Universals

This paper presents a Generative Projection Ontology (GPO) as a unified ontological framework grounded in the Generative Projection Framework. The framework treats pro- jection as an invariance-constrained principle of ontological reconstruction, specifying how coherent domains of structured description arise from shared generative conditions without introducing new empirical postulates or modifying domain-specific theories. Within this framework, established physical descriptions—such as spacetime geometry, quantum theory, and field-theoretic structure—as well as descriptions associated with con- sciousness and psychological organization, are interpreted as effective realizations (...) situated within distinct but co-projected sectors. These sectors are governed by domain-specific invariant organizational principles and are treated as ontologically robust without being hierarchically ordered or mutually reducible. The generative level itself is defined purely in architectural terms. It is not identified with any physical substrate, mental substance, or neutral material, but functions as a structural condition that anchors projection relations across domains. Ontological unity is secured at this generative level, while plurality arises through projection into distinct sectors. By separating ontological interpretation from domain-specific explanation, the Genera- tive Projection Ontology avoids both reductive physicalism and substance dualism without invoking a mediating ontology. The framework is offered as an ontological clarification intended to stabilize interpretation across physics and theories of consciousness while pre- serving the autonomy and methodological integrity of effective descriptions within each domain. (shrink)

Quantum mechanics lacks a formal account of the observer, leaving the measurement postulate structurally incomplete. I introduce a minimal operator chain: J, A, C, L, R, that formalizes recognition, articulation, collapse, and observation. Inserting these operators into the standard measurement rule yields a complete and stable measurement structure without altering quantum predictions. A spin‑measurement example and a reconstruction of Wigner’s friend demonstrate that paradoxes dissolve when collapse is explicitly observer‑indexed. -/- Authored by Eloy Escagedo Gutierrez as part of The Universal (...) Principle of Collapse (UPC) Research Project. (shrink)

Concerning the mind/body problem, most people seem to have basic intuitions about the nature of this problem that lie somewhere on a spectrum between what one could call an ‘inflated’ and a ‘deflated’ view of subjectivity, experience and human thought. On the ‘inflated’ side, people take a strong view of subjectivity, the central importance of phenomenological experiences and often also special human cognitive abilities as so obvious, that they and not some ‘scientific poetry’ on top of them should be taken (...) as the basis for our understanding of the world. The cogito argument, the (at least perceived) freedom of will and qualia are then seen as clearly supporting this view, and seem to call for a revision of the common physicalist world view, alas without giving any unambiguous hints on how this could be done. For the inflationist there exists something like qualitative information that is intuitively grasped (as quality or idea), and human thought can accordingly be much more than ‘symbol pushing’, with rich pre-, sub- and unconscious contributions at the bottom as well as access to universal abstract entities at the top. But how to connect this to the scientific concept of physical, quantitative information processing? On the ‘deflated’ side, subjectivity is understood to be no more than the access to self-locating information, and phenomenological experience and meaning are just special types of concepts and properly coordinated, physically realized information. For the deflationist there is only quantitative information, so that human thought boils down to physical information processing and meaning to optimized (logico-)mathematical relations, e.g. in a web of symbols or as what remains constant over ‘all possible worlds’. The underlying assumption is that not only symbolic structure, but also qualitative features arise from self-organization on the basis of feedback to actions in some form of reinforcement-type learning; only that it is still very unclear how broad and stable abstractions could self-implement in neural-network type systems, let alone how structural relations from the individual coordination of quantitative information could be uniquely connected with identity, quality or universal elements of meaning. The deflated view is very much in line with current physics and AI research, but does not seem to cover the human experience in all aspects, and is therefore in danger of missing important clues even for the further development of physics and AI research themselves. (The later is really now repeating all of this including all errors; we have to see whether there is anything to the saying that sometimes problems were only solved because young people didn’t know that it couldn’t be done.) In trying to understand, let alone make progress with, the mind/body problem, I went through several mindsets that, in retrospect, were not very helpful. To remind myself to not fall into the same trap twice, I have written this manuscript. (shrink)

Over the last years, ‘sub-symbolic’ deep neural network (DNN) based artificial intelligence (AI) systems have run into all sorts of problems, especially with ‘hallucinations’ and in general with reliability.(REFs) One way to conceptualize this is to understand sub-symbolic AI to lack proper world models,(REFs) i.e. some type of proper mapping of what’s supposedly real and what’s not – though it might be more helpful to concede that such AI systems have ‘fuzzy’ implicit world models, that are superpositions of all proper (...) world models compatible with the statistics of the language token use in the training data. Understood in one of these ways, it is tempting to think that the problems of these models can be solved by adding proper world model information, only that the generation and operation of open, extended world models is exactly the task at which ‘classical’ symbolic AI approaches failed.(REFs) Combined sub-symbolic and symbolic approaches (like for instance ‘Neuro-AI‘ or similar)(REFs) are thus most likely doomed to run not only into some of the problems of both subsymbolic, as well as symbolic systems, but even into additional problems related to the interfacing of the two. For this interfacing, no generally applicable approach is known yet and given that (even after at least decades of research) our knowledge of how humans generate or access (layers of) symbol systems and world models is very limited, it seems at least questionable that substantial progress will be made with this in the near future. AI research and developement thus lead us back to core philosophical questions: What is abstraction? Are there proper (Platonic) abstract objects? etc. Somewhat surprisingly, we find ourselves on what appears to be a new path among many, leading to the realization that there is something very ‘real’ about abstract objects. (And that thus a lot of new problems are indeed old ones.) -- But if abstract objects are real, shouldn't we find evidence for this at the Neuroscience/Psychology interface? (shrink)

