In his famous book "Seeing Dark Things: The Philosophy of Shadows" (2008), Roy Sorensen put forward a ‘blocking theory of shadows’, a causal view on these entities according to which a shadow is an absence of light caused by blockage. This approach allows him to solve a quite famous riddle on shadows, ‘the Yale puzzle’, that was devised by Robert Fogelin in the late 1960s and that Sorensen presents in the form mentioned by Bas van Fraassen (1989). István Aranyosi (...) has recently criticized Sorensen’s solution to the Yale puzzle, on the grounds that it does not resist another version of the riddle, that Aranyosi calls ‘the Bilkent puzzle’. A new perspective on shadows, the ‘Material Exstitution View’, that allegedly permits to solve both puzzles, could be adopted as an alternative. In this paper I will show that Sorensen’s blockage theory can actually handle both the Yale and the Bilkent puzzle, plus another one that I put forward (‘the donut puzzle’), which instead is fatal to Aranyosi’s position. As Sorensen puts it, nothing aside from the original blockage of light is needed. (shrink)

In this article I deal with the impact of digitization on education by revisiting the ideas Neil Postman developed in regard with the omnipresence of screens in the American society of the 1980s and their impact on what it means to grow up and to become an educated person. Arguing, on the one hand, that traditionally education is profoundly related to the initiation into literacy, and on the other hand, that the screen may come to replace the book as the (...) prevailing educational medium, Postman’s theses are worth reconsidering. Moreover I propose to develop further one strain of thought in Postman’s work, viz. the interconnectedness of technological inventions, material practices and ideas regarding what education is all about. As such I analyse in great detail the differences between traditional and digital literacy by looking from a material and practical perspective at how we relate to books and screens. This is not a normative analysis, but one that aims at fleshing out differences in spaces of experience. As such I wind up with suggestions regarding the affordances that a new form of literacy, no longer based on the model of the book, might bring about. (shrink)

Are materially constituted entities, such as statues and glasses of liquid, something more than their material constituents? The puzzle that frames this paper stems from conflicting answers to this question. At the core of the paper is a distinctive way of thinking about material constitution that posits two concepts of constitution, compositional and ampliative constitution, with the bulk of the discussion devoted to developing distinct analyses for these concepts. Distinguishing these concepts solves our initial puzzle and enriches the (...) space of possibilities for constitution views. (shrink)

Where does agency lie in musical performance? How is it expressed? Recent music scholarship has highlighted an increasingly prominent tendency to conceive of agency as not confined to any one individual or type of individual, instead being distributed across diverse individuals that can be found occupying performance situations. . This article uses two ‘percussion’ works from the 1970s by the composer John Cage, Child of Tree (1975) and its multi-performer elaboration Branches (1976), as a foil for engaging with these practical (...) and theoretical musical concerns, and for suggesting some heretofore underappreciated distinctions within the ongoing work on multi-agential performance. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to suggest that models in scientific practice can be conceived of as epistemic artifacts. Approaching models this way accommodates many such things that working scientists themselves call models but that the semantic conception of models does not duly recognize as such. That models are epistemic artifacts implies, firstly, that they cannot be understood apart from purposeful human activity; secondly, that they are somehow materialized inhabitants of the intersubjective field of that activity; and thirdly, that (...) they can function also as knowledge objects. We argue that models as epistemic artifacts provide knowledge in many other ways than just via direct representative links. To substantiate our view we use a language‐technological artifact, a parser, as an example. (shrink)

What is the relation between the material, conventional symbol structures that we encounter in the spoken and written word, and human thought? A common assumption, that structures a wide variety of otherwise competing views, is that the way in which these material, conventional symbol-structures do their work is by being translated into some kind of content-matching inner code. One alternative to this view is the tempting but thoroughly elusive idea that we somehow think in some natural language (...) (such as English). In the present treatment I explore a third option, which I shall call the "complementarity" view of language. According to this third view the actual symbol structures of a given language add cognitive value by complementing (without being replicated by) the more basic modes of operation and representation endemic to the biological brain. The "cognitive bonus" that language brings is, on this model, not to be cashed out either via the ultimately mysterious notion of "thinking in a given natural language" or via some process of exhaustive translation into another inner code. Instead, we should try to think in terms of a kind of coordination dynamics in which the forms and structures of a language qua material symbol system play a key and irreducible role. Understanding language as a complementary cognitive resource is, I argue, an important part of the much larger project (sometimes glossed in terms of the "extended mind") of understanding human cognition as essentially and multiply hybrid: as involving a complex interplay between internal biological resources and external non-biological resources. (shrink)

