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7068.704154
Key elements of the recent dialectic surrounding the hole argument in the philosophy of general relativity are clarified by close attendance to the nature of scientific representation. I argue that a structuralist account of representation renders the purported haecceitistic differences between target systems irrelevant to the representational role of models of general relativity. Framing the hole argument in this way helps resolve the impasse in the literature between Weatherall and Pooley and Read.
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367374.704316
When we count, we often count fractions, too. We contend that fractional counting involves partial entities, which are merely possible parts of entities of the counted kind. The size of these possible parts is measured with respect to the size of a possible member of that kind. Therefore, partialhood is mereomodal, and the logical form of fractional counting claims includes mereological predicates, modal operators, and a measurement functor. Different varieties of modality and forms of measurement are involved, depending on the kinds of entities to be counted and the context. The mereomodal account validates the idea that fractional counting is a way of counting by identity, in continuity with logic-based accounts of non-fractional counting, albeit more complex than them. Such an account also explains why some kinds of entities are not involved in partialhood and cannot be fractionally counted, while others only have marginal involvement in these phenomena. In the last part, we discuss some difficult cases and show that an integrity condition for partial entities is required in the logical form of some fractional counting claims.
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753172.704325
A principle of plenitude implies the existence of a host of objects, the point being to avoid arbitrariness and worldly vagueness. But to play this role, the host of objects must exhibit an appropriate host of features.
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834370.704331
The concept of infinity has long occupied a central place at the intersection of mathematics and philosophy. This paper explores the multifaceted concept of infinity, beginning with its mathematical foundations, distinguishing between potential and actual infinity and outlining the revolutionary insights of Cantorian set theory. The paper then explores paradoxes such as Hilbert’s Hotel, the St. Petersburg Paradox, and Thomson’s Lamp, each of which reveals tensions between mathematical formalism and basic human intuition. Adopting a philosophical approach, the paper analyzes how five major frameworks—Platonism, formalism, constructivism, structuralism, and intuitionism—each grapple with the metaphysical and epistemological implications of infinity. While each framework provides unique insights, none fully resolves the many paradoxes inherent in infinite mathematical objects. Ultimately, this paper argues that infinity serves not as a problem to be conclusively solved, but as a generative lens through which to ask deeper questions about the nature of mathematics, knowledge, and reality itself.
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1122793.704343
Radical ontic structural realism (ROSR) argues that structure is all that there is and that objects are metaphysically eliminable. By making such claims, ROSR is widely considered metaphysically obscure. To address this, I propose a novel characterisation of ROSR, drawing on two metaphysical concepts: existence monism, attributed to Spinoza by Bennett (1984) and Spinoza’s concept of modes. These concepts are adaptable to ROSR, which becomes a structuralist existence monism, where putative objects are reconceptualised as modes of the world’s structure. This proposal directly contributes to solving two problems ROSR faces: (A) the need for a metaphysical framework clarifying ROSR’s key claims and (B) ROSR’s need to account for the apparent plurality of objects we experience. Drawing on Wallace and Timpson’s (2010) spacetime state realism, I suggest a solution to a third problem, (problem C), McKenzie’s (2024) challenge to ROSR's status as a substantive metaphysical doctrine. My reformulation of ROSR is a natural interpretation of this solution. I also compare my proposal to French’s (2014) ROSR, and Esfeld and Lam's (2011) moderate structural realism, highlighting my proposal's advantages.
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1642023.70435
Trevor Griffith and Adrian Kind argue that we should reject a standard interpretation of pain asymbolia, according to which asymbolics experience pain even though their pain lacks the affective-motivational element that typical pains possess. We make the case that Griffith and Kind’s reasons for rejecting the standard interpretation are relatively weak. We end by arguing that debates between the standard interpretation and alternative interpretations cannot be resolved without addressing the issue of how we should taxonomize pain asymbolia as a neurological condition.
