In §2-4, I survey three extant ways of making sense of indeterminate truth and find each of them wanting. All the later sections of the paper are concerned with showing that the most promising way of making sense of indeterminate truth is via either a theory of truthmaker gaps or via a theory of truthmaking gaps. The first intimations of a truthmaker–truthmaking gap theory of indeterminacy are to be found in Quine (1981). In §5, we see how Quine (...) proposes to solve Unger’s problem of the many via positing the possibility of groundless truth. In §6, I elaborate the truthmaker gap model of indeterminacy first sketched by Sorensen (2001, ch.11) and use it to give a reductive analysis of indeterminate truth. In §7, I briefly assess what kind of formal framework can best express the possibility of truthmaker gaps. In §8, I contrast what I dub ‘the ordinary conception of worldly indeterminacy’ with Williamson’s conception of worldly indeterminacy. In §9, I show how one can distinguish linguistic from worldly indeterminacy on a truthmaker gap conception. In §10, I briefly sketch the relationship between truthmaker gaps and ignorance. In §11, I assess whether a truthmaker gap conception of vagueness is really just a form of epistemicism. In §12, I propose that truthmaker gaps can yield a plausible model of (semantic) presupposition failure. In §13, in response to the worry that a truthmaker gap conception of indeterminacy is both parochial and controversial—since it commits us to an implausibly strong theory of truthmaking—I set forth a truthmaking gap conception of indeterminacy. In §14, I answer the worry that groundless truths, of whatever species, are just unacceptably queer. A key part of this answer is that a truthmaker–truthmaking gap model of indeterminacy turns out to be considerably less queer than any model of indeterminacy which gives up on Tarski’s T-schema for truth (and cognate schemas). (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Preamble Conceptual Primitivism Concerning “Determinately” Incoherentism and Indeterminate Truth Slater on Indeterminate Truth Quine, Indeterminate Truth, and the Problem of the Many Truthmaker Gaps and Indeterminate Truth The Logic of Determinacy Worldly Indeterminacy: Williamson's Conception and the Ordinary Conception Minimal Versus Robust Forms of Worldly and Linguistic Indeterminacy Truthmaker Gaps and Knowledge Epistemicism, Third Possibility Views, and Indeterminate Truth Semantic Presupposition Failure and Indeterminate Truth Truthmaking Gaps and Indeterminate (...) Truth The Queerness Objection Conclusion References. (shrink)

This is a paper about philosophical methodology or, better, methodologies. Most of the material that has been published to date under the rubric of African philosophy has been methodological in character. One reason for this is the conflicts that sometimes arise when philosophers in Africa attempt to reconcile their relationships with both academic philosophy and so-called African '‘traditional’ systems of thought. A further complication is that the studies of traditional African thought systems that become involved in these conflicts are themselves (...) products of academia– of disciplinary methodologies. (shrink)

It has been argued recently that perception is indeterminate. But there are more than one ways of spelling out what this means. The standard line is that perceptual states attribute different probabilities to different propositions. I provide an alternative to this view, where it is not the attitude, but the content of perceptual states that is indeterminate, inasmuch as it consists of the representation of determinable properties. This view does justice to the more general claim that perception is (...) indeterminate without appealing to probability either in the attitude or in the content. (shrink)

Indeterminate Bodies organizes a number of theoretical and empirical studies around the concept and actuality of indeterminacy, as it relates to body and society. Located within the struggle to apprehend different categories of ‘body’ in the volatile flows of late-capital, indeterminacy is considered through such multiple incarnations as economy, contingency, inheritance, question, force, uncertainty, materiality and affective resistance to determination. While indeterminacy is often positioned as the ‘trouble’ or friction in subject/object knowledge-formation (framed as ontological or empirical challenge), it (...) also engenders affects such that some subjects are both in and out of recognition. Questions of indeterminacy overlap with work on imperceptibility, giving rise to interlocked questions about the modes of representation, categorization, inclusion, exclusion and sensibility in the production of bodies. We address the hesitancies, difficulties and necessities of working with and through indeterminacy in order open up new descriptions, visions and modes of political work. (shrink)

Sometimes it is indeterminate what an agent morally ought do. This generates a Decision Ought Challenge—to give moral guidance to agents in such a scenario. This article is a field guide to the options for a theory of the decision ought for cases of indeterminacy. Three categories of view are evaluated, and the best representative for each is identified.

