Modal Epistemology

This paper argues that epistemic circularity is not a flaw but an inescapable feature of all knowledge systems. Building on recent work in coherentism (Olsson, 2017), structural realism (French, 2014), and virtue epistemology (Sosa, 2015), we demonstrate that even our most trusted epistemic frameworks-logic, mathematics, and empiricism-rely on selfvalidating structures. We propose a novel framework of "parameterized pluralism" that evaluates knowledge systems through measurable performance indicators rather than foundational certainty. Our central contribution is the "circular wrap" metaphor, which reconceptualizes knowledge as cognitive structures that achieve varying degrees of fit with reality's patterns, without requiring epistemic access to reality itself. This approach addresses key debates in contemporary epistemology: (1) it dissolves rather than resolves the coherentism-foundationalism debate, (2) it provides a graduated solution to the demarcation problem following Pigliucci (2013), and (3) it offers a middle path between scientific realism and anti-realism aligned with Chakravartty's (2017) semi-realism and Massimi's (2018) perspectival realism. We demonstrate how this framework legitimizes diverse epistemic practices while avoiding relativism through explicit, measurable parameters including predictive coherence, manipulative power, and intersubjective alignment. The paper concludes by showing how embracing circularity transforms epistemology from a quest for impossible foundations into an iterative process of pattern refinement, with implications for scientific methodology, institutional knowledge hierarchies, and cross-cultural epistemology.

In this paper, I present a new explanationist argument for moral skepticism, the Predictive Explanationist Argument. Unlike the traditional explanationist argument which holds that we cannot have moral knowledge because moral facts lack explanatory power, the Predictive Explanationist Argument says that moral beliefs cannot amount to knowledge because they do not facilitate predictive success. The problem is not with the nature of moral facts, but with the nature of our moral beliefs and concepts. This argument makes special trouble for moral naturalists who are committed to naturalist realism as a general philosophical thesis, since the key epistemic premise of the Predictive Explanationist Argument is arguably constitutive of general naturalist realism.

American Philosophy has experienced a re-vitalization in the last 25 years. It has become so popular that it is sometimes appropriated by people who are not really familiar with the tradition at all. On the other hand, it is being utilized by many in new and exciting ways. This paper points to some of the ways American philosophy has been a publicly engaged tradition and argues that it should remain so if we care about the future of democracy. It then suggests that some of the possibly emerging themes that the tradition needs to wrestle with in the 21st century are conceptions of boundary and place, pluralism and agency, and fallibilism and hope.

L'Argument Ontologique a longtemps été un sujet de débat en philosophie et en théologie. Bien que certains le rejettent comme un simple jeu de mots, il reste l'un des arguments les plus intrigants et logiquement rigoureux pour l'existence de Dieu.

CHEN Bo took charge of a significant project “Research on Major Frontier Issues in Contemporary Philosophy of Logic” supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China in last seven years. The six-volumes of Companion of Studies on Contemporary Philosophy of Logic are the final achievement of that project, which is evaluated as “Excellent” grade by the National Social Science Foundation of China in 2025. The Companion will be published in Chinese by People’s Publishing House (Beijing) in a few years later.

Human enhancement technologies offer prospects for improving the mental capacities that are typically considered to ground moral status. Bioethicists, posthumanists and transhumanists have raised the worry that the radical enhancement of our moral status-relevant capacities is open to the possibility of creating supra-persons. The worry is that supra-persons would further reduce the moral inviolability of mere persons. If the possibility is plausible, then radical enhancement would put mere persons at risk. In order to assess the plausibility of possibility claims, epistemologists have investigated the role of imagination in justifying our beliefs about what is possible. Philosophy has abounded with imaginability arguments for various entities like zombies, experience machines, super-spartans, and perfect actors. The aim of this paper is to investigate a newcomer in the bestiary of bioethics, the supra-person, using the utensils of imaginability-based modal epistemology. We will argue for an epistemic claim: that no imaginative act is sufficient to justify the belief that supra-persons are possible. In order to support our thesis, we will employ two influential accounts of the relation between imaginative acts and acquiring justification for beliefs about what is possible.

Some have argued for a division of epistemic labor in which mathematicians supply truths and philosophers supply their necessity. We argue that this is wrong: mathematics is committed to its own necessity. Counterfactuals play a starring role.

