Does Being Well-Off Make Us Happier? Problems of Measurement

The article uses General Social Survey data (GSS) collected by Statistics Canada from 1986 to 2005 and experience sampling data (ESM) collected in 1985 and 2003 at the University of Waterloo to examine relationships between economic growth, household income, and subjective sense of well-being. The article puts to a test two propositions made by Easterlin (Nations and households in economic growth: Essays in Honor of Moses Abramovitz. Academic Press, New York, NY,1974), namely that personal and household incomes correlate positively with subjective well-being, but this does not apply to the relationship between subjective well-being and societal economic growth. Analyses of GSS data reported in this article support Easterlin’s findings. They show that higher household incomes correlate positively with respondents’ retrospective assessments of life satisfaction, but economic growth has not been accompanied by a corresponding rise of subjective well-being. Analyses of ESM data suggest that when relationships between household income and subjective well-being are measured by “experiential” measures (Csikszentmihalyi and Larson in J Nerv Ment Dis 175: 526–537, 1987), these relationships are not statistically significant and subjective valuations of well-being taper off at the top of the income pyramid.     

Vague Objects with Sharp Boundaries

In this article I shall consider two seemingly contradictory claims: first, the claim that everybody who thinks that there are ordinary objects has to accept that they are vague, and second, the claim that everybody has to accept the existence of sharp boundaries to ordinary objects. The purpose of this article is of course not to defend a contradiction. Indeed, there is no contradiction because the two claims do not concern the same ‘everybody’. The first claim, that all ordinary objects are vague, is a claim that stems both from common sense intuitions as well as from various types of ontologies of ordinary objects. This puts then pressure on theories of vagueness to account for the vague nature of ordinary objects – but, as we shall see, all theories of vagueness have to accept the existence of sharp thresholds. This is obvious in the case of epistemicism, and it is a well‐known defect of supervaluationism, but as we will see friends of metaphysical vagueness do have to endorse the existence of sharp thresholds in their theory as well. Consequently, there are reasons for dissatisfaction with these accounts, since they do not seem to be able to do the job we asked them to do. 1     

The Relationist and Substantivalist Theories of Time: Foes or Friends?

Abstract: There are two traditionally rival views about the nature of time: substantivalism that takes time to be a substance that exists independently of events located in it, and relationism that takes time to be constructed out of events. In this paper, first, I want to make some progress with respect to the debate between these two views, and I do this mainly by examining the strategies they use to face the possibilities of ‘empty time’ and ‘time without change’. As we shall see, the two allegedly very different rival views are much less different than has been thought: their structure is extremely similar, their strategies are extremely similar, and they can both face the possibilities of ‘empty time’ and ‘time without change’ in the same way. Thus, I argue in favour of a certain kind of equivalence between the two views; I discuss a Strong and a Weak version of this claim; and I provide reasons for endorsing the former. I also discuss the parallel between this pair of views about the nature of time and another analogous pair of views: the bundle theory and the substratum theory about the nature of material objects, with respect to the problem with Identity of Indiscernibles.     

Tropes or Universals: How (Not) to Make One's Choice

This article discusses a familiar version of trope theory as opposed to a familiar version of the theory of universals, examining how these two rivals address the problem of “attribute agreement”—a problem that has been at the root of the very reason for developing these theories in the first place. The article shows that there is not much of a difference between the ways these two theories handle the problem, and in a more general way it argues that there is little reason for preferring one theory over the other. It is not interested in this claim only for the sake of the debate between trope theory and the theory of universals. Indeed, the reasons why it claims that it is so difficult to choose one theory over the other can be applied to other cases as well (where they might lead to claims of metaphysical equivalence).     

The bundle theory and the substratum theory: deadly enemies or twin brothers?

In this paper, I explore several versions of the bundle theory and the substratum theory and compare them, with the surprising result that it seems to be true that they are equivalent (in a sense of ‘equivalent’ to be specified). In order to see whether this is correct or not, I go through several steps: first, I examine different versions of the bundle theory with tropes and compare them to the substratum theory with tropes by going through various standard objections and arguing for a tu quoque in all cases. Emphasizing the theoretical role of the substratum and of the relation of compresence, I defend the claim that these views are equivalent for all theoretical purposes. I then examine two different versions of the bundle theory with universals, and show that one of them is, here again, equivalent to the substratum theory with universals, by examining how both views face the famous objection from Identity of Indiscernibles in a completely parallel way. It is only the second, quite extreme and puzzling, version of the bundle theory with universals that is not equivalent to any other view; and the diagnosis of why this is so will show just how unpalatable the view is. Similarly, only a not-so-palatable version of the substratum theory is genuinely different from the other views; and here again it’s precisely what makes it different that makes it less appealing.

Relational and Substantival Ontologies, and the Nature and the Role of Primitives in Ontological Theories

Several metaphysical debates have typically been modeled as oppositions between a relationist approach and a substantivalist approach. Such debates include the Bundle Theory and the Substratum Theory about ordinary material objects, the Bundle (Humean) Theory and the Substance (Cartesian) Theory of the Self, and Relationism and Substantivalism about time. In all three debates, the substantivalist side typically insists that in order to provide a good treatment of the subject-matter of the theory (time, Self, material objects), it is necessary to postulate the existence of a certain kind of substance, while the other side, the relationist one, characteristically feels that this is an unnecessary expense and that one can get the job done in an ontologically cheaper way just with inter-related properties or events. In this paper I shall defend the view that there is much less of a disagreement between relational ontologies and substantival ontologies than it is usually thought. I believe that, when carefully examined, the two sides of the debate are not that different from each other, in all three cases of pairs of views mentioned above. As we will see, both the relational side and the substantival side work in the same way, suffer from and answer the same objections, and are structurally extremely similar. It will be an important question—one that I shall discuss in detail, and that is indeed the main point of interest for me in this paper—whether this means that the two sides of the debate are somehow ‘equivalent’ or not, and what ‘equivalent’ could mean.     

From Experience to Metaphysics: On Experience‐based Intuitions and their Role in Metaphysics

Metaphysical theories are often counter‐intuitive. But they also often are strongly supported and motivated by intuitions. One way or another, the link between intuitions and metaphysics is a strong and important one, and there is hardly any metaphysical discussion where intuitions do not play a crucial role. In this article, I will be interested in a particular kind of such intuitions, namely those that come, at least partly, from experience. There seems to be a route from experience to metaphysics, and this is the core of my interest here. In order to better understand such ‘arguments from experience’ and the kind of relationship there is between this type of intuitions and metaphysical theories, I shall examine four particular cases where a kind of experience‐based intuition seems to motivate or support a metaphysical theory. At the end of the day, I shall argue that this route is a treacherous one, and that in all of the four cases I shall concentrate on, phenomenological considerations are in fact orthogonal to the allegedly ‘corresponding’ metaphysical claims. An anti‐realist view of metaphysics will emerge.