Material Objects

Edited by Noel Saenz (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
About this topic
Summary Material objects (basketballs, planets, buildings, tables, chairs, electrons, organisms, etc.) have proved philosophically fascinating. Though they might, at first, appear to be those kinds of objects that pose the least amount of philosophical trouble, puzzles and questions concerning their nature have proved just as interesting, and intractable, as puzzles and questions over abstract and non-existent objects. In this section, papers dealing with questions having to do with their existence, persistence, mereology, location, constitution, origin, modal features, mind-independence, grounding status, causal role, place in a quantum world and perceptibility can be found.
Key works For some key works on the existence, mereology, and constitution of material objects, see Van Inwagen 1990, Merricks 2001, Rea 1997, Thomasson 2007 and Koslicki 2008. For some key works on the persistence, location, and modal features of material objects, see Heller 1990, Sider 2001 and Hawley 2001.
Introductions For a nice introduction on the philosophical issues surrounding ordinary material objects, see Korman 2011.
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1860 found
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Material to categorize
  1. Ontologiset Kategoriateoriat.Markku Keinänen & Jani Hakkarainen - forthcoming - Ensyklopedia Logos.
    Ontologiset kategoriateoriat pyrkivät vastaamaan metafysiikan klassiseen ongelmaan: kysymykseen siitä, mihin eri kategorioihin oliot eli entiteetit jakaantuvat. Olioilla tarkoitetaan tässä mitä tahansa, joka on olemassa. Olevan kategoriat eli ontologiset kategoriat (lyhyesti kategoriat) ovat alustavasti olioiden hyvin yleisiä lajeja. Jäsenyys olioiden kategoriassa ei niinkään kerro sitä, mitä piirteitä oliolla on, vaan sen olemisen tavan ¬– miten se esimerkiksi on tai voi olla maailman rakenneosa. Esimerkkejä mahdollisista kategorioista ovat konkreettiset partikulaariset yksilöoliot (substanssit), ominaisuudet, relaatiot, prosessit, tapahtumat ja joukot. -/- 1. Mitä ovat ontologiset (...)
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  2. Thing Causation.Nathaniel Baron-Schmitt - forthcoming - Noûs.
  3. ULTA-AI.Ilexa Yardley - 2024 - Https://Medium.Com/the-Circular-Theory/.
    Beyond current existential technology: intelligent anarchy and the cogent explanation for, what humans identify as, ‘representation.’ And, therefore, materialization and identification (interpretation, intention, attention).
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  4. Are Sounds Events? Materiality in Auditory Perception.Elia Gonnella - 2023 - Phenomenology and Mind 25 (25):226-240.
    Whilst arguing for sounds as repeatable objects does not seem suitable to our auditory experience, considering them as events can then help us understand some of their main features. In this sense, sounds are events happening to material objects; they have a beginning and an end; they are ephemeral entities that we cannot grasp as ordinary objects. Nevertheless, supporters of event theory usually focus on the autonomous status that sounds manifest from the things in the world. Conversely, when we hear (...)
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  5. The Many-Subjects Argument against Physicalism.Brian Cutter - forthcoming - In Geoffrey Lee & Adam Pautz (eds.), The Importance of Being Conscious. Oxford University Press.
    The gist of the many-subjects argument is that, given physicalism, it’s hard to avoid the absurd result that there are many conscious subjects in your vicinity with more-or-less the same experiences as you. The most promising ways of avoiding this result have a consequence almost as bad: that there are many things in your vicinity that are in a state only trivially different from being conscious, a state with similar normative significance. This paper clarifies and defends three versions of the (...)
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  6. Genealogical Defeat and Ontological Sparsity.Jonathan Barker - 2023 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 47:1-23.
    When and why does awareness of a belief's genealogy render it irrational to continue holding that belief? According to explanationism, awareness of a belief’s genealogy gives rise to an epistemic defeater when and because it reveals that the belief is not explanatorily connected to the relevant worldly facts. I argue that an influential recent version of explanationism, due to Korman and Locke, incorrectly implies that it is not rationally permissible to adopt a “sparse” ontology of worldly facts or states of (...)
