The basic principles of dispositional essentialism do not require that the fundamental spatiotemporal relations are dispositional in nature. Nevertheless, Bird (who defends dispositional monism) argues that they possess dispositional essences in virtue of the fact that the obtaining of these relations can be characterised by the satisfaction of a certain counterfactual. In this paper I argue that his suggestion fails, and so, despite his attempt, the case of the spatiotemporal relations remains the ‘big bad bug’ (...) for the thesis of dispositional monism. (shrink)

The excellent commentaries to our target paper hint upon three main issues, spatiotemporal neuroscience; neuro-mental relationship; and mind, brain, and world relationship. We therefore discuss briefly the history of Spatiotemporal Neuroscience. Distinguishing it from Cognitive Neuroscience and related branches, Spatiotemporal Neuroscience can be characterized by focus on brain activity, spatiotemporal relationship, and structure. Taken in this sense, Spatiotemporal Neuro-science allows one to conceive the neuro-mental relationship in dynamic spatiotemporal terms that complement and extend their (...) cognitive characterization. Finally, more philosophical issues like the need to dissolve the mind-body problem and the question for different levels of time including their nestedness are discussed. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to offer a classification of particulars in terms of their relations to spatiotemporal and spatial regions. It begins with an examination of spatiotemporal particulars, and then explores the extent to which a parallel account can be offered of continuants, or spatial particulars that can endure and change over time, assuming such particulars exist. For every spatial particular there are spatiotemporal particulars that can be described as its life and parts thereof. (...) But not every time-slice of a spatiotemporal particular yields a spatial region suitable for hosting a corresponding spatial particular. Events are spatiotemporal particulars though not all spatiotemporal particulars are events. Objects and states are spatial particulars though not all spatial particulars are objects or states. Spatial and spatiotemporal particulars can be either bare regions, or the contents or material contents of such regions, or property instantiations. It is left open whether events are contents of regions, property instantiations, or both. But it is argued that objects are material contents of spatial regions while states of objects are property instantiations. Spatiotemporal particulars can be changes or nonchanges. Events and states can be instantaneous while objects cannot. (shrink)

Findings in dynamic unit formation suggest that completion processes reflect the optics of our world. Dynamic unit formation may depend on patterns of motion signals that are consistent with the causes of optical changes. In addition, dynamic completion conforms to a local curvature minimization constraint. Such relational aspects of vision are important to consider in linking perceptual experience and neural activity.

Substantial change occurs when a persisting object of some kind either begins or ceases to exist. Typically, this happens when one or more persisting objects of another kind or kinds are subjected to appropriate varieties of qualitative or relational change, as when the particles composing a lump of bronze are rearranged so as to create a statue. However, such transformations also seem to result, very often, in cases of spatiotemporal coincidence, in which two numerically distinct objects of different kinds (...) exist in exactly the same place at the same time, such as a statue and a lump of bronze. Various attempts to resist this way of describing the results of such transformations are examined and found wanting and objections to the possibility of cases of spatiotemporal coincidence are rebutted. (shrink)

One of the basic assumptions of David Lewis's formal semantics of counterfactuals is that the crucial relation of comparative similarity between possible worlds is a linear ordering.Yet there are arguments that when we take into account relativistic features of space-time, this relationshould be only a partial ordering. The first part of the paper deals with the question of how to formulate appropriatetruth conditions for counterfactuals under the supposition of a partial ordering of possible worlds. Such truthconditions will be put forward, (...) and it will be argued that they are more general than those proposed in recentliterature, because they turn out to be applicable also when the so-called Limit Assumption is not met. The secondpart analyzes two relativistically invariant ways of interpreting spatiotemporal counterfactuals with antecedentsreferring to free-chance point events. After briefly examining key differences between these two approaches,the issue of their extension for a broader class of antecedents will be addressed. Following the approach of Finkelstein, who has proposed a specifically designed similarity relation between possible worlds, servingas a generalization tool in the case of one of the above intuitions, the possibility of a similar extension forthe second interpretation will be considered. The main result of the paper is the theorem to the effect that thegeneralization of the second intuition is impossible to obtain. More specifically, the theorem proved in the paperstates that there is no similarity relation which together with the Lewis-style truth conditions for counterfactualswould imply the second of the above interpretations as a special case. Some consequences of thistheorem for the applicability of the Lewis logic of counterfactuals to quantum phenomena will be briefly mentionedat the end of the paper. (shrink)

