The Ontology of Causal Process Theories

There is a widespread belief that the so-called process theories of causation developed by Wesley Salmon and Phil Dowe have given us an original account of what causation really is. In this paper, I show that this is a misconception. The notion of ??causal process?? does not offer us a new ontological account of causation. I make this argument by explicating the implicit ontological commitments in Salmon and Dowe??s theories. From this, it is clear that Salmon??s Mark Transmission Theory collapses to a counterfactual theory of causation, while the Conserved Quantity Theory collapses to David Fair??s phsyicalist reduction of causation.     

A Naturalist Ontology of Instantiation

The aim of this paper is to defend a naturalistic approach to instantiation and the Principle of Instantiation. I argue that the instantiation of an ordinary property F consists of two coordinated relationships at the levels of the manifest and scientific images, namely, constituency and entailment. Also, I offer an account of the Principle of Instantiation related to this conception of instantiation based on the notion of scientific prediction.     

Ontology and Spirituality: A Jungian Perspective

Rationality is very seductive. With our cognitive ability we are tempted to explore the world and reality. We hypothesize and theorize and we acquire the confidence that through this avenue we can capture reality. Nature however ignores our attempt and moves on leaving us in the despair of alienation. Jung invites us to move beyond our desire to capture reality. Jung invites us to the art of listening because nature seeks to direct. And the direction seems to point, suggests Jung, toward the path of spirituality.     

Process Ontology: Conversations and Argumentations,Controversies in Mathematics and Mathematics as Socialisation

To better conceive the socializing and pragmatic aspects of mathematics, it can be useful to use a process ontology, which allows, starting from an analysis of the processes of conversations, to compare their recourse, from degree to degree, to supposedly common “virtualities”, in particular in argumentative conversations, with the construction of more complex mathematical entities that allow new symmetries, but also with controversies between mathematicians on the use of these entities.

     

On Future Ontology: A Reply to Longenecker

Axiomathes - The supporters of Indeterminate Futurism Theory [IFT] suggest three different reasons for preferring their view over Growing Block Theory [GBT]. If compared to GBT, IFT offers a better...     

Ontology, Understanding, and the A Priori

How might one explain the reliability of one's a priori beliefs? What if anything is implied about the ontology of a certain realm of knowledge by the possibility of explaining one's reliability about that realm? Very little, or so it is argued here.     

Ontology, reduction, emergence: A general frame

In a scientific context, ontological commitments should be considered as supervenient over accepted scientific theories. This implies that the primarily ontological notions of reduction and emergence of entities of different kinds should be reformulated in terms of relations between existing empirical theories. For this, in turn, it is most convenient to employ a model-theoretic view of scientific theories: the identity criterion of a scientific theory is essentially given by a class of models. Accordingly, reduction and emergence are to be seen as particular kinds of relations between (some) models of different theories that subsume the same (or a similar) “experiential field”. The set-theoretical notion of an echelon-set proves to be crucial for this purpose: The domains in the models of the reduced theory are echelon-sets over the domains of the reducing theory. Finally, it is argued that emergence may plausibly be interpreted as akin to but weaker than reduction.     

Logic and Ontology

A brief review of the historicalrelation between logic and ontologyand of the opposition between the viewsof logic as language and logic as calculusis given. We argue that predication is morefundamental than membership and that differenttheories of predication are based on differenttheories of universals, the three most importantbeing nominalism, conceptualism, and realism.These theories can be formulated as formalontologies, each with its own logic, andcompared with one another in terms of theirrespective explanatory powers. After a briefsurvey of such a comparison, we argue that anextended form of conceptual realism provides themost coherent formal ontology and, as such, canbe used to defend the view of logic as language.     

解构与本体论——记德里达在上海社科院的讲演

J.德里达,当今世界上最负盛名的哲学家之一,于2001年9月14日下午访问了上海社会科学院哲学研究所,进行了学术交流.他先作了简短而精练的讲演,题为"解构与本体论",然后,又在讨论中回答了提问.本文系根据德里达的讲演以及他对与本题有关问题的回答的记录整理而成.