[This is an ealier English manuscript of the book that will soon be published by Brill/Mentis (in German for now).] Why are computers so smart these days? And why are humans apparently still a bit smarter? Does this have something to do with the difference between data and meaning? Does this in turn mean that at least some abstract entities, such as numbers, exist independently of human thought? Wouldn’t that require an expansion of our scientific world view? And would that (...) at all be compatible with what we know about our world from physics and chemistry, philosophy, psychology, neuroscience and the theory of evolution? Finally, what would this tell us about ethical and aesthetic value theories? These and related questions will be discussed in this book. We will find that the difference between data and meaning, i.e. quantitative and qualitative information, does indeed appear to be of central importance for understanding both artificial and natural intelligence. And then the independent existence of abstract entities not only appears to be a particularly promising hypothesis, but also one that is entirely compatible with the sum of our scientific knowledge, especially with regard to value theories. The book thus arrives at the exploration of a scientifically tenable, panpsychistically inspired, objective idealism that can be derived from our most fundamental intuitions as subjects that perceive qualities, but that can also take into account the structuring of the world already at the micro-scale, found in the modern natural sciences. The result is a Platonic, but in a second step also a scientific realism and a naturalism in the sense that it is informed by the natural sciences in terms of an inductive metaphysics. An objective idealism, not in a rationalistic maximum form, but in a pragmatic minimum form; without eternal truths, but dependent on the continued philosophical-scientific and also philosophical-social dialog. The proposed model could offer interesting solutions to a number of problems at and near the mind/matter boundary: Proposals are being considered for the interpretation of quantum mechanics, the problem of molecular symmetry, the neuronal code and the binding problem in neuroscience, mental causation, a more holistic understanding of mental processes, and so on and so forth. However, the extent to which the model threatens to promise far too much is also being discussed. In sum, the core question is how we can imagine human thinking beyond physically conceived information processing. An alternative model of human thinking is then put up for discussion, for which not only machine-like cognitive performance, but above all the intentional perception of qualitative information, i.e. of abstract entities, would be central, as well as the free, ultimately creative linking of patterns of quantitative information (signals, data) with such qualities (meanings). (shrink)

In this paper I explore the logical relationship between the question of the reality of qualia and the problem of universals. I argue that nominalism is inconsistent with the existence of qualia, and that realism either implies or makes plausible the existence of qualia. Thus, one's position on the existence of qualia is strongly constrained by one's answer to the problem of universals.

A connection between things and properties is required to hold things and properties together. Exemplification is such a connection. Exemplification is usually considered primitive, and therefore analysis of exemplification is nearly absent from the literature. I maintain that exemplification might not be primitive; and in giving a description of exemplification, I point out a new problem having to do with the issue of how things are tied to properties.

Property realism is the view that there are mind-independent universals. In this paper, I present a distinctive argument for property realism, partly inspired by Edmund Husserl, which has not appeared in the contemporary literature and has only a spare few precedents in the history of philosophy. The argument is distinguished by being phenomenological, that is, based in reflective analysis of experiential content. It shows that universals must exist because we can have veridical experiences as of universals whose contents cannot be (...) reduced to representations of particulars. (shrink)

In 'Higher-order quantification and the elimination of abstract objects', Dorr uses sum types to develop a novel higher-orderist account of nominalization in natural languages. Dorr's account is elegant and ingenious, but we argue that it faces some serious problems. Dorr could avoid these particular problems if he replaced sum types with (what we call) union types, but union types would then introduce new problems of their own. Fortunately, our own fictionalist approach to nominalization steers clear of all these difficulties.

Many realists and nominalists, guided by a specific interpretation of the nature of the debate concerning the existence of properties, agree in holding that predicative sentences of the form «a is F» – whereas the schematic letters «a» and «F» stand for, respectively, a name of a particular and a general term –, taken by themselves alone, don’t commit us to the existence of properties. In this paper I’ll take into account the main versions of realism and nominalism that assume (...) the correctness of that thesis; then, moving from what I call “the argument from the anaphoric anomaly”, I’ll bring them into question pointing out that their debate is misguided. (shrink)

The present paper presents a new (formal) theory of presence according to which, roughly, to be present at a place is to have a delegate located at that place. One crucial feature of the theory is that something can be present at a place without thereby being located there. The theory is then applied to several central issues in metaphysics, such as persistence through times and worlds, theories of universals, the ontology of social entities, and the nature of God.

