Metaphysics Commons^™

An Extended Lewis-Stalnaker Semantics And The New Problem Of Counterpossibles,, Jeffrey C. Goodman

Faculty Scholarship

Closest-possible-world analyses of counterfactuals suffer from what has been called the ‘problem of counterpossibles’: some counterfactuals with metaphysically impossible antecedents seem plainly false, but the proposed analyses imply that they are all (vacuously) true.  One alleged solution to this problem is the addition of impossible worlds.  In this paper, I argue that the closest possible or impossible world analyses that have recently been suggested suffer from the ‘new problem of counterpossibles’: the proposed analyses imply that some plainly true counterpossibles (viz., ‘counterlogicals’) are false.  After motivating and presenting the ‘new problem’, I give reasons to think that …

A Defense Of Creationism In Fiction, Jeffrey C. Goodman

Faculty Scholarship

Creationism is the conjunction of the following theses: (i) fictional individuals (e.g. Sherlock Holmes) actually exist; (ii) fictional names (e.g., ‘Holmes’) are at least sometimes genuinely referential; (iii) fictional individuals are the creations of the authors who first wrote (or spoke, etc.) about them.  CA Creationism is the conjunction of (i) – (iii) and the following thesis: (iv) fictional individuals are contingently existing abstracta; they are non-concrete artifacts of our world and various other possible worlds.  Takashi Yagisawa has recently provided a number of arguments designed to show that Creationism is unjustified.  I here critically examine three of his challenges …

The Halcyon Tone As Birdsong, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Contained in one of Nietzsche's favorite words is the name of a seabird that flits back and forth across the landscapes and seascapes of Mediterranean reality, classical myth, and Nietzsche's imagination. Lexical authorities credit Nietzsche with reintroducing the word "halcyon [halkyonisch]" into the German language. That word will recall the "halcyon days," part of the metamorphic complex in the story of Alcyone, who lost her husband Ceyx at sea but was transformed along with him into a pair of seabirds, the female having the extraordinary characteristic of building a floating nest, in which she hatched her eggs during the weeks …

Dogs, Domestication, And The Ego, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In Zarathustra's "On the Vision and the Riddle," three animals-a spider, a snake, and a dog-make significant appearances, as do three human or quasihuman figures-Zarathustra himself, the dwarf known as the Spirit of Gravity, and the shepherd who must bite off the head of the snake. Of these animals, it is the dog who receives the most extended attention. Here, in the passage that along with "The Convalescent" (with its eagle and serpent) is usually and rightly taken to be Nietzsche's most articulate and yet highly veiled approach to explaining the teaching of eternal recurrence, the riddling vision involves animals. …

Commentary On Philosophy And Aviation Security, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article outlines how the formal study of philosophy can be applied to aviation security, considering the merits of the inclusion of philosophers in the international working groups tasked with discerning and commenting on aviation security trends and their relevance for intelligence and security activities.

Review Of Subject, Society, Culture, By Roy Boyne, Michael Ian Borer

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Review Of Pure Immanence, Essays On A Life, By Gilles Deleuze, Ellen E. Berry

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

L'Etica Di Lonergan, Richard Liddy

Department of Religion Publications

No abstract provided.

"A Shower Of Insights" Autobiography And Intellectual Conversion, Richard Liddy

Department of Religion Publications

No abstract provided.

Despair, Liberation, And Everyday Life: Two Bundle Views Of Personal Identity, Kathy Behrendt

Philosophy Faculty Publications

This paper, intended for general readership, discusses the real-life effects that personal identity theory either has had or has apparently failed to have upon two philosophers: David Hume and Derek Parfit. Both arrive at similar and quite radical beliefs about personal identity. And both have documented the difficulty of sustaining these beliefs in their day-to-day lives. For those considering embarking upon philosophical study – whether formally or not – this last point may seem discouraging, reinforcing a picture of a discipline that even on the admission of its own practitioners has little impact on everyday life or concerns. I explore …

Intentional Explanation, Psychological Laws, And The Irreducibility Of The First Person Perspective, Karsten Stueber

Philosophy Department Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Lonergan's Ethics, Richard Liddy

Department of Religion Publications

No abstract provided.