This thesis argues for the incoherency of the putative distinction between those properties which are possessed essentiallyin a metaphysical senseby an object and those which are possessed only accidentally. This thesis is thus a critique of metaphysical essentialism. In chapter one I distinguish various kinds of essentialism, possibility and necessity. I explore both metaphysical and semantical issues associated with the essential/accidental distinction. I examine Quine's related attack on quantified modal logic. The burden of Quine's objections is carried by his antipathy to metaphysical essentialism, arguments against which he leaves undeveloped. In chapter two I remedy this defect and develop a line of attack on the essential/accidental distinction by adapting and sytematising an argument of Chisholm's in his seminal paper of 1967. I consider various lines of response by the essentialist and find them wanting. I concede that the weakest point in my attack on essentialism is an appeal to a principle about the transworld identity conditions of individuals. Given this concession, my discussion changes tack in chapters three and four. I granl irenically the coherence ofthe essentiaVaccidental distinction. In chapter three I argue that even given this concession there is no cogent case to be made for the claim commonly advanced by essentialists that an object's origin is essential to that object's identity. What I take to be the stongest argument for origin essentialism is in effect self-refuting because it appeals to the very principle of transworld identity which grounds my rejection of essentialism in chapter two. In chapter four I argue that there is no compelling ground to believe that an object essentially satisfies-in a metaphysical as opposed to a conceptual sense of 'essentially'the sortals which are true of it. lv CONTENTS CHAPTER 1 ESSENTIALISM, QUINE AND QML 1.1 INTRODUCTION 1.2 ESSENTIALISM AND ANTI-ESSENTIALISM 1.2.1 LOGICAL, CAUSAL AND METAPHYSICAL POS SIBILITY AND IMPOSSIBILITY 1.2.2 WOULD HAVE AND COULD HAVE 1.2.3 METAPHYSICALESSENTIALISMVERSUS CONCEPTUAL ES SENTIALISM 1.2.4 FORMAL AND ORDINARY LANGUAGE CHARACTERISATIONS OF ES SENTIALISM 1.3 INFORMAL MODAL SEMANTICS 1.3.I NECESSARILY TRUE THAT P I.3.2 NECESSARILY IS F 1.3.2.1 (:xxNECF)xAND (:X)NEC(FX) t.3.2.2 (xXl\rECF)xAND (X)NEC(FX) 1.3.3 EQUIVALENCE OF'(NIECF)A', AND 'NEC(FA)', 1.3.3.1 EMPTYNAMES'A' 1.3.3.2 RUSSELLIAN INTERPRETATION OF DEFINITE DESCRIPTIONS 7.3.3.3 APARTICULARNON-RUSSELLIAN INTERPRETATION OF DEFINITE DESCRIPTIONS 1.3.3.4 INTERPRETING 'NECG(IX)FX)" WHERE '(IX)FX' IS

In this paper I will attempt to show that there are some essential connections between essence and knowledge, and to clarify their nature. I start by showing how the standard Finean counterexamples to a purely modal conception of essence suggest that, among necessary properties, those that are counted as essential have a strong epistemic value. I will then propose a "modal-epistemic" account of essence that takes the essential properties of an object to be precisely the subset of its necessary properties that constitute a significant source of knowledge about it. I will then argue that this view is supported by an inference to the best explanation that starts from some uncontroversial, although sometimes neglected, epistemic roles essences should play.

In this article I criticize the explanatory reductionism underlying the zombie argument from the point of view of the philosophy of science. I argue that it is a thesis that finds no support in the available models of reduction, a thesis that is based on an unfounded idealization of the natural sciences and that depends on an uncertain appeal to the possibility in principle of a future unified physics. I conclude that the uncertain character of these assumptions calls for a reassessment, not only of the implications of this type of argument for methodological naturalism but also of the role such arguments play in the study of consciousness.

In light of a specific reading of Descartes’ theory of the creation of the eternal truths, this chapter analyzes and interprets the figure of the evil genius in the Meditations. In sections 1 and 2, I reconstruct Descartes’s theory of eternal truths, highlighting its relationship with Suárez’s and Mersenne’s ideas, and setting out what I call Descartes’ “instituted innatism,” i.e. the theory that God was not only absolutely free in creating the essences of the world, but also instituted their truths by endowing all his intelligent creatures with the same notions about them. In section 3, I argue that Descartes’s First Meditation is wholly built upon “instituted innatism” as a fundamental and self-evident assumption, and that Descartes’s text is structured as a reductio ad absurdum argument; indeed, here he accepts the possibility of a world not created by an absolutely good and omnipotent God, which is for him a plain contradiction, given that God necessarily exists. Here I stress the role played by the evil genius in Descartes’s argument. In section 4, I dwell more specifically on the character of the evil genius, arguing that Descartes draws from medieval and early modern angelological and demonological debates, and contending that he especially plays with the topic of the ordered/disordered thought of separate substances.

