The Questions of Ontology

Despite its enduring influence, Quine’s account of how we should both understand and go about answering ontological questions has come under increasing fire in the recent metaontological literature. The focus here is on one important and influential critique of Quine’s views, due to Kit Fine (2009), who argues that Quine’s picture of ontology is thoroughly misguided insofar as it both misidentifies the subject matter of ontological questions and misconceives the appropriate methodology for pursuing ontological inquiry. Taking up the defence on behalf of Quine, the chapter argues that Fine’s central objections to the Quinean approach are unsuccessful since the Quinean is well positioned to both explain the apparent triviality of many existential questions and explain how ontological questions might remain open, even once everyday existence questions have been answered in the ordinary business of life.

Una nueva solución al problema de la fundamentación

Let us consider a statue and the piece of clay out of which it is made, and let us suppose that they start to exist and cease to exist at exactly the same time. According to colocationism, the statue and the piece of clay are two different objects: they have different properties (for example, one is a statue and the other a piece of clay) and, according to Leibniz’s Law, the same object cannot have different properties. One of the most difficult questions for colocationism is that of the grounding problem: given that the statue and the piece of clay share many of their properties (their matter, their microscopic composition, their structure, etc.), what is it that grounds the fact that they have different sortal (or modal) properties? Recently, Catherine Sutton has offered a very interesting answer to the question. However, as I will argue, it cannot be applied to all cases of colocated objects and therefore, it is not an adequate solution to the grounding problem. The main objective of this paper is to present a new solution to the grounding problem that integrates some of Sutton’s theses, but that allows us to give a complete answer to the question. To do this, the notion of a process of coming into existence will be crucial. After presenting the new proposal, I will compare it with the proposals by Kit Fine and Noël Saenz.

Essence, Propria and Essentialist Explanation

In this paper I propose a notion of propria inspired by Aristotle, on which propria are non-essential, necessary properties explained by the essence of a thing. My proposal differs from the characterization of propria by Kit Fine and Kathrin Koslicki: unlike Fine, the relation of explanation on my account can’t be assimilated to a notion of logical entailment. In disagreement with Koslicki, I suggest that the explanatory relation at issue needs not be necessary. My account of essence is conceptually parsimonious: it illuminates the contribution of essence to explanation without relying on obscure notions such as Aristotelian form or identity.

The Problem of de re Modality

The problem of de re modality is how, if at all, one can make sense of it. Most who have discussed this problem have assumed that modality de dicto is relatively unproblematic. It is, rather, the interpretation of sentences involving, within the scope of modal operators, singular terms or free variables which is thought to give rise to grave—and in the view of some, insuperable—difficulties. Quine has two arguments against the intelligibility of de re modality: a “logical” and a “metaphysical” one. That the “logical” argument is central to Quine’s attack is surely indisputable. But my claim that it is his basic argument is, in effect, denied by Kit Fine. I can (and do) agree with Fine that there are some significant differences between the two arguments. The most important question, for my purposes, is whether he is right to claim that the two arguments have force independently of one another.

Introduction

Over the last forty-odd years, Kit Fine has been one of the most influential and original analytic philosophers. He has made provocative and innovative contributions to several areas of systematic philosophy, including philosophy of language, metaphysics, and the philosophy of mathematics, as well as a number of topics in philosophical logic, such as modal logic, relevance logic, the logic of essence, and the logic of vagueness. These contributions have helped reshape the agendas of those fields and have given fresh impetus to a number of perennial debates. Fine’s work is distinguished by its great technical sophistication, philosophical breadth, and independence from current orthodoxy. A blend of philosophically sound common sense combined with a virtuosity of philosophical argumentation and construction, meant to back up the former, this seems to me to be the nature of Kit Fine’s lasting contributions to the current trends in analytic philosophy. The chapter gives a general overview of the groundbreaking work of Kit Fine and connects the contributed essays with Kit Fine’s work.

Metaphysics, Meaning, and Modality

This book is the first edited volume on the philosophy of one of the most seminal and profound contemporary philosophers. The volume is intended for philosophers, linguists, and cognitive scientists interested in metaphysics, language, and philosophical logic. The readers will benefit from the debates over Kit Fine’s novel theories on meaning and representation, arbitrary objects, essence, ontological realism, metaphysics of modality, and constitution of things. The work contains original essays which evaluate both the philosophical and some of the formal seminal contributions of Kit Fine to contemporary metaphysics, ontology, philosophy of language, and philosophical logic. The chapters in the work also advance new ideas and arguments which help in developing the debates on concepts of interests not only for philosophers but also for linguists and cognitive scientists who are interested in the foundations of their own fields. The work gives Kit Fine’s current views on the topics that he has helped to renew in today’s metaphysics, philosophy of language, and philosophical logic. The work contributes to the furthering of the debates in metaphysics, philosophical logic, and philosophy of language, focusing on brand new theories in the forefront of analytic philosophy. More generally, the hope is that a thorough discussion of the work of a very innovative and profound author such as Kit Fine can contribute to a better understanding of what is at stake within contemporary analytic philosophy.

Coordination, Understanding, and Semantic Requirements

In his monograph Semantic Relationism, Kit Fine proposes two characterizations of coordination between proper names: an intuitive test and a technical definition. The intuitive characterization is grounded in a notion of understanding distinct from the familiar notion of linguistic competence. Three prima facie appealing proposals to characterize this notion of understanding are examined in the present chapter and then dismissed as intrinsically implausible or as incompatible with Fine’s semantics. Not even his technical characterization of coordination, involving the notion of semantic requirement, enable us to escape the impasse. Ultimately, the question of what exactly coordination between names is will remain open.

Can Metaphysical Modality Be Based on Essence?

In his hugely influential paper “Essence and Modality” (1994), Kit Fine argued that the then orthodox view that essence can be understood in terms of metaphysical modality is fundamentally flawed. He proposed, in its place, the view that all metaphysical modality has its source in the essences or natures of things, where the notion of a thing’s essence or nature can be understood in terms of a broadly Aristotelian notion of real definition. This theory appears to require that the relevant conception of real definition can itself be isolated without appeal to metaphysical modality. I argue that this requirement cannot be met. I then briefly consider the implications of my argument for the relation between essence and metaphysical modality.

Qua Objects and Their Limits

It is both a matter of everyday experience and a tenet of sociological theory that people often occupy a range of social roles and identities, some of which are associated with mutually incompatible properties. But since nothing could have incompatible properties, it is not clear how this is possible. It has been suggested, notably by Kit Fine (1982, 1999, 2006), that the puzzling relation between a person and their various social roles and identities can be explained by admitting an ontology of social qua objects—objects constituted by, yet distinct from, the persons on which they are based. This article argues that admitting even a rich ontology of such qua objects does not suffice to explain the puzzle cases of interest. Instead, alternative resources are required which, once available, diminish the motivation for adopting an ontology of social qua objects in the first place. The paper concludes by considering whether there remains work for social qua objects in explaining differences in persistence conditions between a person and the social individuals to which they may give rise, but reaches a negative verdict. Social qua objects, if they exist, have little work to do in our theorizing about the relation between a person and their various social roles and identities.