Properties in a Contingentist's Domain

This article attempts to make sense of property contingentism, the view that the metaphysical nature of properties is contingent. That is, it is contingent whether properties are universals or tropes or some other kind of entity. The article argues that even if one thinks that necessities are exhausted by conceptual truths and a posteriori necessities, the sort of methodology that can lead one to endorse contingentism in various domains in metaphysics does not give us good grounds to suppose that the nature of properties is contingent.     

Higher-Order Contingentism,Part 3: Expressive Limitations

Two expressive limitations of an infinitary higher-order modal language interpreted on models for higher-order contingentism – the thesis that it is contingent what propositions, properties and relations there are – are established: First, the inexpressibility of certain relations, which leads to the fact that certain model-theoretic existence conditions for relations cannot equivalently be reformulated in terms of being expressible in such a language. Second, the inexpressibility of certain modalized cardinality claims, which shows that in such a language, higher-order contingentists cannot express what is communicated using various instances of talk of ‘possible things’, such as ‘there are uncountably many possible stars’.     

Schaffer on laws of nature

In ‘Quiddistic Knowledge’ (Schaffer in Philos Stud 123:1–32, 2005), Jonathan Schaffer argued influentially against the view that the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary. In this reply I aim to show how a coherent and well-motivated form of necessitarianism can withstand his critique. Modal necessitarianism—the view that the actual laws are the laws of all possible worlds—can do justice to some intuitive motivations for necessitarianism, and it has the resources to respond to all of Schaffer’s objections. It also has certain advantages over contingentism in the domain of modal epistemology. I conclude that necessitarianism about laws remains a live option.     

Consciousness,Higher-Order Content,and the Individuation of Vehicles

One of the distinctive properties of conscious states is thepeculiar self-awareness implicit in them. Two rival accounts of this self-awareness are discussed. Accordingto a Neo-Brentanian account, a mental state M is conscious iff M represents its very own occurrence.According to the Higher-Order Monitoring account, M is merely accompanied by a numerically distinctrepresentation of its occurrence. According to both, then, M is conscious in virtue of figuring in a higher-ordercontent. The disagreement is over the question whether the higher-order content is carried by Mitself or by a different state. While theNeo-Brentanian theory is phenomenologically more attractive, it isoften felt to be somewhat mysterious. It is argued (i) that the difference between the Neo-Brentanian andHigher-Order Monitoring theories is smaller and more empirical than may initially seem, and (ii) that theNeo-Brentanian theory can be readily demystified. These considerations make it prima faciepreferable to the Higher-Order Monitoring theory.     

Leibniz on Memory and Consciousness

In this article, I develop a higher-order interpretation of Leibniz's theory of consciousness according to which memory is constitutive of consciousness. I offer an account of Leibniz's theory of memory on which his theory of consciousness may be based, and I then show that Leibniz could have developed a coherent higher-order account. However, it is not clear whether Leibniz held (or should have held) such an account of consciousness; I sketch an alternative that has at least as many advantages as the higher-order theory. This analysis provides an important antecedent to the contemporary discussions of higher-order theories of consciousness.     

Passionate Yearning Theory as a Theory of Meaning in Life

In this paper, I offer an original account of meaning in life, which I call the passionate yearning theory. Within the framework of the passionate yearning theory, meaning is understood as the intrinsically derived yearning, and passionate striving, for something (an ideal, or a state of affairs) that possesses some plausible objective claim to truth or facticity, which makes it worth pursuing for its own sake. To properly delineate the view, I present the various criteria that serve as the foundation for the passionate yearning view. These include the truth/facticity criterion, the lack of immorality, intrinsic subjectivity, passion, yearning and striving. I then show how these criteria coalesce into the passionate yearning theory and how exactly the theory works. Finally, I motivate the passionate yearning theory by addressing some possible criticisms and objections that can be raised against the view and also differentiate it from similar competing views.

     

Instrumental Rationality and Carroll's Tortoise

Some philosophers have tried to establish a connection between the normativity of instrumental rationality and the paradox presented by Lewis Carroll in his 1895 paper “What the Tortoise Said to Achilles.” I here examine and argue against accounts of this connection presented by Peter Railton and James Dreier before presenting my own account and discussing its implications for instrumentalism (the view that all there is to practical rationality is instrumental rationality). In my view, the potential for a Carroll-style regress just shows us that since instrumental rationality involves a higher-order commitment to combine our willing an end with our taking the necessary means, it therefore cannot, on pain of regress, itself be added as a conjunct to one of the elements to be combined. This view does not support instrumentalism.     