We describe the main issue debated at the IV Blasco Disputatio: whether our knowledge of metaphysical possibility and necessity rests on knowledge of essence. But before getting to this specific issue, we offer a broader introduction to the more general problems in the epistemology of modality. In this way, we establish a background against which the contributions to this SI can be better appreciated.

En este trabajo voy a defender dos tesis interconectadas: por un lado, argumentaré que tenemos conocimiento modal de re acerca de (algunas de) las propiedades modales de los objetos, y que obtenemos este conocimiento mediante un mecanismo (plausiblemente descrito como) de análisis conceptual; por el otro, sostendré que la mejor explicación de este hecho requerirá, a su vez, comprometerse con una concepción constructivista respecto de los objetos ordinarios. Nuestra discusión se ocupará, por lo tanto, de la conexión entre una tesis epistemológica y otra metafísica, y puede en ese sentido entenderse como un intento de ofrecer una respuesta, para un caso particular (el de las propiedades modales de los objetos), al «desafío de la integración» discutido por Peacocke (1999). Dicho desafío consiste en ofrecer una explicación simultánea razonable tanto de cierto ámbito de la realidad como del conocimiento que parecemos tener del mismo, y puede ser entendido como la generalización de un problema que Paul Benacerraf (1973) presentó originalmente respecto de la matemática en su caso, el desafío era el de ofrecer una epistemología razonable de la matemática que pudiera ser compatible con el platonismo matemático, lo que dada las dificultades tomaba el valor de una objeción al platonismo. En el caso particular que nos ocupará aquí, se tratará es de compatibilizar la explicación metafísica que demos de las propiedades modales de los objetos con una explicación razonable del conocimiento que parecemos tener de ellas. Quisiera adelantar brevemente antes de empezar la estrategia que voy a seguir. Las tesis que quiero defender pueden parecer controversiales, en la medida en que parecen combinar posiciones asociadas con aproximaciones contrapuestas a la modalidad: en efecto, por una parte, la idea de que resulta inteligible y apropiado atribuir propiedades modales (por ejemplo, propiedades esenciales, condiciones de persistencia, etc.) a los objetos mismos se deriva en buena medida de la rehabilitación de la comprensión realista de las modalidades que parece seguirse de la desconexión entre modalidad y analiticidad a la que llevaría el rechazo por parte de Kripke del descriptivismo respecto de los nombres; por otra parte, la idea de que El conocimiento modal y la metafísica de los objetos ordinarios EZEQUIEL ZERBUDIS XV Jornadas de Comunicación de Investigación en Filosofía -2 611

Paper has a say on a variety of epistemological matter as it concerns with the very basis of what is known and how it is known , it starts of with a simple introduction using normative definition and then escalates at the end , opting for an empiricist , skeptic position on grounds of logic and mathematics.

David Chalmers’s famous Zombie argument rests on the premise that conceivability entails metaphysical possibility, an assumption that remains hotly contested. One seemingly devastating objection against the premise comes from Kripke: while one could conceive a world where water is XYZ instead of H20, this is not actually possible because of a posteriori necessity. Chalmers responds by utilizing the distinction between primary and secondary intensions, arguing that while conceivability may not always entail 2-possibility, it does entail 1-possibility. In this paper, I propose a counterexample revolving around the conceivability of a Siamond world – a world where Diamonds are the exact same except for the fact that they are soft. This, I argue, creates a dilemma for the Chalmersian two-dimensionalist:  if we accept the conceivability of a world where diamonds are soft, we are forced to ask: what “epistemic properties” allow for our modal talk to remain fairly stable.  If hardness or any other property or set of properties whose necessity can only be known a posteriori are among of them, we are forced to accept that certain necessities are “strong,” in that they cannot be ruled out a priori, and hence are counterexamples to Chalmers’s conceivability thesis. If no such epistemic properties truly remain constant, then the consistency of modal talk is doubtful. Either way, this exposes a key methodological flaw in his methodology, undercutting the two-dimensional framework that Chalmers depends upon.

