Volume 17, Issue 2 -

In his 2009 paper Conceptual Schemes Revisited , Timothy Nulty argues that Davidson’s philosophy affords an argument for metaphysical pluralism, the theory that there are many actual worlds. In my (2010) reply, I charge that the argument depends on an unacceptable conflation of worlds and world-views: at most, we may infer from some of Davidson’s views that inhabitants of a shared world may conceive of it in radically different ways. In his most recent (2015) discussion of these issues, Nulty offers a fuller version of his argument for the conclusion that (if Davidson is right) their worlds might differ, and not merely their world-views, resting on the formerly suppressed premise that “to be is to be a possible intentional object”. He reckons that, if thinkers triangulate in very different ways, the intentional objects possible for one thinker or group may not be possible for some others; it may then follow that their worlds are different too. Against this fuller version of the argument, I here present two objections: first, Nulty’s ontological principle is incompatible with all kinds of causal truths about different kinds of actual thinkers; second, if it were true, we could not coherently explain the kind of situation that Nulty and I both take to generate interesting differences in world-view.

Vallicella’s influential work makes a case that, when formulated broadly, as a problem about unity, Bradley’s challenge to Armstrongian states of affairs is practically insurmountable. He argues that traditional relational and non-relational responses to Bradley are inadequate, and many in the current metaphysical debate on this issue have come to agree. In this paper, I argue that such a conclusion is too hasty. Firstly, the problem of unity as applied to Armstrongian states of affairs is not clearly defined; in fact, it has taken a number of different forms each of which need to be carefully distinguished and further supported. Secondly, once we formulate the problem in more neutral terms, as a request for a characterization of the way that particulars, universals, and states of affairs stand to one another, it can be adequately addressed by an Armstrongian about states of affairs. I propose the desiderata for an adequate characterization and present a neo-Armstrongian defense of states of affairs that meets those desiderata. The latter relies on an important distinction between different notions of fundamentality and existential dependence.

This paper addresses the ontological status of the ontological categories as defended within E.J. Lowe’s four-category ontology (kinds, objects, properties/relations, and modes). I consider the arguments in Griffith (2015. “Do Ontological Categories Exist?” Metaphysica 16 (1):25–35) against Lowe’s claim that ontological categories do not exist, and argue that Griffith’s objections to Lowe do not work once we fully take advantage of ontological resources available within Lowe’s four-category ontology. I then argue that the claim that ontological categories do not exist has no undesirable consequences for Lowe’s brand of realism.

How can a metaphysics of abstract entities be built upon a metaphysics of time? In this paper, I address the question of how to accommodate abstract entities in a presentist world. I consider both the traditional metaontological approach of unrestricted fundamental quantification and then ontological pluralism. I argue that under the former we need to impose two constraints in the characterization of presentism in order to avoid undesired commitments to abstract entities: we have to characterize presentism as a thesis only about the concrete, and we also need to avoid the widely held distinction between tensed and tenseless senses of existence. Under ontological pluralism, instead, I argue that we can naturally accommodate any view of abstract objects in a presentist world.

In a series of papers, Elizabeth Barnes and Robert Williams have developed a theory of metaphysical vagueness in which they argue for legitimacy of vague object and indeterminate identity. In his recent paper, Ken Akiba raises two objections against Barnes-Williams theory, concluding that it is ill-conceived and wrong-headed . In one objection, he argues that the theory implies indeterminate identity between referentially determinate objects to which λ -abstraction is applicable, and hence Evans’ argument ultimately goes through. In the other, he objects that Barnes-Williams theory also fails to block Salmon’s argument. This paper discusses the two objections. It argues that there are legitimate reasons for rejecting both, and hence to revive Barnes-Williams theory. Furthermore, it is shown that the objections, while unsuccessful, are helpful in revealing the limitations of Barnes-Williams theory.

Putnam’s argument against the sceptical Brain-in-a-Vat hypothesis continues to intrigue. I argue in what follows that the argument refutes a particular kind of sceptic and make a proposal about its more general significance. To appreciate the soundness of the argument, I explain, we need to appreciate that the sceptic’s contention is that I cannot know that I am not a brain in a vat even if I am not. This is why in response to the sceptic it is legitimate to make a transition from knowing that a sentence is true to knowing the truth it expresses, which is the crucial move in the argument.

The paper investigates the extent to which naturalized metaphysics, as proposed and characterized by Ladyman and Ross (2007. Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized . Oxford: Oxford University Press) among others, suggests a radical break with the conceptual space of pre-naturalized metaphysics. The investigation compares Ladyman and Ross’s methodology for metaphysics with that recently advocated by Steven French (2014. The Structure of the World: Metaphysics and Representation . Oxford: Oxford University Press). The comparison promises to be revealing because French shares Ladyman and Ross’s commitment to build a new metaphysics on the basis of a particular thesis developed in the philosophy of science literature, ontic structural realism (OSR). Thus differences between Ladyman and Ross’s and French’s approaches to metaphysics can be exhibited cleanly, without having to be pried apart from different respective views about the ontology implied by scientific theory and practice.