In this thesis I propose an improved theory of ontological commitment, one which is neutral on epistemology. Although Quine's quantificational criterion of ontological commitment has many advantages over its competitors, like its univocal treatment of being and existence, its clear account of ontological reduction and its capacity to accommodate implicit commitments, I argue that it has a fatal flaw: the inability to account for ontological commitment to individuals. Quine's choice of a first-order language of regimentation without constants is so entwined with his holist epistemology that imputations of existence cannot be made except to objects-qua-F, qua some wholly third-personal description. Commitments of those who believe that minds reach out directly to objects by means of acquaintance or introspection, encoded in language by constants, are ungrammatical in Quine's language. This breakdown of grammaticality, on my view, is an avoidable result of Quine's behaviourism and holist epistemology filtering into his choice of canonical language. I opt for a broader conception of ontological commitments as incurred by formalised theories with one or more semantic categories of categorematic objectual expressions, whose function is to stand for objects. I expand the language of regimentation at least to first-order logic with constants and identity. This preserves the attractive features of Quine's position. It retains its elegant treatment of reduction and implicit ontological commitments, and its capacity to explain away Meinongian confusions, without being beholden to global holism. My canonical language makes room for acquaintance and first-personal methods as sources of ontological commitment. It has the advantage of allowing theories like Quine's, which confine themselves to objects-qua-F, to be regimented as well as non-holist theories whose criteria of ontological commitment are 'to be is to be the referent of a name' or 'to be is to be the value of a constant or variable'.

In this thesis, Semantics, Meta-Semantics, and Ontology, I provide a critique of the method of truth in metaphysics. Davidson has suggested that we can determine the metaphysical nature and structure of reality through semantic investigations. By contrast, I argue that it is not semantics, but meta-semantics, which reveals the metaphysically necessary and sufficient truth conditions of our claims. As a consequence I reject the Quinean (semantic) criterion of ontological commitment. In Part I, chapter 1, I argue that the metaphysically primary truth bearers are not propositions, but rather concrete representations, either beliefs or sentences. I show, in chapter 2, that we can give sense to a truth predicate applying to sentences, given a truth operator and quantification into sentence position. I argue that this strategy does not commit us to the existence of propositions serving as truth bearers. In Part II I argue that although we must assign semantic values to sentences and/or predicates, the meaningfulness of these expressions is not thereby explained. In chapter 3 I articulate Davidson’s problem of predication and his solution, but argue that he was wrong to attribute this solution to Tarski. In chapter 4 I examine the semantics of modal languages; I conclude that although they require semantic values for predicates and/or sentences we should be instrumentalists about these theories. In Part III I consider the relationship between truth and existence. In chapter 5, I defend Pluralism about truth: in some (though not all) domains of discourse, I claim, semantic reference plays a merely instrumental role in explaining truth. In chapter 6, I show that Hume’s Principle, which is committed by the Quinean criterion to the existence of numbers, can be true even though numbers do not exist. In doing so, I appeal to meta-semantic and diachronic considerations. In the conclusion I compare my views on ontology and commitment to Jody Azzouni’s; and in the appendix I suggest how one might pursue diachronic linguistics.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Sydney, 2007. / Title from title screen (viewed 28 March 2008). Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Dept. of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts. Degree awarded 2007; thesis submitted 2006. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print form.

Thesis (M.A.)--Carleton University, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 149-150). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

In this dissertation I criticize and reconfigure the ontological framework within which discussions of the organization, ontogeny, and evolution of organic form have often been conducted. Explanations of organismal form are frequently given in terms of a force or essence that exists prior to the organism’s life in the world. Traits of organisms are products of the selective environment and the unbroken linear inheritance of genetically coded developmental programs. Homological traits share unbroken vertical inheritance from a single common ancestor. Species are the product of exclusive gene flow between conspecifics and vertical genetic inheritance. And likewise, race is ascribed on the basis of pre-existing essential features. In place of this underlying preformationism which locates the source of form either in the informational program of inherited genes or within a selecting environment, I suggest form is the product of an organism’s self-construction using diverse resources. This can be understood as a modification of Kant’s view of organisms as self-organizing, set out in his Critique of Judgment (1790). Recast from this perspective the meaning and reference of “trait,” “homology,” “species,” and “race” change. Firstly, a trait may be the product of the organism’s self-construction utilizing multiple ancestral resources. Given this, homologous traits may correspond in some but not all of their features or may share some but not all of their ancestral sources. Homology may be partial. Species may acquire epigenetic, cellular, behavioural, and ecological resources both vertically and horizontally. As such, they are best conceived of as recurrent successions of self-constructed and reconstructed life cycles of organisms sharing similar resources, a similar habitus, similar capacities for sustaining themselves, and repeated generative processes. Lastly, race identity is not preformed but within the control of human organisms as agents who self-construct, interpret, and ascribe their own race identities utilizing diverse sets of dynamic relationships, lived experiences, and histories.