Here I compare two accounts of metaphysical indeterminacy (MI): first, the 'meta-level' approach described by Elizabeth Barnes and Ross Cameron in the companion to this paper, on which every state of affairs (SOA) is itself precise/determinate, and MI is a matter of its being indeterminate which determinate SOA obtains; second, my preferred 'object-level' determinable-based approach, on which MI is a matter of its being determinate---or just plain true---that an indeterminate SOA obtains, where an indeterminate SOA is one (...) whose constitutive object has a determinable property, but no unique determinate of that determinable. In S1, I first note an important difference between our accounts, concerning whether MI is taken to induce propositional indeterminacy; in S2, I highlight and defend certain advantages of my account; in S3, I address certain of Barnes and Cameron's objections to my account. (shrink)

One of the most important objections to sense data theory comes from the phenomenon of indeterminate perception, as when an object in the periphery of one’s visual field looks red without looking to have any determinate shade of red. As sense data are supposed to have precisely the properties that sensibly appear to us, sense data theory evidently has the implausible consequence that a sense datum can have a determinable property without having any of its determinates. In this article, (...) I show that a parallel objection applies to standard forms of colour relationism. In light of the phenomenon of indeterminate perception, the colour relationist must either reject intuitively obvious claims about the determinate–determinable structure of colour space or reject the plausible and widely accepted principle that nothing can have a determinable without having one of its determinates. (shrink)

Sider (Four-dimensionalism 2001; Philos Stud 114:135–146, 2003; Nous 43:557–567, 2009) has developed an influential argument against indeterminacy in existence. In what follows, I argue that the defender of metaphysical forms of indeterminate existence has a unique way of responding to Sider’s argument. The response I’ll offer is interesting not only for its applicability to Sider’s argument, but also for its broader implications; responding to Sider helps to show both how we should think about precisification in the context of metaphysical (...) indeterminacy and how we should understand commitment to metaphysically indeterminate existence. And if I’m right that metaphysical indeterminacy can allow for indeterminate existence in a way that semantic indeterminacy can’t, indeterminate existence might actually give us a reason to accept metaphysical indeterminacy (rather than a reason to reject it, as is commonly assumed). (shrink)

I focus my discussion on the well-known Ellsberg paradox. I find good normative reasons for incorporating non-precise belief, as represented by sets of probabilities, in an Ellsberg decision model. This amounts to forgoing the completeness axiom of expected utility theory. Provided that probability sets are interpreted as genuinely indeterminate belief, such a model can moreover make the “Ellsberg choices” rationally permissible. Without some further element to the story, however, the model does not explain how an agent may come to (...) have unique preferences for each of the Ellsberg options. Levi holds that the extra element amounts to innocuous secondary “risk” or security considerations that are used to break ties when more than one option is rationally permissible. While I think a lexical choice rule of this kind is very plausible, I argue that it involves a greater break with xpected utility theory than mere violation of the ordering axiom. (shrink)

Explanations of the genuine openness of the future often appeal to objective indeterminacy. According to the received view, such indeterminacy is indeterminacy of certain future-tensed state of affairs that presently obtain. We shall call this view the weak indeterminate present, to distinguish it from the view we will defend in this paper, which we dub the strong indeterminate present. According to our view, unsettledness of the future is grounded on the present indeterminacy of some present-tensed state of affairs. (...) In order for an indeterminate present-tensed state of affairs to explain the unsettledness of a future-tensed state of affairs, there has to be a connection between the two. We argue that this connection can only be provided if we look at the internal structure of the relevant state of affairs. Finally, we will suggest that the best background theory to explain the connection are the so-called spontaneous collapse models of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

