Results for 'Cowling Sam'

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  1. Abstract Entities.Sam Cowling - 2017 - New York: Routledge.
    Think of a number, any number, or properties like fragility and humanity. These and other abstract entities are radically different from concrete entities like electrons and elbows. While concrete entities are located in space and time, have causes and effects, and are known through empirical means, abstract entities like meanings and possibilities are remarkably different. They seem to be immutable and imperceptible and to exist "outside" of space and time. This book provides a comprehensive critical assessment of the problems raised (...)
  2. The limits of modality.Sam Cowling - 2011 - Philosophical Quarterly 61 (244):473-495.
    It is commonly assumed that all propositions have modal profiles and therefore bear their truth-values either contingently or necessarily. I argue against this commonly assumed view and in defence of amodalism, according to which certain true propositions are neither necessarily nor contingently true, but only true simpliciter. I consider three arguments against ‘possible-worlds theories’, which hold that modal concepts are to be analysed in terms of possible worlds. Although each of these arguments targets a different version of possible-worlds theory, these (...)
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  3.  37
    Philosophy of Comics: An Introduction.Sam Cowling & Wesley Cray - 2022 - London: Bloomsbury.
    What exactly are comics? Can they be art, literature, or even pornography? How should we understand the characters, stories, and genres that shape them? Thinking about comics raises a bewildering range of questions about representation, narrative, and value. Philosophy of Comics is an introduction to these philosophical questions. In exploring the history and variety of the comics medium, Sam Cowling and Wesley D. Cray chart a path through the emerging field of the philosophy of comics. Drawing from a diverse (...)
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  4. Ideological parsimony.Sam Cowling - 2013 - Synthese 190 (17):3889-3908.
    The theoretical virtue of parsimony values the minimizing of theoretical commitments, but theoretical commitments come in two kinds : ontological and ideological. While the ontological commitments of a theory are the entities it posits, a theory’s ideological commitments are the primitive concepts it employs. Here, I show how we can extend the distinction between quantitative and qualitative parsimony, commonly drawn regarding ontological commitments, to the domain of ideological commitments. I then argue that qualitative ideological parsimony is a theoretical virtue. My (...)
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  5. The modal view of essence.Sam Cowling - 2013 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 43 (2):248-266.
    According to the modal view, essence admits of reductive analysis in exclusively modal terms. Fine (1994) argues that modal view delivers an inadequate analysis of essence. This paper defends the modal view from Fine's challenge. This defense proceeds by examining the disagreement between Finean primitivists and Quinean eliminativists about essence. In order to model this disagreement, a distinction between essence and a separable concept, nature, is required. This distinction is then used to show that Fine's challenge is misdirected and therefore (...)
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  6. Haecceitism.Sam Cowling - 2015 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  7. Instantiation as location.Sam Cowling - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 167 (3):667-682.
    Many familiar forms of property realism identify properties with sui generis ontological categories like universals or tropes and posit a fundamental instantiation relation that unifies objects with their properties. In this paper, I develop and defend locationism, which identifies properties with locations and holds that the occupation relation that unifies objects with their locations also unifies objects with their properties. Along with the theoretical parsimony that locationism enjoys, I argue that locationism resolves a puzzle for actualists regarding the ontological status (...)
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  8. No Simples, No Gunk, No Nothing.Sam Cowling - 2014 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 95 (1):246-260.
    Mereological realism holds that the world has a mereological structure – i.e. a distribution of mereological properties and relations. In this article, I defend Eleaticism about properties, according to which there are no causally inert non-logical properties. I then present an Eleatic argument for mereological anti-realism, which denies the existence of both mereological composites and mereological simples. After defending Eleaticism and mereological anti-realism, I argue that mereological anti-realism is preferable to mereological nihilism. I then conclude by examining the thesis that (...)
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  9. Non-qualitative Properties.Sam Cowling - 2015 - Erkenntnis 80 (2):275-301.
    The distinction between qualitative properties like mass and shape and non-qualitative properties like being Napoleon and being next to Obama is important, but remains largely unexamined. After discussing its theoretical significance and cataloguing various kinds of non-qualitative properties, I survey several views about the nature of this distinction and argue that all proposed reductive analyses of this distinction are unsatisfactory. I then defend primitivism, according to which the distinction resists reductive analysis.
