Benjamin Schnieder

The paper is a detailed reconstruction of Bernard Bolzano’s account of merely possible objects. According to Bolzano, there are some objects which are merely possible. They are neither denizens of space and time nor members of the causal order, but they could have been so. Examples are merely possible persons, mountains etc., objects which are neither actual nor persons or mountains, but which could have been both. Bolzano’s views are contrasted with the theory of Alexius Meinong, and it is shown that they have a modern counterpart in the accounts of merely possible objects that were developed by Bernard Linsky & Ed Zalta, and by Timothy Williamson

The article is a critical examination of Joshua Hoffman’s and Gary Rosenkrantz’ approach to the traditional category of individual substance. On several places they offered an analysis of the concept of a substance in terms of some highly sophisticated notion of generic independence. Though ingenious, and even though it might be extensionally adequate, their account cannot provide an informative analysis of the concept in question, because it exhibits a peculiar kind of circularity. It is shown that one cannot establish, on the basis of their analysis, that a given entity is a substance, if one does not already know that it is one in advance. The circularity of their account is examined in detail, and it is explained how it could have arisen.

By fictional realism let us understand the doctrine that there are fictional entities, in the same sense of "there are" in which -- philosophical worries set aside -- there are people, planets, and prime numbers. The standard argument for fictional realism runs as follows. Consider the following two sentences: Some characters in nineteenth-century novels are presented with a greater wealth of physical detail than are some characters in twentieth-century novels. Some fictional detectives are more famous than any living detective. Both sentences are true by ordinary standards. Moreover, they involve quantification over fictional entities which cannot be paraphrased away in an easy and intuitive manner.

I develop a new argument for an expressivist account of epistemic modals, which starts from a puzzle about epistemic modals which Seth Yalcin recently presented. I reject Yalcin's own solution to the puzzle, and give a better explanation based on expressivism concerning epistemic modals. I also address two alleged problems for expressivism: do embeddings of epistemic modals pose a serious threat to expressivism, and how can expressivism account for disagreements about statements containing epistemic modals?

In Plato’s Euthyphro, Euthyphro proposes to analyse the pious as that which is beloved of the gods. In the most widely discussed argument of the dialogue, Socrates tries to show that Euthyphro’s analysis fails. The argument crucially involves an ingenious use of the explanatory connective ‘because’. This paper presents a detailed reconstruction and defence of the argument. It starts with a rigorous analysis of its logical form, explains and justifies its premises, and closes with a defence of the argument against the strongest common objection.

This Paper is an Exploration of Bolzano’s views on causation, which have not been thoroughly examined yet. The paper reconstructs Bolzano’s position, with a focus on his analysis of the concept of causation, on its ontological presuppositions, and on how he relates causation to his theory of grounding.1 A comparison with standard positions from the contemporary debate on causation will prove his views to be quite original. Moreover, they are a valuable addition to the more recent debate on metaphysical grounding,2 in which grounding is sometimes informally described as something like metaphysical causation with the exact connection of the two notions seldom being elaborated. Bolzano’s theory explicitly addresses ..

Bernard Bolzano développe une théorie exhaustive et très élaborée des propositions comme entités structurées et composées de concepts. L’une de ses thèses principales consiste à dire que toutes les propositions ont en commun la même structure : « A – a – b ». Cet article examine le rôle que jouent les propriétés eu égard à cette thèse. Lorsque les propriétés figurent dans les théories sémantiques standards, elles sont généralement conçues comme des entités partageables, en d’autres mots, comme des universaux. Je montre que Bolzano croyait que ce sont bien plutôt des propriétés particularisées qui tombent sous la représentation-prédicat d’une proposition. De là émerge une sémantique plutôt inhabituelle : une proposition de la forme [A – a – b] est vraie ssi une des propriétés particularisées qui se tiennent sous la représentation-prédicat [b] inhère au sujet de la proposition, c’est-à-dire l’entité dénotée par la représentation-sujet [A].Bernard Bolzano developed a highly elaborate and comprising account of propositions as structured entities composed of concepts. One of his main contentions was that all propositions share a common structure : “A – has – b”. The main part of my paper is a discussion of the role which properties play for this thesis and thus in Bolzano’s semantics. Where properties feature as semantic values in standard semantic theories they are conceived of as shareable entities, in other words, as universals. I show that it is particularised properties which Bolzano thought to be the entities standing under the predicate-ideas of propositions. With this idea, a rather uncommon semantic arises : a proposition of the form [A – has – b] will be true iff one of the particularised properties standing under the predicate-idea [b] inheres in the subject of the proposition, i.e. in the entity denoted by the subject-idea [A]

The article scrutinises the semantics of canonical property designators of the forms ‘the property of being F’ and ‘F-ness’. First it is argued that, as their form suggests, the former are definite definitions, albeit of a special sort. Secondly, the prima facie plausible classification of the latter as proper names (which is often met in philosophical writings) is rejected. The semantics of such terms is developed and it is shown how its proper understanding yields important consequences about the concepts expressed by these terms

Many friends of the category of particularised qualities subscribe to the view that particularised qualities have a unique bearer in which they inhere; no such quality then can inhere in two different entities. But it seems that this idea is flawed, for there are apparent counterexamples. An apple’s redness is identical with the redness of its skin, though the apple is distinct from its skin. So it seems that a principle of beareruniqueness has to be modified, maybe by excluding certain unwanted cases.