Volume 18, Issue 1 -

In this paper I argue that the problems solved by universals require not merely that we know they exist but that we know them by acquaintance. I begin by explicating this thesis of acquaintance with universals. I then show how it solves some familiar problems. After that I reply to the objection that something weaker will do such as David Lewis’ distinction between natural and artificial classes of possibilia.

Commonsense appears committed to enduring macroscopic material objects that exclude each other from their precise location at all times. I elaborate a specific version of the commonsense commitment and consider its merits in connection with an important line of objection concerning the relation between material objects and their parts. The central thesis is that amongst persisting macroscopic material objects there are Natural Continuants, NCs, whose unity at a time and over time is entirely independent of our concepts, which occupy their precise spatial location Exclusively at all times, and which ground Artificial Continuants, ACs, by partition, collection, and approximation. I call the position the Natural Continuants View (NCV). Section “The Natural Continuants View” offers a provisional characterization. Section “Spatial Partition” considers a familiar puzzle concerning the idea that material objects may survive the loss of a part in order to provide intuitive motivation for (NCV) and to elaborate its commitments concerning (spatial) parts. The result is an account of the way in which NCs ground ACs by spatial partition. Section “Collection and Approximation” turns to a consideration of collections and assemblages of NCs. Section “Conclusion” concludes.

The questions at issue in this discussion of Hilary Putnam’s Twin Earth thought experiment include the scope and limits of narrow versus wide meaning, the role of attempting to successfully refer as opposed to successfully referring in determining where meaning resides and how thought functions in relation to the meanings of words and sentences. Twin Earth is supposed to challenge the Fregean thesis that intensional sense ( Sinn ) determines extensional reference ( Bedeutung ), and that meanings are ‘in the head’. Putnam in ‘The Meaning of “Meaning”’ (1975) concludes emphatically that the Twin Earth thought experiment definitively shows that meanings are not in the head. It is argued here in a previously unexplored criticism that there are several senses in which meanings can appropriately be said to reside in the intending thinker’s head, especially under available interpretations of the metaphysics of and identity conditions for intending mental acts and their intended objects. The thought experiment loses force if it is said that the identity requirements for a ‘simultaneously’ intending mental act involving ‘Water’ imply achieved reference to H20 on Earth and to XYZ on Twin-Earth. Then the intending mental acts on Earth and Twin-Earth involving the thought ‘Water’ will not in fact, despite superficial appearances, belong even to the same relevant general types or kinds of psychological events.

Michael Dummett’s fecund and uncharacteristically brief article “A Defence of McTaggart’s Proof of the Unreality of Time” offers a well-known interpretation of McTaggart’s proof, and makes a number of controversial claims about a range of inter-connected theses concerning time and space. I want to sort out what is plausible in what Dummett says from what is not, and identify which theses should be endorsed by A theorists and which by B theorists. It is important, even today, to get clear about these issues and their bearing on Dummett’s interpretation of McTaggart.

I would like to attack a certain view: the view that the concept of identity can fail to apply to some things although, for some positive integer n , we have n of them. The idea of entities without self-identity is seriously entertained in the philosophy of quantum mechanics (QM). It is so pervasive that it has been labelled the Received View (French and Krause 2006. Identity in Physics: A Historical, Philosophical, and Formal Analysis . Oxford: Oxford UP: 105). I introduce the Received View in Section 1. In Section 2 I explain what I mean by “entity” (synonymously, by “object” and “thing”), and I argue that supporters of the Received View should agree with my characterization of the corresponding notion of entity ( object, thing ). I also explain what I mean by “identity”, and I show that supporters of the Received View agree with my characterization of that notion. In Section 3 I argue that the concept of identity, so characterized, is one with the concept of oneness. Thus, it cannot but apply to what belongs to a collection with n elements, n being a positive integer. In Section 4 I add some considerations on the primitiveness of identity or unity and the status of the Identity of Indiscernibles. In Section 5 I address the problem of how reference to indiscernible objects with identity can be achieved.

The article, in the first part, aims at providing a positive answer to the ontological question about fictional objects starting from semantic reflections on the negative existential statements containing terms purporting to refer to such objects and the principle of compositionality. In the second part is proposed a Meinongian account of ficta , showing how it handles the problem of negative existentials without giving up neither the principle of compositionality nor our way of talking about fictional characters in the natural languages. It is also considered a particular kind of Meinongianism, namely Modal Meinongianism which seems to be the best Meinongian theory in order to explore the modal properties of ficta .

I argue that Mumford and Anjum’s recent theory of simultaneous causation among powerful meso-level objects is problematic in several respects: it is based on a false dichotomy, it is incompatible with standard meso-level physics, it is explanatory deficient, and it threatens to render the powers metaphysics incoherent. Powers theorists are advised, therefore, to adopt a purely sequential conception of causation.

The aim of this paper is to propose that both Hegel and Peirce are committed to two arguments against the notion that metaphysics is impossible, where not only do they claim metaphysics is possible, but that they also insist on the indispensability of this philosophical discipline. In the first argument, both Hegel and Peirce argue that it is impossible to eliminate metaphysical concepts from ordinary language and our scientific practices. In the second argument, both Hegel and Peirce argue that metaphysics is a necessary part of intellectual enquiry on the grounds that metaphysics is indispensable for human development. Such is the philosophical significance of both their views on the indispensability of metaphysics that there is every reason to regard Hegel and Peirce as representing powerful challenges to eliminativist attitudes to metaphysical enquiry. The purpose of my paper is to justify the exercise of metaphysics as a “humanistic discipline”, to use an expression from Bernard Williams. Using perfectionist approaches to ethics as a framework in which to contextualise the question of whether it could ever be desirable to eliminate metaphysics is under-explored and potentially a major avenue through which to explore the way we do metaphysics today.