The ontology developed in this article is a version of the bundle theory of universals. These universals are dispositional in nature. To possess a powerful character and to be empirically existent, these universals require a material substratum. This substratum is conceived as physical ether or Plato’s chora, in which universals are like waves in the sea. The world is composed of basic dispositional universals, such as charge, mass, and spin. These basic dispositional universals bundle together to form elementary particles, which in turn compose more complex structures. An object is thus a composition of basic dispositional universals, whose sustained unity is explained by their mutual dispositional manifestations. The assembled whole already exhibits different manifestations than its parts and therefore constitutes a new kind of dispositional universal of a higher order. Hence, a graded hierarchy is present in the structure of dispositional universals. The article defends the view that dispositions are universals rather than tropes, since what we observe in the physical world are identical, numerically repeatable properties, not merely similar particulars. The proposed theory of dispositional universals stands in opposition to Humean conceptions, as the thesis that “whatever is conceivable is metaphysically possible” does not hold. The lawfulness of the world is conditioned by the dispositional nature of universals. Scientific models that aim to explain and predict events should therefore be adapted to this metaphysical framework.
Mechanistic explanations play an important role in the scientific understanding of the mind. Mechanistic explanations reflect the commitments of mechanistic philosophy. This philosophy stresses a methodology based on decomposition into constituent parts and the synergistic integration of their activities. The methodology provides the identity types required for the formulation of explanations targeting the explanandum phenomenon. The basic relationship between mechanisms and their target explananda is mereological. A system is in intrinsic compositional relation to the participation of its constituent parts in the system’s overall functionality. The compositional relation is primarily inter-level. The stability of the system requires also the existence of intra-level causation within the boundaries of minor sub-mechanisms. In combining the compositional relation with intra-level causation mechanistic explanations would track nonreductive relations. Intra-level causation and inter-level compositional effects are also reflective of a mereological relation. The mind-brain system is an example of a mereological relationship and so according to this logic, the mind would be rendered irreducible. Combining both intra-level causation and inter-level material constitution is nevertheless not sufficient to warrant mechanistic explanations being non-reductive. By emphasizing identity types as the bearers of the mereological relation, mechanists in general regard special-sciences and their kinds as actually reducible to the subsuming mechanisms. Applied to the mind-body relation this means the reduction of mind to brain states.
Epistemicism about vagueness is the position that bivalence holds for every instance of a vague predicate, even if truth or falsity is unknowable in borderline cases. Epistemicism is accused of rejecting the tolerance intuition, and committing itself to sharp borderlines. Mainstream Epistemicists, like Williamson and Sorensen, accept these accusations as costs of their view. I argue instead that both are myths. First, I argue our intuitions support only generic, dense tolerance principles, which are non-paradoxical. Epistemicists can affirm these principles, without inferring any paradoxical principle, and so can embrace the tolerance intuition. Second, bivalence is perfectly compatible with the denial of sharp borderlines, provided that we model the extension of vague predicates as scattered stochastically and non-monotonically across a gradient, just as we should expect if meaning depends on use. My revisionary form of epistemicism better balances our intuitions about vagueness with the conservation of bivalence.
This article argues for the pedagogical value of using literentryway into foundational concepts in feminist theory. It identifies three thematic clusters essential to feminist thought: (1) material conditions and gendered inequalities, (2) representation and discursive power, and (3) language, subjectivity, and gendered expression. Through close textual analysis, the article demonstrates how Woolf's narrative not only illuminates these themes but also renders abstract theoretical debates accessible to students encountering them for the first time. Integrating concrete classroom strategies, the study shows how Woolf's text can scaffold students' understanding of feminist concerns related to economic precarity, epistemic authority, gender construction, canonical exclusion, and the politics of language. Ultimately, the article contends that teaching feminist theory through literature enhances conceptual comprehension, strengthens critical and interpretive skills, and cultivates a nuanced awareness of how gender, power, and discourse intersect across both historical and contemporary contexts.