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  7. What analytic metaphysics can do for scientific metaphysics.Chanwoo Lee - 2023 - Ratio 36 (3):192-203.
    The apparent chasm between two camps in metaphysics, analytic metaphysics and scientific metaphysics, is well recognized. I argue that the relationship between them is not necessarily a rivalry; a division of labour that resembles the relationship between pure mathematics and science is possible. As a case study, I look into the metaphysical underdetermination argument for ontic structural realism, a well‐known position in scientific metaphysics, together with an argument for the position in analytic metaphysics known as ontological nihilism. I argue that (...)
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  8. Bundle theory and weak discernibility.Seungil Lee - 2023 - Analytic Philosophy 64 (3):197-210.
    Bundle Theory is the view that every concrete particular object is solely constituted by its universals. This theory is often criticized for not accommodating the possibility of symmetrical universes, such as one that contains two indiscernible spheres two meters from each other in otherwise empty space. One bundle theoretic solution to this criticism holds that the fact that the spheres stand in a weakly discerning—i.e., irreflexive and symmetric—relation, such as being two meters from, is sufficient for the numerical diversity of (...)
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  9. Bundle theory and weak discernibility.Seungil Lee - 2023 - Analytic Philosophy 64 (3):197-210.
    Bundle Theory is the view that every concrete particular object is solely constituted by its universals. This theory is often criticized for not accommodating the possibility of symmetrical universes, such as one that contains two indiscernible spheres two meters from each other in otherwise empty space. One bundle theoretic solution to this criticism holds that the fact that the spheres stand in a weakly discerning—i.e., irreflexive and symmetric—relation, such as being two meters from, is sufficient for the numerical diversity of (...)
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  10. Against Purity.Jonathan Barker - 2023 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 9.
    A fundamental fact is “pure” just in case it has no grounded entities—ex. Tokyo, President Biden, the River Nile, {Socrates}, etc.—among its constituents. Purity is the thesis that every fundamental fact is pure. I argue that Purity is false. My argument begins with a familiar conditional: if Purity is true, then there are no fundamental “grounding facts” or facts about what grounds what. This conditional is accepted by virtually all of Purity’s defenders. However, I argue that it is also the (...)
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  11. A Diversified Approach to Fission Puzzles.Justin Mooney - forthcoming - Journal of Philosophy.
    I introduce a new approach to fission puzzles called the Diversified Approach that proceeds by distinguishing different kinds of fission and assimilating each kind to a different ordinary phenomenon, such as breaking apart, replication, or part loss. To illustrate this approach, I apply it to the case of amoebic fission. The upshot is a novel account of amoebic fission according to which the dividing amoeba ceases to exist because it breaks apart. After developing this solution and highlighting some of its (...)
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  12. The Special Power-Composition Question and the Powerful Cosmos.Joaquim Giannotti - forthcoming - In Christopher J. Austin, Anna Marmodoro & Andrea Roselli (eds.), Powers, Parts and Wholes: Essays on the Mereology of Powers. Routledge. pp. 167 - 184.
  13. Chalmers on Virtual Reality: Realism on the Cheap?Steffen Koch - 2022 - Analysis 82 (4):766-774.
    You sit in your office and put on the latest pair of virtual reality (VR) goggles. Suddenly, you stand in the middle of Times Square. A car almost hits you. You.
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  14. Cryptobiosis and Composition (Presidential Prize Award Winner).David Skowronski - 2023 - Southwest Philosophy Review 39 (1):21-29.
    Peter van Inwagen’s answer to the Special Composition Question, call it Organicism, says the xs compose y iff the activity of the xs constitutes a life. What about suspended lives (i.e., cryptobiosis)? Suppose a cat is alive at t1, completely frozen at t2, then revived at t3. Is the cat alive while frozen? Plausibly no, which according to Organicism means the cat-qua-composite ceases to exist at t2. Intuitively, however, the same cat seems present at all of t1, t2, and t3. (...)
