Towards ontological nihilism

2016

In section 1, I explain why a specifically Dummettian conception of realism will be relevant only in a restricted range of cases. In section 2, I suggest that Crispin Wright could be read as holding that the truth of certain judgements depends on our capacity to know it (if and) only if their being true consists in their being superassertible. In section 3, I point out that insisting on knowability, as both Dummett and Wright do, prevents one from seeing that their are other legitimate forms of realism. I argue against the claim attributed to Wright in section 2, which leads me to suggest that it is a mistake to construe the realism debates as being essentially concerned with the nature of truth. The purpose of this paper is to explain and criticize a conception of realism which is suggested by the general approach to the realism debates which Crispin Wright has developed, mainly in his Truth and Objectivity [Wright 1992]. This book largely contributed to restructuring the whole pro...

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2018

This chapter is concerned with a semantic (as opposed to ontological) approach to metaphysics, developed by Michael Dummett and Crispin Wright, that takes truth as fundamental, and explicates debates about realisms in terms of truth. On this approach realism is fundamentally concerned with the objectivity of truth, where objectivity does not consist in the existence of entities. The chapter shows that Dummett worked with three separable criteria for the objectivity of truth, which support a subtle and flexible framework for characterizing various degrees of realism. It argues that Dummett’s so-called “manifestation” arguments against semantic realism can handle many objections that have been brought against them. It discusses Wright’s minimalism about truth, his four semantic criteria of realism, their inter-relations, and their connections to Dummett’s criteria. It concludes with reflections on the meta-philosophical status of the semantic approach: the reasons in favor of pursuing...

What are the prospects for contemporary continental philosophy in the wake of speculative realism's rehabilitation of ontology? In order to answer this question, I discuss the fundamental reasons behind the rise of antirealist philosophies from Hume and Kant to the postmodernists and how they are addressed in the new realist philosophies of M. Ferraris and M. Gabriel. First, I point out why realist metaphysics has been increasingly linked to dogmatism in modern and postmodern philosophy. I argue that the many forms of anti-realism have their roots in a twofold quest, the desire to uncover and overcome the dogmatic presuppositions of traditional philosophising, and the desire to show the limits of instrumental rationality. Second, I sketch out the essence of the dogmatic-realist moves of traditional philosophy as established by Kant: in a nutshell, they consist in regarding the forms of representation as determined by the mind-independent nature of the objects of representation. The post-Kantian development of philosophy is largely influenced by this view of dogmatism as it gives rise to various attempts for overcoming of metaphysics. Third, I discuss how Ferraris and Gabriel resist the influential criticisms of realism by developing non-representationalist accounts of truth. In particular, I regard the pluralist tendency in Gabriel's theory of Sinnfelder as highly productive. Having in mind their insights, I discuss how the realist turn has the potential to oppose contemporary forms of dogmatism.

Idealism, Relativism, and Realism: New Essays on Objectivity Beyond the Analytic-Continental Divide, ed. by Dominik Finkelde and Paul M. Livingston (De Gruyter, 2020), 2020

The paper brings Dummett's formulation of "realism" into dialogue with Heidegger's understanding of truth as "unconcealment." Livingston argues, with references to Frege and Wittgenstein, that the phenomenon of truth can be understood theoretically and analytically as requiring the pre-theoretical appearing and constitution of objects, in experiential, practical, or explicitly linguistic modalities. This approach provides a basis for new logically-and phenomenologically-based accounts of the structure of objectivity within linguistic truth in relation to the appearance and being of objects. Within the context of a development of Heidegger's idea of ontological difference, this further implies that truth and objectivity must have a logically paradoxical structure. Even if Heidegger does not often say so explicitly, this paradoxical structure of objectivity and truth is centrally involved, as Livingston argues, in his understanding of the "clearing" and the interpretation it allows of beings "as such and as a whole."

Zeitshchrift Fur Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie, 2004

This paper presents an argument for metaphysical realism, understood as the claim that the world has structure that would exist even if our cognitive activities never did. The argument is based on the existence of a structured world at a time when it was still possible that we would never evolve. But the interpretation of its premises introduces subtleties: whether, for example, these premises are to be understood as assertions about the world or about our evidence, internally or externally, via assertibility conditions or truth conditions-and what sorts of beings are included in the 'we' upon whose cognitions the antirealist supposes the structure of the world to depend. I argue that antirealism can provide no defensible, fully articulated interpretation of the premises that either shows them not to be true or defeats the reasoning.

Academicus International Scientific Journal, 2012

In the paper we argue that no neat border line between ontology and epistemology can be drawn. This is due to the fact that the separation between factual and conceptual is rather fuzzy, and the world is characterized by a sort of ontological opacity which makes the construction of any absolute ontology difficult. Our ontology is characterized by the fact that the things of nature are seen by us in terms of a conceptual apparatus that is inevitably influenced by mind-involving elements, and all this has important consequences on both the question of scientific realism and the realism/anti-realism debate. Conceptualization gives us access to the world, while, on the other, it is the most important feature of our cultural evolution. While the idealistic thesis according to which the mind produces natural reality looks hardly tenable, it is reasonable to claim instead that we perceive this same reality by having recourse to the filter of a conceptual apparatus whose presence is, in tur...

Ergo, an Open Access Journal of Philosophy, 2018

According to ontological nihilism there are, fundamentally, no individuals. Both natural languages and standard predicate logic, however, appear to be committed to a picture of the world as containing individual objects. This leads to what I call the expressibility challenge for ontological nihilism: what language can the ontological nihilist use to express her account of how matters fundamentally stand? One promising suggestion is for the nihilist to use a form of predicate functorese, a language developed by Quine. This proposal faces a difficult objection, according to which any theory in predicate functorese will be a notational variant of the corresponding theory stated in standard predicate logic. Jason Turner (2011) has provided the most detailed and convincing version of this objection. In the present paper, I argue that Turner's case for the notational variance thesis relies on a faulty metasemantic principle and, consequently, that an objection long thought devastating is in fact misguided. B oth standard metaphysics and common sense are, plausibly, committed to a picture of the world as containing individual objects: these objects range from the mid-sized dry goods of everyday life such as trees, tables, and turnips to electrons, protons, and neutrons. These objects belong to kinds-biological, chemical, physical, etc.-but they are particular instances of these kinds. It is these particular objects that we seem to encounter in perception, and they are central to much of our ordinary communication about the world. Viewing the world as containing concrete, particular objects-henceforth 'individuals'-is so fundamental to our cognitive operations that the project of devising a metaphysics without individuals might seem hopeless. Recently, however, several philosophers have challenged this picture, motivated by puzzles stemming from both metaphysics and (a certain interpretation of) the findings of physics. They argue that contrary to appearances, fundamental reality does not include any individual

2010

In: Kenneth R. Westphal (ed.), Realism, Science, and Pragmatism, Routledge, 2014., 2014