The Fundamentality of Physics

A core commitment among physicalists is that physics holds some special status among the sciences, that it is fundamental. This paper argues that the most common interpretation of the fundamentality of physics, in terms of the ontological or explanatory completeness of physics, faces several insurmountable challenges. This interpretation relies on questionable assumptions about physics, many of which have been widely recognized as questionable in the philosophy of science for decades. Moreover, completeness physicalism is untenable in failing to provide the physicalist with any usable guide to ontology or metaphysical commitments. These same considerations motivate a revised interpretation of fundamentality in terms of a notion of ontological or explanatory maximality. This maximality physicalism is developed and defended.

A Little Puzzle about a Piece and a Puddle

A new puzzle about material constitution is presented and its implications are discussed. The moral of the story is that familiar intuitions supporting a neo-Aristotelian view of the material world are contradictory. To accommodate these intuitions is to embrace inconsistency. Therefore, neo-Aristotelianism is worse off for its intuitive appeal. Furthermore, the puzzle is used to argue for an account of ordinary modal thought and language that’s reconstructive, or ameliorative.

Truthmakers and Easy Ontology

Sympathy has been growing for the idea that existence questions can be answered by ‘easy’ arguments. But some have suggested that an important project remains for ontology: not determining what exists, but rather what makes true those claims we accept. The question addressed here is: If we accept the easy approach to ontology, can we legitimately take on the truthmaker project? There are two versions of this project: one has the goal of giving a uniquely true statement of what the fundamental entities are, while the other takes it merely as a constraint on metaphysics to give some good account of what the truthmakers are for claims we accept. I will argue that, if we truly take on board some of the basic theses of easy ontology, we should have serious reservations about both of these projects.

Some Consequences of Physics for the Comparative Metaphysics of Quantity

According to comparativist theories of quantities, their intrinsic values are not fundamental. Instead, all the quantity facts are grounded in scale-independent relations like “twice as massive as” or “more massive than.” I show that this sort of scale independence is best understood as a sort of metaphysical symmetry—a principle about which transformations of the non-fundamental ontology leave the fundamental ontology unchanged. Determinism—a core scientific concept easily formulated in absolutist terms—is more difficult for the comparativist to define. After settling on the most plausible comparativist understanding of determinism, I offer some examples of physical systems that the comparativist must count as indeterministic, although the relevant physical theory gives deterministic predictions. Several morals are drawn. In particular: comparativism is metaphysically contingent if true, and it is most natural for a comparativist to accept an at-at theory of motion.

Ontological Pluralism and Notational Variance

Ontological pluralism is the view that there are different ways to exist. It is a position with deep roots in the history of philosophy, and in which there has been a recent resurgence of interest. In contemporary presentations, it is stated in terms of fundamental languages: as the view that such languages contain more than one quantifier. For example, one ranging over abstract objects, and another over concrete ones. A natural worry, however, is that the languages proposed by the pluralist are mere notational variants of those proposed by the monist, in which case the debate between the two positions would not seem to be substantive. Jason Turner has given an ingenious response to this worry, in terms of a principle that he calls ‘logical realism’. This paper offers a counter-response on behalf of the ‘notationalist’.

Nomothetic Explanation and Humeanism about Laws of Nature

Humeanism about laws of nature—the view that the laws reduce to the Humean mosaic—is a popular view, but currently existing versions face powerful objections. The non-supervenience objection, the non-fundamentality objection, and the explanatory circularity objection have all been thought to cause problems for Humeanism. However, these objections share a guiding thought—they are all based on the idea that there is a certain kind of divergence between the practice of science and the metaphysical picture suggested by Humeanism. I suggest that the Humean should respond to these objections not by rejecting this divergence, but by arguing that it is appropriate. The Humean should distinguish between scientific and metaphysical explanation. And they should leverage this into distinctions between scientific and metaphysical fundamentality and scientific and metaphysical possibility. We can use these distinctions to respond to the objections that the Humean faces.

How to Be a Relationalist

Relationalism in metaphysics leads to indeterminism and non-locality in physics. This is widely thought to be a problem for relationalism, but here I argue that it is in fact a?virtue. More specifically, I distinguish two senses in which a physical theory can be indeterministic and non-local. Relationalism does imply indeterminism and non-locality in one sense, but this is a virtue since indeterminism and non-locality in this sense is precisely what empirical observation confirms. There is a second sense of the terms on which indeterminism and non-locality would be a problem, but I argue that relationalism does not imply indeterminism or non-locality in that sense. With respect to indeterminism and non-locality, then, relationalism gets things exactly right. This defense of relationalism rests on distinguishing these two senses of indeterminism and non-locality. Since both terms are intimately connected to metaphysical possibility, this requires distinguishing two species of the latter. The distinction between two senses of metaphysical possibility I offer may be of interest to metaphysicians regardless of its bearing on relationalism, determinism, and locality.

Advanced Temporalizing

There is a widespread assumption that B-theorists—according to whom there is no fundamental distinction between present and non-present times—should interpret tense operators such as ‘It was the case that’ and ‘It will be the case five minutes hence that’ as implicit quantifier-restrictors, so that (for example) an utterance at the present time n of the sentence ‘It was the case that there are dinosaurs’ is true just in case there are dinosaurs located at some time t earlier than n. However, it is easy to show that this interpretation of the tense operators causes problems for B-theorists when combined with certain other natural B-theoretic commitments. In this paper, I argue that a good way for B-theorists to avoid these problems is to treat the tense operators as redundant when the sentences in their scope are qualitative—that is, not about any particular individual(s).

Easy Ontology, Two-Dimensionalism, and Truthmaking

Amie Thomasson argues that ontology is easy. That there are tables (e.g.) is settled by a mixture of conceptual analysis—to discover under what conditions the concept ‘table’ is appropriately deployed—and straightforward empirical observation—looking in my kitchen to see that those conditions are met. There is, then, no distinctively metaphysical work to be done in settling whether there are tables, according to Thomasson. This paper agrees with Thomasson that it is easy to establish that tables exist and gives a two-dimensionalist defense of this claim. However, it argues that a distinctively metaphysical question remains: what must the world be like to make it the case that tables exist? It defends this view against objections from Thomasson, and draws out some morals concerning the project of ontology.