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168Metaphysical nihilism defended: Reply to Lowe and PaseauAnalysis 62 (2). 2002.I believe in metaphysical nihilism, the thesis that there could have been no concrete objects, because I believe in a version of the subtraction argument, the subtraction argument*, that proves it. But both Jonathan Lowe (2002) and Alexander Paseau (2002) express doubts about the subtraction argument*. Paseau thinks the argument is invalid, and Lowe argues that invoking concrete* objects is unnecessary. Furthermore Lowe attempts to rebut my objections (Rodriguez-Pereyra 2000) to his anti-nihilis…Read more
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927Truthmaker Maximalism defended againAnalysis 75 (1): 3-8. 2015.In this note we shall argue that Milne’s new effort does not refute Truthmaker Maximalism. According to Truthmaker Maximalism, every truth has a truthmaker. Milne has attempted to refute it using the following self-referential sentence M: This sentence has no truthmaker. Essential to his refutation is that M is like the Gödel sentence and unlike the Liar, and one way in which Milne supports this assimilation is through the claim that his proof is essentially object-level and not semantic. In Sec…Read more
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96Leibniz's argument for the Identity of Indiscernibles in Primary TruthsIn M. Carrara, A. M. Nunziante & G. Tomasi (eds.), Individuals, minds and bodies: themes from Leibniz, Franz Steiner Verlag. 2004.In this paper I reconstruct Leibniz's argument for the Identity of Indiscernibles in his *Primary Truths*. I criticise the alternative interpretation put forward by Cover and O'Leary-Hawthorne and defend my own interpretation, both on philosophical and hermeneutical grounds.
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3El hacer verdad, la implicación y la tesis de la conjunciónRevista Latinoamericana de Filosofia 33 (1): 55-85. 2007.
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518The Disjunction and Conjunction ThesesMind 118 (470): 427-443. 2009.This paper is a response to replies by Dan López de Sa and Mark Jago to my ‘Truthmaking, Entailment, and the Conjuction Thesis’. In that paper, my main aim was to argue against the Entailment Principle by arguing against the Conjunction Thesis, which is entailed by the Entailment Principle. In the course of so doing, although not essential for my project in that paper, I defended the Disjunction Thesis. López de Sa has objected both to my defence of the Disjunction Thesis and my case against the…Read more
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791The Subtraction Arguments for Metaphysical Nihilism: Compared and DefendedIn Tyron Goldschmidt (ed.), The Puzzle of Existence. Why is There Something rather than Nothing?, Routledge. pp. 197-214. 2013.The subtraction argument, originally put forward by Thomas Baldwin (1996), is intended to establish Metaphysical Nihilism, the thesis that there could have been no concrete objects. Some modified versions of the argument have been proposed in order to avoid some difficulties faced by the original argument. In this paper I shall concentrate on two of those versions, the so-called subtraction argument* (presented and defended in Rodriguez-Pereyra 1997, 2000, 2002), and Efird and Stoneham’s recent…Read more
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40Resemblance nominalism and abstract nounsAnalysis 75 (2): 223-231. 2015.This is a reply to Byeong-Uk Yi who argued that my _Resemblance Nominalism_ fails to account for sentences featuring abstract nouns like Carmine resembles vermillion more than it resembles French Blue and Scarlet is a colour. I accept his criticism of what I said in my book on Resemblance Nominalism about, but then I go on to show how can be accounted for. I reject his criticism of what I said in my book about. I also show how Resemblance Nominalism can account for other sentences featuring abst…Read more
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485Paradigms and Russell's Resemblance RegressAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 82 (4). 2004.Resemblance Nominalism is the view that denies universals and tropes and claims that what makes F-things F is their resemblances. A famous argument against Resemblance Nominalism is Russell's regress of resemblances, according to which the resemblance nominalist falls into a vicious infinite regress. Aristocratic Resemblance Nominalism, as opposed to Egalitarian Resemblance Nominalism, is the version of Resemblance Nominalism that claims that what makes F-things F is that they resemble the F-par…Read more
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1What is wrong with the relational theory of change?In Hallvard Lillehammer & Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra (eds.), Real Metaphysics, Routledge. pp. 184--195. 2003.
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127Leibniz's Principle of Identity of IndiscerniblesOxford University Press UK. 2014.Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra presents an original study of the place and role of the Identity of Indiscernibles in Leibniz's philosophy. The Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles rules out numerically distinct but perfectly similar things; Leibniz derived it from more basic principles and used it to establish important philosophical theses. Rodriguez-Pereyra aims to establish what Leibniz meant by the Principle of Identity of Indiscernibles, what his arguments for and from it were, and to ass…Read more
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135Indiscernible universalsInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 60 (6): 604-624. 2017.Universals have traditionally thought to obey the identity of indiscernibles, that is, it has traditionally been thought that there can be no perfectly similar universals. But at least in the conception of universals as immanent, there is nothing that rules out there being indiscernible universals. In this paper, I shall argue that there is useful work indiscernible universals can do, and so there might be reason to postulate indiscernible universals. In particular, I shall argue that postulatin…Read more
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259La anotación 202 de las Investigaciones Filosóficas de WittgensteinLogos. Anales Del Seminario de Metafísica [Universidad Complutense de Madrid, España] 27 (2): 25-3. 1993.The paper clarifies the sense of remark 202 of Wittgenstein's *Philosophical Investigations* with respect to its relation to the private language argument. It argues, against what some have maintained, that remark 202 is not meant to reject the possibility of a private language as this is defined in remark 243.
