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30Indeterminist Free WillPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 70 (3): 681-690. 2007.The aim of the paper is to prove the consistency of libertarianism. We examine the example of Jane, who deliberates at length over whether to vacation in Colorado (C) or Hawaii (H), weighing the costs and benefits, consulting travel brochures, etc. Underlying phenomenological deliberation is an indeterministic neural process in which nonactual motor neural states n(C) and n(H) corresponding to alternatives C and H remain physically possible up until the moment of decision. The neurophysiological…Read more
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2863D/4D equivalence, the twins paradox and absolute timeAnalysis 63 (2). 2002.The thesis of 3D/4D equivalence states that every three-dimensional description of the world is translatable without remainder into a four-dimensional description, and vice versa. In representing an object in 3D or in 4D terms we are giving alternative descriptions of one and the same thing, and debates over whether the ontology of the physical world is "really" 3D or 4D are pointless. The twins paradox is shown to rest, in relativistic 4D geometry, on a reversed law of triangle inequality. But …Read more
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275What are we? A study in personal ontology • by Eric T. OlsonAnalysis 69 (2): 388-390. 2009.In the Second Meditation, Descartes famously asks at one point, ‘But what then am I?’ – to which his immediate answer is ‘A thing that thinks.’ It is this question, or rather the plural version of it, that Eric Olson examines in this excellent book. He thinks that it is – today, at least – a rather neglected question. He points out that it is wrong to confuse the question with the much more frequently examined question of what personal identity consists in. In fact, he thinks that possible answe…Read more
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22Objects and criteria of identityIn R. Hole & C. Wright (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Language, Blackwell. 1997.'Object' and 'criterion of identity' are philosophical terms of art whose application lies at a considerable theoretical remove from the surface phenomena of everyday linguistic usage. This partly explains their highly controversial status, for their point of application lies precisely where the concerns of linguists and philosophers of language merge with those of metaphysicians. This chapter explains the possession of determinate identity‐conditions. It argues that the distinction between 'abs…Read more
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325Material coincidence and the cinematographic fallacy: A response to OlsonPhilosophical Quarterly 52 (208): 369-372. 2002.Eric T. Olson has argued that those who hold that two material objects can exactly coincide at a moment of time, with one of these objects constituting the other, face an insuperable difficulty in accounting for the alleged differences between the objects, such as their being of different kinds and possessing different persistence-conditions. The differences, he suggests, are inexplicable, given that the objects in question are composed of the same particles related in precisely the same way. In…Read more
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138Entity, identity and unityErkenntnis 48 (2-3): 191-208. 1998.I propose a fourfold categorisation of entities according to whether or not they possess determinate identity-conditions and whether or not they are determinately countable. Some entities – which I call ‘individual objects’ – have both determinate identity and determinate countability: for example, persons and animals. In the case of entities of a kind K belonging to this category, we are in principle always entitled to expect there to be determinate answers to such questions as ‘Is x the same K…Read more
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230Problem of the Many and the Vagueness of ConstitutionAnalysis 55 (3): 179-182. 1995.E. J. Lowe; The problem of the many and the vagueness of constitution, Analysis, Volume 55, Issue 3, 1 July 1995, Pages 179–182, https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/
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6Identity, composition, and the simplicity of the selfIn Kevin Corcoran (ed.), Soul, body, and survival: essays on the metaphysics of human persons, Cornell University Press. 2001.
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6The Determinists Have Run Out of Luck---For a Good ReasonPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 77 (3): 745-748. 2008.
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286The definition of enduranceAnalysis 69 (2): 277-280. 2009.David Lewis, following in the tradition of Broad, Quine and Goodman, says that change in an object X consists in X's being temporally extended and having qualitatively different temporal parts. Analogously, change in a spatially extended object such as a road consists in its having different spatial parts . The alternative to this view is that ordinary objects undergo temporal change in virtue of having different intrinsic non-relational properties at different times. They endure, remaining the …Read more
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115Substantial change and spatiotemporal coincidenceRatio 16 (2). 2003.Substantial change occurs when a persisting object of some kind either begins or ceases to exist. Typically, this happens when one or more persisting objects of another kind or kinds are subjected to appropriate varieties of qualitative or relational change, as when the particles composing a lump of bronze are rearranged so as to create a statue. However, such transformations also seem to result, very often, in cases of spatiotemporal coincidence, in which two numerically distinct objects of dif…Read more
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837Ontological DependenceStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2020.Ontological dependence is a relation—or, more accurately, a family of relations—between entities or beings. For there are various ways in which one being may be said to depend upon one or more other beings, in a sense of “depend” that is distinctly metaphysical in character and that may be contrasted, thus, with various causal senses of this word. More specifically, a being may be said to depend, in such a sense, upon one or more other beings for its existence or for its identity. Some varieties…Read more
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3Book Reviews (review)History and Philosophy of Logic 15 (2): 237-263. 1994.Patrick Grim, The incomplete universe:totality, knowledge, and truth. Cambridge, Mass, and London: The MIT Press, 1991. xiv + 165pp. £22.50 Jan SebestikLogique et mathématique chez Bernard Bolzano. Paris:Vrin, 1992. 522 pp. 198Fr J. De Lorenzo, Kant y la matemâtica. El uso constructivo de la razön pura Madrid:Editorial Tecnos, 1992. 180 pp. No price stated F. Coniglione, R. Poli And J. Woleintski, Polish scientific philosophy:The Lvov-Warsaw school. Amsterdam and Atlanta, Georgia: Rodopi, 1993. …Read more
Ethan Lowe
California Baptist University