According to Madhyamaka Buddhist philosophers, everything depends for its existence on something else. But what would a world devoid of fundamentalia look like? In this paper, I argue that the anti-foundationalist “neither-one-nor-many argument” of the Indian Mādhyamika Śrīgupta commits him to a position I call “metaphysical indefinitism.” I demonstrate how this view follows from Śrīgupta’s rejection of mereological simples and ontologically independent being, when understood in light of his account of conventional reality. Contra recent claims in the secondary literature, (...) I clarify how the Madhyamaka metaphysical dependence structure is not a straightforward infinitism since it does not honor strict asymmetry or transitivity. Instead, its dependence relations are irreflexive and extendable, admitting of dependence chains of indefinite (though not actually infinite) length and dependence loops of non-zero length. Yet, the flexible ontology of Śrīgupta's Madhyamaka can accommodate a contextualist account of asymmetry and support a revisable theory of conventional truth, delivering significant payoffs for the view, including the capacity to accommodate developments in scientific explanation. (shrink)

ABSTRACTZalabardo argues that the Tractatus makes an important contribution towards explaining how a representation doesn¹t merely introduce various objects, but furthermore represents them as comb...

In this article, we critically discuss the ideal of alignment, unity and harmony in cross-sector partnerships for wicked problems like sustainable development. We explore four characteristics of the concepts of identity, unity and difference which are presupposed in the partnership and collaboration literature, and point at their metaphysical origin. Based on our analysis of these four characteristics, we show the limitations of the metaphysical concepts of identity and difference in the case of CSPs for wicked problems (...) like sustainable development. (shrink)

Studies of Plato’s metaphysics have tended to emphasise either the radical change between the early Theory of Forms and the late doctrines of the Timaeus and the Sophist, or to insist on a unity of approach that is unchanged throughout Plato’s career. The author lays out an alternative approach. Focussing on two metaphysical doctrines of central importance to Plato’s thought – the Theory of Forms and the doctrine of Being and Becoming – he suggests a continuous progress can (...) be traced through Plato’s works. He presents his argument through an examination of the metaphysical sections of six of the dialogues: the Euthyphro, Phaedo, Republic, Parmenides, Timaeus, and Sophist. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that the central problem of Aristotle’s Metaphysics H (VIII) 6 is the unity of forms and that he solves this problem in just the way he solves the problem of the unity of composites – by hylomorphism. I also discuss the matter– form relationship in H 6, arguing that they have a correlative nature as the matter of the form and the form of the matter.

How should we understand the relationship, for Aristotle, between matter, form, and hylomorphic composite? Are matter and form distinct from each other, so that each hylomorphic unity harbours a plurality within it, or would such a plurality undermine the unity of the composite? A recent strand of argument in both Aristotelian and contemporary literature on hylomorphism has concluded that no genuine unity can be composed of a plurality. I will argue that the objection motivating this conclusion falls (...) away as improperly formulated in light of Aristotle's metaontology—in particular, his thesis that unity is indeterminate. The genuine objection threatening hylomorphic unity is one that Aristotle himself formulates as a central concern in his Metaphysics: no substance can be composed of substances. He answers this genuine objection in his appeal to the actuality/potentiality distinction, and in Metaphysics VIII.6 he reminds us why no more basic problem of hylomorphic unity arises. Against the backdrop of Aristotle's metaontology, hylomorphic unity cannot be undermined by the plurality, just as such, of matter and form. (shrink)

This volume presents fourteen essays by leading figures in the fields of ancient philosophy and contemporary metaphysics, discussing Aristotle's theory of the unity and identity of substances, a topic that remains at the center of metaphysical enquiry. The contributors examine the nature of essences, how they differ from other components of substance, and how they are related to these other components. The central questions discussed are: What does Aristotle mean by "potentiality" and "actuality?" How do these concepts explicate (...) matter and form, and how are they related to the actuality of a substance? What is the role of actuality in accounting for the unity and identity of substance? These questions are crucial to an understanding of the unity of composite substances and their identity over time. The aim of the volume is both exegetical and philosophical: to give answers to central problems in Aristotle's metaphysics, and also to stimulate further investigation of the problems defined and the controversies embodied. (shrink)

Ross & Spurrett's (R&S's) rebuttal of recent reductionistic work in the philosophy of mind relies on claims about the unity of science and explanation. I call those claims into question.