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  10. How to Be Omnipresent.Sam Cowling & Wesley D. Cray - 2017 - American Philosophical Quarterly 54 (3):223-234.
    Attributions of omnipresence, most familiar within the philosophy of religion, typically take the omnipresence of an entity to either consist in that entity's occupation of certain regions or be dependent upon other of that entity's attributes, such as omnipotence or omniscience. This paper defends an alternative conception of omnipresence that is independent of other purported divine attributes and dispenses with occupation. The resulting view repurposes the metaphysics of necessitism and permanentism, taking omnipresent entities to be those entities that exist at (...)
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  11. Resemblance.Sam Cowling - 2017 - Philosophy Compass 12 (4):e12401.
    Our ordinary judgments and our metaphysical theories share a common commitment to facts about resemblance. The nature of resemblance is, however, a matter of no small controversy. This essay examines some of the pressing questions that arise regarding the status and structure of resemblance. Among those to be discussed in what follows: what kinds of resemblance relations are there? Can resemblance be analyzed in terms of the sharing of properties? Is resemblance an objective or subjective matter? What, if any, resemblance (...)
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  12.  68
    Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics.Sam Cowling - 2018 - Philosophical Quarterly 68 (271):403-406.
    Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics. By Hofweber Thomas.
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  13. Haecceitism for Modal Realists.Sam Cowling - 2012 - Erkenntnis 77 (3):399-417.
    In this paper, I examine the putative incompatibility of three theses: (1) Haecceitism, according to which some maximal possibilities differ solely in terms of the non-qualitative or de re possibilities they include; (2) Modal correspondence, according to which each maximal possibility is identical with a unique possible world; (3) Counterpart theory, according to which de re modality is analyzed in terms of counterpart relations between individuals. After showing how the modal realism defended by David Lewis resolves this incompatibility by rejecting (...)
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  14. Conceivability arguments for haecceitism.Sam Cowling - 2017 - Synthese 194 (10):4171-4190.
    According to haecceitism, some maximal possibilities differ even while they are qualitatively indiscernible. Since haecceitism is a modal thesis, it is typically defended by appeal to conceivability arguments. These arguments require us to conceive of qualitatively indiscernible possibilities that differ only with respect to the identity of the individuals involved. This paper examines a series of conceivability arguments for haecceitism and a variety of anti-haecceitist responses. It concludes that there is no irresistible conceivability argument for haecceitism even while anti-haecceitist responses (...)
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  15. Advice for Eleatics.Sam Cowling - 2015 - In Chris Daly, The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophical Methods. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.
    Eleaticism ties ontology to causality by denying the impossibility of causally inert entities. This paper examines some challenges regarding the proper formulation and general plausibility of Eleaticism. After suggesting how Eleatics ought to respond to these challenges, I consider the prospects for extending Eleaticism from ontology to ideology by requiring all primitive ideology to be causal in nature. Surprisingly enough, the resulting view delivers an eternalist and possibilist metaphysical picture in the neighborhood of Lewisian modal realism.
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  16. Recombining non-qualitative reality.Sam Cowling - 2021 - Synthese 198 (3):2273-2295.
    Haecceitism and Hume’s Dictum are each controversial theses about necessity and possibility. According to haecceitism, there are qualitatively indiscernible possible worlds that differ only with respect to which individuals occupy which qualitative roles. According to Hume’s Dictum, there are no necessary connections between distinct entities or, as Humeans sometimes put it, reality admits of “free recombination” so any entities can co-exist or fail to co-exist. This paper introduces a puzzle that results from the combination of haecceitism and Hume’s Dictum. This (...)
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  17. The Way of Actuality.Sam Cowling - 2014 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 92 (2):231-247.
    In this paper, I defend an indexical analysis of the abstract-concrete distinction within the framework of modal realism. This analysis holds the abstract-concrete distinction to be conceptually inseparable from the distinction between the actual and the merely possible, which is assumed to be indexical in nature. The resulting view contributes to the case for modal realism by demonstrating how its distinctive resources provide a reductive analysis of the abstract-concrete distinction. This indexical analysis also provides a solution to a sceptical problem (...)
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  18. Kantian Humility and Ontological Categories.Sam Cowling - 2010 - Analysis 70 (4):659-665.
  19. Prioritizing platonism.Kelly Trogdon & Sam Cowling - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (8):2029-2042.
    Discussion of atomistic and monistic theses about abstract reality.
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  20. Hud Hudson, The Metaphysics of Hyperspace.Sam Cowling - 2009 - Philosophy in Review 29 (3):189.
     
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  21. Keith Hossack, The Metaphysics of Knowledge Reviewed by.Sam Cowling - 2008 - Philosophy in Review 28 (5):341-343.
     
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  22.  45
    Michael Jubien, Possibility Reviewed by.Sam Cowling - 2010 - Philosophy in Review 30 (1):47-49.
  23. Naturalism and Non-Qualitative Properties.Sam Cowling - 2020 - In Luis R. G. Oliveira & Kevin Corcoran, Common Sense Metaphysics: Essays in Honor of Lynne Rudder Baker. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 209-238.
    Lynne Baker’s case for the incompatibility of naturalism with the first-person perspective raises a range of questions about the relationship between naturalism and the various properties involved in first-person perspectives. After arguing that non-qualitative properties—most notably, haecceities like being Lynne Baker—are ineliminably tied to first-person perspectives, this paper considers whether naturalism and non-qualitative properties are, in fact, compatible. In doing so, the discussion focus on Shamik Dasupgta’s argument against individuals and, in turn, non-qualitative properties. Several strategies for undermining Dasgupta's argument (...)
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  24.  67
    Ontology without Borders, by Jody Azzouni.Sam Cowling - forthcoming - Mind:fzz080.
    Ontology without Borders, by AzzouniJody. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. xxv + 279.
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  25. Are properties abstract entities?Sam Cowling - 2024 - In A. R. J. Fisher & Anna-Sofia Maurin, The Routledge Handbook of Properties. London: Routledge.
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  26.  64
    Carolyn Swanson , Reburial of Nonexistents. Reconsidering the Russell-Meinong Debate . Reviewed by.Sam Cowling - 2012 - Philosophy in Review 32 (5):431-435.
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  27.  60
    Joe Salerno, ed. New Essays on the Knowability Paradox. Reviewed by.Sam Cowling - 2010 - Philosophy in Review 30 (3):220-222.
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  28.  58
    Robin Jeshion, ed. , New Essays on Singular Thought . Reviewed by.Sam Cowling - 2011 - Philosophy in Review 31 (6):434-437.
  29.  44
    Time: A Philosophical Introduction, by James Harrington.Sam Cowling - 2016 - Teaching Philosophy 39 (4):537-540.
  30.  25
    Superhero Thought Experiments: Comic Book Philosophy, by Chris Gavaler and Nathaniel Goldberg. [REVIEW]Sam Cowling - 2020 - Teaching Philosophy 43 (1):98-102.
  31.  24
    Aesthetics for enigmatologists. [REVIEW]Sam Cowling - forthcoming - Metascience:1-3.
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  32.  79
    God and Necessity by Brian Leftow: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, pp. 592, £60.00. [REVIEW]Sam Cowling - 2013 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 91 (3):610-613.
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  33. Mark Kalderon, ed., Fictionalism in Metaphysics. [REVIEW]Sam Cowling - 2006 - Philosophy in Review 26:197-199.
     
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  34.  85
    Intrinsic Properties of Properties.Cowling Sam - 2016 - Philosophical Quarterly 67 (267):241-262.
    Do properties have intrinsic properties of their own? If so, which second-order properties are intrinsic? This paper introduces two competing views about second-order intrinsicality: generalism, according to which the intrinsic–extrinsic distinction cuts across all orders of properties and applies to the properties of properties as well as the properties of objects, and objectualism, according to which intrinsicality is a feature exclusive to the properties of objects. The case for generalism is then surveyed along with some proposals for distinguishing intrinsic second-order (...)