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1872967.704355
Philosophers of science commonly connect ontology and science, stating that these disciplines maintain a two-way relationship: on the one hand, we can extract ontology from scientific theories; on the other hand, ontology provides the realistic content of our scientific theories. In this article, we will critically examine the process of naturalizing ontology, i.e., confining the work of ontologists merely to the task of pointing out which entities certain theories commit themselves to. We will use non-relativistic quantum mechanics as a case study. We begin by distinguishing two roles for ontology: the first would be characterized by cataloging existing entities according to quantum mechanics; the second would be characterized by establishing more general ontological categories in which existing entities must be classified. We argue that only the first step is available for a naturalistic approach; the second step not being open for determination or anchoring in science. Finally, we also argue that metaphysics is still a step beyond ontology, not contained in either of the two tasks of ontology, being thus even farther from science.
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1873109.704361
The purpose of this paper is to argue that neither mathematics nor logic can be applied ‘directly’ to reality, but to our rational representations (or reconstructions) of it, and this is extended to scientic theories in general. The difference to other approaches (e.g., Nancy Cartwright’s, Bueno & Colyvan’s or Hughes’) is that I call attention to something more than what is involved in such a process, namely, metamathematics. A general schema of ‘elaboration’ of theories, which I suppose cope with most of them, is presented and discussed. A case study is outlined, the quantum case, whose anchored description, in my opinion, demands a different metamathematics and a different logic.
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1873175.704366
This paper deals with the issue of the admissible content of perceptual experience at the centre of the debate that opposes Conservatives and Liberals —who advocate, respectively, a Sparse and a Rich Content-View— and aims, specifically, to consider how this debate interacts with the Externalism/Internalism debate in philosophy of perception. Indeed, apart from a few exceptions (Siegel, 2006, 2010, 2013; Bayne, 2009; Ashby, 2020a; Raleigh, 2022), this issue has not yet been sufficiently addressed, and the present paper, in the wake of the aforementioned works, aims to focus on this issue in order to assess whether it would be more congenial for a Liberal to adopt content internalism or rather content externalism. In my paper I argue that the best move the Liberal should make is to endorse externalism with regard to the content of perceptual experience and internalism with regard to its phenomenal character. But, as it will turn out, this combination can only be sustained consistently if the Liberal discards the standard interpretation of one of its central claims, the so-called (Ashby, 2020a, p. 689) “phenomenal reflection claim” (PRC) —the claim according to which perceptual properties are reflected in/reverberate in the phenomenology of the experience— and adopts a different interpretation of it. To indicate what alternative interpretation of PRC the liberal should provide is one of the main goals of the paper. KEYWORDS: Sparse vs Rich View of Perceptual Experience, Content Externalism, Phenomenal Internalism, Phenomenal Reflection Claim, Representationalism.
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1873261.704375
Phil Dowe’s Conserved Quantity Theory (CQT) is based on the following theses: (a) CQT is the result of an empirical analysis and not a conceptual one, (b) CQT is metaphysically contingent, and (c) CQT is refutable. I argue, on the one hand, that theses (a), (b), and (c) are not only problematic in themselves, but also they are incompatible with each other and, on the other, that the choice of these theses is explained by the particular position that the author embraces regarding the relationship between metaphysics and physics.
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1873324.70438
In this paper I discuss the process ontology that has been the central focus of my research for almost 20 years . I explain what this is, and illustrate how it applies to biology through the example of the organism . I also aim to show how naturally process ontology fits with the disordered world I described in the preceding article . Finally, I show how process philosophy illuminates a number of topics relating to the human condition, including personal identity and freedom of the will, and provides a deeper understanding of the issues around human classification, notably by sex and gender and by race .
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1975140.70439
Could you be a brain in a vat, with all your experiences of people, plants, pebbles, planets and more being generated solely by computer inputs? It might seem difficult to know that you aren’t, since everything in the world would still appear just as it is. In his 1981 book, Reason, Truth, and History, Hilary Putnam argues that if you were in such a predicament, your statement ‘I am a brain in a vat”, would be false since, as an envatted brain, your word ‘vat’ would refer to the vats you encounter in your experienced reality, and in your experienced reality, you are not in one of those but are instead a full-bodied human being with head, torso, arms, and legs living in the wide open world. The following extended thought experiment is intended to illustrate that, contrary to Putnam’s view, you, as an envatted brain, could truthfully believe that you are a brain in a vat.
