I defend physicalism about phenomenal consciousness against recent epistemic arguments for dualism. First I argue (as against Kripke) that psychophysical identities can be a posteriori (and apparently contingent, and conceivably false). Their epistemic status is due to the analytic independence of phenomenal and physical-functional terms. Unlike Kripke's own explanation of a posteriori necessity, analytic independence is consistent with - indeed explained by - the direct reference of phenomenal terms, so Kripke's argument against psychophysical identities fails. I then argue (as against White and Chalmers) that direct reference does not itself make identities a priori. Next I endorse the 'a priori entailment thesis': if physicalism is true, phenomenal truths follow a priori from a complete statement of the facts of physics. I argue that physicalists must accept a priori entailment if we are to avoid brute or 'strong' a posteriori necessities. I show that a priori entailment is consistent with analytic independence, and so make room for what Chalmers calls 'type-C' physicalism. Jackson's 'Mary', who knows all the physical facts, would be able to deduce the physical-functional reference of phenomenal terms, and so the truth of psychophysical identities, without appealing to analytic connections. The 'knowledge' argument for dualism therefore fails. The lack of such connections does, however, help explain why Mary's deduction seems intuitively impossible. A priori entailment makes zombie scenarios inconceivable, so Chalmers's 'conceivability' argument fails. It also closes Levine's 'explanatory gap' between physical and phenomenal truths. Though it may not satisfy all demands for explanation, any remainder poses no threat to physicalism. I then defend type-C physicalism against some recent objections to the 'phenomenal-concept strategy'. I close by observing that while the view I defend can rebut epistemic arguments for dualism, it leaves the question of whether consciousness has a physical basis as a matter for empirical investigation.

Abstract not available.

The phrase ‘in virtue of’ is a mainstay of metaphysical discourse. In recent years, many philosophers have argued that we should understand this phrase, as metaphysicians use it, in terms of a concept of metaphysical dependence called ‘grounding’.This dissertation explores a range of central issues in the theory of grounding. Chapter 1 introduces the intuitive concept of grounding and discusses some compulsory questions in the theory of grounding. Chapter 2 focusses on scepticism on grounding, according to which the recent philosophical interest in the topic is misguided. In chapter 3 I discuss grounding’s explanatory roles. Chapter 4 focusses on the claim that if an entity is grounded then it is an ontological free lunch. Chapter 5 discusses and rejects the claim that groundingis a relation between facts. This conclusion raises a problem: if grounding is not a relation between facts it becomes difficult to specify the connections between grounding and explanation and grounding and necessity. But not only is it desirable to specify these relations, it is essential for establishing that grounding is able to play the explanatory roles that are discussed in chapter 3. Chapter 6 responds to this problem by outlining an approach to grounding based on David Lewis’s (2003) theory of truthmaking. Against this backdrop I discuss, in chapter 7, some issues in the logic of grounding.

