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Jonas Werner
University of Bern
  1. Cardinal Composition.Lisa Vogt & Jonas Werner - forthcoming - Erkenntnis:1-23.
    The thesis of Weak Unrestricted Composition says that every pair of objects has a fusion. This thesis has been argued by Contessa and Smith to be compatible with the world being junky and hence to evade an argument against the necessity of Strong Unrestricted Composition proposed by Bohn. However, neither Weak Unrestricted Composition alone nor the different variants of it that have been proposed in the literature can provide us with a satisfying answer to the special composition question, or so (...)
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  2.  88
    A grounding-based measure of relative fundamentality.Jonas Werner - 2020 - Synthese 198 (10):9721-9737.
    Reality is hierarchically structured, or so proponents of the metaphysical posit of grounding argue. The less fundamental facts obtain in virtue of, or are grounded in, the more fundamental facts. But what exactly is it for one fact to be more fundamental than another? The aim of this paper is to provide a measure of relative fundamentality. I develop and defend an account of the metaphysical hierarchy that assigns to each fact a set of ordinals representing the levels on which (...)
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  3. Contingent Objects, Contingent Propositions, and Essentialism.Jonas Werner - 2021 - Mind 130 (520):1283-1294.
    Trevor Teitel (2017) has recently argued that combining the assumption that modality reduces to essence with the assumption that possibly some objects contingently exist leads to problems if one wishes to uphold that the logic of metaphysical modality is S5. In this paper I will argue that there is a way for the essentialist to evade the problem described by Teitel. The proposed solution crucially involves the assumption that some propositions possibly fail to exist. I will show how this assumption (...)
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  4.  84
    A Minimality Constraint on Grounding.Jonas Werner - 2020 - Erkenntnis 85 (5):1153-1168.
    It is widely acknowledged that some truths or facts don’t have a minimal full ground [see e.g. Fine ]. Every full ground of them contains a smaller full ground. In this paper I’ll propose a minimality constraint on immediate grounding and I’ll show that it doesn’t fall prey to the arguments that tell against an unqualified minimality constraint. Furthermore, the assumption that all cases of grounding can be understood in terms of immediate grounding will be defended. This assumption guarantees that (...)
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  5. Plural grounding and the principle of sufficient reason.Jonas Werner - 2020 - Analysis 80 (1):90-95.
    In a recent article published in this journal, Kris McDaniel proposes a variant of Peter van Inwagen’s argument against the principle of sufficient reason that makes crucial use of plural grounding. In this response paper I object to McDaniel’s argument. I argue that there is no notion of plural grounding available that is both irreflexive in the sense required for the argument to go through and general enough to formulate the principle of sufficient reason as proposed by McDaniel.
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  6. Arbitrary grounding.Jonas Werner - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 179 (3):911-931.
    The aim of this paper is to introduce, elucidate and defend the usefulness of a variant of grounding, or metaphysical explanation, that has the feature that the grounds explain of some states of affairs that one of them obtains without explaining which one obtains. I will dub this variant arbitrary grounding. After informally elucidating the basic idea in the first section, I will provide three metaphysical hypotheses that are best formulated in terms of arbitrary grounding in the second section. The (...)
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  7.  57
    Plenitude and necessarily unmanifested dispositions.Jonas Werner - 2021 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 10 (3):169-177.
    The principle of plenitude says that every material object coincides with abundantly many further objects that differ in their modal profiles. A necessarily unmanifested disposition is a disposition that necessarily does not manifest. This paper argues that if the principle of plenitude holds, then there are some necessarily unmanifested dispositions. These necessarily unmanifested dispositions will be argued to evade some objections against the cases of necessarily unmanifested dispositions put forward by Carrie Jenkins and Daniel Nolan.
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  8.  30
    Potentialism and S5.Jonas Werner - forthcoming - Canadian Journal of Philosophy.
    Modal potentialism as proposed by Barbara Vetter (2015) is the view that every possibility is grounded in something having a potentiality. Drawing from work by Jessica Leech (2017), Samuel Kimpton-Nye (2021) argues that potentialists can have an S5 modal logic. I present a novel argument to the conclusion that the most straightforward way of spelling out modal potentialism cannot validate an S5 modal logic. Then I will propose a slightly tweaked version of modal potentialism that can validate an S5 modal (...)
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  9.  80
    Extended Dispositionalism and Determinism.Jonas Werner - 2022 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 9.
    Modal dispositionalists hold that dispositions provide the foundation of metaphysical necessity and possibility. According to the kind of modal dispositionalism that can be found in the present literature, a proposition p is possible just in case some things are disposed to be such that p. In the first part of this paper I show that combining this classic form of dispositionalism with the assumptions that the laws of nature are necessary and deterministic and that all dispositions are forward-looking in time (...)
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  10.  44
    Solving a puzzle of definition.Jonas Werner - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    This paper concerns the question of which logical principles hold for real definitions. Recently, Samuel Elgin has presented five principles concerning real definitions that seem initially plausible. He has shown them to be jointly inconsistent. This gives rise to a puzzle that can only be solved by denying one of the principles. In this paper, I argue against Elgin's principle of expansion, which concerns substituting a definiens for its definiendum within the definiens of a further definition. I show that this (...)
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  11.  15
    A Note on von Neumann Ordinals and Dependence.Jonas Werner - forthcoming - Philosophia Mathematica:nkad007.
    This note defends the reduction of ordinals to pure sets against an argument put forward by Beau Madison Mount. In the first part I will defend the claim that dependence simpliciter can be reduced to immediate dependence and define a notion of predecessor dependence. In the second part I will provide and defend a way to model the dependence profile of ordinals akin to Mount’s proposal in terms of immediate dependence and predecessor dependence. I furthermore show that my alternative dependence (...)
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  12. Irreducibly collective existence and bottomless nihilism.Jonas Werner - 2022 - Synthese 200 (2):1-16.
    This paper develops the metaphysical hypothesis that there are irreducibly collective pluralities, pluralities of objects that do not have a singular object among them. A way to formulate this hypothesis using plural quantification will be proposed and the coherence of irreducibly collective existence will be defended. Furthermore, irreducibly collective existence will be shown to allow for bottomless scenarios that do not involve things standing in relations of parthood. This will create logical space for an anti-atomistic form of mereological nihilism.
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  13. An Aristotelian approach to existential dependence.Benjamin Schnieder & Jonas Werner - 2021 - In Ludger Jansen & Petter Sandstad (eds.), Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Formal Causation. Routledge.
     
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  14.  49
    The Modalities of Essence and Ground.Jonas Werner - 2022 - Frankfurt (Main): Vittorio Klostermann.
    It is not a coincidence that every red rose is coloured. No rose can be red without being coloured. A red rose is coloured in virtue of its being red, its being coloured is metaphysically explained by its being red. This is, at least in part, underwritten by what it is for the rose to be coloured, by the nature – or essence – of its being coloured. If this is right, then questions concerning possibility and necessity, questions concerning metaphysical (...)
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