Many Christians assume that there are only two possibilities for what a human person is: either Animalism (the view that we are fundamentally animals) or Immaterialism (the view that we are fundamentally immaterial souls). I set out a third possibility: the Constitution View (the view that we are material beings, constituted by bodies but not identical to the bodies that now constitute us.) After setting out and briefly defending the Constitution View, I apply it (...) to the doctrine of resurrection. I conclude by giving reasons for Christians to prefer the Constitution View of human persons to both Animalism and Immaterialism. (shrink)

Abstract:Since the birth of autism as a psychiatric category, autistic individuals have been described as preoccupied with the world of objects and detached from the world of subjects, thus marking a distinction between the “social” and the “non-social” still prevalent in autism research and diagnostic criteria. The aim of this article is to question this distinction by examining the role of things in autistic forms of social interaction. Drawing on qualitative data from an ongoing qualitative and phenomenological study on social (...) interaction among youth with autism, I argue that material things enjoy a sustaining and facilitating role in autistic social interaction for two reasons: First, by being sensible things open to tactile, auditory, and visual engagement, and second, by being things that incorporate normative practices. This relation between the material and the social in which the latter is mediated by the former, is beneficial to individuals with autism because it exploits a particular relation to materiality to consolidate a shaky attunement to the social world. I propose a materially mediated mode of interaction guided by the approaches to perception, embodiment, and materiality developed by Maurice Merleau-Ponty and James Gibson. This account puts pressure on the phenomenological emphasis on the face-to-face encounter and brings intersubjectivity into view as a many-faceted phenomenon realizable not only through interbodily dynamics but also through the material landscapes situating social encounters. (shrink)

Many scholars view artworks as the products of cultural history and arbitrary institutional conventions. Others construe art as the result of psychological mechanisms internal to the organism. These historical and psychological approaches are often viewed as foes rather than friends. Is it possible to combine these two approaches in a unified analysis of the perception and consciousness of artworks? I defend a positive answer to this question and propose a psycho-historical theory, which argues that artworks are historical and (...) class='Hi'>material artefacts designed to prompt mental activities and elicit the conscious experience of aesthetic worlds. My argument suggests that the material components of artworks--termed their `material substrata'--are crucial mediators between historical contexts and the mental activities elicited by the perception of artworks. (shrink)

John D. Norton is responsible for a number of influential views in contemporary philosophy of science. This paper will discuss two of them. The material theory of induction claims that inductive arguments are ultimately justified by their material features, not their formal features. Thus, while a deductive argument can be valid irrespective of the content of the propositions that make up the argument, an inductive argument about, say, apples, will be justified (or not) depending on facts about apples. (...) The argument view of thought experiments claims that thought experiments are arguments, and that they function epistemically however arguments do. These two views have generated a great deal of discussion, although there hasn’t been much written about their combination. I argue that despite some interesting harmonies, there is a serious tension between them. I consider several options for easing this tension, before suggesting a set of changes to the argument view that I take to be consistent with Norton’s fundamental philosophical commitments, and which retain what seems intuitively correct about the argument view. These changes require that we move away from a unitary epistemology of thought experiments and towards a more pluralist position. (shrink)

_Material Falsity and Error in Descartes’s Meditations _approaches Descartes’s Meditations as an intellectual journey, wherein Descartes’s views develop and change as he makes new discoveries about self, God and matter. The first book to focus closely on Descartes’s notion of material falsity, it shows how Descartes’s account of material falsity – and correspondingly his account of crucial notions such as truth, falsehood and error – evolves according to the epistemic advances in the Meditations. It also offers important new (...) insights on the crucial role of Descartes’s Third Meditation discussion of material falsity in advancing many subsequent arguments in the Meditations. This book is essential reading for those working on Descartes and early modern philosophy. It presents an independent reading on issues of perennial interest, such as Descartes’s views on error, truth and falsehood. It also makes important contributions to topics that have been the focus of much recent scholarship, such as Descartes’s ethics and his theodicy. Those working on the interface between medieval and modern philosophy will find the discussions on Descartes’s debt to predecessors like Suárez and Augustine invaluable. (shrink)

Common everyday materials such as textiles, foodstuffs, soil or skin can have complex, mutable and varied appearances. Under typical viewing conditions, most observers can visually recognize materials effortlessly, and determine many of their properties without touching them. Visual material perception raises many fascinating questions for vision researchers, neuroscientists and philosophers, yet has received little attention compared to the perception of color or shape. Here we discuss some of the challenges that material perception raises and argue that further philosophical (...) thought should be directed to how we see materials. (shrink)