This article examines Bertrand Russell’s engagement with pragmatism through his critical yet respectful treatment of William James and John Dewey in A History of Western Philosophy (1945). While Russell endorses the metaphysical innovation of neutral monism, especially in James’s doctrine of radical empiricism, he rejects the pragmatist redefinition of truth as a function of practical success. The analysis reconstructs Russell’s main arguments against pragmatist epistemology, emphasizing his insistence on truth as correspondence between belief and reality. Particular attention is given to Russell’s theory of belief, his conception of the “bearer of truth,” and his critique of instrumentalist approaches that conflate usefulness with validity. The article concludes by drawing a parallel with George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, showing how Russell’s concerns anticipate the political and ethical risks of subordinating truth to utility. In light of current challenges such as misinformation, algorithmic manipulation, and post-truth politics, Russell’s critique emerges as a timely defense of objective truth and the conditions for free inquiry and public discourse.
Artifacts are mind-dependent objects; they exist by virtue of the intentional activity of their makers, at least according to what philosophers usually defend. Some philosophers consider artifacts to be causally and essentially dependent on the intentions of their original makers-a position that we will call Artifacts' Intention-Essentialism. Although this position is very attractive, it suffers from various problems. This paper focuses on a discussion of two of those problems: the possibility of creating negative, and queer objects. The first criticism was originally raised by Evnine (2016) against Thomasson's view, but our aim is to defend this criticism for all Artifacts' Intention-Essentialism views, including Evnine's. The second problem is a new issue regarding how easy it would be to create queer kinds of artifacts if we accept Artifacts' Intention-Essentialism.
The article examines the necessity of moral knowledge for (2015) and Cunningham (2021) contend that moral worth requires moral knowledge. In contrast, Sinhababu (2024) challenges this view using Gettier cases, arguing that justified true belief, even without knowledge, can still confer moral worth. This article argues that Sinhababu's Gettier cases do not convincingly demonstrate that moral knowledge is unnecessary for moral worth.
This paper deals with the debates on whether semantic relationism can adequately address belief reports. Soames argues that semantic relationism encounters difficulties in addressing belief reports, to which Fine provides a reply. However, Pinillos contends that Fine's responses are problematic and proposes an alternative theory that, he claims, can handle belief reports without issues. The primary aim of this paper is to argue against Pinillos's claims. I begin by discussing the Fine-Soames debate on semantic relationism, focusing on the propositions suggested by Fine. I then introduce Pinillos's criticism of Fine's response to Soames's objection and argue that this criticism is inconclusive. Following that, I outline Pinillos's alternative view and demonstrate that it faces a serious problem. Finally, I conclude by summarizing the main points discussed throughout the paper.
This paper develops and defends an essentialist bimodal (or biessentialist) interpretation of Descartes' Creation Doctrine. The two modalities express facts about essences: i-modalities express relations of compatibility/entailment as obtaining between propositions and the essences of created things, while o-modalities express such relations with God's essence. On this reading, the necessity of eternal truths should be understood as i-necessity, while the possibility with which God could have made the eternal truths false should be understood as o-possibility. I argue that this is a plausible reading of the central texts, and that it renders the creation doctrine coherent while improving on some previous accounts.
Despite the significance of explicability in AI ethics, the principle of explicability remains subject to several unresolved issues, including its moral status, purpose, and the recipients of explanations. First, this paper proposes treating explicability as a prima facie duty to make machine learning algorithms explicable. Second, the dual nature of explicability is highlighted. It is claimed that explicability is for the warranted trust of decision-recipients in the algorithmic decisions as well as for enhancing the autonomy of decision-makers.
I will consider two views about the structure of reality: metaphysical foundationalism (all grounded entities are fully grounded in ungrounded entities) and metaphysical infinitism (there are infinite chains of grounding that lack a foundation). Foundationalists motivate their view by appealing to an intuition that there must be a fundamental level that is the source of reality (Schaffer) or causal capacity (Trogdon) of grounded entities because a grounded entity inherits its reality or causal capacity from its ground and there would be a vicious infinite regress otherwise. I will argue that this argument is not successful as the source of reality or causal capacity of an infinite chain can be its cause. For example, this source can be the direct physical cause, the first physical cause or a Prime Mover. A vicious infinite regress is avoided this way too because there is no transference of the same status ad infinitum.