Lodged in an impasse between questions of environmental justice and modes of capitalisation in the green economy, indeterminacy is a vulnerable and porous relation. Pollution activates a potentiality in the organism to be otherwise, to generate certain kinds of tumours, mini-deaths or mutations. Toxicity has an intermediary status that launches a mobility of effects that is often fragmented through sense organs, affirming forms of non-identity in biopolitical relations. Organisms are receptive to such bodily reconfigurations precisely because they are open to (...) the material communication of the world. In contrast to the “hidden labour” of indeterminacy in capitalist modes of capture, this article crafts an analytics of indeterminacy as an interjection in the politics of environments. Through dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico and military bees, two economies of indeterminacy are discussed. Drawing on Georges Bataille’s notion of political economy, I argue that what is required is an economy of radical inequivalence; an excessive engagement with the possibilities of indetermining forces to make fleeting marks. (shrink)

Terence Parsons presents a lively and controversial study of philosophical questions about identity. Because many puzzles about identity remain unsolved, some people believe that they are questions that have no answers and that there is a problem with the language used to formulate them. Parsons explores a different possibility: that such puzzles lack answers because of the way the world is (or because of the way the world is not). He claims that there is genuine indeterminacy of identity in the (...) world. He articulates such a view in detail and defends it from a host of criticisms. (shrink)

This paper examines the question of how so-called indeterminate phrases in Japanese (Kuroda 1965) associate with relevant particles higher in the structure. In the universal construction in Japanese, the restrictor (provided by an indeterminate phrase) sometimes appears to be separate from the universal particle mo. It is proposed that quantification at a distance is only apparent, and that the restriction is in fact provided locally by the sister constituent of mo as a whole. The proposal leads us to (...) a straightforward uniform picture of the syntax-semantics mapping of the universal construction and wh-questions, building upon Hamblin’s (1973) semantics for wh-phrases as sets of alternatives. It allows for a switch of perspective on a long-standing puzzle regarding locality effects in the indeterminate–particle association by deriving the locality pattern from the way indeterminate phrases are interpreted and associated with particles, without any stipulations. (shrink)

Various people have claimed that some cases involve indeterminate permissibility. However, it’s unclear what guidance one can take away from this fact: are indeterminately permissible options choiceworthy and if so when? In this paper, I present a counterexample that undermines two existing responses to this question and I then present two alternative solutions that avoid this counterexample.

We argue that indeterminate probabilities are not only rationally permissible for a Bayesian agent, but they may even be rationally required . Our first argument begins by assuming a version of interpretivism: your mental state is the set of probability and utility functions that rationalize your behavioral dispositions as well as possible. This set may consist of multiple probability functions. Then according to interpretivism, this makes it the case that your credal state is indeterminate. Our second argument begins (...) with our describing a world that plausibly has indeterminate chances. Rationality requires a certain alignment of your credences with corresponding hypotheses about the chances. Thus, if you hypothesize the chances to be indeterminate, your will inherit their indeterminacy in your corresponding credences. Our third argument is motivated by a dilemma. Epistemic rationality requires you to stay open-minded about contingent matters about which your evidence has not definitively legislated. Practical rationality requires you to be able to act decisively at least sometimes. These requirements can conflict with each other-for thanks to your open-mindedness, some of your options may have undefined expected utility, and if you are choosing among them, decision theory has no advice to give you. Such an option is playing Nover and Hájek’s Pasadena Game , and indeed any option for which there is a positive probability of playing the Pasadena Game. You can serve both masters, epistemic rationality and practical rationality, with an indeterminate credence to the prospect of playing the Pasadena game. You serve epistemic rationality by making your upper probability positive-it ensures that you are open-minded. You serve practical rationality by making your lower probability 0-it provides guidance to your decision-making. No sharp credence could do both. (shrink)