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  15. Edenic Idealism.Robert Smithson - 2023 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 101 (1):16-33.
    ABSTRACT According to edenic idealism, our ordinary object terms refer to items in the manifest world—the world of primitive objects and properties presented in experience. I motivate edenic idealism as a response to scenarios where it is difficult to match the objects in experience with corresponding items in the external world. I argue that edenic idealism has important semantic advantages over realism: it is the most intuitive view of what we are actually talking about when we use terms for objects.
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  16. Gegenständlichkeit und Objektivität.David Espinet, Friederike Rese & Michael Steinmann (eds.) - 2011 - Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
    Was ein Gegenstand ist, in welcher Weise seine Gegenständlichkeit begegnet und worin deren Objektivität besteht, bleibt ein zentrales Thema zeitgenössischer Erkenntnistheorie. Deshalb erörtert der vorliegende Band den Begriff des Gegenständlichen im Hinblick auf die Themen Welt, Subjektivität, Personalität, Freiheit, Sprache, Interpretation und Wissenschaft, und dies geschieht im Spannungsfeld einer Neubewertung von Objektivität. Ausgangspunkt und Anlaß der Beiträge dieses Bandes ist ein neuerer Ansatz in der Hermeneutik, wie er von Günter Figal in seinem Werk 'Gegenständlichkeit' vorgelegt worden ist. Da die Reflexion (...)
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  17. Debunking Interface Theory: Why Hoffman's Skepticism (Really) is Self-Defeating.Jeffrey N. Bagwell - 2023 - Synthese 201 (25):1-23.
    Cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman and others have recently advanced an evolutionary debunking argument aimed at our perceptual beliefs in ordinary objects, based on the Interface Theory of Perception. In contrast with most recent criticisms of Interface Theory, which have targeted its characterizations of perception and veridicality, I raise a broad dialectical problem for Hoffman’s debunking argument. I show that the argument is self-defeating, and that responding to this problem by appealing to Universal Darwinism leads to a fatal dilemma for the (...)
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  18. El nihilisme mereològic i l'estratègia de la paràfrasi: una avaluació crítica.Adrián Solís - forthcoming - Anuari de la Societat Catalana de Filosofia.
    En aquest article pretenc fer una crítica al nihilisme mereològic, al·ludint que les expressions «simples agrupats en-tant-que-F» tenen unes conseqüències desastroses per als seus compromisos ontològics. Primer, explicaré què és el nihilisme mereològic -que és part de l’eliminativisme- el qual pretén negar l’existència dels objectes compostos (objectes amb parts pròpies) i l’estratègia de la paràfrasi: l’ús que fan de les expressions «simples agrupats en-tant-que-F» per referir-se als objectes ordinaris sense comprometre’s amb l’existència d’objectes compostos, però posaré l’èmfasi en aquells nihilistes (...)
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  19. Living Objects.Margarida Hermida & James Ladyman - manuscript
    This paper addresses the question ‘what is an organism?’. Extant theories of organismality only provide a partial answer because they do not include an account of composition on which an ontology of living entities can be based. Here we develop a new account of what organisms are, based on a naturalistic answer to the special composition question, the bound state view. We argue that physical structure, including the existence of a boundary, is essential for life, and that, therefore, organisms are (...)
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  20. «Condizione di possibilità dell’esperienza» o «relazione d’essenza»? Apriori teoretico e apriori etico in Kant e Reinach.Faustino Fabbianelli - 2014 - In Stefano Caroti & Alberto Siclari (eds.), Filosofia e religione. Studi in onore di Fabio Rossi. Parma: E-theca OnLineOpenAccess Edizioni. pp. 258-289.
    This paper analyzes the objections of Adolf Reinach to Kant’s transcendental apriorism, shedding light on (1) the speculative distance separating their conceptions of philosophy (namely Reinach’s phenomenology and Kant’s transcendental critique), and (2) the consequential misunderstanding which is at the core of Reinach’s confrontation with Kant. In particular, attention is paid to the issue of the transcendental constitution of objectness, i.e. the question of the givenness of an object with respect to certain functions proper to the subject. In order to (...)