Substantial change occurs when a persisting object of some kind either begins or ceases to exist. Typically, this happens when one or more persisting objects of another kind or kinds are subjected to appropriate varieties of qualitative or relational change, as when the particles composing a lump of bronze are rearranged so as to create a statue. However, such transformations also seem to result, very often, in cases of spatiotemporal coincidence, in which two numerically distinct objects of different kinds (...) exist in exactly the same place at the same time, such as a statue and a lump of bronze. Various attempts to resist this way of describing the results of such transformations are examined and found wanting and objections to the possibility of cases of spatiotemporal coincidence are rebutted. (shrink)

Intuitively, we can conceive of the existence of a conscious state as a pure activity that does not necessarily require a body (or even a brain). This idea has found new support in certain recent theories that present the possibility of a totally disconnected and disembodied consciousness. Against this hypothesis, I argue that human experience is intrinsically embodied and embedded, though in a specific way. Using Sartre’s phenomenology of the body, I first analyze the concept of consciousness as intentionality and (...) a world-disclosing activity, thus explaining how conscious activity can only be expressed through a body that is spatiotemporally related to the world. Then, I argue that bodily consciousness does not necessarily imply the actual presence of an anatomical body but, rather, a process of spatialization and temporalization (hodological space and temporal synthesis) through the “spatiotemporal body”. Finally, I test my thesis by critiquing some cases of apparent disembodied/disconnected consciousness, i.e., dreams, out-of-body experiences, and the brain-in-a-vat scenario. (shrink)

The integration of event-related potential and functional magnetic resonance imaging helps to obtain and study neural networks with high temporal and spatial resolution. EEG/fMRI data proves that in the visual tristimulus oddball paradigm, two P300 potentials induced by target stimulation and novel stimulation are detected at the frontal-middle, center, and mid-apical electrodes. Previous studies have shown that P3a and P3b have different spatial distributions of brain activation, but it is unclear whether they have the same neural mechanism. The purpose of (...) this study is to determine the neuropsychological mechanisms of P3a and P3b, as well as the spatiotemporal differences in neurodynamics between the two ERP subcomponents. In a group of 25 subjects, P300 ERP induced by target stimulation and novel stimulation can be detected at the Fz, Cz, and Pz electrodes. At Cz and Fz, compared with P3b related to the target stimulus, the P3a related to the novel stimulus has a higher amplitude and the waveform declines more slowly. But at Pz, P3b has a higher amplitude than P3a. P3a appeared earlier than P3b at Cz and Fz, but the opposite phenomenon was observed at the Pz electrode. The activated brain regions of P3a included the left frontal-parietal lobe region, left anterior wedge lobe region, and right insula, while the target-driven P3b was significantly associated with BOLD changes in the bilateral fusiform gyrus, the left frontal region, and the bilateral insula. The results showed that the integration of the spatial and temporal information of the two imaging modes, namely, ERP and fMRI, proves the existence of the different brain function processes of the two P300 subcomponents. Through the analysis of the composition of P300, the results further proved that the top-down and bottom-up processing processes have played a role in the occurrence of attention capture. It is just that the modulation effects of the two processing mechanisms are different in different tasks. Therefore, it should be noted that the captured neural mechanism is not a single top-down or bottom-up processing process but should be the result of the interaction between the two. (shrink)