What Aristotle's main concern is in Metaphysics H 6 has long puzzled commentators. In this paper I argued for a novel, deflationary interpretation of that chapter: Aristotle's main concern is to argue for the causeless unity of the definitions of form and of composite substance. The problem he is grappling with arises from a combination of speaking about the parts of form and the parts of composite substances, and the principle that parts of a whole need a unifying cause (...) in order to be one and not many. If both form and composite particulars need a unifying cause, form cannot be primary substance, and composite substances, as composites of form and matter, cannot be true unities, but must be mere heaps of material parts which need a third unifying cause. Aristotle argues that although and seemingly threaten his theory of substance with incoherence, the problem can be easily solved if the unity of definitions of form and of composite substance are properly seen as causeless. In the course of clarifying and defending this reading of H6, a number of alternative interpretations are exposed and criticized. (shrink)

The contributions to this collection deal with the fundamental problem of unity, which plays a decisive role in many contemporary debates (even when this role ...

Lakatos held that science proceeds by means of competing research programme, each with its own “hard core” or paradigm. He intended this view to reconcile the competing views of Kuhn and Popper. But what Lakatos overlooked is that science needs to be construed to be one gigantic research programme with, as its “hard core”, a metaphysical thesis that asserts that the universe is such that there is an inherent unity in the laws that govern the way physical phenomena (...) occur. The conception of science that emerges from this insight succeeds in doing what Lakatos’s own view fails to do; it has fruitful implications for science itself, and solves the problem of induction. (shrink)

I respond to Karin de Boer, Thomas Land, and Claudio La Rocca’s comments on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and the Method of Metaphysics (CUP 2023). I first provide a quick outline of some of the main claims I make in the book. I then directly address their criticisms, which I group into three categories. The first group of comments raises doubts concerning my characterization of the central tasks of the critique of pure reason. The second targets the fact that (...) I downplay faculty analysis as an essential characteristic of the critique. The third has to do with my claim that the Critique of Pure Reason aims to show that metaphysics is capable of architectonic unity, where this unity is only achievable when we construe metaphysics according to the worldly concept of philosophy. (shrink)

The paper reconstructs the conception of the soul by the Spanish Jesuit Juan Maldonado, one of the first Jesuits who lectured on the Aristotelian De anima, through the analysis of the synthesis of the lectures he gave in Paris. Maldonado maintains the definition of the soul as form of the body but also suggests that there are more forms in the human compound. The paper aims to solve this tension through the comparison with the later De anima by Francisco Suárez.

This article argues for an emendation in Aristotle's Metaphysics A 10, 993a13–15. The emendation is based on a hitherto overlooked reading preserved in Alexander of Aphrodisias’ commentary on A 7. First, the article problematizes the reading of the Metaphysics manuscripts in terms of syntax, diction and content. Second, it shows that Alexander's reading is free of all three problems. Third, it argues for the originality of Alexander's reading according to the principle utrum in alterum abiturum erat? and based on the (...) fact that the new reading reveals a subtle didactic link between A 7 and A 10 that sheds new light on the argumentative architecture of Metaphysics Book A. (shrink)

The fundamental error of the metaphysical tradition, according to Heidegger, is the subordination of general ontology to the ontology of a special, exemplary entity (God, the soul, etc.). But Being and Time itself treats one kind of entity as exemplary, namely Dasein. Does this mean that Heidegger fails to free himself from the kind of metaphysics that he sought to criticize? To show how he avoids this charge I propose to examine the parallels between the methodology of Being and (...) Time and the methodology Heidegger ascribes to Aristotle's Metaphysics. Heidegger takes the virtue of Aristotle's inquiry to reside in the way he resists the subordination of general to special ontology: Aristotle was guided by a "double concept" of metaphysics, pursued two irreducibly distinct methods of inquiry, and avoided the temptation to unite them. In proposing to similarly pursue a "double task" in Being and Time Heidegger seeks to apply this insight to his own work. Alongside the task of fundamental ontology, Heidegger spells out the shape of a second task, Destruktion, understood as a historical critique that traces ontological concepts back to their ontic roots. But Destruktion is not a mere addendum to fundamental ontology; the two tasks are meant to counterbalance one another and thereby prevent the collapse of the ontological difference between being and beings. Indeed, Heidegger proposes to apply Destruktion to the results of his own fundamental ontology. He hopes to thereby achieve a transformation of the philosophical attitude which underpins the metaphysical tradition. (shrink)

Love as a unitive force -- Degrees of union -- Participation and the love of God -- Conformity and sin -- The fulfillment of love in God -- The love of self and subjectivity.