What is the epistemic function of imagination? Traditionally, philosophers have claimed that the epistemic function of imagination is exhausted by its ability to provide justification for modal beliefs, or that it is epistemically irrelevant. However, in recent years a number of philosophers have broken with the tradition by arguing that imagination can generate justification or knowledge about contingent empirical facts. This paper argues against this view by developing a new dilemma. The upshot of the argument is that although imagination does have an important epistemic function that has evaded the traditional view, it cannot give rise to new empirical justification or knowledge.

To begin, then, with epistemic possibility, this can be said. This use of "possibility" is relative to knowledge, hence its close affiliation with the terra "probable". This use is common in ordinary language; for example, when we see dark, low clouds rolling in from the West at evening, we say, "It's possible that it will rain tomorrow." 1. M.R. Ayers, The Refutation of Determinism.(Methuen. 1968) pp. 12-13. 1. ibid, p. 14. 1. ibid, p. 103. 2. ibid, p. 69.

This chapter explores a noteworthy, as-yet-unanalysed normative aspect of imagining. It begins by examining cases where imaginings are deemed erroneous, showing that imaginings can “go wrong” not only by failing to represent that which the imaginer intends to imagine, or is asked to imagine by an external source (e.g. a work of fiction), but also when imaginings arise unbidden. That unintended, non-deliberate imaginings can be erroneous shows that there must be a norm or commitment that is inherent to imagining, a norm or commitment that, if violated, renders imaginings erroneous. Invoking Kendall Walton’s thesis about the normativity of imagining, I adduce a first-pass account of this normative aspect; the account pivots on the idea that imagining aims at, or is committed to representing, that which is fictionally true. After showing that this account is inadequate, I revise Walton’s thesis, arguing that in imagining, we are not committed to representing the fictional truth. Rather, taking on a quasi-doxastic role vis-à-vis the fictional world, we are committed to representing that which is (merely) presented as fictionally true. I proceed to explain the error in question in terms of this thesis, showing that when the quasi-doxastic role we take on in our capacity as imaginers is not carried out properly, our imaginings are rendered erroneous.

Depuis la remise en cause de la doctrine du cercle de Vienne selon laquelle toute métaphysique est dépourvue de sens, la métaphysique des sciences s'est développée à partir de la méthode esquissée par Quine visant à extraire des théories scientifiques leur « engagement ontologique ». Le concept métaphysique de constitution est utilisé à la fois en métaphysique des sciences-qui a pour objet l'analyse des concepts à l'oeuvre dans les sciences-et en métaphysique descriptive qui analyse la conception du monde du sens commun. La réponse à certaines questions métaphysiques, par exemple celle qui porte sur l'existence d'un objet composé de plusieurs parties, dépend du choix du cadre conceptuel. La réponse peut être différente en métaphysique descriptive et en métaphysique des sciences.

This article aims to connect issues in the epistemology of modality with issues in the philosophy of music, exploring how modalizing takes place in the context of musical performance. On the basis of studies of jazz improvisation and of classical music, it is shown that considerations about what is sonically, musically, and agentively possible play an important role for performers in the Western tonal tradition. We give a more systematic sketch of how a modal epistemology for musical performance could be constructed. We argue that it is necessary to adopt a pluralist approach toward the modal epistemology of music.