When one allows truth to be indeterminate, “fixed point” interpretations can be found even when the language includes sentences such as the liar paradox. In this chapter this kind of account is applied to rational credences, to find non-undermining indeterminate epistemic states even in certain situations which have been discussed as challenges for rationality. In the process of doing this, a deeper understanding of how the supervaluational account of truth works is obtained, especially when one focuses on sets (...) of precisifications. (shrink)

W. V. Quine is commonly read as holding that there are no analytic truths and no a priori truths. I argue that this is a misreading. Quine’s view is that no sentence is determinately analytic or determinately a priori. I show that my reading is better supported by Quine’s arguments and general remarks about meaning and analyticity. I then briefly reexamine the debate between Quine and Carnap about analyticity, and show that the nature of their disagreement is different than what (...) it is usually thought to be. (shrink)

Can we solve the Problem of the Many, and give a general account of the indeterminacy in definite descriptions that give rise to it, by appealing to metaphysically indeterminate entities? I argue that we cannot. I identify a feature common to the relevant class of definite descriptions, and derive a contradiction from the claim that each such description is satisfied by a metaphysically indeterminate entity.

La thèse de l'indétermination de la traduction de W. V. O. Quine est certainement une des thèses les plus controversées de la philosophie du langage. Le présent article explique en quoi consiste cette thèse et examine les liens qu'elle entretient avec la thèse de la sous-détermination des théories scientifiques. La première section montre comment la thèse de l'indétermination de la traduction découle de la conception behavioriste du langage de Quine. Les sections suivantes exposent deux façons de dériver la thèse de (...) l'indétermination: par le holisme et le vérificationnisme dans la section 2 et par la thèse de la sous-détermination dans la section 3. La section 4 précise la formulation de la thèse de la sous-détermination proposée dans «On Empirically Equivalent Systems of the World» et la section 5 expose les critiques exprimées par W. Bechtel à propos de cette formulation. Ces critiques témoignent d'une mauvaise compréhension de la position de Quine et j'essaierai de montrer en quoi elles sont fautives. La section 6 traite des deux façons de dériver la thèse de l'indétermination, à la lumière des modifications apportées à la formulation de la thèse de la sous-détermination. Enfin, la section 7 s'intéresse aux questions de fait relatives à la sous-détermination des théories et à l'indétermination de la traduction. (shrink)

The strategy of updating credences by minimizing the relative entropy has been questioned by many authors, most strongly by means of the Judy Benjamin puzzle. I present a new analysis of Judy Benjamin–like forms of new information and defend the thesis that in general the rational posterior is indeterminate, meaning that a family of posterior credence functions rather than a single one is the rational response when that type of information becomes available. The proposed thesis extends naturally to all (...) cases in which new information is traditionally handled by minimizing the relative entropy. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed that preferences are determinate; that is, that an agent who has a preference knows that she has the preference in question and is disposed to act upon it. This paper argues the dubiousness of that assumption. An account of indeterminate preferences in terms of self-predicting subjective probabilities is given, and a decision rule for choices involving indeterminate preferences is proposed. Wolfgang Spohn’s and Isaac Levi ’s arguments against self-predicting probabilities are also considered, in light (...) of Wlodek Rabinowicz’s recent criticism. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop a view on set-theoretic ontology I call Universe-Indeterminism, according to which there is a unique but indeterminate universe of sets. I argue that Solomon Feferman’s work on semi-constructive set theories can be adapted to this project, and develop a philosophical motivation for a semi-constructive set theory closely based on Feferman’s but tailored to the Universe-Indeterminist’s viewpoint. I also compare the emergent Universe-Indeterminist view to some more familiar views on set-theoretic ontology.