The unity of consciousness has so far been studied only as a relation holding among the many experiences of a single subject. I investigate whether this relation could hold between the experiences of distinct subjects, considering three major arguments against the possibility of such ‘between-subjects unity’. The first argument, based on the popular idea that unity implies subsumption by a composite experience, can be deflected by allowing for limited forms of ‘experience-sharing’, in which the same token experience (...) belongs to more than one subject. The second argument, based on the phenomenological claim that unified experiences have interdependent phenomenal characters, I show to rest on an equivocation. Finally, the third argument accuses between-subjects unity of being unimaginable, or more broadly a formal possibility corresponding to nothing we can make sense of. I argue that the familiar experience of perceptual co-presentation gives us an adequate phenomenological grasp on what between-subjects unity might be like. (shrink)

Everything is Something is a book about Stoic metaphysics. It argues that the Stoics are best understood as forging a bold new path between materialism and idealism, a path best characterized as non-reductive physicalism. To be sure, only individual bodies exist for the Stoics, but not everything there is exists — some things are said to subsist. However, this is no Meinongian move beyond existence, to the philosophy of intentionality (as the language of subsistence might suggest), but a one-world metaphysics (...) that both counts its entities by logical criteria, and grounds them in body by physical principles, yielding a tightly ordered ontology in which everything is Something and nothing is not. -/- This last phrase is not innocent. It invokes the Stoic innovation of Something (ti) as the highest genus of reality, and takes the stand that it is not only principled and coherent, but comprehensive — anything that is not Something is nothing at all (for the initiated: there is no class of Not-Somethings between Something and nothing). Further, everything that is Something is either itself a body, or ontologically dependent on body. Herein lies the Stoics’ non-reductive physicalism, and the beating heart of their response to the Battle of Gods and Giants in Plato’s Sophist: a one-world metaphysics. -/- The foundation of Stoic metaphysics is their ground-breaking corporealism, which introduces an alternative to both atomism and hylomorphism. The Stoics are continuum physicists for whom body as such, i.e. solid, three-dimensional extension, is homogeneous, partless, uniform, and infinitely divisible without reaching minima (atoms). And because body is not conceived along hylomorphic lines, i.e. as a composite of matter and form, the Stoics are free to make body fundamental. Out of two basic bodies, then (the archai), and by the tantalizing mechanism of through and through blending (krasis di’ holou), Stoic physics constructs the cosmos (and every body it contains) in completely corporealist terms, composing one thing out of many. And once those bodies are built, Stoic logic gives an account of their identity conditions, kinds, and qualities according to the vexed schema of the Categories, making now many out of one by the constitution relation, as a statue is constituted by its clay. With these distinct mereological relations of composition and constitution, Stoic corporealism artfully divides the labor of Plato’s Forms between physics and logic. -/- Next in the ontological order, with bodies as their foundation, are the incorporeals (asōmata): space (place, room, and surface), time, void, and the (awkwardly named) sayables, or lekta (roughly, though controversially, the meanings of our words). These entities do not exist; they do, however, subsist, inheriting their physical properties and, hence, their subsistence, from the bodies on which they depend. For example, place depends for its three-dimensional (non-solid) extension on the bodies that occupy or delimit it. The ontological dependence of space, time, and their novel semantic entities (the lekta) on body, is what takes Stoic metaphysics beyond corporealism to non-reductive physicalism, beyond a merely sorted ontology to an ordered, one-world metaphysics. Each incorporeal counts as Something according to the Stoic criterion for subsistence (hence, the theory is non-reductive), and what they have in common as incorporeals (and what makes the account physicalist), is their dependence on underlying body. -/- In addition to the incorporeals, the Stoics also recognize the subsistence of things like creatures of fiction and geometrical limits, which they classify as neither corporeal nor incorporeal. What these entities have in common is that they are products of thought; and since thoughts are themselves bodies according to Stoic corporealism, this remains a physicalist account. As before, the account is not Meinongian; neither all objects of thought, nor all products of thought count as Something. Indeed, the Stoics’ eliminative treatment of universals (and Forms) turns on their denying concepts (ennoēmata) a place on the ontological map altogether — concepts are simply not Somethings (and, again, not some further category of Not-Somethings, intermediate between Something and nothing at all). If all this is right, then the Stoics are not flat-footed materialists or ersatz Platonists, as so often assumed, but our first non-reductive physicalists. (shrink)