LaPorte gives a range of interesting and informative examples. Most of these are in biology but some come from chemistry. I shall start with the latter. LaPorte starts with the example of jade and argues that contrary to the tradition following Putnam, jade present an example very similar to his Twin Earth thought experiment, but with a different outcome. For many centuries the jade that the Chinese work with and called 'yü' was just nephrite. Only towards the end of the eighteenth century was jadeite from Burma introduced into China. Chinese jade experts were aware that it was a different material, but nonetheless decided also to regard it as 'yü'. LaPorte argues that the terms 'jade' and 'yü' have a certain kind of vagueness, such that it was not determinate whether the new jade, jadeite, was within the extension of those terms. A decision was made to include the new material, thus introducing a change to the concepts 'jade' and 'yü', rater than an application of previous, unchanging concepts. Furthermore, that decision went in a different direction to the direction that is alleged in the Twin Earth story. There we are supposed to reject XYZ as water despite superficial similarity. With jade the chemically different but superficially similar jadeite was included, not rejected. If LaPorte's understanding of this case is right, then the extension of 'yü' is not fully determinate but is vague. Given that for centuries the Chinese only ever knew nephrite, one might have expected, from Putnam's Twin Earth story, that they would reject jadeite, on the grounds that is is different kind of substance. But, they eventually decided against that. LaPorte then contrasts the cases of topaz and ruby. Topaz was initially identified by its yellow colour, but the discovery that some blue minerals have the same chemical composition led to their inclusion under the extension of 'topaz'. Ruby is also identified by its colour, this time red, but in this case the existence of blue minerals with the same underlying structure were not included within the term's extension. The contrasting cases seems to suggest that it is a matter of choice whether we take the extension of a term to include newly discovered items that share some of the features of established sample but not others. Since it is a matter of choice that topaz is the mineral with formula Al 2 SiO 4 (F,OH) 2-presumably the discovery of blue minerals with the same formula could, as in the case of ruby, have led to a restriction of 'topaz' just to the yellow variety of the mineral-that essence is a matter of stipulation. The story here, I think, may be a little more complicated. For in the case of ruby there was already a term available for the mineral species of which ruby is a variety, viz. corundum, and furthermore, there was already a name available for blue corundum, viz. sapphire. So it is not clear how much choice played a part in the case of ruby. In which case it would not offer a fair contrast to the case of topaz, which in turn may then look less like a case of choice too. However, the real problem with the cases of jade, topaz, and ruby is that we are dealing here with gemstones and so there are interests competing here with the scientific ones. It would not be a surprise to find that when there is tension between the two that the former predominate. It is not that the scientific concept is forgotten completely but rather that some compromise is sought. And so one could take the view that jade really was just nephrite but that the makers of jade artifacts decided that it was in their interests to allow jadeite also to count as jade. As LaPorte makes clear, not just any old

It is not unusual for epistemologists to argue that ordinary epistemic practice is a setting within which (infallibilist) scepticism will not arise. Such scepticism is deemed to be an alien invader, impugning such epistemic practice entirely from without. But this paper argues that the suggested sort of analysis overstates the extent to which ordinary epistemic practice is antipathetic to some vital aspects of such sceptical thinking. The paper describes how a gradualist analysis of knowledge can do more justice to what sceptics seek to achievewhile also showing how sceptical thinking can even be part of (and is able to have some muted epistemic impact within) ordinary epistemic practice. Keywords Knowledge. Scepticism. Skepticism. Ordinary epistemic practice. Fallibilism. Gradualism 1. How resistant to sceptical possibilities is ordinary epistemic practice? Many epistemologists have been tempted to conceive of such practice as setting or manifesting standards which render such possibilities ineffective by being irrelevant. Indeed, it is common among epistemologists to say that ordinary contexts of inquiry are ordinary in part because of their being so inhospitable towards sceptical possibilities. This is particularly true (it is thought) of infallibilist sceptical possibilities. 1 In this paper, I question that assumption, in a way which seeks to expand our understanding of the epistemic significance of both ordinary epistemic practice and (infallibilist) sceptical thinking. 2

It is often considered received wisdom that verificationism is wrong. My view is that this is a serious blunder of contemporary philosophy. The inventor of verificationism was Wittgenstein. But his view of verificationism was very different from that of the Wienner Kreis. They tried to develop a precise form of verificationism from Wittgenstein's suggestions, and they failed. But their failure does not mean that Wittgenstein's earlier insights were wrong. My aim in this paper was to recuperate Wittgenstein's insights.

L.A. Paul calls "deep" the kind of essentialism according to which the essential properties of objects are determined independently of the context. Deep essentialism opposes "shallow essentialism", of which David Lewis is said to be a prominent advocate. Paul argues that standard forms of deep essentialism face a range of issues (mainly based on an interpretation of Quinean skepticism) that shallow essentialism does not. However, Paul claims, shallow essentialism eliminates the very heart of what motivates essentialism, so it is better to be deep than shallow. Accordingly, she proposes a very sharp novel account of essentialism, which, while attempting to preserve some of the advantages of shallow essentialism over the classical forms of deep essentialism, can be deemed to be deep. In this paper, I compare Paul's proposal for a kind of deep essentialism with Lewis's account, as it is presented by Paul. My aim is to show that the differences between the two approaches are not as significant as Paul takes them to be, and that Paul's account can be taken to be deeper than Lewis's only at the cost of sacrificing the very idea at the bottom of deep essentialism. This might be taken to suggest that, if Paul is correct in asserting that shallow essentialism is better equipped to address some skeptical challenges, but it is generally preferable to be deep than shallow, then Lewis's account should be re-evaluated, since, as shallow as it can be, it might be deeper than it looks.

