Jonathan Schaffer
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 1099407 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Jonathan Schaffer |
| PRENOMES | Jonathan |
| SOBRENOME | Schaffer |
| ASSINATURA | SCHAFFER J |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey |
| ORCID | 0009-0003-6340-8353 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 31 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 401 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 30 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2000 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2020 |
| ÍNDICE H | 12 |
Folk teleology drives persistence judgments
Quantum holism
Anchoring as Grounding
Confessions of a schmentencite
Natural language semantics is heir to two formalisms. There is the extensional machinery of explicit variables traditionally used to model reference to individuals, and the intensional machinery of implicit index parameters traditionally used to model reference to worlds and times. I propose instead a simple and unified extensional formalism - explicit semantics - on which all sentences include explicit individual, world and time variables. No im…
Laws for Metaphysical Explanation
Derivative Properties in Fundamental Laws
Orthodoxy has it that only metaphysically elite properties can be invoked in scientifically elite laws. We argue that this claim does not fit scientific practice. An examination of candidate scientifically elite laws like Newton’s F = ma reveals properties invoked that are irreversibly defined and thus metaphysically non-elite by the lights of the surrounding theory: Newtonian acceleration is irreversibly defined as the second derivative of posit…
Grounding in the image of causation
A Companion to David Lewis
What Not to Multiply Without Necessity
The Razor commands us not to multiply entities without necessity. I argue for an alternative principle—The Laser—which commands us not to multiply fundamental entities without necessity.
Companion to David Lewis
Writing the Book of the World
Writing the Book of the World is masterful work. Sider offers a careful and insightful treatment of metaphysical structure (or naturalness, or fundamentality), developing a framework for metaphysical inquiry while defending the centrality of metaphysics to philosophy as a whole. There is much to admire and much to discuss. I expect Sider's book to become a touchstone for further discussion of the nature and viability of metaphysical inquiry. It i…
Grounding, transitivity, and contrastivity
A summary is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Necessitarian propositions
Monism
Which is prior, the whole or its parts? The monist holds that the whole is prior to its parts, and thus views the cosmos as fundamental, with metaphysical explanation dangling downward from the One. The pluralist holds that the parts are prior to their whole, and thus tends to consider particles fundamental, with metaphysical explanation snaking upward from the many. There seem to be physical and modal considerations that favor the monistic view.…
The Least Discerning and Most Promiscuous Truthmaker
I argue that the one and only truthmaker is the world. This view can be seen as arising from (i) the view that truthmaking is a relation of grounding holding between true propositions and fundamental entities, together with (ii) the view that the world is the one and only fundamental entity. I argue that this view provides an elegant and economical account of the truthmakers, while solving the problem of negative existentials, in a way that prove…
On What Grounds What
On the now dominant Quinean view, metaphysics is about what there is. Metaphysics so conceived is concerned with such questions as whether properties exist, whether meanings exist, and whether numbers exist. I will argue for the revival of a more traditional Aristotelian view, on which metaphysics is about what grounds what. Metaphysics so revived does not bother asking whether properties, meanings, and numbers exist. Of course they do! The quest…
Knowing the Answer Redux
Andreas Hüttemann What's Wrong With Microphysicalism
Truth and Fundamentality
The Contrast-sensitivity of Knowledge Ascriptions
Knowledge ascriptions are contrast-sensitive. One natural explanation for this is that the knowledge relation is contrastive (s knows that p rather than q). But can the binary view of knowledge (s knows that p) explain contrast-sensitivity? I review some of the linguistic data supporting contrast-sensitivity, and critique the three main binary explanations for contrast-sensitivity. I conclude that the contrast-sensitivity of knowledge ascriptions…
Knowing the Answer
“ev’ry gambler knows that the secret to survivin’ is knowin’ what to throw away and knowing what to keep.” (Kenny Rogers) How should one understand knowledge‐ wh ascriptions? That is, how should one understand claims such as “I know where the car is parked,” which feature an interrogative complement? The received view is that knowledge‐ wh reduces to knowledge that p , where p happens to be the answer to the question Q denoted by the wh ‐clause. …