This paper explores and defends an institutional metaphysics for the Trinity as providing us with an inherently interpersonal reality, and provides general and specific methodological arguments in that direction in the first section. The actual argumentation is then first of all directed against Augustine’s rejection of the family as a suitable analogy for the Trinity. It is instead argued that the family does in fact offer an interesting and suitable analogy. Next, several more general and historic precursors to such an (...) institutional analogy are explored and fleshed out, relying on the legal and economic meaning of the term ‘substance’ as an estate, such as the shared inheritance between a father and a son. The main section further develops the outlines and main features of such an institutional metaphysics, relying on both analogies to result in three persons in one numerically identical substance. The final section returns to the methodological issue but now in an explicitly Marian key, culminating in the Holy Family as a key exemplar for the family analogy. (shrink)

Aristotle's inquiry into the definitional question “what is substance?” in the central books of the Metaphysics is constrained by the unity requirement. Roughly, a particular hylomorphic compound substance, such as this human, ought to be a unified whole and not just a heap of material parts and form. A similar claim applies to the substance‐kind, human, which Metaphysics ΖΗΘ characterises as a hylomorphic compound taken universally. I raise the following question about this picture of unity: Is a compound's (...) unity basic or is it derived from the form's unity? Reading closely Metaphysics Z.12 and H.6, I argue that the form is explanatorily basic for the compound's unity. (shrink)

This paper unifies the disparate analyses in Heidegger's lecture course, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude, in a single therapeutic and philosophical project. By taking seriously the text's claim to lead us towards authenticity, I show how Heidegger's analysis of boredom works together with his comparative analysis of man and animal to diagnose and lead us out of our contemporary complacency about being. This reading puts both analyses in a new light, reveals the hidden strategic unity of (...) the lecture course, and brings out the therapeutic dimension of Heidegger's phenomenology. (shrink)