No Abstract was provided. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

In this thesis I treat success in explicating probabilistic laws of nature (e.g., laws of radioactive decay) as a criterion of adequacy for a metaphysics of laws. I devote a chapter of analysis to each of the three best known theories of laws: the best systems analysis, contingent necessitation, and dispositional essentialism. I treat the problem of undermining that David Lewis identified in his theory of chance as a challenge that any metaphysical theory of probabilistic laws must overcome. I argue that dispositional essentialism explicates probabilistic laws while the other two theories fail to do so. Lewis's best systems analysis explicates probabilistic laws only with a solution to the problem of undermining. Michael Thau's solution was met with Lewis's approval. I argue that Thau's solution is ad hoc and renders impossible the fit of best systems with probabilistic laws to indeterministic worlds. Bas van Fraassen argued that David Armstrong's theory of contingent necessitation is totally incapable of explicating probabilistic laws of nature. I argue that Armstrong is able to respond to some of van Fraassen's arguments, but not to the extent of rehabilitating his theory. I also argue that Armstrong's theory of probabilistic laws suffers from the problem of undermining. This result adds to the widely held suspicion that Armstrong's theory is a version of a regularity theory of laws. With propensities grounding probabilistic laws of nature, the problem of undermining does not arise for dispositional essentialism, because all nomically possible futures are compatible with the propensities instantiated in the world. I conclude that dispositional essentialism explicates probabilistic laws of nature better than Lewis's and Armstrong's theories do. Since probabilistic laws are ubiquitous in contemporary physics, I conclude that dispositional essentialism furnishes a better metaphysics of laws than Lewis's and Armstrong's theories do. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Higher-order metaphysics is in full swing. One of its principle aims is to show that higher-order logic can be our foundational metaphysical theory. A foundational metaphysical theory would be a simple, powerful, systematic theory which would ground all of our metaphysical theories from modality, to grounding, to essence, and so on. A satisfactory account of its epistemology would in turn yield a satisfactory epistemology of these theories. And it would function as the final court of appeals for metaphysical questions. It would play the role for our metaphysical community that ZFC plays for the mathematical community. I think there is much promise in this project. There is clear value in having a shared foundational theory to which metaphysicians can appeal. And there is reason to think that higher-order logic can play this role. After all, it has long been known that one can do math in higher-order logic. And there is growing reason to think that one can do metaphysics in higher-order logic in much the same way. However, most of the research approaches higher-order logic from a monist perspective, according to which there is 'one true' higher-order logic. And in the midst of the enthusiasm, metaphysicians seem to have overlooked that this approach leaves the program susceptible to epistemological problems that plague monism about other areas, like set theory. The most significant of these is the Benacerraf Problem. This is the problem of explaining the reliability of our higher-order-logical beliefs. The problem is sufficiently serious that, in the set-theoretic case, it has led to a reconception of the foundations of mathematics, known as pluralism. In this dissertation I investigate a pluralist approach to higher-order metaphysics. The basic idea is that any higher-order logic which can play the role of our foundational metaphysical theory correctly describes the metaphysical structure of the world, in much the way that the set-theoretic pluralist maintains that any set theory which can play the role of our foundational mathematical theory is true of a mind-independent platonic universe of sets. I outline my view about what it takes for a higher-order logic to play this role, what it means for such a logic to correctly describe the metaphysical structure of the world, and how it is that different higher-order logics which seem to disagree with each other can meet both of these conditions. I conclude that higher-order logical pluralism is the most tenable version of the higher-order logic as metaphysics program. Higher-order logical pluralism constitutes a radical departure from conventional wisdom, requiring a significant reconception of the nature of validity, modality, and metaphysics in general. It renders moot some of the most central questions in these domains, such as: Is the law of excluded middle valid? Is it the case that necessarily everything is necessarily something? Is the grounding relation transitive? On this picture, these questions no longer have objective answers. They become like the question of whether the Continuum Hypothesis is true, according to the set-theoretic pluralist. The only significant question in the neighborhood of the aforementioned questions is: which metaphysical principles are best suited to the task at hand?