Deterministic Chance
Can there be deterministic chance? That is, can there be objective chance values other than 0 or 1, in a deterministic world? I will argue that the answer is no. In a deterministic world, the only function that can play the role of chance is one that outputs just 0s and 1s. The role of chance involves connections from chance to credence, possibility, time, intrinsicness, lawhood, and causation. These connections do not allow for deterministic cha…
Phil Dowe And Paul Noordhof Cause and Chance
1. Summaries2. Reflections
Le trou noir de la causalité
Cet article examine les changements idéologiques qui touchent le statut social des femmes, en particulier la maternité et la sexualité. Il analyse la pluralisation des féminismes en articulation avec les mobilisations actuelles contre les violences sexuelles et montre les injonctions paradoxales qui s’exercent sur les femmes. Dans une perspective épistémologique il relie ces évolutions à des mutations conceptuelles significatives qui s’observent …
Contrastive Causation
Research Article| July 01 2005 Contrastive Causation Jonathan Schaffer Jonathan Schaffer Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google The Philosophical Review (2005) 114 (3): 327–358. https://doi.org/10.1215/00318108-114-3-327 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Permissions Search Site Citation Jonathan Schaffer; Contrastive Causation. The Philosophical Review 1 July 2005; 114 (3): 327–358. doi: https://d…
Monism
Which is prior, the whole or its parts? The monist holds that the whole is prior to its parts, and thus views the cosmos as fundamental, with metaphysical explanation dangling downward from the One. The pluralist holds that the parts are prior to their whole, and thus tends to consider particles fundamental, with metaphysical explanation snaking upward from the many. There seem to be physical and modal considerations that favor the monistic view.…
Contrastive Causation
Research Article| July 01 2005 Contrastive Causation Jonathan Schaffer Jonathan Schaffer Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google The Philosophical Review (2005) 114 (3): 327–358. https://doi.org/10.1215/00318108-114-3-327 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Permissions Search Site Citation Jonathan Schaffer; Contrastive Causation. The Philosophical Review 1 July 2005; 114 (3): 327–358. doi: https://d…
Knowing the Answer
“ev’ry gambler knows that the secret to survivin’ is knowin’ what to throw away and knowing what to keep.” (Kenny Rogers) How should one understand knowledge‐ wh ascriptions? That is, how should one understand claims such as “I know where the car is parked,” which feature an interrogative complement? The received view is that knowledge‐ wh reduces to knowledge that p , where p happens to be the answer to the question Q denoted by the wh ‐clause. …
Deterministic Chance
Can there be deterministic chance? That is, can there be objective chance values other than 0 or 1, in a deterministic world? I will argue that the answer is no. In a deterministic world, the only function that can play the role of chance is one that outputs just 0s and 1s. The role of chance involves connections from chance to credence, possibility, time, intrinsicness, lawhood, and causation. These connections do not allow for deterministic cha…
The Least Discerning and Most Promiscuous Truthmaker
I argue that the one and only truthmaker is the world. This view can be seen as arising from (i) the view that truthmaking is a relation of grounding holding between true propositions and fundamental entities, together with (ii) the view that the world is the one and only fundamental entity. I argue that this view provides an elegant and economical account of the truthmakers, while solving the problem of negative existentials, in a way that prove…
Causation by Disconnection
The physical and/or intrinsic connection approach to causation has become prominent in the recent literature, with Salmon, Dowe, Menzies, and Armstrong among its leading proponents. I show that there is a type of causation, causation by disconnection, with no physical or intrinsic connection between cause and effect. Only Hume-style conditions approaches and hybrid conditions-connections approaches appear to be able to handle causation by disconn…
Quantum holism
Anchoring as Grounding
Truth and Fundamentality
Principled Chances
There are at least three core principles that define the chance role: (1) the Principal Principle, (2) the Basic Chance Principle, and (3) the Humean Principle. These principles seem mutually incompatible. At least, no extant account of chance meets more than one of them. I offer an account of chance which meets all three: L*‐chance. So the good news is that L*‐chance meets (1)–(3). The bad news is that L*‐chance turns out unlawful and unstable. …