It has been widely noted that Humean supervenience , according to which everything supervenes on intrinsic properties of point-sized things and the spatiotemporal relations between them, is at odds with the nonlocal character of quantum mechanics, according to which not everything supervenes on intrinsic properties of point-sized things and the spatiotemporal relations between them. In particular, a standard view is that the parts of a composite quantum system instantiate further relations which are not accounted for (...) in Lewis's Humean mosaic. But that suggests a simple solution: Why couldn't Lewis simply add these new relations to the supervenience basis? The aim of this article is to use Humean supervenience as a foil to spell out a feature of entanglement of general metaphysical interest: The way in which the metaphysical lessons drawn for two-party systems ramify when systems of many parties are considered. The main conclusion is that the proposed simple fix in fact results in a supervenience thesis different in kind from Lewis's, by making the relations in the supervenience basis global in a certain sense. (shrink)

Fifteen philosophers offer new essays exploring the metaphysics of relations from antiquity to the present day. They address topics as diverse as ancient and medieval reasons for scepticism about polyadic properties; recent attempts to reduce causal and spatiotemporal relations; recent work on the directionality of relational properties; powers ontologies and their associated problems; whether the most promising interpretations of quantum mechanics posit a fundamentally relational world; and whether the very idea of such a world is coherent. From (...) those who question whether there are relational properties at all, to those who hold they are a fundamental part of reality, The Metaphysics of Relations covers a broad spectrum of positions on the nature and ontological status of relations, from antiquity to the present day. (shrink)

Experimental work has shown that spatial experiences influence spatiotemporal metaphor use. In these studies, participants are asked a question that yields different responses depending on the metaphor participants use. It has been claimed that English speakers are equally likely to respond with either variant in the absence of priming. Related studies testing non-spatial experiences demonstrate varied results with a wide range of primes. Here, the effects of eye movement and stimuli presentation modality on comprehension of this question are investigated (...) in different formats. In addition, the results of prior reported controls are re-analyzed in a meta-analysis to verify reliable ambiguity of the test question. Results suggest that English speakers have a baseline preference for the Moving Ego metaphor variant, with a stronger preference in verbal rather than written presentation. The findings have implications both for interpretation of prior studies' results and future study designs. (shrink)

The paper discusses from a metaphysical standpoint the nature of the dependence relation underpinning the talk of mutual action between material and spatiotemporal structures in general relativity. It is shown that the standard analyses of dependence in terms of causation or grounding are ill-suited for the general relativistic context. Instead, a non-standard analytical framework in terms of structural equation modeling is exploited, which leads to the conclusion that the kind of dependence encoded in the Einstein field equations is a (...) novel one. (shrink)

With the development of geoscience, users are eager to obtain preferred service from geospatial information intelligently and automatically. However, the information grows rapidly while the service gets more complicated, which makes it difficult to find out the targeted information for an exact service in geospatial issues. In this paper, a novel method is proposed to promote the geospatial service from information to knowledge with spatiotemporal semantics. Both prompted and professional knowledge are further refined to be published as a service. (...) In terms of an exact task, numerous related services are recombined to a service chain under user requirement. Finally, the proposed method is applied to monitor the environment on the Air Quality Index and soil moisture in the Sensor Web service platform, the results of which indicate geospatial knowledge service is more efficient to support spatial decision-making. (shrink)

Electricity is hidden within wires and networks only revealing its quantity and flow when metered. The making of its properties into data is therefore particularly important to the relations that are formed around electricity as a produced and managed phenomenon. We propose approaching all metering as a situated activity, a form of quantification work in which data is made and becomes mobile in particular spatial and temporal terms, enabling its entry into data infrastructures and schemes of evaluation and value (...) production. We interrogate the transition from the pre-digital into the making of bigger, more spatiotemporally granular electricity data, through focusing on those actors selling and materialising new metering technologies, data infrastructures and services for larger businesses and public sector organisations in the UK. We examine the claims of truth and visibility that accompany these shifts and their enrolment into management techniques that serve to more precisely apportion responsibility for, and evaluate the status of, particular patterns and instances of electricity use. We argue that whilst through becoming Big Data electricity flow is now able to be known and given identity in significantly new terms, enabling new relations to be formed with the many heterogeneous entities implicated in making and managing energy demand, it is necessary to sustain some ambivalence as to the performative consequences that follow for energy governance. We consider the wider application of our conceptualisation of metering, reflecting on comparisons with the introduction of new metering systems in domestic settings and as part of other infrastructural networks. (shrink)

