Gideon Rosen

This paper defends the idea that there might be vagueness or indeterminacy in the world itself--as opposed to merely in our representations of the world--against the charges of incoherence and unintelligibility. First we consider the idea that the world might contain vague properties and relations ; we show that this idea is already implied by certain well-understood views concerning the semantics of vague predicates (most notably the fuzzy view). Next we consider the idea that the world might contain vague objects ; we argue that an object is indeterminate in a certain respect (colour, size, etc.) just in case it is a borderline case of a maximally specific colour (size, etc.) property. Finally we consider the idea that the world as a whole might be indeterminate; we argue that the world is indeterminate just in case it lacks a determinate division into determinate objects.

Alan Weir: Quine's Naturalism: Starting with the distinction between epistemological and ontological naturalism, this chapter focuses most on Quine's epistemological naturalism, not the ontological anti‐naturalism he thought it leads to. It is argued that naturalized epistemology is not central to Quine's epistemology. Quine's key epistemological principle is: follow the methods of science, and only those. Can Quine demarcate scientific methods from non‐scientific ones? The problems which have been raised here, for example in the case of mathematics, are considered. A main theme is the relationship between Quine's naturalism and reductionist forms of “scientistic” naturalism. Quine is generally taken to be an anti‐reductionist, unsurprisingly given his explicit anti‐reductionist pronouncements from “Two Dogmas” onward. It is argued that the situation is more complex than this and that key Quinean arguments are driven by a positivistic reductionism he never entirely broke free from.

This paper defends the idea that there might be vagueness or indeterminacy in the world itself---as opposed to merely in our representations of the world---against the charges of incoherence and unintelligibility. First we consider the idea that the world might contain vague *properties and relations*; we show that this idea is already implied by certain well-understood views concerning the semantics of vague predicates (most notably the fuzzy view). Next we consider the idea that the world might contain vague *objects*; we argue that an object is indeterminate in a certain respect (colour, size, etc.) just in case it is a borderline case of a maximally specific colour (size, etc.) property. Finally we consider the idea that the *world as a whole* might be indeterminate; we argue that the world is indeterminate just in case it lacks a determinate division into determinate objects.

This chapter explores bridge-law non-naturalism: the view that when a particular thing possesses a moral property or stands in a moral relation, this fact is metaphysically grounded in non-normative features of the thing in question together with a general moral law. Any view of this sort faces two challenges, analogous to familiar challenges in the philosophy of science: to specify the form of the explanatory laws, and to say when a fact of that form qualifies as a law. The chapter explores three strategies for answering these questions, all of which maintain that a moral law is a true generalization of the form [It is normatively necessary that whatever ϕ‎s is F].

ABSTRACT Bennett argues that the various building relations are all directed, necessitating and generative. This note provides interpretations of these conditions different from Bennett’s. According to Bennett, the full builders for an entity must necessitate its existence alone or in conjunction with other items that are not builders. I suggest that the full builders must necessitate the built item outright. According to Bennett, building is generative only in the sense that when the xx build y we are thereby “licensed” to say that y exists/obtains because the xx exist/obtain. I suggest that the building relations are unified by the fact that when the xx build y, the xx together metaphysically ground y. This entails, contra Bennett, that causation is not a building relation.

ABSTRACTThe paper explores Stephen Yablo's suggestion that ‘If-Thenism’ in the philosophy of mathematics is best formulated as the thesis that the real content of a mathematical claim C is the result of subtracting the potentially problematic metaphysical commitments of mathematics from C [Yablo 2017]. Yablo's proposal assumes that some propositions make others true. The present discussion assumes that propositions are coarse-grained sets of possible worlds and asks what Yablo's proposal looks like on that assumption. The conclusion is that the adequacy of the proposal turns on hard-to-settle questions about the truthmakers for propositions expressed by material conditionals.

The thesis defends the legitimacy of a 'platonistic' metaphysic, according to which there exist non-spatiotemporal 'abstract' objects, against a series of recent nominalist challenges. After distinguishing the nominalism I intend to discuss from a range of distinct views with which it has been historically confused, I take up the core of the nominalist's challenge: the suggestion that abstract objects, if there were such things, would be incapable of causal interaction with us and our surroundings, and hence unknowable. I suggest that every attempt to make this line of thought precise is either internally incoherent or depends upon an implausible conception of rational opinion. There is no a priori case for nominalism grounded in the theory of knowledge. I then take up Hartry Field's case for nominalism, which I take to be grounded in a broadly Quinean conception of philosophical and scientific methodology. And once again it is suggested that there is no way to develop the case in detail against the background of an independently plausible normative epistemology. Finally I take up one strand in the positive case for platonism: the 'Fregean' view that the existence of abstract objects is an analytic consequence of certain independently unproblematic states of affairs. I offer a reconstruction of certain arguments due to Crispin Wright, and tentatively endorse one development of this line of thought. If this is right, nominalism is not simply undermotivated: it is an essentially unstable account of what there is

Van Fraassen defines constructive empiricism as the view that science aims to produce empirically adequate theories. But this account has been misunderstood. Constructive empiricism in not, as it seems, a description of the intentional features of scientific practice, nor is it a normative prescription for their revision. It is rather a fiction about the practice of science that van Fraassen displays in the interests of a broader empiricism. The paper concludes with a series of arguments designed to show that constructive empiricism so understood is self-undermining

In Being Realistic About Reasons T. M. Scanlon argues that particular fact about reasons are explained by contingent non-normative facts together with pure normative principles. A question then arises about the modal status of these pure principles. Scanlon maintains that they are necessary in a sense, and suggests that they are ‘metaphysically’ necessary. I argue that the best view for Scanlon to take, given his other commitments, is that these pure normative principles are metaphysically contingent in some cases and necessary only in a weaker sense.

We know a great deal about what is possible, so modal knowledge must be possible, not just in principle but by ordinary methods. Christopher Peacocke’s leading thought in Chapter 4 of Being Known is that this fact places significant constraints on philosophical treatments of modality. Modal realism is ruled out on the ground that it renders modal truth “radically inaccessible”, and actualism is forced upon us. It goes without saying that any account of the modal facts must eventually dovetail with some account of how we know them. But Peacocke’s approach is animated by the thought that there is a mystery about modal knowledge—a transposed version of Benacerraf’s puzzle about mathematical knowledge under Platonism. Peacocke clearly believes that modal realism renders the problem intractable. But what exactly is the mystery in the modal case? And why exactly does modal realism preclude a solution? Peacocke himself does not say. The ‘access problem’ for modal realism is clearly decisive for him; but it is very much in the background. Nonetheless, for several reasons, it will help to start here.