The Individuation of Tropes
Skepticism, Contextualism, and Discrimination
The skeptic says that “knowledge” is an absolute term, whereas the contextualist says that ‘knowledge” is a relationally absolute term. Which is the better hypothesis about “knowledge”? And what implications do these hypotheses about “knowledge” have for knowledge? I argue that the skeptic has the better hypothesis about “knowledge”, but that both hypotheses about “knowledge” have deeply anti‐skeptical implications for knowledge, since both presu…
Derivative Properties in Fundamental Laws
Orthodoxy has it that only metaphysically elite properties can be invoked in scientifically elite laws. We argue that this claim does not fit scientific practice. An examination of candidate scientifically elite laws like Newton’s F = ma reveals properties invoked that are irreversibly defined and thus metaphysically non-elite by the lights of the surrounding theory: Newtonian acceleration is irreversibly defined as the second derivative of posit…
The Contrast-sensitivity of Knowledge Ascriptions
Knowledge ascriptions are contrast-sensitive. One natural explanation for this is that the knowledge relation is contrastive (s knows that p rather than q). But can the binary view of knowledge (s knows that p) explain contrast-sensitivity? I review some of the linguistic data supporting contrast-sensitivity, and critique the three main binary explanations for contrast-sensitivity. I conclude that the contrast-sensitivity of knowledge ascriptions…
Necessitarian propositions
Knowing the Answer Redux
The Problem of Free Mass
Properties come in clusters. It seems impossible, for instance, that a mass could float free, unattached to any other property. David Armstrong takes this as a reductio of the bundle theory and an argument for substrata, while Peter Simons and Arda Denkel reply by supplementing the bundle theory with accounts of property interdependencies. I argue against both views. Virtually all plausible ontologies turn out to be committed to the existence of …
Folk teleology drives persistence judgments
Confessions of a schmentencite
Natural language semantics is heir to two formalisms. There is the extensional machinery of explicit variables traditionally used to model reference to individuals, and the intensional machinery of implicit index parameters traditionally used to model reference to worlds and times. I propose instead a simple and unified extensional formalism - explicit semantics - on which all sentences include explicit individual, world and time variables. No im…
Of Ghostly and Mechanical Events
Causation by Disconnection
The physical and/or intrinsic connection approach to causation has become prominent in the recent literature, with Salmon, Dowe, Menzies, and Armstrong among its leading proponents. I show that there is a type of causation, causation by disconnection, with no physical or intrinsic connection between cause and effect. Only Hume-style conditions approaches and hybrid conditions-connections approaches appear to be able to handle causation by disconn…
The Individuation of Tropes
The Problem of Free Mass
Properties come in clusters. It seems impossible, for instance, that a mass could float free, unattached to any other property. David Armstrong takes this as a reductio of the bundle theory and an argument for substrata, while Peter Simons and Arda Denkel reply by supplementing the bundle theory with accounts of property interdependencies. I argue against both views. Virtually all plausible ontologies turn out to be committed to the existence of …
Principled Chances
There are at least three core principles that define the chance role: (1) the Principal Principle, (2) the Basic Chance Principle, and (3) the Humean Principle. These principles seem mutually incompatible. At least, no extant account of chance meets more than one of them. I offer an account of chance which meets all three: L*‐chance. So the good news is that L*‐chance meets (1)–(3). The bad news is that L*‐chance turns out unlawful and unstable. …
Skepticism, Contextualism, and Discrimination
The skeptic says that “knowledge” is an absolute term, whereas the contextualist says that ‘knowledge” is a relationally absolute term. Which is the better hypothesis about “knowledge”? And what implications do these hypotheses about “knowledge” have for knowledge? I argue that the skeptic has the better hypothesis about “knowledge”, but that both hypotheses about “knowledge” have deeply anti‐skeptical implications for knowledge, since both presu…
Of Ghostly and Mechanical Events
Contrastive Causation
Research Article| July 01 2005 Contrastive Causation Jonathan Schaffer Jonathan Schaffer Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google The Philosophical Review (2005) 114 (3): 327–358. https://doi.org/10.1215/00318108-114-3-327 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Permissions Search Site Citation Jonathan Schaffer; Contrastive Causation. The Philosophical Review 1 July 2005; 114 (3): 327–358. doi: https://d…
