Adrián Solís-Peña

Artifacts are mind-dependent objects; they exist by virtue of the intentional activity of their makers, at least according to what philosophers usually defend. Some philosophers consider artifacts to be causally and essentially dependent on the intentions of their original makers—a position that we will call Artifacts’ Intention-Essentialism. Although this position is very attractive, it suffers from various problems. This paper focuses on a discussion of two of those problems: the possibility of creating negative, and queer objects. The first criticism was originally raised by Evnine (2016) against Thomasson’s view, but our aim is to defend this criticism for all Artifacts’ Intention-Essentialism views, including Evnine’s. The second problem is a new issue regarding how easy it would be to create queer kinds of artifacts if we accept Artifacts’ Intention-Essentialism.

Religious fictionalism is a sort of view that pretends to maintain the moral and intellectual legitimate of religious utterances without being necessary to believe in them. Although it explains the different religious domains through a fictionalist approach, including the nature of God or religious experience, in this paper we will discuss an ontological challenge that should matter to religious fictionalist: religious artifacts. First, we will introduce the religious fictionalism. Next, we will introduce the new ontological challenge of religious artifacts, inspired by the growing literature on the ontology of artifacts. Finally, we will offer a possible response from religious fictionalism to this ontological challenge.

The debate on the nature of the artefacts is very important for contemporary metaphysicians. In this paper we will discuss the standard position in the debate, what we will call it Artifacts’ Intention-Essentialism – such as Baker, Evnine or Thomasson –, that considers the essence of artifacts in terms of intentions of the makers. The aim will be to introduce a new criticism to this proposal based on the undesirable metaphysical and moral consequences that this proposal involve. To do this, in the first section an important notion into the feminist metaphysics, and we will be inspired into this in order to introduce a new important notion for our debate: the artifactification. Nextly, we will explain the debate on the nature of artifacts and the Artifacts’ Intention-Essentialism. Consequently, we will introduce two different scenarios based on the artifactification’s notion that it will show problems for Artifacts’ Intention-Essentialism because they show how easily would be produce artifacts using persons as their matter, that involve undesirable consequences.

Recently mereological hylomorphism, the theory in which form and matter are considered to be proper parts of objects, has become very important among contemporary metaphysicians. The present work aims to analyse and dismantle Bennett’s criticism regarding the existence of formal proper parts. To do this, I will start by presenting Koslicki’s mereological hylomorphism. Next, I will focus on Bennett’s critique which seeks to deny the existence of formal proper parts. Finally, I will analyse critically the Bennett’s criticism focusing on the scenario of lump of clay and statue. I will show Bennett’s proposal is not explanatorily better than Koslicki’s hylomorphism because she needs to accept a counter-intuitive thesis. Therefore, we should prefer Koslicki’s mereological hylomorphism.

En aquest article pretenc fer una crítica al nihilisme mereològic, al·ludint que les expressions «simples agrupats en-tant-que-F» tenen unes conseqüències desastroses per als seus compromisos ontològics. Primer, explicaré què és el nihilisme mereològic -que és part de l’eliminativisme- el qual pretén negar l’existència dels objectes compostos (objectes amb parts pròpies) i l’estratègia de la paràfrasi: l’ús que fan de les expressions «simples agrupats en-tant-que-F» per referir-se als objectes ordinaris sense comprometre’s amb l’existència d’objectes compostos, però posaré l’èmfasi en aquells nihilistes mereològics que pretenen explicar l’existència de les propietats emergents. Seguidament, presentaré una classe de crítiques, les de Bennett i Tallant, sobre l’ús d’aquesta estratègia per part dels nihilistes, i quina és la resposta crítica que ofereix Brenner sobre aquesta classe de crítica. Finalment, presentaré la meva crítica on mostraré que el nihilisme mereològic utilitzant l’estratègia de la paràfrasi s’està comprometent amb l’existència d’objectes compostos i que la crítica de Brenner no funciona amb la meva postura. In this paper I intend to critique mereological nihilism, alluding that the expression «simples arranged F-wise» has disastrous consequences for its ontological commitments. First, I will explain what mereological nihilism is -which is part of Eliminativism- which tries to deny the existence of composite objects (objects with proper parts) and the Paraphrase Strategy: the use they make of the expression «simples arranged F-wise» to refer to ordinary objects without committing to the existence of composite objects, and I put the focus on the mereological nihilist that pretends to explain the existence of emergent properties. Second, I will present a kind of criticism, by Bennett and Tallant, of the use of this strategy by nihilism and which is the response of Brenner about this kind of criticism. Finally, I will present my criticism where I will show that nihilism by using the Paraphrase Strategy is committing itself to the existence of composite objects and that the Brenner’s critique does not work with my position.

Actualment en Filosofia, tenim dues caracteritzacions canóniques sobre la naturalesa de la Metafísica, la carnapiana i la quineana, tot i que són dues tesis diferenciades, ambdues coincideixen en que la Metafísica és reduïda a qüestions d'existència. No obstant, Kathrin Koslicki considera que aquestes caracteritzacions de la naturalesa de la Metafísica són errònies i que comporten una crítica explícita a la Metafísica o redueixen la resolució dels problemes metafísics a un pragmatisme. Per això, Koslicki considerant que els desacords metafísics són legítims i profunds, tenint com a marc de referència la filosofia aristotèlica, considera que la tesi quineana i carnapiana no reflecteixen bé la naturalesa de la Metafísica, ja que, hi ha disputes metafísiques que es deuen a disputes no-existencials sobre temes de fonamentabilitat. Koslicki considera que la Metafísica no pot ésser reduïda a qüestions d'existència, sinó que ha de ser pensada com la reflexió de quines entitats són fonamentals, i quines són derivades d'aquestes. L'article està dividit en una primera part introductòria sobre els meus objectius, seguit d'una breu exposició de les tesis carnapiana i quineana de la metafísica, i per últim l'exposició de la proposta neo-aristotèlica de Koslicki.