This article offers a novel solution to the problem of material constitution: by including non-concrete objects among the parts of material objects, we can avoid having a statue and its constituent piece of clay composed of all the same proper parts. Non-concrete objects—objects that aren’t concrete, but possibly are—have been used in defense of the claim that everything necessarily exists. But the account offered shows that non-concreta are independently useful in other domains as well. The resulting view (...) falls under a ‘nonmaterial partist’ class of views that includes, in particular, Laurie Paul’s and Kathrin Koslicki’s constitution views; ones where material objects have properties or structures as parts respectively. The article gives reasons for preferring the non-concretist solution over these other non-material partist views and defends it against objections. (shrink)

Street art is an art form that entails creating public works incorporating the street physically and in their meaning. That physical property is employed as an artistic resource in street art raises two questions. Are street artworks necessarily illegal? Does being illegal change the nature of production and aesthetic appreciation? First, I argue street artworks must be in the street. On my view, both the physical and sociocultural senses of the street can be constitutive of meaning. Second, I argue (...) that illegality is a prototypical and paradigmatic feature of street art. While illegality alone does not make works better than sanctioned street art, it affects the production process and changes what is available to appreciate. (shrink)

_Material Falsity and Error in Descartes’s Meditations _approaches Descartes’s Meditations as an intellectual journey, wherein Descartes’s views develop and change as he makes new discoveries about self, God and matter. The first book to focus closely on Descartes’s notion of material falsity, it shows how Descartes’s account of material falsity – and correspondingly his account of crucial notions such as truth, falsehood and error – evolves according to the epistemic advances in the Meditations. It also offers important new (...) insights on the crucial role of Descartes’s Third Meditation discussion of material falsity in advancing many subsequent arguments in the Meditations. This book is essential reading for those working on Descartes and early modern philosophy. It presents an independent reading on issues of perennial interest, such as Descartes’s views on error, truth and falsehood. It also makes important contributions to topics that have been the focus of much recent scholarship, such as Descartes’s ethics and his theodicy. Those working on the interface between medieval and modern philosophy will find the discussions on Descartes’s debt to predecessors like Suárez and Augustine invaluable. (shrink)

Summary This article explores some continuities between Late Aristotelian and Cartesian embryology. In particular, it argues that there is an interesting consilience between some accounts of the role of imagination in trait acquisition in Late Aristotelian and Cartesian embryology. Evidence for this thesis is presented using the extensive biological writings of the Padua-based philosopher and physician, Fortunio Liceti (1577–1657). Like the Cartesian physiologists, Liceti believed that animal souls are material beings and that acts of imagination result in material (...) images that can be transmitted by means of medical spirits to the embryo. Moreover, while the Cartesian embryologists accepted such a view in a quite speculative way, one finds penetrating criticism of imagination theories of trait acquisition in the Late Aristotelian tradition. Evidence for this thesis is presented using the no less extensive biological writings of Liceti's contemporary, Emilio Parisano (1567–1643). In conclusion, the Late Aristotelian tradition itself provides the theoretical tools for excising immaterial formative forces from embryology and at the same time evinces a much more acute sense for the problems inherent in imagination theories of trait acquisition than the Cartesian tradition. (shrink)

This article examines some aspects of the natural philosophy of Juan Gallego de la Serna, royal physician to the Spanish kings Philip III and Philip IV. In his account of animal generation, Gallego criticizes widely accepted views: (1) the view that animal seeds are animated, and (2) the alternative view that animal seeds, even if not animated, possess active potencies sufficient for the development of animal souls. According to his view, animal seeds are purely material beings. (...) This, of course, raises the question of how living beings can arise from inanimate matter. Gallego is aware that two other thinkers who understood animal seeds as purely material beings, Duns Scotus and the Louvain-based physician Thomas Feyens, did not solve this problem. Gallego’s solution makes use of the notion of incomplete entities developed by the Spanish Jesuit Francisco Suarez. While Suarez applies this notion to soul and body in order to explain why souls have a natural tendency towards organic bodies and organic bodies have a natural tendency towards souls, Gallego applies this notion to the natural tendency of animal seeds towards each other and towards further substances in their respective environment. In his view, this natural tendency of animal seeds to incorporate further substances explains that origin of material structures complex enough to constitute an animal soul. (shrink)

This paper reviews four leading strategies for addressing the problem of material constitution, along with some of the prominent objections faced by each approach. Sections include (1) "The Orthodox View: Coincident Objects," (2) "Dominant Kinds," (3) "Nihilism," (4) "Revising the Logic of Identity," and (5) "Future Research." Also included is an annotated bibliography.