Universals are properties that are shared by multiple objects. In classical South Asia, Brahmanical thinkers from Vyākaraṇa, Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika, and Mīmāṃsā text traditions were realists about universals, while most Buddhists were nominalists. In this paper, my aim is to reconstruct the early Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika theory of universals, with special emphasis on the arguments of the Nyāya philosopher Uddyotakara (6th century CE) against a Buddhist strand of resemblance nominalism. I show that Uddyotakara's contribution to this debate is twofold. First, he is possibly (...) the first Naiyāyika to adopt a sparse theory of universals, a theory according to which it is necessary to posit only those universals which explain how objects resemble each other in the most fundamental or irreducible respects. On the other hand, he offers a few arguments for realism, which are explicitly motivated by a causal constraint on intentionality. (shrink)

In the social world, our lives are informed, impacted, and controlled by time. Behind this grand saying there is the phenomenon of making time. More precisely, there are acts and processes, largely conventional and oftentimes institutional, that create temporal fiat objects (TFOs for short). A TFO is an abstract entity set with temporal boundaries, much like a national park is a creatable spatial fiat object with spatial boundaries. In this paper, I construct an ontology of TFOs and argue that it (...) is explanatorily useful for understanding how TFOs are created and maintained (often at the hands of those in power) and for solving justice issues that arise from TFOs generated in morally problematic ways. The explanatory utility of the theory provides one reason to believe that the theory is true. A comprehensive social metaphysics should make room for such temporal entities in the social world. (shrink)

According to traditional universalism, properties are instantiated by objects, where instantiation is a ‘tie’ that binds objects and properties into facts. I offer two arguments against this view. I then develop an alternative higher-order account which holds that properties are primitively predicated of objects yet, unlike traditional nominalism, are nevertheless genuinely real. When it’s a fact that Fo, it’s not because object o instantiates F-ness, but just that Fo – where F still exists. Against orthodox higher-order approaches, however, my arguments (...) against instantiation also serve to support a sparse conception of properties. In developing the view, I introduce an extension of ontological and ideological commitment in the form of syntactic commitment. (shrink)

Property dualism posits one kind of substance (physical), but two kinds of properties: physical and mental. The view has been criticized for either collapsing into substance dualism or enjoying no distinctive advantage over it. We wield a similar criticism, but our argument has a unique spin: we scrutinize what it could mean for a property to count as mental given different conceptions of the relation between substance and property. We consider various versions of universal realism and trope theory and argue (...) that they either render property dualism incoherent or saddle it with commitments that undermine its initial motivation. (shrink)

In this paper, I first argue for a relational account of the concept of ontological form and its difference from being. The former is explicated by the concepts of character-neutral internal relation and existence or being and that the ontological forms of entities consist in these formal ontological relations in which the entities stand. Secondly, I apply this account to ontological categories and their membership-determination, existence and reality. Here I also defend a relational view that categories are construed as pluralities (...) of entities standing in the same formal ontological relations in the same order. Formal ontological relations are not additional entities to their relata because they are internal relations. Therefore, categories do not exist as entities numerically distinct from their members. Yet their membership is determined by formal ontological relations actually holding among entities. My accounts are nominalist since ontological forms and categories are not universal or general entities of any sort. (shrink)

This essay considers how cross-culturally and historically oriented philosophers can produce excellent translations for use in the undergraduate philosophy classroom. It raises three questions for reflecting on translation methodology, focusing on Sanskrit-language texts as a case study: (1) What do we want students to be able to do with the texts in translation? (2) Given the answer to (1), what features of Sanskrit texts are relevant to how we translate? (3) Given the answers to (1) and (2), what features of (...) the current moment and target audience, if any, are relevant for how we translate? The article concludes by applying these answers to the translation of three key terms (ākṛti, jāti, and sāmānya) in the work of Kumārila Bhāṭṭa, a seminal seventh-century Mīmāṃsā thinker. (shrink)

Avicenna’s Letter to the Scholars of Baghdād records a philosophical exchange between Avicenna and Abū al-Qāsim al-Kirmānī, conducted shortly after Avicenna’s arrival in Hamadhān in 405/1015. The Letter addresses some central metaphysical and epistemological questions in Avicenna’s philosophy, namely the existence and unity of shared essences (al-māhīyyāt al-mushtaraka) and the acquisition of intelligible forms (al-ṣuwar al-maʿqūla). Despite its importance, the work has remained relatively understudied. This paper offers a new critical edition of the Arabic text, based on all known manuscript (...) witnesses, together with the first complete English translation of the Letter and a detailed synopsis. Beyond its editorial contributions, the paper examines a key interpretive issue raised by the Letter: the nature of al-Kirmānī’s realism about universals. Against the prevailing view in modern scholarship that characterizes al-Kirmānī as a Platonic realist, I argue that the Letter shows him to be an immanent realist. Finally, the paper explores the impact of the Avicenna–al-Kirmānī debate on Avicenna’s later writings, showing that the Argument from Contrary Properties, which Avicenna consistently raised against immanent realism in his subsequent discussions of universals, was first introduced in the Letter. (shrink)