Kant's problematic conclusion, that we can know that things in themselves are not in space or time, is shown to follow directly from his claim that space and time are manners of disposition or forms of arrangement in which various items are presented to us in intuition. This argument is not strong enough to rule out certain well-defined senses in which things in themselves "could" possibly be spatio-temporal, but it does show that any sense in which things in themselves could (...) be in space or time would bear no relation to the spatio-temporal features of appearances. (shrink)

This paper considers two aspects of Lewis 's metaphysics to which spatiotemporal relations appear central, with the aim of showing them to be less so. First, Lewis reluctantly characterises what it is for two things to be part of the same possible world in terms of an analogically spatiotemporal category of relations, rather than a wider natural external category. But Lewis 's reason for restricting himself to the narrower category is unpersuasive. Second, Humean supervenience is formulated (...) with spatiotemporal relations at its core. But that seems negotiable. A reason for caring about this is that quantum mechanics is supposed to threaten Lewis 's metaphysics by introducing natural external relations that are not spatiotemporal, hence the interest in how central spatiotemporal relations really are. (shrink)

This paper considers two aspects of Lewis's metaphysics to which spatiotemporal relations appear central, with the aim of showing them to be less so. First, Lewis reluctantly characterises what it is for two things to be part of the same possible world in terms of an analogically spatiotemporal category of relations, rather than a wider natural external category. But Lewis's reason for restricting himself to the narrower category is unpersuasive. Second, Humean supervenience is formulated with (...) class='Hi'>spatiotemporal relations at its core. But that seems negotiable. A reason for caring about this is that quantum mechanics is supposed to threaten Lewis's metaphysics by introducing natural external relations that are not spatiotemporal, hence the interest in how central spatiotemporal relations really are. (shrink)

Paul Ricœur’s recourse to the metahistorical categories, space of experience and horizon of expectation, invites an inquiry into geography’s role as the guarantor of history. The ontology of the flesh provides the first indication of how one’s body is implicated in the sense of one’s place in the world. In turn, narrative inscriptions of events on the landscape transform the physical topography of a place into an array of sites where memories of ancestral wisdom and historical traumas endure. By anchoring (...) historians’ representations of the past in the places and locales in which events took place, geography constructs a third space analogous to the third time of history. The aporias engendered by the phenomenology of time, however, have no equivalent in the phenomenology of space. The dissymmetry between the dialectic that informs the discourse of space and the one that informs the discourse of time thus keeps in place the reciprocal relation between geography and historiography. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to relate Bell’s notion of local causality to the Causal Markov Condition. To this end, first a framework, called local physical theory, will be introduced integrating spatiotemporal and probabilistic entities and the notions of local causality and Markovity will be defined. Then, illustrated in a simple stochastic model, it will be shown how a discrete local physical theory transforms into a Bayesian network and how the Causal Markov Condition arises as a special case (...) of Bell’s local causality and Markovity. (shrink)

A version of relationism that takes spatiotemporal structures—spatial geometry and a standard of inertia—to supervene on the history of relations between bodies is described and defended. The account is used to explain how the relationist should construe models of Newtonian mechanics in which absolute acceleration manifestly does not supervene on the relations; Ptolemaic and Copernican models for example. The account introduces a new way in which a Lewis-style ‘best system’ might capture regularities in a broadly Humean world; (...) a defence is given against a charge of indeterminism that applies to any such approach to laws. (shrink)

It has been argued that Humean Supervenience is threatened by the existence of quantum entanglement relations. The most conservative strategy for defending HS is to add the problematic entanglement relations to the supervenience basis, alongside spatiotemporal relations. In this paper, I’m going to argue against this strategy by showing how certain particular cases of tripartite entanglement states – i.e. GHZ states – posit some crucial problems for this amended version of HS. Moreover, I will show that (...) the principle of free recombination – which is strictly linked to HS – is severely undermined if we add entanglement relations to the supervenience basis. I conclude that the conservative move is very unappealing, and therefore the defender of HS should pursue other, more controversial, strategies. (shrink)

