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The Review of Metaphysics:
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Mario Bunge
Modes of Existence
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This paper consists of two parts. The first criticizes the usual interpretation of the so-called existential quantifier as denoting existence. It is argued that it symbolizes “someness,” as is obvious from its definition as not-all-not, as in “Some citizens will vote,” which is analyzable as “Not all citizens will abstain from voting.” The second part of the paper argues that “existence” is fivefold: real, phenomenal, conceptual, semiotic, and fantastic. A definition and a criterion are proposed for every one of them. Real existence is identified with mutability; phenomenal existence, with occurrence in someone’s sensory experience; conceptual existence, as occurrence in a conceptual system; semiotic existence, as the ability of a sign to excite a reaction in an animal perceiving it; and fantastic existence, as occurrence in a work of fiction that contains or suggests it. Finally, a general concept of existence in a given context is defined with the help of the characteristic function of the said context. In other words, an existence predicate is defined, and so Anselm’s famous proof of the existence of God is shown to be formally correct.
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The Review of Metaphysics:
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Nicholas Rescher
On the Rationale of Philosophical Disagreement
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Evaluating the probative merit of philosophical claims calls for assessing both their inherent plausibility and also their external harmonization with what is accepted elsewhere. However, cogent assessment of plausibility and harmonization calls for judgments of comparative weight and significance that one can make only on the basis of experience. The relevant body of experiences that is operative here is bound to differ among different individuals, who themselves are bound to occupy different points of view. This leads to a variation in philosophical judgment that is not a relativism of rationally indifferent matters of mere taste but rather a rationally cogent contextualism that requires different conclusions to be drawn from different premises.
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The Review of Metaphysics:
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Michael Davis
This and That:
On Plato’s Laches
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The Review of Metaphysics:
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Pascal Massie
Diodorus Cronus and the Logic of Time
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The master argument posits a metaphysical thesis: Diodorus does away with Aristotle’s dunamis understood as a power simultaneously oriented toward being and nonbeing, and proclaims that possibilities that fail to actualize are simply nothing. The author’s contention is that this claim is not a mere application of Diodorus’ contribution to modal logic. Rather, Diodorus creates an ontologico-temporal concept of possibility and impossibility. Diodorus envisions the future as the past that the future will become. Since what will have been can never be the accomplishment of a possibility that did not obtain, and since the future is destined to become past, any futural possibility that doesn’t actualize is neither futural nor even possible.
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The Review of Metaphysics:
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David Scott
On the Crassness of Leibniz’s Metaphysics
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Since Voltaire’s caricature of him in Candide, Leibniz has had the unenviable reputation of representing the worst excesses of metaphysical rationalism. Bernard Williams once characterized Leibniz’s view that ours is the best of all possible worlds—defining “best” as maximum variety by the simplest laws—as “crass” and “untruthful.” Drawing on the character of Ivan in The Brothers Karamasov, A. W. Moore recently developed Williams’s view, claiming that Leibniz’s system lacks the resources to support a connection between what for Leibniz “matters in the end, and what matters now, to us.” The author attempts to disarm Moore’s objection using Leibniz’s theory of truth and his principle of sufficient reason. More generally he argues that for Leibniz, when it comes to reconciling individual circumstance with the cosmic order of things, theodicy cannot provide any principled substitute for individual effort of will. This tempers the optimism typically associated with Leibniz’s philosophy.
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book reviews |
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The Review of Metaphysics:
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Jude P. Dougherty
After Physics
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The Review of Metaphysics:
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Stuart Rosenbaum
The Philosophy of Hilary Putnam
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The Review of Metaphysics:
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Anthony K. Jensen
Weltschmerz: Pessimism in German Philosophy 1860-1900
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The Review of Metaphysics:
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Daniel J. Pierson
The Philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas: A Sketch
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The Review of Metaphysics:
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Lucas Fain
Heidegger: The Question of Being & History
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The Review of Metaphysics:
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R. Scott Kretchmar
Play as Symbol of the World (and Other Writings)
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Joshua Rayman
Ponderings II–VI: Black Notebooks 1931–1938
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The Review of Metaphysics:
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Colin David Pears
Rousseau and the Dilemmas of Modernity
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The Review of Metaphysics:
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Marina McCoy
The Rhetoric of Plato’s Republic
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The Review of Metaphysics:
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Herbert Hartmann
Thomas Aquinas’s Summa contra Gentiles: A Mirror of Human Nature
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The Review of Metaphysics:
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Eric D. Perl
Rational Spirituality and Divine Virtue in Plato
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The Review of Metaphysics:
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Herbert Hartmann
Negative Certainties
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The Review of Metaphysics:
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E. Christian Brugger
Patristics and Catholic Social Thought: Hermeneutical Models for a Dialogue
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The Review of Metaphysics:
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Kevin S. Honeycutt
Hume and the Politics of Enlightenment
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20.
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The Review of Metaphysics:
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Peter Karl Koritansky
Punishment and the History of Political Philosophy: From Classical Republicanism to the Crisis of Modern Criminal Justice
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