According to an act-based conception of propositions, propositions are types of cognitive or linguistic acts. Such accounts are advertised as having major metaphysical and epistemological advantages over traditional platonic accounts. However, existing versions of such accounts appeal to platonic properties and relations in order to account for the contents expressed by predicates, reintroducing many of the problems they aim to solve. Characterizing both *that a is F* and *that it’s F* as different types of “assertibles” (the former can be asserted (...) full-stop and the latter can be asserted of things), the issue can be seen as a limitation of existing act-based approaches: they apply only to a restricted class of assertibles. In this paper, I show how adopting a normative functionalist approach to linguistic meaning enables one to generalize the act-based approach to all assertibles such that no appeal to extrinsic properties and relations is needed. I show, further, how this radicalized act-based account provides the resources for a satisfactory account of our knowledge of objective states of affairs, properties, and relations (which I dub “instantiables”) in terms of our mastery of linguistic norms. (shrink)

This paper defends Natural Kind Fundamentalism (NKF), the view that the ontological category of natural kind is fundamental. I develop a primitivist account of categorial fundamentality based on the Complete Categorial Basis (CCB) criterion, which requires that fundamental categories form a complete and minimal system irreducible to other categories through ontological dependence relations. I argue against bundle-theoretic reductions and in favour of the view that natural kinds are substantial universals serving as principles of unity for property clusters. This framework distinguishes (...) between the metaphysical ‘why’ question (answered by substantial universals as unifiers) and the empirical ‘how’ question (concerning specific unification mechanisms). I demonstrate that natural kinds and properties exhibit mutual but asymmetric dependence: properties depend generically on kinds for instantiation, while kinds depend rigidly on their essential properties. The resulting formal ontological structure satisfies the CCB criterion and explains why certain property clusters are non-arbitrary without reducing kinds to properties or vice versa. (shrink)

Recently, there have been a spate of ingenious grounding arguments targeting the Aristotelian view of universals – see e.g. Alvarado (2019, 2020), Costa (2021), Raven (2022), and Costa & Giordani (2024). My aim here is to address these arguments. Specifically, I will show that these arguments either fail (and hence don’t undermine Aristotelianism) or highlight a problem for anyone who buys into a widely accepted idea about the priority of constituents. A knock-on consequence is that Aristotelianism is either off the (...) hook or at least in the same boat as many other competing positions. (shrink)

This volume contains the complete correspondence of two of the leading analytic philosophers of the late twentieth century, David Armstrong and David Lewis. Comprising some 345 letters, including letters to and from third parties, this correspondence is at once a deep philosophical resource shedding new light on the philosophical development of two of the great late twentieth-century philosophers, and a record of the development of a philosophical friendship. The letters are valuable, not only for the light they shed on the (...) background to many of Armstrong's and Lewis' major publications, but also for what they show us about the practice of philosophy. The correspondence is a window into both the philosophical content of two leading thinkers' minds and an exemplar of how philosophy of the highest level can be done. (shrink)

Alberic of Paris was one of the leading philosophers of the 12th century. He was the main rival to Peter Abelard and, according to John of Salisbury, “a most fierce opponent of the nominalist school.” But although he was an important figure in his time, Alberic is almost completely unknown today. -/- This collection of essays is the first ever dedicated to exploring and contextualizing the views of Alberic and his followers, the Albricani. It discusses topics such as universals, time, (...) mereology, divine foreknowledge, fallacies, and modal logic, and shows that Alberic was an original thinker in a vibrant intellectual milieu. -/- Contributors are Andrew W. Arlig, Enrico Donato, Sten Ebbesen, Charles Girard, Heine Hansen, Peter King, John Marenbon, Sofia Orsino, Boaz Faraday Schuman, Caterina Tarlazzi, Paul Thom, and Wojciech Wciórka. (shrink)

Kappale tuo esiin eräät keskeisimmät objekteista, ominaisuuksista ja lajeista esitetyt metafyysiset käsitykset. Ne jakaantuvat universaalirealistisiin ja toisaalta nominalistisiin ontologisiin kategoriateorioihin. Suurin osa teorioista lähtee aristoteelisen substanssiontologisen tradition pohjalta, jonka mukaan objektit eli substanssit ovat perustava kategoria. Keskeinen kysymys silloin on, esimerkiksi nk. universaalien ongelmassa, minkä muiden kategorioiden olioita on olemassa. Tärkeimpiä poikkeuksia aristoteeliseen substanssiparadigmaan nähdeen ovat universaalikimpputeoria ja trooppiteoriat. Ne hylkäävät substanssit olioiden perustavana kategoriana. Kappaleen ulkopuolelle rajautuvat tapahtumaontologiat ja prosessiontologiat, joita käsitellään kirjan seuraavassa luvussa.