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  21. Goddard and Judge on Tractarian Objects.José L. Zalabardo - forthcoming - Australasian Journal of Philosophy.
    I discuss the idea that the objects of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus are propertyless bare particulars, an idea defended by Leonard Goddard and Brenda Judge in their monograph, The Metaphysics of the Tractatus. I present the difficulties that Goddard and Judge raise for this construal concerning the idea that Tractarian objects have natures that determine their possibilities of combination, and I assess the solution they propose. I offer an alternative construal of the notion with which these difficulties can be overcome.
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  22. Bona fideness of material entities and their boundaries.Lars Vogt - 2019 - In Richard Davies (ed.), Natural and Artifactual Objects in Contemporary Metaphysics: Exercises in Analytic Ontology. Bloomsbury Academic.
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  23. The Magical Santayanan Groundwork for Metaphysical Coherentism.Forrest Adam Sopuck - 2022 - The Pluralist 17 (2):107-140.
    There is a tension in Santayana's ontological system, one that is generated by the interactions of his doctrine of existence, doctrine of systematization, and critical agnosticism on the infinity of material substance. From and, in conjunction with what will be called the expansionist postulate, an infinite material expansion is generated, one that is in conflict with. This tension is remediated by a coherentist proposal regarding Santayanan existence, the relevant feature of which is that existents at distinct orders of organization are (...)
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  24. Spiritual Automata and Bodies Without Organs: Spinoza, Deleuze, and Parallelism.Emanuele Costa - forthcoming - LaDeleuziana.
    In this paper, I seek to examine Deleuze’s fascination with “spiritual automata” as a counterpoint to his more famous notion, the “body without organs”. I shall argue that both are grounded in a deep reflection, on Deleuze’s part, on the problems and issues generated by Spinoza’s notion of parallel attributes. Ultimately, I argue, the development of the two notions is motivated by identical metaphysical worries regarding the tenability of transformation, persistence, and affective interrelations between individuals. The answer, for both thinkers, (...)
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  25. Hoffman's Conscious Realism: A Critical Review.Leslie Allan - manuscript
    Donald Hoffman proposed a bold theory—that objects do not exist independently of us perceiving them and that all that really exists is conscious agents. In this critical review, Leslie Allan examines the three core components of Hoffman's new idealism. He proposes solutions to linguistic absurdities suffered by Hoffman's theory before considering its most serious problems. These include oversimplifications of evolutionary theory, self-refutation, heuristic sterility and dependence on scientific realism.
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  26. Material Objects in Confucian and Aristotelian Metaphysics: The Inevitability of Hylomorphism.James Dominic Rooney - 2022 - Bloomsbury Academic.
    Hylomorphism is a metaphysical theory that accounts for the unity of the material parts of composite objects by appeal to a structure or ‘form’ characterizing those parts. I argue that hylomorphism is not merely a plausible or appealing solution to problems of material composition, but a position entailed by any coherent metaphysics of ordinary material objects. In fact, not only does hylomorphism have Aristotelian defenders, but it has had independent lives in both East and West. -/- I review three contemporary (...)
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  27. Materiality, Parthood, and Possibility.Samuele Iaquinto & Giuliano Torrengo - 2022 - Erkenntnis 87:1125-1131.
    This paper offers an argument in favour of a Lewisian version of concretism that maintains both the principle of material inheritance (according to which, if all the parts of an object x are material, then x is material) and the materiality-modality link (that is, the principle that, for every x, if x is material, then x is possible).
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  28. ‘Rideaux rouges’: The Scene of Ideology and the Closure of Representation.Thomas Clément Mercier - 2022 - Derrida Today 15 (1):5-30.
    As they make their way through Louis Althusser’s and Jacques Derrida’s texts, readers will cross innumerable curtains – ‘the words and things’, as Derrida says, as many fabrics of traces. These curtains open onto a multiplicity of scenes and mises en scène, performances, roles, rituals, actors, plays – thus unfolding the space of a certain theatricality. This essay traces Althusser’s and Derrida’s respective deployments of the theatrical motif. In his theoretical writings, Althusser’s theatrical dispositive aims to designate the practical and (...)