Le trou noir de la causalité
Cet article examine les changements idéologiques qui touchent le statut social des femmes, en particulier la maternité et la sexualité. Il analyse la pluralisation des féminismes en articulation avec les mobilisations actuelles contre les violences sexuelles et montre les injonctions paradoxales qui s’exercent sur les femmes. Dans une perspective épistémologique il relie ces évolutions à des mutations conceptuelles significatives qui s’observent …
Knowing the Answer
“ev’ry gambler knows that the secret to survivin’ is knowin’ what to throw away and knowing what to keep.” (Kenny Rogers) How should one understand knowledge‐ wh ascriptions? That is, how should one understand claims such as “I know where the car is parked,” which feature an interrogative complement? The received view is that knowledge‐ wh reduces to knowledge that p , where p happens to be the answer to the question Q denoted by the wh ‐clause. …
Deterministic Chance
Can there be deterministic chance? That is, can there be objective chance values other than 0 or 1, in a deterministic world? I will argue that the answer is no. In a deterministic world, the only function that can play the role of chance is one that outputs just 0s and 1s. The role of chance involves connections from chance to credence, possibility, time, intrinsicness, lawhood, and causation. These connections do not allow for deterministic cha…
Phil Dowe And Paul Noordhof Cause and Chance
1. Summaries2. Reflections
Andreas Hüttemann What's Wrong With Microphysicalism
Truth and Fundamentality
The Contrast-sensitivity of Knowledge Ascriptions
Knowledge ascriptions are contrast-sensitive. One natural explanation for this is that the knowledge relation is contrastive (s knows that p rather than q). But can the binary view of knowledge (s knows that p) explain contrast-sensitivity? I review some of the linguistic data supporting contrast-sensitivity, and critique the three main binary explanations for contrast-sensitivity. I conclude that the contrast-sensitivity of knowledge ascriptions…
On What Grounds What
On the now dominant Quinean view, metaphysics is about what there is. Metaphysics so conceived is concerned with such questions as whether properties exist, whether meanings exist, and whether numbers exist. I will argue for the revival of a more traditional Aristotelian view, on which metaphysics is about what grounds what. Metaphysics so revived does not bother asking whether properties, meanings, and numbers exist. Of course they do! The quest…
Knowing the Answer Redux
Monism
Which is prior, the whole or its parts? The monist holds that the whole is prior to its parts, and thus views the cosmos as fundamental, with metaphysical explanation dangling downward from the One. The pluralist holds that the parts are prior to their whole, and thus tends to consider particles fundamental, with metaphysical explanation snaking upward from the many. There seem to be physical and modal considerations that favor the monistic view.…
The Least Discerning and Most Promiscuous Truthmaker
I argue that the one and only truthmaker is the world. This view can be seen as arising from (i) the view that truthmaking is a relation of grounding holding between true propositions and fundamental entities, together with (ii) the view that the world is the one and only fundamental entity. I argue that this view provides an elegant and economical account of the truthmakers, while solving the problem of negative existentials, in a way that prove…
Grounding, transitivity, and contrastivity
A summary is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Necessitarian propositions
Writing the Book of the World
Writing the Book of the World is masterful work. Sider offers a careful and insightful treatment of metaphysical structure (or naturalness, or fundamentality), developing a framework for metaphysical inquiry while defending the centrality of metaphysics to philosophy as a whole. There is much to admire and much to discuss. I expect Sider's book to become a touchstone for further discussion of the nature and viability of metaphysical inquiry. It i…
A Companion to David Lewis
What Not to Multiply Without Necessity
The Razor commands us not to multiply entities without necessity. I argue for an alternative principle—The Laser—which commands us not to multiply fundamental entities without necessity.
Companion to David Lewis
Grounding in the image of causation
Epistemology (22 obras) · Philosophy (20 obras) · Philosophy and Theoretical Science (19 obras) · Computer Science (17 obras) · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics (17 obras) · Philosophy and History of Science (12 obras) · Metaphysics (9 obras) · Psychology (8 obras) · Philosophy (6 obras) · Causation (5 obras)