In this article I explore a number of questions that have not been adequately investigated in philosophy of mind circles: are minds located in the same place as the brains (or other computing machinery) supporting them? Must they exist at the same location as the body? Must they exist at the same time? Could a single mind be implemented in multiple brains, or multiple minds in a single brain? Under what conditions might a single mind persist despite being implemented successively (...) in different brains? What contributions do features of the computing machinery make to these questions, compared to the contribution made by the body and embedded point of view? Some of these questions have been touched on previously, but there hasn’t been any attempt at a systematic analysis of the various consequences that different approaches in the philosophy of mind have for how the spatiotemporal location, synchronic individuation and diachronic identity of minds relates to the spatiotemporal location, synchronic individuation, and diachronic identity of both the implementing computational machinery and the embodied embedded point of view. I make a first stab at such an analysis by discussing a variety of thought experiments in which such questions of location, individuation, and identity arise, and I explore how various approaches to understanding the mind – identity theoretic, functionalist, contentualist, embodied/embedded/extended, and so forth – would respond to such situations. A number of novel issues emerge, and some surprising affinities are revealed. (shrink)

Many theories assimilate the idioms of modality to those of quantification; they hold that so-and-so is possible iff there is a "world" at which it is true that so-and-so. "Modal realism" identifies worlds with certain concrete particulars, and truth at a world with what is true of it. Rival "ersatz" theories identify worlds with certain abstract entities and identify what is true at them with what they represent. ;David Lewis argues that pre-theoretic modal intuitions are best explained by modal realism. (...) I try to make a case for ersatzism. ;First, I argue that modal realism is flawed on the grounds that it entails the impossibility of certain intuitively possible spatiotemporal structures; it fails to explain fully even those intuitions with which it is compatible; and it renders the origin of modal knowledge mysterious. ;Next, I argue that objections to ersatzism are not conclusive. ;Lewis objects that even a generic version of ersatzism requires an unnameable and maybe unintelligible primitive relation. I suggest that the problems with naming are perfectly general; they have nothing to do with metaphysical theories of modality in particular. And I suggest a solution taken from Lewis himself. I also argue that any purported unintelligibility is due to illegitimately assimilating the relation to spatiotemporal relations. ;Finally, I consider some difficulties with a version of ersatzism that aims to reduce modality to impure set-theory. One concerns the accommodation of intuitions about properties that are not, but might have been, instantiated. Another concerns accommodation of intuitions about relations of exclusion and entailment among properties. I suggest that these difficulties are due to faulty assumptions about the nature of properties rather than any fundamental flaws in this ersatz approach. So I propose an account of properties that when incorporated into ersatzism circumvents these difficulties and allows it to claim the advantages of modal realism without its drawbacks. Unlike traditional accounts, this takes the essence of a property to consist in its role in imposing a certain classificational structure on the particulars that instantiate it, rather than in any unique and irreducible "quiddity". (shrink)

It has been argued that Humean Supervenience is threatened by the existence of quantum entanglement relations. The most conservative strategy for defending HS is to add the problematic entanglement relations to the supervenience basis, alongside spatiotemporal relations. In this paper, I’m going to argue against this strategy by showing how certain particular cases of tripartite entanglement states – i.e. GHZ states – posit some crucial problems for this amended version of HS. Moreover, I will show that (...) the principle of free recombination – which is strictly linked to HS – is severely undermined if we add entanglement relations to the supervenience basis. I conclude that the conservative move is very unappealing, and therefore the defender of HS should pursue other, more controversial, strategies. (shrink)