Orientador: Jesus José Ranieri / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-24T22:45:45Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 VanderLaan_MurilloAugustodeSouza_M.pdf: 1263200 bytes, checksum: 49b640f693bf7810274a415e4f554c68 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014 / Resumo: Em fins da década de 1950, György Lukács propôs um renascimento do marxismo que fizesse frente tanto aos desenvolvimentos neopositivistas da filosofia burguesa quanto às deformações teóricas de Marx empregadas pelo taticismo stalinista. Vitimado por um câncer em 1971, o filósofo húngaro não pôde concluir suas pretensões teóricas. Ainda assim, nos legou uma rica leitura ontológica de Marx, como prelúdio de seu projeto não escrito de uma Ética marxista. A presente dissertação volta-se à investigação desta leitura, que seria um dos últimos posicionamentos teóricos de Lukács e que deram origem aos Prolegômenos para uma Ontologia do ser social e Para uma Ontologia do ser social. Concentra-se aqui na apresentação e articulação das categorias que considera-se fundamentais para o entendimento da concepção lukácsiana de desenvolvimento do ser social, perpassando o conjunto de reflexões gerais acerca do ser e atendo-se, sobretudo, aos capítulos O Trabalho e A Reprodução da parte sistemática de Para uma ontologia do ser social / Abstract: At the end of the 1950s, György Lukács, proposed a marxism renaissance that would be able to face the neopositivists development of the bourgeois philosophy and the theoretical distortions of Marx, advanced by the stalinist taticism. Killed by a cancer in 1971, the hungarian philosopher couldn¿t finish his theoretical plans. Nevertheless, he left us a rich ontological interpretation of Marx, thought as a prelude of his never written Ethics. The present dissertation investigates this interpretation, one of the last theoretical reflexions of Lukács, that resulted in the Prolegomena to the Ontology of Social Being and The Ontology of Social Being. The focus here is to present and articulate the categories that are essential to understand the lukácsian conception of the development of the social being: the ones dealing with the being in general but, specially, those presented in the chapter Labour and Reproduction, in the systematic part of The Ontology of Social Being / Mestrado / Sociologia / Mestre em Sociologia

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Contemporary developments in cognitive neuroscience are having a profound impact on the philosophy of mind as philosophers work to understand the implications of these advances for appreciating what it means to be a human person. At the same time, a recent consensus has formed among contemporary theologians around the thesis that Jesus Christ is the revelation of what it means to be truly human. Unfortunately, very few thinkers have made any concerted effort to bring these two developments into dialogue with one another. This study addresses this lack by drawing on the anthropological insights of Karl Barth and bringing them to bear on certain aspects of the contemporary discussions regarding the mind/brain relationship. The thesis thus comprises two major sections. The first develops an understanding of Karl Barth’s theological anthropology focusing on three major facets: (1) the centrality of Jesus Christ for any real understanding of human persons; (2) the resources that such a christologically determined view of human nature has for engaging in interdisciplinary discourse; and (3) the ontological implications of this approach for understanding the mind/body relationship. The second part of the study then draws on this theological foundation to consider the implications that understanding human nature christologically has for analyzing and assessing several prominent ways of explaining the mind/body relationship. This study, then, is an exercise in understanding the nature of a christocentric anthropology and its implications for understanding human ontology. While it will devote significant attention to the theology of Karl Barth and various contemporary philosophers of mind, its fundamental aim is to draw together these apparently disparate fields of inquiry by engaging both theology and philosophy in a vital dialogue on the nature of the human person as revealed in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

L'objet de cette thèse doctorale est la réponse poïétique et institutionnaliste offerte par Castoriadis au problème de la constitution d'une universalité pratique dans un contexte post-métaphysique. La thèse s'ouvre sur une définition de la philosophie politique comme projet d'objectivation institutionnelle de la raison et sur l'exposition du problème, pour cette discipline, engendré par la critique de la métaphysique et l'émergence d'une conception procédurale de la raison lors de la modernité. La thèse est ensuite divisée en deux parties. La première porte sur la philosophie de Castoriadis, c'est-à-dire sur sa critique de la pensée métaphysique, son ontologie et sa théorie de la connaissance. Nous y défendons la thèse interprétative que sa philosophie est un « pluralisme ontopoïétique constructiviste ». La seconde porte sur sa conception de la raison pratique, que nous interprétons comme « institutionnalisme post-métaphysique ». Nous concluons en explicitant les nouvelles médiations établies par Castoriadis entre philosophie et politique, sa conception de l'universalité pratique, et, par conséquent, la place qu'il occupe dans le temps long de l'histoire de la philosophie politique. Une perspective comparative a été privilégiée tout au long de notre argumentaire. Nous apprécions la singularité castoriadienne en la comparant avec des philosophies ayant partagé des problèmes communs et certains horizons thétiques, notamment l'héritage hégéliano-marxien et les philosophies de la différence. / The purpose of this doctoral thesis is to expose Castoriadis’ poïetical and institutional answer to the following question: how can we constitute a practical universality in a postmetaphysical context. Starting with a definition of political philosophy as the progressive and institutional objectification of reason, I first show how the modern radical critic of metaphysical thoughts and the modern emergence of a procedural conception of reason were both problematic for political philosophy. The thesis is then divided into two parts. The first part is devoted to Castoriadis’ philosophy and presents his own critics of metaphysical thinking, his ontology and his theory of knowledge. I then follow the interpretative thesis according to which Castoriadis’ philosophy can be characterized as an ''ontopoïetical pluralistic constructivism'' The second part is about his conception of practical reason, which I interpret as a “postmetaphysical institutionalism”. I conclude by showing that Castoriadis offers not only new mediations between politics and philosophy but also an original conception of practical universality in the history of political philosophy. Using a comparative method, I put forward Castoriadis’ thoughts through a comparison with other philosophies that share common problems and thesis, e.g. the Hegelian-Marxian tradition and the philosophies of difference.