This article explores a neglected aspect of the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS). Traditionally, DDS holds that God’s attributes, such as omnipotence and omniscience, are identical to each other and to God’s existence. While most existing literature explores the implication of DDS on other divine attributes, this article offers a systematic reflection on the property of being simple under the framework of divine simplicity. Addressing the ontological nature of simplicity itself raises novel and significant questions about the nature of God (...) and the coherence of DDS. Through an examination of the property of being simple with respect to various ontological frameworks, particularly two versions of bundle theory, this article reveals that the attribute of being simple possesses a distinct ontological status, differing fundamentally from other divine attributes. (shrink)

Within the history of analytic philosophy, L.S. Stebbing was among the few figures who explicitly saw something important and worth defending in the early Whitehead’s philosophy of nature, even if she was unwilling to go along with the later Whitehead’s change of direction. This chapter examines Stebbing’s responses to Whitehead primarily during the period, around the 1920s, before her focus turned to her better-known discussions of what she called ‘directional analysis’. Stebbing produced a series of detailed responses to Whitehead, endeavouring (...) to render his theses and concepts as precise and clear as possible, so as to salvage those worth defending. During this time, some of Stebbing’s original views are presented as solutions to problems found in Whitehead. This chapter demonstrates that, within this Whiteheadian framework, Stebbing developed an original conception of abstraction and its significance for the methodology of science. Apart from reconstructing Stebbing’s theory of abstraction, this chapter highlights its relevance to contemporary debates in the philosophy of science, especially concerning the conception of abstraction as selective attention. (shrink)

This paper argues that the following three popular doctrines are in tension with one another: (i) property essentialism, the view that at least some properties have essences; (ii) the canonical reduction of modality to essence, due to Fine; and (iii) Aristotelianism, the view that properties cannot exist uninstantiated. I consider the different ways in which the Aristotelian might respond to the tension I raise, and I show that each of them has a metaphysically interesting upshot. I also suggest that none (...) of the Aristotelian’s possible responses is prima facie preferable to Platonism, the view that properties can exist uninstantiated, and that Aristotelianism is less plausible overall than ETM or property essentialism. I tentatively conclude, then, that my arguments make a case that the property essentialist—and, more tentatively, the property realist—should embrace Platonism over Aristotelianism. My primary aim in doing so, however, is not to definitively argue for Platonism, but more modestly to raise a challenge to the Aristotelian that has not yet appeared in the literature on properties. (shrink)

In Plato’s Phaedo, Socrates’ argument for the immortality of the soul fails due to his insufficient explanation for how the soul, as a particular, could partake in an immortality that belongs to universals. Simmias’ objection brings this to light by providing an analogy of a particular. This particular is exemplified by the specific harmony belonging to one instrument, and its relationship to that instrument itself. The soul, having an analogous relation to the body, remains separated from Socrates’ establishment of universals (...) as eternal. (shrink)

Building on the discussion of Chap. 9, this chapter argues that normative freedom and non-normative freedom prescribe divergent regulative ideals that cannot be algorithmically synthesized at the level of collective ethico-political theory and practice. The regulative ideal at the heart of our conception of normative freedom is expressed by the universalist impulse for collective (semantic, epistemic, moral) self-mastery while the regulative ideal of our non-normative conception of freedom is expressed by the ‘particularist’ impulse for unhinged monadic material empowerment. It is (...) suggested that in order to achieve an optimal balance between these regulative ideals we must opt for what I call ‘democratic prometheanism’. I examine the implications of this view on the issue of climate change: the democratic prometheanist view, among other things, implies that humans are essentially normatively defined as persons, and not as a distinct and hierarchically superior metaphysical category called ‘humanity’. From this point of view, humans as complex natural processes are ultimately conceived non-hierarchically, as being in a mutually symbiotic relationship with the social and environmental niches to which they are intertwined. This change of focus comes with a higher sensitivity to the strong interdependence relations that exist between our form of life, other living beings and the environment, and this necessitates reconceiving promethean freedom in terms of controlled interdependence. (shrink)

The introduction frames the book’s central problematic: How can thinking be both in the world and about the world? To address this, it develops the concept of fractured immanence, a metaphysical framework that integrates our dual perspectives on the mind-world relation: mind and nature are not ontologically distinct regions of being (they are both ways of being processes) yet diverge in the order of understanding, a tension enabling their ongoing self-correcting interplay as concepts without presupposing transcendence or complete mutual transparency. (...) The introduction also situates fractured immanence as a way to rethink emergence and freedom not as transcendent structures but as processual expressions of being. Normativity is embedded in this framework by being understood as an emergent intensive regime whose function is hyperstitional: it stabilizes and projects ideal possible worlds expressed by unactualized universals, and performatively makes them actual over time by collectively treating them as real. (shrink)

In this chapter, based on Christias (2023), and inspired by Sellars and Deleuze, I suggest that a process-oriented categorial framework can provide the most promising successor of the ‘substance-property’ categorial framework at work in our everyday lifeworld. The former is what results from an immanent critique of the latter. Moreover, I attempt to show that if a process ontology is to supersede the substance-property ontological framework in a consistent manner it must endorse a nominalistic metaphysics which eschews all kinds of (...) abstract universals, such as substances, properties, relations, kinds, facts, and construct a nominalistic process language without recourse to Fregean contents or predicates as referring expressions. (shrink)