Discussion about a dignified death has almost exclusively been applied to palliative care and people dying of cancer. As populations are getting older in the western world and living with chronic illnesses affecting their everyday lives, it is relevant to broaden the definition of palliative care to include other groups of people. The aim of the study was to explore the views on dignity at the end of life of 12 elderly people living in two nursing homes in Sweden. A (...) hermeneutic approach was used to interpret the material, which was gathered during semi-structured interviews. A total of 39 interviews were transcribed. The analysis revealed three themes: (1) the unrecognizable body; (2) fragility and dependency; and (3) inner strength and a sense of coherence. (shrink)

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 hylomorphic theories appeal to ‘structure’ to explain the unity of material objects. Each, however, accepts a controversial principle: that substances can have other substances as proper parts. Such a principle is implausible and severely threatens the coherence of the theory. -/- I begin by showing that Thomas Aquinas’ account of form, which does not accept that substances can have other substances as parts, gives us a more coherent version of hylomorphism. Then I argue Zhu Xi, a Song dynasty Confucian thinker, developed a non-Aristotelian hylomorphism. Unlike Aristotelians, Zhu Xi’s metaphysics was formed in opposition to Buddhist versions of skepticism and gives us reasons to think that anyone who holds a view of objects stronger than Buddhists is committed to forms. In conclusion, I show directly, by appeal to some of those same considerations from Zhu Xi, why it is that all those who believe there are unified material objects will appeal to something like a substantial form. The traditional hylomorphic picture of material composition, then, remains a plausible framework for contemporary metaphysicians – and for good reason. (shrink)

In this chapter, I show that there is at least one crucial, non-short, argument, which does not involve arguments about spatiotemporality, why Kant’s subjectivism about the possibility of knowledge, argued in the Transcendental Deduction, must lead to idealism. This has to do with the fact that given the implications of the discursivity thesis, namely, that the domain of possible determination of objects is characterised by limitation, judgements of experience can never reach the completely determined individual, i.e. the thing in itself (...) or the unlimited real, but only objects as objects of possible experience. As such, it can be shown by reference to a key argument from Kant, that Hegel’s famous criticism that Kant is not licensed, on the basis of his core arguments concerning the original-synthetic unity of apperception, to restrict our knowledge to appearances, is mistaken on purely systematic grounds. More specifically, I argue that idealism follows already from the constraints that the use of the categories, in particular the categories of quality, places on the very conceivability of things in themselves. My claim is that, although it is not only possible but also necessary to think things in themselves, it does not follow that by merely thinking them we have a full grasp of the nature of things in themselves, as some important commentators claim we have. We must therefore distinguish between two kinds of conceiving of things in themselves: conceiving in the standard sense of ‘forming the notion of’, and conceiving in the narrow sense of ‘having a determinate intellectual grasp’. So although we must be able notionally to think things in themselves, as the grounds of their appearances, we cannot even conceive, through pure concepts, of how they are in themselves in any determinate, even if merely intellectual, sense. To put it differently, we cannot have a positive conception of things in themselves (this is in line with Kant’s distinction between noumena in the negative and positive senses; cf. B307–9). For support, I resort to a much overlooked chapter in the Critique, concerning the transcendental Ideal, where Kant discusses what it is for a thing to be a thing in itself proper, namely, something that is thoroughly determined. This concerns the real ontological conditions of things, which are not satisfied by the modal categories alone, namely, their existence conditions. I claim that the chief reason why, given Kant’s view of determinative judgement, we cannot determine a thing in itself is because of two connected reasons: (1) a thing in itself is already fully determined and therefore not further determinable and (2) we cannot possibly determine all of the thing’s possible determinations. In this context, I also discuss the notion of material (not: empirical) synthesis—of which Kant speaks in the chapter on the transcendental Ideal—which must be presupposed as the ground of the formal a priori synthesis that grounds possible experience. This material synthesis, which is an idea of reason that defines a thing as thoroughly determined with regard to all of its possible predicates and has mere regulative status, can by implication not be determined by the forms of the understanding, which synthesise only a limited set of predicates. As a result, given this definition of ‘thing in itself’, any object (appearance) as at best44 a limited set of determinations of the thing can never be numerically identical to the thing in itself as thoroughly determined individual. This undercuts a standard assumption about the identity relation between appearances and things in themselves in many contemporary interpretations of Kant’s transcendental idealism. (shrink)

