Engineering existence
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21335596 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Lukas Skiba (0000-0003-1670-8524, Universität Hamburg, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 69 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 101-126 |
| Publication date | 2026-01-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Inquiry (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0020-174X • E-ISSN: 1502-3923 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/0020174x.2021.1977692 |
| OpenAlex | W4200521689 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 50 |
This paper investigates the connection between two recent trends in philosophy: higher-orderism and conceptual engineering. Higher-orderists use higher-order quantifiers (in particular quantifiers binding variables that occupy the syntactic positions of predicates) to express certain key metaphysical doctrines, such as the claim that there are properties. I argue that, on a natural construal, the higher-orderist approach involves an engineering project concerning, among others, the concept of existence. I distinguish between a modest construal of this project, on which it aims at engineering higher-order analogues of the familiar notion of first-order existence, and an ambitious construal, on which it additionally aims at engineering a broadened notion of existence that subsumes first-order and higher-order existence. After identifying a substantial problem for the ambitious project, I investigate a possible response which is based on adopting a cumulative type theory as the background higher-order logic. While effective against the problem at hand, this strategy turns out to undermine a major reason to embrace higher-orderism in the first place, namely the idea that higher-orderism dissolves a range of otherwise intractable debates in metaphysics. Higher-orderists are therefore best advised to pursue their engineering project on the modest variant and against the background of standard type theory
Construal level theory · Economics · Epistemology · Metaphysics · Order (exchange) · Social science · Sociology · Computer Science · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Mathematics · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science · Philosophy and Theoretical Science
The Construction of Logical Space
Replacing Truth
Fixing Language
Guide to ground
A Pragmatic Method for Normative Conceptual Work
On What Grounds What
The revisionist's rubric
The Extended Mind
New work for a theory of universals
Ontological Pluralism
The Fragmentation of Being
Ontological Pluralism
Modal Logic as Metaphysics
Conceptual Engineering, Topics, Metasemantics, and Lack of Control
Higher-order metaphysics and the tropes versus universals dispute
Verbal disputes and topic continuity
What is conceptual engineering and what should it be
Everything
To Be F Is To Be G
The Prenective View of propositional content
Structure by proxy, with an application to grounding
Conceptual engineering, truth, and efficacy
Ideological parsimony
Mere Possibilities
Grounding, Essence, and Identity
Unrestricted Quantification and the Structure of Type Theory
Higher-order metaphysics
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,5 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2024 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |