Damage to the prefrontal cortex increases utilitarian moral judgements

I admit that this is not metaphysics -- but it is pretty funny (especially at UMass)!

(And since I am not a metaphysician, what else but some stupid jokes could Barak have expected when he invited me to contribute to this blog?)

-Kirk

Are fundamental properties essentially fundamental?

A fundamental property is a property such that other properties are instantiated in virtue of its instantiation, but it isn’t instantiated in virtue of the instantiation of any other property. In Plurality Lewis [60, ft. 44] claims that if P is a fundamental property (a “perfectly natural” property in his terminology), it's essentially fundamental; i.e., if P is fundamental, then it's necessary that, for any object x, if x has P, then there is no object y and property Q such that x has P in virtue of y having Q. Here the idea is that fundamentality is absolute rather than world-relative.

I’m sympathetic with the idea that fundamental properties are essentially fundamental in this sense. Hence, if priority monism (PM) is true (the thesis that (i) the proper parts of the world exist ultimately in virtue of the world’s existence; and (ii) the properties of the proper parts of the world are instantiated ultimately in virtue of the properties the world itself instantiates), and if a distributional property (in Josh Parson’s sense) D is the one and only fundamental property, then D is essentially fundamental. Hence, there is no world in which D is instantiated in virtue of any other property.

Ben Caplan in conversation suggested something like the following. Following Peter Vallentyne, a contraction of a world is ‘a world “obtainable” from the original one solely by “removing” objects from it’. Consider a world, w, that is a contraction of the actual world, @, that lacks one of @’s proper parts, say my left shoe. (As a contraction of the actual world, W is otherwise as similar to the actual world as possible.) Suppose that PM is true, and if PM is true, then PM is necessarily true. So PM is true in w. Let D* be the global distributional property that’s fundamental in w. Ben suggested that it seems that D* is instantiated in the actual world, and D* is instantiated in virtue of the instantiation of D. But if this is right, then D* is fundamental in one world but not in another, so fundamental properties aren't essentially fundamental.

I’m curious what you all think of this example. Do you think this case undermines the claim that fundamental properties are essentially fundamental?

-Kelly

Sider on quantifier variance and equivocation

In "Ontological Realism", Ted Sider imagines a dispute between David Lewis (DKL) and Peter van Inwagen (PVI) about whether there are tables.

DKL: "Tables exist"

PVI: "Tables don't exist"

According to Sider, one type of ontological deflationist (D1 in the paper) diagnoses the disagreement thus: "PVI and DKL express different propositions with 'Tables exist'; each makes claims that are true given what he means; so the debate is merely verbal". Such disagreement presumably arises from some equivocation. And the question Sider considers next is: 'Where is the equivocation located?'. The only possibilities are 'table' and 'exist'. He argues that the equivocations on the former are of no help to the deflationist account, so he must hold that it is 'exist' that is equivocal.

I don't follow him here. I think that the deflationist has a third option: the words 'table' and 'exist' are univocal; however, the disputants are allowing their quantifiers to vary over different domains. And it is this that accounts for the different meanings each attaches to the sentence "Tables exist".

Perhaps what I have in mind will come out more clearly in light of another sample sentence that Sider discusses. "Consider a world in which there exist exactly 2 material simples, which are not arranged in the form of a living thing. Of that world, DKL would accept, while PVI would reject: [Sider writes this out in logical notation] "there are at least three things"." In the logical expression of this sentence, there are: quantifiers and variables, truth-functional connectives, and the identity predicate. But, says Sider, the connectives and identity are univocal, so it must be the quantifier that is equivocal.

I don't follow this. Why not say that the quantifiers have a univocal meaning and that the disputants recognize different domains? DKL recognizes a domain that includes tables and PVI recognizes a domain that does not. This sort of difference will provide the deflationist with a means of accounting for how DKL and PVI are "talking past each other". But, notice, there is no equivocation in the quantifier 'exists', only a disagreement about the range of entities over which 'exists' ranges.

Here's an example of what I have in mind. Consider the universal quantifier and two models, M1 and M2. The domain of M1 contains both of my feet and nothing else. The domain of M2 contains both my feet and the Eifel Tower. If I say "everything is a foot", what I have said is true in M1 and false in M2. I may get in an argument with someone. My disputant says, "What Ed says is wrong, something (the Eifel Tower) is not a foot; so not everything is a foot". This disagreement, like the one Sider discusses, is not substantive. But the reason for its lack of substance is not a disagreement about the meaning of "everything" but rather that we are talking about different models with different domains. As I understand the domain of quantification, everything is a foot, and as my disputant understands the domain of quantification, something is not a foot.

Ed

Must the world be junky?

Here's an argument I came up with while being depressed recently. I haven't really thought about this argument at all, but I think there is something to it. I guess I would deny premise 1, 5, and 7.

(1) For any x, if x has finitely many parts, then there must exist something else distinct (non-overlapping) from x which accounts for (or perhaps contrasts) its finitude
(2) If the Universe has finitely many parts, then there must exist something else distinct (non-overlapping) from the Universe which accounts for (or perhaps contrasts) its finitude
(3) there exists nothing else distinct (non-overlapping) from the Universe which accounts for (or contrasts) its finitude (conceptual truth about the Universe)
(4) Hence, the Universe has infinitely many parts
(5) For any xx, if xx are infinite, then xx are "too many" to compose an object (conceptual truth about the infinite? Think of the notion of infinity that was prevelant up until the madman Cantor.)
(6) The parts of the Universe are "too many" to compose an object ((4),(5))
(7) All and only finitely many things compose something
(8) Hence, the Universe is junky ((4),(6),(7))

-Einar

First Post!

Hey y'all. Ramblings and half-baked ideas to follow.

- Barak