Josh Parsons

(1973 - 2017)

The debate between A-theory and B-theory in the philosophy of time is a persistent one. It is not always clear, however, what the terms of this debate are. A-theorists are often lumped with a miscellaneous collection of heterodox doctrines: the view that only the present exists, that time flows relentlessly, or that presentness is a property (Williams 1996); that time passes, tense is unanalysable, or that earlier than and later than are defined in terms of pastness, presentness, and futurity (Bigelow 1991); or that events or facts (as opposed to language) are “tensed” (Mellor 1993). B-theorists then argue that the A-theory is incoherent, using variants on J.M.E. McTaggart’s argument for the unreality of time (McTaggart 1927, ch. 33).

In his two recent books on ontology, Universals: an Opinionated Introduction, and A World of States of Affairs, David Armstrong gives a new argument against nominalism. That argument seems, on the face of it, to be similar to another argument that he used much earlier against Rylean behaviourism: the Truthmaker Argument, stemming from a certain plausible premise, the Truthmaker Principle. Other authors have traced the history of the truthmaker principle, its appearance in the work of Aristotle [10], Bradley [16], and even Husserl [15]. But that is not my task — in this paper I argue that Armstrong’s new argument is not logically analogous to the old, and, in particular, that it is quite possible to be a thoroughgoing nominalist, and hold a truthmaker principle

Paper begins: Chapter 4 of Hud Hudson’s stimulating book The metaphysics of hyperspace contains an discussion of the notion of location in a container spacetime. Hudson uses this idea to define a number of what we might call modes of extension or ways of being extended. A pertended object is what most people think of as a typical extended object — it is made up of spatial parts, one part for each region the object pervades. An entended object is an extended simple (or a complex object made up of extended simples). Elsewhere, I’ve argued that entended objects are conceptually possible; that nothing about the concept of “extended” rules out entention. (More about how this argument works below). Hudson thinks that I did not go far enough. Besides pertended and entended objects, he also sees conceptual room for what he calls spanners and multiply located objects. These last two ways of being extended are even more exotic than extended simples. ….

If the former is the case, let us say that anti-reductionism about relational facts is true; if the latter, that reductionism about relational facts is true. Let us say that a fact is relational if it makes true some relational proposition (a proposition that asserts that a relation holds between some objects1), that it is irreducibly relational if, in addition, it does not make true any nonrelational propositions, and that it is monadic if it is not irreducibly relational (if it makes true some proposition that does not assert that a relation holds between some objects).

The problem of imperative consequence consists in the fact that theses (i) through (iii) are inconsistent; but yet all three are attractive (for the reasons sketched above). A solution to the problem consists in the denial of one of the three theses; I describe solutions as belonging to type 1, type 2, or type 3, depending on which thesis they deny. For the purposes of this paper, I would like to focus on a certain variety of type 3 solution – a solution that offers a revised criterion of validity of a particular kind

This book is a survey, fortified by original material, of metaphysical theories of modality set in terms of possible worlds. Those theories include what Divers calls “genuine realism”, or “GR” — this is David Lewis’s “genuine modal realism” — and what Divers calls “actualist realism”, or “AR” — this seems to be the same as what Lewis called “ersatz modal realism”, which has also become widely know as “ersatzism”. Two important kinds of theory are not included: those that treat modality by means not involving possible worlds at all (for example, modalism, various kind of non-cognitivism, and Quinean eliminativism about modality); and those that, while treating modality by talking about possible worlds, go on to deny that there are any possible worlds in one way or another (for example, Rosen’s fictionalism, and Divers’ own agnosticism about possible worlds). These get a short discussion towards the end of the introductory part of the book (sections 2.4–2.6), and Divers is planning to write a companion volume covering them.

It’s now commonplace — since Korsgaard (1996) — in ethical theory to distinguish between two distinctions: on the one hand, the distinction between value an object has in virtue of its intrinsic properties vs. the value it has in virtue of all its properties, intrinsic or extrinsic; and on the other hand, the distinction between the value has an object as an end, vs. the value it has as a means to something else. I’ll call the former distinction the distinction between intrinsic and nonintrinsic value; the latter is between value as-an-end and instrumental value.

Here is a puzzle from the Stoic, Chrysippus: There was once a man called Dion, who was unfortunate enough to have his foot annihilated. Thereafter, he was known as Theon. Theon is identical to what was left over after Dion’s foot was removed. That is, Theon is that part of Dion that does not include his foot. If all this is true, then Theon is a proper part of Dion. That is, he is a part of Dion, but not identical to Dion. But if that’s right, then, surprisingly, Dion didn’t survive the loss of his foot.

This seems to me to be a metaphysically significant feature of CEM. If CEM is correct — if all its theorems are true, then metaphysicians have a choice to make in how we understand the mereological nature of the world. We may think of the mereological relation either as a relation of part to whole, or as a relation of overlap; for if we give a metaphysical theory about one, we thereby give a metaphysical theory about the other. We may choose which we think of as more metaphysically fundamental, for the they are interdefinable. However, if CEM is not correct, then perhaps we do not have this choice. Perhaps part-whole cannot be defined in terms of overlap; in which case we must choose part-whole as the metaphysical fundamental mereological relation (if any relation is)