Intrinsic gait variability, i.e., fluctuations in the regularity of gait patterns between repetitive cycles, is inherent to the sensorimotor system and influenced by factors such as age and pathology. Increased GV is associated with gait impairments in individuals with cerebral palsy and has been mainly studied based on spatiotemporal parameters. The present study aimed to describe kinematic GV in young people with CP and its associations with clinical impairments [i.e., passive range of motion, muscle weakness, reduced selective motor control, (...) and spasticity]. This retrospective study included 177 participants with CP representing 289 clinical gait analyses [n = 172 for unilateral CP vs. 117 for bilateral CP ]. As variability metrics, Root Mean Square Deviation for nine lower-limb kinematic parameters and Gait Standard Deviation – as composite score of the kinematic parameters – were computed for the affected and most affected side, respectively, as defined by clinical scores. GaitSD was then computed for the non/less-affected side for between leg comparisons. Uni- and multivariate linear regressions were subsequently performed on GaitSD of the affected/most affected side with all clinical impairments as independent variables. Highest RMSD were found in the transverse plane, for distal joints in the sagittal plane and for foot progression. GaitSD was not different between uCP and bCP but higher in the non-affected vs. affected side in uCP. GaitSD was associated with age, gait deviation index, muscle weakness, selectivity, and pROM. After adjustment for age and GDI, GaitSD remained associated with muscle weakness and selectivity. Kinematic GV can be expressed as global indicator of variability in young people with CP given the strong correlation of RMSD for lower-limb kinematic parameters. In terms of asymmetry, increased variability of the non-affected vs. affected side may indicate contralateral compensation mechanisms in uCP. Notably muscle weakness and selectivity – but not spasticity – were associated with GaitSD. Further studies need to explore the clinical relevance of kinematic GV in CP to support the interpretation of clinical gait analyses and therapeutic decision-making. (shrink)

We should see the debate over the existence of spacetime as a debate about the fundamentality of spatiotemporal structure to the physical world. This is a non-traditional conception of the debate, which captures the spirit of the traditional one. At the same time, it clarifies the point of contention between opposing views and offsets worries that the dispute is stagnant or non-substantive. It also unearths a novel argument for substantivalism, given current physics. Even so, that conclusion can be overridden (...) by future physics. I conclude that this debate is a substantive one, which the substantivalist is currently winning. (shrink)

Originally prepared as a doctoral thesis which was presented in 1940, the present work ranges over the major figures in British idealism, and in the Angloamerican schools of neorealism and logical atomism. What is understood here as the problem of relations is, of course, the controversy regarding the internality or externality of relations. This controversy begins with some issues involved in the definition and classification of relations, issues which affect the definition and classification of other categories such (...) as individual, quality, and even quantity. Soon enough, however, this set of issues is augmented by the problems involved in the definition of the relations emerging with each different kind of knowing, and by the problems concerning the bearing that knowledge has on the reality of relations. The main body of Datta's work is the succinct exposition of the doctrine of relations in a great number of authors such as Lotze, Green, Bradley, Bosanquet, James, Perry, Moore, Alexander, Russell, Broad, Cook Wilson, all of which complement each other in an exhaustive analysis of the above issues. Of great interest is the exposition of the Indian doctrine of the categories, including relation, in the Nyaya-Vaisesika system which protested against the Buddhistic conception of reality as an eternal flux. Datta concludes that "relations are always inter-objective, so that whenever cognition is concerned the question of relation does not arise. For cognition is not a relational fact but the ground of all relational facts." In backing these conclusions, the author sketches a brief outline of an ontology in which the main postulate proclaims that the spatiotemporal world is not the whole of reality: reality must include the meaning world as well.--A. M. (shrink)

The philosophies of education serve as the guide of the teachers in handling the teaching-learning process. However, a belief will remain as a belief unless it is practiced. This study aimed to find the relationship between the philosophical beliefs and practices of the 30 teachers of the schools in San Roque, Mabini, Bohol - San Roque Elementary School and San Roque National High School, S.Y. 2019-2020. The study utilized a quantitative method descriptive survey research design. The research instrument used was (...) a self-constructed questionnaire in which the reliability was tested by a Cronbach’s Alpha using Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) software. Simple percentage and weighted mean were some of the statistical treatments used. Kendall’s tau_b, a non-parametric test, was used to determine the correlation between philosophical beliefs and their equivalent pedagogical practices. All of the statistical treatments were also run using the SPSS software. Further, the researcher assured the proper observation of the research ethics protocol. Based on the results, the philosophies of Progressivism (3.63) and Perennialism (3.31) were the most and least prevailing philosophical beliefs, respectively. On the other hand, the most and least prevailing philosophies practiced are Progressivism (3.69) and Essentialism (3.19), respectively. Moreover, research findings revealed that there was a significant relationship between the philosophical beliefs of teachers and their pedagogical practices. In conclusion, this study claims that teachers’ pedagogical practices are dependent to their philosophical beliefs; and as the teachers believed on a particular philosophy of education, they practice it accordingly to the extent of their adherence to the belief. (shrink)

