Abstract Can physical reality be fully captured by an algorithmic Theory of Everything? We argue not. Gödelian incompleteness shows that no sound, recursively axiomatizable formalism proves all truths of a sufficiently rich domain, while Tarskian undefinability shows that no such formalism defines its own truth predicate. This combined obstruction is not merely epistemic: undecidability in quantum logic, quantum measurement, and spectral gap problems demonstrates the existence of physically determinate questions that no algorithm can decide. We distinguish the Mental Lucas-Penrose (MLP) argument, concerning human cognition, from the Real Lucas-Penrose (RLP) argument introduced here, which transfers the Gödel-Tarski obstruction to the ontology of the physical world. Since truth for sufficiently rich domains is necessarily external, and spacetime is emergent from deeper formal structure, a non-algorithmic semantic layer prior to spacetime is required. Standard objections to MLP do not apply to RLP. A non-algorithmic truth principle is therefore foundational to physics.
Abstract Humean accounts of causality deny the existence of any causal factor that imparts regularity to empirical data. According to the cosmic fluke objection, this makes Humeanism very unlikely, since it must attribute the extensive regularities that we observe to mere chance. In defence of Humeanism, I argue that this objection equivocates between two senses of regularity. Both science and everyday cognition rely not on global, residue-free compressions of data (whole-string regularities), but on component patterns that appear together with nonzero noise (two-part regularities). Any data set, even one that is algorithmically random, can be decomposed into such patterns and noise. Consequently, the existence of such regularities in empirical data is not surprising, even in the absence of a mechanism devoted to making data regular.
This paper examines the parallels between Marya Schechtman's (2014. Staying Alive: Personal Identity, Practical Concerns, and the Unity of a Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press) 'Person Life View' (PLV) and Conventionalism regarding personal identity. PLV contends that personal identity hinges on recognition by others and societal institutions, while Conventionalism argues that personhood is influenced by social conventions. Schechtman argues against Conventionalism and in favour of PLV on the grounds that changing conventions could undermine personhood. However, this paper argues that PLV is a form of Conventionalism. By analysing the roles of conventions, desires, and behaviours in both theories this paper demonstrates their fundamental similarities. In particular, PLV's reliance on the notion of 'acceptance into the person-space' aligns with Conventionalism. Ultimately, this analysis suggests that Schechtman's distinctions between her theory and Conventionalism may be artificial, showing how her criticism of Conventionalism is based on misunderstanding of the theory rather than genuine critiques.
In book Gamma of the Metaphysics Aristotle defends what is known as the principle of non-contradiction (PNC). He highlights how the proclivity of early thinkers to determine the nature or metaphysical identity of something according to sensation leads them to propose contradictions and ultimately deny PNC. This presocratic error can be aptly thought of as a kind of essentialism since the early philosophers generally assign the fundamental nature of a thing, what Aristotle would call essence, to its sensible properties. The paper focusses on what this error entails for the Heracliteans, arguing that the Heracliteans identify a thing as a static collection of properties - what Aristotle would call accidents. This leads to a metaphysics of change in which a subject in a state of change has no diachronic identity, contrasting with Aristotle's replacement model of change in which a subject retains its essence through accidental change.
Realism about metaphysics states that metaphysics seeks, and can sometimes succeed in discovering, valuable truths. One version of realism about metaphysics, which I call Structural Realism, holds that although many ordinary truths about the world seem to require the existence of certain things with particular properties, we cannot actually draw metaphysical conclusions from these truths because they are not stated in a way that "matches" or represents the intrinsic structure of reality (they do not "carve at the joints" of nature). In this paper, I clarify this view and distinguish two forms of it. I show that the more extreme version cannot be correct because a constitutive aim of language use is communication; I argue for this using a novel, teleological account of constitutive aims. I then critique the more moderate version of the theory on the grounds that it would render metaphysics irrelevant to other areas of philosophy.
The distinction between qualitative and non-qualitative properties has been recently the subject of thorough analysis by several authors. This paper defends the standard and arguably most intuitive modal approach to this issue. With some necessary amendments and corrections, the modal account of the distinction is capable of dealing with typical counterexamples presented in the literature. Finally, cases that purportedly prove the need for a hyperintensional analysis are scrutinized and repelled. The defended modal approach is compared with recently proposed alternatives, and its advantages are highlighted.
Abstract Marmodoro (2017. Everything in Everything: Anaxagoras’s Metaphysics . New York: Oup Usa) provides a gunk model for Anaxagoras’s ontology. All elements in the gunk model are some instantiated physical properties — opposites. She suggests regarding these opposites as qualitative gunk. The purpose of this paper is to refute the view that the gunk model for Anaxagoras’s ontology is incompatible with the preponderance principle, which allows certain kinds of opposites to be predominant in certain regions. In my opinion, the incompatibility comes from that Marmodoro confuses the mereological structure and spatial structure of opposites. To clear up this confusion, I elucidate two fundamental concepts pertaining to the gunk model — actual gunk and colocation, and invoke measure-theoretic extension to underpin them. With these resources, I propose a more refined condition for determining preponderance in certain regions, which leads to a gunk model with predominants.