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1987344.704397
Mind uploading promises us a digital afterlife. Critics believe that this promise is void, since we are not the type of thing that could be transmitted as data from one location to another. In this paper, I shall make the case that even if the critics are right and we cannot be uploaded, much of uploading’s appeal can be maintained. I will argue for Parfitian Transhumanism, a view that comprises two claims. First, it maintains that our minds can be uploaded, even if we cannot. Second, uploading our minds preserves what matters in survival.
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2046539.704405
The study of molecular structure has played a central role in the debate around chemistry’s reduction to quantum physics. So far, this case has been invoked to support the non-reducibility of chemistry. However, recent papers claim that there might not be any structure to be assigned to isolated molecules, thus prompting a deeper investigation of the nature of molecular structure. To this end, this paper explores two alternative accounts of structure: the relational and dispositional accounts. Each metaphysical account has interesting implications for the reduction debate and opens news ways of arguing for (but also against) the reducibility of chemistry. The aim is to show that the debate around chemistry’s reduction needs to be radically reframed so as to include a rigorous metaphysical analysis of the nature of molecular structure.
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2046560.704411
Two forms of chemical reaction statements are standardly found in the chemical corpus. First, individual reactions statements describe reactions that occur between specific chemical substances, leading to the production of specific substances. Secondly, general reactions statements describe chemical transformations between groups of substances. Both forms of statements track regularities in nature and are thus warranted to be viewed as representing causal relations. However, a convincing analysis in terms of causation also requires spelling out the metaphysical relation between individual and general reactions. This is because their relation prompts concerns regarding causal priority and causal overdetermination. I present these concerns and address them by arguing that we should view individual and general reactions in the context of the determinate/determinable distinction.
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2046646.704418
– In opposition to traditional approaches in metaphysics of science, Entity Realism proposes to extract ontological commitments from experimental practice instead of abstract theories, using an inference from manipulability to existence that would be continuous with everyday inferences regarding ordinary objects. A problem is that most accounts of ordinary artefacts make them mind-dependent or language-dependent, and so not real by philosophical standards. Furthermore, the functional kinds of biology and chemistry are not necessarily compatible with mind-independence either. It follows that Entity Realism is better understood within a pragmatist or deflationary alternative to standard metaphysics. The approach is beneficial for responding to sceptical arguments.
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2046691.704424
Advances in animal sentience research, neural organoids, and artificial intelligence reinforce the relevance of justifying attributions of consciousness to non-standard systems. Clarifying the argumentative structure behind these attributions is important for evaluating their validity. This paper addresses this issue, concluding that analogical abduction – a form of reasoning combining analogical and abductive elements – is the strongest method for extrapolating consciousness from humans to non-standard systems. We argue that the argument from analogy and inference to the best explanation, individually taken, do not meet the criteria for successful extrapolations, while analogical abduction offers a promising approach despite limitations in current consciousness science.
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2162043.70443
Recent work in quantum gravity (QG) suggests that spacetime is not fundamental. Rather, spacetime emerges from an underlying non-spatiotemporal reality. Spacetime functionalism has been proposed as one way to make sense of the emergence of spacetime. However, spacetime functionalism faces a ‘collapse’ problem. The functionalist analysis seems to force spacetime into the (more) fundamental ontology of QG, thereby conflicting with—rather than elucidating—spacetime emergence. In this paper, I show how to resolve the collapse problem. The solution is to differentiate between physical and metaphysical notions of (relative) fundamentality. With this distinction in hand, we can see that spacetime functionalism does not after all force spacetime into the (more) fundamental ontology of QG in any troubling sense. A side benefit of the paper is that it provides a sharpened characterisation of various notions of (relative) fundamentality.
