1. Ontology
Metaphysics 2019

2. A Little More on Time

3. Things to Talk about Sharing motion metaphor Now/ bread slices
The Andromeda paradox
Rietdijk-Putnam argument
Presentism

4. Time’s Arrow There are asymmetries in time that don’t exist in space:
You can remember the past, but not the future.
You can cause future events, but not past ones.

5. Time-Reversal Invariance
According to the basic laws of physics, processes that run in one direction can just as sensibly run in the other.

6. Video Time!

7. Ontology

8. Willard Van Orman Quine (1908-2000)
American philosopher
Taught at Harvard
David Lewis’s dissertation advisor
Was Lt. Commander in WWII deciphering German code

9. Q & A
Q: What is there? A: Everything

10. What Is There?

11. How Many Things?

12. Mereology Theory of parts and wholes
Are there bigger things than particles?
Arbitrary fusions
Nihilism?

13. How Many Things?

14. Lots of Little Things…

15. Some Weird Things

16. One Maximal Thing

17. Set Theory Sets are mathematical posits
Any time you have some things, there is a set containing those things
The set is a different thing
The things it contains are its members (not parts)
Since sets are things, they can be collected into sets

18. How Many Things?

19. How Many Things?

20. How Many Things?

21. How Many Things?

22. How Many Things?

23. How Many Things?

24. How Many Things?

25. Plato ( B.C.E.)
“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato” A.N. Whitehead (Quine’s advisor)

26. Plato’s Beard
“Nonbeing must in some sense be, otherwise what is it that there is not? This tangled doctrine might be nicknamed Plato’s beard.” --Quine

27. Parmenides (???)
You cannot truthfully ever say of something “it does not exist.”

28. Occam’s Razor
Don’t posit that something exists unless you need to.

29. The Problem
How do we talk about what doesn’t exist, for example, to say that it doesn’t exist?

30. Example: Pegasus
Pegasus doesn’t exist.

31. McX’s Theory
According to McX, Pegasus does exist.

32. McX’s Theory
“McX cannot, indeed, quite persuade himself that any region of space-time, near or remote, contains a flying horse of flesh and blood. Pressed for further details on Pegasus, then, he says that Pegasus is an idea in men’s minds…”

33. McX’s Theory
“…but this mental entity is not what people are talking about when they deny Pegasus.”

34. The Parthenon vs. the Parthenon-Idea

35. Wyman’s Theory
Pegasus exists… but he doesn’t subsist. He isn’t actual. He’s merely possible.

36. Shades of Meinong
Alexius Meinong ( ) was an Austrian philosopher who maintained a distinction between existence and subsistence.

37. Problems for the View Seems a tad silly.
What about the things we seem to talk about that are impossible. Like round squares?

38. More Objections
“Take, for instance, the possible fat man in that doorway; and, again, the possible bald man in that doorway. Are they the same possible man, or two possible men? How do we decide? How many possible men are there in that doorway? Are there more possible thin ones than fat ones? How many of them are alike?...”

39. More Objections
“…Or would their being alike make them one? Are no two possible things alike? Is this the same as saying that it is impossible for two things to be alike? Or, finally, is the concept of identity simply inapplicable to unactualized possibles? But what sense can be found in talking of entities which cannot meaningfully be said to be identical with themselves and distinct from one another?”

40. “It offends the aesthetic sense of us who have a taste for desert landscape”

41. Cutting the Beard

42. Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) 3rd Earl Russell
Part of a prominent aristocratic family
Grandfather had twice been Prime Minister
Parents died when he was young, was raised by his domineering grandmother, Countess Russell

43. Bertrand Russell
With A.N. Whitehead, wrote one of the most important works in mathematics, Principia Mathematica
With G.E. Moore and Wittgenstein, led the revolt in philosophy against Idealism

44. Bertrand Russell Agnostic Pacifist (went to prison) Social critic
Winner of the Nobel Prize in literature

45. Quantifiers and Variables
Consider two English sentences:
He is happy.
Everyone loves himself.
ꓯ ꓱ

46. Quantifiers and Variables
Consider two English sentences:
x is happy.
For everyone x: x loves x
ꓯ ꓱ

47. Quantifiers and Variables
Consider two English sentences: Hx
ꓯx Lxx
ꓯ ꓱ

48. Russell’s Theory of Definite Descriptions
The F is G:
There is at least one F
There is at most one F
Every F is G

49. Russell’s Theory of Definite Descriptions
The F is G:
ꓱx (Fx
& (ꓯy(Fy  y = x)
& ꓯz(Fz  Gz)))

50. Russell’s Theory Applied
The king of France doesn’t exist: It is not true that: There is a unique king of France & every king of France exists.

51. Quine on Pegasus
Pegasus does not exist: It is not true that: There is a unique winged horse & every winged horse exists.

52. Universals

53. Universals
There’s been a long-running debate in Western philosophy between nominalists and platonists. The question is whether universals– properties, qualities– exist.

54. McX on Universals
‘There are red houses, red roses, red sunsets…These houses, roses, and sunsets, then have something in common; and this which they have in common is all I mean by the attribute of redness.’

55. Quine Responds
We don’t need universals to explain anything. Explanations involving them go around in a circle: they’re what similar things have in common; they’re why similar things are similar.

56. Occam’s Razor
Don’t posit that something exists unless you need to.

57. Quine Responds
We shouldn’t confuse meaning with naming. Sure, if you’ve named something, it must exist. But ‘red’ isn’t a name of a thing, just because it has a meaning.

58. McX on Universals
“McX hits upon a different stratagem: ‘Let us grant,’ he says, ‘this distinction between meaning and naming of which you make so much. Let us even grant that ‘is red,’ ‘pegasizes,’ etc. are not names of attributes. Still, you admit they have meanings. But these meanings, whether they are named or not, are still universals.’”

59. Quine Responds
Quine doesn’t agree; he gives his own account of meaning that he thinks does not commit him to universals.

60. Ontological Commitment

61. Ontological Commitment
“We can very easily involve ourselves in ontological commitments by saying, e.g., that there is something (bound variable) which red houses and sunsets have in common… but that is, essentially, the only way we can involve ourselves in ontological commitments: by our use of bound variables…”

62. Ontological Commitment
“…[W]hen we say that some zoölogical species are cross-fertile, we are committing ourselves to recognizing as entities the several species themselves, abstract though they be. We remain so committed at least until we devise some way of so paraphrasing the statement as to show that the seeming reference to species on the part of our bound variable was an avoidable manner of speaking.”

63. Quine’s View
To be is to be the value of a bound variable.

64. Paraphrase
There is a chair. := There are some particles arranged chair-wise.