In her inventive and tightly argued book Defensive Killing, Helen Frowe defends the view that bystanders—those who do not pose threats to others—cannot be liable to being harmed in self-defence or in defence of others. On her account, harming bystanders always infringes their rights against being harmed, since they have not acted in any way to forfeit them. According to Frowe, harming bystanders can be justified only when it constitutes a lesser evil. In this brief essay, I make the (...) case that some bystanders can indeed be liable to harm. They can be liable, I will argue, because they can be morally responsible for threats of harm, and in becoming responsible they can forfeit their rights. While bystanders cannot be responsible for initiating threats, they can become responsible for the persistence of threats, and for culpably failing to prevent them from being initiated in the first place. (shrink)

The paper examines Posterior Analytics II 11, 94a20-36 and makes three points. (1) The confusing formula ‘given what things, is it necessary for this to be’ [τίνων ὄντων ἀνάγκη τοῦτ᾿ εἶναι] at a21-22 introduces material cause, not syllogistic necessity. (2) When biological material necessitation is the only causal factor, Aristotle is reluctant to formalize it in syllogistic terms, and this helps to explain why, in II 11, he turns to geometry in order to illustrate a kind of (...) class='Hi'>material cause that can be expressed as the middle term of an explanatory syllogism. (3) If geometrical proof is viewed as a complex construction built on simpler constructions, it can in effect be described as a case of purely material constitution. (shrink)

This book aims to overturn the common view of materially false ideas , which is that Descartes’s discussion in Meditation Three generates confusion about his views on truth and falsehood and is irrelevant to the rest of the argument in the Meditations.After introducing MFIs and then criticizing previous interpretations, Wee provides her own account in chapter three. Since a proper understanding of why MFIs fail in their representational function allows Wee to revisit their role in the Meditations, this chapter (...) occupies a central place in the book. She attributes to Descartes two theories of representation, the “Accurate Causal Account” and the “Alternative Account” . According to ACP, “an idea represents truly only if the idea comes from the cause from which it purports to come, and the idea accurately represents that cause” . According to AA, an idea is true “if it represents a thing with objective being ” .Since Descartes, in Meditation Three, is “unable to determine the causes of his . . . ‘adventitious’ ideas, far less to determine whether his ideas accurately represent their causes” , the claim that MFIs “represent no-things as things” is to be explained in light of AA as follows: “Under AA, all ideas purport to. (shrink)

Whereas an inference (deductive as well as inductive) is usually viewed as being valid in virtue of its argument form, the present paper argues that scientific reasoning is material inference, i.e., justified in virtue of its content. A material inference is licensed by the empirical content embodied in the concepts contained in the premises and conclusion. Understanding scientific reasoning as material inference has the advantage of combining different aspects of scientific reasoning, such as confirmation, discovery, and explanation. (...) This approach explains why these different aspects (including discovery) can be rational without conforming to formal schemes, and why scientific reasoning is local, i.e., justified only in certain domains and contingent on particular empirical facts. The notion of material inference also fruitfully interacts with accounts of conceptual change and psychological theories of concepts. (shrink)

This article strongly argues the priority of symbolic, especially discursive, action over the material order in the genesis of social things. What turns a piece of stuff into a social object is its embedment in a narrative construction. The attribution of an active or a passive role to things in relation to persons is thus essentially story-relative: nothing happens or exists in the social world unless it is framed by human performative activity. Drawing on Gibson's notion of `affordance', Harré (...) affirms that material things may be disposed towards many different usages, and may acquire multiple identities according to different narrative constructions, even though the range of their possible `existences' is constrained by certain material features. Objects acquire their full significance only if one takes account of their double role in both the `practical' order, which includes social arrangements for maintaining life, and the `expressive' order, which creates hierarchies of honour and status, and which enjoys priority over the former. Reasoning from a microsociological constructionist perspective, Harré restates his view that there is nothing else to social life but symbolic exchanges and joint management of meaning, including the meaning of things; the illusion that some thing is real is merely an effect of certain interpretational grammars which remain stable across the generations or even the centuries. (shrink)

