Volume 22, Issue 2

The recent holistic trends in metaphysics are surveyed here and a tentative typology is offered. The non-linear mode of composition is suggested as the key feature of holism, apart from its familiar non-reductionism and emergentism. It is argued that those holistic views are promising that refrain from extreme relationalism based on the denial of there being self-subsistence particulars; also, those refraining from the postulation of an unarticulated all-embracing whole where both relations and terms are denied to be genuine ontological items. The further suggestion is that a trade-off between the holistic perspective and the limits imposed upon it in the form of built-in confinements may help in making this metaphysics go.

Attempting to provide an ontological framework for the notion of the non-personal Universe of Being proposed elsewhere, this paper – after some basic definitions – focuses on substances , one pillar of that notion. It recognizes only to individual substances a material ( vs. formal) existence, viewed as the entire complex of the properties instantiated in each of them. It then examines features of the general essence of substances ( in primis their independence). While such essence can be comprehended via abstract definitions, their individual essence (‘this-ness’) cannot, I argue, because it is not a concept but a reality, which I refer to as Being . This manifests powers, is inexhaustible growth and is one, although expressed differently in each individual. The possible connection of the human being with this reality is the second pillar of the notion of the non-personal Universe of Being, which I summarize and compare to other scenarios at the end.

I argue that Hume’s philosophy of time is relationist in the following two senses. 1) Standard definition of relationism . Time is a succession of indivisible moments. Hence there is no time independent of change. Time is a relational, not substantial feature of the world. 2) Rigid relationism . There is no evidence of uniform natural standard for synchronization of clocks. No absolute temporal metric is available. There are countless times, and no time is privileged. Combining 1) and 2) shows that Hume’s ontology of time is thoroughly relationist.

I introduce the implantation argument, a new argument for the existence of God. Spatiotemporal extensions believed to exist outside of the mind, composing an external physical reality, cannot be composed of either atomlessness (infinite divisibility, atomless gunk), or of Democritean atoms (extended simples), and therefore the inner experience of an external reality containing spatiotemporal extensions believed to exist outside of the mind does not represent the external reality (inner mind does not represent external, mind-independent, reality), the mind is a mere cinematic-like mindscreen (a mindscreen simulation), implanted into the mind by a creator-God. It will be shown that only a creator-God can be the implanting creator of the mindscreen simulation (the creator of reality), and other simulation theories, such as Bostrom’s famous account, that do not involve a creator-God as the mindscreen simulation creator, involve a reification fallacy.

I offer in this article an account of the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties based on the ontology of modes. Modes are particular properties that directly depend for their identity on their “bearers”. In Section 1, I shall introduce the ontology of modes. In Section 2, I shall examine the problem of distinguishing between intrinsic and extrinsic properties by considering another, related problem: that of distinguishing between internal and external relations. In Section 3, I shall present my own account and I shall also single out different degrees of intrinsicality and extrinsicality. In Section 4, I shall deal with missing- relatum modes, namely, with modes that lack specific relata , such as Othello’s loving someone. I shall introduce three different theories to deal with them. Finally, in Section 5, I shall solve some problems affecting the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction from the standpoint of my account.

Many philosophers accept the view that, when one object constitutes a second (say a tree and an aggregate of wood molecules), the two objects can be entirely in the same place at the same time (collocated). But what of two objects such that neither constitutes the other (a non-constituting pair)? Can they be collocated? If there can be such a pair of objects, they would have to share the same material constituents. To show that there are two collocated objects and not just one object at a specific time and place, one has to show that one of the objects has some property that the other fails to have. I claim that the properties I use in my example are legitimate substitution instances in the Law of the Indiscernibility of Identicals. I offer a metaphysically possible example that illustrates such collocation, a possible case from ‘raw nature’, two trees.

Two of the main contenders in the debate about personal persistence over time are the neo-Lockean psychological continuity view and animalism as defended by Olson and Snowdon. Both are wrong. The position I shall argue for, which I call, following Olson, the hybrid view, takes (non-branching) psychological continuity as a sufficient but, pace the neo-Lockeans, not necessary condition for personal persistence. It sides with the animalist in allowing that mere (non-branching) biological continuity is also sufficient. So I am, in a sense, a psychological continuity theorist. But I am also in a sense, a biological theorist (or as Olson put it, a new animalist).

Work on dispositions focuses chiefly on dispositions that are manifested in dynamic causal processes. Williams, Neil. 2005. “Static and Dynamic Dispositions.” Synthese 146: 303–24 has argued that the focus on dynamic dispositions has been at the expense of a richer ontology of dispositions. He contends that we ought to distinguish between dynamic and static dispositions. The manifestation of a dynamic disposition involves some change in the world. The manifestation of a static disposition does not involve any change in the world. In this paper, we concede that making a conceptual distinction between dynamic and static dispositions is useful and we allow that we can truthfully represent objects as manifesting static dispositions. However, we argue that the distinction is not ontologically deep. Rather, the truthmakers for our representations of static dispositions are actually dynamic dispositions to whose manifestations we may fail to be sensitive.

In this article, I discuss Richard Swinburne’s case for the conception of substance causation, identified with the substances-powers-liabilities (SPL) account of causation, versus the conception of event causation, identified with alternative accounts. I specify the place of Swinburne’s argument in the debates about agent causation, and uncover reasons to be sceptical about the claims that substance causation is a genuine alternative to event causation, and that it helps to comprehend the specifics of the causation involved in free agency. I also advance considerations in favour of the relations-between-universals (RBU) account of causation that can make it preferable to the SPL account.