Peter M. Simons

Particulars in Particular Clothing: Three Trope Theories of Substance*

[W]hen we talk or think of any particular sort of corporeal Substances, as Horse, Stone, etc. though the Idea, we have of either of them, be but the Complication, or Collection of those several simple Ideas of sensible Qualities, which Ae find united in the thing called Horse or Stone, yet because we cannot conceive, how they should subsist alone, nor one in another, we suppose them existing in, and supported by some common subject; which Support we denote by the name Substance, though it be certain, we have no clear, or distinct Idea of that thing we suppose a Support. (John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book II, Chapter XXIII, ?4.)

Farewell to Substance: A Differentiated Leave‐Taking

For most of the history of metaphysics, the subject has been dominated by the concept of substance. There is an everyday commonsense notion of substance which is perfectly harmless and which I shall defend against attempts to remove it or revise it away. But I deny that substance has to be construed as a primitive even in everyday terms. Borrowing Strawson’s distinction between descriptive and revisionary metaphysics, I press the legitimate claims of revisionary metaphysics and argue that there is no place for a fundamental concept of substance within it, although aspects of the concept are likely to find their place therein.

Absolute Truth in a Changing World

With Jan Woleiiski I share a great admiration for the achievements of Polish philosophers and logicians from Twardowski onwards, and we likewise share a fascination for their personalities, foibles and vicissitudes. More importantly, we both agree that Polish logic and analytical philosophy got the balance about right between philosophy and its history. Other things being equal, it is better—for philosophy—to be a good philosopher who is ignorant of the subject’s history than a good historian with no good sense of what is philosophically important. But other things are not equal, and it is possible to both have a good nose for philosophical importance and plausibility, as well as being sensibly informed of relevant portions of the subject’s history. The reason is not simply that by knowing the history one is able to avoid tumbling into the pitfalls of the past or wasting time reinventing theories that have already been invented. It is also that the historical dimension lends depth to one’s appreciation of the problems themselves, and gives one a sense of the historical element in any current discussion. No one philosophizes in a vacuum and it is folly to suppose otherwise. When the history is relatively recent, as with the history of Polish philosophy from 1895 to 1939, some of the issues are likely still to be with us. One such issue is the philosophy of truth, about which Jan and I collaborated some years ago in a long historical essay! An aspect of it is the subject of this essay.

Computer Composition and Works of Music: Variation on A Theme of Ingarden

SummaryThe introduction of computers into the process of musical composition markedly disturbs the relationships which normally obtain between composer, work, performances, and sound complexes. This shift gives rise to a number of philosophical problems with far-reaching consequences, which this paper discusses. The conclusion is that the use of computers in composition exposes a crisis facing the notion of a work of music, whose outcome cannot yet be foreseen. In its subject matter, the paper takes up issues raised by Roman Ingardens phenomenological ontology of art works. The use of example and counterexample to probe the boundaries of the notion of a work of music on the other hand owes more to Husserls method of eidetic variation.

The Importance of Joint Respect: Interplanetary Thoughts on a Naturalistic Account of Naturalness@@@Dividing Reality.

George and I have been discussing Dividing Reality. (I should say, Dividing Reality; neither of us likes quotes but George has trouble with Italics.) It was my Canadian friend whose native language is supposed to have so many different words for snow and ice who suggested I was wasting my time with him and should try George. After all, he pointed out, Georges environment is so different from even the Arctic that wed be getting a truly alien perspective. He (my Canadian friend) at least understands gricular, in fact hed be happy to see more gricular things about, they might well be edible. (This is someone who is not above the odd cdog steak in a hard winter. When they suspect he is hungry his chuskies tend to cluster so they arent it. ) George does not see what the fuss is about. As far as he is concerned, gricular is just as unnatural as green or circular: its way off his conceptual map. That George and others of his kind can communicate with us at all is serendipity. Wed never know they were there, had not a Vegan robot mineral prospector ship almost out of fuel gone into emergency orbit some three billion years ago and reduced its power level to stand-by. At that time the most exciting things on earth were mere cyanobacteria and Georges ancestors were little more than eddies of animo acids in the Jovian troposphere. You see, George is a Jovian gasbag. Not that one would ever demean him by putting that way, any more than youd call a human being a water-bed, but he is mainly gaseous apart from thin outer and inner membranes and some fluid organs. While our lot were getting the hang of walking without hanging onto branches or plumping back onto our knuckles, Georges ancestors were perfecting their foil control. You probably know Jupiter has no solid surface and is pretty windy, so Jovian organisms get no rest. The more primitive ones are simply blown around at different levels and latitudes, and they form the bottom of the food chain. (Though by nature social hunters, George and co. occasionally graze these, though more like a blue whale or a vacuum cleaner

Parts, A Study in Ontology.

The relationship of part to whole is one of the most fundamental there is, yet until now there has been no full-length study of this concept. This book shows that mereology, the formal theory of part and whole, is essential to ontology. Peter Simons surveys and criticizes previous theories, especially the standard extensional view, and proposes a more adequate account which encompasses both temporal and modal considerations in detail. This has far-reaching consequences for our understanding of such classical philosophical concepts as identity, individual, class, substance and accident, matter, form, essence, dependence, and integral whole. It also enables the author to offer new solutions to longstanding problems surrounding these concepts, such as the Ship of Theseus Problem and the issue of mereological essentialism. The author shows by his use of formal techniques that classical philosophical problems are amenable to rigorous treatment, and the book represents a synthesis of issues and methods from the analytical tradition and from the older continental realist tradition of Brentano and the early Husserl. The book is aimed at philosophers, logicians, and linguists.

The Metaphysics of Modality.

Analytic philosophy has recently demonstrated a revived interest in metaphysical problems about possibility and necessity. Graeme Forbes here provides a careful description of the logical background of recent work in this area for those who may be unfamiliar with it, moving on to discuss the distinction between modality de re and modality de dicto and the ontological commitments of possible worlds semantics. In addition, Forbes offers a unified theory of the essential properties of sets, organisms, artefacts, substances, and events, based on the doctrine that identity facts must be intrinsically grounded, and analyzes and rejects apparent counterexamples to this doctrine.