Barbarism was by no means unique to the past 100 years, Jonathan Glover tells us, but ''it is still right that much of 20th-century history has been a very unpleasant surprise.'' This was the century of Passchendaele, Dresden, Nanking, Nagasaki and Rwanda; of the Final Solution, the gulag, the Great Leap Forward, Year Zero and ethnic cleansing -- names that stand for killings in the six and seven figures and for suffering beyond comprehension. The technological progress that inspired the optimism (...) of the Victorians turned out also to multiply the effects of old-fashioned evil and criminal stupidity. (shrink)

We develop a new version of the causal theory of spacetime. Whereas traditional versions of the theory seek to identify spatiotemporal relations with causal relations, the version we develop takes causal relations to be the grounds for spatiotemporal relations. Causation is thus distinct from, and more basic than, spacetime. We argue that this non-identity theory, suitably developed, avoids the challenges facing the traditional identity theory.

Presents the fundamental ideas of Indian thinkers that have shaped the mind of Indian from 1770 to the post-modern era in the middle of 20th century in India. Lists the most Indian influential figures in the field of philosophy, political theory, activicism such as Rabindranath Tagore, Ram Mohan Roy, Swami Vivekananda, and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

Hume's attempt to show that deduction is the only legitimate form of inference presupposes that enumerative induction is the only non-deductive form of inference. In actuality, enumerative induction is not even a form of inference: all supposed cases of enumerative induction are disguised cases of Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE), so far as they aren't simply cases of mentation of a purely associative kind and, consequently, of a kind that is non-inductive and otherwise non-inferential. The justification for IBE lies (...) in two truths, each analytic, viz. that good explanations eliminate anomalies and, second, that anomaly-elimination is identical with discontinuity-elimination. Given these truisms, along with the empirical data to which even skeptics must grant that we have access, it follows that induction is truth-conducive, a corrollary being that skepticism with regard to the veridicality of our senses is indefensible. Hume's erroneous beliefs about non-deductive inference are consequences of his belief that the world has a digital, as opposed to an analogue, structure--of, in other words, his belief that the spatiotemporal manifold decomposes into minimal units. This belief of his is not only false, but analytically so, and its negation has the consequence--for reasons additional to the one already given---that many forms of skepticism are non-starters. It also has the consequence, later given empirical confirmation by the (apparent) truth of Relativity Theory, that spatiotemporal relations are causal relations. Finally, it has the consequence that, contrary to what Hume argues, there are instances of causation. Additional reinforcemet for this claim is shown to lie in a fact first identified by Kant, viz. that we couldn't even ask whether or not there were instances of causation unless there were in fact such instances. Other, similarly 'transcendental' arguments of Kant's are put forth, sometimes in a modified form, so as to buttress the anti-skeptical positions advocated in thsi paper. (shrink)

Should we understand implicit attitudes on the model of belief? I argue that implicit attitudes are (probably) members of a different psychological kind altogether, because they seem to be insensitive to the logical form of an agent’s thoughts and perceptions. A state is sensitive to logical form only if it is sensitive to the logical constituents of the content of other states (e.g., operators like negation and conditional). I explain sensitivity to logical form and argue that it is a necessary (...) condition for belief. I appeal to two areas of research that seem to show that implicit attitudes fail spectacularly to satisfy this condition—although persistent gaps in the empirical literature leave matters inconclusive. I sketch an alternative account, according to which implicit attitudes are sensitive merely to spatiotemporal relations in thought and perception, i.e., the spatial and temporal orders in which people think, see, or hear things. (shrink)

A tropel is a particular property: the redness of a rose, the roundness of the moon. It is generally supposed that tropes are individuated by primitive quantity: this redness, that roundness. I argme that the trope theorist is far better served by individuating tropes by spatiotemporal relation: here redness, there roundness. In short, tropes are not this-suches but here-suches.