In "Counting and Indeterminate Identity", N. Ángel Pinillos develops an argument that there can be no cases of `Split Indeterminate Identity'. Such a case would be one in which it was indeterminate whether a=b and indeterminate whether a=c, but determinately true that b≠c. The interest of the argument lies, in part, in the fact that it appears to appeal to none of the controversial claims to which similar arguments due to Gareth Evans and Nathan Salmon appeal. (...) I argue for two counter-claims. First, the formal argument fails to establish its conclusion, for essentially the same reason Evans's and Salmon's arguments fail to establish their conclusions. Second, the phenomena in which Pinillos is interested, which concern the cardinalities of sets of vague objects, manifest the existence of what Kit Fine called `penumbral connections', phenomena that the logics Pinillos considers are already known not to handle well. (shrink)

I am a friend of supervaluationism. A statement lacks a definite truth value if, and only if, it comes out true on some admissible ways of precisifying the semantics of the relevant vocabulary and false on others. In this paper, I focus on the special case of identity statements. I take it that such statements, too, may occasionally suffer a truth-value gap, including philosophically significant instances. Yet there is a potentially devastating objection that can be raised against the supervaluationist treatment (...) of such cases—in fact two objections. Luckily, both can be resisted. But seeing how requires that we take a closer look at the ontological presuppositions of supervaluationism, allowing for more leeway than is usually supposed. (shrink)

Holtby, Allen and Fairchild are both recent and revolutionary decisions that address an important aspect of the indeterminate causation problem that frequently arises in tort litigation. In Holtby and Allen, the Court of Appeal departed from the traditional binary approach, under which a tort claimant either recovers compensation for his or her entire injury or is altogether denied recovery—depending on whether his or her case against the defendant is more probable than not. Holtby and Allen substituted this approach by (...) the proportionate recovery principle, under which the defendant compensates the claimant for a fraction of his or her injury that represents the defendant's statistical share in that injury. This article analyses this development within the particular domain of indeterminate causation, over which the proportionate recovery principle has been licensed to exercise control. The article claims that this development would constitute an improvement of the law from the perspectives of both optimal deterrence and corrective justice, if the courts properly formulate its scope. First, the proportionate recovery principle needs to be explicitly confined to cases that deal with recurrent wrongs. Second, determination of the defendant's share in the claimant's injury ought to be grounded on the probability of causation, rather than the risk of inflicting that injury. Third, judges must not apply unarticulated intuitions in determining the magnitude of the relevant risk or probability: their decisions in that area would be better informed by the statistical principle of ‘insufficient reason’, also known as the ‘indifference principle’. Fourth, courts are yet to relieve the doctrinal tension between the proportionate recovery principle, as recognized in Holtby and Allen, and the previous rejection of that principle by the House of Lords. Subsequently, the article analyses the House of Lords' decision in Fairchild—yet another instance of indeterminate causation in which proportionate recovery is preferable to the ‘all or nothing’ approach. In this case, the House of Lords allowed the claimants full recovery. This holding was grounded in the Law Lords' innovative approach to indeterminate causation, and the article unfolds the problematics of this approach. Finally, the article offers an adoption of yet another legal mechanism—the ‘evidential damage doctrine’—that replaces liability under uncertainty with liability for uncertainty. (shrink)

Recent advances in quantum physics have led to a renewal of interest in the problem of human freedom and in the wider problem of indeterminism. It is important to recognize, however, that if every denial of determinism is to be called indeterminism, the latter term covers a wide range of logically distinguishable positions. We should perhaps speak in the plural number of indeterminisms rather than of indeterminism. For determinism may be defined, simply, as the doctrine that every event has a (...) cause; or we may add that the effect is always uniquely determined; or that when the effect is complex it can always be exhaustively analyzed into components each of which is the effect of a component of the cause; or that every cause directly or indirectly includes the entire universe. And in the case of each of these, or of still other interpretations of determinism, the denial would be a form of indeterminism. (shrink)

This paper sketches out Peirce's "theory of indeterminacy" as part of a larger "triadic" theory within the context of the semiotic. It then examines the theory of the object in his later work, emphasizing the difference between immediate and dynamical object. The role of collateral experience is discussed. Connections are drawn between Peircean indeterminacy and Kant. The relationship of the indeterminate to contradiction and excluded middle is discussed. 'Determination', 'vagueness', and 'generality' are discussed in detail in the context established (...) in this paper. (shrink)