This chapter argues that freedom is also expressed in a fractured form: (1) as normative freedom, that is, freedom as self-determination (with Kant, Sellars and Brandom as its main representatives), and (2) as non-normative freedom, that is, as an increase of the power to act, as opposed to the ‘power to dominate’ (the main representatives here being Spinoza and Deleuze). It is suggested that normative freedom and non-normative freedom are intimately related in that the former is epistemically and practically necessary (...) for achieving the latter, while the latter is the ultimate raison d’ȇtre of the former. Universals play a key role here as immanent regulative ideals that coordinate collective projects. I argue that universals, stripped of their metaphysical connotations, serve as tools of critique and emancipation, projecting ideals of collective welfare and empowerment. In this sense, universals function hyperstitionally, guiding practices beyond existing constraints. (shrink)

This book offers a new understanding of naturalism and normativity by integrating them within a process metaphysics framework. Rejecting all forms of transcendence, Dionysis Christias advances a conception of ‘fractured immanence’ in which mind and nature are not ontologically distinct regions of being (they are both ways of being processes) yet diverge in the order of understanding, a tension enabling their ongoing self-correcting interplay as concepts without presupposing transcendence or complete mutual transparency. Drawing on Deleuze, Sellars and Peirce, the book (...) replaces substance metaphysics with an anti-representational, univocal process ontology which throws light on core problems in contemporary analytic metaphysics of powers and emergence. Normativity is embedded in this naturalistic process framework by being understood as an emergent intensive regime whose function is hyperstitional: it stabilizes and projects ideal possible worlds expressed by unactualized universals, and performatively makes them actual over time by collectively treating them as real. (shrink)

This chapter clarifies the multiple meanings of immanence and specifies the sense in which it is used throughout the book. It distinguishes between ontological immanence (rejection of transcendent essences), epistemological immanence (thinking as always conducted in medias res and as self-correcting) and explanatory immanence (intelligibility as self-grounding). Classical models—from Platonic Ideas to Aristotelian forms, to modern notions of laws of nature—are shown to harbor transcendent residues. By contrast, fractured immanence affirms the unconditionality of being while rejecting all transcendent grounds, causes (...) or epistemic standpoints. The chapter also positions this conception against correlationist and phenomenological approaches, which raise the mind-world correlation itself to unconditional status. (shrink)

Grounding is traditionally conceived in hierarchical or foundational terms, often tied to metaphysically necessary essences. This chapter develops an account of grounding that resists such hierarchies. Drawing on an evolutionary reinterpretation of the principle of sufficient reason, it reconceives grounding as an emergent ordering relation internal to processes themselves. Grounding thus becomes a mode of intelligibility immanent to being’s unfolding as opposed to an appeal to transcendent principles. This reconciles the demand for self-grounding intelligibility with the fractured, open-ended nature of (...) reality. The chapter situates this approach against contemporary debates in analytic metaphysics of powers, showing how it can reframe grounding beyond neo-Humean regularism, neo-Aristotelian realism and analytic neo-Hegelian absolute idealism. (shrink)

This chapter further investigates important ontological implications of process ontology and attempts to find a place for emergence within a univocal process nominalist framework. Traditional accounts of emergence often rely on transcendent essences or epiphenomenalist supervenience relations. By contrast, in this context emergence is understood as a self-fracturing of being. Emergent properties, from qualia to symbolic thought, are intelligible not as independent ontological levels but as novel configurations within continuous processes. To develop this, the chapter mobilizes Deleuze’s notion of intensity, (...) understood topologically rather than representationally, to explain how discontinuous structures arise from continuous deformations. This allows emergence to be accounted for without invoking universals or transcendent causes. The view challenges both reductive physicalism and panpsychism, showing that novelty can arise immanently without collapsing into reduction or dualism. (shrink)

In this chapter, I turn my attention to the issue of the seeming incommensurability between two equally indispensable ways of understanding ourselves-in-the-world: our normativist self-image and our causal-naturalistic self-image. My suggestion is that both these frameworks are best understood as fractured projections of processual reality. To this end, I first stress the irreducibility yet also ‘parallelism’ of the space of reasons (norms) and the space of causes (facts) and suggest that these relations as a package deal are an essential part (...) of a metaphysical view (itself a sophistication of our common-sense view of the world after modernity) that Brandom calls ‘bimodal hylomorphic conceptual realism’ (Brandom, A spirit of trust: A reading of Hegel’s phenomenology. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2019). I then propose that Brandom’s conceptual realism and modal realism (that articulate our ordinary descriptive metaphysics about reasons, causes and their relations) can be understood as indispensable ‘ladder languages’ that can yet be eventually transcended by a naturalistic process metaphysics—where both causes and reasons are understood as different ways of being processes. (shrink)