Thesis advisor: Peter Kreeft / This dissertation is a Thomistic personalist account of the human family. It seeks to shed light on the nature of the family by way of a metaphysical and phenomenological analysis. Or better, I hope to contribute to a conscious awareness of the presence of the family. Such a project is necessary because personalists have said much about the individual person but less about the person-in-the-family. Moreover, Thomistic personalism will benefit from a synthesis of late 20th and early 21st century insights regarding philosophical anthropology; such a synthesis I offer here. I pose the philosophical question thus: what is the nature of the family? And the central claim of the dissertation: the family is beautiful. Now, there is a distinction between ontological and aesthetic beauty. Ontological beauty belongs to beings as such. It is the kind of beauty that is contained in the classical meaning of the term cosmos—"the beauty resulting from order.” For its part, aesthetic beauty deals with the artifacts of man. It is a derivative kind of beauty. So, my dissertation will be an examination of the family as ontologically beautiful, or said differently, the family as a microcosm. Such a claim contends with two prominent, contemporary philosophies of the family. First, feminist philosophy following Foucault imagines the family as an artificial structure of sexual oppression. For these, the family is not a microcosm, but is instead a prison—artificial and controlling. Second, reforming philosophers such as Henry Rosemont Jr., reject any metaphysical account of the family and argue that the value of the family is strictly utilitarian in nature—it is a community of merely cooperating human beings towards the end of the greatest, communal happiness. To respond to these objections, I draw on the 20th century Catholic personalists to articulate a portrait of the family as beautiful according to the three Thomistic attributes of the beautiful: integritas, consonantia, and claritas. The dissertation unfolds in this way. After examining the objections, in Thomistic fashion I provide a sed contra by considering three world wisdom authorities on the question. I show that the Islamic Quran, the Bhagavad Gita and the philosophy of Confucius all take the family to be of cosmic import and beautiful. I next lay Thomistic personalist foundations for a study of the family. This includes the anthropology of Karol Wojtyla and the metaphysics of W. Norris Clarke. Wojtyla describes the human person as a rational being, free and related to the eternal. Clarke explains that the person is a substance-in-relation and proposes system as a category of being to account for the unity of relating substances. With these key notions in hand, I turn to St. Thomas’s cosmology to articulate the attributes of the cosmos that will in turn describe any microcosm; specifically: esse, diversity, metaphysical inequality, and teleology. Following the articulation of foundational notions in Thomistic personalism, I begin the examination of the family according to the attributes of beauty. Under integritas, I consider the person-in-the-family beginning with Clarke’s metaphysical account of the person as ontologically relational. Next, I turn to Dietrich Von Hildebrand to provide an account of the role of the heart in human persons, given the heart’s crucial role in the experience of relationships in the family. Finally, I consider three Thomistic positions on the gender of persons: each attributing gender to either matter, form, or esse respectively. In the final move, I argue that a home is crucial to the integrity of the family too. Consonantia has to do with harmony and therefore I attempt a phenomenology of the familial relationships, arguing that each person of the family has a vocation to contribute to family unity. Drawing on Marcel’s study of fatherhood, I propose an existential order in the family wherein the father is found at some existential distance from the family. This distance is a condition that calls a father to provide a unity of direction for the family—to lead. To explain this leadership, I consider the Aristotelian distinction between a king and a tyrant to say that the father’s vocation is kingly: to order the family to virtue through giving himself. For her part, the mother is at the existential center of the family. She actualizes the unity of the family with her ineinanderblick (loving gaze). To understand this, I turn to Dietrich Von Hildebrand’s phenomenology of love as a value response. Finally, I consider the relationship of children as those who receive love in the family and so complete the perfection of being as both acting and receiving according to Clarke’s notion of receiving as an ontological perfection. Moreover, I consider Marcel’s insight that children are both incarnations of the parent’s love and also a judgement. In my final move, I take up the claritas of the family. I account for the intelligible unity of the family as a metaphysical system characterized by the central qualities of freedom and virtue. Regarding freedom, I examine Marcel’s notion of founding a family as a free act. With respect to virtue, I consider the traditional notion of the family as a school of virtue, not only for the children but for the parents. Finally, I propose that the family has a sacred character because, of all the unities or systems in the cosmos, the family most clearly reflects the splendor of God. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

No description available.

<p>The distinction between that which can be said with a language and that which must be shown by a language is central to Ludwig Wittgenstein/s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The theme of "saying and showing" has at least three distinct but related connotations in that work. First, the theme constitutes the core of the Tractarian view of the logic of language and, with this, the core of its view of metaphysics. The logical form of a proposition must show itself thereby allowing the proposition to picture a possible state of affairs in the world and, consequently, allowing a language-user to claim that that state of affairs is actually the case in the world. Second, the theme of saying and showing is apparent in Wittgenstein/s view of the elucidating activity that is philosophy, as the philosopher brings one to see that which shows itself and thereby brings one to see the world aright. Third, the theme of saying and showing accounts for Wittgenstein's remarks on the ineffability of the mystical/ethical: why one must remain silent concerning that which is "higher" and what this silence means. The implications of the third connotation of the theme of saying and showIng, however, make possible a critique of and a development within the first connotation of that theme. This third sense of the theme, therefore, makes possible a changed view of language, logic and the world. Exactly such a view is developed in the Philosophical Investigations and other later writings of Wittgenstein. The theme of saying and showing can thus be traced into Wittgenstein's later writings. Further, having found the theme in the later writings as well as in the earlier work and having linked the theme with Wittgenstein's views on the mystical/ethical, it becomes reasonable to postulate a unified ethical project of showing the limitations of language as underlying the entire corpus of Wittgenstein's work.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

No description available.