Unity of science was once a very popular idea among both philosophers and scientists. But it has fallen out of fashion, largely because of its association with reductionism and the challenge from multiple realisation. Pluralism and the disunity of science are the new norm, and higher-level natural kinds and special science laws are considered to have an important role in scientific practice. What kind of reductionism does multiple realisability challenge? What does it take to reduce one phenomenon to another? (...) How do we determine which kinds are natural? What is the ontological basis of unity? In this Element, Tuomas Tahko examines these questions from a contemporary perspective, after a historical overview. The upshot is that there is still value in the idea of a unity of science. We can combine a modest sense of unity with pluralism and give an ontological analysis of unity in terms of natural kind monism. This title is available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Concepts, Judgments, and Unity in Kant's Metaphysical Deduction of the Relational Categories CHARLES NUSSBAUM 1. INTRODUCTION TO ANY ATTENTIVEREADERof the section of the Critique of Pure Reason' known as the "Metaphysical Deduction of the Categories" (A67/B92-A83/B to9), one paragraph in that section stands out particularly by virtue of its special importance for Kant's developing argument: The same function Which gives unity to the various representations (...) in ajudgment also gives unity to the mere synthesis of various representations in an intuition; and this unity, in its most general expression, we entitle the pure concept of the understanding. The same understanding, through the same operations by which in concepts, by means of analytical unity, it produced the logical form of a judgment, also introduces a transcendental content into its representations, by means of the synthetic unity of the manifold of intuition in general.... (CPR A79/B loS) The importance of this paragraph is, however, more than equaled by its difficulties, which center on the question of how the function which operates by means of analytical unity can be the same as one that operates by means of the synthetic unity of the manifold of intuition in general. Put shortly, the problem is this. If the functions are really the same, then how do we distinguish at all between analytic and synthetic operations? But if they are different, then how can these forms of judgment serve as a clue for the discovery of the categories? ' Immanuel Kant, Critiqueof Pure Reason, trans. Norman KempSmith (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1963).Hereafter CPR. [89] 9~ JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 28:1 JANUARY 1990 The results of this dilemma which can be observed in the literature are not surprising: commentators tend to grasp one horn or the other. They either emphasize the difference between analysis and synthesis, and reject or dilute the claims as to sameness of function; or they take seriously Kant's argument concerning sameness of functions, and try to minimize the difference between analysis and synthesis. The major twentieth-century representant of the former approach is Kemp Smith," and of the latter, Paton. 3 This latter approach has found a formidable contemporary champion in the person of Henry Allison. By Allison's own admission,4 however, his position on this controversial topic was suggested (in part) by arguments first put forward over fifty years ago by Klaus Reich in a most remarkable book entitled Die Volls~ndigkeit der Kantischen Urteilstafel, 5 a book, by the way, also greatly admired by Paton. 6 In the first section of this paper I will try to show that Reich's arguments are rather more subtle than Allison apparently takes them to be, and that Reich is one commentator who attempts to go between the horns of the dilemma described above, and who essays an interpretation of our crucial paragraph that unifies its seemingly divergent tendencies. In the second section of the paper I will introduce some interpretive elements of my own. 2. Let us begin by reacquainting ourselves with Kant's notion of analytical unity, one aspect of this debate which is not particularly controversial and is largely agreed upon by all parties. For Kant, analytical unity is the sort of unity achieved by all general concepts (conceptus communes) insofar as they abstract from all differences that subsist between the objects under them, or the lower concepts subordinated to them. 7 A general concept unifies these objects or concepts by means of a common mark or set of marks. Thus Kant's example at CPR A69/B94 of the unification of bodies under the concepts 'body' and 'divisible' is a perfectly representative instance of unification via analytical unity, as the function upon which such concepts "rest." Let us note that the " Norman KempSmith,A CommentarytoKant's "Cr/t~rueofPureReason"(NewYork:HumanitiesPress, 196~). 3 H.J. Paton, Kant's MetaphysicofExperience, 2 vols.(London:George Allenand Unwin,Ltd., 1936). 4 Henry Allison,Kant's TranscendentalIdealum (NewHaven:YaleUniversityPress, 1983), 144 n. 3o. Hereafter KTI. 5 KlausReich,Die Vollst~ndigkeitderKantischenUrteilstafel,3rd. ed. (Hamburg: Meiner, 1986). Hereafter VKU. 6 Paton, Kant's Metaphysic, 1:302. Kant, we should note, does not makethis important logicaldistinctionbetweensubordination... (shrink)

A translation of the Third and Fourth Disputations of Francisco Suárez.

This paper will argue that the order and the unity of St. Thomas Aquinas’s five ways can be elucidated through a consideration of St. Thomas’s appropriation of an Avicennian insight that he used to order and unify the wisdom of the Aristotelian and Abrahamic philosophical traditions towards the existence of God. I will begin with a central aporia from Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Aristotle says that the science of first philosophy has three different theoretical vectors: ontology, aitiology, and theology. But how (...) can all three be united into a single Aristotelian science? In his Metaphysics of the Healing, Avicenna resolved the impasse by taking the ontological vector as the subject of metaphysics. He then integrated the question of the four first causes into the penultimate stage of his demonstration for the existence of God, thereby placing aitiological and theological questions among the ultimate concerns of a unified Aristotelian metaphysics. In the five ways, St. Thomas integrated Avicenna’s Aristotelian search for the first four causes into the last four of his five ways, by showing that each of the four aitiological orders terminate in an ultimate first cause that we call God. Finally, by appending the proof from the Physics to the beginning of the five ways, St. Thomas was able to show that the ultimate aim of both natural philosophy and metaphysics is the divine first principle, which is the beginning and subject of sacra doctrina. (shrink)