A modus tollens against zero-dimensional material objects is presented from the premises (i) that if there are zero-dimensional material objects then there are bare particulars, and (ii) that there are no bare particulars. The argument for the first premise proceeds by elimination. First, bare particular theory and bundle theory are motivated as the most appealing theories of property exemplification. It is then argued that the bundle theorist’s Ockhamism ought to lead her to reject spatiotemporally located zero-dimensional property instances. (...) Finally, it is argued that since she must accept such instances if she accepts zero-dimensional material object bundles, she ought to avoid the latter. This leaves bare particular theory as the default view of zero-dimensional material objects. The argument for the second premise invokes the thesis that the exemplification of at least one sparse property is a prerequisite for the existence of any particular. It is argued from Humean considerations that bare particulars fail this prerequisite. (shrink)

B a c k g r o u n d. Sinicized Marxism involves the utilization of Marxist theory to address issues specific to China and the transformation of China's rich practical experience into theory, combined with Chinese history and traditional culture. This can be observed in the context of the exploration of philosophical-anthropological issues. M e t h o d s. The key methods employed to address the outlined tasks were comparative and dialectical. The use of the comparative method allowed (...) for the identification of commonalities and differences in the understanding of the human problem in Western European and contemporary Chinese philosophy. The inclusion of the dialectical method helped reveal contradictions in the explication of the nature and meaning of human existence by various contemporary Chinese thinkers. R e s u l t s. It has been found that contemporary Chinese thinkers perceive a dichotomy in human nature–social and natural. Considering not only Karl Marx's works but also those of other Western philosophers, particularly Immanuel Kant, Marxist philosophers in China emphasize the social component of human nature, which is crucial to individuality. C o n c l u s i o n s. It is argued that Sinicized Marxism, like its Soviet counterpart, also incorporates the concept of the "new man" whose life's purpose is to exist exclusively based on the principles and values of Marxist philosophy. The formation and functioning of this concept are influenced by extensive discussions regarding the role of humans in history. Sinicized Marxism emphasizes that each individual, living in society, pursues their own specific values and, guided by them, acts to achieve their realization. Although these goals and actions are diverse, varied, and contradictory, there is a common essence underlying this mass of individual goals and actions. Accordingly, contemporary Chinese thinkers assert that within a specific historical society, people are integrated independently of their will and desire into a unique system of material relations that constitutes their social existence. As a result, they are in a certain way connected within each formation and with the means of production. Production relations organize people, stimulate their activities, generate certain relationships and dependencies among social groups. Common interests, reflected in consciousness, more or less consciously, unite people, motivating them to strive for the realization of certain social goals. The thesis is substantiated that although Sinicized Marxism emphasizes the social goal of human life, it also encompasses considerations about the existential aspect, manifested in living for self-improvement and for the sake of others. (shrink)

In metaphysics, the view that material constitution is transitive is ubiquitous, an assumption expressed by both proponents and critics of constitution views. Likewise, it is typically assumed within the philosophy of mind that physical realization is a transitive relation. In both cases, this assumption of transitivity plays a role in discussion of the broader implications of a metaphysics that invokes either relation. Here I provide reasons for questioning this assumption and the uses to which this appeal to transitivity (...) is put. As my title suggests, I shall focus on the case of material constitution, using a brief discussion of realization at the outset to motivate the discussion of the transitivity of material constitution at the core of the paper. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that if a completed neuroscience of consciousness is to be attained, we must give the synchronic and diachronic application conditions for brain states and phenomenal states. I argue that, due to the temporal nature of our experiences, such states must be viewed as being temporally extended events, and illustrate how to give such application conditions using examples of other temporally extended events. However, I also raise some difficulties for the project of giving application conditions for (...) brain states and phenomenal states and suggest these as challenges for further philosophical work. (shrink)

I have both a smaller and a larger aim. The smaller aim is polemical. Kit Fine believes that a material thing—a Romanesque statue, for example, or an open door—can be distinguished from its constituent matter—a piece of alloy, say, or a hunk of plastic—without recourse to modal or temporal considerations. The statue is Romanesque; the piece of alloy is not Romanesque. The door is open; the hunk of plastic is not open. I argue that these considerations, when combined with (...) a proper understanding of how the use of ‘not’ is functioning, entail that the statue is the piece of alloy, and that the door is the hunk of plastic. Far from challenging the doctrine that a material thing is its matter, Fine’s observations confirm the view. My larger aim is methodological. I will show that natural language semantics can guide inquiry in certain areas of metaphysics by helping us to advance lingering debates. (shrink)

This paper poses a problem of promiscuity for views that endorse material constitution as a metaphysic relation.