This chapter takes up the challenge of articulating a successor concept for ‘normativity’ that construes the causal efficacy of the latter in a resolutely immanent naturalistic manner—yet without reducing it to mere physicalism. I mobilize Land’s (Fanged noumena: Collected writings 1987–2007. Urbanomic, Falmouth, 2011) notion of ‘hyperstition’ as such a successor concept and draw a picture of normativity as an emergent intensive regime which, by way of we-attitudes as its manner of causally affecting the world, institutes a novel kind of (...) hyperstitional dynamics which can turn ‘lies into truths’. This is a way of illustrating and developing my basic immanent materialist view of normativity according to which its causal power lies exclusively in the enactment of normative statuses in the corresponding (we)attitudes. Moreover, building on Kukla’s (Philos Stud 101:161–211, 2000) suggestion that at the core of the function of ideology lies the misrecognition of a norm for correctly perceiving, thinking and acting as always already binding, it is further argued that this way of construing normativity can throw light on the phenomenon of ideology. From this point of view, ideology in its most general form consists in construing our fundamental lifeworld categories as representational, that is, as cutting nature and society at its categorial joints. Further, it is suggested that hyperstitional dynamics is best seen as bifurcated in a non-conceptual and conceptual dimension: non-conceptual-level hyperstitional dynamics can be understood in terms of predictive processing (Clark, Surfing uncertainty: Prediction, action and the embodied mind. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2016; Clark, Andy Clark and his critics. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2019), whereas conceptual-level hyperstitional dynamics can be construed in terms of Brandom’s neo-Hegelian model of content determination and conceptual change (Brandom, Reason in philosophy. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2019). (shrink)

In this chapter, drawing on Sellars, I suggest that immanence can provide an illuminating account of the relation between mind and world only if it goes hand in hand with a complete rejection of the Given. I also explore the consequences of resolutely rejecting the Given for ontology and the nature of our access to the world through thought. I argue that the rejection of Givenness implies that, at the level of semantics, thinking attempts to grasp the world as such: (...) there are no fixed limits to thinking—for example, transcendental conditions of possibility of experience—that prevent it from being semantically about the world as it is in itself. Yet it also implies that the form or content of the world as such are never themselves Given to thinking in its semantic dimension and are always subject to self-correction. I also focus on the anti-representational implications of the rejection of Givenness in our conception of the mind-world relation. It is argued that a resolute rejection of Givenness entails anti-representationalism in semantics and ontology and a post-Kantian, critical and transcendentally informed metaphysics. In this spirit, it is suggested that a Sellars-inspired non-representational semantics coupled with a Deleuze-inspired non-representationalist ontology can provide a viewpoint from which we can launch a positive critique of traditional representationalist (substance-property) metaphysics, by constructing an evolutionary process metaphysics with anti-representationalist yet realist implications. (shrink)

This paper argues that ontological category systems (OCS) should be assessed against explicit target criteria. To compare the highly diverse OCS, we focus on the epistemic issue of the category problem, not on the ontological one, and examine the system architecture at the bicategorical level. From existing systems we extract mutual exclusiveness, exhaustiveness, and generalness, and add a neglected criterion: recursiveness – the requirement that, at themost general level, the categories also categorize themselves, thereby conceptually closing the system. On this (...) basis we motivate the most defensible number of categories and re-evaluate the traditional divide between universals and particulars in a slightly revised form. The resulting framework clarifies how OCS can remain maximally general while retaining classificatory power and shows why systems that exceed two top-level categories trade generalness for individuation without clear gain. (shrink)

More than almost any other topic in philosophy, the problem of universals has been debated for centuries among the schools of nominalism, conceptualism, and realism. But why do scholars continue to address this issue without reaching consensus? This article argues that the persistence of the problem lies in the existence-centered structure of argumentation, which tends to promote binary responses, and in the fact that the explanatory approaches employed are primarily rooted in classical philosophical traditions. Accordingly, the central element of the (...) debate ‐ existence ‐ is analytically decomposed into emergence and persistence. This shift reveals previously overlooked features of the constitution of universals ‐ namely intersubjectivization, institutionalization, and materialization ‐ thus paving the way for the development of a socio-ontologically informed theory, allowing universals to appear in a new light. (shrink)

2025 update of the entry "Properties".