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2162087.704435
This paper proposes that relational ontology, which defines existence through relations, serves as a bridge between scientific realism and empiricism by offering a structural criterion for scientific explanation. Through case studies in quantum mechanics and thermodynamics, we illustrate how relationality grounds scientific theories in empirical interactions while supporting realist commitments to unobservable structures. Engaging with philosophy of science debates—realism, reductionism, and demarcation—and drawing on thinkers such as Lakatos, Kuhn, Cartwright, van Fraassen, and contemporary authors like Ladyman and Chakravartty, this work examines the explanatory limits of relational ontology in addressing consciousness and contrasts scientific explanations with non-scientific accounts. Its original contribution lies in demonstrating how relational ontology unifies these perspectives through a rigorous structural criterion, advancing our understanding of scientific explanation within the philosophy of science.
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2220078.704442
I present an argument that undermines the standardly held view that chemical substances are natural kinds. This argument is based on examining the properties required to pick out members of these purported kinds. In particular, for a sample to be identified as -say- a member of the kind-water, it has to be stable in the chemical sense of stability. However, the property of stability is artificially determined within chemical practice. This undermines the kindhood of substances as they fail to satisfy one of two key requirements: namely that they are picked out by (some) natural properties and that they are categorically distinct. This is a problem specifically for the natural realist interpretation of kinds. I discuss whether there are other ways to conceive of kinds in order to overcome it.
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2220219.704448
It has long been known that brain damage has negative effects on one’s mental states and alters (or even eliminates) one’s ability to have certain conscious experiences. Even centuries ago, a person would much prefer to suffer trauma to one’s leg, for example, than to one’s head. It thus stands to reason that when all of one’s brain activity ceases upon death, consciousness is no longer possible and so neither is an afterlife. It seems clear from all the empirical evidence that human consciousness is dependent upon the functioning of individual brains, which we might call the “dependence thesis.” Having a functioning brain is, at minimum, necessary for having conscious experience, and thus conscious experience must end when the brain ceases to function.
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2251855.704454
Many physicalists nowadays, and Bigelow for one, stand ready to carry metaphysical baggage when they find it worth the weight. This physicalist’s philosophy of mathematics is premised on selective, a posteriori realism about immanent universals. Bigelow’s universals, like D. M. Armstrong’s, are recurrent elements of the physical world; and mathematical objects are universals. The result is a thoroughgoing threefold realism: mathematical realism, scientific realism, and the realism that stands opposed to nominalism.
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2393224.704459
In Factual Difference-Making, Holger Andreas and Mario Günther propose a theory of model-relative actual causation which performs remarkably well on a number of known problematic cases. They take this to show that we should abandon our counterfactual way of thinking about causation in favour of their factual alternative. I cast doubt on this argument by offering two similar theories. First, I show that the theory of Factual Difference-Making is equivalent to a partly counterfactual theory. Second, I give a fully counterfactual theory that makes the same judgments in the scenarios discussed by Andreas and Günther.
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2434536.704465
Patrick Butlin, Robert Long, Eric Elmoznino, Yoshua Bengio, Jonathan Birch, Axel Constant, George Deane, Stephen M. Fleming, Chris Frith, Xu Ji, Ryota Kanai, Colin Klein, Grace Lindsay, Matthias Michel, Liad Mudrik, Megan A. K. Peters, Eric Schwitzgeb...
best-supported neuroscientific theories of consciousness. We survey several prominent scientific theories of consciousness, including recurrent processing theory, global workspace theory, higher-order theories, predictive processing, and attention schema theory. From these theories we derive ”indicator properties” of consciousness, elucidated in computational terms that allow us to assess AI systems for these properties. We use these indicator properties to assess several recent AI systems, and we discuss how future systems might implement them. Our analysis suggests that no current AI systems are conscious, but also suggests that there are no obvious technical barriers to building AI systems which satisfy these indicators.
