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62Relations and Idealism: On Some Arguments of Hochberg against Trope NominalismDialectica 68 (2): 305-315. 2014.In a recent article, Herbert Hochberg portrays my ontological position, that of a trope nominalist who is sceptical about relational tropes, as deviating into idealism. Since there are few philosophical views I find more repugnant than idealism, I must either resist the accusation or recant. I choose to resist, by showing how relational tropes are not needed as truth-makers for a wide range of truths, and raising the real possibility that they may not be needed at all, without lapsing into eithe…Read more
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Whitehead : process and cosmologyIn Robin Le Poidevin, Simons Peter, McGonigal Andrew & Ross P. Cameron (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics, Routledge. 2009.
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44Parts: A Study in OntologyClarendon Press. 1987.The relationship of part to whole is one of the most fundamental there is; this is the first and only full-length study of this concept. This book shows that mereology, the formal theory of part and whole, is essential to ontology. Peter Simons surveys and criticizes previous theories, especially the standard extensional view, and proposes a more adequate account which encompasses both temporal and modal considerations in detail. 'Parts could easily be the standard book on mereology for the next…Read more
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483Bocheński and balance: System and history in analytic philosophyStudies in East European Thought 55 (4): 281-297. 2003.Using the work of Józef Bocheski as apositive example, this paper sets out the casefor a balanced use of historical knowledge indoing analytic philosophy. Between the twoextremes of relativizing historicism, whichdenies absolute truth, and arrogant scientism,which denies any constructive role for thehistory of ideas in philosophy, lies a viamedia in which historical reflection onconcepts and their history is placed at theservice of the system of cognitive philosophy.Knowledge of the history of p…Read more
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22How to Do Things with Things: Brentano’s Reism and its LimitsIn Bruno Leclercq, Sébastien Richard & Denis Seron (eds.), Objects and Pseudo-Objects Ontological Deserts and Jungles from Brentano to Carnap, De Gruyter. pp. 3-16. 2015.
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20New Categories for Formal OntologyGrazer Philosophische Studien 49 (1): 77-99. 1994.What primitive concepts does formal ontology require? Forsaking as too indirect the linguistic way of discerning the categories of being, this paper considers what primitives might be required for representing things in themselves (noumena) and representations of them in a thoroughly crafted large autonomous multi-purpose database. Leaving logical concepts and material ontology aside, the resulting 32 categories in 13 families range from the obvious (identity/difference, existence/non-existence)…Read more
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24The Next Best Thing to Sense in BegriffsschriftIn Petr Kotatko & John Biro (eds.), Frege: Sense and Reference One Hundred Years Later, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 129--140. 1995.
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52Existential PropositionsGrazer Philosophische Studien 42 (1): 229-259. 1992.By considering a wide and expressly classified range of examples from natural and logical languages, the attempt is made to isolate from other concomitants the features of existential sentences which make them existential. One such concomitant is the imputation of singularity. There are many ways to say something exists, and their relationships are charted. It is denied that there is anything in reality called existence, or any special existential facts.
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103Confounding earlier predictions of naysayers and sceptics, by the beginning of the twenty-first century, metaphysics had re-emerged for the first time in decades as a vital, progressive and exciting branch of philosophy. Although the most strident criticisms came from early analytic philosophers such as Carnap, it is analytical metaphysics that has led the way. But rather than trace the stages of the revival of metaphysics, we consider a spread of contemporary themes which have been especially f…Read more
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34To be and/or not to be the objects of meinong and HusserlIn Lila Haaparanta & Heikki Koskinen (eds.), Categories of Being: Essays on Metaphysics and Logic, Oxford University Press, Usa. pp. 241. 2012.
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77Leibniz, Whitehead and the Metaphysics of CausationBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 18 (1): 175-177. 2010.This Article does not have an abstract
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223Ramsey, Particulars, and UniversalsTheoria 57 (3): 150-161. 1991.My subject is the arguments brought by Ramsey in his paper “ Universals ” ’ against the generally held distinction between particulars and universals. This paper is provocative, suggestive, and radical, and it is humbling to reflect that its author was just 22 years old when it was published in Mind. As so often with Ramsey, the paper is superficially very easy to follow and hardly requires any introduction other than the imperative, “Read it through”, but underneath the surface are many assumpt…Read more
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20Continuants and Occurrents, ISupplement to the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 74 (1): 59-75. 2000.