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  35.  45
    Another fine footnote to Plato: Sam Cowling: Abstract entities. Milton Park, UK and New York: Routledge, x+281pp, £31.99 PB.James Robert Brown - 2018 - Metascience 27 (3):477-480.
  36.  40
    (1 other version)Modality and Essence in Contemporary Metaphysics.Kathrin Koslicki - forthcoming - In Sam Newlands and Yitzhak Melamed, Modality: A Conceptual History. pp. 263-293.
    Essentialists hold that at least a certain range of entities can be meaningfully said to have natures, essences, or essential features independently of how these entities are described, conceptualized or otherwise placed with respect to our specifically human interests, purposes or activities. Modalists about essence, on the one hand, take the position that the essential truths are a subset of the necessary truths and the essential properties of entities are included among their necessary properties. Non-modalists about essence, on the other (...)
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  37. Picture-Reading in Comics, Prose, and Poetry.Hannah H. Kim - forthcoming - Canadian Journal of Philosophy:1-14.
    Comic is one of the paradigmatic forms of hybrid media, and coming up with a satisfactory definition for it has been difficult. Sam Cowling and Ley Cray (2022) take a functional approach and offer an Intentional Picture-Reading View which defines comics as something that is “aptly intended to be picture-read.” I show that the view is extensionally inadequate as is because formally ambitious prose and concrete poetry, too, are aptly intended to be picture-read. The way forward, I argue, is (...)
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  38. Voluntary action and conscious awareness.Patrick Haggard, Sam Clark & Jeri Kalogeras - 2002 - Nature Neuroscience 5 (4):382-385.
  39. Number adaptation: A critical look.Sami R. Yousif, Sam Clarke & Elizabeth M. Brannon - 2024 - Cognition 249 (105813):1-17.
    It is often assumed that adaptation — a temporary change in sensitivity to a perceptual dimension following exposure to that dimension — is a litmus test for what is and is not a “primary visual attribute”. Thus, papers purporting to find evidence of number adaptation motivate a claim of great philosophical significance: That number is something that can be seen in much the way that canonical visual features, like color, contrast, size, and speed, can. Fifteen years after its reported discovery, (...)
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  40. Intentional action: Conscious experience and neural prediction.Patrick Haggard & Sam Clark - 2003 - Consciousness and Cognition 12 (4):695-707.
    Intentional action involves both a series of neural events in the motor areas of the brain, and also a distinctive conscious experience that ''I'' am the author of the action. This paper investigates some possible ways in which these neural and phenomenal events may be related. Recent models of motor prediction are relevant to the conscious experience of action as well as to its neural control. Such models depend critically on matching the actual consequences of a movement against its internally (...)
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  41.  17
    From Real Analysis to the Sorites Paradox Via Reverse Mathematics.Walter Dean & Sam Sanders - forthcoming - Review of Symbolic Logic:1-25.
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  42. Seven reasons to (still) doubt the existence of number adaptation: A rebuttal to Burr et al. and Durgin.Sami R. Yousif, Sam Clarke & Elizabeth M. Brannon - 2025 - Cognition 254 (105939):1-6.
    Does the visual system adapt to number? For more than fifteen years, most have assumed that the answer is an unambiguous “yes”. Against this prevailing orthodoxy, we recently took a critical look at the phenomenon, questioning its existence on both empirical and theoretical grounds, and providing an alternative explanation for extant results (the old news hypothesis). We subsequently received two critical responses. Burr, Anobile, and Arrighi rejected our critiques wholesale, arguing that the evidence for number adaptation remains overwhelming. Durgin questioned (...)
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  43. Mental Health Without Well-being.Sam Wren-Lewis & Anna Alexandrova - 2021 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 46 (6):684-703.
    What is it to be mentally healthy? In the ongoing movement to promote mental health, to reduce stigma, and to establish parity between mental and physical health, there is a clear enthusiasm about this concept and a recognition of its value in human life. However, it is often unclear what mental health means in all these efforts and whether there is a single concept underlying them. Sometimes, the initiatives for the sake of mental health are aimed just at reducing mental (...)
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  44.  45
    Thinking with Spinoza about education.Elizabeth de Freitas, Sam Sellar & Lars Bang Jensen - 2018 - Educational Philosophy and Theory 50 (9):805-808.