What kind of ethics can we consider in the framework of feminist phenomenology that takes poststructuralist feminism into account? This seems to be a difficult task for at least two reasons. First, it is not yet clear what ethics in poststructuralist feminism is. Second, phenomenology and poststructuralism are still regarded as opposites. As a phenomenologist with strong affinities to poststructuralism, I want to take on this challenge. In this paper, I will argue that phenomenology and poststructuralism share the idea of (...) the “indeterminable.” If this idea is applied to the topic of gender, we can speak of an “indeterminable gender.” Moreover, phenomenology and poststructuralism support an ethical attitude toward genders inasmuch as they both avoid making problematic determinations. My goal is to explore what the so-called “indeterminable gender” is and to illuminate the ethical implications of this concept. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ: Je propose iei une interprétation de la position quinienne sur l’asymetrie entre l’indétermination de la traduction et la sous-détermination. Je discute les articIes de Chomsky, Rorty et Friedman, qui prétendent montrer que l’asymétrie défendue par Quine est inacceptable. J’examine en outre les points de vue de Føllesdal et Gibson, deux auteurs en accord avec Quine au sujet de l’asymétrie. Je défends l’idée selon laquelle il faut admettre le réalisme de Quine, mais pas son physicalisme, pour être en mesure de (...) reeonnaître l’asymétrie entre le cas des théories scientifiques et celui des manuels de traduction.ABSTRACT: I propose an interpretation of Quine’s position on the asymmetry between indeterminacy of translation and underdetermination of theory. The positions of Chomsky, Rorty, and Friedman, who reject the asymmetry, are presented and criticized. The same is done with Føllesdal’s and Gibson’s views, which are favourable to Quine’s. I argue that we must admit Quine’s realism but not his physicalism in order to accept the asymmetry. (shrink)

Dans la première section du présent article, mon but est d’extraire le contenu de la thèse de l’indétermination de la traduction, à partir d’une revue de plusieurs formulations de Quine. Je tente d’identifier ce qui est constant et ce qui varie dans celles-ci. Je retiens ce qui est constant comme le coeur de la thèse et je considère ce qui varie comme secondaire. J’arrive ainsi à lire une seule thèse à travers les diverses formulations. Je dois admettre, par ailleurs, que (...) les variations sont suffisamment importantes pour semer la confusion. Dans la deuxième section, je retrace les arguments offerts par Quine en guise de justification de l’indétermination de la traduction. Je rappelle l’évolution de cette argumentation et je montre qu’il y a des variations là aussi : au début, Quine fait surtout appel à son physicalisme et, à la fin, il invoque seulement son behaviorisme. Même si je conclus qu’il ne s’agit pas là d’un changement radical, force est d’admettre que le changement est suffisamment important pour déconcerter plus d’un lecteur. Finalement, dans la troisième section, je montre comment mon interprétation de la thèse de l’indétermination de Quine, si elle est correcte, contribue au débat sur l’asymétrie avec la sous-détermination. Les deux premières sections de l’article permettant de distinguer clairement les arguments épistémologiques du contenu ontologique de la thèse de l’indétermination de la traduction, il devient facile d’admettre l’asymétrie défendue par Quine : l’indétermination de la traduction est une thèse ontologique ; elle ne peut donc pas être confondue avec la sous-détermination, une thèse épistémologique.In the first section of this article, my aim is to grasp the content of Quine’s indeterminacy of translation thesis. I propose a review of Quine’s formulations, and I try to identify what is constant and what varies in them. Guided by charity, I keep what is constant as the core of Quine’s thesis, and I consider what varies as secondary. I thus achieve to read a single thesis throughout all the formulations. I must admit, however, that the variations are important enough to be confusing. In the second section, I identify Quine’s arguments for indeterminacy of translation. I retrace the evolution of his argumentation, and I notice that there are variations there too. At first, Quine appeals mainly to physicalism, and, at the end, he appeals only to behaviorism. Although I think that this is not a radical change of mind, I conclude that the change is, once again, important enough to have confused some readers. Finally, in the third section, I show how my interpretation of Quine’s indeterminacy of translation contributes to the debate over the asymmetry between this latter thesis and underdetermination of theory : my analysis of Quine’s treatment of indeterminacy of translation leads me to conclude that, whereas the arguments are epistemological, the content of the thesis is ontological. Once this ontological content is well seen, it is easy to acknowledge, with Quine, the asymmetry with underdetermination, which is an epistemological claim. (shrink)