The objective of this paper is modest yet significant. We aim to explore how, within the Aristotelian framework, a body at rest can be considered temporal given that time is ontologically derived from change. Aristotle's translators employ the term "in time" to categorize at-rest bodies as temporal, but the precise interpretation of this expression is far from straightforward. We contend that the commonly favored interpretation, which we refer to as the celestial solution, is inadequate and warrants reconsideration. This analysis facilitates a deeper understanding of the intricate relationship between time and substance, leading us to advocate for what we believe is a more fitting solution.
When David Lewis put forward modal realism - the view that all possible worlds are concrete - he neglected the explanatory dimension of such a model of existence. In this paper my goal is to put modal realism in the context of the principle of sufficient reason (PSR) and consider the explanatory structure of a modal realist model of existence. I consider two modal realisms - the platonist and the theistic modal realism. According to the former, the explanans for the existence of all possible worlds is the principle of plenitude according to which all possible worlds must exist. According to the latter, the explanans for the existence of all worlds is God. The two modal realisms converge in the fact that the explanans for any existing particular fact is constituted by the entire logical space. This is the main place where modal realisms governed by the PSR diverge from traditional necessitarian systems in which the explanans for any particular facts is constituted only by its own world. Also, the point of divergence between the two modal realisms is twofold. First, the platonist version doesn't admit God in its existence. Second, it allows for what "brute facts" which in the end are not brute given that they have an explanation in terms of the principle of plenitude.
Timothy Williamson is known for defending the view that second-order S5 system axiomatized with Barcan Formulae gives us the most sensible doctrine for metaphysical modality. Barcan Formulae require a constant domain of quantification in which absolutely everything is necessary. Among the objects that constitute this 'everything' we find contingently non-concrete objects. These objects do not occupy spatiotemporal coordinates and exist just in the logical sense of 'exist' defended by Williamson. In this paper, I try to characterize these sui generis objects arguing that the only properties we can use to individuate them are non-qualitative, including some modal properties. This is so because, as I show in the paper, if we try to individuate contingently non-concrete objects using qualitative properties we incur into the predicative reading of expressions like 'possible X' rejected by Williamson.
The subject of this paper is the relation between three views: noneism, Meinongianism, and allism. The first one has it that 'some objects do not exist,' the second that 'there are objects that do not exist,' and the last one that 'every object exists.' While noneism is commonly considered to be close to Meinongianism and very distant to allism, this arrangement has been lately questioned. Consequently, some claimed that the difference between noneism and allism is based merely on the choice of words. The aim of this paper is to argue that the disagreement between noneism and allism is substantial and not merely verbal, and its subject is the domain of objects.
Kit Fine has put forward a new argument for the coincidence between a statue and a clay, according to which the two differ in numerous sortalish properties that are non-modal. In this paper I offer a one-thinger response to Fine's argument. The key to my response is the notion of sortal counterparts. Just as in the modal case we can relegate the conflicting modal properties of the statue and the clay to distinct modal counterparts, in the non-modal case we should relegate the conflicting simple sortalish properties to distinct sortal counterparts. Sortal counterparts, I argue, aren't just the conceptual tool that we need for resolving the puzzle over conflicting sortals, they also help to shed light on the idea of a sortal paradigm and how sortal generalizations can survive recalcitrant exceptions.
Offered is a limited prospectus on how a refined ontology of attribution can properly distinguish identity from indiscernibility, and relatedly ground a proposed consistent type-free intensional predicate logic. The ontology recognizes individuated 'instance' attributes Fi having among themselves shared common intensions F. This instance-intension ontology has embedded in it a Particularized Predicate Logic, PPL, with the unique formal device of 'extended-binding'. The latter consists of a two-tiered nesting of instance quantifiers and the variables they bind being both bound by, and allowed instantiations under, subsuming intension quantifiers. The logic restricted to monadic predicates, M-PPL, is outlined sufficient to demonstrate its expressive and inferential power to differentiate identity from more general indiscernibility, and to diagnose and prevent contradictions of self-attributions involve in some self-referential paradoxes. Intended is to ground a program fulfilling the desideratum of a consistent intensional predicate logic with unrestricted quantification, while adding warrant for the background instance-intension ontology.