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  29. The structuralist approach to underdetermination.Chanwoo Lee - 2022 - Synthese 200 (2):1-25.
    This paper provides an exposition of the structuralist approach to underdetermination, which aims to resolve the underdetermination of theories by identifying their common theoretical structure. Applications of the structuralist approach can be found in many areas of philosophy. I present a schema of the structuralist approach, which conceptually unifies such applications in different subject matters. It is argued that two classic arguments in the literature, Paul Benacerraf’s argument on natural numbers and W. V. O. Quine’s argument for the indeterminacy of (...)
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  30. The Ontological Diversity of Visual Artworks.Sherri Irvin - 2008 - In Kathleen Stock & Katherine Thomson-Jones (eds.), New Waves in Aesthetics. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 1-19.
    Virtually everyone who has advanced an ontology of art has accepted a constraint to the effect that claims about ontology should cohere with the sort of appreciative claims made about artworks within a mature and reflective version of critical practice. I argue that such a constraint, which I agree is appropriate, rules out a one-size-fits-all ontology of contemporary visual art (and thus of visual art in general). Mature critical practice with respect to contemporary art accords artists a significant degree of (...)
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  31. Prison Break? In Defense of Correlationism.Emanuel Rutten - 2024 - Revista Atlantika 2 (1):1-22.
    A core presumption of object oriented ontology and other speculative realisms is that there is a world independent of the mind that can be successfully inquired and should take center stage in our reflections again. A profound case for this realist presumption is found in Meillassoux’s After Finitude. He aims to secure our access to reality as it is in itself by refuting correlationism according to which we cannot escape reality as it is thought by us. He presents three arguments: (...)
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  32. Fine’s Monster Objection Defanged.Damiano Costa, Alessandro Cecconi & Claudio Calosi - 2023 - Philosophical Quarterly 73 (2):435-451.
    The Monster Objection has often been considered one of the main reasons to explore non-standard mereological views, such as hylomorphism. Still, it has been rarely discussed and then only in a cursory fashion. This paper fills this gap by offering the first thorough assessment of the objection. It argues that different metaphysical stances, such as presentism and three- and four-dimensionalism, provide different ways of undermining the objection.
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  33. Norm and Object: A Normative Hylomorphic Theory of Social Objects.Asya Passinsky - 2021 - Philosophers' Imprint 21 (25):1-21.
    This paper is an investigation into the metaphysics of social objects such as political borders, states, and organizations. I articulate a metaphysical puzzle concerning such objects and then propose a novel account of social objects that provides a solution to the puzzle. The basic idea behind the puzzle is that under appropriate circumstances, seemingly concrete social objects can apparently be created by acts of agreement, decree, declaration, or the like. Yet there is reason to believe that no concrete object can (...)
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  34. Théorie générale des objets chez Bunge et Harman.Martín Orensanz - 2022 - Mεtascience: Discours Général Scientifique 2:75-93.
    Bien qu'il existe des différences significatives entre la philosophie de Mario Bunge et celle de Graham Harman, il existe également des similitudes fonda-mentales entre elles. Ces penseurs affirment tous deux qu'il est possible de dé-velopper une théorie générale des objets. Le premier estime que la théorie en question est logico-mathématique, tandis que le second suggère qu'elle est on-tologique. Quoi qu’il en soit, ils conviennent que tous les objets doivent être con-sidérés, qu’ils soient réels ou non. En outre, ils suggèrent que (...)
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  35. La causalité selon Mario Bunge et Graham Harman.Martìn Orensanz - 2022 - Mεtascience: Discours Général Scientifique 2:95-102.
    Imaginez une table de billard, sur laquelle se trouvent plusieurs boules de billard rouges. Supposons que l’une d’entre elles en percute une autre. On pourrait prétendre que la première boule de billard, la cause, est en contact direct avec la seconde, l’effet. Si nous devions généraliser cela pour toutes choses, pas seulement pour les boules de billard, nous dirions que « la chose A cause la chose B ». Comme nous le verrons, Bunge et Harman rejettent tous deux la conception (...)