The Uniqueness Thesis (U), according to Richard Feldman and Roger White, says that for a given set of evidence E and a proposition P, only one doxastic attitude about P is rational given E. Luis Rosa has recently provided two counterexamples against U which are supposed to show that even if there is a sense in which choosing between two doxastic attitudes is arbitrary, both options are equally and maximally rational. Both counterexamples work by exploiting the idea that 'ought implies can' and trying to spell out situations in which some inferences are beyond the capabilities of some reasoners. I argue that on a descriptive account of doxastic rationality, questions of whether 'epistemic ought implies can' can be bracketed and that at least one of the inferential moves that Rosa describes in his cases is irrational. I further argue that a descriptive account of doxastic rationality is the appropriate notion of rationality that is to be considered when evaluating U. If my argument for a descriptive account of rationality is successful, then we have reason to revise our use of the term rationality to fit this descriptive understanding.

In recent work, Christopher Peacocke has argued for a kind of realism (or anti-reductionism) about magnitudes such as temperature and spatial distance. Peacocke’s argument is that magnitudes are an ineliminable commitment of scientific and everyday explanations (including high-level explanations), and that they are the natural candidates for semantic values of our ordinary magnitude talk, and for contents of our mental states. I critique these arguments, in particular focusing on whether the realist has a satisfactory account of how high-level magnitude facts are grounded in lower-level facts. I argue that a less realist (i.e., more reductionist approach) is preferable, or at least viable. I also aim to substantially clarify what is at stake in the debate.

Nous croyions savoir ce qu’était la raison, que nous la vouassions aux gémonies comme responsable de tous les maux du XXe siècle, ou que nous défendissions bec et ongles ses Lumières contre les obscurantismes. Mais voici un livre, L’énigme de la raison d’Hugo Mercier et Dan Sperber, qui promet de mettre d’accord adversaires et défenseurs : la raison n’existe pas, l’évolution nous a dotés du pouvoir de raisonner, mais juste au sens de la chanson : « Moi je dis que les bonbons valent mieux que la raison ». La dame de nos pensées n’existe tout simplement pas.

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Legal theories define their task and discovery of necessary and/or essential features of law. It is unclear what "necessary" and "essential" mean in this context. This paper focuses on the problem of necessity, claiming that what is meant is metaphysical necessity. The clue to metaphysical necessity is the ideal secondary conceivability. The basis for such conceivability is the folk theory of law. As it is contingent which folk theory is actually adopted legal theories apply a very weak understanding of necessity. Theoretical claim that a certain feature of law is necessary has the function of explaining beliefs, forming the folk theory of law. Various legal theories define their task in different ways. I focus on the theories that define their task as the discovery and explanation of the nature of law. Such theories are quite numerous. Let me give a few examples. Joseph Raz (2009, 92) writes: "[I]n as much as the general theory of law is about the nature of law, it strives to elucidate law's essential features, i.e. those features which are possessed by every legal system just in virtue of its being legal, by every legislative institution in virtue of its being legislative, by every practice of legal reasoning by virtue of its being a practice of legal reasoning , and so on. A claim to necessity is the nature of this enterprise." Julie Dickson (2001, 17) endorses Raz's view by stating: "[...] analytical jurisprudence is concerned with explaining the nature of law by attempting to isolate and explain those features of law which make law into what it is. A successful theory of law of this type is a theory which consists of propositions about the law which (1) are necessarily true, and (2) adequately explain the nature of law." Scott Shapiro (2011, 9) expresses a similar view, as follows: "[...] to answer the question "What is law" on this interpretation is to discover what makes all and only instances of law instances of law and not something else. [...] [T]o discover the law's nature, in this second sense, would be in part to discover its necessary properties, that is, those properties that law could not fail to have." Interestingly enough, a similar view on the task of legal theory is shared by Robert Alexy (2004, 162), a leading representative of the non-positivistic camp. "The possibility of defining the concept of nature as it appears in sentences of the form "What is the nature of p, namely by means of the concept of necessity, allows for the substitution of the question "What is the nature of law?" by the question "What are the necessary properties

