Woosuk Park

ACCORDING TO DUNS SCOTUS, what makes a material substance an individual is a positive entity which falls within the category of substance and contracts the specific nature to this or that. That entity, called haecceitas, together with the formal distinction, constitutes the core of Scotus' theory of individuation. But what is haecceitas? Haecceitas is not definable. Nor can we be acquainted with it. Then how could we understand it? Both negatively and positively, Scotus himself tried to give an answer to this question. Before presenting his haecceitas theory, Scotus criticized six different types of rival theories available in his day: the position of the nominalists, the double negation theory, the theory of individuation by actual existence, the theory of individuation by quantity or other accidents, the theory of individuation by matter, and the theory attributed to Godfrey of Fontaines. In other words, he was explaining "what haecceitas is not" when he criticized these theories. More importantly, he tried to give us a positive characterization of haecceitas. Since he used "individual difference" as a synonym for "haecceitas," he resorted to an analogy between the specific difference and the individual difference in order to explain the notion of haecceitas. The problem is that twentieth-century ontologists may not be patient enough to study the triple analogy, which again presupposes Scotus' doctrines of the formal distinction and the ultimate difference. In order to draw their attention to Scotus' theory of individuation, one would need to discuss the following questions: How can we translate the term "haecceitas" into modern terminology? Is there any counterpart of haecceitas in contemporary ontology? For what reasons should we reintroduce haecceitas into the current discussion of individuation, if it has a good counterpart? Is there still anything significant left to add to our understanding of haecceitas?

Both the defenders and the challengers of the indispensability argument seem to ignore the obvious fact that it is meant to be an analogical inference. In this note, I shall draw attention to this fact so as to avoid unnecessary confusions in any future discussion of the indispensability argument. For this purpose, I shall criticize Maddy’s version of the indispensability argument. After having noted that Quinean holism does not have to be one of the necessary premises, I shall suggest alternative formulations of the indispensability argument as an analogical inference. Also, some further reflections on how to evaluate Maddy’s objections to the indispensability argument will be in due order.

We can witness the recent surge of interest in the interaction between cognitive science, philosophy of science, and aesthetics on the problem of representation. This naturally leads us to rethinking the achievements of Goodman’s monumental book Languages of Art. For, there is no doubt that no one else contributed more than Goodman to throw a light on the cognitive function of art. Ironically, it could be also Goodman who has been the stumbling block for a unified theory of representation. In this paper, I shall contrast the ways how differently misrepresentation has been treated in cognitive science, aesthetics, and philosophy of science. And I shall show that it is Goodman’s unnecessary separation of resemblance and representation in art that made such a difference. As a conclusion, I will indicate some of the most promising projects toward the unified theory of representation the revolt against Goodman’s rejection of resemblance theories might promise to us.

One of the most pressing issues in understanding abduction is whether it is an instinct or an inference. For many commentators find it paradoxical that new ideas are products of an instinct and products of an inference at the same time. Fortunately, Lorenzo Magnani’s recent discussion of animal abduction sheds light on both instinctual and inferential character of Peircean abduction. But, exactly for what reasons are Peirce and Magnani so convinced that animal abduction can provide us with a novel perspective? Inspired by Peirce’s and Magnani’s discussions of animal abduction, I propose to compare Peirce’s and Magnani’s views of animal abduction with the estimative power of non-human animals and humans, which was one of the internal senses in medieval psychology.

Arthur N. Prior, in the Preface of Past, Present and Future, made clear his indebtedness to “the very lively tense-logicians of California for many discussions”. Strangely,with a notable exception of Copeland, there is no extensive discussion of these scholars in the literature on the history of tense logic. In this paper, I propose to study how Nino B. Cocchiarella, as one of the Californian tense-logicians, interacted with Prior in the late 1960s. By gathering clues from their correspondence available at Virtual Lab for Prior Studies, I will highlight some of the differences between their views on tense-logic, which might still have far-reaching philosophical implications. I will conclude with a sketchof how to study in what ways Prior and Cocchiarella influenced some other Californian tense-logicians.