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98The argument from almost indiscerniblesPhilosophical Studies 174 (12): 3005-3020. 2017.What I call the argument from almost indiscernibles is an argument, put forward by Robert Adams in 1979, for the possibility of indiscernibles based on the possibility of almost indiscernibles. The argument is that if almost indiscernibles are possible, indiscernibles are possible, but since almost indiscernible are possible, indiscernibles are possible. The argument seems to be an improvement over the mere appeal to intuitions, like that suggested by Max Black, that situations in which there ar…Read more
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872Resemblance Nominalism and Russell's regressAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 79 (3). 2001.Bertrand Russell argued that any attempt to get rid of universals in favor of resemblances fails. He argued that no resemblance theory could avoid postulating a universal of resemblance without falling prey to a vicious infinite regress. He added that admitting such a universal of resemblance made it pointless to avoid other universals. In this paper I defend resemblance nominalism from both of Russell's points by arguing that (a) resemblance nominalism can avoid the postulation of a universal o…Read more
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117The Problem of Universals and the Limits of Conceptual AnalysisPhilosophical Papers 31 (1): 39-47. 2002.In this paper I argue, contra Fraser MacBride, that conceptual analysis, and in particular the distinction between numerical and qualitative identity, can solve the Problem of Universals, whether understood as the One over Many or the as the Many over One. In this paper I show why the solutions needed to solve either version of the problem must be in terms of truthmakers, and that the distinction between numerical and qualitative identity is not sufficient to solve them.
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592Leibniz’s Argument for the Identity of Indiscernibles in his Letter to CasatiThe Leibniz Review 22 137-150. 2012.Leibniz’s short letter to the mathematician and physicist Ludovico Casati of 1689 is a short but interesting text on the Principle of Identity of Indiscernibles, to which it is entirely dedicated. Since there is no watermark in the paper of the letter, the letter is difficult to date, but it is likely that it was written during Leibniz’s stay in Rome, sometime between April and November of 1689 (A 2 2 287–8). When addressing the letter, Leibniz wrote ‘Casani’, but this seems to be a mistake and …Read more
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261El problema metafísico de la verdadRevista Latinoamericana de Filosofia 26 (2): 351-59. 2000.In this paper I present what I call the 'Metaphysical Problem of Truth', which consists in explaining in virtue of what all true sentences are true, and argue that a version of the Correspondence Theory of Truth is the most plausible solution to this problem.
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186Truthmaking, entailment, and the conjunction thesisMind 115 (460): 957-982. 2006.In this paper I undermine the Entailment Principle according to which if an entity is a truthmaker for a certain proposition and this proposition entails another, then the entity in question is a truthmaker for the latter proposition. I argue that the two most promising versions of the principle entail the popular but false Conjunction Thesis, namely that a truthmaker for a conjunction is a truthmaker for its conjuncts. One promising version of the principle understands entailment as strict impl…Read more
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2931The Bundle Theory is compatible with distinct but indiscernible particularsAnalysis 64 (1): 72-81. 2004.1. The Bundle Theory I shall discuss is a theory about the nature of substances or concrete particulars, like apples, chairs, atoms, stars and people. The point of the Bundle Theory is to avoid undesirable entities like substrata that allegedly constitute particulars. The version of the Bundle Theory I shall discuss takes particulars to be entirely constituted by the universals they instantiate.' Thus particulars are said to be just bundles of universals. Together with the claim that it is neces…Read more
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599Postscript to Why TruthmakersIn E. J. Lowe & A. Rami (eds.), Truth and Truth-making, Acumen Publishing. 2008.In this chapter I shall reply to a pair of articles in which the main contention of my “Why truthmakers” – namely, that an important class of synthetic true propositions have entities as truth-makers – is rejected. In §§1–5 I reply to Jennifer Hornsby’s “Truth without Truthmaking Entities” (2005) and in §§6–7 I reply to Julian Dodd’s “Negative Truths and Truthmaker Principles” (2007).
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990Why Truthmakers?In Helen Beebee & Julian Dodd (eds.), Truthmakers: the contemporary debate, Oxford University Press. pp. 17-31. 2005.Consider a certain red rose. The proposition that the rose is red is true because the rose is red. One might say as well that the proposition that the rose is red is made true by the rose’s being red. This, it has been thought, does not commit one to a truthmaker of the proposition that the rose is red. For there is no entity that makes the proposition true. What makes it true is how the rose is, and how the rose is is not an entity over and above the rose. It is against this view that I shall …Read more
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614Mellor's facts and chances of causationAnalysis 58 (3). 1998.Mellor´s theory of causation has two components, one according to which causes raise their effects´ chances, and one according to which causation links facts. I argue that these two components are not independent from each other and, in particular, that Mellor´s thesis that causation links facts requires his thesis that causes raise their effects´ chances, since without the latter thesis Mellor cannot stop the slingshot argument, an argument that is a threat to any theory postulating facts as th…Read more
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154Lowe's argument against nihilismAnalysis 60 (4): 335-340. 2000.By nihilism I shall understand the thesis that it is metaphysically possible that there are no concrete objects. I think there is a version of an argu- ment, the subtraction argument, which proves nihilism nicely (see Baldwin 1996 and Rodriguez-Pereyra 1997). But E. J. Lowe, who is no nihilist, has a very interesting argument purporting to show that concrete objects exist necessarily (Lowe 1996, 1998). In this paper I shall defend nihilism from Lowe’s argument.
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |