Philosophy and History of Ideas

In this paper I investigate the thought experiment of “The Ship of Theseus” in an attempt to compose an alternative theory, within the debate of persistence, which is capable of accounting for object identity. This I do by first using the unique bundle theory of universals to show how the problem presented by the thought experiment is in fact no problem at all, according to an analysis of the object’s content. However, according to our common sense, these problems persist and are unexplainable by the dominant theories of continuity of form and identity of original parts. After showing how the two theories are unsuccessful in explaining the problem, and only serve to bring more problems into the debate, I introduce the notion of an object’s role as grounding our common sense notion of identity. After clarifying the notion of a role as the strictly dependent continuing potential functions of an object I show how this new role-theory is capable of solving the problem introduced by the original thought experiment and also the mentioned problems introduced by the continuity of form and identity of original parts theories. In conclusion I show how the role-theory is capable of avoiding the problem of an object’s “history” that no other theory can explain.

According to the standard view of particularity, an entity is a particular just in case it necessarily has a unique spatial location at any time of its existence. That the basic entities of the world we speak about in common sense and science are particular entities in this sense is the thesis of “foundational particularism,” a theoretical intuition that has guided Western ontological research from its beginnings to the present day. The main aim of this paper is to review the notion of particularity and its role in ontology. I proceed in four steps. First, I offer a brief reconstruction of the tasks of ontology as “theory of categorial inference in L”. An ontological theory states which (combinations of) entity types or categories make true L-sentences true; the features of the stipulated categories explain why L-speakers are entitled to draw certain material inferences from the classificatory expressions of L. Second, I draw attention to the fact that since Aristotle this theoretical program typically has been implemented with peculiar restrictions prescribing certain combinations of category features, e.g., the combination of particularity, concreteness, individuality, and subjecthood. I briefly sketch how these restrictions of the “substance paradigm” or “myth of substance” are reinforced by the standard readings of predicate-logical constants, viz. the existential quantifier and the identity sign. Third, I argue that in the context of the substance paradigm foundational particularism is incoherent. I discuss the current standard conceptions of particulars as developed in the debate about individuation (bare particulars, nude particulars, tropes) and show that their main difficulties derive from the traditional restriction that particulars are so also logical subjects and/or individuals. Fourth, to show that the traditional linkages of category features are not conceptual necessities, I sketch the outlines of an ontology (General Process Theory) based on non-particular individuals. For ontologists in computer science working with description logic this monocategoreal ontology based on more or less generic ‘dynamics’ may hold special interest. As General Process Theory documents, ontologists may well abandon the notion of particularity: in common sense and science we do reason about items that have a unique spatial location at any time, but the uniqueness of their location can be taken to be a contingent affair.

General Process Theory (GPT) is a new (non-Whiteheadian) process ontology. According to GPT the domains of scientific inquiry and everyday practice consist of configurations of ‘goings-on’ or ‘dynamics’ that can be technically defined as concrete, dynamic, non-particular individuals called general processes. The paper offers a brief introduction to GPT in order to provide ontological foundations for research programs such as interactivism that centrally rely on the notions of ‘process,’ ‘interaction,’ and ‘emergence.’ I begin with an analysis of our common sense concept of activities, which plays a crucial heuristic role in the development of the notion of a general process. General processes are not individuated in terms of their location but in terms of ‘what they do,’ i.e. in terms of their dynamic relationships in the basic sense of one process being part of another. The formal framework of GPT is thus an extensional mereology, albeit a non-classical theory with a non-transitive part-relation. After a brief sketch of basic notions and strategies of the GPT-framework I show how the latter may be applied to distinguish between causal, mechanistic, functional, self-maintaining, and recursively self-maintaining interactions, all of which involve ‘emergent phenomena’ in various senses of the term.

The paper traces, historically and systematically, the influence of Carnap’s philosophical program on the writings of Nelson Goodman, focusing on the relationship between Carnap’s Aufbau and Goodman’s Structure of Appearance. In particular, drawing on unpublished material from the Carnap Research Archives, I show that Carnap had already anticipated Goodman’s criticism of the method of quasi-analysis and that Goodman misconstrued the status of this procedure on several counts. I also argue that Carnap’s anti-metaphysical stance left his approach with an explanatory deficit which Goodman’s pragmatist pluralism is able to address.