Dread, Route And Time: An Autobiographical Walking Of Everything Else, Phil Smith

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

This response to Reconstruction's Summer 2002 edition, Volume 2, Number 3, autobiogeography: considering space and identity, particularly to the papers of Matthew Wolf-Meyer and Davin Heckman, Subhash Jaireth, Deirdre Heddon and Sally Munt, is an attempt to establish provisionally whether a discourse that sets critical theory, autobiographical practice and a poetics of space in performative motion orbiting each other can add anything to the critical discussion of autobiogeography. Part of my motivation is an antipathy toward criticism that can be applied to everything but itself. Given that hybridity will be an important part of a critical discourse about …

Where Is Sherlock Holmes?, Jeffrey C. Goodman

Faculty Scholarship

Most philosophers would say that fictional characters lack spatiotemporal location simply because such entities do not exist.  However, even prominent believers in ficta hold that they must lack location.  I here focus on the views of one such believer, Amie Thomasson, and her Artifactual Theory.  The fundamentals of her ontology seem correct, but I argue that the view implies that ficta do have location.  I provide a diagnosis of an argument Thomasson gives for the contrary, and then suggest a way for the Artifactual Theory to account for the locations of ficta.  I conclude by discussing some potential applications of …

Review Of Ivo Celho, Hermeneutics And Method: The "Universal Viewpoint" In Bernard Lonergan, Richard Liddy

Department of Religion Publications

No abstract provided.

Analisa Kritis Pemikiran India : Kajian Kes Ke Atas Sistem Astika Darshana, Rajaretnam Vejayan

Student Works (2000-2009)

Secara naluri, dalam hati sanubari setiap manusia terdapat keinginan bagi metafizik iaitu untuk mengetahui dan memahami apa yang wujud di luar misteri dan tabir ilusi alam semulajadi dan dunia material ini. Keinginan manusia ini merangkumi semua manusia dari orang gasar kepada masyarakat yang berperadaban tinggi. Falsafah India klasik yang bermula pada sejak zaman veda tidak sahaja melatih pengikutnya untuk melihat kebenaran metafizik, ia menawarkan satu cara pemikiran yang membolehkan seseorang untuk memahami secara rasional realiti yang telah dialami oleh tokoh-tokoh yang terkabul dan sempurna,' dengan itu ia memimpin manusia untuk menyedari kebenaran. llmu kebenaran yang terkandung di dalam sistem astika …

The Cyborgian Self: Toward A Critical Social Theory Of Cyberspace, Michael Ian Borer

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Contemporary social theory currently remains at a virtual standstill, quivering over the decision to radically leave the past behind or to continue within the historical narrative of the Enlightenment. Postmodern social theorists, advocating the position that we have, in fact, entered a new historical epoch, pose serious challenges to our perception of modernity and cultural identity. As an influential strategy that has infiltrated both the humanities and the social sciences for more than thirty years, postmodernism can no longer be dismissed as merely a fad or trend. In a world where the use of complex, and often mobile, …

Supposing A Space: The Detecting Subject In Paul Auster’S City Of Glass, Richard Swope

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

To Blend In The Place You're In, But With A Mind To Do Something: The Practice Of Merging In James Dickey's To The White Sea, Casey Clabough

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

In a final sortie the day before the great fire-bombing raid on Tokyo in the last months of World War II, Muldrow (his first name is purposefully never given), an American tail gunner, parachutes from his burning B-29 into the city. Protected at first by the smoke-blackened anarchy on the ground, he journeys north, away from the chaos and ruin of Tokyo, instinctively drawn toward Japan's sparsely-populated northern island of Hokkaido, a frozen, desolate sanctuary he is certain will assure his survival. With little more than a knife and a small map of Japan he makes his way …

Navigating The Starless Night: Strategies For Understanding Autobiogeography, Matthew Wolf-Meyer, Davin Heckman