Étienne Gilson ha dedicato numerosi lavori alla riflessione filosofica di Agostino e alla tradizione agostiniana medievale. Lo storico francese ha cercato di rilevare i tratti principali e lo spirito della filosofia agostiniana e si è interessato ai complessi sviluppi dell’agostinismo. Gilson ha introdotto la categoria storiografica delle indeterminazioni agostiniane per esprimere la complessità del pensiero di Agostino: questa filosofia sarebbe caratterizzata da numerose questioni irrisolte dovute al tentativo agostiniano di dare alla filosofia neoplatonica un significato cristiano. In alcuni suoi lavori, (...) Gilson ha sostenuto che la convergenza fra queste indeterminazioni e alcuni sistemi di pensiero, giunti nell’occidente latino fra il XII e il XIII secolo, avrebbe ispirato la cosiddetta riforma tomista. A questo proposito è molto importante un articolo del 1926, Pourquoi saint Thomas a critiqué saint Augustin. L’articolo mostra l’importanza delle indeterminazioni negli studi dello storico: questa intrinseca incompletezza dell’opera di Agostino consentirebbe di comprendere non solo gli sviluppi del pensiero agostiniano, ma anche il pensiero di Tommaso d’Aquino e della scuola domenicana. L’articolo tratteggia, inoltre, l’interpretazione di Gilson del pensiero agostiniano in relazione all’adesione dello storico alla filosofia neoscolastica. Étienne Gilson devoted several studies to Augustine’s thought and to medieval Augustinian tradition. The French historian attempted to paint the main tracts and the spirit of Augustine’s philosophy and he studied the complex developments of Augustinianism. Gilson introduced the historical category of the indéterminations augustiniennes to express the problematic nature of Augustine’s thought: this philosophy would be characterized by several unexplained questions due to the Augustinian attempt to attach a Christian meaning to the Neoplatonic philosophy. In numerous of his works, Gilson pointed out that the confluence of these indéterminations and some philosophies, penetrated into Latin west during XII-XIII centuries, would have inspired the so-called Thomistic reform. On this subject it is very revealing an essay written in 1926, “ Pourquoi saint Thomas a critiqué saint Augustin ”. This paper aims to outline the importance of the indéterminations in the Gilsonian studies: this intrinsic incompleteness of the Augustinian texts would allow understanding not only the Augustinian tradition, but also Thomas Aquinas’ philosophy and Dominican thought. This article outlines Gilson’s reading of the Augustinian thought with regard to Gilsonian Neo-Scholastic philosophy. (shrink)

Most views of personal identity allow that sometimes, facts of personal identity can be borderline or indeterminate. Bernard Williams argued that regarding questions of one’s own survival as borderline “had no comprehensible representation” in one’s emotions and expectations. Whether this is the case, I will argue, depends crucially on what account of indeterminacy is presupposed.