In this work we explain the philosophical analysis of the modal categories oriented toward the study and understanding of self-organizing systems showing complexity. For this, we focus our research in the area of ecology and, more specifically, in the field of aural ecology, that is, in the study of the sounds that make up ecosystems. The modal categories developed here are, firstly, «repertoriality», referring to the coherence and internal stability of any self-organizing system; then, «dispositionality», or the experimentation and variation inherent in these systems and, finally, the «landscape», regarding what is really effective, what is given. This conjunction of categories leads us to explore the modal system of necessity-contingency-possibility-impossibility which, applied to sound studies, becomes the game of signals-redundancy-noise-silence. These categories, applied to real instances found in natural environments, help us to understand the way Heraclitus’s becoming is revealed in every ecosystem. Finally, we discover how the categorical investigation of soundscapes provides us with complex information about the evolutionary behaviour and the state of conservation of these systems.

Wittgenstein in his early work viz. Tractatus argued that there is a common, essential, underlying structure that links logic, language and the world. He also argued about the need for an analysis of ordinary language in terms of a perspicuous symbolism that would display a one to one relationship between a proposition and a fact-when both of them are broken down to their simplest components-viz. to atomic propositions and atomic states of affairs. All propositions are ultimately truth-functional combinations of atomic propositions-thus all language is resolvable to a unique constant. So for early Wittgenstein, though there is an apparent complexity and diversity of propositions still there lies a uniform, essential structure of truthfunctional propositions and that can be reduced to a single constant. And language to have a determinate sense must be ultimately based on objects-the absolutely simple logical atoms of the world. These objects imbibe their range of combination with other objects, which implies that any genuine propositions-however unusual and unconventional it may seem to be-must ultimately be constrained by the permissible range of combination of the objects. In this way early Wittgenstein sought to secure an essential metaphysics via an essential structure of language. However in Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein attacked essentialism by rejecting the picture theory, and the search for commonality and uniformity. He denied essence, the universal, the common element present in all the objects of a class and accepted only an indeterminate and incomplete flow of the criss-crossing, the overlapping features. For him language is constituted by an ever expanding flow of uses, which he called language-games. The significance of the term 'language-game' lies in the fact that like games language too is not based on any ontology that would confer a common essence across all the widely divergent uses. Nor did Wittgenstein accept any hidden essence behind appearance. In PI the later Wittgenstein denied both analysis and essence and propagated description of usage and behaviours as the only method of philosophy. Later Wittgenstein will neither commit himself to ontological necessity, nor to necessity being a matter of scheme-relative propositions in the Quinean sense. For later Wittgenstein all attempts to establish essences, or the contrary exercises to relativise them to a particular set of presumptions, are themselves language-games-they boil down to usage and practices that do not rest on any foundation.

Wittgenstein in his early work viz. Tractatus argued that there is a common, essential, underlying structure that links logic, language and the world. He also argued about the need for an analysis of ordinary language in terms of a perspicuous symbolism that would display a one to one relationship between a proposition and a fact-when both of them are broken down to their simplest components-viz. to atomic propositions and atomic states of affairs. All propositions are ultimately truth-functional combinations of atomic propositions-thus all language is resolvable to a unique constant. So for early Wittgenstein, though there is an apparent complexity and diversity of propositions still there lies a uniform, essential structure of truthfunctional propositions and that can be reduced to a single constant. And language to have a determinate sense must be ultimately based on objects-the absolutely simple logical atoms of the world. These objects imbibe their range of combination with other objects, which implies that any genuine propositions-however unusual and unconventional it may seem to be-must ultimately be constrained by the permissible range of combination of the objects. In this way early Wittgenstein sought to secure an essential metaphysics via an essential structure of language. However in Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein attacked essentialism by rejecting the picture theory, and the search for commonality and uniformity. He denied essence, the universal, the common element present in all the objects of a class and accepted only an indeterminate and incomplete flow of the criss-crossing, the overlapping features. For him language is constituted by an ever expanding flow of uses, which he called language-games. The significance of the term 'language-game' lies in the fact that like games language too is not based on any ontology that would confer a common essence across all the widely divergent uses. Nor did Wittgenstein accept any hidden essence behind appearance. In PI the later Wittgenstein denied both analysis and essence and propagated description of usage and behaviours as the only method of philosophy. Later Wittgenstein will neither commit himself to ontological necessity, nor to necessity being a matter of scheme-relative propositions in the Quinean sense. For later Wittgenstein all attempts to establish essences, or the contrary exercises to relativise them to a particular set of presumptions, are themselves language-games-they boil down to usage and practices that do not rest on any foundation.