    Thinking with Spinoza about education involves thinking with and beyond his authored texts, situating his work within the tradition of Western thought, and exploring his contribution to the philoso...
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  45. Size adaptation: Do you know it when you see it?Sami R. Yousif & Sam Clarke - 2024 - Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics 86:1923-1937.
    The visual system adapts to a wide range of visual features, from lower-level features like color and motion to higher-level features like causality and, perhaps, number. According to some, adaptation is a strictly perceptual phenomenon, such that the presence of adaptation licenses the claim that a feature is truly perceptual in nature. Given the theoretical importance of claims about adaptation, then, it is important to understand exactly when the visual system does and does not exhibit adaptation. Here, we take as (...)
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  46.  37
    Metaphorical Thinking and Delusions in Psychosis.Felicity Deamer & Sam Wilkinson - 2021 - In Maxime Amblard, Michel Musiol & Manuel Rebuschi, (In)Coherence of Discourse: Formal and Conceptual Issues of Language. Dordrecht: Springer Verlag. pp. 119-130.
    This paper explores how metaphorical thinking might contribute to an aetiology of florid delusions in psychosis. We argue that this approach helps to account for the path from experience to the delusional assertion, which, though relatively straightforward for monothematic delusions like the Capgras delusion, has always been difficult to account for in florid delusions in psychosis. Our account also helps to account for double book-keeping and the relative agential inertia of the belief.
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  47. Rational Number Representation by the Approximate Number System.Chuyan Qu, Sam Clarke, Francesca Luzzi & Elizabeth Brannon - 2024 - Cognition 250 (105839):1-13.
    The approximate number system (ANS) enables organisms to represent the approximate number of items in an observed collection, quickly and independently of natural language. Recently, it has been proposed that the ANS goes beyond representing natural numbers by extracting and representing rational numbers (Clarke & Beck, 2021a). Prior work demonstrates that adults and children discriminate ratios in an approximate and ratio-dependent manner, consistent with the hallmarks of the ANS. Here, we use a well-known “connectedness illusion” to provide evidence that these (...)
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  48.  2
    A nursing manifesto: an emancipatory call for knowledge development, conscience, and praxis.Paula N. Kagan, Marlaine C. Smith, I. I. I. W. Richard Cowling & Peggy L. Chinn - 2010 - Nursing Philosophy 11 (1):67-84.
    The purpose of this paper is to present the theoretical and philosophical assumptions of the Nursing Manifesto, written by three activist scholars whose objective was to promote emancipatory nursing research, practice, and education within the dialogue and praxis of social justice. Inspired by discussions with a number of nurse philosophers at the 2008 Knowledge Conference in Boston, two of the original Manifesto authors and two colleagues discussed the need to explicate emancipatory knowing as it emerged from the Manifesto. Our analysis (...)
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  49. Is Pain Modular?Laurenz Casser & Sam Clarke - 2022 - Mind and Language 38 (3):828-46.
    We suggest that pain processing has a modular architecture. We begin by motivating the (widely assumed but seldom defended) conjecture that pain processing comprises inferential mechanisms. We then note that pain exhibits a characteristic form of judgement independence. On the assumption that pain processing is inferential, we argue that its judgement independence is indicative of modular (encapsulated) mechanisms. Indeed, we go further, suggesting that it renders the modularity of pain mechanisms a default hypothesis to be embraced pending convincing counterevidence. Finally, (...)
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  50.  53
    Sex differences in scanning faces: Does attention to the eyes explain female superiority in facial expression recognition?Jessica K. Hall, Sam B. Hutton & Michael J. Morgan - 2010 - Cognition and Emotion 24 (4):629-637.
    Previous meta-analyses support a female advantage in decoding non-verbal emotion (Hall, 1978, 1984), yet the mechanisms underlying this advantage are not understood. The present study examined whether the female advantage is related to greater female attention to the eyes. Eye-tracking techniques were used to measure attention to the eyes in 19 males and 20 females during a facial expression recognition task. Women were faster and more accurate in their expression recognition compared with men, and women looked more at the eyes (...)
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