Sentences such as "The author started the book" are indeterminate because they do not make explicit what the subject (the author) started doing with the object (the book). In principle, indeterminate sentences allow for an infinite number of interpretations. One theory, however, assumes that these sentences are resolved by semantic coercion, a linguistic process that forces the noun "book" to be interpreted as an activity (e.g., writing the book) or by a process that interpolates this activity information in (...) the resulting enriched semantic composition. An alternative theory, pragmatic, assumes classical semantic composition, whereby meaning arises from the denotation of words and how they are combined syntactically, with enrichment obtained via pragmatic inferences beyond linguistic-semantic processes. Cognitive neuroscience studies investigating the neuroanatomical and functional correlates of indeterminate sentences have shown activations either at the ventromedial pre-frontal cortex or at the left inferior frontal gyrus. These studies have supported the semantic coercion theory assuming that one of these regions is where enriched semantic composition takes place. Employing fMRI, we found that indeterminate sentences activate bilaterally the superior temporal gyrus, the right inferior frontal gyrus, and the anterior cingulate cortex, more so than control sentences ("The author wrote the book"). Activation of indeterminate sentences exceeded that of anomalous sentences ("…drank the book") and engaged more left- and right-hemisphere areas than other sentence types. We suggest that the widespread activations for indeterminate sentences represent the deployment of pragmatic-inferential processes, which seek to enrich sentence content without necessarily resorting to semantic coercion. (shrink)

Fictional realists maintain that fictional characters are part of the world’s ontology. In an influential article, Anthony Everett argues that the fictional realist is thereby committing herself to problematic entities. Among these are entities that are indeterminately identical. Recently, Ross Cameron and Richard Woodward have answered Everett’s worry using the same strategy. They argue that the fictional realist can bypass the problematic identities by contending that they are merely semantically indeterminate. This paper concisely surveys Everett’s original argument, Cameron’s and (...) Woodward’s responses, and then argues that the strategy employed by Cameron and Woodward fails to satisfactorily answer Everett’s worries. (shrink)

In this article, I survey some philosophical attitudes to talk concerning `the' universe of sets. I separate out four different strands of the debate, namely: (i) Universism, (ii) Multiversism, (iii) Potentialism, and (iv) Pluralism. I discuss standard arguments and counterarguments concerning the positions and some of the natural mathematical programmes that are suggested by the various views.

Especially over the past twenty years, a number of analytic philosophers have embraced the idea that the world itself is vague or indeterminate in one or more respects. The issue then arises as to whether it can be the case that the world itself is indeterminate in all respects. Using as a basis Chinese Madhyamaka Buddhist thought, I offer two reasons for the coherence and intelligibility of the thesis that all concrete things are themselves indeterminate with respect (...) to the ways they are. The first reason draws on a notion reminiscent of the picture of reality as an amorphous lump, while the second reason makes use of the relativity of conceptual perspectives and determinations. Assuming that the world is the mere totality of all concrete things, I show that there is a genuine metaphysical possibility of the world’s being indeterminate in all respects. (shrink)

In this article, I re-examine political subjectivity by way of looking at the canonical text of Chinese Daoist philosophy – Zhuangzi. I trace the course of how the body is conceived in Zhuangzi and discuss its relation with the unmaking of personhood. I then look into ways in which the body–self nexus in Zhuangzi gives rise to new conceptualization of political relations. I argue that, in Zhuangzi, the body is conceived as spontaneous and dispossessed. The body as such foregrounds the (...) condition for unsettling subjectivity. In staging ambivalent subjectivities, Zhuangzi describes a mode of politics where political relations thrive on indeterminacy and uncertainty. I submit that the authors of Zhuangzi propose a depoliticizing approach to politics whereby ‘effortless action’ replaces established processes in reinventing new relations and subjects. (shrink)

One of the most important insights that Russell had in presenting his philosophy of language was his view of singular definite descriptions. Russell held that singular phrases of the form ‘the so-and-so’ should not be viewed as names, but rather incomplete symbols which can be said to have meaning only in a context. We should not represent the sentence The inventor of bifocals is bald.as a simple subject-predicate sentence of the form ‘Fa.’ but rather as a complex existential sentence. According (...) to Russell we should analyze as There is a unique x such that x invented bifocals and x is bald.Moreover, if Russell's analysis is correct then the proposition expressed by will be true in a given circumstance provided that there is a unique inventor of bifocals who is bald in that circumstance. (shrink)