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  36. Being in Flux: A Post-Anthropocentric Ontology of the Self.Rein Raud - 2021 - Cambridge, UK: Wiley.
    Reality exists independently of human observers, but does the same apply to its structure? Realist ontologies usually assume so: according to them, the world consists of objects, these have properties and enter into relations with each other, more or less as we are accustomed to think of them. Against this view, Rein Raud develops a radical process ontology that does not credit any vantage point, any scale or speed of being, any range of cognitive faculties with the privilege to judge (...)
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  37. Review of John Heil, The Universe As We Find It. [REVIEW]Alyssa Ney - 2014 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 65 (4):881-886.
  38. Dwojaka natura ontologiczna znaków językowych i problem ich wzajemnych relacji.Urszula Wybraniec-Skardowska - 2021 - Ruch Filozoficzny 77 (1):7-24.
    The subject matter of this work covers the issues or problems listed below: * The problem of the ontological status of language signs and a more general philosophical problem connected with it: * What is language as a system of signs, which – on the one hand – serves to: 1) represent our knowledge about the reality which is being recognized, and, on the other one to: 2) a. explore and better cognize or discover it, b. describe it in an (...)
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  39. Co to znaczy być transcendentalnym idealistą i empirycznym realistą jednocześnie? O statusie rzeczy w filozofii transcendentalnej.Alicja Pietras - 2020 - Ethos. Kwartalnik Instytutu Jana Pawła II 3 (33):69-89.
    The aim of the article is to present an interpretation of the Kantian concept of transcendental idealism, which would make it possible to understand the status of things from the perspective of transcendental philosophy. The main claim of the article is that Kant’s standpoint can be situated beyond metaphysical realism and idealism, or, to use contemporary terms, beyond representationalism and constructivism. The standpoint in question can thus be regarded as an inspiration to reject the Cartesian dualism of substance and to (...)
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  40. Causation According to Mario Bunge and Graham Harman.Martín Orensanz - 2022 - Mεtascience: Scientific General Discourse 2:66-73.
    Imagine a billiard table, with several red billiard balls. Suppose that one of them impacts another. It could be claimed that the first billiard ball, the cause, makes direct contact with the second one, the effect. If we had to generalize this for all things, not just billiard balls, we would say that “thing A causes thing B”. As we shall see, both Bunge and Harman reject the preceding view of causation. They would agree that the statement “thing A causes (...)
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  41. Seepage in Objects: A Primer.Niel Bezrookove - manuscript
    A critique of ontology which introduces seepage, the process of properties revealing themselves from the matrix forms of an object. What follows is the observation that these properties have their own system of relations, placed in the context of a culture of objects which engages a revealing process. An argument is presented for considering organization as the principle which allows for seepage, understood as an inherently informative and intuitive process where the organization of objects reveals some property and consequently makes (...)
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  42. Quantum Gravity and Mereology: Not So Simple.Sam Baron & Baptiste Le Bihan - 2022 - Philosophical Quarterly 72 (1):19-40.
    A number of philosophers have argued in favour of extended simples on the grounds that they are needed by fundamental physics. The arguments typically appeal to theories of quantum gravity. To date, the argument in favour of extended simples has ignored the fact that the very existence of spacetime is put under pressure by quantum gravity. We thus consider the case for extended simples in the context of different views on the existence of spacetime. We show that the case for (...)
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  43. Somewhere Together: Location, Parsimony and Multilocation.Roberto Loss - 2021 - Erkenntnis (2):1-17.
    Most of the theories of location on the market appear to be ideologically parsimonious at least in the sense that they take as primitive just one locative notion and define all the other locative notions in terms of it. Recently, however, the possibility of some exotic metaphysical scenarios involving gunky mixtures and extended simple regions of space has been argued to pose a significant threat to parsimonious theories of locations. The aim of this paper is to show that a theory (...)