The aim of this paper is to offer an analysis of the emergence that group epistemic traits may exhibit. Our research implements a methodological shift in the study of collective traits from defensive argumentation against summativism (the position that reduces the collective traits to the sum of members' traits), to offering a positive thesis on the nature of irreducible collective traits. We start from the assumption that there are cases of emergent epistemic traits. By analyzing and comparing examples of emergent traits, we establish three criteria that a trait must meet in order to be considered emergent. Additionally, based on the established criteria we introduce a distinction between the two types of emergences-strong and weak. In the end, we discuss whether there is a correlation between the types of emergence and types of epistemic traits (viz. character and faculty).
The paper raises a quandary for the naturalist friend of truth who rejects the a priori outright. The quandary is that instances of the T-scheme are analytic, hence knowable a priori. The naturalist must either renounce their friendship with truth or soften their stance on the a priori. The paper recommends the latter option.
On Brunero's non-normative disjunctivism, agents exhibiting means-ends incoherence are irrational because they are guaranteed to have at least one attitude that fails to achieve its constitutive aim, and such an aim failure is not a failure of reason. This paper primarily aims to show that this account fails to adequately explain the irrationality of means-ends incoherence. More specifically, I argue that agents exhibiting this incoherence can be justifiably criticized for irrationality, and they cannot ward off such criticism by claiming that there is no reason to be means-ends coherent. Furthermore, I argue that Brunero's three objections to the strong normativity of means-ends coherence are not successful.
The debate between scientific realism and anti-realism has long revolved around scientific theories. Realists contend that scientific theories are true or approximately true. In contrast, anti-realists posit that scientific theories are shaped as mere instruments that help to predict and categorize observable phenomena. As such, anti-realists find no truth value in scientific theories and only accept their empirical adequacy. Roy Bhaskar, as a critical realist, believes in the existence of the unobservable entities and considers them knowable. Furthermore, because he considers knowledge fallible, he maintains that theories arising from social activities may or may not be true. The purpose of this article is to clarify the position that Bhaskar takes in the debate between scientific realism and anti-realism. Before addressing this central purpose, the article first tries to find out whether Bhaskar is indeed a realist in three metaphysical, epistemic
The problem of destructive change comprises two interrelated questions: (1) Is there destructive change? (2) If there is, what underlies it? Classical hylomorphists argue that there is destructive change, understood as the change of primary substances, and that what underlies it is prime matter. Insofar as there is destructive change, I agree with classical hylomorphists. But there are reasons to doubt that prime matter is the underlying substratum, so I disagree with them with respect to (2). Alternatively, I propose a new version of classical hylomorphism, according to which what underlies destructive change, understood as the change of what I term "rigid-kooky" objects, is primary substance. My proposal has at least two perks. Compared to the classical account, it is relatively tolerant because it denies the historically contentious and ambiguous notion of prime matter. It is also economical because, unlike the classical account, which admits two constituency levels-one pertaining to primary substances and one to kooky objects-it admits only one constituency level, pertaining to kooky objects.
This essay deals with two often underappreciated Quinean naturalistic motifs. The first motif concerns the metaphysical status of reality under naturalism, by examining what can be viewed as Quine's attempt to dissolve realism and idealism into each other; the second motif concerns the metaphilosophical dimension of naturalized epistemology. I aim to demonstrate that Quine's way of approaching these two motifs turns out to be not only complementary, but also highly indicative of his overall naturalistic outlooks as well as professional preferences. As a result, this essay re-assesses Quine's influence on the development of naturalism and naturalistically conceived philosophy from the second half of the 20th century onwards.
This article explores internal objects as a kind of non-existent and analyses the role of internal objects and internal object relations in unconscious thinking. My aim is to outline a project of 'logic of the unconscious' based on object relations theory. Drawing on the approaches of Melanie Klein, Susan Isaacs, Joseph Sandler, Thomas Ogden, and Linda Brakel, I clarify unconscious thinking in terms of the notions of primary process and phantasy and explore the nature of internal objects as background phantasy figures. In addition, using psychoanalytically relevant clinical examples, I analyse condensation, displacement, and transference as primary mental operations and suggest that considering internal objects as abstract particulars helps to clarify their role in unconscious thinking. Finally, I formulate a project of the logic of the unconscious as a logic of object relations.