In this paper, I will argue against thick presentism, a particular type of presentism according to which the present has a temporal duration. I will first review some of the arguments that have been given for this view. Following this, I will briefly recapitulate two of the most elaborate accounts of thick presentism by H. Scott Hestevold and Sam Baron. The two views agree that temporally extended presents overlap as time progresses, but they disagree on the question of whether the temporally extended present contains a temporal order of irreducible times within them. In total, there are four kinds of possible kinds of views on thick presentism, distinguished by whether the thick presents are overlapping as time progresses, and whether they contain an ordering of irreducible times. We will see that none of the four possible views, neither the two existing ones nor the two possible alternatives, are tenable.
Epistemic Structural Realism (ESR), the view that structure is all we can know about the unobservable world, has been criticized for lacking sufficient metaphysical depth to qualify as a genuine form of realism. This paper defends a refined version of ESR – which I call agnostic ESR – that avoids these objections by committing to knowledge of detectable, concrete structures while maintaining agnosticism about the existence of objects with intrinsic properties. I respond to prominent criticisms, including Newman’s objection, concerns about ESR’s metaphysical clarity, and potential collapse into other views, by showing that agnostic ESR can provide a rigorous account of structural knowledge grounded in empirical science that cannot be defended by advocates of other realist positions. I argue that agnostic ESR is metaphysically robust to deserve the realist label.
Fictionalism is a popular approach to handling possible worlds discourse. It gives one the power of possible world semantics without being committed to undesirable consequences. The standard approach of reparsing possible world statements by attaching a fictional operator suffers from a problem that we argue is structural for all kinds of narrow fictionalism. To show this, we develop a toy theory of temporal fictionalism, showing that it is vulnerable to the same problem. We develop a solution in the form of a broad account of modal fictionalism. Broad modal fictionalism is a contentious view and its usefulness needs to be clarified. Given this, towards the end of the paper we offer some motivations for why broad modal fictionalism is useful and gesture towards how modal talk arises in everyday discourse.
I argue for the controversial view that God could indeed create a rock so heavy that He Himself could not lift it. This paper is in the tradition of modal metaphysics initiated by Hawthorne and Uzqiano's (2011. "How Many Angels Can Dance on the Point of a Needle? Transcendental Theology Meets Modal Metaphysics." Mind 120 (477): 53-81) "How many angels can dance on the point of a needle?" The argument proceeds through an in-depth consideration of the theoretical physics involved in imagining God trying to create and lift a maximally heavy rock using mechanical force. This narrative thought experiment serves as a springboard for investigating modal puzzles about the limits to which the laws of physics can be modified while retaining the conceptual possibility of weight and lifting.
Jean-Baptiste Gonet, O.P. (c. 1616-1681), articulated a distinctly eternalist philosophical framework in his Clypeus Theologiae, wherein he maintained that God's eternity encompasses past, present, and future entities in a mode of real coexistence. According to Gonet, divine eternity serves as the ontological measure of all things, and God apprehends past and future entities in their actual reality rather than merely as intentional objects, a position that diverges from earlier philosophical interpretations. Gonet sought to reconcile this eternalist perspective with the doctrines of creation in time and human free will. He did so by introducing a nuanced distinction in the interpretation of the verb "coexists" within the proposition "past/future entity x coexists with God." When the verb is understood in relation to temporal reality, x is conceived as non-existent; however, when interpreted in reference to divine eternity, x is understood to possess real existence (in re), rather than existing solely as a conceptual entity within the divine intellect. Gonet's system represents a rare and sophisticated attempt to integrate a Christian metaphysical framework with an eternalist ontology. This paper will examine the core arguments developed by the French Dominican, analyzing their implications within both theological and philosophical discourse.
The work carried forward by this paper is simply to spotlight the said prospect of certain Metaphysical presuppositions in Science. This paper takes recourse to the Aristotelian idea of Metaphysics as the first philosophy, redirecting to two conceptions of the ubiquity of Metaphysics in Science, first by Claudia Ribeiro, and the second by Anjan Chakravartty. The paper will then state that in a Metaphysical Spectrum, science and all other types of Empirical Knowledge are simply at their base, Metaphysical theorising. Science is not simply a posteriori content, but it also contains a priori dimensions, which are substantiated in the course of this essay. Finally, the prospect of a naturalisation of metaphysics to save it from scientific underdetermination will be analysed.
This paper argues that ontological category systems (OCS) should be assessed against explicit target criteria. To compare the highly diverse OCS, we focus on the epistemic issue of the category problem, not on the ontological one, and examine the system architecture at the bicategorical level. From existing systems we extract mutual exclusiveness, exhaustiveness, and generalness, and add a neglected criterion: recursiveness - the requirement that, at the most general level, the categories also categorize themselves, thereby conceptually closing the system. On this basis we motivate the most defensible number of categories and re-evaluate the traditional divide between universals and particulars in a slightly revised form. The resulting framework clarifies how OCS can remain maximally general while retaining classificatory power and shows why systems that exceed two top-level categories trade generalness for individuation without clear gain.
