Alan Sidelle

A not-unpopular position in the metaphysics of material objects (Ted Sider's, for instance) combines realism about what objects there are and the conditions of objecthood with conventionalism about de re modality. I argue that this is not a coherent combination of views: one must go fully conventionalist, or fully realist. The central argument displays the difficulty for the modal conventionalist/object realist in specifying the object that satisfies de re modal predicates. I argue that if this is a mind-independent object, contradictions arise when we consider the possibility or actuality of non-equivalent conventions both applying to 'the same object'.

Many philosophers believe that identity through time cannot depend on features extrinsic to the relata and relations between them. This goes with the view that one must deny identity in cases for which there is a `duplication case'-a case just like the first, but for an additional, `external' element which provides an equal or better `candidate' for identity with one of the relata. Such friends of intrinsicness cannot remedy the failure of continuity of function/form to be one-one by non-branching or closest competitor clauses. The obvious intrinsic approach-perhaps taken for granted-appeals to considerations of quantity of matter, requiring over 50% shared matter between identicals. But this rules out plausible cases of halving and doubling for which there are not duplication cases. After bringing out this problem, I ask what makes duplication cases possible, and use this to formulate an intrinsic condition which allows identity whenever there is continuity of function, but no threat to intrinsicness via duplication cases.

André Gallois’s Occasions of Identity is a detailed, well-written presentation and defense of one attempt to solve many of the recently much discussed puzzles in the metaphysics of material objects. It is engaging not only for Gallois’s ingenious attempt to defend his view that objects can be “occasionally identical”—identical at one time but not another —but for his discussion throughout of the puzzles and of alternative solutions. Gallois does a fine job of keeping the motivations for a position, whether his own or others’, in view while working out details and responding to objections. Even where one disagrees, there is excellent food for thought and discussion here.

In “Innocuous Infallibility,” Earl Conee argues that the infallibility to which I argue Internalism is committed, in “An Argument that Internalism Requires Infallibility,” is harmless and trivial. I maintain that this overlooks the fact that Internalism makes use of an intuitive notion of ‘epistemic twinhood’ to drive its position, rather than one antecedently defined with a filled‐out notion of ‘relevant epistemic circumstances’. Conee is correct that any theory requires, and trivially gets, some sort of infallibility‐but it is not trivial that there is a coherent and univocal notion of the sort of relevant circumstances‐and so, twinhood and infallibility‐behind the Internalist strategy and motivation.

This paper lays out the basic structure of any view involving coincident entities, in the light of the grounding problem. While the account is not novel, I highlight fundamental features, to which attention is not usually properly drawn. With this in place, I argue for a number of further claims: The basic differences between coincident objects are modal differences, and any other differences between them need to be explained in terms of these differences. More specifically, the basic difference is not a difference in sort. A number of recent defenses of coincidence, which share the basic structure I outline, misidentify what, in their accounts, plays the basic role of addressing the grounding problem. More tentatively, I argue Coincident entities differ only in these modal properties, and properties they entail. In particular, they do not differ in properties like ‘being a tree,’ ‘being a statue,’ or aesthetic properties, and finally in light of how the account of coincidence offered addresses the grounding problem, the grounding problem provides no reason to prefer monism to pluralism.

The idea that disputes which are heated, and apparently important, may nonetheless be 'merely verbal' or 'just semantic' is surely no stranger to any philosopher. I urge that many disputes, both in and out of philosophy, are indeed plausibly considered verbal, and that it would repay us to more frequently consider whether they are so or not. Asking this question is what I call ‘The Method of Verbal Dispute’. Neither the notion nor the method of verbal dispute is new. What I do here is to urge its wider application, to suggest how widespread is the phenomenon of verbal disputes, and to clarify certain misconceptions about what is, or needs to be, involved in a verbal dispute. One central claim is that verbal disputes need not be ‘merely’ verbal disputes – that often, there is a real disagreement to be had, but it is not the one suggested by the surface form of the disagreement. I also discuss the relation between verbal disputes, relativism and cases in which ‘there is no fact of the matter’

In section 96 of Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit offers his now familiar tripartite distinction among candidates for ‘what matters’: (1) Relation R with its normal cause; (2) R with any reliable cause; (3) R with any cause. He defends option (3). This paper tries to show that there is important ambiguity in this distinction and in Parfit's defence of his position. There is something strange about Parfit's way of dividing up the territory: I argue that those who have followed him in viewing the choice among (1)–(3) as the (or an) important question in thinking about ‘what matters’ are mistaken, and that they bypass what seems to be a more important, even crucial, set of options and considerations. I am less concerned with what he does say than with what he ought to say, given his intuitions and arguments, and the general framework within which he is working. And I am particularly concerned to show that whether or not I am correct about what he is doing with his tripartite distinction, it is a distinction with which we should not be particularly concerned in the analysis either of what matters or of psychological continuity

Plausible recent arguments for the existence of necessary truths a posteriori have led many philosophers to believe, at least implicitly, that conventionalism about necessity is false, and that necessity is in fact a real-world quantity. Necessary truths, on this view, are no more independent upon our linguistic conventions than any other truths; assertions of necessity and essential predications are, like any other claims, true or false as they correspond or not to a wholly independent reality. I believe that this view is not supported by the finding of necessary truths a posteriori, and further, that we have excellent reason to reject this realism about necessity, and to accept instead a conventionalist account. My dissertation attempts to argue for this view, and to present and defend such a conventionalist account. ;In Chapter One, I present a conventionalist explanation of necessary truths a posteriori, and thus argue that the existence of such truths does not establish realism about necessity. My account makes use of general conventions which I call 'general principles of individuation.' If these principles are products of our conventions, then we can both allow for and explain how there can be such 'empirical' necessary truths within a conventionalist framework. ;Chapter Two argues that conventionalism about necessity and essences has traditionally been grounded in metaphysical worries about necessity, not upon now outdated epistemological and semantic views, as is often claimed by the opponents of conventionalism. ;In Chapter Three, I present my central arguments for conventionalism and against realism about necessity. I argue that only conventionalism can explain how we have the knowledge that we do of what is necessary, and further, that it is not even clear that we can make sense of necessity as an independent feature of the world. Chapter Four responds to worries stemming from the fact that my account requires that there be systematically important analytic truths. ;Finally, in Chapter Five, I attempt to apply my findings to the theory of reference. I argue that if conventionalism about necessity and essences is true, then empiricist semantics must be basically correct, and that causal theories of reference must thus be either compatible with empiricist semantics, or false