes’ attribute-mode distinction cannot be characterized in terms of the determinable-determinate relation. I identify the latter’s formal and modal properties in order to determine whether the former shares them, which ultimately shows distinctness. I then indicate which property accounts for the differences. I conclude that the relation that unites modes under an attribute is weaker than that which groups determinates under some determinable, respectively, the relations of inherence and incompatibility.
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  48. A tale of two simples.Joshua Spencer - 2010 - Philosophical Studies 148 (2):167 - 181.
    A material simple is a material object that has no proper parts. Some philosophers have argued for the possibility of extended simples. Some have even argued for the possibility of heterogeneous simples or simples that have intrinsic variations across their surfaces. There is a puzzle, though, that is meant to show that extended, heterogeneous simples are impossible. Although several plausible responses have been given to this puzzle, I wish to reopen the case against extended, heterogeneous simples. In this paper, I (...)
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  49. Determination, realization and mental causation.Jessica Wilson - 2009 - Philosophical Studies 145 (1):149-169.
    How can mental properties bring about physical effects, as they seem to do, given that the physical realizers of the mental goings-on are already sufficient to cause these effects? This question gives rise to the problem of mental causation (MC) and its associated threats of causal overdetermination, mental causal exclusion, and mental causal irrelevance. Some (e.g., Cynthia and Graham Macdonald, and Stephen Yablo) have suggested that understanding mental-physical realization in terms of the determinable/determinate relation (henceforth, 'determination') provides the key to (...)
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  50. Crimson brain, red mind: Yablo on mental causation.Edward T. Cox - 2008 - Dialectica 62 (1):77–99.
    Stephen Yablo offers a solution to the problem of mental causation by claiming that the physical is a determinate of the mental's determinable, and therefore the mental and physical do not compete for causal relevance. I present Yablo's solution and argue that the mental‐physical relation cannot meet three necessary conditions for determination. That relation fails to meet the requirements that determinates of the same determinable be incompatible and that no property can be a determinate of more than one determinable. Further, (...)
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