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70Logical atomism and its ontological refinement: A defenseIn Kevin Mulligan (ed.), Language, Truth and Ontology, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 157--179. 1992.
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19Parts Study in Ontology: A Study in OntologyOxford University Press UK. 1987.The relationship of part to whole is one of the most fundamental there is, yet until now there has been no full-length study of this concept. This book shows that mereology, the formal theory of part and whole, is essential to ontology. Peter Simons surveys and criticizes previous theories, especially the standard extensional view, and proposes a more adequate account which encompasses both temporal and modal considerations in detail. This has far-reaching consequences for our understanding of s…Read more
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145Bolzano on CollectionsGrazer Philosophische Studien 53 (1): 87-108. 1997.Bolzano's theory of collections (Inbegriffe) has usually been taken as a rudimentary set theory. More recently, Frank Krickel has claimed it is a mereology. I find both interpretations wanting. Bolzano's theory is, as I show, extremely broad in scope; it is in fact a general theory of collective entities, including the concrete wholes of mereology, classes-as-many, and many empirical collections. By extending Bolzano's ideas to embrace the three factors of kind, components and mode of combinatio…Read more
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21Whose Fault? The Origins and Evitability of the Analytic–Continental RiftInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 9 (3): 295-311. 2001.This is a broad survey of the chronology of the rift between continental and analytic philosophy, starting in 1899. Whereas at that time there was no discernible divide, as the twentieth century progresses we can see a gradual parting of the ways in which philosophy was done, culminating in a period of maximum separation in 1945-68, followed by some convergence. There is one substantial historical thesis proposed, and facts are adduced from the chronology to back it up: that the divide was never…Read more
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29Ontic Generation: Getting Everything from the BasicsIn Hieke Alexander & Leitgeb Hannes (eds.), Reduction, Abstraction, Analysis, Ontos Verlag. pp. 11--137. 2009.
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57Abstraction, Structure, and SubstitutionPolish Journal of Philosophy 1 (1): 81-100. 2007.λ-calculi are of interest to logicians and computer scientists but have largely escaped philosophical commentary, perhaps because they appear narrowly technical or uncontroversial or both. I argue that even within logic λ-expressions need to be understood correctly, as functors signifying functions in intension within a categorical or typed language. λ-expressions are not names but pure viable binders generating functors, and as such they are of use in giving explicit definitions. But λ is appli…Read more
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17Meinong's Theory of Sense and ReferenceGrazer Philosophische Studien 50 (1): 171-186. 1995.Gilbert Ryle wrote that "Meaning-theory expanded just when and just in so far as it was released from that 'Fido'-Fido box, the lid of which was never even lifted by Meinong". This paper sets out to relieve Ryle's oversimplification about Meinong and the role of meaning theory in his thought. One step away from canine simplicity about meaning is the recognition of a distinction between sense and reference, such as we find in Frege, Husserl, and the early Russell. In Über Möglichkeit und Wahrsche…Read more
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26The University of Warsaw has a splendid modern library with 60,000 m 2 of floor space. It resembles a shopping centre. The long and elegant modern building on ulica Dobra, on the low ground between the old University and the Vistula, was opened in 1998 replacing the previous hopelessly inadequate facilities. It has an imposing sequence of copper-green “great texts” on its front side in Greek, Arabic, Sanskrit, Hebrew, Latin, Polish, music, and mathematics. These are international symbols, posting…Read more
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90The Logic of LocationSynthese 150 (3): 443-458. 2006.I consider the idea of a propositional logic of location based on the following semantic framework, derived from ideas of Prior. We have a collection L of locations and a collection S of statements such that a statement may be evaluated for truth at each location. Typically one and the same statement may be true at one location and false at another. Given this semantic framework we may proceed in two ways: introducing names for locations, predicates for the relations among them and an “at” prepo…Read more
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