Shoemaker on Phenomenal Content

Sydney Shoemaker has given a sophisticated theory of phenomenal content, motivated by the transparency of experience and by the possibility of spectrum inversion without illusion (1994, 2000, 2001, 2002). It centers on the idea that color experiences represent what he calls “appearance properties”. I consider the different sorts of appearance properties that Shoemaker has suggested might enter into phenomenal content – occurrent appearance properties, dispositional appearance properties, and higher-order dispositional appearance properties – and argue that none of them are plausibly represented by color experiences. I argue that Shoemaker's theory faces a dilemma – either it makes misperception too difficult, or it does not truly accommodate veridical spectrum inversion. I then examine some alternative Russellian theories of phenomenal content that might be consistent with Shoemaker's motivations, including a different sort of proposal recently suggested by Shoemaker (forthcoming). I argue that these views are also lacking, for similar reasons as the appearance property view. Finally, I conclude that in order for a representationalist theory to properly accommodate spectrum inversion without illusion, phenomenal content must include an indexical element. Such a view requires the adoption of a broadly Fregean theory of phenomenal content, according to which sameness of phenomenal character does not entail sameness in extension. What phenomenally identical experiences have in common is not what they represent, but how they represent.     

The fitting attitudes analysis of value: an explanatory challenge

This paper is concerned with the implication from value to fittingness. I shall argue that those committed to this implication face a serious explanatory challenge. This argument is not intended as a knock-down argument against FA but it will, I think, show that those who endorse the theory incur a particular explanatory burden: to explain how counterfactual (dis)favouring of actual (dis)value is possible. After making two important preliminary points (about one of the primary motivations behind the theory and what this implies, respectively) I briefly discuss an objection to FA made by Krister Bykvist a few years ago. The point of discussing this objection is to enable me to more easily present my own, and I believe stronger, version of that objection. The overall argument takes the form of, simply, a counterexample which can be constructed on the back of (an acceptance) of my two preliminary points. Throughout the paper I try to respond to various objections.

     

Love in the Time of Consequentialism

There are several powerful motivations for neutral value‐based deontic theories such as Act Consequentialism. Traditionally, such theories have had great difficulty accounting for partiality towards one's personal relationships and projects. This paper presents a neutral value‐based theory that preserves the motivations for Act Consequentialism while vindicating some crucial intuitions about reasons to be partial. There are two central ideas. The first is that when it comes to working out what you ought to do, your friends’ interests, the needs of your family, the significance of your own projects and ideals, etc. have more weight than the interests and needs of strangers. Your friends’ interests are not (thereby) more neutrally valuable than the interests of others. So there is a difference between the value of an outcome and its deontic significance. The second familiar idea is that reasons are modifiable. Reasons of partiality are reasons the weights of which are a function of the value of the relevant outcome modified by facts about the value of caring about the outcome in question. The resulting principle has various further explanatory advantages; in particular, it accounts for project‐ and relationship‐specific permissions and requirements, both at a time and across time.     

Identity Through Time and Trope Bundles

This paper brings together two theories that I have propounded separately elsewhere. The first is the view that concrete individuals are constituted completely by tropes, that they are trope bundles. The second and more recently developed theory is that of the two major categories of concrete individuals, continuants and occurrents, the latter are ontologically more basic than the former and that continuants are to be viewed as invariants among occurrents under equivalence relations. The latter theory embodies on its own an account of the nature of identity through time of things that are in time but not extended in time. The question is whether this view is compatible with the trope bundle account of concrete particulars, and, assuming it is (both theories being separately attractive) whether bringing them together entails any modifications (other than complexity) to either theory. After examining likely metaphysical difficulties the tentative conclusion is that the attractiveness of the trope bundle theory persists despite the marriage, but that the mental picture of what tropes and trope bundles are must be overhauled. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Dynamics, Brandom-style

This paper discusses the semantic theory presented in Robert Brandom’s Making It Explicit. I argue that it is best understood as a special version of dynamic semantics, so that these semantics by themselves offer an interesting theoretical alternative to more standard truth-conditional theories. This reorientation also has implications for more foundational issues. I argue that it gives us the resources for a renewed argument for the normativity of meaning. The paper ends by critically assessing the view in both its development and motivations.     

Composition,Contingency, and Local Supervenience

A growing number of philosophers have argued against the orthodoxy that the correct principle of composition will be a metaphysically necessary truth. With contingentism about composition a seemingly viable option, it would appear that would‐be necessitarians shoulder the burden of proof. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that the contingentist, too, has a significant burden. I argue that nonbrutal principles of composition satisfy a principle according to which facts about whether or not a collection composes supervene on noncomposition facts that are spatiotemporally local to the collection. I further argue that the contingentist has reason to reject both brutal composition and the supervenience principle. This reveals a significant internal tension in the contingentist's position. Unless this tension can be resolved, there will be (defeasible) reason to prefer necessitarianism about composition.     

Fiction,Pleasurable Tragedy,and the HOT Theory of Consciousness

Abstract

The ‘feeling fiction problem’ asks: is it rational to be moved by what happens to fictional characters? The so-called ‘paradox of tragedy’ is embodied in the question: Why or how is it that we take pleasure in artworks which are clearly designed to cause in us such feelings as sadness and fear? My focus in this paper is to examine these problems from the point of view of the so-called ‘higher-order thought theory of consciousness’ (HOT theory) which says that the best explanation for what makes a mental state conscious is that it is accompanied by a thought that one is in that state. I examine the feeling fiction problem in light of the HOT theory and through a critique of Colin Radford's view. For example, I argue that Radford equivocates in his use of the term ‘aware’ in his response to some of the proposed solutions to the feeling fiction problem. Finally, I show how Susan Feagin's approach to the paradox of tragedy can be analysed and supported by the HOT theory.     

