Results 31 to 40 of about 3,260 (56)

Words, Species, and Kinds

Metaphysics, 2021
It has been widely argued that words are analogous to species such that words, like species, are natural kinds. In this paper, I consider the metaphysics of word-kinds.
J. T. M. Miller
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Is Reference Essential to Meaning?

Metaphysics, 2020
Most linguists and philosophers will tell you that whatever meaning is, it determines the reference of names, the satisfaction conditions of nouns and verbs, the truth conditions of sentences; in linguist speak, meaning determines semantic value.
Mark Richard
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The Identity of Social Groups

Metaphysics, 2020
I apply the theory of embodiment to various questions concerning the identity of social groups.
Kit Fine
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Are Reference Rules Inessential to Meaning?

Metaphysics, 2020
This article responds to a case-based argument by Mark Richard that rule of reference is not essential to meaning. It objects that the argument requires shifting between understanding the relevant term in the case, ‘marriage,’ as a determinable, in order
Kirk Ludwig
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Relative Positionalism and Variable Arity Relations

Metaphysics, 2019
Maureen Donnelly’s (2016) relative positionalism correctly handles any fixed arity relation with any symmetry such a relation can have, yielding the intuitively correct way(s) in which that relation can apply.
T. Scott Dixon
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Artifacts Without Authors: Generative Artificial Intelligence and the Question of Authorship

Metaphysics
Artifacts are often characterized as intentional products of human activities, suggesting that they must have authors. However, contrary to this common characterization, I argue that there exist novel examples of artifacts that lack authors. This novelty
Nurbay Irmak
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The Form is Not a Proper Part in Aristotle’s Metaphysics Z.17, 1041b11–33

Metaphysics, 2018
When Aristotle argues at the 'Metaphysics' Z.17, 1041b11–33 that a whole, which is not a heap, contains ‘something else’, i.e. the form, besides the elements, it is not clear whether or not the form is a proper part of the whole.
Liva Rotkale
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Do Computer Simulations Include Digital Artifacts?

Metaphysics
In contemporary computer simulations, particles attract each other and form clusters, cells interact, and agents communicate with one another. This is at least how computer simulations are commonly described. But how can we make sense of such talk?
Claus Beisbart
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The Use of Sets (and Other Extensional Entities) in the Analysis of Hylomorphically Complex Objects

Metaphysics, 2018
Hylomorphically complex objects are things that change their parts or matter or that might have, or have had, different parts or matter. Often ontologists analyze such objects in terms of sets (or functions, understood set-theoretically) or other ...
Simon Evnine
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Real, Immediate, Multiple: Towards a Theory of Definition

Metaphysics
In ‘Senses of Essence’ Kit Fine tentatively proposed that one could take the notion of real definition as basic and define essence in terms of it. Building on Litland 2023 this paper begins to develop an account where the notion of full, immediate real ...
Jon Erling Litland
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