Der Beitrag stellt Überlegungen zur Rekonstruktion der Methodologie der zeitgenössischen analytischen Ontologie vor.  Abschnitte 1 und 2 bestimmen Daten, Aufgabe und Aussagebereich ontologischer Theorien:  Ontologische Theorien sind metaphysisch neutrale Strukturbeschreibungen des Denotationsbereichs eines Begriffssystems im Sellars’schen Sinne, d.h.,  eines Systems .L. von sprachlichen Rollen.  Eine Ontologie erstellt eine Strukturbeschreibung (ein Modell) der Wahrmacher von .L. –Sätzen, die erklären soll,  weshalb die in .L.  erlaubten kategorialen Folgerungsmuster bestehen.  Anders als semantische Modelltheorien erheben Ontologien einen an .L.-Sprecher addressierten Erklärungsanspruch, der die “Fundierung” ontologischer Basisbegriffe erforderlich macht.  Abschnitt 3 beschäftigt sich näher mit den Grundelementen einer ontologischen Strukturbeschreibung.  Ich stelle kurz ein Verfahren zur Gewinnung neuer Kategorien vor (Kategorieninduktion) und unterscheide drei Formen der Rekategorisierung (ontologische ‘Reduktion’).  Dabei—dies versuche ich mithilfe der Sellars’schen Mehrstufen-Rekategorisierung von qualia zu illustrieren—spielt das Verhältnis zwischen Kategorie und ‘Modell’ (hier im Sinne des naturwissenschaftlichen Modells) der Kategorie eine zentrale Rolle, die bisher kaum Beachtung gefunden hat.

It is a common presupposition in ontology (metaphysics) that a so-called 'principle of individuation' amounts to a principle of counting. Against this presupposition I argue that the predicates 'x is the same individual as y' and 'x is one with y' are neither co-extensional nor co-intensional. Non-countable entities such as masses or stuffs (or the referents of nouns in classifier languages) also fulfill the requirements of individuality. I suggest that Leibniz' 'principle of the identity of indiscernibles' (PII) should be taken as a principle of individuality, rather than as a principle of the individuality of countables.

There is a well-known tension within Sellars' scheme arising from commitments to both an anti-foundationalist epistemology and a Peircean scientific realism. This tension surfaces conspicuously in his treatment of ontological category theory. On the one hand, Sellars applies and extends Carnap's metalinguistic deflation of ontology. On the other hand, however, Sellars is not prepared to 'go conventionalist' but upholds the possibility of a "positive ontology" (Rosenberg). I offer a new reading of Sellars’ Carus Lectures in which I combine two projects. First, I argue that Sellars provides us here with the sketch of a method of ‘category projection’ which can be used, within the setting of Sellars' scheme, to 'transcend from within' the limitations of category theories developed in non-Peircean conceptual structures and to enable us non-Peirceans to make any justifiable descriptive claims about the structure of reality. In the course of doing so I also offer a new reading of Sellars' Carus Lectures, highlighting the systematic advantages that motivated Sellars to view a process ontological interpretation of sensation.

The paper presents in outline a program of ontological revision, arguing both a methodological thesis in favour of a pluralist-constructional conception of ontology, and a substantive thesis in favour of a process ontology. Working from case studies in the contemporary debate about numerical, qualitative, and transtemporal identity, I identify six deep-seated substance-ontological presuppositions. Using the negations of these presuppositions as constructional heuristics I sketch the outline of a new ontological scheme based on processes or “dynamic masses.” As I try to show in the paper’s last section, the theory of dynamic masses offers new and promising routes to undercut the characteristic dichotomies in the debate about individuation, universals, and persistence.

Parfit’s Branch Line argument is intended to show that the relation of survival is possibly a one-many relation and thus different from numerical identity. I offer a detailed reconstruction of Parfit’s notions of survival and personal identity, and show the argument cannot be coherently formulated within Parfit’s own setting. More specifically, I argue that Parfit’s own specifications imply that the “R-relation”, i.e., the relation claimed to capture of “what matters in survival,” turns out to hold not only along but also across the branches representing the development of a reduplicated person. This curious fact of ‘interbranch survival,’ as I call it, has gone unnoticed so far. The fact that the R-relation also holds across branches creates a trilemma for Parfit’s approach. Either the envisaged notion of personal identity is circular, or the R-relation fails as a reconstruction of the common sense notion of survival, or talk about persons ‘branching’ (being reduplicated etc.) remains semantically empty. In the paper’s last section I suggest that my criticism does not detract from the larger systematic significance of Parfit’s argument. The argument is simply terminologically miscalibrated. Even though Parfit’s branch line argument fails to establish the conceptual separability of survival and identity, it can be used to show the separability of sameness and numerical identity, which should have similar implications for meta-ethics as the original argument.

Carnap’s thought not only played a pivotal role for the development of formal semantics and modern philosophy of science, but also engendered the profound methodological reorientation that distinguishes analytical from traditional ontology.  Set out in the Aufbau and  modified in Syntax, Carnap presented a deflationary approach to  traditional category theory, arguing that the latter can be considered as a derivational systematization of cognitive contents which may remain metaphysically "neutral."  Carnap's 'neutralism thesis' is taken to imply the stronger 'elimination thesis,' Carnap's explicit anti-metaphysical pronouncements that stand and fall with semantic verificationism.  Against this I show, first, that the neutralism thesis is historically and systematically independent of the elimination thesis.  Second, I argue that, unlike the elimination thesis, the neutrality claim and Carnap's attempt to cash it out in the Aufbau is important for the methodology of contemporary ontology, at least where it  follows constructivist predilections.  Third, I draw attention to the fact that Carnap's neutrality claim in the Aufbau  is supported by an implicit conception of  reality as invariance-structure which, however, threatens the explanatory aspirations of constitution theory.  This tension between neutrality and explanatory power sheds new light on the notion of "foundedness," Carnap's curious restriction on the interpretation of the system's basic relation.  While this restriction has struck some as outright incoherent, I suggest that it can be viewed more cheritably as an acknowledgement of the explanatory character of ontology, as the distinctive constraint  where ontology and formal semantics part company.

This chapter explores connections between the phenomenology of intercultural dialogue and theories of cognition. Theories of cognition investigate how living organisms of suitable complexity generate cognitive significances, which for the human case include meanings, valuations, beliefs, and motivations.  I try to make plausible that the phenomenology of intercultural dialogue can provide important leads for theory choice in cognitive science and the philosophy of mind, at least if one admits the form of argument called ‘infer-ence to the best explanation.’  Theories based on the so-called “computational paradigm” of cognition, where understanding is conceived of as algorithmic processing of predefined symbols, seem ill-suited to explain the phenomenology of dialogue. In contrast, approaches to cognition along the lines of the competing new paradigm of “embodied cognition” can accommodate all relevant phenomenal aspects.  In order to get at the core ideas of the view of cognition that is currently denoted by the label 'embodied cognition,'  I draw the reader's attention to the first formulation of these core ideas in the "Theory of Cognitive Orientation" (TCO, 1976) by H. Kreitler and S. Kreitler, which provides useful 'umbrella terminology' in my view.  TCO uses the familiar process of orientation, i.e., the ‘online’ interaction of an organism with its environment, as model for the process of cognition in general, a postulated theoretical entity called “cognitive orientation.” According to TCO, cognitive orientation is a fast and defaulted interactivity between organism and environment; the routines that emerge from this interactivity have quasi-objectual permanence and can be classified as meaning and values. But cognitive orientation also occurs in two slow modes, especially in heuristic cognition. I argue that the phenomenology of intercultural dialogue is best explained in terms of a slow mode of heuristic social cognition.
While my primary aim is to argue for the significance of intercultural dialogue as a datum for a theory of cognition, I also suggest that, vice versa, cognitive science research can contribute to a better understanding of intercultural dialogue in theory and praxis.  As I elaborate in conclusion, insights about the cognitive processing involved in dialogue might allow us to identify non-attitudinal factors—e.g., sensory relevant aspects of the spatial environment as well as temporal aspects—that are positively linked to facilitating the relevant communicative attitudes of dialogue participants.

Much of the ethical debate about social robotics applications hinges on the ontological classification of our interactions with robots, but a detailed ontological account of simulated social interaction is still missing. In this paper I briefly explain why characterizations of human-robot interactions are best undertaken in a neutral, ‘technical’ idiom.  Then I define five modes of simulation (functionally replicating, imitating, mimicking, displaying, and approximating) in terms of relations between processes. I sketch how these notions can be used to describe more precisely what a certain robot ‘can do.’ In conclusion I sketch a general strategy for developing a fine-grained taxonomy of social interactions.