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  44. What Is Metascientific Ontology?François Maurice - 2022 - Mεtascience: Scientific General Discourse 2:22-44.
    Metascientific ontology differs from philosophical ontologies in its objectives, objects and methods. By an examination of the ontological theories of Mario Bunge, we will show their main objective is a unified representation of the world as known through the sciences, that their objects of study are scientific concepts, and that their methods do not differ from those that one expects to find in any rational activity. Metascientific ontology is therefore not transcendent because it does not seek to represent non-concrete objects (...)
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  45. Petri Thomae Quaestiones de esse intelligibili.Petrus Thomae & Garrett Smith (eds.) - 2015 - Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press.
    First critical edition of Petrus Thomae’s theory of non-causal dependence. This work of Scotist metaphysics is an investigation into the ultimate constitution of things. In the course of this treatise, Petrus Thomae examines whether the essences of things ultimately depend on being thought of by God for their very intelligibility or whether they have it of themselves. Defending in detail the second option, Peter argues that creatures exist independently of the divine intellect in the divine essence. They enjoy real, eternal (...)
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  46. Qu'est-ce que l'ontologie métascientifique?François Maurice - 2022 - Mεtascience: Discours Général Scientifique 2:19-43.
    L’ontologie métascientifique se distingue des ontologies philosophiques par ses objectifs, ses objets et ses méthodes. Par un examen des théories ontologiques de Mario Bunge, nous montrerons que leur principal objectif est l’élaboration d’une représentation unifiée du monde tel que connu via les sciences, que leurs objets d’étude sont les concepts scientifiques, et que leurs méthodes ne diffèrent pas de celles qu’on s’attend à trouver dans toute activité rationnelle. L’ontologie métascientifique n’est donc pas transcendante parce qu’elle ne cherche pas à représenter (...)
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  47. Bunge and Harman on the General Theory of Objects.Martìn Orensanz - 2022 - Mεtascience: Scientific General Discourse 2:46-64.
    Although there are significative differences between the philosophies of Mario Bunge and Graham Harman, there are also some fundamental similarities. One of the core features that they have in common is that both of them claim that it is possible to develop a general theory of objects. The former believes that the theory in question is logical-mathematical, while the latter suggests that it is on-tological. Regardless, they agree that all objects have to be considered, no mat-ter if they are real (...)
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  48. Brüche, Torsi, Unvollendetes.Erwin Sonderegger & Kurt Schärer (eds.) - 2004 - Zürich: Chronos Verlag.
    The leading question of our lecture series is in which areas and in which sense fractures and incompleteness are relevant for us. Are brokenness and incompleteness only accidental and singular, or do they belong to the style of things in general? Is wholeness and perfection the rule, and fracture the exception? The same question must be applied to the distinction between our knowledge of the world and the world itself. Is brokenness and incompleteness due to the things themselves, or only (...)
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  49. What is an Extended Simple Region?Zachary Goodsell, Michael Duncan & Kristie Miller - 2019 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 101 (3):649-659.
    The notion of an extended simple region (henceforth ESR) has recently been marshalled in the service of arguments for a variety of conclusions. Exactly how to understand the idea of extendedness as it applies to simple regions, however, has been largely ignored, or, perhaps better, assumed. In this paper we first (§1) outline what we take to be the standard way that philosophers are thinking about extendedness, namely as an intrinsic property of regions. We then introduce an alternative picture (§2), (...)
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  50. Fleeting Things and Permanent Stuff: A Priorean Project in Real Time.Paul Needham - 1997 - In Uwe Scheffler and Max Urchs Jan Faye (ed.), Perspectives on Time. Dordrecht, Nederländerna: pp. 119-141.
    Prior left us with a problem which he stated in the following way: ‘Very roughly, it would seem that countable “things” are made or grow from bits of stuff, or from other countable “things”, that are already there. The precise logic of this process hasn’t been worked out yet, and until it has been, it seems likely that any tensed predicate logic can only be provisional in character.’ Although I disagree with much of the philosophy of time underlying Priorean tense (...)
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