My dissertation deals with metaontology or metametaphysics. This is the subdiscipline of philosophy that is concerned with the investigation of metaphysical concepts, statements, theories and problems on the metalevel. It analyses the meaning of metaphysical statements and theories and discusses how they are to be justified. The name "metaontology" is recently coined, but the task of metaontology is the same as Immanuel Kant already dealt with in his Critique of Pure Reason. As methods I use both historical research and logical (or rather semantical) analysis. In order to understand clearly what metaphysical terms or theories mean or should mean we must both look at how they have been characterized in the course of the history of philosophy and then analyse the meanings that have historically been given to them with the methods of modern formal semantics. Metaontological research would be worthless if it could not in the end be applied to solving some substantive ontological questions. In the end of my dissertation, therefore, I give arguments for a solution to the substantively ontological problem of universals, a form of realism about universals called promiscuous realism. To prepare the way for that argument, I argue that the metaontological considerations most relevant to the problem of universals are considerations concerning ontological commitment, as the American philosophers Quine and van Inwagen have argued, not those concerning truthmakers as such philosophers as the Australian realist D. M. Armstrong have argued or those concerning verification conditions as such philosophers as Michael Dummett have argued. To justify this conclusion, I go first through well-known objections to verificationism, and show that they apply also to current verificationist theories such as Dummett's theory and Field's deflationist theory of truth. In the process I also respond to opponents of metaphysics who try to show with the aid of verificationism or structuralism that metaphysical questions would be meaningless or illegitimate in some other way. Having justified the central role of ontological commitment, I try to develop a detailed theory of it. The core of my work is a rigorous formal development of a theory of ontological commitment. I construct it by combining Alonzo Church's theory of ontological commitment with Tarski's theory of truth.

Susan Haack has recently attempted to discredit religion by showing that science is an extended and enhanced version of common sense while religion is not. I argue that Haack’s account is misguided not because science is not an extended version of common sense, as she says. It is misguided because she assumes a very restricted, and thus inadequate, account of common sense. After reviewing several more realistic models of common sense, I conclude that common sense is rich enough to allow various kinds of extensions. Just as science can be correctly seen as an enhanced version of common sense, so also religion.

EXTRAPOLATION AND SCIENTIFIC TRUTH Louis Caruana I am taking extrapolation to mean the act of inferring more widely from a limited range of known facts. This notion of extrapolation, when especially applied to past events, has recently been used to formulate a pragmatic definition of truth. The argument in this paper is meant to show that this definition has serious problems. The pragmatic definition of truth has been formulated in the context of the discussion concerning internal realism. In this paper, the basic internal realist starting point, as expounded in the works of H. Putnam and N. Jardine, will be taken to be the claim that the distinction between judgements which are true from judgements which are false is explainable from within our judgement-forming faculty-no recourse to the external world is necessary. There are three steps in the argument I am presenting. I will start first by showing that the pragmatic definition of truth involves a counterfactual statement. The second step will be to describe how the counterfactual definition is apparently justified by an inductive argument. In the final step, I show that this justification is not successful, and I will then draw out some problems with the definition of truth. Putnam's definition of truth may be expressed in the following way, 1 which I will be referring to as statement S1: S1: X is true if and only if X is verifiable in the long run by an ideal community of inquirers.

Saul A. Kripke’s Naming and Necessity was rst published in 1972. A revised and enlarged edition appeared in 1980 and has been continually available in print since then. The book is essentially a transcription of three lectures delivered in January 1970 at Princeton University, with some amendments and a preface added.1 This text will give an overview of Kripke’s book and ošer some comments on its philosophical content. Of course, I will not cover each and every argument in the book. In particular, I will comment on the second half of the third lecture only briežy.

An essay written for an epistemology class for the MA in Philosophy program of Biola University. 

I examine Laurence BonJour's conception of Indirect Representational Realism and note some critical problems for his views, thus opening up the possibility for a form of direct realism.