In search of unity: Twardowski,Husserl, and Ingarden on the unity of the object

This paper is devoted to Kazimierz Twardowski's thesis that the unity of a compound object (a whole) can be ensured only by the relations between its parts and the object itself. Twardowski's idea of unity raises many difficulties, especially the threat of petitio principii: the whole is presupposed as furnishing the ground for the unification of its parts, and yet it also seems to be the result of this unification. To avoid these problems, Edmund Husserl sought to refute Twardowski's thesis, and ascribed the role of a principle of unity to the foundational relationships which directly hold between the parts of a whole. Roman Ingarden then seemed to return to Twardowski's concept of unity, but employed it within a different theory of objects, according to which to be an object is to be a subject of properties. I seek to demonstrate that: (1) Twardowski's thesis is sound if a compound object is something over and above its parts; (2) with respect to Husserl's solution, it is not clear as to whether the whole is really something over and above its parts; (3) Ingarden's conception of the subject-properties structure saves Twardowski's thesis; (4) Ingarden's theory of higher-order objects is invalid.     

Theory of science in the light of Goethe's science of nature∗

J. W. Goethe is well known as one of the world's greatest poets. Some are also aware that throughout his long and active life Goethe devoted much of his time to natural science. His theory of colour and studies in the morphology of plants are acknowledged contributions in their fields. What is much less known is that in his scientific work Goethe was attempting to elaborate and justify a new basic methodology for the natural sciences. He opposed and wished to refute the one‐sided quantitative‐mechanistic method which had been dominant since Galileo and Newton (and in principle still prevails today) and to set up against it a qualitative method. An essential characteristic of this qualitative method, according to Goethe, is that it is immune to a Humean reduction of the status of ‘natural laws’ to mere hypotheses. This claim makes Goethe's view directly relevant for current discussion of such questions as the status of scientific ‘laws’ and the correct method of theory construction. The present essay tries to show the fruitfulness of Goethe's view for such discussions, partly by means of an exposition of the view — drawn from various works — and partly by drawing consequences from it which bring it into direct contact with contemporary discussions in philosophy of science.     

Grounding,Contingency and Transitivity

Grounding contingentism is the doctrine according to which grounds are not guaranteed to necessitate what they ground. In this paper I will argue that the most plausible version of contingentism (which I will label ‘serious contingentism’) is incompatible with the idea that the grounding relation is transitive, unless either ‘priority monism’ or ‘contrastivism’ are assumed.     

ALTRUISM AND THE GOLDEN RULE

This essay addresses recent claims about the compatibility of the sociobiological theory of reciprocal altruism with standard Western formulations of the Golden Rule. Derek Parfit claims that the theory of reciprocal altruism teaches us to be “reciprocal altruists,” who benefit only those people from whom we can reasonably expect benefits in the future. The Golden Rule, on the other hand, teaches us to benefit anyone regardless of their intention or ability to return the favor, or as Parfit puts it, the Golden Rule teaches us to be “suckers.” I argue that this distinction is founded on a misconception of the nature of the theory of reciprocal altruism, which is sociobiological as opposed to moral, and that this distinction accordingly confuses is with ought. Sociobiological theories may explain underlying psychological motivations in individuals (and perhaps even in populations), but these theories do not prescribe any sort of moral behavior. Furthermore, the theory of reciprocal altruism does not imply mental states of which agents are aware. The unconscious motivations assumed by this theory are in fact compatible with certain formulations of the Golden Rule; I will accordingly argue for the view that certain words with moral content related to the Golden Rule—such as “altruism” and “selfishness”—exist only insofar as they are social tools, which can further the self‐interests of an individual in any group.     

Social value orientations and the strategic use of fairness in ultimatum bargaining

One of the main issues in research on ultimatum bargaining is whether bargainers are motivated by self-interest or by a concern for fairness. It is difficult to distinguish between both motivations, because it may be in the own interest to make fair offers. In the current paper on ultimatum bargaining, it is investigated whether bargainers are truly motivated to be fair, or whether they merely strategically use fairness as a means to increase their own outcomes. The results of two experimental studies indicate that social value orientations play an important role: strategic use of fairness is mainly displayed by proselfs.     

Envy and admiration: emotion and motivation following upward social comparison

Two key emotions people can experience when someone else is better than them are envy and admiration. There are conflicting findings in the scientific literature on which behaviour is elicited by these emotions. In one study (with two samples, total N?=?345), we test which motivations are triggered by envy and admiration. The main finding is that (benign) envy and admiration both lead to a motivation to improve oneself. This confirms earlier findings that admiration leads to a motivation to affiliate with the admired other and a motivation to improve one's own position. Furthermore, it supports the idea that envy can lead to both a motivation to improve oneself and a motivation to pull down the envied other, finding support for a subtypes theory of envy.