Think of “locations” very abstractly, as positions in a space, any space. Temporal locations are positions in time; spatial locations are positions in (physical) space; particulars are locations in quality space. Should we reify locations? Are locations entities? Spatiotemporal relation- alists say there are no such things as spatiotemporal locations; the fundamental spatial and temporal facts involve no locations as objects, only the instantiation of spatial and temporal relations. The denial of locations in quality space is the (...) bundle theory, according to which particulars do not exist; facts apparently about particulars really concern relations between universals. A “space”, in our abstract sense, consists of a set of objects, together with properties and relations defined on those objects. The objects are the locations of the space, and the distribution of the properties and relations over the locations defines the space’s structure. All spaces are thus quality spaces; when the relations are thought of as spatiotemporal then the space is also a spatiotemporal space. By not reifying locations one denies that these abstract spaces isomorphically represent the real world. The real world does in some sense have a structure that can be non-isomorphically represented by a space (or, more likely, a class of spaces), but the locations in those spaces do not correspond to anything real. We will examine modal considerations on reifying locations. Denying the existence of spatiotemporal locations excludes certain possibilities for spatiotemporal reality. Denying the existence of qualitative locations excludes certain possibilities for qualitative space. In each case the excluded possibilities are pre-analytically possible. Some of the possibilities can be reinstated by modifying the locationless theories, but at the cost of an unattractive holism. Do these modal considerations mandate postulating locations? That depends on whether modal intuition can teach us about the actual world.. (shrink)

This paper argues against the proposal to draw from current research into a physical theory of quantum gravity the ontological conclusion that spacetime or spatiotemporal relations are not fundamental. As things stand, the status of this proposal is like the one of all the other claims about radical changes in ontology that were made during the development of quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. However, none of these claims held up to scrutiny as a consequence of the physics (...) once the theory was established and a serious discussion about its ontology had begun. Furthermore, the paper argues that if spacetime is to be recovered through a functionalist procedure in a theory that admits no fundamental spacetime, standard functionalism cannot serve as a model: all the known functional definitions are definitions in terms of a causal role for the motion of physical objects and hence presuppose spatiotemporal relations. (shrink)

Conferralism is the view that social properties are neither intrinsic to the things that have them nor possessed simply by virtue of their causal or spatiotemporal relations to other things, but are somehow bestowed (intentionally or not, explicitly or not) upon them by persons who have both the capacity and the standing to bestow them. We argue that conferralism faces a dilemma: either it is viciously circular, or it is limited in scope in a way that undercuts its (...) motivation. (shrink)

Kriegel described the problem of intentional inexistence as one of the ‘perennial problems of philosophy’, 307–340, 2007: 307). In the same paper, Kriegel alluded to a modal realist solution to the problem of intentional inexistence. However, Kriegel does not state by name who defends the kind of modal realist solution he has in mind. Kriegel also points out that even what he believes to be the strongest version of modal realism does not pass the ‘principle of representation’ and thus modal (...) realism is not an adequate solution to the problem of intentional inexistence. In this paper, I respond to Kriegel by defending a modal realist solution that he did not consider in 2007, called ‘extended modal realism’. EMR is a version of modal realism where possible worlds are not completely isolated as they are under the Lewisian model. Rather, under EMR worlds are, in a way, spatiotemporally related. The fact EMR worlds are related allows EMR to sufficiently pass the principle of representation and thus can be deemed a legitimate solution to the problem of intentional inexistence. I conclude that either EMR can pass the principle of representation in some cases or, and I think the more sensible option, we give up on the principle of representation altogether. (shrink)