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2566333.704481
This paper argues that functionalism, a dominant theory in philosophy of mind, fails to adequately explain the emergence of conscious experience within the Everettian (Many-Worlds) interpretation of quantum mechanics. While the universal wavefunction contains many possible ways of decomposition, functionalism cannot account for why consciousness appears only in decohered, classical-like branches and not in other parts of the wavefunction that are equally real. This limitation holds even if those other parts do not instantiate complex functional structure. We argue that consciousness, as it is observed in many worlds, defies the predictions and explanatory resources of functionalism. Therefore, functionalism must be supplemented or replaced in order to account for the observed phenomenology.
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2654648.70449
In this three-part essay, I investigate Frege’s platonist and anti-creationist position in Grundgesetze der Arithmetik and to some extent also in Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik. In Sect. 1.1, I analyze his arithmetical and logical platonism in Grundgesetze. I argue that the reference-fixing strategy for value-range names—and indirectly also for numerical singular terms—that Frege pursues in Grundgesetze I gives rise to a conflict with the supposed mind- and language-independent existence of numbers and logical objects in general. In Sect. 1.2 and 1.3, I discuss the non-creativity of Frege’s definitions in Grundgesetze and the case of what I call weakly creative definitions.
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2739775.704496
One of the main ontological challenges posed by quantum mechanics is the problem of the indistinguishability of so-called “identical” particles, that is, particles that share the same state-independent properties. In the framework of this philosophical problem, a quasi-set theory was formulated to provide a proper metalanguage to deal with quantum indistinguishability; this theory included certain Urelemente called m-atoms, representing essentially indistinguishable objects. In turn, over the last two decades, the Modal Hamiltonian Interpretation proposed an ontology of properties, totally devoid of objects, where quantum systems are bundles of instances of universal properties. Therefore, the original quasi-set theory, with its m-atoms, does not adequately reflect the structure of an ontology devoid of objects. The purpose to the present article is to introduce a new quasi-set theory that does not include atoms at all: elementary items correspond to properties and are also represented by quasi-sets, which can be only numerically different. The final aim is to apply this new quasi-set theory to the MHI ontology.
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2740113.704501
Peter Unger (1980) introduced us to the Problem of the Many. Garden variety macroscopic objects like clouds, tables, trees, and so on lack sharp and clear boundaries. So rather than there being just one collection of particles that’s a good candidate for composing the cloud which I’m looking at, there are actually millions of massively overlapping but distinct collections of particles that are all equally good candidates to each compose a cloud. Recast as an argument, its conclusion is that if there are clouds, tables, trees, etc., then there are millions of each wherever we thought there was only one. Either Nihilism or Manyism.
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2740135.704506
According to anti-haecceitism, facts about particular things are modally fixed by qualitative matters. According to qualitativism, such facts are metaphysically second-rate, perhaps because grounded in qualitative matters. Qualitativism seems to imply anti-haecceitism, so objections to the latter threaten the former. The most powerful sort of apparent counterexample to anti-haecceitism, I think, consists in a pair of situations that seem the same, and qualitatively symmetric, for a stretch of time, but that differ in how that symmetry breaks. I examine this sort of candidate counterexample in depth, and argue that the prospects for resisting it are heavily sensitive to broader metaphysical considerations, specifically ones about ontology, time, and causation. So, anti-haecceitism’s and qualitativism’s prospects are heavily sensitive to such considerations.
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3201141.704512
Scientific realism is typically associated with metaphysics. One current incarnation of such an association concerns the requirement of a metaphysical characterization of the entities one is being a realist about. This is sometimes called “Chakravartty’s Challenge”, and codifies the claim that without a metaphysical characterization, one does not have a clear picture of the realistic commitments one is engaged with. The required connection between metaphysics and science naturally raises the question of whether such a demand is appropriately fulfilled, and how metaphysics engages with science in order to produce what is called “scientific metaphysics”. Here, we map some of the options available in the literature, generating a conceptual spectrum according to how each view approximates science and metaphysics. This is done with the purpose of enlightening the current debate on the possibility of epistemic warrant that science could grant to such a metaphysics, and how different positions differently address the thorny issue concerning such a warrant.