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Ancient mapmakers relied upon the presence of celestial bodies for their conceptualization of the world, for their external knowledge-making tools, as if a far-off body could help to make sense of our terrestrial life/as if it couldn't. Cosmology, as a practice, relied on the construction of an external body of knowledge that the local meaning-maker could situate him- or herself into, and more broadly, their entire society and culture -- the interior is determined by its relationship to the exterior (or the exteriorized). For the ancient Greeks then, the font of Western culture, this cosmology works at once …

Method In Theology: Rahner And Lonergan On The 'Natural-Supernatural' Distinction, Richard Liddy

Department of Religion Publications

No abstract provided.

Trends. Diplomacy, Time, And Conflict, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article discusses the nature of time in the context of conflict, diplomacy, and conflict resolution.

Reading Well: The Key To The Core, Richard Liddy

Department of Religion Publications

No abstract provided.

Trends. Psychological Pathways To Suicidal Terrorism, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article discusses psychological pathways to suicidal terrorism. This discussion includes aspects of both social cognition and social learning, as well as philosophical psychology.

Reconciling Arguments About The Self-Preserving Soul With Evolutionary Theory, James M. Donovan

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Advocates of a self-preserving soul must somehow integrate that soul with an organic body which is the product of an evolutionary history. Efforts to resolve this version of the sorites paradox (at what point in the gradual evolution of Homo sapiens was the step taken from the soul-less to the ensouled?) can result in conflict between the two theories. The position is taken here that, given the standard of Popperian verisimilitude, any such conflict signals a weakness in the soul-theory, and not in evolutionism.

Five soul-theories (those by Plato, Aristotle, William of Auvergne, Hume, and Heidegger) are evaluated on three …

Understanding Imperfection, Martin Zwick

Complex Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

Because of their inherent abstraction, systems ideas are not themselves sufficient for gaining scientific knowledge or solving practical problems, but they can be a source of insights into the universality of imperfection, insights which can contribute to a new scientific world view. Systems theory offers a metaphysics, or more precisely an ontology, of imperfection. Through it, we can heed Spinoza's injunction, “Not to lament, not to curse, but to understand.”

Bernard Lonergan On A Catholic Liberal Arts Education, Richard Liddy

Department of Religion Publications

No abstract provided.

Dalil-Dalil Ibn Sina Dalam Membuktikan Wujud Tuhan, Rajab Selamat

Student Works (2000-2009)

Among the 'mutakallimin' (teolog). they inclined to use their own concept ' dalil' regarding nature as an evidence to prove the existence of God. This concept is based on the principle that nature was created by God as a symbol of 'Al-Mighty' (Keesaan) 'lradahNya yang azali'. Without his prior consent, the whole world of nature would not be a existence. With this concept. it reveals that this would is 'new' ie. From non-existence to existence, whilst Allah are caisidered 'qadim ' (Forever Will Remain). lbn Sina (w. 1037m) was among the 'failasur who quite disagree with this concept. To him, …

The Varieties Of Theism And The Openness Of God, Donald W. Viney

Faculty Submissions

Charles Hartshorne was an advocate of the openness of God. Contrary to some critiques, he was aware of and responded to criticisms of his views and developed ways of thinking about the varieties of theistic metaphysics.

Smith On Hanley, 'The Metaphysics Of Star Trek, Anne Collins Smith

Faculty Publications

Review by Anne Collins Smith on the H-PCAACA mailing list, June 1998.

The Metaphysics of Star Trek by Richard Hanley. New York: Basic Books, 1997. xviii + 253 pp. $18.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-465-09124-9.

Richard Hanley's The Metaphysics of Star Trek is an engaging examination of certain philosophical issues raised within the Star Trek universe. Its title, however, is overly broad; it would be more correctly titled, The Twentieth-Century Applied Metaphysics of Star Trek. The earliest reference in the bibliography is an article written in 1950; the next earliest, 1960. The vast majority of sources are from the 1980's and …