This book provides an exhaustive overview of the ontology of relations. Moreover, it offers a detailed defense of the existence of irreducible relations in the universe and shows that entities such as powers should be better thought of as relations. At first, the author discusses many classical arguments for and against the existence of relations and draws preliminary distinctions between internal and external relations and symmetrical and non-symmetrical relations. He defends the existence of irreducible relations against several objections, most notably (...) three Bradleyan regresses. In response to these objections, the author argues that both internal and external relations should be thought of as relational modes and that intentional, temporal and spatial relations are external. He also presents several problems that are typically taken to affect non-symmetrical relations and introduces one new version of a theory to deal with them-the O-role theory. Finally, the author explores essential dependence relations and causal dependence relations and defends the view that power are relational modes. The Ontology of Relations will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in metaphysics, philosophy of science, and history of philosophy. (shrink)

Higher-order logic, with its type-theoretic apparatus known as the simple theory of types (STT), has increasingly come to be employed in theorising about properties, relations, and states of affairs – or ‘intensional entities’ for short. This paper argues against this employment of STT and offers an alternative: ordinal type theory (OTT). Very roughly, STT and OTT can be regarded as complementary simplifications of the ‘ramified theory of types’ outlined in the Introduction to Principia Mathematica (on a realist reading). While STT, (...) understood as a theory of intensional entities, retains the Fregean division of properties and relations into a multiplicity of categories according to their adicities and ‘input types’ and discards the division of intensional entities into different ‘orders’, OTT takes the opposite approach: it retains the hierarchy of orders (though with some modifications) and discards the categorisation of properties and relations according to their adicities and input types. In contrast to STT, this latter approach avoids intensional counterparts of the Epimenides and related paradoxes. Fundamental intensional entities lie at the base of the proposed hierarchy and are also given a prominent part to play in the individuation of non-fundamental intensional entities. (shrink)

Are free will and moral responsibility possible in a world where choices are the inevitable consequences of past causes governed by physical law? Both libertarian and hard incompatibilist theories suggest not. By contrast, this paper develops an account of freedom as self-government, motivated by the need to address key challenges: the need for a broad understanding of free will beyond the limitation of liability, the charge that it proceeds by equivocation, the problem of the lawful causal origins of choice, the (...) recognition of degrees of freedom and moral responsibility, and the risk of conformist functionalism. The framework of freedom as self-government integrates five key ideas. One, it recognizes a wider realm of autonomy for which freedom is relevant, anchored in non-domination. It holds that it is identified by the cognitive and practical role it has in liberation movements against domination, which aims to protect and secure wide capacities for choice. Two, it does not proceed by equivocation, but rather is grounded in a robust compatibilist tradition of thinking about free will from Plato onwards, present in both common and expert circles today. Three, it acknowledges that relative to all causes governed by physical law, no person has free will and moral responsibility. However, drawing from the model of the physical relativity of motion, it argues that the frame of reference of freedom as self-government is also valid, that relative to it people can be free, and that this frame of reference is the more relevant to adopt. Four, the view presented also suggests that in contrast to libertarian and hard incompatibilist doctrines, it can parsimoniously acknowledge degrees of freedom and proportional responsibility. And five, the present view suggests that the functionalist methodological component of freedom as self-government does not have to lead to conformity with de facto evil, if coupled with moral realism. (shrink)

摘要：本文旨在运用前文所确立的“先天/后天”存在论框架，对康德哲学的核心痼疾— —四个二律背反——发起一场决定性的总攻。本文认为，康德揭示的理性矛盾，其根 源并非理性自身的永恒缺陷，而是一种深刻的存在论误置：即试图运用仅适用于描述 “后天”（时空之内）现象世界的知性范畴（如有限/无限、部分/整体、因果/自由、必 然/偶然），去规定那必然包含“先天”（时空之外）维度的“世界整体”。本文将以精密的 逻辑推演，逐一对四个二律背反进行“存在论分诊”：第一背反（有限/无限）实质是后 天现象总和的边界性与先天本体的非时空性之混淆；第二背反（单纯/复合）乃后天之 物无限可分性与先天之理不可再分性的错位；第三背反（自然因果/自由）清晰地呈现 了后天因果铁律与先天主体能动性在两个不同层面的并行不悖；第四背反（必然存在 者）则触及后天现象序列的无条件开端与先天本体自身的绝对必然性之关系。通过将 正题与反题分别归置于“先天”与“后天”的恰当层级，本文论证，所有二律背反将如冰释 泉涌，自然消解。这不仅解决了康德难题，更雄辩地证明了“先天/后天”框架作为一种 新存在论范式的巨大解释力与逻辑优越性，为理性夺回了被康德判为“幻相”的、通向超 越领域的合法权能。.

L'Occident n'a jamais paru aussi vulnérable à la critique. On lui impute notamment l'humiliation infligée par des siècles de colonisation. Même en son propre sein il est contesté, accusé d'avoir assuré au mâle hétérosexuel blanc des privilèges indus ou encore jugé responsable du saccage de la planète. Pourtant, l'Occident continue de fasciner ceux-là mêmes qui le contestent. Le sens des flux migratoires en est la preuve : ce ne sont pas les Occidentaux qui fuient leurs pays au risque de leur (...) vie, même quand ils sont en désaccord avec leurs gouvernants. Ces quatre derniers siècles, l'Occident a toujours été à la pointe, en politique, morale, esthétique, science, technologie, philosophie, etc. Les bienfaits planétaires de ses progrès justifient, à ses yeux, son universalisme messianique. Cependant, la liste est longue de ceux qui refusent de suivre aveuglément les valeurs 'universelles' de l'Occident. Mais que lui reprochent-ils précisément? (shrink)